January 10, 2025 • 64 mins
Joining me tonight is a true legend in the field of UFO studies, Peter Robbins. Peter is an investigative writer, author, and lecturer whose writing and research are focused on the subject of truly anomalous UFOs and their implications for humanity. He has appeared as a guest on and been consultant to numerous radio shows, television programs and documentaries. He also hosts the live weekly two-hour radio talk show, “Meanwhile, Here On Earth” on The Un-X Network.
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PLEASE HELP THE CHANNEL GROW ☕️ SUBSCRIBE, like, comment, and click the YouTube Notification Bell so you don’t miss a show. Thank you! https://www.youtube.com/mysticlounge
HALF LIGHT documentary: https://tubitv.com/movies/678744/half-light
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome back to Coffee and uf ohs. This is Alan B. Smith,
your most grateful host. I have a very and I
know I say that at times, but this time it
truly is a very special guest because our guest tonight,
Peter Robbins, is a legend in my mind in the
(00:38):
field of upology. He is someone that I care for,
I consider a friend, and who has been very supportive
of my podcasting over the years, and that is none
other than Peter Robbins. He will be covering not only
decades worth of his experience tonight with us, be drawing
(01:00):
the bridge between thirty forty years ago where he was
looking into the UFO now UAP subject and what it
looks like now, what's the same, what's changed. His show
also happens to be on the Ondex network, just like
this year Coffee and UFO's podcast, and it is meanwhile
(01:24):
here on Earth where Peter Robbins really does a great
job of kind of flipping the script on investigators and
journalists of the UAP and UFO enigma, and instead of
just talking about UFOs and aliens, he does an amazing biographical,
journalistic interviewing style and it really brings a lot of
(01:48):
depth to the many people that you and I are
familiar with in these fields. So I highly recommend going
out and checking. Meanwhile, here on Earth, Peter Robbins's own podcast,
this podcast, Coffee uf can be found on the Unex network.
It will be streaming live rebroadcast live stream on the
Next network two am Eastern on Friday evenings and eleven
(02:12):
pm Pacific time Thursday night in case you miss the
live stream here and of course this podcast will be
podcast posted every Friday wherever you listen to your podcast.
And if you're a fan of coffee and UFOs, if
you appreciate this subject and the guests that we have on,
please go to wherever you listen to those podcasts, leave
a review, some comments. All that is really helping to
(02:35):
continue coffe, the growth of coffee and UFO. Speaking of
as I kind of stutter along here, I'm gonna have
a little bit more coffee. It's been a long day,
but my gosh, it is worth it to bring on
the one and only Peter Robbins. Peter, welcome back. How
are you?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I'm okay. It's good to be back with you, Alan
on this cold, snowy night. Oh yeah, New Yorky.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Still have frozen lips from earlier today. So you know
you are meaningful to me in many ways, and I
just want to remind people here. So before coffee and UFOs,
I had a podcast called paranorl Now, which was on
the old Inceptional radio network, and you were one of
(03:20):
my earlier guests, and I was honored that you had
broken your story about your co author at the time
on that pop podcast and it spoke so loudly to
your integrity as a human being and as a investigator.
So I just want to thank you for that, because
(03:40):
I think you've said a really good example. You know,
it's hard, the sunk cost fallacy is a problem in
this field, and you went out there and you showed
people that you don't have to get stuck. You can
do the right thing, and I think that's amazing. So
before we continue with the conversation on UFOs, I do
want to just update people and give a little background
(04:01):
on how you got involved in the subject in the
first place.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Highly unintentionally, isn't it for all of us? Very much
against my will and intentions. On a certain level. More
than forty years ago, an aspiring artists living in Lower Manhattan.
I had a dream that I was living, and one
(04:26):
that had been encouraged in the adult world around me.
Since I was a small boy. I was gifted as
a painter and doing drawings and the like, and it
was a natural career path. I studied art at university,
then transferred to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan
(04:48):
and pursued that career. And by the time I was
really in my late twenties, things we're just going the
way I had hoped they would. I was starting to
show my work at galleries. I was part of a
world that I found absolutely fascinating. I was meeting well
(05:11):
known artists and part of a tradition, a life that
you know. It just goes back in time. And for
a number of reasons that I think I understand now,
I had the return of a childhood memory that I
(05:33):
had repressed, of a profoundly unambiguous UFO siding. More specifically,
five disc shaped objects coming in over the neighborhood. I
became of agent on Long Island, and my sister and
I watched them. They were close enough to make out
(05:56):
what we could only read as windows. They were silvery white,
and there they were, and to compress the story considerably,
it was really too much for me at a certain point,
my only interest up until that point. I was fourteen,
but probably intellectually like nine, at a very happy childhood
(06:19):
in a simpler time. I guess anybody that watches old
time TV and may remember the character leave it to Beaver.
That's not how sophisticated I was. But I really liked
my life and had all kinds of interests. Again, UFOs
didn't fit into them other than the wonderful black and
(06:43):
white movies that I usually would see on Saturday mornings
or afternoons at our local movie theater of you know,
monsters invading the Earth and all the good stuff. But
I think I intuited strongly the adult message on spoken
that it might be that this was antasy, yet there
they were. While watching them, Alan, I had a reaction
(07:08):
that I've since chronicled confirmed with many many witnesses or experiences,
myself being a witness, that I call the checklist reaction.
You're minding your own business, you're living your life, and
all of a sudden, there it is, or there they are,
(07:29):
and your logical mind just goes down the list of
what this is not or what they are not. And
I literally remember once the memory re emerged.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
You remembered actually doing that in your head.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Well again the memory was submerged and hidden with one
interesting breakthrough. From the time I was fourteen until I
was in my late twenties something over fourteen years and
I knew that what I was looking at were not planes, helicopters, kites, blimps, dirigibles,
(08:08):
strange shaped clouds, formations of birds, flots of and jets,
and reflections from the ground, And at a certain point
realized I was looking at something wholly other, and that
everything I thought I knew now is open to question.
I should also say that I not only had no
(08:31):
exposure to the subject, but nobody who I knew had
any interest in it. I didn't know there were such
things as UFO conferences. I think I knew there were
UFO magazines because you know, you'd see them on the stands,
you know, kind of pulp magazines. But again, it was
a subject I paid no attention to. Fourteen plus years past,
(08:53):
that memory comes roaring back and down in my loft
in East China, down sitting on the floor, thinking, I
think I'm having some kind of metal episode or I'm
going crazy or having some kind of breakdown, because this
can't be. I couldn't have forgotten something that was the
(09:14):
most profoundly different, interesting, provocative thing I had ever seen.
And yet we know the human mind can repress much
more conventional memories if it needs to. I had a witness,
and once I calmed down and thought things through, I
phoned my sister Helen, who is an aspiring poet living
(09:37):
in a mile or so north of me in the
east village. Astrip was a good time to talk. Told
her a memory had returned to me. I needed her confirmation,
and that I didn't want to tell her what I
remembered because I knew she'd say yes or no, and
then I'd really not know for sure. So I set
the scene, told her what the weather was like, about
(09:59):
how old we were, time of year, where we were standing,
cut me off mid sentence, and repeated the memory. I
was flabbergasted because it was conscious she had never forgotten it.
I asked her why we never talked about it. She
reminded me that that afternoon she came up to me
and asked me if I wanted to talk about it.
(10:20):
I said, no, and the years started to pass, and
one would think that would be plenty. I think if
it had just been that allan, I would have been
one of those many people in the world who had
a really serious interest in UFOs, but would hardly be
talking to you from my current vantage point all these
(10:40):
years later on this podcast. It's what she said next
that totally changed my life and for a good period
of time, not really for the better, which was telling
me about a series of fragmented memories, but conscious memories
of being taken and being on board a craft and
being examined. This is years before the term gray existed
(11:05):
and described the beings. And I had a bc AD
moment in my life basically that you camp back or
forward from thinking for a moment that my sister had
gone crazy, and then with a little self humor reminding
me that I had just you know, talked about the
(11:26):
five flying saucers hanging over the Parker's house close enough
to see windows, and thought, listen to your sister now.
The things she said were so archetypical to me and
would be to you even word for word of what
she was remembering, the procedures, the voices in her head,
(11:46):
what exactly they were saying. And over the next days, weeks,
and months, I continued to paint and draw and take
photographs and teach painting at my alma mater, but the
passion to be one of those few people that really
(12:09):
makes it as a serious professional artist in New York
City took a mortal blow. I continued to work in
the field for years, but the UFO books started to
replace the art books. Within a year, I had made
a new friend, another painter who had just started to
(12:31):
take a serious interest in the subject, named Bud Hopkins.
The following year, we gave our very first UFO presentations
together on the stage of the School of Visual Arts
where I taught, and our lives took off in different ways,
in different trajectories. But I was so disturbed by what
(12:56):
I had come into. I was really frozen. For some time.
I knew my sister was sane, I felt I was,
but any adult who took UFOs seriously I really had
to question, and so I was very careful and starting
over the months to choose initial colleagues mentors. I also
(13:22):
needed to put myself in therapy seriously. I needed and
I found a psychotherapist who took the subject seriously and
who helped me to understand that I wasn't crazy nor
my sister. The World War happened and it might be
an area that I should take part in. And over
the years I started doing what I do.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Did the psychotherapist work with anyone else who had experiences.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I don't know. But his distinction for me was when
I was still a teenager, I was introduced to thes
of brilliant Austrian psychotherapists and social observer, doctor Wilhelm Reich,
And over those ten years that I read Reich's work
on and off, I was aware that in the nineteen
(14:15):
fifties he had serious UFO sidings and really interacted with
the phenomena via an extraordinary device that he created, repeatedly
documented visually and by instrument by other scientists. But I
hadn't given it much thought. And when this memory, you know,
(14:37):
the post memory time, I remembered this. Also remembered that
his first assistant for the last eleven years of his
life was still alive in practicing as well in his
seventies at the time. But I found doctor Ellsworth F. Baker,
who had two UFO sidings of his own, one with
Reich and took the subject very seriously, so there was
(15:00):
no need for me to have to justify or explain.
