Somewhere in the Skies - Trail of the Saucers

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

On episode 232 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Bryce Zabel returns to discuss all the latest UFO news, including the development of a permanent UAP office within the Department of Defense, the scientific endeavors being undertaken by various organizations in relation to UAP, and the stunning accuracy in which Zabel's 2010 book, A.D. After Disclosure, mirrors what we are seeing play out in 2021 in relation to possible UFO disclosures. Then, Zabel and Ryan reflect on the 60th anniversary of the Betty and Barney Hill Incident, the 25th anniversary of Zabel's NBC television series, Dark Skies, and Zabel's personal thoughts and theories on the UFO phenomenon. Zabel then takes your listener questions and teases all his upcoming Hollywood projects involving all of what is discussed in this jam-packed episode and beyond. Guest Bio: Bryce Zabel is a winner of the prestigious Writers Guild award for screenwriting. He has created and produced five prime time television series, including fan favorites like NBC’s UFO thriller "Dark Skies" and the TV adaptation of "The Crow", and worked on a dozen TV writing staffs (i.e. "Lois & Clark”, "Steven Spielberg’s Taken"). He was the first writer since Rod Serling elected to serve as Chairman/CEO of the Television Academy. He has taught screenwriting as an Adjunct Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, reported on-air as a CNN correspondent, and won multiple awards for investigative reporting for PBS. He is developing “The Crash," about the race to break the Roswell story, and “Captured" about the Betty and Barney Hill abduction. His book "A.D. After Disclosure" with Richard Dolan is considered a classic of UFO literature. To learn more, visit: www.whatifufos.com Follow Bryce Zabel on Twitter: @hollywoodufos VOTE for Somewhere in the Skies in the Paranormal Podcast Awards: https://bit.ly/3j4ijTg Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Somewhere in the Skies Coffee! https://bit.ly/3mIAq2o Order Ryan’s book in paperback, ebook, or audiobook by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Somewhere in the Skies Subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/SomewhereSkiesPod/ Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at 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

What's up guys, Ryan Sprag here, and I'm just dropping in to remind you about our Patreon campaign. Somewhere in the skies is always free to consume, but it's not free to create. So if you want to help the show on a monthly basis, we have tons of rewards for you in return, including shoutouts on the show and website, bonus content and episodes, and free merge. Want to be my guest or pick a topic for the show? You can do that too. So if you'd like to learn more and to help support the show, visit patreon.com. com slash somewhere skies. Thank you and keep looking up.

This is Somewhere in the Skies with Brian Sprague. Bryce Zabel. I'm going to go through his amazing bio, not the whole bio, or else we would be here all night. Bryce Sable is a winner of the prestigious Writers Guild Award for screenwriting. He has created and produced five prime time television series, including fan favorites like NBC's UFO thriller, Dark Skies, which we will be talking a lot about tonight.

and the TV adaptation of The Crow and worked on a dozen TV writing staffs for such projects as Lois and Clark, one of my favorite shows, and Stephen Spielberg's Take In the Miniseries. If you have not seen that miniseries, please check it out. He even wrote the first ever sci-fi original movie official denial, which we will be talking about as well. And he was the first writer since Rod Serling to be elected to serve as chairman and CEO of the Television Academy. He has taught screenwriting as an adjunct professor at USC and has reported on air as a CNN correspondent and has won multiple awards for investigative reporting for PBS. He is developing the crash about the race to break the Roswell story and captured about the Betty and Barney Hill abduction. His book, A.D. After Disclosure with Richard Dolan, is considered a classic of UFO literature. I highly agree with that. and seems to be becoming more of a reality today more than ever. So without further ado, let's bring him in. Hey, but welcome to somewhere in the skies.

Well, I feel I just want to go home now because that's, I'm done. That was nice. Thank you. Yeah. That's great. No, it's great to be here somewhere in the skies, wherever that is. I know you're in an undisclosed location. Yeah, that's what I thought.

This is somewhere in the skies HQ, but I mean, everyone knows I'm a New York City boy. So I won't give my exact address, Bryce. So we've, if you'll pardon the expression, we've gone coast to coast. We have literally gone. I'm not going to keep you here for four hours, though, I promise. That's true. And you don't have to do that at two in the morning either. So that's always good.

I know, man. I went on there for the first time about six months ago. And I just remember having to have like a whole pot of coffee before going out there. You know, well, first of all, we shouldn't be talking about this. other show, but it has been interesting in that you can't really do that unless you drink coffee. And if you do drink coffee, you get so wired up and then you just get through the show and then suddenly you're off and only it's two or three in the morning and you can't sleep. I know.

Time to start the day. Throw you off for a couple of days. Anyway, love your show and it's good to be here and doing it. Well, thank you. Thank you. And, you know, we were talking today about some of the, the things we might bring up tonight. We'll see where the conversation goes.

But I definitely have some specific stuff I want to talk to you about. So much has been going on, man, in the UFO world and in show business. So I guess what I really want to talk to you about is the most recent news, this UAP permanent office that is supposedly going to be happening. Let me just read this really quick before we talk about it. According to this bill that's trying to get passed, Congress is directing the Director of National Intelligence to establish an office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense to carry out on a department-wide basis the mission currently performed by the UAP Task Force. Now, we know this task force was temporary. You know, they came out with the preliminary assessment.

That was, what, six pages maybe, the cover page and an appendix. And we didn't get much, man. It was a task they were put on. They completed that. They did no more, no less, and that was it. But now we're hearing that we might be getting a permanent office. I guess Project Blue Book 2.0, what do you think? What do you make of all of this?

And is this disclosure? What do you think? You know, well, let's go back to that report for just one second. Well, it wasn't, it was not a nothing burger, which is a double negative, I guess. But I thought that it gave us a few things that I was glad just to get out in the open. Number one, it said that these things are real. Number two, it said the U.S. doesn't make them. And number three, it said it wasn't likely that China or Russia made them either.

So I always say, do the math. Who does that leave? It leaves some rather exotic ideas. So I guess I wasn't, I wasn't as, I mean, it did make it sound like we didn't start experiencing UFO or UAP, phenomena until, say, 2004, when we all know it's gone back to at least World War II and maybe before that. But now, okay, the new office. Well, it sounds a lot like the old office, right? It's still being controlled by the Department of Defense if that was the case.

And we've certainly realized that there have been investigations into UAP over the years. So is it a new Blue Book? Not really, because Blue Books, mandate allowed it to take cases directly from the public. And I don't see in the language that this new UAP office would be soliciting from the people. It seems more like it's just another way for the Defense Department to get some of its, to bring their stuff together, which I think is a good thing. I just do think, no matter what they call it, it still feels that. It still feels that. the same a little bit. And so I stick with my previous position, which is I'm happy if the government

tries to be a little more forthcoming with some of this newer stuff, but we're not going to be able to solve this mystery by just relying on the government because obviously they've been closed mouth for quite some time. And we have some work to do on our own. Absolutely. I'm so happy you said that. I think, you know, a lot of people are putting all their eggs into this government basket and expecting them to do all the heavy lifting. And we know that's not going to happen from the quote-unquote capital G government. It's going to come from scientists and those who look into it, you know. You know, if we know one thing, we may not be able to predict this exactly.

It's going to come from different places at different times and how they interact has yet to be written. Someday the history books of the future will look back on this time. and explain it all to us. But right now we're living through it, and it's not entirely clear how that is going to lay out. But I think some of the shadows of what we're about to see are becoming clear. Somebody, somewhere, knows more about this than we do currently. And so far, they've not been sharing their work.

Now, does opening up a UAP office mean that those people are going to share their work with that office? I don't know. Not necessarily. If that office does only one thing, and that is to collect Department of Defense videos and photos, if they get them released, then that'll be one of the greatest things that could happen right now because it will take us rapidly past this confusing time where people are wondering, well, is this legit or what's going on? Now, I don't happen to think that, and I know you don't think that, and most of your listeners don't think that. but we also live in the real world where a lot of our friends and family don't give as much thought to this as we do. And they still need to have that little push to get them off the edge. And so where that comes from, I'm not sure.

I'll do one thing. Rich Dolan and I said it in after disclosure all those years ago, which is at some point, something happens. Now, it could be a picture, it could be a video taken by people or by the government. government. We know for sure right now the government has better photos than we seem to have. And I just think it's time for them to put those out and let the games begin. So, you know, I, that's why the only reason why I'm somewhat hesitant from just endorsing the UAP task force, it's simply that I think we, we don't know. We just don't know. Right. I think, you know, that's, that's the thing they always say is the government may not know what's really going on,

but they can sort of control the information or the narrative that gets out there. And I kind of see that happening with all this potential threat talk and all that. But you're so right about we're so embedded in this stuff on a daily basis, those of us who find ourselves in the UFO community or whatnot. I mean, UFOs are my every day. I live, breathe, eat, sleep it. Some days I want out, some days I pulls me back in, which we'll talk about. You and me both, my friend.

I know. You and me both. It is the most toxic relationship, I think you can really have. But aside from that, you're right. It takes a lot for the everyday person who doesn't think about this to find the legitimacy in it. Or where, how does it affect me? I think that's what I hear most is like, oh, cool, a Navy UFO video came out. But I got to go to work tomorrow.

I got to, you know. I got to worry about my health, this, that. So I get it. I totally get it. And I also understand those who are really excited and just getting involved in this topic, Bryce, we've seen such an explosion of the UFO, quote unquote, UFO Twitter world. And a lot of these people are brand new to it. They don't know the 75 plus years of baggage.

They don't know which cases have been debunked and which haven't. And sometimes it's frustrating, you know, having to kind of walk them through it. I used to be one of the young guys in the field and now I'm not even close to being one of the young guns. But at the same time, I tried in my shoes for a few days. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second

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Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply. I know, man. We all have to say it at some point in this journey. You were a young gun, but now you're just a new god. So that's how I look at it. Well, that's extremely nice coming from you. So I try to keep that in mind.

You know, let's not be too harsh on them. they're having the revelations just as we did back in the day. Well, by the way, Ryan, you know, you say they don't know certain things or cases that have been debunked. I'm continually surprised. I'll write an article or spout off about something. And then people will come out and go, oh, well, that was all debunked already. And, you know, I continually learn things. But one of the things I learn is that it's harder and harder and never gets easier,

trying to get some clarity on even a single case. You know, you think that the case that you're talking about, well, that one people know about. And then you realize, well, not everybody agrees with it. And I know we'll talk about some cases like that tonight and where they just, they'd never seem to get toward closure. And so let alone disclosure. So we're not quite there on a lot of levels. and one of the great things that will happen, I think, when we crossed that line and now suddenly

we're all able to say, oh, I saw that video. Not one of the three little Navy ones that were a minute and a half and kind of fuzzy. No, I saw the 40-minute one that was in HD. Once that's happening, I think everyone's going to take this a lot more seriously. So our friends right now seem to be waking up. The evolution for me personally has been, I've gone from being, you've heard me say this,

being the drunk uncle at the wedding, right, where everybody is like, ah, there goes Bryce, talking about UFOs again. And now they don't act like that. Now they're just as likely to come up and go, hey, man, I know that you know a lot about this. What's really going on? So there's a hunger for that. I'm sure you're experiencing that level of interest as well.

