Hollywood, The CIA & UFOs: The History Beyond Spielberg

Summary

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American Alchemy with Jesse Michels

Episode: Hollywood, The CIA & UFOs: The History Beyond Spielberg

Date: June 20, 2026

Host: Jesse Michels

Guests: Bryce Zabel & Brent Friedman

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the decades-long intersection between Hollywood, the intelligence community, and the UFO phenomenon — with a special focus on the secret history behind major films and TV shows, government influence on entertainment, and personal high-strangeness encounters. Jesse is joined by Hollywood industry veterans, creators of "Dark Skies" and hosts of the “Sound, Light & Frequency” podcast, Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman. Together they recount direct experiences with covert “consultants,” share stories of notable figures like John Harrington, and discuss the eerie predictive power of media. The conversation is timely, airing just after the release of Steven Spielberg’s fictional (or not so fictional?) event film "Disclosure Day," which has upended UFO discourse.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Hollywood’s Tangled Roots with UFO Disclosures

[03:07–07:00]

• Introduction of guests: Bryce Zabel (creator of "Dark Skies," co-author of "After Disclosure") and Brent Friedman (TV writer/producer, "Star Trek: Enterprise," "Clone Wars").
• Both are now hosts of "Sound, Light & Frequency" podcast, investigating real-life UFO and Hollywood connections.

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2. The "Dark Skies" Party Crash & The Mysterious "JC"

[05:16–14:00; 41:50–62:00]

• During the "Dark Skies" NBC series launch party (1996), a mysterious man named JC, claiming to be from Naval Intelligence, tells them:
  • "You guys got a lot right... but you also got a lot wrong. And that's why I'm here." [00:54]
  • Offers them access to real information in exchange for cooperation in a “slow drip” disclosure through TV scripts.
• JC writes a cryptic “sound, light, and frequency” formula on the back of an ATM envelope, telling them to lock it away for 10-15 years:
  • "Put this in a safety deposit box for about 10 to 15 years. And if we don't make a deal, then you'll know I was for real... Sound, Light and Frequency. Secrets of the universe. Good night, folks." [12:53]
• Later, two ONI reps (including a "Captain") show them a vial of gold "flakes," telling them "it's all about the moon" — implying resource extraction is an deeper part of the UFO secret.

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3. How (and Why) Insiders Contact Filmmakers

[09:53–13:00]

• JC and his superior attempt to recruit Bryce and Brent into ONI’s “disclosure” agenda, offering exclusive knowledge. They refuse due to skepticism, lack of legal clarity, and not wanting to cede creative control.
• Brent: “We didn’t take the deal.” [13:00]
• The experience haunts them and forms the genesis of their current investigative podcast.

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4. Hollywood Encounters with the Intelligence World

[64:39–80:00]

• Spielberg, after "Jaws," was allegedly approached by Naval Intelligence and "took the deal" — supposedly feeding real cases and ideas into "Close Encounters" and other works.
• Tobe Hooper ("Poltergeist") recounted that "Close Encounters" and "E.T." are "based on a true story" and that Spielberg had access to "case files."

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5. Direct Government Interference in Productions

[68:00–80:00]

• "Dark Skies" faced studio and legal pressure to remove men in black suits, autopsies, secret facilities, and other tropes to not conflict with the upcoming "Men in Black" and Spielberg-helmed projects.
  • "Get your actors out of the black suits today or we'll shut down your production and burn your negative." [70:22]
• The hosts suspect: did they get punished for not cooperating with ONI?

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6. Eerie Parallels Between Media and “Real” UFO Lore

[75:22–79:45]

• "Close Encounters" contains many "deep cuts" (TRW, Lockheed crates, Hynek cameo, Serpo exchange program, etc.) from actual UFO tradition.
• Alleged White House screening: Reagan told Spielberg, “There are about five people in this room who knows that everything they just saw on that screen is absolutely real.” [76:59]
• Many Spielberg films (including "Taken" and "Disclosure Day") weave parapsychology, children’s psychic experiences, and remote viewing — themes more advanced than public awareness at the time.

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7. Insider Legends & The John Harrington Story

[17:58–44:44; 105:05–110:00]

• Brent recounts being “disclosed to” at age 18 by John Harrington, neighbor, later Secretary of Energy, who claimed:
  • He had a clearance "higher than the President." [23:13]
  • Aliens are real, he’s seen them, and “reality is not what we know.”
  • UFO info is managed as “a multi-billion dollar campaign to cover up the truth.” [26:41]
• Years later, David Grusch (whistleblower) sought Harrington to testify before Congress, adding modern relevance and external confirmation to Brent’s recollections.

“Aliens are real. They're here and I've seen them. Just like that. ... [Disclosure will ruin] the global economy, everything falls apart... Governments of the world will not be able to control the populace.”
— John Harrington, via Brent Friedman [24:35–27:11]

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8. The "Sound, Light & Frequency" Document: Analysis & Recovery

[191:29–201:46]

• JC’s cryptic formula (symbols, possible mathematical/quantum/astral meaning) remains unsolved.
• Over 20 years later, it’s regained and subjected to AI and expert analysis — becomes centerpiece artifact of the podcast.
• Parallels to Tesla’s quote: “If you want to understand the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, vibration and frequency.” [195:41]
• Researchers find first credible use of “sound, light and frequency” in a 2012 CERN/God particle whitepaper — years after JC’s note.

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9. Personal High Strangeness: Synchronicity, Death, and the Paranormal

[110:54–147:58]

• Brent recounts harrowing personal experiences: witnessing multiple sudden deaths, out-of-body experiences, and being visited by “entities of light.”
  • "Six people die in pretty horrific ways...Like Final Destination type. But I was in the middle of them." [115:05]
• Narrates a chilling "witch rider" event, classic sleep-paralysis entity with cosmic eyes:
  • "Her eyes are two black circles that are undulating...I see the most beautiful constellations and cosmos you've ever seen... I felt my soul leave my body."
• Seen a Nordic alien on Orcas Island; friend says they're real, with a compound, and only selectively interact.

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10. Predictive Programming & The Reality Management Theory

[151:47–167:09]

• The panel discusses how media can seem to prefigure or shape "real" events (Simpsons, "Adventures of Baron Trump," "Outer Limits" preceding Betty & Barney Hill, etc.).
• Writers are “unwitting remote viewers,” tuning into probable futures.
  • “I’ve always thought of writers being remote viewers...We put a little bit of intent attention on an idea, and suddenly we're jumped to the future where we're seeing an event play out.” — Ernie Klein, paraphrased by Brent [164:37–165:19]

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11. The Big Picture: Disclosure, Reality Control, and the Role of Consciousness

[113:26–166:24]

• UFO incidents are interwoven with the development of consciousness; the “trickster” element always inserts plausible deniability (Keel, Vallée).
• “Disclosure” is less an event than a glacial, deeply personal “slow dissolve” (not a “hard cut”) — suggesting a managed, phase-based process.
  • “We're at this inflection point...We are muddling toward disclosure.” — Bryce Zabel [105:09–105:45]

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12. Finale: Legacy, Oral Histories, and the Looming Moment

[214:06–218:00]

• Brent is asked to help connect John Harrington to congressional investigators. They reflect on the importance of preserving oral histories before they vanish.
• Bryce: “At this stage of our country's history, that would make him a true patriot.” [215:25]
• Jesse: “As cool as Call of Duty is, you’re making a, like, a World War II movie right now, but this [disclosure work] has humanity-level implications.” [217:49]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• JC’s delivery at the Dark Skies party:
  “Put this in a safety deposit box for about 10 to 15 years. And if we don't make a deal, then you'll know I was for real... Sound, Light and Frequency. Secrets of the universe. Good night, folks.” [12:53]

• On the psychological toll of secrets:
  "This is not the world I thought I was bringing my daughters into." — John Harrington (via Brent) [24:16]

• On reality management:
  "We're just passengers. We're not really a fully developed human until we're activated." — Brent [166:31]

• Spielberg, Reagan, and UFOs:
  “There are about five people in this room who knows that everything they just saw on that screen is absolutely real.” — Reagan to Spielberg, per Spielberg [76:59]

• The “Men in Black” legal threat:
  “Get your actors out of the black suits today or we’ll shut down your production and burn your negative.” [70:22]

• “Disclosure Day” as truth:
  “He’s got a movie called Disclosure Day. He’s in the trailer saying it's true. That's probably why his movie is polarizing in the UFO community.” — Bryce [89:00]

• On the Mothman synchronicity:
  “As this guy passes me, … he's holding a book. And it's the Mothman Prophecies. How's that happen? How does that happen?” — Bryce [149:35]

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Important Timestamps

• Dark Skies party and JC encounter: 05:13–14:00; 41:50–62:00
• Harrington’s “real” disclosure: 17:58–33:18
• Direct ONI interference & “moon vial”: 54:01–58:33
• Spielberg & Hollywood-Intel relations: 64:39–80:00
• Roswell/JFK & Majestic 12 discussion: 49:04–52:52
• Predictive programming & writers as remote viewers: 164:33–167:09
• Brent’s personal strangeness stories: 110:54–147:58
• “Sound, Light and Frequency” document analysis: 191:29–201:46

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Flow of Conversation

• Outlines how personal and professional lives have been altered by exposure to "insider" information and high strangeness.
• Dives into the mechanics of Hollywood’s ongoing interaction with US intelligence, from direct content manipulation to the mysterious “advising” of top directors.
• Integrates philosophical and metaphysical interpretations of the phenomenon: Is disclosure about “aliens,” or is it a consciousness upgrade?
• Rich with corroborative anecdotes, names, agencies, and narratives — always self-reflective: how much is real, and how much may be managed perception?

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Final Thoughts

The episode is simultaneously an inside-Hollywood tell-all, a personal confession of high strangeness, and an open inquiry into the relationship between our stories, our minds, and the reality we inhabit. Whether or not the truth is “out there,” it is also very much “in here”—reflected in our stories, our whispers, our syncs, and the persistent sense that, as Spielberg’s movies suggest, reality is far weirder—and perhaps more managed—than we suppose.

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For More

• Sound Light & Frequency podcast: soundlightfrequency.com
• Contact/Decode: Podcast & Document: Anticipate future analysis of the "sound, light, and frequency" document on Jesse’s and the guests’ platforms.

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Transcript

[A]

And we're live on Matchday as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing.

[B]

He's got it. Oh, and he's gone for a can of Pepsi, too.

[C]

What a finish.

[B]

There's no doubt about it.

[C]

It just tastes better.

[B]

Matchdays deserve Pepsi.

[A]

I get a postcard to my home address, and it says in all caps and dark black, we are watching you.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[B]

I know.

[A]

It was very unnerving.

[C]

What do you think put you on the radar of any of these people?

[A]

Dark Skies was an NBC series about an alien invasion set in the 1960s.

[C]

What you co created?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

We're running the show and it's going to air that night. We say, let's have a party.

[B]

I'm at a premiere party with all of these, like, big wigs in Hollywood, and some guy walks out and he

[A]

says, you guys got a lot right,

[B]

but you also got a lot wrong. And that's why I'm here. He just starts writing something on a piece of paper, and he goes, put this in a safety deposit box for about 10 to 15 years. I go, what is this? And he goes, secrets of the universe.

[C]

Whoa.

[B]

Good night, folks. They're going to tell us, like, when to write and how to write.

[A]

So how would that work? You would give us ideas that you would want us to put in scripts?

[B]

We didn't take the deal.

[C]

Do you guys think that any other directors in Hollywood have taken similar deals?

[B]

I am much more inclined now than I was when I made Close Encounters to really believe that we're not the only intelligent civilization in the universe. You know, after Jaws, apparently he got approached by some guys from Naval Intelligence or something, and he came and offered him a deal and. Yeah, and he took it.

[C]

We all just watched Steven Spielberg's disclosure date, and it's just like there are too many deep cut things.

[A]

I think he got a lot right.

[C]

No, he gets a lot right every time.

[B]

I had a whole previous disclosure experience when I was 18. We lived right next door to this family, a guy named John Harrington, his wife Lois. He goes, listen, I got a new job. I have a higher clearance level than the President. Aliens are real. They're here and I've seen them. Reality is not what we know. This is what kicked off decades of high strangeness. I have seen six people die in pretty horrific ways, like Final Destination type. But I was in the middle of them. What? So I lower the paper, and there's a woman standing at the foot of my bed. Her eyes are two black circles that are undulating.

[C]

You also saw a Nordic Alien I

[B]

did on Orcus island. And he said, Ignition sequence 5. How is this possible? Nothing too unusual about that.

[C]

Their existence cannot longer be denied. Bryce Zabel, thank you so much for being here. Brent Friedman, this is an honor. This couldn't be more perfect timing because we all just watched Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day and both of you guys have just illustrious Hollywood credentials. And we're here to talk about the connections between Hollywood and UFOs, but also a new amazing podcast that you guys have started about that. Bryce, you are the former chairman and CEO of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. You've created five primetime TV series, including Dark Skies, which you co created. And it is just incredible. It's kind of a cult classic and I want to get into a lot of themes there. You were a writer on Taken with Steven Spielberg and you co authored Ad After Disclosure with Richard Dolan, obviously legendary UFO researcher. I know you guys do a lot of media together as well. And Brent Friedman, you are writer, producer, obviously Dark Skies, Mortal Kombat, Star Trek, Enterprise, Star wars, the Clone wars and many others. And you have some very interesting stories as well, which you guys share on your new podcast, Sound Light and Frequency. Thank you both for being here.

[B]

Thanks for having us. This is a real pleasure for me. I'll let Bryce tell his own story, but I've been a fan of your show for a long time, listened to so many episodes and learned a lot.

[A]

We talk about your show all the time. We keep doing shout outs to your show on our show because you are bringing it and we're happy to be here. Thanks for having us.

[C]

Where do we start? Maybe the title, Sound Light and frequency of the podcast that came from a very interesting story. Let's get into that. You just made Dark Skies. You're doing this party right around its release, its premiere.

[A]

Yep.

[C]

And what happens? Somebody enters the scene.

[A]

Well, I mean, the only thing you need to know is that Dark Skies was an NBC series about an alien invasion set in the 1960s.

[C]

My name is John Lowengard. I'm recording this because we may not live through the night. They're here, they're hostile and powerful. People don't want you to know. History as we know it is a lie.

[A]

So it was kind of a, at the time, kind of a home run to have a network say, we're going to give you $40 million to make a bunch of subversive television because the pilot said JFK was killed because he was going to tell the truth about UFOs. So we're celebrating, right? We're on the air. It's a cool thing. There's buses driving around LA with our. With our Dark Skies logo on it. And it's cool. It's a great thing. So we say, let's have a party. And we have it at my house, the same. I live today, all right? And there's 200 people in the backyard, which is a lot of people. It's a nice party. But Brent and I, we know every single one of them because we're running the show. And these are network executives, studio executives. What casting crew.

[B]

Yes. And we had a way to identify everybody because we did a party favor where when you'd come in, we took a little Polaroid photo of you and we turned it into a majestic badge. Because in our show, it was about Majestic 12, right? The main characters were in Majestic 12. So everyone was walking around with a majestic badge with their name and their. Their photo on it, which is an

[A]

important part of the story, except for one guy during the party before the show has aired. So remember, nobody has seen this show. I mean, other than the production people. But it's not aired, and it's going to air that night. And we have TVs all over the place so that everybody can watch it. And one of our producers comes up to me and says, hey, there's a guy. You got to meet this guy. And this guy introduces himself as JC and he. He just wanted to meet me to congratulate me on a successful show and says, you guys got a lot, right? And he basically is saying that he has seen the pilot, all right? And I kind of challenged him. I said, well, if you've seen the pilot, what happens after that crop circle scene? And the guy goes, oh, yeah, that was great. They go back to the Majestic headquarters, they do that autopsy thing, and they pull the ganglion out of the guy's head. And I'm looking at him going, well, yeah, that's exactly what happens. Is very unnerving. And the baton gets tossed to Brent here because I basically had 200 people in my backyard. I got people saying, where are the appetizers? Right? And I've got people saying, you know, the network guy wants to talk to you and say something. So there's a lot going on. I don't know this guy. And I say, look, I don't know you. I don't know exactly why you're here. You were not invited. You should leave. And then I left and thought he'd escort himself out of the party. I had Other things to do. But that's not what happened.

[B]

Cut to Brent. This is my first TV series, so, as Bryce said, huge. It's on NBC. It's the lead of their trilogy, Night. I'm at a premiere party with all of these bigwigs in Hollywood. But I've seen the pilot at this point, a hundred times through all the editing and the post production. So I'm less interested in watching it on the monitors with everybody. About halfway through, I lose interest. And I'm thinking, I just wanna find a place where I can go out into the backyard and look at everyone and watch them watching it. So I go up by myself, and I'm just standing out there, and I hear a rustle in the bushes behind me. And I kind of turn around and some guy walks out, and he does not have a majestic badge, right? And so I'm already thinking, I don't know who this guy is. And he's like, hey, Brent, how's it going? And I'm like. And I don't know his name. And I'm thinking, is this like an NBC marketing executive or something? But he knows me. I go, that's going pretty good. He goes, yeah, you guys got a lot right now. Sidebar. In that moment, what that meant to me was I had a whole previous disclosure experience when I was 18 with a guy who was a family friend that was in the Reagan administration. We can go into that later. But I took some of those ideas. I told Bryce over a lunch about them, which is what got us making Dark Skies. So there was some truth in the show. And this guy is suddenly standing there saying, you got a lot right? And then he says, you must have talked to someone. And I felt my whole stomach cinch up.

[A]

Cue the eerie music in the song.

[B]

And I. Right in that moment, I thought, I'm going to jail. Remember? I'm just like, I'm what, 40, 40, 35? I don't know. I'm like, mid-30s, first TV show. And I'm thinking, here I am on the precipice of greatness, and there's some. Because the guy looks like a cr. A frat guy and a typical FBI agent. Kind of clean cut, round 30. He's got a white press shirt, navy blue blazer.

[A]

So what you're saying, other than me being above 30, like me looks like me.

[B]

You're too old to be a.

[A]

Got the jacket and the shirt.

[B]

So here's this guy, and I'm like, I'm seeing my whole life flash before my eyes. And he goes, but you also got a lot wrong. And that's why I'm here. And I'm like. And again, I'm thinking, like, who is this guy? And so we start to talk, and he lays out that he is from the Office of Naval Intelligence, and they would like to talk to us about a deal where we could get access, we could get information that we could then help them with their Slow Drip disclosure program.

[A]

And just to complete now that the two stories kind of intertwine here, because the show is now on by the time Brent is talking to him at the barbecue. And I'm going back in the house to. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm going back in, and I look over, and there's this guy I threw out of the party an hour, and he's talking to Brent. And I'm thinking, that's not right. So now I joined this story, and now you got Brent Mee and the guy who said he's from the Office of Naval Intelligence. And by the way, we are getting to satellite and frequency.

[B]

Yes. So there I am, I'm talking to this guy, and my wife comes up, and she's looking for me. Bryce sees this guy. Suddenly my wife is there. So there's all these people talking, and. And the guy says, yeah, so anyway, we'd like to make a deal with you. Here's my card, you know, and he gives me the card, and all it says is j, c with a 310 number on it. Nothing else. Give me a call and we can talk about it. And I kind of say, okay, you know, fine. And he kind of looks at me, and his demeanor up until this point had been, like, you know, fairly genial,

[A]

probably, by the way, because the guy that tried to throw him out of the party is Bryce. Walter is looking at him.

[B]

So now he gets a little bit more serious, and he says, I can see you're not taking this seriously. He looks at my wife and he goes, ma', am, could I borrow a piece of paper and a pencil? She kind of, like, goes into her purse and she pulls out a piece of paper, which is. She takes an old ATM deposit envelope, right? You have to put your checks in there. She rips off the triangular fold down. She gives him that and a pen, and he takes it in front of all of us, and he just starts writing something on a piece of paper about 30 seconds, and then he folds it up, and he goes, here you go. Do me a favor. Put this in a safety deposit box for about 10 to 15 years. And if we don't make a deal, then you'll know I was for real. So I take it from him and I kind of look at it and I go. And it's an incomprehensible formula thing. And I go, what is this? And he goes, sound, Light and Frequency. Secrets of the universe. Good night, folks. And he turns around and walks out.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

Is it a math formula?

[A]

Not particularly. It's got some symbology in it and we're actually looking into it right now. I'd love to come back on your show someday and show it to you and explain.

[C]

I want to see this thing. Yeah, you should use AI and try to decode it.

[B]

We have done that. And we're a lot of different things. We have a lot of people write. Someone wrote a 22 page analysis of it.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[B]

I know. So it's weird and we can talk about that later, but I wanted to at least give you the understanding of what sound, light and frequency meant. Right. Why we named the podcast this because this is what kicked off decades of high strangeness, starting with that show. Now I'm an experiencer. So my high strangeness started going all the way back till I was a child. But it all kind of culminated in Dark Skies and brought Bryce into this crazy experience that lasted, that went on for a while. Because that was not the only time

[C]

we talked to JC to what happened next.

[A]

Actually, it's almost important to talk about what happened before. A year before that event, we were shooting the Dark Skies Pilot. Okay. And by the way, we're not here to talk about a 30 year old show, other than it exists in a framework.

[C]

Well, everybody should watch it because it's a really great show.

[A]

It's fun. It is fun, but it exists and it's predictive.

[C]

I think of a lot of things that seem to really dovetail with real whistleblower accounts.

[A]

Absolutely. And as we've been sort of, I guess we're using the Soundlight and Frequency podcast as a bit of an investigative active investigation to try to see if we tell our story, will other people tell us their stories. And that's actually starting to work. Anyway, things we had forgotten almost were this one a year before, when we're shooting the pilot, I get a postcard to my home address and it's got a picture on the front cover, which, by the way, we will. You should put that on your show if you want. And it's a picture of a book, I believe, from 1960 called Flying Eyes and It's these eyes flying in the sky, looking at whatever. And I turn it over to read the postcard and it's been typed on an old style manual typewriter with a very black ribbon. And it's all in caps, all right? And it's not as like Tom Hanks used in, you know, Band of Brothers and all that, that kind of old thing. And instead of it being a sentence that goes across all in caps, it's four words, 1, 2, 3, 4, stacked on top of each other. And it says in all caps in dark black, we are watching you. So that's pretty. So as a sort of. So Brent, of course, was thinking about his interaction with this guy that was the Secretary of Energy during the Reagan administration and wondering about that. I'm thinking about these postcards that we got. So this guy didn't come out of nowhere, right? Yeah, did not come out of nowhere.

[C]

What do you think put you on the radar of any of these people? Do you think it would. Had you already written Taken with Spielberg?

[A]

No, that came after. But I had done a couple of UFO things and of course, Brent and I were at that moment doing a very highly anticipated pilot. People were talking about it because of the way we sold it was interesting, but that's another story. But prior to that, I had written the first Sci FI Channel original film. And it was called Official Denial. And it was highly ufological. I mean, it had everything from Majestic 12 to abductions to crash wreckage and organic spaceships and all this stuff in it. So put that on the. On the radar. I'd even written UFOs and men in Black into the Lois and Clark series when I worked there. So I was sort of a UFO guy in making, you know, and then we got dark skies. So maybe that's what put us on the radar.