There were other issues I was dealing with, as any
one in therapy does, but he really helped me to
put it in place and realize they're real. This is
important work. The implications for humanity are very significant, and
(15:25):
I was hooked.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
You were hooked, which means, is that another way of
saying you were a believer? Did you need more convincing.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I've always kept away from that word believer. I became
interested in the subject having nothing to do with belief.
There they were as real as the chair that I'm
sitting in, and so that whole aspect of the way
the mind functions really was short circuited away. Also, when
(15:58):
we talk about u f UAP studies, as you know,
it's a very big tent covering many specialty areas of research.
The pie slice I was first interested in was specifically
the abduction of people by this one group of beings,
(16:18):
and I keep coming back to that, although my interests
have expanded and covered many other areas of research and
investigation over over the years.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
And that's understandable because of your familial experience. I think,
I think that you would be more sympathetic.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
But belief again, wasn't it. I knew there was something real,
and the ones I was interested in was the ones
that had interacted with my sister who began to work
with Bud Hopkins once he became Bud Hopkins the investigator
so to say, and wonderful ship as well that they had.
(17:05):
Once Bud's first book was published, that was Missing Time,
which is the first real serious case history of experiences
observing patterns that are similar from one to the next,
one of them being missing time. Not only was that
the title of his book and a phenomena that happens
(17:28):
to so many abductees, but he gave a new phrase
to the English language, like gray. You know. In the
world of UFO studies. For a brief while they owned it,
but because of popular culture, many folks who don't follow
this subject know what a gray is. They also know
(17:51):
that Missing Time has a specific, nonstandard, if you will,
paranormal aspect to it. That book was published, I started
to work with him informally for the years leading up
to it, one painter to another. I sometimes would work
in his studio as his studio assistant, and that would
(18:14):
come back over the years, sometimes nostalgically decades later. But
it was a very interesting first meeting. And you know,
as in life, you never know where something's going to lead.
He had published his very first case study in nineteen
seventy six. I was about less than a year into
(18:36):
the work, and it was published in a publication. You're
familiar with The Village Voice, a New York staple, but
not a UFO publication, a political publication.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
And well, I found job postings there when I was younger, too,
very very useful.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You can find this article, by the way, it's easy
to trace down on the Internet the title of the article,
and it's I. I from nineteen seventy six in the
Village Voice, Sane man sees UFO, sane man sees UFO.
And I of course bought the paper, went home, read
(19:17):
it in one sitting, thought it was the best thing
I had read on the subject. Contemporaneously, I had started
to read used books. I was picking up Donald Keyhoe
and MK jessp some of the early classics. But as
far as a case study, he hit the ground running.
It's brilliantly written up and backed up and I just
(19:40):
went to the New York City phone book. There was
only one Bud Hopkins in him and two d's, and
I just cold called him and introduced myself and told
him about my memory and my sister's experience. And the
very first question he asked me, it's the very beginning
of a thirty five year friendship, tell me about your art.
(20:01):
And that didn't go really well. And Bud was a
flight period abstract expressionist. I was coming out of the
minimalist conceptualist tradition. But he was interested in what happened
to Helen and invited me over for coffee and a
few days later that's just what I did.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Did you continue debating art after that as well? Or?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Oh yeah, Art and New York City and popular culture
and the theater and films ran through our entire relationship.
But you know, you never know how things are going
to go when you meet somebody new in your life.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Well, so what's the perspective when you're when you were
looking at the UFO phenomena then, now, how do you
contrast it to the way you look at it today?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Well, number one, it was for me a number of
independent investigators that I was meeting a handful of organizations.
I think APRO was still around, NICAP I think had
(21:09):
recently been deceased, and Muffan had was there. I think
I joined for a year in the late seventies, and
then every few years I joined again, and then not joined.
But it was mostly for me. My perception was independent individuals,
overwhelmingly middle class white guys, middle aged white guys, who
(21:32):
were doing the work and wanting to be taken seriously,
speaking at conferences, publishing in paper journals, writing books, and
giving talks. This was decades before the Internet. You know,
you'd subscribe to a publication, or you would write to
(21:52):
somebody by mail and sometimes follow up with an actual
meeting compare notes all of us this is the Freedom
of Information Act came in under President Carter. So this
was before the Freedom of Information Act. But there were
authentic important documents out there that had been naturally declassified
(22:19):
put in the National Archives and there to find, you know,
for diligent researchers, and we would copy and trade copies
of authentic declassified documents. It was quite a big deal
for many of us to it seems so simple now
and so almost yes, but it was. We were kind
(22:42):
of making it up as we were going along in
a certain way.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
And all right, but if i'm interject, I would like
to add that that experience actually kind of gives you
a depth of insight, more wisdom, I think in some ways,
because when information like now, it's coming at your rapid fire,
you know, back back then, you know, because I started
(23:08):
reading about this, you know, TV first in the eighties
and then reading in the nineties. Yeah, you had time
to sit on a book. Yeah, you know, you had
time and something would come out, maybe on coast to coast, right,
a news item of some sort that was, you know, revelatory,
and then you can think about it for a while,
the alien autopsy, right, you can, you can really talk
(23:30):
about it and let it sink in. Now you've got
a week, and then the next thing is happening. You know,
it's it's it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Even more than that. Now the world of UFO studies
is peopled with very colorful personalities, many of them with
incredibly professional sources of dissemination. The website, DEMI organizations, followers,
(24:00):
any of them kind of at the celebrity level. Also,
the world of television in the seventies really wasn't covering
this at all, and it was just regular old fashioned television.
Now how many hundreds of television shows and documentaries and
(24:21):
independent films you can get lost in it. It was.
It was so very different. Plus we were even among ourselves,
we knew we were considered outsiders, and for many of us,
(24:45):
we knew people that knew and cared about us affectionately
behind our back. That's my friend, you know, Peter, he's
into UFOs. And then oh, you're into UFOs? You know,
do you believe in reincarnation? And you just get kind
of tagged as a bit of a goofball And.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
It was all under the umbrella of paranormal supernatural.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
In nineteen ninety one, and again by that point, I
was considerably into the subject. My sister and I Helen,
who went on from being a poet to a golden
platinum record award winning singer, songwriter and performer and greater
(25:30):
New York area and you know, beyond that, she was
very upfront and very public about her experiences from the
get go. But nineteen and we were not just brothers sister,
but very good friends. She passed in two thousand and
we were roommates in a number of apartments and a
(25:52):
house over the years, A great, great friend again as
well as sibling. And it was the pilot episode of
a new weekly show on whatever networker was on, called
The X Files. And we sat there and wrapped watching
this show together. And of course, if you watch the pilot,
(26:14):
it was as good as a pilot can be. We get,
you know, the basic characters, the thrust of the thing,
the dynamics, and we find that this eccentric FBI agent
is obsessed with the subject because his sister was taken, yes,
and in the plot, of course, she wasn't returned. And
I remember at the end of the show, we didn't
(26:35):
say a word to each other the whole time. She
just turned around, looked at me and says, that's you
with certain modifications. And I thought, that's what obsession is.
And I still wonder. You know, I guess I have
whatever answers I'm going to have relative to her specific
experience as well as anybody can. And you know, you
(27:00):
go on from there. But now it's it's an institution,
it's a big business. It's a lot of competing, very energetic,
often very intelligent, sometimes somewhat devious personalities looking for airtime,
(27:23):
wanting to be better known, and I find it fascinating
and kind of a dispassionate mister Spock, you know, eyebrow
raising way that this entire it's an industry and right
now it is wide open. One of the challenges is
(27:44):
that you know, I'm like, say, if you and I
were a doctor or a lawyer and we we acted
on ethically, or we put forward information to a patient
that wasn't correct, whatever, we could lose our licenses. There's
the AMA, the barssociation within eupology and the greater study
of the paranormal. I believe in order to be a
(28:07):
ufologist the qualifications are basically, touch your finger to your nose,
turn around three times and say you're one, and get
to work. There's no way that's.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
That's the ritual I did.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, you know, we can criticize each other or in
dialogue or behind each other's back, but there's no.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
You know, it's it's the wild West on a certain.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Level, where he's a check some balance.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Well, yes, it depends on the individual and well an
example would be if you are a member of Muffon
Mutual UFO network, the largest UFO research organization in the world,
but still only consisting of you know, X number of
thousands of people. And you become an investigator and you
(28:58):
pass that course which is quite rigorous, and then it
was a big book. Yeah, you you blow it, you know,
you fake your information whatever, they can kick you out,
but you know, and.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
They do, they do, they do background checks and everything.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
But that's the exception to the rule. We're on our
own and most of us try to follow I believe,
some kind of moral compass and one foot in front
of the other and do our best to bring our
corner of the truth to the public realm.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, and the self regulating that exists are by other researchers, documentarians.
So Darcy Weir was on the podcast a couple of
episodes back, and his documentary you Know, put a lens
right on David Wilcock and Cory good Story and really
(29:56):
just uncovered that entire thing, just to and expose the
absolute sham and bamboozling that occurred. And the thing is,
I think for a lot of long time people were
afraid to call out Charlatan's because if you did, then
(30:16):
it's just it's like another bruise on the image of upology,
you know, so that I think the approach often was
just ignore those guys, you know are you know, just
pay attention to this. But I think more and more
we're seeing people come out, especially in social media, and
just call people out like, you know, this is bs,
this is whatever. Yeah up, you're immuted.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Peter did it again, Pescio, little Mike. As you know,
things changed in December of twenty seventeen with the publication
of several landmark articles in The New York Times by Leslie,
(31:00):
Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Carter that really changed the game.
