Coulthart vs Elizondo

Summary

It's a Very Exciting Time – Episode Summary

Podcast: It's a Very Exciting Time
Hosts: Scott Vandehey & Chuck Lauer Vose
Episode: Coulthart vs Elizondo
Date: July 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Scott and Chuck dive into the growing tension and speculation around key figures in the UFO community as rumors swirl about Lou Elizondo’s potential appointment to a government role in UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) transparency under a possible Trump administration. The hosts compare and contrast the reputations, backgrounds, and controversies surrounding investigative journalist Ross Coulthart and former AATIP head Lou Elizondo, discussing how each figures into ongoing debates over trust, disclosure, and the future of government openness about UFOs. Along the way, the episode touches on whistleblower amnesty, the complicated NDAA legislative process, credible claims of pre-Sputnik artificial objects in orbit, and the wider scientific and cultural implications of disclosure.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: July 8th Rumors & UFO Disclosure Hype

• The episode opens with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the perennial rumors about imminent government disclosure of alien contact—specifically the July 8th Roswell anniversary (01:14).
• Scott is skeptical anything dramatic will happen, noting past rumors often dissolve, but acknowledges the cultural suspense is ramping up each year surrounding these dates.

2. Ross Coulthart’s Comments and the Lou Elizondo Debate

• Ross Coulthart: Claims a prominent member of the UAP community is being considered for a high-level government appointment, sparking widespread speculation it's Lou Elizondo (02:00).
• The hosts discuss Elizondo’s background, his central role in making UAP a mainstream issue, and his 2024 congressional testimony supporting crash retrieval claims.
• Notable quote – Scott reads from Coulthart (06:10):

  “There are people who bitterly resent and don’t think it’s a good idea that Lou be appointed to a position of power… They think he was part of a previous agenda… to control the narrative, to restrict what the public is entitled to know about the UAP disclosure.”

3. Transparency, Trust, and Controlled Disclosure

• Speculation exists that Elizondo’s public appearances were a form of “controlled disclosure”—engineered to manage the UFO narrative (07:52-08:51).
• Scott details community tensions between those who view Elizondo as a genuine advocate versus those who suspect him of being an intelligence operative managing information.
• Elizondo’s congressional testimony and book indicate a gradual shift in his openness about crash retrieval programs; some see this as evolving with what's being publicly acknowledged, others as inconsistency (10:46).

4. Community Polarization: Is Lou the Right Choice?

• Whistleblower trust: Some are concerned that Elizondo’s intelligence and counterintelligence background could dissuade whistleblowers from coming forward if he’s placed in charge of UAP transparency (14:29).
• The challenge: There’s a “catch 22”—Elizondo cannot fully disclose his past due to security oaths, which creates suspicion (09:08, 28:23).
• Chuck summarizes (18:10):

  “To me… there’s a guy here who’s been involved in the Legacy program for a long time … he’s going to know where all the bodies are. That was his job.”

5. Direct Responses: Elizondo and Coulthart Exchange

• Elizondo, in a Chris Cuomo interview:

  “...Just weeks ago, I had nothing to do with the UFO program… now apparently I ran everything involving UFOs in the legacy program.” (23:14)

• He denies ever claiming he was in the Legacy Program, clarifies what security oaths allow him to discuss (24:10–25:22).
• Coulthart responds, recognizing Elizondo’s constraints, and neither seem personally antagonistic—just constrained by the nature of their positions (26:12–28:23).

6. Wider Pool: Who Else Could Take the Role?

• Chuck argues there are very few plausible choices for a trustworthy, public-facing UFO “czar” besides Elizondo or David Grusch (31:04–32:07).
• Concerns about other candidates lacking either the credibility, advocacy, or political skill required.

7. Whistleblower Amnesty and Legislative Efforts

• Representatives Luna and Burleson push for whistleblower protections and the possibility of immunity for those breaking silence about UAP programs (33:33–36:52, 39:01–40:55).
• Distinction is emphasized: immunity may prevent jail, but career repercussions remain (34:51–36:19, 37:15).
• Burleson voices frustration that decisions are being made by unelected staffers rather than elected officials in the legislative process for amendments like the UAP Disclosure Act (73:47).

8. Who Controls the Secret? Fragmentation Post-Cheney

• Ross Coulthart and Burleson discuss the lack of centralized oversight after Dick Cheney, leading to dispersal of UAP data into the private sector (42:28–48:02).
• Notable “Spider-Man meme” moment (43:07) about agencies blaming each other for secrecy.
• Fragmentation and compartmentalization mean “not only does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing, the left hand doesn’t know the right hand exists” (52:43).

9. The Coming Impact of Disclosure: Science, Society, and Funding

• Dr. Jacques Vallée claims communication with non-human beings is already occurring in labs (57:33).
• Chris Mellon and Rep. Luna agree that wide-ranging impacts—religious, philosophical, economic—are imminent if/when real disclosure arrives (59:14–63:22).
• Chuck and Scott discuss both the potential funding boom for astronomy if “scientists find ET” and, conversely, a shift to military if the White House leads on disclosure (91:30–93:57).

10. Science Corner: AI, NASA, & Artificial Objects Pre-Sputnik

• Disclosure Foundation launches an ambitious AI project to hunt for UAPs in NASA’s colossal archives, involving respected scientists (77:23–82:37).
• Dr. Beatrice Villarreal’s work revealing mysterious pre-Sputnik artificial objects in orbit is confirmed by an ingenious analysis—matching distortions in photographic plates (99:56–103:19).
• Discusses broader resistance and stigma in academia towards UAP research (95:26–97:12).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Coulthart on Elizondo:
  “I have been quite delicately outspoken in my belief that I think Lou needs to be more forthcoming about his past roles… But there are people who… don’t think it’s a good idea that Lou be appointed…” (06:10)
• Elizondo’s Wry Rebuttal:
  “Make up your mind, guys. Right? Am I lying about everything, or am I lying about everything because I actually did everything.” (23:16)
• Scott, on the trust dilemma:
  “In order to get the job, he has to be the kind of person who would never compromise his oaths. In order to be effective at the job, he needs to be absolutely clear in the eyes of the public.” (28:23)
• Coulthart on compartmentalization:
  “I think there was an MJ12 style control group, but I think that’s now been superseded by huge levels of compartmentalization.” (44:18)
• Jacques Vallée:
  “There are people in labs trying to talk to alien life forms… It will involve religion, philosophy, the history of science…” (57:33)
• Chris Mellon:
  “The sooner we learn the truth, the better our chances of preparing for whatever comes next… the implications are not merely scientific. They ripple outward…” (59:14)
• Rep. Anna Paulina Luna:
  “There have been a few very credible whistleblowers… that alleged they had information specifically pertaining to the locations of craft and biologics, but were afraid of losing their clearances.” (34:27)
• Chuck, on academic pushback:
  “I think a lot of scientists are still operating on this sort of X-Files, little green men disinformation campaign…” (96:54)
• Dr. Villarreal, excitement about new confirmation:
  “He demonstrated that the transients that appear on these plates exhibit the same optical distortions as the stars themselves…” (100:22)

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• [02:00] – Ross Coulthart stirs speculation about Elizondo’s possible government appointment
• [06:10] – Scott reads lengthy Coulthart quote questioning Elizondo’s transparency
• [10:46] – Elizondo’s congressional testimony on crash retrieval programs
• [16:45] – Community skepticism about Lou Elizondo’s role and trustworthiness
• [18:10] – Chuck outlines why the controversy is as much about perception as facts
• [23:14] – Elizondo’s direct response to accusations on Chris Cuomo
• [26:12–28:23] – Coulthart’s measured reaction and framing of the “catch 22”
• [33:33] – Discussion shifts to whistleblower amnesty and upcoming immunity
• [42:28–48:02] – Who is (or was) in charge? Dick Cheney, agency fragmentation, and the MJ12 myth
• [57:33], [59:14], [63:22] – Vallée, Mellon, Luna reflect on societal impacts of disclosure
• [77:23–82:37] – Disclosure Foundation’s new large-scale AI analysis of NASA material
• [99:56–103:19] – Villarreal and Busco’s work confirming pre-Sputnik artificial objects

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Last Word: Reflections on Trust, Disclosure, & What’s Next

• The episode closes with Scott and Chuck agreeing that, for all Lou Elizondo’s baggage, he remains one of a tiny handful qualified for a major UAP transparency role.
• The scientific community’s stigma against UAP research may soon face a reckoning, as new archival research and possible whistleblower disclosures are poised to shake the field.
• Scott jokes that if the July 8th disclosure rumors come to pass, the world may have to deal with the clash between everyday life and seismic revelations:

  "I still have a job, I still have to go to work… My rent is still due in 10 days." (61:47)

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Additional Resources

• VeryExcitingTime.com – Show notes, links, Discord, and merch
• Patreon Support – Support the show, get access to extras

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This episode is especially insightful for listeners wanting a nuanced, inside-baseball perspective on UFO disclosure politics, the personalities shaping the narrative, and the intersection of science, secrecy, and public trust in an era when the boundaries of the possible seem in constant flux.

Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome back to It's a Very Exciting Time, a podcast by a UFO nerd and his tolerant friend. My name is Scott and I've been fascinated by the phenomenon my whole life.

[B]

I'm Chuck. I'm an aerospace nerd and a tolerant friend.

[A]

I started this podcast because since 2017, there have been shocking revelations, from news of secret Pentagon programs to confirmed videos of astonishing craft. In a nutshell, now that we know the government has recovered non human technology,

[B]

or at least we will after President Trump tells us aliens are real on July 8th.

[A]

That's right. It raises a natural question. If UFOs are real, what else? Suddenly, some of these other parts of the phenomenon that seemed unlikely are pulled into the realm of the possible.

