Somewhere in the Skies - UFO Roundtable: The Year In Review

Episode Date: December 19, 2017

On episode 36 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan is joined by colleagues: Jason McClellan, MJ Banias, and Mike Damante to discuss the year in review.  The boys begin with the late October UFO incident over Oregon where both commercial planes and fighter jets observed and scrambled an unknown aircraft. They then discuss the Oumuamua Asteroid story, the Kepler discovery of eight new alien planets, and then things get really recent as they go deep into the bombshell story of a secret Pentagon UFO program in connection with Tom DeLonge's To the Stars Academy.  The episode ends with the boys discussing who they want to hear from more in 2018 and who they want to shut the hell up as well! It is a jam-packed episode and a perfect way to ring in the New Year. Guest Bios:  Jason McClellan is a UFO journalist and the producer/co-host of the web series Spacing Out! He is also the web content manager and staff writer for OpenMinds.tv, and a co-organizer and technical producer of the International UFO Congress. As a founding member of Open Minds, Jason served as a writer and editor for the now defunct Open Minds magazine. He has appeared on Syfy, NatGeo, and, most recently, he co-starred on H2’s Hangar 1: The UFO Files. He is the author of Only Weirdos See UFOs: An Introduction to the Public's Misperception of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and Extraterrestrial Life. His work can be found at: www.RoguePlanet.tv Guest Bio: MJ Banias is a writer, blogger, and theorist with a background in Critical Theory, History, and Cultural Studies who critically and philosophically examines the weird, the strange and the anomalous.  He was a former field investigator with MUFON, has been featured on multiple podcasts and contributes to Mysterious Universe and Rogue Planet. His work is also featured in a new book entitled UFOs: Reframing the Debate. He is also the creator of the blog, TERRA OBSCURA. This blog is aimed at critically exploring the culture, the people, and the ideas that shape what society considers inexplicable. Using aspects of philosophy, critical theory, and cultural studies, TO questions the common ideologies that form and inform our knowledge concerning bizarre incidents, anomalous paranormal events, UFOs, synchronicities, and other events people consider "strange." To learn more, visit: www.terraobscura.net Mike Damante is the author of the book, Punk Rock and UFOs: Cryptozoology Meets Anarchy. He is also an established journalist, having worked for the Houston Chronicle as a copy editor, writer, reporter and web producer. He currently produces their "MIKED" music blog and has interviewed bands and musicians like Bad Religion, Blink-182, Taking Back Sunday, Tom DeLonge, Tegan and Sara, Aerosmith, B.o.B and countless others. He currently teaches Journalism and English in Houston, TX. All his work can be found at his website: www.punkrockandufos.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Official Store: CLICK HERE Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Order Ryan's Book by Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get to this week's show, I wanted to remind you that in this holiday season, we can't forget those less fortunate than us. And here at Somewhere in the Skies, I am running an event I did last year as well. For anyone who purchases merchandise from the official Somewhere in the Sky's store, or purchases my book, Somewhere in the Skies, a human approach to an alien phenomenon, 25% of the proceeds will be donated to the Women's Refugee Commission. There are currently almost 60 million refugees worldwide who have been displaced by conflict. The Women's Refugee Commission improves the lives and protects the rights of women, children, and youth who suffer this displacement. The Commission also researches their needs, identifies solutions, and advocates for programs and policies to strengthen their resilience and drive change in humanitarian practice. Since 1989, they have been a leading expert on the needs of refugee women and children, and the policy.

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This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. What against the wind? The wind's a hundred and a point out of the west. That's not our hell on us, though, is it? It's not a... I do. I don't know. Well, the fair's like... Look at that thing. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprague. The audio you just heard comes from a recently declassified case file. It pertains to an encounter between a Navy fighter jet and an unknown object. It was released by the Defense Department's Advanced...

Aerospace Threat Identification Program. A secret Pentagon project that we learned recently was working in the shadows to investigate UFOs. This story is making national headlines across every major news outlet, and today we talk in depth about it, along with other highlights of 2017 in the somewhere in the skies year-end wrap-up. I am joined by close friends and colleagues, Jason McClellan, Mike Demonte, and MJ Benayas to discuss some of the most interesting UFO, alien, and space news that graced us in 2017. And we then look forward to what 2018 may have in store for us as we continue to search further and deeper somewhere in the skies.

So, without further ado, let's get to the 2017, somewhere in the sky's wrap up. This is going to be an epic conversation today. I thought, what better way to wrap up the year than to bring on three? of my closest friends and colleagues. I have got Jason McClellan from Rogue Planet. I have MJ Benyis from Terra Obscira. And I have Mike Demonte from punk rocking UFOs. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today.

Pleasure to be here with you, fine, gentlemen. Yes, this is going to be an interesting one for sure. I did ask all of you before we started recording. We are not going to be able to get through this without a drink. So I need to know what does everyone have in hand right now? Jason, I'm kind of stealing this from your show. So we'll start with you, my friend. What are you drinking today?

It's kind of hilarious that you decided to do this because in an uncharacteristic manner, I'm drinking water tonight. Ooh. I have a reason for that. I already did my drinking earlier, but I just finished dinner recently, and I don't cook a meal without it being extremely spicy. So water's necessary right now. But to make it interesting, I'll give you a little brief story about my water. So I live in Phoenix, and the tap water here, the groundwater, is just absolutely horrible. You don't want to drink it. It tastes awful.

So, and I know that's the case in many places, but in Phoenix especially. So I go to whatever grocery store I shop out, haul my five-gallon jug and fill that up at the machines that they have at all the grocery stores. The grocery store closest to my house has two of these machines sitting right outside the front door. and the brand, the company that operates these water machines is called, perfect for Phoenix, it's called Fiesta water. So it makes it seem more exciting than it is. So I'm drinking fiesta water. You know what, we're going to say that's a tequila. It might be.

Yeah. Let's go with that. Let's go with that. But I do have alcohol in my system, so I guess that counts, guys. Sorry. That's fair. That's totally fair. MJ, what do you got for us?

It's winter here, but I find that I often tend to go in reverse, so I'm enjoying a nice gin and soda, Bombay Sapphire on ice with a hint of club soda and a splash of lemon juice. So I'm just, I'm keeping it classy tonight, boys. Oh, that sounds delightful. That is my go-to gin, so well done, buddy. Yes, very well done, very well done. What temperature do you have there, MJ, I have to ask? It's actually, it's nice right now. Hold on.

Let me, I, it's, it was nice all day, but currently it's a balmy, um, minus one. Oh, my God. Centigrade. Right. So I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. Sorry. I don't either. I don't know the conversion ability.

I am freezing in Phoenix. I'm like shivering right now and it's 52. Yeah. Oh, no, where, yeah. 67 degrees in unit in Houston. Okay. Okay, Mike. Awesome.

Yeah, Jason. I'm pretty much with you, buddy. Yeah. This is actually going to be my first holiday. without snow. So it's going to be very interesting. Mike, what are you drinking? I mean, it's Monday, so in the most punk rock fashion, I drink, I'm drinking water as well because Monday nights, I do punk rock stuff. Like, I go cycling, I drink a smoothie, and I eat a salad. So, and it's also late. So the last thing I drank did have alcohol in it. It was mouthwash. That is fair enough,

man. I can't imagine swallowing that, yeah. If I'd have to work tomorrow morning, I would have a Drinking hand. I have a lot of whiskey left over, different flavored whiskey left over. So if I have to teach the youth of America tomorrow morning, I would definitely be indulging. Yeah, yeah, that is a good point. I think what are we at, gentlemen, three different coasts right now. So it's getting a little late for a couple of you guys. So we will run through this. What are you drinking, Ryan? I have got Jason Dalmore Scotch whiskey. This is a 12-year-old. So my girlfriend got me this amazing gift for Christmas, the Advent calendar of whiskey.

Amazing. Amazing. It's amazing. Yeah, you just open up a little thing every day, and it's got a little, you know, shot bottle of whiskey. A lot of them, it's from, I believe, England, so it's got a lot of scotches. But I've run across some really interesting ones. There was a Japanese one I had yesterday. I think it was 20 years old.

This one's 12 years old today. Very good. Very, very mild. very carmally, very wintry, so I'm loving it. That's very cool. Yeah, I only started seeing those things this year, and those are the coolest gifts. They really are. They love those advent calendars. That's awesome. And they do every alcohol you can think of.

