WTUFO
What the UFO? We're learning about UFOs and processing in public.
We talk about what the phenomenon might be, explore historical sightings, track new developments, and generally feel our way through this wild, exciting subject.
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WTUFO
S1E7: Talking to Friends About UFOs
Once you start thinking about UFOs, it can be hard to talk with people who don't know much about them.
We explore ideas about how to approach the tricky topic and share some stories about how this has gone for us so far.
If you're enjoying the show and you'd like to help us keep making it, please consider supporting us at patreon.com/WTUFO
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What up? Hi, welcome to WTUFO rebranding. It used to be UFO Holding Space. Before that it was just Holding Space. Now it's WTUFO. It sums up our casual devil-may-care attitude and our reckless curiosity about this wild subject, which is that UFOs are real and we're going to talk about it. I'm Caleb Mayle and this is my brother, john hey there, and today we're going to talk about it. I'm Caleb Mayle and this is my brother, john hey there, and today we're going to talk about talking to friends about UFOs, which, if you're into UFOs, you know is a fraught topic. So, john, why don't you explain a little bit about what we're thinking here?
Speaker 2:Man, I was at a dinner party a few months ago and somebody who knew I was into UFOs like teed me up with a like John's really into UFOs, why don't you tell us about it, john? And it was harrowing and I really choked, I feel, and I had like 10 people listening to me for a minute and I think I probably alienated all of them and didn't convince anybody to be more curious about this subject. It's something that's like really hard to talk about. I personally find it challenging. I know you do too, caleb, and yeah, so I'm excited to unpack it a little bit. Talk about what makes it so difficult and hopefully land on some good ideas for how we can do this better, better. Does that sound all right to you?
Speaker 1:yeah, that sounds great. Uh, as a background piece of information, I have a dog in my room, two dogs in my room, and one of them is very young, so they might squeak things or bite me well the dog.
Speaker 2:Now you have to show the dog messy in here, all right. You're right, I do have to show the dog.
Speaker 1:It's really messy in here, all right you're right, I do have to show the dog. That's the adorable dog. He's destroying a spray bottle because he was trying to eat wires and I stopped him from doing it. Okay, just quick preamble on a little other unrelated intro. Floor is wet now. We both found this app from an economist article this week and we thought it was really cool. It's by enigma labs. Um, I actually don't remember what it's called. Do you remember what it's called? The android version is called ufo sightings. It's not an enigma labs product, but it also has like a map and the enigma labs version it's just called Enigma on Apple on the iPhone and it's got a kind of cool little icon that looks like the sort of looks like the gimbal video.
Speaker 2:It's like a like lock brackets on it. Anyways, yeah, so you downloaded this yesterday. Have you played around with it much?
Speaker 1:I downloaded the Yankee ripoff Android version, which is not by the same company, and played around with it a little bit, and what's very cool about it is that you can just see right off the bat that there are thousands of sightings you can see they're all over the world and you can like zoom in on your area and see information back as far as like at least the early thousands about what people saw and in some cases, photos and video. You said you also ran out and did that in your area.
Speaker 2:It's pretty amazing. I'm sorry you only have the janky one, uh, but the. I live in altadena, california, which is like a little town outside la, and I opened it up and there were 12 sightings and I just picked one at random and it was like a very detailed, very well-written sighting that somebody had taken a lot of time and effort and there were like four videos and some stills attached with it, also about like a sighting over the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which happens to be down the street from my house, with like a shimmering silver cigar shaped object with multicolored lights and then several smaller objects. It was a lot of the sort of like trans-shape ones that'll be like circles and then they're cubes and then it's triangular for a minute and then it's spherical again. So I don't know, you know whatever.
Speaker 2:This is not an app that I think you would turn over to somebody who you're just talking to about UFOs for the first time, because it's, you know, it's a lot of. Who knows who's making these reports. But I was pretty blown away by just the few reports I looked at and also just like the complexity and polish of the interface, like it's pretty robust app. So good find man Glad you sent that to me.
Speaker 1:That's very cool, and it's also cool that the economist covered it relatively dryly, with very little snark loved how boring that economist article was. Yeah, appreciate it. Also, they put the whole arrow report in parentheses like that. It's like one little line in parentheses and found like oh, by the way, the pentagon says this is bullshit, but anyway, back to the story oh, that's great I think they maybe said a little green man once, but that was the only time.
Speaker 1:it's not an ivorley article, and I think they appreciated what other people might about this app, which is just that it's data, it's just raw information about what people have seen, because and maybe this is a good transition if there there's one rock hard, indisputable, mutually agreeable fact around UFOs, it's that people see them. So people see something is a good place to start, because that is something that everyone agrees is true. There's no, no, you're not going out on any limbs. You don't have to send anybody a link or like cite a historical source. We all know that people see them, uh, and then, if they're new to the subject, they probably don't know how many people see them, and we think this is fuzzy, but it's like at least 5 000 a year in america. Richard dolan thinks it's probably like 50 000 real sightings globally a year, um, but it could be as many as 100 000000. We don't really know. It's a lot, though, and that's an early thing that people don't know, so tiptoeing is safe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go ahead. And then, just off of that, I would say, then the next thing that you want people to know is that is like the kinds of people who see them, and because what I encounter a lot is the like. But all those people are crazy and even like. Stephen Hawking said that basically in like one of the like once I found about him like interesting, they only talk to rednecks and fucking morons, huh, but like no, no, no, that's not that's not true at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the economist article has some data about that. They break down the people who self-reported one profession in this app, uh, as mostly veterans, and then I think law enforcement is also really high up on that list. Um, I don't remember there was something in between there. But again to your point, it's like often quite serious people oh, pilots is big people who have, like, jobs that involve looking at things in the sky or looking for unusual stuff or relating to military craft seem to be extra likely to notice and report things like this. So do you want to start with a discussion of how this has gone so far for us? Would you like to talk about how it's been to talk to friends about this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that would be a fun way to start. I'll try to. I don't know. I'll just give general top line thoughts. It's been pretty challenging. I think it's challenging on two levels. I think is where I feel it's challenging on two levels. I think is where I feel it. One is the actual like communicating to people that there's something going on here that's worthy of their attention. I struggle to do that. I think like to convince people. And then I also struggle to like, like feel okay, while I'm doing it, like, not sort of like, yeah, not sort of just like turn on myself or just like gets, you know, flop, sweat, or like, or just like be really self deprecating. It's just kind of like, you know, take a posture of like well, I know I sound crazy, but like how to do it with a straight face, kind of I relate to that really strongly.
