Somewhere in the Skies - UFOs in Pop Culture: Influencing Public Perception

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

On episode 91 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan first gives us a sneak peek at his new television special, ROSWELL: MYSTERIES DECODED. It recently aired on the CW network and is now streaming for free on the CW Seed. You can watch anytime and from any device by visiting www.CWseed.com and clicking on ROSWELL: MYSTERIES DECODED. Then we return to AlienCon Baltimore for a live recording of a panel discussion with Rogue Planet's very own Jason McClellan. They run through the history of UFOs in Pop Culture and the influence that Hollywood and the media have had on the subject and vice versa. It was a wonderful conversation with a very excited audience! Be sure to keep your schedule open June 21st, 22nd, and 23rd for AlienCon Los Angeles! Ryan and Jason will be in full force yet again representing Rogue Planet and Somewhere in the Skies. Hear their lectures, panel discussions, and special events. To keep up to date on the guests, events, and tickets, visit: www.TheAlienCon.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening and Closing Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with eOne Entertainment SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is sponsored by HelloFresh. To receive 50% off your first order, use promo code: SOMEWHERE50 at checkout by visiting www.HelloFresh.ca Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavyweight in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. The universe is far too large for us to be the only intelligent species.

We have materials from the Roswell UFO crash. Will this test confirm the metal is not of Earth? If the aliens come for you today, are you ready? Roswell, Mystery's Dakota. Stream now on CWC. Hey, y'all, Ryan Spreck here. As you all know, the Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is always free to consume. But it isn't free to create.

That's why I've started this Somewhere in the Sky's. Sky's Patreon campaign. On a monthly basis, you give what you think the show is worth. You'll be helping the show continue, grow, and to be something truly communal. And remember, there are rewards for each level of contribution, and the list is only growing. So please, help Somewhere in the Skies now by becoming a patron. To contribute and to learn more, visit www.com backslash Somewhere Skies. Thank you for your support. And now on with the show. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host Ryan Sprague. And this week has been insane. Our television special, Roswell, Mysteries Decoded, aired on the CW network about four days ago.

And the feedback has been incredible. My investigative partner, Jennifer Marshall and I, set out on an expedition to find answers to the most elusive and famous UFO event of all time. 72 years of mystery surround the Roswell incident, and we set out to ask new questions, find new evidence, and discover what truly happened on that ranch in New Mexico in 1947. If you weren't able to tune in during the broadcast, don't fret, because the one-hour special is now available in its entirety to stream for free at the C-Ean. Just head on over to cWCed.com and click on Roswell Mysteries Decoded.

Be sure to also tweet out your thoughts about the show by using hashtag Roswell Mysteries Decoded, and be sure to tag at the CW, at CWC'd, and at Somewhere Skies in your tweets. Our special is a lead into the CW drama, Roswell, New Mexico, premiering January 15th on the CW. Be sure to check it out. In the meantime, because of how crazy and hectic this past week has been, I have very little time to bring you an interview or audio doc this week. But I have an exclusive panel discussion recorded live at this past AlienCon in Baltimore. I'm joined once again by Jason McClellan of the Unknown Podcast and a live audience as we dive deep into UFOs in pop culture.

How does pop culture influence public perception of the UFO topic and, vice versa. It's a game of chicken and egg as we try to dismantle the relationship between Hollywood, entertainment and media in general, and the ever-elusive UFO mystery that continues to intrigue us somewhere in the

skies. I hope you enjoy. Obviously, we're talking about UFOs and pop culture, so hopefully you're in the right room. I am Jason McClellan. I recognize several of you from this weekend. Hopefully everybody's had fun. I've had a blast here. This is my first time. at AlienCon.

Ryan's been at AlienCon before, but I think we both had an amazing weekend so far. Yeah, absolutely. I did the last one. And as UFO researchers, we do a lot of different UFO conferences, which are usually a lot more academic, I would say. And coming to something like this

has just been incredible. And it just keeps getting bigger and bigger in these topics are getting more out into the mainstream. Yeah. And as we'll see, they are a big part of pop culture as well. So, yeah.

And Ryan and I have been, professional UFO researchers and journalists for about 10 years now. And we've had the opportunity to do some pretty cool things and focused in pop culture. And that's really a lot of our interest. Because we are part of the UFO research community, but we like to cater our research and what we do to the general public. And specifically, the younger audience, because typically a lot of the UFO crowd that we do with, people who are very interested in learning more about UFOs and extraterrestrials and studying that subject

tend to be older, and there's nothing wrong with old. I love old. So, there you go. You guys are my people, but, you know, there's really, I see it's, there's a big need when targeting the younger audience. They are the curious people, they want to learn how to get involved,

And we like to try to provide them with that information and sort of encourage them to get involved and start researching for themselves. So that's our focus. And so in recent years, I've started doing a lot more appearances at things like Comic-Con. And doing lectures like this, UFOs in pop culture, because, you know, everybody's interested in UFOs and extraterrestrials in some way or another. And Hollywood has certainly been very much in love with UFOs and extraterrestrials as a theme since the beginning of Hollywood. It is very pervasive and, you know, these topics fill pop culture. And now with pop culture and geek culture merging quite a bit, you know, these are very, very mainstream topics. So, you know, we've both been on TV shows and so written in magazines and written for media outlets.

