The Uncannery

Visitors from the Void: Tracing the Transformation of the Alien Image

Ron, Doug, and Don Season 5 Episode 4

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What if the eerie feeling you get on a late-night drive past a cemetery isn’t just your imagination? Join Ron, Doug, and Don on Uncannery as we blur the boundaries between reality and the supernatural. From Doug's overwhelming connection with nature at Red Rocks Amphitheater to Ron's ghostly encounter on a deserted road, we share stories that invite you to reflect on your own uncanny experiences. Don opens up about a touching moment of feeling his late father's presence, reminding us how the unexplained can bring comfort and intrigue.

Venture beyond Earth as we tackle the age-old question of extraterrestrial life. Our discussion spins through the mysteries of the Fermi paradox and theories like the "zoo theory," which suggest we might be under alien observation. We uncover the layers of UFO sightings throughout history, tracing narratives from ancient civilizations to modern encounters. These stories, filled with celestial beings like the Anunnaki, highlight humanity's endless fascination with what might lie beyond our planet.

Conspiracy theories take the spotlight as we explore David Icke's reptilian narratives and their underlying societal anxieties. We consider how such theories reflect fears about power dynamics and control, drawing parallels with cultural myths and modern storytelling. As we unravel these narratives, we ponder their broader implications, weaving together past and present beliefs about the unknown. This episode invites you to question and explore the complex tapestry of supernatural and extraterrestrial phenomena with an open mind and a sense of wonder.

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Ron

Welcome. Welcome, cartilaginous and bony organisms to another episode of the Uncannery. I am Ron, your host today, and to my left I am joined by Doug, and I welcome you, even if you don't have bones.

Doug

I thought that that wasn't the most inclusive.

Ron

I included the cartilaginous. What, what if we're just goo? Uh, nope, don't want goo.

Doug

All right, no goos anybody is a fan of the blob 1954. I think it might be wrong in the year.

Ron

I apologize if the blob is listening anyway don't need no blob, and to my right is I'm Don, not a blob, don. Great, we're going to have some fun today. Folks, I really need to bring the mood up. It's been one of those weeks, doug and Don, and so I really wanted to start us off by thinking about the incredible all right, an incredible experience. You ever been somewhere, maybe late at night, maybe in the early morning? Maybe a location, a hotel, a farm, far away from your local bed that you alight upon every night and through a twilight or a fogginess of mindset? Did you have an experience that caused you to question your very own senses In the loaming, if you?

Don

were yes, the loaming period. No.

Ron

Oh, okay, doug, save this. Have a great day.

Doug

So in my time being a touring musician, I remember looking up at Red Rocks Amphitheater and if you're not familiar with this venue, it is on both sides. You're covered in a like it's the side of a mountain that they've built a venue in, red Rock Mountain, and I remember looking out at the stars and completely stopping what I was doing. It wasn't necessarily a very supernatural experience, but just the awe and moment of the beauty of the space completely made me forget what I was doing at the time, to the point that I kind of like shut down uh, most faculties and just like had to take a moment to to drink it in. And I know there've been similar experiences where people have kind of talked about the sublimity of nature. Um, and that was a very profound moment for me. I think about that. But I know ghosts.

Ron

Maybe a ghost hey, maybe I wasn't having you were yeah, yeah, you got, there's a Patrick Swayze there, yeah is either aliens from area 51 or yeah hopefully adhd could be yeah knowing, we'll never know knowing me

Doug

we do know, and it's option two.

Don

Yeah it's definitely option two but, really clever names. There too, Red Rock Amphitheater is built into the Red Rock Mountain. Let me guess what color the rock is.

Doug

You'd be shocked, vermilion.

Ron

Thank you, yeah, I was going to say burnt orange.

Don

Can't call it vermilion Ted.

Ron

No one wants to spell that. I've got one minor kind of. I've always wanted an experience right that that I could like tell people right, like like it's like a fishing story, right the perfect fishing story.

Ron

Like you, you want something kind of impressive, something you can you know, reel out at a party, but I think the only one I really have. Um was once when, like I was like a teenager and I had my driver's license, I used to just like driving around late at night, you know, listen to music, whatever and I was driving around probably around 2 am or so. It was an empty road and to my left was a cemetery, and in the road ahead of me, caught in my headlights, was a person right dressed, all in white, and they were walking from the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side of the road into the cemetery, crossing the road and not and not at a crosswalk, I might say, or a a walking juncture, wow, um, but they were far enough ahead of me that I didn't really need to like they weren't like ah, and I crashed into them or there was no risk of that, but they were, and I did kind of a double take, like what, and my heart started.

Don

And then you looked in the rear view mirror and she was in the backseat.

Doug

Was it by any chance October 31st? It was nowhere.

Ron

Actually I couldn't say I have no memory of when this was.

Doug

I was very tired on Halloween.

Ron

It was probably the summer, I'm assuming that's probably when you do most of your late night driving. You're not driving a lot when you have school the next day, and that's my only real kind of like ghost story I did have a similar like.

Don

It's not very interesting, I don't think, but it but it's similar to that, I guess. But it was after my, it wasn't. It didn't meet any of the requirements of your story that you were listing for us. It wasn't far away from my home.

David Icke

It actually was in my home.

Don

No, uh, right outside here, after outside my uh my bedroom, after my uh, my father passed away and uh, it was like about two or three weeks worth of like double takes and like motions out of the corner of your eye and just like the right shape in the hallway um uh, just kind of sensing that he was still hanging around, I guess a little bit I don't know if that was. Then you know my brain, like I was super excited because like missed him.

Ron

But uh also like oh hey, well quick, what's your password?

Don

Um, but also wondering if it's just my brain manifest. You know manifesting that because I was missing him right If it was my own creation, or if it was actually an encounter with the supernatural.

