November 10, 2023 • 55 mins
UFO researchers, also known as ufologists, make frequent appearances in pop culture, and many are professional, full-time experts in their field. But how exactly does one become a ufologist? Join the guys as they dive into this question, searching for the most (and least) credible paths to becoming a genuine ufologist.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Who doesn't love UFOs. Some people make an entire career
off studying some or multiple facets of strange things in
the sky.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
We call them ufologist, mofonbaby, MoveOn dot org.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Yeah, it's a mutual network of enthusiasts.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It's surprising because so many experts in other scientific disciplines
start applying their knowledge towards UFOs, like an astrophysicist, someone
who specializes in chemistry or material science. But our question
that we ask in this classic episode is how do
you become a credentialed ufologist? Is there a school? Is
(00:45):
there an academy? Is there you know, a course at
Harvard or Stanford or der or something.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Well, it's funny because this conversation is definitely way way
before a lot of the more kind of mass acceptance
that this could well be a potential reality. So you know,
I mean, for for many years, this has always been
looked at as kind of a fringe pursuit. And I'm
interested to see now where things go if it does
become a little bit more accepted or there becomes more
(01:14):
of like an official field of study for this, because
there is and there isn't in this episode, but it's
it's largely you know, kind of sneezed at by the
scientific community.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
It was right after Tom Tom DeLong made all the
announcements and everything right not right after, but this is
like a little bit after that. So I bet the
interest was super high at this time. I don't really
imagine it's skyrocketing.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Where it is now.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And it just again being approached with a lot less
kind of funny faces being made.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And we had, you know, I think we all shared
a mutual sadness about the breakup of Blink one eight two.
They're back. They're back, So the future isn't always terrible.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, Now, let's find out how to be a genuine ufologist.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, Matt,
You're back. I'm here.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
It's me and Noll.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Hey, they call me Ben. We are joined, of course,
with our super producer Paul Decatt, and we hope you
join us in welcoming back. Matt Frederick, you are here.
You are you, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This episode is meant to answer
a question that we stumbled upon in our earlier conversations
(02:56):
with John Goforth. Remember that, Matt, we talked with go
Forth about Tom DeLong and disclosure.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, yeah, and I think it did come up. How
do you become an expert?
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Like?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
What are the means to be an expert in these things?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I was super bummed to have missed that one. So
I am going to be learning some new stuff today.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Excellent.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Hey, who knows we might end the show by becoming
ufologist ourselves. This question was posed to us by one
of our co workers, Jason Koch, So shout out to you, Jason,
and thanks for the recommendation.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
You think work will pay for it.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
That's that's up to debate. Hey, do us a favor
if you want to help us become credited ufologists.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Go to gofund me dot com slash stdwy t K.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I was gonna say right to our bosses, you know
what do both?
Speaker 6 (03:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
They do both.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
So that's that's today's question. How exactly does someone become
a ufologist? We hear about ufologists often. You'll see them
in things like ancient aliens on History Channel.
Speaker 6 (03:58):
You'll see them quoted in.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Different television programs like The Old Unsolved Mysteries and so on.
But to explore how somebody goes from just being an
average a civilian in the world of UFOs to becoming
a noted expert of some sort or another, we have
to first figure out what a ufologist is. So here
(04:23):
are the facts. The term ufologist comes from. Obviously UFO
that dates back to nineteen fifty three, when it was
an abbreviation of the earlier term unidentified flying object that
came around nineteen fifty basic stuff, And they do what
it says on the tin. They study reports of unidentified
(04:44):
aerial phenomenon or flying objects. But there's a weird tricky
thing here when you think about it, because once you
identify the thing, are you really still a ufologist, or
you know, if it's a weather pattern, have you accidentally
become a meteorist, If it's a bird, have you become
an ornithologist.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
I'm just fascinated by the fact that these credentials come
in at ten with instructions.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
I think one thing we're going to notice here is
that historically, when you maybe are considered a ufologists, you
probably have a degree in some related field, yes, like
what like a meteorologist or an other ologist, well, yeah, orics. Yeah,
physics is a really big one. If you're let's see
(05:26):
you and if you're an engineer and you make airplanes
or something to that effect.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
An aerospace engineer, yeah, that could come in handy. Yeah,
and we'll find that the interdisciplinary nature of this is
both a blessing and the curse for the professional ufologist
out there. About how many are there, funny you should ask,
there are no accurate figures on that number. The one
thing we found that had an indication at least of
(05:53):
the education level. Going to your point, Matt, about their degrees.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
In nineteen seventy six, the Center for UFO Studies conducted
a voluntary poll amid its donors, and they found that
of the one hundred and sixty one people who responded,
one fifth of them had PhD degrees and seventy five
percent had earned at least a bachelor's degree or higher.
The most common degrees were in physics and engineering. And
(06:20):
their jobs, as it's reported in this paper, are you
pretty white collar professional things. Doctors, lawyers, engineers of course,
and professors, which is strange because they were dedicating their
free time to this study of unidentified phenomenon or objects,
(06:40):
and in their day jobs, these people are considered credible scientists.
But ufology today is still widely considered a pseudoscience.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
So you can't go to a reputable university and get
a degree in ufology.
Speaker 6 (06:56):
Not for the most parts, got it.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And in that survey, these are just people who are interested, right,
These are people who donated to a thing.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, they donate to a thing. They go to the conferences,
the networks.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Cool, so they have an active interest in it. They're
in one of those outside professions.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
They're probably not out protesting in front of the White
House in the seventies for disclosure. But yeah, no traditional
colleges or universities offer specific degree programs in what we
would call ufology. However, there are some courses available online.
For instance, the International Metaphysical University offers six courses in
(07:35):
ufology studies, including Introduction to Ethology. It's taught by an
historian named Richard Dolan, and the online courses have twelve
lectures each that cover different different ideas. I mean, we
have the names of them that I think indicate a
little bit of bias.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, things like what are UFOs? It's a good place
to start of ancient visitation.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Not as good me it just it feels a little
like they're stacking the deck.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I say, I got you, and then the early cover up.
Does the Great Courses offer this?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Hey, I've missed the Great Courses. Those things were fantastic.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, man, we can still get them, right, Great Courses
dot COM's last conspiracy maybe is still active.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Who knows?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
There are also just so you know, other electure titles
like weird science, propulsion, energy, space time and Consciousness.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Is that consciousness separate from space time or space time
and conscious I.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Think it's all of it wrapped up together.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
More bang for your buck?
Speaker 6 (08:34):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Digging deeper? The Breakaway Civilization? What is that?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Would that be? Would that be a hypothetical civilization that
breaks away from Earth and lives in space?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
I don't know. You gotta take the course.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Got to take the course. Yeah, and this is the
this is extant. You can go and take the course. Now,
you can enroll and you can see some tech stimonies
from people who've taken the course, and you can read
about the grading system all you can get all the
details all you have to do is visit intermetu dot
(09:12):
com I N T E R M e t U
dot com. This is not free, No, we should point
that out. You know what the Breakaway civilization is, it's
pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
It's this idea of this alternate reality that exists only
in like five hundred million pages of classified documents. So
it's sort of this like meta reality that supposedly the
information exists to understand, but we don't have.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Access to it.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Oh okay, And when I say reality, I just mean
you know, cover ups and the stuff that is known
but not known to us.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
So it's an alternate reality physically earthly, right, just like
the you know, the behind the curtain kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
I've never heard that term before.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
I like, let's do an episode on that like it.
We may have to invest, however, if we want to
use this course as the basis for our future episode
on Breakaways, because the courses cost around two hundred to
four hundred dollars each, and this can be you can see.
Speaker 6 (10:11):
How this could become expensive.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
And let's say you decide to become a ufologist, but
you say, you know what, I don't want to rely
on self education a lot of people who describe themselves
as ufologists. You're doing it based on research after an
event that they have experienced firsthand, or something they've seen,
something that touched them in their personal lives. So they're
(10:36):
self directing. And there's nothing wrong with self directed research.
Some of the most important scientists and philosophers in human
history we're just on their own, reading books they thought
were interesting, and writing other things as well. But let's
say you don't feel completely comfortable doing self education. You
(10:57):
sign up for something like this program at International Metaphysical University,
You finish that twelve lecture course and boom, you're out
of school. You have to get a job, right, So
what do you do for a living with this with
this degree?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Basically, you try and give talks wherever you can give talks,
or you get in contact with people who have footage
of something. You study that footage, or you watch the
sky and you wait and then hopefully write books about it.
Those are my that's my understanding. Is there anything else?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I You know, it's funny you say this because it
reminds me of some of my friends who were who
became sociologists. They get their PhDs in sociology, and so
what do you do with that? And they said, teach
sociology classes. Oh okay, it's so maybe a lot of
people who become ufologists through this path begin teaching or
(11:56):
transmitting their own knowledge and experience.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah, but I can go to the International Metaphysical thing
and pay four hundred dollars and get my degree. Why
would I need to learn from you, u afologist guy
who just got your degree.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Maybe they are adding more to that base education. Gocha,
I don't know. It's a good question, right. The university
website notes that ufologists can seek work as lecturers, writers,
movie consultants, which sounds pretty cool, or political activists similar
to Tom DeLong and Luis Elisondo working toward disclosure or
(12:34):
working in the political and government arena on the area
of UFOs in preparation for contact or landings.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
All right, there we go.
Speaker 6 (12:44):
There are a couple of other things they say you
can do as well.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
So prepare for contact. I like that a lot you
could work, I guess. Yeah. This does note that you
can work as a professional hypnotist and or what does
this say? A life co coach for people who claim
to have had abduction experiences.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Right, yeah, and the university, for their part, makes no
claims about the employment chances after completing the course. You
know how some universities or colleges for certain courses will
say ninety percent of our graduates are placed in a
job within the first six months after graduation.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And you know, to be fair, this is an audio course.
You're listening to lectures by Richard Dolan. That's what you're doing.
You're listening to a podcast essentially by Richard Dolan and
then taking notes and having discussion.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
So there's no like testing.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
It's all it's an all online course. I'm certain there
is test. Yeah, but in this case it's a prepared
lecture essentially like you would get out of college. I
guess there's just no.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
There's back and forth.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yet the course has let's see, the course has several
quizzes and then they have a mid term assignment and
a final exam.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Do you think you could find any of them that
to try to quiz ourselves, just to see if we
could do it cold?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I wonder if we could. We could probably dig into
it and see.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
I'd be interested.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Do Let's do a series of two or three episodes
where we just take this course live on the show.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
I bet they would probably take issue with that.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, surely that's illegal.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Well, let's just contact Richard Dolan and see if he'll
come in and talk with us. I mean, he's an author,
he's made he's written several books that you end up
reading or are asked to read or suggested in a syllabus.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Yeah. Well that's a great idea.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
Yeah, that is a great idea there.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
If you don't want to go that route for some reason,
there are two other online in universities we found that
offer similar courses. There's the IMHS Metaphysical Institute and the
Center for Excellence in the United Kingdom. They offer full
degree programs as well. And Matt, you've looked at some
(14:59):
of this.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Yeah, the Ufology diploma course from the Center of Excellence
only costs one hundred and twenty seven pounds. That's britty
sure for the whole course. Yeah, and you can you
can even finance the course. You put twenty nine pounds down,
then you pay sixteen thirty three for six months.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I mean, even if it's a scam, that's a pretty
affordable scam.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Yeah, yeah, you can go over. I mean they've got
some information about what you're gonna learn. But it's I
would say it's pretty limited as far as I mean.
