Was UFO Skepticism Engineered? The Legacy of Donald Menzel (Part 2)

We're talking here about skeptics and pseudo skepticism. What for you as a skeptic then? Because I think if you say in modern times, skeptics for the UFO topic that come to mind immediately for most would be Mick West, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the likes. What for you as a skeptic and what differentiates healthy skepticism to going to the extreme? Yeah, I think it's a professional branch. So with Menzel, I was able to say it's counterintelligence. I mean, it looks pretty obvious that after he was briefed and brought in, he just took his textbook. And that was the other thing he was doing during World War II, is they knew it was going to be a total war effort. Sorry to go back in history a little bit again. But they knew it was going to be a total war effort. And they knew women would be involved in the war, right? So they knew it was the Rosie the Riveter. In the Navy, they had WAVES, they called them, which was an acronym for the women that were active on the Navy side. They had what they called Code Girls that were doing the punch card computing. And Menzel, the first thing he did was teach classes of cryptanalysis and cryptography to women at the women colleges that were sister colleges of all the Ivy Leagues on the East Coast there. So he started heading up one with Radcliffe College, and then they added basically nine or 12 other colleges. And that's, again, in the book Code Girls, and it's also in that Craig Bauer article. And so he was doing that. And then from that, in the book, it's like, okay, if you're sending signals, you need to also send deceptive signals. And you have to do these deceptive practices to trick the enemy to think that you're going to attack or you're not going to attack and just basic, you know, Sun Tzu, Art of War type stuff. And so that was an aspect of what he was trained on and teaching. You know, you could like quote from the, which I do in the article, the textbook of like, do these things to deceive. And so since he was sort of the arch debunker in that era, it basically lines up to all these skeptics are doing. And so I think the biggest difference is they're not like they're card carrying skeptics. Like Mick West, when he says, oh, you should debate me because I'm a skeptic. And this other person is just not a skeptic, they're a believer or whatever. And he'll say that to people like Gary Nolan, right? Where it's like, Gary Nolan will say, why am I debating Nick West? You know, it's like this guy's in his garage making computer graphics of a different world, where I'm trying to get data from the real world and actually apply it into peer review process, which is more skeptical enough for me, and go through and actually get a paper published. I don't need to debate somebody to debate somebody that's just calling themselves something that's not even a scientist. I'll gladly debate a scientist that's skeptical of my science, but I'm not going to waste my time with somebody that just says, I'm skeptical. I'm a skeptic just to be skeptical, like full stop. And I kind of touched on it in my very first article, where it looks like from the era that spun out, that it became sort of a privatization of what, you know, was an official counterintelligence move. So when Menzel's NSA CIA, it's officially counterintelligence to cover up something that they don't want, you know, Russia to know about or Soviet Union back then, you know, it would have been pure counterintelligence in that regard. And it's just the consequence of a global battlefield and radio and everything else. Like if you send out a broadcast, it goes all around the world. So you can't really divide out your public from your enemies. So the same counterintelligence that you would put in front of your enemies has to be put in front of your public. Right. But then the church committee comes along and it sort of cleans house in the in the CIA and says, hey, what's all this stuff that you've been doing that has been impacting the public? And there's like, well, there's this thing called MKUltra. And there's like this other thing called, you know, XYZ. And there's this and there's that. They call it like family jewels, all the bad stuff. But it looks like they were able to just privatize some things. And so it looks like the counterintelligence efforts around UFOs just got privatized. And they looked at the tea leaves, they looked at public sentiment. And by then, after JFK assassination, Nixon, like all these things, the global trend of how people felt was more skeptical. And so they said, OK, if we're going to wrap our messaging up in something and we want it to have an outcome of people not believing anything or questioning everything and not being able to conclude, let's call it skepticism. You know, let's make that the core feature and tie it to there. And so it just leaves everybody in an ambiguous state. Yeah, I had the other day online and it's something I'm going to have a broader conversation with. In the coming days, I've got Pavel from Seco Activo coming on the podcast and he's been quite vocal on the Chris Bledsoe interview on American Alchemy. It's like three and a half hours long and I've been watching it, Ryan. I don't know if you've managed to catch it yet. It's only just kind of dropped in the last couple of days. There's been clips online and stuff, but I'm about halfway through it. But it's funny that it goes from, I'm actually more than halfway through it, but two hours in, it goes from a UFO interview conversation story and very often bleeds into a more religious and spiritual framing and a personal narrative. But again, I don't think I'm eloquent enough to put this across, but I don't want to sound disparaging, but it does often, I can see why some folks will say it's a cult that's being pushed because the story often goes from my UFO experience to very, very biblical. I can summon or call in angels and beings with wings and all that kind of stuff. And I don't think Jesse Michaels pushes back very often in the conversation, but I get that style and presentation. There's a lot of, wow, that's amazing. Rather than follow up to say, you know, but let's just look at the other side of the coin and that's where you've got to be discerning. And to be fair to Jesse Michaels, he does at one point mention discernment in this topic, but there's so many opportunities to, you don't have to push back and debunk. Jesse Michaels doesn't have to debunk Chris Bledsoe. There can be a quality conversation there, which there is, but there is a place, isn't there? Well, in my opinion, I'm going to ask you this, for healthy scepticism, for discernment to say, okay, that sounds incredible. Let's just explore some potential options, some potential misidentifications. And that's for me, not to go down a route to say, your story is bollocks. There's nothing to what you're saying. I don't believe you. But there's an opportunity to explore and actually solidify or really solid up the story that you're hearing and the experience to say, actually, based on what you're saying and what we've discussed, those other options are far less realistic than this being something non-human or alien or spiritual, whatever you want to call it. And I think there's a fear from folks who are heavily invested in the UFO topic to go down that route, because I don't know if they fear being exposed. And I don't mean that they're lying, but they're out there having a conversation they're not sure how to have. And then on the flip side of it, this is where I see your Mick Wests and co. And I've never had a bad word with Mick Wests. I've had a few exchanges in the past. I appreciate some of the work he does, to be honest. But for me, the issue is on the other side of that conversation, where Mick tries to show everything can be explained away by something else. Famously, using a bar of soap on a string around a pond once. I'm sure it was a Tic Tac video. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, you can look at a crazy UFO sighting, like the Phoenix lights. And I could put a load of balloons with LED lights on them up in the sky at a certain time of night and take lots of pictures and go, look, I've recreated that. Well, no, you haven't. You've made something that looks like it. But we can all do that. You know, I can go to a famous chef and have them make the most incredible dish. I can probably make something that looks kind of similar. It doesn't mean I've recreated it. It's not going to taste the same. It's not going to be the same. It's not had the same care put into it. And that, for me, is the two extremes of this topic. Of course, I'm UFO leaning, for the love of God. I've got this podcast. I've written that bloody book. You know, I enjoy the topic. I've had my own experience, which sounds ridiculous. But I do feel you have to sit not on the extreme and you have to allow, OK, but what if? And then agree, disagree, but allow your opinion to be shaped and a little bit fluid and malleable. Because if you just go into this with everything's real or everything's fake, I don't think that's healthy. And that's for me where, you know, skepticism does have its place. Is that fair? What's your take on that? Yeah, totally. I think it's also just basic emotional intelligence, too. I think a lot of times you'll hear a phrase, and James Fox even used