I remember at the time thinking, gee, it's great, We've got,
you know, two articles and an important newspaper that usually
does not take a subject seriously. But it took me
almost a year to realize that something profound had shifted
and that the other shoe wasn't going to fall. And
(31:22):
we go back to wink wink, nudge, nudge and flying
sauces and the green men that now that the world
of officialdom may be best embodied by the House of
Representatives and their continuing efforts of certain members to push
forward to relinquish some of the terrible secrecy that the
(31:43):
subject is mired in has changed the climate as well
as the game. The same thing in the world of academia.
This may has been a tremendous breath of fresh air.
There was a time not that long ago, that if
you were a professor or associate professor, or even a
high school teacher, and you took this seriously and your
(32:06):
students knew it, or you had the bad form to
speak about it, it could be a problem in your career.
Same thing for an established scientist or other professional. But
now we're seeing more and more people with advanced degrees
in teaching positions or in research positions like AVI a
little bit Harvard, who are not worried as John Mack
(32:30):
would have been twenty years before. Not that he was worried,
but he was censured by Harvard, and it took taking
his case to the board with his lawyer, Daniel Shehan
to have him reinstated. We're in a much healthier climate.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Now, much healthier. There's still a ways to go, because
I do see backsliding on occasion. I still see the
snickering from a news reporter or you know, the little smile.
It happens, but much less often my concerns brings us
to the subject of the of the drones. My concern
(33:11):
is that with the drone activity, it once again gives
mainstream media reporters and anchors something to excuse. Yes, the UFOs,
So what do you think what's going on with the
(33:32):
drone scenario.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
I don't know, but I'll tell you some of the
thoughts that I've had. One is it just stopped. It
just stopped cold. When it stopped, all of a sudden,
they weren't there anywhere, and we're not hearing about them anymore,
I think. Initially, and this is educated speculation, there were
(34:00):
it was a test of technology within more advanced military
drones to pick up radioactive signatures. Again, it's one of
a number of theories that's been put forward of the
possibility of, you know, a terrible scenario, but enough plutonium
(34:24):
to make a dirty bomb, and that New York City
would be a logical place to set it off. But
let's do the tests nearby and focus it in New Jersey,
and then people with drones sending them up small planes
joining other official but un associated drones, then copycat operations
(34:52):
in different parts of the country, and then other countries
and all of it, leading to a tremendous amount of confusion, anxiety, concern.
I like you sometimes get calls or notes from old
friends from earlier in your life who look to you,
(35:13):
you know, as people who now take the subject more seriously,
but don't have another person you know to turn to
as knowledgeable. And I was actually taken aback by how
many old friends contacted me from different parts of the country,
some going back to elementary school. What is going on?
(35:33):
We saw them over the house. I am concerned a
friend in England who ultimately said after a siding she
was frightened and didn't know what she was frightened about.
At a certain point, it was just too much hanging
in the air. Our timing right now, at this exact
(35:58):
moment in time, with a major change on the political
landscape in this country and by extension, internationally, right now,
a tremendous amount of concern in this country for our
friends and brothers and sisters in southern California. And that
(36:18):
kind of a reminder that, you know, if there's some huge,
horrible hurricane cyclone typhoon in Bangladesh that kills one hundred
thousand people, it's a footnote in an American newspaper.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Where we look very increasingly inward in this country, more
isolationists all the time, it seems, And of course this
is a terrible tragedy, and maybe also because the area
involved is so.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Iconic and so beautiful and in terms of you know,
part of the American heart and dream, Hollywood and the
neighborhood surrounding it. As we were talking beforehand before we
went on the air, just in the past few hours,
I've been in touch with two friends who have had
(37:10):
evacuation orders sent.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
To them just you know, this evening. But it's kind
of emblematic in a way of the moment that we
seem to be in spinning around us for many of us,
seemingly out of control, and the future of this subject
now as we kind of entered this new year in
a very interesting year. I'm sure it's going to be
(37:35):
however one wants to interpret the word interesting, and what
is going to be happening with this increasing push for
more openness and or less secrecy on this subject. Anybody's guests,
I think.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
We know, Peter is interesting. I was, you know, fortunate.
Thank you for being a guest on your panel. Oh yeah,
for the holidays guests. Yeah, and over Christmas break, my
wife and I were driving on the Jersey coast and
we saw drone or I saw drone, but I was
(38:10):
driving and I'm looking out the window, and it wasn't
that parallax effect that it was close enough that I
could identify this as a drone. And I was like,
I was in all like, oh my god, I'm seeing
one of these things. But I, you know, couldn't stop
the call and I couldn't whip out my phone and
take it as I'm you know, going by. But it
(38:32):
really does speak to your point that it was quite
common for a few weeks here in like the New
York Jersey area. And then, you know, I have heard
of a couple of you know reports apparently, but nothing
nothing like what was going on there for a few weeks.
I think that, and I brought this up on your show.
(38:52):
It's interesting we haven't had like a sighting type of
a flap since the Stephenville, Texas. Yeah, and I've been
waiting for a long time, like when's the next big
one coming? And it is that what we experienced. I
know that Stephen Bassett and other people have speculated that
maybe these are actually UAP that you know are guising
(39:18):
disguising themselves.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I will jump in here and say another thing, a
phenomena that we've been faced with now and looking at
for some years in a acknowledged way, is orbs. Are
these intelligences themselves? Are they reconnaissance things? Are they? What
(39:45):
are they? And that they seem to have entered into
this as well. Also, whatever plan, whatever intention set this off,
may have been fun following really an ancient way of
(40:07):
dealing with the public in certain matters, which is, when
you want attention taken off of something that's happening, creates
something of your own as a sideshow to take the attention.
And once again we're faced with that as a possibility
(40:30):
or one of a number that are woven in. But
it wouldn't I wouldn't put it past any of the
great powers. We also know from declassified UFO related documents
from the Soviet era that they were as concerned as
we were back in the day, and that for forty
five years, a UFO event might serve as cover for
(40:55):
something an incursion of an aircraft into enemy tear ritory
or vice versa. That you know, a story about an
incursion might cover for a legitimate anomalous phenomena object and
where it shouldn't be.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
And I think I can understand that from and I
think there is an argument to be made for a
for psyops. So for instance, you know Annie Jacobson's book
Area fifty one, she makes the argument. If you're listening
to the podcast, Peter just rolled his eyes. I am
(41:34):
internally as well, because what she proposes is that it's
really Russians sent a foe UFO as a psyops program
to scare the US military, to distract us, and that
we would somehow be fooled by either deformed bodies of
(41:57):
whatever in this craft. And there are so many evidentiary
contradictions that it's like this would not hold up in
a court of law. There's no way in heck. And
yet you know, people eat it up because if you
throw enough information at the wall, people see all of
(42:18):
this glitter and then that's the story that they start
to believe. And I think it was very effective.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Yeah, I think we're dealing with a very identifiable phenomena there.
I forget whether it's Professor Jacobson or MS Jacobs, but
she had you know, the Harvard and Cachet, and she
wrote a book. I think Harvard University Press published it.
The debunker's mantra, as I've made up in my mind
(42:44):
is it can't be, therefore it isn't. Therefore it's something else.
And it's my self assigned job to pat you on
the head and give you some pseudoscience and explain it
away if just the basic fact is true. And I'll
paraphrase the late great Stanton T. Friedman, The question is
not are UFOs representative advanced technology from parts unknown under
(43:09):
intelligent control coming and going with immunity? The question is
has one ever been? And the answer to that is
an overwhelming yes that for those of us who like me,
went through that Alice's looking glass experience accompanied by complete
(43:31):
shock and a threatening of everything that you thought you knew.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
The deconstructing of your paradigm.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
It's much more preferable to make someone wrong, even if
they're correct or they're decent, because if it's true, then
all those certificates on your wall or your life experience
is now open to question. And again better but better
to call somebody a liar or delusional, or well meaning
(44:04):
but mystical, or a believer you know or a dreamer
on this kind of thing, and we will keep seeing it.
I think one phenomena that we should be aware of
right now is, after all these years, after all these years,
going back to nineteen forty seven, it is now socially
acceptable for two reasonably intelligent, sophisticated adults or not to
(44:30):
talk about this without you know, a general feel of ridicule. However,
an associated phenomena, which is the UFO abduction phenomena, is
still their boden to a great degree. As an old
time researcher said to me talking about the beginning of
abduction related research back in the seventies, we were focused
(44:54):
on the cars and not the drivers. You could talk
about a radar return or physiological evidence in a trace
case that had been transformed when come into contact with
the UFO, or the nonstandard situation. You could work on
archival materials and interview witnesses, but to talk about the
(45:17):
beings themselves, then you were crazy. And in fact, the
first serious project I was ever involved in nineteen seventy
eight with my first mentor, retired Major Koman Vonkovetsky, a
member of the Hungarian Royal Army staff. He was in
charge of all photo reconnaissance for the Hungarian Army during
(45:37):
World War Two and photo education. That was my first mentor.
He wrote an extraordinarily important paper that the Secretary General
then at the time Kurt Wallheim, some years before we
learned he had been an SS officer and didn't cop
up to that originally awkward moment. But it was a
paper about how important it was for the American and
(46:00):
the Soviets to come to some kind of mutual agreement
and understanding that if an unknown were to come into
their airspace and be interpreted as an enemy missile or bomber,
that it could set off a nuclear conflagration when it
was really a truly anomalous UFO. And it was a
(46:23):
wonderful way to kind of enter the work. And I'm
slightly off topic, but it's a question that's going to
come up again. It's a very important question that's never
really fully been dealt with.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Do you remember the name of the paper, the title?
