Truth, Lies and ETs

Summary

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Alien UFO Podcast – Detailed Episode Summary

Episode Title: Truth, Lies and ETs
Host: Simon Bown
Guest: Don Donderi (author, experimental psychologist)
Release Date: July 31, 2026

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Overview

In this classic episode, Simon Bown interviews Dr. Don Donderi, author of Truth, Lies and ETs: How We Stumbled into the Universe, about the ongoing UFO and ET phenomena. The discussion spans the history of UFO reports, alleged abductions, government secrecy and debunking, the reliability of witness testimony, and how both believers and skeptics navigate the search for truth. Donderi’s expertise in psychology and memory brings a unique scientific perspective to the emotionally charged realm of UFOs and alien encounters.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Meaning Behind the Book’s Title

• Stumbling into the Universe: Refers to humanity’s slow, reluctant confrontation with the reality of extraterrestrial encounters since 1947, due to both psychological defense mechanisms and government obfuscation.

  “We…the human collectivity has spent since about 1947 trying to deal with the evidence…that extraterrestrials…have been here and have been looking at us and…playing with us for the last 75 or so years.”
  — Don Donderi, [03:34]

• Human nature and official secrecy have delayed accepting the evidence.

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2. The State of Evidence: Physical Proof and Witness Testimony

• Skeptics frequently cite the lack of “smoking gun” artifacts. Donderi counters that physical traces (burn marks, ground traces, injuries) are well-documented.

  “You can show them burn marks on the ground…broken branches, you can find all sorts of physical evidence…A man named Stephen Michalak approached a landed UFO, was burned by it…”
  — Don Donderi, [07:02]

• The reliability of eyewitness testimony has been historically undervalued, though recent psychological research (including by Elizabeth Loftus) shows initial accounts are often accurate.

  “Human eyewitness testimony is reliable…I have to tell you that eyewitness testimony on the whole is reliable.”
  — Don Donderi, [09:17]

• Many sightings are corroborated by radar and have qualified witnesses, especially military and commercial pilots.

  “Years ago…I talked to an airlines pilot…He’d flown wingtip to wingtip with a UFO for half an hour at one flight. So the evidence is there from reliable, competent witnesses.”
  — Don Donderi, [10:59]

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3. Personal Experience and Memory

• Simon shares his own close sighting, questioning whether his memory remains accurate after many years. Donderi assures him that such classic sightings are common and that memory, particularly initial recall, is generally trustworthy.

  “Large rugby ball, football shaped craft with many lights hovering low...that’s not an uncommon sighting and there are scores of them.”
  — Don Donderi, [12:58]

• Donderi’s lifelong interest dates to first reports in 1947 and later professional involvement as a psychologist.

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4. Government Secrecy, Debunking and 2017 Disclosure

• Early coverage of UFOs was serious, but the US government responded almost immediately by debunking and ridiculing witnesses.

  “From 47 on until actively 2017, the US government in particular took a completely debunking stats on the whole subject, made it a subject of ridicule…”
  — Don Donderi, [19:44]

• Possible justification: to protect the integrity of air defense systems from mass false alarms.

• 2017 was a pivotal year, with the release of Navy videos (“Gimbal,” “GoFast,” “Tic Tac”) and public pressure from policymakers, resulting in greater official transparency.

  “The news is out there...Qualified observers, namely pilots, have seen these things.”
  — Don Donderi, [10:19]

• Pentagon’s Aerial Threat Identification Program played a key role; leaks (possibly via USB drive) spurred the public acknowledgment.

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5. Famous UFO Cases & Historical Abductions

• Barney and Betty Hill (1965): One of the first publicly-investigated abduction cases, explored via hypnosis and documented in Incident at Exeter and later works.

  “They were abducted, they were subjected to examinations on the craft, they were released...”
  — Don Donderi, [32:57]

• Suggestion that abductions span generations within families.

  “We are under study. And I pointed out in the last couple of paragraphs in the book that we do the same thing…”
  — Don Donderi, [33:35]

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6. Abduction Phenomena and Hybridization

• ETs are telepathic and exert mental control over abductees, making casual “souveniring” impossible.

  “The people who are abducted are also under mental control…casual theft on the way out is…I’m sure, not permitted…”
  — Don Donderi, [06:15]

• Some abductions involve genetic experimentation, allegedly to create hybrid beings with telepathic powers.

  “They’re also messing around with hybrids…to produce an intermediate species physically indistinguishable from humans but possessed with one vital asset…and that is telepathy.”
  — Don Donderi, [36:04]

• Anecdotes include direct reports from “experiencers” who claim to have interacted with hybrid beings (e.g., teaching them social dance), and witnesses to screen memories—visions or images designed to comfort or obscure reality.

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7. The Mark McCandlish “ARV” Case & Government Black Projects

• Donderi relates the story of Mark McCandlish, an aerospace illustrator who allegedly saw secret US-made UFO-like craft (ARVs) in a hangar.

  “He saw, according to McCandlish, two hovering what we would commonly call UFOs…models for small UFOs, the two seater, the kind that you see in cartoons…”
  — Don Donderi, [45:30]

• Patents have been filed for electromagnetic propulsion devices, indicating real research—though Donderi refuses the ‘conspiracy theorist’ label, preferring to follow evidence.

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8. Types of ETs and Biological Plausibility

• Despite prolonged presence on earth, ETs do not appear to require special measures for Earth’s atmosphere—perhaps a testament to advanced research or technology.

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9. Lies, Debunking, and the Fight for Legitimacy

• Good “lies” are those told to debunk, ridicule, or discredit witnesses.

  “The bad side is…this mostly American effort to actively debunk…ridicule and make fun of and shame the people who presented this information.”
  — Don Donderi, [52:04]

• Good side: community and organizations building a resilient body of knowledge (APRO, NICAP, CUFOS, MUFON, and, notably, the French Group des Etudes Spatiales).

