UFOs in the US

Summary

American History Hit: UFOs in the US – Comprehensive Summary

Release Date: December 2, 2024
Episode Title: UFOs in the US
Host: Don Wildman
Guest: Greg Egigian, Professor of History and Bioethics at Penn State University

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of American History Hit, host Don Wildman delves into the enigmatic world of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) in the United States. Featuring expert insights from historian Greg Egigian, the discussion navigates through the historical sightings, evolving terminology, governmental responses, and the cultural impact of UFO phenomena.

The 2004 USS Nimitz Encounter

The episode opens with a vivid recounting of a significant UFO sighting involving the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group on November 14, 2004. Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, piloting F/A-18 Super Hornets, described encountering a white, oblong object performing extraordinary maneuvers, including an “80,000ft descent in less than a second” (00:35). This incident, captured on advanced radar and witnessed by credible military personnel, underscores the mystery that continues to surround UFO sightings.

History of the UFO Phenomenon

Early Sightings: The 1896 Airship Scare

Greg Egigian traces the UFO phenomenon back to the late 19th century, highlighting the 1896 airship scare in Northern California. He describes an encounter where H.G. Shaw and his companion observed three strange beings with “seven feet tall, elongated fingers, and large egg-shaped eyes” (16:20). Unlike modern UFO sightings, these early reports often attributed the mysterious airships to eccentric inventors or foreign pilots, reflecting the technological curiosities of the era.

The 1947 Kenneth Arnold Sighting

The conversation shifts to the pivotal June 24, 1947, when private pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine “pie pan shaped objects” near Mount Rainier, Washington. Arnold’s description led a journalist to coin the term “flying saucer”, a phrase that quickly entered the American lexicon, with a Gallup poll revealing that “nine out of ten Americans” were aware of the term just six weeks later (10:12). This event marked the beginning of the modern era of UFO sightings, setting the stage for widespread public fascination.

The Roswell Incident

Egigian references the Roswell Incident as a landmark event that solidified UFOs in public consciousness. The alleged crash of an unidentified craft in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 ignited a cultural obsession with extraterrestrial visitors, intertwining with the post-World War II anxieties and the burgeoning Cold War tensions.

Evolution of Terminology

The terminology surrounding UFOs has evolved over time to reflect changing perceptions and governmental approaches. Egigian explains the transition from “Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)” to “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs)”, and more recently, “Anomalous Phenomena” (05:18). This shift aims to “eliminate associations with the historical baggage” of the term UFO, seeking a more “generic” and “objective” classification. However, Egigian critiques this renaming as insufficient in shedding the phenomenon’s “mysterious” legacy.

Government and Military Response

Historical Stigmatization

Historically, the U.S. military and intelligence services have stigmatized UFO reports, discouraging personnel from coming forward due to fears of damaging their careers. Egigian notes that reports were often dismissed, labeling witnesses as unreliable (07:51). This atmosphere of skepticism hindered serious investigation and perpetuated the mystery surrounding UFO sightings.

Recent Acknowledgment and Reports

In recent years, there has been a paradigm shift in governmental attitudes towards UFOs. The U.S. intelligence community has begun to acknowledge the presence of “physical objects” in unexplained aerial phenomena. Egigian highlights the 2023 NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team report, describing it as a “refreshing” and “objective” examination that neither confirms nor denies the extraterrestrial nature of UFOs (28:42). This newfound openness aims to foster a more transparent and stigmatization-free environment for reporting and studying UFO incidents.

Cultural Impact and Public Perception

The UFO phenomenon has significantly influenced American culture, inspiring countless movies, literature, and conspiracy theories. Egigian emphasizes that UFOs serve as a “cultural story element”, embodying societal fears and the imagination of advanced technologies. The idea of extraterrestrial visitors “invites” a multitude of voices and perspectives, making it a “wonderful” yet “cacophonous” subject that captivates the public’s curiosity while remaining cloaked in mystery (35:13).

Greg Egigian's Insights and Book

Admixture, Mysteries, and Citizen Science

Greg Egigian shares his motivations for authoring “After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon”, aiming to historicize the UFO conversation beyond the binary of believers and skeptics. He admires the “citizen science” aspect, where dedicated individuals pursue UFO research out of passion rather than for fame or fortune. Egigian views the UFO phenomenon as an enduring mystery rather than a solvable puzzle, noting that many enthusiasts are “lost” names whose contributions deserve recognition (29:43).

