Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Live from SXSW: How UFOs Work

Episode Date: March 31, 2011

In this episode, Josh and Chuck ditch the studio and head west -- south by southwest, in fact -- to record a live podcast in Austin, Texas. Tune in and learn more Stuff You Should Know about SXSW and UFOs. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Park, with me as always, with a little extra echo is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Hello. How are you doing, Chuck? I'm well, sir. Yeah. Anything slightly unusual today? We are in a different place than normal. We are in Austin, Texas. Yes. Yeah. Are

you guys from Austin that are cheering or is that just enthusiasm? Yeah. Keep Austin weird. That's the motto. Is that right? We're doing our best. I should probably say to those of you listening on your iPods, Chuck, talking to people who are watching us podcast right now. Yes. He's not insane. So they got a laugh track after three years. They got a laugh track. It's the little red box after three years. So yes, we're doing a lot of podcasts. This is a little different for us. I'm normally not so sweaty from being stared at when we record, but I'm getting a little more used to it. I'm fine. Yeah. And I lost my coffee, so I'm going to get really dry. Oh, you don't have coffee? Yeah, I'll be okay. Oh boy. Chuck, Josh, have you ever heard of the X-Files? Oh, yeah. It

turns out a lot of that was true. Really? Yeah. Well, okay. So not the, not the whole child healer who may or may not be like killing people like the compartmentalized versions of the X-Files, but the overarching thread with the aliens. Yeah. Not like the shapeshifter episodes. According to how UFOs work on howstuffworks.com, that's probably true. Well, you know, I'm a believer. Are you? I'm in the Fox Mulder camp. I'm okay. Although he's Hank Moody to me now. To you. It's the Californication. Okay, gotcha. I thought you would always be Fox Mulder. And now, right? I see nods. He's Hank Moody now. That's a huge, huge changeover. It is. Yeah. I thought he's having a lot more fun on Californication though. I'm sure. I'm sure. There's a lot of brooding on

X-Files and not so much dirty, dirty stuff. Well, okay. So let me give you some examples. So the X-Files, we're going kind of retro here, right? Because the UFOs is very 90s. And very 40s and even ancient. Ancient, exactly. So have you heard of the ancient Indian Sanskrit scriptures? I have, sir. Okay. Oh, thank you very much, Jessica. Thank you very much, Jessica. I got the first beep. All right. Okay. In these ancient Indian Sanskrit writings, there is a description of an airship. And it actually talks about how this airship can go forward and backward and vertically, very quickly. And a man can travel by sky in a very short time. And the weird thing is these texts were written like way before there were supposed to be airships, right? Yeah. It's called

the Vimanas. And they describe things like a great flying bird made of light material. They even describe a mercury engine with an iron heating apparatus underneath. So they get really specific about how it can move and how it operates. And this is not anything that should be happening. Oddly specific, right? Yeah. Allow me to continue. In 1211, it was written that a group of people in England were at church one day. And there was a loud crash from outside of the church. And they all go outside. They're all very dirty, I'm sure. They go outside and they look up and there's an airship. Again, you're going to notice airships keep popping up in this how UFOs work podcast. And it's anchored like an anchor has dropped into the steeple above the church and

it's stuck. And so all the very, very old timey medieval people are like, what is going on? Some guy comes down from the airship, tries to get the anchor out, is grabbed, and they're about to be killed in the bishops like, no, no, no, just let this guy go. I don't know what his jam is. His jam? His jam. So the airship cuts rope and flies off. And I should point out, it's weird, right? This is 1211 AD. Yeah, that's weird. At any time, it's weird. So a folklorist named Catherine Briggs points out, I think she puts it perfectly, that this is one of those, quote, one of those strange, unmotivated, and therefore rather convincing tales that are scattered throughout the early chronicles, like basically saying this chronicler had no reason to just

make this up. And it's just so weird how specific it is. And then we can fast forward to the 19th century, tons of airship sightings, Nebraska was huge, Texas was huge, California, it was basically like that whole James West steampunk thing. But in the time, right? So it wasn't retro. And then just this February, in Jerusalem, there was a big sighting, there were several videos of... I didn't hear about this one. Well, there were three different videos. And the founder of the site, Marshall Brain, put it to bed, or he tried to, saying like, this is how it was hoaxed, not entirely convincingly, but they're supposedly UFO over the Dome Rock in Jerusalem. And this was February. And if you go onto the Mutual UFO Network website, every day, there's still UFO

