July 10, 2021 • 55 mins
UFO researchers, also known as ufologists, make frequent appearances in pop culture, and many are professional, full-time experts in their field. But how exactly does one become a ufologist? Join the guys as they dive into this question, searching for the most (and least) credible paths to becoming a genuine ufologist.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to our playlist, celebrating the release of the
U A P Report. Well, the release of two reports.
One is classified and just for Congress, but you can
read the other report right now. And while you're looking
for that, you might ask yourself, Hey, how can I
get involved? How can I become a U ethologist? This
(00:21):
is the question we answer in this episode. And uh,
you guys remember doing this right? We had? We had
actually talked with you ethologist in the past. What was
your take? Have you guys become your apologist? We we
did for a time. Do you remember we on our
machines back when we were owned by Discovery? Oh? I
hope they. We can't get in trouble for this. When
(00:42):
when I left the office at night, sometimes very late,
my machine was being used to study reports and to
look at the sky. It was a part of move On,
so you could do this too. And didn't you guys
actually go to a move On conference? Yes, we did.
Sad sad that I missed out on that one, but
(01:04):
it's kind of like a good time. And I believe
we discussed it in the episode. Yeah, I believe we do.
We definitely we discussed it in the past because we were,
you know, we're fascinated by it, and there are there
are a lot of people doing pretty rigorous investigations here
uh into these mysteries. But if you ever hear the
term ufology or ufologists and you wonder how how do
(01:27):
I do that? How does that become my profession? Then
this is This is the episode for you. It bust
a lot of myths and it separates some of the
fact from fiction and misunderstandings. Honestly, more of a hobby,
unfortunately for now. From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies,
history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
(01:49):
now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, Matt,
you're back. I'm here. It's me and all hey, they
(02:11):
call me Ben. We are joined, of course with our
super producer Paul Decont, and we hope you join us
and 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 that we
stumbled upon in our earlier conversations with John go Forth.
(02:35):
Remember that Matt, we talked with UM John go Forth
about Tom DeLong and disclosure. Yeah, yeah, 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 superbommed to have missed that one. So I
am going to be learning some new stuff today. Excellent. Hey,
who knows we might end the show by becoming ufologists ourselves.
(02:58):
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 credited ufologists
to go fund me dot com slash s t w
I c K. I was gonna say right to our bosses,
(03:20):
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'll see them in things
like Ancient Aliens on History Channel. You'll see them quoted
in UM in different television programs like The Old Unsolved
(03:41):
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 first figure out what are
ufologists dis So here are the facts. The term ufologists
(04:06):
comes from obviously UFO that dates back to nineteen fifty three,
when it was an abbreviation of the earlier term unidentified
flying object that came around nineteen fifty basic stuff. And
they do what it says on the tin. They study
reports of unidentified aerial phenomenon or flying objects. But there's
a weird, tricky thing here when you think about it,
(04:28):
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 by the
fact of these credentials come into tin with instructions. I
think one thing we're gonna notice here is that historically,
when you maybe are considered upologists, you probably have a
(04:50):
degree in some related field, yes, like what like like
a meteorologist another oologists. Yeah, yeah, physics is a really
big one. If you're let's see if you and if
you're an engineer and you make airplanes or something to
that effect, then aerospace engineer come in handy, yeah, and
(05:12):
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. The one
thing we found that had an indication at least of
the education level. Going to your point, Matt, about their degrees.
(05:35):
Right in six the Center for UFO Studies conducted a
voluntary pole mid its donors and they found that the
hundred and sixty one people who responded, one fifth of
them had PhD degrees, and seventy five had earned at
least a bachelor's degree or higher. The most common degrees
(05:55):
were in physics and engineering. And their jobs, as it's
reported in this pay for are you know, pretty pretty
white collar professional things. Doctors, lawyers, engineers of course, and professors,
which is strange because they were dedicating their free time
to this study of unidentified phenomenon or objects, and in
(06:19):
their day jobs these people are considered credible scientists, but
uthology today is still widely considered a pseudoscience. So you
can't go to a reputable university and get a degree
in ufology. Not not for the most parts. And in
that survey, these are just people who are interested, right,
(06:39):
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 from
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 off for specific
(07:00):
degree programs in what we call ufology. However, there are
some courses available online. For instance, the International Metaphysical University
offers six courses in ufology studies, including Introduction to Ethology.
It's taught by an historian named Richard Dolan, and the
(07:22):
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
what are UFOs. It's a good place to start theories
of ancient visitation. It's gonna be it. Just it feels
a little like they're stacking the deck and I sat
(07:44):
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 get them, right.
Great Courses dot COM's last conspiracy. Maybe it's still active.
Who knows. They're also just you know other lecture titles
like weird Science, Propulsion, Energy, Spacetime and Consciousness. Is that
(08:05):
consciousness separate from spacetime or spacetime and conscious I think
it's all of it wrapped up together. More bang for
your buck? Huh? Digging deeper? The Breakaway Civilization? What is
that would that be? Would that be a civil hypothetical
civilization that breaks away from Earth and lives in space?
I don't know. You gotta take the course. You got
(08:27):
to take the course. Yeah, and this is the this
is extant. You can go and take the course. Now,
you can enroll and you can see some testimonies from
people who have taken the course, and you can read
about the grading system. All you can get all the details.
All you have to do is visit ter metto dot com.
(08:51):
I N T E R M E t U dot com.
This is not free, No, we should point that out.
You know, breakaway civilization is it's pretty interesting. It's this
idea of this alternate reality that exists only in like
five hundred million pages of classified documents. So it's sort
of this like meta reality that supposedly the information exists
(09:13):
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 reality
physically earthly, right, just like 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
(09:35):
have to invest however, if we want to use this
course as the basis for our future episode on breakaways.
Because the courses cost around two hundred to four hundred
dollars each, and this can be you can see how
this could become expensive. You know. And let's say you
decide to become a ethologist, but you say, you know what,
(09:56):
I don't want to rely on self education. A lot
of people who described the themselves as you have bologists
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 personal lives, so they're self
directing the and there's nothing wrong with self directed research.