Maintaining the Mystery

Egigian argues that the enduring allure of UFOs lies in their mysterious nature, which continues to captivate and invite speculation. He observes that despite extensive reports and government acknowledgments, the phenomenon remains unresolved, much like the Kennedy assassination, leaving both experts and enthusiasts in a state of perpetual intrigue (29:15).

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with a reflection on the persistent enigma of UFOs, underscored by Egigian’s call to appreciate the cultural and historical dimensions of the phenomenon. He acknowledges the bizarre and anomalous nature of many sightings but maintains a balanced perspective, deferring definitive explanations to engineers, physicists, and pilots (33:47). Don Wildman closes by inviting listeners to explore more episodes that unravel America's vast and varied historical narratives.

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Notable Quotes:

• Greg Egigian (05:23): “Flying saucer was first employed... a term that would eliminate this kind of image of this disk-like object.”

• Greg Egigian (16:20): “Right. Most of them described the pilots as being human beings. They were oftentimes foreigners.”

• Greg Egigian (29:43): “One of the things I came away from was to understand that the phenomenon has been more of a mystery than a puzzle.”

• Greg Egigian (35:13): “Nobody's going to stop you from chiming in and getting involved, throwing your hat in the ring and throwing some ideas out there.”

Timestamp Reference Key

• [00:35] – Introductory recount of the USS Nimitz encounter
• [05:18] – Discussion on evolving UFO terminology
• [07:51] – Government’s historical stigmatization of UFO reports
• [10:12] – Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 flying saucer description
• [16:20] – Early airship sightings and their descriptions
• [28:42] – Insights on the 2023 NASA report
• [29:15] – Reflection on unresolved UFO mysteries
• [29:43] – Greg Egigian on his book’s perspective
• [33:47] – Balancing UFO skepticism and belief
• [35:13] – The inclusive yet chaotic nature of UFO discussions

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This detailed summary captures the essence of the episode, providing listeners and readers alike with a thorough understanding of the discussions surrounding UFOs in American history, enriched with expert commentary and historical context.

Transcript

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[Don Wildman]

The USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group conducts exercises about 100 nautical miles off the coast of San Diego. It's November 14, 2004, and the strike group has deployed a number of F A 18 Super Hornets, high performance twin engine tactical aircraft onboard the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton. The radio crackles. It has been tracking anomalous aerial vehicles on its advanced radar for weeks. They need someone now to go out for a closer look. This thing they've observed has been doing some crazy maneuvers. At one point, it seems to have descended 80,000ft in less than a second. Two planes, piloted by Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, are dispatched to check it out. Each aircraft has a weapons systems officer on board in the rear seat.

[Greg Egigian]

As these four men in their two.

[Don Wildman]

Fighter jets approach the location, they are confounded by what they see below them is a white, oblong object. Craver later describes it looking like a Tic Tac mint, about the same size as the planes, but with no markings, exhaust plume, or even wings. The object seems to mirror Fravor's movements, but when he tries to cut it off, it accelerates away, disappearing from sight. All four of these men, members of the U.S. navy in good standing, are certain of what they've seen, and it seems to have been otherworldly. Dear listeners, it's Don Wildman, and on today's episode of American History hit. We're venturing beyond the bland borders of.

[Greg Egigian]

Doubt and disbelief into a mystic realm of intrigue and insight to confront that which skeptics claim cannot exist, even while year upon year evidence seems to stack.

[Don Wildman]

Up to the contrary. As encounters grow ever closer and private.

[Greg Egigian]

Acceptance goes public, we have gradually become.

[Don Wildman]

A nation that embraces the possible, some say probable idea that alien visitation has.

[Greg Egigian]

Occurred here on Earth, a shift a.

[Don Wildman]

Long time coming, considering all that's been.

[Greg Egigian]

Out there in the distant and recent past. And what we can suppose is out there even now.

[Don Wildman]

UFOs exist.

[Greg Egigian]

Flying objects that cannot be identified.

[Don Wildman]

The military admits to it.

[Greg Egigian]

But by that simple definition, the phenomenon is part of our reality, documented in.