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10. Living with the Knowledge & Societal Challenges

• Social stigma keeps most people silent; most prefer not to confront the anxiety triggered by the reality of advanced, interfering non-human intelligences.

  “If I were to ask, I would not mention them…unless I knew the company had at least semi-positive or inquisitive attitude about the subject…Most people don’t have the background, they have the fear…”
  — Don Donderi, [56:18]

• Donderi feels fortunate his reputation and expertise allow him to be open about his interest.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the psychological defense against the phenomenon:

  “…it’s much less threatening to be skeptical about it and dismiss the people…than it is to actually face the evidence. And that’s why I say we’re stumbling into the universe…”
  — Don Donderi, [04:52]

• On initial eyewitness recall:

  “Their initial accurate reflections are subsumed unto a kind of collective average…So I just actually wrote a note about this to Elizabeth [Loftus], got a polite response.”
  — Don Donderi, [08:54]

• On the government’s stance post-1947:

  “The US Army Air Force…immediately put up a counter explanation. These were weather balloons…So from the very beginning…a subject of ridicule…”
  — Don Donderi, [19:55]

• About abductions/hybrids:

  “…the goal…is to produce an intermediate species physically indistinguishable from humans but possessed with one vital asset…telepathy.”
  — Don Donderi, [36:20]

• On societal avoidance:

  “Why would you want to give space to this in your own head? I give space to it because it’s my trade…”
  — Don Donderi, [58:16]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |---------------------------------------|--------------| | Introduction to episode & guest | 02:51 | | Book title meaning & human reluctance | 03:34 – 06:02| | Physical vs. testimonial evidence | 06:02 – 11:43| | Host’s own sighting/Memory discussion | 12:19 – 13:28| | Early media coverage & debunking | 18:25 – 21:30| | The 2017 Navy UFO disclosures | 21:30 – 24:44| | Barney & Betty Hill abduction | 27:38 – 33:23| | Abduction, hybrids, and telepathy | 33:35 – 38:41| | Mark McCandlish’s hangar story | 43:23 – 45:24| | “Good lies” vs. “bad lies” | 52:04 – 56:02| | Social stigma & living with UFO knowledge | 56:02 – 59:07| | Closing remarks and future plans | 59:07 – 60:47|

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a nuanced tour through decades of UFO and abduction scholarship from a veteran psychologist’s perspective, granting equal weight to the emotional, psychological, and physical evidence. Don Donderi illuminates the challenge of assimilating the implications of ET contact—both individually and collectively—while urging a more open, rational assessment of the accumulated testimony and traces. The conversation balances skepticism, belief, scientific rigor, and the human factor in a field where evidence is both abundant and elusive.

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For further details, Dr. Donderi’s book Truth, Lies and ETs: How We Stumbled into the Universe is recommended. Host Simon Bown’s own book Aspects of Alien Abduction and more episodes are available via the Alien UFO Podcast and Patreon page.

Transcript

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[Simon Bown]

This is an alien UFO podcast Classic episode. And I'm your host, Simon Bown. There are a number of UFO episodes that I released on the podcast a few years ago that are full of great information and I thought it would be a good idea to share them for listeners who may have missed them the first time around. And this week I'm talking to Don dondairy about his book Truth, Lies and et's How We Stumbled into the Universe. Hi, Don, Thanks a lot for coming on the podcast.

[Don Don Dairy]

You're absolutely welcome. It's my pleasure.

[Simon Bown]

So I wanted to talk to you about your books called truth, lies and ETs how we stumbled into the Universe. So what is it you mean by that title, How We Stumbled into the Universe?

[Don Don Dairy]

Some people closer to me than you have asked the same thing. We that is, the human collectivity has spent since about 1947 trying to deal with the evidence that used to be called the UFO evidence and is basically evidence that extraterrestrials in their extraterrestrial vehicles, formerly called UFOs, or flying saucers or flying discs or whatever, have been here and have been looking at us and. And if you like, playing with us for the last 75 or so years. This has taken the human species a long time to catch on to. There are many reasons people don't want to pay attention to it. First of all, with a technologically advanced adversary, if possibly that's what they are, you don't know how to deal with it. You'd rather forget it. And psychology tells you how to forget it. You've got many ways of dismissing the evidence that's been gradually accumulating for 75 years that human beings on this planet have been subject not just to observation but to interference by extraterrestrial creatures with superior technology, including telepathy and the ability to put it in plain American English, mess with us any way they like. And that's something that it's been very hard to get used to. Not so much because the evidence is ambiguous, it's not. But because the evidence has been first of all hidden or attempted to be hidden by mostly the US government, but others as well. Not so much uk, I have to say, and because people would rather not know. And not everybody's seen a ufo. So there's plenty of reason and plenty of excuses to be skeptical about the whole thing. And it's much less threatening to be skeptical about it and dismiss the people as believers or credible, uncredible or something like that than it is to actually face the evidence. And that's why I say we're stumbling into the universe, we're not confronting it. Right on. Although that's changed a lot in the last five years, I have to say. But the stumble into the universe part is that we haven't really shown any ambition to be there. But we are, and we can't avoid it.

[Simon Bown]

One of the things a skeptic has said, I can't remember his name, said something like, well, if people are being abducted, why can't they just grab something on their way out of the craft and bring some proof, you know, like a, an ashtray or something?

[Don Don Dairy]

The nice idea. But the people who are abducted are also under mental control, put it that way. Remember, one thing that I mention and talk about in the book is that ETs are telepathic. They can tell you what to do and what not to do and sort of what you might call casual theft on the way out is, I'm sure, not permitted, put it that way.

[Simon Bown]

We don't have any physical proof of their visitation. I mean, out in the public it seems that the military, the governments might have it. And that's one of the things. There's so many sightings, so many people reporting abductions, but still we don't have that final kind of thing that we. You could show to the public. That would be proof.