So I will give up the shameless plug. This is called Drinks by the Dram for anyone interested in a very, very unique gift this holiday season. Drinks by the Dram! All right, moving on. All right, well, I feel that Mike and I are at a disadvantage going into this, but we'll try to pull our weight. We're depending on you guys, the sober ones, for sure. So the first, I guess, story I kind of wanted to run through with you guys is a very, now we hear about UFO cases on a daily basis, the four of us.

But this one really caught all of our attention. And it was pretty interesting. And this was in October of this past year in Oregon, where several witnesses, both military and commercial. This was also confirmed by the FAA and NORAD of an unidentified. flying object in the skies. This was first reported on Reddit and then eventually was reported in the drive website. So apparently around 4.30 p.m. over the border of Oregon and California, there were reports that were coming in of a craft and there was no transponder. There was no communication being done between the other aircraft and this. So this is pretty interesting.

There was visual confirmation, but not any really good descriptions of what was scene. But Jason, I know you did cover this in an episode of unknown. So I wanted to maybe throw this one over to you, man. And if you could shed any more light on this case for us. Sure. Well, one of the, you know, frustrating things that we tend to deal with in this field is the lack of real follow-up on a lot of these cases we hear about. You know, and it's a sad, sad state of affairs, but you look into this, into anything with UFOs, any current news story that comes out, that sounds awesome, and you just kind of assume

you're never going to hear anything about it again, because that's what happens most of the time. And as of a couple days ago, I did try to find more information, any follow-up to what we found out initially from this report, and I haven't personally seen any more about it. And I, truth be told, I didn't go back and look at Reddit, because Reddit is Reddit. Yeah, exactly.

I think potentially some really good information came from that. And, you know, these sources could be pilots. They could be people who were personally involved in it. But, you know, you're just going on faith there. But all that aside, I mean, with the article that came out, with Tyler Rogaway, the journalist who did the story, he did more than a lot of people do with UFO stories. he did actually press the FAA and NORAD trying to get confirmation, trying to get more information. He did get that confirmation.

And a couple things with this case really jump out at me because I love when this happens. Number one, again, official confirmation that there was something in the air that was seen by multiple witnesses, both in the air and on the ground. The craziest thing is the scrambling of military aircraft to try to intercept that. this thing, but crazier still, they couldn't find it. So they scrambled military aircraft because there was an unidentified craft in the air, and they couldn't find it when they got up there. So mystery craft that was going super fast, approximately 860 miles per hour. It had limited radar reflectivity.

And, I mean, it was seen by a lot of pilots in the air. It was allegedly executing high G maneuvers. So a lot of interesting elements to this story that I don't know, make it a pretty darn good UFO story in my book. I think so. And I think there was there, was there audio as well from this? Did anyone have a... Yeah, that's what makes it fun to listening through the chatter from pilots in the air as they're tracking this thing, communicating with the airport tower.

You know, it's fascinating to listen to. And it's almost like listening to like a police scanner or something hearing you know, an event unfold right before you're listening to it live and hearing their reactions. It's kind of exciting. Right. I love when there's audio data to go with these UFO cases. It helps so much. And it really puts you in the shoes of the witnesses, which is something we rarely get. We'll talk about another case that recently came out where we had some audio as well, video. But yeah, this is a pretty compelling one. I don't know. Guys, do you have anything to add to this one? Were you following this case at all? I was going to chime in real quick. So I thought it was kind of a coincidence when I was

looking stuff up about this that just a few weeks prior, the Oregonian, their website, Oregon Live, ran October 12th. This was, I think two weeks before the signing happened. They ran a throwback story about a UFO case in the 20s. And if you look at Paul Trent UFO photos, which were taking in Oregon as well, they're very, they're very distinct. Yeah, these are famous photos, by the way. I mean, these are some of the first UFO photos we've ever gotten, I believe, of a clear object. And to this day, Jason,

I don't know, in MJ, I don't know if you guys can attest to this. They've pretty much been proven authentic, right? I mean, there hasn't been tons of controversy behind them, as far as I know. I think it was Bruce McAby, right? Who sort of, yeah. He's the big supporter of the Trent photos, and he still stands by them.

I think so. Even today, right? And I think that, like, you know, it's tough, right? Because he, I think all he claims though is that, you know, no one tampered with the film or no one tampered with the photograph. Right. It's a physical object. Right. It's a physical object in the sky.

But, you know, whether it's, you know, a lampshade or something getting through into the area, you know, he can't really comment on that. It could be really be anything, those, the Trent photos. But, I mean, they're definitely part of sort of UFO mythology, right? They're definitely sort of well-known pictures. Absolutely. That's really interesting, Mike. I didn't think about that.

We do have some of the first UFO photos ever from Oregon. So that was pretty cool. And I mean, in terms of this recent case here, I thought it was pretty interesting that the theories, they ranged from a possible drug smuggling operation since this happened in the middle of the day, pretty much. It was in broad daylight. Or they think it might have been possible military test craft. Some people said that they saw a white plane, which is pretty interesting. But yeah, I guess.

There's a white craft. That's really the only description they had. And the time of day, the pilots flying, you know, most of the closest. pilots, you know, it was toward the sun, so they couldn't really see it for very long and really just saw a reflection of something. Right, right. And this sort of harkens back to early 2017. I'm thinking of the Chilean case, which to this point, have we had, guys, I don't know about

you, any updates on what the hell that was? Was there any firm answer to what that video was? Was this a Leslie Kane one? Yes. With the thing dumping? Yep, yep. Yeah, wasn't it debunk on, not metabunk, but... I think they also did, but with a lot of these cases, you know, there are plenty of people who, you know, look through flight records and make their determination that, well, based on where they say these things were in the time of day, it was obviously flight so-and-so out of this place.

So, yeah, I think with that case, several people were more than content saying, yeah, for sure. Sure, they identified the flight. But, you know, then it comes down to you as an individual deciding if you want to go with this side or this side. I do think many people are happy with an identification of just a flight that was in the area, but others are still on the fence. Yeah. Well, if they were saying it was a flight, how did they explain how it was almost breaking off? How did they explain that? Because that was featured on Josh Gates' Destination Truth.

He did his whole, like, four-part chasing UFO series. In that case, and they tried to recreate it on just through, I think they were on an air balloon. They tried to recreate that same thing through, not special effects, but just through kind of practical effects in the air. To try to create a similar phenomenon, they had trouble doing so. So I'm wondering, you know, people are saying, well, there was a flight at the same time. How does that explain the phenomenon of what people were seeing? I think it had to do with, they were making claims that it was dumping, like, wastewater out of its, like basically

of toilet water. The lavatory show. Yeah. The way the plane would bank to like the left or the right or something, I guess the way the jet would show up on the fleer because of all the heat, just the remnant heat, what you're actually seeing is not sort of anything coming off. It's just the heat signature of

the jet wash coming off the rear of the airplane. I don't know. Metabunk did it is it was Metabunk after all. They did a really good job actually of sort of providing all of their sort of evidence and citations and references. I mean, no one from the other side has sort of come back and said,

well, here's why it isn't this or here's why it isn't that. I don't think they've really done much to kind of counter the metabunks debunking. So I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm just concerned that it was just, you know, they released it maybe prematurely thinking it was something big and it turns out just a plane. Well, and I think that's a good point, MJ, that, you know, the journalist Leslie King, she did say, like, if you have an, answer, please tell me. Like, you know, again, a responsible journalist saying, like, to the public,

tell us what you know. We're bringing this to you. Tell us what you know. We did run into a lot of issue with this case, I think, early on, where people were so quick to be so unbelievably. They scrutinized it to a point where they're saying that the journalist covering this case in specific was stupid or was irresponsible, when in reality, it's a pretty compelling video. by an army, you know what I mean? Like, no matter what it was, they wanted to bring it to the public. So I think that was, it was an interesting case. It kind of reminded me of this one.

But, yeah, interesting nonetheless. Well, something important that we have to keep in mind with, especially these cases where we have video, we have footage from planes and coming from military sources, and really any case in general, is keeping an open mind and understanding. that facts and information that come to us through the investigation process do change and we need to be open to change. A lot of people latch on to things. And I don't remember if it was that it was that

particular Chilean case or a different case. But I know something with information displayed on the camera, I think it was later found out that it was like a new camera and it hadn't been calibrated right. So maybe some of the figures on the camera displaying weren't actually correct. To like a centimeter, I believe, Jason. Yeah. Yeah. So completely putting what was being viewed in a different location in the sky than the investigator had initially reported because they were judging off of what the camera was saying.