it. I think he used it as a movie title. I know what I saw. And I came across that phrase in, you know, like a newspaper from the 1930s or 40s or whatever. Something very old. And it was describing an event. And then halfway down, he was getting pushed back. Or it might have been now in Menzel's debunking days, so maybe in the 50s. And that phrase popped right up. He's like, I know what I saw. Like the guy, I know what he saw. And then this might have been when Menzel mixed like benzene and acetone and shine a light through it. And then with the light, he was able to recreate the Lubbock lights and, you know, say, hey, this is probably what the guy saw. And maybe he wasn't wearing glasses and blah, blah, blah. And in that era, like Jacques Vallée, he was also looking at that. And his wife had the paper and was showing it to him. He's like, great. Next time it's raining Byzantine or acetone outside, I'll be sure to see if I can see any UFOs. So it's that whole substitution for a prop or a setup that you can construct in order to get something that looks kind of similar. And it's funny, too, because that was a key aspect of the Robertson panel and what sort of preceded the debunking career of Menzel. So he had some stuff that was prior to the Robertson panel, but in the panel itself, it says, oh, when we're debunking UFOs, we should also incorporate magicians. And those magicians should have the aspect of showing the trick that is what creates the illusion. And then when they show the bat, you know, like the sort of the Penn and Teller method, like do it, do the box out of plexiglass instead of instead of dark wood. And then you see like the legs moving and the sword being dodged and all this sort of stuff. And then it's like, oh, OK, I get it. I get it. I get it. But it's, again, a setup in the very first place. You get tricked when you just buy into watching and seeing that that's what they're going to do and and not listening to the actual person that was there. And, you know, having enough emotional intelligence to understand that they experienced something and that it impacted them to a very high degree. And then however that gets interpreted by others, I think, you know, that's a whole whole quagmire itself. I think a lot of religion gets spun up from from people that had faithful encounters and faithful interactions. You know, they saw the burning bush. They stopped and looked like something happened, like something extraordinary happened. And then as best they can, they try to explain what happened and then how it could possibly happen again or how it could happen with others. And they create these these processes. They sort of try to reverse engineer the faith. And so they say, well, maybe this is what you can do to have that experience. And, you know, and then people get the telephone game and they get one step removed. And they're like, you have to do it this way and you have to do it that way. And then if you don't do it that way, you're not right. And and all of this. And so I think I think it's just a combination of things. But when it came down to, you know, some of the the legit debunking, I think there are some people that knew, like really, really knew, like Menzel. I think he he really knew and he was counterintel and covering it up. But now generations removed, you can just have people that are part, you know, part and parcel, like card carrying, skeptical organization people that do it because that's where their friends are. You know, like that's the group they hang out with, like, I think Gerbic's a good example. I think she formerly was like a JCPenney portrait photographer, you know, just normal life. Like people would come in, pay 100 bucks, get their portrait taken, get like high school photos and everything. And then she met these guys. And it's like she's meeting the incredible James Randi and and going to these conferences. And it's like people are whining and dying or like that's her group of friends. Right. And it's an exciting life. It's something different. And it's it's amazing. And then I think, you know, if you're in that kind of group and those are the people that support you, then you just want to go along to get along as part of a part of that. But it's hard to say if it's, you know, if it's the truth or not. It's a it's a big debate. There's one thing like being in these groups that I've noticed that is in terms of misleading something that like gives me hope and gives me caution is like I grew up religious and it but a very tiny kind of church organization that it didn't even have priests. It was very volunteers, like, you know, more or less like a dozen families would be what a church would be. And so it was all volunteer and all this stuff I think came out of England originally. And so I had that background, but it's like pretty much DIY, like do it yourself and figure things out. But I was looking at this chart one day of Christianity and I think you can find it online. It's like all the denominations of Christianity. And it's like this tree of like, you know, here's here's Isaac and here's, you know, Abraham and Abraham meets God and gets and then it splits into like Islam into Christianity. Yeah. And there's this whole chart like generation after generation. And by the end of it, there's like, I don't know, maybe a thousand different things that are, you know, official churches nowadays. And it's like at the core of these people that more or less believe that God exists, like there's some sort of conscious creator or consciousness preceding material, whatever, right? Like an alpha omega, a beginning and end. And we're just all this stuff in between. And, you know, that's the thing that happened before everything else. So they believe something like that. And then they believe that Jesus was sent by him and the sacrifice for sins. And that's how they can be Christians. You know, they follow Jesus Christ. Right. So you have that core belief, which in itself, like the whole Jesus story is, you know, a wild experiencer story if you take it through that lens. But you have all these different things believing that truth, but calling themselves different. Right. And so I think in the in the disclosure world, there's this element of, oh, once the truth comes out, we'll all we'll all be aligned. We'll be all we'll all be on the same page. And it's kind of like, maybe, you know, like even if we get 100 percent disclosure, I think we're going to have our differences still. So I think that's a big part of it. I'm with you on that. And you know what, to go back to your pen and teller analogy. So the idea, I think that's a really good way of framing the UFO folks versus the skeptics and debunkers on the other side of it, because I think skeptics would say that the UFO folks are the people going along wanting to be tricked and are really easy to be tricked and happy to not know that there's actually an illusion behind it and believe it's real magic. Like, whereas the UFO folks, I think there maybe are some who believe that, but largely are going along there knowing there's something behind it, but wanting maybe not wanting to know what it is. Some folks don't want to know. And some folks like the illusion and like the mystery and like the lore. But then I think you've got most folks who are happy to to go, wow, that looks incredible. But I want to know how it's done. And that's that's me and appreciate the art behind it. But I don't think that's the UFO topic. Then you have that that three percent, that five percent of you can't explain that. You can't recreate that. You can't do that again. And that's the phenomenon. That's the mystery. That's the NHI. The rest of it is, wow, isn't that incredible? It was a drone. It was the ISS. It was Starlink satellites. It was the the rockets, the Tesla Elon Musk rockets going off that leave those incredible plumes in the sky. And people people post them online and go, wow, look at this wormhole opening up. And it's like, no, it's just the booster rockets coming off and ionization in the sky. So and I think that's the way I see a lot of skeptics and debunkers is they look upon the UFO community as as just a big group of people who want to be tricked by something. And the knowledge that actually it's all bullshit. And that's that's not fair, because like you say, to quote James Fox and to quote those articles in the 50s, I know what I saw. I often use if tomorrow, Grush, Elizondo, Mellon, Greer, all that come out on a big stage and go, everyone, big sigh up. They take a bow and they say we made all this stuff up for money. And just to play you all, there's no UFO topic that can't explain what I saw in the mid 90s and Knightswood in Glasgow. It just doesn't. And there are hundreds of thousands of people out there. So many people listening are watching this who have had those sightings, those experiences. And do you know what? Some of them, unfortunately, may have been misidentifications. But there are going to be so many that, no, it wasn't a plane. It wasn't a drone. It wasn't me seeing swamp gas reflecting off of Venus. It was something tangible that I cannot explain that is almost definitely not of this world. And that's where we've got to the point now of Age of Disclosure and the folks who have been going on to big, big podcasts, big platforms, sharing incredible sightings, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So for me, I