[Don Don Dairy]

Well, you can, Simon. You can show them burn marks on the ground where the UFO that you saw close up landed and then take off. You can find broken branches, you can find all sorts of physical evidence that a craft has landed, has changed the environment, mostly by electromagnetic radiation, and then taken off again. There's a famous case goes way back, I can't recall the exact year 57 or something like that, in which a man named Stephen Michalak approached a landed ufo, was burned by it. The burns. The testimony was his alone, fair enough, but the burns were a unique pattern of electromagnetic burns on his stomach, skin, right through his, his outer shirt. This was in the Canadian Rockies and came back alive to prove that he'd had a close encounter with the ufo. The other thing people forget, and this has now been modified a bit recently, is that human eyewitness testimony is reliable. Now, I say that as a statement that I'm willing to back up with evidence. One of my colleagues, a woman named Elizabeth Loftus, a very well known experimental psychologist like me, whose research concentrated on memory for years, took the position that eyewitness testimony was fallible and that you could not pay. You had to have much more than eyewitness testimony to make a case in a legal sense for anything. Recently, Elizabeth and a couple of other people have changed their tune very delightfully from my point of view, because they've discovered evidence that when you ask people about events that they've seen or experienced, particularly faces, and you ask them the first time, their responses are accurate. If you then repeat this again and again, their story changes. Their story changes sort of to the average. Their initial accurate reflections are subsumed unto a kind of collective average in their mind of what they might have seen. And the fact is that most of the eyewitness UFO evidence, frequently backed up by instrumental observation, I add, is firsthand, first account reports. So I just actually wrote a note about this to Elizabeth, got a polite response. And I have to tell you that eyewitness testimony on the whole is reliable. In court, you'd probably need more than one witness and the legal system hasn't quite got around to absorbing this recent paper. But eyewitness testimony can be shown to be reliable. Let's leave it at that. And it is one, but not the only source of evidence. Many, and you may not know this, Simon, but many UFO encounters are recorded on one kind of medium or another, as simple as being a photograph. Now, yes, you say everybody can fake a photograph, but photographic analysis can check the photograph to see if it's reliable. Background circumstances can indicate whether or not the photograph is reliable. And in many cases that has been demonstrated. And now go ahead to 2017. I don't know how much you've been following the news, the UFO news, if you like, in North America, but in 2017, a lot of things began to happen. First of all, the US Navy released accidentally or surreptitiously, I think really is a better word. Video Sightings of UFOs at close range, seen by both the radars on major American warships and by the pilots catapulted from the aircraft carriers to chase these things. All of that's public news in the US and probably in the UK too. I'm sure this has been copied and followed in the Guardian and the Express and whatever else. But the news is out there. Qualified observers, namely pilots, have seen these things. And as a matter of fact, Simon, years ago at a conference in 2012, I talked to a airlines pilot, flew across the continental US regularly and said he'd flown wingtip to wingtip with a UFO for half an hour at one flight. So the evidence is there from reliable, competent witnesses whose live livelihood depends on being good observers. Case closed. As far as I'm concerned, at least part of the case.

[Simon Bown]

Okay. And You're a research scientist, you've got a doctorate in experimental psychology and your specialty is human visual perception and memory.

[Don Don Dairy]

Sorry, yeah.

[Simon Bown]

You're exactly the sort of person that we need when it comes to looking at UFO sightings and working out what was actually there.

[Don Don Dairy]

Thank you. The only skill I don't have is the one you possess. I am not a therapist and I cannot do hypno or other regressive therapies, so I have to defer to my better qualified colleagues, like yourself, for that kind of stuff.

[Simon Bown]

Well, I wanted to ask you about the UFO sighting I had in, in as much as it happened in the early 90s. And I was driving down the motorway and I saw it off to the side and I slowed down to like five miles an hour and I was looking up at it through the windscreen. It was very close. It was a large craft shaped like a rugby ball. It didn't move an inch the whole time, covered in lights. And I've got that image in my mind right now as I talk about it. But would you say that the image I have in my mind now is not what I saw? Because over time it might have changed somehow.

[Don Don Dairy]

Might have changed, but it's not unlike a lot of other people's reports. Large rugby ball, football shaped craft with many lights hovering low. Do you know, by the way, this is the kind of thing that one does, ask witnesses. Did you get to where you were going at the time you expected to?

[Simon Bown]

Yeah, yeah, because I'm aware of that, the missing time thing. And I checked the clock when I got home and it was relieved to find. Find out it was okay.

[Don Don Dairy]

Well, I'm relieved too. No, that kind of thing does happen. But Simon, that's not an uncommon sighting and there are scores of them. What I don't think many people realize, and you can't see it because we're doing a. A non visual podcast is right behind me on the bookshelf, directly behind my desk there is a row of about 20 Encyclopedia of UFO evidence. Different names produced by different people or groups that all of them are compendium of sightings of case reports, multiple witness, single witness, some photographs, some radar events. Because that exists as well. It's been going on for a long time and the people who collect it and are interested have been interested for a long time. As I said, it started in 47. And I will tell you this in truth, and my memory is not that bad, put it that way. In 1947, the first sightings were widely reported in the United States. Everybody's heard of Roswell and everybody may have heard of the flying saucers seen by the Kenneth Arnold, the American private pilot, was flying over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State and spotted about nine of them in a row flying above him. But he was a pilot, he reported it. And that was the first public UFO sighting. You know when Don Dondary first find out, found out about UFOs a couple of months after that when they were reported in look magazine, Life magazine and the other big circulating periodicals in the United States at the same time. They've been around a while. Everybody knows about it. A lot of people took it seriously from the very beginning. In 1947 I was 10, a little bit too young to take it professionally seriously. But when I got into the academic world and these things were happening again and routinely in the States and Canada in 1965, I picked up on the stories, realized that with this many corroborated similar eyewitness testimonies, the probability that these were mental deficiencies or mental illness or psychological disturbances was approaching zero. And I should begin to have a professional look. And so I started paying attention as a trained professional, as that phrase is often overused. But to be honest, my observational interests started when I first read about them at age 10 and got going again when I was a bit older, about 28. And it's been an interest, a long term interest. It has not, it's been in parallel, has not usurped my other interest. I still work as a consultant in human factors psychology as a matter of fact, doing the same kinds of things I did for research. But no, it's a fascinating subject. It's very important to the human species and we should pay attention to it. And we really, some of us have, but most of us haven't. And thank you for paying attention, I appreciate that.