Doug

Yeah, to be fair, very similar experience. Grandma passed away, uh, and I remember having an experience in a kid where I really thought and I guess that's why I didn't think about it until right now but I I don't. It's hard to say when you're a kid, you know, because you're so in tune with things, but then yet everything is like so much more heightened with where your brain is developing. But I remember thinking like, oh, she's in the room and she's saying goodbye, okay, very much, nothing physical, nothing in particular, but just like an overall feeling.

Speaker 6

But then you know the psychologist shows up and says well, it shows your way of, your kid has adhd he's never going to be able to play a concert. It's keep him away from rocks. What color were they?

Ron

oh yes, he's going to be very, very you actually both just remind me, I do have another one I do also from my childhood this is not an episode.

Doug

This is a trauma dump.

Ron

Please help us work through some things that are reawakening in our minds. Um, but it was also after the death of my grandmother and I would have been nine or ten or so somewhere around there and I remember we, uh, we started going to bed. I shared a room with my brother and at night I started hearing this bell, this bell, this ding, and it and it was, and it was. It was like ding.

Doug

Like it was. You know what a bell sounds like. It wasn't like a dong.

David Icke

And it wasn't like a tink, but it was like a ding, and.

Ron

But what I meant was that it had a tempo, it had a reliability about it, right Like it was always at the same time, and I remember it was grandma's alarm clock. I was like I remember like going to my mom the next morning, or like this happened over several nights. I was like mom, like you need to come into my room, I think like grandma's in there she's ringing a bell, because ghosts love bells or whatever so my mom came in and she did, she like sat there and she listened and then and she's like okay, yeah, yeah, I hear it, I hear it.

Ron

It's like cool, I'm not crazy. And then the next morning she, uh, I think, yeah, I think the next morning she was like I think I know where the, what the bell is, and it turned out we had this like night light. That was a um, it was like a big, tall night light in the shape of a street light, uh, and it would kind of just flash different, you know, red, yellow, green, and every time it changed it dinged dude.

Doug

Your grandma turned on the light that's crazy it's an actual manifestation.

Ron

Yeah, yeah, so then, so that was my first also, uh, uh, sort of skeptical moment, right, or skeptical whiplash, as it were, right, oh, like the, the world isn't as magical as, uh, as my mind construed it perhaps to be. Yeah, so I don you mentioned, you know, that question of did I manifest this right, or was this a phenomenon of the waking world? And that's kind of what I want to talk about today, and I want to talk about it, not about ghosts at all. Ha ha, fooled you, listener. I want to talk about aliens, because this is the thing I've always wanted to see.

Ron

Yeah, of course, doug. I feel like you definitely grew up watching alien stuff, don. I'm not saying they didn't have aliens when you grew up, but I feel like, uh, maybe your media was less alien oriented remember aliens don yeah, we had papyrus, that described the aliens back then remember stone tablets.

Speaker 6

How do you think we built the the?

Ron

pyramid yeah, but like was alien media important to you, right? Like we had independence day and uh um I guess, the movie alien and and like like history channel was already doling out like alien stuff, like it was world war ii levels of credibility. Yeah right, like what was your alien upbringing yeah, no, they were, they were all over.

Don

There's um the last starfighter, but uh that's the one I'm thinking of what's the alien enemy mind, enemy mind yeah, that's the one that, uh, that I had, and then on tv we had v with the rotten milk and um, uh, so yeah, aliens is absolutely a.

Ron

But did you want to see aliens?

Don

Did you?

Ron

think aliens were real, I guess, is a better Did all of us think when we were children? And then we'll come back and revisit as adults.

Doug

I don't want to give up the See, I was thinking we break a rule. I feel like the Uncannery has done a great job of like well, let's explore and leave options. But I am fair, I want to be linear as shit. Yeah, just keep it simple. Um, I very much want to know where you gentlemen stand on. Is their life in this universe? Besides I, I very much.

Don

I think you have to wait to the end of the episode to find out.

Ron

Yeah, cause they're just going to click off. We have to get to listen.

Speaker 6

He likes her, he doesn't.

Doug

Goodbye, all right.

Ron

I believe in our audience. Can we divide this into?

Don

two questions. I think we could pause recording right now and I'll write down what we think. The others think. And then we could revisit that at the end of the episode and see if that's not a terrible idea.

Ron

Can we break it into two questions, Because I think there are two questions that I feel very differently about. So, Doug, you said do we think there is extraterrestrial life in this universe Right, but I think that's separate from the question has that life visited our Earth?

Doug

Yeah.

Ron

Right.

Don

Yeah.

Ron

So I will say happily, I don't think this is a spoiler, but I do think there is extraterrestrial life in the universe we just lost half of it.

Doug

Come back, come back, click off. I changed my mind. Yeah, but wait till don says something.

Ron

Yeah, but uh, like, just I feel like that's a pretty commonly held viewpoint. I don't think that's that controversial to say. The sheer size of the universe, right and and our understanding of the mechanism by which life can occur in it suggests that that's not impossible, that there's a greater than 0% chance that other organisms have grown, whether those are even bacterial organisms or intelligent organisms. They're somewhere out there. Do we all agree on the statement?

Doug

Don won't say because they have to stay in the, in the unknown, to keep the listener. I 100% agree. Yeah, I think that just statistically right, like it's just so wild to think of the ever-expanding universe and to kind of have the idea that, yeah, we, we would be alone, is fairly wild. Um, and then I think to take that to another step is like I kind of think conceptually, and maybe this is just so influenced by the you know the episodes of Star Trek that I've seen, but it's like just thinking about the different ways that we, yeah, you look at like kind of the, the cosmic place of us and then like what the purpose is within that, which is a whole different rabbit hole, but thinking about other beings, like living, or just even bacteria that we find on other planets, things like that.

Doug

Um there, yes, I do think. I think that we continue to expand out.