[C]

On the radar of the powers that.

[A]

Of somebody. Of somebody.

[B]

That's Bryce. Bryce was doing a lot of work in this area. I had literally done no work in this area. But again, I should bring you up to speed on this when I got disclosed to, because obviously it was relevant to somebody. And it has come full circle now because Dave Grush has been asking me about this person.

[A]

He should tell you the story. And I just want to give you one quick setup. Brent and I did not know each other. His wife was my assistant on a show called Mantis that I was producing. And she knew I had all these UFO books in the office. And she said, you should meet my husband. So we went out to lunch and he told me the story that he's going to tell you right now. And when I heard it, I went, I don't even know who this guy is. I don't even know if this story is true. But it's a hell of a story, and I'd like to work with him. And that became our. Our origin, if you will.

[B]

Yes, that was our meet Cute.

[A]

That was our meet cute. It is. But we did meet.

[B]

So here's the story. I grew up next to a guy that I revered when I grew up in the Bay Area, in a place called Walnut Creek, just East Bay. And we lived right next door to this family where there was a guy named John Harrington, his wife Lois, his two daughters. Not gonna name them. His daughters were in between my brother and I. So I was the oldest of the four kids. My brother was the youngest. And, I mean, we literally lived right next to him. There was like one gate between us, and we lived on these pretty big pieces of property, so we didn't have any other real neighbors. It was just us kids growing up. And John was a man's man. He was all the things I wanted to be. My dad was an artist, and so I wanted to be an athlet. I wanted to do all these things. John taught me how to throw a football, got me into football, taught me how to hold a gun, you know, shoot a BB gun, like, just all these things. And loved my dad, but he was an artist. He wasn't interested in any of this stuff. So I became. He was the. He was like a surrogate father to me. Cut to. We move away six years later. We stay in touch, the families. And then I get a phone call. I've just graduated from high school, it's 1981, and I'm going to UCLA. And I had. John had suggested that I go to Stanford, which was his alma mater, but I'm going to UCLA to be a theater major. So he calls me up and he says, you know, what are you doing? And I can't believe you didn't go to Stanford. He goes, listen, I got a new job. I'm back east now, and I'd like you and maybe a couple friends to drive our cars across the country. Oh, and our dog. Bring our dog with you. And some other stuff that we left in the garage. But I'll pay you guys, and then when you get back here, I'll show you around D.C. and then I'll fly you back. I'm thinking, what a great summer.

[A]

Sweet deal for a college kid, right?

[B]

It's like, this is the in between high school and college. So I'm thinking, sure, I can do that. So he didn't say anything about what his job was, but actually we knew something was going on because about a year earlier or so, we had been approached the family by some, like, NSA or like CIA or someone that come in and asked a bunch of questions. I guess they were doing, like, a background character check on him, but they didn't tell us what the job was, but we knew it was something with the government. And he has just moved back to Langley Farms, Virginia.

[A]

So, by the way, in 1981, we now know John Harrington was the Undersecretary of the Navy for, I believe, development or procurement or something like that.

[B]

And I believe he went through Stanford on a Naval ROTC scholarship. So Navy.

[A]

And he will later become the Secretary of Energy in the second term.

[B]

Department of Energy. Yeah.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

So none of this means anything to me. He's just a great friend. He's like my surrogate dad. The drive across the country, I don't know why we weren't killed or put in jail many times. That's a whole other movie I've never written. We get to his house that night when he comes home where everyone's waiting to have dinner because it's gonna be like this reunion. And I remember kind of like waiting at the window, kind of waiting to see when all of a sudden a black Lincoln Town Car pulls up. And he gets out of the backseat, and there's two Secret Service people that come in. And I notice he has a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. They walk him into the house and into. Kind of off the entryway into his office. And they go back. And I'm kind of watching from a distance. No one will even make eye contact with me. And I'm watching from a distance. And he puts it into a wall safe, right? One of the Secret Service people leaves, and the other one stays in the house. I'm thinking, who is this guy? But he comes, hey, Brian, how's it going? We have a big dinner and everything's great. And then afterwards, he's like, hey, why don't you and I go out onto the veranda and catch up? So when we were growing up, he was not just, like, badass, but he was Calvinist, so he was very strict about certain things. We go onto the back patio, and he brings a big bottle of Jim Beam. And he's pouring himself two fingers as we're talking. He looks Hagg. Looks very much older, but also just heavy now he's a different guy. I'm sitting there talking with him, we're catching up. He's giving me shit about not going to Stanford. And I'm like, okay, all of that's great. What is your job? And he goes, I can't really talk about it. I'm working for the government now. He was Reagan's advance man in his campaign. He was one of the reasons he helped Reagan get elected. There's a whole history between John's wife, Lois Haight, who's, I think, one of her family members. Family members was a governor of California back in the day. And so politics, Republican, they went way back. At any rate, he's working for Reagan because Reagan trusts him and this is a super smart guy. And now he's telling me, I can't tell you what the job is, it's classified. And I said, okay, well, I don't know. What does that even mean? And he goes, look, I have a higher clearance level than The President. Now. 1981.

[A]

Oops.

[B]

18 years old. I was not a standout in civics. I was like, that's impossible. The President. There is nothing higher than the President. How could the guy who lived next door to me have higher classification than the President? But this is not a guy who lies. So I'm looking at this guy and I'm thinking, what? I'm like, okay. And I said, well, how did. So how did you get that job? And he said, well, I was briefed for months in an underground facility in West Virginia. Again, this is the guy you grew up with? I'm looking at this person like I don't even know who this man is anymore. And I said, what? What was that like? And he said, well, I used to cry myself to sleep every night. Night.

[A]

That's by the way, when he said that to me at this lunch, I just got shiver because a tough guy is crying himself to sleep every night. What's it take for that to happen?

[B]

And even if he's exaggerating, I couldn't have imagined him crying himself to sleep once. So I said, well, what would make you cry yourself to sleep? And he goes, this is not the world I thought I was bringing my daughters into. And I'm thinking, well, I'm like your son. What is this world that we're in? And so I pressed him on and he kept saying, I can't talk about that. I can't talk about it. This is like classified information. And finally, after he'd had a couple drinks, he said, all right, look, I Know when you were growing up, you were into science fiction and comic books and all that stuff. I can tell you this, aliens are real. They're here and I've seen them. Just like that. Just like here. I'll throw you a bone, kid. Now, honestly, at that point in my life, I hadn't thought a lot about aliens. I wasn't into aliens, this wasn't a thing in my life. But this felt huge, like I couldn't wrap my brain around it. And I said, well, are they alive? And he paused and he said, I can't say. I said, you can't say or you won't say? And he said, I can't say. And I kind of just left it at that. And then I came back at him with, okay, well, hold on a second. If what you're saying is true, how does everyone not know about it? And he said, oh, lots of people know about it. 81, you could walk into any bookstore and you're gonna find all sorts of books on the shelves with lots of truth. But right next to them are the books that we publish, full of propaganda. It's a multi billion dollar campaign to cover up the truth. Now in 81, the other thing that struck me was, I don't know that I'd heard the term billion before. So I'm like, everything is blowing my mind right now. And I'm thinking, what? I just had not considered any of this. And I was like, okay, why does the truth have to be covered up? You're telling me, okay, aliens are real, okay, great, what else? And he said, look, we live in a God fearing country. Again, 1981. There's only one thing that keeps this world spinning, gives everybody the control they need. That's the global economy. If you disrupt that by taking away the reason for people to live their lives, everything falls apart. And governments of the world will not be able to control the populace. So what's the advantage of giving people the truth? And I was like, well, so you're telling me it'll never come out? He said, if it has to. In our lifetime, maybe.

[A]

Now why would he tell you an 18 year old if he's classified? Did you ask him?

[B]

I asked. Well, yes. So one other. He's telling me all of this and each thing is just like a brick on my shoulder. I'm just like, this is a lot to process. And I said, wow, okay, well, I guess now I know why you cried yourself to sleep every night. And he said, no, Brent, you don't understand. This was day three. He'd been there for months and I'm thinking, okay, I'm out. I'm like, I can't take. And I said, well, how do you know I'm not going to tell anybody this? And he goes, I'm sure you will. Question is, who's going to believe you? You're an 18 year old kid, you're going off to college, you're going to tell a big story. You use my name, I'll just deny it. Now in the years following that, I did tell a couple people and they were like, wow, that's such a great story. And I could tell. No one believed me. And I just started to just lose interest in even telling the story because like all you end up looking like is an idiot.

[A]

Although I did make Brent tell it to me multiple times because I wanted to see if it ever changed if this, if this. You know, I'm a, a journalist by training. So I thought if he tells it multiple times and it's, it's something he's riffing on, then, then the riff will change a little bit. But it never has. And recently a couple of things have even happened that make us more sure than ever that it's a true story.

[B]

Yeah. Share some of that.

[A]

Well, I mean the one thing that's most obvious and Jesse, you must know this yourself, you're all your. Many of your audience does. There are underground facilities in West Virginia, but we did not know about them until the Washington Post. I think it was the Post that broke this story in the 90s about Greenbrier Inn. And there's another one and Greenbrier was where they were going to evacuate Congress in the event of nuclear war. So there was a place, but in 1981 nobody knew that.

[C]

Do you think he was talking about Greenbrier?

[B]

He didn't say, but again he was talking about an underground facility in West Virginia. I couldn't have shown you on a map where West Virginia was at that time. I did not know there were such things as underground facilities. So when I told it to Bryce that was probably just part of the story. But then it was years later when it actually came out, like Bryce said, that there's a whole story and now you can go visit it. It's like a tourist place.

[A]

We could do a show from there.

[C]

Do you think what freaked him out so much dealt with the fact that he had this Calvinist Christian background or do you think there's something much darker than just aliens at the surface level of what he sort of was briefed on?

[B]

So so excellent question. It's the question we get a lot. I get a lot. And I regret having not followed up with him to ask that question. I frankly was just too overwhelmed. I was like, it's the whole drinking from a fire hose thing. I just had too much information too fast.

[C]

What was your instinct, though? Because I often before you rested the aliens thing out of him, he's saying, this is not, not the world I thought I was bringing my daughters up in.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Are you? Are you, you, your mind must be racing, like, what is he talking about? Are you thinking anything specific there or.

[B]

No, I think at that, at that moment I, I didn't have. My imagination wasn't developed enough to even, you know, start to think. Well, is it, are we in a matrix or, you know. Yeah, yeah. I didn't have any of that language right to. I just was like, what does that mean? All I knew is I don't like it. I don't like what he's talking about. And so I didn't have an opinion then. Since then I have developed many ideas and theories and people have asked me too, like, well, how do you know he wasn't lying to you? How do you know this wasn't a psyop? Well, technically I don't, but again, I think why I set the story up with the context is that I had a really strong relationship with this guy. Right. For him to use me as part of a psyop. And by the way, what's my value as a psyop? As an 18 year old student? It's not even like I'm going into film school, I'm going to theater. So I'm absolutely worthless on every level, but particularly him. So I have to scratch that off and say, well, he wasn't a psyop. And then I go, why would he lie to me?

[C]

Right?

[B]

Like that's such a weird, specific lie.

[C]

No reason.

[B]

So then I'm into, why did he even disclose to me?

[C]

Well, it sounded like he needed to unburden himself, that is. And he looked haggard and run down and he wasn't this man's man that you had grown up with.

[B]

So you can imply, as I do that by saying, this isn't the world I thought I was bringing my daughters into. Well, how do you protect your daughters? You don't share any of this information. So my guess is that he probably hadn't shared anything with his wife or his daughters. They were only my age at that point. And so who does he talk to? Who is that outlet? I mean, at the end of the day, this is a super smart guy, badass, very successful, but he's human, right? And he's having to carry. And he's a lot of integrity. He's having to carry these stories, which are, as he's saying, lies. Right. The public is being lied to. I'm sure that doesn't make him feel good, but I think in the intervening years, my theory has gone to the truth that he had to process was that reality is not what we know. Right? That includes history. That includes the things we're being taught in school, just everything. And I think that is what would make him cry. Like how this is not the. This is. I brought kids into a world I thought I understood. The rules of that world are not at all what I thought. And now my ability to protect those children, to bring them up and give them the life I had is gone.

[C]

So.

[A]

Wow. There is a piece of information, though, that just has come out in the last couple of years and is active today that actually lends great credibility to this story. Can I go into that for a second?

[C]

Sure.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. So in 2023, I was doing the need to Know show with Ross Coltard, and Coulthard had a source who you have now met. It was David Grush. And David Grush was coming out to Los Angeles to be interviewed by Ross on News Nation. And the day before, he had come out, and everybody had lunch, and then they decided, well, you know, we should put him on tape now for either practice or as an emergency piece of tape in case he gets arrested. He, too, was worried about being arrested before he went to record with Ross. So everyone went to my house, the same place where this party crasher crashed, Right? And my son was the guy that recorded Dave Grush on his first interview. During the time when we were getting ready to record that, I said, have you ever heard of John Harrington? And Grush said, oh, I know John Harrington. I said, well, what do you know about him? He didn't want to talk about it. Okay, now let's flash forward to 2025. I don't think I'm even working with Coltart anymore when this happened, or maybe I was, but he calls me and he says, I've been asked by Dave GR Rush to ask you to ask Brent if he can help us get John Harrington to Washington, D.C. to potentially testify to the House Oversight Committee. Well, I don't think you do that. If. If it's just a wacky story made up by a kid.

[C]

No, you definitely wouldn't also Assistant Secretary of the Navy. You'd probably be at the heart of the matter and that. And then you go on to be the Secretary of Energy.

[A]

Right on.

[C]

Like, you know, the Navy comes up. It was Bob Lazar. The Navy comes up. You know, Nat Kobitz, who is a, you know, a senior Navy scientist who was kind of Ross Coltheart's original source. That really brought him down the rabbit hole.

[A]

Absolutely.

[C]

You know, he was Navy. Harold Malmgren said, you know, office of Naval Intelligence, that's where all the secrets are kept. Office of Naval Intelligence is the oldest intelligence agency in the United States. It goes back to, I think, like, 1881 or two or something. So. So, yeah, all of that makes sense. And then, of course, you have all of the rumors that the Manhattan Project was the kind of original UFO legacy program. And the Atomic Energy Commission outlined this sort of restricted data where if you were to collect anything that had any radiological features, alpha, beta, gamma radiation, it would be born secret. There's just so much meat on that bone when it comes to both Navy and Atomic Energy Commission, which turns into the doe. So it just makes sense.

[A]

And by the way, when the guy who said he was from ONI said, you got some things right. One of the things he said we got right is we had the guy running Majestic 12 be from the Navy. Okay. And they thought that.

[B]

Inspired by John Harrington.

[A]

Inspired by John Harrington. And you got to add the final piece here. John Harrington. Not John Harrington. Dave Grush called you this year in

[B]

the last couple weeks.

[C]

Really?

[A]

You should fess that up, because I don't think anyone's. You've not said that to anybody.

[B]

It was a little unsettling. I get an email saying, I've got a matter I want to talk with you about.

[A]

I'm like, from Dave Grush?

[B]

Yeah, from Dave Grush. And I was like, I hope I don't have to go talk in front of a bunch of people. I did not want that. And so I call him up on the signal app, and he explains to me, I can't say everything he said, but he said to me, the gist of it was, we've identified John Harrington as one, as a very important person who has oral history of a period where a bunch of documentation does not exist anymore. And we would like to talk to him.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And I will go to him. He doesn't have to come. I'm asking you because you know him well, you had a relationship. How would I go about even getting him to talk? Because five or six years ago, Marco Rubio tried to approach him and that he got shut down. So I really want to talk to him now. John is in his mid-80s at this point. His wife maintained a relationship with my

[C]

mom,

[B]

and I got through secondhand information that John wasn't in great health. So I'm sure there's a little urgency to get his story on the record. But. But I also understand he doesn't want to tell his story. If he wanted to tell his story, he would have been like Harold Malgren was with you, like, coming forward and volunteering. He hasn't done that. And it goes back for me to. Maybe he hasn't told his family about any of the things that he did and he does not want to, and that's his right and privilege.

[C]

Wow, this is so fascinating. It's almost like he was maybe Majestic 12 or at that level. You know, you have Bobby Ray Inman, who was Navy, and then he ended up as. I believe he was both Director of the CIA and Director of the NSA at the same time, I think. Or maybe he was Deputy Director of the CIA and Director of the nsa. And you have all these guys who seem like they're high up in the Navy and then they are all over this issue in this sort of lore. And so I wonder how much he knows. And it's interesting, too, that he wanted you to go to Stanford. Do you ever think about that? Like, maybe he was, like, grooming you a little bit and he was like, why didn't you go to Stanford? Maybe you could have gone down the same road I did.

[A]

That's a great theory.

[B]

I have. No one has ever proposed that.

[A]

That's really interesting.

[B]

I like that.

[C]

Have you thought. Have you thought about it independent of me bringing it up?

[B]

No, I'm saying no one has asked it. And I had not thought of it. There was at one point. So he was a lawyer because you

[C]

were like a son to him.

[B]

Yes, well, he was a lawyer and he wanted me to follow in his footsteps and go to. He went to, like, Bolt or Hastings Law School at Cal. So he went to Stanford, apparently with a 4.0 in three years. Like that kind of guy, top of his class. Bolt or Hastings. I think it was Bolt. And he had always been telling me, you should be a lawyer, take over my practice or come work in my. So maybe. Maybe I was heading down that path. I don't know. People have said over the years, like, why you? Why would he talk to you? I think it's. Your theory is correct. I think in that moment here's this kid he has a relationship with. He can just unburden himself. We're sitting out on the back porch, right? And he just unburdens himself. And at the same time, I think he didn't want to tell his family about this. But here's this young man going off to college. It's like, here's some things you should know, kid.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And to get even trippier, a lot of these things seem woven together on this hermetically sealed level of, like, serendipitous interactions.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And it sometimes it deals with kind of like old money, old families, that sort of thing. And if he is married to Lois Haight, is this of like the Haight Ashbury? The same name and the sort of this, you know, almost royal Californian, you know, like king making family like that. That seems kind of interesting as well.

[B]

And it's very interesting. I don't. This is, as we've talked about, not just the story, but a lot of the things that have happened to us. There's a point where you get the tipping point of coincidence and you go, okay, this cannot logically be a coincidence. All of these things, these connections and whatnot. You're into this thing where it's like, it's either synchronicity or it's designed.

[C]

Yeah. It's designed at a level that's higher than you.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

We were just talking earlier about you being the chair of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. And, you know, the last writer to do it was Rod Serling, who I knew was my. My dad's godfather, but I didn't know that he had produced this sort of, you know, preeminent UFO documentary in 1974. UFOs. Past, present, future, until I had gotten into the subject. So there are all these things, you know, I've experienced similar things and you can't even talk about it. And then it also feels a little self indulgent and people start to think that you're like part of the conspiracy and it's. It's happening at a higher.

[A]

It. Sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Higher level.

[A]

And by the way, there's just one little Harrington note that you should point out. During Dark Skies. You heard from him? Yes.

[B]

Okay, so this was interesting. We're in the middle of production on Dark Skies. I think it's just started to air. There's a lot of press at the time. And I come in and there's on my desk at the production office, there's an envelope from John Harrington. I'm like, this is another oh, you betrayed everything that I told you. And instead I open it up. It's one of those old buck slips, right. From the desk of John Harrington, and it's like this long strip, and it says, congratulations, Bren, on finally getting your story out there.

[A]

Whoa.

[C]

No way.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So he. Okay, well, then this clearly, this jc, you know, Office of Naval Intelligence guy was probably acting. He was probably aware of. And John Harrington were aware and in coordination around the fact that you had been, you know, informally briefed.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

This is the question that you can't

[B]

answer, and I'd love an answer if someone could provide it. Did J.C. know John Harrington? Was there any coordination?

[C]

I think there had to. Because if you think about. If he's saying, I'm Office of Naval Intelligence, and then John has this, like, you know, kind of illustrious, you know, amazing history at the highest levels, and then he's, you know, saying, like, it's almost like you were fed some of this information, and then you were fed a little bit of the information. At least get interested when you were a teenager. And then. And then John, simultaneous to that, is writing to you, and he hadn't gotten in touch for a while, and so he's saying, congrats on getting your story out, as if he's knowledgeable about the whole story. Dark skies and all of it. That all seems, you know, not coincidental to me.

[A]

That buck slip came just after the JC contact. So part of what's so interesting, like, again, we wouldn't be telling a story because, hey, we. It's nostalgic that this will be fun. It's because these events, like barnacles on a ship, have just attached itself to this story. So there's the story of a ufo, alien invasion TV series that it told, but that's only part of the story because Brent and I were part of the synchronicity, this lightning rod for some of these other things. And as we've gone forward with our own investigation into this, we have found other people who have other similar kinds of stories.

[C]

I want to close the loop on the JC story.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Because I'm sure a lot of the audience is like, whatever happened with that?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Did you take the. The Faustian bargain and end up working with him or what happened next?

[A]

There's two beats to that story, as we say in Hollywood, in the week following JC coming to the party. So now we go back to work, right? We. You know, it's hard to make even bad television, but if you aspire to make good television, it's. It's all encompassing. Because think about it, at any given time, you're shooting one episode, you're in post production on another episode, you're on pre production on something else. You've got a writer's room knocking out scripts. There's just a lot of work, right? So we sort of moved on. We just said, I don't know what that was, but let's forget about it and move on. And I believe it was your assistant that got a phone call from jc.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Who suggested a meeting.

[B]

Yes. Well, so jc, first of all, we were very rattled. Once we were able to kind of talk and debrief after that first meeting, we were a little bit rattled. So I did not call him. He gave me the card. I did not call him. He called a couple times. So my assistant finally came in and said, it's that JC again. And I'm like. So I go in and I take the call. And he's like, hey, listen, we would like to follow up on our meeting, and I'm gonna bring a superior over to your office and we can have another discussion. I was like, okay. But we're click, like, it wasn't, let's set a meeting. It was, I'm coming over to do this thing, right? And he gave me a day and a time, and it wasn't negotiable.

[A]

And part of the problem, part of the setup was that he, I think he was saying, I think your partner needs a little bit of convincing. Right. Because I'd been sort of the blocking character in this story, right? And so they did come to our offices. I believe it was the week after this party. And what Brent and I, I decided to do is, okay, we had a conference room. It had, you know, the glass window and everything, which we thought was good. That'd be a good place to meet with these people if. If they showed up. Because we posted our security guys from the the show. We said, just stand outside and look tough. Right? So they were. So there were witnesses, too. We thought, if anything untoward is going to happen, we don't want to, you know, we want to see this. And so this guy did show up. JC showed up, the young, youngish, 30ish guy. And he showed up with a guy who we would, I say, say 10 to 15 years, maybe, you know, older. And this guy JC gave off sort of the intelligence vibe. The guy that he brought out gave off more of a military vibe.