[Don Wildman]

So many startling videos and captured images.

[Greg Egigian]

But what they are and where they're from, and by what weird means they are somehow propelled through the air, well.

[Don Wildman]

Those are still the confounding questions, the.

[Greg Egigian]

Answers to which would challenge everything we know and believe about life on Earth and our existence in the cosmos. Which begs the other question, do we really want to know? Our guest today does, and that's why.

[Don Wildman]

He'S authored a major book on the.

[Greg Egigian]

Subject, released this past summer from Oxford University Press, a comprehensive account of UFO.

[Don Wildman]

Sightings and close encounters around the world.

[Greg Egigian]

Entitled after the Flying Saucers Came A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon. Its author is a professor of history.

[Don Wildman]

And bioethics at Penn State University.

[Greg Egigian]

Hello, Greg Egigian.

[Don Wildman]

Nice to have you.

[Greg Egigian]

Thank you for having me on here.

Traditionally, Greg, UFO has meant flying saucers, but Unidentified Flying Objects have now become UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomenon, which was recently.

[Don Wildman]

Broadened to Anomalous phenomenon. What exactly are these acronyms accounting for?

[Greg Egigian]

And how has this been changing in recent years?

Yeah, so one of the biggest challenges throughout the whole history of this phenomenon has been giving it a name. Yeah, it has defied any kind of adequate description, and every label, every acronym that's been employed has been called into question. Part of the reason, of course, is because you first of all don't have completed agreement on what the phenomenon is. Secondly, you don't even know, is it a phenomenon?

Yeah.

So it becomes really, really difficult to do it. Flying saucer was first employed. That was really a media construction in the late 40s, very popular. Remained popular well into the 1970s. But it gets replaced by the US Air Force in the early 50s by unidentified flying object, which was seen as being more generic. Right. That was a term that would eliminate this kind of image of this disk like object. The problem was other people said, well, hold it. A UFO doesn't eliminate the problem. It too implies that this thing's a physical object. It implies that if it implies flying, it implies there must be a pilot. Right. So that was seen as a problem. And now we have the uap, as you point out, a term that was seen as a way to again get at something generic. But the other idea behind it by the people who were in government circles studying this stuff, their thinking was this would eliminate any associations with the whole history of this phenomenon, that all that quote, unquote noise would no longer be relevant. We can start from scratch. As a historian, I don't think you get to just rename something and give it a new brand name and somehow you're released from all that legacy. That doesn't kind of work that way.

My subjective experience, I have to say, has been through television work. I have stood on Roswell, you know, crash site. I have camped outside of Area 51 looking for, you know, unexplained phenomenon at night. I've done all these things because I was paid to do so, frankly. But it was very interesting to me, once you're sort of inside this world, how very, very serious people are about it, really. People have very serious arguments. How much has that infiltrated the government levels, the military levels? Finally, you know, as far as taking these people seriously in all these reports.

Yeah. So I think there's no question that in recent years, and certainly by at least 2020, that the intelligence services within the US government have come to at least acknowledge, and this is fairly unprecedented, have acknowledged not only are physical objects being seen that at least on the surface can't be accounted for, but that they themselves have historically played a role in stigmatizing people reporting this stuff, particularly within military circus, particularly military pilots, but also civilian pilots, that there's been disincentives created to report these things because it would seen as a blemish on your record. It was seen as something that indicated that you might not be qualified for promotion down the Road. So they've come out very clearly and made it clear that they need to adopt a new approach to this. And so now the attitudes, at least in those circles, at least what they're saying is they are taking those reports seriously. They're trying to create channels for communicating this information without any stigma attached to it or consequences. That said, in the end, intelligence services, and I would also say that civilian scientists kind of agree on one thing, and that is they will never get the truth about this phenomenon by just relying on eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses are not enough. They're going to need instruments detecting things. They're going to need some. Something that's incontrovertible and that is not eyewitnesses from their standpoint.

This conversation and all the current noise, as you say, is in the context of these new reports that have been done and commissioned in the teens, 2018, I believe, and then another 2021, there's 23 there. A lot of different agencies have been okaying this and moving ahead with different commissions to do this. So it's against that backdrop that we're having this conversation. But really, the sightings of strange things in the skies goes all the way back, really. But our modern reference points begin very specifically with June 24, 1947. Always surprised me how few people realize this. The sighting near Mount Rainier in Washington really starts the modern age of ufology. Let's nail down why flying saucers are called flying saucers. You mentioned the media construct.