It gives you kind of a course syllabus.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
It's like an introduction class, an introductory course rather, so
it talks a little bit about the history of the
search for UFOs, a little bit about the present day,
and then it seems to end on how addressing how
a student can get involved. But there there are some
(15:55):
things that will I'm sure drive the more skeptical of
us in the audience insane. Like in their rite up
they say, quote, the Ufology Diploma course provides insight into
the technologies they're likely used to propel UFOs and different
kinds of craft and their purposes. So they're not saying
(16:15):
we're trying to figure out what these are. They're claiming
that they have in fact identified the unidentified objects.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
There you go. Another thing that we should point out
for this is that this course is certified by the IAHT,
the International Alliance of Holistic Therapists. That's claimed on the website.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
There, and I wonder what they have to do with ufology.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Well, so it inherently has kind of a new age
bent to it.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
It would appear to be the case. Yeah, unless the
IAHT is more familiar with this sort of stuff, because
one would assume that most ufology questions are going to
be related to things like the nature of physics and
aviation and again meteorology. But perhaps there's more to the story.
(17:07):
So what do you do if you say, Okay, I've
seen that. I appreciate it, but I think I want
something more traditional. I want more formal education, like to
your point, NOL, I want to go to Rutgers or
to Yale or something. I learned this. It can be
difficult for a budding ufologists to find the right path
(17:27):
of study because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of this research.
Like if we go back to our earlier example, should
a ufologist first study engineering, or should they study physics,
Should they study meteorology or psychology, or folklore or sociology
or just all of them at once?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, right, I mean it is a bit of a
grab bag because there's certainly science involved in astronomy, involved
in the idea of studying space, but it's also wrapped
into a lot of pop culture ideas and a lot
of folkloric ideas or things that are not quite provable
so there's a lot of conceptual thought behind it as well.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
It's interesting.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Sure, making yourself aware of a lot of the folklore
surrounding the event of a UFO will give you an
idea as to what are these people maybe think they're
seeing in their heads when they're viewing some object in
the air. That's all I wanted to say.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
Yeah, and it's a dilemma.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You know, for many people UFU enthusiasts and skeptics light
this feels problematic. Some of the skeptics in the audience
now might think these are just wastes of money, or
even worse, a purposeful con job. As we've said, Matt
Nolan and I have not taken these courses and we
haven't yet seen material from them, so you can't really
(18:48):
comment too deeply on what they actually are. I think
that idea of taking a test is fascinating. But people
who actively research UFOs and perhaps feel that they have
a specific line on it, that they've found a previously
unexplained whether phenomenon, or they've proven there's extraterrestrial involvement, they
(19:09):
might feel this type of education is unnecessary or misdirected,
and they say, well, maybe we're better off studying just
orthodox meteorology, old school aerospace engineering. Will the time of
a professional ufologist be better spent in the field chasing
reports and gathering firsthand experience?
Speaker 4 (19:28):
And I mean anybody can do that.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
You could be a hobbyist ufologist in that respect of
just paying attention to the clues and writing things down
and submitting your reports. But it feels to me like
if you really wanted to be in a position to
really catch something like this, you would be studying one
of these other more traditional fields like astronomy, for example,
(19:51):
that would give you the skills needed to actually see
a UFO if it.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Were to be a thing. I don't know, it's interesting
to me.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
I think it's a great point. Oh and that's right.
We buried the lead a little bit. We should mention this.
It's true there are professional uithologists, and we'll explore their
stories after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
So while most mainstream media outlets tend to portray these
ufologists or people that study UFOs in generalize to crackpots
or or you know, misguided, there is some truth in
the idea that multiple places do actually employ professional ufologists.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
And we're not talking about what's that guy from ancient Aliens?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
His name Richard Dolan.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Richard Dolan not talking about him, he is, though, Slucos.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
What's that?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Yeah? Or there are so many that we've discussed in
the past, the Hand of the god s guy.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Eric von Denikin.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
We're talking about real you know, human people, not television
presenters say.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Those are real human pect I know, I.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Know, but I don't believe it until I see them
in the flesh. I think they could be just conjured.
Speaker 6 (21:11):
Okay, oh yeah, well we do know.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
The technology exists to completely impersonate them.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
So yeah, we're talking about people who get paid money
currency to spend time trying to determine the true nature
of these unknown aerial phenomena, or.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
At least at one time, we're paid by a government
even to do so.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, Nick Pope, are we talking about Nick Pope?
What's going on with this Nick Pope guy?
Speaker 3 (21:41):
He's the real molder, He's the one.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
He's the chosen one.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
He is a career civil server, or he was at
the time in the United Kingdom, and the Ministry of
Defense gave him a weird job in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 6 (21:59):
He works at a thing called the UFO Desk.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah pretty cool, yeah, man, And apparently it gets between
two hundred and three hundred reports a year of sightings
and his job is to follow up one on one interesting, right.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Yeah, I bet some of those calls are pretty wild.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
We should say he did or he was or just
in the past ten because this is uh nineteen ninety one, right,
m two years before the old X Files comes.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Out, which is like our favorite show.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
The best show, and I don't care who you are.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
That's that's true.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
All around, but was recently is May twenty ninth of
twenty eighteen, he put out a tweet talking about the
Pentagon's UFO program and how they also studied poltergeist activity
and goes back and mentions, when I ran the UK
government's UFO project, we were the focal point for all
the quote weird stuff, cropsrop circles, yeah, ghosts, you know,
(22:56):
weird stuff, wacky stuff. Both the US and the UK
programs were real life X files.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And he so what he would do from nineteen ninety
one to nineteen ninety four, which is great because that
means he was still doing this when the first season
of X Files came out.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, it makes you think he got on the phone
with somebody, maybe Chris Carter.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
That would be fantastic. I would We'd love to interview
all the people we're mentioning at this point too, So
let us know who you would like to hear from
in a subsequent episode. So his job was just that
he would get a report. Somebody would say, oh, there's
a maybe a crop circle or a haunted place, or
there's a strange light that's been appearing, you know on
(23:42):
don Over on Sandwich or whatever whatever British village. I'm
just making up names.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
I want to go there.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I want to go to Donover on Sandwich. And so
he would travel to the place, he would interview people,
he would verify the precise time of the report, the
precise location, and he would check those facts against something
that he called the usual suspects.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
A true investigator and that's what he is. I mean,
he's a paranormal investigator.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Have we heard about what his credentials are? No?
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Would you like to talk about this?
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
What a journalist?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Right, that's a good I think that's a good start too,
as far as just being able to kind of be
a detective and you know, follow the leads and follow
the clues. I think a journalist would be a great
way to study this kind of stuff if you so chose.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
What about a podcaster?
Speaker 6 (24:33):
Well, there you go, hey, dream big, right? Got so?
Speaker 1 (24:38):
He also he says that he started from a baseline
of zero when he was assigned this UFO desk, and
it was not based on any prior knowledge or personal
interest on his part. So he was a little maybe
less I don't want to say less enthusiastic, because he's
(24:58):
definitely still professional. But he Our point is he wasn't
going home at night looking at the truth as out there.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
A poster because they weren't out yet, because they.
Speaker 6 (25:08):
Weren't out yet.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yes, okay, fair play, he got me. I was trying
to slide that one by you. But don't you have
one of those posters? Yeah, it's so awesome. We should
get more around the office. Okay, how many is too many?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Seventeen?
Speaker 6 (25:23):
Okay, great, so we'll stick to sixty.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So he Yeah, he's a journalist. He's objectively digging into things,
and if you are an investigative journalist, you still apply
the same methods to any investigation. So he's doing the
same sort of leg work that a good reporter would do,
and he found that there were a lot of simple
(25:48):
explanations for what people were reporting.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Yeah, almost ninety five percent of the cases that he
was presented with, right, And it's always something like what
a weather balloon and aircraft flight. The things you hear
about swamp gas, maybe, but probably not very often.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
I still, you know, I have a hard time saying
swamp gas when it comes up all the time on
our show. But something about those the A and swamp
and the A and gas make it really difficult for
me not to say it in a weird accident.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Like swamp gas. Yeah, was there another one swamp gas? Oh?
Speaker 3 (26:23):
There you go?
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Swamp gas? You ever did?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
We had a guy that came to our school when
I was a kid named Okie Finoki Joe. You'd always
talk about being swamp wise. Swamp would be swamp wise.
You know, I'm not quite sure what he meant.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
I took a tour with Okino Joe. Yeah, I was
a kid. Hey, guy down in an old oak from
swamp Were you swamp wise? We did a swamp tour?
Would you get a snake bit I did not then
you were swamp wise.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
This is a real thing. Yeah, yeah, I think it was.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
That's funny.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
Yeah, it was a nice and Augusta George. I think
he just like made the rounds. You know, I don't
think I ever met.
Speaker 6 (26:53):
I haven't had the privilege.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
I really missed out.
Speaker 6 (26:56):
Is there more than one oak.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
For Joe as possible?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Is there a lineage like how there's more than one McGruff?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
There must be? There must be, But I mean with
around the same time. I bet it was. I bet
it's the same one.
Speaker 6 (27:07):
Swamp gas O.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Well, instead of swamp gash, just say naturally occurring bioluminescence.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
All right, I think we both know. I'm going to
stick with saying swamp gas in a bad accent.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
Swamp Oh say it like that. It sounds like you
got a touch of the swamp cat. There we go.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Is that our new euphemism for really bad farts and
terrible flatialism?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Flatialism and this has been our childish aside for today's episode.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
So important, but yeah, yes, thank you forgetting us back
on track. Yeah. So those things that like you were saying, Matt,
that would be the usual suspects, lights, weather, balloons, swamp gas.
So this is weird though, because it means that five
percent of these cases could not be explained.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Yeah, and then his real job, why he was employed there,
is to take that five percent and then go nothing
to see here?