Pop culture is a big part of what we do and who we are. So, and obviously UFOs are too. So we have been lucky and we love merging the two. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the big misconception always with the UFO topic is when someone brings a story forward of a UFO encounter or, let's say, an abduction experience, anything in between. It's always, oh, they just, they saw that in a movie or they saw it on a TV show, which is kind of what we're going to be talking about today, that that's not always the case. Yeah.

This really is a chicken and egg sort of situation. Yeah. So today we're just going to be very loose, but we want to sort of focus on three different areas when looking at this topic from a pop culture perspective, and that is looking at, you know, how does and how has Hollywood influenced our perception of UFOs and extraterrestrials. Also looking at how, if and how, UFO cases and lore, really, UFO lore influence Hollywood. You know, how much of what Hollywood creates has been influenced by real events. And then third, looking at the military and the government. And do they, and if so, to what extent, do they have an influence over what we are presented in Hollywood? So those are the things we're going to go over as we move through this.

So first we'll start with looking at Hollywood and influencing our perception. And like Ryan mentioned, a lot of people think or like to think that our understanding of UFOs and aliens, when we just generally picture in our minds what we think of when we think of UFO or alien, you know, if anybody in the mainstream public is asked, you know, all right, here's a piece of paper, here's a crayon, draw me a UFO, draw me an alien. Most people are going to go with a flying saucer or a gray alien, these big headed things with big black wraparound. eyes and people like to point to Hollywood to explain that to say well that's because obviously we're influenced we have all these sci-fi movies these space movies where UFOs

and ETs are the theme and so when we're picturing aliens and extraterrestrials and UFOs we're thinking about what we saw on the movies what we saw on TV that's clearly where we're getting that reference from but then look at

the big movies in Hollywood it. The big TV shows and think about how they are actually portrayed. When it comes down to it, the majority of the extraterrestrials and the spacecraft, the extraterrestrial spacecraft, are not your typical flying saucers. They're not your typical gray aliens. So we just kind of jump through some of the movies right now to talk about that. And I will say, I think this is probably your favorite UFO movie. But of course, Close Encounters are the Third Kind. It's, I think, it's a fantastic UFO movie, and a lot of that, I mean, we'll get into it more later, but because of the research that went into this movie. But Close Encounters is one that, yes,

plays into what I just mentioned, and that is the depiction of the gray alien. This was really the first movie to portray that type of alien, that alien image. And yes, it was a big film, 1777, highly influential, but still, up to that point, the gray alien hadn't really been depicted in a main Hollywood movie.

Yeah, I mean, when I first think of the typical gray alien being, it didn't come around until that cover of Whitley Streber's book in 1980s. So you have to wonder where were all these case reports of these gray aliens truly coming from? What was the source?

And it clearly, in our observations, was not Hollywood at this point. Right. And so we'll talk more about close encounters later and some of the influences there. But yeah, you've got your gray alien there. But then look before that. You know, the day the Earth stood still,

we've got a humanoid as the alien and a robot. You know, that certainly is far removed from the gray alien. E.T. You've got this short dude with a pot belly and a wobbly head and long sausage fingers that are really scary. Looks like a raisin. Yeah.

Yeah. And his ship was like a weird colander thing that was, I don't know, looked a little wonky. But Flight of the Navigator, one of my favorite UFO movies, you're looking at artificial intelligence, really. And a very bizarrely shaped metal structure is the craft, the abyss, something totally different from what we typically think of and what is typically presented as alien life. Just a water-based life form. Independence Day, what is that? Really disgusting long head. You know, it's similar to the xenomorph, an alien.

You know, with these extended skulls, but not anything remotely close to a gray alien. Avatar, completely different. And a lot of what's portrayed, I will say, is typically humanoid. But as you see, there are a lot of examples of something that's completely different. And so I would venture to say the majority of the representations of extraterrestrials in movies are not even close to gray aliens. No, it's not the image that you're seeing at AlienCon on every, you know, hat, every poster, every sign. Yeah, that's the icon. It's just simply not.

So we really wanted to trace back to when did that really start to happen? And was Hollywood an influence on that or vice versa, which we will get into for sure? And it's interesting being researchers and having been in the field for so long and we're more conscious of the things that are portrayed by TV and in films. And I don't know about you, but the longer I've been in it, you know, it's fascinated me even more just the creativity, it seems, in coming up with new types of extraterrestrials, new types of craft. and in many cases they're not even closely related to the things that we hear in real cases. In case reports. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it goes both ways. The complexity of these aliens is completely, it's so alien to us that we don't even recognize it anymore. Well, let's get into it. Well, let's talk about the influence that some of these real cases may have had on Hollywood because I'd like to give credit to creative people. I think there are some incredibly creative people in the world, and they do. do come up with very creative and fantastic ideas on their own without outside influence.

With that being said, I do think, well, Transformers, of course, you've got to throw Transformers in there as an alien too, robot trucks, right? Alien trucks. But they're, and we're seeing this more and more now. Creators are doing a better job at doing their research. They're actually calling on and bringing in people who have done research on the topics that they want to do a show about and trying to get the details as close to real as possible. So credit to them. But we have to talk about Roswell when talking about this, because Roswell is a pop culture fixture. And regardless of your personal opinion on what happened in Roswell, that is a household name. Anybody really in the world, here's the name

Roswell, it's synonymous with UFO. It's interesting, though, that although people know that Roswell had something to do with the UFO, they're not necessarily familiar with any additional details beyond that. We actually, you know, at conferences, we are surprised when we find out that even a lot of people don't, they're not familiar with Roswell in, even to the very basic detail that Roswell is in New Mexico. You know, I had somebody asked me, or mentioned Roswell, and they're all, that's in Arizona, right? No. Roswell, New Mexico, so that's the very basics of it.