So just imagine when there's some. something visual besides the same three videos that we've seen. And it's just something really profound. I mean, crystal clear. And the government admits that's not ours. Well, then, you know, you talked about the threat narrative. If it's not ours and it doesn't identify itself and it has these impossible technical specifications of what it can do, then I think it would be irresponsible not to at least

consider what the threat might be. I mean, you know, I don't want to be naive and say, well, you know, if they were going to kill us, they'd have killed us already, which I hear a lot. And I just don't know that I buy that. And I'll give you a quick reason why I don't. If you think about it in the United States, we operate on a very short time frame, right? So if, you know, literally less than a presidential administration, you get about a year and a half honeymoon if you get elected president, if that. Now, countries like China may operate on a hundred-year time frame where they're able to make some plans and work around that. What if we're encountering an intelligence that works on a 5,000-year time frame? Well, then their true intent might not be revealed yet.

So I don't have enough information to know. So I do think, you know, let's go back to Teddy Roosevelt, walk softly, carry a big stick. If we have a big enough stick, who knows. But the idea that there are things that we don't know what they are able to maneuver around our best technology, including nuclear. And you could say, well, they're trying to protect us from nuclear. Well, okay, that's, I guess, one point of view. But if I had a – what is the military of our country and other country do? They try to assess what the other guys got.

So what if that's going on? So I just think we are entering a period where we're about to, it's a, instead of it being a hard cut, it's a slow dissolve into a period where we're going to be able to think more and more, okay, the easy part is done. We've all admitted they're real. Right. Now we get into the hard part. Who knows what? Who's willing to share their work? Who's violated the law to suppress.

this truth and what are we going to do about it yeah i don't know right well and those are so many of the hypotheticals that you and richard dolin approached in your book you know what happens after that's literally the name of the book after disclosure and you're you're right the the ramification of just that acceptance and acknowledgement of the phenomenon is real it's interplanetary or it's interdimensional whatever the source may be or sources. You know, what comes after that? And, you know, that's no more apparent than cool. Okay, let's say they're E.T. And they have visited our planet. We get to the highly controversial topic of alien abduction, something you have tackled a lot in your writing career and in your research. So let's dive right into that, if you don't mind. I'd love to talk about we just celebrated the 60th anniversary of the bed and and Barney Hill abduction. So let's go right in. It's crazy, man.

I'm going to do a little summary here for anyone who wants to play catch up. The night of September 19th and into the early morning of the 20th, Betty and Barney Hill returning from a honeymoon in Canada, encountered a large UFO in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Next thing they remembered was being 30 miles down the road with two hours elapsed, and they could not account that they could not account for. Both physical evidence and nightmares alarmed them. Later, they were hypnotically regressed and recovered memories of being onboarded craft.

It's subjected to medical exams by non-human entities. Their story swept America in the mid-1960s and remains one of the most famous abduction cases in history, which is obviously very true. Anyone you ask about alien abductions brings this one up. But you have a very special connection with this case, Bryce. You've written about it extensively over at trail. of, oh my gosh, I'm forgetting the own name of our writing collection. Trail of the saucers. Trail of the saucers.

Yeah, right. Oh my gosh. I'm a horrible writer. It says it right on your screen. So there you go. It's literally right in front of my face. There it is. So let's start with that, man.

The case, this case, what weight do you give this thing and it's place in UFO hits? It's seriously two separate questions there. I think the problem with Betty and Barney for me is that I just can't quit them. You know, the more I learn, the more I'm compelled by it. And I think that it's clear that a lot of people around the world have been compelled by it for a long time. Why is that? I think it's because it's a case that's all about first. It's the first time that in a public way, in America, an abduction was reported.

It's the first time that anybody claimed to experience missing time. it's the first time that anybody was regressed through hypnosis to recover those memories. And it's also the first time that anybody ever described the grays. So it's important to us because it provides the template for a lot of what we see discussed today. And for me, it's a tremendous case because if someone were to stop me today and say, you know, I was abducted, they did medical experiments on me. I'm not going to say that they're wrong, but I'm going to say there's been 60 years now, obviously,

where people have been exposed to that. So what's great about the Betty and Barney case is they had no template. So when they just laid this story out, that's what the story was. So that explains why we're so interested in it. The reason it's still a great case, though, to a certain extent has to be laid to not, just the description that you read, but to those hypnosis tapes, because you can actually listen

to those tapes, you can read the transcripts. And when you do, particularly if you listen to them, you go, Betty and Barney aren't really faking it. Now, I guess they could be confused and be something else had happened to them and they're interpreting it in this bizarre way. But it's still freaking them out. And when you hear someone freaked out to that degree, it changes you. It makes you say, well, something's going on. So, yes, I've been involved. I remember reading about it as a kid, but when I was doing dark skies, I actually put them in the pilot of dark skies because I thought their story was so compelling. And of course, right now I have the book by Stan Friedman and Kathy Martin, the book called Captured Under Option, and my wife and I are developing it for a

television series. So, yeah, I'm all in on Betty and Barney. Yeah. And again, I think it's so exciting to know that it's still, it's the one you can't quit and you keep chasing it. And we all want that. We all want a series. We want a movie. We want to see it get out there. You know what's interesting about it. Why can't we quit it? Is it just the UFO thing? I submit it's not. What's always, I mean, that's been one reason why it's extremely powerful. But for me, and I wouldn't be surprised if for you and a lot of your listeners and viewers, it's the fact that it was an interracial couple. You know, Barney Hill is a black man. Betty Hill is a white woman. It's 1961. Black Americans are being water cannoned down in the south and dogs are being set upon

them simply for demanding fair and equal rights of citizenship. So it's a pretty wild time. And Betty and Barney, although they lived in New Hampshire, I don't think you could say they were immune from that. I mean, they were both involved in the NAACP. And quite clearly, if you were Betty on Barney Hill and you went through the local restaurant to get a burger, people were watching you and talking about you. And they lived with that. So, you know, I look at it as a case of why here's what really I find profound. I call it why Barney Hill's Black Life matters. All right. It matters because Barney, was a man who was all about equality and civil rights.

That's who he was. It defined who he was. He was working in the NAACP. He would do things as interesting as he would have, he would go in and ask for a haircut at a barber shop. And the guy would say, take a seat over there. And then his friend, a white guy, would come in and ask for a haircut. And the barber would take him and make Barney wait.

And then they would confront the barber. That's the kind of social activism. they were doing to sort of kind of get out this on a granular level. So here's a man who's consumed by that, and his wife obviously thought it was important as well. But what happens? He gets abducted by aliens, or at least that's what he thinks happened to him. He talks about it. It becomes public.

And suddenly, the Barney Hill, who was a civil rights advocate, is no more. Now it's Barney Hill, a person who was abducted by aliens. and that changed the whole tenor of his life, the whole course of his life. And it makes his story a little bit tragic. And that's where I found a lot of the drama in this. Because close with this, at a time in 1961 where there was practically no one in America

who could not see their race. If you saw Betty and Barney on the street, you looked twice and a third time, right? At that time, who didn't see their skin color? whoever it was that abducted them. Those creatures, whatever they were, whoever they were, wherever they were from, they didn't go, how interesting we have a black man here and a white person there. They didn't say that.

They just saw human beings. Right. That's such a good point. And I mean, you bring up the very valid argument of they had so much to lose with coming forward with this. And, you know, I know over at the collective, you've really dived into so many aspects of this. from the first reporting of it, the journalists who first broke the story to, you know, everything that happened after that, you know, the ramifications of them coming forward. So what do you make of the journalism side of all this, the way the case was first covered

in the media when it first happened? I know there were books written about it. Well, it's a great question. And I'll tell you something. I dive deeply into it because I was trying to find details that I can. use to, you know, to put into a television series. And frankly, you can't just do a television a series and go 10 hours and say, were they abducted? Weren't they abducted? Maybe, maybe not. You know, that's, that's not enough to sustain it. So I started really digging into it.

And I'll give you the very short version. I did do some, you know, investigative work and have uncovered a few things. Among them is that if you ask the average person who even is aware of the case right now, how did that? that case become public, they will say, oh, well, there was a book written about it called The Interrupted Journey that was excerpted in Look Magazine by written by a guy named John Fuller. And that happened in 1966. And that's how most people think the case became public. But it's not true.

It's not true at all. It became public because a reporter for the Boston traveler, an investigative reporter, an award-winning reporter, a man named John. John Littrell, Sr., in 1965, heard about the case and began investigating, began calling up their friends called Betty and Barney, asked him to give him an interview, which they refused. And he just kept at it. And in October of 65, he ended up filing a, I believe it was a six-part series in the Boston Traveler that's actually fairly accurate.

It's much more accurate, for example, than the interrupted journey where the John Fuller author actually changed facts because he didn't want to offend certain people. I give you an example. Betty and Barney had a gun in their trunk. But not if you read The Interrupted Journey because the gun doesn't exist in that book. Instead, John Fuller turns it into a tire iron. I don't think that's good reporting. And certainly John LaTrell, the guy before that, was very accurate.

The other thing that's been a misconception about the case, and I say this not as an attack and Betty and Barney, who I have great sympathy for. But it's been kind of an article of faith that, you know, they didn't really seek publicity. They never sought publicity. And yet it found them. And it was, well, I'm not saying they sought publicity. But let me tell you what happened for John LaTrell to actually get the story. Betty and Barney came home that day.

They told the upstairs renter about the story. They told Betty's family about the story. Betty's sister told her next door neighbor who was a physicist about the story. Betty's sister told the former chief of police in one of the towns about the story. This is all on day one, okay? Betty talked to people at work about it. We don't know if Barney did or did not. They spoke to their church leaders about it,

and they spoke multiple times to church groups where they told their story. not necessarily about being taken aboard the craft. That would come a little bit later, but they were public about it. And then the one that just blows my mind is in 1963, okay, this is two years before the Littrell articles come out, and three years before the book, they spoke to something called the two-states UFO working group.

And there were 200 people in this audience. It was a public audience, and they talked about their story. All right. Now, among the people in that audience was, guess who, John LaTrell Sr., the reporter for the Boston traveler. And he said, this is a good story. And LaTrell spent two years digging into it. And if LaTrell had not been digging into that story, guess what? John Fuller wouldn't have seen it to write the book about it.

So I just say the hidden story of Betty and Barney is this guy, John LaTrell, who is a former reporter. I'm not a former. I guess you're always a reporter if you're a reporter. I just admire his journalism and tenacity. Here's a guy that got a comfortable pair of shoes and started walking around and expending shoe leather to get the story. And without him, we wouldn't have had the true story as we have it today. Wow.

I love that, the shoe leather journalist. I love hearing those kind of stories, man, before the days of clicking on Google search. You know, this guy was great. He wouldn't take no for an answer. He called Betty and Barney up and said, I'd like the interview. They said no.

And he goes, I just want you to understand that I'm going to do this story anyway. It'd be better if I could talk to you. And they said, no, that's their right, of course. But then he started calling their friends. And he started, there were two reports, by the way, which I left out in the itemization of things that happened before he wrote. They told their story to Peace Air Force Base. That went to Project Blue Book.

So the people at Peace and Project Blue Book started telling their people, because it was a juicy case. and asking them to help validate it. He also, they also spoke to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena NYCAP, and NYCAP ended up writing a 60-page report about it. And, you know, people over time have said, well, you know, he violated Betty and Barney's privacy by writing about this. Well, you know, I'm sympathetic to that, but you don't have a right to privacy on a public matter, right? And you would argue if the aliens are abducting us,

that's the public matter that we should all probably know something about. And so, you know, it went on like that. And this John Latrille, before he published, got a copy of the 60-page Nycap report. He got a copy of the Project Blue Book report. These were given to him. And he got transcripts of the hypnosis sessions that were given to him. So I would argue those people are the ones that leaked. You know, he didn't leak anything.