(10:18):
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 doing self education. You
sign up for something like this program at International Metaphysical University,
(10:40):
You finish that twelve 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, you try and give talks wherever
you can give talks, or you get in contact with
(11:00):
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 who were who became sociologists. They
get their PhDs in sociology and they still, what do
(11:23):
you do with that? And they said, teach sociology classes. Okay,
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 to pay for inner dollars
(11:43):
and get my degree. Why would I need to learn
from you uphologist 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 you have bologists can seek work as lecturers, writers,
movie consultants, which sounds pretty cool, or political activists similar
(12:07):
to Tom DeLong and Luis Alisando working toward 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 you could work, I guess. Yeah,
(12:29):
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.
(12:51):
You know, how some universities or colleges for certain courses
will say of our graduates are placed in a job
within the for 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
(13:12):
taking notes and having discussion. So there's no like testing,
it's all. It's an all online course. I'm certain there
is testing, but there but in this case, it's a
prepared lecture essentially like you would get out of college.
I guess there's just no go back and forth. Yeah,
the course has um Let's see, the course has several
(13:36):
quizzes and then they have a mid term ex assignment
and a final exam. If you could find any of
them that 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.
(13:56):
I bet they would take probably take issue with that.
It's surely 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. Yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah, that's is
a great idea there. If you don't want to go
(14:18):
that route for some reason. There are two other online
in universities we found that 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
(14:38):
Upology diploma course from the Center of Excellence only costs
one and twenty seven pounds 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.
(15:03):
I mean they've got some information about what you're gonna learn,
but it's I would say it's pretty limited as far
as I mean, it gives you kind of a course syllabus.
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,
(15:24):
and then it seems to end on how addressing how
a student can get involved. But there there are some
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 Ufology Diploma course provides insight into
the technologies they are likely used to propel u fos
(15:46):
and different kinds of craft and their purposes. So they're
not saying we're trying to figure out what these are.
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
(16:07):
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 uology, So it inherently
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,
(16:31):
because one would assume that most ufology questions are going
to be related to things like the nature of physics
and aviation and again meteorology, but perhaps there's more to
the story. So what do you do if you say, okay,
I've seen that. I appreciate it, but I think there's
(16:52):
I want something more traditional. I want more formal education,
like to your point and all, I want to go
to Rutgers or to Yale or so they learned this.
It can be difficult for a budding ufolo just to
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,
(17:15):
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,
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
(17:37):
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.
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 want. Yeah,
(18:00):
And it's it's a dilemma. You know for many people
u FU enthusiasts and skeptics light this feels problematic. Look,
some of the skeptics in the audience now might think
these are just wastes of money, or even worse, a
purposeful con job. As as we've said, Matt Nolan, I
have not taken these courses and we haven't yet seen
(18:23):
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 research
UFOs and perhaps feel that they have a specific line
on it that they found it previously unexplained, whether phenomenon
(18:43):
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
aerospace engineering. Well, the time of a profession a ufologists
be better spit in the field, chasing reports and gathering
(19:04):
firsthand experience. And I mean anybody can do that, and
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 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
(19:28):
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 to me.
I think it's a great point. And that's right. We
buried the lead a little bit. We should mention this.
It's true there are professional ufologists, and we'll explore their
stories after a word from our sponsor. So while most
(19:57):
mainstream media outlets tend to tray these ufologists or people
that study UFOs in generalize the crackpots 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
(20:18):
talking about what's that guy from Ancient Aliens? His name
Richard Dolan. Richard Dolan not talking about him, he is,
though slucos. Yeah, 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,
(20:40):
not not television present ours. Say, those are real human
people now, I know, but I don't believe it until
I see them in the flesh. I think they could
be just conjured. Yet, well, we do know the technology
exists 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
(21:04):
aerial phenomena, or at least at one time, we're paid
by a government even to do so. Oh yeah, yeah,
Nick Pope, 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.
(21:25):
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
a thing called the UFO Desk. Yeah. Pretty cool man,
and apparently it gets between two hundred and three hundred
reports a year of sightings and his job is to
(21:49):
follow up one on one. Interesting, right, Yeah, I bet
some of those calls are pretty wild. We should say
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.
(22:11):
That's that's true all around, but is recently is May
twenty nine, eighteen, he put out a tweet talking about
the 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, crop crops, circles, yeah, ghosts,
(22:33):
you know, weird stuff, wacky stuff. Both the US and
the UK programs were real life X Files. Yeah, and
he so what he would 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,
(22:53):
maybe Chris Carter. That would be fantastic. I would We'd
love to interview all the people were mentioning at the
point too, so let 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
(23:13):
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 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,
(23:37):
and he would check those facts against something that he
called the usual suspects. A true investigator, and that's what
he is. I mean, he's a paranormal investigator. We we
heard about what his credentials are. No, would you like
to talk about this journalist? Right? That's a good I
think that's a good start to as far as just
(23:58):
being able to kind of be detective and you know,
follow the leads and follow the clues. I think a
journalist would be a great way to study this kind
of stuff if you so chose. What about a podcaster?
There you go, hey, dream big, right, so he also
he says that he started from a baseline of zero
(24:22):
when he was assigned this UFO desk, and it was
not based on any prior knowledge or personal interest on
his part. So he was a little maybe less I
don't want to say less enthusiastic, because he's definitely still professional,
but he was. Our point is he wasn't going home
at night looking at the truth is out there a
(24:43):
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
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? Set team? Okay, great,
so we'll stick to sixty. So he Yeah, he's a journalist.
(25:06):
He's objectively digging into things, and if you are an
investigative journalist, you still apply the same methods to any investigation.
So he's doing the same sort of leg work that
a good reporter would do. And he found that there
were a lot of simple explanations for what people were reporting. Yeah,
(25:29):
almost cases that he was presented with, right, and it's
always something like what a weather balloon and aircraft light
the things you hear about swamp gas maybe, but probably
not very often. I still, you know, I have a
hard time saying swamp gas when it comes up all
the time on our show. But something about those the
(25:49):
A and swamp and the A and gas make it
really difficult for me not to say it in a
weird accent, like swamp gas. For it's like swamp asked
there you go swamp gas like you ever did. We
had a guy that came to our school when I
was a kid named Okay Finocchi Joe, and he'd always
talk about being swamp wise, be swamp wise. You know,
(26:09):
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 Oak swamp where you swamp wi.