But just to brief, I'm confident you guys know what Roswell is, but Roswell, just to give an overview in 1947, a craft or crafts, depending on who you talk to, crashed in the desert outside of Roswell, New Mexico. There was a strong military presence after that came, recovered wreckage, completely cleaned the site, and issued a press release that announced. that the Air Force had recovered a crashed flying saucer. That came directly from the Air Force. That wasn't some conspiracy theorist or some UFO nut.

That was the Air Force's press release. They put out themselves, claiming to have recovered a crash-flying saucer. And that wasn't just a silly accident that came from some low-level person. That came right from the top. And then the following day, damage control happened for whatever reason. higher-ups swooped in, shut it down, issued a second press release, saying, oh, just kidding, we have no idea what we're talking about, we recovered a weather balloon. And that story has changed multiple times over the years with regards to, or in response to public outcry,

people digging into it. So they've changed and modified the story over the years. They eventually settled on the idea or the story that this was Project Mogul. There was a high altitude research balloon listening for nuclear detonations by evil bad guys in other countries. There were claims of bodies recovered at this crash and the government's response to that, which came in the 2000s sometime. I don't remember when that last report was. But their response to that was, oh yeah, just kidding, there were bodies, but they were crash test dummies that we were using in these experiments. and so people don't know the difference between crash test dummies and our own military don't know the difference between a flying saucer and a weather balloon which we were launching all the time at that time. Apparently not.

Yeah, and these crash test dummies were not created until about eight years after Roswell happened. So there's a little tidbit for you as well. But, yeah, Roswell for us is like the preeminent case. It's where we all started, where it all sort of began a little bit earlier kind of. Arnold Flying Saucer citing. But with Roswell is where we and many other researchers believe the true cover-up began. It's so much fun looking Roswell. There are a lot of people who have been researching UFOs for a long time.

They're bored of Roswell. They're enough with Roswell. We've heard about Roswell move on. Nothing more to learn here. Get over it. But Roswell is, it continues to be important and fascinating to us, number one, because it is an important case. Number two, there's still a lot of unanswered questions.

And number three, this, like Ryan said, is the start of the whole, the military covers up UFOs. Because they did, in fact, cover up this incident. Whatever it was, they covered it up. They swooped in. They pushed everybody out. They recovered everything. They threatened people. They completely changed the narrative of what happened.

And over the years, changed their story multiple times. So the whole UFO cover-up thing. I could go into a lot of stuff about that. I don't think there's as much of a cover-up as many people believe. But in this case, they certainly did it, and they did it to themselves. By first saying that, hey, we have a flying saucer, and then with the cover-up. So it didn't all start.

UFO researchers and UFO believers get painted as nutjops, you know, these crazy people, because they believe that the UFOs have UFOs, that the Air Force and military cover-up UFO information, that all stemmed from the Air Force. They did that to themselves. Can I add Jason, too? I mean, in terms of pop culture, three years after the Roswell event happened, the first flying saucer film came out. It was called the Flying Saucer, and it involved a crashed flying saucer, and the military going in, retrieving it, and pretty much doing a cover-up themselves.

So you have to wonder why this movie came out so soon after this event happened and why Hollywood got involved and latched on immediately to this whole flying saucer thing that was going on. And the really interesting thing with Roswell and pop culture is Roswell didn't enter pop culture until the 80s. Roswell essentially fell off the map. You know, it made news around the country and around the world. Newswires picked it up around the story.

It was front page news places. that the Air Force recovered a flying saucer. But it sort of just died. It died until the 80s when UFO researchers, notably Stanton Friedman, went. He caught wind of this story, went, and did a lot of digging, did a lot of interviewing, and was largely responsible for bringing this story back into the public light, and it just took off from there. And now we've had several TV shows called Roswell, both fictitious and, you know, documentaries.

and so much. Again, like you said, just the name Roswell, everyone automatically knows what it is, no matter where you are in the world. That's right. So even just the reference appears in so many shows, so many movies. Have any of you been to Roswell?

Have you gone to the Roswell UFO Festival? That's fantastic. It's such a weird and fascinating and fun place during the festival. They do the festival every year around 4th of July weekend whenever that happens. And it just takes over the city. I mean, it's a very small city.

But the downtown street is so much fun. Their lamp posts have little alien eyes on them. The McDonald's is a flying saucer. Yeah, they get all into it. It's a fun time. I've had fun, but it just shows what a pop culture icon it is. I mean, people come from all over the world just to go to that festival. And I think some people are disappointed when they go to Roswell,

because there's really not that much there. It's really in the middle of nowhere. But it's a good time. If you haven't, you have to go to Roswell. Roswell at least once. Then on Area 51, right? I mean, that's the other household name. We've all known about Area 51, the secretive military base where supposedly there could be extraterrestrials there working willingly or not, and recovered crash-flying saucers, right? It's one of those household names, but again, a lot of people in the general public don't know much about Area 51, even where

it is. It's in Nevada. And we really didn't know about Area 51. until the late 80s when Bob Lazar, a guy who claims that he worked at Area 51, started talking publicly about it, and investigative journalist George Knapp in Las Vegas on Las Vegas Channel 8 ran the story with Bob Lazar and his testimony, and that introduced the world to Area 51. The military and the government firmly denied the existence of Area 51. But that was the funny thing. up to 2013, I want to say, I don't quote me, but sometime in the, yeah, around that time period,

we finally got the official confirmation that, oh yeah, it does exist, just kidding. But at that time, it was the most well-known secret base because everybody in the world knew that Area 51 was there, despite them saying, no, no, it doesn't. And I guarantee you, once that got out, and everyone now knows what Area 51 is, everything. was swiftly moved to area 52, wherever that might be. Right. So Area 51 pops up in so many movies. Even movies directly related about Area 51 and trying to break into Area 51. There have been some interesting ones, but that's another one that's just...