Speaker 1:I get physically very squirmy and I find myself like contorting into awkward positions while I'm explaining shoulders crunching, spine bends yeah, I mean you and I have almost all the same dna, so I guess no surprise that that's very much.
Speaker 2:I'm probably like tearing up the label on my beer or something. Um yeah, just just awful, and I think in part that's because I want people to think I'm smart and respect me and like you know, and that's really probably the same impetus.
Speaker 1:That is why, like, academia doesn't study it. You know, to some extent, absolutely. I had a friend ask me after one of our conversations recently why is this making you so anxious? And when I really stopped to ask myself that question, that was the answer I came up with that I I value your opinion of me and I like to think of myself as an intelligent person who understands the world, and I'm really scared of coming off as not that and and that that's a really good thing to notice about yourself, because it's it's a tool to express yourself better. Once you understand that, that's your motivation.
Speaker 1:On a broader level, when I realized a couple years ago that it was very important for me that people think that I was smart, it was like a master key to my whole personality for myself, like it was a, it was a big revelation about just like how I behave in the world and uh, it's. It's like humbling also, but like noticing that has allowed me to sort of like get off my idiot high horse about it and just like catch myself when I'm doing dumb things, to like demonstrate that I know something when somebody doesn't need a piece of information. Um, and I think that pops up in the UFO realm for me, because I want to tell people, um, like the most crazy thing that I learned. Um, right away, I want to like jump in at the deep end where I'm swimming currently, and that is bad. We can talk about that in our, our um tips on the way out. But, uh, but, in a couple of these conversations, especially the longer ones I've, I've found that to be a major screw-up for myself.
Speaker 2:Just uh, starting with what I'm thinking about right now is like not a good way to approach somebody who's thinking about it for the first time I have totally done that exact thing, and also done it as a kind of like, just to be like a little playful and provocative and be like I'm going to open up by telling you about, you know, the Italian pancakes or the jellyfish or something, um, so okay, so all right. So for me, I feel the challenges are like, yeah, maintaining like not fucking crawling out of my skin from like embarrassment or discomfort, um, and then also like actually succeeding in convincing people that they should be interested in this. Is there anything else like what's your experience, anything else that you find particularly challenging about this so that you'd like to solve for?
Speaker 1:Um, I agree with you that the the the main thing that we would like out of our friends is curiosity, and I think that's also an important thing to realize. And if other people have different experiences, then it's important for them to realize whatever they want to get out of it too. No-transcript, and it might be as simple as like asking your friend to please hold some space for you while you explain some crazy stuff that you've been thinking about, but it might. It might be like more of an ask in terms of like inviting a friend into the curiosity, and that is my dream scenario for how this goes is you say hey, I've been looking into this stuff and your friend goes Whoa, what really there's like interesting stuff here. I always assumed it was bullshit.
Speaker 2:Well, tell me what to read and then you know, you trip off happily down the rainbow road of discovery I think this idea of uh, of an ask, is kind of a fun um, like like safe I don't know safety blanket. Maybe for me, going into a conversation like this um would be I work in the world of training and you're training around like sales and also political conversations, like canvassing conversations, and it's really good to end conversations like that with a specific ask, like you want to have something to ask, and also it gives you like a piece of punctuation so you could ask a friend if it's a good enough friend, like would you can.
Speaker 2:I say like would you read an article? Will you read this article that I'm going to send you, or will you look at this thing? Yeah, that's a good point, Okay, so let's try to impose some structure here, maybe.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe that's a good segue into our entry points that you were discussing. Or do you want to talk a little bit more about how it's gone and, like, categorize the ways in which it's gone, right or wrong?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess what I want is to have like a 30 second and then maybe a 60 second or 90 second like elevator pitch basically, and for me it's of like why you should go and learn more about this and and then you know. So, with that as a goal for me, like then, what I started thinking about is like what do I, what is important information to try to communicate in that? What's important to try to communicate in that short amount of time? Versus what stuff do you not have space for there? So I don't know that. Feel free to pivot us away from this, but I would be curious to talk with you about what are the things that you need to communicate in elevator pitch.
Speaker 1:That sounds great. We could also try one of these live, but maybe we should start with a top-level discussion of the things you'd like to cover. One thing that I would really like to get people to at level one is there are physical objects in the skies that we can't identify, and by can't identify I mean all of us can't identify, like our most advanced sensors and our most advanced scientists and military professionals can't identify, and they are objects. Objects, they're not meteorological phenomena, and then from that I think I would like to get them to, they are intelligently controlled, and that is the assessment of professionals who work in fields like flying airplanes and commanding military vehicles, um, or like running intelligence operations.