Don

Hmm, well, the the questions raised by the Fermi paradox, right Like the, the yep. The answer seems easy because the universe is so vast that the probabilities of all of the, the collisions and chemistry that's happening throughout the universe, it must have happened in another place other than just here on earth. That's the but the paradox. The Fermi paradox says that if that's the case, why have we not encountered them or seen them, or seen evidence of them or anything like that? The um, the thing that I've recently come across, although it's not new by any means, um is is called the zoo theory. Have you guys heard about?

Doug

this oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that were being observed.

Don

Is that? Is that correct?

Doug

Yeah.

Don

So it was proposed by John Ball in 1973, but it had been explored a little bit in fiction by some authors before then. But yeah, the idea that we have been found, we just don't know we've been found because we're the subjects in this wildlife preserve and we're being kept from the interaction of the aliens, so so that way they can study us or see us, and then we don't have the interaction.

Ron

So but if that were true, then why have we seen so many aliens?

Don

Because you just said you didn't see any.

Ron

Well, I haven't seen it. But people, we, the, the collective, we, humanity, has seen so many aliens over the years, don, and there's no arguing with the fact that there, there, we know types of aliens, we know species of aliens, we know where some of them live or come from. There are so many types of aliens they can't be in the zoo. They're clearly showing up and being like what's up?

Don

we finished the eve online. Uh episode. Yeah, that one's over, right we also finished the bigfoot one.

Doug

So, ron, are you taking us down a similar path?

Ancient Celestial Beings and UFOs

Ron

I want to talk about. Yeah, the different there are so many. So I grew up really loving aliens and like the first books I I checked out from the library were all like non-fiction, ufo and in alien books, cool right. And I remember one in particular was just telling me stories about encounters people have had with aliens and I was it like blew my mind.

Ron

I remember like reading it on a camping trip with my dad and I was like Dad, did you know that, like in 1975, a saucer landed outside of a small town in Peru and it released a green gas and these lizard creatures came out and the whole town was sick? The whole town was sick, dad. They have evidence. Everyone was sick. What could have caused that? My dad was like? That's just not true. And I was so mad at him.

Ron

I was like what do you mean this book? It was like the first time I realized you can just put whatever you want in a book and call it nonfiction. The teacher told me nonfictionfiction was true stuff, don how could this book make? Up a story.

Doug

Your dad was more of a scully at the end of the day?

Don

oh definitely. Teachers are totally reliable, unreliable you can't trust anything. A teacher's agreed, yeah they oversimplify everything just fits their rules, absolutely.

Ron

Um, I want to talk a little bit about the progression of alien sightings, right, because I think this tells us something about the different ages of of like of people, and where we are sort of collectively, uh, psychically, emotionally, culturally, right, um, the earliest alien, like experiences like when do you think they like happen? Like when are the first ufos, when did these happen? Like people actually seeing and reporting ufos?

Doug

I mean, I'm instantly, instantly thinking of the meme of the guy with the ancient aliens haircuts, instantly going to that. So I would imagine we're seeing paintings that we can't describe, you know, cave paintings that we can't describe in inscriptions and going it's got to be aliens, that's what they saw so that's definitely like a school of thought and UFO UFOlogy, right, the study of unidentified flying objects, which I think is like not what.

Ron

They're not UFOs anymore Now, they're like aerial for not you, fap, it's way worse, it's a way worse acronym nowadays. Um, but I think a lot of that stuff is, like you know, ascribed from like the perspective of the 2000s, like, as far as I can tell, like yes, sometimes people see weird lights and stuff in the skies and they report on them in like the 16th century or something. But it's like they're usually meteors or you know, just sort of like not so phenomenal aerial phenomenon, right the first. Like real ufos, like are a product of like the mid 20th century, right like world war ii, that kind of era moving onwards, right they be. We start seeing ufos in the skies and stuff like this. Oh, I think it goes back a lot further than that. Really, how?

Don

much further the the earliest that I can find is ancient mesopotamia. There we go, give us the description. So the Sumerians in 4000 BC are writing about the Anunnaki, who are beings that descend from the sky or from the stars, and it's in relatively like legendary texts. Right, it's in the Epic of Gilgamesh, so it's well recorded as a an ancient source, um, but there's that the ancient Egyptians have similar um circles of fire stories that exist from at least 3000 BC. Um, indians, uh, the ancient Indians have uh have stories about, uh, a text about flying machines existing from 2000 BC. So it goes back really far, this idea that there's this. Well, yeah, and this is going to take us off on a tangent, I think.

Doug

I don't think there was any way we weren't going to do that on this episode.

Ron

Doug said we were not exploring this episode, please follow my script.

Don

But that idea that there's a being coming from the sky, like it's always been from the sky, like why are there beings coming from the sky and not from underneath the earth, when, you know, to an ancient civilization like under the earth, would have been as legitimate of a mystery as above. But all of the stories are coming from the same location. They're all coming from the stars, from the skies. And you think back to the, you know, I know that the ancient Babylonians had not, yeah, had like a sense of the universe and they were able to map the stars and the calendar and all that. So, but the, the way that that sky was created, like it didn't allow for as much distance as we today know exists up there. So I think that's interesting that all of those stories are coming from the same spot and it even fits into our language because the Roman god, jupiter, the king of the gods right, it's actually a compound word coming out of Proto-Indo-European languages. The Pater part of it actually is the same root as the root for father Potter.

Don

Oh yeah yeah, yeah, so Jupiter actually.

David Icke

uh, father, it means sky father of the Jew.

Don

Barry, in a proto Indo-European, which is the language that we don't have any actual record of, but that they are recreating by um, by finding similarities in European languages. So it's a language that pre-exists any of the current languages that we know of.

Doug

Let's not just get off the path, let's go ahead and destroy it.

Speaker 6

At this point, no I did so much work to build that path.

Doug

We'll never come back Um. I instantly was thinking about um. Are we familiar with the biblical reference, that reference to the Nephilim?

Ron

Yeah, we love me some Nephilim.

Doug

Yeah, it's really fun.

Ron

This is the coolest stuff in the Bible.

Speaker 6

The monsters and the weird people who screwed aliens and made creatures.