[B]

We'll call him the captain.

[A]

We call him. We didn't call him in the meeting. The captain and Maybe he was introduced as that. We've called him that since. Because we. We don't want to call him the guy in the bomber jacket. Right, but he had a bomber jacket with insignias and all that. Boots, jeans. And he was. If JC was willing to have a. A friendly conversation and was the good cop in this. This guy was the bad cop because he sort of acted like, I can't believe I have to be here and talk to you guys. And so. But they were still there to sort of make a deal or to talk about it. And so, remember we told you earlier where they had said you got a lot of things right? So we were like, well, you know, what? What did we get right? And so there was some conversation about that. But at one point, the guy. I'll tell you what you've got wrong. And we had had this thing, which was a horror kind of trope, which was the alien organism embedded in your brain and could be copied and sent to other humans. It was classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers kind of thing. And he said, the ganglion. The ganglion. And this is the thing he said that got both of us kind of taken aback. He goes, that's not the way it's done. And we're like, okay.

[C]

You say, how is it, Doc?

[B]

Yeah, how is it?

[A]

We did? And they said, implants. And it was more technological, some kind of implants. And the only thing I can tell you is, again, both Brent and I were in a different state of mind. We didn't have proof that this was real. Right. And we hadn't put together all the other things that were around us, and stuff was coming at us like a fire hose. So I do remember thinking, you know, I've. I don't have a long time for this meeting, so if these guys want to know what we're thinking, I want to know what they're thinking. So I started asking qu. Like you're asking us. I was asking him questions like, so what about the Betty and Barney Hill thing, right? And he was very dismissive because. Not now. Next, right? He would.

[C]

Did they confirm anything? When they say, you got a lot right? And you said, what. What did we get right?

[A]

Did they say XYZ, naval intelligence? The Kennedy connection around UFOs assassin.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Assassination being linked to UFOs.

[A]

Although. But definitely that Kennedy and UFOs were correct. And. And that was a huge part.

[C]

Did he go deeper on that at all, or.

[A]

No, I don't think so. I think he just sort of confirmed that that was. I mean, because that's the essence of the Dark Skies pilot.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And so as a consequence, the mere fact that we would say it in 1996, today you can go on the Internet, you find a lot of people talking about it. Malgram certainly talking about it.

[C]

Yeah. He said, I think it was the number one issue for rec.

[A]

But none of that existed when we put it in the pilot. The only reason we put it in the pilot is when we were sort of creating the show. We said, well I'll tell you what, let's take the two greatest conspiracies of all time, UFOs and JFK. Let's put em in an atom collider and see what we get. And that's what Dark Skies was. So it wasn't us saying we have inside information, it was just saying wouldn't this be interesting? But they sort of confirmed that we were on the right track with that, which is weird. And the reason I was asking him about Betty and Barney is they're in the pilot. You know, the whole idea of Majestic 12, I don't recall that they actually that this guy confirmed the name Majestic12, but he certainly. The idea that there was naval intelligence involved in a pretty vast and powerful organization that was dedicated to man. I think the term was managing the whole thing.

[C]

It almost feels like that MJ12 is like they're like managing reality itself and managing timelines or something.

[A]

And oh actually there is one thing we should point out. The one thing and I know we're going to talk later maybe about Disclosure day because disclosure is a big theme of the moment, but that's what Dark Sides was about. We had two characters. We had the young kid and his so called boss mentor. And the entire series was like a tone poem between these two. One of them said the people have a right to know. And the other guy said the people can't handle the truth. Sort of the Jack Nicholson statement. And so every episode kind of talked about that kind of thing. Anyway, in terms of disclosure, back when they invoked the idea that. And I'm sure you, you've talked about it on your show. Oh the, the idea of the, the Aviary, which sort of came out in the 80s, these guys said well you've heard of the Aviary and that had been on that TV show of course. And they said well we're the aquarium. And now I've told that to people and I see you've got a smile on your face. I've told it to people. And they, they're like, yeah, I don't know about. But all Brent and I can do is bear witness to what was said. We can't evaluate, you know, the truth of that per se.

[C]

For context. The aviary was this long rumored. Like it was like bird code names assigned to kind of disinfo agents around UFO related truths. So people like Rick Doty, John Lear, it's kind of associated with Bill Moore in the 80s where he made that MUFON speech. And he was like, I was. I took this Faustian bargain and was like led astray on this topic.

[A]

So the one thing that they were confirming, though, I mean, the one basic thing they were confirming is that the UFO topic, such as it was being managed in terms of what people were going to be allowed to know or not know. Air Force definitely not in favor of it. Air Force holding the line, you know, closed down blue book in 69, said, we're washing our hands of that. We don't want any more to do about that. And their attitude is, well, obviously we think differently. The people we work with think. And I think Brent used the term slow drip disclosure. Right. We know something has to change.

[C]

Makes sense. I mean, the Navy is really responsible for a lot of modern disclosure. Not only were the. All the sightings in that New York Times article, Naval sightings.

[A]

Right on.

[C]

But you had. Bray was the guy who, like, you know, disclosed, I think in 20 and 2021. Like, that was the Navy that, you know, it was like these. These were how many sightings we had. And, you know, so a lot of these were actually like, you know, unidentified. I think Stratton was former Navy maybe as well, and he formed the whole UAP task force, which was basically like, let's internally review all of the data here. So, yeah, the Navy feels like they hold the deeper and deeper secret.

[A]

What's interesting is that they were picking up on that detail because that film I told you that I had done for the Sci Fi Channel, kind of similar to Dark Skies, I mean, in structure kind of thing. But it was the Air Force in official denial. So we pivoted to Navy after because we were talking about the Harrington story. And we went, well, it can't hurt. Let's go Navy. There is one thing that he did say. I guess you should lay the vial on the table here.

[B]

So there was a whole thing. Again, he didn't answer a lot of our questions other than with terse, like, I don't have time for this. So we said, okay, well, well, what is it that you want to talk about? Like, you're here to Tell us, you know, what's the deal? It's access for influence, right? You're going to. You want to influence our show. What do we get access to? What's the information? And he said, okay, here's this thing. It's all about the moon.

[A]

Well, he put a vial on the table, and you've maybe seen him about that big glass vial with a little black screw top on it. People scientists use them in labs and things like that. So he put that on the table and said, it's all about that. And so when we picked it up, well, we each got a slightly different view of it. I.

[B]

Well, you saw it first, so I picked it up. Well, first of all, so he says it's all about the moon. And he's also bringing this up because they've seen our show Bible. And in the second season, we go. We deal with the space program, right? And he was like, you've got to move all that up. So already we're getting a taste of. They're going to tell us, like, when to write and how to write and all this other stuff.

[A]

What we were going to do in the second season, just so you know, is we were going to do season. We're going to go decade by decade every season. So the first season was the 60s. So in the second season, there was going to be an Apollo 18, even though that mission got canceled, right? So we were going to.

[B]

That was our dark skies.

[A]

Now, people have now speculated and done movies about that, but back then, that's what we were going to do. So he knew that we were going to going moon forward.

[B]

And his whole point is, forget about all this other stuff. It's all about the moon. He slams this little vial down. I pick it up, I look at it, and I'm like. And I shake it like it's a snow globe, but there's no liquid in it. And all of the. It's like gold flakes, except it looks like fool's gold because actual gold doesn't really look that gold. It's like more dull. Fool's gold is more. Looks like gold. So it looks like these. Like these gold flakes. And they. Everything just kind of floats, but there's no liquid.

[C]

What do you think he meant by that? It's all about the moon. And he puts the violin mining.

[A]

He was implying things are being mined.

[B]

And so then Bryce looks at it, right?

[A]

And I didn't shake it. So what I saw was just, you know, I. Less than half of it were these little flakes, and I Just looked at it, and I. I have no experience with gold. I didn't know.

[C]

But how do you go from, like, secrets around the nature of reality to,

[A]

like, I don't know.

[C]

It actually deals with natural resources possibly derived from the.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

Again, this is. And he was saying it in a way that was, like, not even casual. It was like, how could you not know this? It was. He had this, like, disdain for us.

[A]

Jesse, I have a theory, though, because that is a great question. It's not like Brent and I have not spent a lot of time debating. But here's a good example. What if his job was to find out how gullible the two of us were? And so at some point, he pulls out this thing to test us to see if we'll buy them that hook, line, and sinker. And by the way, just to wrap. Put a little wrap on. Because you said, did you take the deal? Obviously, if we'd probably taken it, we wouldn't be on your show. Maybe we would. I don't know. But what happened was, during that meeting, I don't know why. I was just a pragmatic producer, and I knew that there are people on our writing staff who. Who depend on residuals, right? That's how they feed their family. So I started asking. I. I know this sounds ridiculous, but, you know, I was in my executive producer, showrunner kind of mode, and I'm. I'm like, so how would that work? You would give us ideas that you would want us to put in scripts, and then who would get credit for,

[B]

you know, about the Writers Guild with the residuals? And so I'm.

[A]

I'm talking Writers Guild stuff. And actually, I did have one very specific memory. One of the things that really set him off is he was saying, in the second season, you need to do more stuff in the water. Okay, more stuff in the water. Because Navy and USOs and all that. And I went into this riff about, well, you know, water is very expensive. You got to get a tank, and you got to shoot in the tank, and it takes forever in the studios. And that just set him off. And then when I started asking about the Writers Guild, he just got pissed off. The two of them left, and so we thought, okay, that's it. But it wasn't it. There was one final beat on this thing, and that was, again, time goes by. Brent gets another called. Brent was the.

[B]

I'm the weak link, obviously. I'm the one with the mark.

[C]

I still am wondering if that's John Harrington being Like, give him another chance, you know, or something.

[A]

It's a great. It's a great thought.

[B]

Well, if this next beat was John Harrington, that's a little terrible.

[A]

It's weird. It's strange. So I guess the thing was, Bryce seems a little difficult, I believe, is what they were saying. You know, he seems like, you know, we wouldn't ordinarily do this, but we do feel like maybe you should have one final chance so that would fit with a Harrington.

[C]

So they were trying to divide you guys, essentially have you.

[B]

From their point of view, I was good cop, he was bad cop. Right.

[A]

Or foolish cop.

[B]

I get this phone call. My assistant comes in and goes, it's jc. I was like, I thought this was over with. And he said, said, listen, obviously that meeting did not go well. We're gonna give you one more chance. Here's what's going to happen. I'm bringing in someone much higher this time. It's an admiral, and his boat is coming into.

[A]

He said there was a ship in the Long beach harbor.

[B]

In the Long beach harbor.

[A]

And that they could not check us into the ship because you can't bring in a couple of Hollywood screenwriters onto a ship to meet an admiral to talk about UFOs. That ain't gonna work, right?

[B]

So I'm, like, listening to all of this, and he said, so what's gonna happen is he is going to come off of the ship with a cover story of visiting a deceased friend. We need you to meet at a cemetery at midnight. Here's the name of the gravestone you're going to meet at. And all I heard was, cemetery at midnight. I'm like, okay, here's. I'm a writer, but this is what I'm seeing. Bryce and I walk up. There is no name that we're looking for. There's our names on tombstones and two graves. And as we're processing that, we get capped from behind. And that's clearly direct.

[A]

The way this finally ultimately played out is Brent walks into my office and says, I just had another call with J.C. and I'm like, yeah. And he gets to cemetery at midnight. Which I agree. I agree. It's insane. All we can do is bear witness to what happened. So again, we're not vouching that. It seems reasonable. It seemed insane to us. And I said to Brent at the time, you know, I've got a wife and I got three kids, and there is no way in hell I will be meeting anybody at a cemetery at midnight. And so we stopped calling them back. But, but we have, in terms of doing this new show, had to think about what our mental state was at that point. To be completely honest. Jesse, we talked about, you know, we said, if this, if, if we were to push these guys for a higher standard of proof and they were able to prove who they were, would we take the deal anyway?

[C]

And what's that? What's the answer there?

[A]

And the answer was we just wouldn't. We just felt like we would seed the narrative thrust of our own show to people who. We didn't know what they would demand of us. We didn't, we didn't feel good about them. I mean, the guy that we, we thought that the guy that came and was so abusive to us in the, in the conference room would be our boss. And we thought, we already have studio bosses and network bosses. We don't need a boss from O and I. Right.

[C]

Do you guys think that any other directors in Hollywood have taken similar deals? I want to take a moment to thank one of today's sponsors, ZBiotics. ZBiotics pre alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to specifically tackle rough mornings after drinking. Drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for the rough days after drinking. Pre alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Of course, drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. I have Zebiotics before my first drink of the night, and I wake up feeling totally normal the next morning.

[A]

Morning.

[C]

So go to zebiotics.com Jesse to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use Jesse at checkout. Zbiotics is also backed with a 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to ZBiotics.com Jesse and use the code Jesse at checkout for 15% off. Off. It happened to me in the woods. I was hiking solo New year. No phone, no gear. I was just trying to find myself. That's when I saw it. Something glowing, silent, descending through the trees. A ufo. And stepping out from it wasn't an alien or an Android. It was me, but better. Same face, same great hair. But something was different. Different. This Guy had perfect posture. He was wearing the perfect jean. And they start at just $79. Six fits sizes for every thigh on this timeline and beyond. Now 2026 me wears the perfect jeans. They don't crush my thighs or my dreams. They're soft but dangerous. For a limited time, our listeners get 15% off their first order plus free shipping at The Perfect Gene NYC. Or just Google the Perfect Gene and use code JESSE15 for 15% off. That's 15% off for new customers at the PerfectGene NYC with promo code JESSE15. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you your khakis and gifts. Get the Perfect Gene. Do you guys think that any other directors in Hollywood have taken similar deals?

[B]

Yes. And so there's one last interesting piece of the puzzle that I'm going to drop on the table now. Before we were approached by JC at the deal, in fact, before Dark Skies was even finished, we were still scouting Dark Skies, doing location scouting.

[A]

This is. You're about to. I know what you're going to do. This is a location scout during the pilot, who that was, right? That was direct. It was directed by Toby Hooper, who we all know is the director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the director of Poltergeist. And Brent and I had managed through sheer luck because of his relationship to get him hired to direct our pilot. And he wanted to, you know, in Hollywood you got to protect your material. There were some directors we met with that said, okay, I'm going to cut the first 45 pages. I'm changing all this. This will be different. We won't do that. But Toby came in and said, I like this script, I'll shoot it. So he was our guy and you were scouting locations.

[B]

So we are in an area called Newhall Ranch, which is just kind of north of la. You know, just what it sounds like. It's just a big ranch, kind of rolling fields out near the grapevine. And we're looking for a place where we can shoot our crop circle sequence. We have a big crop circle sequence. And so we find this big field and everything's great. At the end of that location scouting day, we go down to like a roadhouse down in Newhall. And we're having dinner, lunch or whatever it was. And I'm sitting with Toby because he's a friend of mine. I developed a script with him that was going to be a low budget independent horror film. And we'd become good friends and he was A great guy. So we're sitting there and all the producers, Bryce, everyone else is kind of talking and we're kind of. And I said to him, him, so, Toby, you're finally going to have one up on Steven, because I know he's very competitive with his buddy Steven Spielberg. And he goes, what do you mean? And I said, well, you're going to be the first one to put a crop circle on film. And he hasn't done that yet. And he's like, yeah, I'm never going to beat Stephen in that category. And I go, what do you mean, why? And he goes, after Jaws, he was like, really a big deal. And apparently he got approached by some guys from Naval Intelligence or something, and they came and offered him a deal.

[A]

And did he actually say Naval Intelligence?

[B]

Yes, he did.

[A]

Oh, he did.

[C]

All right.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And. And yeah, and he took it and he, you know, he got. He got all sorts of information. I mean, Close Encounters is based on a true story. And I was like, what? And he goes, yeah, I mean, ET Too. Like, he got access to a bunch of really, like, interesting case files and stuff. Stuff. And yeah, so this is all happening before we are approached, right? And so then this is all part of what's going through my head when the guy says, I'm here with Office of Naval Intelligence. And so now kind of swing it all the way around and ask that question again. Would you take the deal? Well, I don't know. Our show got canceled at the end of one season, right? We didn't take the deal. I'm not saying that that's a guarantee for success. And I'm not saying that Steven Spielberg's success, massive success, isn't purely based on talent. But in terms of the deal and having access to information, we already know other people have come forward. We weren't the only ones offered the deal. And why would we be?

[C]

Well, it gets even crazier, right? Because Dark Skies, there was active intervention on behalf of Steven Spielberg where you had to redo a whole season to adequately differentiate it from. From his projects.

[A]

This is a painful story. To be honest. Brent and I have not told this story ever until this year. We sort of took the vow when we went down this road to not because these are our ideas, are the only ideas out there, but we just said if we're going to tell this story, if we're going to demand transparency from other people, then we better be fully transparent. And if you're going to really look at the Dark Skies thing, from those postcards to the Harrington aspect and to the, you know, the, the JC approach and the admiral and the cemetery at midnight. There's a piece of that puzzle. And it happens in the summer. Well, the first time it happened actually was back during that pilot shooting and I got a phone call on the set and it was the Columbia TV executive and he said, listen, we have a problem. They're making a movie. It's a comedy called Men in Black at Sony. Now that's where we were. Columbia was under Sony, so at the same production entity. And they're very upset and you need to get your guys out of the black suits today. Now we had called our guys in the script Men in Black and we were shooting them in black suits and skinny ties and sometimes in sunglasses, sometimes in hats. But we were mostly. They were Men in black. And I went into, as you know, chapter and verse. Well, Men in Black doesn't belong to anybody. It goes back to the 50s, Maury island and Gray Barker and all the, the stuff that you're aware of and many people in your audience are aware of. And the guy cuts me off and he goes, bryce, let me put this in words that you can understand, which is about the most condescending thing you could say to anybody. But I've been insulted by experts in Hollywood so it didn't really faze me. But what he said next really did. And this is a quote. This isn't. It's seared in my head. He says, get your guys. No, get your actors out of the black suits today or we will shut down your production and. And burn your negative.

[C]

Jesus.

[B]

Yeah, that's not. We're going to cancel your show. We're going to remove all evidence.

[C]

Delete you.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

We're going to delete you now from reality.

[C]

So that's crazy. We're going to Men in Black you. If you don't get your Men in Black out of the show.

[A]

Right on. It was terrifying. I mean, it was really terrifying because we're nobody. You know, I mean, he. The people making Men in Black were a very successful director, Barry Sonnenfeld and a successful producer, Steph Spielberg. A successful company, Amblin with, you know, I mean, it was just like, this is a big deal. So we caved. We said, okay, well if that's all we have to do. So we started shooting. You know, we, we, we did what they wanted. No more Men in Black in the suits. We started shooting.

[C]

Do you think that was a Sony thing or a Spielberg Amblin thing?

[A]

Well, it was conveyed to us. We Never spoke to like, look, we did not talk to Steven Spielberg or Barry Sonnenfeld. We had lawyers, lawyers from Amblin talking to lawyers from Columbia TV talking to executives from Columbia TV talking to us. But so anything we're saying here definitely came to us through lawyers and executives, but not directly. We never had that kind of situation and we thought we'd taken care of it. We actually did a fine replace in our script. So everywhere we said Men in Black we had to come up with a new name. It's not the best name, but it's the only one. One out of thousands everybody went through they could sign off on. We called them cloakers. Okay, so the cloakers dressed in green and blue and gray and brown. Right. And we thought we had dodged a bullet. Okay, flash forward a year. It's now the summer prior to the show that's going to be put on in September. That's when shows debut typically in old scout, old style broadcast television. That, that's the big time. And so that's what we're aiming for. It's July. We are in the middle of shooting, you know, writing all the scripts and shooting scripts and, and we are on tv. They've accepted our pilot, they're putting it on, they're, they're promoting the hell out of it. And that same executive calls us and says I, I'm coming over today. We, we, we have to talk. And he comes over and he says, I've just come from a room full of lawyers and, and by the way, while I may slightly misquote it because I'm in a room with you without my notes, I took notes on a yellow legal pad as fast as I could in the meeting. And then Brett and I got out of the meeting and we sat at a computer and typed up with our mutual recollection the exact thing. So we made notes that are pretty good notes. And he said, I come from a room full of lawyers and things have gotten, gotten out of hand.

[B]

They escalated.

[A]

They've escalated beyond all reason. Something like what he said. And we got A list of 19 non negotiable demands of things that had to change in our pilot. And these non negotiable demands were shocking. They were things like you can't have an elevator because there's an elevator in Men in Black. You can't have your secret headquarters in Washington D.C. it has to be outside D.C. you can't have, have a farmer. You cannot have a farmer. And here's the one that'll rock your world. You can't do your autopsy. There can be no autopsy in dark

[B]

skies because there's an autopsy scene in Men in Black.

[C]

That's crazy. Yeah, that almost. I'm almost wondering if the Office of Naval Intelligence is like, you should have taken the deal.

[A]

You should have taken the deal.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And just there's an important piece of

[B]

context about like, well, why is this happening now? A year goes by. Well, when we were first approached, we weren't on the air yet.

[A]

Right.

[B]

We were just a pilot waiting to go to see was it going to get picked up at this point? It was right after we got picked up and we were going to serious.

[A]

And we were big.

[B]

So now they had made us. They had made us change some things, but they were thinking, well, this may not get picked up, so we don't have to push it any further. The minute it was going to be on the air in September, suddenly they had to come in with like, shock and awe.

[C]

That's so maddening and frustrating and annoying and to, you know, just corroborate the Spielberg stuff. You know, obviously this is to the audience, always going to be somewhat apocryphal of a story. But you have stuff that's so verifiably, you know, real. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, for example, you have crates with TRW and Lockheed on them.

[A]

Right.

[C]

You have on. On top of Devil's Tower. It's like they're playing tones kind of like Valerie Ranson in the Aethership. They were like, trying to communicate with, you know, aliens. And then obviously Jalen Hynek, who was, you know, chief astronomer of Blue Book, is there. Francois Truffaut is playing Jacques Vallejo for the, you know, the whole movie. You know, Dustin Hoffman has like a sunburn which shows kind of this UV radiation gravitational lensing thing, which you can hear Hal put off talking about an agent Disclosure.

[B]

Richard Dreyfus.

[C]

Richard Dreyfuss. Sorry. Not Dustin Hoffman. Yeah.

[A]

He'd have been good in the role, though. He would have been great.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Like looks slightly like it.

[B]

And by the way, whether you believe it or not, put that aside. There's a whole kind of visual reference to Project Serpo and in there.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Because it's all of the guy. There's 12 guys dressed in suits ready to go on an exchange program.

[C]

Right.

[A]

With their little travel bag.

[B]

With their little travel bags and the whole thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And they come out of the.

[B]

Oh, yeah, there's Richard Dris, number 13.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And he's the only one that gets.

[C]

And Richard Dreyfus Also gets obsessed with, like, you know, it's like the mash. What is it? The. The mashed potatoes.