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, isn't that weird? His job was not to say, hey,
look at these inexplicable things. His job was to downplay
the importance of that to the public. Keep calm, carry on,
God save the Queen, et cetera, et cetera, and the.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
But not only to the media and the public, to
the lawmakers themselves.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
To Parliament, don't worry about this.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
To what end though?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
You know, it depends on where you're coming from. So
if you believe that the government is actively suppressing knowledge
of something, then it's his job to keep people sort
of blissfully ignorant, right, But like Will Smith and Tommy
Lee Jones and the Men in Black. But if it's
(28:54):
if we're looking at it from a more skeptical standpoint,
people would say it's his job to stop people from
becoming alarmed unnecessarily. So he's trying to quell panic.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
I see, I see.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
And he's also a first level gatekeeper for whatever other
governmental organization is going to actually look into that five percent,
So he, in my mind, he doesn't even have to
fully look into that five percent. I mean, he's doing
all the investigation, he's talking to witnesses, he's doing all this.
But if you get way down into it and truly
trying to figure out what it is.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
It's worth passing on to someone that can actually do
something about.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
That's that's in my mind what Nick Pope's like, the
true reason that he's doing this.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
That seems spot on to me.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
That makes sense.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Otherwise, why bother.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Fielding all these phone calls from these wackadoos that think
they've seen, you know, a spaceman.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Which I think I think the four of us would
be very good.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
At that job. Oh absolutely.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
And when I say wackados, I'm saying I'm sure many
of them are legitimate sightings or legitimate things and concerns,
what have you.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
But I'm talking about that percentage of people that are
just talking about swamp gas, you like, out in the swamp.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
I got a message from my cat, the Greenman at
the end of the world.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Right seah exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
You know there's gonna be some of that, and you
gotta give props to this guy because he he took
it to the to the max. My friends, he felt
that it was his personal duty to like look into
everything regarding the history of UFO sightings from you know,
everything from the you know, like the more of the
folkloric or you know, pop culture kind of versions of
(30:26):
stories to these kind of really over the top conspiracies.
And he had just an encyclopedic knowledge of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, it's a sponge.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Does sound like it would have been a fun job.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, and he as we said, his work with the
Ministry to Defense at the UFO Desk ended in nineteen
ninety four. He continued working for a while with the Ministry.
He moved to the US in twenty twelve and retired
from that line of work to become a full time
(30:57):
UFO expert, what people would call a noted ufologist, but
you see, he doesn't care for the term. He calls
himself a UFO investigator, not a ufologist. And he's a
little bit anomalist in his field. Right now, because we've
talked with people who are fairly prominent, you know, and
(31:18):
considered experts in the field of UFO studies. We've talked
to them on this show, and he to some people
stands out or is controversial because he came to this
through a professional aspect, whereas again, a lot of people
were who became UFO panelists or commentators. They were inspired
(31:40):
by their own UFO sighting, or they were drawn to
the topic due to a personal interest, and he has
neither of those. And he Pope himself, notes that some
members of the community do not trust him. They think
he may still be employed by the government or some
organization to function as an agent of disinformation.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
He's the Richard C.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Dody of the UK, the Richard C. Dody of the UK.
That's it remind us of Richards.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Richard Doty is the guy, the mirage man, the guy
who was sent out there to purposefully feed disinformation to
people who consider themselves ufologists.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
And that's a real thing, folks. Yep, that actually did happen.
So this is not entirely unfounded paranoia and paranoia runs
high in this community, and it's not an unusual accusation.
You know, it also makes sense because by his own admission,
his professional task was less to publicize reports and more
(32:40):
to downplay their importance. And you know, it depends on
where you fall. If we're being completely fair, you could
say that he is either suppressing the truth or you
could say that he is preventing public hysteria. So it
really depends on what what motivates you would ascribe to him.
(33:01):
We're we're not ascribing motivations to him, or he's he
seems on the up and up. He seems like he
was just at least at that time, doing what he
was supposed to do as an employee.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yeah. You know, he makes a really really good point
in some of the writing he's done about these concepts
of taking an online course to train yourself to be
a ufologist.
Speaker 6 (33:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah, because he makes a fantastic point that if you
are that interested in something and you're already perhaps creating
images in your mind of what the potentials could be
for the things you're seeing or studying, you may already
have drink, like, had too much of the kool aid yourself,
and you're gonna see things that aren't really there because
(33:43):
you're gonna have confirmation biases, bias problems, and all kinds
of other issues in that regard. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
And that that does make sense also, that can go
both ways, right, right, So someone can say, I mean
the most. Some of the most irritating, irritating mistakes and
critical thinking come from people who consider themselves skeptics and
think that being a skeptic automatically means extraordinary things cannot exist.
Speaker 6 (34:13):
Just shoot it down, right, right, It's it's weird.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
It's difficult to be objective and people people constantly think
that objectivity is in the eye of the beholder. Objectivity
is the process by which someone comes to agree with
what I believe. Right, Yeah, that's the mistake we make.
But Pope is out there, as you said, Matt, he
(34:38):
is an author. You can find his books online, you
can see interviews with him, and he is one of
many ufologists. There's one important point though about about Pope
and ufologists in general, that our complaint department made while
he was getting coffee and we're getting ready to record
(34:58):
talking about the strickmeister. Yes, so you can play the department.
Jonathan thought Strickland at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
The quiz the Quiztor.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
That's the that's sort of an alter ego.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Okay, but yeah, yeah, we still call on Jonathan Strickland
the quizt.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
It's very confusing.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
It's very strange.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
You should have him on this show.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, when are you going to come on in Ridiculous History?
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Matt?
Speaker 1 (35:18):
When when do you want to go on the show.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
That's not up to me, Guys, what do you want
to talk about? Is it?
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Nick?
Speaker 6 (35:23):
Pope?
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Do we have to check with Nick?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
I'm here all right?
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Well, alright, well, well we'll tap you.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
We'll tap you for that in the very near future,
because we're getting people requesting it pretty heavily at this point.
Speaker 6 (35:37):
Okay, and we have to we have to.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Do it before you're on some more adventures.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, as long as you make uh, you let me
appear as the what was it, the the Southern Genie
and the shine Bottle or whatever you.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Will you do it in your Milt Jewlip voice.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah, that's I think everything is predicated on that.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Okay, that's all right.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
So what exactly what great point did our uh did
our complaint department bring up? We'll tell you after a
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Oh, faded breath, let's do this.
Speaker 6 (36:17):
All right, all right?
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
They don't want you to know. You pay for the
whole seat, but you only need the edge, I'd say,
Scott Benjamin line. So what Jonathan pointed out, and he
is one of the more of our colleagues and cohort,
he falls more on the skeptical side pretty clearly, and
he said that he believes there's a difference between professional
(36:42):
and credible, and we often conflate the two. So a
professional uthologist doesn't necessarily have to be a credible ufologist.
They're just someone who is paid to investigate these things. Okay,
And I thought I thought that was a point that
we had to mention at least once in this show.
Now we're not We're not calling in to question anybody's
(37:06):
credibility at this point, but we are saying that just
because someone is paid to do something does not mean
they are automatically the.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
Best at it. Right.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yeah, With that being said, we would like to empower you.
If you are listening now and you say, guys, thanks
for giving me the lay of the land. I wanna
do this UFO stuff. I want to be a ufologist.
I don't have time to mess around with the online studies.
(37:37):
I've read some books, but I think the best way
to learn about UFOs is on the job experience. Just
like Nick Pope, Well, we have some leads for you.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
The first one is are you a member of move On,
the mutual UFO network already? If you are, you're probably
paying around sixty dollars a year for membership there. And
what you can do is, once you become a member,
you can talk to your state director, so you can
send an email out to the person that's the director
(38:11):
of MoveOn near you. You get a copy of this
MoveOn Field Investigator's Manual. You study the manual. It's pretty big.
Let's see. You can order one here. Where is it?
Where I'm try I'm looking for it online? Here we go,
Here we go. Hard copy Field Investigator's Manual only cost
you one hundred and five dollars US. So far we're
(38:35):
at about one hundred and seventy dollars, which is more. Well, no,
it's less than that first course.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
We were talking about one hundred and twenty seven pounds.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Yeah, yeah, let's see. Oh no, the other one was
like what one four hundred dollars, oh, something like that.
So depending on where you land in there, then once
you've done that and you've studied your manual really hard,
you can complete the Volunteer in Field Investigator Orientation program
on the Moufon University and then ooh another thing. Another
(39:11):
opportunity you can have here is to mentor with a
licensed MoveOn field investigator, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Does that cost extra?
Speaker 3 (39:18):
I don't know, but all you have to do is
contact your state director and coordinate with somebody. But you
can just do a write along I guess.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I think they have meetups where you can kind of
just go check out the lay of the land and
have a little meet and greet.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Yes, I'd be into.
Speaker 6 (39:31):
That, Yeah, I would. I would love for us.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
To go there.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Is there a chapter here in Atlanta?
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Yes, really, I don't know. I honestly don't know, guys,
but we can look it up.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
I'm assuming there has to be something, at least regional.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
There's a Georgia meetup. Dot com says there's a moofon
Georgia meetup that's happening on August fourth.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh, no way, that's four days before my birthday twenty eighteen.
My mind exploding.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Where it is is? Oh, it's in Tucker right off
La Vista, right street.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
That's totally in our neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Right off seventy.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Oh, we gotta go right off to eighty yep, that's ay.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Let me check with Paul. Paul, do you want to
go with us?
Speaker 3 (40:12):
It's a Saturday, August fourth.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Paul nodded and.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Smile and a nod. Yeah, all right, the double whammy
from Paul.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Well, if we've got Deccans in then we have to
we have to see if we can make it to
this thing.
Speaker 6 (40:26):
It would be a great experience. So there we go.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
You can get firsthand experience even with a mentor investigating
reports of UFOs under the auspice of the Mutual UFO
Network or mof on. And again it is not free.
It is a rather significant investment.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
It is.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
But let's say you're not in the US, well, you
are still in luck. The British UFO Research Organization or
you like this, No Bufora offers a similar program BOOFO.
And we'd like to hear about other countries programs, because
I imagine there are other European communities or institutions that
(41:09):
have stuff like this. There's probably some stuff like this
in Canada as well as in parts of South America,
Central America, maybe some parts of Africa as well. We
want to know, we want to know what's going on
in your neck of the Global Woods. These licenses, by
the way, are self determined by these groups. Yes, so
(41:32):
it's not like, for instance, how you would get a
pilot's license that allows you to fly in different countries.
You know what I mean. It's up to that. It's
organization by organization.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Last thing to say about that, Move on, meetup. Sorry,
it's free to the public.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Oh nice, I'm.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Gonna let's blow this thing up. See how many people
we can get there. Do you do you want to
do that or do you just want to let it
If people are interested, they'll find it. And who knows
when this episode will actually come out?
Speaker 1 (42:04):
That's true, We need to put it out before August four, Yeah,
we do, all right, okay, yeah, let's blow it up.
Speaker 6 (42:09):
Matt. What's what are the deats?