Doug

So for them it's celestial beings, right, and so, yeah, there's this idea, and it's very briefly mentioned, but the idea of these absolutely gigantic people, um, that had, yeah, uh, fraternized, if you will, with, with humans, um, and then, yeah, like people who are going with the really wild alien theories, they're going to say like, well, that was and it, and they'll go into all of this territory. Um, we, yeah, we're obsessed with the idea of came from, yeah, usually the sky.

Ron

But I don't, I don't, I don't ascribe a lot of that stuff to UFOs honestly. Like yes, there is there a link there? People descending from the sky, of course, of course. But to me that has its roots more in just like a sort of like just legendary material, the mythic in general, right, the sort of like we who's, who's the mask guy? You know the freaking. Who am I thinking of?

Don

phantom of the opera no no, no the the scholar jason the hero of a thousand faces.

Ron

Who am I thinking?

Don

of joseph campbell thank you.

Ron

Thank you, right campbell, and jason Bough and all these theories that link how humans across culture, across times like have all these similarities.

David Icke

Archetypes yes exactly right.

Ron

To me, that's just like a human archetype. Right, the sky is always superior to underground, because the sky is inaccessible. Right, and the sky provides so much more to humanity than beneath the earth. Right, beneath the earth is where we bury our dead. It's it's the dead land, it's hades.

Don

Right and and of course you else gets hold of it then yeah, yeah my locks.

Ron

What are they called the?

Don

more locks, more like that's the time machine, but also journey to the center, yeah, yeah um, but uh, anyways, I don't.

Ron

I don't count that as alien stuff, though. Like I don't think angels are proof of aliens, I don't think like ancient beings coming from the sky, the Anunnaki. That's not aliens to me.

Doug

That's just like myth stuff and I'm with you on that, yeah, like. But what I find interesting is that there are people that will say it isn't angels, it has to be aliens.

Ron

Like that is interesting to me, that people and it isn't angels, it has to be aliens, like that is interesting, right that people. And when does that transformation occur? And to me, that's why I think of UFOs being a strictly 20th century phenomenon, because of this combination of science and technology, and like the shrinking of the imaginary world and the expanding of the observable world.

Ron

And now, instead of there being celestial beings in the sky, we need scientific observable organisms in the sky right and so some of the first of these are like um, are you guys, do you remember back when we're talking about racist dnd? And I said, uh hey, in racist star frontiers you can play any of a number of very exciting species, nordic or a.

David Icke

Nordic or a Negro Negro. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ron

So Nordics were like some of the first aliens that were documented by people reporting to have encounters with aliens. This was like a term. These were Nordic aliens because they were always described as being very tall seven to eight foot tall white people with blonde hair, very tall, seven to eight foot tall white people with blonde hair. And I think like the first guy to kind of describe these was a Polish American author named George Adamski and he said he was like in the desert in California and with a couple of friends and a cigar shaped saucer came down and landed outside the desert and a man came out and he was blonde and wearing moccasins and he said his name was Orthon and he gave George a warning. He said you guys got to cool out this Cold War stuff, man. Like nuclear bombs are bad.

Doug

What else was he doing in the desert? Because it sounds like there might have been some extra work with a cigar shape.

Ron

Definitely just hanging out with friends and talking about their 401k. I don't know. Adamski is very much considered like a hoaxster, like he was like into occult stuff back in the 20s, like dude actually like was like fighting pancho villa during the mexican revolution stuff like, like lived a pretty crazy and cool life, but also just like trying to sell anything he could and so he became like a ufo guy somewhere in the 1940s and 50s.

Ron

um the problem with like, so like, because george adamski popularized this idea of the nordic aliens, other people across america and europe like reported like oh yes, I too saw an alien. And and there's like commonalities in all these reports they're all blonde, they're all nice, uh, they're all benevolent. And they're all blonde, they're all nice, they're all benevolent and they're all like super obsessed with the Cold War. These aliens are always like you guys, you're going to ruin yourselves, you're going to blow up your planet.

Don

Please heed our warning.

Speaker 6

That's why Rocky got knocked out by Dolph Ivan yeah.

Don

Absolutely.

Speaker 6

Ivan Drago.

Ron

I will break you, I will break you, but like, can you think of a reason why, like everyone in the forties and fifties, uh would be seeing benevolent white people telling them please don't shoot the nukes?

Doug

You gotta have something dependent on, don't you All that anxiety and fear?

Ron

So yeah Right, it's like clearly speaks to a sort of societal angst. Um, and not only that. Uh, in 1951 a movie came out called the day the earth stood still. And any idea what the message of the aliens is in the day the earth stood still?

Doug

um, don't overbake your brownies we're not gonna move this earth until you guys do what we say no again.

Ron

They're benevolent aliens who say don't shoot nukes. You guys are very close to destroying your world they're very wise aliens they are and they're played by a white guy, like one of the nords. So like uh, this theme I kept seeing in like you whenever people start seeing a new type or want to catalog a new species of alien. There was like a movie that came out two years before this that depicted the alien this way, and then it kind of like infiltrates the popular imagination.

Don

So you think that the people aren't actually experiencing these encounters with aliens? I don't think, remembering a movie they saw.

Ron

Well, I want to come back to that question, right, because? That's an important question but if I were to ask you guys a drawn alien, what are you gonna like? What's what's today's alien? What are we gonna?

Doug

do, it's not gonna. It doesn't work for me because I just I love the xenomorph from ridley, scott's alien so much. That's forever stuck in my mind. But so it's hr.

Don

Geiger and that's absolutely not alien to me like yes, I know the movie but I mean to me very much it's it's robot.

David Icke

I know it's not, but like the way it is.

Don

It's depicted in the film Like it's very mechanical Okay.

Doug

Yeah.

Don

So now I'm I'm going to draw gray, Like that's.

Ron

Yeah, yeah, a gray. What's a gray alien?