[B]

And they may still be unlikely. But even if it's new science and not aliens,

[A]

it's a very exciting time. Oh, my God, it's been a while. We're feeling a little punchy. We had to rerecord the intro like three times this morning.

[B]

Yeah, it's good. What are we talking about today? I mean, aside from apparently July 8th.

[A]

We'll get to that in a minute just to set everybody at ease. I don't think shit's going to happen on July 8th. I think this is, I believe, continued that rumor that we heard a few months ago from the guy who claimed his source was Robert Bigelow and then George Knapp outed him, like I just asked Mr. Bigelow and he said he didn't say anything of this sort. So, yeah. Yes, those rumors that there is an impending announcement about something to do with alien life continue. July 8th, if anybody's forgotten, is the anniversary of the Roswell incident. It's also in three days time. So by the time you're listening to this, it may have already happened. Or not. Who knows?

[B]

Who knows?

[A]

Yeah, we got some quotes about that later. The main thing I want to talk about is. Well, let me just dive into it. So I've got a quote here from investigative journalist Ross Coltart. He says, I've been hearing rumors that a very prominent member of the UAP transparency push may be being considered for appointment by the Trump administration. I hope that it's done in a way that gives powers of subpoena powers to compel openness and transparency.

[B]

Yeah, that would be nice. Who do you think it would be?

[A]

Well, the community basically immediately assumed that he was referring to Lou Elizondo. And there's multiple reasons for this. I mean, as much as I would like it to be someone like David Grusch, if it is going to be someone, Lou Elizondo is kind of a natural choice. He kind of kickstarted the whole thing in 2017. He's been out and outspoken about this topic for some time, including in the halls of Washington, although he knows how it works.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah. I don't know.

[A]

But the reason everybody's thinking about him is because last year, whistleblower. I just introduced him. Lou Elizondo, former head of atip.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Drafted a policy brief for the incoming administration, and he said recent events like the drone incursions in New Jersey and the Chinese spy balloon incidents underscore a critical gap. The US Woefully lacks a whole of government solution to emerging all domain technologies. To solve this problem, this policy brief recommends that the President empower a White House senior advisor or czar within the National Security Council to one, coordinate the US Government's response, two, formulate policy, and three, conduct domestic and international outreach, allowing the President and other key decision makers to get the answers they need when they need them.

[B]

Yeah, I still don't like the term czar.

[A]

Seems so weird, but it's super weird.

[B]

Also, I realized as you were reading it, I don't know what all domain means, such as literally.

[A]

All domain literally means, like, air, water, like ground. It's more of a military term. Like, okay, so this is not just a matter for the Navy or the Air Force or the Army.

[B]

Got it. I see. I see. Okay, cool. Yeah. Okay.

[A]

Yeah. So, yeah, Lou Elizondo wrote that. We haven't heard anything about it since, but he was advocating for the role to be set up. He obviously suggested himself for it. Now, interestingly, Ross's quote doesn't say what this person is being considered for. He says, considered for appointment by the Trump admin. Okay, for what? Janitor.

[B]

Yeah. Could be anything.

[A]

Yeah. Now, a little later, Ross tipped his hat, and in another interview, he said, look, it's pretty obvious that the gentleman I've been talking about, who I suspect might be up for a big position is Lou Elizondo. I have been quite delicately outspoken in my belief that I think Lou needs to be more forthcoming about his past roles. And he kind of laughs here. He says, look, I like and respect Louis a lot, and I think he's in a difficult position because he's bound by his security oath about what he can reveal about his past roles. I know he can't talk about it. It's a ridiculous situation. But there are people who bitterly resent and don't think it's a good Idea that Lou be appointed to a position of power in UAP transparency because they think he was part of a previous agenda that was essentially to try to control the narrative, to restrict what the public is entitled to know about the UAP disclosure. And I think a lot of this was an intention by General James Clapper to try and impose a narrative on the public domain using Lou as a frontman, a highly urbane, articulate, and likable frontman, to try to restrict what the public was told about crash retrievals.

[B]

So I don't recognize the name General James Clapper. Is that one I should recognize?

[A]

I mean, he was a guy in power around the time that Lou was coming out. The point is, the narrative that we've been led to understand from Lou, and I have no reason to doubt, but that Ross is somewhat calling into question here is Lou was actively trying to get the DoD to take UAP seriously, and due to stigma, they would not. The program he was in started out well funded and then contracted and contracted and contracted until effectively he was running it out of, like, pocket funds from his unrelated work and managed to keep it alive. And he eventually tried to do an end run past the people that were blocking him to go directly to the Secretary of Defense. That didn't work. And in the end, he submitted his letter of resignation to the SECDEF and went public with what he could say. Now, Lou, if you remember, is the guy that's always like, I can walk right up to this line and I can't say anything more than this, but he will tantalizingly hint at things.

[B]

And.

[A]

And I remember him talking about crash retrievals. Now, the community has kind of gone wild in the reaction to Ross saying that actually what was happening was Lou was coming out as part of a, like, internal effort to do controlled disclosure. So, okay, Lou, go talk to them. Let them know there are objects up there, but don't let them talk about crash retrievals. And it's true that early on they didn't talk a lot about crash retrievals. The closest that Lou would say is, we have recovered exotic materials. And the assumption was always that he was talking about, like, arts parts and other, like, little tiny bits of, like, metal fragments and stuff, which they did have and talked about, but they did not talk about the kind of stuff that David Grusch was talking about, like, full on crash retrieval. Now, here's the thing. Lou did talk about crash retrieval, but he was always kind of careful about it. And.

[B]

And yeah, so how could he be. How could he be more forthright about his previous or his past roles.

[A]

Well, this is kind of what Ross is saying. Lou's caught in a catch 22. He can't talk about it, but the fact that he won't means people don't trust him.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

When Lou testified in Congress in 2024, this is after David Grusch. So crash retrievals is already out there in the vernacular at this point. One of the representatives on the panel asks him about crash retrievals. And Lou says, I signed documentation three years ago. So 2024, that would have been 2021 he signed this. So still well after he came out in 2017, I signed documentation three years ago that restricts my ability to discuss specifically crash retrievals. I submitted my book through the Dopser process, and what is in the book is what I was told I am allowed to talk about. Now we've talked about his book. It fully discusses crash retrievals. Like it talks about the fact that, you know, I think he explicitly says Lockheed Martin has crash retrieval that the government gave them, and that there was an effort to transfer this material back, back to the OS app program to a special facility at the Pax river facility. And that whole thing got spiked by the CIA. So at this point, Lou is definitely talking about crash retrievals. The representative follows up and says, has the government conducted secret UAP crash retrieval programs? Yes or no? He says, yes. She says, have they? Were those programs designed to identify and reverse engineer recovered craft, yes or no? Lou says, yes. So people were what?

[B]

Was he restricted?

[A]

Well, that's the question. Right? So he says, I'm not allowed to talk about it. But then he explicitly says yes and yes, but he doesn't give details. I guess that's what it is. It's very confusing if you are pro Louis. It's easy to look at this as his response has evolved over time, as the community's understanding of these topics has evolved, and presumably as other information got leaked, it's no longer a. You can't say this. People are already talking about it. How am I allowed to respond? Well, you can say, yes, it exists. That's it. You know, that kind of thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you are anti Louis, it's easy to see this as inconsistency and therefore a cover up. As a side note, when I went to the Lou Elizondo event here in Portland a few weeks ago, I walk in, I'm wearing one of my TV shirts with the five observables on it, and I'm kind of waiting to see if anybody, like, not recognizes Me, I don't think that's going to happen, but, you know, just wants to be like nobody. Like, this crowd was exclusively like age 40 and up, which, you know, I'm nearly 50, so I fit into that demographic.

[B]

But, like, right.

[A]

This is an older crowd. They are here to see Lou. I sit down, this guy next to me is talking to the guy sitting in front of him and he mentions, well, you know, like Lou, you know, I don't know how much we can trust him. And he mentions the thing where Lou showed the photo of like, what he implied was a UFO and turned out to be like, not crop circles in the sense of UFO crop circles, but literally like an irrigation pattern in a field. And he was being kind of uncharitable. I said, well, you know, in Lou's defense, he said at the time, I haven't verified this photo. I was handed it 10 minutes ago. But this is the kind of thing our pilots are seeing. And you know, he, he tried to walk it back. And you'll remember we were a little skeptical of that defense on this show at the time. But. But by and large, I believe Lou is genuine in his efforts to try to convince us. I don't think he is an intelligence agent who's trying to mislead us. This guy next to me was absolutely convinced Lou is entirely a disinformation agent. At some point I wanted to turn to him and be like, bro, why are you here?

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Why go for a ticket to see Lou Elizondo talk? It's not like you were somewhere else and he happened to show up. Are you hate watching this live event? Yeah, yeah, that's. So that was a very strange encounter. So, yeah, Ross has come out and implied that Lou was part of the Legacy Program and actively part of a disinformation effort.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Very strange. Post Disclosure World on Twitter responded. He said, Ross Coulthardt has been told that one concern some have is that there needs to be some perception that the individual who would have an oversight role within the National Security council like a UFOs are, should be someone that whistleblowers feel comfortable approaching. And since Lou Elizondo allegedly had a counter intelligence role in the Legacy Program, I want to separate these two things. Lou has a documented counterintelligence role in the military. That's literally what he was trained to do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The new part here is within the Legacy Program. That's Ross's claim.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Since Lou allegedly had a counterintelligence role in the Legacy Program, this makes those who want to come forward nervous, that's a legitimate concern. This doesn't mean Lou Elizondo would necessarily be untrustworthy. It just means that some may feel there hypothetically could be a conflict of interest and that the UFO czar should not create that kind of atmosphere. I think that's a fair objection.

[B]

Yeah. I guess in comparison, you have to look at Arrow and do whistleblowers feel more comfortable talking to them? No, of course not.

