August 1, 2018 • 54 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):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, Matt,
You're back. I'm here. It's me and Ally they call
me Ben. We are joined, of course, with our super
producer Paul Decont, 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. This episode is meant to answer a question
(00:48):
that we stumbled upon in our earlier conversations with John
go Forth. Remember that, Matt, we talked with um John
go Forth about Tom DeLong and disclosure, and I think
it did come up, how do you become an expert? Like?
What are the means to be an expert in these things?
I was superbummed to have missed that one. So I
am going to be learning some new stuff today. Excellent. Hey,
(01:11):
who knows we might end the show by becoming ufologists ourselves.
This question was posed to us by one of our coworkers,
Jason Cokes, So shout out to you Jason and thanks
for the recommendation. Do you think work? We'll pay for it.
That's uh, that's up to debate. Hey, do us a
favor if you want to help us become uh credited
(01:33):
ufologists to go fund me dot com slash s t
w I t k I was going to say, right
to our bosses, you know what do both? They do both.
So that's that's today's question. How exactly does someone become
a ufologist. We hear about ufologists often. You will see
them in things like Ancient Aliens on History Channel. You'll
(01:55):
see them quoted in um in different television programs like
The Old Ones of the Mysteries and so on. But
two 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
(02:15):
first figure out what a ufologist is. So here are
the facts. The term ufologists comes from. Obviously UFO that
dates back to nine when it was an abbreviation of
the earlier term unidentified flying object that came around ninety
basic stuff. And they do what it says on the tin.
(02:38):
They study reports of unidentified 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 meteorologist? If it's
a bird, have you become an ornithologist. I'm just fascinated
(02:59):
by the these credentials come into ten with instructions. I
think one thing we're gonna notice here is that historically,
when you maybe are considered upologists, you probably have a
degree in some related field. Yes, likewise, like like a
meteorologist or other ologist. Well, yeah, yeah, physics is a
really big one. If you're let's see if you and
(03:23):
if you're an engineer and you make airplanes or something
to that effect, then aerospace engineer like a come in handy, yeah,
and we'll we'll find that the interdisciplinary nature of this
is both a blessing and the curse for the professional
ufologists out there. But how many are there? Funny you
should ask, There are no accurate figures on that number.
(03:45):
The one thing we found that had an indication at
least of the education level. Going to your point, Matt,
about their degrees right in nine six, the center for
UFO Studies conducted a Vall and Terry Pole mid its donors,
and they found that the hundred and sixty one people
(04:05):
who responded, one fifth of them had PhD degrees and
seventy had earned at least a bachelor's degree or higher.
The most common degrees were in physics and engineering. And
their jobs, as it's reported in this paper, are you know,
pretty pretty white collar professional things. Doctors, lawyers, engineers of course,
(04:25):
and professors, which is strange because they were dedicating their
free time to this study of unidentified phenomenon or objects
and in their day jobs these people are considered credible scientists.
But uthology today is still widely considered a pseudo science.
(04:46):
So you can't go through a reputable university and get
a degree in u ethology. Not not for the most parts.
And in that survey, these are just people who are interested, right,
These are people who donated to a thing. Yeah, they
donate to a thing. They go to the conferences, the networks,
so they have an active interest in it. They're on
(05:06):
one of those outside professions. 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 call ufology. However, there are some
courses available online. For instance, the International Metaphysical University offers
(05:30):
six courses in 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 difference different ideas.
I mean we have the names of them that I
think indicate a little bit of bias. Yeah, things like
(05:52):
what are UFOs? It's a good place to start theories
of ancient visitation that's going to be just it feels
a little like they're stacking the deck and I say,
I got you, and then um the early cover up?
Does the Great Courses offer this? Hey, I've missed the
Great Courses? Those things were fantastic. Man, we can still
(06:13):
get them, right, Great Courses dot COM's Last Conspiracy. Maybe
it's still active. Who knows. They're also just so you know.
Other lecture titles like Weird Science, Propulsion, Energy, Spacetime and Consciousness.
Is that consciousness separate from spacetime or spacetime and conscious
I think it's all of it wrapped up together and
more bang for your buck. Huh. Digging deeper the Breakaway Civilization?
What is that? Would that be? Would that be a
(06:38):
civil hypothetical civilization that breaks away from Earth and lives
in space? I don't know. You gotta take the course.
You gotta 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 testimonies
from people who have taken the course, and you can
(06:59):
read about the grading system. Well, you can get all
the details. All you have to do is visit inter
met to dot 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. It's this idea of this
(07:21):
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 access to it. Okay. And when I
say reality, I just mean you know, cover ups and
the stuff that that that is known but not known
to us. So it's an alternate physically earthly right, just
(07:46):
like the you know, the behind the curtain kind of stuff.
I've never heard that term before. I like, let's do
an episode on that. 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 or four hundred dollars each, and this
can be you can see how this could become expensive.
(08:09):
You know. And let's say you decided to become a
u ethologist. But you say, you know what, I don't
want to rely on self education. A lot of people
who describe themselves as ufologists are doing it based on
research after a an event that they have experienced firsthand,
or something they've seen, something that touched them in their
(08:30):
personal lives. So they're self directing the And there's nothing
wrong with self directed research. Some of the most important
scientists and philosophers in human history were 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
(08:52):
doing self education. You sign up for something like this
program at International Metaphysical University, You finish that twelve of
lecture course and boom, you're out of school. You have
to get a job, right, so what what do you
do for a living with this? With this degree? Basically,
(09:14):
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 those are my own. That's my understanding. Is
there anything else? I You know, it's funny to say
this because it reminds me of some of my friends
(09:37):
who were who became sociologists. They get their PhDs in
sociology and they still, what do you do with that?
And they said, teach sociology classes? So it's so maybe
a lot of people who become upologists through this path
begin teaching or transmitting their their own knowledge and experience. Yeah,
but I can go to the International Metaphysical thing and
(10:01):
pay for in dollarge and get my degree. Why would
I need to learn from you, you apologist guy who
just got your degree. Maybe they are adding more to
that based education. Gosh, I don't know, It's it's a
good question, right. The university website notes that ufologists can
seek work as lecturers, writers, movie consultants, which sounds pretty cool,
(10:24):
or political activists similar to Tom DeLong and Luis Alisando
working towards disclosure or working in the political and government
arena on the area of UFOs in preparation for contact
or landings. All right, there we go. There are a
couple of other things they say you can do as well,
so prepare for contact. I like that a lot um
(10:46):
you could work. I guess, yeah, this this does note
that you can work as a professional hypnotist and or
what does this say a life coach for people who
have who claim to have had abduction experiences? Right? Yeah,
And the the university, for their part, makes no claims
about the employment chances after completing the course. You know
(11:10):
how some universities or colleges for certain courses will say
of our graduates are placed in a job within the
fort six months after graduation. 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
(11:31):
having discussion. So there's no like testing. It's all. It's
an all online course. I'm certain there is testing, there is,
but there but in this case, it's prepared lecture essentially
like you would get out of college. I guess there's
just no there's back and forth. Yeah, the course has
um let's see what the course has several quizzes and
(11:55):
then they have a mid term ex assignment and a
final exam. If you could find any of them to
try to quiz ourselves, just to see if we could
do it cold, I wonder if we could. We could
probably dig into it and see I'd be interested. Let's
do let's do a series of two or three episodes
where we just take this course live on the show.
I bet they will probably take issue with that. Surely
(12:20):
that's illegal. 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, are asked to read or suggested.
That's a great idea. Yeah, that's just a great idea there.
If you don't want to go that route for some reason.