So little things like that can completely change a case. And a lot of times people dismiss little things like that because they say, oh, well, I read the initial report and they dismissed that because they said that absolutely couldn't happen. Well, when you have something like information from the camera that you're basing everything, off of in terms of positioning that changes your entire case. I mean, you have to go back and revisit evidence that you've crossed off the list or possibilities that you crossed off the list. I was going to say one thing I like with this, airliners and I think the article is called airliners and F-15s involved in bizarre encounter with mystery aircraft. Yeah. One thing I like with

this is it didn't come from sort of a UFO source or a typical UFO source, right? I like when when articles come from sort of these rogue players who are not involved in any way within the UFO community. They're sort of just, you know, regular jobs. journalists who just sort of dig into a case or an interesting event with no real background in the UFO community. So they don't really arrive to their conclusions from sort of a pre-determined or I guess a pre-established notion of what UFOs are or at least sort of the mythology behind UFOs. So that's one thing I found this case to be interesting, right? And it's probably something, you know, it's probably not aliens, but I really like this sort of article and I really enjoyed

listening on your show, actually, Jason, the audio. It was super interesting because, again, right, this is like totally not a UFO story that sort of became a UFO story, right? Yeah, I'm with you 100%. I mean, I love that, and especially with the background of that particular journalist, he's a military and aviation correspondent. So he's coming at this, you know, from the angle of, hey, I'm really familiar with military aircraft.

This is what I write about. Yeah. And so that gives it a really fun angle. know, for me personally. It speaks volumes, too, the fact that you're having someone, like, you know, you said, MJ, who's not, you know, invested in the subject like we are, you know, it's a different perspective. But for them to be commenting about it as well and covering it, I think that just speaks, like I said, speaks volumes about just the interest, the stuff is starting to kind of garner.

Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And in that context, you know, pointing out from his military and aviation background, pointing out why this particular case is something that has. has elements that we should take note of, you know, not just saying, oh, there was some mystery thing in the sky, but pointing out the fact that here it was being acknowledged by official sources, that jets were scrambled, that it wasn't able to be located, just a lot of things that raised red flags from a military slash aviation standpoint.

I've loved it. We got nothing but the facts. And I think that's, you know, Mike, you can attest to this as a professional journalist and you guys as well. Like, that's what we need. There's no belief involved in this. It was this happened. Fact by fact, time, date, done, boom.

Hopefully we'll get some sort of follow-up. Who knows, we run into that. That's always the hope. All the time. I know, Jason. Well, guys, we're going to do a UFO sandwich. So we've got some meat in between these, or some vegan meat as well. Sorry.

Thank you, Frank. You're welcome. Have you guys had the Impossible Burger, by the way? I have not had the Impossible Burger. I've had the Beyond Burger. Beyond Burger is amazing. Still haven't had the impossible. Dude, I had an impossible burger last night, and I'm hooked.

I'm going to cross over. I think I'm ready to cross over finally. Just for that. So good. Come join the dark. Yep. Yes, yes. As the last Jedi, I would say.

All right. So, yeah, in our sandwich, gentlemen, we have another pretty, a lot of these things we're covering tonight are very recent, which always seems to happen when you try to. to do a wrap-up show. Everything happens like a couple days after or, you know, stuff like that. It's never throughout the year. So we have... The year is so long. It's so freaking long. It's hard to remember what happened early in the year. It really is. And there are some things that we all want to forget. We did discuss a couple things we were going to talk about, a few individuals specifically, but I think we should veer towards more the optimistic side. So the next one we're going to talk

about is the my girlfriend's from Hawaii. She will never forgive me if I get this wrong. The umwa-moa-moa asteroid story. I think I said that right. Say it again, Ryan. Say it again. Um-wa-moa. I was actually practicing trying to pronounce it earlier, and I was like, you know what?

I'm trying to let Ryan take the lead on this. This is his show. I'm just going to put whatever. That's the appropriate decision. She's probably in the other room thinking, what the hell is he doing in there? All right. So we have an asteroid. from another star system that recently, if not currently, is zipping past Jupiter at around

196,000 miles per hour. Holy shit. This is actually too fast to be trapped by the sun's gravitational pull. Amazing. This was first spotted by astronomers at Pan Stars Project at the University of Hawaii. This is pretty interesting, guys. This is not like most meteors or asteroids we're used to seeing that are round, jagged. This is cigar-shaped.

and pretty weird. It's pretty weird. And some scientists do not think that this is a natural object, including Stephen Hawking. So they had a plan that they wanted to try to communicate with whatever this object is. And I did ask a couple of you guys to do some homework on this one because I am horrible at astronomy and space stuff.

So if anyone can chime in on this one and has further details, please feel free to jump in. Sure. So I'll start us off here. The most recent article actually that just came out literally hour ago was from BGR.com, which is a tech website. And I guess there's been a recent development. They are calling it officially sort of a comet now, or at least, I don't want to say officially,

but they're assessing it now as a comet because it doesn't sort of contain the usual sort of rock-like substance on an asteroid or a meteor would. However, due to its odd shape, and I guess the speed it's traveling and the fact that it's been traveling for quite some time, it's lost its outer sort of icy shell. So that's why it's not really sort of giving off the typical comet trail. And it's just sort of behaving oddly, I suppose. But right now they're considering it a comet. But, you know, we can always try talking to it too, I guess. Yeah, yeah, this was a pretty interesting one.

The day this came out, I don't know about you guys, but everyone was like, uh, what is this thing? Especially since someone like Stephen Hawking is saying, you know, this looks like a ship. Yeah. Pretty interesting thing for something, someone like him to say, again, maybe that was taken out of context somehow. I'm sure it was, but yeah, yeah, this one was pretty interesting. I don't know if anyone else has anything else to add.

Well, I love stuff like this. And I mean, it just, you know, another illustration of how bizarrely awesome the universe is and how we really have no idea about the things that are in it. So, you know, we see something that looks different. And it's the same with UFOs, too, things in the sky that we're not used to seeing. We see something that looks bizarre. Then all of a sudden, our imaginations run wild. And we're all, ooh, what's this? This must be an alien spacecraft.

Yeah. So, you know, and some people poo-poo the initiatives, like the breakthrough initiatives, people who, you know, train the Green Bank telescope and try to listen to see if they can get any alien extraterrestrial signals off of this thing. I applaud those efforts. You know, I'm glad someone's out there doing it because we should try everything, right? I mean, we don't know what it is. So, why just dismiss something and say, well, obviously it's not extraterrestrials? We don't know. It could be. It's probably not. It looks like a big piece of rock that looks bizarre, but it doesn't look like a cool spacecraft like I would imagine awesome extraterrestrial civilizations would build. But, hey, it's possible.

So let these guys in their group, you know, they've got the money. I mean, it's Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg. You know, I love what breakthrough initiatives is doing. Like, I love billionaires who are spending their money on space exploration. That is amazing. So let them do it. I'm glad. Haven't heard from aliens yet aboard this thing, but hey, keep looking.

Exactly, man. I think that's a good point that, like, there's got to, if these projects are going to continue, like, they need something to study. So why not throw that money into some money. something like this. While others may say it's a waste of time or money, this is why we have these projects. And dude, I always pointed out, people, people love to rip on SETI and stuff. Right. SETI's not something that's really getting taxpayer money, you know, stuff they get donations for and whatever. And projects like this, breakthrough initiatives, these are billionaires. And billionaires can either spend their money on yachts and being obnoxious here on Earth,

or they can fund space initiatives. I'm all for the billionaires. who want to spend their money on space. Very good point. Mike, what were you going to add? Yeah, I was just saying the interesting thing was the name it was given in Hawaiian. It stands for a scout. It means scout, which is really fascinating. Yeah, absolutely.