The sign in New Hampshire says that the, the road sign says that Betty and Barney weren't public with their story until it was leaked in the Boston Traveler. I think that's two factors. They were public with their story and it was not leaked to the Boston, you know, it was not leaked by the Boston Traveler. It was leaked to the Boston Traveler, which reported it. So that's my soapbox on journalism, but I find it really interesting. And I always love correcting the historical record a little bit if you can, because let's face it,

if it doesn't happen now by the, you know, as we are on the 60, anniversary, when is it going to happen? So we have to do these things. Absolutely, man. I couldn't agree more. Well, you know, speaking of that, a lot of people in the chat here are asking about the star map. So before we wrap up our talk on Betty and Barney Hill, what do you make of that whole side of this? A lot of people turn to it as like hard evidence that this happened. Betty saw these star maps before they even apparently came out. And others say it was debunked. But where do you land on all that. And is that something you would, you would explore in your series? We'll, of course, explore that in the series because it's an important thing. I think both

things that you just said are true. Yes, Betty talked about it and there are strong arguments to be made that it was something real and authentic. And yet other people have tried to debunk it. I don't think personally that the veracity of the Betty and Barney Hill story rests on the star map itself. Just for people who don't know about that, Betty had claimed that the leader of the alien group from Zeta Reticuli that took them, showed her kind of a holographic projection and said, this is where we're from, this is where you are, there's these other places that we visit and this map that she didn't actually remember until under hypnosis

she was able to remember it in detail and was given permission by Dr. Benjamin Simon, who was the psychiatrist, to draw it, which she did. And then 10 years later, a woman named Marjorie Fish took that map that she drew after hypnosis, and again, it's disputed by various sides, but was able to say, oh, look, that's exactly what the reality of, astronomy tells us, and we didn't know that until years after her abduction. But again, the short answer for me is it is not definitive. But it doesn't have to be from, look, I'm not the final arbiter of any of this stuff, right?

I'm just a guy who at this point hopes to write or produce a series about them. and so clearly coming up with a star map, attempting to authenticate it would be part of that. But you are totally correct. Different people disagree about it. And, you know, Carl Sagan famously said about the map that he felt that it's almost like you could interpret any set of stars. If you wanted to, you could pick and choose. I don't know that that's totally true either, but I know that it's not as simple as you you get a piece of paper and you draw some points on it and say,

see, that's exact. That's proof that I was abducted. It's not proof that you were abducted. Right. Small piece of the puzzle. Absolutely. Well, kind of wrapping up abductions here, Bryce. What do you make of this whole phenomenon?

I mean, as a researcher, I was heavily into the abductions back in the 90s and in even early 2000s where people were still coming to me with their stories of being abducted. but we don't hear about it that much anymore, you know? Is that just a mainstream media perception of this topic? We're focused on Navy UFOs and all that stuff? Or where has the phenomenon gone, in your opinion? That's a really interesting topic.

I mean, first of all, I have written a lot about it and not, I didn't set out to just write abduction stuff. But that first movie you mentioned, official denial, is about an abduction. And the abductee is being watched by the U.S. government figuring that if he gets abducted again, they'll wire his house so that they'll hear about the abduction and they can try to shoot a craft down. That's what official denial is about. That's brilliant. So that's all about abduction. And then dark skies, the NBC series, which we'll talk about later, also its through line is abduction. There's abduction in the pilot. And of course, captured is abduction. Now, your question is different.

I mean, as a dramatist, absolutely, abduction works terrific. It's conflict of the highest order. Taking people against their will is, well, that's a crime. You know, I don't care if I do it, you do it. A serial killer does it, or people from set of reticuli do it. It's not right to be taken against your will. Now, when Betty and Barney claimed it happened to them, they appeared to be this unique case.

And even in the years after, while a few more cases started falling into the abduction file book, if you will, there went a lot of them. And now we have a lot. We have experiencer sessions at every conference, UFO conference now and the like. I'm, you know, listen, I see people who have had these experiences. and they are in pain. And I cannot deny their pain. I think that, yes, in a vast amount of, when you have a vast amount of anything,

some people are, you know, bringing, are not telling the truth. That's quite likely that not everyone who says they were abducted was abducted. But it also doesn't mean that some of them weren't. So I just, I, you know, I watched Lou Elizondo the other day get interviewed. He's a smarter man than I am on sort of the big, gigantic picture. And he seemed to be frustrated by the abduction topic because he was saying, I want data.

You know, you tell me you were abducted. I can't turn that into data. I don't know what to do about that. So he's frustrated because he's into data. I also like to see data, but I can also write about abductions. Do I think it's happened? Yeah, I think it's happened. Do I think it's happened to as many people to say?

I mean, it would be, I mean, I got to throw that to you too. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, what's your take? No, I mean, I kind of stop in my tracks when I get that question too. Like, why all of a sudden has it, does it seem like abductions aren't, abductions aren't happening? And I can't say they're not.

We're just not getting the reports and we're not hearing about it. So I don't really know where I stand on it. I think this is a product of the phenomenon in general, sort of the amorphous nature of it. Well, and also have evidence, you know, we just. It absolutely can be real, but it doesn't mean you've been abducted by aliens. It may mean that there's another explanation for that reality. I don't know what it is, but I am also here to say, I don't know what the answer. to the whole phenomenon is.

And so as a consequence, I'm not working with enough, whether Lou wants to call it data or I don't have enough experience or whatever. I think about it all the time. I can't seem to resolve it in my head. I will tell you that there are certain people who have researched it like David Jacobs, that when I read his books, they scare the crap out of me.

Because if that's real what he's describing, then we're in trouble. right i mean he's describing a world where it's a a plan it's been done to millions of people and the plan is to walk among us and potentially relieve us of our stewardship of our own planet well shed sorry that bothers terrifying i'm not i'm not down with that so i i go round and round about it and all i want to say here though is if if you're an experiencer i mean no disrespect to you or to anyone else in that, I'm just telling you because I'm not an experiencer and I have to go only on what people tell me. I just don't feel like I have a good

enough grasp to be definitive about it. And I know that if you're an experiencer, you feel that you do. And I can't tell you you're wrong. Exactly. I was not in their shoes when this happened. And that's kind of where I lay breaks. I don't, I grow more skeptical of certain aspects of this phenomenon and topic as the years go on. But that doesn't mean, you know, I would flat out ever deny these experiences happen to these people. It was real to them. And sometimes they just need someone to listen.

And, you know, if I can do that, great. Do I want to enable fantasy prone people or possible hoaxers? No, obviously not. But it's such a struggle, you know, with each and every case that comes to you. You know, and this is not apropos of the millions of people who have claim this happening to them, but we've been talking about Betty and Barney. One of the things that I tried to do in my research was to say, look, it doesn't matter where I come down personally on it.

It's like, what story am I going to tell, and what are these people thinking and what are they doing and how are they reacting? I stumbled across a very interesting fact. You know, Betty and Barney were coming back from where? Montreal. They were on their honeymoon that had been delayed. So I called the Betty and Barney case the lost honeymoon. to me because they thought they had enjoyed their delayed honeymoon and then this thing happened to him.

Okay. I'm reading separately and I discovered that Montreal was sort of the home base of M.K. Ultra, which is the U.S. government's mind control group, right? So the dramatist, again, I'm not saying this is what I believe personally, but the dramatist in me says, if I was going to try to do mind control over somebody to see if I can mess with their memories and implant memories and all that, and I didn't want them to talk about it, I might pick an interracial couple who have enough problems already and probably don't want to talk about it. So there's things that explain or have to be debated about how things have

happened. And, you know, also, Betty and Barney lived near a Peace Air Force Base, which was the only nuclear bomber base in America at the time. It had taken over in that decade from where, Roswell. So you went Roswell, Peace Air Force Base. Betty and Barney lived about an eight-minute drive from peace. This is during the height of the Cold War. There were Soviet submarines off the coast of New Hampshire during those days, right? So maybe the Soviets were abducting people to see as a test to see if they could abduct military people and put them back with their memories wiped. Who knows?

But what we do know is that the period of the 1960s in the Cold War, it wasn't just Dr. Strangelove, the movie that was weird. Life was weird, you know? It was very strange. Very strange. And we're going to, we're going to dive into the 60s pretty heavily in just a minute, Bryce. I'm going to do a little reset here of the room. For anyone who's just joining us, we are live with Bryce Sable. We are talking all about his work in Hollywood, with UFOs. We're going to talk a little about his work with the Emmys, which is another anniversary that just occurred as well. But before we do that, Bryce, I'm going to go ahead and actually show the beginning.

of dark skies before we dive into it. I love it. I love it. Because I know we're going to chat about that and what the beginning actually says about the show. Fantastic. Then and where we are now. So let me go ahead and pull that up. We'll give ourselves a little breather here while we play the opening of dark skies.

My name is John Lohengarde. I'm recording this because we may not live through the night. They're here. They're hostile and powerful people don't want you to know. History as we know it is alive. I still. Me chills, man. That brings back good memories.

By the way, those main titles to Dark Skies won the Emmy in the year that the show was out. The show was nominated for Emmys on several other things, but it actually won for the main titles. Those were considered to be the best show opening titles of that year. And I, you know, listen, I think they probably were because they're really good. They're riveting. You can watch them many times. They tell you what the show is. And they also remind you that Dark Skies is probably the most subversive show that had aired on network television up to that point.

If you're going to seriously put main titles out there that say history as we know it is a lie, that's a little subversive. That's a little balsy. Yeah, man, I know. And well, let's talk about that. I mean, okay, Dark Skies, for any of our viewers, listeners, who aren't familiar with it. I do want to also recommend, before we dive into it, the brilliant book by Matthew Cressel,

who wrote kind of the definitive, you know, story, having interviewed you and your co-writers and people involved with the show, The Silver Archive, check out the book, Dark Skies by Matthew Cressel. Awesome, awesome book. I've been meaning to have Matthew on the show to talk about it. So we'll make that happen soon.

You know, there were times when he was writing it, I thought he knows more about this than I do. You know, because he, you know, he had to soak it all up. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I guess the one thing we should say is for people who, who never heard of it or hadn't seen it or whatever, two quick things. It's a show that takes place in the 1960s. The main character is a young kid played by Eric Close, who goes to work in Washington, D.C., very naive.

He thinks he knows everything and he finds out he knows nothing. because before the end of the pilot, he's been dragooned into being a majestic 12 agent, and he's indirectly responsible for the assassination of John Kennedy. So it's a pretty wild show. And then it goes from the Kennedy assassination through the Summer of Love in the run of the next 20 hours of shows. So that's kind of what the series was about, and blending real facts and real people with UFO and eophological events and so forth. And also just, while Matthew has done a great job, people may want to also see it.

People ask me all the time, where do I see this? And I wish I could say, well, you know, it's streaming on Netflix or Amazon or something. And people could go watch it, but it's not. The only place you can watch it right now, you can see clips of it. I have a YouTube playlist with a lot of clips. But you have to get the DVD set, which Shout Factory made. It's brilliant. they not only got it all right,

but they did four hours of a documentary, which was terrific. They have Easter eggs like you. There's so many Easter eggs you want to go hug a bunny. There's so many of them. And, you know, it's just a really great job. And I just can't say enough about it. They did a terrific job.