There are two other online in universities we found that
(12:43):
offers similar courses. There's the I MHS 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 of this. Yeah, the Upology Diploma course from the
Center of Excellence only costs one and twenty seven pounds
(13:04):
that's British 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.
I mean, even if it's a scam, that's a pretty
affordable scam. 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
(13:28):
I mean. It gives you kind of a course syllabus.
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
(13:51):
things that will I'm sure drive the more skeptical of
us in the audience insane, like in they're right up,
they say, quote the Ethology Diploma course provides insight into
the technologies they are likely used to propel u FOS
in different kinds of craft and their purposes. So they're
not saying we're trying to figure out what these are.
(14:13):
They're claiming that they have in fact identified the unidentified objects.
There you go. Another thing that we should point out
for this is that this course is certified by the
i a h T, the International Alliance of Holistic Therapists.
That's claimed on the website there, And I wonder what
what they have to do with youthology. So it inherently
(14:38):
has kind of a new age bent to it. It
would appear to be the case. Yeah, unless the i
a h T 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 media orology. But perhaps there's more
(15:02):
to the story. So what do you do if you say, Okay,
I've seen that. I appreciate it, but I think there's
I want something more traditional. I want more formal education,
like to your point, and well, I want to go
to Rutgers or to Yale or something to learn this.
It can be difficult for a budding ufolog just to
(15:23):
find the right path of study because of the inherently
interdisciplinary nature of this research. Like if we go back
to our earlier example, should a ufologists 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? Yes? Yeah, right,
(15:44):
I mean it is a bit of a grab bag
because there's certainly science involved and um 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.
(16:05):
It's interesting sure, making yourself aware of a lot of
the folklore surrounding the event of a UFO will give
you an idea as to what what are these people
maybe think they're seeing in their heads when they're viewing
some object in the air. Um, that's all I wanted
to say. Yeah, and it's it's a dilemma. You know,
for many people UFO enthusiasts and skeptics light this feels problematic. Look,
(16:27):
some of the skeptics in the audience now might think
these are just waste of money or even worse, a
purposeful con job. As 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 comment too
deeply on what they actually are. I think that idea
of taking a test is fascinating. But people who actively
(16:51):
research UFOs and perhaps feel that they have a specific
line on it, that they found it previously unexplained, whether
phenomenon or they've proven there's extraterrestrial involvement, they 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
(17:15):
aerospace engineering. Will the time of a professional ufologist be
better spit in the field, chasing reports and gathering firsthand experience?
And I mean anybody can do that. You could be
a hobbyist ufologist in that respect of just paying attention
to the clues and writing things down and submitting you know,
your reports. But it feels to me like if you
(17:36):
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, that would
that would give you the skills needed to actually see
a UFO if it were to be a thing. I
don't know. It's it's interesting too. I think it's a
great point. And that's right. We buried the lead a
(17:59):
little bit. We should have been in this. It's true
there are professional ufologists, and we'll explore their stories after
a word from our sponsor. So while most mainstream media
outlets tend to portray these ufologists or people that study
(18:21):
UFOs in generalize to crack pots or or you know, misguided. Um,
there is some truth in the idea that multiple places
do actually employ professional ufologists. And we're not talking about
what's that guy from Ancient Aliens his name Richard Dolan.
Richard Dolan not talking about him, he is, though, Lucos. Yeah,
(18:49):
or there are so many that we've discussed in the past,
the Hand of the Gods, guy Eric van Denikin. We're
talking about real you know, human people, not not tell
vision present ours say. Those are real human things now,
I know, but I I don't believe it until I
see them in the flesh. I think they could be
just conjured. Yeah, well, we do know the technology exists
(19:10):
to completely impersonate them. It's true. 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 at least at one time, we're paid by a
government even to do so. Oh yeah, yeah, Nick Pope?
(19:32):
Are we talking about Nick Pope? What? What's going on
with this Nick Pope guy? He's the real molder, He's
the one, He's the chosen one. Yeah. Yeah, it's true.
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 he works at
(19:55):
a thing called the UFO Desk. 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, Yeah, I bet
some of those calls are pretty wild. We should say
(20:16):
he did or he was or just in the past
time because this is uh right, two years before the
old X Files comes out, which is like our favorite show,
the best show, and I don't care who you are.
That's that's true all around. But as is recently, is
May eighteen, he put out a tweet talking about the
(20:37):
Pentagon's UFO program, and now they also studied poulter geist
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, crops, circles, yeah, ghosts, you know,
weird stuff, wacky stuff. Both the US and the UK
programs were real life X Files. Yeah, and he so
(20:59):
what do from to? Which is great because that means
he was still doing this when the first season of
X Files came out. Yeah, it makes you think he
got on the phone with somebody, maybe Chris Carter. That
would be fantastic. I would We'd love to interview all
the people were mentioning at this point too, so let
(21:19):
us know who you would like to hear from in
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, and
don Over on Sandwich or whatever whatever British village. I'm
(21:41):
just making up names. I want to go to don
Over on Sandwich And 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 sus effects a true investigator, and that's what he is.
(22:04):
I mean, he's a paranormal investigator. We have we heard
about what his credentials are. No, would you like to
talk about journalist? Right? That's a good I think that's
a good start to 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
(22:26):
stuff if you so chose. What about a podcaster? Wow?
There you go, Hey, dream big? Right? So 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
(22:48):
his part. So he was a little maybe less I
don't want to say less enthusiastic, because he's definitely still professional.
But he was. Our point is he wasn't going home
at looking at the truth is out there a poster
because they weren't out yet. Because they weren't out yet. Yes, okay,
fair play, he got me. I was trying to slide
(23:08):
that one by you, but we don't. You have one
of those posters, So awesome, we should get more around
the office. How many is too many? Seventeen? Okay, great,
so we'll stick to sixteen. 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.
(23:33):
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 explanations for what people were reporting. Yeah,
almost cases that he was presented with, right, And it's
always something like what a weather balloon and aircraft light?
(23:56):
The things you hear about swamp gas, maybe, but probably
very often. I still, you know, I have a hard
time saying swamp gas. 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 see it in a weird accent
like swamp gas. Yeah, was there another way? It's like
(24:18):
swamp gas? There you go, swamp gas like you ever did.
We had a guy that came to our school when
I was a kid, named Oki Finocchi Joe, and he'd
always talk about being swamp wise. Swamp would be swamp wise.
You know, I'm not quite sure what he meant. I
took a tour with Oki Finocchi Joe, and I was
a kid guy down in the old swamp where you swamp.
We did a swamp tour, didna? I did not? Then
(24:39):
you were swamp wi. This is a real thing. Yeah,
I think it was funny. Yeah, it was a nice
gin in Augusta George. I think he just like made
the rounds. You know, I don't think I ever met
I haven't had the privilege. I really missed out. Is
there more than one O possible? Is there a lineage
like how there's more than one mc gruff must be
there my speed? But I mean, what's around the same time.
(25:01):
I've bet it was. I bet it's the same one.
Swamp gas. Well, instead of swamp gas, just say naturally
occurring bioluminescence. All right, I think we both know. I'm
going to stick with saying swamp gas in a bad accent.
When you say it like that, it sounds like you
got a touch of the swamp game. There we go.