Video games, everything you can think of. Yeah, that's right. And there's actually a movie coming out in early December, specifically about Bob Lazar. And it's a new movie about Balazzar. Now, just retell telling his story, it's spending time with Bob and looking at what Bob's doing now and sort of revisiting his story. And the great thing about Bob is he's a very controversial figure. You know, people either believe him or they don't. But his stance has always been, look, I don't care if you believe me. I'm just telling you what I know happened there. Believe me or don't. I don't care. I'm just trying to get on with my life. Leave me alone. And he's generally done

that. He hasn't tried to make any money off his story. He's just a a just a nerd. He's in the best way possible. He's just this science nerd. He runs a nuclear supply shop or something now. He makes like rocket jet powered cars and Geiger counters and stuff. Yeah, but he's an interesting fellow. But the movie's coming out in early December. It's done by a filmmaker named Jeremy Corbell. So that's going to be going to be good. We've seen a little bit of it. I'm excited for that. So this is a fun case that I just want to sort of gloss. lost over for you guys. And this is one that has had more influence than a lot of films, or a lot of cases, I think, than most, because it influences a handful of very big movies.

So this case happened in Kelly, Kentucky, and it was in 1955 and involved a family, multiple families, actually, and they had a shootout with aliens. That's their story that these these short aliens with pointy ears, seemingly floating off the ground at times, with like glowing eyes and claw-like hands, just sort of assaulted their farm. And these guys went out with their shotguns and were shooting at them, but they were floating and bouncing and running away, and they couldn't hit these things,

but they were just shooting all over the place. They went to the police in Hopkinsville. They came out and did an investigation. But, yeah, these things are seen to this day, in the area. People report seeing these things, hiding in caves and coming out and terrorizing people. But in that region, yeah, these are known as the Kentucky Goblins is what they call them. But this case was actually what Stephen Spielberg wanted to use for ET when he initially started working on ET. Number one, with ET, he wanted ET to be more of a horror movie. and number two, he wanted E.T. to look freaky, and he looked at the drawings and the testimony from the people in Kelly Hopkinsville case as the inspiration for E.T. Later, they decided to make it more child-friendly, changed the story, and changed the character. But that character's image was then used in Gremlins. That was Spielberg's inspiration for the Gremlin's character. And also, these things were described as, again, short, they were like three feet tall or something, and they were greenish in color. And this is really the start of the popularization of the term little green men.

Little green men had been used earlier in very little known sci-fi novels, but this was the first mainstream introduction to the term little green men. So it has its hands in a lot of cool places in pop culture. It's a really interesting case, and the thing I love about it a lot is that a lot of people still report this activity, seeing these creatures in that area. It's certainly an investigation we've wanted to go on, but I'm also kind of scared. I'm a little scared, man. So this is a fun one I just wanted to throw in. This is a very little-known guy. He's an alleged contact he reported that he had a lot of recurring.

contact with extraterrestrials was taken aboard spacecraft. His name's Daniel Frye, and this happened in the late 40s. And he described being taken aboard a metal craft that was very strange. I forget how he described the shape, but he touched it and it opened for him. He was able to go on. He heard a voice talking to him. The voice was very, very mechanical. It was, there wasn't an actual extraterrestrial aboard.

The ship was actually being remote controlled by extraterrestrials on a mother ship or something. But there was like a voice in the ship that talked to him and he could interact with. And the ship zoomed him across the country and he could see everything below him. Like the metal craft became transparent and he could see right through it as they were flying. So really interesting, far out stuff. But the cool thing about this case, is that, and I can't guarantee this because I haven't seen any 100% confirmation, but researchers have said that this case has a lot of parallels to Flight of the Navigator.

So it's conceivable and possible that his case was used in part of that story. Some of the parallels were, you know, the, so in flight of the navigator, the robot alien that controls the ship. His name is Max. And the voice he heard on the ship controlling the ship had a very simple name too, Alan, although he says it was pronounced Alon, but it was spelled Alan. It spoke very colloquially. You know, if you've seen Flight of the Navigator, it's voiced by Paul Rubin, Pee B. Herman. Very silly, very human, very jokey in the conversations that he has with the boy who's taken aboard the ship. So very similar in the interactions that he had with this being whatever it was. The shape of the ship that he described

in the way he drew it is nearly identical to the ship that you see depicted in flight of the navigator. He does have missing time, just like we see depicted in flight of the navigator. and oh the description and we see it shown in flight of the navigator too being taken in the ship zipped across the country all the way across the country in a matter of seconds and then zipped back to the place of origin and being able to view everything below where the metal floor just like became completely transparent so a lot of parallels there and this case is only brought to my attention recently so I want to look more into it I know he authored some books too But it's an interesting case, but of course I had to throw that in there because I love flight of the navigator.