Speaker 1:And then I guess maybe the next thing would be that like a ton of okay, I was going to go to beans, but I think maybe step three is actually there's a ton of freaking data about this, because me, the big like blindfold removal stepping into UFO world, has been realizing that we have a ton of information about this. Like my previous expectation was that we had no information and that is why we all assumed that there were no flying saucers. And once you get into it a little bit, you realize that in fact we have a ton of information, and so it becomes more confusing that we haven't, as a group, stepped into credulity or at least curiosity about this subject. And then probably the last level is and also, thousands of people have had experiences with beings, and you've got to just encounter that at some point as you move down this road, as uncomfortable as it is, and that is the area where you're most likely to lose people. So that's the area where you kind of have to be the most careful.
Speaker 2:I love this. That's a great list, so, and I all right. So it's, these are objects and nobody knows what they are. They're intelligently controlled, according to experts, and there's a ton of data about this. And then I guess the cherry on top, or the chaser is, is this yeah, is people having experiences with entities? I strongly agree with 0.1, and 0.1 is basically the only thing that I if I have. Like that's my 10 seconds. If I have one thing to try to communicate something to people, it's that they're physical, technological objects and nobody knows what they are. And obviously you know I mean there's tons of citations for that Quick sidebar. I really want a business card sized thing with a QR code with all the citations in it.
Speaker 1:It reminds me of that the guy who played Biff Tannen had one of those cards that explained himself.
Speaker 2:I want that exactly. I want the Biff Tannen card Available on our store. Okay, but I'm not sure that I agree with point four, though I don't know that it's worth talking about. I like in such a short, I don't know, I don't. I, I'm like I could see it both ways. I could see it as like alienating people, turning them off, or like like piquing interest, and as being kind of a chaser or like a teaser if you've successfully kind of built the other rungs there. I don't know. What do you think?
Speaker 1:No, I think you're right. I sort of feel like we're looking at the three things that would give 10 seconds each in a 30 second. There are physical objects. They're intelligently controlled. There's tons of data. That's a good 30 seconds, and then you could say a little bit more about them to make it 60 or 90 seconds. Rather than adding more big claims, maybe you would want to like at the end of your 90 seconds suggests some stuff people could consume. We're going to get to that next, like specific recommendations of entry point content, but I don't know what do you think? Are there more substantive points to add to this list, or is the 30, 60, 90 just about expanding how much you say about objects, intelligence and data?
Speaker 2:I expanding how much you say about objects, intelligence and data. I do think that you're right that it is helpful to have some recommended research avenues as an off-ramp and just as a to add something on here like it's almost like it's. It's so. It's such a fucking weird thing to lay on somebody. It's like so intense that like you kind of want to like cushion it almost by like by telling them where they can go to to learn more about this if they want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what would you think about maybe pointing to other serious people who are interested in this?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I love that idea.
Speaker 1:So there are some pretty serious scientists who are looking into this now, like the guy at Stanford and the guy at Harvard, and there are also six or seven members of Congress who are aggressively investigating and think there's really a there there. So it's going to be an interesting subject to watch and you're out.
Speaker 2:I kind of love that, because the the first three points are they're good, they're information that I want to communicate, but they're not, I don't think, working toward my goal of convincing people to be that there's something here that they should be curious about. So bringing in validators, like like that, I think, is a really good idea.
Speaker 1:Cool, yeah, Maybe don't even need to name them in the 60 second version. In the 90 second version you can say Avi Loeb and Gary Nolan and a couple of the congressional UAP caucus names would be okay. What do you think about Jared Moskowitz? Maybe?
Speaker 2:Yeah that's safe-ish. What do you think about talking about the US government at all, Like the, you know the idea of a cover up or the Pentagon or any of the reports.
Speaker 1:That seems like the hour long version of the conversation. I'm not sure. Just like with the beings, I'm not sure that you can do that in the 60 or 90 seconds because it you start to sound crazy and you start to feel crazy also. For me that's a point where I get like really angry and it triggers this like new emotional tone from me that is probably not constructive for the conversation. Um, what can you give me a, an example short version of uh of hitting the cover-up?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, I guess I would get there through, um, the schumer amendment to the defense authorization act, the amendment that was gutted, um, and I would just get there, I guess, through the, you know, through the validators point, where you're like, lots of other people are interested in this. For instance, you know, senator schumer actually introduced an amendment last year, um, that was was scuttled, but he mentions non-human intelligence like 17 times and is you know, he seems to believe, as one of the most cleared members you know has some of the highest security clearance of anybody in our government that we are in possession of alien craft. We're like that's that that's a real possibility. Obviously I'm already over 30 seconds, this is not going well, but like, but like the there's the schumer amendment is so I don't know, maybe people don't even have the context to to understand how crazy that is to have the majority leader of the Senate introduce a piece of legislation that has language like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 30% of America would be like the Senate works for the Supreme Court, right? Yeah, yeah, maybe, and alongside that point I feel like it's not worth mentioning, I don't know. Actually I'm waffling on this, but you can sum up the Grush allegations pretty quickly. The air force intelligence, uh, who was tasked with investigating the uap, told congress last year that he thinks we have some of these craft and, uh, we've been secretly researching them. So congress is trying to get to the bottom of that.
Speaker 2:You know you could do that or like yeah I mean, I like how, I like how light your, your touch was there. It was a nice casual tone that I feel like you probably wouldn't be able to bring to a real conversation, but I would struggle to. Yeah, I don't care, take it or leave it, it's just interesting, is all.
Speaker 1:Right. Is there a question to ask people at the end of this?
Speaker 2:That's a great idea. That's a great idea, because then you can turn your own nervousness back on them.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, like how, what's the spotlight to?
Speaker 2:spin over to your friend.
Speaker 1:That isn't just like. What do you think about this? Will I ever get a job again? Oh my god. Sorry, Goblin mode is happening over here.
Speaker 2:You could ask what about this are you most curious about?
Speaker 1:And maybe the answer is no, the answer could just be nothing.