Speaker 3 (42:11):
It's at the uh let's see co F. E. Er
Kofer Library. Oh, there's an address. You want to put
this address.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
In put it out in the world.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Man, It's at fifty two thirty four La Vista Road
in Tucker, Georgia.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
The Tucker read H. Kofer Library. There it is, all right, Yeah,
let's let's do it. Let's go all right, it's down
it's down the street.
Speaker 6 (42:39):
From us.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
I think I've actually been to this library, you know,
I think I have to not during a move on.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Don't want to give away how close in proximity I
am to that area.
Speaker 6 (42:48):
But you've been there, you're familiarly.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, this is cool.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
We're actually this spontaneously is happening, folks. We have organically
decided that we're going to take a field trip.
Speaker 6 (43:01):
And if you are in the area, we would love to.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
See you there, and if not, you can experience it
vicariously through us, because I'm sure we'll report back unless
we totally flake on this. But we've codified it in
podcast Stone, so we have to.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
We have to follow through.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Now it's basically written in our own blood disagreement.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
This is awesome.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
So so we are going to get We're going to
learn about move on firsthand. We're going to hear from
people who are active in these investigations and hear about
their journeys. There are also, as several of our listeners
already know, numerous groups and organizations studying various specific aspects
(43:42):
of unidentified aerial phenomenon, and you can join these groups
in person or online. They provide literature and other resources
that could be great of great value to you if
you're a buddying ufologists. It's also no secret that there's
a lot of misleading info out there in this field,
and so the burden of differentiating between legitimate research and
pure entertainment is going to fall squarely on the shoulders
(44:06):
of the individuals or groups researching this stuff, you know
what I mean. It's the like you can read a
book about algebra and pretty much trust that you don't
have to double check a lot of the text.
Speaker 6 (44:18):
It's not the case here. You know.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Nowadays, many academic studies of UFO phenomenon can be classified
as primarily sociological or anthropological studies, not of the sightings themselves,
but of the psychology of the witnesses. This is a
trend We've noticed a lot, and it happens in other
categories of things that would be called fringe research or
conspiracy theories. It's an immensely valuable undertaking. I'm not trying
(44:46):
to ding it for that, but we can't conflate it
with studies of sightings or reports themselves. It's a shift
in the narrative, you know what I mean. And it's
kind of so like one example, tell me what you
think about this. I don't know if this matches one
to one, but I would say writing or studying solely
(45:06):
the psychological or sociological trends of someone or some group
of people who report seeing UFOs, it's a lot like
how it's as if you're writing about how people feel
about a song or it's cultural impact and saying it's
the same thing as writing about the structure of the song.
Speaker 6 (45:24):
It's not interesting. Yeah, No, I like that.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
That's kind of what I was saying at the top
of the show too. How And you also said when
you talk about the ufology as a field, you presuppose
the discovery of actual UFOs, which turns it into something
else at that point, doesn't it. It's more like ifology,
you know. So there's a lot of a leap of
faith kind of activity going on with this whole field
(45:50):
of study. But I like the more sociological version of it.
That interests me more than trying to get the credentials
to be a UFO hunter. I think just with a
little imagination and go getterness and that journalistic spirit we
talked about with our buddy Pope. I think he kind
of armed and dangerous to go after the stuff yourself,
(46:10):
if it really intrigues you.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
You know, I.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
Would say, speaking of Pope some on his website right now,
if you go check it out. I don't remember the
r L, but just search Nick Pope and it's right
up there with a wiki. And he discusses how he's
taken after all this time, taking more of a big
picture view of a lot of this stuff, and he
that's exactly what he's looking at now, the sociological meaning
of even even conspiracy theories, Like he says that on
(46:35):
his web page. Why why do we as a culture
tend to believe in conspiracy theories?
Speaker 2 (46:41):
That's one of my favorite parts about our show. Yeah,
is that very discussion.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Yeah, and that's what he wants to study now, and
he thinks there should be bigger funded studies on that.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
And those those things are on the way. I would say,
we had you know, we've had people call us off
air to do interviews about this kind of thing, you.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Know, and you've been doing some lately.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
We I think we're gonna end up doing more, To
be honest with you, I don't know, I don't know
where it's gonna go for us.
Speaker 6 (47:10):
I hope that we I don't.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
The Zoo Crew one was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Uh yeah, we're we might be back on there too.
I'm trying to drag you guys on there.
Speaker 4 (47:20):
I want to do a morning Zoos show.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
It's it's a thing.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
Can I hit the air the air horn button?
Speaker 1 (47:25):
No, they'll do they're in charge of the sound of time.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
They're actually pretty clear about it too.
Speaker 4 (47:31):
This was a thing.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Yeah oh man, So yeah, so you know, we love
that stuff. Any way, we can communicate the message and
we have. We have a great time in those things. Because,
to steal the old line from Fox News, now, more
than ever, a lot of things that we're considered implausible
are becoming increasingly provable and plausible.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yep, right, because we jumped timelines and now we're in
an alternate universe.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
We're in a we have become our own breakaway society.
Speaker 6 (48:00):
Is that what they did?
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Bring it back?
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Right?
Speaker 4 (48:03):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (48:03):
So, like any serious academic, a true UFO researcher is
not setting out with a predetermined conclusion. Obviously, this means
a good investigator is not sitting down and saying, how
can I prove this craft was made by a previously
unacknowledged extraterrestrial civilization. But just as importantly, it also means
(48:23):
that person is not sitting down and saying, how can
I disprove that this is unusual? You know what I
mean what they're doing is they're doing exactly what Nick
Pope did, which is getting all the data, sponging up everything,
and then following it to a provable conclusion. So it's
no surprise that most UFO investigators have found numerous mundane
(48:45):
explanations for sightings. And that's a great thing. I mean,
I know it sounds like a party pooper thing to say,
but it's it's fantastic because the stuff that we can
prove gives us more information about the inexplicable, real mysterious
stuff that five percent, you know. I mean, even Project
Blue Book couldn't explain everything. Yeah, and they threw a
(49:07):
ton of money at it.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
I gotta say, guys, there have been humans that have
been fascinated by looking up in the sky and seeing
strange things for.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
A long time.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Now, let's say a long time. We still haven't been
able to prove anything anywhere. Because if we have, this
discussion wouldn't even be happening right now. We'd be talking
about the mid Chlorians and the from whatever far away galaxy,
the species that we uncovered, or the ship that landed
(49:40):
that one time that wasn't at Roswell, or wasn't the
Rendelstrom Forest incident.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
There was a fantastic piece on This American Life that
I heard the other day where Ira Glass was interviewing
one of his producers whose name now escapes me, but
he has a degree in astrophysics and that was his
first kind of career and then he became a producer
and a journalist for This American Life. And he was
talking about how he couldn't help but be bummed out
(50:06):
existentially at the idea that maybe there is no other life.
And he was trying to explain to Ira Glass that
from his scientific background, through his filter, through his understanding
of you know, astrophysics, how this.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
Was a really big deal to him, and at Ira
Glass kind of couldn't understand.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
He thought it was sort of a silly thing to
be quote unquote bummed out about.
Speaker 4 (50:26):
So what is that called the Fermi paradox?
Speaker 2 (50:29):
The idea that if it was there, somebody would have
found something by now, you know. And then there's also
a number that is generated I believe that is the
Drake equation, that is the likelihood of extraterrestrials that is existing.
And they calculated it on the show, and it was
something like point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
nine to one.
Speaker 4 (50:48):
So basically zero.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
But it was just interesting that life exists or that
we will encounter that life.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
I can't quite remember the nature of the equation, but
that was where it stands right now. Apparently based on
the scientific research and material that's out there, that number changes,
but apparently it's very very close to zero right now.
Speaker 3 (51:08):
I would take a bummer. I would take issue with
those people because I think that next to zero number
is probably that Earth would be visited or that Earth
will visit some other civilization.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
Right it's the meeting.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
Yeah yeah, oh oh, so that life exists, I'm pretty
sure that's almost a certainty. Oh.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
That came up too in the in the piece where
it was like would you be cool if it was
just like maybe an amoeba, Like does it have to
be a sentient creature that you can communicate with?
Speaker 4 (51:34):
Like where do you draw the line?
Speaker 2 (51:35):
And this like existential bummer kind of thing, right, Right,
So that's a big question here.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
Too, and it's interesting.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
It's all a timescale problem, buddy.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, I mean, it's certain that there is some form
of life somewhere out in the universe, just because the
room is too big for there not to be. But
because the room is so big, this room being the universe,
there's virtually no chance that we will ever ever run
into love. I love the idea of humanity stumbling upon
(52:06):
some ancient relic and it's very sad and bittersweet, but
it's still really important. Like, you know, what if someone
finally lands on Mars and then they find like the
equivalent of alien graffiti, Zorlac was.
Speaker 6 (52:20):
Here or whatever.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
That's first off, that's the most important thing that ever
happened automatically in human history. And secondly, it's one of
the loneliest things. Yeah, what happened to Zorlac?
Speaker 4 (52:32):
Dude?
Speaker 3 (52:34):
He made it to Earth with that one ship full
of DNA and then seated the whole planet with it.
You've seen Alien Covenant or whatever.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
It was Prometheus. So if in conclusion for today's episode,
thanks for coming along with us on this ride. If
you want to become a ufologist, one of your first
and most significant steps is going to be determining an
area of focus. Want to concentrate on a specific event
like that aerial school sighting, or do you want to
(53:08):
focus on a typer genre of events. Do you prefer
to focus on a related trend, such as the psychology
of witnesses, even though this would not in itself be
UFO research so much as sociological research. And then after
determining that you want to read widely, we found a
great starting point for anybody who's looking for a good
(53:29):
bibliography on serious UFO research.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
It's called UFO Literature for the Serious Uifologist. It's by
George M. Eberhardt, and it lists all kinds of different
books and articles on this particular subject and will help
you get started. You can also there are a couple
places online that you can find, but this is a
real we would recommend this place.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
Yeah, it was. I think it's I want to say
it's from nineteen ninety eight, which will which means it's
going to be a little bit data, but it has
some solid gold classic hits.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Yeah. Basically a bibliography that's going to get you on
your feet.
Speaker 4 (54:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
And you also want to join organizations and groups with
similar focus areas like the meet up Matt just found
for us on air.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
Move on only seventy dollars a year.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Yeah, attend conferences, correspond with fellow researchers, become a part
of the community. And while the online courses we found
do still exist, they're not the only operations around. For example,
and this is more alien life than UFO related, But
for example, Harvard has a free online course called Super
Earth's and Life that combines multiple disciplines to examine the
(54:41):
possibility of life on other planets. But let's end on
this note. We would like to hear from you. Do
you consider yourself a ufologist? What sort of studies have
you found to be helpful? What are some tips or
tricks you might have for your fellow listeners who are
considering pursuing this research.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
That's really great. Please please write in let us know,
send us And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK.