And if anybody wants to sort of know the show and or know this back, behind the scenes of the show, it does a great job. for it. Right. And you know, I, in the age of streaming, I mean, there are very few DVDs I still have, Bryce. I'm going to be completely honest. I think I've got the Star Wars trilogy. I've got the entire X-Files collection and I have dark skies. Well, you're very high. It needs the stream. And I, you know, I wonder why it doesn't stream. There are three probably good answers. One of them might be that

the music rights can screw it up because there's a lot of original. period music and possibly that screws it up. The only reason I say that is the DVD set took 14 years to release because of the music rights, or at least that's what they told me. And I kept on them. I never gave up. I phoned everybody twice a year and said, what about it now? What about it now? And finally one day they said, you know, we have the lawyers look at it and I guess we can release it. So they released it. And I guess the third answer would be somebody doesn't want you to see it. Ooh, yeah.

We'll get to that whole aspect to all this. That's the most fascinating part of, you know, kind of what happened once you guys started pitching and stuff. But let's get into the nitty gritty if you don't mind. Bryce, I love to know, like, when did the seed first kind of get planted into your mind to do the series? Correct me if I'm wrong. Official denial came before that. It came before it. Okay, okay.

So how did the idea for dark skies come about? When did you get hooked up with your writing partner? Yeah, tell us how was it like pitching the show and all the Hollywood stuff, if you don't mind? Well, you know, I literally, that's one reason, by the way, to watch the DVD because in the four hours of the documentary, you can find the full story. But I had actually been, I had pitched a show about UFOs to, Steven Spielberg in 1990, and I'd actually used the name John Lonegard for my character. And we weren't able to sell that, even with Spielberg. We didn't sell it.

And then I did official denial, which became a sci-fi channel film, 1993, I think. And then I went on with my career, and I was producing a Fox television series called Mantis about the first African-American superhero. And my assistant was a very talented woman named Patricia Fried. and she heard me and one of our producers Coleman Luck talking about UFOs all the time. And she said to me, you know, you really need to meet my husband because he's got some stories. So I went out to lunch with her husband, Brent Friedman. And he told me a story, which I don't have the time to go into now, but it was about his neighbor,

who was a member of the Reagan administration and told him some things. and it just curled my toes. It was so intriguing. But at least it allowed Brent to sort of cross the threshold where I went, this is a compadre. This is a guy that I can relate to. So Brent and I, after Mantis was starting to wrap up, started spending all our time talking about a show that we were calling dark skies.

We used my name again, the John Lonegard name for various reasons, but it was not the same show at all. That's where we came up with the idea. and it was just kind of the thing that we thought, well, this would unlock it. We said, if Roswell was a true event in 1947, if that really happened, then a whole lot of things that are supposed to have happened for various reasons might have happened for different reasons, because that means the biggest story, the biggest historical event, the biggest anything of all time, the fact that we are not alone, has been hidden. And so that's where we sort of came up with the hidden history aspect of dark skies that we unfolded, you know, in the series. Now, what's interesting is it was an interesting sale because what Brennan and I did, we felt that it was such a weird idea, you know, to say that Kennedy might have been assassinated because our main character gave him a piece of the Roswell wreckage, which seemed pretty radical. We thought, you know, we need people to really understand that we can carry the ball all the way to the end.

So we wrote a briefing book, a notebook that took human history from 65 million BC to 2,200. And we wrote this. And we cross-referenced historical, I mean, we fell in the rabbit hole. And we wrote this briefing book. And the thing about the briefing book was it said, you have been chosen as a lot of, an instrument to bring this television series to the public because we can't tell the truth as nonfiction. We have to use the cover of fiction to tell people the truth. All right. So we have this briefing book. All right. Brent and I, I don't have a copy of it here. Anyway, Brent and I

take that briefing book and we wrap it in wrapping paper, brown wrapping paper, and we seal it entwine and we stamped top secret on it and we put labels on it and everything. And then on one day, Jeff Saganzky, who was our angel on this whole thing, he and I, Brent, was out of town. I don't remember why, but Saganzky and I went to ABC, NBC, and CBS. And we presented them with their notebooks. We told them a little bit about the show and then we said, we're just going to leave you this notebook. So here's what they, so we leave their offices. And we thought, well, it's interactive. What will they do? Well, there's this notebook in a, in brown paper wrapping paper. They had to cut the twine. So that required getting scissors or getting an assistant in there.

They take the twine off. Then they had to cut the wrapping paper. And now there's this notebook, but it's got a gold foil seal on it. So you can't just open it up. And it says on the outside that if you open this thing up, you accept the penalties for treason if you betray it. If you betray it. And so we just were laughing thinking, we're network presidents that now are asking themselves, what? Treason.

What? But by the end of the day, we had two offers, one from NBC, one from CBS, and we went with NBC. Man, that is a sales pitch if I've ever.

What I would give to have one of those briefing books, If you end up finding one price, let me know I will pay any price. Help me, guys, in the super chat. If you want us to have the briefing book, help us out. Yeah, well, I'll tell you something, too. What I was really touched last year or a year or two ago, somebody put together in an article about the best, I think it was the best 21 Bibles ever written for a television series. And it was listed as one of them. So I was very proud of that.

That's awesome, man. The loving care you guys gave into this story, which eventually, you know, would have to be truncated in terms of how it was told. And the whole, I mean, we know the business. We, unfortunately, you know, you didn't have as much time as you would want it to tell the story. Sure. But how do you feel, are you satisfied with how it all played out? Obviously, it would have been great to run for five seasons, but not tell your whole story. But, you know, I think whenever I read it.

watch the series. I want more, but I'm also still like, I love this. I love what it is. It's a moment in time. We have people in the chat saying reboot, reboot, reboot, reboot. Well, listen, I wish the Beatles haven't broken up in 1970, but they did, you know, but it makes their music more precious. So maybe those episodes are even more precious. It is true. It was hard to let it go. But you ask an interesting question. Was I satisfied? Well, I wasn't satisfied to only tell 20 hours of it. No. Right.

But was I satisfied that we sort of got what we wanted to get on film? And I'd say, Brent and I've talked about it, and we think we got about 90% of what we set out to do. But I won't say it was easy. I'm actually working on a book right now, and I may be able to tell the whole freaking story someday. But we ran across some serious. obstruction. Obstruction from on one level from people who said they were from the Office of Naval Intelligence, which was pretty interesting. And obstruction from a very high-powered Hollywood heavyweight that led the studio to tell us to get our guys out of black suits. And when I protested that men in black was a staple of euphology, the studio executive said, stay where you are. I'm coming down. And that studio.

executive came down to the set and said, Bryce, I'm going to explain this to you in words that I think you can understand. You will get your people out of the black suits today, or we will shut down your production and burn the negative. And then he went back to the office. And he wasn't kidding. He was not kidding. Now, at the time he said that, we had to order for six episodes, which meant that the company, it was at Columbia TV at the time, was willing to say, yeah, never mind, we won't make those six episodes. Yeah. And you know, we hear these stories, Bryce, of when it comes to the UFO topic being portrayed

on television or movies, you know, sort of the infiltration or influence that the government might have on these projects. We know, you know, FBI agents were on set at the X-Files. We know Area 51 employees were cooperating. with Independence Day when that movie came out. Like this has been a long marriage between military government and Hollywood. You're right, but that story I just told didn't involve the government, or if it did, it was never admitted.

That we were being messed with by other Hollywood producer types. Okay. Who had a power play going to get us off the air. Okay. No. The people who came, when I say Office of Naval Intelligence on the night of the dark skies party in this house where I am right now out in our backyard, we had 200 people show up who were part of the cast and the crew to watch the premiere. And a guy who said he was from the Office of Naval Intelligence came, party crashed us and said that he had come because they had seen our pilot. And they thought it was pretty good. good. And I said, nobody's seen the pilot yet. It hasn't even aired. And he proceeded to tell me what was in it. And he said, I've been sent to offer our help to help you get it a little more accurate. Interesting. Yeah. Now, is this the story that kind of led you to a cemetery? Yes, it is. And again, there's way more details than what I can say here. But that gentleman,

who said he was from O&I, I had 200 people at my house, and I was throwing a party. And I just said, you know, I don't know who you are for sure, but I didn't invite you into my house. And I'm going to ask you,

I'm going to invite you now to leave. And I had him leave. And in the next week, he contacted Brent, my partner and said, okay, I can see that your buddy Bryce isn't, you know,

isn't going to be easy. He needs, He needs a little more proof. So it's been a proof for me to bring a guy that I work with, my superior, to meet with you guys at dark skies. So this guy and this other guy show up at dark skies and proceed to lay down what they said was the secrets of the universe for two hours in our conference room. And again, I said, well, this has all been fascinating, but I don't really know who you guys are. and I have a show to run. And NBC doesn't really care if I talk to O&I or haven't talked to O&I.

They care that I get the show done on time. So we're done today. Thank you. Goodbye. So I threw him out a second time. And that's when they contacted us again and said, I guess Bryce really has a problem with us. So maybe he needs to see the big guy.

And that's when they said, and it always sounds so stupid. It sounds ridiculous what I'm about to say. and yet it happens. So what can I tell you? Sometimes the phenomenon does sound ridiculous. Oh, yeah, in that tricksterish way. So what the guy said was, all right, well, the boss is on a ship in Long Beach Harbor, and he's agreed to meet with you guys.

And the meeting is all set up, and it will take place in a cemetery in Long Beach at midnight. What's up, guys? Ryan dropping in to wish you all of very happy Halloween season and what better way to celebrate than with Jim Harold's Campfire podcast. With over 500 episodes of Campfire

you'll hear stories that will bend your reality and leave you truly spooked. The concept is pretty simple. Jim talks to regular folks about strange stuff that happens to them and yes, that includes UFOs and UAPs

along with cryptids and of course. ghosts. Now, not all the stories are horrifying. Some are pretty heartwarming, like a visit from a past loved one or a peaceful near-death experience. Regardless, they are true and fascinating stories, as told by ordinary people who've had extraordinary experiences. So, pull up a log and tune in to Jim Harold's campfire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to Listen to somewhere in the skies. And remember, stay spooky. And I said to him for the third time,

I have three children and a wife and I'm not meeting anybody in any cemetery at midnight. And that was the last time we ever heard from them. Wow. I love and I know there's a lot more to it. I definitely suggest people seek out the DVDs, check out their special features. God, I look like I should be in a cemetery.

I don't know what's going on. with my lighting brides you know what it's funny though ryan i just was talking to brent last week and we said you know what would be a great television series the two producers go to the cemetery yes that's the alternate i'd like to see what happened you know and and suddenly find themselves inside the UFO cover up but they can't tell anybody right well and you know and that's a hypothetical a lot of people get asked like if you were given the keys to all the answers but you couldn't share it with the public, would you, would you want to know, would you share it? You know, and I kind of feel like that's, that's a, what would you say?

What's your answer? That's tough because I like, I kind of look at your character, your main character in the show, Loenegarden, be even like, God, if I knew, you know, everything that was going on, but I wasn't allowed to say anything. I think I'd, see, and this is the journey of your character. Yeah. Yes. show like what do you do stop it um what do you do you do who do you tell so i don't know it's kind of like elizando today and that's what i want to talk to you about how dark skies is kind of um telling a story we're seeing play out right now with delong and and elizondo and all that stuff of um you know people

have asked elizondo and delong if the public knew some of the stuff you guys are now privy to when it comes to this topic, how would they feel? And both of them have said on several occasions, very, what was the word? Somber, I think, Elizondi used. And DeLong said they would be horrified. So that just like a million things start going through your head in that ambiguity that they're using. But I mean, it's the greatest speeds of all time because I, you know, I want to pin them down. I want to get Tom DeLong and Lou Elizondo and lock him in this office and say, I'm not even going to feed you guys until you tell. And you can't go to the bathroom until you tell me what's going on.