All right. How many of you familiar with Billy Meyer? So Billy Meyer is a very, very controversial case in the UFO world. Billy Meyer is a Swiss gentleman. I believe he's still living. But in the 70s, he was very, very well known for being a very outspoken alleged contact. he reported that he was having frequent contact with extraterrestrials, that they were taking him aboard their ship, traveling all around, even through time. He claimed that he, you know,

met dinosaurs, not met dinosaurs, but saw dinosaurs and was able to take pictures of dinosaurs. But Billy Meyer is best known for taking the best UFO photos ever, really. He would constantly produce these very clear images of different shapes of craft in the sky, and that continued for many years. And I'm very skeptical of Billy Meyer. I will just say that. And I've written extensively about Billy, and I'll be covering him on my podcast coming up in the next year. But they're hardcore believers and people who have just looked at the piles of evidence that show that he most likely faked a lot of his stuff. But I have no opinion about whether he faked his photos or not. But what I do know is, from his own words,

are the most damning evidence against him because he claims that his photos and you have to see some of these photos and I should have put more in here so you could see them some of them are really ridiculous but he eventually came out and said the extraterrestrials the last time I was visited told me that my photos are all fake

because when I went to have my film developed the CIA confiscated my film recreated them then those are the photos I got back. So the photos I've been showing everybody are fakes that were created by the CIA. It sounds legit. Yeah.

Does anyone recognize that photo, by the way? What comes to mind, I have to ask? Excellent. There you go. Yeah, the famous poster, I want to believe, poster from the X-Files, that photo is sourced from Billy Meyer. Yeah.

So now let's move into talking about the possibility that the government and the military attempts to influence how we view the topic of UFOs and extraterrestrials. And I don't know. You want to start? Where do we even begin? Yeah. I mean, so for those who may not know, you've probably seen it all around here, Project Blue Book. Yeah. It was a government-funded program to investigate UFOs by the Air Force. When all the flying saucers started to be seen, they, They wanted to, you know, look into it. They wanted to calm the public concern and find prosaic answers for all these things going on. They hired astronomers. They hired all different kinds of scientists and aviation people to investigate these cases that people were reporting.

So when they started, yeah, they started, the precursor to blue book was called Project Sign is how it started. And Project Sign at the conclusion of their investigation, surprisingly concluded, And again, this is the Air Force conducting this investigation, the official government investigation into UFOs. Their conclusion was that some UFOs, the most likely explanation, was extraterrestrial spacecraft. Our military, our government, came to that conclusion. There were some people at the Pentagon who weren't happy with that conclusion. And so they killed Project Sign and turned it into Project Grudge. and that name was intentional, and Project Grudge was issued a mandate.

You need to make UFOs seem absolutely ridiculous. Make people reporting UFOs seem like nutballs. You just need to make fun of this, make it go away. That was the mandate that they were given. So that's what Project Grudge did. And like Ryan said, the scientists that were hired to do a scientific study with this, thing. And the military individuals assigned to this who wanted to do investigations to figure out what

the hell is going on, they got fed up with this because they said, look, this is just a sham. What are we doing here? Like, we have these cases in front of us. We know that we need to look into this and find out, number one, what's going on? Number two, who are they? Number three, is it a threat to us? We don't know, yet we're trying to brush it under the rug. And at the same time, we're just ridiculing the public.

We're making people seem like they're crazy and telling the public this is all crazy nonsense when we know for a fact that it's real and we need to do something about it. So that's when Project Blue Book came in. They decided, look, this is ridiculous with Grudge. We need to do a real job. And so Blue Book then started and did a much better job anyway. Very extensive. It went on for years. And at the conclusion of Blue Book, a cool thing about Blue Book, and I know this doesn't sound that impressive,

but they found, through their investigation, 701 cases that they couldn't explain, that remained unidentified and unexplained. That's how they called that unknowns. And that's a lot. That's a lot. There's a lot of unexplained cases by your... Some people aren't impressed by that, but, I mean, even if there was just one, You know, that's still something to take note. I don't know.

But, oh, man, the, so the Robertson panel, this was conducted by the CIA. And this is another one of those things. It's just absolutely ridiculous, just like Project Grudge, because now the CIA's involved, and they, it was established, and what their recommendation was to the government was the same thing. We need to make this thing seem as ridiculous as possible. We need to make fun of people. We need to insert ourselves into popular TV shows and movies to kind of take hold of this narrative. That's what the Robertson's panel mandate was, and that's what they concluded.

That's what they wanted to do, and that's why they existed. And every time you see a news report about UFOs or someone reporting it and you hear the X-Files music behind it, or you hear them the news anchors making fun of the people on the news, it all stemmed from the Robertson panel saying we need to make this look silly and we need to feed this public perception that these things aren't real and that we have answers for them and y'all are just crazy yeah and the Robertson panel they did specifically identify using pop culture popular media to spread this disinformation really yeah so yeah how do you know that is that written down that it was the mandate? I mean, what's the proof of what you're just saying? Yes, yeah. This is documented. That this was...

Yeah, all of these official studies, these documents are public. Yeah, that's a very good question, though, because we don't want to just go saying those things, but... Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so, do you have anything to say about the new docudrama

or whatever for the history channel's thing on the list? Oh, yeah. Do you like that they're trying to to look at it a different way, I guess? That's actually what we were just about to talk about. That's a really good question. No, here's the thing. I mean, we get asked this all the time,

and there is a lot of conflicting opinions when it comes to this show, because this is a fictionalized drama. That's what it is. It's not a real show. It's not an accurate, truthful representation of what Project Blue Book did. It's not a documentary.