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Oh yeah, it was a book. I can literally pull
it off my shelf. I don't think it's available. I'd
make it available to you, but hold it one moment.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
So we're seeing, okay, so we're going to do real world,
real time research pulling from Peter's vast library. And I've
you know, my wife and I have seen Peter's library
and it's it is quite the collection. So yeah, it's
some really interesting Thanks to everyone from Chat by the
way for defining the wave in the flat. I appreciate that, guys. Okay, cool,
(47:10):
let me get that a bigger screen there. Okay, world,
I can't, I can't read this.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Yeah, it's Coleman was Hungarian and wrote English sometimes as
though it were Hungarian, but World Authority for spetical affairs,
just spatial affairs, so to say, with the Hungarian touch.
And I got a credit in it, and it actually
gave me an opportunity to take part in my very
(47:37):
first UFO related events. Several years before I went to
my first UFO conference, I was in the Gallery of
the United Nations in a special meeting of the General Assembly,
listening to Alan Heineck and Stanton Friedman and Jacques Vallet
and a statement from Cooper Astronaut. Also President was an
(48:05):
American lieutenant colonel who had been involved in a very
recent and very well documented helicopter UFO event. On the
floor of the United Nations. It was quite an introduction
to beyond my own research and experience.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's amazing so early on in your research
days as well. Speaking of astronauts and UFOs, you maybe
think of doctor Edregar Mitchell, who was very much into
the psychic capabilities as well, not just you know, extraterrestrials.
(48:45):
And I don't know, have you heard of this podcast
Peter called the Telepathy Tapes. Okay, I highly highly recommend it.
It is a documentarians study and it's an all podcasts,
but there is a website that that highlights some of
(49:05):
these tests that were performed. It covers certain people who
have autism that are enable to speak or very limited
in their ability to see.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
I have heard about it and somebody sent me a link,
but I haven't watched it yet.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
It is well right now. I think it's just the podcast.
I'm sure they're going to make like a proper film
documentary at some point. But I originally heard about it
on that UFO podcast because the director I was interviewed there.
But I've been listening to this like crazy. It is
so fascinating and it's interesting the way they speak to
(49:43):
evidence and how science and skeptics, you know, a dismiss
what's right there? It blows my mind. And do you
think that that we are seeing a sea change where
(50:04):
or putting out evidence and now people are actually taking
a look at it rather than just going, oh, that's
a great episode for X files. Oh that's great for
that that sightings, you know, editorial show.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Not in a formal organized way. But what you're talking
about really is the process of disclosure as opposed to
what some of us more naively imagined at first, an
event which it may ultimately be too you know, all
world leaders going on you know, media at the same
(50:40):
time and talking to their people about it, et cetera.
But can you just restate the question again?
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Oh yeah, So the question is do you see any improvement,
because in this podcast, it's very clear that that there's
this scene the double blind, triple blind, undeniably provable, you know,
examples of telepathy between these autistic adults and I think
(51:13):
a couple of children, and the UFO phenomena. We have
a plethora of evidence. I think that is the evidence
still being ignored or people now actually been paying attention
to it.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
I think people accept pay attention to take heart about
what they can accept to the very limits. If it
pushes too hard, it will create real anxiety, a sense
of isolation, challenging all of your beliefs. It's something that
(51:55):
happens every day, but independently, people seven people, four people,
one person, in different parts of the world have experiences,
have sightings, are taken, are returned if they had an
interest in the subject. The word belief now is outmoted.
(52:17):
Belief has nothing to do with it. You know it's real,
You've had it happen to you. And those people actors
anchors within their families, their group of friends, their communities. Ultimately,
and some of them are the ones who go on
to give their first talk at a public library or
you know, a church basement that they connect up with
(52:42):
each other. This is a process that now is absolutely unstoppable.
But I think those of us in the work sometimes
lose sight of the fact that we, in terms of
the world population or the Western world, however one wants
to break it down, we're still a good way off
(53:05):
from a critical mass, which would cause it tipping in
terms of social thinking and expression. But things are moving
along at a clip, and that can be exacerbated at
any given time by another major event or by possibly
(53:28):
you know, one of the things that derailed the Vietnam
War was the unauthorized release of the Pentagon Papers by
Daniel Elsberg. The way that Julian Sange put forward material
that got him into so much trouble but told very
uncomfortable truths about this country. Same thing for Chelsea Manning,
(53:51):
same thing for a litany of whistleblowers. And now we
have this new cadre of whistleblowers who, many of whom
are assuming their own place in kind of a demi
celebrity circle that people unlike us who don't keep track
of these things now know some of these names, and
(54:15):
you know, they've bled out of you know, a bad term.
They have expanded beyond, you know, the frontiers of ufology,
so to say, to enter the realm of pop culture,
popular culture and the news, and that will continue. I
think it's so interesting in a way that it's not
(54:38):
like a sporting event, but as though reality cares what
we believe would think that my opinion on this person is,
I think this guy is credible or this woman. You know,
it's like a horse race or something. It's a little
like a sport and for some people a bit of
(54:58):
an entertainment. I think it's also a way to kind
of shuck the air out of the intensity of some
of what they are actually saying, to start to get
picky about the personalities or we will do anything to
evade what makes us uncomfortable enough. And that's a human
condition and that's going to continue.
Speaker 1 (55:20):
And there have actually been including this in the book
that I'm writing, there have been studies that have proven
this over and over again. And we're talking about on
the political level, like people highly intelligent, highly educated, people
in position of powers, power in the science community, in
their circles. Yeah, it's amazing. It happens in when you're
(55:44):
in grade school, and it happens as an adult. Whatever
the collective.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
Thinks.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
People are really afraid to go outside of that circle
and test the bautrees because they want to be there's
this desire to be accepted. You Peter and Mike went
off again.
Speaker 2 (56:13):
It's true, and again it doesn't have nearly as much
to do with the world of UFOs as human nature. Also,
again I have to stress that in the old days,
there were like worker bees, there were very few stars. Uh,
you know, one could look to the fact that at
(56:37):
that time, I think Donald Kehoe was still alive and
still doing you know, interviews. Jacques Valet was really just
beginning his work, and the people did shine. They were
important and their contributions were central. But people came up
through the ranks in analog reality. Now, now you know,
(57:01):
you can become very well known in a moment. I
would call it the Oswald phenomenon by attacking somebody super
well known, and all of a sudden you're a player
at least folks that are listening to this particular dialogue,
and so it goes. Yeah, it's like professional wrestling on
(57:22):
a certain level at its worst and genuine scholarship at
its best.
Speaker 1 (57:29):
Yes, I agree on that, but I think we can
wrap it up on that point. That's important to have
that range. There are a lot of people who just
make it big on social media. They post a lot,
and essentially they're just a different kind of reporter, right,
And I think that's okay. I think that's okay long
as you understand that that's what you're doing and you're
(57:50):
not pretending to be something else.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, And and you do see it on occasion where
people will take other people's ideas and present it as
their own. And that's a whole other another thing. If
you could leave us with one thought, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Well, it's the simple basic thought that human hubris, going
back to ancient myths, suggests that we are the most
extraordinary creation ever to be created or to evolve, And
(58:28):
in fact we don't know that what we do know,
and after all these years, one thing that I can
say with absolute certainty is I really have no idea
what the big picture is here. I observed slices that
you know long enough and carefully enough to make some
(58:49):
educated guesses. We're not alone. There are other intelligences that
come and go, whether from another dimension, another location in
the cosmo. I think the most romantic theory is time
travelers from our future, one that I'm very attached to,
but have the least feeling of reality around. I'd like
(59:16):
to think I'm wrong, because it's an amazing, mind blowing possibility,
but simply that what we really have is a dialogue
between human beings and a subject, one of the very
few at the moment that has the potential to bring
individuals of entirely different beliefs, sometimes dramatically so together and
(59:41):
to create more understanding between people. I think, next to
what is going on with environmental change right now and
political change. To a degree, this has to be the
implications of the subject have to be central to all
of us more and more as we move forward.
Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Yeah, so I to be an idealist. The UFO subject
can bring about world peace, wouldn't it be nice? Who knows?
Let's let's pull on that on that thread and see
where it takes.
Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
I think also we're dealing with a variety of them's
intelligences who are likely as capable and as able to
span all of the behaviors of human beings, from extraordinary
(01:00:39):
empathy and kindness to murderous pathology that we don't know.
And that I'll close it by reminding us of the
wonderful parable about the blind men and the elephant. Six
blind men. One's got the leg, one's got the ear,
one's working on the tusk, one holding the tail, another
(01:01:02):
one the trunk, and they're arguing about what an elephant is.
They're all right, but they don't understand that it's all connected.
This is connected in some ways, the spiritual the physical.
We're doing our best to wrap our heads around it.
(01:01:25):
But in the process realizing our humanity I think more
than anything, and we have quite a ways to go.
Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Boy oh boy, sure we sure do. But Peter, speaking
of the best, you are one of the best. Thank
you so much again for coming on. Everyone listening, please
check out Peter's podcast. It streams live Monday nights on
the UNEX Network. It is called Meanwhile Here on Earth.
Good night, Peter, Thank you and thank you everyone for
(01:01:56):
joining us. I really appreciate your support. I appreciate your
comments and questions in the chat. If you are a
fan of this podcast, please subscribe like comment down below,
and if you listen to the podcast, give a good
review and as many stars as possible. That really helps.
I super super appreciate all of your ongoing support. It's
twenty twenty five. Hopefully this will be an even better
(01:02:18):
year for UFOs and UAP than the last couple of years,
which has been very exciting. So fingers crossed. As a reminder,
this podcast is rebroadcast on the ONEX Network Thursday evenings
at eleven pm Pacific Time, Friday evenings Friday mornings two
a m. Eastern Standard Time special thanks to Margie Kay
(01:02:39):
and Race Hobbes at the n X Network. Until next time, everyone,
peace and love and I'll see you on the flip side.
It's good to be in perfectly and I wish more
of us would think of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
I want.
Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
I don't have a problem with skeptics.
Speaker 5 (01:03:03):
It's the bunkers that are on some other level that
I don't understand, especially an inference of a change in
(01:03:28):
local gravity.
Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Saucer shaped craft and they're hovering over the water.
Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
Bill Book Special Report fourteen. The better the quality of
the seting, the more likely to be unexplainable.
Welcome back to Coffee and uf ohs. This is Alan B. Smith,
your most grateful host. I have a very and I
know I say that at times, but this time it
truly is a very special guest because our guest tonight,
Peter Robbins, is a legend in my mind in the
(00:38):
field of upology. He is someone that I care for,
I consider a friend, and who has been very supportive
of my podcasting over the years, and that is none
other than Peter Robbins. He will be covering not only
decades worth of his experience tonight with us, be drawing
(01:00):
the bridge between thirty forty years ago where he was
looking into the UFO now UAP subject and what it
looks like now, what's the same, what's changed. His show
also happens to be on the Ondex network, just like
this year Coffee and UFO's podcast, and it is meanwhile
(01:24):
here on Earth where Peter Robbins really does a great
job of kind of flipping the script on investigators and
journalists of the UAP and UFO enigma, and instead of
just talking about UFOs and aliens, he does an amazing biographical,
journalistic interviewing style and it really brings a lot of
(01:48):
depth to the many people that you and I are
familiar with in these fields. So I highly recommend going
out and checking. Meanwhile, here on Earth, Peter Robbins's own podcast,
this podcast, Coffee uf can be found on the Unex network.
It will be streaming live rebroadcast live stream on the
Next network two am Eastern on Friday evenings and eleven
(02:12):
pm Pacific time Thursday night in case you miss the
live stream here and of course this podcast will be
podcast posted every Friday wherever you listen to your podcast.
And if you're a fan of coffee and UFOs, if
you appreciate this subject and the guests that we have on,
please go to wherever you listen to those podcasts, leave
a review, some comments. All that is really helping to
(02:35):
continue coffe, the growth of coffee and UFO. Speaking of
as I kind of stutter along here, I'm gonna have
a little bit more coffee. It's been a long day,
but my gosh, it is worth it to bring on
the one and only Peter Robbins. Peter, welcome back. How
are you?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I'm okay. It's good to be back with you, Alan
on this cold, snowy night. Oh yeah, New Yorky.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Still have frozen lips from earlier today. So you know
you are meaningful to me in many ways, and I
just want to remind people here. So before coffee and UFOs,
I had a podcast called paranorl Now, which was on
the old Inceptional radio network, and you were one of
(03:20):
my earlier guests, and I was honored that you had
broken your story about your co author at the time
on that pop podcast and it spoke so loudly to
your integrity as a human being and as a investigator.
So I just want to thank you for that, because
(03:40):
I think you've said a really good example. You know,
it's hard, the sunk cost fallacy is a problem in
this field, and you went out there and you showed
people that you don't have to get stuck. You can
do the right thing, and I think that's amazing. So
before we continue with the conversation on UFOs, I do
want to just update people and give a little background
(04:01):
on how you got involved in the subject in the
first place.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Highly unintentionally, isn't it for all of us? Very much
against my will and intentions. On a certain level. More
than forty years ago, an aspiring artists living in Lower Manhattan.
I had a dream that I was living, and one
(04:26):
that had been encouraged in the adult world around me.
Since I was a small boy. I was gifted as
a painter and doing drawings and the like, and it
was a natural career path. I studied art at university,
then transferred to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan
(04:48):
and pursued that career. And by the time I was
really in my late twenties, things we're just going the
way I had hoped they would. I was starting to
show my work at galleries. I was part of a
world that I found absolutely fascinating. I was meeting well
(05:11):
known artists and part of a tradition, a life that
you know. It just goes back in time. And for
a number of reasons that I think I understand now,
I had the return of a childhood memory that I
(05:33):
had repressed, of a profoundly unambiguous UFO siding. More specifically,
five disc shaped objects coming in over the neighborhood. I
became of agent on Long Island, and my sister and
I watched them. They were close enough to make out
(05:56):
what we could only read as windows. They were silvery white,
and there they were, and to compress the story considerably,
it was really too much for me at a certain point,
my only interest up until that point. I was fourteen,
but probably intellectually like nine, at a very happy childhood
(06:19):
in a simpler time. I guess anybody that watches old
time TV and may remember the character leave it to Beaver.
That's not how sophisticated I was. But I really liked
my life and had all kinds of interests. Again, UFOs
didn't fit into them other than the wonderful black and
(06:43):
white movies that I usually would see on Saturday mornings
or afternoons at our local movie theater of you know,
monsters invading the Earth and all the good stuff. But
I think I intuited strongly the adult message on spoken
that it might be that this was antasy, yet there
they were. While watching them, Alan, I had a reaction
(07:08):
that I've since chronicled confirmed with many many witnesses or experiences,
myself being a witness, that I call the checklist reaction.
You're minding your own business, you're living your life, and
all of a sudden, there it is, or there they are,
(07:29):
and your logical mind just goes down the list of
what this is not or what they are not. And
I literally remember once the memory re emerged.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
You remembered actually doing that in your head.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Well again the memory was submerged and hidden with one
interesting breakthrough. From the time I was fourteen until I
was in my late twenties something over fourteen years and
I knew that what I was looking at were not planes, helicopters, kites, blimps, dirigibles,
(08:08):
strange shaped clouds, formations of birds, flots of and jets,
and reflections from the ground, And at a certain point
realized I was looking at something wholly other, and that
everything I thought I knew now is open to question.
I should also say that I not only had no
(08:31):
exposure to the subject, but nobody who I knew had
any interest in it. I didn't know there were such
things as UFO conferences. I think I knew there were
UFO magazines because you know, you'd see them on the stands,
you know, kind of pulp magazines. But again, it was
a subject I paid no attention to. Fourteen plus years past,
(08:53):
that memory comes roaring back and down in my loft
in East China, down sitting on the floor, thinking, I
think I'm having some kind of metal episode or I'm
going crazy or having some kind of breakdown, because this
can't be. I couldn't have forgotten something that was the
(09:14):
most profoundly different, interesting, provocative thing I had ever seen.
And yet we know the human mind can repress much
more conventional memories if it needs to. I had a witness,
and once I calmed down and thought things through, I
phoned my sister Helen, who is an aspiring poet living
(09:37):
in a mile or so north of me in the
east village. Astrip was a good time to talk. Told
her a memory had returned to me. I needed her confirmation,
and that I didn't want to tell her what I
remembered because I knew she'd say yes or no, and
then I'd really not know for sure. So I set
the scene, told her what the weather was like, about
(09:59):
how old we were, time of year, where we were standing,
cut me off mid sentence, and repeated the memory. I
was flabbergasted because it was conscious she had never forgotten it.
I asked her why we never talked about it. She
reminded me that that afternoon she came up to me
and asked me if I wanted to talk about it.
(10:20):
I said, no, and the years started to pass, and
one would think that would be plenty. I think if
it had just been that allan, I would have been
one of those many people in the world who had
a really serious interest in UFOs, but would hardly be
talking to you from my current vantage point all these
(10:40):
years later on this podcast. It's what she said next
that totally changed my life and for a good period
of time, not really for the better, which was telling
me about a series of fragmented memories, but conscious memories
of being taken and being on board a craft and
being examined. This is years before the term gray existed
(11:05):
and described the beings. And I had a bc AD
moment in my life basically that you camp back or
forward from thinking for a moment that my sister had
gone crazy, and then with a little self humor reminding
me that I had just you know, talked about the
(11:26):
five flying saucers hanging over the Parker's house close enough
to see windows, and thought, listen to your sister now.
The things she said were so archetypical to me and
would be to you even word for word of what
she was remembering, the procedures, the voices in her head,
(11:46):
what exactly they were saying. And over the next days, weeks,
and months, I continued to paint and draw and take
photographs and teach painting at my alma mater, but the
passion to be one of those few people that really
(12:09):
makes it as a serious professional artist in New York
City took a mortal blow. I continued to work in
the field for years, but the UFO books started to
replace the art books. Within a year, I had made
a new friend, another painter who had just started to
(12:31):
take a serious interest in the subject, named Bud Hopkins.
The following year, we gave our very first UFO presentations
together on the stage of the School of Visual Arts
where I taught, and our lives took off in different ways,
in different trajectories. But I was so disturbed by what
(12:56):
I had come into. I was really frozen. For some time.
I knew my sister was sane, I felt I was,
but any adult who took UFOs seriously I really had
to question, and so I was very careful and starting
over the months to choose initial colleagues mentors. I also
(13:22):
needed to put myself in therapy seriously. I needed and
I found a psychotherapist who took the subject seriously and
who helped me to understand that I wasn't crazy nor
my sister. The World War happened and it might be
an area that I should take part in. And over
the years I started doing what I do.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Did the psychotherapist work with anyone else who had experiences.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I don't know. But his distinction for me was when
I was still a teenager, I was introduced to thes
of brilliant Austrian psychotherapists and social observer, doctor Wilhelm Reich,
And over those ten years that I read Reich's work
on and off, I was aware that in the nineteen
(14:15):
fifties he had serious UFO sidings and really interacted with
the phenomena via an extraordinary device that he created, repeatedly
documented visually and by instrument by other scientists. But I
hadn't given it much thought. And when this memory, you know,
(14:37):
the post memory time, I remembered this. Also remembered that
his first assistant for the last eleven years of his
life was still alive in practicing as well in his
seventies at the time. But I found doctor Ellsworth F. Baker,
who had two UFO sidings of his own, one with
Reich and took the subject very seriously, so there was
(15:00):
no need for me to have to justify or explain.