(55:20):
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 5 (55:24):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (55:28):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Who doesn't love UFOs. Some people make an entire career
off studying some or multiple facets of strange things in
the sky.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
We call them ufologist, mofonbaby, MoveOn dot org.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Yeah, it's a mutual network of enthusiasts.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It's surprising because so many experts in other scientific disciplines
start applying their knowledge towards UFOs, like an astrophysicist, someone
who specializes in chemistry or material science. But our question
that we ask in this classic episode is how do
you become a credentialed ufologist? Is there a school? Is
(00:45):
there an academy? Is there you know, a course at
Harvard or Stanford or der or something.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Well, it's funny because this conversation is definitely way way
before a lot of the more kind of mass acceptance
that this could well be a potential reality. So you know,
I mean, for for many years, this has always been
looked at as kind of a fringe pursuit. And I'm
interested to see now where things go if it does
become a little bit more accepted or there becomes more
(01:14):
of like an official field of study for this, because
there is and there isn't in this episode, but it's
it's largely you know, kind of sneezed at by the
scientific community.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
It was right after Tom Tom DeLong made all the
announcements and everything right not right after, but this is
like a little bit after that. So I bet the
interest was super high at this time. I don't really
imagine it's skyrocketing.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Where it is now.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And it just again being approached with a lot less
kind of funny faces being made.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And we had, you know, I think we all shared
a mutual sadness about the breakup of Blink one eight two.
They're back. They're back, So the future isn't always terrible.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, Now, let's find out how to be a genuine ufologist.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, Matt,
You're back. I'm here.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
It's me and Noll.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Hey, they call me Ben. We are joined, of course,
with our super producer Paul Decatt, and we hope you
join us in welcoming back. Matt Frederick, you are here.
You are you, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This episode is meant to answer
a question that we stumbled upon in our earlier conversations
(02:56):
with John Goforth. Remember that, Matt, we talked with go
Forth about Tom DeLong and disclosure.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, yeah, and I think it did come up. How
do you become an expert?
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Like?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
What are the means to be an expert in these things?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I was super bummed to have missed that one. So
I am going to be learning some new stuff today.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Excellent.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Hey, who knows we might end the show by becoming
ufologist ourselves. This question was posed to us by one
of our co workers, Jason Koch, So shout out to you, Jason,
and thanks for the recommendation.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
You think work will pay for it.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
That's that's up to debate. Hey, do us a favor
if you want to help us become credited ufologists.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Go to gofund me dot com slash stdwy t K.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I was gonna say right to our bosses, you know
what do both?
Speaker 6 (03:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
They do both.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
So that's that's today's question. How exactly does someone become
a ufologist? We hear about ufologists often. You'll see them
in things like ancient aliens on History Channel.
Speaker 6 (03:58):
You'll see them quoted in.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Different television programs like The Old Unsolved Mysteries and so on.
But to explore how somebody goes from just being an
average a civilian in the world of UFOs to becoming
a noted expert of some sort or another, we have
to first figure out what a ufologist is. So here
(04:23):
are the facts. The term ufologist comes from. Obviously UFO
that dates back to nineteen fifty three, when it was
an abbreviation of the earlier term unidentified flying object that
came around nineteen fifty basic stuff, And they do what
it says on the tin. They study reports of unidentified
(04:44):
aerial phenomenon or flying objects. But there's a weird tricky
thing here when you think about it, because once you
identify the thing, are you really still a ufologist, or
you know, if it's a weather pattern, have you accidentally
become a meteorist, If it's a bird, have you become
an ornithologist.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
I'm just fascinated by the fact that these credentials come
in at ten with instructions.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
I think one thing we're going to notice here is
that historically, when you maybe are considered a ufologists, you
probably have a degree in some related field, yes, like
what like a meteorologist or an other ologist, well, yeah, orics. Yeah,
physics is a really big one. If you're let's see
(05:26):
you and if you're an engineer and you make airplanes
or something to that effect.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
An aerospace engineer, yeah, that could come in handy. Yeah,
and we'll find that the interdisciplinary nature of this is
both a blessing and the curse for the professional ufologist
out there. About how many are there, funny you should ask,
there are no accurate figures on that number. The one
thing we found that had an indication at least of
(05:53):
the education level. Going to your point, Matt, about their degrees.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
In nineteen seventy six, the Center for UFO Studies conducted
a voluntary poll amid its donors, and they found that
of the one hundred and sixty one people who responded,
one fifth of them had PhD degrees and seventy five
percent had earned at least a bachelor's degree or higher.
The most common degrees were in physics and engineering. And
(06:20):
their jobs, as it's reported in this paper, are you
pretty white collar professional things. Doctors, lawyers, engineers of course,
and professors, which is strange because they were dedicating their
free time to this study of unidentified phenomenon or objects,
(06:40):
and in their day jobs, these people are considered credible scientists.
But ufology today is still widely considered a pseudoscience.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
So you can't go to a reputable university and get
a degree in ufology.
Speaker 6 (06:56):
Not for the most parts, got it.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And in that survey, these are just people who are interested, right,
These are people who donated to a thing.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, they donate to a thing. They go to the conferences,
the networks.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Cool, so they have an active interest in it. They're
in one of those outside professions.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
They're probably not out protesting in front of the White
House in the seventies for disclosure. But yeah, no traditional
colleges or universities offer specific degree programs in what we
would call ufology. However, there are some courses available online.
For instance, the International Metaphysical University offers six courses in
(07:35):
ufology studies, including Introduction to Ethology. It's taught by an
historian named Richard Dolan, and the online courses have twelve
lectures each that cover different different ideas. I mean, we
have the names of them that I think indicate a
little bit of bias.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, things like what are UFOs? It's a good place
to start of ancient visitation.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Not as good me it just it feels a little
like they're stacking the deck.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I say, I got you, and then the early cover up.
Does the Great Courses offer this?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Hey, I've missed the Great Courses. Those things were fantastic.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, man, we can still get them, right, Great Courses
dot COM's last conspiracy maybe is still active.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Who knows?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
There are also just so you know, other electure titles
like weird science, propulsion, energy, space time and Consciousness.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Is that consciousness separate from space time or space time
and conscious I.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Think it's all of it wrapped up together.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
More bang for your buck?
Speaker 6 (08:34):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Digging deeper? The Breakaway Civilization? What is that?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Would that be? Would that be a hypothetical civilization that
breaks away from Earth and lives in space?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
I don't know. You gotta take the course.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Got to take the course. Yeah, and this is the
this is extant. You can go and take the course. Now,
you can enroll and you can see some tech stimonies
from people who've taken the course, and you can read
about the grading system all you can get all the
details all you have to do is visit intermetu dot
(09:12):
com I N T E R M e t U
dot com. This is not free, No, we should point
that out. You know what the Breakaway civilization is, it's
pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
It's this idea of this alternate reality that exists only
in like five hundred million pages of classified documents. So
it's sort of this like meta reality that supposedly the
information exists to understand, but we don't have.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Access to it.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Oh okay, And when I say reality, I just mean
you know, cover ups and the stuff that is known
but not known to us.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
So it's an alternate reality physically earthly, right, just like
the you know, the behind the curtain kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
I've never heard that term before.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
I like, let's do an episode on that like it.
We may have to invest, however, if we want to
use this course as the basis for our future episode
on Breakaways, because the courses cost around two hundred to
four hundred dollars each, and this can be you can see.
Speaker 6 (10:11):
How this could become expensive.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
And let's say you decide to become a ufologist, but
you say, you know what, I don't want to rely
on self education a lot of people who describe themselves
as ufologists. You're doing it based on research after an
event that they have experienced firsthand, or something they've seen,
something that touched them in their personal lives. So they're
(10:36):
self directing. And there's nothing wrong with self directed research.
Some of the most important scientists and philosophers in human
history we're just on their own, reading books they thought
were interesting, and writing other things as well. But let's
say you don't feel completely comfortable doing self education. You
(10:57):
sign up for something like this program at International Metaphysical University,
You finish that twelve lecture course and boom, you're out
of school. You have to get a job, right, So
what do you do for a living with this with
this degree?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Basically, you try and give talks wherever you can give talks,
or you get in contact with people who have footage
of something. You study that footage, or you watch the
sky and you wait and then hopefully write books about it.
Those are my that's my understanding. Is there anything else?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I You know, it's funny you say this because it
reminds me of some of my friends who were who
became sociologists. They get their PhDs in sociology, and so
what do you do with that? And they said, teach
sociology classes. Oh okay, it's so maybe a lot of
people who become ufologists through this path begin teaching or
(11:56):
transmitting their own knowledge and experience.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah, but I can go to the International Metaphysical thing
and pay four hundred dollars and get my degree. Why
would I need to learn from you, u afologist guy
who just got your degree.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Maybe they are adding more to that base education. Gocha,
I don't know. It's a good question, right. The university
website notes that ufologists can seek work as lecturers, writers,
movie consultants, which sounds pretty cool, or political activists similar
to Tom DeLong and Luis Elisondo working toward disclosure or
(12:34):
working in the political and government arena on the area
of UFOs in preparation for contact or landings.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
All right, there we go.
Speaker 6 (12:44):
There are a couple of other things they say you
can do as well.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
So prepare for contact. I like that a lot you
could work, I guess. Yeah. This does note that you
can work as a professional hypnotist and or what does
this say? A life co coach for people who claim
to have had abduction experiences.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Right, yeah, and the university, for their part, makes no
claims about the employment chances after completing the course. You
know how some universities or colleges for certain courses will
say ninety percent of our graduates are placed in a
job within the first six months after graduation.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And you know, to be fair, this is an audio course.
You're listening to lectures by Richard Dolan. That's what you're doing.
You're listening to a podcast essentially by Richard Dolan and
then taking notes and having discussion.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
So there's no like testing.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
It's all it's an all online course. I'm certain there
is test. Yeah, but in this case it's a prepared
lecture essentially like you would get out of college. I
guess there's just no.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
There's back and forth.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yet the course has let's see, the course has several
quizzes and then they have a mid term assignment and
a final exam.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Do you think you could find any of them that
to try to quiz ourselves, just to see if we
could do it cold?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I wonder if we could. We could probably dig into
it and see.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
I'd be interested.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Do Let's do a series of two or three episodes
where we just take this course live on the show.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
I bet they would probably take issue with that.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, surely that's illegal.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Well, let's just contact Richard Dolan and see if he'll
come in and talk with us. I mean, he's an author,
he's made he's written several books that you end up
reading or are asked to read or suggested in a syllabus.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Yeah. Well that's a great idea.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
Yeah, that is a great idea there.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
If you don't want to go that route for some reason,
there are two other online in universities we found that
offer similar courses. There's the IMHS Metaphysical Institute and the
Center for Excellence in the United Kingdom. They offer full
degree programs as well. And Matt, you've looked at some
(14:59):
of this.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Yeah, the Ufology diploma course from the Center of Excellence
only costs one hundred and twenty seven pounds. That's britty
sure for the whole course. Yeah, and you can you
can even finance the course. You put twenty nine pounds down,
then you pay sixteen thirty three for six months.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I mean, even if it's a scam, that's a pretty
affordable scam.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Yeah, yeah, you can go over. I mean they've got
some information about what you're gonna learn. But it's I
would say it's pretty limited as far as I mean.