Don

done. A gray alien has the, the large eyes that the kind of almond shape, the uh other shorter, stat in stature, kind of elongated bodies sort of like. Like, oddly their bodies are more like toddler proportions, like the size of their head is too big and their bodies are small and yeah but uh, the ones that you know come waddling out of the flying saucer and the cartoons and stuff, exactly exactly.

Ron

And this is like the next phase of the alien that people encounter right Like the gray alien and this is from what I could tell kind of was popularized in 1961. There's a famous abduction that occurs in 1961. Are either of you familiar with the Betty and Barney Hill abduction?

Ron

No, oh, this is great, this is like the abduction In 1961, betty and Barney Hill. They're a married couple, they're a biracial couple in 1961 in New Hampshire and they decide to have like an impromptu honeymoon. They'd never had a honeymoon. So they go out for like a weekend drive and they're driving across I don't know somewhere late in New Hampshire. Uh and uh, one night they're like at a coffee shop and it's like 10 PM and they're like you know, we could probably just make it home, like if we just beeline it right now, we'll, we'll avoid traffic and I think there's like a storm on the way. So they do that. They're driving late at night, late at night. And then suddenly they like start to feel kind of odd. They had remembered seeing these lights in the sky right, kind of blinking and following the car. Barney was like in the army and so he was like oh, that's like not like any airplane I remember seeing, seeing.

Ron

And then when they get home they realize that like there was two hours they seem to be missing. They have no memory of like how did we get home? Their shoes are scuffed, betty says her dress has been torn. Their watches, their wristwatches, don't work and never work again, and they just feel very odd and strange. And so they start having these sort of like anxious moments. They feel confused. Betty reports having bad dreams. For a long time they just sort of like live with this bad feeling but then trying to research it, betty goes to the library and she starts looking up books and eventually she finds books about UFOs and alien encounters and alien abductions.

Ron

And it's like a couple of years later I want to say it's like 1963 or so they finally decide to see a psychologist because these symptoms haven't really gone away. They just feel ill, like what happened that night. And eventually they go, they meet a psychologist and he's a hypnotherapist and so he decides to put them under this kind of burgeoning new field of hypnotherapy. We're going to hypnotize them and see if they can recover any lost memories therapy. We're going to hypnotize them and see if they can recover any lost memories.

Ron

And when he does this they both tell this story about their car being brought to a stop. A spacecraft landed on the road in front of them. Small little gray people with almond shaped eyes came out of the ship and brought them inside. And they do abduction stuff right. This is where the idea of like sort of being surgically operated on, being probeded, being scanned, uh, being like, observed and experimented on comes from and uh, and eventually they do this, uh, and then they let the barney and betty go and then they get back in their car and they completely erase their memories, right?

Don

abduction. And what was of course? What was their last name? Hill hill.

Ron

Yeah, is that an important clue?

Don

well, no, but when you started the story it said that they're betty and barney. I thought it was betty and barney. Rubble and hill and rubble are not that different, don't forget the flintstones and the jetsons, and sometimes they met once Actually, are there any?

Doug

I don't think there are aliens on the Jetsons. It's just robots, isn't it?

Don

Yeah, yeah, I was going to say that it's all retrofuturism. Yeah, yeah, but interesting. So how did she do research on this if they were the first ones to be so? I?

Ron

think there have been stories of alien abductions, right like, or encounters with aliens, right like. Even george adamski said he like went into a spaceship once and they started flying them around the universe and he went to jupiter and he went to venus. He saw the aliens homeworld on venus, which is like why even people at the time didn't really take him seriously because they knew like no one can live on venus you moron. But uh, so like these, this literature exists, right, um, but this is the considered, the story that popularizes this idea in the american imagination, because they write a newspaper article about this and that article becomes a best-selling book. It's called, uh, the interrupted journey, right, and then they eventually make a, a movie version of it. It's got james earl jones as as barney, right, and so it just sort of like goes out everywhere and since then, um, according to like, uh, ufo historians like, there's a um the nordic aliens are no longer really encountered by people. All, all sort of reported alien encounters involve these gray aliens.

Doug

Um, and this kind of culminates in steven spielberg's close encounters with a third kind right which comes out in the 70s and the aliens are little tiny gray almanide children looking aliens right I was trying to remember the first time that I'd seen yeah, that was.

Ron

I think that that was my first experience seeing them as well and a lot of people have tried to obviously explain what possibly could have happened to uh, uh, betty and Barney, and one of the kind of most interesting finds is that, um, just two weeks before they uh went for their hypnotherapy session, they ate mushrooms. They got completely blitzed. Do you remember there was a television show called the Outer Limits?

Don

Yeah.

Ron

Science fiction sort of Twilight Zone-esque show, right?

Ron

Well, the Outer Limits aired a series of episodes that all involved alien abductions, and the aliens portrayed in those television shows were almost exactly the aliens that were described by Barney.

Ron

At least, barney drew the alien that he encountered and it doesn't quite look like our version of a gray alien, but it is bald, it has these big wraparound eyes. He continually in his session mentions the eyes, the eyes, the glowing eyes, and it's like also basically a line from the show like, oh, the eyes of evil, and blah, blah. So there's like a succession of three episodes that all involve like when one of them, uh, spaceship lands and stops a car right and and takes the people inside, and another one there's like a surgery scene where an alien is trying to turn the people uh that it captures into like servants and stuff, and uh, betty and barney both say like, uh, they were at least betty did that, she wasn't like familiar with this show, but um, it seems uh uncertain if that's, you know, like maybe they did, maybe they didn't, who can can say? But it seems like the running theory is that they've kind of had these images, these ideas, imprinted in them prior to having gone into hypnotherapy.

Don

So it sounds like what you're saying is that that television show was really well researched and grounded in authentic fact of the Lane encounter Very much so.

Ron

And there's also like small differences in their stories, like they were put in separate sessions, right and and barney, who was like a veteran of world war ii. He described the aliens as looking like nazis like, like they had nazi uniforms.