[A]

Definitely not. Well, and more to the point, we've already seen that. Right. Like, Arrow is explicitly a group that the public does not trust, and whistleblowers have overtly said, I do not feel comfortable going to them. Arrow is the government's official channel for whistleblowers to come in, and they're like, no, we won't do it. So the concern being manifested here is whether there's anything to it or not, the person who's going to be in this role, if there is going to be someone in this role, should have an unimpeachable reputation, should be someone whistleblowers do inherently trust as their back.

[B]

Yeah, but there's like, very few people who could beat out Lou in that regard.

[A]

And it's like, I mean, David Grush, our good, good boy.

[B]

But it's pretty much it, right? It's.

[A]

It's a high bar. It's difficult to clear. Yeah. UAP Gerb also commented on this, and he kind of echoed what Ross was saying. He said, I have heard similar statements from individuals within or on the peripheries of the Legacy programs regarding Mr. Elizondo. These allegations are twofold. One, from 2009 to 2017. So this is before Lou came public. Lou operated AATIP, a cover program for several National Security Council led activities at the behest of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. This effort originated from within the Legacy program Onion, and sought to push a partial disclosure transparency initiative, culminating in attempts to establish Hillary Clinton as the disclosure president. Two separate from a tip. Elizondo has a very deep history within the legacy architecture, specifically surrounding program protection. So a couple things. One, Lou's background in program protection is overtly stated by Lou himself in his book. He talks about, this is his background and this is why he was brought into osap. He was not running OS app. He was brought in to do counterintelligence security for the Special Access Program. That's his normal day job at the time. This idea that Hillary Clinton was being set up as the disclosure president and Trump's election kind of threw everybody for a loop That's a story we've heard repeatedly. The idea that that was going to be part of a partial disclosure transparency initiative. That's the new claim that I haven't heard before. That like, yeah, Hillary was being set up, but they weren't going to tell us about the crash retrieval reverse engineering. They were just going to tell us, yeah, there's weird stuff in the sky which, yeah, I mean, plausible. Is it true? I don't know. But the claim here is that Lou was involved in that cover program until 2017 when he left government.

[B]

Right. I mean, I look at the statement at the top and the two points at the bottom and I'm not seeing the connection and why that would concern people. To me, what I see is, all right, there's a guy here who's been involved in the Legacy program for a long time. Yeah, he was counterintelligence. But counterintelligence doesn't mean disinformation. It means many different things. And I don't know, both of them are basically like, hey, he's got a lot of history with this. He's going to know where all the bodies are. That was his job.

[A]

You are nailing the tension in this story. And the fact is, right or wrong, Lou is a polarizing figure in the community and he always has been. There are people who have never and will never trust Lou Elizondo and just full stop anything that even smacks of, oh, he's deep state. He's part of the program, he's part of the secret keepers. They will factor that in higher than anything he has done since. I will point out that both of these things can be true. He can have been part of the secret keeping apparatus. He can have been part of a push for partial transparency that failed and decided to go full transparency. He can have been out in public actively pushing for partial transparency, not talking about crash retrieval until crash retrieval became part of the conversation. And like all of these things can be true, he can still be a good guy who is, broadly speaking, pro transparency. But how you interpret Lou and his actions and whether he's trustworthy and more importantly, as Ross is saying, whether he is a good choice for a UAP transparency organization head is going to come down a lot to how you feel about Lou Elizondo.

[B]

Yeah, I guess the other part is people forget that like this is his job sometimes. Like, I, I don't have any problem thinking of someone who's done active disinformation campaigns who is now sick of it because that happens.

[A]

Another thing around Lou that is really difficult to talk about is Lou was actively part of the work that went on at Guantanamo Bay. And how you feel about the things that happen at Guantanamo Bay is going to color how you feel about Lou Elizondo. I'm very, very ambivalent about this part of Lou's past. A pro, Lou Elizondo, based on the work I have seen him doing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I don't celebrate this part of his past. He does not seem to feel any hesitation or remorse about it. But that's true of a lot of service people that I know. They were there to do a mission. They believe they were doing it for the right reason. Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, like, I. I'm not here to throw Lou Elizondo out with the bathwater. You know what I mean? Like, there can be aspects of his background that we are uncomfortable with, and he can still be a good advocate for disclosure.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Could there be a better one? Sure. And it gets back to the conversation we had last week about Avi Loeb's group and the skeptic they were bringing in. Avi's logic for having a devil's advocate on the group is sound.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is this guy the best choice for that? Maybe not. This could be the same kind of thing. Like, Lou is a good candidate. Someone like David Grusher might be a better candidate. But also, frankly speaking, there's a vanishingly small pool of candidates. It needs to be someone who has publicly advocated for disclosure for years, publicly advocated for better treatment of whistleblowers. I mean, we're talking about a handful of people, and other than David Grush, I would say every single one of them has some reason to hesitate about them.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's very reasonable.

[A]

Yeah. Now, here's the thing. This whole story would be kind of whatever, except, of course, this happened about a week ago, and someone asked Lou Elizondo about it. So he had an interview on Chris Cuomo. And Elizondo's first reaction I find so human and relatable. He says, you know, I find it interesting that just weeks ago, according to some on social media, I had nothing to do with the UFO program or the Pentagon or a tip. And now apparently, I ran Everything involving UFOs in the legacy program.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, that's social media for you. Right?

[A]

Like, make up your mind, guys. Right? Am I lying about everything, or am I lying about everything? Because I actually did everything.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Elizondo continues. He says, look, I don't know exactly where Ross is getting his information. I suspect he has Sources, really? That's not my concern. I've always had a lot of respect for Ross. For the record, I think Ross is an excellent investigative journalist. I consider him a friend. I've dedicated the last 10 years of my life to being forthcoming with the American people about the reality of UAP UFOs. In fact, one only has to look at my resignation memo. For the record that I wrote to Secretary James Mattis at the time, I've committed myself to transparency to the degree that I could. It's true. I had a security clearance. I did not say I was part of the Legacy Program.

[B]

I don't understand that last part.

[A]

It's because, okay, this quote comes a tiny bit out of context. He's responding to Ross saying he's part of the Legacy Program. He's also responding to Chris Cuomo saying, lou, you said you were part of the Legacy Program. Lou's like, no, I didn't. I said I had a security clearance. I said I was part of a tip. That's not the Legacy Program. So Lou's trying to draw a line in sand. And it's true. Lou has never said he was part of the Legacy Program.

[B]

Yeah, okay.

[A]

Lou continues. He says, look, when you work for the government, you have a security clearance. There's always these statements, you know, we cannot confirm or deny. And people always take that as some sort of implicit confirmation. But the reality is that's not at all what it means. There are classified programs out there. And if someone were to ask me, lou, were you part of, I don't know, Project x with the M1 Abrams tank? Even if I wasn't, if it's a classified program, I would have to say, I can't discuss that. In fact, I can't even acknowledge that. A lot of times people infer things and it starts to take on its own life.

[B]

Totally true. Yeah. NDAs are really weird in that regard.

[A]

Well, and I told you about the before, about the. The difference between an acknowledged and an unacknowledged SAP. An acknowledged SAP. You can do the no comment. I can neither confirm or deny an unacknowledged SAP. You are actually supposed to lie and say, there is no such program. It's not enough to say, no comment and do the thing Lou's talking about where you lead the person to believe that maybe it's true. You're actively supposed to tell them, no, that thing doesn't exist.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's really weird. I told you about the time that we had something similar to that at work, and it's like, I have to have to ask my co workers to do things, but I can't tell them why.

[A]

Right.

[B]

This is very weird.

[A]

Very weird. Yeah.

[B]

Like, I don't know. Just do it. It's important.

[A]

Yeah. Now, of course, things being what they are, after Elizondo responded to Coldheart, Coldheart, on his own show, responds to Louis and Goldart's kind of laughing. And I want to be clear, neither one of them seems mad about this. Right. Like Coltart, very upfront. I like glue. I respect him. But if he is the candidate for this, there are people that are upset about that. And Lou saying, hey, I like Coltart. I respect him as a journalist, but there are some things I can't talk about. So Coltheart kind of laughing, responds to this back and forth again. He says, look, what I saw was Lou very deftly avoiding any breach of his National Security act oath obligations and basically refusing to confirm or deny whether or not he was part of the Legacy Program. I respect and understand the constraints that Lou is under. He's in a very difficult position, and I certainly don't want people to think that I'm trying to hijack him with this stuff. Lou has never made any public admission that he was in the Legacy Program. But what he didn't do is respond to the specific allegation that he was involved in Legacy UAP retrieval. Reverse engineering program.

[B]

Yeah. So the fact that he didn't respond, Coulthardt is saying, is some indication that he was involved in it.

[A]

No, not at all. Coltar is being very upfront. I know Lou can't respond to this. I get it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But the fact that he has not means there will always be people who are uncomfortable with the idea of him being the UFO's owner. It's a catch 22. Like, in order to get the job, he has to be the kind of person that would never compromise his oaths. In order to be effective at the job, he needs to be absolutely clear in the eyes of the public.

[B]

He can't. That's not.

[A]

And that's all Coulthard is trying to say. But, of course, like, people want to quote Quick Hits. So a lot of the reporting around Lou responding to Ross was. Elizondo denies being part of the Legacy Program, which he did not do. No, he did not deny being part. He just said, I never said that. Which is true, but doesn't really address the question. Yeah, nobody said you said that, Lou. We're saying it. What do you say in response to it? Well, I can't say Anything in response to it. Yeah, of course. We all get that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's one of these funny things, you know, Like, I'm sure the. The clickbaity title and video thumbnail that I have to do for YouTube will be like Coltart v. Elizondo, you know, that kind of thing. But it doesn't feel like that. Like, these are two people I respect a lot who clearly both respect each other, but they have to talk about this weird thing, which is Lou is up for a position that requires a great deal of public trust. And kind of due to the nature of his career and his oaths, it's hard for Lou to gain the amount of trust he needs to make everyone comfortable.