I think, again, like, what we can bring to things like this is just, it goes far beyond anything that we do in terms of, like, studying UFOs here on Earth. It's amazing that we have, like you said, Jason, people willing to put. money into looking for things out there. So let's keep doing that. And I guess to sort of piggyback off of that is our next big story that came a few days ago. And this is the discovery of the first alien star system with eight planets, which sounds a little similar to our own. So I'm going to throw it over to you guys. Who's looked into this one? I've barely scratched the surface when it comes to this, but it sounds extremely interesting. Well, I can certainly talk a little bit about it. You know, this is one of those

things that we get announced notification from NASA that they're going to hold a press conference to reveal some exciting findings. Sometimes, and more times than not, NASA is to blame for hyping stories. They started doing this several years ago when they realized that people got really excited about extraterrestrials and the possibility of alien civilizations. So they'd start carefully wording their press releases to hype it up and create this maybe a little bit of hope that they're going to announce they found aliens. So that never happens and hasn't happened yet. And even now with press releases, and the press release for this particular story wasn't really hyped up like NASA has done in recent history. But that didn't stop a lot of mainstream media

from wording their headlines in a way that said, is NASA going to reveal they found aliens? There was nothing in the press release to even hint that they had this massive announcement or something to do with extraterrestrial life. Previous press releases have said that because they're talking about things with astrobiology and potential signs and potential energy sources

that could mean that life could have been there at one point in time. But there was nothing like that in this. But still, there are plenty of headlines wondering and speculating about what this announcement is going to be and saying they are going to announce they found aliens. Well, there was nothing like that. So it was on December 14th when they had their press conference to announce the latest findings from the Kepler Space Telescope. And anybody's listened to me over the years through various interviews and shows, I love Kepler. Super fan of Kepler. The little space robot that could.

Like, he's overcome so much adversity. and he's still out there trucking. And, you know, so what Kepler did? They sifted through some of the recent data collected by Kepler, and they found this solar system, approximately 2,500 light years from Earth. Planets, there are eight of them. They circle a star called Kepler 90.

And so this solar system now ties our solar system for the highest number of planets around a single star. So, of course, people start the speculation out there. that oh maybe it's our twin maybe there's an earth out there and all this stuff and also we can get into a debate about well hey we really have nine planets let's be honest here don't don't be mean to my pluto see when i was a boy when i was a young lad yes but anyway so they found this so they found a couple more planets in the solar system to bring it fling its count up to eight to tie our planet count in our solar system that's cool but the coolest part of the

about this announcement was that NASA teamed up with Google AI. They used machine learning to sift through Kepler's data. So machines found these planets kind of freaky, but kind of cool. What they did was they essentially constructed a neural net based off of human brain. And these machines were able to look through data and notice dips that human eyes would miss and they were able to locate these planets. So that's going to help tremendously in sifting through Kepler data. You know, this thing was launched in 2009 and it just continues collecting mountains of data. It would take years and years and years and years to sort sift through it. They've implemented and utilized other things like crowdsourcing and other computers like SETI at home, that system to help sift through

the data. But still, it's... It's going to take forever, especially since Kepler's still collecting data. But now that we've got the machines on it, those robots will, they'll find plenty of more planets. But since launching in 2009, 2,500 planets, exoplanets have been confirmed thanks to Kepler. So pretty awesome. I love Kepler. Exactly, man. And again, proving like we're searching for radio signals, we're searching visually.

It's incredible that, like, these things are still going on. And unless we hear these breakthrough announcements by NASA, not many people ever think about it. Like, this should be national headlines. Anytime there's even a small discovery. But again, it's just not the sort of media world we live in. Well, and, you know, we're so used to stuff now. I mean, you know, desensitized to everything and anything because we've heard it before. So exoplanet, been there, done that.

Right. Let me know when you find aliens. And then even then, people won't be that. excited but yeah i mean people don't get it that exoplanets are fairly recent we didn't even know about a single exoplanet until you know recent history so i don't know it's all very exciting it's all happening super fast too so i think because we're so inundated with it now it's just such a common occurrence that people you know brush it off they're all another another planet so what yeah no i was going to agree with that it's you know it's common occurrence but the same time you're

right. The people who are exploring these are the billionaires and NASA and groups like Saturday because the government's not putting any money into this as far as we know. You know, space exploration is not on the budget in the United States right now. So it's just fascinating that, you know, all these discoveries kind of has to be done. Not rogue, per se. No pun intended. But, you know, like you said, you know, we're just kind of desensitized too, too. It's just kind of happening very, very low key. You know, and when it does happen, you know, you're right. It's like, oh, another, you know, Star Wars discovered, and it's not as big news, but at the same time, people are still interested,

if that makes sense. Just the fact that, you know, some of these sites are running almost clickbait about the NASA announcement. I think that that speaks volumes of the fact that of the interest of, even if the announcement or the news isn't earth-shattering. Well, and the things that really do hit are so just like head-scratching. Really? Why did this story become so large? I mean, think about the last solar eclipse. That was like a pop culture. thing. You know, wait, why is this happening? Yeah. That's a good. All of a sudden, everybody's into eclipses? What's going on? I mean, is space cool again? Like, seriously, like, I'm tripping. I'm all, yeah. Obviously,

these people, like, have finally woken up. Space is cool, man, and all this stuff going on. But why now? What, what happened to make everybody interested in the eclipse? I'll tell you guys. I think because Earth sucks so bad. Yeah. Maybe it's that, Mike, or I was going to say, like, in order for this thing to be, you know, a pop culture thing or to really get to the masses, you got to get an Instagram selfie with it. And we just can't do that with these planets yet. That's true. But they even tried to latch on to that several years ago, some of these initiatives with, yeah, take a selfie and send it to this number and we'll take all your selfies to Mars.

God, that's where we're out, guys. I don't think this would be a euphology 2017 year in review, unless we mentioned sort of how exciting it's been for sort of the exopolitics and the disclosure movement. I think that they've had a really good year. And I think that if I have to sort of comment on one post, I'm tired of seeing it is the typical disclosure person who sort of writes like drip, drip splash in regards to,

the news this year because it's been this sort of you know discovery of exoplanets is suddenly you know NASA just slowly dripping that there's an alien reality they're just slowly releasing this obviously and uh you know so help me if i see the words drip drip splash again i'm going to go nuts in regards to disclosure because you're going to see it oh i and i and i've kind of you know girded my loins i'm ready for it but i'm just i'm just i'm just i have to be it's so much It has to be mentioned in the 2017 Uphology view here. Absolutely.

And with that, gentlemen, we're going to get to the meat, the actual meat, my vegan friends, of 2017. Let's start with Tom DeLong. Now, we had this major announcement about To the Stars Academy. I don't need to remind listeners about what that is. You know what it is now.

Jason, you did a wonderful discussion with both of these gentlemen about this. So yeah, who wants to take this one? Before we even get to what happened a couple days ago, wants to give a brief overview and sort of maybe what's currently going on to the Stars Academy. Anybody want to take this one? I dare you.

I dare you. I'd just wait. MJ would love to. He's just waiting. I said we should have MJ take it. Okay, so I will try and give my most unbiased, journalistic to the Stars Academy recap. Okay.

Let's say. So, I can't remember the month, October, I think. To the Starz Academy of Arts and Science. Yep. There you go, October 11th. All this stuff happened in October, yeah. A day which will live in infamy. Yeah, that's my wedding anniversary.

To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science officially sort of was announced by Tom DeLong and a group of individuals, let's say contractors from various government and intelligence, cough-cough agencies. and they announced that they were launching a project that would join both science and art to, one, develop new technology for the public good, which would bring 25th century technology to the 21st century, as well as some potential new evidence to suggest that advanced aerial threats exist and that unknown aerial phenomena are real and haunting our skies, and it's not necessarily benevolent.

Is that okay? my, was that fair? Absolutely. I threw up a few times in my mouth saying all that, so I just need to watch that down with my gin. Someone take over. So do you want to talk, let's talk about more recently the past couple of days. Yes, let's get into that.

Thank you. Well, you know, I mean, me and Ryan were talking about this last week, how I don't think Tom has really done himself favors leading up to it. Just because I know the initial announcement, just the kind of the flack he was getting from it to the Stars Academy, I think it really was a big blow to his ego. And I think when it was it on? Like Thursday or Friday, you know, he posted this tweet,

just kind of attacking a lot of the people who follow him. Or was the UFO community in general, and it was just a bad look. And then, like, two days later, they dropped this footage, which they've been promising. Wait, wait, wait, wait, Mike, we have to be fair. We have to be fair here. After his announcement in October for several months,

well, actually, not several months, sorry, several weeks. He posted many photographs that are clear, have already been debunked by the UFO community. Yes. To his Twitter feed and saying that this was evidence of UFOs when clearly this was sort of ridiculous hoaxed information from even Secure Team 10. So we need to be fair here that yet, yeah, he did sort of get his ego hurt. But I'm going to be honest, what is he doing posting these ridiculous photographs that

clearly are not legitimate? I think that just comes from his general sloppiness. I mean, you know, he's very ADD and he gets really excited. And rather, you know, if you're going to post a photo like that, explain, hey, this is something that's fake, but we're going to try to build something that's like this. Or there's none of that. It's just very rushed and very not very well thought out. And I think a lot of things he kind of posts on social media aren't very thought out because he doesn't have a lot of people managing kind of, well, when we put it this way, I think there's people who manage officially what he can't. can't do regarding the company, but when it comes to his own social media, I don't think

there's anyone in his ear saying, hey, this isn't a good idea or not, especially the people he has working with. The people he has on his team are, you know, unto the stars, not the academy. I mean, it's family and friends he's been working with for years now, and I don't think any of them have the balls to be anything other than a yes man or a friend to tell him, you know, hey, this isn't a good look or this isn't a good idea. I'm not defending and posting the ridiculous hoax photos he did. You know, that's definitely a head scratcher. But I just think, you know, He kind of has this accountability-free world to the stars. Right, right.