David Icke

The leader was very hitler-esque.

Ron

Betty described the aliens as nice and actually friendly. She enjoyed talking to them and they were very kind um, whereas barney found them more hostile um.

Don

So it sounds, aliens are just like people.

Ron

Some people are nice and some people some people I'm gonna say that maybe they, you know, we're dredging up multiple subconscious experiences and trying to meld them together into a way that makes sense, in a similar way that we might have a dream but then what would have been the either?

Don

so this happened to them together. Right, they were traveling together on the road they had, and whatever this episode is that is causing them to, to, to believe, or want to believe, or to to fabricate this memory. Yeah Right, like what was the there had to have been like a common sort of event, right, yeah, something had to have happened.

Ron

The best explanation for this I could find is not super exciting, right, but there is a guy who apparently has spent he lives in the area in which this took place and he's spent his whole life trying to counter this story and apparently nearby there is a beacon, an airplane beacon of sorts, that's really tall and it blinks and it can look like a UFO if you're driving through the sky at night or something like that. And secondly, the idea that they were just tired, right, that they were driving while drowsy.

Don

Why would that make them feel bad for like three weeks?

Ron

That part I agree, it's odd right.

Doug

It was the worst coffee you could have had at that coffee stop ever. Somebody put something psychedelic in there. They're like we're going to drive home right now, honey.

Don

Where were they driving again?

Ron

New Hampshire I'm pretty sure it's New Hampshire. They were trying to get to Portsmouth. No-transcript feeling was maybe just like a you know an O, like a sort of over anxiety about being uh watched, being being people being hostile to them as a couple and that, in some way, that this was just the unease that they were feeling right and living during this time in a very white part of the united states, um, and a potentially very hostile, uh place, and that this manifested in these feelings and this need to explain it, um, through finding these UFO explanations.

Don

No, no, no, no, no no, what do you guys remember from your sixth grade memorizing facts about the states of the United States? They're going to New Hampshire. New Hampshire's state bird is the purple finch. Morning dove, purple finch.

Doug

Yeah.

Don

Portsmouth finch. What's the nickname of New Hampshire, the who-hares state? It's the nickname of New.

Ron

Hampshire, the Whoopi Air State. It's the Granite State, okay.

Don

Okay, the gray, that could be red granite, which means they're driving by red rocks.

Doug

Okay, which is?

Don

clearly a sign of aliens, because Doug had an alien experience.

Doug

Something is happening right now in our space and we are going to need to.

David Icke

I see something right now.

Speaker 6

I am being beamed up, orthon.

Doug

They are speaking to me. Oh, they are speaking to me, yeah.

Ron

So, anyways, I bring this up, as this was like the famous gray alien story. Since then it seems to have replaced the idea of a benevolent alien creatures in the, at least the american imagination, with more hostile alien um creatures, right, and then I wanted to get to the most hostile of all.

Doug

Right, because it gets worse the xenomorph from ridley, scott's alien for some reason I can't find anything that seemed.

Ron

no one has seen a xenomorph this has not influenced aliens. Haven't you seen aliens? I've seen aliens, but my big hypothesis is people watch TV. It gets stuck in their brains and then when they see something they can't explain, they replace it with. They go through the Rolodex in their brain and they're like oh yeah, the guy from Close Encounters.

Ron

Oh yeah, the guy from the Day the Earth Stood, still Same way that HG Wells loved fairies. He didn't see no aliens because no one had drawn a gray alien yet, but people were talking about fairies and toadstools. Don, what do you know about fairies?

Don

I've never been more certain about anything than you know about fairies in the 19th century, tell us about it. Just that they were. It was popular to believe in fairies and and they were some of the first, um, I don't know, supernatural, supernatural, um, uh, creatures. That scientific proof was was provided for, like photographic proof right, right, right yeah right, and so it was a. And there's photographic proof of aliens as well, right of course, yes, so it's a famously.

Don

But I actually think I want to circle back to this idea. So go ahead and and tell us about scary alien, and then let's circle back to this, because I I just bring the fairies back up Because I've got some theories.

The Reptilian Conspiracy Theory

Ron

Okay, okay, scariest alien. Have you heard of the reptilians? Oh, yeah, yeah, doug, what do you know about the reptilians?

Doug

I cannot remember the guy's name. I can't.

Ron

You want to.

David Icke

I know it's coming, but it's, david.

Doug

Ike, david, ike. Okay, there it is. Yeah, it's the idea. You know that celebrity that's doing so well, you know that really rich individual that's influencing the world. Do you know what's behind the skin? Reptile, reptile, baby. And we're not talking about the Mortal Kombat character, we're talking about a group of people. Is this where skinwalkers comes from? Like this idea too, of like behind the facade.

Ron

I think Skinwalkers have a basis in actual, like indigenous American myth. But I do think the sudden fascination with Skinwalkers in the last 20 years is a mutation, mutation of the of the reptilian um a story, right, and this, uh, this reptilian story is exactly what you're saying, doug, and it's popularized by a guy named david ike who, in the 1990s david ike, is still alive. He's he's a british. He was a british like sports broadcaster, like a soccer jockey or whatever they call him it's that sock jock baby a football voice man, but uh, and then at some

David Icke

point in the 1990s he went insane.

Doug

He said he was like visited by an angel, uh and that he was told he was the nephilim he had to.

Ron

Yeah, he had to. He had to save humanity by giving them the truth and he kind of wrote a bunch of books and he tried on lots of different hats. But the thing that I think kind of rocketed him the most was a book in 1999 called the Biggest Secret. And the Biggest Secret posits that actually all the rich and powerful people in the world, world leaders, George Bush, Barack Obama Barack Obama didn't exist in 1999.

Don

Well, I guess he did, but not in any way he did. Well, they had to manufacture him that year.

Ron

But like Madonna. He said like any kind of famous person was actually a shape-shifting reptilian alien and that these reptilian aliens had infiltrated the Earth from like the Draco star system something stupid.