It's not a documentary. This is a drama. This is a fiction show. It's a for-fund show. show. So they're basing it on real things. Oh, I should mention J. L. and Hineck, the main character, is one of the scientists we talked about, who was hired astronomer, who was hired to investigate, was then told to debunk everything, was a staunch skeptic in the whole UFO phenomenon, and eventually became

a believer. Yeah. He's the one who we all heard, have heard the term swamp gas to explain UFOs. That's it. That came from J. Allen Hinek. Also, the term close encounters came from Jay Allen Hinek. He's the one who created that system of the close encounter system. And he was in fact brought in to the movie Close Encounters to be a consultant.

Yeah, actually. And he has a cameo in that movie. He is in the actual Heineck is in that movie. So cool. But with Blue Book, my personal opinion on History's Project Blue Book show, I am psyched to see that movie. I think it's going to be fun. Look, I'm not approaching it saying, oh, you're destroying what Project Bluebook. Blue Book was, you're not accurately representing what happened here. You can't go into it thinking

that. It's just like I can't go see a Star Wars movie and think that I'm learning about, you know, what's really happening in space. You know, I have to accept that it's entertainment and go in and let myself be entertained. And I'm fine with that. And I think it's great because Project Blue Book is a real thing. And I think this is going to introduce a lot of people to that. And hopefully people will research and look into the real project Blue Book and sort of gain entry that way. We're excited about the cases they're covering. I think it's really interesting. They had a talk here with Paul Heineck, Jay Allen Heineck's son, who talked about, you know, his dad would come home to dinner and tell him about the case he investigated that day. And that like gave me chills

hearing the son of this hero to many of us in the UFO field talk about what cases he found most compelling, most possibly extraterrestrial, and we know that the Project Blue Book TV show is going to be covering a lot of those. Will it be a little fictionalized and dramatized? Yeah, I mean, it's television, and that's kind of the whole point of what we're doing here is,

you know, what did come first? Did the UFO field and phenomenon influence Hollywood, or vice versa? And I don't think we have a concrete answer on that. It's very much both. They run in tandem with one another, I would say. Yeah. But Project Blue Book is probably the prime example right now in terms of now this getting out to the mainstream.

And I will say I am more excited about Project Blue Book show now that I know that J.L. and Hinek's son is a consultant on the show. So I think that's going to add a lot to the character of J.L. and Hinek. The Ministry of Defense, U.K.'s Ministry of Defense, is another one I want to mention, because they had a official UFO, part of their Ministry of Defense, the UFO desk, is what it was called. And Nick Pope, who's here and who's on ancient aliens all the time, ran that desk for a few years. And so they would collect UFO reports. They would do UFO investigations.

But they also, and Nick has commented on this before, that they had a policy to debunk UFO sightings and downplay any UFO occurrences or UFO stories in the media. I mean, that was their mandate, that was their effort to sort of make it seem ridiculous in the eye of the public and make it go away. They did that. And now Nick Pope is here talking at UFO conferences about what he experienced, which is, you know, for us, full circle.

Yeah, it really is. Before we get in, we want to let you guys ask some more questions, but before we get into that, I just want to go back and talk about close encounters again because I promised we would. But that's an interesting movie for many reasons. reasons. Number one, like I mentioned, the research that went into that, Spielberg did an incredible amount of research for that movie. He wanted it to be real. Like Ryan said, he worked with Jaylon Heineck and looked at actual UFO cases, looked at stories of alleged contact. He wanted to represent that

in the best way that he could. And when he put this film together, a lot of what Hollywood films and TV shows do is they try to get the support of the military and or government if they're going to be using like any military personnel, any jets, any tanks, anything like that, because the military is happy to provide that to certain films. And the Air Force and NASA refused to participate in close encounters. And there was pressure to change the script for certain parts of the movie that they didn't like. And this is actually a pretty common story with a lot of films that deal with UFOs and extraterrestrials where they're seeking military support and the military comes back and says,

look, we'll participate in your film, but you need to change this, this, and this. And really what they're doing is wanting to steer the narrative. They want to take control of how certain things are being presented. and in close encounters, yeah, they just didn't want to participate if the story, if they weren't painted in the light that they wanted to be painted in when it came to the topic of UFOs and extraterrestrials. It's interesting. And, I mean, not really having to do with the UFO topic, but staying in the air, we know

for a fact that the Air Force funded the movie Top Gun simply as a recruiting tool. I mean, you look at how many people joined the Air Force after. Top Gun came out. A recent example of that too is the film Battleship. Yeah. That was really a military recruiting video. Recruiting tools. And they funded these movies. So there's that if you want to, if you want to get your movie funded for any filmmakers out there, just say it's pro-military. That's all you really got to do. Well, you don't have to, you know, it's not a huge stretch to realize that Steven Spielberg is very interested in the topic of UFOs and extraterrestrials. He's done tremendous research into the subject, and he, in fact, attributes his belief in the reality of UFOs to

the strong government resistance to his films. So there's actually, I want to mention, there's a panel, or a lecture today shortly after this one, by our colleague Alejandro Rojas, called Steven Spielberg, euphologist. I think that's what it's called. But Steven Spielberg really is a euphologist. He does investigate this topic and follows it. very closely. We'll see, Independence Day was another one too. The Army and the Department of Defense

refused to provide support for Independence Day. They provided the filmmakers with a list of changes they wanted to do, specifically related to the mention of Area 51 and Roswell. They didn't want

to have anything to do with anything that said that they had any knowledge of Area 51. Does the government influence what Hollywood is showing us? The answer is yes. I mean, they clearly do.