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[Simon Bown]

so when the original reports were made back in 1947, did the media cover it seriously? Or was there a point where suddenly all the media switched to just treating it as something to be ridiculed, like it's a joke at the end of the news report?

[Don Don Dairy]

I don't know because I'm not basically a scholar of the media, but I can tell you this. The first reports were certainly serious and they're widely circulated now. You can get copies of the Roswell Daily Record. You'll see them online. You could find them online. They're in the book. As a matter of fact, I had to pay through my nose to get them. But they're there. The records are there. The original serious reports are there. What happened immediately afterwards is also in the book. The US Government started debunking almost immediately. In fact, the nice copy that I borrowed from the Roswell Daily Record is the first story is something like I can't recall the exact title and I don't have the book in front of me. UFOs landed in Roswell, New Mexico. Next headline next day, General Rainey Empties Roswell Saucer. In other words, the US Army Air Force, as it was at the time, immediately put up a counter explanation. These were weather balloons and the people just misidentified the wreckage which they came across. So from the very beginning, from 47 on until actively 2017, the US government in particular took a completely debunking stats on the whole subject, made it a subject of ridicule they co opted, I'm sure they didn't have to pay because these people were establishment people. Two people in particular, Dr. Donald Menzel, who was an Harvard astronomer and oh God, the other guy, what's his name? Philip Class, who was the editor of the Aviation Week in Space Technology magazine. They both became publicly identified debunkers who ridiculed and made fun of the people who took these reports seriously. Now again, the US Government might have had an excuse for doing this. And this is the after the fact explanation. The United States air defense system in 1947 depended both on radar, which is relatively new, and on ground observers standing in towers with binoculars looking at the horizon to see if anything was coming. What the government might have been worried about was that people would see fleeting things in the sky, meteorites or what have you, jump up and down, call the Air Defense Command and fighters would be scrambled and they'd find nothing. So false positives would happen over and over again and that would both demoralize and make less efficient the ground observer part of this whole system. So there may have been a justifiable defense reason for doing this, but it was done and it didn't stop until 2017.

[Simon Bown]

You talked earlier about 2017 and the footage that was released over time is the gimbal, the go fast and the Tic tacs, wasn't it?

[Don Don Dairy]

Right, you got it, yeah.

[Simon Bown]

And that they were released by the Navy. So do you think the Navy has a different policy on what information is released compared to the Air Force or the Army?

[Don Don Dairy]

Well, I think things changed and they changed gradually. And there is a history of this which I haven't written and don't intend to. But back a few years, people in the government, the US Government, the elected officials of the US Government, the senators, Senator Harry Reid in particular from Nevada, began to push the Pentagon on looking into what is in respectable language called unidentified aerial phenomena. So the Pentagon was under some pressure from their financers, basically the elected members of the House of Representatives in the Senate, to do something about these sightings which people had continued to report and which a lot of people, including many, many Americans took very seriously. As I said, there's been as much collection of evidence as there has been debunking of evidence, probably more since 1947. And the government was pressured into setting up a small, publicly funded and publicly acknowledged department in the Pentagon. I've forgotten the exact title, Aerial Threat Identification Program or something like that. And it was active on a sort of modest bureaucratic level, but in public. And people were aware of it. And this also was made more public when these Navy videos were released. So how are the Navy videos released? That's an excellent question, and I don't think anyone has a perfect answer for this. My explanation in the book, and I believe I've read this somewhere, but not in a quotable source, is that the original videos were recorded on radar on a US cruiser, the USS Princeton, and then from the aircraft carrier, I believe it was USS Enterprise. More videos, more radar returns were downloaded from the ship's radar and of course on each jet fighter that went up. They were image recording systems as well. These images ended up on the computer servers in the aircraft carrier. And I think the story is, and I cannot corroborate this, was that they were surreptitiously downloaded onto somebody's USB drive and taken public without anyone's permission. And then there were so many eyewitnesses. And these people had or are willing to speak out. And America doesn't execute people for speaking out when they're in the military. They may get into trouble, but these people didn't and the story got out. The story was made headline news in the New York Times and in the Washington Post in December 2017 and it's continued to this day. And the people have not every one of the witnesses has acknowledged in public that this is what they saw.

[Simon Bown]

I talked to Matthew Roberts, who was the intelligence officer on the USS Roosevelt.

[Don Don Dairy]

Oh, neat.

[Simon Bown]

He, he said he remembers when the footage came to him in his job as the intelligence officer. And I asked him, did other stuff happen that you're not allowed to tell us about? And he said, just said yes.

[Don Don Dairy]

That's fascinating. Well, I think we all know that and I'm delighted that he was on and you asked him that question. Is he still working for the government by the way, or is he retired?

[Simon Bown]

No, I think he's retired now.

[Don Don Dairy]

Okay, so he can be a little more overt about that. Yes, and other people have done the same. I'm obviously a member of some groups that are interested in this. And last night I happened to be on a zoom with what's called the Experiencer Research Resource Team, which is a part of the Mutual UFO Network, an American based organization with branches elsewhere, including the UK I think. And there's a guy there who was talking about sightings out in the Southwest about which he knew a lot, but had had signed some non disclosure agreements with some government people who let him have a little more information that he couldn't tell us about. So this is also not Surprising. And you'll ask the other question, I'm sure. Or if you won't, anybody listening to your podcast will want to know, do I think the government knows more than we already know from the government? And the answer is unequivocally, yes.