(25:23):
Is that our new euphemism for really bad farts and
terrible flatialism. Flatialism and this has been our childish aside
for today's episode, served for it. But yeah, yes, thank
you for getting this 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
(25:51):
is weird though, because it means that five percent of
these cases could not be explained. And then his real job,
why he was employed there, is to take that and
then go nothing to see here? 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
(26:13):
that to the public, keep calm, carry on, God save
the Queen, etcetera, etcetera, and the but not only to
the media in the public, to the lawmakers themselves, to Parliament,
don't worry about this. To what end though, you know,
it depends on where you're coming from. So if you
believe that the government is actively suppressing knowledge of something,
(26:37):
then it's his job to keep people sort of blissfully ignorant, right,
But like like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones and
the Men in Black but if it's uh, 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,
(26:58):
So he's trying to quell I see, and he's also
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
(27:20):
figure out what it is, they're probably worth passing on
someone that can actually do something about. That's that's in
my mind, what Nick Pope's like, the true reason that
he's doing this. That sames spot on to me. Otherwise,
why bother fielding all these phone calls from these wackados
that think they've seen, you know, a spaceman, which I
think I think the four of us would be very
(27:40):
good at that job. Absolutely. And when I say wackados,
I'm saying I'm sure many of them are legitimate sightings,
are legitimate things and concerns, what have you. But I'm
talking about that percentage of people that are just talking
about swamp gas like out the swamps. I got a
message from my cat the green at the end of
the world exactly. You know, there's gonna be some of that.
(28:01):
And you've 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
(28:21):
versions of stories to these kind of really over the
top conspiracies. Um. And he had just an encyclopedic knowledge
of this stuff. It does sound like it would have
been a fun job. Yeah, and he as we said,
his work with the Ministry Defense at the UFO Desk
ended in nineteen four. He continued working for a while
(28:44):
with the Ministry. He moved to the US in two
thousand twelve and retired from that line of work to
become a full time 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.
(29:05):
And he's a little bit anomalous in his field right now,
because we've talked with people who are fairly prominent, you know,
and and considered experts in the field of UFO studies.
We've talked to them on this show, and he to
some people stands out or as controversial because he came
(29:27):
to this through a professional aspect, whereas again, a lot
of people were who became UFO panelists or commentators. They
were inspired 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.
(29:50):
They think he may still be employed by the government
or some organization to function as an agent of disinformation.
He's the Richard C. Doughty of the UK. The Richard C.
Doughty of the UK that's in remind us to Richard
is the guy, the mirage man, the guy who was
sent out there to purposefully feed disinformation to people who
(30:13):
consider themselves ufologists. And that's a real thing, folks, 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
(30:34):
publicize reports and more 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 motivations you would
(30:56):
ascribe to him. We're not ascribing motivations to him. Well,
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. 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 upologist,
(31:19):
because he he makes a fantastic point that if you're
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 you you're
(31:39):
going to have confirmation biases, bias problems, and all kinds
of other issues in that regard, 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
(31:59):
people who consider themselves skeptics. And I think that being
a skeptic automatically means extraordinary things cannot exist. Just shoot
it down right, right, It's it's weird, and it's difficult
to be objective, and people people constantly think that objectivity
(32:20):
is in the eye of the beholder. Objectivity is the
process by which someone comes to agree with what I believe. Right,
That's that's the mistake we make. But Pope is out there,
as you said, Matt, he is an author. You can
find his books online, you can see interviews with him,
and he is one of many ufologists. There's there's one
(32:44):
important point though about about Pope and ufologists in general,
that our complaint department made while he's getting coffee and
we're getting ready to record talking about the strickmeister, Yes,
I complained department. Jonathan thought Strickland at how stuff works
dot Com. The quiz the Quister. That's the that's sort
of an alter ego. But yeah, yeah, we still call
(33:05):
on Jonathan strictly the Quister. It's very confusing. It's very
strange you have him on this show. Yeah, when are
you going to come on in Ridiculous History? Matt? When
when do you want to go on the show? That's
not up to me, Guys, what do you want to
talk about? Is it? Nick? Pope? Do we have to
check with Nick? I'm here, all right, all right, well
(33:26):
we'll tap you what We'll tap you for that in
the very near future, because we're getting people requesting it
pretty heavily at this point, and we have to. We
have to do it before you are on some more adventures. Yeah,
as long as you make you let me appear as
the what was it, the the Southern genie in the
(33:48):
bottle or whatever you will? You do it in your
mint Julip voice. Yeah, that's I think everything is predicated
on that. Okay, alright, done deal. 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. A breath,
(34:12):
let's do this alright, alright, Yeah, that's right. Stuff 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
(34:34):
he believes there's a difference between professional and credible, and
we often conflate the two. So a professional upologist doesn't
necessarily have to be a credible uthologist. They're just someone
who is paid to investigate these things. And I thought
I thought that was a point that we had to
(34:55):
mention at least once in this show. Now we're not
We're not calling into question gen anybody's credibility at this point,
but we are saying that just because someone is paid
to do something does not mean they are automatically the
best at it. Right. With that being said, we would
(35:15):
like to empower you. If you are listening now and
you say, guys, thanks for giving me the lay of
the land. I wanna I wanna do this UFO stuff.
I want to be a ufologist. I don't have time
to mess around with the online studies I've I've read
some books, But I think the best way to learn
(35:37):
about UFOs is on the job experience, just like Nick Pope. Well,
we have some leads for you. 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. Um. And what you
can do is, once you become an mender member, you
(36:00):
can talk to your state director, so you can send
an email out to the person that's the director of
move On near you. You get a copy of this
move On Field Investigators Manual. You study the manual. It's
pretty big. Let's see, you can order one here, Um,
where is it? Where I'm try I'm looking for it online?
(36:22):
Here we go, Here we go. Hard copy Field Investigators
Manual only cost you a hundred and five dollars US.
So far we're at about a hundred and seventy dollars UM,
which is more well, no, it's less than that. First
of course we were talking about pounds. Yeah, let's see.
(36:47):
Oh no, the other one was like, what one hundred
dollars 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 and
Field Investigator Orientation program on the mouf On University uh
and then another thing, another opportunity you can have your
(37:07):
is to mentor with a licensed mouf On Field investigator,
which is kind of cool. Is that cost extra? I
don't know, but you all you have to do is
contact your state director and coordinate with somebody. But you
can just do it right along. I guess. 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. Yes, I'd be into that, Yeah,
I would. I would love for us to go there. Absolutely.
(37:30):
Is there a chapter here in Atlanta? Yes? Really, I
don't know. I honestly don't know, guys, but we can
look it up. I'm assuming there has to be something,
at least regional. There's a Georgia meetup. Dot com says
there's a mouf On Georgia meet up that's happening on
August four. Way, that's four days before my birthday. That's
(37:51):
my mind exploding. Where it is. Oh, it's in Tucker
right off, that's totally in our neighborhood. Go hang let
me check with Paul. Paul, do you want to go
with us. It's a Saturday. Paul nodded, and my smile
(38:13):
and a nod. Alright, the double whammy from Paul. Well,
if you've got dec Inton, then we have to we
have to see if we can make it to this
thing will be a great experience. So there we go.
You can get firsthand experience even with a mentor investigating
reports of UFOs under the auspice of the Mutual UFO
(38:35):
Network or mouf on. And again it is not free.
It is a rather significant investment. It is. But let's
say you're not in the US, well, you're still in
LUCK the British UFO Research Organization or you like this,
No Boufora offers a similar program. And we'd like to
(38:56):
hear about other countries programs, because I imagine there are
other European communities or institutions that 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
(39:18):
the global woods. These licenses, by the way, are self
determined by these groups. So 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. Last thing
(39:42):
to say about that, move on, meet up? Sorry to
it's free to the public. Oh nice. Um, I'm gonna
let's blow this thing up. See how many people we
can get there? Do you do? You want to do
that or you just want to let it If people
are interested, they'll find it. And who knows when this
episode will actually come out, that's true. Need to put
it out before August, we do, all right, Okay, yeah,
(40:03):
let's blow it up, Matt. What's what are the deeds?