reports coming in. So... The Mutual UFO Network? Mufon. They made tons of appearances in X-Files. You know, Mufon. Mufon, right? They got nothing on SETI. That's a little foreshadowing. You pop up later. Nice, Chuck. So if you go onto the Mufon website, you'll see that there's still just dozens of sightings every day. So this is very much embedded in our culture, which is why we're about to talk about it now. Chuck, go. That was my intro. I wasn't prepared. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of

marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know the one you made

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with guidance three times a week and we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money's got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, if we're going to talk about UFOs, let's start. Well, that was sort of the beginning, I guess. But let's start in the mid 20th century. As everyone knows, UFOs were pretty big in the 1940s

and 50s. Yeah, got a lot of press. And in fact, that's when the term UFO as an identified flying object was coined by the United States Air Force. I don't know if everyone knows that. Yeah, that's kind of that's a big one. At least the people in this room know that now. And, you know, unidentified flying object, flying saucer, flying disc, what we're really talking about is alien spacecraft. Right. I mean, let's let's cut to the chase. That's what ufologists have been talking about. Right. Is that how that's pronounced? Yes, ufology. Okay, because I kept saying UFOologist. And that's, that's like saying, do you refer to the IRS as the ERS? I don't. So, ufologist. Yeah. No, it's ufologist, not ufologist. Okay, ufologist. Ufologist.

So the Air Force started investigating these things for real, and found out that 5 to 10% of UFO sightings are unaccounted for. Yeah. The rest are explained away. You always hear weather balloon, whatever the heck that is. Or hoax. Hoaxes. Lightning. Yeah, lightning in any kind of a natural weather phenomenon can be mistaken. And hoaxes is big. People, people like faking their photography. Sure. Or crop circles. Yeah, sure. So that, that's a pretty significant point that you just brought up that there are some cases of UFO sightings that are out there that are unexplained. Right. Yeah. Where's the, I did have a stat in here on that. It was 5 to 10%. No, I have numbers. 12,000 UFO sightings, the Air Force researched between 48 and 69. So 21 years,

if my math is correct. And all but 701 were explained away. But if you ask me, 701, that you can't explain, that's kind of a lot. That's a significant number for sure. And that's why I believe. And there's a guy named Jay Allen Heineck who kind of figures big into ufology. He's the man or was, he's passed away now. He's dead. Yes, he was the man. But he still, he kind of lives on in this very long winded and detailed definition of what a UFO is. Right. You want to, you want to take this one? Yeah. Should I read it? Can you do it in one breath? There's no way I can do it in one breath. But this is the best definition we've got from Dr. Heineck. Or is, he's an astronomer. Is he a doctor? Yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. The reported

perception of an object or light seen in the sky or upon the land, the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original recipients, but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification if one is possible. Period. And that is one sentence. So that, yeah, that says it all. So basically what he's saying is like after, you know, it's a, it's a sighting and it's, it seems weird. And then after closer examination, it, it really is weird. Exactly. That's a UFO sighting, right? That was his first draft, I think. The Air Force is like,

eh, can you get a little more specific? He's like, no, I'm in a strong one. Check on my hair. I have no time to write sentences that make sense to you idiots. But we say Air Force because he was actually hired by the Air Force. He was a faculty member at the Ohio State University, which this article didn't say the. No, but that's the right way to say it. You're right. They get really picked. Any, any Buckeyes out there? Oh, right. One's all unique. And in 1948, they said, hey, dude, why don't you come work for us? We got all these weird things happening. Yeah. We got a program called, uh, Project Sign. Yeah. It was originally Project Sign. Then it became Project Grudge, which I love. And then Project Blue Book was what they landed on. Grudge. That's, that's

not a, that's not a good name for a scientific investigation. You know, it seems a little, no grudge. Oh yeah. You know, one blue book I imagine was before the whole auto industry thing with used cars to call. No, no, a little known fact. It grew out of that Air Force investigation. Yeah. Very cool. That's, that's how your cars rated now. So, uh, Heineck was, his deal was he was a skeptic. He was hired by the Air Force, not as someone to, uh, say, hey, these things are real. Let's just investigate it. And he was a big time skeptic for quite a while. He was, he was an astronomer. He didn't believe in extraterrestrial life, anything. It's 1948. So he hadn't really given much thought to it. But eventually he became kind of a defector,

