Somewhere in the Skies - To the Stars Academy of Whiskey and UFOs

Episode Date: August 27, 2018

On episode 71 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan is joined by UFO journalist, Jason McClellan and UFO blogger and academic, MJ Banias. The three sit down, whiskey in hand, to discuss the recent happenings over at To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. With the announcement of a new research project knows as The Acquisition and Data Analysis of Materials (A.D.A.M), things are getting very interesting in the UFO field and beyond. With this project, Tom DeLonge, Luis Elizondo, and the rest of the science team will recover materials that are said to have possibly been from downed UFO craft. With the assistance of TTSA member, Hal Putoff, and a group of scientists, these materials will undergo rigorous analysis to determine its composition and possible origins. But will we be privy to what they find? And if they do determine these materials to be from off-planet, what comes next?  Ryan, Jason, and MJ weave their whiskey-fueled way through the project including its pros, cons, and what may come next for the future of To the Stars Academy and even the future of UFO research on a grander scale. As you can imagine, it was a critical conversation that could only take place Somewhere in the whiskey!  Guest Bios: Jason McClellan is a UFO journalist and the producer/co-host of the web series Spacing Out! He is also the web content manager and staff writer for OpenMinds.tv, and a co-organizer and technical producer of the International UFO Congress. As a founding member of Open Minds, Jason served as a writer and editor for the now defunct Open Minds magazine. He has appeared on Syfy, NatGeo, and, most recently, he co-starred on H2’s Hangar 1: The UFO Files. He is the author of Only Weirdos See UFOs: An Introduction to the Public's Misperception of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and Extraterrestrial Life. His work can be found at: www.RoguePlanet.tv MJ Banias is a writer, blogger, and theorist with a background in Critical Theory, History, and Cultural Studies who critically and philosophically examines the weird, the strange and the anomalous.  He was a former field investigator with MUFON, has been featured on multiple podcasts and contributes to Mysterious Universe and Rogue Planet. His work is also featured in a new book entitled UFOs: Reframing the Debate. He is also the creator of the blog, TERRA OBSCURA. This blog is aimed at critically exploring the culture, the people, and the ideas that shape what society considers inexplicable. Using aspects of philosophy, critical theory, and cultural studies, To questions the common ideologies that form and inform our knowledge concerning bizarre incidents, anomalous paranormal events, UFOs, synchronicities, and other events people consider "strange." To learn more, visit: www.terraobscura.net * Audio clips in this episode provided by To The Stars Inc. Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by 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

One, two, a one, two, three, four. Give me a break. Give me a break. Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar. Give me a break. Give me a break. Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat. Me a break.

Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar. Have a break. Have a Kit Kat. Hey, y'all. Ryan Spreck here. As you all know, the Summer in the Sky's podcast is always free to consume. But it isn't free to create. That's why I've started the Somewhere in the Sky's Patreon campaign.

On a monthly basis, you give what you think the show is worth. You'll be helping the show continue, grow, and to be something truly communal. And remember, there are rewards for each level of contribution, and the list is only growing. So please, help Somewhere in the Skies now by becoming a patron. To contribute and to learn more, visit www. patreon.com backslash somewhere skies. Thank you for your support. And now on with the show. Grabbing this stuff, I think, is going to...

It has a potential, if it ends up being real, has potential for being, A, very dangerous that we have it, and B, shake things up quite a bit. I find it very interesting that there are people out there who absolutely are convinced that they've seen what they've seen, and for that reason I'm willing to listen. And again, that doesn't mean run to the hills with your hand in the air, screaming that the aliens are coming or aliens are coming.

No one's even mentioned the word aliens. we're not talking about aliens. We're not talking about extraterrestrial life. We're simply saying that there is something out there in our airspace. We don't control. We don't know what the hell it is. And so if it's not the eyewitness reports and it's not the videos and it's not the electro-optical data and it's a lot of electromechanical data, well, all right, how about

material? Will that be enough? This is Somewhere in the Skies. Brian Sprague. Welcome to another installment of Somewhere in the Whiskey. Today is a very exciting day. I've got two of my best friends and colleagues in the UFO field with me. Jason McClellan, M.J. Benayas, gentlemen, thank you for joining me on this very special episode. So very happy to be here. It's always a pleasure.

Yeah, so MJ, you know the game by now. You've been on for two of these now. This is where we just let loose, kind of like I did a couple weeks ago for UFO Happy Hour with our friend Rob Christopherson. But we're switching to whiskey this week. So I have to ask you guys, What's new? Jason, I know you've been busy. MJ, you've been very busy. I know you're finishing up some projects as well. So let's hear what's new with you guys since the last time we talked.

So much is new with me, but, you know, a lot, I'm not prepared to publicly talk about yet. I know I've teased some of it, and it's the same stuff that I'll tease now working on a couple of book projects. One may or may not be with Mr. Ryan Sprague. So working on books, working on a couple of... public appearances coming up, excited to tease that right now and share more information in the coming weeks. So that's what's new with me. Awesome. MJ, what do you got going on over there, man, in Canada? Oh, man. Well, apart from like raising two little kids, which is always a fun project, I just,

I finished the draft of my book. So that's been submitted to my publisher. So it's really nice to sort of have a break from that and just sort of have that monkey off my back. It's been sort of two years now of constantly thinking about it and writing and whatever. So now that it's done, it's sort of in his hands. Congratulations, by the way.

Yes. Thanks very much. So, you know, hopefully we see that out soon. Like we said, we're sort of in the editing process right now. Apart from that, just plugging away at Mysterious Universe,

writing articles, and blog posts for Tara Obscura. Awesome, man. Well, I'm sure the book is going to ruffle some feathers in the field as it should. And so will today's episode because we are drinking some whiskey tonight, gentlemen.

What are we drinking, Jason? Let's start with you. I am drinking some good old Wild Turkey 101. So going bourbon tonight. Very nice drink. MJ? Oh, see, this is interesting. I'm going with Crown Royal, which is a Canadian rye,

which is actually made just about an hour from my house. So it's really nice to be, it's close to home. But I'm drinking a specific version. It's the bourbon mash bill. So they basically use a bourbon mash in the rye production. So it's still a rye, but it uses sort of a bourbon, I guess, mash base to sort of get that fermentation going. And then it's aged in some nice bourbon barrel. So while I'm not drinking a bourbon, I'm enjoying the flavor of bourbon.

That sounds amazing. And I love crown. So just trying to imagine that is really exciting. So, yeah, when I saw it, you posted the picture of the barbubon. bottle, I was extremely excited and curious. It's really nice, actually. It's very mellow. Yeah.

Awesome. I've always been a huge fan of Crown. Whenever people ordered it at my bar in New York, I immediately gave him this salute. I'm like, that's a good person right there. Well, good. I mean, Jason, you got a bourbon. MJ, you got a rye. I am drinking a scotch.

So we're going all around the brown table tonight, guys. Got our bases covered. Yes, we do. I am drinking. This is from the blended whiskey company. Now, this was part of the drinks by dram collection I got last Christmas. Actually, it was the last time all three of us spoke together with our good friend Mike DeMonte. I decided to keep one last bottle for some sort of celebration.

It's a 50-year-old half-century blend Scotch whiskey. It's amazing. It's hard as shit because it was made the old school way. You know, none of the filtering. of that like really measuring portions of each ingredient. They just made this shit in bathtubs and hoped for the best. So it's a little rough going down, but I really appreciate that. But yeah, I'm really enjoying it.

And what better way to celebrate than with what we're going to be talking about today? And that is To the Stars Academy and the Adam Research Project. So the last time the three of us talk, guys, was pretty much the start of To the Stars and the Pentagon program becoming public. So for those... The start of To the Stars Academy. Correct. The Academy, yes.