[B]

Yeah. Do you think that. Yeah. Do you think that this would be in any way different if they were both in the same room? Or is it actually advantageous that they can have this argument where this discussion in, like, in the open, with time in between.

[A]

I will say, I will say Lou is incredibly personable and. What's the word? Convivial. Like, he's just really good and at ease and making other people feel at ease. You know, like when he was up on stage at a show, he's in an armchair with a beer, you know, like, it was not a. I'm pacing and lecturing to you. Look, we're going to have a conversation that's very Portland. He's very good in a one on one setting. Ross is Australian and an investigative journalist, which means he can come off a little strong sometimes.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

But he's also very personable. And I'm sure that they would both end up laughing and not be able to do anything about it because at the end of the day, Ross is asking him to do something he cannot do and Ross knows that and Lou knows that. They would both kind of shrug, like, what are you gonna do? Like. Yeah, I'm sure they dance around it for a little bit, then laugh and move on.

[B]

Yeah. Because you can't do anything else. Yeah, exactly.

[A]

So for the record, I still think Lou would be a fine candidate for UAPs are. But I understand why someone has reservations. Personally, I'd rather see David Grush do it because I think he has a more sterling reputation. But there are probably bigger political concerns. Maybe Lou is better at interacting with, you know, Lou's a little less autistic.

[B]

Yeah, that's true. And also, Grush is doing something important for us right now.

[A]

Absolutely. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't. What do you think? Like, is there a better Candidate like, do you think Lou should step back?

[B]

No, I think Lou is the right person. I don't. I don't think there's anyone else. The only position I wish was different is that I wish Gary Nolan was the skeptic on Avi's thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But no, I think he's perfect for that. I think Grush is in the right place. I think Lou is hopefully going to be in the right place.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, it's like we said, right? Like the short list of people who could do this role is vanishingly small. You could maybe have Chris Mellon do it, but I think they probably want someone who is Pentagon. David Grusch and Lou Elizondo are the obvious choices. Other whistleblowers like Matthew Brown and Dylan Borland are a little more problematic. They weren't as high ranking. They're not as good at, you know, working the politics of the situation. Beyond that, you need to start talking about former Navy pilots like Ryan Graves and David Fravor. And they're great, but again, they were pilots. They weren't in the national security apparatus. They weren't. You know, the number of people have risen to the level that Elizondo and Grush have and have the connections and the political know how is very, very

[B]

small that we know about.

[A]

I struggle to think of it. Well, that's the other thing. Right. There are people that we don't know of, but the fact that we don't know of them almost eliminates them from the running. Again, we need someone that the potential UFO whistleblowers trust. So unless it's somebody who's very well known Interior, but not publicly, that all of them are like, oh, that guy. Yeah, no problem. But is such, does such a person exist? I don't know.

[B]

We wouldn't know.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so moving on from Coltart v. Elizondo, let's talk about whistleblower amnesty and stuff. We've had a number of interesting quotes from that. First of all, Representative Anna Paulina Luna continuing to talk about this. She said there have been a few very credible whistleblowers we have talked to that alleged they had information specifically pertaining to the locations of craft and biologics, but were afraid of losing their clearances. So we've talked directly to the White House and we are providing them with a list of people who will be given immunity in that they will not have to face retribution in the future for violations of their security clearance or in some cases maybe the Espionage act, whatever it might be.

[B]

So is the White House actually capable of granting that. I have no idea who grants that.

[A]

Yeah, White House is top of the executive branch and the military is in the executive branch. Commander in Chief is not a made up title.

[B]

Right. Yeah. And so. So, like, there's a good chance they would still lose their clearance, but at least they wouldn't be going to jail.

[A]

It's hard to say. Again, there's a difference between what is the legal situation and what happens as a practical reality. We've talked about the idea that Trump still hasn't issued an executive order to disclose everything, but everyone understands what he wants because he's been vocal about it. If Trump stands up and gives blanket immunity to David Grush, Eric Davis, Lou Elizondo, you know this short list that Anna Paulina Luna has put together. Yes. Technically, there's nothing stopping their security clearances from being revoked, but politically, I think there's an understanding these people have the President's backing and they're paying attention and you shouldn't fuck with them anymore.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Who knows? But yeah, that's the understanding. And in particular, Representative Luna is not saying we're going to keep them from losing their security clearances. She's saying we're going to keep them from prison. Yeah. The idea is they're going to come testify and say the things that they have not been able to say except in a skiff. They're going to say those things publicly. Right now they can't do that because it's a violation of their security clearances, their NDAs, maybe the espionage Act.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Getting this blanket immunity means they can talk publicly about it. The thing I found interesting about this, because we heard her say all of this last week is hearing her say that she's given the White House a list. This is not the White House going, we're going to give immunity to this category of people or for this duration, or people who are in this program. It's the following X number of individuals recommended to us by Annapolina Luna will be given immunity. That's an interesting development.

[B]

Yeah. It's certainly a smaller set and it's a more constrained set, which makes, seems to me like it would make it more likely to be less legally problematic for the White House. A little bit easier to say yes, because it's scoped so tightly.

[A]

But to be fair, how big the list is, it could be 500 people.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's still. But even if it was 500, it is still constrained and something that's boundless becomes much more problematic. But what I, But What I think is still really important is that the whistleblowers are, I think, probably still committing career suicide. Oh, yeah. Like, it's over. So it kind of limits.

[A]

It's a risk you take any time you become a whistleblower. And, you know, we've seen the very public faces of that in Dylan Borland, David Groer. Oh, my God, not Davis. No, Eric Davis is not a whistleblower. Matthew Brown, you know, like, all of these guys are whistleblowers who came out and said that they were overtly retaliated against. Elizondo and Grush have specifically talked about threats to their life. Dylan Borland has talked about administrative terrorism.

[B]

So

[A]

it's never. It's never easy to become a whistleblower. But right now, a lot of the whistleblowers are saying, I can't come forward because I'm worried I will be killed or disappeared or thrown in prison for the rest of my life. If you're willing to come forward, you may be willing to tank your career and your security clearance to do the right thing, but that doesn't mean you're signing up for a lifetime of harassment and black helicopters and, you know, taken to black sites and stuff like that, you know.

[B]

Right, yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Representative Eric Burleson said something that I thought was really interesting, talking about the kind of people that they want to give immunity to. He says there may be times where these individuals were promoted into a system or a program, and sometimes they're now inheriting things where they realize, well, there's crimes involved in this. So they're put in a kind of awkward situation. Do they do their patriotic duty? What do they do? I think providing some level of amnesty for them to be able to come forward is very important. We've talked historically about the difficulty of amnesty for crimes. In particular, if people have been killed or terrorized, that's a crime, and we want them to be punished for it. But the people who are currently running things may not be the people who did that or authorized it or were involved in it. They may have inherited this. I'm sympathetic to that, depending on what they did when they found out. Now, the people that originally did it, if they're still around and we're in a position, yeah, fuck them. I am. I'm not interested in, like, oh, Yeah, I killed 37Americans to keep this secret. No, man, that. I'm sorry, no. But, yeah, the guy that inherited it five years ago and is like, oh, shit, what do I do? I have a lot of sympathy for that. Guy.

[B]

Yeah, it's interesting to think about. Like, I think different people would say different sides of it are patriotic. Is it. Is it more patriotic to tell the truth and come out about crimes, or is it more patriotic to do the thing you were ordered to do by the military? I don't know. No, it's.

[A]

You seized on an ambiguous part of Berluscen's quote. He said, do they do their patriotic duty? It is unclear what he means, which is, does he mean keep it secret or come forward? Both could be argued to be patriotic. And also, this gets back to what Ross Colthart and Tom DeLonge and a lot of other people have said. The people who were keeping this secret believed they were doing so for the best possible reasons. You have to see this in a Cold War context. I don't think the government should commit crimes for the sake of secrecy, but I understand how you could be of the mentality that that is required. So I. I'm not arguing that these people are not patriots, or at least weren't operating from what they believed was a patriotic stance. But if we're going to move forward, we need to be able to talk about this stuff. Truth and reconciliation, amnesty, immunity. These are exactly the things I want to see them talking about because it implies that the next step is not, you know, another six tranches of UFO files. If they're talking about immunity, they're talking about taking another step beyond. And I'm very interested in that step.

[B]

So, total wild aside, did we get a new tranche?

[A]

Not yet, no. Maybe they're dropping to it every three weeks. Or maybe they're doing the Arrow thing and it'll be exponentially longer between each release. That's your favorite theory. I know.

[B]

Yeah, it is.

[A]

Okay, they still haven't dropped last year's UAP report, so we're still right on schedule. Investigative journalist Ross Coltart. Once again, I've actually asked people, I've said to people who are in a semi managerial position inside the program, why the secrecy? And there was one executive of a major aerospace company who said to me, it's not us, it's the CIA. And then I spoke to someone in the CIA and they said, oh, no, no, no, it's not us, it's the aerospace companies.

[B]

Q. Spider man meme.

[A]

Yeah, no, you need to call billing. No, you need to call accounting.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, God, that sounds so right. You know that feeling where it's like, that tastes so bad. This must be the right answer.

[A]

Yeah, it's terrible. Coulthard says, I Think part of the problem is that not since Dick Cheney has there been a super executive who sat over the whole thing. And this is something we've heard before from a few people was that during the Bush era, Dick Cheney was the guy who was overall in charge of the Legacy program and nobody took over that administrative role after him. And that's part of why things have kind of fragmented sense. So, yeah, Ross says not since Dick Cheney has there been a super executive who sat over the whole thing. Like the idea of a control group, like an MJ12 style group, I think that's been overcome by history. I think There was an MJ12 style control group, but I think that's now been superseded by huge levels of compartmentalization.