because ufology, if anything, is this huge clash of the titans between people who believe in UFOs and skeptics who hurt them for believing in UFOs, right? Yeah. And Heineck started out as a complete skeptic. And then eventually, you know, they basically gave them all these files and said, look through these and see if this was an asteroid, if this was a comet, basically just give rid of a big backlog to start with, right? Of this 12,000 sightings. And, you know, he, he signed off on lots of them. And then he kept running across ones that made up the 701 inexplicable cases. Yeah. And at first he called them puzzling. Right. And then he, he started calling them like, oh my God, this is real. And, um, yeah, he became probably the most outspoken, uh, UFO, bless you.

See, that was weird. Yeah. That doesn't normally happen. Um, he became one of the most outspoken UFOs at just people who said, yes, UFOs are real. And, uh, he, he was in a position to really kind of make that claim more than anybody else. Yeah. And he found himself at odds with the Air Force. They were, um, I don't think they knew what they were kidding into when they hired this scientist who was originally a skeptic. And all of a sudden he starts touting these things and the Air Force was like, no, don't say these things. Right. He said, no, I'm going to. What was his line about, uh, uh, skepticism, not having any part in the scientific method or no, uh, ridicule, ridicule. So there's another guy, if you go a little further back, the first ufologist is named Charles Fort,

and he was kind of a, um, a hero of mine. Um, he was a scientist. Yeah. If you, if you read, uh, The Forty in Times, which is one of the greatest magazines of all time, um, it's based on this guy's philosophy that, yes, science, um, is the, the proper approach to explaining the universe, but you have to investigate everything incredulously, or else you're just kind of a jerk. Right. You can't selectively say like, well, you know, science can't really explain this right now. So it doesn't exist. It's not possible to exist. And we're going to make fun of you for even thinking that. That's not what science is about. And, um, J. Allen Heineck, uh, held the same views, basically, that, that, um, through Project Blue Book, science was failing the public by not properly

explaining, hey, this is a weather balloon. Like, you don't know what a weather balloon looks like. I don't know what a weather balloon looks like. I don't know what they do. We were failed at some point in time by science, and he was upset about that. And then the idea that they were heaping ridicule and scorn while not even carrying out their duty, right, irked him to say the least. So Heineck is the guy, actually, that came up with the Heineck scale, which you say, what is the Heineck scale? You might know it better. Wait, wait, hold on. No? What is, exactly. Dude, we should do this every time. Totally. I love this. I don't know what I'm so nervous about. Uh, you might know the Heineck scale better as the, uh, close encounters, uh, chart. So he's the

dude who invented it. And, uh, the first kind is a sighting. If you see it, close encounter of the close encounter of the first kind. The second kind is a sighting plus physical evidence. So. Like scat. Alien scat. Crop circles. Sometimes there'll be like vegetation that is, uh, like disintegrated sometimes. And I didn't research this, but the spider web like things hanging from trees. Yeah. What's that all about? Any idea? I couldn't find that either. Okay. Yeah. Apparently that happens. Yeah. UFOs nearby. Well, the big problem with them is, um, like they are brittle to the touch and just disintegrate. UFOs? No. The, the spider web like strings. It's like, um, silly string, but that's been left out for many, many weeks. Gotcha. So that's the second

kind. Uh, the third kind, um, is observation of an intimate, uh, animate being. Scatting. That wasn't quite right according to Steven Spielberg. Oh, is that the third encounter? Well, that's the third. Yeah. They did see an animate being, but let's get forward. After Heineck, they added fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh kinds. He wasn't a part of that. Okay. Fourth kind is abduction. Uh, and the fifth kind is bilateral contact event through voluntary human, uh, initiated cooperation. So that was really close encounters of the third kind should have been the fifth kind because Francois Truffaut and the movie, you know, sent out the he initiated contact. And there was a sign for it too. He did. I don't remember what that is.