[Simon Bown]

We could think that it all started really with Roswell, but I think there were a couple of other crashes around that time. So there's a good idea, a good theory that crashed craft have been recovered.

[Don Don Dairy]

Oh, I agree with you completely. And Roswell was recovered. And besides that, the historians and scholars of this subject will take you back into the 19th century and find airship sightings, which were controversial, of course, because since the 18th century, people, starting in France, learned how to put hot air into a balloon and make it rise, first with goats and then with people. And so there have been things in the sky that we have produced for a relatively long time. And when you see something in the sky, whether it's something we produced or something somebody else produced, becomes an open question. And as I said, the airship quote unquote, sightings began in the 19th century in the US anyway, where they recorded in newspapers. But I'm not a scholar of the history of that, so I can't give you chapter and verse. I'm sure there are people around better qualified than me. I can't think of one offhand to talk to about that. The best known American UFO scholar I know has also published a great book on the subject back in the 1990s. That's Leslie Kane, who you may or may not have interviewed.

[Simon Bown]

I wanted to ask you about some of the cases you talk about in the book. Could you, like, tell us about the incident at Exeter in 1965?

[Don Don Dairy]

Yes, that was an interesting case because it was 65 and it was the year I got interested, as a matter of fact, what was happening. What happened was that a American couple, bit unusual for the time, a divorced woman, a divorced guy named Barney Hill, and a woman named Betty Barrett got married. The unusual thing was Barney was black. And in those days, that was the. How shall I put it, still kind of surprising. But Barney and Betty took a holiday, a honeymoon, a late honeymoon, a delayed honeymoon. They came up through New York State. They lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They drove to Canada, across the border near Detroit, went into Canada, drove up the St. Lawrence to Montreal, were planning to stay overnight in Montreal, but got turned. I mean, you're reading this out of my book and it's out of other sources, which I'll tell you about. Got turned around, got stuck on the south branch of the St. Lawrence, south shore of the St. Lawrence decided they would drive back instead of trying to find a place to stay. Language was perhaps a problem as well, because Paris Francais, you see. And they Left down Route 3, an old US highway, not an interstate, to return to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On the way, they saw a UFO in the sky. It came closer. They saw it close up. It hovered in a field near them. Barney ran out to see what it was like. He ran back again. Betty screamed at him to get ahead, to get back into the car. They drove down. There was an interval of time which was missing. They'd heard some beeps on the car, they'd heard some beeps on the car later, returned home much later than, than they were supposed to and didn't know what had gone on. And so that's the outline of the story. Now, Betty Hill had friends who she talked to about this. The friends got in touch with other people who were interested. So soon the sort of UFO world up in New England got word of this and people began to talk to them about it, including tech people, people who work for IBM, as I had done before then, by the way. And so that the case, as they remembered it, began to get into the public domain in a minor way through organizations like the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, NICAP as it was called, and so forth and so on. Eventually, because they were still suffering some kind of trauma, bad dreams and stuff from this event, they went to see a psychiatrist, a guy who specialized in what was called then shell shock, or that we now call post traumatic stress disorder, the kind of stuff that soldiers suffer from. Benjamin Simon interviewed both of these people, individually, interviewed them, treated them if you like, had them record what their hypnotic sessions. You'll appreciate that he was a hypnotherapist, revealed, kept the information secret by hypnotic, post hypnotic suggestion and recorded many sessions from each of them. And then after that was all over, talk to them about what they had revealed, not before, not during. And the revealed story was told in a book by John Fuller, which came out shortly afterwards, I forgot the exact year incident at Exeter. And then later on, Betty's daughter, sorry, niece, who I happen to know, she's a colleague in the UFO world, woman named Kathleen Martin, wrote another book with another colleague of mine, a friend and fellow college graduate named the late Stanton Friedman. They wrote a book called Abducted. And the book was about their experiences, the Barney and Betty Hill experience. So the story has been well told. It was well documented at the time by hypnotherapist they eventually went back, found the site, recovered some of the memories that came spontaneously afterwards. And I've read some of the original documents that they provided to the researchers during this time because they went to an organization called the center for UFO Studies in Chicago. This you want. You'll get bored with all of the, what you might call historical details of who told what to whom and where are the documents stored. All of that stuff is known, but somewhat less interesting. Anyway, I've seen some of those documents. I know some of the people who, who, who are responsible for storing them and keeping them. And I certainly know Kathleen Morton, Betty Hill's niece, who heard the story as a kid from her aunt. So that's the Barney and Betty Hill story. And it's a well told and well documented story of abduction. They were abducted, they were subjected to examinations on the craft, they were released. And the rest of the story is told in the book, in both Barney, in both Incident at Exeter and the Freeman and Kathleen Morton book. And I've only retold it, it's a thrice told tale and a very, very solid piece of the UFO evidence.

[Simon Bown]

And there's this idea that that was perhaps the first abduction, but it was like the first one that was really reported on because it seems like abductions go back in generations through the family.

[Don Don Dairy]