Because it's just too much. It's too crazy. And listen, I don't know whether we should attribute DeLong with, you know, speaking the revealed truth. But I look at Lou Elizondo as a pretty straight shooting guy. And if Lou Alizando is that troubled, I'm troubled. Yeah, really good point. Absolutely.

I couldn't agree more. Well, we did have one question here. Sure. I'd love to ask you, Bryce. Rodriguez says, did dark skies have a character based on Bob Bigelow? Any sort of entrepreneurs in your show who were trying to buy their way into the disclosure? There would have been, it's a good, it's a great question. not in season one.

We were going to go there, and partly because our sort of five-year arc, if you will, was going to take the Majestic 12 organization from being primarily a governmental slash military organization and slowly take it off shelf and make it private enterprise, which is what I sort of believe has probably happened anyway. So, yeah, there would have been, we wouldn't have called him Bob Bigelow and he would have been a composite character of other people, plus some stuff that we added to it.

But that would have definitely been a part of the series because it would have to be. But the whole concept of the series was, because it came out in 96, 97, our goal was to get five seasons. So in the fifth season, we would hit the millennium, where we were going to have the big, big reveal. at the millennium about what was really going on.

And so we were going to climb through the decades. So season two would have been into the 70s and 80s and 90s. And so when we hit the sort of the 80s, 90s, we would have seen that kind of character. Interesting. Yeah. And that's kind of how the UFO topic plays itself out, it seems. Yeah.

In decades, too. You know, you had the atomic age. You had the saucers. Then it moved up to free love and the six. 60s with the contactees. Boom, 90s, 80s, 90s hit, and you've got these terrifying grays abducting people. It's crazy how that seems to work.

And I could see a show like Dark Skies really leaning into that threat. You know, the other thing is, I'm grateful for all the people over the years who have said how it affected them, impacted them, and they liked its interweaving of history and all that. You know, but the truth of the matter is

we were also interweaving a lot of drama that, you know, we weren't, we weren't trying to be a documentary, right? We were just trying to tell a good story, but we were trying to do it in a way that was more faithful to the historical record. And what we were trying to do was just say, okay, if you're coming with us for this ride, there's only one thing that we're actually saying is dead, dead on us, true. And that is there's a hidden history because there has to be. It's implied. If Roswell happened and UFOs and flying saucers are real and yet nobody admits it, then there's a hidden history. And so that's what I think when people respond to really liking dark skies, I think that's what they're saying is that instead of placing it in the present and sort of having this big amorphous cover up in the present, we were saying, wait a second, our future is written in our past. before you go get all upset about today,

just admit to yourself that the whole history of what you grew up with has been deprived of you. And think about it. When we actually have disclosure sooner than later, those history books are going to have to be rewritten. And what happens, for example,

we talked about Betty and Barney. Maybe there's a memo someplace that comes out where they tell us what really happened to Betty and Barney. I mean, we don't know. right now, but there's been a history that's been hidden from us. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, look at, you know, a few days ago, we learned that humans were possibly in North America thousands and thousands of years before we first thought. I mean, we're still

finding evidence that changes our entire history. So if that were to happen, even a small slipper of that within the UFO field of Roswell being interplanetary or Rendell Schum being a si-op of some sort. It would change everything we're talking about today when it comes to this topic. I would assume. It was funny thing. This just happened. I won't go into all the details. But on December 17th, 2017, which is the day of the New York Times article, I was talking with Dan Aykroyd about, actually about captured. I was talking to Dan Aykroyd via email and phone about the Betty and Barney's story. And I have a phone message from him that day where he's just, he's just saying, have you seen this thing? This world is going to change, man.

This world is going to change. And, you know, it is. We are on the verge. And I don't think I understand everything well enough to say that that's cause for celebration. I do believe it's absolutely necessary. It has to happen. It's been overdue. But in many ways, it's going to be the, it's going to be the equivalent of having that old family trunk and you're going through it.

And you've led this life where your parents were, you know, perfect people or whatever. And you find some document in the trunk that says your father was arrested for, you know, for robbery or something and serve seven years. years in prison. And you're like, what? Okay, well, we're going to have that on a societal basis where the things that come out of that trunk are going to be shocking. And they may not make us feel good. They may leave us disturbed. But let's put it this way. In the last few years, we've lived through a pandemic which certainly disturbed us on an existential level. We've lived through political instability of the greatest kind. And we've hoarded toilet paper. So, you know, we're probably going to hoard some toilet paper again when we reveal UFOs and their reality to us.

And there may be some darker secrets as well. Absolutely. You know, there's, I don't. There's your headline, by the way. Zabel predicts toilet paper shortages in disclosure. That's the supplemental chapter for AD after disclosure. Yeah. It's crazy, man, because I think about that.

I'm like, why is this all happening now in the middle of a pandemic and the middle of political strife here in America and all over the world. All these crazy things happening. And of course, right in the middle of that is like the most we've ever gotten from the U.S. government on the UFO top. It's got to plan that way. Yeah, I'm just not sure you get to choose those things. And so, you know, part of me, you know, for a while I've been going, well, you know,

maybe it's not the right time. You can make that argument. But I can't make that argument. I feel like I wrote an article a few months ago or a month ago called Code Red for Disclosure because there are people talking about it's Code Red for Planet Earth and survival and all that. I think there's no choice right now but to just say we are so fractured and fragmented and disturbed as a species right now. We're at each other's throats. We're threatening each other. We can't seem to agree on anything.

So we probably need to just roll the dice and tell the truth about whatever it is because whatever it is has at least one positive possibility, which is when we find out we're not alone for real, it may make us appreciate our shared humanity a little bit more. And so I say, roll the dice. Roll the dice, rip that bandaid off. You're right. And I think humans are a lot more resilient than we often think. And I think we can handle the truth. It might not be easy. It might not be what we want.

But let's go there. I always say, like, yeah, I want answers. I probably won't like the answers I get, but I want them. So, yeah, for whatever that's worth. Rodrigo, Bryce, actually, has a great question here. How does this present moment compare to your book? 80 after disclosure. Again, a lot of these hypotheticals you guys wrote in this book are, we're seeing play out right now. And you guys were not far off on a lot of this stuff.

Rodrigo, that's a good question about where we are in it currently. And Ryan, you bring up something. We made a lot of predictions. And some of them were right on like one of the things we said in chapter one is if they were ever going to have official disclosure, they would do it on a Friday afternoon after four o'clock. That was the first thing I noticed, man. Yeah, you can sort of bury it and you can sort of use the weekend to ascertain how people are going to deal with it. And when did they release the UAP report on June 25th on Friday after 4 o'clock?

So I found that kind of interesting. Now, to Rodrigo's question, though, how does this present moment compare? Well, we spent some time in after disclosure sort of talking about, about how the BC world becomes the AD world, BC before confirmation, AD after disclosure. And there's two ways that you can get from BC to AD. And I'll just use the movie metaphor. You can either have a hard cut, right?

UFO lands on the White House lawn. Okay. Disclosure done, hard cut. Or you can have what we are experiencing now, which is a slow dissolve from BC to AD. So I think it compares favorably in that while we didn't pick one as being more likely than the other, nor did we say that it was either black or white, but it might be shades of gray in between. We certainly laid out those two possibilities, and it seems clear to me that just because you're in a slow dissolve right now,

doesn't mean that you might not wake up tomorrow morning and realize you're in a hard cut, right? All it would take is something incontrovertible. And the interesting thing is the incontrovertible proof no longer has to come just from the government. It can come from people. And the incontrovertible truth no longer has to come just from the United States. It might come from China or Russia or the Vatican or Brazil or France or the United Kingdom. Right. So there's there might be a disclosure race that leaps us for.

So imagine if the United States were to turn up evidence right now that China was about to make a very pro-disclosure statement. And we had it on good authority. Our sources were impeccable. And we knew that they were going to do it next Tuesday. Don't you think we might do it on Monday? That's such a good point. It's like a new Cold War of trying to understand the phenomena, understand the technology behind. did. I think that's what we're seeing when it comes to this UAP task force and whatnot.

What we're seeing displayed in these Navy UFO videos, they're not looking at it as, wow, aliens. They're looking at it as, whoa, our plane can't do that. If that's China or Russia, we're in trouble. So we've got to figure that out. It's almost like this new race of intelligence or counterintelligence being played out. I sort of see. You know, I'll tell you the one thing, this is again apropos of everything you've just been saying And what Rodrigo was saying is, I don't think anybody quite saw this coming this way. I mean, I didn't see Trump coming, right? So we didn't have Trump in the book.

And that kind of disturbance in the force, if you will. And we didn't have, you know, who would have predicted that rock star Tom DeLong would be this key guy? And who would have predicted that Lou Elizondo, I think you could have predicted a Louelizondo as a whistleblower kind of guy, but who would have predicted he'd have the longevity to just be hanging out there, making the kind of statements he's making and not being shut up by somebody, right? So we predicted a lot of things, many things we're in the ballpark with, some other things we just never even spoke about,

because who would necessarily get it quite that specific? And I think the intent of after disclosure was just to say that while we don't know exactly what the specifics are about everything, we do know that in general, everything will change. Everything. There isn't one thing that's not going to change. It's all going to change. Everything. Yeah. Everything.

Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Gary Voorhees is in the chat here, Bryce. He is one of the Nimitz witnesses. and also the head of UAPX, an amazing group putting real data and science out there to explore these phenomena. Same with SkyFort.

So this kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier of science, kind of taking the front seat now with this topic. It's not the government per se. Like let them do their potential threat thing, let them create the permanent office. But it truly comes down to the evidence, the data, and the science behind this. So you have people like Avi Lube, you have people like UAPX, and other groups, the Galileo Project with, like I mentioned, Avi Love in finding techno signatures.

You have this new, I think, excitement to study this phenomena scientifically. You've highlighted one of the drivers of disclosure, which would be science. And I agree that. There are, you know, two key ones. we've always looked at it as a zero-sum game with this with a government and now we're sort of adding in science okay but the thing that we've not added in and I just wonder if it's not the missing element in this thing which is social activism right we just really haven't added that no one is credibly stepping forward as a social activist on this I mean if I mean there's a few

people that have tried but it hasn't caught on And I wonder, because in America anyway, that's kind of what it takes. It took social activism to get civil rights, right? It took social activism to end the Vietnam War. So why do we think that we'll get the answers that are needed if there isn't some form of social activism? And I don't look at social activism as having a healthy Twitter feed, right? I mean, I have a healthy Twitter feed, but I don't think I'm changing the world. And I don't think that's how the world changes. The world changes when people get in

the powers that be in their faces and demand answers. And so when I see an entire presidential election transpire in 2020 with God knows how many debates, I mean, debate after debate after debate with 17 candidates and not one single question about you. UAP. That doesn't cut it. You know, it just doesn't cut it. So something, something's going to have to change in that equation.

And, you know, I don't know who it's going to be. I mean, in a way, I guess you could say, well, Tom DeLong is,

you know, he was, I mean, but it's not social activism because he's not, he's not reaching out to his followers and saying, I need 30,000 of you to march down Wilshire Boulevard

with signs tomorrow night. Right. I mean, no one's quite doing that. And maybe they have to. Maybe we'll have to. You know, and I don't look at social activism as the silly, you know, race to Area 51 or whatever. Storm area. Yeah. Storm area. That's not social. Yeah. I mean, that isn't, that's not what, you know, I'm not saying you got to be perfect, but you got to be serious. Exactly. Exactly. Well, we should, I think, acknowledge here. the work done by Luis Menez and the Unidentified Celebrity Review and doing two of their events to big phone home. Of course.