And did you know that was Francois Truffaut? I know Rob probably did famous director. He was in that movie. And then, uh, the sixth kind is direct injury or death, which is the least fun kind. And the seventh kind is the best because that means you are knocking boots with an alien. Oh, yeah. And creating a star child. That's true. A close encounter of the seventh kind means you have sex with an alien and they get pregnant. And there is, there's a lot of, there is, um, traditionally a lot of sexiness involved with alien abductions, whether it's forced copulation, the standard anal probe, whatever. There's some sort of sexuality associated with, with abductions. Do you want to go over some of the abductions?

Yeah, let's hear about prodding and poking and probing probing probing. All right. Where are we? Well, let's, I guess let's talk a little more about some of the characteristics of UFOs. Um, we talked about the strange web-like disintegrating, uh, remains. Um, crop circles? Crop circles, which may or may not have been Led Zeppelin's dirigible. Who knows? Animal mutilation is sometimes associated with that. And that is when, uh, you find, uh, let's say cattle with, uh, organs removed, but no signs of humans being anywhere around. We should do one on that. We should. Probably not. Um, because I, I was looking this up and apparently, uh, some sheriff's department in Arkansas, when this, like the

height of this cattle mutilation, um, scare, um, was going on, they, they took a cow and I imagined shot it in the head and left it where it lay because for, you know, to, to really undertake this, you'd have to kind of kill a cow where it was and then leave it alone. And, but they had a dead cow for 48 hours in this field and filmed it and, and said, hey, like all of the normal stuff that a dead cow's body undergoes, auto lysis, putrefaction, like all of this can explain like these mutilations you're talking about. Everybody just settled down. And I think it was kind of like the same, um, the same group of people who were worried about Satanists kind of put a lot of stock in the animal mutilation thing. So I think that one's kind of off the table. Uh, radio

and TV interference happens a lot. Car ignition failure, which of course happened. I keep looking at Rob for closing counters of the third kind because he's a movie nerd like me. But, uh, yeah, the car won't start. Uh, radio cuts out, lights flicker. Uh-huh. UFOs nearby. Yeah. There's a correlation sign. It's a correlation. Uh, and then, uh, I guess that's about it, right? Well, I got a couple of stats though. That's not it. Trust me. That's it for that part. Uh, I looked up UFO sightings by state because I was curious. Uh, what state do you think leads the way? New Mexico is a good guess. Nevada is a good guess. No, no, no. Think about it. Crazy people. Cuckoo. California. I hope there's no one from California in here. Oh, they know, they know

they're crazy. 7,981 sightings. And this is a very, you know, this is a high science. This is from the Center for UFO Studies or Cufos. They're no Mufon. They're no Mufon or SETI. And, uh, number two is actually Washington State at, uh, 3483. I did look up Texas because that's where we are. 3,172. And I looked up Georgia. What do we have? About 1,000. And guess what state is the least? No. Keep, keep going. Yeah, you'll get to it. 46 more. North Dakota, which I figure, I figured they'd be lousy with it because all the, I don't know, desert space seems appealing to aliens. I think everyone in North Dakota is too depressed to look up. Well, that may be, there's not a lot of people there. So that may actually, you know, have something to do with it.

So only 116 in North Dakota. And we do have a poll in here that is so outdated that we would like to conduct a live poll since we have, what about 50 people here? I would say 400. All right, we're going to do this, we're going to do this by applause, but you're not rooting for it. So don't feel like you have to go crazy if you believe in it. We just want to get a little, a little thing. So, uh, if you believe that aliens have contacted humans, just some light golf clapping. Okay. CNN says 60%. Uh, if you believe aliens have abducted humans, uh, no break. That is zero percent zero because CNN in 1997 said 50% of the people polled. Yeah. And then they said 80% believe the government is hiding something about aliens. Wait, wait,

wait, let everybody come in there. Yeah, the government, I think more people think the government is hiding something than believe aliens exist. How does that really something? I don't think that works. Yeah, it works. That's our first live poll. So, um, I found, uh, another poll in 2008, and the only thing I could find was, you know, do you believe that there's intelligent life that's been to earth and contacted humans? And it was down to like 34%, which was probably about what we got here, but that's significantly less than the 60% in 1997. True. I think it was Y2K angst. Anything that had everybody like, there's something going on. We're going to die. Like, that was such a rip-off. Our computers are going to stop. I was one of the guys. I was like,