Yes, you're right, Simon, that's true. We are under study. And I pointed out in the last couple of paragraphs in the book that we do the same thing. We run this planet the way we please, when it. Mostly the way we please, not when it comes to each other, because we're totally screwing that up, if you pardon the expression. And I have no sympathy for the human race as to what it's doing to each other this particular month. But in general, we treat the other species on this planet as subject matter for observation, entertainment, food. We put them in petting zoos, we look at them behind bars, in cages. We sometimes look at them with benevolence and try and make sure that their world is not destroyed by our world. But we don't always do that. And we treat these animals as if they were essentially properties of the human species on this planet. Now we're being looked at by intelligent critters from other planets who are at the very least interested enough, interested enough to pick us up, study us and put us back again. And if you want to get into the rest of it, which is also discussed in the book, they're also messing around with hybrids, as I'm sure you've heard and for all I know, maybe some of your clients have told you that as well. The human males who are abducted sometimes have sperm extracted. This doesn't always happen. Human females who are abducted are sometimes inseminated with this sperm that the ETs have modified and the fetuses are. Then the woman who is bringing a fetus to turn on earth without perhaps knowing how or where she got pregnant is re abducted, the fetus is removed and raised as a hybrid on the UFO or the et, the ET vehicle. And if you want to follow that up, we go down another path. And that's a path that was well trodden by my colleague David Jacobs, a a historian and professor at Temple University in Philadelphia for years now retired, who looked in detail with hypnosis as his tool into the abduction phenomenon and the production of hybrid phenomenon. And the goal, according to David's work is to produce an intermediate species physically indistinguishable from humans but possessed with one vital asset that we do not possess and that is telepathy. And if this is too much for your listeners to take in, I have one more piece of semi personal information to add to this and it's interesting and I put it in the book and it's there. I know a colleague in Oxford, why I've been to Oxford more than once named Young Hei Chee, who is a researcher in Oriental studies, but whose sideline and great interest is UFOs and ETs and my wife and I, my late wife and I visited Jung, he and his wife. I was giving a talk at his invitation at Nuffield College on the subject, obviously. After the talk we went out to dinner with some friends of Junghe's, a guy named in print Sean Allen, not his real name, and Sean's friend Joanna. And so the six of us had a very nice dinner in an Oxford Inn and we went our way afterwards back to London as a matter of fact. And the next day we by arrangement ran in to Sean and his friend Joanna and we spent the day with him and it was a delightful day. Now again, this is all in the book and the part I'm telling you is the public part. Sean is a scene. Sean, sorry, is a businessman, a very successful Brit who travels the world selling medical instruments which he manufactures in the uk and he's been abducted multiple times and on one of those times he was abducted, taken aboard a etv, I call them extraterrestrial vehicles and asked to teach a class of hybrids social dancing. Now that's not A story I heard necessarily just from reading about it in David Jacobs book. I heard about it sitting on the London Eye with Sean and Joanna and Verna and I. And we spent an entirely enjoyable day in May, in London in 2015. And that was not only what he told me, but what's on the record, the Planet record as well. Takes you right out of commonplace reality, doesn't it?

[Simon Bown]

There was something else that Sean Allen said that I wanted to ask you about, is that he said that during an abduction there was an entity accompanying the ETs who looked like his grandfather. What do you make of that?

[Don Don Dairy]

Well, I think that they can manage to mess with your mind. Put it plainly. Either they, they had made him. They first of all remember telepathy. That gives you a tremendous asset. Like having an intelligence agency reading everything the Russians are saying and doing completely all the time about this dreadful conflict they've started. But if you can do that with somebody, you might just mess with their minds enough to make them less ill at ease in your environment. Say, I don't know, I can't. I can't tell you whether they dressed somebody up to look that way, whether they made Sean Allen think that one of them looked that way, but the technology was there to make him convinced that he'd seen a person looking like his grandfather. It's a fascinating story and I can't elaborate it any more than he has, other than David Jacobs wrote it down. John told it to me personally or us personally. And there we have reminds me of

[Simon Bown]

that, that phenomenon of screen memories where people might see an owl or a deer or something that you know, but you'll see a four foot owl which just doesn't exist.

[Don Don Dairy]

Quite right. Well put. And you do this professionally. You probably have seen and heard about more of these than I've ever come across in my life. Because you're in the trade and I am not in the trade. In a sense you can't do everything. But it would have been very nice if somewhere along the line I learned hypnosis and had some kind of qualifications as a licensed practitioner, which I don't, which I regret, but only mildly because we can't do everything.

[Simon Bown]

But it also reminds me of something Whitley Strieber said, that he used to be in his cabin in the woods and ETs would show up and occasionally the dead would show up with the ETs.

[Don Don Dairy]

Yeah, I don't. I never met Whitley Strieber, but I was good friends with Bud Hopkins, who knew him. I don't know if you Know who Bud Hopkins is? I can elaborate if you want me to. Bud Hopkins was. He died in 2011. He was a little older than I was. He was born in 31. I was born in 37. I met him again. I've been interested in UFOs publicly since 65. I met him in the 90s at a conference at MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which had a conference on UFOs and abductions, believe it or not. And we became friends after that. I visited him in New York City, which is where he lived more than once. He was friends also with Leslie Kane, the writer of this bestseller, really book on the UFO experience. And I met Bud many times. And Bud was quite skeptical. He also knew Whitley Straber and somewhat skeptical of Whitney's reliability as a witness, put it that way. That's all I know. That slandering. I don't know if Whitley is still alive, but it's slandering the dead by somebody who can't answer the slander because he's no longer with us. But. And I've read whatever Squigley's book is and don't have much comment on it, but those experiences might be. And I'm putting this in the. Might be. They might be persistent, they might be continuous. They might simply influence your life over many decades. And remember, we do the same to other species on this planet. We mess around with bears. I put this as an example in my book. We fly over the bear's habitat in a helicopter, shoot a dart into the bear, the bear keels over. We put a tracing chip in the bear's skin, check the bear's metabolism, look at what it ate last night. And then we let the bear go, but we keep track of it, and we may follow up by another visit in a year or so. So all of this stuff is stuff we do on this planet. That other intelligent beings with advanced technology are doing it to us is not surprising to me.

[Simon Bown]

Yeah. And sometimes I've heard people are abducted and while they're on board the craft, they see lots of other humans on there. And it's like the whole. A factory where the aliens are processing the humans.

[Don Don Dairy]

Oh, yeah. You know, I've read that kind of account also. For sure. Absolutely. I can't verify those from my own interviews with people, but you're absolutely right. We are under investigation. Put it plainly. And ETs are treating us the way we treat other species on this planet. I couldn't make that more clear.