So on June 24, 1947, this private pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold is flying his small plane around Mount Rainier. He's looking for the wreckage of a cargo craft that had crashed around there. There was a reward for anybody who spotted it. And he said that later on that when he was flying around there, he sees these nine. He first described them as pie pan shaped objects that were flying in close formation at very high speeds. Hadn't seen anything like it before. He was convinced that these were probably military aircraft, but he thought in any event, he needed to report it. He lands, he reports it to media sources, media outlets, newspapers. He reports it to the military. And he gets interviewed. He gets interviewed, and within just a day or two, he gets reporters who were following up on this. And one of them asked him, how did this thing move? How did they move? How would you describe? He said, well, they, they moved like a saucer might, if you skipped it across water. He did not utter the phrase flying saucer, but a, a very, very clever journalist who Knew a good headline when he heard one, said, ah, flying saucer. And it became flying saucer. And we know that this becomes a kind of very ready made meme out there. It goes viral really way before the Internet, because Gallup poll does a survey and finds that nine out of 10Americans, six weeks later know of this term, flying saucer.

It's really amazing. I met a man on a park bench in Portland. I remember it was a secret meeting, kind of framed that way for television. And he pulled out all these newspapers from his briefcase of that summer. And the tracking that was done up and down the west coast was pretty chronological, like they could. And geographically sort of moved logistically down.

[Don Wildman]

The coast and they could.

[Greg Egigian]

And they were seeing these things from one place to the next. He was showing this to me as like a duh, kind of look, look at this. You just. This has been lost to history, but it just went on for a sustained period of time and then basically land, so to speak, with Roswell, which is.

[Don Wildman]

At the end of all of that.

[Greg Egigian]

And supposedly that's one of those vehicles that would have gone down in that farm field. It was really a big deal. And it really changed the culture, didn't it? It launched everything in terms of UFOs in the 40s into the 50s, right?

I mean, from that point on, that summer of 1947, as you're talking about, there were hundreds of reports across the United States and then they start up in other parts of the world as well. And this whole phenomenon, this wave of sightings, Kenneth Arnold's sighting that summer, also gets worldwide international news coverage. So it becomes a kind of focal point and an origin point, right, for what's going to follow. Because from that point on, this thing that wasn't just a one off, it's clear that there's other people seeing very similar things. That becomes a cause for people to now begin to ask the question, what is it? How do we make sense of it? If it is a set of objects, whose are they? What are they doing? What's the intention here? The idea of aliens being behind it was not high on people's lists. That was not where people instantly went. And that was going to take a while before that actually gains any kind of real ground with people. But nonetheless, it was a mystery and it was one that unsettled people, particularly if you remember the context, which is this is just very shortly after World War II. People had seen what secret weapons could do. So this, this was a really, really perplexing, baffling, and even kind of scary thing for a lot of people.

Right. And also in the context of the Cold War, everyone is worried about what the Russians are doing and how they're infiltrating Sputnik happens, and therefore we're convinced they're watching us and all the rest of it. And so all of this sort of melds together in this state of mind. That really does fuel the whole passion for understanding this thing. But it's not like it hadn't been done before. I mean, people have been spying objects in the sky all the way back to ancient times.

[Don Wildman]

You have to Wonder how much UFOs.

[Greg Egigian]

Contributed to the mankind's idea of the divine. Honestly, the sky associated with deities and such, when did it become associated with other worlds? That implies an understanding of our place in the universe, doesn't it?

Yeah. I mean, the idea that people would see anomalous things in the skies, in the heavens, and that these were meaningful, these were significant. The sky wasn't just observed, it was read for messages.

Yes.

That goes back to ancient times. The idea that we are not alone, that we might not be alone in the universe, is also an old one. I think a lot of people are surprised by that. But even the ancients were debating, at least debating the issue about whether we are alone. And even, really, by the 17th century, I think most educated people in the world would have assumed that human beings aren't the only sentient beings out there in the universe. What's different is this idea that they are visiting us, that they are coming here and they are looking at us or they're communicating with us. That is, in fact, a very new idea. The first science fiction authors, right, the most famous probably being H.G. wells in the 1890s. Right. Are really the first to imagine that in sort of a concrete way. But this idea that they are visiting us is really going to only take off with the UFO phenomenon. Other people had set up the ducks already, but it's going to be the UFO thing that says, no, no, no, I know what this all adds up to. And they are here, and they are here.