[B]

It's the shape of Devil's Tower, where all of this is going to happen. Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And so he's getting. Well, you deconstruct that movie. When he gets the ship over him and he gets the sunburn, he's getting a download.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And he's getting that imagery, and it's almost like. And then that's what Melinda Dillon gets. Like, the woman who has the little kid that gets abducted, she's drawing. All these people are getting a download of something they become obsessed with. They all converge on Devil's Tower. Right. So there was a lot of stuff that was going on in that movie. Movie that was either very prescient or was informed on to some degree.

[C]

And ET Very similar. You have this kind of symbiotic relationship where you have a sinking of, like, the heartbeats of the child and E.T. you have the. You know, the mother's inability to see the ET Walking around the kitchen. But the kids can all see it.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And, yeah, you have that. They have that story of Spielberg screening it in the White House for Reagan.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And then Spielberg says this in an interview himself. He. He says, Reagan looks around. He says, there are about five people in this room who knows that everything they just saw on that screen is absolutely real.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Crazy talk, huh?

[C]

Crazy.

[A]

And then Reagan goes and talks to the United nations and says, wouldn't it be great if we all united to fight off an alien invasion?

[B]

I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing

[A]

an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not

[B]

an alien force already among us?

[A]

Crazy stuff.

[B]

The ET Thing. We haven't done the episode yet, but we're gonna do a whole episode. It's actually based on a true story occasionally.

[A]

I didn't know that.

[B]

Yeah. In Kentucky or something.

[A]

Well, that's what got it started.

[B]

That's what got it started. That was the impetus story.

[C]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Where a family found an alien on a farm, and they hid it in their barn. And the whole thing. It was a movie called Night Skies, which he was developing as a produce.

[C]

I had no idea. I want to look into the original case. That's wild.

[B]

Oh, it's.

[A]

Yeah, it's very.

[C]

They hid an ET in the closet or something in the actual store, in the barn. Okay.

[B]

Yeah. And it was communicating with a kid who was autistic.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

That is fascinating.

[B]

Yeah, totally. So the point Being is that whatever his official line is, there's evidence when you go back and look at some of these movies that he had some level of access.

[C]

No, he's got it. He's got it because you watch Disclosure Day and it's just like, like there are too many deep cut things where it's just a little incongruous with his interview where, like, he'll say, like, yeah, I don't know, his 2017 New York Times article, Leslie Kane and Ralph Blumenthal. It's like, you know, got me into this, this stuff. And then you realize he's like, you know, blurbed like James Fox deep cut documentaries before, like out of the blue. He's like, this is compelling. And you're watching the movie and it's like, like it's not even, you know, UFO disclosure. Spoiler alert. It's like parapsychology disclosure. You know, people's perceptive abilities and ability to like, you know, kind of download information and assume identities and remote view.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And stuff. And so it begets like an extremely deep knowledge that, you know, probably shows an organic interest that's deeper than what he lets on in the interviews. But also maybe, you know, maybe you're being fed some stuff too.

[A]

You can't go wrong with Spielberg and UFOs. Every story is great. Just to wrap that up, we did shoot 11 days of a different, you know, to make him happy. So that cost us a lot of money. And there's two versions of the Dark Skies pilot that are out there because of that. And the only reason that we survived, because they, this executive said they want us to give the money back to NBC and fire you guys for stealing your idea from him. So we had to create a whole legal defense and everything. And it turns out that the guy that ran NBC, Don Olmeyer, turned out to be our patron saint because he said to them, oh, he got wind of it and he said, oh, so let me get this straight. You want us to accept this, but they've already turned in the pilot to me. You know what? I'm going to air it. I'm going to air it just the way it is. F you. Yeah, right. And so then the 19 non negotiable

[B]

demands became like five or six negotiable demands.

[A]

But by the way, one of the most bizarre moments in this whole thing, though, is while that was all going on, my agent called me and said, I've got an Amblin wants to talk to you about a video game and you get to meet with Stevenson Spielberg. And I said, are they aware that they're doing this to us right now? And my agent said, I don't think so. Do you want me to tell him? And I said, please don't tell him. I said, should I take the meeting? He goes, well, you've already been damaged once. Don't damage yourself twice. Take the meeting. And so in the middle of this, I went and sat in Steven Spielberg's office waiting. He comes in, shakes my hand, says, great to see you again. I hadn't met him, but whatever. Very nice. Hits me on the back and says, big fan of Dark Skies.

[C]

Whoa. Oh, it's like a weird power play or something. Or do you think that's like he's just unaware, like, the left hand's not talking to the right hand, and he actually just likes.

[A]

You got to give priority thought maybe on that because he seemed genuine. Both Brent and I have worked with him on various projects. I worked on Taken, as you pointed out. And the only thing I would say about the meetings we had on Taken, he, look, we're all. We got three guys here. We're all interested in UFOs, and we could probably off air, go another 10 or 11 hours, you know, going, what about that? What about that? He felt like that to me. He felt, I mean, you know, a lot of what he gets credit for, you know, putting into his. His films, you know, if you're widely read. And. And once he made Close Encounters, virtually everybody that probably talked to him who had any story at all call or ideas on UFOs, said, hey, you know, have you ever heard about. He seemed extremely well informed, but he wasn't throwing out ideas that. Where I was like, I never heard of that before. Right. He just, He. He's just a passionate guy. Great filmmaker, obviously, and. And it was interesting to. To work on. On Taken. And I think he got a lot of right in Taken.

[C]

Yeah, no, he gets a lot right every time. We were just talking about the serendipitous interactions that weave together to, like, you know, result in some sort of deliberate end point. And you have, like, timeline managers. And if you watch again, disclosure day. Spoiler alert. Colman Domingo's character is like a kind of. He defects from, like, the, you know, terrestrial intelligence apparatus. Like, he's like a CIA guy who leaves, and he is always on these calls with, you know, Josh o', Connor, and he's. He's like, dude, it's like a set design sort of situation. There are multiple sets, and he's directing all of that. And that feels very important and symbolic. Like he is a reality manager. And the whole movie starts with basically like a scene from like wwe.

[B]

It's a staged event.

[C]

It's a staged event. Everybody's wearing a USA America hat that. And it's as if what we are watching is totally fake. But that's politics. And so that felt very symbolic as well. And there's something going on above that and that deals with these sort of this almost like deep state intel timeline war of people trying to almost imminentize the apocalypse of disclosure or stave that off in a way that is supposedly protective of some homeostasis of society, but in reality just protective. The vested interests at the top totally look.

[B]

To add to Bryce's kind of cognitive dissonance, I was invited to come and do an interview on Taken, which is weird. So both the two writers on Dark Skies are invited to come and write on Taken.

[C]

Well, that's my interpretation of them reaching out to you about the video game. And then you is like they want to fold you in, right?

[A]

I wish they had.

[B]

Well, but the hell follow.

[C]

But then you're kind of under control too. You're not like doing your like other alien rogue thing. That's like off script.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

So but follow this line. So I can't do that job because I have a deal at Sony. So Bryce does the job. Then a couple years later I'm offered a job on a show with Barry Sonnenfeld as the executive producer called Secret Agent Man. He never mentions Dark Skies.

[C]

Right.

[B]

But one of the people that tried to get us canceled is suddenly hiring me on another show, which is weird. Now cut to a few years later from that. I'm working at EA Electronic Arts, a game company in la and we're working on a big command and conquer project. And one of the other games projects in that area is in that studio is a project that Steven Spielberg, an original ip, brought to EA because he wanted to make a video game.

[C]

Best way to silence your enemies is to hire them.

[B]

So get this. The game was codenamed lmno and it was about a woman who is human but has alien capabilities running around using the power of empathy to disarm people because the government is chasing her.

[C]

Whoa, sounds familiar. Sounds exactly like Disclosure day.

[B]

But that was the whole game. And the only reason it didn't get made was they couldn't figure out it was a cool idea idea. They couldn't figure out how to make that work interactively as a game in 2004 or whenever it was.

[C]

And that's exact. Emily Blunt's character, like, shape shifts.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And does kind of signature management where everybody sees, you know, their former child or their, you know, or their, you know, their ex wife for their, you know, whatever, and. And then they sort of get manipulated into doing things as a result of that.

[A]

Yeah. In that final.

[B]

So he had obviously been interested in telling that story 20 years earlier.

[A]

Well, he told a version of it in Taken. The Dakota Fanning young girl has those same kind of psychic powers and empathy. Right.

[C]

Yeah. He's clearly been so deep on this topic for so long. What was interesting to me about Disclosure Day is the end of the movie, I think, almost felt exciting and cool and wild. Cause you're seeing this again, big spoiler alert. This drop of all these alien files and, you know, crashes, real historical crashes, as we all know, and alien bodies and stuff. But it's almost like the real disclosure was actually, like, the entire movie leading up to that around the kind of deeper threads of, like, you know, parapsychological interactions between people. And then at the end, it's like this, like, arbitrary kind of, like, data dump of alien stuff. And you're like, where are you getting that? Where are the aliens coming from? What does all of this mean?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And so the disclosure is really, like, the unspoken stuff.

[B]

In the beginning, I felt the exact same way, because I felt at the end, the disclosure that the public was getting.

[C]

Right.

[B]

In the movie, the public was the disclosure we're getting right now, which is just a bunch of videos with no context and whatnot.

[A]

But better videos.

[B]

But better videos.

[C]

Yeah, but better video.

[B]

But the real disclosure, to your point, happened outside of the public's eye. It was the story we were being shown. Right. And so there's this whole meta quality about that movie that I think it raises a lot of questions if you go all the way back to, well, what did Steven Spielberg know? When did he know it? And with Disclosure Day, as we found out the hard way, he's gotta be one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful person in Hollywood. Right. They can get someone to say, burn the negative. What are the chances that a man at his age, you know, going on 80, last couple years of his filming career, potentially, he's gonna invest in a movie called Disclosure Day without any guarantees that it will not be irrelevant by the time his movie comes out.

[C]

Right.

[B]

I'm serious.

[C]

No, it's.

[B]

What are the chances, again, Coincidence. Is it a coincidence that it just. It somehow all worked out? I've seen him in interviews, say, yeah, it's just like. It's amazing. It's coming out at the exact right time. It's like, well, yes. But then he's also taken it much further in some of these interviews, which is saying the movie's much more truth than fiction.

[C]

Yeah, he is saying that now.

[B]

He's literally coming out and saying that.

[C]

But then he'll also, at the same time, he'll say, I don't know anything that you don't know. I don't know if that's correct. He might know a few more things than the average person.

[A]

He did raise the bar for himself because how many. When's the last trailer that you saw that has the direction director interviewed in the trailer? That's what his last trailer was. And what is he saying in the trailer? This stuff is true.

[C]

Right, Right.

[A]

So he's got a movie called Disclosure Day. He's in the trailer saying it's true. That's probably why his movie is polarizing in the UFO community.

[C]

I. I sometimes wonder, you know, like, you have the video of the two grays that Josh o' Connor shows his girlfriend. So, you know, he leaves this kind of private corporation, he defends effects, and he's kind of this Ed Snowden type who, like, takes with him the. The secrets of, like, the alien presence, the nature of reality, which should not be held from the 8 billion people on Earth. And he's showing this video to his girlfriend, and you see these two grays for, like, a second, and then it, like, kind of moves away from that, and then you see some other really kind of intense stuff. And I wonder, you know, like, those. Those two grays probably, you know, aren't real, but like. But like, you know, you have that whole data drop at the end as well with all the videos back to back to back to back. Is there one thing. Oh, that's in that entire video, an entire video montage that is real? Like, I wonder. I wonder if there's one thing in the movie that is a real artifact. And then you can always. Then that's how you inoculate the public. They've all seen the thing. And then you point back and you say that thing that you saw was actually real. And you just, you know, you've. You've tested the waters. It wasn't destabilizing. And then you just be like, oh, I already saw that, Jesse.

[A]

That is the Easter egg of all Easter eggs. If that. That happened.

[C]

Well, to take that one step further, my buddy Chris Ramsey, who runs a great show called Area 52, he has a theory that maybe the UFO flap that showed up the drones over New Jersey In November of 2024, this thing, you know, disclosure day, was filmed in New Jersey in late 2024. And we all know that UFOs seem to show up when you, like, move material around.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And so. And, like, exotic science. Experiments. Experiments and stuff. So, like, was, you know, some of what was used in the movie actually real? And was that provoking any of the flyover stuff in. In Jersey? Were they moving a UFO around? Did they want to, you know, show you a little piece of a ufo? You didn't know it was a ufo? Who knows?

[A]

Well, New Jersey is. You're right. They're shooting in New Jersey. At the same time all these drones are flying around New Jersey.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

New Jersey. Yeah.

[C]

Right. Yeah. Pinchatinny Arsenal is right there. And I have a friend named Rob Jones who's uncovered all sorts of stuff around Lockheed kind of divesting itself eventually of this craft to, I think, this, like, Veritas Capital. And any. He. He kind of speculates that the craft ends up in Jersey, in Picatinny Arsenal, later on. When I talk about the. The lineage of where I think that material went. What's the company that you think controls the material?

[B]

I believe the company that currently holds that material is a company by the name of. And they have offices at Picatinny Arsenal.

[A]

Whoa.

[C]

Crazy.

[B]

Yes. So, yeah, it's a little interesting.

[C]

So who knows?

[B]

Fascinating. Something else you said just to touch on. I don't know if you're aware of this, but as you said, Josh O' Connor at one point says, 8 billion people have the right to know the truth. Did you know that in the first trailer that came out? The line in the trailer was. Was, 7 billion people have the right to know the truth.

[A]

Which set everybody off because people were saying either they don't know how many people are on the planet, which seems unlikely, or maybe it doesn't take place in the present, or maybe a billion people are alien hybrids or whatever. But isn't it interesting? It's in the trailer, and then it's not in the movie. It's been updated for the movie.

[B]

Weird when I saw the movie the first time, because what happened was Bryce and I did a need to know episode where we talked. Talked about that, and we went down that rabbit hole. We were like, why would they say 7 billion? Like, there's only a couple ways to interpret that. And then when I'm sitting there watching the movie and they says 8 billion, and I'm like, is this the Mandela effect? Like, what's. What is going on? And I'm thinking, am I losing my mind? Like, we had a whole conversation about this in an episode. So after the movie, I had to go back and watch our episode. I'm like, no, no, that happened.

[A]

That happened.

[B]

But why would you choose change that?

[C]

I don't know. Seems possibly deliberate or maybe they got for the seven and that. But that you don't really. That's not an oversight that you make on a movie of that level.

[B]

Think of how many people had to see it in order to actually become a trailer on.

[A]

Right before that trailer. Hundreds of people saw that, including Spielberg and Cap and all the. All the gang. There's only one. I mean, there is one theory which is, you know full well that it's wrong, but it's kind of your little thing that you'll drop in and get. Get people talking, speculating about, or it's

[C]

like, either, you know, the dystopian place I would go is like, you're predicting some sort of population reduction thing. Hopefully it's not that. You could be saying that a billion people are aliens or alien hybrids or something. So they're not people.

[B]

Whatever the case is, the fact that it was out there and then it was changed with no inform, with no explanation, to me, feels very inauthentic. So the whole sh. The whole movie, as Spielberg's talking about it is like, this is his vision. This is. Is what he always wanted to believe was the truth. And he believes is more truth than fiction. Okay. But then the marketing of it, you're messing with people's minds by putting out this. Like that feels like it's completely counterproductive.

[A]

Very odd.

[B]

So it really strikes me as, like, I don't understand who made that choice. If it was a choice, if it was an accident. That even seems more preposterous. So what is going on?

[C]

I don't know. It's so fascinating, though, and there's so many deep threads where it's like you have this almost invisible college equivalent, you know, invisible college, obviously, is this, you know, coined by Jacques Valle and J. Allen Hynek? Of course. But it's like, you know, these. This ragtag team woven together through serendipitous events where they're calling each other just at the right time to, like, you know, not get killed in the nick of time and, you know, hide the hard drive sort of thing.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And then you have. Have the kind of establishment structure that's really trying to just stave off disclosure. But they're sort of getting manipulated by this, like, higher, higher force that can even, like, cause defections among them. And you have Nathan Twinning left, you know, 12 intelligence officers left us. And this is Wardex, who, like, holds the secrets of UFOs. And they say Nathan Twinning. And Nathan Twinning is probably Nathan Twining.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Who's head of Air material commander command, 1947. He wrote the twining memo. He was rumored Majestic 12 and 12 people are missing, but they're sort of defectors from the intelligence agency, which I. That. I find that really interesting. Like, they're, they're. They have like some bizarre, higher, almost alien calling.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Which maybe Harrington did. And I'll.

[B]

I'll. I'll.

[C]

I'll end this rant soon, but you have a kryptos conundrum as well. This book that is written by Chase Brandon, who's this Hollywood CIA liaison. He's a longtime guy. You met him, So I want to talk about that. And he worked with, you know, Stanton Friedman and, and writes this book. And he says, you know, the. In the prologue, he quotes Francis Bacon, and he says, so some truths are so strange that you have to hide them in fiction. They must be told in fiction.

[A]

Cover of Fiction is what our. Our Dark Skies series was based on.

[C]

There you go.

[A]

By the way, I have a quick Nathan Twining thing. One reason he might have done that, people who go, okay, who is that name? If they look it up? Twining is famous for saying the phenomenon reported is neither visionary nor fictitious. Yeah, that's his quote. Okay. And that's a great quote. So it's sort of like that's a little Easter egg to get people to talk about it. But yes. Chase Brandon. Should we talk a little Chase?

[C]

Well, because he. He kind of predicted the Majestic 12, or he writes about it in a way. Way that's really deeper than, you know, all the. The Majestic 12 really came from these, like, you know, sequential, you know, document drop memos from 80s to the 90s. But, but, but a lot of that stuff, you know, outside of maybe the first batch, which seemed legit, seemed like kind of passage material and fake and meant to maybe catch some Russian spies or something. But the way Chase Brandon writes about this, you know, group, they come out of the Office of Strategic Assessment, which was a subgroup of the Office of Strategic Services Services, and you have this guy named Chalmers, who's this math whiz, and you have this sacred object which also shows up in disclosure day, and they all. It's like these beings show up to them and know more about them than they do and they have these almost near death experiences or experience this liminal space where they're taught more about reality than when they come back. And they come back and they sort of forget their purpose and they have to get reactivated to remember their purpose. And all of this, this feels so, you know, prevalent and ubiquitous in disclosure day where you have these like, almost like star seeds being activated or something. And I think the red cardinal activating them. I wonder if that's. It's not a red cardinal, it's Bluebird, which is, you know, the pre MK Ultra.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Sort of thing. Which. Anyway, I don't know.

[A]

Yeah, well, and all the animals in display close your day kind of people criticize them as being CGI kind of thing and, and not being, you know, obviously perfect. And yet Spielberg has so much money that he ought to make them perfect if he wanted to. So they're not perfect by choice. Maybe they're not perfect because they're not really the animals. They're what your brain is perceiving aliens as. Right?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

So that might, might be that.

[C]

Yeah, it was intentionally a little off.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's meant to be like when you have those experiences, feels off. It's because you're in the phenomenon, right?

[C]

Yes.

[B]

It's not because it's bad cgi, it's because your brain is having to process something that is not normal.

[C]

Yes. Yeah. It's like, I think Whitley Strieber, who's another interesting kind of, you know, intersection between entertainment.

[B]

Absolutely.

[C]

And you know, ufology. He, he talks about like owl synchronicities.

[A]

Absolutely.

[C]

And sometimes you have these experiences with animals where you're like. Felt like a little strange. That did. That felt a little more intentional than like this random animal thing. Absolutely. All of these things sound so ridiculous and they always have kind of mud or plausible deniability attached to them, which is how as we know from Jacques Valle or John Keel, that's how the phenomena sort of works. It has this trickster element where it's like you'll never get the incontrovertible thing that you can tell the whole world. This will always be this little, little wink just for you.

[A]

Yep. Although, you know, you're talking about Whitley Strieber. He is helpful in us sort of deciding this thing is all very authentic because remember, it's his book that he puts out, I think in 87. And it's got that classic photo or not photo, artistic rendition of the grays. Okay. That got A lot of people to buy it. That's a great story in itself and, you know, kudos to the artist. But what happened in the aftermath? Nearly half a million people wrote letters to. To. To Whitley and his wife and said, when I saw your book, that made me, you know, think about it. Activated me to remember things. Now I don't think 500,000 people are making up those letters that I've had

[C]

people on my show who said they're walking by and that's how they remember their abduction experience. They see the COVID of Communion at Barnes and Noble or something.

[A]

Exactly. So, I mean, those people are activated and they're not all crazy. So there is a core truth here that needs to be recognized.

[C]

Clearly. Yeah, go for it.

[A]

Well, I was just gonna say, so what Bren and I have been trying to assemble is sort of what is the timeline of what's really gone on in this sort of dance between Hollywood and UFOs, the phenomenon and secrecy. Because if our experience was a simple one off, Jesse, then it'd be like, well, okay, that's interesting. Don't know if they're telling the truth. Don't know if they're not. Who knows? What are we going to do about it? But if it's part of a lineage of events, then it becomes a little more important. So, for example, when we realized that the Harrington story is more likely true than not given David Grush trying to get him under oath and tell his story, we started to look at the timeline. Well, you think about it. What happens in 47? Yeah, there is Roswell, and it's the military, and they don't want to talk about anything. Then movies start getting made in the 50s that are about flying saucers, and a couple of them have CIA people that are part of them. But what happens in 1953? The Robertson panel gets convened by the CIA. I'm getting to chase, Brandon. Right. It gets convened by the CIA. And what do they come up with? They say, yeah, we got to really make people not take this very seriously. That seems to be a policy statement they come up with. But what do they decide? That might be a very specific, specific answer. Let's call up Walt. Walt Disney. Let's get him on board. And then what happens in the aftermath? Walt Disney's guy, Ward Kimball, thinks they're going to do a documentary and they're going to have real footage given by the government that goes forward, and then it gets pulled away. Then in the 70s, you got Emanager and Linda Moulton, Howe and Sandler. Who think they're also going to get footage. Then it get pulled away. Then in the 80s, you've got. Got that. The whole thing with the majestic 12 documents. But then that's where our story fits in. In the 90s, it seems like there is not only a confluence of UFO projects. I mean, in 1996, when we were just going on the air Time and Newsweek had aliens on their cover the same week.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Just like Bruce Springsteen before. Right. And suddenly everybody's talking aliens. And you got the Roswell anniversary coming up in 97. Right. And that's where this Chase Brandon guy shows up in Hollywood and he's opening up a. Some kind of CIA operation where they can advise people on things like this.

[B]

He's like a. He's going to be the official liaison between the CIA and, and Hollywood.

[A]

And based on some of the people that have come forward to us, and we're uncovering more all the time, it does look like there's this big bubble of interest in trying to soft disclose or use Hollywood as a bit more of a authentic conduit. And it looks like that's going forward. But then what happens? 2001, 9, 11, and suddenly the idea that we're going to disclose aliens doesn't seem as good a policy when you're at war with terrorism. And Dick Cheney's leading it. And we all know Dick Cheney probably is involved in this mess to a certain degree.