Speaker 2:But maybe the answer is no. The answer could just be nothing. But if the answer is not nothing, then it's their gears are going to be turning and they're going to, you know, start building some pathways for themselves what about this are you most curious about?
Speaker 1:that's interesting. Um, I've I heard in a. I read a really good negotiation book last year called Never Split the Difference, and one of the recommendations he has is he's like a famous hostage negotiator, this guy, and he proposes not ever asking questions where the answer can be no. So you want to say something that they would almost certainly agree with and say is that right? Or like do I have that right? As opposed to like saying, are you curious about this, for example, where somebody could say no, not really, because I think it's all made up. Another thing I think that might work would be have you what have you heard about this subject? I'm curious About what your Media diet has brought to you.
Speaker 2:I like that. I like that a lot too dog zaster.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry um okay all right, it's worse than I imagined I might have to like take him he's making a lot of noise. Yeah, what a little punk I, so I think that's pretty good. What about this makes you curious is okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, okay. So there's. I'm going to share some more like sort of a buzzy, like sales methodology kind of thinking similar to what you were just saying Different closed concepts of how you could close a conversation that I've encountered um, one is uh, one is um, uh like a calendar close where you could be like can I talk to you again about this? And like, next week, can we talk about this again sometime, even something like that. Another is a choice. Give people a choice of two things rather than a yes or no kind of question. So be like, if you're still interested in this, do you want to hear a little bit more about sightings, or do you want to hear about a specific, really credible sighting, or do you want to hear a little bit about abduction experiences? Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Put them the wheel want to hear a little bit about like abduction experiences. Oh, that's interesting. The wheel in the conversation a little bit, and then you keep them trapped.
Speaker 2:In the conversation there's an if-then. This is a concept of like an if-then. So you could be like if the New York Times published an article that said that Lockheed Martin had a crashed alien spaceship. You know, new York Times published an article that said that Lockheed Martin had, you know, had a crashed alien spaceship. Would you believe it? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's a bad example.
Speaker 1:I still feel and I actually haven't done this in my own conversations, but I feel like what have you heard about this subject is a really strong over to you. I do like that and it's something that, in retrospect, I wished that I had tried in some of my conversations, because my instinct is that, at least for some group of person, if you give them the option, they will opt out of the conversation. My friends have ranged from like the third, that's like just really trying to stop talking about this as soon as possible, to the third, that's like, and just like swirling their brandy, uh, and happy to let me just have at it. Um, no one has done what I really wanted, which which is like where do I learn more? But that's been kind of the range.
Speaker 1:One as much as you want and please stop talking.
Speaker 2:Yeah right. One other specific question type. This would be a pretty weird one to use, I think, but maybe it could be fun On a scale of one to ten, like how much do you, to what extent do you believe that there are physical objects in the sky that nobody knows what they are? And then when they answer and say I'm like a three dude, be like what would it take to get you to like a six?
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is really good, I agree, I think I think engaging with this on the like, on the probability scale, is really powerful, especially for some of our more technically-minded friends. I know you have one in particular who's been giving you the full brush-off, yeah, and I know that sometimes engineer brains work in probability and they might be more receptive to that. You know what? I'm going to put him in another room. I'll be right back.
Speaker 2:The dog is so bad that he needs to be taken out of the room.
Speaker 1:Okay, my dog is in another room. I'm sorry, that was hideously disrespectful to listeners. I apologize. I have some chew toys if he comes back. So we were talking about probability, and one thing you could do is ask a friend where this is all landing for them right now in terms of their sense of its reality. You could maybe try to pivot there by saying like you know, half of Americans think that there's something to this. Do you fall in that top half or that bottom?
Speaker 1:half maybe maybe no, where do you, where do you fall on the spectrum of, of information and belief about this?
Speaker 2:that's kind of what is the number? Isn't it like?
Speaker 1:56 percent.
Speaker 2:Nice, it's probably something like that of americans believe, believe in ufs, I think, which is a weird question, one question I've seen is believe the government knows more than it's telling us.
Speaker 1:That's kind of an easy sell.
Speaker 2:I do think I'm pretty convinced that in a really short version of this, it's best to avoid talking about the cover up, because it just gets so woolly, so quickly. And yeah, and like I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even talk about, if I mentioned the schumer amendment, which I do think is really, like it, valid and interesting and weighty, I would not talk about the idea even of crashed craft. I would just say that, like you know, after a lot of you know, yeah, yeah, I just I would not talk about the idea even of crashed craft. I would just say that, like you know, after a lot of you know, yeah, yeah, I think this amendment that clearly demonstrates that he believes one of the most highly cleared people in our government, that he believes there's something going on here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree that it's dangerous territory, and I would just say that the lightest touch way to hold it is to say something like by the way, there's a pretty good chance that our military and intelligence communities know a little bit more about this than they're letting on, and that is, I think, the gentlest way to address that whole subject, which for me is also very thorny.
Speaker 2:I like that a lot because I think that when you start, when you talk about it and start trying to talk about it in depth, you can sound a little, you know, a little cuckoo, but but actually like people hear it as cuckoo but like actually most people have no trouble believing the U S government and the military is lying to us and actually they think that that happens all the time.
Speaker 1:They're like very certain that that happens, yes, um, so you can pair those beliefs effortlessly and stay on the side of sanity yeah, if you say it the way you just did, then they just in their internal monologue will think like well, yeah no shit right. Obviously, and I think that's especially true when you talk to members of the military. I think they're more likely to understand stovepiping and like classification systems and just like the high likelihood that sensitive information would be withheld from the broader public. It feels very normal to people especially.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you want to talk more about probability, or should I maybe pull us back to what the structures were kind of landing on?