We did a swamp tour. I did not then you
were swamp wise. This is a real thing. Yeah, I
think it was funny. Yeah, it was a nice gun
in Augusta, Georgia. I think he just like made the rounds.
You know, I don't think I ever met. I haven't
(26:31):
had the privilege. I really missed out. Is there more
than one possible? Is there a lineage like how there's
more than one big gruff. There must be, there must be,
But I mean, what's around the same time I've paid
it was, but it was the same one swamp gass. Well,
instead of swamp gas, just say naturally occurring bioluminescence. All right,
(26:53):
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. Is that our
new euphemism for really bad farts and terrible flatilism flatialism?
And this has been our childish aside for today's episode,
(27:14):
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 is weird though, because it means
that five percent of these cases could not be explained,
(27:36):
and then his real job, why he was employed there,
is to take that five 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 that to the public,
(27:57):
keep calm, carry on, God save the Queen, Ctera, 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, then it's his job
(28:20):
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. So
he's trying to quell panic. And he's also a first
(28:44):
level gatekeeper for whatever other governmental organization is going to
actually look into that five percent. So he, in my mind,
he doesn't even have to fully look into that five percent.
I mean, he's doing all the investigation, he's talking to witnesses,
he's doing all this. But if you get way down
into it and truly trying to figure out what it
is they're worth passing on to someone that can actually
(29:05):
do something about that's that's in my mind what Nick
Pope's like, the true reason that he's doing this. That
seems spot on to me. Sense. Otherwise, why bother fielding
all these phone calls from these wackadoos that think they've seen,
you know, a spaceman, which I think, I think the
four of us would be very good at that job. Absolutely.
And when I say wackadoos, I'm saying I'm sure many
(29:25):
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, you know,
like out in the swamps. I got a message from
my cat, the Greenman at the end of the world,
right exactly. You know, there's gonna be some of that.
And you've got to give props to this guy because
he he took it to the to the max. My friends,
(29:49):
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 more of
the folkloric are you know, pop culture kind of versions
of stories to these kind of really over the top conspiracies. Um.
And he had just an encyclopedic knowledge of this stuff, Sponge,
(30:12):
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 with the Ministry. He moved
to the US in two thousand and twelve and retired
from that line of work to become a full time
(30:34):
UFO expert, what people would call a noted ufologist, but
you see, he doesn't care for the term. He calls
himself a UFO investigator, not a ufologist. And he's a
little bit anomalous in his field right now, because we've
talked with people who are fairly prominent, you know, and
(30:55):
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 to
this through a professional aspect, whereas again, a lot of
people were who became UFO panelists or commentators. They were
(31:17):
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. They
think he may still be employed by the government or
some organization to function as an agent of disinformation. He's
(31:39):
the Richard C. Doughty of the UK, the Richard C.
Doughty of the UK. That's it remind us to Richard C.
Dot is the guy, the mirage man, the guy who
was sent out there to purposefully feed disinformation to people
who consider themselves ufologists. And that's a real thing, folks,
That actually did happen. So this is not entirely unfounded
(32:03):
paranoia and paranoia runs high in this community and it's
not an unusual accusation. You know. It also makes sense
because by his own admission, his professional task was less
to publicize reports and more to downplay their importance. And
you know, it depends on where you fall. If we're
(32:24):
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 ascribe to him. We're not ascribing motivations
to him. Uh. Well, he's he seems on the up
and up. He seems like he was just at least
(32:45):
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, because he he makes a
fantastic point that if you're that interested in something and
(33:06):
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 going to have confirmation biases,
bias problems, and all kinds of other issues in that regard,
(33:27):
and that that does make sense. Also, that can go
both ways, right, right, So someone can say, I mean
the most some of the most irritating, irritating mistakes and
critical thinking come from people who consider themselves skeptics. And
I think that being a skeptic automatically means extraordinary things
(33:49):
cannot exist. Just shoot it down right, right, It's it's weird.
It's difficult to be objective and people people constantly think
that objectivity is in the eye of the beholder. Objectivity
is the process by which someone comes to agree with
what I believe, right, That's that's the mistake we make.
(34:13):
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 important point though about about
Pope and ufologists in general, that our complaint department made
(34:33):
while he's getting coffee and we're getting ready to record
talking about the Strickmeister. Yes, I complaint 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 on Jonathan Strickland the Quister. It's very confusing,
it's very strange. You should have him on this show. Yeah,
when are you going to come on in Ridiculous History, Matt?
(34:55):
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? Don't know? I'm here, all right,
all right, Well 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
(35:15):
have to we have to do it before you're 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 bottle or whatever? Will you do
it in your mount Julip voice, Yeah, that's I think
everything is predicated on that. Alright, done deal. So what
(35:38):
exactly what great point did our uh did our complaint
department bring up? We'll tell you after a word from
our sponsor faded breath, 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,
(36:00):
i'd say, Scott Benjamin line. So what Jonathan pointed out,
and he is one of the more of our colleagues
and cohort, he falls more on the skeptical side pretty clearly,
and he said that he believes there's a difference between
professional and credible, and we often conflate the two. So
(36:22):
a professional uthologist 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 mention at least once in this show. Now,
we're not We're not calling into question anybody's credibility at
(36:43):
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 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
(37:07):
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 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,
(37:30):
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 a
mender member, you 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 movef On Field Investigators Manual. You study
(37:55):
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? Here we go, Here we go.
Hard copy Field Investigators Manual only cost you one hundred
and five dollars US. So far we're at about a
hundred and seventy dollars UM, which is more. Well, no,
(38:19):
it's less than that. First of course we were talking
about pounds. Yeah, let's see. 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
(38:43):
the mouf On University uh. And then another thing. Another
opportunity you can have here is to mentor with a
licensed mouf On Field Investigator, which is kind of cool.