[C]

Brush said that he was the last guy to be a pyramid when, you know, we had some vital legacy UFO program structure.

[A]

Correct. So disclosure goes away for a while, and then it's like, okay, we got a new plan. We're going to get Hillary Clinton in because she believes in it. She'll do it. But then she loses. Right. And then you say, well, let's, you know, maybe Tom DeLonge can go do his thing for a while and, and now it's just too big a thing. You can't hold it off. And we get Disclosure day coming out at the same time. Age of Disclosure is coming out at the same time Trump is disclosing documents and things. There's a continuity that seems to be laying itself out about how we have sort of muddled our. That's how. I guess that's the word I would use. We are muddling toward disclosure.

[C]

Bryce, you said something really interesting early on. You said that, that when you were working with Ross Coldheart, you met Grush alongside him and that you conducted maybe the first ever interview with David Grusch.

[A]

I didn't conduct It. Ross did, but I put it on camera.

[C]

You put it on camera at your house?

[A]

At my house.

[C]

At your house, yeah. What was that like?

[A]

Well, it's so weird.

[C]

Did he learn anything interesting?

[A]

Well, I mean, it's become an interesting artifact. I mean, because again, what Brett and I are all about, and it seems like you're about it too, which is, let's bear witness to this moment in history. So let's all sort of be transparent, add our little piece, maybe all the pieces together. We'll assemble this mosaic of contact and disclosure or whatever. So, yeah, I had heard about this source Ross had because we'd been doing the show for a while and he hadn't named him until then. He did. And then I knew about Dave Crush. And then one day it's like, hey, I'm going to be in LA on next Thursday, or whatever it was. And so we all went to lunch, me and Ross and another guy that was involved in and help setting up the News Nation thing. And Dave Grush. And everybody thought, well, we better again, I thought we were doing it for practice. The idea is like, we don't want Dave to fold his cards on News Nation and do a bad interview. Let's give him some practice. And so everyone looks at me. You're the Hollywood guy. Can't you get a camera over here? And so I called my son, who's the director. I said, hey, Jared, do you think you could come over here right now and shoot an interview for me? And like all kids, he's like, well, you know, dad, I'm kind of busy right now. And I said, I'll give you 500 bucks. And he said, I'll be right over. So he came over when we, you know, Dave Grush was in, you know, cargo shorts and a T shirt for this thing, and it was just a practice thing. And to be honest with you, if you look at it right now, it looks more like a hostage video than anything else because he's up against the wall. But yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So that is the first time he ever told his story on video.

[C]

Did he say anything interesting?

[A]

Well, I. Everything he said was interesting to me. I mean, this is the first time I heard things like about the Italian magenta. Magenta crash.

[C]

Anything above and beyond what came out in the News Nation.

[A]

Well, see, that's just it. Not to me. I felt like. Because the first time I heard it, when he laid it out in my house, I was reeling as a lot of people were from the News Nation. But remember the News Nation thing? Ross did is was an hour with commercials taken out. So not. And with introductions and all that. So maybe Grush is on camera spewing whatever he's going to spew for 30 minutes. But you know, we ran the camera for two and a half hours in my house and I was there for the News Nation taping and that went like three hours plus. So there's a lot of tape. And so what we had always said said is at some point Ross was on board for this. We had always said at some point these are artifacts of history and we're going to put the whole thing out there. And I thought that's what was going to happen. And people have gotten cold feet and said, you can't do it.

[C]

Gotcha. Anything you heard. Oh, in the room where you were like, this is a really crazy fact that you've held since then that you think the public should know or.

[A]

No, I wish, I wish. I will say that Crush's attorneys seem to feel like something was said. I need to go review all these tapes with a fresh mind because the way I remember it was very similar. And although my pressure to actually put this out there has been met with like, I asked Dave Grush a few weeks ago if I could put it out because it was three years. And he waited about two minutes and wrote me back and said, bryce, I do not give you permission to do that. So I think his attorney has said, you don't need this trouble, David.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I understand that he's in a probably 360 exposed position. It's an interview from a long time

[A]

ago and he probably doesn't feel he looks great and you know, and he, he probably doesn't have the time to go review it. But I would, you know, I would like to review it. I'd like to you to air it. I'd like you to just put it out as a show, you know what I'm saying? I, I don't think that I. If there was something historically strange that he said in that interview that he didn't say to Coltart, that would be worthy and maybe that would be the one a lawyer wouldn't want him to put out. But I sat there through both and did not see the difference.

[C]

I think it might end up having really positive unintended effect of like, this is this guy. And it's totally candid, like not media trained, like first little trial run. And he's consistent on all of the same things that he said since.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's just an important piece of History. Just like, for example, the News Nation thing. Why. Why did they change their minds about that? Ross said all along that the whole thing would go up on the Internet. And then people changed their minds and said that they couldn't do it. I'll tell you what. I'll make you a deal. I will. I will watch them the whole thing, and if I find anything, I'll give you a call.

[C]

Okay. Brent, you are a lifelong experiencer.

[B]

I am, yes. I'm kind of the molder to Price's Scully.

[C]

Oh, there you go.

[A]

I don't do autopsy.

[C]

Well, I want to hear more about that because I. You know, in researching you, there's some really trippy things that you've experienced, and I don't know exactly what order to go, maybe chronologically, but.

[B]

Yeah, well. And I don't want to turn this into a Brent Fest, but I want to give you a couple things, though, because I think I'm going to. If you bear with me, I'm going to bring this all the way back to disclosure day in a very strange way. And that's really kind of the microcosm of my life. Um, if you look back at a bunch of things that have happened to me, there's weird pattern recognition that you can apply and say what seemed like a curse or chaotic was actually very beneficial and was a sequence of events, and sometimes they're out of time. Right. Like, this had to happen for this to happen. No, this had to happen for this to make sense. Right. You know, it's like. So I say all of that because I think that the couple things you need to understand are. To start with, I need to give you my philosophy, which has been born of all of this, and that is that we look at the phenomenon as this broad kind of way of saying that it's like the Twilight Zone. You kind of get into it and things just don't make sense. You're no longer in consensus reality. But we also do something where we put things in silos or in buckets and we say there's UFOs and aliens, and we say there's the paranormal. That's very different. And then we say there's the afterlife. I've had experiences across all three of those. And I'm saying it's all the same thing in that the commonality is consciousness.

[C]

Right?

[B]

It's. The commonality is those experiences are being filtered through my consciousness. And so I have a version of a UFO or a UAP experience. I have a version. Brent's version of a paranormal Experience. And I have a version of the after afterlife. As Brent Right. And it's that continuity of my consciousness is what makes all of those unique and authentic. To anyone else it's like, well, that's just an interesting story, right? Until you've lived it, until you've experienced it. That's the only truth that I believe you can count on. But because I've had all of these strange experiences, I realize everyone else is just trying to think of it like, what's the objective way, the rational way to view this? Let's just look at. It's too hard. When you start lumping in paranormal and ufo. Now suddenly I'm on skinwalker ranch. It's all confusing, but it is all part of a spectrum. It is all informed by some, by one kind of idea, large idea. Probably the biggest elephant in the room if you ask me about human consciousness.

[C]

I think so too. And I want to get into the core stories, but I fully agree. I think if you actually get into kind of the upper echelons of, you know, former program or program adjacent people and what they talk about in the way they talk, whether it's Jake Barber feeling emotional and locked on to the craft, that sort of maybe either emotionally guiding or manipulating him, depending on how you want to look at it, or it's Jim McCaskey talking about like some higher platonic order and like, you know, like the mental interfaces and that sort of thing. You get into far deeper truths which the Office of Naval Intelligence has also always been into. This idea of parapsychology, they were working hand in glove with the Princeton Parapsychology Lab with Stanford Research Institute. And ultimately if you go look at those experiments like random event generators, this idea that the mind can sort of non locally affect these what are supposedly supposed to be random quantum mechanical events, everything else that you say has to be downstream of that.

[B]

Absolutely.

[C]

Your reality has to be sort of local to you. You and sense made by you. And you have a unique interface and I have a unique interface. And I think these objects that we call UFOs and these hangers exist at the boundary and they're sort of. I think if there is a psyop here, it's like space aliens. That is a quick snap to grid analytical conclusion that is very premature. But okay, I want to get into the whole story.

[B]

So the first thing you need to know is that for reasons I cannot explain, that really make no sense. I have seen six people die in pretty horrific ways right around me throughout my life. And they were all strangers Right. And so there was no. And I've never worked in the military. I've never worked in a hospital. I've been a paramedic. It's not like. It was all just crazy, weird, weird, like Final Destination type sequence. But I was in the middle of them. What, right now? So you go. If that happened to you once, that would be like a defining moment in your life. Traumatic, right? Twice you go, wow, that's weird. Three times you go, okay, it's you, dude. Like, you're a magnet for this stuff. 4, 5, 6.

[C]

I'm gonna leave the.

[B]

But you're not a stranger anymore, so you did a really smart thing.

[C]

Okay, nice. Okay, we're friends now.

[B]

You're safe.

[C]

We're good.

[A]

Well played.

[B]

Wise. So I'm not going to get into all of them, but there's a couple I want to highlight. The first one happened to me when I was five years old. I was living in Berkeley at the time. This is before we moved to Walnut Creek. And the Berkeley Hills has this park at the top called Tilden Park. And there's a road called Marin Boulevard or Avenue or something, which kind of comes down the side of the Berkeley Hills in a road that just kind of does this. It's like a roller coaster. And I had been up there with a. My dad, and we were in an old VW Bug. And I used to love coming down that road because it was, like, steep, right? And then. So I was sitting there holding on to kind of the bar in front of the glove box, riding the car down, right? And we're kind of going down, and I noticed kind of out of the corner of my eye that there's someone's washing their car. And the water is kind of running off and it's. And I'm thinking, oh, we're chasing the water as it's going down the hill. And I'm thinking, oh, this is so cool. And in front of us, which I'm not really paying attention to, there's a girl on a motorcycle. She's in, like, jean shorts and a halter top. No helmet, because this was 68. And I'm watching her, I'm watching the water. And she turns. And as she's turning, the water has just gone across the street that she's turning into. And when the back tire hits that water, her bike slides, slides, stops, flips her. She goes flipping over and hits. They used to have metal fenders in those days. Hits the metal fender, knocks her head right off. It rolls into the road. And my dad has to slam on the brakes to not hit her head. Oh, dude. So. And I'm watching all of this, right, Hanging on, and my dad turns my head and says, don't look, Right? And he gets out of the car to go deal with. With this. Well, of course my head's on a swivel eye. That's all I can do is look. But I'm five years old, so in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, well, I'm not focusing on the fact that the body is just flailing and blood everywhere and whatnot. I'm focusing on the head, thinking, oh, well, they can just put the head back on like you would, like a GI Joe doll or something. It didn't really occur to me, but that happened, right? So that's the first death that I saw. The second death that I saw was. Was. Well, actually, this is the third death. I can't talk about the second one because it's. My mom will get upset. The third death was I was on Telegraph Avenue. I'm 15 years old, 16 years old, and I've got a girlfriend or I've got a date. I'm sorry. We're walking down. It's a Sunday, and it's like Twilight. It's, like, just perfect because all of the day markets are gone and whatnot. So everyone's moved out, and it's just kind of like, quiet Telegraph Avenue. And we are heading to one of the restaurants that we know will not cart us, so we're gonna go have pizza and beer. So we're walking, talking, and our hands kind of hit. And all of a sudden we're holding hands. Like, oh, my goodness.

[A]

That first date.

[B]

Like, this is the moment. Like, everything is perfect. A couple seconds after that, there's a weird rush of motion, and I'm like, what's going on? And the next thing I know, my arm is yanked backwards as the girl is running the opposite direction. Direction. And I kind of let her go, and she just sprints. She's sprinting the opposite direction. I'm like, wait, what's going on? And I kind of look down, and there had been, like, a weird noise that my brain couldn't quite process. And I looked down, and there's a body this far in front of us, and it's somebody who obviously has landed on their head, and their head is crushed open and. And their pants are down around their ankles, and they're just flailing, and all sorts of stuff is happening because they jumped. Because when I look up three stories up, there's an open window with a curtain blowing. And they jumped. They missed us. They missed landing on my head and her head by this much.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[B]

And so, again, like, what are the odds that this would happen? So I. I don't even know how to respond. I'm just kind of numb. And I think, okay, I. I've got a. And no one is stopping, by the way. There's, like, a skateboarder that runs by, drives by, and goes, oh, gnarly, like, and it's, like, very surreal. And so I walk into the hotel. This turns out to be a hotel. And there's a guy on the phone, you know, talking to somebody behind the counter. And he's like, yeah, yeah, I'm doing this stuff. And he's irritated that I'm there. He's like, yes.

[A]

What?

[B]

And I go, some guy's dying out on your sidewalk. Okay. I'm like, he jumped from your window? How many stories up? I'm like, I don't know. Three or four. What did he look like? Like, he can't really see his face anymore. Did he have a beard? I think so. Hold on a second. Yeah. Guess what? Jim jumped again. Yeah, I know. And why does this happen on my shift? I'll call the police. Thank you.

[C]

What?

[B]

And I'm like, so just go back out there. He's like. He's, like, back to his conversation. So I walk back out there. There's still no one has stopped, and the body has stopped moving. Right. Okay. I'm not gonna dwell on it. The whole point is, is that very strange, very surreal. What are the odds?

[C]

Seven of these?

[B]

Six. Six of these. That was two. Okay. One of them had a really weird component that I want to bring up because it's important to. Disclosure day. One of them. I was at lax, and it was early. It was between kind of like right after college, before I, like, my career really took off. I'm working as a limousine driver in Hollywood, which is a job I would recommend to no one, by the way. And I'm coming out of lax, and I've just dropped off someone and walked them to their gate with their bags. And I'm walking over to the town car, whatever, that I've got parked in the parking lot. And LAX is like, two big bands. It's like, there's the inner thing where shuttles and whatnot come in. Then there's the big loop that you can just drive around with cars and buses and all of sorts. Sorts of other stuff. And I'm walking across the inside band And I'm looking straight across to people that are waiting over here. And there's a bus parked right at the edge of the crosswalk, so you can't see the traffic moving back and forth. And meanwhile, as I'm walking to the crosswalk, it's red, okay? So everything is stopped. I'm sorry, it's green. So everybody's walking across it. And the woman next to me, me catches up to me, and she is an airline stewardess and she's arguing with a passenger who's followed her out there. And she's like, kind of pissed off and arguing with him. This is all happening in parallel to me. And so we step onto the little medium between the two through lanes, and I notice, oh, wait, the light has just turned red. Okay, but there's a bus right here. So I stop. But she's arguing with the guy, so she's not paying attention. The last thing she saw was that it was green. So she walks out and I'm kind of like. Everything goes into slow motion and I'm like, oh, no. She's walking out and all of a sudden somebody comes that she doesn't see and hits her. And her whole body goes flying up into the air. And here's the interesting thing about this. In that moment, LAX is a very noisy place. I heard nothing except her breathing. What? She is flying up in the air. All of the sounds disappear. And all I'm hearing is. And I'm like, what is that noise? And then she comes down, she slams onto the ground. She kind of is all. Her body's all tangled up and stuff. She kind of looks up through her hair is in her face and her face is all bloody and she gasps and then just dies. And right in that moment, all of the noise came back in lax. So I had this like incredible weird connection where kind of time slowed and audio manipulated and I was suddenly connected to her in some weird way. Right, okay, so last one I'll tell you you about. We're at the Dark Skies production office. It's late night. We're working one night. Everyone's doing stuff, and it's like on a Friday night. And all of a sudden there's like an explosion outside on the. And it's like in the worst part of North Hollywood. It's a kind of industrial area. There's an explosion outside. So my assistant and I go running out. We're the first ones outside, and we see across the street there's a car that has, like, flipped and gone into an old, like, auto Yard. And it's behind, like, a. It's flipped and it's gone behind barbed wire fence. So there's, like, no way we can get to that. And then down the street, there's another car that's gone off the road into kind of the parking lot, and it's kind of, like, stopped. And I look down there, and the front door opens, and a teenage kid runs out. Just takes off, like, hit and run, whatever was going on there. So I look at my assistant and I go, go call 911. So I run down to the car. You get down to the car? Well, obviously the driver's gone. So I go over to the passenger seat, and I start to look in the window, and there's an older Hispanic man just kind of slumped in the seat. And I knock, and I'm like, sir, sir, are you okay? Does not have a seatbelt on. He kind of looks up at me like this, and there's blood coming out of his ear. And I kind of reach in, and the door's unlocked. So I open it up and I kneel down and I go, sir, are you okay? We're calling 911. There's going to be help here soon. And he reaches out this hand like this, and I take it. And he's looking at me, and he's kind of, like, breathing really slow. And all of a sudden, he goes. And in that moment, I feel all of his energy go through my body. Like his soul. Like, that's the only way I can describe it. And I'm seeing images of his life. You know, it's like the life. When you say, like people see their life flash before your eyes. His life flashed before my eyes. I'm hearing Spanish and all these things that. They're not in my consciousness. Whoa. And all of a sudden, he's gone. He's dead.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[B]

In that moment. And there's this pause, and I'm like, wow. Suddenly, all of these incidents kept moving me closer and closer to an understanding of death. And now I get this experience, right? And in the backseat, I hear, papa. And this little boy pops up, like he knew somehow, intuitively. Cause nothing was said, really, for a minute or. And he just knew that his father had passed away, right? So all of that happens. And then when you say, well, why would all of that happen to me? Like, we say, well, that's a curse, right? But here's the thing. About five years ago, I had cancer. And I'm not gonna go through that whole journey, but I almost died. I was In a hospital during COVID I had had a whole reaction to something I got sepsis from after the cancer surgery and whatnot.

[C]

Oh, Jesus, man, I'm sorry.

[B]

So I. In a hospital all by myself in ICU during COVID with a temperature of 105.5.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[B]

And for several days, I'm just battling that, right? And the nurses are like. They keep making me sign the thing because I have a purple wristband on. Like, you don't want to be revived? We're just confirming. We're just confirming because you're not going to probably make it. And at one point in one of those nights, I'm just laying there by myself, and all of a sudden, light entities come to the foot of my bed. And because of everything that had happened to me in my life, I wasn't scared of death. I was there. I understood it intuitively. I just was like, oh, this is my time if I want it. And it wasn't like, oh, hey, it's Grandpa Joe, it's dad, it's Grandma, whatever. It was just weird. It was. It was like that. This is why I respond to contact so well. It was like the end of contact. When Jodie Foster sees that light being kind of come closer, and then it becomes her father. This was before. It becomes. It was just that light. There's these light beings. There was three of them, and they're just kind of there for me if I want them. And I don't speak to them, they don't speak to me, but I feel this real sense of calm. All of the body horror I was going through with a temperature of 105, I didn't feel anything. I just felt good. I felt, like, totally at peace. And I was like, no, I have something I still need to do. I didn't even know what it was at that time, but I just made that thought in my head, and they just receded. Wow.

[C]

And you got better, and I got

[B]

better, and here I am.

[C]

That's amazing.

[B]

One of the things that I. You know, you can call this whatever you want, rationalization, or writing your own narrative. When Bryce said, we need to do this podcast and you need to tell some of your stories, I'm like, you know what? This is what I was supposed. This is why I wanted to stay alive. And when I went to my family, they had been the ones that said, please don't tell these stories. They were like, you know what? You need to tell these stories, because if you had died when this happened, we would be telling your Stories secondhand. And that's not nearly as powerful as people hearing them from you.

[C]

It all makes sense in hindsight.

[B]

It all makes sense in hindsight.

[C]

What do you think those light beings were?

[B]

It's hard for me to articulate this because I'm not a religious person. And I will willingly admit that I resist trying to codify anything in religious terms, but I feel like in some ways these were my guardian angel type beings. I felt a total connection with them. Not in a familial way, but just in a coherence. I just knew who they were and I trusted them and I felt like everything was going to be okay. And I felt like they had a connection with me, even though I didn't understand what it was.

[C]

Did you get better right after that experience?

[B]

I got better within the next 24 hours and I was leaving in the hospital.

[C]

Whoa.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, this.

[C]

I don't even know what to say after all of that. I mean, that's a. Those are some gnarly experiences. The six deaths that you witnessed. I don't. I mean, that's hard to hear for anyone. It's. It's super graphic and intense and I can only imagine, like, how are you. You're able to tell the stories in such detail. And I imagine you had to in each time, sort of process and integrate what had just happened.

[B]

Yes, but all of them are building on. Right. So it's like you have the first experience when I'm five, I can barely comprehend it.

[C]

Right, right.

[B]

And then experiences continue to build on that. And there. I wouldn't say, you know, there's a way to say, oh, you were being desensitized. No, I think I was being slowly awakened. Right. And again, this is all like how you choose to view your own narrative. I could have viewed all of that as. As I'm traumatized. I need therapy for the rest of my life. I can't be around things that trigger me. I think that's one viable path you can take if you have those type of experiences. Fortunately, I don't know that I ever made a conscious choice to say, no, don't do that, don't fall into that path. But now to connect a few other dots. I've had out of body experiences. I have been visited by entities. Not ufo, not like aliens, but like paranormal type entities.

[C]

Like what?

[B]

So here's one I'll share with you. I was in LA working. This is when my writing career was taking off and I was writing a script on a ghost story. And this, this is one of those things where you start to realize intention, like what you put your mind on, especially if you have a certain type of mind, you become a magnet for things. That's the only way to view this. I am trying to write this story, and I get obsessed with this idea that I'm writing a comedy. And I can't get past the scene where the main character sees his dead girlfriend as a ghost. Because I'm like, okay, all I can do, right, is the comedy version of that. But I need to know what would really happen. Like, if I really saw a ghost, what's that reaction? And then I'll twist it and make it funny, but I need to know what would really happen. And so I start reading some ghost stories and I'm like, this is all just very. It's not interesting. So it's like I didn't find what I wanted. So I was going through this phase where I was very frustrated because I couldn't get the answers I wanted. And my ritual at that time was I would write very late at night from probably about midnight till 4am and then I would sleep in, get up around noon. It's the writer's life, right?

[C]

Right.

[B]

So I would get up and then I would walk out. I'd pick up the LA Times, I'd come back, I'd sit in my bed, I'd read the paper, whatever, start to plan out my day, and I'd go do my thing. So I'm doing this one morning and my cat's on my leg. I'm sitting on the bed. It's broad. I mean, it's like noon, and I'm reading the LA Times, and already my mind is drifting to, am I going to even try and write that scene again today? Right? And I hear this voice say, I'm right here. I'm like, I mean, here's the thing. A voice has spoken to me a number of times throughout my life. The best way I can describe it is. And it's weird, is that it's. If someone's putting, like, one of those, like, cooking funnels in my right ear and they're giving me. There's pouring in pure information. It's not words. It's just, like, intelligence, pure intelligence. And I just know it. And it's not male or female, but it's an order. It's like, oh, I feel like at that moment, I'm a Manchurian Candidate and something is speaking to me in a higher language and I just understand it. And it's like, I'm right here. Where is here? I don't. So I lower the paper and there's a woman standing at the foot of my bed.