To the Stars has been around for a while. So to the Stars Academy, for those who may not know, I don't know how they wouldn't know at this point. But this is started by Tom DeLong and a few other individuals who we will mention later. But to the Stars Academy sort of coins itself as it strives to be a powerful vehicle for change by creating a...

I'm drunk already. a consortium among science, aerospace, and entertainment that will work collectively to allow gifted researchers the freedom to explore exotic science and technologies with the infrastructure and resources to rapidly transition them to products that change the world. Ooh, that's a mouthful. So, guys, I guess before we really even get started, is that what to the stars is doing? Are they sort of sticking with their mission so far? or what are we getting from them so far? I'd love to get your initial reactions to how to the Stars Academy is going before we get into the new endeavor they're undertaking. So, Jason, let's start with you.

Sure. Well, you know, I think everything that they laid out at the beginning clearly painted the picture that this was a grand project company. And grand projects take time. And they're not going to be companies that are constantly delivering. fans and followers new things because that doesn't happen. That's not what the company is existing to do. So these grand plans, and really a lot of the grand plans, focused on their entertainment division and feature films and, you know, television projects. Those things take time. We've certainly seen teasers and things showing that something is underway, but, you know, any more

than that, we haven't really seen anything delivered. And honestly, I wouldn't expect it to be at this point. This is going to be probably one of the slowest process we've ever seen in terms of possible UFO quote disclosure. Right. Well, look at their other efforts to, you know, work on propulsion devices, things that could potentially be sourced from extraterrestrial spacecraft, looking at extraterrestrial vehicles as a inspiration for building some sort of space vehicle. Again, that's not something that every day we're going to see a new post on social

media that says, hey, look at this new alien screw we made. I mean, I don't know what people would expect to see in terms of a gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, now, now, now, mentality. But if you're really expecting a spaceship to be built by this company, you're not going to see it for quite some time. It's a process, and the people involved know how to do that sort of process, this really slow burn, as it were. And that's how things get done. So, MJ, what do you think?

Are we sort of, is to the stars so far, it's been a little over a year now, are they sticking to the plan? Are we getting some of the stuff that we've sort of been promised, or are we discounting them at this point? What do you, what are your, let's just go right out of the gate with it? What do you think, man? Yeah, I tend to agree with, I mean, I agree with the two of you. All science takes time. You know, all good science takes time. You know, in order to get stuff properly analyzed and then double-checked and then triple-checked

and then to actually compile your data into a peer-reviewed article or peer-reviewed paper that's going to go into a scientific journal and then sort of move forward with any of this, this is always going to take time. When you talk to sort of any academic projects take, take at some studies in projects, to take literally a decade or longer, with some studies taking literally, you know, 20 or 30 years. So really fundamentally, if the youthful community is expecting anything of sort of value, and I mean actual, like, sink your teeth into meat and potatoes value, something that the UFO community can bring before sort of mainstream academia and mainstream science and say, okay, here's our data.

It's been peer-reviewed. You know, it's your turn to pick it apart and look at it. all that's going to take time. You don't want to go half-cocked into any of this, right? Because ultimately, if they do, if TTSA comes out and says, here's stuff, you know, meta-materials, here's video footage, whatever, and says, you know, this has been peer reviewed, this has been assessed by multiple organizations, independent organizations, whatever, and turns out it's all rubbish. That's going to set the UFO discourse, I suppose, or the study of UFOs back another 40, 50 years, right? So I think caution is important here. And I think, like as Jason says, sort of a slow burn is important here.

So that's sort of my opinion. Do I think that they've sort of offered or sorry, I've been able to deliver what they promised? I don't necessarily know what they sort of promised initially. There was a lot of hype, right? But the hype was designed to sell shares. It is a corporation after all, a public benefit corporation, I suppose. I'm not sure what that means, but a corporation nonetheless.

So funding is essential here. And if the hype was designed, the hype was probably designed just to sort of sell as many shares as possible. Have you ever had the desire to look outward to the edge of what is known and unknown? We have the chance to do something revolutionary. Something that I think has never been attempted before. What if I told you I found a group of like-minded people who held senior positions in the U.S. government, from the CIA to the Department of Defense to the most advanced aerospace engineering groups within our national security establishment? people who have life skills in collecting and decoding elusive information.

And they all wanted to do something ambitious, something that could help change the conversation about who we are through an unparalleled search for answers that can propel humanity forward. But, you know, they're going to come with a lot of media, and I think that's kind of where their bread butter is going to come from, really fundamentally, is the media projects that they're doing. Well, not only that, but, I mean, the fact that now to the stars is out there into the main.

stream or getting out there, that's when they're going to start to collect data and information. You know, when people are going to start coming forward with these, like you said, meta materials that they've come across, which we'll get to shortly, this all came because of the articles that came out about to the stars and the secret Pentagon program and Luis Elizondo. You know, this is how they got these materials is through people finding out who the company was, what they were doing and what they were looking for. So I think that's pretty interesting, you know, it's working in tandem with them trying to, uh, trying to discover these things.

But MJ, you did bring up a good word and that's caution. And something I think that has kind of been a problem with to the Star's Academy since the beginning is caution. They've had some stumbles along the way, you know, mainly the first being the Joe Rogan interview with Mr. Tom DeLong. They've since sort of put the, uh, the lid on Tom, not really, letting him do any type of interviews, which might be for the best for now. But you wrote a very interesting article recently for Mysterious Universe about the Nimitz case, one of the videos that came forward by To the Stars and Mr. Luis Elizondo about taking caution. And they clearly didn't do that in terms of this with Mr. Chris Mellon. So could you maybe sort of run us through this little first

bump that they had with a Nimitz case? After my op-ed appeared with the video, I got a call from an individual retired from the Defense Department and who had worked on these issues. And I asked them, I said, do you have any context for that video? Do you have any details? He told me that was one of two videos that came into the Pentagon from the commander of a carrier battle group. And these are his words. He described it as a plea for help, end quote. Yeah, this is a, this was a really interesting sort of situation. only because, I have to be honest, it was such a contained incident

that not many people sort of knew about it. And in fact, I'm convinced not many people still know about it. So on August 7th, there was a Twitter user who has quite a long handle, but I'll say it out loud or you can put in the show notes or something, but it's at J-097-84691.

And he posted several tweets concerning something he discovered, on Chris Mellon's personal website concern sort of a I guess a series of documents that had been posted to I think the resources page and they were sort of totally out of place they were totally out of context they were just there just sort of pictures and and JPEG images and files and they sat there for about a day and a half or maybe a day or so like 24 36 hours until the site was taken down but the contents of that I suppose package of data contained sort of various photographs of sort of CDs and a delivery package as well as Louis Elizondo's

resignation letter as well as a few other things we've seen the three videos except the unedited videos so they don't contain any of the sort of to the stars preemptive information and then the concluding information they're just sort of the raw videos that were posted on the website

there's nothing more to them though like it's not like they're long These are just sort of the raw cuts, I suppose, of what they posted. And then, for me, the most important piece was the Nimitz report or the pilot report that is posted on to the Star's website. The issue is that that report was on Chris Mellon's site posted and it was totally unredacted. So you could read the names of all of the pilots and the source who brought that information out. So it was all sort of public, where if you go on the TTSA website, you'll see the file or the report, but all the names are redacted out and some of the other information is redacted, such as the dates of when the interview occurred, where the interview occurred, etc. So basically what happened was for about, like I said, 24 to 36 hours, who knows how many people, several hundred, several thousand had access to the Nimitz report with, all of the contact information for the sources involved and the pilots involved.