To write their congresspeople. And it was awesome to see everyone. That is social activism. That is. And I guess what I'm saying is it didn't, you know, it didn't move to, it hasn't yet, might. Right. Hasn't yet moved to that next level where, you know, serious people come in and say, here's a check for a hundred grand. Exactly.

You know, let's go do this. You're not seeing that yet. Exactly. Yeah. I know. Hopefully in time, maybe we will. But, you know, putting the power back into the people's hands, I think, you're right. That's where we're really going to get the answers.

You know, it took the New York Times to really hold the Pentagon their feet under the fire. And they said, we're releasing this story. Just letting you know it's coming. And what happened? They got caught red-handed lying to the public about Elizando. didn't work for him. Oh, wait, yes, he did. Oh, they, the Pentagon didn't look into UFOs. Oh, wait. Yes, they did. You know, so I think you're right. I think it really is going to take a movement to force any sort of disclosure. And actually, there's one other lever, if you will, of change. And that's journalism.

Right. Because let's face it, if you go back to the historical antecedent of Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein had Watergate all to themselves for a short period of time. I'm there, the guys that broke it. They put their own asses on the line. They were out there. And when they said what was turned out to be the truth, instead, it looked like, you know, the next administration was going to crush them. And then as they, as that story kind of got some purchase and some traction, guess who else came in? All the other people, you know, the networks and New York Times and a lot of other people got in. So I think we may see, you know, major, you know, major, uh, journalistic organizations not wanting to deceive this whole thing to the New York Times.

I mean, why should they? There's no reason that the New York Times gets to own the UAP story. But I will say it's time for everybody to wake up because from what I hear, the New York Times and some other people who, you know, I don't have sourced properly enough to speak out loud on your show about. But the next big thing, and I put those in capital letters, next big thing, is crash record. And it's shocking to think of that, but you know the New York Times is looking into it. And you know that major people have admitted it's happening.

You have people like our mutual friend Ross, Colthart, who has basically said that he's talked to multiple sources who say it's the real thing. I mean, you lay down crash wreckage into the public square. I don't see how you walk that one back. Yeah. And if there is crash wreckage. You know, if you have crash wreckage, that could end up in the Supreme Court, you know, because if the government obtained crash wreckage and there's, and it can't prove a national security reason for hiding it, and you demand to see it or depends, it depends on who demands it, I mean, something like that ends up in the Supreme Court.

Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, a lot of this comes down to congressional hearings. and again, kind of like getting it out there. They're not going to ever, like even your book states, like the disclosure isn't going to come from the government. They're not going to just one day say, let's put it out there. It's going to come on the timetable of the phenomena revealing itself or something, like you mentioned, another nation saying, we know more than you.

We're going to release tomorrow. And it'll be something, by the way, that you and I aren't necessarily predicting. But here's a great example. I'll just give you a specific example, just probably not going to be this, but it could be an interesting thing. What if a number of airline pilots who are still alive who lost their jobs or lost advancement after reporting seeing something, banded together in a class action suit against the airlines? I mean, that would get tremendous, tremendous coverage.

That is a really good example. You know, we even had a public conference recently with the aviation. administration talking about air safety when it comes to these UAP and you had folks like Ryan Graves, Lieutenant Ryan Graves, who had near misses with these UFOs off the East Coast saying, yo, FAA, you have to look into this. You've got to do something. Which is it's going to take one of these, you know? And Ryan, that illustrates the snowball effect.

Let's say that absent Ryan Graves, right, if a bunch of pilots, it's banded together and said, we lost our jobs for trying to report this. You know, maybe it wouldn't be perceived as that important. But when you have a Ryan Graves saying, this is an air safety issue and he's one of your expert witnesses, well, if it's an air safety issue, then by God, the airlines should not have been firing people for daring to report it. You know, they should have made it very easy to report. and they should have been dealing with the government about how to protect our airwaves.

I mean, we shut down the airwaves. I mean, we shut down and grounded everything right after 9-11. That was over a perception that maybe the airlines and the air wasn't secure. Well, why is it any different right now if there are things out there that we don't know what they are? Yep. We know that a lot of flights were grounded when the Chicago O'Hare incident occurred. Yes. So, yeah, you're completely right.

Well, I want to backtrack just a little, Bryce. Before we get to some listener questions, viewer questions, again, guys, if you have questions for Bryce, feel free to use the super chat over on YouTube, help the show out. We'll feature your questions at the end of the show. We're going to do them all at the end. But you can put them in right now through the super chat as well. And let me just say this, Ryan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If somebody out there is listening and wants to write that $100,000 check to get social activism, write it to you. Hey, what would you do with $100,000? If somebody gave you $100,000 and said, we need UFO disclosure, where would you spend the money? Oh, that's tough. Isn't that an interesting thought? Anyway, I interrupted. I apologize. You turn the tables on me.

I was blindsided. I don't know, man. I'm going to have to think about that one. I want to rewind to back to official denial for just a moment, Bryce. One of the fascinating things in the movie, I, spoiler alert guys, I guess. You can't have a spoiler alert that's 30 years old. 30 years, okay, fair enough, my man. We have people like Dr. Michael P. Masters and anthropologists who wrote a fascinating book about aliens and what they might be.

or we have one of the Rendellsham witnesses saying they heard this as well from the phenomena or intelligence behind that incident, that it was not so much alien. It was us from the future. And this was something you brought to the table far before either of these individuals. God bless you, son, for saying that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd love to know where did you come up with that idea?

I'd never heard it before I saw official denial. And that's when I knew I had to start following your work. I'm like, wow, that never even dawned on me, that theory. You know, okay, so I told you that it was based, I had read Whitley Streber's book, Communion, and I thought to myself, well, what if Whitley was being abducted repeatedly, right? Then what would he, and the government knew it, maybe they would use that to try to shoot one of these things down. And then, of course, that's what I did. And then I thought, okay, well, I still need some suspense in here.

What are the aliens here for? And I thought, well, what if they're not exactly aliens? And so at the end of the movie, and it is, you know, again, I'm not sure you can have spoiler alerts this far in the, you know, removed. Literally somebody says in a line of dialogue, it's not where they're from, it's when. And that was the character, the alien that had come back came from the future, trying to take care of things here before they got all messed up. Now, it is interesting. A few years ago, a skeptic, I think, named Ian Riddpath, pointed out that my movie official denial, which came out in 1993, November of 93, saying that they were time travelers. apparently Jim Penniston,

who part of the Rendlesham story, then in 1994 said that when he touched the craft or whatever, he got the idea that they were from the future. Right. You know, I don't know. I corresponded with Penniston, and he said that's definitely not the case. And I take him at his word.

But I think it's a good, okay, let's look at it this way. there are a lot of different opportunities for what they can be. They can be E.T. That seems to be the go-to one. But they can be ultra-dimensional. That's another one. They could be a race of some kind, intellectual, you know, intelligent race from here. But they could also be us.

And I cannot go into the sources on this. But I know that there are certain people. who are actively stating they think that's the case. Really good sources. I'd be shocked. I mean, I just made it up out of my, you said, where did it come from? You know, it just came,

what are writers do? We make stuff up, right? And at the time I was writing official denial, I didn't actually believe the UFO phenomenon was 100% authentic. I was trying to make my movie 100% authentic, right? I'd written this script and I wanted it to feel real. So I started doing a lot of reading. And then it was as a function of doing all that reading that I came to that conclusion that it was the real thing. But I will tell you this on the subject of time traveling future humans

coming back. It was, it made for one hell of a development process because it's like, I think even in Terminator at the end, Sarah Connor says something in voice. over like, you know, you can't think too much about this time travel thing because it'll make you crazy. I don't remember what the exact words are. So I had written a script where I had my own rules for time travel. But then when it got, was being developed, the people I was developing it with at a company called Wilshire Court, they would read it and go, now on page 97 when he says this, what, what exactly, how does that work?

And then I would find myself getting tongue-tied going, well, no, see, if you go in the future, but then you come, hmm, and then I'd get confused. And we would chase ourselves around. And there would usually be in a meeting about this. And there were many, but there'd usually come a point where the executive would go, so, I guess, okay, we're all agreed. Okay, Bryce, why don't you just go do that version? And I would go wrestle with it and come back with the new version. or somebody would say, as I was out the door, they'd go, yeah, but what if? And then they would ask a question and everybody in the room would go, oh.

And then they'd say, well, Bryce, why don't you work on that, right? Yeah. This is actually, this is true story. So at one of these last meetings, the executive is Matt Gross. And Matt and I had become good friends, but we were going through one of these things where I was trying to explain time travel. and we were all knocking time travel concepts around. And then somebody asked one of those questions. And then everybody kind of went, oh.

And, you know, you just see everybody going, we're going to be here another two hours. And then Matt goes, I've got it. And he says, the future is unwritten. Now, you can debate what that exactly means, but it means that the future is not preordained, that it's a fluid thing. and for whatever reason, all of us in the room went, oh, well, that's great.

The future's unwritten. And I went away and, you know, kind of incorporated some of that into the script, and that's what we shot. And I got to tell you, official denial was a terrific film, except that it was shot for $2.5 million. And the alien time traveler is a 12-year-old Australian ballerina in a rubber suit. So if it had been made for $50 million, people would still be talking about it today. But so, hey, that's how it happened.

Hey, but you know what, man, you started the sci-fi original movies, which are such a big popular thing now. I'm very proud of that. I mean, at the time I didn't know it, but I did remember that they said, you know, sci-fi thinks they need to start making movies. And we're going to go with yours first. It's awesome. You know, and again, I didn't even know who you were when I first saw it when it premiered on sci-fi. And now here I am today talking to you about dark skies, another show I watched that I didn't know you then. Again, this whole idea of time is just so fascinating.

It's surreal that I'm having this conversation with you right now. By the way, I just thought of something while you were, this is crazy. This never happens. But a few years ago, a director contacts me. a very well-established director. And he says, you know, I'd really like to remake official denial. I loved that film so much, and I'd like to remake it. Do you have the rights?

And of course, I didn't have the rights. I mean, I sold the rights to sci-fi and Wilshire Court to make it. But my wife, Jackie, says, well, let me look into that. So she calls up the Writers Guild, and the Writers Guild says, send us your contract. We send them our contract. And it turns out that when they bought the rights to my script and the underlying rights, they only bought it for television. And so the Writers Guild send me a letter, which I have in my possession right now,

that says if I want to make official denial as a remake as a feature film, I can do it. Let's go. Oh, man. It may happen. If you need anyone, I'll play the alien. I don't care, boys. How do you look at a rubber suit? We're going to have to check that out first.

I've got the pandemic 15, so I might have to drop a few pounds before that. But, hey, man. Well, we're going to wrap up our time travel with this question here from G. West. Thank you so much, G. West, for the super chat. Are there any theories that they could be from an ocean moon like Europa, which is why they are in our oceans? We're hearing so much about possibly a lot of these UAP mysteries. The answers may lie under our own waters instead of in the skies.

That's a good question. They wouldn't even need light travel. Well, the first reason we could never, that could never happen is it would involve you retitling your show. Oh my gosh. And we can't have that. Yeah, we just, it doesn't have the same pop. I don't know.