Now, your book concerns itself primarily with the years after World War II, when all these things take off. Of course, 1947 starts so much up, and you see so many movies and so forth, but 50 years before that, or more, in the late 1800s, 1896.

[Don Wildman]

And 7, there are sightings in Northern California.

[Greg Egigian]

A guy named H.G. shaw traveling in a carriage with a companion. I assume he's corroborated on this. As a result, they encounter three Strange beings, seven feet tall, fingers elongated, no nails, a large egg shaped eye. Sound familiar?

[Don Wildman]

No clothing, skin soft as velvet.

[Greg Egigian]

He describes this was just out in the middle of nowhere in his carriage. That's how long these have been going on.

Right. It's often referred to as the great airship scare or airship mystery of the 1890s. What's interesting about it is the term airship scare doesn't really quite capture what went on because most people weren't scared. The airships that were being described in newspapers at the time described people mostly being really fascinated with it, not terribly disturbed, really interested in sort of getting to the bottom of what they were and who was behind them. The shock case is also interesting because in many ways it really is an outlier too. Most of these incidents that get described don't involve the idea of strange beings from possibly other worlds. Most people who said they caught sight of or even communicated with who was piloting the people piloting these strange aircraft, which most of the time, by the way, looked like balloons or dirigibles. Yeah, Most of them described the pilots as being human beings. They were oftentimes foreigners. They spoke Spanish or they spoke German or something. So the most common scenario at that time was that these things were really the work of. Of a kind of an eccentric tinkerer, a kind of a Thomas Edison. Right. Savant of some kind who was behind it all. You get a little of this stuff that Shaw describes of aliens. But again, that line of argument tends to be an outlier.

It's almost like a steampunk, isn't it? It's like these renderings that you see of these airships are quite elaborate. They couldn't possibly have been up there. So therefore it's some sort of storytelling thing that's going on here. But it's interesting, it reminds me of growing up in South Jersey when the Jersey Devil was told to you as a boy scout. And you'd hear these stories and turns out the Jersey Devil was most likely a large bird that came from Africa, you know, stowed away on a. On a boat from Africa and then started scaring the heck out of South Jerseyans because it was so big and scary. There are no reference points at this point, you know, and so things get very colorful very quickly whenever somebody sees something that surprises them. The other backdrop of this is, of course, scientific advancement and new observations of the cosmos. Of course, most famously, we have Lowell, the astronomer who has been identifying what are become called canals on Mars. This notion that there are these signs of civilization on the surface of Mars, which is because there are new observatories. His becomes the Lowell Observatory in New Mexico.

Yeah, the idea of beings Martians on the planet Mars, right. Is one again, not entirely distinctive or unique to the 19th century, but it really accelerates in the 19th century when you have some astronomers. You mentioned Percival Lowe being one of the prominent people who, using their telescopes, they see what they believe to be canals. Canals is a neat term to use because if there's canals, it implies engineering. And then you've got to explain, well, why who's engineering them and why are they there? And you know, an elaborate story gets concocted that if you notice them, they seem to come from the polar caps. And that means that it probably is the way in which Martians are getting water to dried out desert areas on the planet. It's an idea that really has some legs. Around the turn of the century, by the 1920s, it's pretty clear from astronomers that the problem was that these canals are really just artifacts of bad telescopes. That with more refined telescopes, you could find out that these were just mistaken shapes due to the kind of inaccuracies of the instruments themselves. So by the 20s and 30s, most serious scientists don't believe there's any sentient life on the planet Mars or any planet really in our solar system.

[Don Wildman]

I'll be back with more American history.

[Greg Egigian]

After this short break.