Now, we know three of the pilots, I believe, currently. I know two for sure. Three of the pilots, so as far as I know, have come forward and said, yes, I've been here, I've been part of it, and they've gone on record saying that they were involved in this Tick-Tac incident. However, the other three, as well as the source who provided the report, were not public or have not gone public. So obviously, in this case, their privacy was sort of violated. Now, again, I don't know necessarily personally how many people have seen the unredacted report. I don't know how many people actually are in possession of it. Nor, as far as I know, though, which is sort of on the positive note, it hasn't been sort of publicly posted yet. So as far as I know,

no one has just taken the file and reposted it on, let's say, Reddit or Twitter or Facebook Facebook or above top secret. As far as my recent check, however, it could be buried somewhere. Or it could be on some sites that I just don't visit, you know, somewhere deep, deep in the bowels of the internet. So who knows? As far as I know, it's still intact. But again, I would say there's probably a few hundred people who probably have this file. Yeah, exactly.

And I mean, this wasn't the first time that sort of a, I guess, miscommunication with the members of to the Stars Academy that this has happened. I mean, we look at the, we're going to talk about the new project that they're, you're doing and sort of the first bump with that. So I guess let's get into that. Now, this was maybe a week and a half ago or so that to the stars announced a new program, a research program that they are conducting called Adam. This is the acquisition and data analysis of materials. Now, this is what a lot of UFO people have been waiting for, physical evidence, materials from downed exotic craft, as it were, and this is what they seem to be teasing with us. Grabbing this stuff, I think, is going to, it has a potential if it ends up being real,

it's potential for being, A, very dangerous that we have it, and B, shake things up a bit. I find it very interesting that there are people out there who absolutely are convinced that they've seen what they've seen, and for that reason I'm willing to listen. And again, that doesn't mean run to the hills with your hand in the air, screaming that the aliens they're coming or aliens are coming. No one's even mentioned the word aliens. We're not talking about aliens. We're not talking about extraterrestrial life. We're simply saying that there is something out there in our airspace. We don't control. We don't know what the hell it is. And so if it's not the eyewitness reports and it's not the video and it's not the electro-optical data and it's a lot of electrical

data, well, all right, how about material? Will that be enough? What you all are agreeing to do is to allow us TTSA to maintain temporary control of the material for the purposes of scientific and and research. Then I have additional protection here. I'm going to go ahead and make sure it's all lead shielded, RF everything. We can continue to protect it. Rather than getting to fly home, I get to drive 18 hours now with this stuff. I mean, Jason, you have some experience with this. Having worked for a UFO organization, you've come across this type of data and analysis of materials many, many times. So before we get into what you think about that, this is a joint effort between TTSA and EarthTech International, you know, which is owned by Hal Putoff,

one of the members of to the stars. So right there, I found that pretty interesting that they're sort of announcing that they're working with the gentleman who's already a member of the program. They're working with themselves. Yeah. Working with themselves, yes. Very, very interesting spin they put on all that. But it was, it was exciting to know that they are pursuing actual physical evidence. So I guess, Jason, let's get your initial. reactions to Adam in general, do you think this is, what should we expect from this? We do know that there are materials and we do know where those materials possibly come from in terms of the source, the people that were in possession of them, where they may have been

found here on Earth. So, yeah, what do you make of Adam so far? Well, with Adam, my initial reaction is I'm super stoked. I'm glad it's happening and I'm really excited to see where it goes. But like with all things, in this world of strange that we all find ourselves in. And as we've seen, with everything that Two the Stars does, people really need to manage their own expectations, right? I mean, I think that's a problem that a lot of people are having right now because they hear that there's this new project that's going to test materials

that could potentially be from extraterrestrials. It's easy to get super worked up and excited by that, right? How cool is that testing UFO material? That's awesome. But at the same time, we have to kind of reel back and just enjoy the ride while it happens. And we do need to pay attention to, just like you mentioned, the details, like the lab that they're using. Yes, it is amazing that they have access to a high-tech lab. That is great.

That's something that you don't have. That's something that I don't have. But they have it. And that enables them to do so much more than any of us could. So they've got resources. That's awesome. That being said, when we do have testing or results, of course, that's going to be scrutinized even more than it would normally, right? You've got these guys doing testing in a lab that's not necessarily in a neutral situation.

So it's a private lab owned by somebody affiliated with the company. That could potentially be a red flag, but, you know, you still just have to have to roll with it and see what happens in the first place. Right now we have no results. So it's tough to criticize or poo-poo anything until something actually happens. But when it comes to material, my personal opinion, and again, like you said, we did some of this at open minds. We did testing of material that people would bring to us and say, oh, yeah, this is a piece of a UFO that fell on my yard. And, you know, that stuff happens quite often in this field. and when people hear that there's somebody willing to pay for testing to do it, they come out of the woodwork.

This is also something that, you know, sent up not really flags, but definitely caught my attention when we heard about the governments or the Pentagon's UFO program and contracting with Robert Bigelow and Robert Bigelow allegedly modifying buildings at Bigelow Aerospace to house extraterrestrial material or potential extraterrestrial material, that's all. cool and exciting, but you have to step back and ask, okay, where is this material coming from? What is the provenance? Just because this is a government contractor and it was working under a government, a Pentagon program, doesn't mean that this material was sourced from government sources or that the government authenticated it or signed off and said, yes, the government has UFOs. No, I mean, we still don't know how much of that material would whatever it is, Bigelow already had from his previous exploration into the strange. We don't know, you know, if these were just from people saying, hey, I have a piece of a UFO,

and that's most likely what they are, but we don't know any more than that. And that's what we get in these cases of organizations, testing material that could be extraterrestrial. It's somebody saying, oh, yeah, I have a story. There was a UFO outside my yard. I shot at it, and a piece fell down. So here you go. And they go, oh, yeah. And the guy says, oh, by the way, I was in the military and I have great credentials.

And they're all, all right, we vetted this. This is a credible case. And, you know, that's good. You need to go down and cross off your boxes. But in the end, that's still all it is. It's a story from somebody that claims something and you have a piece of material and you're going to go test it. Great.

But what happens when you have your test results, right? Even if your test results say, wow, we've never seen. anything like this, this looks like it was manufactured off Earth. That's the most likely explanation. It's still not concrete proof, right? It needs to be tested and tested again and tested again by multiple labs. Go through the scientific process, like MJ said at the beginning. You know, it's a very rigorous process for mainstream science, let alone talking about things that could potentially be from a UFO. So that makes it even more difficult and really ups the responsibility, the burden of proof on the people doing the testing in this case. But even if

We accept their results and say, wow, this thing is probably from a UFO. What does that do? What does that do? For the world, for us, for the UFO research community, what does that do? And my opinion is nothing. Not a thing. It sucks. But, you know, for us in this and for the people who are excited about it, I'm a UFO fan, you know, I want those results.

I want to hear that announcement. it'll be super exciting for me and I'll go, that's cool, but I can't really do anything else with it. I'll file it away in my brain and say, okay, this is another element I have to work with in forming my own opinions, but that's really all it does. It might stir some headlines for a couple weeks, like we saw with the Pentagon UFO program, but people are going to move on, even if the results, you know, go to a couple different labs and say, this is from an alien spacecraft, that news is still going to fade in a couple weeks. So is it going to change the course of UFO research?

I don't think so. But I love this because I know it's so paradoxical, but on one hand, I say it's not going to do anything. On the other hand, I'm all for it. I'm all behind it 100%. And I'm so excited that somebody is willing to pony up that money and do research like this, because I do think it's incredibly important, but while also saying it's not really going to do anything. I'm going to jump in here.