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 meet ups where you
can kind of just go check out the lay of
(39:04):
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, 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 move on
Georgia meet up that's happening on August four. Way, that's
(39:29):
four days before my birthday. My mind exploding. Where it
is It's in Tucker, that's totally in our neighborhood. We
gotta go. Yep, that's happy. Let me check with Paul. Paul,
do you want to go with us? It's a Saturday
(39:51):
August and my smile and a nod. Alright, the double
way meet from Paul, Well, have you got deck intent?
Then we you have to. We have to see if
we can make it to this thing and will be
a great experience. So there we go. You can get
firsthand experience even with a mentor investigating reports of UFOs
(40:14):
under the auspice of the Mutual UFO 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 like this, No Boufora offers a similar program.
(40:37):
And we'd like to 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
(40:58):
in your neck of the Lobal woods. These licenses, by
the way, are self determined by these groups. Yes, 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
(41:19):
organization by organization. Last thing to say about that, move on,
meet up, Sorry to backtrack. 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,
(41:41):
we need to put it out before August we do
all right, okay, yeah, let's blow it up, Matt. What's
what are the deeds? It's at the let's see C. O. F. E.
Er 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 La Vista Road in Tucker, Georgia,
(42:06):
the Tucker Reed H. Koper 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 and proximity I am to that area.
But you've been there, You're familiar. This is cool. We're
(42:31):
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 we've we've codified it
in podcast stone, so we have to we have to
(42:52):
follow three 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. There are, also, as
several of our listeners already know, numerous groups and organizations
(43:16):
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 a budding you ethologists. It's
also no secret that there's a lot of misleading info
out there in this field, and so the burden of
differentiating between legitimate research and pure entertainment is going to
(43:40):
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 case here,
you know, all right? Nowadays, many academic studies of UFO
phenomenon could be classified as primarily sociological or anthropological studies
(44:06):
not of the sightings themselves, but of the psychology of
the witnesses. This is a trend we've noticed a lot,
and it it happens in other categories of things that
would be called fringe research or conspiracy theories. It's an
immensely valuable undertaking. I'm not trying to ding it for that,
but we can't conflate it with studies of sightings or
(44:26):
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. 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
(44:47):
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 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
(45:10):
as a field, you presuppose the discovery of actual UFOs,
which turns it into something else at that point, doesn't
it more like uh I foo? You know. So there's
a 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
(45:32):
than trying to get the credentials to be a UFO hunter.
I think, just with a little imagination and and go
get eternus and that journalistic spirit we talked about with
our buddy Pope, I think you kind of armed and
dangerous to go after the stuff yourself if it really
intrigues you, you know, I would say, speaking of Pope
some on his website right now, if you go check
it out. I don't remember the r L, but just
(45:55):
search Nick Pope and it's right up there with the
WICKI and he discusses how he's take can 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, 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
(46:16):
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 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
(46:38):
doing something 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 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
(47:00):
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 um yeah, So
you know, we love that stuff. Any way we can
communicate the message and we have. We have a great
time in those things. Because to steal the old line
from Fox News now more than ever, a lot of
(47:23):
things that we're considered implausible are becoming increasingly provable and plausible. Right,
because we jumped timelines and now 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
(47:45):
setting out with a predetermined conclusion. Obviously, this means a
good investigator is not sitting down and saying, how can
I prove this craft was made by 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
(48:07):
doing is they're doing exactly what Nick Pope did, which
is getting all the data, sponging up everything, 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
(48:28):
it's fantastic because the stuff that we can prove gives
us more information about the inexplicable, the real 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. I gotta say, guys, there have been
(48:49):
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
to prove anything anywhere, because if we have, this discussion
wouldn't even be happening right now. Would be talking about
the mid Glorians and the from whatever far away galaxy,
(49:12):
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 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
(49:33):
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 is no other life. 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,
(49:55):
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
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
(50:16):
likelihood of extraterrestrials 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.
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
(50:39):
that's out there, that number changes, but apparently it's very
very close to zero right now. It's just I would
take I would take issue with those people because I
think that next to zero number is probably that Earth
would be visited or that Earth will visit some other civilization. Yeah, yeah,
that life exists. I'm pretty sure. That's almost a certain
(51:00):
Oh that came up to and 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 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
(51:24):
is some form of life somewhere out in the universe,
just because of the room is too big for their
not to be. But because the room is so big,
this room being the universe, uh, there's virtually no chance
that we will ever ever run into him. I love
I love the idea of humanity stumbling upon some ancient
relic and it's very sad and bitter sweet, but it's
(51:47):
still really important. Like, you know, what if someone finally
lands on Mars and then they find like the equivalent
of alien graffiti zorlac was 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.
(52:07):
What happened is oor lock, Dude, he made it to
Earth with that one ship full 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
(52:29):
become a ufologist, one of your first and most significant
steps is going to be determining an area of focus.
Do you want to concentrate on a specific event like
that aerial school sighting, 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
(52:50):
psychology of witnesses, even though this would not in itself
be UFO research so much as sociological research. And then,
after determining that you want to read widely, we found
a great starting point for anybody who's looking for a
good bibliography on serious UFO research. It's called UFO Literature
(53:11):
for the Serious Upologist. It's by George M. Eberhardt, and
it lists all kinds of different books and articles on
this particular subject and will help you get started. You
can also there are a couple places online that you
can find, but this is a really we would recommend
this place. Yeah, it's uh, it was, I think it's
I want to say it's from which Will, which means
(53:35):
it's gonna be a little bit dated, but it has
some has some solid some solid gold classic hits. Yeah.
Basically a bibliography that's gonna 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
(53:58):
the community. And while the online courses we found do
still exist, they're not the only operations around. For example,
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,
(54:22):
we would like to hear from you. Do you consider
yourself a ufologist? What sort of studies have you found
to be helpful what are some tips or tricks you
might have for your fellow listeners who are considering pursuing
this research. That's really great. Please please write in let
us know, send us uh I would say, call us
(54:42):
and tell us what you're like, what you think these
places are that you need to go or things you
need to read. We are one eight three three std
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 that came in today,
we did, but we need more. We need more, So
(55:03):
greedy for your messages, fuel the machine of your own voice.