Speaker 1:I'm curious about it. I'd love to have a better question for it. I feel like the gentle way to do it in a friend conversation is how likely does this stuff seem to you right now? But I still feel like that's a little more on the spot than what have you heard about this? How much have you heard about this subject? Because how much have you heard doesn't require them to make a judgment. They're just like then reporting what they've encountered. Oh like, oh, not much.
Speaker 1:I read that New York Times article, or like oh yeah, I saw there was a congressional hearing, but I didn't watch it. Congressional hearing but I didn't watch it. And that's like nice and safe, because you're not asking them to like say what they think about something, whereas when you get to the probability, you are putting them on the spot. So I feel like you need a little buy-in before you get to that point, like you need them to be interested in some level before you engage them, which I guess kind of cuts against what you're trying to do, which is like get somebody who's not curious about it to become curious about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess I'm not convinced that that question actually does much, because they'll tell you whatever they've seen or heard and then you're still left. You're basically exactly where you were. That's a good point. You just have to move on to your next thing to say, and they're not really thinking critically there. So I, I'm, I'm kind of warming to the question of like, like.
Speaker 2:So you said what, uh, um, you know, what do you feel? What do you think is the probability here right now? Or framing it as 57 of americans think that there's something going on here? Are you in the top half of the? But like? What do you think? Are you? Um?
Speaker 2:But then, following up with the question of like, what do you think you would need to see? What would it take to convince you that there was something going on here? Or what would it take to move you from a three to a six out of ten in believing not like? Being not convinced is probably a bad thing to ask for, actually, but like what would move the needle for you, you know? And they might say like ufos on the white house lawn. But they might say something more nuanced and I think, probably best of all, they might like think for a beat and you know. And then like be spinning their wheels about like and start building structures in their brains for like, yeah, how they, how they process this information in the future yeah, I think that's a really good idea.
Speaker 1:What more would you like to see? Can you phrase the question again?
Speaker 2:well, like on a scale of one to ten, how convinced are you that there are objects in the sky that we don't know what they are?
Speaker 1:uh, I'm like go to bro.
Speaker 2:I don't know, sounds like might be weather stuff or it could be secret government programs okay, so like what do you think could move you to like a seven out of ten?
Speaker 1:like if the government told me that, like, they knew there were aliens, like, and then I be like okay, I guess, whatever, but it still wouldn't change how much I care about healthcare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess that's your friends.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're right.
Speaker 2:Even if you did say that, then I don't know. I guess the point then is, like, well, like in political persuasion and canvassing, you're never, you're never going to convince somebody, you're never going to change somebody's mind in one conversation, and that's not the point of the conversation really. When you're doing a persuasion conversation, you're just trying to like move them from undecided to like curious, towards your, towards your field, so field, so getting you to a. Even if I got that answer from you, I don't know that's something I would then, I guess, just have to move on and not try to dig in on that question more.
Speaker 1:What's it going to take for me to get you in one of these UFOs today? So let's move on to entry point content. Okay, let's do that, yeah but I like this general.
Speaker 2:The general thing that we've landed on here is like we want to communicate that there are objects and no, and our greatest, our biggest experts don't know who they are. Uh, what they are. They're intelligently controlled per x. They appear to be intelligently controlled again per experts. Um, and then that there's like a ton of data dating back decades and I would want, I want numbers for all of these and I want, like I want, to get more specific on them. But, and then here's some people who are also taking this very seriously and here's some places you could go to learn more if you want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and when we're asking questions, you can ask things what about this makes you curious? What have you heard about this subject? What would you like to hear more about? What would move your needle from where it is now to a higher estimation of the likelihood that this is real? And finally, can we talk about this more sometime, which is just like a nice way to put it down the field and then re-engage later. As you said, it doesn't happen in all in one conversation.
Speaker 2:Or can I text you an article, you know yeah.
Speaker 1:Can I text you an article is good, and then we're going to go into this list now of like really good things to send people. If you get that, yes, if you make that sale you'll put them in a UFO. I'm liking it more than I thought I would. I thought this was going to be a little casual banter, but this feels like an action plan now, great, okay, so, okay, cool, great.
Speaker 2:So now we're going to talk about some top entry points with things that we think are really good trailheads for learning more or getting pilled, and points with things that we think are really good trailheads for learning more or getting pilled. Um, and I will say, like, for me it really was the uh, it really was just a point, one thing that we're trying to communicate, that they're physical objects and we truly don't know what they are. Like that. For me, when that finally really landed and I actually internalized that that is true, and that unidentified meant unidentified by, like the most qualified possible people you could imagine, uh, then I was like what? That? What the ufo it that? That really is like what sent me.
Speaker 1:I just like walked around saying it out loud to myself for like a week and a half.
Speaker 2:Um, but okay, what was your? What?
Speaker 1:I don't know. Where do you want to go, Do you want?
Speaker 2:to tell me what your first entry point was that really hit for you, or do you want to tell me what you think the best entry point is for somebody?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's start with ours. I guess you sort of just gave yours, although I'm curious where did that happen for you, like, what piece of content did you consume that made you have those realizations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess just to do the, to give the shortest possible answer to this, because I've been into this subject for years in some ways and different avenues. But like the second chapter or the first real chapter of Leslie Kane's book, which is the Belgian air force general talking about the Belgian wave from, I think it's 1989, um, just like I went into that book being like ready to be like, being kind of like hoping to be convinced I guess, but like that chapter, just like hit me like a ton of bricks there's one specific thing I remember from this chapter correct me if I'm wrong, please which is that they contact the uS government and military right and ask if this is like a test program by some of our like advanced DARPA tech right.