Don

Yeah, I don't think like you think about all the rich and most powerful people that exist in our world right now.

Ron

like I can see the similarities, this is actually this is my problem with it, because if you listen to David Icke, at first you're like oh, it's a fun metaphor, right that the rich and powerful are. I mean he literally says they like drink the blood of children right they, they shape shift, they, they mean us ill, they formed a powerful cabal and they're and they're trying to enslave us, blah, blah blah. And if you listen to that and just think of it as like a science fiction story, you're like like yeah, that's pretty, I agree, Like the powerful people in the world do suck and they don't have our best interests at heart.

Ron

But he like literally means it anti-Semitism inherent to this message because it trucks in a lot of conspiracy theories that go many centuries back that all involve the idea that, hey, very wealthy people, especially very wealthy Jewish people in Europe, are actually secretly trying to mastermind us and control the world and there are plenty of statements in Ike's writing that allude to this and that he is playing into this story. He will say when confronted on it that no, no, no, he is not anti-Semitic, he is not racist, blah, blah, blah. He's just trying to unveil a true conspiracy of powerful people and that not all the reptilians are Jews, but a lot of them happen to be, and that not all the reptilians are Jews, but a lot of them happen to be. And this is a cause, I think, I think very rational criticism of this argument, besides the fact that probably there are not alien reptiles on this planet who shape shift into the forms of our government leaders.

Doug

Yeah, I mean it's, it'd be it'd be funny to continue to scapegoat the idea, right, because then it's just like again, it's another similar thing. Okay, Like going, I'm seeing this theme that's running through of like cold war, fear, right With the Nords, um, racial tent, uh, the, the feeling of paranoia and being watched with the grays, with the couple that you have. And then, once again, and I mean just unfortunately, like, looking through the history of antisemitism, it's always interesting to me, I think, specifically with this one, that it always is under the guise of like, I'm not saying it's just, it is just Jewish people, it just happens to be a lot of them, which of course naturally leads to the racist thought of, but it it is Jews, you know, and I, yeah, it's fascinating to me looking at this because it's like instantly put in this very uh, not benevolent kind of scope. Yeah, it's unfortunate.

Don

Well, and I was just going to say that, setting aside the obvious racial component that you're bringing up, like the, the base anxiety there is, just there are, there are people that have power that is out of my control and and it's not even worth fighting against because, like it's alien power, like how?

Doug

can I, how could I?

Don

right, so it's. It's not just that, it's overwhelming amount of wealth and overwhelming amount of political power and social power. But it really underscores that feeling of I don't know, of absolute uselessness in that universe, like I have no control over my own life because this other race of creature is actually secretly controlling the world.

Doug

Yep, and now common enemy. It's the aliens who are doing it. But then it gets scary because it's like well, and then group of people, and then that leads to other really dark thoughts. Right, you can kind?

Ron

of link that back to the nordic alien thing, right where the anxiety over the cold war, war and potential global annihilation. We need to invent a super powerful from beyond the stars race of people to tell us to be our parents right To be like hey you guys are really not doing so good.

Ron

It is that thing that I find interesting. And then too, like I think you laid it out really well, Doug and David Icke's reptilian aliens, which are, I would say say, kind of like the new, most popular sort of alien. Uh, it speaks to like the newer anxieties of like concentrated world power, right. Or like we're concentrated power in general right.

Ron

Across the world and I want to play a clip real fast, uh, from a documentary I've seen. Uh, this is a documentary with John Ronson. You guys ever seen any of his stuff? No, he did this really great documentary in 2001 where he basically just wanted to follow David Icke around and let him talk his weird stuff, because John Ronson's just kind of interested in weird guys. And he winds up.

Ron

So David Icke is about to go on a speaking tour in Canada but John Ronson also winds up filming a group in Canada called the Canadian Jewish Congress who wants to stop David Icke from speaking because they're very aware of this anti-Semitic messaging in his texts and in his talks. And so they kind of under. They launch a campaign to kind of prevent David Icke from speaking, trying to keep him essentially, they start kind of protest outside of radio stations so that the radio stations will cancel his appearances or just physically block him from entering into bookstores. And the campaign goes pretty poorly because it turns out like a lot of Canadians want to hear David Icke talk. For some people he's just the funny reptile man, but for others he's speaking truth to power. And at the end of this documentary I wanted to play this clip, because this clip shows the members of this Canadian Jewish Congress kind of talking about the failures of their campaign to stop Icke and what people like about Icke, and I think it is salient today. Would you please play that clip for us, don.

Speaker 6

The strange thing is that many in the coalition share David's conspiracy theories about an evil elite ruling the world. This is what the left-wingers here were battling against in Seattle and Prague. They just don't believe these elitists to be shape-shifting lizards or Jews.

David Icke

What we do have to remember is out there there are lots of people who are undecided on many things that he stands for that sound very progressive. He's against the WTO. I'm against the WTO. There are very rational explanations of corporate globalization. It's not a conspiracy. Corporations do what they do because they are corporations and we don't need to imagine conspiracies to explain why they would do everything they possibly can to increase their profits and take away the rights of workers and and suppress democracy. That's, that's their business. In fact, that's their only business.

Speaker 6

The problem is this David Ike has become so popular here in Vancouver that those people who don't believe in the lizards are beginning to seem like has-beens his views are expressed as the answer.

Speaker 5

You know what I mean. A lot of especially young people are getting involved in these issues and they're seeing that you know this big task before them and we sort of have the answers as a group of people. But DVI has the real answer and it's these conspiracies and their lizards and that's linked to dehumanizing. You know, the elite People who are just finding their ground on these issues are like don't tell me, I'm stupid, I'm looking for some answers. And he seems to have them.

Speaker 6

But it is all over for the coalition by the end of the week. They disband In getting David banned from radio shows and book signings. The anti-elitists have themselves behaved like a shadowy elite, like the hidden hand, and behaved like a shadowy elite, like the hidden hand.