That number is eight three 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
Welcome back to our playlist, celebrating the release of the
U A P Report. Well, the release of two reports.
One is classified and just for Congress, but you can
read the other report right now. And while you're looking
for that, you might ask yourself, Hey, how can I
get involved? How can I become a U ethologist? This
(00:21):
is the question we answer in this episode. And uh,
you guys remember doing this right? We had? We had
actually talked with you ethologist in the past. What was
your take? Have you guys become your apologist? We we
did for a time. Do you remember we on our
machines back when we were owned by Discovery? Oh? I
hope they. We can't get in trouble for this. When
(00:42):
when I left the office at night, sometimes very late,
my machine was being used to study reports and to
look at the sky. It was a part of move On,
so you could do this too. And didn't you guys
actually go to a move On conference? Yes, we did.
Sad sad that I missed out on that one, but
(01:04):
it's kind of like a good time. And I believe
we discussed it in the episode. Yeah, I believe we do.
We definitely we discussed it in the past because we were,
you know, we're fascinated by it, and there are there
are a lot of people doing pretty rigorous investigations here
uh into these mysteries. But if you ever hear the
term ufology or ufologists and you wonder how how do
(01:27):
I do that? How does that become my profession? Then
this is This is the episode for you. It bust
a lot of myths and it separates some of the
fact from fiction and misunderstandings. Honestly, more of a hobby,
unfortunately for now. From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies,
history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
(01:49):
now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, Matt,
you're back. I'm here. It's me and all hey, they
(02:11):
call me Ben. We are joined, of course with our
super producer Paul Decont, and we hope you join us
and 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 that we
stumbled upon in our earlier conversations with John go Forth.
(02:35):
Remember that Matt, we talked with UM John go Forth
about Tom DeLong and disclosure. Yeah, yeah, 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 superbommed to have missed that one. So I
am going to be learning some new stuff today. Excellent. Hey,
who knows we might end the show by becoming ufologists ourselves.
(02:58):
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 credited ufologists
to go fund me dot com slash s t w
I c K. I was gonna say right to our bosses,
(03:20):
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'll see them in things
like Ancient Aliens on History Channel. You'll see them quoted
in UM in different television programs like The Old Unsolved
(03:41):
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 first figure out what are
ufologists dis So here are the facts. The term ufologists
(04:06):
comes from obviously UFO that dates back to nineteen fifty three,
when it was an abbreviation of the earlier term unidentified
flying object that came around nineteen fifty basic stuff. And
they do what it says on the tin. They study
reports of unidentified aerial phenomenon or flying objects. But there's
a weird, tricky thing here when you think about it,
(04:28):
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 by the
fact of these credentials come into tin with instructions. I
think one thing we're gonna notice here is that historically,
when you maybe are considered upologists, you probably have a
(04:50):
degree in some related field, yes, like what like like
a meteorologist another oologists. Yeah, yeah, physics is a really
big one. If you're let's see if you and if
you're an engineer and you make airplanes or something to
that effect, then aerospace engineer come in handy, yeah, and
(05:12):
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. The one
thing we found that had an indication at least of
the education level. Going to your point, Matt, about their degrees.
(05:35):
Right in six the Center for UFO Studies conducted a
voluntary pole mid its donors and they found that the
hundred and sixty one people who responded, one fifth of
them had PhD degrees, and seventy five had earned at
least a bachelor's degree or higher. The most common degrees
(05:55):
were in physics and engineering. And their jobs, as it's
reported in this pay for are you know, pretty pretty
white collar professional things. Doctors, lawyers, engineers of course, and professors,
which is strange because they were dedicating their free time
to this study of unidentified phenomenon or objects, and in
(06:19):
their day jobs these people are considered credible scientists, but
uthology today is still widely considered a pseudoscience. So you
can't go to a reputable university and get a degree
in ufology. Not not for the most parts. And in
that survey, these are just people who are interested, right,
(06:39):
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 from
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 off for specific
(07:00):
degree programs in what we call ufology. However, there are
some courses available online. For instance, the International Metaphysical University
offers six courses in ufology studies, including Introduction to Ethology.
It's taught by an historian named Richard Dolan, and the
(07:22):
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
what are UFOs. It's a good place to start theories
of ancient visitation. It's gonna be it. Just it feels
a little like they're stacking the deck and I sat
(07:44):
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 get them, right.
Great Courses dot COM's last conspiracy. Maybe it's still active.
Who knows. They're also just you know other lecture titles
like weird Science, Propulsion, Energy, Spacetime and Consciousness. Is that
(08:05):
consciousness separate from spacetime or spacetime and conscious I think
it's all of it wrapped up together. More bang for
your buck? Huh? Digging deeper? The Breakaway Civilization? What is
that would that be? Would that be a civil hypothetical
civilization that breaks away from Earth and lives in space?
I don't know. You gotta take the course. You got
(08:27):
to take the course. Yeah, and this is the this
is extant. You can go and take the course. Now,
you can enroll and you can see some testimonies from
people who have taken the course, and you can read
about the grading system. All you can get all the details.
All you have to do is visit ter metto dot com.
(08:51):
I N T E R M E t U dot com.
This is not free, No, we should point that out.
You know, breakaway civilization is it's pretty interesting. It's this
idea of this alternate reality that exists only in like
five hundred million pages of classified documents. So it's sort
of this like meta reality that supposedly the information exists
(09:13):
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 reality
physically earthly, right, just like 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
(09:35):
have to invest however, if we want to use this
course as the basis for our future episode on breakaways.
Because the courses cost around two hundred to four hundred
dollars each, and this can be you can see how
this could become expensive. You know. And let's say you
decide to become a ethologist, but you say, you know what,
(09:56):
I don't want to rely on self education. A lot
of people who described the themselves as you have bologists
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 personal lives, so they're self
directing the and there's nothing wrong with self directed research.