Speaker 1:They ask about this. I don't remember answer, which you know because it's spec ops you can't take as an absolute certainty, but it's some kind of evidence they are an ally Like. It's very unusual to conduct exercises over an ally's airspace without notifying them. We read each other into that stuff all the time. We'd be more likely, I think, think probably to do that to ourselves. Um, well, it's a yeah go ahead.
Speaker 2:Should we talk about the cane book now or the?
Speaker 1:cane book is the best big thing, I think I the game book is also the thing, that I have mailed to the most people.
Speaker 1:I've sent physical copies of that book to two of our good friends and uh, I one of them started it. I think it helps the. The foreword by john podesta, I think helps um great, but it's it's the single best because it's the simplest. I think it starts like with this very clear short list uh, we talked about earlier uh of goals she has to establish during the book, and then it ends with that list of like I have established these three facts and my basic memory of them is like these are physical objects and they're in our skies and we don't know what they are. And that's like the whole book is really just establishing those three things and then you can like read into it other layers of the mystery. But she doesn't go to any crazy places. She doesn't talk about beings. She doesn't talk about extraterrestrial hypotheses, she doesn't talk about crash retrievals.
Speaker 1:She barely talks about the cover up and she she spends almost no time in her own voice. It's like set up and then primary source reports from highly qualified people all the way through the book and then that great essay by the political scientists at the end about like why we might not know more about this if the government does in fact know more or if the military and intelligence communities know more, which is a really worthwhile enterprise, I think it's a fantastic book.
Speaker 2:You should totally read it, even if you're already convinced that the phenomenon is real. And yeah, if somebody is willing to read a book, who's a skeptic, it is a fantastic skeptic handholder.
Speaker 1:And for me it's called UFOs. I think like generals, pilots and government officials go on the record and it's leslie kane, but it's spelled k-e-a-n.
Speaker 2:Leslie kane um, it's so good and what hit me and then we should move on. But what hit me about the belgian wave, why that landed so so hard for me is um, the. It's like a year-long, so there's like hundreds of sightings of the belgian air force. He writes the um or goes on to like, write, uh, like air force plans for the united nations, like it's just his. The little paragraph that describes his background was like jaw-dropping to me as somebody coming in who was still kind of in the, the hayseed mindset was like you know, to be like see somebody of this caliber, even though I was into the Fravor stuff. Like this level of investigation is just not. It just blew my mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good point. The head of the Belgian air force. It's also easy to tell that story once you've read that chapter.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's a really long one, let's try to not talk that much about. And also the book.
Speaker 1:Nobody's gonna read the fucking book, really um yeah, it's true, and nobody's gonna listen to this whole thing that I'm gonna do next, but for me, the torchlight, for some reason, was the lex friedman interview with david fravor. Um, it's like an hour and a half or two hour long conversation and probably only like 30 minutes are about the encounter. So you could hop to the time code and I will put that time code in our. We'll put all this stuff in our show notes and maybe in an article about this piece. But for me, for some reason, the 2017 articles didn't set off my bunny hole investigation. They were like very cool and exciting, but it didn't. It wasn't the tipping point for me, which at the time, obviously I wasn't curious about cause I wasn't curious about the whole subject. But since then, in the last year, I've been curious about why they didn't do that for me.
Speaker 1:Like, the videos are freaking crazy. The, the, the whoa video and the like. What the hell is that thing Video is? I mean, they're like nuts. They're the gimbal videos freaking amazing. It's really cool and crazy and it should have shaken me to my core and made me start researching this, but it didn't. So I'm curious about why that is, but it's beyond my ability to answer that right now, but for whatever reason, listening to the long form interview with David Fravor who's like a West Point flight commander you know the closest thing to Tom Cruise in the real military just like slowly and confidently described this thing. That happened to him was the brain cracks like an egg moment. For me, that was the like, oh shit, we're dealing with an actual thing. That happened to him was the the brain cracks like an egg moment. For me, that was the like, oh shit, we're dealing with an actual thing. That's like almost certainly not human and it is technological and that's freaking crazy. And then then that is the thing that made me start like reading and listening to everything and getting deeper and deeper into it and gathering all these details. So I guess everybody watching this knows full well what the Tic Tac encounter is like.
Speaker 1:But the very short version is this the thing comes up out of the water and like stares face to face with a supersonic American jet I don't know if it's supersonic, it's just a high-tech American jet and then it blasts off at an insane speed to a specific location in their flight plan, which changes every 15 minutes for Air Force security reasons. So it's like super weird that this thing got to this place and it's super weird that it went as fast as it did. And, as David Fravor said to Congress last year, this thing was like unlike anything that we're currently developing or that we're likely to develop in the next 20 years. So like, as far as he's concerned, he saw something that was not human and it was technological and it's on our planet. So when you do that math, all the other like hey, maybe we'll need a civilization stuff falls away and you end up dealing with this idea that something intelligent is here, and I think I was at the. That thing is probably a drone for at least six more months until I bumped into some of the like experiencer stuff which I don't think we have on our short list of entry point content for understandable reasons.
Speaker 1:So we got the Kane book and the Friedman Fravor interview. You want to do the next one?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well off the Friedman Fravor interview. You want to do the next one? Yeah, well off the Friedman Fravor interview. I would push the 60 Minutes piece from Fravor and Ryan Graves also is in this 60 Minutes package from, I think, like 2022, maybe 2021. It's like, I don't know, it's the shorter version. It's the shorter version of the Fried're, not it's, it's the shorter version of the end of the freedom one. But you still get the, you still get the story and you get footage and it's just like dry, just the facts. Um, yeah, I think the 60 minutes piece is actually a really good entry point for um, maybe especially for older people I.