[Simon Bown]

One of the cases that I thought was really interesting in the book was with. Is it Mark McCandlish talking about somebody who went into some hangars and saw some prototypes.

[Don Don Dairy]

Yeah, I know, it's a great. It's an interesting, fascinating story. I cannot vouch for it personally. I never met the man. I wish I had. He. He died allegedly of suicide, as you know. But the, the story is plausible, put it that way. And I say that with respect because you asked me before whether I thought the US government knew anything more about UFOS than they've. Than they released. And the answer is undoubtedly yes. I cannot. I do not go on as a conspiracy theorist because that's an easy tag to be tagged with and I don't have evidence. All I have is common sense and the inference that if normal human beings who are not connected with the US military or space program can observe UFOs routinely as they do, and if they are equipped with things as they are, like telescopes and now more elaborate sensing instruments which are available to people, small scale radars and stuff like that, then should I be surprised that the United States government, through its military establishment, knows infinitely more than its private citizens know about the subject? Of course, that's an inference that is completely reasonable. But what they do know, I do not pretend to know. And that's where I draw the line because I don't want to be tagged as a conspiracy theorist. I just know there's a conspiracy, if you want to put it that way, or there's a lot of hidden information.

[Simon Bown]

It seems that this guy went into the hangar and saw no. Was it prototype flying saucers?

[Don Don Dairy]

I suppose you wanted me to go on with a story which I'll be happy to tell because it's a very public story. It was published in the newfound journal and so this is widely circulated. He was a professional illustrator for aviation and military stuff. In other words, he drew things that aerospace industry needed to have drawn, like pictures of prototypes and sketches of planes and stuff like that. So he was a professional artist. Interestingly enough, so was my dad. He was a commercial artist in New York City for many years. But McClanlish was taken into a hangar by a highly placed friend. That means, I presume, the executive of some aerospace company for whom he had worked. And they were looking at stuff on exhibit and they went behind a curtain that this guy apparently was able to get through without being stopped because of his clearance. And he took McCandlish with him. And they saw, according to McCandlish, two hovering what we would commonly call UFOs, but what you might call, I guess you call them Hovercraft, but they're covering over the earth, not over water. And they are basically models for small UFOs, the two seater, the kind that you see in cartoons. And he saw them hovering and then they had to leave quickly because he wasn't supposed to be there and he'd seen what he had to see and he drew pictures of them. The pictures have been widely circulated. So everybody who's seen the MUFON journal or seen some reproduction of it has seen the so called aerial reproduction vehicle, which is a two seater, which operates on some not quite clear principle that I as a non physicist don't pretend to understand, but enables craft based on Earth overcome Earth's gravity, not using conventional thrust reaction against the atmosphere and not using lift generated by the atmosphere with propellers. So by some electromagnetic means that I have outlined a possibility for in my book, but not being a engineering physicist cannot vouch for, I covered it in the book only because I thought a reader interested in the phenomenon wants at least a sketch of everything that can be reported about the phenomenon. And I begin that section of the book by saying how do they work? I'm not an engineering psychologist, so my professional answer has to be I don't know. But here are some ideas and one of the ideas, several of the ideas are expressed as patents, as US Government patents. And I point out being a patent holder myself, I did some Arctic research and with mostly based on marine problems in the Arctic, that you can get a patent on something which I did with a model, you don't have to build a full scale thing. I have a patent on something I call an ice rig, which is a way to move ice out of the path of a ship. And my, my ice rig sits on a shelf behind me. It's about 2ft long and about 10 inches wide. In other words, it's not the kind that's going to move much ice out of the Arctic, but it's a working concept and it got me a patent. And there are models of crafts operated by some form of electromagnetic propulsion which the US Navy has a patent on. If the patent is in the name of one of the Navy employees, the patent rights are assigned to the Navy and that's on the public record. And so it is possible to see at least a little way into the technology that may be developing the, what you might call the counter or the counteract, the counteractive technology to the ET technology which we are exposed routinely.

[Simon Bown]

And it may be that this has been developed by us because we picked up crashed craft or do you think maybe there's an agreement with ETs that they give handover technology? Sorry, we're getting into conspiracy theories now, aren't we?

[Don Don Dairy]

Oh, we are indeed. And I don't know. I absolutely know that we've picked up crash saucers. That's not conspiracy theory. That's Roswell, basically, and beyond. But as to whether there's cooperation or not, that is an open question, and I haven't got an answer. And you're right, that's beyond. I haven't even got what you might call what you might call credible rumors. I just don't know. I simply don't know.

[Simon Bown]

So one thing that I've always wondered about is people report seeing ETs, various types of ETs when they're abducted. And so these ETs may be in their bedroom or by their car somewhere. But there's also this idea which I've seen, which I believe is reality. I've seen it in science fiction, where if we as humans were to step out onto another planet, there'd be so much in that atmosphere that could be deadly to us that we die, maybe instantly. So why is it you think these ETs are able to just happily walk around on Earth and they don't seem to need breathing apparatus or anything?

[Don Don Dairy]

Well, maybe they've done a little research before they got here and figured out what was and what wasn't safe. And maybe our atmosphere, despite the fact that we work hard to pollute it, is not so bad after all. I don't know the answer to that. And that's again, far beyond my technical ability to answer why ETS can show up. They can levitate. They levitate themselves down. They levitate us up. And the classic ET that everybody knows from the many, many fictional renditions is probably very close to what a lot of people have reported. The three or four foot tall, gray, with the slaty eyes and the pointy chin. I think that's probably a realistic rendition of what people have seen or have recalled under hypnosis. And white is critters can get around so easily on our planet in terms of adaptation to their own physiology. I don't know.

[Simon Bown]

So you have a section in your book called lies, and you have bad lies and you have good lies. So what's the difference between them?