(10:18):
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 doing self education. You
sign up for something like this program at International Metaphysical University,
(10:40):
You finish that twelve 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, you try and give talks wherever
you can give talks, or you get in contact with
(11:00):
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 who were who became sociologists. They
get their PhDs in sociology and they still, what do
(11:23):
you do with that? And they said, teach sociology classes. Okay,
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 to pay for inner dollars
(11:43):
and get my degree. Why would I need to learn
from you uphologist 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 you have bologists can seek work as lecturers, writers,
movie consultants, which sounds pretty cool, or political activists similar
(12:07):
to Tom DeLong and Luis Alisando working toward 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 you could work, I guess. Yeah,
(12:29):
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.
(12:51):
You know, how some universities or colleges for certain courses
will say of our graduates are placed in a job
within the for 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
(13:12):
taking notes and having discussion. So there's no like testing,
it's all. It's an all online course. I'm certain there
is testing, but there but in this case, it's a
prepared lecture essentially like you would get out of college.
I guess there's just no go back and forth. Yeah,
the course has um Let's see, the course has several
(13:36):
quizzes and then they have a mid term ex assignment
and a final exam. If you could find any of
them that 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.
(13:56):
I bet they would take probably take issue with that.
It's surely 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. Yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah, that's is
a great idea there. If you don't want to go
(14:18):
that route for some reason. There are two other online
in universities we found that 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
(14:38):
Upology diploma course from the Center of Excellence only costs
one and twenty seven pounds 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.
(15:03):
I mean they've got some information about what you're gonna learn,
but it's I would say it's pretty limited as far
as I mean, it gives you kind of a course syllabus.
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,
(15:24):
and then it seems to end on how addressing how
a student can get involved. But there there are some
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 Ufology Diploma course provides insight into
the technologies they are likely used to propel u fos
(15:46):
and different kinds of craft and their purposes. So they're
not saying we're trying to figure out what these are.
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
(16:07):
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 uology, So it inherently
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,
(16:31):
because one would assume that most ufology questions are going
to be related to things like the nature of physics
and aviation and again meteorology, but perhaps there's more to
the story. So what do you do if you say, okay,
I've seen that. I appreciate it, but I think there's
(16:52):
I want something more traditional. I want more formal education,
like to your point and all, I want to go
to Rutgers or to Yale or so they learned this.
It can be difficult for a budding ufolo just to
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,
(17:15):
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,
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
(17:37):
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.
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 want. Yeah,
(18:00):
And it's it's a dilemma. You know for many people
u FU enthusiasts and skeptics light this feels problematic. Look,
some of the skeptics in the audience now might think
these are just wastes of money, or even worse, a
purposeful con job. As as we've said, Matt Nolan, I
have not taken these courses and we haven't yet seen
(18:23):
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 research
UFOs and perhaps feel that they have a specific line
on it that they found it previously unexplained, whether phenomenon
(18:43):
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
aerospace engineering. Well, the time of a profession a ufologists
be better spit in the field, chasing reports and gathering
(19:04):
firsthand experience. And I mean anybody can do that, and
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 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
(19:28):
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 to me.
I think it's a great point. And that's right. We
buried the lead a little bit. We should mention this.
It's true there are professional ufologists, and we'll explore their
stories after a word from our sponsor. So while most
(19:57):
mainstream media outlets tend to tray these ufologists or people
that study UFOs in generalize the crackpots 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
(20:18):
talking about what's that guy from Ancient Aliens? His name
Richard Dolan. Richard Dolan not talking about him, he is,
though slucos. Yeah, 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,
(20:40):
not not television present ours. Say, those are real human
people now, I know, but I don't believe it until
I see them in the flesh. I think they could
be just conjured. Yet, well, we do know the technology
exists 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
(21:04):
aerial phenomena, or at least at one time, we're paid
by a government even to do so. Oh yeah, yeah,
Nick Pope, 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.
(21:25):
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
a thing called the UFO Desk. Yeah. Pretty cool man,
and apparently it gets between two hundred and three hundred
reports a year of sightings and his job is to
(21:49):
follow up one on one. Interesting, right, Yeah, I bet
some of those calls are pretty wild. We should say
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.
(22:11):
That's that's true all around, but is recently is May
twenty nine, eighteen, he put out a tweet talking about
the 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, crop crops, circles, yeah, ghosts,
(22:33):
you know, weird stuff, wacky stuff. Both the US and
the UK programs were real life X Files. Yeah, and
he so what he would 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,
(22:53):
maybe Chris Carter. That would be fantastic. I would We'd
love to interview all the people were mentioning at the
point too, so let 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
(23:13):
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 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,
(23:37):
and he would check those facts against something that he
called the usual suspects. A true investigator, and that's what
he is. I mean, he's a paranormal investigator. We we
heard about what his credentials are. No, would you like
to talk about this journalist? Right? That's a good I
think that's a good start to as far as just
(23:58):
being able to kind of be detective and you know,
follow the leads and follow the clues. I think a
journalist would be a great way to study this kind
of stuff if you so chose. What about a podcaster?
There you go, hey, dream big, right, so he also
he says that he started from a baseline of zero
(24:22):
when he was assigned this UFO desk, and it was
not based on any prior knowledge or personal interest on
his part. So he was a little maybe less I
don't want to say less enthusiastic, because he's definitely still professional,
but he was. Our point is he wasn't going home
at night looking at the truth is out there a
(24:43):
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
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? Set team? Okay, great,
so we'll stick to sixty. So he Yeah, he's a journalist.
(25:06):
He's objectively digging into things, and if you are an
investigative journalist, you still apply the same methods to any investigation.
So he's doing the same sort of leg work that
a good reporter would do. And he found that there
were a lot of simple explanations for what people were reporting. Yeah,
(25:29):
almost cases that he was presented with, right, and it's
always something like what a weather balloon and aircraft light
the things you hear about swamp gas maybe, but probably
not very often. I still, you know, I have a
hard time saying swamp gas when it comes up all
the time on our show. But something about those the
(25:49):
A and swamp and the A and gas make it
really difficult for me not to say it in a
weird accent, like swamp gas. For it's like swamp asked
there you go swamp gas like you ever did. We
had a guy that came to our school when I
was a kid named Okay Finocchi Joe, and he'd always
talk about being swamp wise, be swamp wise. You know,
(26:09):
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 Oak swamp where you swamp wi.