[B]

Yeah. Remind me what mj12 is. Is that the conspiracy theory?

[A]

I mean, all of everything we talk about is a conspiracy theory, but yes, you are thinking of a conspiracy theory.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

MJ12 is one of those legends. We have not talked about it much on the show because like Roswell, there's so much out there, it's actually really difficult to kind of get a feel for it. But the, the short version is that in 47, a group of 12 scientists, generals, intelligence community people, were in charge of the whole UFO thing. Everything to do with it, it was restricted to them. It was called Majestic 12. And that was the level of secrecy. There were a bunch of documents that were released to a journalist back in the 80s that were stamped MJ12 and were about this. Those documents have been variously proven and disproven. Some of them are demonstrably fake, some of them are maybe real interesting. I would say the community on the whole believes that MJ12 was a thing at one time, but is not an ongoing thing. And of course, there's all sorts of conspiracies around. MJ12 is an ongoing Illuminati style thing, men. I think it's more likely that a few of the top scientists at the time were kind of in an Avi Loeb type thing, but top secret.

[B]

I'm going to laugh when Avi names his group MH13 or something.

[A]

Yeah. So Coltart keeps going. He's talking about the level of compartmentalization. He says, so you've got Northrop Grumman working on one thing, largely psionics, Lockheed Martin working on physical craft, people like Mitre Corporation working on what I think is an extension of the GATE program, which is, believe it or not, finding children that are psychically manipulatable and usable in the program. All of This I know, quite extraordinary and science fiction sounding, but it's real. And I found myself being dragged reluctantly down this rabbit hole, increasingly confronted by the fact that nobody is in charge of it. And that's the issue.

[B]

Oh, yeah, See that at work all the time.

[A]

Yeah. Now here's something funny. A lot of the quotes I've given you today are from Representative Burleson's podcast. Yeah. In his defense, I don't think it's his podcast. I think he is a co host of a podcast and their big draw is reps of. Burleson is one of the co hosts.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's called Fresh Freedom. But Burleson obviously talks a lot about UFOs, and they've done a number of episodes where they've invited on prominent figures from the UFO community. One of them was this interview where Ross Coulthardt interviewed Burleson on his NewsNation program and Burleson interviewed Ross Coulthard on his podcast. So they were having this conversation. So Ross says, basically nobody's in charge. And Representative Burleson responds. He says, I can definitely imagine Dick Cheney on his way out saying, I'm not reading in the Obama administration or the Clinton administration, I'm not reading them in on this. And knowing that once he's gone, no one really will because now it's all been completely disseminated.

[B]

Totally very effective strategy.

[A]

Yeah. Bear Listen continues. He says, from the people I talked to, it appears to me that what has happened since the Dick Cheney kind of era is gone is now no one really knows what's what. And I think all the information is being held in that private sector, somewhere between the FFRDCS and the private companies. The FFRDCs, remember, are that kind of weird federally funded research programs that are. They're not just private companies like Lockheed, they're kind of semi governmental. So mitre, mit, rand, all of these are. Yeah, and he's currently subpoenaing them. He says that very soon we are going to see that video he got. I did get a little bit more detail. He says it is specifically a military general briefing the scientists at the lab about the UFO flyovers in Washington in 1952, which we talked about before. That was a big event. And it totally tracks to me that a federally funded research group might be given a briefing about like, yeah, we want you guys to look into this.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

[A]

Burleson says, so now it's an effort to try to basically go back and learn what people used to know. And that's not an easy effort. So the way they're describing it to me is that the easiest thing to release was the Department of War videos, because they had those readily available and because myself and others were giving them the names of specific video files and saying, here you go, start with this. And then they come back and say, what's next? And my response is, you're asking me. You're asking me what you should be releasing next. It just tells me that they are either just only going to release what they know that I know, or honestly, I think that they are actually trying to rediscover what they once knew.

[B]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's no question, Mama. I guess my. So the idea that we have lost all this information 100%, we see this all the time, the team implodes at work, and suddenly, like, yeah, now we have to figure out what's going on. So if I can see it at a, like, relatively much smaller scale, then of course it's happening at a much grander scale there. What I want to know is how did someone like Dick Cheney become that super executive? How did he, like, gather up all the.

[A]

All the different CIA?

[B]

Is that all you have to do?

[A]

I don't know if it's all that you have to do, but my understanding is the CIA has been kind of the gatekeeper of this for a long time, where everything kind of reported up to the CIA. I find this narrative that Dick Cheney would have gotten into that because of who he was and the nature of his rise to power, and that he overtly did not appoint successor, you know, that, like, it wasn't immediately lost, but, you know, it's been 20, 40 years, whatever, and shit has just continued to compartmentalize and fragment and drift apart to the point where now not only does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing, the left hand doesn't know the right hand exists, and everybody's kind of doing their own thing. I think this explains a lot about what we see. You know, the. The people that come out of the DoD who state confidently this material doesn't exist because to the best of their ability to see, it doesn't. It fits in the sense that this stuff was disseminated to private companies who are now maybe running their own parallel research and development and crash retrieval programs, and maybe not sharing stuff back with the government, like, surprise, unethical corporate behavior. Who could have seen that part coming? Like, I find this idea that we went from a post World War II, strong, centrally driven secrecy to a fragmented, broken apart, nobody really knows who's in charge path believable that it feels realistic to me. I don't know anything about it. I don't know if it's true. I don't know if Dick Cheney was in charge. But the broad pattern we're describing, going from Manhattan Project style to, oh, shit, everything is ever and nobody's in charge and everybody's kind of doing what they individually think is best. I find that very believable.

[B]

Yeah. So he was not. He was not the head of the CIA. That was George H.W.

[A]

right?

[B]

Yeah. He was background Secretary of Defense. And.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

He was the continuity of governance authority after 9 11, which. Which gave him kind of permission to reach into every agency's classified program under emergency continuity justification. So. Okay, that could be part of it. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Anyway, I don't know.

[A]

Like I said, I don't know how or why Dick Cheney became the guy. I don't know if he did become the guy.

[B]

Right. Yeah.

[A]

But I find it believable. There was a guy, and I find it believable that the way that they're talking about Dick Cheney, that guy might have done the same thing. I'm like, yep, no, I'm not appointing a successor. This incoming government does not deserve to be part of this.

[B]

Yeah. I suspect that consolidation of power, you know, kind of goes in waves and also goes with trends. If. Well, if something is trending off.

[A]

Sorry, go ahead.

[B]

If something is trending off, then it may not have even been. My point is, it may not have even been malice. It could be that UFOs were trending off and Cheney didn't think there was a reason to hand off because it just wasn't important anymore.

[A]

That is the charitable explanation. I will say, I find the other thing is coming out of the 80s, like before the 80s, there was, broadly speaking, more bipartisanship. Like, people still absolutely hated each other's guts. But it was largely understood we're all working together, we're all here for the right reason. And especially things like the CIA were less partisan. Now, there may be someone out there who knows more than me that is laughing their ass off at me, but what I'm getting at is this idea that the. You would work together for the greater good and you would hand off to the next administration. Maybe you don't like those guys, but they are the next administration and it's important that the government continue to run it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Coming into and out of the 80s, I think we had a much bigger schism politically. And that quote about, like, I can totally see Dick Cheney Saying there's no way I'm handing this to Obama or the Clintons. I find that political divide both plausible and kind of like fits the timeline that we moved from largely centralized and handed from person to person to eventually. Oh, maybe not every president gets read into it to eventually. Maybe not the administration gets read into it. Anyone in the administration to eventually. Nobody in the government is allowed to know about this. Like.

[B]

Right, yeah. Or, or it really is just the long timers because it's such a pain to get everyone read in. And I don't know, it feels like there's a lot of different ways this could end up getting fragmented.

[A]

Yeah. And they may be working in concert, you know, like the thing I'm describing might be amplifying the thing you're describing, you know.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Yeah. So I've got our next section here. I've got three quotes that will feel a little unrelated and I've grouped them together because there's a through line that I find really interesting, which is three different people giving three different quotes that are talking about the impact of disclosure. Now, they're all coming at it from a different angle and they're all saying different things, but broadly speaking, this idea that disclosure is going to have a big impact on the public, and I'm hearing more and more people talking about this not as an abstract concern, but as a. When this happens, we need, you know, that kind of.

[B]

Yeah, interesting.

[A]

So, first of all, legendary UFO researcher Dr. Jacques Vale, he was interviewed recently and he said some of the things I've been exposed to that are unclassified, that I can talk about to some extent of communication with actual beings in labs on this planet that people are interacting with to try to develop higher level languages, to prepare for the communication. That's a different order of creatures that we haven't really seen before or been aware of before. Those things are going on. There's obviously a huge cultural impact coming and it will involve, of course, religion, but it will involve philosophy, it will involve the history of science. All of those disciplines need to catch up and start building an infrastructure to study this.

[B]

It's hard to build infrastructure when you don't know what you're building towards. Sort of seems like disclosure has to happen first. But.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I think his point is he feels there's enough information out there to start taking it seriously and start laying the groundwork for if this turns out to be true. What does our field do about it? But Jacques has always been 20 to 30 years ahead of everyone else in the field. So, you know, mostly I found it interesting that he's just flat out stating as a fact there are people in labs trying to talk to alien life forms.

[B]

Like, yeah, okay, and that's unclassified. And yeah, I guess.

[A]

Next quote is from our oldest fan of the show, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon. He said, the facts are undeniable. Something gravely serious is occurring in our airspace. And in many cases, our government does not understand the origin, capability or intentions of these intruders. The sooner we learn the truth, the better our chances of preparing for whatever comes next. That may be transformational. Because if it turns out, as I believe the evidence increasingly suggests it will, that some of these craft are of non human origins, the implications are not merely scientific. They ripple outward from national security into economics, into religion and philosophy, into the very deepest questions of human identity.