[Don Wildman]

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[Greg Egigian]

It goes all hand in hand, of course, with technology moving along. Which is why in the 20th century, we're seeing so many more of them. Because suddenly we have the jet age coming upon us and these fast moving pilots are going around at speeds they didn't encounter before. Who knows if that's how they're seeing these things differently than they did before. But it sure seems to skyrocket, so to speak, the sightings of UFOs throughout the going into the 20s. But again, it's also against the backdrop of war, World War I, World War II. It's always hand in hand, isn't it, this view of UFOs as an outgrowth of cultural change and the pressures that we're encountering.

The thing about the ufo, right, is that no matter who's behind it, if they are real, these devices are advanced technologies, these are beyond what we are used to seeing, meaning that therefore whoever is behind it has access to knowledge that most of us don't have, have abilities to create things using scientific and technological understanding that is beyond anything that we typically recognize in the present. And so in that sense, what the UFO thing has been as a phenomenon socially, is a way to imagine not only the present, but the future, right? Particularly if it's aliens, right? The idea of alien tech, the aliens are here visiting us in these spaceships that can do these really remarkable things. This offers us a glimpse of our potential future and raises all sorts of questions about whether or not we will ever have those capabilities. Can we achieve these self same things? But even if it's not the aliens, then what you get is, as you do today with the US Government, there are worries about, oh, are we behind in a new arms race, right? Do the Russians or do the Chinese have now these advanced drones or hologram devices or something, right? This becomes the worry. So always there's been this kind of interaction with existing technologies and the kind of just sort of the cultural infrastructure surrounding those technologies.

How is it that we've come up with this new age of commissions and so forth? Is it the Internet and the proliferation of the imagery? I mean, has that just put too much pressure on the government? Do they finally have to own up to the fact that they have a lot more information than they've been letting on about?

It's interesting. I mean, the renewed interests of people within the US government, again, it's not an entirely unusual phenomenon, it has happened in the past, but it is something that requires a kind of critical mass because there's always been a politician here and there who's been interested in UFOs, tried to put it on the national agenda, the federal agenda.

Harry Reid.

Yeah, Harry Reid did it back then. There were people back in the 50s and 60s trying to do it. What you need, however, is you need usually a combination of some access to Media, you usually need some compelling lobbyists behind it. And then you need to have some pivotal political figures who chime in. You get people like Gillibrand in New York, you get Rubio involved. You got now Chuck Schumer in New York. You get certain people with some real clout who get on board, so to speak, and run with this. And once you get that, once you have that kind of energy, if you will, you've got enough there to make this something that can't just go away overnight. And so that's where we are. We've reached this point where you got a certain critical mass. The question is, for them and the people who pursue this politically is, is this sustainable? In the past, this kind of interest has usually been a passing fancy. Other things usually take over and this stuff usually then sort of moves on and they move on with their interests. So that will be the question. Is this going to be sustained over a lengthy period of time or not?

I have to tell you the report to read. I mean, there's several of them, as we mentioned, but I just printed off the Internet the NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon Independent study team report 2023, I believe it is. It's really refreshing to read. First of all, it's very readable. It's not too heavy handed in terms of one way or the other. Are they there or are they not? It's very objective is what I'm saying. But it's also fun to go through and see how you could look at this differently than you might have thought of, you know, because data matters and they're not finding the data that supports this. And it's just a refreshing kind of.

[Don Wildman]

Take on the whole thing.

[Greg Egigian]

This again was repeated earlier, more famously, a few years earlier, when they finally said, yes, we're going to do this thing. And we thought, oh, we're going to have all the answers. It's like the Kennedy assassination. Finally we're going to know. And that did not happen. We're still sort of in the lurch, which is really, you know, where we probably will always be, frankly, which is frustrating to many, including myself. You were obviously drawn to this subject matter passionately to write such a book about this. Where did you come down on this? What were your feelings about it yourself?