We did a swamp tour. I did not then you
were swamp wise. This is a real thing. Yeah, I
think it was funny. Yeah, it was a nice gun
in Augusta, Georgia. I think he just like made the rounds.
You know, I don't think I ever met. I haven't
(26:31):
had the privilege. I really missed out. Is there more
than one possible? Is there a lineage like how there's
more than one big gruff. There must be, there must be,
But I mean, what's around the same time I've paid
it was, but it was the same one swamp gass. Well,
instead of swamp gas, just say naturally occurring bioluminescence. All right,
(26:53):
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. Is that our
new euphemism for really bad farts and terrible flatilism flatialism?
And this has been our childish aside for today's episode,
(27:14):
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 is weird though, because it means
that five percent of these cases could not be explained,
(27:36):
and then his real job, why he was employed there,
is to take that five 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 that to the public,
(27:57):
keep calm, carry on, God save the Queen, Ctera, 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, then it's his job
(28:20):
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. So
he's trying to quell panic. And he's also a first
(28:44):
level gatekeeper for whatever other governmental organization is going to
actually look into that five percent. So he, in my mind,
he doesn't even have to fully look into that five percent.
I mean, he's doing all the investigation, he's talking to witnesses,
he's doing all this. But if you get way down
into it and truly trying to figure out what it
is they're worth passing on to someone that can actually
(29:05):
do something about that's that's in my mind what Nick
Pope's like, the true reason that he's doing this. That
seems spot on to me. Sense. Otherwise, why bother fielding
all these phone calls from these wackadoos that think they've seen,
you know, a spaceman, which I think, I think the
four of us would be very good at that job. Absolutely.
And when I say wackadoos, I'm saying I'm sure many
(29:25):
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, you know,
like out in the swamps. I got a message from
my cat, the Greenman at the end of the world,
right exactly. You know, there's gonna be some of that.
And you've got to give props to this guy because
he he took it to the to the max. My friends,
(29:49):
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 more of
the folkloric are you know, pop culture kind of versions
of stories to these kind of really over the top conspiracies. Um.
And he had just an encyclopedic knowledge of this stuff, Sponge,
(30:12):
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 with the Ministry. He moved
to the US in two thousand and twelve and retired
from that line of work to become a full time
(30:34):
UFO expert, what people would call a noted ufologist, but
you see, he doesn't care for the term. He calls
himself a UFO investigator, not a ufologist. And he's a
little bit anomalous in his field right now, because we've
talked with people who are fairly prominent, you know, and
(30:55):
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 to
this through a professional aspect, whereas again, a lot of
people were who became UFO panelists or commentators. They were
(31:17):
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. They
think he may still be employed by the government or
some organization to function as an agent of disinformation. He's
(31:39):
the Richard C. Doughty of the UK, the Richard C.
Doughty of the UK. That's it remind us to Richard C.
Dot is the guy, the mirage man, the guy who
was sent out there to purposefully feed disinformation to people
who consider themselves ufologists. And that's a real thing, folks,
That actually did happen. So this is not entirely unfounded
(32:03):
paranoia and paranoia runs high in this community and it's
not an unusual accusation. You know. It also makes sense
because by his own admission, his professional task was less
to publicize reports and more to downplay their importance. And
you know, it depends on where you fall. If we're
(32:24):
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 ascribe to him. We're not ascribing motivations
to him. Uh. Well, he's he seems on the up
and up. He seems like he was just at least
(32:45):
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, because he he makes a
fantastic point that if you're that interested in something and
(33:06):
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 going to have confirmation biases,
bias problems, and all kinds of other issues in that regard,
(33:27):
and that that does make sense. Also, that can go
both ways, right, right, So someone can say, I mean
the most some of the most irritating, irritating mistakes and
critical thinking come from people who consider themselves skeptics. And
I think that being a skeptic automatically means extraordinary things
(33:49):
cannot exist. Just shoot it down right, right, It's it's weird.
It's difficult to be objective and people people constantly think
that objectivity is in the eye of the beholder. Objectivity
is the process by which someone comes to agree with
what I believe, right, That's that's the mistake we make.
(34:13):
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 important point though about about
Pope and ufologists in general, that our complaint department made
(34:33):
while he's getting coffee and we're getting ready to record
talking about the Strickmeister. Yes, I complaint 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 on Jonathan Strickland the Quister. It's very confusing,
it's very strange. You should have him on this show. Yeah,
when are you going to come on in Ridiculous History, Matt?
(34:55):
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? Don't know? I'm here, all right,
all right, Well 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
(35:15):
have to we have to do it before you're 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 bottle or whatever? Will you do
it in your mount Julip voice, Yeah, that's I think
everything is predicated on that. Alright, done deal. So what
(35:38):
exactly what great point did our uh did our complaint
department bring up? We'll tell you after a word from
our sponsor faded breath, 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,
(36:00):
i'd say, Scott Benjamin line. So what Jonathan pointed out,
and he is one of the more of our colleagues
and cohort, he falls more on the skeptical side pretty clearly,
and he said that he believes there's a difference between
professional and credible, and we often conflate the two. So
(36:22):
a professional uthologist 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 mention at least once in this show. Now,
we're not We're not calling into question anybody's credibility at
(36:43):
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 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
(37:07):
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 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,
(37:30):
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 a
mender member, you 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 movef On Field Investigators Manual. You study
(37:55):
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? Here we go, Here we go.
Hard copy Field Investigators Manual only cost you one hundred
and five dollars US. So far we're at about a
hundred and seventy dollars UM, which is more. Well, no,
(38:19):
it's less than that. First of course we were talking
about pounds. Yeah, let's see. 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
(38:43):
the mouf On University uh. And then another thing. Another
opportunity you can have here is to mentor with a
licensed mouf On Field Investigator, which is kind of cool.