[B]

I think that that is true. And I also still feel like that meme of the guy saying, yeah, I got a lot of stuff going on

[A]

right now and I got a lot going on feels really true. Absolutely. No, I've thought a lot about. Of course I have. About what disclosure day is like, right? Like, yeah, let's say it happens, right? The President at the podium, non human life treaty signed to Holloman Air Force Base, Roswell, all of it, like, full disclosure, I still have a job, I still have to go to work. And like how many times has this happened to us over the last X number of years, right? Like in the middle of, you know, the, the George Floyd protests, in the middle of COVID like various national security incidents. Like, how many times have you had to like be watching something incredibly intense happening in the world and then like sign in to slack for the day,

[B]

like, hey everyone, I think I might take a mental health day.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. So I don't know what it looks like. And he's right. Of course it will affect economics, it'll affect religion. But I think the fascinating thing will be watching the very awkward period afterwards, like before the world changing impacts happen. You're still living in the old world. With the reformation of the new world,

[B]

like, oh, what do we do with this? Yeah, that's a really good point. There's going to be this like big

[A]

dream carnation real, you know, the matters of the flesh don't matter. Money is a made up concept by the church to keep us all down. But my rent is still due in 10 days.

[B]

Exactly, exactly. Yeah,

[A]

last quote. And again, I know these are kind of wildly unrelated other than this through line of impact. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, there will be an announcement soon. First of all, awesome. First time I've heard that from Anna. Paulina Luna, is this part of the whole July 8th rumor? I don't know. But again, reading between the lines, I'm starting to see more and more things that hint at we're not just releasing files, right? Like whistleblower immunity announcements. These are the kinds of things we're starting to hear more about. So, yeah, Annapoleon and Luna, there will be an announcement soon on one other kind of factor to all this, but it's nothing that I think it'll just be kind of to give assurance to people that they will understand that the phenomenon is real. For the most part, everything we've been able to discuss in a skiff we can now talk about publicly. What I will say is, without a doubt, the phenomenon is real.

[B]

I'm having a really hard time parsing this quote.

[A]

It was very difficult to parse and I think she was struggling with what she's allowed to say. So she kept kind of like starting, if I understand her right, what she is saying is there will be an announcement that the phenomenon is real. That could mean anything. I take it to mean not the full on. We've had a treaty with the grays since 1947, but more, yes, we know for a fact some of these craft we observe in the sky are non human. Start there. No crash retrieval, no reverse engineering, no alien bodies in labs. Just confirmation of non human life. That would fit what I see her saying here. You could also interpret it as, we're going to come out and acknowledge the crash retrieval program. You could interpret it as, we have given Eric Davis and David Grush permission to talk publicly. We'll see what they say. I don't know. But there will be an announcement. Without a doubt, the phenomenon is real. That's pretty interesting.

[B]

Yeah. What about the line. For the most part, everything that we've been able to discuss in a skiff we can talk about now publicly.

[A]

It's an odd one, right? Like, we know for a fact there are things in the skiff that they have told us they can't talk about. Although usually they're saying, I saw a video or we heard from a witness, but maybe most of that information has gotten out to the public in one form or another. And what she's trying to say is there isn't a whole lot more that the government knows that you don't know, broadly speaking, but I don't know. As you mentioned, this quote is difficult to parse and there's a lot of different ways to interpret it. But Throughline, here is three different people that I give a lot of credence to on this topic, implying there will be information hitting the public soon that will have a big impact on the public. That's really interesting.

[B]

Yeah, I noticed that none of these three people. Well, Chris Mellon is up there in my mind, but these aren't from Ross Coulthardt. They're not from Elizondo. I mean, I guess they've been saying this stuff for a long time, but it's surprising to see Dr. Jacques Vallee come in.

[A]

So Jacques Vallee is really hard to talk about because he has been writing about this for so long. He has an incredible volume of work. And in addition to just his own books of theory, his own interviews, which are expansive, he also has been publishing his, like, journals on a rolling basis. I think they're either, like, 20 years delayed, something like that. So, like, he recently dropped a new batch of journals that was, like, going back to the time when he's working with Lou Elizondo and everybody back in the.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

The start of this stuff. But I haven't read any of his books, and I don't see other people quoting them or talking about them either. He's kind of this, like, elder statesman that everyone has a lot of respect for, but nobody really talks about much. I don't really know what to make of that. Like, the. Again, I think the. The charitable way to put it is Valet seems to be 10 to 15 years ahead of everyone else on things he's saying. But that doesn't necessarily mean that what he's saying is parsable, understandable, or that we're ready for the conversation. Like, he may be saying things that we look back on and go, oh, yeah, that's what he meant. Yeah, totally. He was absolutely right about it. But looking at it at the time, you're like, I don't know what the hell he's talking about.

[B]

That's so interesting. It must be really annoying to be 20 years ahead of everyone.

[A]

Super, super annoying. Yeah. He also. He has some theories about the phenomenon that are. They're just difficult to talk about. Right. He's the one who advocated what he called the. The control mechanism hypothesis, which is the idea that the phenomenon as a whole is not aliens from Zeta Reticuli coming here in flying saucers. It's fairies and shape shifters and portals and dimensions. And it's like. He almost talks about it like. Like the DM in a Dungeons and Dragons game. Like, Randomly tweaking the world to give the story that they want. Like, oh, you know, the humans are doing X now. Like, what can we do to kind of, they've swung too far in this direction. Let's pull them back this way with some paranormal stuff. Oh, they've gone too far in that direction. Let's pull them back this way with some science.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

It manifests itself in a way that steers us in a direction something wants us to go. But this is what I'm talking about, right? Like, it's so hard to talk about valet when we are closer in this podcast to the nuts and bolts side of things. Like, I'm a little more woo than you are and I'm nowhere near where Jacques Vallee is at. Like, I read his stuff and I'm like, yeah, maybe. I'll be honest. I have the same difficulty with Diana Pasulka. So she is a Catholic researcher or. I actually don't know if she's Catholic, but she's done a lot of research into Catholicism and she has written a number of UFO books which are influenced by her research into Catholicism and tend to take kind of a religious history angle at the phenomena. They're good. They sometimes contain really interesting information. I also find them very difficult to approach because they're, they're like so high level philosophical that I'm like, okay, yeah, but what does it mean? Like, you get back to the idea. Like, I still have bills to pay. Like, okay, like, let's say Jacques is right and this is like a cosmic control mechanism. What do I do with that? Like, I can kind of wrap my head around what do I do with. We're being visited by a non human intelligence. Okay, why are they here? What do they want from us? These are things I can understand and slot into my worldview. They'll be difficult. There'll be a period of adjustment. But like, okay, alien life is real. Sure. Are we trading partners now? Are we at war? Whatever. I have context, understanding how to parse that information. The idea that the universe as a whole just kind of like, steers us. What do you do with that?

[B]

Don't know. Yeah, yeah, that's okay. I understand why it hasn't come up very often.

[A]

It's hard to talk about. No shade on Jacques Vallee or Diana.

[B]

Doesn't sound like it.

[A]

Both great. But yeah, it's just, it's. It's hard to bring to the podcast.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Yeah.

[A]

All right, let's keep going. So swinging. Speaking of control mechanism, let's swing it all the way back to, you know, real world politics. UAP Disclosure Act. So we talked about last time. There was some movement on it.

[B]

Again,

[A]

first of all, ask a Paul cornered Senator Mike Rounds, who was the co sponsor of the original UAP Disclosure act along with Senator Schumer. And he said, quote, we're going to introduce the UAP Disclosure act, put it as an amendment on the National Defense Authorization act, the ndaa. Hopefully the Senate will agree with us to do so. And if that's the case, then the next step is going with the House and seeing if they would agree to some format of it. I presume they'll have concerns like they did last time. Hopefully we'll be able to allay some of those concerns or work through those concerns.

[B]

Is there a Senate version of the UAP caucus?

[A]

No.

[B]

Or are there senators who are on board?

[A]

There are senators who are more and less interested in it. Marco Rubio was one while he was a senator. Mike Rounds, Chuck Schumer. But yeah, Senator Gillibrand is one. Oh, but there is not like a body of senators who are like, we're pro uap.

[B]

Yeah, okay, got it.

[A]

So ask a poll kind of seizes on this. He goes, okay, so you're convinced the concerns are with the House? I still haven't been able to find the voice of opposition. And Senator Round says, well, this is one way to find out. Offer it again and then find out who will object to it. And it'll be interesting to see whether or not the House has any provisions along the same line as our proposal. And if there is, we'll have a stronger case for putting it in the final version. So this gets back to what we talked about. The, like, incredibly convoluted process of the NDAA is basically the House and the Senate both write their own NDAAs, and we hope they're enough alike that we can, like, merge them together. And then that's a whole other process. And everybody can put in amendments the whole time, and everybody tries, and most of them never even make it to a vote.

[B]

Just imagining like the git branch structure. It's just like a nightmare. A spiderweb spaghetti. Yeah, yeah, sounds terrible.

[A]

So Representative Burleson talking from the side of the House says, we're trying to get the UAP Disclosure act put on the National Defense Authorization Act. We're facing difficulties. And I mean, it's so frustrating. Frustrating because it's not members of Congress. I don't. At least if it is members, they're not coming to me and saying, hey, I'm not allowing your amendment. It's staff. And it's like, who elected you? You weren't elected. I mean, for you to be able to deny an elected official who. My job is to answer to the people and you're going to deny me the ability to get this amendment at least even offered, it's unacceptable. And so right now we're trying to get that made in order so that when it comes to the floor, at least we'll get an opportunity to have vote on the UAP Disclosure act and then you'll know who supports it and who doesn't interest.