Speaker 1:I think it's probably the strongest short piece of content that you can send people. It's not like two minutes, but there is a six and a half minute version. There's one that's like 13 minutes and then there's a six and a half-ish minute version that it covers some slightly different territory with Fravor and Dietrich, but that's the total time footprint of it is like less than 20 minutes, and probably the first one you'd want people to watch is the 13 minute one. It's very serious. It's framed in the 60 minutes style. It's yeah, it's just like dripping with formality and certainty and official technical care.
Speaker 2:Um, I think lou elizondo's also there. Um, oh yeah, which is rough, honestly, just because of his soul patch and the fact that he carries a backpack with him. There's a shot of him like at a bus station or something leaning against the wall. I mean you know god love him, but he's the soul. Patch is not good for the movement.
Speaker 1:But then Chris Mellon kind of swoops in and saves it with his like tall private investigator peacoat and just like certain dry voice and I think that's right.
Speaker 2:I think you're right and Grace, it's really, it really is good. I think you're right and Grace, it's really, it really is good. I'm going to zag and say that I don't think that there's a New York Times article that I would push, actually at this point.
Speaker 2:I think those glowing auras and black money, the Pentagon secret UFO program stuff from 2017, which is arguably what started this modern era of ufology and UFO interest I just think that that's just old news at this point. And UFO interest. I just think that that's just old news at this point. And what that? What that establishes, if anything is just, or what it establishes is that the U S government has continued to be interested in this and you know well, well, pretending that they they aren't interested in it. And I just feel like we're beyond that now and like in in the project of trying to convince somebody that they should be curious about the phenomenon. I don't know if, like, because the Pentagon used to have a program that has since been shuttered moves that and replaced subsequently by like three additional programs. I don't think that it moves that needle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, I buy that point. I would say people should see those videos.
Speaker 1:Absolutely that's I. I buy that point. I would say people should see those videos absolutely. But also the new york times has just been really shitty about this ever since they handed it to julian barnes. So going to the new york times is not a great spot.
Speaker 1:And bouncing off this, I would say the debrief article that debuts the grush claims is actually a very good written place to start people and if I was going to send people one article, I would send them that article because it's got the Carl Nell verification and the like Jonathan Gray super spy verification, which is shady because it's like a weird. It's weird that he has a pseudonym and works at the CIA. But there are some quotes in that that support Grush's claims in a way that sound really strong, firm, certain. I think carl nell says something like his fundamental assertion that there's a sub rosa arms race going on. There has been for like 70 years to control this technology. That's accurate. That might be somebody else, but they basically people back up Grush's claims and they can sound not crazy.
Speaker 1:There's also a Christopher Mellon article like an op-ed in the debrief. That's like a written version of his soul talk. There's some pretty good quotes in it about just like how frequent these sightings are at military bases, and that's information that people are not exposed to if they're just coming into this for the first time, but I think if they're, if they're really reading their very first ever article about it. The the debrief is a pretty good place to start. It's a little more detailed than that. There's that one other Hill op-ed. It's like either we're experiencing a PSYOP or this is real, and both of those options are very strange. That's pretty good, but what do you think about the debrief article? Would you send that to somebody on the phone now or no?
Speaker 2:My problem with it is that I've never heard of the debrief before that article.
Speaker 1:And that's on me.
Speaker 2:It's a reputable publication.
Speaker 1:And it's Leslie Kane and Ralph Blumenthal, so it's like their names should matter because they wrote.
Speaker 2:But like I don't know, maybe I'm just out of touch and I just didn't know it and like that but like I don't think that's not your fault my, like you know, dippy artist friends on the east side of Los Angeles are not reading a like national security specific blog, so they had not heard of it either. So it's like not a great article for me to to send to them yeah, all right, I buy that.
Speaker 1:I mean, the 60 minutes has more authority to that point. Something that's not on our list was that meet the press half hour? Oh yeah, it's like it's not bad, it's not great. They talked to garrett graff, who's just like wrong, um, but they, they. There's a key moment in it about halfway through where the chuck todd asks the interviewer who he tasked to learn about this. So what do you think? And the guy's like honestly, I thought I was going to report on nothing here, and now that I've like done the research, I don't know what's going. And that's like a very key moment that people should have about this. That's, that's what should happen to skeptics who do a little digging here. They should realize, oh, there's much more to this than I thought. And now I will become curious about it. Oh God, I'm just wish casting. Yeah, we got the 60 minutes.
Speaker 1:The Friedman interview. We've ruled out the New York Times article. We got the 60 minutes. The Friedman interview. We've ruled out the New York times article. We've ruled out the debrief article. You have this really cool website. You want to talk about them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is my favorite resource. I think this is actually the one that I would be most likely to think to send to somebody. Um, it's just UAP dot guide. It's just uapguide. It's looks good on your phone, looks good on a laptop. It's just a really very simple website that is basically attempting to do what I'm trying to do, which is make people be curious about this, and it's built almost entirely around just quotes. So you go there and you'll first read like a Marco Rubio quote, then a Barack Obama quote, then a deputy director of Naval Intelligence really short little hits of people that you know folks are going to know saying something kind of mind blowing. And it has it specifically divided even into these different sections, starting with uap exists, and then they're real objects. They're moving too fast. It's not something new, it's a global phenomenon and, yeah, there's. So there's the. It just lays it out very succinctly and again, it's just. It's just like a ddos attack of validators. Yeah, with citations and links too. It really kicks ass. It's so cool.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic Good job. Uap Guide. Uapguide.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these three people just put it together, just as volunteers Brad Crispin, Haley Morris and Austin Alexander. Absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1:I wanted to ping quickly the one other thing we mentioned on our outline, which is the congressional hearing from last year, from 2023. It's long, so no skeptics are really going to watch the whole three hours, really going to watch the whole three hours. But if, if you could get them to do it by saying, eh, click around, or like you could send them a time code to like just David Fravor, saying we don't have anything like this and we won't soon, you know, maybe there's something there. Plus, it's very formal, it is before Congress, it's it's on C-SPAN, you know, or YouTube doing C-SPAN, so it's there's. There's something to that it's. It's probably not the only thing that you would send somebody, but it would be on the short list of, like a list of links If you were emailing someone. The congressional hearing about Grush's testimony, also featuring Ryan Graves and David Fraber.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's cool. It's also just cool to see like that it exists and it's very long and it's from last year and it's Congress taking this very seriously.