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 meet ups where you
can kind of just go check out the lay of
(39:04):
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, 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 move on
Georgia meet up that's happening on August four. Way, that's
(39:29):
four days before my birthday. My mind exploding. Where it
is It's in Tucker, that's totally in our neighborhood. We
gotta go. Yep, that's happy. Let me check with Paul. Paul,
do you want to go with us? It's a Saturday
(39:51):
August and my smile and a nod. Alright, the double
way meet from Paul, Well, have you got deck intent?
Then we you have to. We have to see if
we can make it to this thing and will be
a great experience. So there we go. You can get
firsthand experience even with a mentor investigating reports of UFOs
(40:14):
under the auspice of the Mutual UFO 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 like this, No Boufora offers a similar program.
(40:37):
And we'd like to 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
(40:58):
in your neck of the Lobal woods. These licenses, by
the way, are self determined by these groups. Yes, 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
(41:19):
organization by organization. Last thing to say about that, move on,
meet up, Sorry to backtrack. 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,
(41:41):
we need to put it out before August we do
all right, okay, yeah, let's blow it up, Matt. What's
what are the deeds? It's at the let's see C. O. F. E.
Er 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 La Vista Road in Tucker, Georgia,
(42:06):
the Tucker Reed H. Koper 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 and proximity I am to that area.
But you've been there, You're familiar. This is cool. We're
(42:31):
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 we've we've codified it
in podcast stone, so we have to we have to
(42:52):
follow three 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. There are, also, as
several of our listeners already know, numerous groups and organizations
(43:16):
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 a budding you ethologists. It's
also no secret that there's a lot of misleading info
out there in this field, and so the burden of
differentiating between legitimate research and pure entertainment is going to
(43:40):
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 case here,
you know, all right? Nowadays, many academic studies of UFO
phenomenon could be classified as primarily sociological or anthropological studies
(44:06):
not of the sightings themselves, but of the psychology of
the witnesses. This is a trend we've noticed a lot,
and it it happens in other categories of things that
would be called fringe research or conspiracy theories. It's an
immensely valuable undertaking. I'm not trying to ding it for that,
but we can't conflate it with studies of sightings or
(44:26):
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. 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
(44:47):
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 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
(45:10):
as a field, you presuppose the discovery of actual UFOs,
which turns it into something else at that point, doesn't
it more like uh I foo? You know. So there's
a 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
(45:32):
than trying to get the credentials to be a UFO hunter.
I think, just with a little imagination and and go
get eternus and that journalistic spirit we talked about with
our buddy Pope, I think you kind of armed and
dangerous to go after the stuff yourself if it really
intrigues you, you know, I would say, speaking of Pope
some on his website right now, if you go check
it out. I don't remember the r L, but just
(45:55):
search Nick Pope and it's right up there with the
WICKI and he discusses how he's take can 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, 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
(46:16):
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 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
(46:38):
doing something 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 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
(47:00):
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 um yeah, So
you know, we love that stuff. Any way we can
communicate the message and we have. We have a great
time in those things. Because to steal the old line
from Fox News now more than ever, a lot of
(47:23):
things that we're considered implausible are becoming increasingly provable and plausible. Right,
because we jumped timelines and now 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
(47:45):
setting out with a predetermined conclusion. Obviously, this means a
good investigator is not sitting down and saying, how can
I prove this craft was made by 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
(48:07):
doing is they're doing exactly what Nick Pope did, which
is getting all the data, sponging up everything, 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
(48:28):
it's fantastic because the stuff that we can prove gives
us more information about the inexplicable, the real 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. I gotta say, guys, there have been
(48:49):
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
to prove anything anywhere, because if we have, this discussion
wouldn't even be happening right now. Would be talking about
the mid Glorians and the from whatever far away galaxy,
(49:12):
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 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
(49:33):
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 is no other life. 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,
(49:55):
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
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
(50:16):
likelihood of extraterrestrials 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.
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
(50:39):
that's out there, that number changes, but apparently it's very
very close to zero right now. It's just I would
take I would take issue with those people because I
think that next to zero number is probably that Earth
would be visited or that Earth will visit some other civilization. Yeah, yeah,
that life exists. I'm pretty sure. That's almost a certain
(51:00):
Oh that came up to and 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 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
(51:24):
is some form of life somewhere out in the universe,
just because of the room is too big for their
not to be. But because the room is so big,
this room being the universe, uh, there's virtually no chance
that we will ever ever run into him. I love
I love the idea of humanity stumbling upon some ancient
relic and it's very sad and bitter sweet, but it's
(51:47):
still really important. Like, you know, what if someone finally
lands on Mars and then they find like the equivalent
of alien graffiti zorlac was 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.
(52:07):
What happened is oor lock, Dude, he made it to
Earth with that one ship full 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
(52:29):
become a ufologist, one of your first and most significant
steps is going to be determining an area of focus.
Do you want to concentrate on a specific event like
that aerial school sighting, 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
(52:50):
psychology of witnesses, even though this would not in itself
be UFO research so much as sociological research. And then,
after determining that you want to read widely, we found
a great starting point for anybody who's looking for a
good bibliography on serious UFO research. It's called UFO Literature
(53:11):
for the Serious Upologist. It's by George M. Eberhardt, and
it lists all kinds of different books and articles on
this particular subject and will help you get started. You
can also there are a couple places online that you
can find, but this is a really we would recommend
this place. Yeah, it's uh, it was, I think it's
I want to say it's from which Will, which means
(53:35):
it's gonna be a little bit dated, but it has
some has some solid some solid gold classic hits. Yeah.
Basically a bibliography that's gonna 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
(53:58):
the community. And while the online courses we found do
still exist, they're not the only operations around. For example,
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,
(54:22):
we would like to hear from you. Do you consider
yourself a ufologist? What sort of studies have you found
to be helpful what are some tips or tricks you
might have for your fellow listeners who are considering pursuing
this research. That's really great. Please please write in let
us know, send us uh I would say, call us
(54:42):
and tell us what you're like, what you think these
places are that you need to go or things you
need to read. We are one eight three three std
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 that came in today,
we did, but we need more. We need more, So
(55:03):
greedy for your messages, fuel the machine of your own voice.
That number is eight three 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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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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