[B]

I didn't realize that it didn't even make it to a vote last time.

[A]

That happens really frequently. And again, it's because the NDAA is one of those few bills that will pass. There will be an NDAA every year. So you know how hard it is to get anything done in Washington anymore. One way to get it done is take something that is completely unrelated to the national defense and put it on the ndaa. You're gonna fund the military, and when you do, you're gonna fund my pet project. Yeah, that's where a lot of the UFO stuff has happened. It did manage to sneak in there. The UAPDA has been excluded three times now. The first year it did actually make it in, it got voted on and approved, but they gutted it. And every year since, they have put the original version back up and it has not made it to a vote. Okay, so D. Dean Johnson, who's kind of the guy in the UFO community who tracks UFO stuff in the ndaa, posted two updates. He said one, Representative Burleson testified in person before the committee to request approval of his amendment, which is a step taken by only a small number of sponsors of submitted amendments. So getting back to the idea of like, basically every member of Congress puts up amendments, most of them don't show up and advocate for them. They know it's kind of a political thing. Burleson actually showed up and testified. There's a video of him. He didn't say anything. We haven't heard a million times, so I'm not including any quotes. But yeah, he. He showed up and actually tried to get it to happen.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

It does not appear to have happened, which is frustrating. Another quote from Dee Dean Johnson. Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike rounds filed the UAP Disclosure act as a possible amendment to the 2027 NDAA on June 24. That means that versions of the UAPDA are now formally available for possible consideration when the Senate and House take up their respective versions of the ndaa, likely in July. As we said, this process is convoluted and awful. A number of times we hear it did not make it into the ndaa, and then actually they get it in in a later reconciliation phase. So it ain't over until it's over. Where we're at currently is.

[B]

Hasn't even begun.

[A]

This has happened before where the UAPDA was put forward in both chambers of Congress. So. Okay, that might be proud.

[B]

That's interesting. That could be pro. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we'll see.

[A]

All right, let's end the show here with some fun science stuff for Chuck. So, first of all, we've got a quote here from the Disclosure Foundation. They say the Discloser Foundation, a non partisan, non profit organization, will conduct a review of NASA archival material for UAP information. Troves of public but unanalyzed information remains available through NASA. This initiative will identify imagery, data and other forms of information that is relevant to unlocking the mystery of UAP by leveraging state of the art artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. The objective will be to identify anomalies that warrant further investigation and ultimately share its findings with the public as well as any interested federal and state government agencies, entities.

[B]

Sorry. Yeah, I mean, I'm for it. I love that NASA makes everything available publicly. Yeah, I. It makes me wonder why they haven't been doing this before. But maybe they just didn't have the AI power, or maybe they didn't think it was easy enough.

[A]

My understanding of NASA is that their funding has become so political that there's very much a. Like, don't do anything to draw attention to yourself if you don't have to. And I imagine, hey, we are spending more than $0 to look for UFOs in our old photos.

[B]

That makes sense. What I'm wondering about why the Disclosure foundation hasn't done it before.

[A]

Yes, absolutely. The effort is led by former NASA Associate Administrator for Space policy and partnerships, Mr. Mike Gold. He's the guy that we saw testified to the Senate with David Grush. It is being carried out together with Disclosure Foundation Executive Director Jordan Flowers. Okay, cool. Theoretical physicist Dr. Manelli Durakshani. Sorry if I butchered that man. Aerospace engineer and former chief scientist of the UAP task force, Dr. Travis Taylor. Now, we've talked about him before. This is the. The guy from Skinwalker Ranch, the dad gum. We're gonna fire a rocket through it. Who, despite having a silly Alabama Accent is genuinely a rocket scientist and smart guy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Dr. Travis Taylor, former Under Secretary for Science and technology at DHS. Dr. Reggie Brothers, clinical psychologist Dr. Stephen Brule, who's a name you may recognize because he was one of the CO authors on Dr. Beatrice Villarreal's paper about transients. And Dr. Beatrice Villa Royale.

[B]

All right, that's cool.

[A]

Yeah. So she was quoted on Twitter. She said, we will conduct a serious review of NASA material in search of UAPs and anomalies, and I'll be looking for transients too.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. This. This actually seems more exciting to me now that we have some of the names attached to it. This could be really cool.

[A]

I know that you rolled your eyes a little at the AI and machine learning, but, yeah, I completely agree with you. Knowing Beatrice Villarreal is attached, that was literally her whole deal. We had a huge body of archival information. We wanted to look to see if there was anything unusual in it. And here's the process we followed. And she published it and defended it successfully. And yeah, why not take that same approach to the body of information NASA had? As they point out elsewhere in the press release, NASA information has been included in two of the three UFO releases from the government. And what I imagine is frustrating for NASA people is all of that information was already publicly available, but they put it up like, oh, my God. And we, we have talked about some of that. And the problem is almost all of it is stuff that is explainable. Some of it is maybe not like reports of seeing lights on the moon and stuff, but none of it was like a slam dunk. Like, oh, yeah, Neil Armstrong saw UFO on the way back from the moon. Like, we don't have anything like that, even if it was kind of presented that way. But even if you ignore NASA and UFOs, just, hey, this group is funded and is going to make an AI pass through the enormous body of archived information NASA have to look for anomalies. Beatrice Villarreal, Travis Taylor, Stephen Bruhl, all of these people, Mike Gold, these are the people I want doing that work.

[B]

Yeah. So one of the things I'm thinking about, or the reason I'm pausing, is that the amount of data that they actually have to go through, I'm not sure Via Royale will actually is actually up to that task.

[A]

Yeah, we'll see.

[B]

It's far bigger than what she did before, like a thousand or a million times.

[A]

And she talked about this. Remember, they asked her, what do you need? If you were to continue this work? What do you need? You could tell she's not used to asking for things. She was like, I need two graduate students and access to data. If this is the Disclosure foundation putting together a group of scientists and saying, here is money. Awesome. Like, let's see what happens. I agree with you. The challenge is immense. And of course, it's not as simple as, you know, point the AI at the NASA hard drive. You know, like, different material is going to need to be parsed and interpreted different ways. You're not going to run Dr. Villarreal's transient detecting software on every star photo. It would be meaningless. Like, you have to come up with a different way to look for anomalies. But. But again, these are the people that I trust to do it. Representative Burleson wasn't talking specifically about this effort. It was on his podcast. He was interviewing Avi Loeb. He was talking about Avi Loeb's group, which is similarly. Here is a pro science group coming in and taking a look at stuff. And Burleson says basically he's in favor of this. But he says, the real question to me is if there is or was a program that has already done all this work and does have the truth and probably knows what these glowing orbs are that we're seeing, wouldn't it make more sense that we crack the nut of who was in the legacy program and where those files are stored? How do we open that so we can, instead of doing all the reinventive work, to try to rediscover it from another angle? And I saw a couple of people echo that sentiment on Twitter, that I understand where Avi Loeb is coming from with the Galileo project. Hey, look, we're never going to get this information out of the government, but the skies are open. We can look at them. Let's build our own telescopes. You know, it's a very, like, bender from Futurama. Like, you know, screw you guys. I'm going to build my own casino with blackjack. You know, like, yeah. What? I. I share that sense of frustration that, like, why do we have to start from scratch? This information is already out there.

[B]

Maybe.

[A]

But if the government is going to continue dragging their feet and current indications is we're heading in the right directions, but I don't trust that that will continue. We talked about this in the last episode. If Trump dies tomorrow, I think it's more likely this shit gets shut down overnight than that it continues under JD Vance. Right? Like, agreed. I think this is happening because of Trump, Right or wrong, that is giving everyone the air Cover they need. So starting up more traditional public science driven initiatives running in parallel to the effort to open up the government, I think is a good idea.

[B]

Seems like a good plan.

[A]

I understand the frustration, but I think it's a good idea.

[B]

So the legacy program was up through the 80s, is that right?

[A]

The legacy program means different things to different people. The original definition that I remember Lou Elizondo and Chris Mellon using was legacy program is like a code name, not an internal codename. Their word for the program whose shape we can infer.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

There is a group. They actually said they think it's many programs, maybe under one umbrella, maybe unrelated. But the point is this is legacy in the sense that it's work that started back in 47 or maybe earlier and has continued to the present day, where as opposed to groups like aatip and OS App, which were new efforts starting in the 2000s. So now we see more people talking about the legacy program as an active current program, as if it is a single program. And I don't know that it is.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, so the reason I asked is that any answers that came out, you know, prior to, honestly prior to 2000, maybe even 2010, are going to be wildly different than what we do right now. Yeah, I'm thinking about

[A]

the state of material science, the state of astronomy, the state of biological science. If I get notes from the doctor who conducted an autopsy on a gray alien in 1947, that's fascinating. That's interesting. Medical science has advanced a lot. If I get notes from the guy who tried to figure out what metal the UFO they recovered was made out of from 1947, material science has advanced a lot. Avi Loeb had a quote recently. He was like, it would be really exciting to get access to some of this recovered material. He said, for example, given just a gram of the metal that these craft are made out of, we can tell you whether or not it is from this solar system.

[B]

Yeah, it would be very cool. Assuming they can do the same studies. Yeah, I know. I think I've told you this before. I went to a talk a while ago about dealing with astronomical photos and the whole talk was basically, how do you scan or deal with one image and apply AI or ML to it when it is so large that it not only doesn't fit in ram, but it also does not fit on any hard drive that exists? And this is just one photo. And we make one of those every single day. And it's like there's nothing the 80s or even the aughts could do with that amount of data.