I mean, he is not the sole owner, but yeah, he runs basically everything that's coming out of there. And that tweet, Mike, was deleted, I believe, a few hours later. The hoaxed photos were deleted at one point. Yeah, so this guy, this is, if anything is coming out of this whole Tom Delonc thing, which may run even deeper into 2018. It's that the dude is shooting himself in the foot time and time again, but then producing solid stuff. That can be debated. We will get into that.

Many people argue that none of what has happened in the past few days is anything new. I want to hear your guy's opinion on that. So, Mike, you are sort of hinting at what happened. So why don't you sort of drop this bomb for us that, I guess, inevitably, Tom DeLong dropped on us a couple days ago. Saturday morning, I believe. Yeah, it was really interesting to me because the, New York Times apparently was, you know, they were going to quote unquote broke the story and they were holding onto it for days. Because a lot of times, you know, before you run a story, especially something like that where there's multiple sources, you have to get the sources approved by your editors.

You know, so it's always fascinating me when there's, you know, you hear about, you know, Washington Post or big outlets that have stories with 30 plus sources. You know, usually it's a pretty credible story. So I think this is something that's been working for a while. And I think this is something that Tom has teased. And, you know, you know, you couldn't really reveal anything about it yet. But still, why would you, you know the story's coming out soon? Why would you tweet something ridiculous previous, you know, previous days just try to stir in the pot and attacking people.

So that kind of, you know, boggles my mind. But on Saturday morning, the New York Times came out with this great story. And the story, the story never mentioned Tom by name. Mostly about Louis Alizando and his position in the Pentagon and the gimbal footage, which to the stars released on their website. And then, yeah. So that's kind of where we're at Saturday. and the biggest takeaway I take from this is this story is everywhere.

It's on CNN. It was a New York Times largest story this weekend in terms of hits and comments. NBC picked up on it. Washington Post. Every major outlets reported on it. And I blogged about this today. And the most important thing we take it, you know, the biggest takeaway we take about this is number one. These major outlets are reporting on it.

And they're taking it seriously, too. You know, they're not dismissing it. And especially with all this going on in the world right now, you know, the 24-hour news cycle is very much dominated by ratings, what's clicking what people care about. And like I said, with the, you know, the situation in North Korea, what's going on in America right now between the GOP tax bill and Trump making a fool out of himself every day. You know, every day there's something new. There's so much stuff that's dominating the headline. So for this to kind of get some play, even if it's 10 minutes, I think that that says something. That speaks volumes to the fact that, hey, maybe people are starting to care.

and show that they care about this stuff. I want to believe that so bad, Mike. I do wonder, though, a lot of the reporters on these major outlets, when they had Leslie Keen on, they had Luis Elizondo on, to interview them, the first thing they said before they even asked about what this actual news was about was it is so refreshing to talk about something other than American politics. So that right there, I do question, you know, the genuine interest by some of the mainstream media, but at the same time, it does come down to ratings.

We do know that UFOs and aliens are a big hot-button thing when it is in the mainstream, even if it is ridiculed at times. But like you said, there's been very little ridicule factor with this story. And I think it is because of the content. We have an extremely compelling video that was given to us by Two the Stars. And I do want to ask about that. Do any of you know, does DeLong and Two the Stars, do they own this video? I don't think so. I don't know that that'd be possible unless there's some story where he paid for the rights to it, but I don't think so.

It's it belongs to the government and no one person can own it. So it's a declassified video so anybody can get it. Okay. But they are the ones that facilitated the getting it released. So obviously the ones that all the media sources are citing to. So, and rightfully so. But no, he doesn't own it. Yeah. Jason, could you maybe comment on what exactly the news was? Besides the video, we have a project that, I don't know about you guys, but I never really heard anything about this. Maybe I'm a naive eophologist. I don't know, but please. Tell me if you guys knew anything about this project.

I think the videos that were released are cool and people need to understand or, you know, we'll just wait and see if they follow through. And I think they will, but they just launched their community of interest. And we're talking about to the Stars Academy of Arts and Science here, something that Tom had hinted at that they were trying to do. And that's this community of interest, an online platform, that they have designed to kind of get people actively involved to what extent we don't know yet. But that's where they plan to release lots of these videos, videos that have been declassified from government sources to get people discussing them, looking into them, whatever else. So I think that's going to be an endless supply of fun for all of us researchers in the coming year. But obviously the biggest story here, and some people don't think it's a story at all. And as MJ alluded to, many people love pointing out that this could be disinformation or preparing us for a false flag or other things that really make me annoyed.

But we learned that the Pentagon, the government, had an active UFO investigative. program going on up until just recent years. So some sources I've seen have been turning it into a financial story, too, talking about spending $22 million on UFOs. That's ridiculous. You can't do. And being surprised at black budget spending. I mean, this is a big win, big confirmation for some people in the UFO world who have been

screaming about UFOs and black budgets for so many years. but here we have confirmation that money was spent and used from black budget purposes to fund this UFO program that ran for a span of five years and worked primarily with Robert Bigelow and Bigelow Aerospace. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody because we know that Bigelow still not really with confirmation, but we all assume that he still operates his advanced aerospace division of Bigelow, aerospace and that's sort of what happened after his National Institute of Discovery Sciences that he put together. But money was funneled to him for the purpose of doing this investigation for the government's project. One of the more exciting things is he changed buildings,

apparently, on his big compound there in Nevada to store materials allegedly recovered from crashed UFOs. And again, that's shouldn't be terribly exciting for people who have followed Bigelow and what he's done with UFO research. Even, I don't think it's still there, but the National Atomic Testing Museum there in Las Vegas used to have an Area 51 exhibit called Area 51, Met the Reality. And it was really largely a UFO exhibit with all sorts of interesting and fascinating things, not even necessarily related to Area 51. It was a very small component of this exhibit. A lot of stuff from George Knapp in there. but Robert Bigelow even contributed some artifacts to this exhibit, and one was something that

George Knapp was involved in an investigation with, but a piece of metal that displayed unusual properties and like anti-gravity properties and just, you know, interesting, interesting things. I've written some articles on that, but Bigelow donated some of the stuff to this museum, but he's been involved in material collection and other aspects of UFOs for so many years, again talking about news this year back in May was when 60 Minutes ran their interview with Robert Bigelow and again saying things that he's been saying for years, years, but saying that there's been and has been and is an existing presence, an ET presence on Earth and, you know, saying that you don't have to go anywhere in space to find extraterrestrials because they're right

here. And, you know, so all of his comments about his personal beliefs that we know that extraterrestrials are here. You know, so it's not surprising that Bigelow was heavily involved and perhaps still is involved in government UFO studies. And it didn't hurt that he was a good friend of Harry Reid. So when Harry Reid was the one who really put this program in motion. I think it gives the program credibility, too, to mainstream audiences, especially. And that's why I think the news is covering it, because Harry Reid is a major political player. Yeah, yeah. And he had backing for this program through both Democratic and Republican Senate. So I think that's a big thing.

Like, it doesn't matter what political side you land on. This is a topic and an interest by many people, both in Congress, both in the military, both in the intelligence agencies. And, yeah, I mean, Reed says he's not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry he got this thing going. He thinks it's a good thing, and he did his congressional service. And I think that's awesome. If this is the thing you're going to be remembered for, you have so many people who dream of that. So yeah, whatever, another big thing I think is interesting is that officially this program supposedly has ended due to, you know, no more financing. But we are hearing, you know, by many of these people, Alizondo included, that it's still going on.