Their motivation behind that, I don't know. I don't know how much of it still stems from mandates to ridicule this topic, but unfortunately it still exists today. It does. And it's interesting to think that going back to Roswell, they tried to cover all this stuff up. And as they tried to influence our perception of what these things were, they kind of shot themselves in the foot. And they brought these topics into pop culture because they were trying to cover it up. So in my opinion, they failed, and they failed miserably. And I mean, the topic of UFOs and extraterrestrials clearly isn't going away, and it shouldn't. And it certainly hasn't deterred Hollywood at all. Hollywood still has its love

affair with this topic. It's still one of the most pervasive topics in Hollywood. And in every type of movie, really, you can point it to extraterrestrials, especially children's movies. There's a lot of children's movies with extraterrestrials. It continues up until today. Well, do you guys have any questions? In terms of pop culture, where do you think the attitude that UFOs are a malevolent force? Is it from the military? Is it Orson Wells and his War of the World's radio show? Sure. Yeah. My personal opinion on that is look at the majority of films that have UFOs and extraterrestrials. They're usually invasion films, right? I mean, there could be many, reasons for that. I think probably the most logical reason is people like to see stuff get blown up.

What's interesting about War of the Worlds too is that was a direct commentary on invasion of humans upon humans. And that was his take that what if an outside source from another planet came to invade. So that was kind of the start of it right there, this whole malevolent idea that humans aren't or not the only ones out there. We may not be in control of the entire universe. Something might be vastly more intelligent and out there. And I always question when people say just because another civilization is more intelligent, that they won't be malevolent. That doesn't always ring true with me. I understand the concept, but it doesn't always ring true. We don't know. We don't know the intention. Influence did these like the project glue book and did those have a bent toward malevolence or was it just to

Dispers it as a fantasy? It was the disbursement. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, not not not recognizing the reality at all. Right. Yeah, for sure. But Stephen Hawking of course, you know, through through flame on that fire, gas on that fire, because he was he was a strong proponent and repeatedly said that extraterrestrial is coming here is a bad. idea. Yeah. I think another misconception, too, is that the government knows what we're dealing with, that they are just keeping it from the public and they know exactly what race is visiting our planet, how these craft work, we've reverse engineered the technology, all these things, when in reality, I'm not going to speak for you, Jason, but I don't think they know shit. I don't. They can control, they may not be able to control these things going on. but they can control the information that gets out to the public. They have that power to do that.

And maintain the illusion that they have all the answers. Yeah. Yeah. I just got to this comment. I talked to somebody who got a visit from people who were kind of forming the space force. And he said after they left, he told me, he said, I used to think the government was really up to, you know, up to, you know, to a high state of knowledge.

He says, after talking to these guys, I've decided most of the government is clueless. It's true. The government is much bigger than we think. It's not like one overarching thing, keeping a secret. There's so many individuals involved with it and have their own motivations and intentions. I just want to say, before people start leaving, we invite you to come down to our table. We have a

booth down in the room, and you guys are all awesome, so we would be more than happy, supply limited, give you guys free shirts. Awesome. Yeah, come visit us. Booth 503 I think, yeah. Hi. Well, I came late, so I don't know

if the free shirt applies. And tangent of that, I'm not sure if you covered this, but question as far as what the government knows and their controlling of information, what's your stance on the concept of men in black, not Will Smith, Tommy Lee-John style, but this

sort of mid-century broken English coming and asking questions, but also leaving with more questions than they seem to have asked. I can't believe we didn't talk about men in black. I know, right. They must have erased our memories, yeah. That's a really good question. I used to think men in black were just hired government agents sent out there to tell you

not to talk about stuff, and possibly they are. I talked to a gentleman recently who wrote a... comic book called Sasser Country. And he had a really interesting theory that Air Force officials, just to mess with the public, would go out and do these things. They would dress as men in black. They would act really weird and go out there to people who reported UFOs and mess with them, mess with their heads, acts like they were aliens and act like, you know, like

you had mentioned that they didn't speak good English or they didn't know how to drink a glass of water, just all these really weird little nuances that would make you think, I don't think they're quite human. So he actually thought this is part of this whole disinformation campaign to make these people think even more crazy things about what they had experienced. Fascinating. I don't know if I truly buy into it, but an interesting theory. Well, I will say that I like to point people to Nick Redfern.

Nick Redfern has done a lot of research on men in black, so look for Nick. he's written on pretty much every strange topic. But people, I've been asked a lot about men in black. Like I mentioned, I've been doing the UFO thing. I've been a UFO researcher for more than 10 years now. And at some points during my career, been heavily involved in some pretty weird, interesting stuff as far as like potential craft materials, alien implants, things like that. And we were pretty high profile too, and I've never been approached by anybody.

Same. That I know of. We're waiting for that day, yeah. I'd like to add, there is a story that has not been 100% confirmed, but when Spielberg first screened close encounters, was it? Or ET to the president at the time? Oh, to Reagan?

To Reagan? He did a private screening for the president, and afterwards they're having some drinks, whatnot, and he comes up to Spielberg and says to him, wow, you have no idea how close you actually were with that one. Again, we can't say that's 100% true, but there have been... Well, he did 100% say it. It's been confirmed, but the debate is whether or not Reagan was joking, because apparently he had a weird sense of humor like that. But he did speak.