[A]

It's just 100%. And you've told me before about the idea that we see, you know, photos from Hubble or James Webb Space Telescope. And because we're human, we assume this is a visual light capture. Like if I pointed my camera at space, this is just a bigger camera in a better location. But it's not. What we are seeing is a representation of the information reaching Hubble. You know, like almost every famous Hubble Space Telescope photo is an interpretation of like, yeah, we, we pulled the infrared spectrum into the visible by tinting it green or something. So like this nebula, who knows what it looks like in visible light through our eyes? We're not up there. What we can tell you is this is the em information we cut back and how you choose to present that influences what it looks like. And you can have the sun is really common. They take photos of the sun and what spectrum you focus on is based on what you're trying to learn. If you're a scientist who's studying the deep structures of the sun, that may be different than if you're a scientist who's studying solar flares. And you may emphasize different parts of the spectrum to get at different, different bits of information. So yeah, this. And that's just a dumb example with like publicly available information. You know, who knows how complicated it gets when you're dealing with potentially non human stuff.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[A]

So I've got two more quotes here from Dr. Villarreal. First, one more of a theoretical one. She posted a longer thin thread on Twitter. She said while chatting with a friend yesterday, we discussed what might happen to astronomy funding after disclosure. In my view, there's a tension between a scenario in which the first recognized evidence of extra terrestrial life comes through SETI or conventional astrobiology, and one in which disclosure arrives through the White House.

[B]

That's so true. Like if we get it through seti, oh my God, all the funding in the world goes to SETI and to astronomy. If we get it through the White House, everyone's like, what are you even doing? Why are you. Why focus that far away? We got stuff right here.

[A]

You have almost nailed what her concern was.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

She says, first of all, let us consider a scenario in which there are zero indications of UAPs in the astronomical data. And astrobiologists proudly announced that planet Huntabunta 32b exhibits a rich array of biosignatures, perhaps even accompanied by small radio emitting moon. News of that kind would almost certainly lead to a major increase in Funding for astronomy. So that gets to your point. Right? Like if we find out about it through science, this is almost inarguably good for science funding.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Now consider the alternative, and in my view, far more realistic scenario. The White House publicly acknowledges contact with. Sorry, I could see Chuck highlighting Huntabunta 32B in the background so he could google to see if that's a real planet or a made up silly name.

[B]

It is a made up silly name and I knew that. But what I was looking at is that's very similar to the. The name of the planet in satisfactory.

[A]

Okay, you were trying to see if it was a particular nerdy joke as opposed to just a joke.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Okay, consider the alternative. Far more likely scenario. White House publicly acknowledges contact with non human intelligence within the coming years and confirms that UFOs are real. Given the long standing stigma surrounding the subject within academia, and how far ahead military intelligence communities appear to be on the UFO question compared to academic researchers, such an acknowledgment would likely trigger a significant reshuffling of research priorities and funding. So you're right. And she actually does mention the idea of like, how could you guys have missed this? You know, and academic funding being lessened because they missed something obvious. But she's getting at a more insidious thing, which is, well, the military seems to know, so we should give more money to the military.

[B]

Yep, 100%.

[A]

So she keeps going. She says, I suspect a significant fraction of resources would shift away from traditional civilian astronomy toward more public facing military programs dedicated to studying UAPs. For this reason, I believe many astronomers are motivated to dis. To dismiss anything related to UFOs or disclosure. Whether consciously or not, they may recognize that a confirmed UFO reality could eventually compete with existing research priorities and funding structures.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. On the. I mean, on the other hand, most research in the US has already suffered incredibly, and so it kind of doesn't matter. Like there are very few labs.

[A]

The bridge is already doing work anymore.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

As a reminder, political feedback can be sent to our intern, devnulleryexcitingtime.com thanks, Dev. But yes, absolutely, you're right. But I think she has hit on an interesting tension. This is something that I see both Dr. Villarreal and our favorite scientist, Dr. Gary Nolan, talking about, which is the instant you start taking this subject not even seriously, but just as worthy of looking into, you encounter an almost violent reaction from the mainstream academic group.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

And Gary Nolan, we've quoted many times over the years as being like, look, you can Be mad about it and you can believe there's nothing to it. But refusing to look into it means you're not doing science. Like this is science. There is data. You examine it, you come up with a hypothesis and you test your hypothesis. Right. Refusing to or dismissing data because it doesn't fit your worldview is the opposite of science. That's been Gary's take on it. I really like that Via real I think is coming at it from a different angle. She got a lot of pushback for her paper, sometimes surprisingly from people that she respected as peers. And she's talked about how difficult that was. And I think it's interesting for her to have come at this and gone is there a reason that subconsciously they just sense that any acknowledgement of UFOs and disclosure as worthy of scientific intention is a bad idea for scientists? That it may not even be a conscious reaction, but they're just like, nope, nope, we can't do that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it could be. I think a lot of scientists are still operating on this sort of X Files little green men disinformation campaign, I guess. I don't know.

[A]

Well, and that's Gary Nolan's whole thing with the Soul foundation, right. Is trying to destigmatize this by having a science led group that is actively considering what it means and how to give advice and think about this from a grounded scientific perspective.

[B]

Yeah, totally.

[A]

I'm just always glad to see more people heading in the direction of treating the topic seriously. And that doesn't necessarily mean oh yeah, it's all little green men. Like it may turn out to be this whole thing is a secret black government program helicopter that the UFO story was a helpful distraction from. I don't know. But yeah, not looking at it is silly.

[B]

Yeah, I agree.

[A]

Okay, so last bit of news. I should have said this earlier by the way. For anybody who's like, who the hell is Dr. Beatrice Villarreal? We talked about her many episodes ago. She published a series of papers that demonstrated artificial objects in orbit in the pre Sputnik era. This is fascinating for many reasons. She doesn't say these are UFOs but she's struggling to find a better explanation. Is what she has said like, you know, you tell me why is there an artificial object up there? Go back and look at our episode for the details of it. But the short version is the way that these objects tumble and move registers a certain type of light, which is what registers. The most common answer to these items that appear in these photographic plates is that they were plate defects that they, you know, like marks on the glass. They were not actual light being recorded. And she had a bunch of stuff that indicated why that wasn't true, including statistical correlation with nuclear events and most notably a statistically significant decrease in these transients when the plates were taken in the Earth's umbra, meaning the shadow of the Earth is blocking the light from the sun. If they're defects, you would expect the same number. If they're real objects, you would expect there to be less because they are no longer reflecting light. And sure enough, there was about 30% less, which implies about 30% of these transients are real physical objects. And there was a big community reaction to that. A lot of scientists were interested. A number of scientists tried to publish alternative answers, but they all basically boiled down to the plate defect hypothesis. And she was able to push back on every single one of them. And her paper is papers are phenomenal examples.

[B]

They are.

[A]

So she tweeted a few days ago, she said, this is huge news. PhD astronomer and former NASA engineer Ivar Ivo Busco has single handedly driven a final nail into the coffin of the contamination based hypothesis, eg. Plate defects and cosmic rays proposed to explain the Vasco translation basket was the data set she was working with.

[B]

Tell me more.

[A]

He did so using one of the most creative approaches in astronomy I have ever seen. You're going to fucking love this, Chuck. By analyzing pre Sputnik photographic plates from a German telescope known to suffer from severe optical distortions, he demonstrated that the transients that appear on these plates exhibit the same optical distortions as the stars themselves.

[B]

Wait, oh, that's fascinating.

[A]

So the paver gets into it. But basically like stars, instead of appearing as circular blobs, appear as these kind of like oblong curved horseshoe things. If they were plate defects, if they were cosmic rays, that would not happen. The fact that these transients show up with the same optical distortion means they are recordings of actual lights in the sky. So fascinating. And one more confirmation of via Rails discovery artificial objects in orbit around the Earth. Pre Sputnik.

[B]

So, but I have a question. If. If they look like stars, Maybe I'm leading into the next comment, but if they look like stars, what's to say they aren't stars?

[A]

That part's easy. The ones that they pick to study are transients, meaning they appear in one plate and not the next. Where stars follow a very predictable trajectory. They show up here and there, Right?

[B]

Right.

[A]

A plane, for example, flying overhead would appear in one exposure and not the previous. One or the next one. So she started by looking for all of the transients that were recorded, which historically have been dismissed as noise in the signal. And she was coming at it with the hypothesis that some of them were real. So, yeah, I actually already said a bunch of this, but she said the transients are slightly narrower and sharper than the stars, consistent with brief flashes. This is a crucial result because it shows that the transient light passed through the telescope optics, meaning the transients originate from real objects producing light rather than from plate defects or cosmic ray contamination that hit the plate. Dr. Busco has also shown that the transients cluster spatially and are associated with periods close to nuclear tests. So this also aligns with two of her other findings. One, that you tend to observe them either in clusters or formations, and two, that they statistically correlate with nuclear tests. So it's fascinating. And exactly what she was saying she wanted to see was other scientists use the same methodology on different sets of plates. And in this case, because the plates have a weird distortion in the lens, we're even more confident now.

[B]

So, yeah, that's super interesting. And just so people know, that's true of every telescope. This one may be much worse, but, yeah, it's true of every telescope, and we have corrections for it in software and everything. But, yeah, that's super interesting.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Yeah. Cool.

[A]

Oh, man, what a show. Right?

[B]

Yeah. Right.

[A]

So we'll see whether we have to record a new show in three days. President Trump announces that alien life is real. And it's time for all the economists to start figuring out whether. I have to go to work on Wednesday.

[B]

Yeah. If we need to do a mental health day on Thursday, let me know.

[A]

We shall see. All right, everybody, thank you so much for joining us on It's a very exciting time. You can find show notes and more on our website, veryexcitingtime.com as well as links to our discord and social media accounts.

[B]

And if you'd like to support the show, please check out our [e-mail] veryexcitingtime or grab some awesome t [e-mail] merch.

[A]

Yep. And, Chuck, as always, my wife thanks you for listening to me talk about UFOs so she doesn't have to.