Now, that really interested me in terms of who is still investigating it. Is this to the stars? Is this Bigelow still? I do wonder who they're alluding to when they say it's still being investigated. Do they mean? Well, he certainly said that Elizondo, Lou said that he and others were still continuing the program even after it had been disfunded. Okay. He was just doing it on his own time, basically.

And dime, I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Elizondo Delange met with Bigelow a couple of months ago. This hasn't been, no one really broke the story. But, I mean, if you look on social media, just through, like, searching hashtags on Instagram, You can see Tom and Elizondo were there meeting with Bigelow and his daughter. So, granddaughter.

Granddaughter. Yeah. Yeah, that's Blair Bigelow. Good old Blair. She works for Bigelow Aerospace. But yeah, she's the one who posted the photo. That's incredible. That's incredible.

That's incredible. Yeah, yeah, that did go a little underreported and is pretty much a big deal. Yeah. Not only that, but the reason that Elizondo left was he quit because of the secret. He said that was behind this. Like he wanted the information out. So that was pretty interesting as well. How deep does the secrecy go with this project?

I do wonder. The interesting thing is he came on, he was the last ones to come on to The Two the Stars Academy. And he was the kind of the big question mark. People are like, who is this guy? And he's been the one dominating the story this whole weekend. Every story's been about him. He's been on every show and every TV show and radio program since Saturday.

Yeah. And that is the real story. I mean, the real story that broke on Saturday and you're seeing the fallout now is not about any military videos that were released. It's about the confirmation that despite denying it for so many years, the U.S. government did and perhaps still does investigate UFOs up into recent years. Absolutely. So, I mean, anyone who doesn't have this keen interest that, you know, the four of us do and who have been preaching for years that, yes, the government does hide information about this. For the everyday person, I mean, I was talking to my girlfriend yesterday about all of this and explaining to her, yes, apparently they have metal alloys and things from structured craft that are not from here. Again, that's a very wide net of what it could be.

But she immediately shivered and said, I had no idea. Like, yes, I know you guys talk about this all the time. You know, the X-Files covers this, but I always thought it was stuff of fiction. And we are seeing that a lot of the things that we do perceive as, you know, in a fictional realm are slowly coming true. I'm not saying drip, drip, splash, MJ by any means. But it is very exciting. Any faith that I have lost in DeLong and what he's trying to do, I'm still being very weary of it at all. But I think this is pretty interesting.

It's very compelling. I want to see more gun camera footage because I think that. is some of the big smoking gun stuff that we're going to get. And I guess to sort of wrap up this one, guys, what do you think of the footage itself? I mean, I personally think it's fascinating. You know, I'm not a pilot, but reading and hearing what pilots have said, including the pilot who allegedly was the pilot of that flight, you know, comments that he doesn't think it was from Earth.

So, I mean, you know, that's interesting information. Yeah, I agree with Jason because like none of us are pilots. We don't know what that's like. So, and like I say, you know, the footage for us, it's very, you know, it's very grainy. And it's very, so their commentary basically tells the story, you know, because basically all right. It's blips on a screen. But here's the other thing, too.

I want people to always keep it in mind. To listen to what he's saying, this is a pilot, a career pilot, somebody who'd been in the military for quite some time as a pilot, had engaged things in the sky. And when these pilots are seeing something that they've never encountered before, never heard about before, displays characteristics. behaviors and abilities that, you know, seems to be far beyond anything that we slash they know about, that's huge and we should take note of it. Put extraterrestrials aside. Yes, that may be a possibility, but just the fact that there's something like that we can't identify, we don't know what it is,

but it's there and seems to outrun the technology we have. That's something that we should be interested in and something that merits study. Absolutely. And I think the audio is very important here too and hopefully it has not been doctored at all. We have people arguing that. But the fact that like you said Jason these trained pilots, they're up there for a reason. They're scrambling this object. So they don't know if it's a potential

threat or not. So while they're intercepting it, they also have to be ready for a national security threat to attack this thing. And as Lou, I think it was Lou who even said and this is a very common sense thing I would think, but it's lost on a lot of people that despite the excuse given by the

of defense by the United States government for ceasing their investigation into UFOs is that, you know, we don't have time for this and it's not a, we've determined it's not a threat. What Lou says is, look, when you know you have something in your airspace and you can't identify it and you can't intercept it, that's a threat. Yeah, that's a good point. It doesn't mean it fired on you. That is a threat. It's not supposed to be there.

I think there's sort of a lot, though, that's kind of hover. on the peripheries here. And I think we've, we've, in the UFO community itself has kind of really been enamored with sort of the last couple days of sort of story. I think we sort of need to be cautious in just in a few things. One, the news, especially 2017 in general, but I think the most recent sort of news regarding these videos and regarding sort of this Pentagon story and all that is one sort of what ideology and what mythology are we sort of creating when it comes to sort of UFOs and the UFOs sort of narrative that that's sort of existed so far. Like what is sort of going to adjust and change in the UFO discourse over the next sort of year

or so? You know, really we see this huge reinforcement of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. You know, no one's really talked about anything beyond that. This is sort of really boiled down to potentially either secret military program or extraterrestrials in nuts and bolts sort of craft from space. Like, you know, this is really, I think, in the public eye, an ET question. We can sort of say that it isn't and we can sort of say all the newspapers are doing a good job of trying to keep aliens out of it. But at the end of the day, what's really

driving these headlines is the term UFO, the term alien, the term extraterrestrial. And it's sort of mythologizing this story. And it's becoming very much sort of a key aspect of euphology in 2017 and into 2018. And ultimately, what is also kind of being lost as a result? What stories are getting pushed to the side because of this one. I would also kind of want to point out sort of the euphological irony in all of this. The government and the military has always kind of, by the UFO community in general, been viewed as someone you can't trust. They lie to us. They have secret underground bases. They have made deals with the extraterrestrials for an exchange for abducting people and mutilating cattle and, you know, stealing our genetic information, you know, the American

government studies their technology, whatever. Like, you know, you can, you can, you can, you can sort of pile on the various, again, UFO lore that exists out there. And we've kind of, a lot of people, especially within the UFO community, have, we now have this blind trust towards sort of this archetypical enemy of UFO community, right? The government has always kind of been the enemy, and not always, but has definitely been the 80s since the 80s, has been the enemy rather since the 1980s, especially after sort of the MJ12 debacle and the Paul Benowitz affair. The government was very much painted as the enemy here. There's someone you can't trust. anyway. And now we're sort of relying on them as a community to provide this information. And a lot of people have bought it sort of hook, line and sinker, just assuming, well, hell, if it's a gun camera video, it must be 100% legitimate or at least, and you know what, I'm not saying it isn't legitimate. I'm not very conspiratorial, but we're, we're not necessarily looking at why now. Like, why has this all been released now? Why have only 30 seconds of the video been released? Why has this all come to light relatively recently.

Is it because Tom DeLong is this UFO mogul who is able to push the right buttons? Or are there sort of agendas on top of agendas on top of agendas that are, again, designed similar to sort of MJ12 in the 1980s and the Benowitz situation and everything from the 1980s designed to kind of manipulate the UFO community or to manipulate the message regarding the UFO community to manipulate the narrative for some purpose or purposes? And I think, you know, as a subculture, I think we sort of need to definitely look at this as an angle. Because to suggest that the government is just now suddenly, hell, you know what, we're just going to be honest with y'all. I think that's ridiculous.

And I think that if you get fooled by that, you know, shame on you. I agree with that, J, but it's funny. You know, we're just so, as a UFO community, we're so jaded. And, you know, we're so inclined to question everything, you know, where stuff comes from. So even if it was truthful, we'd be questioning it anyway. So in the sense that we're kind of doing the work for them in terms of disinformation and just kind of having that discourse amongst ourselves.

So we're kind of just so inclined to always question everything that comes from them. So even if it is accurate, we're still going to question it. So it just kind of, you know, we're in this situation where we're just kind of screwed in terms of, you know, what do we decipher what we believe when we don't. Well, I'm not sure if it's weird, but I think a lot, I agree with you.

And I think however that we've also been played, right? I think the UFO community has definitely been played to be like this. I think a lot of the mistrust within the UFO community, of others within the UFO community, is definitely been seated by sort of various three-letter intelligence agencies purposefully to cause a little bit of disruption. Again, I'm not very conspiratorial, but if you're dealing with people who don't necessarily trust you as a government or they don't buy the status quo, you know, you're going to want to sort of maintain some aspect of control over this group of people. who don't comply with the mainstream.