you people are stupid. Nothing's going to happen. Well, you know that I have my van packed with water and shotgun and all that. That's because you were living in the time. Right. Those are just my normal accoutrements. So, uh, Project Blue Book, uh, the Air Force eventually in 1969 said, you know what, we're going to close up shop, or at least that's what they said. Hmm? Yeah. They said they were going to close up shop. Uh, and then they put out, to me, what is some tricky wording with three statements. They said, no UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated has ever given any indication of threat to our national security. Doesn't mean that they didn't find anything. Right. They just didn't deem it a threat. Right. And then there's been no evidence

submitted to the Air Force that sightings categorize as unidentified, represent technical developments, uh, beyond the range of present day knowledge. And there's been no evidence indicating the sightings categories as undefined, unidentified are extraterrestrial. So, like bam, boom, bam, we're closing up shop by that suckers. But that's tricky to me because all they said was classified as unidentified internally. As soon as they found out, they might go, oh crap, let's change the, uh, they don't quantify the criteria for their categorization. No, but if they did find something, right, and kept it internal, they were still saying like, these were kind of so-so aliens if they're, they weren't doing anything that we couldn't

already conceive of, you know. Yeah, true. Um, and I guess they're friendly at least because they weren't a national security threat. Either that or they were easily like beat up. With the elbow. Is that how you go with an alien? Yeah, yeah. That's good. I thought you go with everybody. But I think it's worth pointing out, this is a Department of Defense publication. You'd be very hard pressed to find the DOD print and release anything that's talking about aliens today. But from 1948 to 1969, they carried out this very famous investigation. Whether it was half-hearted or not, like they were actually, you know, spending tons of taxpayer money on this. And it was, it's a significant moment in history where everyone believed in aliens, right? Right.

Now everybody just believes that the government's hiding something. They're hiding something. So it moved from the government to the private sector with SETI, which we've mentioned, is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the Center for UFO Studies. So there's a lot of work still going on. And these aren't crackpots. A lot of them are very scientific about their research. Jody Foster works there. Right. And what they want to do is, well, not they want to disprove, they want to get to the bottom of it. Well, yes, SETI is very legitimate. They have funding from NASA and they're all very scientific scientists. And they admit their mistakes, right? Like in the late 90s, they got,

they're the ones with the big radio telescopes. Yeah. Right. And they got a signal. It sounded just like that. And it was about a million miles away from Earth. Yeah. And they said, well, there's got to be aliens a million miles away. Right. And then three hours later, they're like, oh, no, it was a sun watching observatory that's a million miles away from Earth. But they admit their mistakes and they're not very sensationalist. I get the impression. So SETI's pretty much carrying on the, they're carrying the torch now that the government shut things down. Right. That's right. So everybody in here is suspicious of the government. We can actually pinpoint the moment that happened. It took place in 1947 on July 7th. There was a guy in New Mexico

outside of a town called Roswell. His name was Mac Brazel and he was a ranch foreman. Right. So he was going to check on the cattle, I guess. Yeah. One day after some terrible thunderstorms the night before and he found some weird debris and it was weird enough debris that he called the sheriff and I'm sure they like spit on the ground and talked about it for a while. But there were strange, we should mention the night before there was a bunch of strange lights in the sky. Yes. And terrible thunderstorms. So then he finds the debris. Right. Okay. Sorry. That's an important point. It is. And so the sheriff comes out, they figured they should probably call the local military, which is kind of a weird step if you ask me. The military comes

out, they take the debris and they take it back to the Roswell Army Air Force Base. Yeah. And then to Dayton, Ohio. Which is another weird thing to do if it's a weather balloon, as the government eventually said it was. In between then the guy who ran Roswell Army Air Force Base released a statement on July 8th, 1947 saying we recovered the debris from a crash disc and I'm making air quotes and you guys can actually see it. I don't have to just say it this time. But a crash disc was found. And then about three hours later his boss in Dallas, I believe, released another press release saying that guy's an idiot. Don't send anything he's ever said. Forget that whole crash disc thing. Exactly. It was a weather balloon and we've taken it and flown it to