totally get that. I can appreciate it. But I think there's there's that, like you say, card carrying skeptic group that it's their tribe. They've found their tribe and they enjoy that. And they they make this living and life out of. Would you use the word ruining other people's interests or experience? Because it probably happens across other fields, not just UFOs. Because, you know, I know there's even as a lesser example, I follow football or soccer for those in the States. You know, I know there's people that when they post on X about football, people will jump in and say football's crap. I like rugby. Football's rubbish. Why do you bother watching it? You know, and it's like just because you don't like it and you don't enjoy it and you can't find the interest in this doesn't mean other people can't. But there is just this thing and it's perhaps not a modern phenomenon, but I think social media certainly amplified it massively where people take great pleasure in going online and bringing down other people's enjoyment in something. And that's that's just kind of where we are in 2026 as it stands. And I want to ask, do you feel the UFO topic in that respect then is held to a higher standard that the burden of proof than other sciences, perhaps? That are explored or talked about far more openly? Yeah, potentially. I mean, yeah, to some degree. I think that's also a consequence of the stigma that was put into it. I mean, there's definitely like in the article itself, I have a point where where I say, you know, here's all the plans going on on underway of, you know, they're going to do this. They're going to do that. But then in their terminology, the enemy gets a vote and they have the 1952 flap where it's just people are seeing everything everywhere. And it culminates right over Washington, D.C., right over restricted flying space with, I think, CNN just recently put out an article recounting like one of the pilots experiences that was up there and his cockpit got completely bathed in light. And he's this former Korean vet. So he's just out of the Korean war. And he's like, well, should I shoot it down? Should I like engage? And then he doesn't hear anything back from the tower because they're just freaking shocked. Like they sent somebody outside to go and see if they could visually make contact and they see something. And then the same time it's on the radar. So it's like Nimitz. They have people on radar. They have people on the ground seeing it. They have radar in the air connected to it. They have the pilot seeing it. And what gets put out in the press release by General Sanford like a week later is, hey, it was this radar reflection. Donald Menzel told us what it was. It's a temperature inversion. And then it was like the car headlights bouncing off a low cloud. And that's what people saw. You know, they eliminate the data and then they they tell you just enough to say this is what it was, even though it wasn't. So I think that's a big aspect of it. It's just and that's kind of what I've what I focused on, because I think if I saw like a really anomalous light in the sky, I just I probably wouldn't care. Like, I'm just not that type where it's like, even if it did something just mind bending, I'd be like, well, that's cool. You know, like I'm still here on the ground doing my thing. What can you do about it type thing? Yeah, like it's. Yeah, like I wouldn't connect it to like it's not like me writing in it. Right. So or it's not like me having a conversation with him. So it's the equivalent of like like watching like some trashy TV about what like rich people are doing or bickering about. But it's just so far removed from my life that it's just like I just not going to waste my time with it. But Ryan, but let me ask the cover up. The cover up seems like like something you can grab on to. Yeah, that's the difference. Let me ask you then. So you mentioned that if you saw a light in the sky, you would just just accept it for what it is, even if it was doing something really strange. And then you said, you know, you're not riding on it. But for example, if you were taken aboard, taken for a ride around Alpha Centauri and brought back, what would you do about that? Yeah. Yeah, that'd be a little bit more. Yeah, that'd be something like reading those stories of the people that interacted in that way. That's just completely different. Like that's it impacts their lives to a super high degree, which is understandable. And there's definitely like it takes two sides and the other side definitely isn't engaging yet. And if that's like, you know, prime directive piece, you know, I could understand that if it's like, oh, if we do engage, all of a sudden everybody becomes telepathic and you're no longer have any sense of wonder. You know, it's kind of like, well, OK, maybe that's that's a trade that we want to hold on to for a little while longer or, you know, just something else where it's like we can't engage directly with you at in mass for X, Y, Z. And we can't really tell about it, tell you about it, because if we do, you know, like then you'll know. And it's like the surprise is kind of ruined. So there's all that. But at the same time, there's definitely a group of people out there that most likely these aren't UFOs. These are actually things that they can touch. Like they have a name for it and it's in a lab somewhere and they're interacting with it. You know, it's not unidentified. It's not flying. And it's the only thing that's left is like an object. Right. So but they're like actually just like studying the materials of it and they're they're doing stuff with it in terms of the objects. And then with terms of the other beings, it's just like that's I think the biggest tragedy is that the there is probably life in the universe and life that knows about us here on Earth and is interacted with us to some degree. But it's only been limited to a very, very, very narrow branch of military and intelligence. And it's not interacted with any sort of way of like diplomacy or in the like mass social way. And we're in this like in between space for the last hundred years. Do you want to wrap up on where the article finishes? Because it's kind of a cliffhanger. And this is a little bit of a Empire Strikes Back because you've had the you've had your new hope. We have talked about the Empire Strikes Back here and your return of the Jedi is coming up next and going from kind of 53 onwards. So what's the kind of ending of the article? Where are you landing on here? And then we'll get to listener questions. Yeah, I think I'm hitting right at the spot where Menzel's entering into the sphere of full time debunker where he's like, that's that's what he's doing. And he's building the relationships around that. I kind of hint at it with Condon and Philip Klaas and also Carl Sagan. Like what he's looking for back in that day when Wikipedia didn't exist and Reddit didn't exist. He's looking for people that had success in mass media. So these are people that are writing for journals, magazines, newspapers. Condon was actually a newspaper writer. He was a journalist before he did his studies in physics and became a physicist. Philip Klaas actually worked at General Electric and had a patent on some aerospace technology during the war. So it was probably like a patent that was secret for a little bit and then released in right before he went to Aviation Week in 52. And then he had a patent in 73 with Honeywell. So another like tech, you know, defense contractor patent. Condon had patents. Menzel had patents. Menzel was a writer for a bunch of magazines, science and invention, all this other stuff. Carl Sagan, obviously TV personality, writer, scientist. I haven't looked up his patents, but he probably had a few, too. So I think 53 through the 70s, we're going to see like that evolution of both culture in the US and sort of like mass media coming up to speed from what it was in the 50s to closer to today. Yeah, really interesting. And I'll definitely get back on for that. Have you got like a time scale on there for when you're hoping to get that done? Yeah. I was able to finish this one with like Christmas break and New Year's. I was like, OK, I can like slough off work just enough to like crank on the keyboard and get this article out. But yeah, it'll be a little while. Yeah. We'll see. Well, listen. I joked. I got. Go on, go on, go on. I was going to say my on the on the very first article I did, I got one paid subscriber and I sent him a message. I said, your paid subscription paid the Smithsonian for this transcript from Donald Menzel. So that's why we have the Donald Menzel article. Well, on that, I was literally about to say that, obviously, I've got you on here. I've done this. So I am going to throw you a few quid for a subscription on that and I'll put the link to your sub stack in there because it's such a well-researched article, as is your previous ones. I'm going to dive through. So for me, obviously, as a thank you, I'll be I'll be doing that. And I would recommend anyone else jump in because, like you say, transcripts and all that kind of stuff, just even your time, if it's worth a dollar or whatever it is to people to sign up to throw something your way. I think it's such a fascinating look back at the UFO topic. And there's so many things I see that resonate now, because how often just in this talking about things