I got to jump in here because I don't actually disagree. So we're going to have our first debate of the night voice. Sweet. Okay, so if let's say, okay, so I want to clarify here, Jason, are you saying that if multiple labs confirm the data and an academic peer-reviewed paper is written and published? Like we're talking about, I mean, we're not talking about this is going to happen tomorrow.

we're talking about this is potentially like five to ten years before this all happens because like testing takes time and then writing the paper and confirming your data. So assuming that happens, an academic paper is written and it comes out, yeah, we have a piece of material that is not from this world and it is otherworldly. Confirmed. You're suggesting that that would not change anything in like the study of UFOs? I agree. We have, we have mainstream scientists who have published peer review papers.

confirming the discovery of extraterrestrial life. And that's mainstream science. And they get shot down. That stuff barely makes the news and people move on, right? I mean, now we're talking about UFOs, so it's even harder. What do you mean? Sorry, there's peer-reviewed papers where scientists have come out and said that they have Episcopal extraterrestrial life.

Many times over in many different areas. Absolutely. And that is fully refuted by plenty of scientists. it barely makes the news and then we move on. I think ultimately what ultimately happens, though, is the ball rolls forward a little bit. I mean, how many, I'm sure, as a result of those papers, most astrophysicists now and most astronomers now, most scientists now believe, or at least would argue that life exists elsewhere in the cosmos, right? Where maybe 100 years ago or 50 years ago, that would have been. been viewed as maybe taboo or somewhat heretical to the dogma of science. But now, most people

believe, yeah, there's probably extraterrestrial life somewhere out there. Whether it's coming here is debatable, but it's somewhere out there. If suddenly a material shows up that enters the academic world as being, yeah, no, it's been confirmed by multiple labs and articles has been written, and it is. I would argue that mainstream academia would now potentially, at least certain people within mainstream academia, would start to start studying the phenomena as being like, okay, well, maybe something is actually happening since there is something here, right? We have a tangible piece of, we have a tangible object we can actually study now. But that hasn't really happened with the fossilized extraterrestrial life, right? That's what I'm saying. It's happened, but, and many times over,

and published in peer-review papers, but scientists, some scientists, not all scientists, but they dismiss it. It's not world-changing. They don't accept, okay, now we've confirmed that extraterrestrial lives exist. No, it's still just an idea to them that, oh, yeah, I think it's feasible

that it's there somewhere. It doesn't change the established, accepted reality that we have discovered extraterrestrial life. Not everyone accepted Newton's theory of gravity when it was a theory, and now is a fact, right? And not everyone accepted Einstein's theory of relativity, right? Not everyone accepted the quantum mechanic theory when it first started, right?

Like, ultimately, everything takes time, right? Like, science takes time. Absolutely. So ultimately, if we can, you know, if that ball starts rolling, if one thing happens, other things might happen, right? And then ultimately it becomes science fact versus science fiction. Yeah, absolutely. It's a process, man.

That's why I said. I mean, I don't think we're going to notice any changes and certainly not any time soon, but I think it's incredibly worthwhile. And I agree with you there. I don't think there's going to be like, you know, suddenly tomorrow everyone believes in aliens. I agree with both of you guys. I think, you know, the needle will move forward a little bit, but it's just going to be, you know, that swinging pendulum at this point, you know? Like, maybe, maybe they will find some sort of isotopic ratio in this material that says there's no way it was from here, or it's so anomalous that there's no

explaining it. But in terms of the teaser we got with Adam, of the materials they are in possession with. We saw, and this was done by the diligence of, you know, many UFO researchers out there and just, you know, people who are following this to the nth degree, they were able to read the documents in the teaser trailer. One was from Rendlesham, a possible material from the Rendlesham UFO event of 1980. Now, this is interesting because, first and foremost, we've never heard of any material having been collected. And then we find out that Colonel Holt, the base commander at the time said that some was collected, shipped off to Germany somewhere. But in these documents that were in the teaser trailer for Adam, it clearly states,

we have no idea if this is actually from Rendell Schum or not. Now, since that has happened, these documents in the trailer for Adam have been blurred out. They re-uploaded the video and blurred out the documents, not thinking that anyone would go through, you know, the diligence of actually dissecting what might be on the... those papers. So in terms of that, I think with this first outing for Adam, people were not impressed. These materials seem to not really be of any importance. But again, this is a teaser. They're trying to sell this project to us so that maybe they will have more anomalous things to look at in the future. So I think that's sort of where I stand in terms of the needle moving forward if this project is

going to be of importance and what it might hold for the future of both TTSA, Adam, and UFO studies in general. I see both sides of it. But before we sort of move on from that guys, MJ, you personally spoke to Howell Putoff, the VP of Science and Tech for TTSA and the owner of Earth Tech. What did he have to say about all this? What do you specifically want to know? Some of it's on record, some of its off, some kind of this nebulous universe. Yeah. So, I mean, ultimately in my article, it's for Dr. Put-up, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a straight sort of contractual agreement. If TTSA comes into possession of a material that they

deem worthy of being analyzed, TTSA sends the material to EarthTech, EarthTech charged its fee to do the analysis, and then provides the results back to TTSA. So it's a straight contract, according to Dr. Put-off, which makes sense. I want to note in all this, and I think that this is important. And I think being someone who's entire maybe euphological purpose is not so much to study the phenomena, but to study the UFO community. A lot of, a lot of criticism has been thrown at TTSA and EarthTech and Hal Putoff in regards that this is sort of too close, right? You know, Dr. Putoff is a member of TTSA and TTSA is using his lab and, you know, this is sort of this potential, you know, maybe conflict of interest or something.

I'm not really sure if that's the case. I mean, really fundamentally, Dr. Putoff is receiving no money from TTSA, apart from, if there is a meta material or a material that they want studied, his lab will be paid for that particular work, I suppose. But at the end of the day, he personally receives no money from TTSA. He personally receives no sort of funding or royalties or anything. starting the project in 2017, he did receive 5,000, roughly close to 6,000 sort of shares in TTSA, Class B shares, which is all in the circular, like the offering circular for investors.

But that's about it. And those shares right now are worthless. At the end of the day, it's not a publicly traded company. So those shares are worth less than the paper they're written on. So really, I'm not sure if I'm going to see conflict yet. I mean, his lab has been doing this type of work for a long time. I'm not sure who else is really out there who has the resources and the ability and the technical expertise to do this.

Yeah, and I want to clarify, you know, I have no reason to doubt his integrity, you know, and obviously the people in the academy were chosen for a reason. You know, you select people who have resources and skills and things that align with what you're trying to achieve. And this resource, you know, obviously was hugely beneficial to the company. So I do want to put that out there. I personally don't have a problem with his lab doing the testing, but that is something that people on the outside or people in the scientific community might see as a red flag and something

to consider. And it should. You should keep that in mind when viewing whatever results come. Yeah, I mean, you have to be critical. You have to remain critical and vigilant. I mean, at the end of the day, you can't. can't just buy into everything wholeheartedly. However, you know, the problem is, again, as someone who sort of studies the UFO community,

we tend to jump into stuff half-cocked. We have half of the information, and then we just make up the rest in our own minds, and then start, you know, taking shots when we don't really have any ammunition. Ultimately, to think that, that, you know, TTSA is going to send these materials to Earth Tech, Earth Tech's going to study them, send the data back, and then TTCSA is going to come out and say, holy crap, EarthTech has confirmed this is alien or this is otherworldly or whatever, that's not going to happen, right? EarthTech is a legitimate organization that is in collaboration with dozens of other labs

globally. I mean, to think that if they get a hit, let's say, on a material that to their experts and to their team is anomalous, they're not going to simply say, yeah, that's it. Evidence, here it is, boom, done, you know, we're writing a paper. they obviously are going to collaborate with other labs, other independent labs, in this process. You have to. You have to send that material off, and it has to be studied by others who are much more of an arm's length away, if not several arms lengths away. Because you need your data to be double-check, triple-checked, quadruple-checked,

before you can even begin to think about this being something legitimate that we need to actually present to academia and sort of the mainstream community. But again, the UFO community is, like I said, I love them, and they're beautiful and crazy at the same time. They're going to say, holy crap, it's Earth tech while these guys is put off and his history and whatever. Therefore, you know, it's a big write-off. I would think that's pretty short-sighted.