[C]

What?

[B]

And not great, but she's translucent but three dimensional. So I can see her full body, but I can also see through her. And she's in like kind of a tattered sundress and she's got long stringy blonde hair. But it's her eyes that get me. Her eyes are. Imagine you give like a 3 year old a piece of charcoal and you say, draw a circle and they go. Her eyes are two black circles that are undulating, which is not comforting. Like that woman's like, is a really bad one night stand. So I'm looking at this woman kind of like spellbound, and all of a sudden there's like a rush of motion. The paper falls out of my hand, my cat digs into my legs, jumps off the bed, takes off. My head slams back. I hit the headboard and I feel my whole body being pushed down and like pain on my biceps. And I'm like, what the. And all of a sudden I'm stuck. And I feel tingling around my neck. And I kind of do this rack focus moment. She's jumped on top of me, she's pounced on me. Her knees are on my biceps and she's holding my arms down and she's holding right over me. Her hair is ticking. And as I kind of take all of this in, I look up into her swirling black eyes and I see the most beautiful constellations and cosmos you've ever seen in your life.

[A]

What?

[B]

Like through her, through her, like shots of NASA that NASA has of deep space through her eyes. And I have, at that point in my life, I've already had at least one out of body experience. I start to feel my soul leave my body going up into those eyes. I'm literally being pulled up like a vacuum. And then I hear that voice again. And the voice says, just look away. And again, it's a command. It's like then I must just look away with all the strength I can muster. I turn until I'm not looking at the other eyes and it's gone. And you know what my first reaction was? Come back. The reason was, is because I have never felt so alive in my life. I felt like if you just took two fingers and put them into an electrical socket, you're supercharged. I was looking around the room, I could look at the stucco and it was like looking into the Grand Canyon. I could see every detail, every dust particle was like a You know, a sagebrush. Brilliant. I mean, it was incredible. And I wanted that experience to come back, but it didn't. I get on the phone, I call every friend. Oh, my ghost and a woman and the thing. And everyone's like, oh, that's a great story. You should write about that. I'm like, no, no, it's not a story. It really happened. So pretty soon I'm like, no one believes me. Everyone's like, oh, you fell back asleep. Fell back asleep. It was noon. I'd been reading the paper, like. Like nobody believes me. So I just kind of start, like, not even thinking about it anymore. And I'm like, I'm not even gonna do the script anymore. And then one day a friend calls me up and he goes, hey, remember that story you told me a couple weeks ago? I go, yeah. And he goes, I want you to walk down the street to Soap Plant, which was like this esoteric book and novelty store. I lived right off Melrose at the time, and pick up the New Whole Earth catalog and turn to page one. I'm like, why? And he goes, just do it. And then call me back. Okay. So I walk down, I'm like, go in. I find the New Whole Earth catalog. For your audience who doesn't know this was pre Internet. This was the Internet. This was like an analog version of the Internet. Someone went and collected all the coolest short stories and pamphlets and whatnot, things that were out of print, and you'd find what you wanted and send in your money, and they'd send you back the hard copy. So I'm flipping through, I find the page, and I'm like, okay, what's on this? And I find this book of out of print ghost stories from scandinavia in the 15th century. And it's like, one of the stories is called Witch Rider, and it's about this myth of a woman in a tattered sundress who will appear at the foot of your bed, jump on you, and steal your soul if you'll let her. What now? On one hand you go, oh, well, that's just dumb. Except that one. Why was the myth from Scandinavia in the 15th century coming to me in the 20th century in a bungalow apartment in LA on a Tuesday at noon? And so at that moment, the horror of being connected to something so much bigger and so much more random and so much weirder now all the fear that I didn't feel before, I felt, and it went up my spine. And I remember just throwing the book, like, ugh, just, oh, get it away. Away from me. So the coda to this sequence is, I lived with the weird. Like this. That whole experience didn't make any sense to me because why would the voice that said into my ear, I'm right here, as if, go ahead, have this cool experience waiting for you, then also be the one that says, just look away. Like, oh, you've had enough, kid. Okay, Just look away. That was all I could. But that didn't make a lot of sense to me. This entity that had been mythologized as this horrible thing would take pity on a kid. And it wasn't until last year I was talking to a friend who was a psychic medium. I start to tell her a story, and she goes, oh, that was your guardian angel or your higher self or whatever you want to call it, talking to you. I'm like, really? I don't understand. Like, why did they say, I'm right here? Because they knew you were about to have an experience that you'd be challenged with, and they wanted to let you know that you weren't alone.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

And that's why they said, just look away.

[C]

Whoa.

[B]

Because you would have died right there on that bed.

[C]

Whoa, dude.

[B]

I know, I know. So that's the kind of stuff that I been.

[C]

I have to ask you, because you mentioned this before we started rolling, you also saw a Nordic alien.

[B]

I did.

[C]

Where did you see a Nordic alien?

[B]

On Orcus Island. Okay. I was visiting a friend there. I'll keep this one short. I was visiting a friend there, and I woke up the next morning after we were talking about a bunch of stuff, and he'd gone down to the store, which is quite a ways away from his property, to get some food. And so I'm like, oh, it's a beautiful day. I'm gonna take a walk on his property. Like 20 acres in the woods. So I start walking, and I come over this ridge, and there'd been no one out. And all of a sudden, there's this person who literally looks like a male model, like a Scandinavian male model with kind of longish blonde hair in a weird kind of more like European clothes, whatever. And they say, hello, Brent. Like, they're about 20ft a little bit further down the hill. And I'm thinking, okay, I did not see his mouth move. First of all, how's he know my name? Secondly, I did not see his mouth move. And I was like, hello? And he said, turn around and walk the other way. And he mouth's not moving, but he's not looking threatening. And I kind of was like, got it on, it turn and I walk away. And now I'm getting a little bit freaked out. I get a waist down and I look back and he's not there anymore.

[C]

Was he tall? Blonde?

[B]

Yes. But he was further down the hill. So I didn't have a chance to look him in the eye. And I'm six four, so I didn't have a chance to look at him and say, oh, this guy's 72 or whatever. But he was well put together, like a specimen. Like an absolute specimen. So I ask, my friend comes back and I say, okay, I just had a really weird experience. He goes, oh, with one of those tall white people. I'm like, what do you know about them? And he goes, they have a compound on Orcas Island. And he said, there's a lot of weird people that have compounds here because there's weird energy that comes, like, every couple months. And they come in a black helicopter, unmarked, to a facility that's all gated, and there's about eight of them. And they come here and they stay here for a couple days at a time. Apparently, when this end energy is really high and they get recharged.

[C]

Whoa.

[B]

And I'm like, have you ever met them? And he goes, no, they don't. They're very select in who they meet. He goes, there's a story about a number of years ago, one of them came down into one of the pubs, right? And just walked through the door one day and said, I want to have a drink. And everyone's like, who are you? And he's like, I live up the way. And they're like, okay, cool. And he's like, so, what's it like to live here? And they're like, on Orcas? And he goes, no, on Earth.

[C]

What?

[B]

Yeah. And everyone was like, okay, dude, what is going on here? And then he had a couple drinks, and people had to, like, get him outside. And he's like, no, it's okay. I'll walk home, you know? And then he left. And so there's. Now is that urban legend on Orcus. Like, this was like, is it like

[C]

a pretty prevalent urban legend?

[B]

Yes, people. I mean, you ask almost anyone that lives on there, it's like, oh, those. Those tall white people. People, like, they come here, but they're very private. They don't intermingle with people. But there's a lot.

[C]

I have a cousin, I was telling you, who moved there. I got to ask him about the tall, white, Nordic aliens.

[B]

So, circling this all back to disclosure day, it's like one of the things that Bryce and I talked about after we saw it was Spielberg told a really compelling story about gray aliens that was not a huge human being. I don't know, it could have been a hybrid. So maybe not a true, like extraterrestrial. Maybe it was an ultra terrestrial. Maybe it was like someone from Atlantis or you know what, there's so many theories around the Nordics, I don't know. But that was not just a good looking man. He spoke to me without opening his mouth. Okay, so, but, but none of that is touched upon in disclosure day. The, the, the other species that many people have said no even at the highest levels.

[C]

Although there was one moment where Emily, Emily Blunt is in the hospital because she spontaneously starts speaking Russian and making clicking noises as a newscaster and she looks out the window because there are men in black suits, presumably, I think from the FBI who want to like ask her questions. She looks at them, she goes, they're not human.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And so there's some ideas being seeded around elements of the intelligence community and the government in itself not being human.

[A]

Correct.

[C]

Which is fascinating. And I always think is the hardest part of this whole disclosure thing to grapple with is the idea that they're not only are they here, but they're probably in charge of disclosure because they have like this, you know, 360 control over a lot of this stuff. And they're probably in charge of at least, at the very least, you know, chains of command within government, if not like the entire thing.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And like that's really hard to see. Say like, how do you go? Then all of a sudden disclosure is essentially ceding your control immediately. So like, how, how do you do that? How do you make a speech saying like, I'm, I'm not actually in charge.

[B]

Right.

[C]

What do you, what, you know, no,

[B]

I, and I, I, I absolutely agree. We've talked about this too, that, you know, the minute that disclosure moves into, it's not just people coming to visit us from outer space, that it's much more kind of anything from Lovecraft, which is like really scary. They're all around us to, you know, Body Snatchers, where it's like a bunch of humans that you think, you know, your neighbor might be an alien or might be a hybrid. The minute you move into the X Men thing, we're back to the red scare. We're back to, well, wait a minute, so some of the people on this planet look like humans, but they're really aliens or they're shape or they're presenting as aliens, they're shape shifting, whatever they're doing. I don't like that.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Because then how do I know? Now I don't feel. Not only am I not the apex predator on the planet, I don't know who to trust or who to believe. You're into like a whole. That's. To me, when people talk about ontological shock, it's not just, oh, you're going to remove your free will. It's like, I don't know who I'm interacting with anymore.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Why?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, clearly the veil is thin with you.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

You know, I meet occasionally people and I identify with this myself somewhat where like, they just have an absurd amount of weird synchronicities in their life and there's something going on. And I don't know if it's a gradient between that and like, you know, normal people who just, you know, have like, goals to like, live, you know, at the white picket, behind the white picket fence and in the house and, you know, and they just want the job and they want to become partner or whatever, you know, whatever. But that, that is a type of person that like, it's like these serendipity maximizer, synchronicity maximizer types where things just kind of happen around them and I don't, I don't know what that is. Do you, do you have any theories? Do you, either of you have any theories?

[A]

I, I don't have any stories that rate with that. I have. We actually have one synchronicity story that came out between the two, two of us when we started working together. Brent was admiring my UFO books and he was like, hey, you have a lot of UFO books. And he said, have you ever read the Mothman Prophecies?

[C]

Oh yeah.

[A]

And at the time I had not. And I said, no, I really haven't. And it's interesting because there's no Amazon at the time. You can't like have it delivered to your house the next day. So I had to go down to Melrose Place to a metaphysical bookstore and find a copy of Mothman Prophecies. And I was reading it and I was keeping it in the backseat of my, my car and I took my young son to see a movie. So like a 7:30 movie getting out at 9:30. And so it's sitting in the back seat and as we're walking out of the movie and you know, it was a dark parking lot, a couple lights, but very dark as we're walking out, I see a guy at the End of the cars where we're going, and he's a tall guy in a dark black duster jacket, you know, almost western kind of thing. And he looked weird. I just thought, this is disturbing. I don't want to see anybody in the parking lot. So I moved my son. I was on this side. I go, why don't you walk over here? And I said, don't make eye contact. Right. We'll just walk past this guy. So we just continue to walk onto our car. And as this guy passes me, he is in a big, long duster jacket, black. And as he passes me, he's holding a book. And it's the Mothman prophecies. How's that happen? How does that happen?

[B]

What are the odds?

[C]

Well, it goes back to that Colman Domingo character who's, you know, he's moving sets around while he's coordinating, you know, locations for the, you know, main characters to go to and kind of weaving everything together. He's like in this architect position, and it's as if there is some sort of reality management system. And you can go back to Plato's Republic. You have this guardian class. We are in the cave and we're chasing our tails. And that would be the dirty little secret about ufology or something would be. I just had a guest on a couple days ago named Max Direkshani. He does all sorts of amazing stuff on lunar anomalies, Mars anomalies. And he was like, I just wrote to the Prince of Liechtenstein, Hans Adams, who's super fascinated with all the UFO stuff. He, I think, interviewed. He got all the Roswell witnesses together and he interviewed them, and he's just, you know, is interested in the pair. Princeton psychology, parapsychology lab stuff. And I think he, you know, he was in touch with. There's photo with him with Hal put off and, like, just knows everybody in the UFO world. And apparently he wrote a very thoughtful letter back to Max who. Who wrote to him. And he was like. Like, I, you know, really tried to get to the bottom of this topic. But every single time and think of it, this guy has all the resources in the world. Like, he's, you know, conspiracies are made about this guy. You know, I'm sure they think of him akin to, you know, the Rothschilds and, you know, the scent of the heart of power, you know, and he's like, every single time I thought I was going to get incontrovertible proof and a clear answer, like, I'd come extremely close and it would slip through My fingers. And I mean, honestly, that I, I feel this. Without that amount of resources, I feel the same way. I, I, I feel like I'm, I'm chasing this thing and like something almost is going to happen, but then, like, mud's mud gets slung on it. So, like, you know, a certain amount of people just won't believe it because it looks kind of ridiculous or something. Whitley Schreiber talks about this as well, where he says, I think they chose me as a communication node for disclosure because I was a horror writer. And yes, you couldn't separate fact from fiction.

[B]

We've talked about that too.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, you are maybe our example as well.

[A]

Yeah. But at the beginning, when Whitley's Communion book came out, because he'd been a horror writer, almost everybody said he's just making it up because he just, he's using what we call cover of, of non fiction. Yeah, he's using not the COVID of fiction. Non fiction. He was pretending that his novel was true.

[C]

Right, right.

[B]

Which neither of us believe, but I can understand that perception. When we've told our stories, people go, but you guys are just Hollywood writers. That's what you do. You come up with these crazy stories. Yes, we do. I think in some ways the stories that we have around Dark Skies are more interesting than what we could have come up with, to be perfectly candid, because they're just too weird. They're too, like, things just don't add up.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, and, and that's a hallmark of the phenomenon.

[C]

They add up enough to keep you going down the thread, but not enough for you to stop and be like, I figured it out.

[B]

And then when you play it back for other people, they're like, well, why would this happen? It's like, oh, that's a really good question.

[C]

You're like, what are you talking about?

[B]

Yeah. Did you do, did you take a photo? Did you do a thing? No, I didn't. It's like, so all you have is this crazy story, but Hollywood makes sense.

[C]

Like, if you do, okay, so you do have some Guardian class, and then we're just sort of like, chasing our tail a little bit. Hollywood is this essential piece for the Guardian class because, you know, if you take, again, the parapsychology stuff at face value, that we sort of create our own reality, it's not purely random atomic interactions that congeal into our reality. Then, of course, shading our reality systematically with what we see on TV and in movies would be of interest to, you know, the sort of power structure.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Like, of course it would. And you know, Diana Pasulka, religious studies professor from UNC Wilmington, she wrote a great book called American Cosmic. And she notes we were talking about Outer Limits, the CBS show, before we started rolling. The Betty and Barney Hill abduction occurred, I think, 11 days after the first show. The pilot had come out and the aliens had eyes wrapping around their heads. And that seemed very similar to the Betty and Barney Hill experience. But it seems like we're being. These things are being shaded.

[A]

Well, there's a great connection. Let's take the Betty and Barney. Yes, the Outer Limits, I think it was called the Belaro Effect or something, which had that episode. And then they did have their event within a couple of weeks of that. But now think about it. So what happens in 1975? NBC makes a. The only movie that's ever been made about him is called. But the book was called the Interrupted Journey. The option that they make a movie called the UFO Incident, okay? James Earl Jones is the star, okay. And that's where a lot of people saw and heard about the Betty and Boy. Not a great film. I mean, by today's standards, no effects, and it's not that great. But what happens two weeks after the UFO incident? Travis Walton gets abducted.

[C]

That's wild.

[A]

Okay, so you just have this, okay, Outer Limits into Betty and Barney into the UFO incident and turning back on. And then what happens after Travis? You get the fire in the sky effect. And what happens with that? Hollywood comes in and goes, your real abduction. Tracy Torme, a friend of mine, wrote it. They tell him the real story of Travis isn't good enough. You have to do a better abduction. So the abduction people have seen in Fire in the sky isn't really what happened to him. So you've got all these truths shading into each other, and it's really, really hard to pull them all apart. But the one thing I will say, by the way, is the witch's hag that. That jumped Brent. I think Witches Cove on HBO just did a. Finally, they did their own episode of that. And when I was doing the Crow Stairway to Heaven producing that show, we did debate doing an episode about this because it's in the. It's. I mean, that's the thing. Stories like the witch jumping you from your bed, that goes back hundreds of years. You know, this stuff has been around, so you can't say one person just made up this story. You got to go. But it's in a. Yeah, it's in a lineage of people going that have always done this I think that's one of the frustrations of frankly researching UFOs.

[C]

And it's so, so hard. It's like you're staring at the sun or something. It's really, it's. And there's all sorts of examples of sort of predictive programming that the Simpsons seem to get an anomalous amount of. Right. You have this book called Wreck of the Titan written by Morgan Robertson in 1898, like 12 years before the Titanic. And it describes the Titanic to a T like perfectly. And you had these blue blooded elites on board and it was April and it was like the exact specs of the ship and it was at night. You have the adventures of Baron and Donald Trump in the 1890s. And of course Baron and Don, their time traveler. There's a lot of this stuff. It's really, really fascinating. And then you get into, around going back to Disclosure Day. Obama doesn't visit normal movie sets. He's not going around to movie sets. Steven Spielberg let fly on Michelle Obama's podcast that her husband Barack visited Steven Spielberg. I guess they're good friends on the set of Disclosure Day. So that implies some sort of deep interest on behalf of Barack on, on in what Steven Spielberg is doing.

[A]

Yeah, I've been obsessed with Betty and Barney for years. We even put a, a scene with Betty and Barney into the Dark Skies pilot. So I, I had written a screenplay about Betty and Barney and I was all gung ho to go sell this thing. And then Barack Obama and Michelle Obama announced they're going to make a Betty and Barbara Barney movie.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's not like which they've abandoned. That ain't happening. So for everyone who's thinking the Obamas are making it, they're not making.

[C]

But the fact that they're that interested,

[A]

what was he doing saying I'm going to make the Betty and Barney thing.

[C]

Right.

[A]

I think Barney, I mean, not Barney, I think Barack, you know, he knows a lot.

[C]

He did, clearly does. And then simultaneous to. So he, he says on this podcast in this like rapid fire questioning section and he goes, aliens are real. And then he sort of moves on and he goes, but it's not like, you know, these beings, you know, under Area 51 or whatever, are aliens real?

[B]

They're real, but I haven't seen them.

[C]

And they're not being kept in, what is it? Area 51.

[A]

Area 51.

[C]

And that's happening at the same time as this documentary is coming out with all of the top intel guys who advised him, his director of national Intelligence. James Clapper, who's supposed to oversee all intel, intel agencies. John Brennan, who you know, he was close with, who is, you know, director of his CIA.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And they're going way farther. They're saying we have like, you know, decades long like, you know, multi generational crash retrievals. We have sensors at Area 51. So it's like this clear, deliberate, like he's walking the population into, you know, belief.

[A]

Well, he, I think he does know what's going on. But remember when he did say to that guy during the rapid fire questions and he said, well, aliens are real. But then what did he have to do the very next day? He had to buy it back. There was so much blowback on him for having actually said the quiet part out loud that he had to say, all I meant was, you know, in the vast universe, there have to be univers. Aliens out there. But that's not what he was saying.

[C]

Well, I felt like it was mission accomplished because I almost thought he was baiting Trump a little bit.

[A]

I think he. Well, and then Trump took it. Trump.

[C]

Trump took the bait and started revealing classified info. And then, and then, oh, if it's classified, it's real. You don't classify by fake stuff.

[A]

So the whole thing, very interesting to see a past president and a current president fighting over alien existence.

[C]

Yeah. Whoever thought would be on this timeline, especially for you guys who've been into this topic for decades when it has been so kind of, you know, at the margins of.

[A]

Although you. And are we allowed to say that you and I saw Disclosure Day together at the imax, which was cool and I really enjoyed that. And one of the things that we both turned to each other during the the film is when they had the Nixon, Jackie Gleason, the alien bodies in Florida, which is no big spoiler. It happens early. But we look at each other and we've always heard that story, you know, as we were talking about. We've heard this story, but it's kind of this kind of ha ha, you know, but. And yet there are, you know, it was his. Jackie Gleason's wife told this the story. But what they use in disclosure day is they give it meaning, it's presidential meaning they say because Nixon was cross crazy enough to show a comedian bodies that whoever was in charge said, well that's not acceptable behavior. These presidents are just short term people. We can't be letting presidents run this, this thing. And that in the 70s do take a turn.

[C]

That's right. And I do, I think that Scene showing up in this movie is kind of an endorsement that it happened because the movie wasn't out, you know, outside of a few cases. It was like Roswell, Kecksburg stuff that, like, if you spend a few days on UFOs and you study those cases, you're like, they happened. Yeah, they said a civilian was in charge of Kecksburg. I thought that was Dr. Eric Walker maybe, who is Penn State and probably Majestic 12. But in the case of this, you know, Jackie Gleason, Nixon thing, Mark Felt was the deputy director of the FBI and he was Deep Throat. Yeah, exactly. So he was, you know, Bob Woodward's source, which is. Makes the whole thing, calls the whole thing into question. Because Bob Woodward was in the office of Naval Intelligence, spy ring or whatever, before he became a journalist and was given the biggest story of, you know, the story of a lifetime. And so I think in Mark Felt's biography, I think he talks about Nixon, you know, having seen some covert technology as well. And so I. And then of course you have Nixon with wanting to like jfk, not scatter the CIA to the winds, but reduce it by a third, do real force reduction. And, you know, it's this age old story of those, you know, civilian elected leader going into loggerheads with the CIA. And it never ends well for the civilian elected leader. And so that, that, that little scene, making it in there and after Beverly McKittrick has gone public saying, you know, this, I think this happened. Maybe it did.

[A]

Maybe, maybe it did. But what's interesting, you mentioned Kecksburg and also Roswell. Well, there's ample evidence, multiple witnesses for both of those. And the anomalous nature of both those, well established, you could definitely make the argument those are the real deal. Now the Jackie Gleason thing, not so much. So it makes me say Spielberg must have known something from somebody to say, I'm gonna put that in.

[C]

When you have two things that are like really real, a third thing in the Nathan Twining thing, and probably some other Easter eggs were missing. And then you have this one thing that was apocryphal included there, I bet you. And we think that Spielberg has some sources that story that probably happened. And Jackie Gleason, I guess, according to his ex wife. We were talking about this last night and you reminded me that he couldn't sleep, according to his ex wife, for weeks after that. And then he built a house shaped like a UFO in upstate New York.