that happened from the 30s through to the early 50s as we've hit, we've talked about skeptics and debunkers from now, we've talked about Beatrice Villarreal, we've touched on that work that will come back in, the UEP caucus. There's a lot of things that resonate and they're so relevant, I think, to why we are where we are. And it might also shine some light and shed some answers on how we get through what might be coming in the upcoming year in terms of some curveballs being thrown the way of the UFO community. So the link is in the description, folks, if you want to sign up or even just throw a few pounds or dollars, whatever is your local currency, in the way of Ryan for the work he's done there. Because it is a fantastic article and please go and check it out. It is on there, obviously, for free if you want to read it. But listen, I want to just ask you then, before we get to listener questions, James Fox has hinted at an event coming soon. Not a UFO landing, folks, I don't think that's what James is getting at. But I think we're going to see an announcement similar to the press club event that happened in Washington, D.C. in 2001, led by Stephen Greer, where we had a host of whistleblowers and witnesses and military folks. I think one of my favourite from that, and I forget, was her name Donna something, who was the NASA person? Donna Hera? Is that the one, yeah? I think so, maybe, yeah. I'll maybe look it up when you're speaking in your next answer, just to give her her full name. But she talked about working at NASA and basically seeing someone go, do you want to see this? And it was a picture of space and had the UFO in there, and he basically airbrushed it out. And she was like, that's what they were doing. So I think we might be getting something announced like this. I asked James, was it going to be US-based? And he said, all of the above. So for me, he's hinting at it being a more international effort, which would be great. I'd love to see something UK-based as part of that. The first ever WrestleMania, folks, was telecast over. Was it three locations? Or was it the second or third? I can't remember, actually. It might not be the... It wasn't the first, sorry. But it was one of the early WrestleManias, was in like three different locations, three different main events. And it was unique. I'd love to see something done in the US, in the UK, and perhaps somewhere in Europe or South America. Something like that would be fantastic. But I wonder if we get something... Like Live Aid. Yeah, yeah. Like Live Aid for UFOs. Yeah, we probably need it. Maybe without the mass fundraising, which would raise a few eyebrows, I think. But if we got something like that, Ryan, where you've got whistleblowers coming forward, where you had witnesses like that, where you had all these different folks coming up and speaking, how do you see that being received in 2026? Yeah, I think it would be another thing. I think the drumbeat right now that's so loud is first-hand witnesses. Like everybody's clamoring for somebody that is hand-to-metal or, you know, shaking hands with the beans or that close. And I think, because I remember one of the things post-Crush that I did was find that, the 2001 one, the Stephen Greer one, and on YouTube, I just went through like all the testimony videos. Like you can find all the old testimony videos. And even those testimony videos, you could actually tell that James Fox was recording some of those because you could hear his voice asking some of the questions. So James Fox and Kane were both running cameras and interviewing people. Like they were, you know, another set of audio peeps that were getting all those interviews while Greer was getting some on his own. And then, so I went through all those. I think it would definitely be valuable. I think when I heard about what James was doing, I think he mentioned it right after, right after the program came out. He was on a podcast and he said, yeah, things are happening so fast. I don't think I have time to do another movie. I'm going to, and at that point in time, he's like, I think I'm going to update a moment of contact. I'm going to try to do something with that really quickly. And then I'm going to do something like I did in 2012, 2013 and do another big press thing in DC and, and all of that. So he did his own one in, in that era, like 10 years after Greer's one. So he participated in Greer's one on the, on the backside of the camera, asking people questions and recording them. And then he did his own in 2012, 2013. And I think that was also with Leslie Kane. And so, yeah, I think at the timing now is things are happening so fast that people are looking at for, for better ways to have turnaround. I mean, Spielberg might be a little antsy that stuff doesn't happen too fast before his movie comes out, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And I think these people should have the contacts at this point. And I think the mainstream media, especially in the U S is perhaps at a point where you will get some major networks interested. I think to be fair, I don't think their class is a major network news nation. Are they that they're still relatively new, but they get big numbers, especially online, which is where things are going these days. Um, yeah, I was amazed to find out actually some of the, the major UK news networks, what they get now in terms of numbers is far, far, far lower than a Joe Rogan podcast highlights real gets. So media has changed. And I wonder if they can time this right with age of disclosure, the, the, the interest that's got and peaked in some people. Um, I thought Megan Kelly, um, I don't know too much of our background. I can only imagine the emails I'm going to get telling me how she's a horrible Republican slash Democrat. I'm guessing Republican. Yeah. Cause they tend to cover this stuff more than Democrats do. Sorry folks. Um, she covered that really well and spoke very genuinely about the UFO topic. You know, sometimes when you get a presenter and you can see their reading off the teleprompter and it's a researchers went and got some stuff and they ask a question and they're kind of like, don't know where to follow up. But there's one particular point in the Grush interview, Megan Kelly summarizing something. And I actually said out loud in the kitchen, wow, she'd done that really well. And David Grush then went, yeah, actually Megan, that was absolutely spot on the way you've said that. So it was so well prepared. Perhaps the, the interest would be there that it would get coverage it would deserve. Um, and then if you can get, even then, do you need the major news media? If you can get Rogan to cover it, your American Alchemy channel gets millions of views. Your Sean Ryan channel gets millions of views. Getting these folks involved in something like that could be a real needle, needle mover that we're looking for. But yeah, I think we'll, we'll wait and see what happens in terms of that coming out. That announcement should be due soon. Uh, folks on this podcast love that word, especially the folks over on the discord channel. Um, but listen, let's get to listener questions for you, Ryan, because you've been so good with your time. Um, and, uh, I can't feel the toes in my left foot and I've stuck a hand warmer down my right slipper that I'm wearing at this point. Uh, so before I fuzzy slippers are given out on the cold floor. Um, so yeah, and I can still see my breath folks. That's how cold it is in here. Um, but I've got the heated blanket on. It's doing its job. So consciousness connection. First question, Ryan. I didn't get to read all of the article, but from what I did read and what I know about Menzel, his work was all about covering up the phenomenon. Anyone who would want to destroy hard scientific data clearly deserves to be seen as an irrational diehard skeptic who cared more about concealing the truth than doing science. Destroying Harvard astronomical plates and refusing to allow new plates to be made from 1953 to 1968 puts him on my enemy of the people slash enemy of truth list. So Ryan, this obviously dies a little bit ahead into what your next articles perhaps are going to explore more of too. Um, but I thought this would be a good place to bring back in the work of Dr. Beatrice Villarreal, her work on transient objects. Again, folks, very quick reminder. My layman's version of it is pictures of stuff from space where there are stars and a photograph taken on these plates before pre-Sputnik, pre-satellite for the most part. So space was not as cluttered or anywhere near as it shouldn't have been cluttered with anything as it is now. And there are objects in one photo. The next photo should show the exact same objects and some of them aren't there. And she's got thousands of examples of this, of which even if 99% of them are blemishes, defects, 1% of those are going to show that something's moved that was there before and stars don't just move like that. So yeah, what's your take on those thoughts then, Ryan? And obviously you can bring in your thoughts on the work of Beatrice Villarreal. Yeah, I think, I think that's a big one. Like that's an outlier for Menzel, because in the article I found that he had a child rock collection. So he lived in like a mining town in Colorado. And even one of the biographies said he gave one of his rocks to like a U.S. president that was passing