That being said, criticism and critical thinking are always important here. So, yeah. The other thing, too, guys, is in terms of Adam is the transparency. Alejandro Rojas, our good friend over at Open Minds, UFO Radio. He did want to chime in here. he sent me this earlier today. He said, I personally think Adam Project is a good thing.

It's great to have a place to go that can fund and perform this sort of analysis. However, I would like to see more clarification on how the owners of the material will be looped in and assurances, findings will be shared. Many who submitted material

to Bigelow in the past do not feel that they had a positive experience. And this group is, you know, basically Bigelow Group 2.0. So I had that concern, too. I don't know how you guys feel about, okay, so say they do get these results back, and it is so anomalous that there's almost no way it could be from Earth. Again, I don't necessarily buy into that just yet, but say they did. You know, how can we trust that they are going to bring that information to the public that has shares in this, I guess, is my concern.

I think if we're looking for, like, Providence, right, on on all of this. one project Adam just started. So ultimately, you know, you're not going to get any documentation for a while. Because at the end of the day, someone who submits a material or an artifact or whatever for study, it's going to take years before sort of anything really interesting happens, I think. You know, they're going to study material and it's going to come back. Yeah, no, it's like a piece of aluminum from like a bicycle or something, right? You're going to get a lot of negatives, a lot of noise, right?

But if a signal ever shows up, right, if you ever get sort of a hit where, holy crap, this is something interesting. You know, TTSA is not going to then suddenly release, well, this is the guy who sent it to us and here's all the province documents and whatever, because ultimately what's going to happen to that person who submitted that artifact. Ultimately, they're going to get bombarded by not only media and, you know, every sort of shock journalist. But no of that, they're going to get bombarded by the UFO community who's going to come out and start emailing and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, and. and showing up at their house and whatever and being like, you know, we want to talk to you, whatever. I mean, there's a lot of privacy concerns and play here. And the vast majority of people who submit stuff undoubtedly to TTSA don't want their names out there. They have something. Here it is. And I think it's interesting.

And again, whether it is or not, that's going to be obviously looked at and debated. But again, you don't want, you want to really make sure your eyes are dotted and your teeth are crossed, which again is going to take years before you start providing okay this is the individual and all that you need that individual's permission like the individual might say listen yeah here's the material

I don't want anymore or I want to hold on to it but you can study it whatever but I don't want my name anywhere attached to this you know what if the individual like our good friend Isaac Coy right you know Isaac Coy is a UFO researcher and he's a great UFO researcher I have nothing but the utmost respect for him but his job is at total risk

if anyone finds out who he is right he you know all we know he's a lawyer This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best have you wait in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix.

Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center Time, 6 p.m. Pacific Time. So at the end of the day, I can imagine him wanting to keep significant distance between his sort of personal life and his professional life as a lawyer and his sort of UFO life. I can imagine if somebody owns something that they say, you know, came out of a UFO and people are going to think I'm nuts and I own a multimillion dollar tech industry or I, you know, work for this newspaper or whatever, whoever I am, it's going to destroy their entire life if suddenly the UFO community finds out who this person is. So again, you know, we need to be cautious. And TTSA, I think, is doing a pretty decent job of being cautious here. You know, you need to walk a fine line. Once in a while, you know, shit gets leaked on someone's website. But at the end of the day, you know, caution is important.

And I hope that the Adam Project sort of walks that path a little bit. It's not going to satisfy everyone's immediate curiosity. And it's not going to give half answers either. It's going to have to provide we have done our due diligence on this. Because the last thing also, I mean, like I guess, there's also litigation. I mean, you know, people sign NDAs, people sign privacy contracts, whatever, you start violating that stuff. Man, like, you are going to be in court for a while. So, and lawyers are expensive.

And I want to just encourage people again to manage expectations and also be realistic with To the Stars. You know, I think a lot of people have been, you know, they were caught off guard when Two the Stars came on the scene and kind of overly excited. I mean, it's certainly exciting, and it's great to have a company like this in existence and part of the UFO community. But at the same time, I think people need to take a more realistic approach at what the company is and how it is, it's just individuals trying to do something that we're all interested in, right? They're not, we put them up on this pedestal, but they're still just guys trying to achieve something and something great. and they're not perfect. They're a small company. They just started.

So I think they deserve a little slack here. And, you know, we can't hold them to some unrealistic high expectation going into all this, expecting that they're going to do everything perfect on the first try and just live up to everything that our dream UFO mega company would be. Because that's not what two the stars is. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I agree. I'm going to, you know, the whiskey's kicking in, which is... This is why I got you on, MJ. I knew I would have to talk tonight, gentlemen.

Yeah, you know, and I think, one, this is generally sort of telling of, like I said, of sort of the UFO community and how it functions, right? Like, we probably all agree the UFO community sort of is this beautiful anarchy of individual, or this sort of anarchist, anarchy, a beautiful anarchy of individuals who sort of do whatever they want. And there really is no throne in euphology. There really is no throne in UFO discourse. There's no governing body. I think TTSA and maybe Mufon or sort of some of our sort of closest temples that sort of people worship. But,

but ultimately there's as many skeptics and critics of TTSA and Mufon as there are members and and believers. So I think this is pretty telling. I think the UFO community, once someone comes out and says, listen, we're going to throw money into this and we're going to actually do a proper study, and it's going to take time and it's going to take effort,

and it's going to, we're not going to get results for a while. Of course the UFO community is going to be divided on this. And of course the UFO community is going to be totally at odds with itself, sort of trying to figure who's on whose side and lines are being drawn and people are trolling each other on social media and going after each other. And really, we see this all the time. I mean, this is no different than any other organizations come forward. You know, I'm sure Nids went through the same thing.

I'm sure Bass went through the same thing. Anything Bigelow has ever touched has gone through the same thing. Mufon is going through the same thing. And whether this is, you know, the OFO community or maybe who knows, the phenomenon itself, just, you know, messing with us, large companies like this, large organizations like this that start are always met with resistance because just the UFO community functions in this way of resisting it it disconnects from things and then it reattaches like I said it's total chaos and anarchy and maybe the phenomenon whatever it is like I said does like wants

it that way you know maybe part of it is is that you know TTSA is is struggling because you know you're trying to control a phenomenon that's uncontrolled. But that's philosophical and we can get there later. If there's time, I don't know, if we want to break this earlier. Well, here's my little rant about the UFO community. You know, I think the UFO community is its own worst enemy. And we see it time and time again. We certainly are saying it with Two the Stars where, you know,

anybody who enters this arena and starts doing something new or something different, the community from within is very quick to pounce. sort of attack something that is seemingly contradictory to what we're trying to achieve. You know, somebody is trying to do some sort of research related to UFOs, but at the same time, we go and attack them and say that, you know, we don't think that what they're doing is beneficial to the community, to the UFO community. So we do everything we can to bring them down, to hack into their websites. and get information and publish it all over the place

and badmouth them any chance we get before they've even had a chance to do anything. I don't understand that mentality. I think a lot of people are looking for a savior. We see that plenty. They're looking for ASource to provide them with all of the answers that they're looking for. And if they don't instantaneously get that,

then that's the enemy, and that personally affects them. And they view that as the enemy. They view that as causing harm to this community that they, you know, worship. So I think really it's advantageous and recommended for people, if you're truly interested in this subject, to understand and, you know, be comfortable in your own beliefs

and understand that it doesn't affect you at all what other people are doing in the UFO community. You know, to the stars can, you know, become best friends with extraterrestrials and have parties with awesome UFO landing, and Blink 182 will play, it'll be awesome. They could also fold up and be gone tomorrow. Does that affect me?