It's at the let's see CEO F. E. R. Cofer Library. Oh,
there's an address. You only put this address and put
it out in the world. Man. It's at fifty two
thirty four Lovista Road in Tucker, Georgia, the Tucker Reed H.
(40:26):
Koeper Library. There it is, right, Yeah, let's let's do it.
Let's go all right, it's down it's down the street
from us. I think I've actually been to this library,
you know. I think I have to not during a
move on. Don't want to give away how close in
proximity I am to that area, but you've been there,
(40:46):
you're familiar. This is cool. We're actually this spontaneously is happening, folks.
We have organically decided that we're going to take a
field trip and if you are in the area, we
would love to 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
(41:07):
we've we've codified it in podcast stone, so we have
to we have to follow through. Now it's basically written
in our own blood, this agreement. This is awesome. So
so we are going to get We're gonna learn about
move on firsthand. We're going to hear from people who
are active in these investigations and hear about their journeys.
(41:30):
There are also, as several of our listeners already know,
numerous groups and organizations studying various specific aspects 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 abuding.
You Ethologists It's also no secret that there's a lot
(41:51):
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 of the
individuals or groups researching this stuff. You know what I mean.
It's 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. It's not the
(42:14):
case here, you know, all right? 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's it happens in other categories of
(42:35):
things would be called fringe research or conspiracy theories. It's
an immensely valuable undertaking. I'm not trying 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 a it's kind
of like one example, tell me what you think about this.
(42:55):
I don't know if this matches one to one. But
I would say writing or studying solely 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 its cultural impact and saying it's the same thing
(43:17):
as writing about the structure of the song. It's not interesting. Yeah, No,
I like that. That's kind of what I was saying
at the top of the show to how and you.
You 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's more like I foology, you know. So there's a
(43:41):
lot of leap of faith kind of activity going on
with this whole field 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 and go
get arness and that journalistic spirit we talked about with
Buddy Pope. I think he kind of armed and dangerous
(44:03):
to go after the stuff yourself. If it really intrigues you.
You know, I would say, speaking of Pope, some of
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 the WICKI 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 heat. That's exactly what he's looking at now,
(44:25):
the sociological meaning of even even conspiracy theories, like he
says that on his web page. Why why do we
as a culture tend to believe in conspiracy theories? That's
one of my favorite parts about our show is that
very discussion. And that's what he wants to study now,
and he thinks there should be bigger funded studies on that,
(44:46):
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 know,
and you've been doing some lately. 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. I hope that we I don't The Zoo
(45:08):
crew one was a lot of fun. Uh yeah, we're
we might be back on there too. I'm trying to
drag you guys on there. I want to do a
morning zoo show. It's it's a thing. Can I Can
I hit the air the air horn button? They do,
They're in charge of the sound. They're actually pretty clear
about it too. This was a thing. Yeah man, so
(45:29):
um yeah, so you know we love that stuff anyway,
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 were considered implausible are becoming increasingly
provable and plausible, right because we jumped timelines and now
(45:50):
we're in an alternate universe. We're in a we have
become our own breakaway society. Is that what they bring
it back? Right? Okay, 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,
(46:11):
how can I prove this craft was made by previously
unacknowledged extraterrestrial civilization, But just as importantly, it also means
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,
(46:32):
and then following it to approvable conclusion. So it's no
surprise that most UFO investigators have found numerous mundane 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, the real
(46:55):
mysterious stuff that five percent, you know. I mean, even
Project Blue Book couldn't explain everything and they threw a
ton of money at it. Gotta say, guys, there have
been humans that have been fascinated by looking up in
the sky and seeing strange things for a long time. Now,
let's say a long time. We still haven't been able
(47:19):
to prove anything anywhere. Because if we have, this discussion
wouldn't even be happening right now. Would be talking about
the mid Clorians and the from whatever far away galaxy, um,
the species that we uncovered, or the ship that landed
that one time that wasn't at Roswell, or wasn't the
Randalls from Forrest incident. There was a fantastic piece on
(47:42):
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 existentially at the idea that maybe there
(48:03):
is no other life. Uh he And he was trying
to explain to Ira Glass that from his scientific background,
with through his filter, through his understanding of you know, astrophysics,
how this was a really big deal to him. And
Ira Glass kind of couldn't understand. He thought it was
sort of silly thing to be quote unquote bummed out about. Um. So,
what is that called the Fermi paradox? The idea that
(48:24):
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 one, so basically zero.
(48:45):
But it was just interesting that life exists or that
we will encounter that life. 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
it's out there, that number changes, but apparently it's very
very close to zero right now. It's just I would
I would take issue with those people because I think
(49:06):
that next to zero number is probably that Earth would
be visited or that Earth will visit some other civilization. Right,
it's the meeting. Yeah, yeah, so that life exists, I'm
pretty sure that's almost a certainty. Oh. That came up
to in in the in the piece where it was
like would you be cool if it was just like
maybe an amiba, Like does it have to be a
(49:27):
sentient creature that you can communicate with? Like where do
you draw the line of this like existential bummer kind
of thing? Right, So that's a big question here too,
And it's interesting. It's all the time scale problem, buddy, Yeah,
I mean it's certain that there is some form of
life somewhere out in the universe just because of the
room is too big for their not to be. But
(49:48):
because the room is so big, this room being the universe, uh,
there's virtually no chance that we will ever ever run
into them. I love I love the idea of humanity
stumbling upon some ancient relic and it's very sad and
bitter sweet, but it's still really important. Like, you know
what if someone finally lands on Mars and then they
(50:10):
find like the equivalent of alien graffiti Zorolac was here
or whatever. 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. What happened to Zorlac. Dude,
he made it to Earth with that one ship full
(50:32):
of d N d N A and then seated the
whole planet with it and seeing Alien Covenant or whatever
it was Prometheus. Yeah. 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
(50:53):
area of focus. Do you want to concentrate on a
specific event like that aerial rule siting, and or do
you want to focus on a type or 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.
(51:17):
And then after determining that you want to read widely,
we found a great starting point for anybody who's looking
for a good bibliography on serious UFO research. It's called
UFO Literature for the Serious Ufologist. It's by George M. Eberhardt,
and it lists all kinds of different books and articles
(51:37):
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 really we would
recommend this place. Yeah, it's it was I think it's
I want to say it's from which will, which means
it's going to be a little bit dated, but it
has some as some solid some solid gold classic hits. Yeah.
(52:00):
Basically a bibliography that's going to get you on your feet. Yeah.
And you also want to join organizations and groups with
similar focus areas like the meet up Matt just found
for us on air move on only seventy dollars a year. Yeah,
attend conferences, correspond with fellow researchers, become a part of
the community. And while the online courses we found do
(52:20):
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
Earths and Life that combines multiple disciplines to examine the
possibility of life on other planets. But let's send on
this note, we would like to hear from you. Do
(52:42):
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. That's really great. Please please righte in,
let us know, send us uh, letuls say, call us
and tell us what you're like, what you think these
(53:05):
places are that you need to go or things you
need to read. We are one eight three three st
d w y t K. We still need more messages
before we can make a full episode with your voices
on it, so we can get your voice one nine
that came in today. We did, but we need more,
we need more, So greedy for your messages, fuel the
machine of your own voice. That number is eight three
(53:28):
three seven eight three nine nine eight five. You can
also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And if
you don't want to do any of that stuff, you
can just do it the old fashioned way, the new
old fashioned way. Send us an email. We are conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, Matt,
You're back. I'm here. It's me and Ally they call
me Ben. We are joined, of course, with our super
producer Paul Decont, 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. This episode is meant to answer a question
(00:48):
that we stumbled upon in our earlier conversations with John
go Forth. Remember that, Matt, we talked with um John
go Forth about Tom DeLong and disclosure, and I think
it did come up, how do you become an expert? Like?