through on the train. It might have been, I forget, but it was one of them. And so this rock collection that he had from when he was a kid ended up at the University of Denver. So Denver University after he died. So he kept those rocks like all his life until he died. And then he gave them, made sure they were like bequeathed to the, to the geology department of Denver University. Right. The other thing he did when he was also a child was built his own radio. So he builds his own radio. He becomes an amateur radio broadcaster. He gets a radio ham handle. It's W-1-J-E-X, Y-J-E-X. And he keeps that his entire life. And then when he dies, some like ham radio broadcast broadsheet, you know, like, like the type of paper clipped or stapled sort of papers that you would get, like a zine kind of thing. He said, oh, silent key announcement, because that's like their lingo for it. Silent key means somebody died. They say silent key on W-1-J-E-X. This was Donald Menzel, who built his own radio at age nine and had the handle Y-J-X from then on and was an astronomer at Harvard. And like they did a short bio on him. So he had all these elements of him where he kept things, you know, like he didn't throw out stuff. And you would think that these photographic plates would be just as precious. But even with that personality trait, he got rid of them. So that tells you that it was either a people that were even closer to him than the plates that he was part and group parcel with. And like that was his group. And those were his people. And he's like, OK, I'm going to take one for the team and get rid of these things because we know what's on them and we can't have people seeing it. So it's either that or, you know, he just destroyed them for malice or they're not destroyed, but they're classified somewhere. You know, another consequence of something that's like the CIA's report of 3I Atlas. You know, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of these Harvard plates that captured the night sky from 1952 to 1969. So, yeah, one of the three. But I'm not, I'm not skeptical that something happened. Yeah, no, it's really interesting on that because there's almost an element of, and I'm just pondering and you've touched on it there. Is it a case of that he did firmly believe that this was all nonsense, this was explainable, or at least it could show that way. But those plates were just such stark evidence of, I can't explain this away, so we have to get rid of these. Because otherwise, you know, we can testimony, we can rubbish and we can cover up crashes and whatnot. But that is the type of photographic evidence. And it's funny that for years we've said actually photographic evidence is becoming less and less credible because of AI and modern photographs. But it's one of those things, you go back to plates of pre-Sputnik era space and show that stuff moved, you know. Yeah. So taking a picture of a CCTV of a car park, you know, that's essentially what you've got. I mean, in one sense, it's etched in stone, you know, like it's a glass plate. And the way it works is you rub emulsion on it, which is like this. I actually did printmaking in university, which is a similar process, where you take a goo and you smear it across the plate, nice and even. And that goo is photosensitive, light sensitive, right? And as it gets exposed to the light of the stars with the telescope tracking as the stars move, because it has to be exposed for that long, that the telescope has to move in coordination with the light from the stars in order to burn that star light onto the emulsion. And then the emulsion gets rubbed off. And then you're left with like the small etch of what is left rubbed off and exposed to light being the space and the light being the star. So, yeah, in one sense, it's like almost etched in stone that this took place when you develop it from there on glass. But what's really interesting, too, and I probably didn't express it well enough in the article because it's more of the sciencey angle. And that's not like my my extreme forte. But Beatrice's biggest result, like her most conclusive sigma, her 22 sigma result was that these objects would disappear in the shadow of the earth. Or like when the shadow would be when they be in the area that the shadow would like block the light from the sun of reflecting on them, they wouldn't show up on the plates. And she said that happened to the degree of 22 sigma, which is like, you know, one with 22 zeros after it or whatever it is to say that it's like that one in that many chance of that being a chance. And five sigma is enough for physicists to say, yeah, this is reality. You don't have to like it's like it's like looking at a chair and wondering, should I sit on the chair? Should I be skeptical about sitting on the chair? Is the chair really there? And having that whole process in your mind versus actually just sitting down on the chair that you see, you're just going to sit down on the chair because your life experience is above five sigma. The chair will still be there when you go to sit on it. Right. Yeah. Like five sigma is that that level of assurance. Twenty two sigma is just like, yeah, it's done. This is peer reviewed. She did the right science. And that element of it being the shadow and being an eclipse feature of of that aspect is the other thing that Menzel was absolutely famous for was eclipses and understanding like the shadow of the earth being something that would block the sun and like all this stuff. So it's it's something that really lines up again, where it'd be like kind of open and shut case of him seeing it and realizing it's there at that date. It's there in that place. And then it's not in the shadow. These are all like his expertise. Yeah. Yeah. This one's good for your thoughts on it as well. Less a question, but if someone's opinion, I'll get your take on it. MJ Jump said we should be so far past this point now, but we're not. I have no time for skeptics or debunkers or their work. The phenomenon is real and the rabbit hole is deep. I won't give any of my time to anyone who can't accept this. Call me what you want. So short of calling on what you want, MJ Jump leaves lots of decent comments on there. So thank you. But what's your take on that? Someone who is like, you know what? No, I'm not giving any time or credence to any skeptic or debunker based on this. Yeah, I mean, I think I think what was it? Michael Masters on Rogan. I don't know if you saw it, but he was talking about partly his experience. I don't think he's you know, his experience where, you know, the sort of like the telepathy or something that that he had and all that. Like he's gone into that very deeply. But on this one, he's more just talking about, you know, what he's been working on. It was more of a casual conversation. And he mentioned that in one of his upcoming classes, he's going to the basic structure of the class is going to be like, look, you have all these people like, you know, first lecture or whatever. Maybe he'll show like age of disclosure. He's like, OK, you have 30 people and you have crush and you have this and you have that. Everybody's saying it's real. I'm going to assign you writing assignments. Don't argue that that exists or it doesn't exist. Argue, like, how's it impacting economics currently? Argue, how's it impacting history in the past? Argue, you know, forget the argument of it's there. It's not there. Make your argument more nuanced and go at it from that angle. And I think that's a really, really good idea. And that's kind of something I took to heart in writing the article. I was like, and one of the critiques was, you know, you're using you're using like M&J 12 documents. Nobody's made sure that those are official. You know, there's no like, you know, FOIA thing that says, yeah, that's the real thing and all that. But I was like, yeah, I like I usually surround those with three other things that are that are official. Like his FBI tracking Menzel's going to Roswell and like actually being there and like it being in the paper and like, you know, two or three other things. And then I add that other stuff because I'm like, we just got to catch up because if the cover up is the way it has been from the point of history, you know, I want to write something that like, like Richard Dolan would be proud of. And he'd look at it and be like, nice, you know, and I want to write something that actually catches people up over the last hundred years versus where we are now. So I think that's a big part of it. And I think that's also probably, you know, one aspect of the divisions we're seeing in the like the internal intelligence community in the Department of Defense. You have like kind of factions, right, because we're getting people that are bringing stuff out and then we're getting people that are pushing back. And I think some of those people bringing stuff out are thinking, you know, we're graduating fewer scientists in the U.S. and we're doing less hard science because the cover up has been so successful. Like there's nothing to see here, you know, put your wonder at the door. Don't don't be curious about stuff. And that's kind of come to bite them in the ass. And they're saying now we've got to catch up and we're not having people interested enough. So we've got to just bring this out because it's coming quick and we're not we're not at the place where we were