There were other issues I was dealing with, as any
one in therapy does, but he really helped me to
put it in place and realize they're real. This is
important work. The implications for humanity are very significant, and
(15:25):
I was hooked.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
You were hooked, which means, is that another way of
saying you were a believer? Did you need more convincing.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I've always kept away from that word believer. I became
interested in the subject having nothing to do with belief.
There they were as real as the chair that I'm
sitting in, and so that whole aspect of the way
the mind functions really was short circuited away. Also, when
(15:58):
we talk about u f UAP studies, as you know,
it's a very big tent covering many specialty areas of research.
The pie slice I was first interested in was specifically
the abduction of people by this one group of beings,
(16:18):
and I keep coming back to that, although my interests
have expanded and covered many other areas of research and
investigation over over the years.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
And that's understandable because of your familial experience. I think,
I think that you would be more sympathetic.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
But belief again, wasn't it. I knew there was something real,
and the ones I was interested in was the ones
that had interacted with my sister who began to work
with Bud Hopkins once he became Bud Hopkins the investigator
so to say, and wonderful ship as well that they had.
(17:05):
Once Bud's first book was published, that was Missing Time,
which is the first real serious case history of experiences
observing patterns that are similar from one to the next,
one of them being missing time. Not only was that
the title of his book and a phenomena that happens
(17:28):
to so many abductees, but he gave a new phrase
to the English language, like gray. You know. In the
world of UFO studies. For a brief while they owned it,
but because of popular culture, many folks who don't follow
this subject know what a gray is. They also know
(17:51):
that Missing Time has a specific, nonstandard, if you will,
paranormal aspect to it. That book was published, I started
to work with him informally for the years leading up
to it, one painter to another. I sometimes would work
in his studio as his studio assistant, and that would
(18:14):
come back over the years, sometimes nostalgically decades later. But
it was a very interesting first meeting. And you know,
as in life, you never know where something's going to lead.
He had published his very first case study in nineteen
seventy six. I was about less than a year into
(18:36):
the work, and it was published in a publication. You're
familiar with The Village Voice, a New York staple, but
not a UFO publication, a political publication.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
And well, I found job postings there when I was younger, too,
very very useful.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You can find this article, by the way, it's easy
to trace down on the Internet the title of the article,
and it's I. I from nineteen seventy six in the
Village Voice, Sane man sees UFO, sane man sees UFO.
And I of course bought the paper, went home, read
(19:17):
it in one sitting, thought it was the best thing
I had read on the subject. Contemporaneously, I had started
to read used books. I was picking up Donald Keyhoe
and MK jessp some of the early classics. But as
far as a case study, he hit the ground running.
It's brilliantly written up and backed up and I just
(19:40):
went to the New York City phone book. There was
only one Bud Hopkins in him and two d's, and
I just cold called him and introduced myself and told
him about my memory and my sister's experience. And the
very first question he asked me, it's the very beginning
of a thirty five year friendship, tell me about your art.
(20:01):
And that didn't go really well. And Bud was a
flight period abstract expressionist. I was coming out of the
minimalist conceptualist tradition. But he was interested in what happened
to Helen and invited me over for coffee and a
few days later that's just what I did.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Did you continue debating art after that as well? Or?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Oh yeah, Art and New York City and popular culture
and the theater and films ran through our entire relationship.
But you know, you never know how things are going
to go when you meet somebody new in your life.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Well, so what's the perspective when you're when you were
looking at the UFO phenomena then, now, how do you
contrast it to the way you look at it today?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Well, number one, it was for me a number of
independent investigators that I was meeting a handful of organizations.
I think APRO was still around, NICAP I think had
(21:09):
recently been deceased, and Muffan had was there. I think
I joined for a year in the late seventies, and
then every few years I joined again, and then not joined.
But it was mostly for me. My perception was independent individuals,
overwhelmingly middle class white guys, middle aged white guys, who
(21:32):
were doing the work and wanting to be taken seriously,
speaking at conferences, publishing in paper journals, writing books, and
giving talks. This was decades before the Internet. You know,
you'd subscribe to a publication, or you would write to
(21:52):
somebody by mail and sometimes follow up with an actual
meeting compare notes all of us this is the Freedom
of Information Act came in under President Carter. So this
was before the Freedom of Information Act. But there were
authentic important documents out there that had been naturally declassified
(22:19):
put in the National Archives and there to find, you know,
for diligent researchers, and we would copy and trade copies
of authentic declassified documents. It was quite a big deal
for many of us to it seems so simple now
and so almost yes, but it was. We were kind
(22:42):
of making it up as we were going along in
a certain way.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
And all right, but if i'm interject, I would like
to add that that experience actually kind of gives you
a depth of insight, more wisdom, I think in some ways,
because when information like now, it's coming at your rapid fire,
you know, back back then, you know, because I started
(23:08):
reading about this, you know, TV first in the eighties
and then reading in the nineties. Yeah, you had time
to sit on a book. Yeah, you know, you had
time and something would come out, maybe on coast to coast, right,
a news item of some sort that was, you know, revelatory,
and then you can think about it for a while,
the alien autopsy, right, you can, you can really talk
(23:30):
about it and let it sink in. Now you've got
a week, and then the next thing is happening. You know,
it's it's it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Even more than that. Now the world of UFO studies
is peopled with very colorful personalities, many of them with
incredibly professional sources of dissemination. The website, DEMI organizations, followers,
(24:00):
any of them kind of at the celebrity level. Also,
the world of television in the seventies really wasn't covering
this at all, and it was just regular old fashioned television.
Now how many hundreds of television shows and documentaries and
(24:21):
independent films you can get lost in it. It was.
It was so very different. Plus we were even among ourselves,
we knew we were considered outsiders, and for many of us,
(24:45):
we knew people that knew and cared about us affectionately
behind our back. That's my friend, you know, Peter, he's
into UFOs. And then oh, you're into UFOs? You know,
do you believe in reincarnation? And you just get kind
of tagged as a bit of a goofball And.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
It was all under the umbrella of paranormal supernatural.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
In nineteen ninety one, and again by that point, I
was considerably into the subject. My sister and I Helen,
who went on from being a poet to a golden
platinum record award winning singer, songwriter and performer and greater
(25:30):
New York area and you know, beyond that, she was
very upfront and very public about her experiences from the
get go. But nineteen and we were not just brothers sister,
but very good friends. She passed in two thousand and
we were roommates in a number of apartments and a
(25:52):
house over the years, A great, great friend again as
well as sibling. And it was the pilot episode of
a new weekly show on whatever networker was on, called
The X Files. And we sat there and wrapped watching
this show together. And of course, if you watch the pilot,
(26:14):
it was as good as a pilot can be. We get,
you know, the basic characters, the thrust of the thing,
the dynamics, and we find that this eccentric FBI agent
is obsessed with the subject because his sister was taken, yes,
and in the plot, of course, she wasn't returned. And
I remember at the end of the show, we didn't
(26:35):
say a word to each other the whole time. She
just turned around, looked at me and says, that's you
with certain modifications. And I thought, that's what obsession is.
And I still wonder. You know, I guess I have
whatever answers I'm going to have relative to her specific
experience as well as anybody can. And you know, you
(27:00):
go on from there. But now it's it's an institution,
it's a big business. It's a lot of competing, very energetic,
often very intelligent, sometimes somewhat devious personalities looking for airtime,
(27:23):
wanting to be better known, and I find it fascinating
and kind of a dispassionate mister Spock, you know, eyebrow
raising way that this entire it's an industry and right
now it is wide open. One of the challenges is
(27:44):
that you know, I'm like, say, if you and I
were a doctor or a lawyer and we we acted
on ethically, or we put forward information to a patient
that wasn't correct, whatever, we could lose our licenses. There's
the AMA, the barssociation within eupology and the greater study
of the paranormal. I believe in order to be a
(28:07):
ufologist the qualifications are basically, touch your finger to your nose,
turn around three times and say you're one, and get
to work. There's no way that's.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
That's the ritual I did.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, you know, we can criticize each other or in
dialogue or behind each other's back, but there's no.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
You know, it's it's the wild West on a certain.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Level, where he's a check some balance.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Well, yes, it depends on the individual and well an
example would be if you are a member of Muffon
Mutual UFO network, the largest UFO research organization in the world,
but still only consisting of you know, X number of
thousands of people. And you become an investigator and you
(28:58):
pass that course which is quite rigorous, and then it
was a big book. Yeah, you you blow it, you know,
you fake your information whatever, they can kick you out,
but you know, and.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
They do, they do, they do background checks and everything.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
But that's the exception to the rule. We're on our
own and most of us try to follow I believe,
some kind of moral compass and one foot in front
of the other and do our best to bring our
corner of the truth to the public realm.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, and the self regulating that exists are by other researchers, documentarians.
So Darcy Weir was on the podcast a couple of
episodes back, and his documentary you Know, put a lens
right on David Wilcock and Cory good Story and really
(29:56):
just uncovered that entire thing, just to and expose the
absolute sham and bamboozling that occurred. And the thing is,
I think for a lot of long time people were
afraid to call out Charlatan's because if you did, then
(30:16):
it's just it's like another bruise on the image of upology,
you know, so that I think the approach often was
just ignore those guys, you know are you know, just
pay attention to this. But I think more and more
we're seeing people come out, especially in social media, and
just call people out like, you know, this is bs,
this is whatever. Yeah up, you're immuted.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Peter did it again, Pescio, little Mike. As you know,
things changed in December of twenty seventeen with the publication
of several landmark articles in The New York Times by Leslie,
(31:00):
Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Carter that really changed the game.
I remember at the time thinking, gee, it's great, We've got,
you know, two articles and an important newspaper that usually
does not take a subject seriously. But it took me
almost a year to realize that something profound had shifted
and that the other shoe wasn't going to fall. And
(31:22):
we go back to wink wink, nudge, nudge and flying
sauces and the green men that now that the world
of officialdom may be best embodied by the House of
Representatives and their continuing efforts of certain members to push
forward to relinquish some of the terrible secrecy that the
(31:43):
subject is mired in has changed the climate as well
as the game. The same thing in the world of academia.