What are the means to be an expert in these things?
I was superbummed to have missed that one. So I
am going to be learning some new stuff today. Excellent. Hey,
(01:11):
who knows we might end the show by becoming ufologists ourselves.
This question was posed to us by one of our coworkers,
Jason Cokes, So shout out to you Jason and thanks
for the recommendation. Do you think work? We'll pay for it.
That's uh, that's up to debate. Hey, do us a
favor if you want to help us become uh credited
(01:33):
ufologists to go fund me dot com slash s t
w I t k I was going to say, right
to our bosses, you know what do both? They do both.
So that's that's today's question. How exactly does someone become
a ufologist. We hear about ufologists often. You will see
them in things like Ancient Aliens on History Channel. You'll
(01:55):
see them quoted in um in different television programs like
The Old Ones of the Mysteries and so on. But
two 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
(02:15):
first figure out what a ufologist is. So here are
the facts. The term ufologists comes from. Obviously UFO that
dates back to nine when it was an abbreviation of
the earlier term unidentified flying object that came around ninety
basic stuff. And they do what it says on the tin.
(02:38):
They study reports of unidentified 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 meteorologist? If it's
a bird, have you become an ornithologist. I'm just fascinated
(02:59):
by the these credentials come into ten with instructions. I
think one thing we're gonna notice here is that historically,
when you maybe are considered upologists, you probably have a
degree in some related field. Yes, likewise, like like a
meteorologist or other ologist. Well, yeah, yeah, physics is a
really big one. If you're let's see if you and
(03:23):
if you're an engineer and you make airplanes or something
to that effect, then aerospace engineer like a come in handy, yeah,
and we'll we'll find that the interdisciplinary nature of this
is both a blessing and the curse for the professional
ufologists out there. But how many are there? Funny you
should ask, There are no accurate figures on that number.
(03:45):
The one thing we found that had an indication at
least of the education level. Going to your point, Matt,
about their degrees right in nine six, the center for
UFO Studies conducted a Vall and Terry Pole mid its donors,
and they found that the hundred and sixty one people
(04:05):
who responded, one fifth of them had PhD degrees and
seventy had earned at least a bachelor's degree or higher.
The most common degrees were in physics and engineering. And
their jobs, as it's reported in this paper, are you know,
pretty pretty white collar professional things. Doctors, lawyers, engineers of course,
(04:25):
and professors, which is strange because they were dedicating their
free time to this study of unidentified phenomenon or objects
and in their day jobs these people are considered credible scientists.
But uthology today is still widely considered a pseudo science.
(04:46):
So you can't go through a reputable university and get
a degree in u ethology. Not not for the most parts.
And in that survey, these are just people who are interested, right,
These are people who donated to a thing. Yeah, they
donate to a thing. They go to the conferences, the networks,
so they have an active interest in it. They're on
(05:06):
one of those outside professions. 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 call ufology. However, there are some
courses available online. For instance, the International Metaphysical University offers
(05:30):
six courses in 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 difference different ideas.
I mean we have the names of them that I
think indicate a little bit of bias. Yeah, things like
(05:52):
what are UFOs? It's a good place to start theories
of ancient visitation that's going to be just it feels
a little like they're stacking the deck and I say,
I got you, and then um the early cover up?
Does the Great Courses offer this? Hey, I've missed the
Great Courses? Those things were fantastic. Man, we can still
(06:13):
get them, right, Great Courses dot COM's Last Conspiracy. Maybe
it's still active. Who knows. They're also just so you know.
Other lecture titles like Weird Science, Propulsion, Energy, Spacetime and Consciousness.
Is that consciousness separate from spacetime or spacetime and conscious
I think it's all of it wrapped up together and
more bang for your buck. Huh. Digging deeper the Breakaway Civilization?
What is that? Would that be? Would that be a
(06:38):
civil hypothetical civilization that breaks away from Earth and lives
in space? I don't know. You gotta take the course.
You gotta 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 testimonies
from people who have taken the course, and you can
(06:59):
read about the grading system. Well, you can get all
the details. All you have to do is visit inter
met to dot 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. It's this idea of this
(07:21):
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 access to it. Okay. And when I
say reality, I just mean you know, cover ups and
the stuff that that that is known but not known
to us. So it's an alternate physically earthly right, just
(07:46):
like the you know, the behind the curtain kind of stuff.
I've never heard that term before. I like, let's do
an episode on that. 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 or four hundred dollars each, and this
can be you can see how this could become expensive.
(08:09):
You know. And let's say you decided to become a
u ethologist. But you say, you know what, I don't
want to rely on self education. A lot of people
who describe themselves as ufologists are doing it based on
research after a an event that they have experienced firsthand,
or something they've seen, something that touched them in their
(08:30):
personal lives. So they're self directing the And there's nothing
wrong with self directed research. Some of the most important
scientists and philosophers in human history were 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
(08:52):
doing self education. You sign up for something like this
program at International Metaphysical University, You finish that twelve of
lecture course and boom, you're out of school. You have
to get a job, right, so what what do you
do for a living with this? With this degree? Basically,
(09:14):
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 those are my own. That's my understanding. Is
there anything else? I You know, it's funny to say
this because it reminds me of some of my friends
(09:37):
who were who became sociologists. They get their PhDs in
sociology and they still, what do you do with that?
And they said, teach sociology classes? So it's so maybe
a lot of people who become upologists through this path
begin teaching or transmitting their their own knowledge and experience. Yeah,
but I can go to the International Metaphysical thing and
(10:01):
pay for in dollarge and get my degree. Why would
I need to learn from you, you apologist guy who
just got your degree. Maybe they are adding more to
that based education. Gosh, I don't know, It's it's a
good question, right. The university website notes that ufologists can
seek work as lecturers, writers, movie consultants, which sounds pretty cool,
(10:24):
or political activists similar to Tom DeLong and Luis Alisando
working towards disclosure or working in the political and government
arena on the area of UFOs in preparation for contact
or landings. All right, there we go. There are a
couple of other things they say you can do as well,
so prepare for contact. I like that a lot um
(10:46):
you could work. I guess, yeah, this this does note
that you can work as a professional hypnotist and or
what does this say a life coach for people who
have who claim to have had abduction experiences? Right? Yeah,
And the the university, for their part, makes no claims
about the employment chances after completing the course. You know
(11:10):
how some universities or colleges for certain courses will say
of our graduates are placed in a job within the
fort six months after graduation. 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
(11:31):
having discussion. So there's no like testing. It's all. It's
an all online course. I'm certain there is testing, there is,
but there but in this case, it's prepared lecture essentially
like you would get out of college. I guess there's
just no there's back and forth. Yeah, the course has
um let's see what the course has several quizzes and
(11:55):
then they have a mid term ex assignment and a
final exam. If you could find any of them to
try to quiz ourselves, just to see if we could
do it cold, I wonder if we could. We could
probably dig into it and see I'd be interested. Let's
do let's do a series of two or three episodes
where we just take this course live on the show.
I bet they will probably take issue with that. Surely
(12:20):
that's illegal. 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, are asked to read or suggested.
That's a great idea. Yeah, that's just a great idea there.
If you don't want to go that route for some reason.