in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Yeah. And a little shout out to Michael Masters, Dr. Michael Masters, who's using my book as part of that class you talked about as well. He'd asked me. Oh, awesome. That's pretty cool. Probably an example of how not to write a UFO book. But, yeah, listen, a win's a win. Yeah. So you can put in a good word for my article. Be like, make the kids read this. Yeah. Do you know what? He listens. He listens and watches. So, Michael, yeah, reach out to Ryan as well. Or if you want to reach out through me, that's absolutely fine. I tried to have lots of citations, you know, make it very collegey. Yes. No, I can. And I can see that on the article, folks. That's another reason to check it out. It's very well researched. Distractions in the wind. Love this question. Does Ryan think sci-fi movies and TV were weirdly mixed with real sightings from the beginning, creating an image problem? I would add that the government used this to cover up real stuff, preventing the public from panicking and keeping the Soviet Union in a state of confusion. Yeah. I mean, I don't know sci-fi movies, but it was absolutely part of the Robertson panel. So one of the recommendations on the Robertson panel was go to the area where somebody saw something and take some balloons, you know, basically like the Air Force's explanation of Roswell. Take some balloons and take some pictures and make it look like what they think they saw and say that, you know, see, look, we can recreate it just like we were talking about earlier. We can recreate it. So that's probably what you saw. So since we recreated something that kind of looks like it, you know, that's that's what we say it is. So I think that's a big aspect of it for me personally, for sci-fi. Ish, I don't know, like I've always seen sci-fi as sort of a pure way to have a physical representation of some tangent of philosophy. Right. Like you can have a really philosophical deep dive into, you know, the consequences of future action, but you can package it in the Terminator. Right. And so for me, sci-fi, the thing I like about it is like this physical way to have some like expanded look into some philosophical question, you know, like what if taken to the extreme? Yeah. But that's just like my nutty take. Yeah. And I think that's the thing I've often used, I think, Harry Potter as an example of you read the books and you're reading, you're reading the words of J.K. Rowling and the world she's painted, but you have to put it into pictures in your own head. So we all had different ideas of what Hogwarts would look like, you know, what certain things would look like, what they would be. And then the movies get made and there is the new director and producers' visualization of what those books were potentially going to be. But now we're going to, and a lot of folks, obviously the movies were wildly successful, right? They all made billions of dollars. Some people weren't happy because it wasn't what they thought it would look like. And I imagine we're about to get this HBO series come out of Harry Potter and there's going to be loads of people unhappy that this isn't what the movies look like. So you start to get different interpretations. And if you look at Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, you know, and then even through the different series of Star Trek, DS9, Voyager, you get different interpretations. So it just, the public has such a wealth out there of this is what UFOs, this is what aliens are like potentially. But it is just different ideas, different philosophies. And I suppose that's where people tie it back a lot to Spielberg that he had such a unique interpretation in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Had that story of, you know, alien crashing to earth and his family coming back to get on with E.T. People are really curious to see what happens with Disclosure Day and what that story looks like. Because on the surface, the trailer for me looks really interesting. And you mentioned it earlier, it could still end up a really bland Hollywood blockbuster where it's a little bit of sinister men in black chasing down people having UFO experiences. But on the other hand, it does look pretty hopeful. We're going to get a big worldwide event happening, you know, a Disclosure en masse, the telepathy aspect of it speaking through Emily Blunt's character. So, yeah, we'll see. But these can kind of shape, this could be the new shaping of what UFOs and aliens could be that perhaps the public hasn't been exposed to. And I'll give a hat tip to the movie Nope. I take it you saw that? Actually, no. No, you haven't seen Nope. I haven't made time for Nope yet. No, you'll have to watch Nope. I've seen like 20 trailers of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I haven't. I definitely, I loved, what was his movie before Nope? Get Out, right? Yeah. I saw Get Out, but I haven't seen Nope. Other way around for me, I've not seen Get Out, but I've seen Nope, obviously, for obvious reasons. Get Out's good. But for Nope, not to spoil too much, but the idea that the object is something biological, even though it's a craft, and it's almost animal-like, right or wrong, it's a different interpretation to present to people to say, actually, take a step back in what you think you know. And what I actually loved about Nope, and again, slight spoiler, folks, but in the trailer, you see a little grey alien running past, but you actually find out in the movie that was just someone in a costume, like, taking the piss. And I like that, because you're like, ah, it's not about little grey aliens, and it's like making you go, it's not about that. That was just something to distract you. The object is real, it's something else, and I like that idea that you're exposing the public to something else. And for me, that's why I'm a little bit hopeful. If you talk about Hollywood and mass media setting up the public for some type of disclosure, then perhaps this Spielberg movie could be a really, really good chance to do that, and reframe this whole topic to say, look, let's maybe forget all of this. And this is probably a good example of what we're looking at here. And I think even then, if there was a disclosure, and the US government leads that disclosure, there's an opportunity for folks within the US government to come out and say, there's a phenomenon here, it's been here, however much detail or little detail they want to go into, I doubt they're going to go back to, we'd have covered craft in Roswell, and we've been reverse engineering it, and we've got all this cool military stuff. That's not going to happen, but what they can say is, from what we understand, we know some basics. We recommend you watch this movie, these documentaries, you read these books, even listen to these podcasts. There could be a literal, there's such a library and wealth of stuff out there, they could probably point the public to 20 or 30 different types of media to say, go and check this out. And this gives you a little bit of a crash course, there could be a full week where global television aligns, that there's going to be the same documentaries, the same movies, not the bullshit, but the stuff that they go, if you go and watch this, this gives you a little bit of a crash course as to where we might be. But maybe that's kind of blue sky thinking in terms of that, but yeah. Interesting. You've talked to Kai Dickens, right? Yes. You've had her on, telepathy tapes, that's another huge one. And Whitley Strieber, his stuff in terms of, especially the newer stuff, because he's gotten, he's gotten more and more used to both the telepathy side of things and how that might integrate with, with what's going on. So I think, and that's also another big area for the skeptics. So like the, the stuff Kai Dickens is doing now with Dr. Powell and the others is, you know, massively blind. It's like quadruple blind or whatever it is to where what a skeptic would say is Phyllis, uh, facilitated communication, where it's basically the parent, you know, pulling the fingers along to, to pick what they want the child to type. Uh, it's just, it's completely impossible because nobody that's in the other state, you know, like a thousand miles removed in a different room and doesn't even know what it is that the child is going to, to produce along with the child shouldn't know. Cause they're all say, you know, like all these things that they've done is again, like pushing that Sigma higher and higher and higher. Yeah. But somebody that's taking the position of now, this isn't like, we're skeptical by default and that's the direction. The only direction we're going to go, they'll say, Oh, facilitated communication. And they won't need at all. Look at the science. So I think that's another aspect of, of catching up is the, uh, you know, the telepathic part of it. And here we go. Uh, last question from Jeff, but Jeff gave us four questions for you. So thank you, Jeff. Uh, Jeff says, does Ryan, well, first question, does Ryan believe that the fellows at the center for inquiry that you mentioned, such as Mick West, Michael Shermer, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and other prominent debunkers, such as Stephen Greenstreet, um, and there's others listed are, or could be part of the, the US government's organized disinformation campaign around UFOs, NHIs, and