Yeah, that's a very good point, man. And I think, again, we always reckon back to this idea that even if we don't have control over what might be in our skies, we can control the information giving to the public. So why they're giving this to us now? We may never know. But I think you guys make good points. What else is crazy? Has anyone noticed that Rick Doty has been around a lot lately?

You have to wonder why. Well, you know, with any subject, but especially the UFO subject, we always try to caution people to be cautiously skeptical of any information. I mean, you really have to question everything from the sources and the meat of that content. So, I mean, just, I know we're getting quote unquote official information here and official sources, but still, you know, you've got to be cautiously skeptical. You need to do your own research, and it comes down to believing what you're going to believe as an individual. But one thing that really kind of annoys me with a lot of the headlines I've seen with this latest news of the government's UFO program, in and out of the UFO community, is this statement that, oh, disclosure has happened. There's finally the confirmation that UFOs exist.

That's what I'm seeing inside the UFO community. and outside, just in the general public, like, oh, the UFOs exist. And, you know, that always makes me scratch my head because I do understand and have talked to so many people that not even speaking extraterrestrial necessarily, but still a big chunk of the mainstream public doesn't think that there are unidentified objects in the sky. They think that, you know, they live in this safe, happy bubble and the military has everything under control and knows every spec of whatever is flying in the sky so they don't need to worry about it.

We're all good. But I've seen so much of that today and yesterday about how we now know that UFOs exist. Yeah. I've talked about this before. I've talked about this before in just I think the disclosure movement in general and sort of the exo-political movement is a natural sort of extension of uphology, right? I mean, you look at, you know, 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, euology, it was really sort of, in investigating UFO reports and trying to piece together sort of the science behind it.

And into those sort of the 80s, especially in the 90s and early 2000s, you have this sort of big push that, you know, really, you know, investigating UFO reports is sort of a dead art. And it's really all about disclosure. And I think disclosure is kind of at the point now where it's sort of run its course, but it's definitely kind of at this point now where it's 2017, it's been, you know, nearly two decades. And nothing's happened. And similarly to, you know, UFO investigating, you know, no one's found a conclusion and disclosure, sort of this natural extension of it, no one's

found a conclusion. There's no answer. So I think, I think the disclosure movement itself is sort of trying to grasp its straws here. I think they're trying to legitimize their entire, maybe philosophy and trying to, to kind of say, you know, yes, you know, this is, this is happening and this is sort of where we're headed to next. It'll be interesting in, in a decade or so, or maybe in 20 years, to see sort of where the disclosure movement is, whether it's even still, a thing anymore and what kind of the next thing will be, at least the next sort of extension of uphology, let's say. I'm not saying that sort of investigating citing reports is over, but it's very much no longer kind of the key, big aspect of really the UFO discourse, right? It is all about

government insiders and it's all about kind of speculating on what the aliens are up to versus sort of, you know, people on the field or people rather in the field actually sort of talking to witnesses and investigating UFOs. It still happens. obviously, but it's, like I said, it's kind of a dying art, I think. It actually is. And, yeah, it gets looked down a lot on and pushed to the side. And I will say, for all you people out there who still believe in the value of looking into and investigating citing reports, I'm raising my hand right now, friends.

Send it to me. Just like with SETI and all those billionaires spending their money trying to talk to rocks, like, I think there's value in all of these things. Let's do all the things, guys. And this is, you know, Jason, you're getting me all riled up. You know, I agree. He's on his third gin. It's empty now.

You know, it's all about the witnesses, right? And this is, I think, where I get a little flummoxed with to the Stars Academy and maybe Mr. DeLong and all of these other, you know, billionaires who are spending their money on UFOs. You know, okay, you have a few Jet Fighter Potts, which is, you know, great. They're witnesses. But again, you have a whole segment of, of, you know, people who have UFO encounters, who have encounters with sort of anomalous beings or whatever

you want to call them, right? They engage with the phenomenon in some way. And ultimately, they're getting pushed aside, right? Like, we're pushing aside the regular everyday witness that has made up the bulk of uphology for, since the 1940s. And it's like they no longer matter, right? Their UFO reports, their citing reports, talking to them and investigating to them is becoming less and less important. And what's becoming more important is the discussion of Mr. DeLong or these sort of government insiders and intelligence officers who have played a role, I guess, in investigating UFO threats sort of for the government or whatever.

I don't know. Like, am I getting, should I be upset? Like, do I feel? I think that's really interesting. It's really interesting point. At the same time, I think you look at the flip side saying, well, maybe it's about time that, you know, these people in. in high positions or, you know, answer some of these questions, whether they're being

truthful or not, at least that the spotlight's kind of on them now, more so than before. I think maybe that's a positive you could get from it. Yeah, I guess, you know, maybe they're finally sort of coming forward with their own personal witnesses, you know, military witnesses. I don't know. I'm a little still, you know. Yeah. And not only that, like what witnesses report is so all over the place, you know, And I think it just points to a phenomenon that is all over the place. I will say that is one of the interesting things that allegedly took place or was a focus of this Pentagon UFO program was the experiencer element where they allegedly did reach out and talk to people who claimed to have had encounters to test and experiment and whatever, see if. people had been physically affected by proximity to UFOs and other things like that.

So the witnesses were an element to that study. No, I definitely don't have a problem with sort of the Pentagon issue. Like, you don't have an issue with that. It's more so just sort of the way maybe UFO discourse is going. Like, you know, the way, what we're spending our time talking about. I don't know. People get bored and then you've got to move on to the new hot, sexy topic. I get it.

I see it all over the place and it annoys me because I think a lot of important stuff gets left behind. There is nothing less sexy than 50,000 chicken scratch scribbled pages of notes from witnesses and experiencers. Let me tell you that much. And I mean that with all the love and compassion, I have. I know you do, brother. I know you do. I mean, you guys know. That's exactly what my fucking book was about.

And, like, it was not easy. I can tell you that right now. Yeah. It's not sexy. It's not, you know, it's not as exciting as people would think. it's at times extremely traumatizing for the witness. It's very uncomfortable and awkward for the interviewer, you know, in terms of like how you handle the information you're getting

and eventually going to give to the public. Yeah, yeah. I do wonder, you know, while we're getting all this Pentagon stuff and this intelligence agency stuff, that's what the public is now seeing. I want to hear from those, I want to hear from the fighter pilots. I want to, you know, like, know what they were feeling, what they saw, like, did anything else, you know, what happened afterwards? Those are the things that interest me the most.

So I, again, I do wonder, MJ, where UFO discourse is going to go in 2018, where it's going to go in terms of what we're getting from to the stars from this project. I don't know. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess. It is the phenomenon, right? It's definitely weird and it's definitely going to mess with you. And hey, we choose to be here. We do.

We certainly do. There's a reason that the three of you, you know, took the... time out of your night to do this with me. So I guess in terms of where we're heading, I want to ask each of you, in terms of uphology, who in 2017 do you guys think we can look at and say, you are doing good work and we hope we hear more from you in 2018? Mike, let's start with you. So this is going to sound like totally like I'm kissing ass, but I'm not to say you. And here's why through your podcast i think you have a great platform i just threw up in my mouth a little bit oh no no i'm serious you hear me out for a minute um i think i think your podcast is a great platform

and every week you're able to come up with fascinating topics different different guests and it's open it's very inclusive and you're almost creating kind of new names and new stars in the in the field i guess just through your show and just through the like said the very inclusive aspect of it. Yeah, I don't look at it as who's making the biggest headline. I'm looking at it is who's helping to grow the field in the most way. And that's why I say you, Ryan. So I'm sorry to be kissing butt, but yes. That was really sweet, Mike. There's a reason I brought you. I got a little happy tear in my eye right now. I knew it. I'm expecting that the $20 hit my PayPal account. You could reach out to my Patreon subscribers for that at patreon.com backslash someone.

or Scott, no, I'm just kidding. All joking aside, but like I said, I think you do a tremendous work. And, you know, I remember when I first read your book, it just, I remember reading it and at this very primal journalistic take on it for someone with, with no, you know, prior, like, professional experience. I thought it was absolutely, it kind of nailed the essence of kind of what, you know, what you should do in investigating. So ever since I read your book, I was a fan. And like I said, I think what you've done with the podcast has been great and hopefully it continues to grow. Well, thank you so much, man. I won't say anything else. Jason, let's move to you, my man.