There are two other online in universities we found that
(12:43):
offers similar courses. There's the I MHS 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 of this. Yeah, the Upology Diploma course from the
Center of Excellence only costs one and twenty seven pounds
(13:04):
that's British 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.
I mean, even if it's a scam, that's a pretty
affordable scam. 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
(13:28):
I mean. It gives you kind of a course syllabus.
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
(13:51):
things that will I'm sure drive the more skeptical of
us in the audience insane, like in they're right up,
they say, quote the Ethology Diploma course provides insight into
the technologies they are likely used to propel u FOS
in different kinds of craft and their purposes. So they're
not saying we're trying to figure out what these are.
(14:13):
They're claiming that they have in fact identified the unidentified objects.
There you go. Another thing that we should point out
for this is that this course is certified by the
i a h T, the International Alliance of Holistic Therapists.
That's claimed on the website there, And I wonder what
what they have to do with youthology. So it inherently
(14:38):
has kind of a new age bent to it. It
would appear to be the case. Yeah, unless the i
a h T 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 media orology. But perhaps there's more
(15:02):
to the story. So what do you do if you say, Okay,
I've seen that. I appreciate it, but I think there's
I want something more traditional. I want more formal education,
like to your point, and well, I want to go
to Rutgers or to Yale or something to learn this.
It can be difficult for a budding ufolog just to
(15:23):
find the right path of study because of the inherently
interdisciplinary nature of this research. Like if we go back
to our earlier example, should a ufologists 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? Yes? Yeah, right,
(15:44):
I mean it is a bit of a grab bag
because there's certainly science involved and um 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.
(16:05):
It's interesting sure, making yourself aware of a lot of
the folklore surrounding the event of a UFO will give
you an idea as to what what are these people
maybe think they're seeing in their heads when they're viewing
some object in the air. Um, that's all I wanted
to say. Yeah, and it's it's a dilemma. You know,
for many people UFO enthusiasts and skeptics light this feels problematic. Look,
(16:27):
some of the skeptics in the audience now might think
these are just waste of money or even worse, a
purposeful con job. As 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 comment too
deeply on what they actually are. I think that idea
of taking a test is fascinating. But people who actively
(16:51):
research UFOs and perhaps feel that they have a specific
line on it, that they found it previously unexplained, whether
phenomenon or they've proven there's extraterrestrial involvement, they 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
(17:15):
aerospace engineering. Will the time of a professional ufologist be
better spit in the field, chasing reports and gathering firsthand experience?
And I mean anybody can do that. You could be
a hobbyist ufologist in that respect of just paying attention
to the clues and writing things down and submitting you know,
your reports. But it feels to me like if you
(17:36):
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, that would
that would give you the skills needed to actually see
a UFO if it were to be a thing. I
don't know. It's it's interesting too. I think it's a
great point. And that's right. We buried the lead a
(17:59):
little bit. We should have been in this. It's true
there are professional ufologists, and we'll explore their stories after
a word from our sponsor. So while most mainstream media
outlets tend to portray these ufologists or people that study
(18:21):
UFOs in generalize to crack pots or or you know, misguided. Um,
there is some truth in the idea that multiple places
do actually employ professional ufologists. And we're not talking about
what's that guy from Ancient Aliens his name Richard Dolan.
Richard Dolan not talking about him, he is, though, Lucos. Yeah,
(18:49):
or there are so many that we've discussed in the past,
the Hand of the Gods, guy Eric van Denikin. We're
talking about real you know, human people, not not tell
vision present ours say. Those are real human things now,
I know, but I I don't believe it until I
see them in the flesh. I think they could be
just conjured. Yeah, well, we do know the technology exists
(19:10):
to completely impersonate them. It's true. 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 at least at one time, we're paid by a
government even to do so. Oh yeah, yeah, Nick Pope?
(19:32):
Are we talking about Nick Pope? What? What's going on
with this Nick Pope guy? He's the real molder, He's
the one, He's the chosen one. Yeah. Yeah, it's true.
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 he works at
(19:55):
a thing called the UFO Desk. 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, Yeah, I bet
some of those calls are pretty wild. We should say
(20:16):
he did or he was or just in the past
time because this is uh right, two years before the
old X Files comes out, which is like our favorite show,
the best show, and I don't care who you are.
That's that's true all around. But as is recently, is
May eighteen, he put out a tweet talking about the
(20:37):
Pentagon's UFO program, and now they also studied poulter geist
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, crops, circles, yeah, ghosts, you know,
weird stuff, wacky stuff. Both the US and the UK
programs were real life X Files. Yeah, and he so
(20:59):
what do from to? Which is great because that means
he was still doing this when the first season of
X Files came out. Yeah, it makes you think he
got on the phone with somebody, maybe Chris Carter. That
would be fantastic. I would We'd love to interview all
the people were mentioning at this point too, so let
(21:19):
us know who you would like to hear from in
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, and
don Over on Sandwich or whatever whatever British village. I'm
(21:41):
just making up names. I want to go to don
Over on Sandwich And 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 sus effects a true investigator, and that's what he is.
(22:04):
I mean, he's a paranormal investigator. We have we heard
about what his credentials are. No, would you like to
talk about journalist? Right? That's a good I think that's
a good start to 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
(22:26):
stuff if you so chose. What about a podcaster? Wow?
There you go, Hey, dream big? Right? So 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
(22:48):
his part. So he was a little maybe less I
don't want to say less enthusiastic, because he's definitely still professional.
But he was. Our point is he wasn't going home
at looking at the truth is out there a poster
because they weren't out yet. Because they weren't out yet. Yes, okay,
fair play, he got me. I was trying to slide
(23:08):
that one by you, but we don't. You have one
of those posters, So awesome, we should get more around
the office. How many is too many? Seventeen? Okay, great,
so we'll stick to sixteen. 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.
(23:33):
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 explanations for what people were reporting. Yeah,
almost cases that he was presented with, right, And it's
always something like what a weather balloon and aircraft light?
(23:56):
The things you hear about swamp gas, maybe, but probably
very often. I still, you know, I have a hard
time saying swamp gas. 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 see it in a weird accent
like swamp gas. Yeah, was there another way? It's like
(24:18):
swamp gas? There you go, swamp gas like you ever did.
We had a guy that came to our school when
I was a kid, named Oki Finocchi Joe, and he'd
always talk about being swamp wise. Swamp would be swamp wise.
You know, I'm not quite sure what he meant. I
took a tour with Oki Finocchi Joe, and I was
a kid guy down in the old swamp where you swamp.
We did a swamp tour, didna? I did not? Then
(24:39):
you were swamp wi. This is a real thing. Yeah,
I think it was funny. Yeah, it was a nice
gin in Augusta George. I think he just like made
the rounds. You know, I don't think I ever met
I haven't had the privilege. I really missed out. Is
there more than one O possible? Is there a lineage
like how there's more than one mc gruff must be
there my speed? But I mean, what's around the same time.
(25:01):
I've bet it was. I bet it's the same one.
Swamp gas. Well, instead of swamp gas, just say naturally
occurring bioluminescence. All right, I think we both know. I'm
going to stick with saying swamp gas in a bad accent.
When you say it like that, it sounds like you
got a touch of the swamp game. There we go.