crash retrievals? Uh, you know, the technical answer is probably no, in the sense that if they've privatized it, it's no longer, quote unquote, part of the government, right? So after the seventies, when Phil Klass and Sagan were founders of, uh, PsychOp, it was a private org. It's like a charity. So they, they, you know, get donations and they run their, run their business and they sell a magazine and they, whatever they do, they consider marketing, you know, their messaging is marketing messaging. It's not counterintelligence and it's not attached to the government in that way. So that's probably part of it, but at the same time in that era, uh, up until he died, you know, Donald Menzel could have been considered a, a CIA handler of Sagan or Klass or whoever. And one of the things in classes, uh, in the, like 2005, when he died in one of his obituaries, it was the CEO, president of McGraw, McGraw Hill publisher. He's like, yeah, I remember Phil Klass would get a phone call from the office and he'd run off, he'd go to a hotel room. And then he'd just be told to go to another hotel room in the same hotel and then hang a thing on the doorknob or whatever, you know, like this whole rigmarole. And then 10 minutes later in would walk the director of the NSA or the director of the CIA. And so like, that's who Phil Klass was because he was in this business and blah, blah, blah. And so I think they've done things to make it one step removed and they've done stuff to say, you know, if they don't need to know, they don't need to know. And if they're still willing to follow the, the debunk marching orders and do it at that level without having to know, then that's what they do. And so, yeah, hard to say, but I don't think it's like the official government anymore in that regard for them. Yeah, I often wonder, do the government even need to, to push people officially and contact them in the background and offer them money? I think there's an element that the public and social media do that themselves and tear each other apart. And yeah, they don't need almost that official confirmation or, you know, in the background that you could find there's a $100,000 payment to X account, Jamie DeBunker89674, because they'll just be doing it anyway. There's people to do that. It just seems almost a waste of time. Perhaps it goes on, but I honestly think there's just an element of human nature will take that course anyway, the way we are in 2026. And listen, as someone who follows a football team, who has a huge rivalry with the other side of the city, there's no need for one side or the other to push fans to wind up the other side. It just happens. So second question, regarding Wikipedia on ufology, and this has been a big debate online for those who aren't on social media. And I know many of you who listen and watch this don't get involved and well done you. There's a huge issue with Wikipedia and folks going on and manipulating articles and editing articles and there's burner accounts and username changes and people associated with usernames going on to fidget with accounts and whatnot. So what are Ryan's thoughts on Wikipedia's long-term debunkery around ufology and its sabotage of BLPs, biographies of living people, involved in ufology? Could Wikipedia's misinformation on ufology be a part of the US government's campaign of misinformation? I'm going to add, Ryan, I would say, for me, see my previous answer, where people will just get involved anyway in that type of, you know, fuckaboutery, as you want to call it. But yeah, what's your thoughts? Yeah, but it's also well beyond that because you have accounts that based so Wikipedia will show the logs of the changes and edits and even the conversation around the edits before the actual page. So if you go to a page of somebody and you click into some of the links that are at the top, you'll see like previous edits, but then you'll see talk, which is the conversation around those edits. And then you'll see like all these other things. And so there's been researchers, Rob Heatherly is one of them. Matt Ford touches on Rob's work and also does his own work on this and others that more or less calculate all those changes and the time spent. And it's like somebody's full-time job, you know, like they're spending eight hours a day on Wikipedia doing this. And so, yeah, it's definitely professionalized. You know, who's sending the marching orders for what is always going to be hard to figure out. But you can see what's the result and what's taking place. And it's definitely not at the level of somebody's hobby when they have a spare few minutes to, you know, like cheer on their team. It's something that's professionalized and they wake up, they log in, they stay on, they go to bed, they log off. You know, it's kind of that level of involvement. So you feel in that respect, there's more potential for that situation I said of someone is being paid or people are being paid, that this is their career, their salary to go online and keep this information, you know, at bay or at least control the narrative around it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But it's also an element of, like, if you want to go back to your analogy, it's like the president of the fan club, right? So if you'd expect the president of the fan club to draw a salary because they're spending so much time on, you know, sending out the newsletter and making sure the best jerseys are in stock and, you know, like doing a signing engagement or some event. Like the footballer is going to come to the hospital and he's going to, like, do stuff for kids and coordinating. Like at that level, you're thinking, oh, yeah, this person is more or less doing all these things for us. So he might as well get paid or she might as well get paid because they're spending so much of their effort on it and working on it. So, yeah, that's understandable. That person should be paid. And then that person gets in a dozen volunteers that, you know, maybe work 10 hours a week. And those 10 dozen volunteers, their 10 hours is 120 hours. So now you've got that and it's just like, oh, maybe they get some benefits of, like, free event tickets or, you know, some recognition or at the event they're at the green room or they're backstage or some sort of access thing. So it's just that element of the structures that are in place for conventional charities and conventional clubs and everything else are being applied to these efforts to manipulate Wikipedia and impact, like, mass media. So, yeah, that's what it is. Like, Wikipedia gets, if it wanted to, like, if Google didn't do otherwise and it's already doing a ton, like, you know, if this video will probably be noted, right, by Wikipedia underneath that we talked about, like, alien, crash retrieval, telepathy, like, you know, all the buzzwords that get some sort of Wikipedia link slapped underneath it. But even if they didn't, like, so many links go into, like, the conventional pages of Wikipedia that they would probably rank number one for any search unless Google manipulated their own algorithm to say, okay, don't let Wikipedia rank for everything all the time. And so the people that are trying to control mass media know that Wikipedia gets that level of involvement. And so they can do two things. They can get their message in front of that many people by controlling what is on Wikipedia. And they can drive visits back to their own websites if they have a link on Wikipedia. So if they sell a book or if they have, like, some sort of income based off of their website and they're, like, the source on the Wikipedia page, that's going to drive a, you know, fairly significant amount of traffic that's organic in the sense of, you know, they think it's just a natural thing and voted on by the crowd and the best of the best. They'll go to that link and be like, yeah, maybe I should get this book. And so that's part of it. Yeah. Yeah. That algorithm manipulation can be a tricky one. You know, if I was going to do that on YouTube, I would say buzzwords like Taylor Swift, 6'7", Kardashian, Roblox, Minecraft, shocking UFO. That's another good one. Secrets, yeah. Bombshell. Yeah, bombshell. Bombshell. Yeah, everything's a bombshell, isn't it? Yeah. I'm fighting it. Like, I really have to fight it. But, yeah, it's like when I go online and look at recommendations, if I do a show and I use transcripts and I'll be like, what are some good titles for the show and whatnot? And I kind of pick out my own based on a few options. Some of the suggestions, it's like, this would be the best one for clicks. And I'm like, I can't use that. That's not the, but it's like shocking UFO secrets you never expected to hear from director James Fox. I'm like, no, that's, I'm not going to use that. He's the nicest. People shouldn't, yeah. I know, I know. Don't click bait with James Fox. No, I know. And question three was along a similar theme that Jeff said, I have the impression that the guerrilla skeptics on Wikipedia and other non-GSOW skeptics on Wikipedia that control the content and also skepticism in general is in decline. Do you have a view on that, the idea that, you know, skepticism is in decline? Yeah, I think potentially so. I mean, from the perspective of just basic, basic science and like even Neil deGrasse Tyson would say, yeah, planets exist outside of us, you know, like outside of our solar system. Whereas a