This may has been a tremendous breath of fresh air.
There was a time not that long ago, that if
you were a professor or associate professor, or even a
high school teacher, and you took this seriously and your
(32:06):
students knew it, or you had the bad form to
speak about it, it could be a problem in your career.
Same thing for an established scientist or other professional. But
now we're seeing more and more people with advanced degrees
in teaching positions or in research positions like AVI a
little bit Harvard, who are not worried as John Mack
(32:30):
would have been twenty years before. Not that he was worried,
but he was censured by Harvard, and it took taking
his case to the board with his lawyer, Daniel Shehan
to have him reinstated. We're in a much healthier climate.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Now, much healthier. There's still a ways to go, because
I do see backsliding on occasion. I still see the
snickering from a news reporter or you know, the little smile.
It happens, but much less often my concerns brings us
to the subject of the of the drones. My concern
(33:11):
is that with the drone activity, it once again gives
mainstream media reporters and anchors something to excuse. Yes, the UFOs,
So what do you think what's going on with the
(33:32):
drone scenario.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
I don't know, but I'll tell you some of the
thoughts that I've had. One is it just stopped. It
just stopped cold. When it stopped, all of a sudden,
they weren't there anywhere, and we're not hearing about them anymore,
I think. Initially, and this is educated speculation, there were
(34:00):
it was a test of technology within more advanced military
drones to pick up radioactive signatures. Again, it's one of
a number of theories that's been put forward of the
possibility of, you know, a terrible scenario, but enough plutonium
(34:24):
to make a dirty bomb, and that New York City
would be a logical place to set it off. But
let's do the tests nearby and focus it in New Jersey,
and then people with drones sending them up small planes
joining other official but un associated drones, then copycat operations
(34:52):
in different parts of the country, and then other countries
and all of it, leading to a tremendous amount of confusion, anxiety, concern.
I like you sometimes get calls or notes from old
friends from earlier in your life who look to you,
(35:13):
you know, as people who now take the subject more seriously,
but don't have another person you know to turn to
as knowledgeable. And I was actually taken aback by how
many old friends contacted me from different parts of the country,
some going back to elementary school. What is going on?
(35:33):
We saw them over the house. I am concerned a
friend in England who ultimately said after a siding she
was frightened and didn't know what she was frightened about.
At a certain point, it was just too much hanging
in the air. Our timing right now, at this exact
(35:58):
moment in time, with a major change on the political
landscape in this country and by extension, internationally, right now,
a tremendous amount of concern in this country for our
friends and brothers and sisters in southern California. And that
(36:18):
kind of a reminder that, you know, if there's some huge,
horrible hurricane cyclone typhoon in Bangladesh that kills one hundred
thousand people, it's a footnote in an American newspaper.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Where we look very increasingly inward in this country, more
isolationists all the time, it seems, And of course this
is a terrible tragedy, and maybe also because the area
involved is so.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Iconic and so beautiful and in terms of you know,
part of the American heart and dream, Hollywood and the
neighborhood surrounding it. As we were talking beforehand before we
went on the air, just in the past few hours,
I've been in touch with two friends who have had
(37:10):
evacuation orders sent.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
To them just you know, this evening. But it's kind
of emblematic in a way of the moment that we
seem to be in spinning around us for many of us,
seemingly out of control, and the future of this subject
now as we kind of entered this new year in
a very interesting year. I'm sure it's going to be
(37:35):
however one wants to interpret the word interesting, and what
is going to be happening with this increasing push for
more openness and or less secrecy on this subject. Anybody's guests,
I think.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
We know, Peter is interesting. I was, you know, fortunate.
Thank you for being a guest on your panel. Oh yeah,
for the holidays guests. Yeah, and over Christmas break, my
wife and I were driving on the Jersey coast and
we saw drone or I saw drone, but I was
(38:10):
driving and I'm looking out the window, and it wasn't
that parallax effect that it was close enough that I
could identify this as a drone. And I was like,
I was in all like, oh my god, I'm seeing
one of these things. But I, you know, couldn't stop
the call and I couldn't whip out my phone and
take it as I'm you know, going by. But it
(38:32):
really does speak to your point that it was quite
common for a few weeks here in like the New
York Jersey area. And then, you know, I have heard
of a couple of you know reports apparently, but nothing
nothing like what was going on there for a few weeks.
I think that, and I brought this up on your show.
(38:52):
It's interesting we haven't had like a sighting type of
a flap since the Stephenville, Texas. Yeah, and I've been
waiting for a long time, like when's the next big
one coming? And it is that what we experienced. I
know that Stephen Bassett and other people have speculated that
maybe these are actually UAP that you know are guising
(39:18):
disguising themselves.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I will jump in here and say another thing, a
phenomena that we've been faced with now and looking at
for some years in a acknowledged way, is orbs. Are
these intelligences themselves? Are they reconnaissance things? Are they? What
(39:45):
are they? And that they seem to have entered into
this as well. Also, whatever plan, whatever intention set this off,
may have been fun following really an ancient way of
(40:07):
dealing with the public in certain matters, which is, when
you want attention taken off of something that's happening, creates
something of your own as a sideshow to take the attention.
And once again we're faced with that as a possibility
(40:30):
or one of a number that are woven in. But
it wouldn't I wouldn't put it past any of the
great powers. We also know from declassified UFO related documents
from the Soviet era that they were as concerned as
we were back in the day, and that for forty
five years, a UFO event might serve as cover for
(40:55):
something an incursion of an aircraft into enemy tear ritory
or vice versa. That you know, a story about an
incursion might cover for a legitimate anomalous phenomena object and
where it shouldn't be.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
And I think I can understand that from and I
think there is an argument to be made for a
for psyops. So for instance, you know Annie Jacobson's book
Area fifty one, she makes the argument. If you're listening
to the podcast, Peter just rolled his eyes. I am
(41:34):
internally as well, because what she proposes is that it's
really Russians sent a foe UFO as a psyops program
to scare the US military, to distract us, and that
we would somehow be fooled by either deformed bodies of
(41:57):
whatever in this craft. And there are so many evidentiary
contradictions that it's like this would not hold up in
a court of law. There's no way in heck. And
yet you know, people eat it up because if you
throw enough information at the wall, people see all of
(42:18):
this glitter and then that's the story that they start
to believe. And I think it was very effective.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Yeah, I think we're dealing with a very identifiable phenomena there.
I forget whether it's Professor Jacobson or MS Jacobs, but
she had you know, the Harvard and Cachet, and she
wrote a book. I think Harvard University Press published it.
The debunker's mantra, as I've made up in my mind
(42:44):
is it can't be, therefore it isn't. Therefore it's something else.
And it's my self assigned job to pat you on
the head and give you some pseudoscience and explain it
away if just the basic fact is true. And I'll
paraphrase the late great Stanton T. Friedman, The question is
not are UFOs representative advanced technology from parts unknown under
(43:09):
intelligent control coming and going with immunity? The question is
has one ever been? And the answer to that is
an overwhelming yes that for those of us who like me,
went through that Alice's looking glass experience accompanied by complete
(43:31):
shock and a threatening of everything that you thought you knew.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
The deconstructing of your paradigm.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
It's much more preferable to make someone wrong, even if
they're correct or they're decent, because if it's true, then
all those certificates on your wall or your life experience
is now open to question. And again better but better
to call somebody a liar or delusional, or well meaning
(44:04):
but mystical, or a believer you know or a dreamer
on this kind of thing, and we will keep seeing it.
I think one phenomena that we should be aware of
right now is, after all these years, after all these years,
going back to nineteen forty seven, it is now socially
acceptable for two reasonably intelligent, sophisticated adults or not to
(44:30):
talk about this without you know, a general feel of ridicule. However,
an associated phenomena, which is the UFO abduction phenomena, is
still their boden to a great degree. As an old
time researcher said to me talking about the beginning of
abduction related research back in the seventies, we were focused
(44:54):
on the cars and not the drivers. You could talk
about a radar return or physiological evidence in a trace
case that had been transformed when come into contact with
the UFO, or the nonstandard situation. You could work on
archival materials and interview witnesses, but to talk about the
(45:17):
beings themselves, then you were crazy. And in fact, the
first serious project I was ever involved in nineteen seventy
eight with my first mentor, retired Major Koman Vonkovetsky, a
member of the Hungarian Royal Army staff. He was in
charge of all photo reconnaissance for the Hungarian Army during
(45:37):
World War Two and photo education. That was my first mentor.
He wrote an extraordinarily important paper that the Secretary General
then at the time Kurt Wallheim, some years before we
learned he had been an SS officer and didn't cop
up to that originally awkward moment. But it was a
paper about how important it was for the American and
(46:00):
the Soviets to come to some kind of mutual agreement
and understanding that if an unknown were to come into
their airspace and be interpreted as an enemy missile or bomber,
that it could set off a nuclear conflagration when it
was really a truly anomalous UFO. And it was a
(46:23):
wonderful way to kind of enter the work. And I'm
slightly off topic, but it's a question that's going to
come up again. It's a very important question that's never
really fully been dealt with.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Do you remember the name of the paper, the title?
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Oh yeah, it was a book. I can literally pull
it off my shelf. I don't think it's available. I'd
make it available to you, but hold it one moment.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
So we're seeing, okay, so we're going to do real world,
real time research pulling from Peter's vast library. And I've
you know, my wife and I have seen Peter's library
and it's it is quite the collection. So yeah, it's
some really interesting Thanks to everyone from Chat by the
way for defining the wave in the flat. I appreciate that, guys. Okay, cool,
(47:10):
let me get that a bigger screen there. Okay, world,
I can't, I can't read this.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Yeah, it's Coleman was Hungarian and wrote English sometimes as
though it were Hungarian, but World Authority for spetical affairs,
just spatial affairs, so to say, with the Hungarian touch.