(25:23):
Is that our new euphemism for really bad farts and
terrible flatialism. Flatialism and this has been our childish aside
for today's episode, served for it. But yeah, yes, thank
you for getting this 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
(25:51):
is weird though, because it means that five percent of
these cases could not be explained. And then his real job,
why he was employed there, is to take that and
then go nothing to see here? 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
(26:13):
that to the public, keep calm, carry on, God save
the Queen, etcetera, etcetera, and the but not only to
the media in the public, to the lawmakers themselves, to Parliament,
don't worry about this. To what end though, you know,
it depends on where you're coming from. So if you
believe that the government is actively suppressing knowledge of something,
(26:37):
then it's his job to keep people sort of blissfully ignorant, right,
But like like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones and
the Men in Black but if it's uh, 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,
(26:58):
So he's trying to quell I see, and he's also
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
(27:20):
figure out what it is, they're probably worth passing on
someone that can actually do something about. That's that's in
my mind, what Nick Pope's like, the true reason that
he's doing this. That sames spot on to me. Otherwise,
why bother fielding all these phone calls from these wackados
that think they've seen, you know, a spaceman, which I
think I think the four of us would be very
(27:40):
good at that job. Absolutely. And when I say wackados,
I'm saying I'm sure many of them are legitimate sightings,
are legitimate things and concerns, what have you. But I'm
talking about that percentage of people that are just talking
about swamp gas like out the swamps. I got a
message from my cat the green at the end of
the world exactly. You know, there's gonna be some of that.
(28:01):
And you've 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
(28:21):
versions of stories to these kind of really over the
top conspiracies. Um. And he had just an encyclopedic knowledge
of this stuff. It does sound like it would have
been a fun job. Yeah, and he as we said,
his work with the Ministry Defense at the UFO Desk
ended in nineteen four. He continued working for a while
(28:44):
with the Ministry. He moved to the US in two
thousand twelve and retired from that line of work to
become a full time 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.
(29:05):
And he's a little bit anomalous in his field right now,
because we've talked with people who are fairly prominent, you know,
and and considered experts in the field of UFO studies.
We've talked to them on this show, and he to
some people stands out or as controversial because he came
(29:27):
to this through a professional aspect, whereas again, a lot
of people were who became UFO panelists or commentators. They
were inspired 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.
(29:50):
They think he may still be employed by the government
or some organization to function as an agent of disinformation.
He's the Richard C. Doughty of the UK. The Richard C.
Doughty of the UK that's in remind us to Richard
is the guy, the mirage man, the guy who was
sent out there to purposefully feed disinformation to people who
(30:13):
consider themselves ufologists. And that's a real thing, folks, 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
(30:34):
publicize reports and more 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 motivations you would
(30:56):
ascribe to him. We're not ascribing motivations to him. Well,
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. 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 upologist,
(31:19):
because he he makes a fantastic point that if you're
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 you you're
(31:39):
going to have confirmation biases, bias problems, and all kinds
of other issues in that regard, 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
(31:59):
people who consider themselves skeptics. And I think that being
a skeptic automatically means extraordinary things cannot exist. Just shoot
it down right, right, It's it's weird, and it's difficult
to be objective, and people people constantly think that objectivity
(32:20):
is in the eye of the beholder. Objectivity is the
process by which someone comes to agree with what I believe. Right,
That's that's the mistake we make. But Pope is out there,
as you said, Matt, he is an author. You can
find his books online, you can see interviews with him,
and he is one of many ufologists. There's there's one
(32:44):
important point though about about Pope and ufologists in general,
that our complaint department made while he's getting coffee and
we're getting ready to record talking about the strickmeister, Yes,
I complained department. Jonathan thought Strickland at how stuff works
dot Com. The quiz the Quister. That's the that's sort
of an alter ego. But yeah, yeah, we still call
(33:05):
on Jonathan strictly the Quister. It's very confusing. It's very
strange you have him on this show. Yeah, when are
you going to come on in Ridiculous History? Matt? When
when do you want to go on the show? That's
not up to me, Guys, what do you want to
talk about? Is it? Nick? Pope? Do we have to
check with Nick? I'm here, all right, all right, well
(33:26):
we'll tap you what We'll tap you for that in
the very near future, because we're getting people requesting it
pretty heavily at this point, and we have to. We
have to do it before you are on some more adventures. Yeah,
as long as you make you let me appear as
the what was it, the the Southern genie in the
(33:48):
bottle or whatever you will? You do it in your
mint Julip voice. Yeah, that's I think everything is predicated
on that. Okay, alright, done deal. 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. A breath,
(34:12):
let's do this alright, alright, Yeah, that's right. Stuff 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
(34:34):
he believes there's a difference between professional and credible, and
we often conflate the two. So a professional upologist doesn't
necessarily have to be a credible uthologist. They're just someone
who is paid to investigate these things. And I thought
I thought that was a point that we had to
(34:55):
mention at least once in this show. Now we're not
We're not calling into question gen anybody's credibility at this point,
but we are saying that just because someone is paid
to do something does not mean they are automatically the
best at it. Right. With that being said, we would
(35:15):
like to empower you. If you are listening now and
you say, guys, thanks for giving me the lay of
the land. I wanna I wanna do this UFO stuff.
I want to be a ufologist. I don't have time
to mess around with the online studies I've I've read
some books, But I think the best way to learn
(35:37):
about UFOs is on the job experience, just like Nick Pope. Well,
we have some leads for you. 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. Um. And what you
can do is, once you become an mender member, you
(36:00):
can talk to your state director, so you can send
an email out to the person that's the director of
move On near you. You get a copy of this
move On Field Investigators Manual. You study the manual. It's
pretty big. Let's see, you can order one here, Um,
where is it? Where I'm try I'm looking for it online?
(36:22):
Here we go, Here we go. Hard copy Field Investigators
Manual only cost you a hundred and five dollars US.
So far we're at about a hundred and seventy dollars UM,
which is more well, no, it's less than that. First
of course we were talking about pounds. Yeah, let's see.
(36:47):
Oh no, the other one was like, what one hundred
dollars 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 and
Field Investigator Orientation program on the mouf On University uh
and then another thing, another opportunity you can have your
(37:07):
is to mentor with a licensed mouf On Field investigator,
which is kind of cool. Is that cost extra? I
don't know, but you all you have to do is
contact your state director and coordinate with somebody. But you
can just do it right along. I guess. 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. Yes, I'd be into that, Yeah,
I would. I would love for us to go there. Absolutely.
(37:30):
Is there a chapter here in Atlanta? Yes? Really, I
don't know. I honestly don't know, guys, but we can
look it up. I'm assuming there has to be something,
at least regional. There's a Georgia meetup. Dot com says
there's a mouf On Georgia meet up that's happening on
August four. Way, that's four days before my birthday. That's
(37:51):
my mind exploding. Where it is. Oh, it's in Tucker
right off, that's totally in our neighborhood. Go hang let
me check with Paul. Paul, do you want to go
with us. It's a Saturday. Paul nodded, and my smile
(38:13):
and a nod. Alright, the double whammy from Paul. Well,
if you've got dec Inton, then we have to we
have to see if we can make it to this
thing will be a great experience. So there we go.
You can get firsthand experience even with a mentor investigating
reports of UFOs under the auspice of the Mutual UFO
(38:35):
Network or mouf on. And again it is not free.
It is a rather significant investment. It is. But let's
say you're not in the US, well, you're still in
LUCK the British UFO Research Organization or you like this,
No Boufora offers a similar program. And we'd like to
(38:56):
hear about other countries programs, because I imagine there are
other European communities or institutions that 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
(39:18):
the global woods. These licenses, by the way, are self
determined by these groups. So 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. Last thing
(39:42):
to say about that, move on, meet up? Sorry to
it's free to the public. Oh nice. Um, I'm gonna
let's blow this thing up. See how many people we
can get there? Do you do? You want to do
that or you just want to let it If people
are interested, they'll find it. And who knows when this
episode will actually come out, that's true. Need to put
it out before August, we do, all right, Okay, yeah,
(40:03):
let's blow it up, Matt. What's what are the deeds?