It was my brand. Yeah. Yeah, I just don't think we can do it. I'll tell you something. I think that that is a theory. I mean, if the question is, yes, it's a theory. I think the one thing that we are increasingly coming to awareness about is that there is an ocean component and that these things can come down from space, travel in our atmosphere and dive into our water without actually losing any fluidity in their motion. And we see them coming out of the water all the time.

So there's something going on in the oceans. It's tied into the phenomenon. I don't know if it is Europa. I mean, that's sort of a theory within a theory. It might very well be that they've been here forever. Or it might very well be that they're the original Atlantans. I mean, I don't know. Yeah.

But there's something going on. I see we have someone who's available to play the alien. All right, we're done. We're casting. Let's go. Dothier is an actor, a trained actor. He's done a bunch of television. You guys might have more in common than we think, Bryce, for sure.

So we can't play the rubber suit. We'll make him the head of Majestic 12. So that'll be okay. I think he could do it. He'd make a good evil leader of Majestic 12. Let's see here. All right. Well, kind of the last, I guess, section,

I really want to get to you with your, Bryce, is on the trail. Yeah. Or trail of the saucers. I always had the on the in front of there. So I do apologize. You don't need to apologize. I originally called it on the trail of the saucers. And then I thought, I got to get this punch here.

I got to get it down. It should be on the trail of the saucers. But it's just, it's too many words. It's like what they say to Mozart, it's perfect, but too many notes. right so it's like so it's called trails of the uh the rule of Hollywood make it just as least amount of words as possible i may go back to it i don't know but trail of the saucers is the title of a publication of of essays and articles um on medium the medium platform and i've been doing it i started it during the pandemic just

because i thought you know um while i am a dramatist by profession right now, I started out as a, as a journalist, and I still like the sort of the fast break of journalism. I still like writing it. I thought the thing I wasn't reading in all these articles that people were writing, I wasn't reading a lot of analysis and essays about things. I was reading sort of a lot of regurgitation of the same, okay, this is what a UAP office is. This is, you know, I just wasn't seeing a lot of opinion.

And I don't mean opinion in the way where you tweet your opinion. I'm talking about sort of like a commentary that you might read at the end of a magazine or something, right? So we started writing these articles and we've attracted some terrific people, including you, my friend, who I have to say, Ryan has specialized and you should definitely go to Trail of the Saucers, which you can see at what if UFOs.com. And I hope that doesn't hit a paywall. I try not to put anything behind the paper. Yeah. But it might. And I'm sorry about that.

But when I do advertise these articles on Twitter and all that, I do the non-paywall thing. But Ryan has written a succession of articles about cases. And I got to tell you, my friend, they are the highest read of many of our articles. Because I think people want to know. details about cases. They want to get specific. They want to get it real and authentic. And you seem to have captured a voice that does that. So I say, thank you and keep doing it. We love them. And somebody to show you that Ryan has good company, Avi Gold, who you mentioned earlier, is now writing for Trail of the Saucers as well and contributing some interesting things. And are, and which is fantastic. I mean,

I'm just, I mean, I'm kind of knocked out that he would do that. I really appreciate it. And then there's an editor working with me, David Bates, and he has been writing a series called Twilight of the Skeptics, where he is tangling with the professional skeptics out there. And he's taken on incoming right and left from the, you know, the Robert Schaefer's. And he's soon to take on Mick West. And that'll be quite fun as well. Because you know what?

I think these things need to happen. And let me float an idea. You'll probably think this is crazy. But I was about to write it. I've actually written it. I just haven't published it. But I was thinking of challenging, this is going to sound crazy.

I was thinking of challenging Neil deGrasse Tyson to a debate. What are your thoughts? He will never do it. Gloves off. I'm all for it, man. There's days I want to punch the guy in the face. And then there's days I want to hug him. I don't know where I stand with that man when it comes to UFOs, but I think that would be awesome.

It would because, you know, he's been so skeptical. And that's okay. I am, he's a scientist, skepticism, okay. But it's not okay to make fun of people who are, you know, who are legitimately trying to discuss something that seems important. And so I don't like that what he does. And I'd like to just get him in a room and, and, and have this back and forth and say, is this, you know, you're a scientist. Why aren't you more curious, right?

Why not be more curious? So, me, I will challenge him. He'll never do it. But I've met him a couple of times. And I agree. He is a big, huggable teddy bear of a guy occasionally. He's gotten in some trouble in the past few years for some other issues. But he's a guy that would be a fun guy to have a couple of beers with and, you know, some appetizers and a

bar because he tell us some great stories. And so I don't have any issues with him for that. But I do have these issues where I just routinely see him sort of putting down the idea that we should search for the truth here. I prefer the Avi Golds of the world as a scientist where, you know, obvious just saying, let's go get some facts. Let's get more data. You know, I'm not going to make fun of you for for having

draw in a different conclusion than I am, but let's talk about it. And I think that's the more effective and proper way to go. Absolutely, Bryce. And just a nip-pick, we're talking about Avi Loeb, right? Oh, what, what, I just say? Gold. Gold. Gold? Avie-Gold? That seems familiar, though. You know what? No, it's not Avi Gold. It's Avi Gold. My apologies. You know what? It's funny. You get on one of these things, you get on a roll, and things just come out of your mouth. Oh, my gosh, man. Who knows? Avi Lowe, who let's be clear, is the Harvard man of the hour, who has written the book Extraterrestrial,

who is the guy, I can't pronounce the giant space object that. Can you pronounce it? Yeah, my girlfriend's from Hawaii, so I actually got her take on this. It is. It's Omuamua. Oh, mua, mua. Well, all right, well, Avi. Loeb is the man behind that.

And he is a really just a force to be reckoned with right now. So very thrilled. And so I, you know, encourage people. If you're on, here's the thing about medium. If you're on medium, then it's this wonderful place where, you know, for 50 bucks a year, you get to read all these fascinating articles. And they don't have ads in them. So they're fun to read.

They're visually interesting. They move quickly. You don't get distracted by a bunch of stuff. They're great. I and I try again to there's a way you can send them out without paywall and I do that the only thing I can't do is there's a paywall to get into the collection of all the articles which I regret but there's nothing I can do about it. Well and you know I mean writers deserve to be paid for their work. So I think you know while while some information might be behind a paywall enough. is out there for free. You know, I do my show for free. Everyone out there doing these podcasts and

whatnot, they do it for free. You can help if you want to, but we're not putting it behind a payroll. So, you know, the way I look at it is it's like asking a musician to write a song for free. This is our job. We are journalists. We deserve to be, you know, compensated for the work we put into something. So, I think it's worth it. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I mean, I think that, um, Listen, there were other ways to go. I chose medium because what I felt I was not able to find anywhere is that clean look where people could really focus on the ideas and where it was high quality magazine style presentation without the distractions. And I thought that would be more of a service. And also I thought, look, if I can somehow make this thing a success within the medium,

ecosystem, then that would be its own victory, because that would mean you'd be saying, look, the UFO, UAP reality issue is so popular and so important that there's this place called Trail of the Saucers on Medium that is really a go-to site. So that's what I'm still hopeful. Absolutely. It's so clean. I love writing over there. And I love writing with you, Bryce, because I don't know if I told you this.

I got reached out to by Medium. And one of my articles that was on the Trail of the Saucers was one of the top 10 most viewed articles of the month a couple months ago. So they, hey, there you go, man. That's what I'm trying to tell you. And you have some also. You wrote about Shag Harbor, which I thought was a great story. But what was interesting about that one, you know, it's very funny. I mean, it's talking about getting in the weeds.

But some articles, if you're graphing them, just go, boom. You know, they just, and then they kind of fall down. The Shag Harbor one of yours, just, it's the little engine that could. It just keeps trending and it just keeps showing. So it's like you're doing something, right? I say keep doing it. And, you know, to keep talking about these cases too. And people, you know, that's your other thing that you do.

You make them authentic about people. You know, your article about Kevin Day, for example, was very powerful. and, you know, it made me know him better. And it made me care about his story and care about, you know, the contribution he's made to the whole thing. Yeah. And I think it's important, too. Like, yeah, these are military cases, but these are human beings at the end of the day. Like, they're just, they're affected by these events just like we are in the civilian world.

So, no, I think, you know, focusing on the people can tell us a lot more than we think. And, I mean, Bryce, you, your job as a drama. is to focus on people, the journeys they take, their characters and everything. And that has led you to some interesting places in the world of show business. And I kind of like to wrap up here. If you do want to ask Bryce any questions, guys, feel free to put them in right now. We'll get to those as we close the hour out here in just a little bit. Thanks for sticking with me, Bryce.

I appreciate this. Yeah. Cool, cool. What I wanted to ask you about is your work as the chairman and of the Academy of Television. Let's rewind a little bit here. In 2001, August of 2001, is when you were selected.

And then, boom, what happens? God, weeks later, probably the most historical moment in America. One of the most historical moments, 9-11 occurred. And your job, one of your first duties, was the Emmys for that year. So I can't even imagine what that must have been like. And I know you've written about this over on Medium as well.

But would you mind telling us a little about what that job entails? Rod Serling was one of the individuals that was a predecessor to you. I should mention as well. I'm reading a biography on Serling right now. Oh, wow. Really well done. I must brag that he is from my neck of the woods in Syracuse and Bingham. Yes, he is.

There you go. Yeah, so something good in the water there, I guess. I guess. Let's get back to the more somber part. Well, you know what? You mentioned Rod Serling. It is one of the great things that I take some joy in, in that I was a governor at the television academy, the people that put on the Emmys. I wasn't selected.

I was elected. I mean, I actually said, okay, I'm running. And I was running because. I felt like, well, actually, they said only one guy was going to run. I said, why? Who's going to run against him? And they said, well, it's his turn. And, you know, that just rubbed me the wrong way.

I just thought like, it's nobody's turn. You know, if it's an election, it should be contested. So I just threw my hat in the ring and said, I'm running. And then what was funny is that, and I thought it would be great because the last writer to actually do this was Rod Serling, who to lead, the last writer to lead the academy. And I started running. realize, well, the last thing you want to do is run and lose. So I ran hard and I won. And I thought it would be just kind of, yeah, I knew it would be work, but it was supposed to be

a volunteer position, basically, that you continued with your career. And, you know, it took time, but not that much time. Well, okay, so I'd been elected for about two weeks. And then 9-11 hit. And we were planning on doing the Emmys in 2001 on September 16th. So that was five days in the future. And we just, that was not possible. We couldn't do it. So we canceled them. Now, here's the interesting thing.

49 years previously, the Emmys had always gone on, you know, during wars and, you know, during the Vietnam War, the Korean War, Emmys always go on. But we had to cancel them because it just was impossible. Nobody was going to come. So we reset the time for October 7th. And I wake up in the morning of October 7th. I was literally in this room here tying my shoes to go for a run. phone rang and I heard those dreaded four words which were turn on your television.

I turn on the television and it turns out we were invading Afghanistan that day. So I called around to all the nominees and the shows and nobody really wanted to come then either. So now they've gone 49 years, say, you know, without cancellation and I did it twice. So we set them for November 4th. and on November 4th, I said to the media at that time, if I have to put them in my suburban and drive them around to everybody, I'm going to do that because I'm not going to cancel them again. And on November 4th, we were up against the seventh game of a very exciting World Series.

And I remember being on the Today Show that the day before and being asked by Matt Lauer, of all people, whether it bothered me that we were going to have to go head to head with the World Series. And, you know, I said no, not at all, because what I thought was so great about it is it meant that two months after 9-11, two live events were happening. One was the Emmys and one was the World Series, and we were carrying on, and I felt that that was a pretty powerful and cool thing. So wasn't bothered. And I want to somehow, we've used the word somber, I believe. today in something you said earlier.