And I got a credit in it, and it actually
gave me an opportunity to take part in my very
(47:37):
first UFO related events. Several years before I went to
my first UFO conference, I was in the Gallery of
the United Nations in a special meeting of the General Assembly,
listening to Alan Heineck and Stanton Friedman and Jacques Vallet
and a statement from Cooper Astronaut. Also President was an
(48:05):
American lieutenant colonel who had been involved in a very
recent and very well documented helicopter UFO event. On the
floor of the United Nations. It was quite an introduction
to beyond my own research and experience.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's amazing so early on in your research
days as well. Speaking of astronauts and UFOs, you maybe
think of doctor Edregar Mitchell, who was very much into
the psychic capabilities as well, not just you know, extraterrestrials.
(48:45):
And I don't know, have you heard of this podcast
Peter called the Telepathy Tapes. Okay, I highly highly recommend it.
It is a documentarians study and it's an all podcasts,
but there is a website that that highlights some of
(49:05):
these tests that were performed. It covers certain people who
have autism that are enable to speak or very limited
in their ability to see.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
I have heard about it and somebody sent me a link,
but I haven't watched it yet.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
It is well right now. I think it's just the podcast.
I'm sure they're going to make like a proper film
documentary at some point. But I originally heard about it
on that UFO podcast because the director I was interviewed there.
But I've been listening to this like crazy. It is
so fascinating and it's interesting the way they speak to
(49:43):
evidence and how science and skeptics, you know, a dismiss
what's right there? It blows my mind. And do you
think that that we are seeing a sea change where
(50:04):
or putting out evidence and now people are actually taking
a look at it rather than just going, oh, that's
a great episode for X files. Oh that's great for
that that sightings, you know, editorial show.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Not in a formal organized way. But what you're talking
about really is the process of disclosure as opposed to
what some of us more naively imagined at first, an
event which it may ultimately be too you know, all
world leaders going on you know, media at the same
(50:40):
time and talking to their people about it, et cetera.
But can you just restate the question again?
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Oh yeah, So the question is do you see any improvement,
because in this podcast, it's very clear that that there's
this scene the double blind, triple blind, undeniably provable, you know,
examples of telepathy between these autistic adults and I think
(51:13):
a couple of children, and the UFO phenomena. We have
a plethora of evidence. I think that is the evidence
still being ignored or people now actually been paying attention
to it.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
I think people accept pay attention to take heart about
what they can accept to the very limits. If it
pushes too hard, it will create real anxiety, a sense
of isolation, challenging all of your beliefs. It's something that
(51:55):
happens every day, but independently, people seven people, four people,
one person, in different parts of the world have experiences,
have sightings, are taken, are returned if they had an
interest in the subject. The word belief now is outmoted.
(52:17):
Belief has nothing to do with it. You know it's real,
You've had it happen to you. And those people actors
anchors within their families, their group of friends, their communities. Ultimately,
and some of them are the ones who go on
to give their first talk at a public library or
you know, a church basement that they connect up with
(52:42):
each other. This is a process that now is absolutely unstoppable.
But I think those of us in the work sometimes
lose sight of the fact that we, in terms of
the world population or the Western world, however one wants
to break it down, we're still a good way off
(53:05):
from a critical mass, which would cause it tipping in
terms of social thinking and expression. But things are moving
along at a clip, and that can be exacerbated at
any given time by another major event or by possibly
(53:28):
you know, one of the things that derailed the Vietnam
War was the unauthorized release of the Pentagon Papers by
Daniel Elsberg. The way that Julian Sange put forward material
that got him into so much trouble but told very
uncomfortable truths about this country. Same thing for Chelsea Manning,
(53:51):
same thing for a litany of whistleblowers. And now we
have this new cadre of whistleblowers who, many of whom
are assuming their own place in kind of a demi
celebrity circle that people unlike us who don't keep track
of these things now know some of these names, and
(54:15):
you know, they've bled out of you know, a bad term.
They have expanded beyond, you know, the frontiers of ufology,
so to say, to enter the realm of pop culture,
popular culture and the news, and that will continue. I
think it's so interesting in a way that it's not
(54:38):
like a sporting event, but as though reality cares what
we believe would think that my opinion on this person is,
I think this guy is credible or this woman. You know,
it's like a horse race or something. It's a little
like a sport and for some people a bit of
(54:58):
an entertainment. I think it's also a way to kind
of shuck the air out of the intensity of some
of what they are actually saying, to start to get
picky about the personalities or we will do anything to
evade what makes us uncomfortable enough. And that's a human
condition and that's going to continue.
Speaker 1 (55:20):
And there have actually been including this in the book
that I'm writing, there have been studies that have proven
this over and over again. And we're talking about on
the political level, like people highly intelligent, highly educated, people
in position of powers, power in the science community, in
their circles. Yeah, it's amazing. It happens in when you're
(55:44):
in grade school, and it happens as an adult. Whatever
the collective.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
Thinks.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
People are really afraid to go outside of that circle
and test the bautrees because they want to be there's
this desire to be accepted. You Peter and Mike went
off again.
Speaker 2 (56:13):
It's true, and again it doesn't have nearly as much
to do with the world of UFOs as human nature. Also,
again I have to stress that in the old days,
there were like worker bees, there were very few stars. Uh,
you know, one could look to the fact that at
(56:37):
that time, I think Donald Kehoe was still alive and
still doing you know, interviews. Jacques Valet was really just
beginning his work, and the people did shine. They were
important and their contributions were central. But people came up
through the ranks in analog reality. Now, now you know,
(57:01):
you can become very well known in a moment. I
would call it the Oswald phenomenon by attacking somebody super
well known, and all of a sudden you're a player
at least folks that are listening to this particular dialogue,
and so it goes. Yeah, it's like professional wrestling on
(57:22):
a certain level at its worst and genuine scholarship at
its best.
Speaker 1 (57:29):
Yes, I agree on that, but I think we can
wrap it up on that point. That's important to have
that range. There are a lot of people who just
make it big on social media. They post a lot,
and essentially they're just a different kind of reporter, right,
And I think that's okay. I think that's okay long
as you understand that that's what you're doing and you're
(57:50):
not pretending to be something else.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, And and you do see it on occasion where
people will take other people's ideas and present it as
their own. And that's a whole other another thing. If
you could leave us with one thought, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (58:06):
Well, it's the simple basic thought that human hubris, going
back to ancient myths, suggests that we are the most
extraordinary creation ever to be created or to evolve, And
(58:28):
in fact we don't know that what we do know,
and after all these years, one thing that I can
say with absolute certainty is I really have no idea
what the big picture is here. I observed slices that
you know long enough and carefully enough to make some
(58:49):
educated guesses. We're not alone. There are other intelligences that
come and go, whether from another dimension, another location in
the cosmo. I think the most romantic theory is time
travelers from our future, one that I'm very attached to,
but have the least feeling of reality around. I'd like
(59:16):
to think I'm wrong, because it's an amazing, mind blowing possibility,
but simply that what we really have is a dialogue
between human beings and a subject, one of the very
few at the moment that has the potential to bring
individuals of entirely different beliefs, sometimes dramatically so together and
(59:41):
to create more understanding between people. I think, next to
what is going on with environmental change right now and
political change. To a degree, this has to be the
implications of the subject have to be central to all
of us more and more as we move forward.
Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Yeah, so I to be an idealist. The UFO subject
can bring about world peace, wouldn't it be nice? Who knows?
Let's let's pull on that on that thread and see
where it takes.
Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
I think also we're dealing with a variety of them's
intelligences who are likely as capable and as able to
span all of the behaviors of human beings, from extraordinary
(01:00:39):
empathy and kindness to murderous pathology that we don't know.
And that I'll close it by reminding us of the
wonderful parable about the blind men and the elephant. Six
blind men. One's got the leg, one's got the ear,
one's working on the tusk, one holding the tail, another
(01:01:02):
one the trunk, and they're arguing about what an elephant is.
They're all right, but they don't understand that it's all connected.
This is connected in some ways, the spiritual the physical.
We're doing our best to wrap our heads around it.
(01:01:25):
But in the process realizing our humanity I think more
than anything, and we have quite a ways to go.
Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Boy oh boy, sure we sure do. But Peter, speaking
of the best, you are one of the best. Thank
you so much again for coming on. Everyone listening, please
check out Peter's podcast. It streams live Monday nights on
the UNEX Network. It is called Meanwhile Here on Earth.
Good night, Peter, Thank you and thank you everyone for
(01:01:56):
joining us. I really appreciate your support. I appreciate your
comments and questions in the chat. If you are a
fan of this podcast, please subscribe like comment down below,
and if you listen to the podcast, give a good
review and as many stars as possible. That really helps.
I super super appreciate all of your ongoing support. It's
twenty twenty five. Hopefully this will be an even better
(01:02:18):
year for UFOs and UAP than the last couple of years,
which has been very exciting. So fingers crossed. As a reminder,
this podcast is rebroadcast on the ONEX Network Thursday evenings
at eleven pm Pacific Time, Friday evenings Friday mornings two
a m. Eastern Standard Time special thanks to Margie Kay
(01:02:39):
and Race Hobbes at the n X Network. Until next time, everyone,
peace and love and I'll see you on the flip side.
It's good to be in perfectly and I wish more
of us would think of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
I want.
Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
I don't have a problem with skeptics.
Speaker 5 (01:03:03):
It's the bunkers that are on some other level that
I don't understand, especially an inference of a change in
(01:03:28):
local gravity.
Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Saucer shaped craft and they're hovering over the water.
Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
Bill Book Special Report fourteen. The better the quality of
the seting, the more likely to be unexplainable.
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