right Air Force Base in Dayton for some reason. But just don't look behind the curtain, everybody. And at that moment, that was when all of the seeds that have sprouted into us going like this when we see like a press release today. That's when it happened. That first press release, followed by the second one, started the whole suspicion of the government that there was a cover-up, Chuck. That's right. And there was some other hinkiness going on. There were eyewitnesses that say they saw bodies being removed from the scene by the military. Some people said that they were actually present at an alien autopsy. If you remember, the Fox network did that TV show, Alien Autopsy, a while ago. And then it turned out that the guy said, I actually shot

all this stuff in the 90s, but I swear this is the footage I saw, and I'm just recreating it. And that footage is now destroyed, but this is what I saw. Come on. You didn't buy it. It took me for a while. It looked kind of cool, but yeah, that was a big disappointment. And Area 51 is the area now, and some people believe that the government is still contacting aliens at Area 51, meeting with aliens on a regular basis. Mm-hmm. Studying them, and that's why it's got big fences around it. That's exactly why. That's the only possible reason that it has fences around it.

But we're going to do a podcast, probably, hopefully on Area 51 one day, because that's about all we're going to talk about with that. The fences. Men in black? Yeah. That's another characteristic of the UFO phenomenon, right? And that actually came out of a guy named Gray Barker's book in 1956. He wrote, they knew too much about flying saucers, and the men in black make their first appearance. Well, Gray Barker pawned this thing off as a work of nonfiction, but it was actually fiction. But that, I guess, came out long enough after that the men in black entered kind of the collective consciousness of, have you seen

Jose Chung's From Outer Space, that one ex-files episode where Jesse the Body Venture and Alex Trebek play the men in black? Really? Yeah, it's pretty awesome. It's probably the best ex-files episode ever. Really? Yeah. Is it a Nelson Riley?

Okay. It's a good one, isn't it? Wait, did you just say Charles Nelson Riley? Charles Nelson Riley plays this author who's interviewing Mulder and Scully, and trying to get to the bottom of this one incident that happened, and it was very cool. Good. I highly recommend it to everybody. I feel ripped off now. Let's get back to it, Chuck.

And abductions. I think this is, if I may tee this one up. Please. So I think it's kind of one thing to see something in the sky and say, well, that's a UFO. Many people have done this. Ronald Reagan said he saw a UFO, and as governor of California, right? Yeah. Jackie Gleason said he saw aliens because... Richard Nixon took them there.

Yeah. That's a true story. Jackie Gleason apparently was in Florida married to his second wife at the time, and he came home all disheveled from something. And his wife was like, what's going on, Jackie? You're not your usual sunny self. And he says, well, I can't talk about it, wife. But later on, he said that she does have a name. I can't remember it.

Let's call her Betty. But ironically, he did just call her wife. Yeah, he did. One of these days. So then he says, you know what happened? I met Richard Nixon, my buddy Richard Nixon. Jackie Gleason was way into UFOs, apparently. And Richard Nixon said, would you like to go see some aliens?

That's my Richard Nixon. That was pretty good. So they've seen it? Well, apparently he took them and saw two little two-foot aliens. Right, little bald man. And said, don't tell anybody about this. Jackie Gleason. And he said, I will never tell anyone.

He told his wife that you can't tell anyone. And then they got divorced and she started telling everyone. Yeah, she did. Yeah. So supposedly he's seen one. And he said, Ronald Reagan saw one. And he was on a small Cessna flight. And he was governor of California at the time.

And he was talking about what he saw until he realized he was talking to a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. And then he was like, maybe I shouldn't say anything about that. Right. And yeah, so there's Jimmy Carter. Carter saw one. Do you want to do your Carter? I don't have a Carter.

He did see one in Georgia, in rural Georgia. And he still talks about it to this day. Apparently 10 or so years ago was the last time at Emory University, Atlanta, where he teaches. He was actually still talking about it and said, dude, I saw UFO. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off.

The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed.

They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save for retirement? Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions

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How to Money's got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. So it's one thing to see a UFO and to talk about it at Emory or to show Jackie Gleeson something weird, right?

But it's an entirely other thing. And this kind of became this spin off of the UFO phenomenon. And that is abductions, right? That's the money, the money shot. Basically, there's this whole group of people came forward over the years starting after 1965, as we'll say, and said, yes, I've been aboard the craft. I've been engaged in alien sexiness.

This is horrible. My life is suffering because of this, right? So the first abduction story was Betty and Barney Hill. Have you heard of them? Have you heard of them before then? Yes. Okay. Because I'm sort of into this stuff.