I came down on this. You know, my approach to this that I make very clear at the beginning is I'm not going to be writing a book that gives the definitive answer, are they really, Are they here or not? I wasn't going to be advancing anybody's you know, pet theory one way or the other. I also was not going to be a debunker. I felt all along that we were not being served well in the conversation by having these two sides of the true believer and the die hard skeptic just fighting it out all the time. Rather, what I wanted to do was historicize that talk about the history of how the conversation got that way for us to see things. And so what I start to see when you do that, I think you start to see some things that are maybe a different perspective. And one of the things I came away from this was to understand that the phenomenon has been more of a mystery than a puzzle. A puzzle you can solve. A puzzle can be put together. You can put. You can get the answer one day. This is something that has always been really shrouded in a sense of mystery. And mystery is not only something that never really has an end. There are many people who are invested in preserving the mystery rather than answering questions or see the mystery as really the answer for everything. So that, I think, was one of the things I came away from. The other thing I came away from the book was an enormous amount of admiration, if that's the right term, for all of these people who over the years have been fascinated with this and decided to create an organization or to write up a news bulletin about it to investigate cases. These are people who did this, is this was a grassroots phenomenon. This was not centrally organized. It was done out of a great love of the field. They did it by spending money out of their own pockets that they often didn't have. They did it in their free time because you couldn't get a job doing this. So they were coming home and working late at night. I came away thinking, you know, this is one of the most impressive citizen science projects we've ever seen in that regard. And so I really came away thinking, you know, that's one of those things you need to capture. You know, the speculation about UFOs and some of the organizational dimensions of it at the top. Those things are a lot of different people who at times, I think, come in and out of those circles and are really looking for fame and fortune. There's very little, by the way, to be had in this field of fortune. What I was really caught by were all these other people who are really lost names. They are not people who are seeking fame or fortune who just felt compelled to look into this. And I thought their stories really needed to be told.

Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's Such a relevant subject matter, as I have mentioned already, as a cultural story element. So much of our media and so much of our entertainment world comes from this world. And it's important to understand how it came to pass. The events that really triggered all of this thinking, not to mention the great minds that are behind it. Imagine, you know, the imaginations that are behind this. H.G. wells being one of those. These are important cultural landmarks to the way we move through our lives. And understanding another realm as part of that, it goes for ghosts and all the rest of it. You know, there's a mystery to life, and it's really worth embracing and understanding how people are kind of stretching out the definitions of our existence. That all being said, when you look at one of those videos, especially of that little cigar shape, you know, that the Air Force pilot is looking at and commenting on, oh, my God. You can't deny the fact that there is some crazy stuff going on there.

Yeah, yeah, weird stuff, Trust me. You know, when you dive deep into this stuff, you see and hear lots and lots of weird stuff. And I will have people all the time ask me, so what's your explanation? And I throw up my hands and say, don't ask me. I'm a historian. I mean, go ask an engineer, go ask a physicist, you know, go ask a pilot. You know, those are the people who I defer to in a lot of these things. But I don't deny for one minute that people see and have witnessed things that are absolutely bizarre, weird, anomalous. I just don't see how anybody can say definitively what they are. And I think most serious people who've looked into this over the years will often say the exact same thing. And that's part of, I think, I guess, the allure of this whole phenomenon. I often like to say that the thing about the UFO mystery is that it's an invitation. It is amazingly inviting. It has space for everybody and everybody's voice. Nobody's going to stop you from chiming in and getting involved, throwing your hat in the ring and throwing some ideas out there. And it's a wonderful world in that regard. But it's the cacophonous world. A lot of voices, and they get very animated and very loud.

It's wonderful until you're on that steel table with those guys looking down at you and they're probes going on. I'm on Team Quantum Physics. I think that there's something that we have yet to get to that is being scratched at the surface of by scientists and physicists and so forth. That really stands up to speculation anyway, that there's another realm here that we will get to down the road of life. And I think that these visitors, if they are visitors, are already there or we're just, you know, existence can interacts with that realm from time to time and suddenly something happens. I chalk it up to that because I need some kind of answer. But who knows? Otherwise, you're existing in the land of science fiction, which is just not fair to yourself. It's fun, but it's not fair. The book is called after the Flying.

[Don Wildman]

Saucers, A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon. The author has been with us all.

[Greg Egigian]

This while, Greg Egigian, thank you for joining us. I really appreciate it.

Thanks very much.

[Don Wildman]

Hey, thanks for listening to American History hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes, dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.

[Eva Longoria]

Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from? Like, what's the history behind bacon wrapped hot dogs? Hi, I'm Eva Longoria. Hi, I'm Maite Gomez Rejon. Our podcast Hungry for History is back. And this season we're taking an even bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history, seeing that the most popular cocktail is the margarita, followed by the mojito from Cuba and the pina colada from Puerto Rico. Listen to Hungry for history on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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