Speaker 1:That's a good point. I told you this offline, but there are a couple of times in friend conversations where I've just shown people data just so that they could see that the data exists, not so that they could pour through the details themselves, but just so that they could mentally confront the fact that there are 800 stories or that there were a thousand instances of physical trace evidence. I think there are more, but another good one is just the page of people's drawings of the shapes you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, real quick. I just I didn't know this before, but the UAPguide is from some Safe Aerospace people. Two of the co-founders of Safe Aerospace, which is Ryan. Graves' group.
Speaker 1:Cool yeah, hell yeah. They seem like they're doing good work and also probably a bunch of the stuff they're looking at is not extraterrestrial, like there's a pretty good chance that some significant percentage of the drones photobombing Air Force bases are Chinese or Russian and we should also know about those things. So it makes us all sound less insane to acknowledge and encourage investigations in those directions.
Speaker 2:This is cool man.
Speaker 1:I feel like we have a good list of some short and long resources yeah, I was thinking as a way to our outro, we could maybe mention some places not to send people. I was thinking about like maybe not trying to get people to watch like a Danny Sheehan hour and a half podcast off the bat, or like maybe not Grosh on rogan, like maybe those are just like not the entry points, um, unless you've got like a rogan fan or like kind of like a deep head podcast boy or girl, um, I would say maybe not also the um the show encounters on net I think it's Netflix from last year.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:I mean, if it were somebody, I just feel like, if you're going to, they're long episodes it's very well done, it's very produced, it's very humanizing, it's very focused on, like, the people in these stories and I just kind of feel like, because it's so focused and each one is about one event and there's only four episodes, that it it doesn't deliver the sort of like overwhelming mountain kind of thing that we we both seem to think is is important, and I just feel like it's easier for people to sort of wave away one event and say like well, those 50 people were crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or that particular instance was rocket flares or something, yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think it just I think. I think the juice isn't worth the squeeze. I think it's a cool show and well done, but for these purposes I think it doesn't do enough in 45 minutes for me.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I buy that Interesting, I like it, it's well done. And I would similarly say, and maybe even more so, that the TMZ Jeremy Corbell piece is not a good starting point because it's too sort of sensational, I think, and like energized, and it's going to push people off, people off, I think, the subject, who are not already curious. Um, and similarly, I wanted to shout out that we both really like richard dolan, but he's a two or three hundred level course, not a 100 level course, as you said. Um, so we do. We would not recommend starting with one of rich Dolan's many books or YouTube shows about this, even though we, as established heads, would recommend it to you. As somebody who's enjoying this subject already, as proven by the fact that you've watched us talk about this for an hour, want to go out with some tips and tricks, some do's and don'ts for chatting about UFOs.
Speaker 2:Yeah sure, don't talk about the mantids, don't accidentally start talking about Bigfoot. One tip I do have is that people are everybody believes in ghosts. In my experience, basically everybody has some form of superstition or paranormal belief, whether they examine it or not. So, like you can find these little wedges to get in there. Yeah, I guess that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would add to that list breakaway civilizations is too soon for that. The Silurian hypothesis of Atlantean holdovers is too soon for that. It's too soon for time travel. It's too soon for interdimensional space hopping. Soon for time travel? Uh, it's too soon for interdimensional space hopping. Uh, don't bring up any of those things.
Speaker 1:Um, we already mentioned, maybe not getting into the cover-up in too much depth. Don't say the pentagon elaborately hoaxed us with a bullshit report, just like. Let them figure that out later. Um, and I think this is the broader thing this goes under is order of operations. Um, you want to start with the most universally established facts. Like people see these things? Um, did you know that people see them at least 5,000 times a year? In the United States, there are 5,000 reports. And did you know that the people who report these tend to be veterans or pilots? Um, so that's a good place to start. And those are like observable facts.
Speaker 1:Don't start, you know, down the bunny hole.
Speaker 1:Start around the entrance to the bunny hole and think about things in probabilities, maybe even talk about your own opinions in terms of probabilities.
Speaker 1:Like, I'm starting to think that there's like a pretty good chance that some of this stuff is in fact real or like bears further investigation.
Speaker 1:You know, um mention other experts who are very interested in this so that they can like align themselves with these institutions that are doing more research, like Stanford's Gary Nolan and Harvard's Avi Loeb, um and Congress's Chuck Schumer, and, and finally, we have this idea about an off ramp, which is pinging an upcoming event. So the way this worked for me when I was having, like Thanksgiving conversations last year was anyway, congress has this bill coming that Chuck Schumer is trying to get passed, and I guess we're going to see what happens to it in in December. So that'll be a good time to circle back and talk about this more to your point about having another conversation. This also kind of allows you to just casually back away from the subject, uh, while still promising to return to it in the future, and it gives something. It gives people something to look out for in their lives as they're reading headlines, just glancing out of the corner of their eye at a wrinkle in reality that they previously ignored.
Speaker 2:Great, nothing to add to that.
Speaker 1:Sounds good. Chung Chung, welcome back. Welcome back, puppy, and thank you for your time today, john. This has been fun and I'll see you on the next one.
Speaker 2:Thanks.
Speaker 1:Caleb, see you soon. Bye.