No, it does not. Does it harm UFO research in the sense that they're no longer, they don't have their lab anymore, and they're not doing testing and doing the things that they're doing. But personally, I'm not affected by that. It doesn't change the research I've done. It doesn't change my view on UFOs. And frankly, after the few years, you headlines that come and go, it's not going to affect mainstream either. So people really need to

understand, be comfortable in what you want to believe in, pursue your own research, and don't be affected by other people. I mean, you're as affected as you choose to let happen, right? I mean, I don't like MJ or Ryan at all. Like, I don't agree with anything they say. I think they're assholes, but I still come on the show and I, you know, I pretend to be nice because, you know what, I don't care of their assholes. It doesn't affect me. Exactly. And you've got a website to plug, you know? Just kidding, guys. I don't think your assholes all the time. Not all the time. I do want to add right there, Jason, though, to sort of elaborate on what you said,

at the end of the day, to the stars, doesn't give a shit about us or the UFO community as a whole. I was going to see that. Sorry. I love you, right. I love. No, no, you go. It's the show. You go. Well, what I was going to say is that, like you said, Jason, they're going to do their work. They're going to release the videos that they get declassified. or that have been declassified, they're going to study the materials, and I'm going to go out and interview witnesses. I'm going to do my thing. And at the end of the day, like, we're all just searching for our own personal truths within all this. They're going to come up with their results, whether it's metamaterials, whether it's video analysis, whether it's this, that, whatever.

That's fine. I'm going to come up with my own conclusions. There is no one single truth to all this. I think that's what a lot of the skeptics or debunkers. have to keep in mind, and the believers, that to the stars is not out to solve the UFO question. They specifically state that they are trying to figure out what these things are and how it can benefit humanity. So right there, yes, they have a mission in mind. Are they going to get there? I sure, I hope so. I think it'd be pretty fucking awesome. But at the end of the day, like,

they're not searching for that one puzzle piece that's been missing in the UFO field because no one's founded in 75 years, 80 years at this point. And I don't think anyone's ever going to find that. And I think they know that too. But why not if you have a passion for this subject? Why not if you have the resources and you can get these intelligence people involved? Why not give it a try? Yeah, I think it's awesome.

And I encourage people to do that. I think what they are doing is awesome. I hope they continue to do it. I hope they have incredible success. But I also want to say, yeah, you're exactly right. They don't give a shit what you think. And they don't need you or me defending them. And when I say my comments about Two the Stars, I'm not doing it to defend them.

I'm just trying to encourage people to have a better thought process that will help them sleep better at night. But I'm a fan of Two the Stars at this point. You know, I am curious, a curious onlooker. And I'm happy to see things happening that, again, Don't personally affect me. I don't have to do anything, but I can periodically check in and see that they're doing some stuff that could potentially be really cool. It's an interesting way to look at it. I mean, again, from my perspective, like I said, I studied the culture and the community.

So my research and my work is very much sort of influenced by to the stars only insofar as we are literally allocating like an hour or whatever of our time to talking about them. And they take up a lot of room in the UFO world. I have to be honest, like when you go into discussions and when you go into social media and when you go into various pockets of UFO discourse to the stars, it takes up a lot of oxygen. And I sort of said this a year ago, literally sitting in the same room in my home, looking at the same laptop at this picture of Jason, which hasn't changed in a year. on this my Skype account. Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, update, man. Come on.

My point is I said one year ago, and I wrote an article about this on Mysterious Universe, you can literally fact-check this if you want. My biggest concern was that TTSA would drown out other voices within the community. That was my biggest concern, right? It would become such a big cultural phenomena within the community, right, within the UFO community. a big cultural phenomena that we would allocate significant time to literally arguing about it and talking about it and dissecting it. And what gets lost is airtime and what gets lost is discourse surrounding other voices within the community. I'm not going to qualify sort of different voices in the UFO community.

I'm not going to say one individual or one researcher is better than another, unless they're frauds. That's another discussion. But I'm not going to sort of qualify who's better and who's not. Again, uphology and UFO discourse is an anarchy. So I can't necessarily qualify. But what occurs is Tom DeLong and TTSA is taking up, like I said, a lot of media attention and a lot of airtime where the smaller voices become lost within the shouting. And I was concerned with this a year ago. I'm still concerned with it today.

I think to the stars is great. I think the work they're doing is great. I have only high hopes, but I think we need to be cautious and critical when to the stars becomes very loud. And we start to see other individual sort of retreat into the background in the darkness because they can't compete, they can't compete, let's say, with to the stars' spotlight. I'll say with what I've seen and the production value of what they're putting out, if they put some angels in there, waves music behind that. I'll crank it and let them get as loud as they want. Absolutely.

The sound direct to our lives. Nobody likes punk music anymore. The one thing I'll say, guys, in terms of that, is if you are one of these people who are out there calling people idiots and stupid for following TTSA or rooting them on, all I have to say is, what the hell are you doing? what are you contributing to the field? I'm putting that challenge out there. If you're so against this, so vehemently against what these people are doing,

trying, God forbid someone try to find new things to study in the UFO field. What are you doing? So I'm putting that challenge out to those people right now. And why do you care so much if other people have other feelings than you do? I don't care. I love TTSA. I will say that right now. I have their sticker, I have their hat, I have their t-shirt, and I get flack for that.

I went to the headquarters a couple months ago because I'm a fucking fanboy. I love this stuff. Anything with UFOs, I'm there. Again, like MJ said, except for the frauds. And I don't think that's what TTSA is doing. So, yeah, again, what are you contributing to the field that gives you the right to be so anti-TTSA or put those down who actually think this is a good idea? Yeah, I agree.

I have to be honest, I have been critical of TTSA. However, everything I personally have been critical against, you know, I have evidence to suggest that, you know, one ought to be critical. Accidentally, or whether you were hacked or whatever, the fact of the matter is that a document sort of being leaked, that's a big ball to drop. And ultimately, I think, an organization that takes that data in confidence, ought to be held to account when it can't keep it in confidence. So I don't apologize when I'm critical.

And as I'm a relatively critical voice of TTSA, I believe in its mission, and I believe in, I guess, the ideals of it or the idea of it. But I'm also, you know, a journalist. I'm also a writer. And, and again, I also study the culture. So when you screw up and I'm paying attention, I'm going to write an article about it because, like I said, you need to be held to a standard. And I think that what happens on social media and I think that, you know, what you're addressing, Ryan, is when people come in without any evidence or citation or sort of they don't come in with a full picture before they address the situation, right? You know, Jason, you know, you're a journalist. You know you got to check your sources two or three times, right? and you've got to confirm that everything that was stated to you was on record or off record, and you've got to confirm what you can say publicly as a journalist.

Otherwise, it's liable or you can be sued. And ultimately, you know, a lot of individuals I don't think don't follow that process. I think they just kind of go in half-cocked, they say whatever they want, and they become insulting because ultimately, when someone challenges them on their criticism, they have nothing to back it up. Therefore, they just resort to sort of add hominum attacks, right? you attack the person and not the argument or you attack the person and not the evidence or the data. So I have no problem with people being critical of TTSA.

I think that's important. I think we ought to be critical. But we got to be critical when we have the evidence to be critical with. There's nothing worse than someone who's skeptical or a debunker, but has nothing to back up their skepticism or their debunkingness. Because then they're no different than the zealot and the believer who just would light themselves on fire for the cause. And we need to kind of walk this middle ground, I think, a little bit. And like a minute, the UFO community has a tough time doing that.