Okay. But they were the first in the early 60s. And they said they saw and were not abducted initially, but then later through hypnosis started remembering these things that happened. Yeah. And that was the first abduction case. It was written up in the Boston Globe.

And then there was a book called The Interrupted Journey because it had a really huge impact on their lives. They started suffering, psychological disturbances. There were big problems among them after this. And then it was made for TV movie. Mr. James Earl Jones played Barney Hill. Did a great job. Yeah.

And from that moment on, this kind of established checklist almost of traits of an abduction were generated. Things like you're being taken against your will. You're being probed or... Bright light sometimes that picks you up, like a beam. The tractor beam. Tractor beam. The...

I hear noise. The losing time was another big one. The hills lost two hours. And then having to deal with this, and there were actual studies of abductees in the 90s because it was such a weird, significant thing that people were saying. Well, and it's consistent, which is the weird thing.

Right. So this guy named Richard McNally, he's a Harvard psychologist, conducted some physiological experiments on people who said they'd been abducted. And they showed similar symptoms to people with post-traumatic stress disorder. So there's definitely something going on. But whether or not it was them being abducted

or if they were suffering from some other trauma is what was at the heart of the matter, right? Yeah. And there's been some pretty good explanations for what was behind this whole abduction phenomenon that's kind of died off now, which is weird if you think about it, right? Yeah.

Susan Blackmore is a famous skeptic. And she did a little experiment in the mid-1990s with a man named Michael Persinger. He's a neuroscientist. And he claims that all kinds of weird phenomenon with the body can be explained by excessive firing of the temporal lobes. And so the only thing that was missing

was no one had ever really tried to replicate this in an experiment. So Susan Blackmore said, dude, hook me up to this stuff and fire away unless he would have it. She said that she had a sensation. She was being pulled, stretched by her leg to the ceiling. She was suddenly very, very angry. And then after that, she was suddenly very fearful.

So basically the guy proved to her, and then she went and told the world in this New Scientist article that, yes, if you can mess with somebody's temporal lobe firing using magnets, you can get them to think all sorts of crazy stuff. Well, she basically, at the end of the experiment, said, I was so out of myself that if someone

would have told me you were abducted by an alien, she said I probably would have believed it. Right. And she's a skeptic. So probably that's a good explanation, but then you have to ask, well, what is exactly exerting this magnetism on people's brains to cause this temporal lobe firing?

So it's an OK explanation. Probably better than anything is sleep paralysis, right, or false awakenings. Yeah, sleep paralysis. You know, does anyone have that sleep paralysis, your wife? Apparently that's what you wake up in your, you can't move. Yeah, when you sleep, your skeletal muscles are normally paralyzed while you're sleeping, but every once in a while,

you can wake up and your muscles don't kind of wake up first. So you can't move, but you don't really know what's going on. You're groggy. There's hallucinations in the company too, right? Yeah, usually, and scary stuff. Yes. And so it's a very fearful thing.

And then if you are the type to dream about sex, right, that kind of adds that probing maybe idea to the whole thing. So sleep paralysis is a pretty good explanation. And then the false awakening is another good one, where you're dreaming that you've woken up, and it's pretty common actually. And I think the thing that gives gravity to this explanation is that the most extreme abduction reports always began

with the people sleeping. Oh, really? Yeah. So it's entirely possible as people were confused. Well, there's also a correlation though between UFO sightings and what was he talking about, seismic events, is he said that he believes earthquakes might trigger this magnetism and people wake up in their bed.

They think they're being abducted. But what about the people in the cars and out in the fields? We're not going to figure this out right here, right? I was going to say, I think a good way to wrap this up is to say that we are wholly unqualified to offer any explanation of what was going on. But at the very least, it was interesting, and it was a wild and crazy time.

It was a good ride there. Agreed. And I think this bears some follow-up. We've got to hit Area 51. We've got to get into the abductions a little more too. Yeah. One day. That's it.

You got any more? I got nothing else on this one. That's it. This is UFOs. We thank you very much. Thank you. So if any of you ever want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email.

I want you to wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for coming out too. On a rainy Monday morning. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Here's today's Fortnite weather report. I Heartland has been hit by a major blizzard.

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