Well, now I have to say you, too. No, you don't stop. God damn it. You know, I love you, Brian, and I'm a fan, but I can't give you the award every year. Well, you know, I was thinking about this, and I hadn't given it much thought through the year. But, you know, when I think about somebody in the field of UFOs and UFO research, who's made a contribution, who's done something, who's done some actual research and done something, that benefits us as researchers and, you know, helps in an educational light.

You know, I'm a big fan of education. And I think giving people information that they can cite to and use is really important. And somebody who jumps out at me is our friend Cheryl Costa. You know, this year put out the UFO sightings desk reference, a nice book with lots of numbers and information that got a lot of media play, big headlines. and she's still being contacted pretty regularly to do interviews with media about UFOs and UFO sighting stories. So I think Cheryl, you know, she's a journalist. She does a really good job with her regular column she does. And so I've been a fan of hers for many years.

She's a friend. And I think because of her work, tireless work compiling that UFO sightings desk reference, she gets my vote. That's awesome, man. And I do have to mention this before we go any further. terms of Cheryl. This is insane. If you think about how far the UFO community stretches in terms of geography alone, Cheryl writes for the Syracuse New Times. For anyone who doesn't know, I am from Syracuse, New York. When I went home to visit my family this past summer, there was a signed version of Cheryl's book on the front porch of my parents' home. And I show up and I'm like,

what the hell is this? And my mom was like, oh yeah, that woman showed up with her book. She wanted you to have it. I found out Cheryl lives two blocks from my pants. Oh, that's crazy. Isn't that insane? I mean, you can't even plan that stuff. But I would have to agree, Jason. I mean, this book, the work and dedication that Cheryl and her spouse put into this book is unbelievable. They deserve all the praise they can get. And I think that's a wonderful, wonderful choice for sure. All right, MJ, what do you got for us? As much as I love Cheryl, I'm going to have to kick this old school. I don't know if people know, but I'm writing a book on the UFO subculture, and I've been talking a lot to a subculture within the subculture, all the historians and archivists, archivists, who sort of log everything euphologically related.

And one guy who I have to give a massive shout out to, and who gets my vote is Paul Dean out of Australia, who runs the UFOs documenting the evidence blog. This guy is an F-O-I master, or F-O-I-A-master, rather. And historically, he is a powerhouse in the UFO world. This guy knows everything. And he can cite military, I don't even know what they're called.

He can cite military reference numbers for various UFO events and whatever. He runs a genius blog. The guy does so much research, he pours his heart and soul into his work. And unfortunately, because his work is just sort of history and archiving UFO information, He doesn't get a lot of press, doesn't get a lot of attention compared to some of the other guys and gals out there. So my vote goes to Paul Dean, who this year sort of blew the doors off of the famous Westall case out of Australia

from 1966, rather, and basically found a witness who was there and said it was a whole bunch of nonsense. And one teacher who just kind of went off the rails with a bunch of the students and just kind of started telling stories, and it became a massive UFO event. and according to his source, nothing really happened. So, you know, an interesting take on an old case,

but Paul Dean definitely gets my boat this year. That's awesome, man. These are so good, guys. I don't know how I can even contribute to this. I've been thinking about this for the past hour or so, trying to come up with someone. And it was tough, but I think I'm going to have to go with Miss Erica Luke's on this one. I know we've all spoken a lot to Erica.

I did want to have her on tonight. I apologize that I wasn't able to make that happen. But the field we know is wrought. It's a boys club. Always has been. Always will be. And any female researchers out there are scrutinized 10 times more than we ever will experience. The work that Erica has done throughout the years just astounds me, amazes me.

What she's done, who she's made contact with. I know she just was with Erling Strang not too long ago out there in, is it Norway? Erlene Strand with the Heseltine lights? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, she's going out of her way to go and investigate anomalous things in our skies, no matter what the hell it is.

And I think she gets a lot of flack for a lot of stuff that she brings forward, but she is, she's strong, she's due diligent, and she does the work. And not many people can say that when they're sitting on their fat asses behind their computers. So I highly respect the work that she is doing. I can't wait to see what she comes up with. Yeah, that's what I got. Excellent. Do we want to do the 2017 people who should shut up for 2018? I'm so happy you reminded me.

I have that on a separate page here on my notes. Yes. So we talked about the people that we want to hear more from in 2018. If you have anyone, guys, that you want to hear less from in 2018, now is the time to voice your concerns. What do you got for me, MJ? All right, so this particular character within the UFO world has been spouting off about evil cabals who are cutting his brake lines. And he recently published a book this year full of pseudoscience and a bunch of strange esoteric nonsense that makes no sense.

So my vote for this year and into 2018 of the person in the UFO community who needs to shut up the most is David Wilcock. Take him off the air, please. That is me clapping. Love it. Love it. All right. Mike, what do you got? Ah, you know, this is a tough one. I don't think anyone said, sorry, shut up. I would like to see more than hear more.

So, you know, if we're going to go back to Tom DeLange, I just want to, you know, just put his money on his mouth is and continue to provide some of the stuff he's promised, rather tweeting like a butt hurt child, you know. Like he's, you know, let the video speak for themselves. So, yeah. Love it. Jason.

Yeah, I'm too nice to say anything. That's fair. That's fair. I completely understand. My Fiesta Water hasn't gotten me riled up like MJ, so I... Really? Okay, what? Do you need to get riled up over David Wilcock as my choice?

Come on. You don't need to get riled up. No, I've never been a fan. That's just a natural progression of logic and feeling. Like, you know, come on. You guys, you know what I completely forgot and we didn't talk about? the person I'm going to choose to shut up in 2017 and should have shut up for the past decade or so

is Mr. Jaime Mousan. Oh, well done. Yeah, I totally forgot about the mummy thing this past year. Not the Roswell mummy, the other mummy. No, the other mummy. The Peruvian, or was it, Ecuador, or where was this thing from? Peru, right? Yeah, it was Peru, yeah.

It was Peru, yeah. A fake, you know, agreed. So, there we go, guys. We got the good ones. got the bad and with that you've got the facts of life so that is our late 2017 heavy wrap-up of somewhere in the skies before we go gentlemen where can we find all the work you're doing jason let's start with you simple place to go rogue planet dot tv you can also follow my spouting at on twitter at acentric that's a c e c-n-tr-i-c and if you're one of those wonderful people who's still

values, UFO sightings, you can email me too at Jason atrogplanet.tv. Mr. DeMonte, what do you got? www.wetot-uncturac.com. That is my zoology and culture site. And on Twitter at Mike DeMonte. And MJ? You can find me at my blog, which is www.teraobscura.net. I also contribute to Mysterious Universe, so you can find me there.

And you can follow me on all the social media at MJ Benayas. Love it. I look forward to you. your book, my friend. And guys, again, I cannot thank you for coming on, taking the time to do this today. I think we only scratch the surface of what is to come in this year. I'm hopeful, and I look forward to whatever comes next, both in euphology and in all of your lives. So again, have a great holiday. Happy New Year, and thank you again for joining me. Thanks very much. All right, that is it for this week's episode. Again, you can find MJ Benyaz's work at terraupscera.net. Jason McClellan at

rogue planet. TV and Mike DeMonte at punk rock and UFOs.com. Oh, and before I forget, just a warning that next week we will be taking a break to celebrate the holidays. But fear not, we will be back the following week with an all-new episode, and I'm sure some updates on Tom DeLong's never-ending battle with euphology, both in the best and worst of ways. Thank you so much for an incredible year of support, whether it was interacting on Facebook, Twitter, or by just sharing the show. Thank you also to my Patreon subscribers. I have big plans for some incredible rewards coming in 2018.

So why not end the year right and head on over to the Patreon campaign to learn more and to help support the show? That's patreon.com backslash somewhere skies. We are on Twitter at SomewhereSkies, Instagram at SomewhereSkies pod, and all past episodes, articles, and contact info can be found on the website somewhere in the skies.com. Have a very happy holiday season, everybody, and I will see you here in two weeks. Remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies. I'm Jeremy, one of the hosts of Sick Boy Podcast, a weekly podcast where we speak with people living with chronic, terminal, mental, and physical illness. But here's the catch. It's a comedy

podcast. Our goal, help people understand that sometimes the best way to deal with the challenges of life is simply to laugh. Tune in on Apple Podcasts and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review. And hey, while you're at it, check us out on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. From the Antica Podcast Network, Sick Boy Podcast.