I just wanted to tell you, during this time, we hosted an event with Gregory Peck. And he died shortly thereafter. But as the chairman, I got to go, you know, meet him, talk to him, sit down and talk to him. And, you know, he was old. And, you know, I didn't want to, you know, be too, you know, ask too much of him.

But I also wanted to talk to him. And I just ask this question. I always like to ask people questions that they don't see coming because that's when you get this strange thing. So I said, you know, Mr. Peck, we're going to have the Emmys. And, you know, with 9-11 and everything, there's a lot of discussion and debate about it. And I know a lot of the actors are concerned as they walk down the red carpet, how should they conduct themselves? And this man in his 80s, doesn't have much life left to live,

doesn't miss a beat. And this is what he says. He says, I would be sober, but not somber, with a twinkle in my eye to assure everyone that it's going to be okay.

Wow. Isn't that great? That's amazing. Like that encapsulates everything, you know, right there. Sober, but not somber.

So in fact, you know, if we're going to talk, about disclosure and things like that just to bring it back full circle, I think that Gregory Peck's not wrong. We should be sober, but not somber, and we should still have that twinkle in our eye to assure people it's going to be okay. Because being somber and depressed, before we even know what we're up against, that didn't get people through World War II. It didn't get people through any great disaster, we have to keep our heads high and hope for the best.

I love that. I can't think of a better way to kind of wrap up this whole conversation we had, man. I do have a question here from Rodrigo. Thank you, Gregory Peck, the spokesperson of disclosure, if I've ever heard one. Think about that. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, yeah, crazier things have happened. Rodrigo wants to know projects for the hopeful.

near future Bryce. Anything you're working on. I know you had a pitch today. We're not expecting you to talk about that. But yeah, what do you got going on, man? Got some things breaking. You know, the superstitious part of you never wants to say things out loud and then be held accountable later for why they didn't happen. But, you know, we have been working a while on the captured series. And we have some, we have some real traction right now. So hopefully we're going to be to have an announcement about that sooner than later. My wife, Jackie and I, just wrote a spec one-hour drama pilot called UAP. So guess what that's about?

It's kind of like a House of Cards meets aliens, right? So it's sort of like it's taking place in sort of the world, the power center of D.C., from the White House to the Senate Intelligence Committee, that kind of world. And we've just finished it. and we're just about to go out with that. And my dark skies partner, Brent Friedman and I, have just had an offer presented to us to write a feature film called Decoy, which we had worked on this a decade ago,

and it just came back out of, you know, the things come back. And that one is about an Ocean's 11 style team is hired to break an alien out of Area 51. That's amazing. It's just kind of a high concept. Look, that's not going to change the world. And, you know, it's not true or anything. But it's fun. And so we're doing that.

And then, you know, just to tell you, my book AD after disclosure has interest. And I, you know, knock on wood, I would love something to happen with that. And I've had Stan Friedman, his book, Top Secret Magic, and Don Schmidt's book, Witness to Roswell under option, and we've developed a feature film screenplay about it, that's sort of about their lives, you know, when they work together in the 90s. So, you know, here's the thing.

We could go a year and I could be back on and you say, what happened to all these things? And I go, damn, if I know, right? Or I could call you back next week and go, I got three things. Put me back on, baby, because I got three things to talk about. I will say this, and I think it's not going to be news to anybody, but Hollywood doesn't usually lead it follows, right? And the zeitgeist right now is making it clear that something is real and people are talking.

And so there is an openness to hearing ideas that aren't just fanciful. Now, I agree, the decoy thing is fanciful, but some of these other ideas, AD and you, WAP and and even the crash, which is the Roswell movie, these are based and grounded in reality. And so people before might not have been as interested in hearing them, but we're seeing that we're getting more traction now. So this is a wood desk. I'm knocking on him. All right. Same here.

And I can say being on the other side of the camera, I have reached out to almost on a weekly basis for. you know, these reality shows to go out and hunt UFOs and whatnot. And it's great. I've been able to do some projects. And just like you, it's kind of hurry up and wait for a lot of these things. But it's exciting. It's exciting to know that UFOs are kind of the hot thing right now. And I couldn't think of a better time for all your projects to finally get the attention they deserve.

I do have to say UFOT here brings it back to the Mantis days. Bryce loved Mantis so much. Thank you. I love Mantis too, man. I forgot to bring that one up. It's crazy. I watched all of your stuff before I even knew you. Again, you know, I'll tell you something that makes me so happy about Mantis is, it was, again, Carl Lumley, brilliant actor starring as Miles Hawkins, aka the Mantis, first African American superhero on TV.

And I've had multiple young African American men who are in their 30s, right, based on when it was. come up to me and tell me how important that show was when they saw it. Because Miles Hawkins is the smartest guy who's, you know, you know, is Carl Lumley is not only the smartest guy in the room, but he's giving orders to everybody else and he's the star. So, you know, I was happy to see that happen. And, you know, even now, Carl Lumley gets to play Martian Manhunter, I think, in various things.

And he was in the Winter Soldier series. Yeah. It's crazy. UFO says so far ahead of its time. You're right. Well, that's very nice. Took Marvel. What?

Geez, like 15 years to get an African-American at the front of one of their movies. So I would have to say, yeah, a lot of respect for that. And he was taking a chance. He were taking a chance. The network was everyone was taking a chance. And it's very memorable. I remember it to this day. Thank you. Well, I love doing it.

It was a lot of fun. And also the birthplace of dark skies because, again, when Mandus was winding down, Brent and I were just saying, well, what the heck? We have an office. Let's spend the next six hours talking about UFOs. And that's sort of how dark skies got built. Yep. And that's where we are today, man. Fun times.

It's amazing. What a journey you've had. It looks like our internet's. kind of getting tired. I'm sure you are as well, my man. You're getting a little, you know, little, it's funny, though. Here's what I've noticed. First of all, you're doing a little of the internet herky jerk thing. But what's happened on my end is when we started, I was sort of brilliantly lit if people were to go back to the beginning. And now I'm kind of in, you know, these long shadows. This is probably a better look for a UFO show

where we are now. I think I think so. I think so. We, We both got to work on our studio. Ryan, I always enjoy talking to you, my friend. It's always so much fun. And I love your show, and I do listen to it. And, you know, I just think you keep fighting the fight, my friend, and it's all going to be, let's put it. I'll tell you something we could leave people with, because I need to put you on the record, too. All right.

What is our respective opinion about where we will be in the count? calendar when the vast majority of the world is now aware that UFO slash UAP reality is an authentic thing and they're not human made. How far in the future till most of the world knows this? I, you know, if you have asked me that three and a half, four years ago, I would have said never. I never thought we were going to get those answers. whether you look at it governmentally or just, you know, again, the phenomena forcing its hand and showing itself.

Now, the way I see our technology evolving so rapidly, things we once thought, you know, paranormal or becoming normal, science fiction is becoming science fact. I really do. I think it could happen in your lifetime, in my lifetime, maybe our kids. I could see it actually happening. And that both terrifies me and excites me more than ever. Because you look at someone like St. Friedman, who spent more than half his life looking for those answers.

And maybe finally got them, unfortunately, when he passed away. Maybe he has all the answers now. That's what I like to think. That gives me comfort. But I could see it happening, Bryce, in the next decade, if not sooner. What about you? What do you think? Well, when you said your lifetime and my lifetime, I thought that's being very generous on Ryan's part.

I'm older than you are. I'll tell you, I do feel that about Stanton, for example, by the way, because he told me about captured. He just said, you know what, just get this thing made. I'd like to be on that red carpet before I pass away. And I never could. I tried. I gave it everything I could to meet that deadline and couldn't quite pull that off. But I will say this.

I feel the frustration. All right. I'm not the young man I used to be. When I came to Hollywood, I was the youngest guy in every room. I'm not that guy anymore. I've been around long enough to say that I, I'm tired of this. I want it to be over. Okay. So here's what I'm going to say. I believe things are moving faster than you could possibly even imagine on this front. And I would say, I'll give you a date. I think. 2025 no later. Wow. I love that, man. I'm holding you to that. The best is on 2025. Here's the thing. Here's the thing about when you're specific. If it turns out I'm wrong, I'll just go, I just was throwing a date out, right? But if it happens before 2025, you're going to pull this out and you're going to go, I don't know what he, I don't know how he knew. And I'll be, I'll be back on a little grayer and I'll go, I don't know, man. It just seemed It seemed right.

Seemed right at the time. Exactly. Exactly. Well, I hope it does come true, Bryce. And we have you to thank for putting those hypotheticals out there way. You're always ahead of the time, man, when it comes to this stuff. And that's why I love working with you. Rodrigo did say Bryce is responsible for me becoming a filmmaker.

So I can't think of a better way to kind of. I'm going to give Rodrigo a virtual hug here for that. That makes me tear up. It's fantastic. He's amazing. Yeah, yeah. He's such a supporter of my work and yours. And it's such a good family. We have it somewhere in the skies. And especially over at Trail of the Saucers, I love working with you guys. It's so much fun. You challenge me, which I think is the most important thing as a writer to never get comfortable. And it does. It feels like a family. You know, first of all, that's great that you've done that with somewhere in the skies. And as I'm looking at somewhere in the skies and Trail of the, saucers down below. I realized why I shortened it to Trail of the Saucers. It's got the same rhythm as somewhere in the skies. It does. It does. You've got somewhere in the skies. I've got of the

saucers. And when it was like on the trail of the saucers, it was too much. And originally, I got the title because I was speaking at the I UFOC, I think. And I, they said, what's the title of your presentation? And I said, uh, fear and loathing on the trail of the saucers. So, which was sort of a takeoff on a Hunter Thompson thing. So then I said, that's too long. So then it's on the trail of the saucers. And then I saw my friend Ryan had somewhere in the skies.

And I thought, well, that's just it. We're bookends here. So that's it. So the mashup of the century. Exactly. I got to thank you, man, for everything. Please, one last time before we go, let us know where we can find you on Twitter and where we can find Trail of the Sissars.

Okay. So on Twitter, it's at Hollywood UFOs. Okay? And by the way, any article you see from Trail of the Saucers on at Hollywood UFOs on Twitter is no paywall. You can read any of those. If you want to go to our site on Medium and you're on Medium, then it's no problem. You can just find it on Medium. But otherwise, what if UFOs.com?

What If UFOS.com Perfect. Awesome. And again, I link to my medium goes right to trial the saucers as well, guys. So please go over right now. There's tons of articles. Start from the beginning. Work your way up.

They're coming out every other day, week. I know David Bates is super busy. You're super busy. And it's exciting, man. I can't wait to see. Let's meet back up in a few months, see where this conversation is at. But I love it.

thank you for coming on Somewhere in the Skies today. My pleasure and bye to everybody for being a part of this. It was really fun. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One podcast network. Hey guys, Ryan dropping in to share some awesome news. Somewhere in the Skies was recently nominated for the 2021 Paranormal Podcast Awards. Presented by Paranormality Magazine.

I'm so honored to be among many other fantastic podcasts in the categories of Best Alien UFO Podcasts and Paranormal Podcasts of the Year. So it would mean the world to me if you'd head on over to Paranormalitymag.com and click on the vote for your favorite podcast link. And I hope you'll consider voting for somewhere in the skies in the two categories we're nominated for. Voting closes at midnight EST on September 30th. So again, head on over to Paranormalitymag.com and consider voting for somewhere in the skies. Thank you for your support. We keep looking up.