It gives you kind of a course syllabus.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
It's like an introduction class, an introductory course rather, so
it talks a little bit about the history of the
search for UFOs, a little bit about the present day,
and then it seems to end on how addressing how
a student can get involved. But there there are some
(15:55):
things that will I'm sure drive the more skeptical of
us in the audience insane. Like in their rite up
they say, quote, the Ufology Diploma course provides insight into
the technologies they're likely used to propel UFOs and different
kinds of craft and their purposes. So they're not saying
(16:15):
we're trying to figure out what these are. They're claiming
that they have in fact identified the unidentified objects.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
There you go. Another thing that we should point out
for this is that this course is certified by the IAHT,
the International Alliance of Holistic Therapists. That's claimed on the website.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
There, and I wonder what they have to do with ufology.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Well, so it inherently has kind of a new age
bent to it.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
It would appear to be the case. Yeah, unless the
IAHT is more familiar with this sort of stuff, because
one would assume that most ufology questions are going to
be related to things like the nature of physics and
aviation and again meteorology. But perhaps there's more to the story.
(17:07):
So what do you do if you say, Okay, I've
seen that. I appreciate it, but I think I want
something more traditional. I want more formal education, like to
your point, NOL, I want to go to Rutgers or
to Yale or something. I learned this. It can be
difficult for a budding ufologists to find the right path
(17:27):
of study because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of this research.
Like if we go back to our earlier example, should
a ufologist first study engineering, or should they study physics,
Should they study meteorology or psychology, or folklore or sociology
or just all of them at once?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, right, I mean it is a bit of a
grab bag because there's certainly science involved in astronomy, involved
in the idea of studying space, but it's also wrapped
into a lot of pop culture ideas and a lot
of folkloric ideas or things that are not quite provable
so there's a lot of conceptual thought behind it as well.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
It's interesting.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Sure, making yourself aware of a lot of the folklore
surrounding the event of a UFO will give you an
idea as to what are these people maybe think they're
seeing in their heads when they're viewing some object in
the air. That's all I wanted to say.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
Yeah, and it's a dilemma.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You know, for many people UFU enthusiasts and skeptics light
this feels problematic. Some of the skeptics in the audience
now might think these are just wastes of money, or
even worse, a purposeful con job. As we've said, Matt
Nolan and I have not taken these courses and we
haven't yet seen material from them, so you can't really
(18:48):
comment too deeply on what they actually are. I think
that idea of taking a test is fascinating. But people
who actively research UFOs and perhaps feel that they have
a specific line on it, that they've found a previously
unexplained whether phenomenon, or they've proven there's extraterrestrial involvement, they
(19:09):
might feel this type of education is unnecessary or misdirected,
and they say, well, maybe we're better off studying just
orthodox meteorology, old school aerospace engineering. Will the time of
a professional ufologist be better spent in the field chasing
reports and gathering firsthand experience?
Speaker 4 (19:28):
And I mean anybody can do that.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
You could be a hobbyist ufologist in that respect of
just paying attention to the clues and writing things down
and submitting your reports. But it feels to me like
if you really wanted to be in a position to
really catch something like this, you would be studying one
of these other more traditional fields like astronomy, for example,
(19:51):
that would give you the skills needed to actually see
a UFO if it.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Were to be a thing. I don't know, it's interesting
to me.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
I think it's a great point. Oh and that's right.
We buried the lead a little bit. We should mention this.
It's true there are professional uithologists, and we'll explore their
stories after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
So while most mainstream media outlets tend to portray these
ufologists or people that study UFOs in generalize to crackpots
or or you know, misguided, there is some truth in
the idea that multiple places do actually employ professional ufologists.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
And we're not talking about what's that guy from ancient Aliens?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
His name Richard Dolan.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Richard Dolan not talking about him, he is, though, Slucos.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
What's that?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Yeah? Or there are so many that we've discussed in
the past, the Hand of the god s guy.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Eric von Denikin.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
We're talking about real you know, human people, not television
presenters say.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Those are real human pect I know, I.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Know, but I don't believe it until I see them
in the flesh. I think they could be just conjured.
Speaker 6 (21:11):
Okay, oh yeah, well we do know.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
The technology exists to completely impersonate them.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
So yeah, we're talking about people who get paid money
currency to spend time trying to determine the true nature
of these unknown aerial phenomena, or.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
At least at one time, we're paid by a government
even to do so.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, Nick Pope, are we talking about Nick Pope?
What's going on with this Nick Pope guy?
Speaker 3 (21:41):
He's the real molder, He's the one.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
He's the chosen one.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
He is a career civil server, or he was at
the time in the United Kingdom, and the Ministry of
Defense gave him a weird job in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 6 (21:59):
He works at a thing called the UFO Desk.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah pretty cool, yeah, man, And apparently it gets between
two hundred and three hundred reports a year of sightings
and his job is to follow up one on one interesting, right.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Yeah, I bet some of those calls are pretty wild.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
We should say he did or he was or just
in the past ten because this is uh nineteen ninety one, right,
m two years before the old X Files comes.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Out, which is like our favorite show.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
The best show, and I don't care who you are.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
That's that's true.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
All around, but was recently is May twenty ninth of
twenty eighteen, he put out a tweet talking about the
Pentagon's UFO program and how they also studied poltergeist activity
and goes back and mentions, when I ran the UK
government's UFO project, we were the focal point for all
the quote weird stuff, cropsrop circles, yeah, ghosts, you know,
(22:56):
weird stuff, wacky stuff. Both the US and the UK
programs were real life X files.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And he so what he would do from nineteen ninety
one to nineteen ninety four, which is great because that
means he was still doing this when the first season
of X Files came out.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, it makes you think he got on the phone
with somebody, maybe Chris Carter.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
That would be fantastic. I would We'd love to interview
all the people we're mentioning at this point too, So
let us know who you would like to hear from
in a subsequent episode. So his job was just that
he would get a report. Somebody would say, oh, there's
a maybe a crop circle or a haunted place, or
there's a strange light that's been appearing, you know on
(23:42):
don Over on Sandwich or whatever whatever British village. I'm
just making up names.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
I want to go there.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I want to go to Donover on Sandwich. And so
he would travel to the place, he would interview people,
he would verify the precise time of the report, the
precise location, and he would check those facts against something
that he called the usual suspects.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
A true investigator and that's what he is. I mean,
he's a paranormal investigator.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Have we heard about what his credentials are? No?
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Would you like to talk about this?
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
What a journalist?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Right, that's a good I think that's a good start too,
as far as just being able to kind of be
a detective and you know, follow the leads and follow
the clues. I think a journalist would be a great
way to study this kind of stuff if you so chose.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
What about a podcaster?
Speaker 6 (24:33):
Well, there you go, hey, dream big, right? Got so?
Speaker 1 (24:38):
He also he says that he started from a baseline
of zero when he was assigned this UFO desk, and
it was not based on any prior knowledge or personal
interest on his part. So he was a little maybe
less I don't want to say less enthusiastic, because he's
(24:58):
definitely still professional. But he Our point is he wasn't
going home at night looking at the truth as out there.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
A poster because they weren't out yet, because they.
Speaker 6 (25:08):
Weren't out yet.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yes, okay, fair play, he got me. I was trying
to slide that one by you. But don't you have
one of those posters? Yeah, it's so awesome. We should
get more around the office. Okay, how many is too many?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Seventeen?
Speaker 6 (25:23):
Okay, great, so we'll stick to sixty.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So he Yeah, he's a journalist. He's objectively digging into things,
and if you are an investigative journalist, you still apply
the same methods to any investigation. So he's doing the
same sort of leg work that a good reporter would do,
and he found that there were a lot of simple
(25:48):
explanations for what people were reporting.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Yeah, almost ninety five percent of the cases that he
was presented with, right, And it's always something like what
a weather balloon and aircraft flight. The things you hear
about swamp gas, maybe, but probably not very often.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
I still, you know, I have a hard time saying
swamp gas when it comes up all the time on
our show. But something about those the A and swamp
and the A and gas make it really difficult for
me not to say it in a weird accident.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Like swamp gas. Yeah, was there another one swamp gas? Oh?
Speaker 3 (26:23):
There you go?
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Swamp gas? You ever did?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
We had a guy that came to our school when
I was a kid named Okie Finoki Joe. You'd always
talk about being swamp wise. Swamp would be swamp wise.
You know, I'm not quite sure what he meant.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
I took a tour with Okino Joe. Yeah, I was
a kid. Hey, guy down in an old oak from
swamp Were you swamp wise? We did a swamp tour?
Would you get a snake bit I did not then
you were swamp wise.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
This is a real thing. Yeah, yeah, I think it was.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
That's funny.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
Yeah, it was a nice and Augusta George. I think
he just like made the rounds. You know, I don't
think I ever met.
Speaker 6 (26:53):
I haven't had the privilege.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
I really missed out.
Speaker 6 (26:56):
Is there more than one oak.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
For Joe as possible?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Is there a lineage like how there's more than one McGruff?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
There must be? There must be, But I mean with
around the same time. I bet it was. I bet
it's the same one.
Speaker 6 (27:07):
Swamp gas O.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Well, instead of swamp gash, just say naturally occurring bioluminescence.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
All right, I think we both know. I'm going to
stick with saying swamp gas in a bad accent.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
Swamp Oh say it like that. It sounds like you
got a touch of the swamp cat. There we go.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Is that our new euphemism for really bad farts and
terrible flatialism?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Flatialism and this has been our childish aside for today's episode.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
So important, but yeah, yes, thank you forgetting us back
on track. Yeah. So those things that like you were saying, Matt,
that would be the usual suspects, lights, weather, balloons, swamp gas.
So this is weird though, because it means that five
percent of these cases could not be explained.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Yeah, and then his real job, why he was employed there,
is to take that five percent and then go nothing
to see here?