It's at the let's see CEO F. E. R. Cofer Library. Oh,
there's an address. You only put this address and put
it out in the world. Man. It's at fifty two
thirty four Lovista Road in Tucker, Georgia, the Tucker Reed H.
(40:26):
Koeper Library. There it is, right, Yeah, let's let's do it.
Let's go all right, it's down it's down the street
from us. I think I've actually been to this library,
you know. I think I have to not during a
move on. Don't want to give away how close in
proximity I am to that area, but you've been there,
(40:46):
you're familiar. This is cool. We're actually this spontaneously is happening, folks.
We have organically decided that we're going to take a
field trip and if you are in the area, we
would love to 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
(41:07):
we've we've codified it in podcast stone, so we have
to we have to follow through. Now it's basically written
in our own blood, this agreement. This is awesome. So
so we are going to get We're gonna learn about
move on firsthand. We're going to hear from people who
are active in these investigations and hear about their journeys.
(41:30):
There are also, as several of our listeners already know,
numerous groups and organizations studying various specific aspects 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 abuding.
You Ethologists It's also no secret that there's a lot
(41:51):
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 of the
individuals or groups researching this stuff. You know what I mean.
It's 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. It's not the
(42:14):
case here, you know, all right? 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's it happens in other categories of
(42:35):
things would be called fringe research or conspiracy theories. It's
an immensely valuable undertaking. I'm not trying 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 a it's kind
of like one example, tell me what you think about this.
(42:55):
I don't know if this matches one to one. But
I would say writing or studying solely 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 its cultural impact and saying it's the same thing
(43:17):
as writing about the structure of the song. It's not interesting. Yeah, No,
I like that. That's kind of what I was saying
at the top of the show to how and you.
You 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's more like I foology, you know. So there's a
(43:41):
lot of leap of faith kind of activity going on
with this whole field 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 and go
get arness and that journalistic spirit we talked about with
Buddy Pope. I think he kind of armed and dangerous
(44:03):
to go after the stuff yourself. If it really intrigues you.
You know, I would say, speaking of Pope, some of
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 the WICKI 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 heat. That's exactly what he's looking at now,
(44:25):
the sociological meaning of even even conspiracy theories, like he
says that on his web page. Why why do we
as a culture tend to believe in conspiracy theories? That's
one of my favorite parts about our show is that
very discussion. And that's what he wants to study now,
and he thinks there should be bigger funded studies on that,
(44:46):
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 know,
and you've been doing some lately. 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. I hope that we I don't The Zoo
(45:08):
crew one was a lot of fun. Uh yeah, we're
we might be back on there too. I'm trying to
drag you guys on there. I want to do a
morning zoo show. It's it's a thing. Can I Can
I hit the air the air horn button? They do,
They're in charge of the sound. They're actually pretty clear
about it too. This was a thing. Yeah man, so
(45:29):
um yeah, so you know we love that stuff anyway,
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 were considered implausible are becoming increasingly
provable and plausible, right because we jumped timelines and now
(45:50):
we're in an alternate universe. We're in a we have
become our own breakaway society. Is that what they bring
it back? Right? Okay, 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,
(46:11):
how can I prove this craft was made by previously
unacknowledged extraterrestrial civilization, But just as importantly, it also means
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,
(46:32):
and then following it to approvable conclusion. So it's no
surprise that most UFO investigators have found numerous mundane 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, the real
(46:55):
mysterious stuff that five percent, you know. I mean, even
Project Blue Book couldn't explain everything and they threw a
ton of money at it. Gotta say, guys, there have
been humans that have been fascinated by looking up in
the sky and seeing strange things for a long time. Now,
let's say a long time. We still haven't been able
(47:19):
to prove anything anywhere. Because if we have, this discussion
wouldn't even be happening right now. Would be talking about
the mid Clorians and the from whatever far away galaxy, um,
the species that we uncovered, or the ship that landed
that one time that wasn't at Roswell, or wasn't the
Randalls from Forrest incident. There was a fantastic piece on
(47:42):
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 existentially at the idea that maybe there
(48:03):
is no other life. Uh he And he was trying
to explain to Ira Glass that from his scientific background,
with through his filter, through his understanding of you know, astrophysics,
how this was a really big deal to him. And
Ira Glass kind of couldn't understand. He thought it was
sort of silly thing to be quote unquote bummed out about. Um. So,
what is that called the Fermi paradox? The idea that
(48:24):
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 one, so basically zero.
(48:45):
But it was just interesting that life exists or that
we will encounter that life. 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
it's out there, that number changes, but apparently it's very
very close to zero right now. It's just I would
I would take issue with those people because I think
(49:06):
that next to zero number is probably that Earth would
be visited or that Earth will visit some other civilization. Right,
it's the meeting. Yeah, yeah, so that life exists, I'm
pretty sure that's almost a certainty. Oh. That came up
to in in the in the piece where it was
like would you be cool if it was just like
maybe an amiba, Like does it have to be a
(49:27):
sentient creature that you can communicate with? Like where do
you draw the line of this like existential bummer kind
of thing? Right, So that's a big question here too,
And it's interesting. It's all the time scale problem, buddy, Yeah,
I mean it's certain that there is some form of
life somewhere out in the universe just because of the
room is too big for their not to be. But
(49:48):
because the room is so big, this room being the universe, uh,
there's virtually no chance that we will ever ever run
into them. I love I love the idea of humanity
stumbling upon some ancient relic and it's very sad and
bitter sweet, but it's still really important. Like, you know
what if someone finally lands on Mars and then they
(50:10):
find like the equivalent of alien graffiti Zorolac was here
or whatever. 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. What happened to Zorlac. Dude,
he made it to Earth with that one ship full
(50:32):
of d N d N A and then seated the
whole planet with it and seeing Alien Covenant or whatever
it was Prometheus. Yeah. 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
(50:53):
area of focus. Do you want to concentrate on a
specific event like that aerial rule siting, and or do
you want to focus on a type or 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.
(51:17):
And then after determining that you want to read widely,
we found a great starting point for anybody who's looking
for a good bibliography on serious UFO research. It's called
UFO Literature for the Serious Ufologist. It's by George M. Eberhardt,
and it lists all kinds of different books and articles
(51:37):
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 really we would
recommend this place. Yeah, it's it was I think it's
I want to say it's from which will, which means
it's going to be a little bit dated, but it
has some as some solid some solid gold classic hits. Yeah.
(52:00):
Basically a bibliography that's going to get you on your feet. Yeah.
And you also want to join organizations and groups with
similar focus areas like the meet up Matt just found
for us on air move on only seventy dollars a year. Yeah,
attend conferences, correspond with fellow researchers, become a part of
the community. And while the online courses we found do
(52:20):
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
Earths and Life that combines multiple disciplines to examine the
possibility of life on other planets. But let's send on
this note, we would like to hear from you. Do
(52:42):
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. That's really great. Please please righte in,
let us know, send us uh, letuls say, call us
and tell us what you're like, what you think these
(53:05):
places are that you need to go or things you
need to read. We are one eight three three st
d w y t K. We still need more messages
before we can make a full episode with your voices
on it, so we can get your voice one nine
that came in today. We did, but we need more,
we need more, So greedy for your messages, fuel the
machine of your own voice. That number is eight three
(53:28):
three seven eight three nine nine eight five. You can
also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And if
you don't want to do any of that stuff, you
can just do it the old fashioned way, the new
old fashioned way. Send us an email. We are conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com
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