[A]

He had a library of 5,000 UFO books, if you believe what was stated. That's A pretty big. My wife already complains my UFO library is too big, and it's a couple hundred volumes. I can't even imagine what she think of 5,000. That's a lot.

[C]

There you go.

[A]

But it is kind of interesting, though, because it would undermine Steven Spielberg's whole concept that, hey, this is the truth, folks. If he put in something that was obviously comedic and not true as the one piece of evidence. You know, there are two pieces of evidence that Josh shows his girlfriend, and one of them is the alien sort of being tortured, but the other is Gleason. Why would you do that if it didn't stack up? I think it does stack up. I think when the history books are written, rewritten, they're all going to have to be rewritten in the years to come. That'll be a couple of pages in one of them.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

Yeah. I want to go back to something that you were talking about with the predictive programming and the Simpsons and all that kind of stuff. We had Ernie Klein, who you may know, Ready Player One.

[C]

I know who he is. I guess he's in Austin.

[A]

Yeah, he lives.

[B]

He lives there.

[A]

He's moving, though, I hear.

[B]

Yes. Yeah. We had him on for an episode to talk about. This is before Disclosure Day. We were like, okay, well, let's talk about what we think Disclosure Day is going to be. And he'd obviously worked with Spielberg on Ready Player One, so he had his own insights and opinions. And he said something that blew my mind that I had never considered. And he said, I've always thought of writers being remote viewers, Right. That we are unwittingly, were sitting there and we put a little bit of intent attention on an idea, and suddenly we're jumped to the future where we're seeing an event play out which may either be the movie finished or the book finished or based on an actual event.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And so then we get an idea, and it's like, oh, I'm gonna write this out. Like, we think it's just inspiration, but in fact, we're seeing into the future potentially. And I had never thought of that, but one of the things that comes up in Hollywood all the time is these weird confluences of everyone seems to have an idea at the same time, Right. Suddenly it's like everyone's making westerns or everyone's making a new sci fi thing. There was the whole thing when we were looking at the abyss. All of no one had made movies about USOs, and then suddenly everyone's making movies about USOs. Why? Somehow it's in the collective consciousness.

[C]

Yeah. It's like the invention of the wheel and disparate places at the same time. There's some sort of. It's like, you know the, the word genius. If you go back to the etymology of it, it's attendant spirit, and it's like we're vessels and you're lucky if you catch the idea, but the idea is sort of this cloud that passes you by and you either, you know, inspiration finds me when I'm hard at work or whatever. You can, you can meet it halfway or you can miss it, but. But it's there.

[B]

But it's there. That reminds me, remember, what does Colman Domingo say to Emily Blunt? You're just a passenger.

[C]

That's right. You're just a passenger. Yeah.

[A]

That's wild. You're just a passenger.

[C]

And then, and then she has to, like, there's something about your life which you sort of just articulated. It doesn't make sense, you know, leading up to some moment of, you know, as the Greeks would call it, noesis, where you, you, you gain knowledge of like, your soul. Your soul and maybe your soul's purpose on Earth. And they have to go back and re. Experience their abduction or their alien encounter because they've been sort of seeded with this mission to disclose and they needed to be activated.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And so that's so fascinating. It's like, it's all this, like, time loop, you know, you have these two endpoints.

[B]

Yep. And when I saw the movie the second time, I noticed a couple things I thought were interesting. One is when Colman Domingo says, you need to go back, you need to go home to discover your destiny. What he's sending her to is an alien spaceship, or at least the memory of one. It's like, why is that home?

[C]

Right, right.

[B]

Because then you start to go, okay, well, we're just a passenger. Right. We're not really a fully developed human until we're activated. And then we have our higher sense of purpose and our powers and whatnot. And now you are a full, full bodied. You embody that being so wild.

[C]

And then it's wild that there are the John Harringtons out there. Maybe Harold Maumgren, as he was dying, essentially called me and he said he had this precocious knowledge of atomic stuff. And he wrote to the Atomic Energy Commission. They wrote back. And he goes, that's when my name started to. He went into the files of the CIA. And then he goes, not just the CIA, but the Majestic, the ones that took it upon themselves to guard the secrets of the world, the guardians of the world. And so it's like, are there people, you know, humans in elite military, intelligence and scientific circles that are sort of reality managers? It's a weird concept.

[A]

It is. I got a question for you, though, because we saw it together. And what do they say in it? He goes, coleman debate says, it's the two of you. It's always been the two of you. The only way for you to ignore

[B]

your purpose is to go back to

[C]

where it all began.

[A]

It's the two of you. It's always been just the two of you. Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So my question is, and I just wondered, because we both had overnight to think about it again, what about all the other people that have been abducted? Where do they fit in this? It's always you two. I mean, what were they abducted for? And what's the point? Are they all going to be triggered? Is that. What was the director saying here?

[C]

I don't know. You know, there's this Hansel and Gretel sort of, you know, which has got

[A]

to be a spacecraft. That's what it was.

[B]

It was a false image of a. Of a house. Like, oh, look, this beautiful little, like, you know, gingerbread house with the animals leading you into it, and she's just a little girl. Then you get inside and it's a spaceship.

[A]

But not every abductee is, you know, it's not all cookies and milk, you know, for them. They. A lot of them are traumatized, so I just kind of wonder where they fit in this truth.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

It can't just be about just two people.

[C]

No, there's.

[A]

There's all this, if anything, and by the way, I think we should say this. It's. Disclosure Day is not a perfect film, but it is an important film. Okay? You know, people can disagree about the film. They can argue about train wrecks and car chases and all that stuff and whatever, you know, whatever. Everybody's going to have a different experience with film. That's the one thing, you know, I've certainly learned in my career, and you have, too, Brent. It's like you put something out there, not everybody's going to see it through the same eyes. I get that. But it's an important film because what Spielberg has said is, I'm going to call it Disclosure Day, and I'm going to tell people that it's the truth. I mean, he's done dozens and dozens of interviews, and you've seen a bunch of them, and he's like, it's all about the truth. Well, okay, I think we're. We could debate the truth about. It's always the two of you, the details. But the big truth that he's got in there is this thing is real. There is evidence, lots of evidence, and it's been going on for a very long time, and it's coming at you. Well, that's probably what we need right about now. We've got the Age of Disclosure kind of documentary effect coming out. We have Spielberg, for whatever reason, and saying, my movie's the truth. I don't believe everything in his movie is the truth, but I believe the big picture is. And. And I. And that's kind of what is kind of percolating through the culture right now. We're at this inflection point right now, Jesse. At least it's. It feels like to me that things that. Especially having written a book about disclosure with Richard Dolan, I mean, we thought about this for a long time. It does feel like the moment is. Is coming.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm not sure yet exactly how we get there, but I don't see how you, as they say, put the toothpaste back in the. You know.

[C]

Yeah, but you do use the analogy of hard cut or slow dissolve into after Disclosure.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And I would say it's definitely a slow dissolve. It seems like there's. There's no. And it's because it's such a personal process. It's a bunch of people being activated on an individual base basis. And we sort of do create our own reality. And you can ignore this thing happening for the longest time until it's staring you in the face.

[A]

We are clearly living in a slow dissolve. But the interesting thing is we could have a hard cut any second. Imagine if an event like the Phoenix Lights happened today. Imagine if it happened. We're in Austin. Imagine tonight in Austin, a large triangular craft slowly goes over and everyone gets a good look at it, and they take a. Take pictures. That's not going to be put away.

[C]

Like, I think that's the part of the forcing function for some of these whistleblowers to come out is they're probably like, this stuff's gonna, you know, get open source, everybody. The world is full of smartphones at this point. We have satellites everywhere. Have either of you seen the Netflix show Dark by any chance?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, we. Well, we talked about it. We went down a whole rabbit hole in one episode about that show. And so we went and watched a bunch. I binged it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I had barely heard of it. And then it. It came up well, one of the.

[A]

There's a little backdrop then we should talk about the actual core concept. But, but at one point Coltart calls me up and, you know, we have, we'd have these signal chats and all that. I'm not violating his confidence or anything. These are, this was a while ago, but he said that in the period of about a. I think it was about a two week period, he had three separate independent sources. Okay. So they weren't, I mean, they could have been coordinated, I suppose by. But these were, you know, his high level level people in the intelligence community. But they were not people in his mind who knew each other. They were separate and had been kept separate. He said in a two week period, all three of them had said to him, so I guess maybe this was part of the playbook. But they had all said, well, if you really want to understand what's going on, watch this Netflix series, Dark.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is kind of crazy because I've got friends who have tried to watch Dark Dark. And they're like, I whoa. I mean, I don't even know what's going on in that thing.

[C]

It has the opposite effect for me. It freaks me out because it feels so true.

[A]

It does.

[C]

And some of these other things are like, you know, they use ideas that seem true and they're like, those are elements and threads and whatever. The Dark feels so close to the bone to me that it freaks me. I have like a visceral, almost allergic reaction to it. But also got to kind of peek a little bit bit. And I'm like, there's, there's definitely something really, you know, true going on there.

[A]

And what it, what makes it so strange and unnerving is that you see that there's these multiple time frames. I believe there's three in the Dark series and they're folding in on each other. And they do impact each other, but the future impacts the past, the past impacts the present.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Present impacts.

[B]

There's.

[A]

It's just.

[C]

They're like multiverse split tests between people and like somebody could, you know, commit suicide in one timeline and that affects this other timeline and this weird. And so then they're like reality managers and a program involving nuclear.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And time manipulation. And it's all comes down to these factions. One that wants to. Again, that's kind of pro apocalypse. One that sort of wants to deter the apocalypse. And it just feels very right square

[A]

into what, you know, ufology is all about. What's a core concept? The. The risk of nuclear energy.

[B]

Yep, yep.

[A]

Which seems I don't know who all these others are, but they seem to be interested in nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

[C]

They're extremely interested. And I always want to mention Robert Hastings, amazing work, who documents 160 plus, you know, people who are on the PRP program and work at nuclear basis. PRP being personal reliability. They have to report if they're taking ibuprofen or anything. And they're guarding the crown jewels of American defense. And they all see Tic Tac saucers, orbs. This is ubiquitous all over the world,

[A]

you know, because we all have friends that are skeptics. And, you know, that's okay. I mean, skeptic is, is fine. But the thing that really gets a lot of people when I'm talking to people and they're like, well, I don't know why I'm not like you, Bryce. You, you, you know more about. But I don't really pay attention to that. I just say, well, okay, we can prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that they're interested, whatever they are or wherever they're from and whoever's in them, that they're interested in nuclear weapons. Okay? And then. And they've shut off nuclear weapons or shut or turned on nuclear weapons. And you got to say to yourself, you have. Do you really want to believe that the people we trust to fire nuclear weapons are so incompetent that they. They would lie about this? And the same thing about Roswell. It's like, were the people at Roswell who were the only people running a nuclear bomber base in the world in 1947, were these intelligence community people at that base so stupid they couldn't tell the difference between a crash saucer and a. And a weather balloon?

[C]

Yeah, right. And they've. You've changed your story five times now. The official story has change so many times. It's so laughable now. It's like, oh, it was like, you know, Russian. And these were. There were these kids with like, oh, this sort of, you know, pro geriatric disease where they were aging fast so they look like gray aliens. Like, oh, come on, go with the mogul, you know, weather balloon thing.

[A]

That's a great leap. Or they were crash dummies or whatever. I will say, I want to give Spielberg props. I really enjoyed this little sequence with Roswell because we know anybody who studied it knows that kind of film exists now. He had to recreate it. But again, someday, hopefully in my lifetime, those will be the kind of film documents that get released onto that government website and we can all look at that stuff and we won't have to go. Well, what do you think? Do you think maybe, do you think we'll just know?

[C]

Well, Harold Malgram, not to keep shilling this one interview.

[A]

No, that was a great interview.

[C]

Oh, he was amazing. But he, he said that he saw footage of an alien, the one surviving being from Roswell, being interviewed. And he, the being, the gray alien gave the intelligence community or whoever was interviewing that being the idea to shoot UFOs out of the sky using this X ray projection system they used in the high altitude nuclear tests of Bluegill Triple prime and. Which is crazy.

[A]

That is totally crazy.

[C]

So he told Pippa that his daughter. Harold, you're right. And that he saw the video himself. And it's just so, so fascinating.

[A]

I mean, that was. And, but again, you know, here's the problem. That was a great interview, by the way, that, that had me riveted because it was good, but also because it sort of validated this, this I, this connection, this JFK UFO connection.

[C]

Right.

[A]

We'd sort of supposed. And then we're like, well, we just kind of made that up. But then it looks like, no, we were, what you call it, predictive programming. We were like almost predictive programming of it. And. But you have a great interview, got a great source, and yet what happens when that kind of story comes out? We still get the debates. Well, I don't know. He was old. He was, yeah, he was that.

[C]

Yeah. And I can pretty definitively debunk all the debunks. I think they're lazy and sloppy. I think they were coordinated too. They came out like very, like immediately. The, the research started when I did the interview, which was not public. Nobody knew I was doing that save for a few people. And then it came out right after I did the interview and there were all these things like, you know, you could FOIA the guy's Q clearance, which is not the case. If he was what I think he was, intelligence wise, I think he was probably not official cover CIA. You know, he's very close with Richard Bissell, who's the deputy director of the CIA. Literally, I was in the interview holding Paul Mellon's walking stick, which he brought in which Paul Mellon founded the C. So like, and he's talking about his best friend Tom Farmer, who was CIA. So like, there are all these ways in which he, you know, the guy would be pretty off record, covered his tracks. And it was just, you know, there was this hit job written about him where it was like, I talked to an archivist, and they had never heard of the guy. And he wasn't in the room with LeMay. Like, what do you mean? You don't get, like, a report card around your conversation with LeMay during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's so. It was so great. Ridiculous. And then they changed his Wikipedia page, which is the first thing that a lot of people look at after they see an interview like that. And it just felt totally coordinated.

[A]

I think it was. I mean, I remember sort of seeing your. Your show and then saying, okay, what's the pushback? And it did feel like people were sort of gathering the wagons around.

[B]

Right. I think that's. That's probably going back to kind of just the concept of disclosure. That's one of the hardest things about disclosure, because I don't feel that there is an objective truth in all of this. I had mentioned before a couple times in my life, I've had these weird downloads that were not stories where I just kind of dropped up a story. It was more that voice just talking in my head. And there's been three of them. The first one that I ever got was I was just out of high school, and it didn't make any sense to me, which the voice was. Reality is subjective. Now, this is before quantum physics. I didn't understand what that meant, but I remember getting just a sense of, oh, this will all make sense to you at some point. Don't focus on it now. We're just planting the seed. I think the problem is that Bryce and I have experienced this. Even with jc, we both remember JC differently.

[A]

Slightly.

[B]

Slightly. But that's telling something that was so seminal to both of us. We have both different slight interpretations. So that Rashomon effect of like. Like anything that happens. You see this a lot with people that have UFO experiences. Right. When you're experiencing the phenomenon, you're seeing it through your filter, right?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And so it's an event, and there's a consensus to it, but everyone takes home their own memories, right.

[C]

And then you have Mandela effects where you have literally, like, air pockets of different consensus reality where, you know, some people. People don't remember South Africa's unification involving Mandela. They thought he died in prison or whatever. It's like a whole, like, large group of people out there. And then you get into, like, what constitutes evidence for what actually happened. And in certain cases, you have physical evidence. In other cases, you don't have any physical evidence.

[B]

So.

[C]

So then you get into these sort of tree falls in the woods, what you know, but nobody's there to hear it. Like, what does that mean? And there's this neuroscientist, Wilder Penfield, who says that, you know, your, you know, false memories are indistinguishable from, you know, real ones. And you can implant false memories. So you get in a really trippy kind of Descartes demon territory where like, maybe reality, maybe there are probable futures and probable pasts and a constricted present.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And you have this.01 flipping, and it flips to one in the present. But the past is like a much wider probability range in the future does, too. And a lot of the quantum mechanics kind of godfathers flirted with ideas like this. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's a model of reality that will become consensus.

[B]

Yeah. So really quickly, because it just jumps on what you just said. The second one I got, which was the download, was, you have everything you need.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And what I took that to mean was it was about me, but I. In. In the years past, and they. I was shown some weird images and whatnot. And what I take that to mean is that we don't need all of the technology we use to manifest the powers we already have. Right. The Internet connects us to a body of knowledge. It's a manifestation of the collective consciousness. And all our communication tools allow us to talk to people we can't see thousands of miles away or whatever. We use those because we don't believe we really have the powers. But guess what? We built all of this stuff collectively with our own intelligence. Intelligence. And it represents for us in a material world how we can do all of the things that we actually can do, but without letting go of those things. Right? So to me, that's the thing. Everything we have. And by the way, Emily Blunt's character, when she's activated, she suddenly can see things and make people feel other people. And all of these things that would make the world a very different place if everyone was. Was activated. So the third one was very simply timelines. Okay. And it came to me at a place where my whole world shattered for two hours, where I was experiencing multiple timelines.

[C]

Really?

[B]

And it was the singular most scary, disturbing experience in my life.

[C]

How did you experience multiple timelines?

[A]

Well,

[B]

I was. And this is the Keel thing. Keel factor. I was researching the formula, the thing that the guy gave us. We lost it for years. It was lost for years.

[C]

Well, how'd you get it back?

[B]

Well, that's a whole crazy story, ultimately, Bryce.

[A]

We will tell you that in a second because it's A good story.

[B]

Yeah. Bryce will tell that part of the story. But what happened was, is that it's back in my life. Life where everyone's trying to make sense of it. I'm at an Airbnb in LA one night and I'm researching it because we're going to be doing a podcast. And I'm thinking, we haven't figured out when are we going to talk about it? We're waiting for all this research to come in. So I'm doing some. My own research, and all of a sudden I see I get a chime on my slack and my day job is. I'm working on a Call of Duty game. I can't talk about it, but there's people all over the world working on Call of Duty all, all time.

[A]

So it's kind of funny. We can talk about the nature of reality, but don't talk about calling. Okay? Not disclose Call of Duty.

[C]

So.

[B]

But I am. I'm. I get this chime on my laptop as I'm researching, and it's at like one in the morning, so somebody in Europe or whatever has come online and. And they're sending me a message having a question about something. So I read the question and I'm like, well, I'm up, right? So. So I'll answer it. So I go back to my research and all of a sudden, ping. I come back and it's like the person's like, what you said does makes no sense. I'm like, okay, well, maybe I'm tired. Let me read what I said. I'm like, well, that's not what I just wrote. That's not what I wrote. And I'm like, okay. So I correct it and I send it back and then comes back and he's like, now you're really confusing me. And I look and I read it again and it's like, nothing that I have now. First of all, his original message is different now. And I'm like, okay, this is weird. Am I really tired? Right? Am I hallucinating what's going on? So I go and I. Okay, hold on. I go to another Slack channel and I'm like, okay, I'm going to go to my creative director. We're talking all the time. So I go and I start reading the messages and I don't recognize our conversation. We're talking about things I've never heard of before.

[C]

And what are you talking about?

[B]

The game, but levels that weren't built like, just. It's. It's all like, he knows me. I'm having that relationship, but this is not the reality that I am living in.

[A]

How do you get back to your reality?

[B]

So I'm like, now I'm starting to get, like, a little, like, shaky. Like, either a, I'm having a psychotic break, which I can never discount, but. Or I'm like, I'm thinking, thinking to myself, do people become, like, get Alzheimer's, like, overnight? Does that. Or like, is there. I kept thinking, wait, no, it's early onset. Like this. What is happening to me? So I'm like, okay, I'm not going to look at this laptop. Because then I'm thinking, oh, you know what? Somebody out there is screwing with us. We are watching you. Someone's messing with me, right? So I go to a different device. I go to my phone. I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to look at the text from my wife. Like, I can trust that, right? So I look on the phone and we're talking about a dog. We don't have what? We have a dog, but it's not the dog. So now I'm like, okay, so two devices are polluted with things that I can't comprehend. And I'm starting to really freak out now. I'm like, okay, what's going on? I'm looking at different slack channels, and the more I stare at it, the more things become, like, even wildly different

[C]

than what you popped into a different timeline. Like your. Your body was ported into another timeline,

[B]

but there was no moment where it was. Like, there was. I was just researching. All of a sudden, I get a ping on a slack. And that like, the whole thing took me down this. So all of this is happening and I am. And by the way, I'm in an Airbnb. It's like by now it's like after 2am And I don't know who am I going to call? I'm going to call someone and say I'm in a different timeline.

[A]

You know, don't call me about, yeah,

[B]

I'm not going to call 911. Like, I'm thinking, if I tell anyone what's going on, I'm going to be in a straitjacket. Like, they're going to think I'm insane. But I don't know how to get out of this. So I get up and I'm walking around and I'm like, I'm checking. I'm like, okay, my heart's fine. I'm doing things like I'm pinching myself. I'm not dreaming. I'm doing all these checks just to make sure this is really happening. And it really is. And every time I go back to the computer, it's keeps changing. It's all these things that I'm not familiar with. So I'm like, okay, stop. I'm going to go take a shower. I'm not going to look at any of this anymore. I'm going to shut down all my devices. I'm going to just take a shower and I'm going to hope and pray that if I can go to sleep, when I wake up in the morning, everything will be reset. That's what the mantra I'm telling myself. I get in the shower and I'm kind of trying to wind down and I hear that voice say, timelines. I'm like, what? Why did you feel the need to show me that? I did not like that at all. I get into bed, I'm thinking about this, I fall asleep. The next morning I wake up and with dread, I'm looking at my devices going, if I open those. And it's all. I'm in a different timeline. I feel like I'm going to lose my mind or that I've lost my mind. So I boot everything up and everything is back to normal, but only 99%. There's a few weird little references that feel like artifacts left over from another timeline. Or I've gone to a timeline that's almost close to mine.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

But it's not 100% had to be reconciled. But it was good enough for me. It was good enough for me.

[C]

What was a holdover from the other timeline?

[B]

It was things like. It was just simple things like dates, like, oh, we have a big thing that we're supposed to do. And it's like, no, I wrote that down on another file and there was a discrepancy. It was like that weird Mandela effect where it's like, no, I had a pages file, but in Slack, the dates that they were referencing was something different.

[C]

And this is while you're studying this light, sound and frequency document that JC had given you and you're trying to

[B]

interpret it over 20 years earlier.

[C]

I have to ask, what do you guys think this document means?

[A]

Well, okay, so a real quick. This shows the power of $500 because Brent was supposed to have put it in a safe deposit box and he lived in la. And we went on about our lives because we didn't know there's no Internet. What are we going to do? And we're both raising families and we got work to do do. So it's in that safe deposit box. He moves the, The. The.

[C]

The message.

[A]

Yeah, the. The. The back of the envelope, okay? And then he moves. And I look, you know, and he takes it with him, okay? And we don't talk about it. We. We don't revisit it. We don't fondly go there and look at it and think about it.

[B]

We're.