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, isn't that weird? His job was not to say, hey,
look at these inexplicable things. His job was to downplay
the importance of that to the public. Keep calm, carry on,
God save the Queen, et cetera, et cetera, and the.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
But not only to the media and the public, to
the lawmakers themselves.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
To Parliament, don't worry about this.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
To what end though?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
You know, it depends on where you're coming from. So
if you believe that the government is actively suppressing knowledge
of something, then it's his job to keep people sort
of blissfully ignorant, right, But like Will Smith and Tommy
Lee Jones and the Men in Black. But if it's
(28:54):
if we're looking at it from a more skeptical standpoint,
people would say it's his job to stop people from
becoming alarmed unnecessarily. So he's trying to quell panic.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
I see, I see.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
And he's also a first level gatekeeper for whatever other
governmental organization is going to actually look into that five percent,
So he, in my mind, he doesn't even have to
fully look into that five percent. I mean, he's doing
all the investigation, he's talking to witnesses, he's doing all this.
But if you get way down into it and truly
trying to figure out what it is.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
It's worth passing on to someone that can actually do
something about.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
That's that's in my mind what Nick Pope's like, the
true reason that he's doing this.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
That seems spot on to me.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
That makes sense.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Otherwise, why bother.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Fielding all these phone calls from these wackadoos that think
they've seen, you know, a spaceman.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Which I think I think the four of us would
be very good.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
At that job. Oh absolutely.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
And when I say wackados, I'm saying I'm sure many
of them are legitimate sightings or legitimate things and concerns,
what have you.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
But I'm talking about that percentage of people that are
just talking about swamp gas, you like, out in the swamp.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
I got a message from my cat, the Greenman at
the end of the world.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Right seah exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
You know there's gonna be some of that, and you
gotta give props to this guy because he he took
it to the to the max. My friends, he felt
that it was his personal duty to like look into
everything regarding the history of UFO sightings from you know,
everything from the you know, like the more of the
folkloric or you know, pop culture kind of versions of
(30:26):
stories to these kind of really over the top conspiracies.
And he had just an encyclopedic knowledge of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, it's a sponge.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Does sound like it would have been a fun job.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, and he as we said, his work with the
Ministry to Defense at the UFO Desk ended in nineteen
ninety four. He continued working for a while with the Ministry.
He moved to the US in twenty twelve and retired
from that line of work to become a full time
(30:57):
UFO expert, what people would call a noted ufologist, but
you see, he doesn't care for the term. He calls
himself a UFO investigator, not a ufologist. And he's a
little bit anomalist in his field. Right now, because we've
talked with people who are fairly prominent, you know, and
(31:18):
considered experts in the field of UFO studies. We've talked
to them on this show, and he to some people
stands out or is controversial because he came to this
through a professional aspect, whereas again, a lot of people
were who became UFO panelists or commentators. They were inspired
(31:40):
by their own UFO sighting, or they were drawn to
the topic due to a personal interest, and he has
neither of those. And he Pope himself, notes that some
members of the community do not trust him. They think
he may still be employed by the government or some
organization to function as an agent of disinformation.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
He's the Richard C.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Dody of the UK, the Richard C. Dody of the UK.
That's it remind us of Richards.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Richard Doty is the guy, the mirage man, the guy
who was sent out there to purposefully feed disinformation to
people who consider themselves ufologists.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
And that's a real thing, folks. Yep, that actually did happen.
So this is not entirely unfounded paranoia and paranoia runs
high in this community, and it's not an unusual accusation.
You know, it also makes sense because by his own admission,
his professional task was less to publicize reports and more
(32:40):
to downplay their importance. And you know, it depends on
where you fall. If we're being completely fair, you could
say that he is either suppressing the truth or you
could say that he is preventing public hysteria. So it
really depends on what what motivates you would ascribe to him.
(33:01):
We're we're not ascribing motivations to him, or he's he
seems on the up and up. He seems like he
was just at least at that time, doing what he
was supposed to do as an employee.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yeah. You know, he makes a really really good point
in some of the writing he's done about these concepts
of taking an online course to train yourself to be
a ufologist.
Speaker 6 (33:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah, because he makes a fantastic point that if you
are that interested in something and you're already perhaps creating
images in your mind of what the potentials could be
for the things you're seeing or studying, you may already
have drink, like, had too much of the kool aid yourself,
and you're gonna see things that aren't really there because
(33:43):
you're gonna have confirmation biases, bias problems, and all kinds
of other issues in that regard. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
And that that does make sense also, that can go
both ways, right, right, So someone can say, I mean
the most. Some of the most irritating, irritating mistakes and
critical thinking come from people who consider themselves skeptics and
think that being a skeptic automatically means extraordinary things cannot exist.
Speaker 6 (34:13):
Just shoot it down, right, right, It's it's weird.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
It's difficult to be objective and people people constantly think
that objectivity is in the eye of the beholder. Objectivity
is the process by which someone comes to agree with
what I believe. Right, Yeah, that's the mistake we make.
But Pope is out there, as you said, Matt, he
(34:38):
is an author. You can find his books online, you
can see interviews with him, and he is one of
many ufologists. There's one important point though about about Pope
and ufologists in general, that our complaint department made while
he was getting coffee and we're getting ready to record
(34:58):
talking about the strickmeister. Yes, so you can play the department.
Jonathan thought Strickland at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
The quiz the Quiztor.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
That's the that's sort of an alter ego.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Okay, but yeah, yeah, we still call on Jonathan Strickland
the quizt.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
It's very confusing.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
It's very strange.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
You should have him on this show.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, when are you going to come on in Ridiculous History?
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Matt?
Speaker 1 (35:18):
When when do you want to go on the show.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
That's not up to me, Guys, what do you want
to talk about? Is it?
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Nick?
Speaker 6 (35:23):
Pope?
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Do we have to check with Nick?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
I'm here all right?
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Well, alright, well, well we'll tap you.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
We'll tap you for that in the very near future,
because we're getting people requesting it pretty heavily at this point.
Speaker 6 (35:37):
Okay, and we have to we have to.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Do it before you're on some more adventures.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, as long as you make uh, you let me
appear as the what was it, the the Southern Genie
and the shine Bottle or whatever you.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Will you do it in your Milt Jewlip voice.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah, that's I think everything is predicated on that.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Okay, that's all right.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
So what exactly what great point did our uh did
our complaint department bring up? We'll tell you after a
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Oh, faded breath, let's do this.
Speaker 6 (36:17):
All right, all right?
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
They don't want you to know. You pay for the
whole seat, but you only need the edge, I'd say,
Scott Benjamin line. So what Jonathan pointed out, and he
is one of the more of our colleagues and cohort,
he falls more on the skeptical side pretty clearly, and
he said that he believes there's a difference between professional
(36:42):
and credible, and we often conflate the two. So a
professional uthologist doesn't necessarily have to be a credible ufologist.
They're just someone who is paid to investigate these things. Okay,
And I thought I thought that was a point that
we had to mention at least once in this show.
Now we're not We're not calling in to question anybody's
(37:06):
credibility at this point, but we are saying that just
because someone is paid to do something does not mean
they are automatically the.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
Best at it. Right.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yeah, With that being said, we would like to empower you.
If you are listening now and you say, guys, thanks
for giving me the lay of the land. I wanna
do this UFO stuff. I want to be a ufologist.
I don't have time to mess around with the online studies.
(37:37):
I've read some books, but I think the best way
to learn about UFOs is on the job experience. Just
like Nick Pope, Well, we have some leads for you.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
The first one is are you a member of move On,
the mutual UFO network already? If you are, you're probably
paying around sixty dollars a year for membership there. And
what you can do is, once you become a member,
you can talk to your state director, so you can
send an email out to the person that's the director
(38:11):
of MoveOn near you. You get a copy of this
MoveOn Field Investigator's Manual. You study the manual. It's pretty big.
Let's see. You can order one here. Where is it?
Where I'm try I'm looking for it online? Here we go,
Here we go. Hard copy Field Investigator's Manual only cost
you one hundred and five dollars US. So far we're
(38:35):
at about one hundred and seventy dollars, which is more. Well, no,
it's less than that first course.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
We were talking about one hundred and twenty seven pounds.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Yeah, yeah, let's see. Oh no, the other one was
like what one four hundred dollars, oh, something like that.
So depending on where you land in there, then once
you've done that and you've studied your manual really hard,
you can complete the Volunteer in Field Investigator Orientation program
on the Moufon University and then ooh another thing. Another
(39:11):
opportunity you can have here is to mentor with a
licensed MoveOn field investigator, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Does that cost extra?
Speaker 3 (39:18):
I don't know, but all you have to do is
contact your state director and coordinate with somebody. But you
can just do a write along I guess.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I think they have meetups where you can kind of
just go check out the lay of the land and
have a little meet and greet.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Yes, I'd be into.
Speaker 6 (39:31):
That, Yeah, I would. I would love for us.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
To go there.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Is there a chapter here in Atlanta?
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Yes, really, I don't know. I honestly don't know, guys,
but we can look it up.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
I'm assuming there has to be something, at least regional.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
There's a Georgia meetup. Dot com says there's a moofon
Georgia meetup that's happening on August fourth.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh, no way, that's four days before my birthday twenty eighteen.
My mind exploding.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Where it is is? Oh, it's in Tucker right off
La Vista, right street.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
That's totally in our neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Right off seventy.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Oh, we gotta go right off to eighty yep, that's ay.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Let me check with Paul. Paul, do you want to
go with us?
Speaker 3 (40:12):
It's a Saturday, August fourth.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Paul nodded and.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Smile and a nod. Yeah, all right, the double whammy
from Paul.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Well, if we've got Deccans in then we have to
we have to see if we can make it to
this thing.
Speaker 6 (40:26):
It would be a great experience. So there we go.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
You can get firsthand experience even with a mentor investigating
reports of UFOs under the auspice of the Mutual UFO
Network or mof on. And again it is not free.
It is a rather significant investment.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
It is.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
But let's say you're not in the US, well, you
are still in luck. The British UFO Research Organization or
you like this, No Bufora offers a similar program BOOFO.
And we'd like to hear about other countries programs, because
I imagine there are other European communities or institutions that
(41:09):
have stuff like this. There's probably some stuff like this
in Canada as well as in parts of South America,
Central America, maybe some parts of Africa as well. We
want to know, we want to know what's going on
in your neck of the Global Woods. These licenses, by
the way, are self determined by these groups. Yes, so
(41:32):
it's not like, for instance, how you would get a
pilot's license that allows you to fly in different countries.
You know what I mean. It's up to that. It's
organization by organization.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Last thing to say about that, Move on, meetup. Sorry,
it's free to the public.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Oh nice, I'm.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Gonna let's blow this thing up. See how many people
we can get there. Do you do you want to
do that or do you just want to let it
If people are interested, they'll find it. And who knows
when this episode will actually come out?
Speaker 1 (42:04):
That's true, We need to put it out before August four, Yeah,
we do, all right, okay, yeah, let's blow it up.
Speaker 6 (42:09):
Matt. What's what are the deats?