It was a screening at the White House. And at the end of the movie, Reagan stood up, and he loved it. And he just turned to the room to Spielberg and said, there are a handful of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true. I don't know what to make of that. Maybe the disinformation continues up to the president. Anybody else? I don't want to take up everybody.

Yeah, what do we got? Why don't each of you give an example of your most compelling story or case that you've interviewed that gives you your belief? Well, I mean, for me, I always come back to military and government personnel, you know, because I've interviewed so many of those guys and some of the Blue Book guys. That was fascinating talking to some of the Blue Book guys. But when you have government and military personnel who, you know, are firmly, just really strongly affected by this topic when you bring it up and frustrated by how the

militaries handled it. One particular person or story that can tell you the most? So what I'll do is I'll go with this one. Richard Hoover. Richard Hoover started NASA's astrobiology program. If you're not familiar with astrobiology, astrobiology is essentially looking for life and space. They study typically how life exists as we know it,

life as we know it, and in what conditions it can survive. So they'll pull ice cores out from Antarctica and look at extreme environments. They call them extremophiles and find out, because that gives us a better sense of where we can look in the universe for life. Richard Hoover started NASA's astrobiology program. He was an astrobiologist with NASA for, I want to say, 30 plus years. The guy knew his shit. And he is 100% convinced that we have found extraterrestrial life.

Granted, he's talking microbial extra life, but still, he, he, The guy who started NASA's astrobiology program says we found extraterrestrial life. And he said that in public. He's published papers to the effect, and he still does a lot of work in that world with other astrobiologists. Chandarwick-Ramsinger is another one. But there are multiple papers published by mainstream scientists in mainstream scientific journals showing that we've discovered extraterrestrial life, yet it's still not accepted by mainstream science. but talking to him and he spoke at a conference we did before

and had the pleasure of spending a lot of time with him and that was just fascinating. Coming from a guy who's very scientifically minded was just talking purely science, not about any of this other complex stuff, just science and saying, look, I know what I'm talking about. I'm a mainstream scientist.

I've kind of done this for a little bit, and I'm telling you, I've got the proof. It's right here we've found extraterruster life. I think the one for me would be the Rua Zimbabwe case, 1994. 62 school children witnessed a craft land in their schoolyard. They saw beings come out of this silver craft, run around the craft. Some of the kids started approaching. Some of them said that they had messages downloaded into the brain.

Some of them said that they heard nothing. They saw nothing. Some of them said that they saw the aliens running around, get back in the craft. it disappears out of sight and they go in tell their teachers what happened and it was very fascinating. John Mack, the Harvard psychiatrist or psychologist, excuse me, went there, talked to these kids, interviewed all of them and it was really fascinating. And up until today, as adults, these kids still talk about this. Some of them took it a really good way. Some of them took it a really bad way. but at the end, these were 62 people who witnessed this thing happen.

And for me, it's one of the most compelling cases, documented, and to have John Mack of highly respected Pulitzer Prize-winning author involved with this and say, I believe something happened to them. Not a doubt in my mind. What happened to them? I don't know. I don't pretend to know, but something did. And it changed their lives.

All right, we've got about one more minute. Oh, okay. Just thank you. I'm from Oklahoma, and I knew it took a course there about American Indians and how the media definitely had changed how people look at things. And I think that this is also very important in this as well. Do you feel like this has also been channeled, like in comic books and other things to have a different kind of slant, what we think of as popular culture, negative or positive? It's certainly a possibility, but, you know, like the government in general, the government is so big, you know, things are created by content creators. You know, I certainly create what I create without any influence by anybody. So I think there are plenty of creators out there doing what they want to do, putting things in books. But I certainly, I think there are instances, and I can't speak to it, but of books, comic books, coloring books, things like that, put into pop culture by the military. Well, they did that especially, I mean, when you look at ethnicities and wars and stuff like that, that's known. People don't think about it. Absolutely. But like you just said about, you know, we're going to, I never even thought about the fact, hey, we'll just have a group of people go out and make folk look like idiots.

That's the easiest thing to do, disinformation. And so I just was like, wow, wow. Yeah. All right. Last question, sir. Hi. I just wanted to comment. I have actually spoken to William Hoover.

I am Dr. John. Brandenburg, I'll be the next speaker. Oh, absolutely, yeah. And William Hooper's work was actually based on a previous guy named Barthalibunaji who worked with a special group of meteorites that are like 1% organic matter. They're just loaded with gunk. It looks like old lake bottom. And apparently it comes from a place in the universe

that was very earth-like. and they're called the C-1 or C-I carbonaceous chondrites. And William Hoover did excellent work. He broke open completely fresh areas of it and found algae. Yeah. And so, by the way, I published an article several years before that where I identified that the CI actually come from Mars. I told this to William Hoover,

and he sort of said, okay, John, one controversy at a time. Welcome to our life. Yes. All right. Well, we are out of time. Thank you so much for coming, guys. And we will be downstairs shortly at our table. Come get a free t-shirt.

A lot of fun. Thank you. That's it for this week's episode. Again, please check out Roswell Mysteries Decoded. Right now on the CWC. Stream it for free at CWC.com. Please subscribe, rate, and review somewhere in the skies on Apple Podcasts and iTunes. As the largest podcast platform, you'll truly be helping us find new listeners.

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