[A]

He's doing his thing, I'm doing my thing. Life goes on, right? And about. I guess this is two and a half years ago, I decided I was going to write. Write a book about Hollywood and UFOs. It's calling it Strange Visitors. And so, of course I want to see this thing, right? So I call up Brent and I go, hey, man, you've had it a quarter of a century. It's my fucking turn. Sorry, but it's my turn. I want it. I want to look at this thing. He says, okay, yeah, I understand. He can't find it, okay, because he's got a different safe deposit box up in Washington. And I. I get a little steamed. I mean, to be honest with you. I mean, we. My threats got engaged. Increasingly irritated. I was like, it's really my time. Yeah, I really. It's. It's important to me for this book that I see this thing. And he wasn't able to find it. And you. I told you about giving my son 500 to. To do the crush.

[B]

You're leaving out one part. What precipitated that was you said, you know what? You need a second set of eyes. I'm going to come up there and go through all your stuff with you.

[A]

I threatened that I would do, okay,

[B]

well, that's where we're drawing the line. And you were like, but I said, but I said, but my daughter's coming home for the summer from college. What could we do with her?

[A]

And I said, I'll give her $500 if she finds it. And she found it.

[C]

She found it.

[A]

She found it.

[C]

Saved the day.

[B]

She saved the day. A really funny little detail was, you know, in Washington, it rains a lot, right? So the back of this envelope, it was like I said it was an ATM like, deposit with a little sticky. So it had stick em on it, okay? So that's what this formula was written on. It went into a small manila envelope, and it was in one of my boxes right in my office. When it got moved out of the safety deposit box, which my wife did, and she said, oh, it's in one. So when I went and looked through all my boxes in the Garage. I couldn't find it. And I went through it twice for Bryce. My daughter came in. She was very thorough. She went out there with, like a headlamp on and gloves and going through everything. And on the second day looking for it, she comes back in and she goes, is this it? I was like, what. What had happened was it had come out of the envelope and it had gotten moisture on it, so it had stuck to the back of a book because it had the stickum in it. Whoa. So I found the envelope, which was empty, and I threw it back in there, like when? And so she found the envelope and she's like, okay, I'm gonna look around. So she started shaking, making everything. And it fell off the back of a book that had a white backing on it so that you wouldn't even have noticed it. And that's the only way that we found it.

[A]

I. I would say this.

[C]

She's amazing.

[A]

We are, we are close to stopping any charade that we're having about, you know, putting. We're going to put it out, we're not going to sit on it. We're gonna, you know, we're just gonna do a show and bring in the people that have consulted, done research on it and let. And voice everybody's opinion.

[C]

I'll be checking in.

[A]

Well, you can be one of them. How about if you're one of them,

[B]

please, we'll send it to you and

[A]

we'll let you do.

[C]

So here's the thing. That'd be awesome. I'd be honored.

[A]

I think the thing that is we're working through right now is to look at it in one way. You go, okay, I could interpret that as something about consciousness or whatever. You know, I think you could make that argument that what you see there.

[C]

And by the way, it's oddly similar to the Tesla.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, Very similar.

[C]

Frequency.

[A]

Yes. If you want to understand the secrets of the universe is what he says.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Think about energy, vibration and frequency.

[C]

Frequency.

[A]

So it, I mean, so this guy JC might have been a Tesla devotee. Who knows? But as I look at the thing, I do think consciousness is part of what it's trying to make.

[B]

But then it's math and it's more like hieroglyphics.

[A]

But it's not hieroglyphics. It's not hieroglyphics, not Egypt or anything like that.

[B]

So one of the first pieces of research we got back on it was like a 20 page, whatever that broke into. Like, the three main ways to interpret it are astral Dynamics, quantum physics and transcendentalism.

[C]

Oh.

[A]

But now here's the way I kind of look at it is as you look at this envelope. And by the way, it is exactly the envelope. I mean when I saw it, I went that's it. And we have other people that we showed it to at the, the office who also, you know, there's, there's been no switcheroo. It's, it's the thing.

[B]

I didn't sketch it a new one.

[A]

Nobody sketched a new one. But when I, I look at it with fresh eyes today, knowing what I know now, I do feel a consciousness part of it. But what I'm having trouble, and I don't know about Brent and I haven't spoken about this yet. I'm having trouble reconciling the concept that the secrets of the universe are soundlight and frequency and how that relates to what I'm seeing in the. We'll call it, for lack of anything, better the formula. In other words, if you just gave me the formula, I probably already have a good concept. But now I'm saying. But he. JC said it's the secrets of the universe, sound, light and frequency. And here's this thing I wrote. Those are three different inputs. Secrets of the universe, sound, light and frequency. And the, this written thing. So I, you know, my brain is only human, you know, I'm only able to perceive it on the level that I can perceive.

[C]

Is it, is it only hieroglyphics or.

[A]

It's not hieroglyphics. That's a, that's what it looks like. There are symbols that are common symbols.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. These are not where you go, wow, where is that from some. No.

[C]

Can you give us one example?

[A]

Yeah, yeah. One of them, the bot one, the bottom one. One is a, is a black. Blacked in box.

[B]

Right. Okay. Also the, what is it the symbol for Ohm.

[C]

Ah, yeah.

[A]

Is in there inverted.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

So there's a very weird quality.

[A]

So you and I told Jesse more than anything I know.

[B]

Yeah, well, but that's fine. Like Jesse, we're giving you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

A little teaser.

[A]

A little teaser. Come back to us with your assessment.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you.

[A]

We would like to know. Yeah.

[C]

But decoded on the spot.

[B]

I think it's, I think it's important to like point out like when people look at it, there is a Rorschach test to it. Like people see, can see something immediately. And other people go, I don't. This is the most impenetrable weird thing I can Imagine.

[A]

I would like to just publicly make this offer right now. I'd like you to be one of our panel.

[C]

I'd love to. Please. I'd be so honored.

[A]

I would like. All you have to do is just. We'll send it to you. Don't put it on your show yet.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Give us your. Your input, Will. When we go public, you can have at it. And you. You may have an opinion that. I mean, we're not. We're trying not to tell anybody what to think. We're trying to just say, here it is. What's your thought? Because we. We don't. We don't have a vested interest in it.

[C]

You know, I'm so excited to look at it. I have to say. It would be hilarious if JC was just like a local homeless man. He gave you, like, this voyage manuscript to like, you know.

[A]

But here's the thing. Thing about it, though, when Brent described it, he is right. The guy kind of turns around and did this, and it was 30 seconds. And yet what he wrote is clearly intricate. Okay. And so what that means to me is that quite likely JC had this in his head. He didn't make this up on the spur.

[C]

Nobody, you know, clearly premeditated.

[A]

Yeah, nobody made that up in 30 seconds. He was putting something on. On this paper that is. He was well aware of. So he did that. So there's thought that went into it. And to me, that's the forethought is what's interesting, because if he is or was, if he's alive now, but if he was the guy he said he was back then, then he was deep into, you know, talking about the nature of UFO reality. And this is something he. He felt would cinch his case any.

[C]

Yeah, that's right. He gave it to you guys. With the implication being that it would be vindicated decades later.

[B]

And you know how it was. How was it that first. So when we got it, it was, what, the 90s, mid-90s? Like, 96, 97, 96.

[A]

September 21, 1996.

[B]

So the Internet wasn't capable of searching images at the time. So there was this. We had this comprehensible formula thing, but we had sound, light and frequency. Secrets of the universe. So what I would do is every couple months, year, whatever, I would Google with quotes. Sound, light and frequency. Sound, light, and frequency. And I was just. There was no hits. Right. The first time that I got a hit on that exact phrase in that order was in 2012, about 15 years in a white paper for the discovery of the God particle.

[C]

Whoa.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

Interesting.

[A]

That's interesting.

[B]

So it was on the CERN server, and it was something about the sonification of the God particle.

[C]

Ah.

[B]

And it listed sound, light and frequency. Now, again, this is one of those weird coincidence things. Could JC have just said this crazy thing with a bunch of chutzpah, like, I'm going to give these guys some crazy talk. And then suddenly, about 15 years later, sound, light and frequency is tied to a seminal piece of quantum physics, the discovery of the God particle.

[C]

So fascinating.

[B]

I don't know how to explain that.

[C]

I don't either. Well, I hope we can decode it. We will figure it out.

[A]

You can now. You're part of the secret decoding team.

[C]

We'll do our blood packed after this.

[A]

Yeah, totally.

[C]

Speaking of predictions possibly being. Being vindicated, you had a show with Ross Colth. He made a very bold. I don't want to say prediction or it was like a statement. Statement, essentially, that he knew unequivocally, without a doubt, that the Tic Tac on which so many people rest their conviction when it comes to UFOs. Steven Spielberg will cite this Nimitz case in 2004 for his own, like, you know, reopening of interest in UFOs. In 2004, we. David Fraber, he said definitively that he knows that that is Lockheed Martin technology.

[A]

He did even more definitive than that. I mean, this is the last show I ever did with Ross, by the way. Last need to Know. And normally before a show, we would discuss not. Not great detail, but we'd go, hey,

[C]

what do you think about.

[A]

We could do. Yeah. And then we could talk about. Okay, let's go. Right, So a little bit. But we didn't have time to do that or didn't do that on this episode. And during the visual part of the episode, you can see Ross looking off, like he's looking at a monitor or something. And we're talking about other things, particularly the Chinese drone explanation. Right. And then about 3/4 of the way in, he turns away and he looks. He goes, bryce, I can now state. This is the quote. I can now state categorically that the Tic Tac is Lockheed Martin technology. I'm going to leave you with one thought today, Bryce. I now know categorically that the Tic Tac is Lockheed Martin technology category. And if you watch the video, you see me literally go, oh, boy. I mean, I just literally. It shocked me.

[C]

And you think him looking off was like, it sure looks like inbound communication

[A]

confirming that it looks to me that way. But I mean, you know, he, he won't, he never said that that was the case. And then. So I, I kind of. First of all, that kind of violates the etiquette rules of co hosting, you know, to just sort of throw something. But that's okay, you know, I mean, we're, we're grownups. We did that all the time. We would sort of challenge each other and that was fine. But then we talked for a little bit because I kind of, I was trying to organize my thoughts, how to even respond to that. And then he said it again and he said, I can now state categorically that the law that Tic Tac is Lockheed Martin technology. So the same exact words twice. Right. And I mean, I haven't actually talked about this, but I will just say this. Afterwards we got off the air and I said that's such a shocking thing that you said. And I didn't have any time to prepare for it. I think we should do an immediate new show and I should be able to talk to you and interview you about why you made make that statement. And he said he wouldn't do it and we stopped recording together.

[C]

Got it. Well, that's a bummer.

[A]

Yeah. But I mean, Ross remains a friend, but you know, this was just a thing that happened, you know, and it's like. And listen, I'm not saying he might not be. I mean, he could be right. I mean, that's possible. But in the immediate aftermath at the time he said it, it did not feel right to me. It just, just felt like I have a hard time believing that. The thing that.

[C]

Well, you always want to know. You always want to know how the person knows.

[A]

Yeah. If you're going to tell me that then subject you're a journalist. I mean, he's always talking about journalistic rigor, which I admire him for. He does have journalistic rigor.

[C]

Of course you don't want to burn your sources.

[A]

And of course he also talks about protecting sources. I'm all in favor of that.

[C]

But then it's kind of on the source as well. Like you for something that categorical where so many people's conviction in the whole UFO thing rests on that one case where you have Fleer data, confiscated radar and a bunch of eyewitnesses all seem super matter of fact, incredible. It's like you kind of have to give the audience something as to how you got there.

[A]

I think so.

[C]

And this, I'm saying this is a huge. Ross Coldheart.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I Think he's, like, done foundational reporting.

[A]

I was honored to work with him, don't get me wrong. I. I learned a lot of stuff from him. And I wouldn't have been involved in the David Grushling without Ross's, you know, sponsorship into that little society. So I, I'm nothing but good things about that. But I do think if you're going to talk about journalistic rigor, what's good for the goose, good for the gander, as they say. Right. So in other words, if that's your. If that's your plan, then if you make a statement like that, then you gotta, you gotta defend it with journalistic rigor. No, not, you know, not later having your producer ask you a question from somebody you know, you gotta, Gotta talk about it to. I don't know what he would say about it right now. You should have him on and you should ask him.

[C]

I'd love to. I'd love to have him back. I had a great interview with him and, you know.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah. First of all, he's entertaining as hell.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Okay. And. And I know he has good sources.

[C]

Oh, he has great sources. He's done, like, some. He's kind of the tip of the spear on the investigative side, really, like, puts himself in harm's way to like, get all sorts of crazy interesting stories.

[A]

He's completely admirable in the way he does that.

[C]

And then it's interesting on the Nimitz thing, it's like the thing is flying in ways that like, you know, CRAFT never could. You know, actually I interviewed this, like, old, I guess, NSA Director of Research, this guy, Eric Hazeltine. And he was like, he brought this thing up. He was like, what if the object is massless? Feature equals ma and so it could accelerate at those speeds and like, break conservation momentum. If it was like a hologram or something, I was like, I hadn't really thought of that. And that's kind of this really important overlay of thinking about all these videos that are coming out where it's like, we don't really know that you're not like a VFX person. You don't know, like, the tip of the spear of advanced technology? And then I think some of that. So then you have to ask yourself, is part of what came out in that 2017 year New York Times article, what were their American national security things that we could do that you want to call UFOs, right alongside, obviously, a whole, you know, treasure trove of data around, like, real anomalous UFOs yeah. Was there some intentional conflation made there or, you know, do you just take at face value this like really inexplicable case that I cannot explain? And Nimitz to me, me seems really like, you know, it's very hard to explain.

[A]

You blew my mind last night because you said to me that when you first heard him make that statement that you were like, no, I, I don't believe that. That seems not reasonable, but that you're now 50.

[C]

50 now I'm kind of not, not 50, 50 on Lockheed necessarily, but some.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, maybe 50, 50.

[C]

Maybe it's most likely it would be Lockheed if they did, but 50, 50 on man made. Yeah.

[A]

Interesting. What changed your opinion over the time?

[C]

Yeah, it's a good question. I think some of the people who kind of have pushed disclosure over the last 10 years are, have ulterior motives and I think, I think. Yeah. And then like, so I think it's really important, like a lot of people know that. Right. And they'll say like, this person's a bad actor. And I'm like, but where's the daylight between you and them on the substance? And like, they can't answer. So like. But they were on the crash retrieval program and now they want to out it. And like that doesn't make sense. That makes no sense at all. So the thing that would make more sense would be some sort of advanced, you know, capability. And then you were kind of doing a little conflation thing. And to be honest, I don't really want to speculate beyond that because I'm not trying to out. You know.

[A]

Right.

[C]

I think there's some fundamental things that have been discovered, like the Byfield Brown effect, which, you know, I'm obsessed with this Townsend Brown character, you know. And you know, there are things like that where it's like, you can't hide that from people. It's like basic science. It's a whole like new lineage of things. But if it's like a weapon and it's like a trade secret around the weapon, I'm not, not trying to get in the way of that. But that, that sort of hermeneutic lens is like, you have to consider, of course, for, for that event specifically.

[A]

It's, it's a ve. It was a vexing thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I had sort of taken it as article of faith that the Tic Tac was, you know, not ours.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I didn't know the details, but it sure didn't seem to be ours.

[C]

Okay. One, one other Thing. One other thing, which is, I know Jake Barber is obviously a source for Ross. And you know, his whole thing is like the psionic assets, like kind of locking. And Ross on other occasions has said, I know about, like I should do an Australian accent. I know about like, you know, I'd love to. These psionic assets, locking onto craft with their mind and flying them. And so that was the whole Jake thing. And so I wonder if you can combine those two declarative statements and say that this was Lockheed tech around flying stuff with your mind. And there are a couple of Lockheed patents, one of which is under this guy John Norsene, which involves kind of neural imprints and neural interfaces for flying aircraft. And there was a Battelle study on this sort of thing, I think in the early 2000s that was kind of a follow up on the Norse scene thing where you'd put nanotechnology and. Cause I think the Norseine thing was based on electrical signals in the brain. And so this is an area of active research and you have all the Skywatcher stuff going on. And so maybe there are psychic pilots of these things.

[A]

Maybe.

[C]

And if you think about what is the highest bandwidth, lowest latency system, it's not a machine, it's the human brain.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Here is the. The biggest thing that has always vexed me, okay. Many of us, not, not just Ross, but many people who are researchers today, many of their sources are in the intelligence community. Okay.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And many of them are active or recently active. And so that's where you're being told certain things. But then what if your intelligence assets are working you, then.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

So. So I. It's not that simple.

[C]

No.

[A]

It's like you. You have to evaluate every source that ever comes out.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And that's why, you know, again, all we can ever do, whether it's whoever's coming out with stuff, you gotta be transparent as well. And so the frustration that I think has always existed between researchers and the people who view their researches, they want to know the names. Why don't these people just come forward and lay it all out? And Ross, to his credit, would always say, that's not the way the game

[C]

is played, but there are ways to work around that, which is what we just described, like the Skywatcher thing, the crap flying, the crap of the mind, these public patents and stuff. You can use open source research, never burn a source source, but like kind of, you know, rework in the open source world, you know, through first principles, you know, inductive logic. How you got there.

[A]

You never want to burn a source. What you do have to do is protect and nurture them. Like, I'm friends with George Knapp as well, who actually, he and Jeremy Corbell were also involved in the David Crush bring. And everybody had to treat David. David Grush for a while with great care.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Not to not scare him away, but to create a system of confidence for him to come forward. And. And if they'd. If they jumped too fast or too hard, he might have gotten scared and turned away, and we might not have had all the information that he brought to us.

[C]

Yeah. Well, we've definitely seen an infinite, you know, amount of new information come out about this, and maybe we can get your, you know, former mentor, family friend John Harrington back on record and let's

[A]

get him on your show.

[C]

Well, I think. I think we should all do something with. That would. I mean, that would be legendary. That would be an amazing thing, and you should try to do that. He.

[A]

It would be. Yeah, go ahead.

[B]

No, I was just gonna say, I mean, this is part of what Dave Grush was asking is like, could. Could you help make this happen?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, I feel I'm in a very weird space because on one hand, even telling this story publicly about him and whatnot really upset my mom because she was still friends with the family, and she made it quite clear to me, he's not in good health. Like, if he wanted to tell the. This story, he would have done so.

[C]

Right, right.

[B]

And I said, okay, I understand that. I'm not going to try and make him tell his story. I'm going to tell the story he told me.

[C]

Yeah, because maybe he wanted you to tell. And he even made those statements of, like, what if he did? I could always deny it.

[A]

Right, right. I've watched you go to travel quite a distance on this. When you first told me, we weren't even talking about his name.

[C]

Right. Well, you should try to reconnect with them at the very least.

[B]

You know what? Or I just let it happen naturally because I have a sneaking suspicion that somehow all of this is going to lead back to somehow us coming together.

[C]

I love it.

[B]

I don't know how or why. I'm not going to force it happening, but I just have a weird sense that it's going to.

[C]

And frankly, I like that.

[A]

I wish John Harrington, first of all, I wish him a healthy life for what is left for him. But again, I think we've entered a new era where we all have to bear witness. And the reason Dave Grush and the House Oversight Committee are after Brent to get him. Harrington is. He must be an important player. He must know certain things. And, you know, I almost got lost in what you were saying, Brent. But why does Grush want Herring to talk to him? He wants the oral history. Because according to. To Grush, which is not something I've seen widely talked about, many documents from a certain period of history where Harrington was active in the Reagan administration have gone missing. They're gone. Okay. And so what they're trying to do is establish the timeline, if you will, but also what was known. And your story is interesting, but it raises a thousand million questions, and the only guy who can answer them at this point is John. So I hope he's does reconsider. I think that would be a patriot. At this stage of our country's history, that would make him a true patriot.

[C]

I love it. Well, on that aspirational note, this has been a really amazing, just whirlwind of. I don't know how long we spent, but this was awesome. Bryce. Brent.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I can't wait for, you know, your podcast to fully come out. I think. Is there. There's one show out right now.

[A]

No, we've got. We're gonna. We've done the first half a season.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

So we're on.

[C]

We're.

[A]

We, we're. Now we're. We've sort of told our Dark Skies sidebar. Now we're more into the active investigation of trying to find others and pull it into one big narrative.

[C]

Okay. Sound, light and frequency. Everybody go check it out.

[A]

Appreciate that.

[C]

Anything else you guys want to plug or.

[A]

No, you know, we're both interested in doing other things. We are doing other things, but satellite and frequency, which is, by the way, if people want to find it, soundlightfrequency.com but it, it's kind of our obsession right now because we just, we want to come clean on the story and we, you know, we want to not hide it. We just want to get it out there and let the world do with it what they want.

[C]

Well, that's, you know, it has humanity level implications. As cool as Call of Duty is, you're making a, like a World War II movie right now.

[A]

Making a movie. Well, that's true. And, and that's. It's always fun to, to make anything in Hollywood, but what's interesting. And by the way, that takes you back to disclosure day, right? Because with Spielberg, obviously, he could have made anything in the world, and he may not be making a lot more in the future. He's.

[C]

Yes, might be it.

[A]

He said last night at our, at the thing that you and I were watching in the live interview at the imax. He, he was acting like, you know, it takes a lot to get me out of the house these days. Yeah, right. Isn't that what he was saying? So who knows if he's getting out of the house again? This might be. Be his last statement.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, all right. We enjoyed it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[C]

Oh, this was a blast. It was so cool.

[B]

All right, all right.

[C]

If you want to access our episodes 24 hours early and want to watch them completely ad free, please consider supporting the show by joining our YouTube. YouTube membership. Just click the link in the description to join today. Your support helps us so much and it allows us to keep making the show and go deeper into the kinds of stories we care most about. And a little early access and not getting bogged down by ads is kind of a cool perk. So join today. If you've made it this far in the show, then I know you care enough to hear about this. Our show, American Alchemy, is growing super fast. It's bursting at the seams. We are looking for an amazing editor to join the team. If you're an experienced YouTube editor, podcast editor, trailer editor, or documentary style editor, maybe you're even a traditional Hollywood editor and you're just really into our content and you want to work on some of the most mind bending stories in the world, we really want to hear from you. We're especially looking for people who are deep into the content and who have a real editorial eye. Someone who can dig through long and sometimes dense content conversations, find the most powerful moments, build tension, create great hooks. Basically people who can turn these raw conversations into very high quality, almost cinematic episodes. Strong technical skills are a prerequisite, but especially for the documentaries we make, we really need somebody with taste, who has strong instincts around pacing, music, sound design, story structure, you know, all the things. And big bonus points if you're genuinely into UFOs, consciousness, frontier science, and big questions about the nature of of reality. So if you're a strong, experienced editor and you know how to keep audiences engaged and you want to work with us on some of the coolest stories in the world. Please email all your relevant work and your application to applyessemichaelsmedia.com and if you have a friend who would be great for this role, please let them know. Thank you so much and we look forward to hearing from you and maybe working with you.

[B]

Sam.