Always have. Always will. Sort of the last thing I want to cover with you guys here is this idea of the whole E.T aspect to TTSA. Now, we have a lot of people on both ends who wonder why they never bring up E.T. They never bring up... Alien has never once been really said by anyone with TTSA. It's always others or, you know, not from here. So I'd love to get your guys' thoughts on, is this just a very careful move by them to not get lumped into the whole extraterrestrial hypothesis?

Or what do you think? Why have they not come out and said, we're looking at alien material this or that? What are your thoughts on that? Well, I think most of, well, everything we've heard, related to that camp associated with, extraterrestrials has been Tom's personal opinion. You know, it has nothing to do with TTSA or the mission of TTSA. People seeing the atom project now, you know, the people who were super excited and thought that what the company was alluding to was that they were in possession of an alien spacecraft.

Now, certainly understand that that's not the case because why would they waste their time testing pieces of metal if they had an alien spacecraft, right? And they've been clear with that from the beginning, saying that, you know, the work they're doing on, whatever spaceship they want to build is based on observations of UFOs, right? Seeing the things that things in the sky have done, the performance, other things that we've seen demonstrated by objects in the sky and trying to replicate that. We've all seen UFOs, but it doesn't mean that we have some superior knowledge to be able to create a spaceship. That's what they're working with.

They're working on observation, observable behavior demonstrated. by mysterious craft in the sky. So the company's never been really about extraterrestrials. When it comes to the mysterious craft in the sky, it's unknown craft that seemingly aren't ours, right? So they're displaying some sort of fantastic technology that we don't have, so potentially extraterrestrial, but that's really where they leave it.

I mean, you need to think who's really sort of these conduct. I guess they call them contractors, right? And TTSA, the individuals who sort of form really sort of the spine of what Tom DeLong is trying to achieve here, right? I think he's sort of the head and then sort of the spinal column is all of these individuals, right? How put off Gary Nolan, Chris Mellon, Semivin, whatever, you have all these individuals. These guys have been, and there's a few girls, have been in this game a long time. Like, they have been in the UFO game quite a while. And it sort of reminds me of like Valet's invisible college, right?

When he first sort of stipulated, you know, in uphology, there is this sort of, in all fields of study, there's invisible colleges. But within euphology, there's sort of this invisible college. And he was obviously working with Heineck and all these other men back then. This is really the invisible college that we're dealing with here. These guys and gals have been doing it for a long time. And when it comes to their personal beliefs, right, their personal philosophies as to what the source of the phenomena is, it's going to be so varied and it's going to be so dynamic.

Because again, they've been working at this, some of them, for 30 or 40 years. And all that, they've been relatively big players. Like, I mean, you know, Hal Putoff has really done a lot of stuff in the UFO community, like sort of discursively and done a lot of research and work. Howe put off, I'm a physicist. I'm also director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin. And basically, we do forefront research on energy and propulsion for spaceflight. Well, as a physicist, I've always, in fact, starting as a kid, I've always been interested in the actual forefront

of physics. And so I've been always involved in looking at ideas that were, you know, right at the edge. And along the way, I ended up getting interested in spaceflight, followed the space program in great detail. My ex-CIA contract monitor Kit Green told me about Tom and what he was doing and said he thought I should meet him because Tom was really exploring new areas right at the edge of research and that since that was my interest level, it would make a good combination. You know, I'm not, I think the sign that to me sort of when I first, I guess, began talking to put off was that he sort of came on and said, listen, I have no idea what's going on in regards to the phenomena. But that's the point, right, is to try and figure it out. And I don't think,

you know, he has any, any notion that he's going to figure it out anytime soon. You know, I think he is, and he's convinced, he's probably convinced, you know, I'm going to go to my grave, not knowing, and we're all going to go to our graves not knowing, and our children and their children and the children after that, right? I think at the end of the day, we're never going to sort of piece this puzzle together. But sort of with every piece we do find, interesting things tend to happen. So, you know, in regards to the extraterrestrial hypothesis and the nuts and bolts UFO and all that stuff, I think that's starting to slowly sort of go the way of the dinosaur within sort of the UFO community proper, sort of the more core UFO community. I think I think what's starting to

occur is we're starting to realize that it's not necessarily aliens from outer space. But again, I think it's cultural as well. I think, you know, we're starting to start. trying to realize that maybe some of the stuff we believed in the 90s and in the 80s. We now sort of technologically have developed. We've developed more scientifically. We know a lot more about the universe than we did 30 years ago. You know, maybe it's not aliens from other planet, even though they could exist. It could be something much more complicated and much more interesting, as Valet has stated as well.

So I think the UFO community is becoming much more Valian in its interpretation of the phenomena. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my interpretation anyway. you did mention the word or the name, I should say, MJ of Valet. I do have to ask you guys, we've recently heard news that he might be sort of stepping down in his endeavors of continuing to study the UFO field in that whatever he had in his possession, may it be materials or whatnot, are being given to institutions. Do we think perhaps maybe this is one of those institutions? You know, maybe. I mean, I know he's friends with a lot of the people in TTSA. So a lot of these contractors, rather, not in TTSA is really like Tom DeLong and his sister.

If you really, yeah, if you really look at like a company structure, there's like three people who work at TTSA and are paid maybe more, but really it's very few. The rest of them are sort of just this invisible college that sort of hovers around it. Right. And I will say, I mean, the entire Two the Stars operation is incredibly small. So to me, it makes the fact that they're doing all of these things, all the more incredible. So I give them mad props. Well, they're all doing it pro bono, right? Like, that's the big thing here, right? Like, no one is paid except for the secretary at the office, I think,

and which is, and like, the media person who I think is Tom DeLong's sister. So, like, at the end of the day, you know, you have very few people collecting a salary. So I think it's interesting. I think it's a very, you know, it's funny. We don't necessarily culturally view TTSA as a grassroots operation, But it really kind of is in a way, right? Like it is sort of grassroots.

It's tiny. Sure, it's funded by Tom DeLong, which is not tiny. Right. And you see the incredible names associated with it, the high caliber people. And that's why we're quick to put them up on this pedestal as this giant monster corporation. But it's just a very small outfit. Yeah, I mean, everyone runs their own life. I mean, like, you know, like Hal Putoff runs a company.

he has grandkids and he has a family and you know like it's not like he dedicates his entire life to UFOs you know Gary Nolan is a Stanford university professor and researcher I mean UFOs are just something he's interested in and I think that that's one thing we need to sort of appreciate here is this TTSA is really made up of individuals who are interested in the phenomenon just like you and I are interested but we still got to go to work every day like we still got a paycheck and we still got to pay the mortgage and you know pay for our kids dance class lessons because you know know, the UFOs, you know, don't pay for shit. And, and that's kind of the reality of the situation. Yeah.

Gras. Do you question, to your question about Valet, you know, it's sort of like Stan Friedman retiring, except Valet, Valé, exactly. And, I mean, Valley wasn't just a UFO guy, you know, that wasn't his full-time job. So him stepping away, does that really mean anything? No, not really. I think he's sort of, I think there's been rumors. I don't know if this is sure or not. I've heard rumors that he sort of come out and said, listen, no, no, I'm not sort of leaving UFOs behind totally. I'm just stepping away from the sort of broader UFO community.

Like, I think he's no longer going to do lectures at. Haven't we all said that at one point or another? I mean, George Knapp said that many times, you know. He doesn't do UFO conferences. He makes fun of the UFO crowd all the time because he decided he couldn't stand him a long time ago. I can't imagine, I mean, I can't imagine. I think this was last year, Valet spoke at contact in the desert, right? Yeah.

Yeah, just last summer. I can't imagine the people who just sort of like walked up to him and said, hey, I have a story. Like, you know, I mean, you can't imagine like your Jacques Valet and these people approach you and like, man, do I have a story that's going to change your life? And he's saying, I can visualize the eye roll. I'm sure there were so many eye rolls that happened there. And I'm sure it was very polite, right? Oh, of course.