[Don Don Dairy]

Well, I have the good side and the bad side. The bad side is what I talked about earlier. That was all of this mostly American effort to actively debunk. And by debunk, I mean ridicule and make fun of and shame the people who presented this information. And that, of course, included the scores and scores of people who organized themselves into private study groups for this subject. And that goes back almost to the beginning, to the 19 to the 47, 48s, when, when the first information, the Roswell and the Kenneth Arnold stories began to circulate. So these, the, the, what you might call the good side has been all of the people fighting against the debunking and the, the slandering, if you like, of the people who've reported this. And the good side includes the organizations I've some of whom I've named. The first one was called the American, the apro. Apro. I can't. Sorry, I can't name the acronym right now, but it was one of the first research organizations, Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization. That's it, of course, apro. Then there was nicap, National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. I joined that organization when I first got interested. Then there was the one that sort of took over after center for UFO Studies, C U F O S Center for UFO Studies. I'm still in touch with people who ran that organization. Then MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, came on the scene in about 1969, and I'm a member of that now and work actively with some of the groups in MUFON who are studying what they. What was called, rather benignly, the experience or resource, resource team, in other words, dealing with people who've been abducted. And so those are leading organizations in America, I have to say, and I give credit for this in the book, the French, as part of the Group de Special, their spatial studies group, have released information on UFOs that's been collected by their government research agency. And that is uncommon in the free world, put it that way, and it's respectable and very much appreciated. So there are a lot of private organizations and have been for years studying the subject. I belong to the one, I belong to the earlier ones now either past their prime or dissolved, I'm not sure which. But anyway, I belong to the currently most active and biggest one, that's mufon. And it is a widely interesting and widely studied subject. MUFON runs annual conferences. There's another large group of people centered around a gentleman named Michael Swords, who I also know, who's a retired physics professor who also had a continuous and ongoing dialogue amongst themselves or ourselves, I should say, about the issues. And it's largely an email conversation, but this goes on because there are many issues that aren't decided. Many of the phenomena need to be tied down, obviously. And if you want me to go on the conspiracy theory side briefly, I will, I'm sure, put it this way. Without being able to prove a word of it that the US government has indicated, perhaps by the McCandler story, the hovering UFOs seen inadvertently and the stories about the patents that have been taken out in the name of the US Navy for various electromagnetic propulsion systems, is actively studying the subject with or without help of visitors from elsewhere.

[Simon Bown]

Well, do you ever feel like it's almost like you live on a different planet to lots of other people? You walk down the street and you have so much knowledge on this and there'll be so many people around you who just don't know anything about it and would not believe you if you told them this reality.

[Don Don Dairy]

Well, I live in a very friendly neighborhood, let's put it that way. If I were to go to a dinner party across the street, if I were asked about UFOs, I would mention them. If I were to ask, I would not mention them. Put it that way. And I think that's from the point of view of somebody who's. I'm not ashamed to be identified with the subject at all. But I would not bring it up in company where I didn't know the company had a at least semi positive or inquisitive attitude about the subject. And here's where psychology comes into the picture again. It is very easy to defend against the kind of uncertainty and ambiguity and anxiety that what I've just described leads to. Why am I not anxious about all of these things because I'm studying them and because I have a sort of professional leg to stand on. I can say I know this, I've written a book. My professional skills make it credible for me to say this. Most people don't have the background, they have the fear. And where does that come from? Well, it comes from science fiction. That comes also realizing that if there are technological beings who can manage to come and go as they please to Earth, and if, as everyone on this planet has already seen, the fiction shows horrors produced by UFOs city is destroyed, people abducted, people being carried away into spaceships, a billionth coming tumbling down, all the rest of it, why would you want to give space to this in your own head? I give space to it because it's my trade. I also have space in my head for other things because I'm still painfully employed doing research on nothing like what we're talking about. But not everybody has that privilege and not everybody has the background to deal with it or be able to manage what you might call two worlds in the same head. And mine is easier because there's a professional head that keeps busy with other things. There's this research head which has always been part of my research profession, which I'd never concealed from anybody in the academic world and which I continue with. Other people are not so lucky to be so well grounded, if you want to put it that way, or to put it another way, have their feet as carefully plaited without the chance of losing their living by talking or taking on the subject. I said I'm fortunate in the sense that my circumstances make it possible for me to talk about this without compromising my livelihood or my friendships.

[Simon Bown]

Well, the book we've been talking about is called truth, lies and ETs how we stumbled into the Universe. And do you have plans for another book?

[Don Don Dairy]

Oh goodness no, not yet. I have a lot of work to do. I mean in that literal sense, as I said to you, I'm still employed as a consultant. I work with a company in Toronto which I co founded as a matter of fact. Again, part of the academic freedom enjoyed by people with tenure was to do consulting on the side. So I started a consulting company with a colleague at McGill and two colleagues at the University of Toronto doing what's called engineering psychology, the application of psychological principles to designing equipment and situations where people work. Now of course including the our our Internet related connected world and also dealing with legal problems that come up which have a what you might call a psychological engineering psychology part. In other words, were these steps the right size? Was this car driving on the right side of the road? Did the driver see this, see that, that kind of thing. So I'm quite busy with that, quite busy as a widower managing my own household in this very friendly neighborhood, as I said. And I have no plans to write another book in the immediate future.

[Simon Bown]

Thanks a lot for coming onto the podcast. It's been fascinating talking to you.

[Don Don Dairy]

I'm very grateful to be asked. Thank you very much. And, and by the way, with the kind of skills you have, I'm hope you are doing the best for whoever comes your way with the problems we've been discussing as you have the seals do it.

[Simon Bown]

And that was an interview with Don Don Dairy about his book truth, lies and ETs how we stumbled into the Universe. And my book titled Aspects of Alien Abduction is on Amazon. You can get it on paperback audiobook or Kindle. And a great way to support the podcast is to join Patreon just go to patreon.com alien ufopodcast and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review and be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or via your favorite podcast app to make sure that you don't miss out on any episodes. And thanks for listening.

[Don Don Dairy]

Sa.