Speaker 3 (42:11):
It's at the uh let's see co F. E. Er
Kofer Library. Oh, there's an address. You want to put
this address.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
In put it out in the world.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Man, It's at fifty two thirty four La Vista Road
in Tucker, Georgia.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
The Tucker read H. Kofer Library. There it is, all right, Yeah,
let's let's do it. Let's go all right, it's down
it's down the street.
Speaker 6 (42:39):
From us.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
I think I've actually been to this library, you know,
I think I have to not during a move on.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Don't want to give away how close in proximity I
am to that area.
Speaker 6 (42:48):
But you've been there, you're familiarly.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, this is cool.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
We're actually this spontaneously is happening, folks. We have organically
decided that we're going to take a field trip.
Speaker 6 (43:01):
And if you are in the area, we would love to.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
See you there, and if not, you can experience it
vicariously through us, because I'm sure we'll report back unless
we totally flake on this. But we've codified it in
podcast Stone, so we have to.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
We have to follow through.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Now it's basically written in our own blood disagreement.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
This is awesome.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
So so we are going to get We're going to
learn about move on firsthand. We're going to hear from
people who are active in these investigations and hear about
their journeys. There are also, as several of our listeners
already know, numerous groups and organizations studying various specific aspects
(43:42):
of unidentified aerial phenomenon, and you can join these groups
in person or online. They provide literature and other resources
that could be great of great value to you if
you're a buddying ufologists. It's also no secret that there's
a lot of misleading info out there in this field,
and so the burden of differentiating between legitimate research and
pure entertainment is going to fall squarely on the shoulders
(44:06):
of the individuals or groups researching this stuff, you know
what I mean. It's the like you can read a
book about algebra and pretty much trust that you don't
have to double check a lot of the text.
Speaker 6 (44:18):
It's not the case here. You know.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Nowadays, many academic studies of UFO phenomenon can be classified
as primarily sociological or anthropological studies, not of the sightings themselves,
but of the psychology of the witnesses. This is a
trend We've noticed a lot, and it happens in other
categories of things that would be called fringe research or
conspiracy theories. It's an immensely valuable undertaking. I'm not trying
(44:46):
to ding it for that, but we can't conflate it
with studies of sightings or reports themselves. It's a shift
in the narrative, you know what I mean. And it's
kind of so like one example, tell me what you
think about this. I don't know if this matches one
to one, but I would say writing or studying solely
(45:06):
the psychological or sociological trends of someone or some group
of people who report seeing UFOs, it's a lot like
how it's as if you're writing about how people feel
about a song or it's cultural impact and saying it's
the same thing as writing about the structure of the song.
Speaker 6 (45:24):
It's not interesting. Yeah, No, I like that.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
That's kind of what I was saying at the top
of the show too. How And you also said when
you talk about the ufology as a field, you presuppose
the discovery of actual UFOs, which turns it into something
else at that point, doesn't it. It's more like ifology,
you know. So there's a lot of a leap of
faith kind of activity going on with this whole field
(45:50):
of study. But I like the more sociological version of it.
That interests me more than trying to get the credentials
to be a UFO hunter. I think just with a
little imagination and go getterness and that journalistic spirit we
talked about with our buddy Pope. I think he kind
of armed and dangerous to go after the stuff yourself,
(46:10):
if it really intrigues you.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
You know, I.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
Would say, speaking of Pope some on his website right now,
if you go check it out. I don't remember the
r L, but just search Nick Pope and it's right
up there with a wiki. And he discusses how he's
taken after all this time, taking more of a big
picture view of a lot of this stuff, and he
that's exactly what he's looking at now, the sociological meaning
of even even conspiracy theories, Like he says that on
(46:35):
his web page. Why why do we as a culture
tend to believe in conspiracy theories?
Speaker 2 (46:41):
That's one of my favorite parts about our show. Yeah,
is that very discussion.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Yeah, and that's what he wants to study now, and
he thinks there should be bigger funded studies on that.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
And those those things are on the way. I would say,
we had you know, we've had people call us off
air to do interviews about this kind of thing, you.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Know, and you've been doing some lately.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
We I think we're gonna end up doing more, To
be honest with you, I don't know, I don't know
where it's gonna go for us.
Speaker 6 (47:10):
I hope that we I don't.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
The Zoo Crew one was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Uh yeah, we're we might be back on there too.
I'm trying to drag you guys on there.
Speaker 4 (47:20):
I want to do a morning Zoos show.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
It's it's a thing.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
Can I hit the air the air horn button?
Speaker 1 (47:25):
No, they'll do they're in charge of the sound of time.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
They're actually pretty clear about it too.
Speaker 4 (47:31):
This was a thing.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Yeah oh man, So yeah, so you know, we love
that stuff. Any way, we can communicate the message and
we have. We have a great time in those things. Because,
to steal the old line from Fox News, now, more
than ever, a lot of things that we're considered implausible
are becoming increasingly provable and plausible.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yep, right, because we jumped timelines and now we're in
an alternate universe.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
We're in a we have become our own breakaway society.
Speaker 6 (48:00):
Is that what they did?
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Bring it back?
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Right?
Speaker 4 (48:03):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (48:03):
So, like any serious academic, a true UFO researcher is
not setting out with a predetermined conclusion. Obviously, this means
a good investigator is not sitting down and saying, how
can I prove this craft was made by a previously
unacknowledged extraterrestrial civilization. But just as importantly, it also means
(48:23):
that person is not sitting down and saying, how can
I disprove that this is unusual? You know what I
mean what they're doing is they're doing exactly what Nick
Pope did, which is getting all the data, sponging up everything,
and then following it to a provable conclusion. So it's
no surprise that most UFO investigators have found numerous mundane
(48:45):
explanations for sightings. And that's a great thing. I mean,
I know it sounds like a party pooper thing to say,
but it's it's fantastic because the stuff that we can
prove gives us more information about the inexplicable, real mysterious
stuff that five percent, you know. I mean, even Project
Blue Book couldn't explain everything. Yeah, and they threw a
(49:07):
ton of money at it.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
I gotta say, guys, there have been humans that have
been fascinated by looking up in the sky and seeing
strange things for.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
A long time.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Now, let's say a long time. We still haven't been
able to prove anything anywhere. Because if we have, this
discussion wouldn't even be happening right now. We'd be talking
about the mid Chlorians and the from whatever far away galaxy,
the species that we uncovered, or the ship that landed
(49:40):
that one time that wasn't at Roswell, or wasn't the
Rendelstrom Forest incident.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
There was a fantastic piece on This American Life that
I heard the other day where Ira Glass was interviewing
one of his producers whose name now escapes me, but
he has a degree in astrophysics and that was his
first kind of career and then he became a producer
and a journalist for This American Life. And he was
talking about how he couldn't help but be bummed out
(50:06):
existentially at the idea that maybe there is no other life.
And he was trying to explain to Ira Glass that
from his scientific background, through his filter, through his understanding
of you know, astrophysics, how this.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
Was a really big deal to him, and at Ira
Glass kind of couldn't understand.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
He thought it was sort of a silly thing to
be quote unquote bummed out about.
Speaker 4 (50:26):
So what is that called the Fermi paradox?
Speaker 2 (50:29):
The idea that if it was there, somebody would have
found something by now, you know. And then there's also
a number that is generated I believe that is the
Drake equation, that is the likelihood of extraterrestrials that is existing.
And they calculated it on the show, and it was
something like point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
nine to one.
Speaker 4 (50:48):
So basically zero.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
But it was just interesting that life exists or that
we will encounter that life.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
I can't quite remember the nature of the equation, but
that was where it stands right now. Apparently based on
the scientific research and material that's out there, that number changes,
but apparently it's very very close to zero right now.
Speaker 3 (51:08):
I would take a bummer. I would take issue with
those people because I think that next to zero number
is probably that Earth would be visited or that Earth
will visit some other civilization.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
Right it's the meeting.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
Yeah yeah, oh oh, so that life exists, I'm pretty
sure that's almost a certainty. Oh.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
That came up too in the in the piece where
it was like would you be cool if it was
just like maybe an amoeba, Like does it have to
be a sentient creature that you can communicate with?
Speaker 4 (51:34):
Like where do you draw the line?
Speaker 2 (51:35):
And this like existential bummer kind of thing, right, Right,
So that's a big question here.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
Too, and it's interesting.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
It's all a timescale problem, buddy.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, I mean, it's certain that there is some form
of life somewhere out in the universe, just because the
room is too big for there not to be. But
because the room is so big, this room being the universe,
there's virtually no chance that we will ever ever run
into love. I love the idea of humanity stumbling upon
(52:06):
some ancient relic and it's very sad and bittersweet, but
it's still really important. Like, you know, what if someone
finally lands on Mars and then they find like the
equivalent of alien graffiti, Zorlac was.
Speaker 6 (52:20):
Here or whatever.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
That's first off, that's the most important thing that ever
happened automatically in human history. And secondly, it's one of
the loneliest things. Yeah, what happened to Zorlac?
Speaker 4 (52:32):
Dude?
Speaker 3 (52:34):
He made it to Earth with that one ship full
of DNA and then seated the whole planet with it.
You've seen Alien Covenant or whatever.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
It was Prometheus. So if in conclusion for today's episode,
thanks for coming along with us on this ride. If
you want to become a ufologist, one of your first
and most significant steps is going to be determining an
area of focus. Want to concentrate on a specific event
like that aerial school sighting, or do you want to
(53:08):
focus on a typer genre of events. Do you prefer
to focus on a related trend, such as the psychology
of witnesses, even though this would not in itself be
UFO research so much as sociological research. And then after
determining that you want to read widely, we found a
great starting point for anybody who's looking for a good
(53:29):
bibliography on serious UFO research.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
It's called UFO Literature for the Serious Uifologist. It's by
George M. Eberhardt, and it lists all kinds of different
books and articles on this particular subject and will help
you get started. You can also there are a couple
places online that you can find, but this is a
real we would recommend this place.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
Yeah, it was. I think it's I want to say
it's from nineteen ninety eight, which will which means it's
going to be a little bit data, but it has
some solid gold classic hits.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Yeah. Basically a bibliography that's going to get you on
your feet.
Speaker 4 (54:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
And you also want to join organizations and groups with
similar focus areas like the meet up Matt just found
for us on air.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
Move on only seventy dollars a year.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Yeah, attend conferences, correspond with fellow researchers, become a part
of the community. And while the online courses we found
do still exist, they're not the only operations around. For example,
and this is more alien life than UFO related, But
for example, Harvard has a free online course called Super
Earth's and Life that combines multiple disciplines to examine the
(54:41):
possibility of life on other planets. But let's end on
this note. We would like to hear from you. Do
you consider yourself a ufologist? What sort of studies have
you found to be helpful? What are some tips or
tricks you might have for your fellow listeners who are
considering pursuing this research.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
That's really great. Please please write in let us know,
send us And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK.
(55:20):
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 5 (55:24):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (55:28):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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