But he's also French, right? So I can just get to smoking a cigarette, you know, knocking. knocking against the ass, you're like, okay, fuck off. You know, like, I've heard this before. Like, I can picture that as well. So, yeah, I mean, I can imagine going to contact in the desert and all of these people bombarding you with the same stuff you've been listening to for 30 years, and some of it is redundant or ridiculous, and it becomes not annoying, but it just, you're just kind of like,

okay, I clearly need to move on and I want to pursue this, but, you know, privately or quietly in my own way. It's exhausting, yeah. And I mean, we haven't been in the field as long as valet, but, you know, even at these conferences or, you know, you're coming to contact with people who want to share their stories. Like, it's emotionally and mentally and sometimes physically taxing to hear the redundancy, first of all, which is invigorating in some ways, the patterns, but also just, you know, what do you do with it? You have the story, like, I can't fucking help you. I can't stop an alien gray from coming in your bedroom or for this light to stop showing up over your house every night. Like, I can't stop that.

But I can tell your story. But yeah, I can imagine at this point. He's just like, look, I can hear a million stories. It's still not going to solve this problem for me. Yeah, I think he's surprised he lasted as long as he did. Me too. Yeah. I think he's just got bigger fish to fry.

You know what I mean? Like, I think he's going to look at the phenomena. I'm sure he's still interested in it. I mean, he's dedicated his life to it. I'm sure he's going to continue to look at the phenomena, but probably in a more, you know, in a field that's more related to his interest, right, which is like computer science and,

and he's really into, I think, like sort of sci phenomena and parapsychology and that kind of thing. So I'm sure he's going to sort of pursue it along those lines, dealing with individuals who sort of share a similar level of, you know, academic prowess maybe or knowledge or whatever that he's at, right? You know, when somebody comes up and says, you know, I saw this on ancient aliens,

what do you think? I want to punch myself in the face, you know? Never mind someone who's been dealing with it for 30 years or 40 years now. I think we should all take a cue from him. I encourage people in the UFO community to do that because again, we don't all need to be part of this one singularly minded, singularly focused community all thinking the same thing and believing the same ideas. That's not how it works. I mean, just look at the, the disconsory. Just look at the, the the disagreements, all the various explanations or beliefs for what UFOs are or what extraterrestrials are doing or what they look like. You know, abductions versus contact, all of these different things. We all have our different ideals and our different ways of putting the pieces of the puzzle into place that, you know, work for us.

So we don't need the community to steer that for us. steer it yourself. And I think the people who make sort of maybe the most progress, and I put the term, like I'm doing air quotas around the word progress, right? Because progress in UFOs is, you know, weird. But I think the people that sort of make the most progress really function like that. And I think that's predominantly because whatever the phenomena is, is it doesn't necessarily tie itself down to anything, right? Everyone, I'm sure, thought Mufon would be a big smash success when it first started. And it wasn't. And it hasn't really solved anything. And no one really has, right?

And I think that's kind of fundamentally the point. And I think that if anyone expects TTSA to provide the answer to the phenomena, I think they're diluted. I think maybe TTSA will be able to provide some interesting information that is perhaps novel and unique or original. But the phenomena isn't going to present itself to TTSA and say, hey, I'm here, you know, you can, you know, explore me all you want. You know, this is shades of Colm Kellerers and George Naps hunt for the Skinwalker, right? The second Nids showed up, everything just went to ground, right? Because, you know, the second you start looking at me too closely, I'm just going to change gears. I'm going to be an airship in the 1890s and I'm going to be a flying sauce in the 1950s.

And, you know, if you want to try and make sense of that, screw you. And I think that ultimately, whatever the phenomena is, if there's a phenomena, that's sort of what we're dealing with here. it's just going to change gears. Again, I don't think anyone involved with TTSA expects to find disclosure or that one answer. But like you said, putoffs looking at zero point energy. Tom's looking for his own things within this pursuit. I'm sure Melon is they all are, as we all are. And I'm going to keep rooting them on.

And hey, if we can find one thing that can help humanity in some way through all of this, it's in my opinion it's all been worth it if we can get one more person interested in UFOs just by hearing about this like it's all been worth it in my opinion so or or if we don't right if we don't find if we don't find anything like it's it's better and more to our advantage to at least try something right just like I know people hate me for saying this and they disagree with me but it's the same thing with SETI, right? People hate on SETI for using radio telescopes to listen for

possible signals from extraterrestrials. They say, waste of money, shut it down. Why are you wasting your time? But, hey, if somebody wants to do it, I'm glad somebody's doing it. Because really, you think that's something that isn't worthwhile. Let somebody do it. You don't have to do it. But if somebody else is going to do it,

great. That's one thing that somebody is out there doing. Let's do all the things all the time. All of the things. That is the slogan of the century. Let's do all of the things, all of the time. Oh, I love it. Guys, I think we're going to wrap it up here. I'm drunk and we could go on forever, but this has been awesome. I think we really only scratched the surface, but we are promised by Mr. Luis Elizondo some really stunning things coming in the future from TTSA, and I'm, I'm there, I'm ready. Let's do it.

So at the end of the day, the future looks bright for UFO studies. It's a really exciting time to live in, I think, with all of this going on. But before we go, I do have to ask you guys, where can we find what you're doing? Jason, let's start with you, my man. All right. Jump on over to rogue planet.tv. That's my weird website where I post everything that I do. A lot of podcasts over there do a UFO podcast called Unknown.

Check that out. Follow me on Twitter at Acentric. That's A-C-E-C-E-N-T-R-I-C. That's the same on Instagram. And on Facebook, I'm the UFO geek. Perfect. MJ, what do you got for us? I just want to jump in briefly.

I'm going to pitch Jason a little more. I'd be honest, it takes me 20 minutes to cut my lawn in my backyard. And that's when I listen to Unknown. Literally, I plug myself in. Yes. And I listen to Unknown because it's 20 minutes, roughly. And it's the same to cut my grass. It's the perfect.

Yes. It's perfect. And you sort of keep me actually on pace because sometimes like, oh, crap, I've got five minutes and it's like seven minutes worth of work. So I really hustle. You know, like it's, it's a, it's, I have to, these 20 minute like episodes, they're beautiful. Well, thank you, sir. I'll have to give you a shout out on the next episode. And I'll have to think about something grass cutting appropriate for the next one.

Crop circles, of course. There you go. And I cut weird patterns sometimes just for fun, you know, like my wife hates. But it's, I just do the diagonal lines. It's ridiculous. Yeah. Dude, throw those, take some photos, throw them online, and we've got a whole conspiracy going. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. You can find me at my blog, www. www.teraobscura.net, where I wax philosophical and theoretical and theoretical on all things, euphology. You can also find my articles on Mysterious Universe and my book coming out sometime. I don't know. It depends on my publisher. So I will definitely keep you all posted.

Sounds awesome. Guys, thank you so much for joining me. And remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the whiskey. 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. Hi, everybody. I'm Chris.

I'm Nick. And we're the host of The Two Dumb Dad. podcast, a show about two dads trying to work our way through parents. Are we doing a show or a podcast? It's a podcast show. About parenting? Yeah, it's the same thing. He has my wife's mouth.

My wife's a big mouth. We talk about everything from, how do you find a babysitter? I'm going to, I don't know, like, I'm going to stalk you for a week before I let you babysit my kids. Two will mac and cheese kill your kid. I've gotten to the point now where I just sprinkle a little bit of the fucking mac and cheese on the hot dog. I'm like, I'm sold. You can find us at our website, Two Dumb Dads.com. You can find us at our Facebook group, the number two dumbdies.

ads. And of course, anywhere the podcast can be found.