hundred years ago, that was a question, you know, looking into Menzel's background, like the discoveries they're making were, you know, what is the material of the universe? Is hydrogen like the most common element? Like all that stuff that we take for granted nowadays was just completely unknown. And so I think what's happening is we're also getting to a stage where we understand that we have the technology to do what could have been done to us prior in the whole scope and scale of the billions and billions of years of a universe. Where we have a James Webb telescope and it's looking out into the universe and it's looking at planets that have an atmosphere and it's looking for planets that might even have a technological signature. And we're finding asteroids that are coming out of the solar system. So I think there's all this that's making it very, very, very clear that we live in a very abundant universe that has a lot going on. And so saying we're the cream of the crop, the tip of the top, the one and only, like humans are where it's at. People are just kind of done with that. And I'll say there's definitely an element of we want to know more. We're earthlings. We want to, if we're going to go like interstellar, you know, it's not going to be like Captain America from the Bronx versus Spider-Man from Brooklyn. It's going to be earthlings going somewhere else. You know, we're going to have to get over our little cliques and who's better here and go out there. So maybe that's part of it. Yeah. Even within that, the idea of skepticism being in decline, I like to think myself as skeptical about in a healthy way. But I do feel that's less and less a common trope with people and that people are too quick to jump to one side of an argument and stick themselves there. And it's, nope, this is where I am. This is where I'm going to be. It's all real. It's all bullshit. But, and that goes across society, not just UFOs. And I always try and ask, if anything, I never like to force my views on people on this. I'll present an interview or present some information. I'll give my opinion. And it is just that, an opinion. And I'm always happy to hear arguments on different sides. But that would be one thing I would ask folks is just open up a little bit to, it might be not, it might not be what you agree with or what you think. But just entertain the notion at least and have it back there to be like, okay, what if, and then just see where things go from there. And if you land back on your initial opinion being, you know what, that's what I'm sticking with. Cool. Great. I think that's a really healthy way to approach things on this. And then final question from Jeff. He says, does Ryan agree that paragraph P of the Majestic 12 fifth annual report from 1952 could be the first time that a formal policy of control, denial, and information was recorded in leaked government documents? And if you want, I can read that for you if you don't know off by heart, Ryan, because I can't see my tattoo of it. I have to like look at it. Yeah, it's in reverse. So it says, and I've got it here, and it's one of those ones I've copied and pasted it for you, but it's like typewriter copied and pasted. One of the most difficult aspects of controlling the perception in the public's mind of government attempts of denial and ignorance is actual control of the press. Until a clear intent is established with diplomatic relations firmly in hand, it is the recommendation of the president's special panel, with concurrence from Majestic 12, that a policy of strict denial of the events surfacing from Roswell, New Mexico, and any other incident of such calibre be enforced, and an interactive programme of controlled releases to the media in such fashion to discredit any civilian investigation be instituted in accordance with the provisions of the 1947 National Security Act. So in black and white, you know, control of the press, denial, let's go with this, and that's where we are now still, largely. Yeah, well, in the article itself, I've got Corso, when he's being interviewed by George Knapp, saying one of the best covers we ever came up with was saying it just doesn't exist, because if it doesn't exist, there's no crash. If there's no crash, there's no craft. There's no craft, there's no bodies, there's no anything, and there's nobody investigating it. So what are you looking for? What are you talking about? You're talking nonsense. You saw a cloud. Get over it. Go bye. And so, like, when was the year on that? And then additionally, it's a bit of a carryover from World War II, where, you know, loose lips sink ships, right? Where if you talk, maybe the enemy will hear you. And so, like, all these things were definitely developed. I don't know if it's something that you can say that was the year, or that was the paragraph that cemented it in stone. I think it was just sort of adapted from all the other elements of warfighting. And really going back to a global battlefield, like, Menzel knew that radio broadcasts were heard by the public and the enemy. And I think they decided whatever we say going forward is going to be heard by both people. So we just have to keep the public in the same basket as we would the enemy with what we say and what we broadcast and what goes on TV and what we talk about. So I think that was the choice they made based on that. Absolutely. Listen, Ryan, this has been fascinating. And even during the conversation, I think it's went in a little bit of a different direction than I was probably planning initially. But it's been a wonderful look at Donald Menzel from a particular period that I think has really highlighted why we are where we are. And, like I say, perhaps how we can perhaps navigate the coming months and years. Like I say, George Knapp on Weaponised mentioned that something is coming down the pipeline that's going to attempt to derail the UEP caucus and their work they're doing in Washington and the UFO topic. We've now got David Grush coming out. And I'm sure that timing isn't just a random interview he's decided to do on Megyn Kelly. So I think we are in for an interesting year. Wonderful work, Ryan. Honestly, the article's top-notch and thoroughly recommend it to folks. I'll be subscribing to that. And if that helps you get more work like this done, get you back on this podcast on a regular basis too to discuss that history in depth. I think, like I say, you mentioned Richard Dolan. I always like to mention my good friend Graham Rendell. His work on the history of this topic, the Foo Fighters going back to the 10s, the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, is really, really important in the UFO topic. In your article, it was something I found a really enjoyable and interesting read. It's full of information, but it's not dense. It's not where I was, like, getting lost in it going, this is just, I can't follow it. It made sense. It was informative. It was interesting. And it paints a really clear picture, Ryan. So, wonderfully well written. Thank you very much, mate. And, like I say, it was a pleasure to meet you at Sol. And I'd love to get you back on soon. And if I'm subscribing, that should give you a bit up the arse to get that next part done. That'll sweeten the deal. That'll take you through those next couple of decades, yeah? Yeah, indeed. It definitely will. Listen, Ryan, thank you very much, mate. And you can just plug very quickly. How can people listen? How can people not listen? How can they find your work? Yeah, it's unquestionably skeptical. I think if you Google it, you'll find it, I think. And that's on Substack. There's only two articles so far, but doing my best to dig deep and find some stuff. Yeah, like we were talking about earlier, that's, you know, people shouldn't be afraid to dig into a topic and see what they can find. I think it's worthwhile. And thanks for what you do. Like, your podcast has been epic. You've interviewed millions over the years. Maybe not millions, but getting there. It feels like it. It certainly feels like it. But yeah, listen, and even, folks, if money's tight for everyone, I appreciate any support. I'm sure Ryan's the same. There is an option to subscribe even for free on Ryan's Substack. And that visibility, knowledge for nothing, is always appreciated too, folks. So thank you very much for listening. Ryan, I look forward to getting you back on the podcast soon, mate. And I'll speak to everyone else very, very soon. That's all for this episode of That UFO Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and watching. If you enjoyed the show, please follow, subscribe, and leave a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps others find the show. If you're watching on YouTube, hit like, subscribe, and turn on notifications so you don't miss future episodes. You can also support the show directly and get early access, ad-free episodes, and bonus content on Patreon, or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube memberships. All the links are over at thatufopodcast.com or in the show description below, along with merchandise and more. Don't forget you can also pick up a copy of my book, Atlas of Unidentified Flying Objects, available now in all good bookstores and through online retailers, including Amazon. Big thank you again to all of you for listening and tuning in. Until next time, keep looking up, you never know what you might see.