Ron

And nobody likes a shadowy elite, and I think this from 2001 explains a lot of what's happened over the last 20 years. Right, I think, like David Icke, as a man peddling a bizarre and obviously untrue story about reptilian aliens, did become popular because a lot of people have that shared anxiety of I really hate the people in power, like it is very obvious that they do not care about me, and I will kind of take any story that seems to want to, or follow any person who seems to claim to want to, diminish their power, whether they have that ability, or not?

Ron

Right, like I'll believe that they're aliens, if that lets me, like, hate them a little bit more easily, or something, right? Well, it dehumanizes.

Don

Right, it takes away that that the guilt that you have over thinking that another person of your same species is lower.

Ron

And allows for a common enemy that's easier to collectively hate as well, yeah, things that have zero basis in any rational kind of thinking but can very easily be linked to what these people, who clearly don't care about my suppressed wages and the cost of living, are telling me to now put this thing in me. I'm not going to listen to them If that makes them mad. If that sticks it to them, then yeah, that's where I'm going to go, and I think in some way, david Icke is uh the realist alien because we live in, in, in in the world, uh, uh, to an extent that he has uh heralded Right.

Don

Yeah.

Ron

But, the.

Don

It's not a new phenomenon to hate the, the elite right, the those that have that much power over you. But I think one of the things that the 20th century brought to us is the expanding publicity and access to media that an individual has right. A thousand years ago, lived under a tyrant king, probably had feelings about that tyrant king that he couldn't do anything about, couldn't say anything about, because he couldn't read or write. But through the 20th century not today like all it takes is a couple of thumbs and a smartphone and you can post anything you want.

Ron

Yeah, and it's definitely not new to hate the elite. But I think the the new, the novel kind of thing about this and you, you kind of said it, don is that because the reason why this elite is so powerful and evil is now outside of our control, outside of my hands, therefore I don't have to actually do anything about it. It used to be the mine workers would grab a bunch of guns and shoot the people trying to break the strike and stuff. They would actually fight the people in power. They could at least agree upon. Hey, the person in power is vulnerable, right, he is not invincible. But now if he's an alien?

Don

Yeah, it alleviates my sense of incapacity, because it's not that someone else is more successful because they worked harder or had more benefits than I did. It's because they're a completely different creature.

Ron

Yeah, yeah yeah, so it in a, in a ironic way, it's the most powerful tool of the elite right to cloak themselves in this fictional story of their own, um, invincibility indeed can we, uh, can we bring it back to the greatest tale of aliens?

Doug

And is this Ridley Scott again? No, this one's not Ridley Scott. This is the X-Files.

Ron

Prometheus. Oh yeah, prometheus was pretty good. Take us to X-Files, doug.

Doug

Just for a moment for anybody not familiar I brought up Scully earlier but any not familiar with the show, the dynamic and what I believe made that show so successful, why I enjoyed it so much is, of course you had two FBI agents, one of them being the conspirator, and Mulder, who was sent there to keep him under wraps and make sure that he isn't going too wild with what he's doing. And of course the dynamic of the show plays off of the constant we're being exposed to things. And then Scully tries to find a rational explanation and Mulder says how could you possibly see that from what we just saw? And at various times they range between, uh, you know, scully and Mulder, kind of Mulder being put under the thumb and going like, ah, maybe the things that I see, I don't have a rational basis. And then that time Scully is like there's for sure alien life because of what we've just done.

Ron

Point of the story is Don't leave out the raging sexual tension.

Doug

Yes, of course that's. That is a very big part of uh, I think, especially for that era, right, but, um, I think it was in this uh done since you have access. If you remember, I believe it was Mulder's brother. I think that this is where it all stems from is Mulder's brother was suddenly gone.

Speaker 6

Like suddenly disappeared.

Doug

Yes, suddenly disappeared Is this correct? Supposedly killed by the smoking man?

Don

Oh, you spoiled it.

Doug

You told me to look. That comes later. No, yes, but in the beginning he believes. I don't remember if it's abduction, but he just has constant flashbacks to know it had to be something else. And of course he has the famous poster in his office that says I want to believe and I think that for the unexplainable, or this can't be, this or this is so terrible that I can't connect to this.

Doug

It does tend to push this idea of alien or foreign. It's beyond comprehension because if it becomes this, then at least I can focus on this. And at times it's anxiety, at times it can turn into racism or pain. But it's fascinating to me that people will continue the cycle of I need to put something in place to explain the miseries or anxieties of life, because it is too great and I think it speaks to our human character, because we are so um, there is something almost unexplainable about the amount of pain and anguish and also the joy and exuberance that we go through as human beings, and I think that the alien is a great way to express that, because it's. If there's something even beyond us, then how I interact with that becomes even a more human experience, even though it is alien.

Don

And it's that, that filter that your, your culture, your brain puts on your experience because of your culture, that I find really interesting, because the you know we were talking we started the episode talking about the ancient Sumerians and and right, and the way that ancient people understood these phenomenon is different than the way that a Victorian person explains that phenomenon and it's different than the way that a modern person explains that phenomenon. But that doesn't change the phenomenon, it just changes the explanation. And you can see that even between the Eastern and Western perspectives and the western perspective, like you point out, ron, we tend to think of aliens as a mid-20th century sort of invention, technology and and a cold war anxiety, but from um earlier times eastern um cultures tend to look at at like, uh, alien encounters.

Don

Of the things that we would would describe as alien encounters, are described in terms of dragons in.

Don

Chinese culture and in Japanese culture it's peaceful visitations, spirits, right, right. But then, if you just focus on that Western culture, circle back to the fairies that we were talking about a little while ago. Those same like I said, the same phenomenon are just get filtered through that culture. And there's a name for that. There's a folklorist call it cultural morphing, which means that you have an experience and then your culture tells you how to interpret that experience. So for ancient people it would be the gods and it's anxiety over natural forces. And then we get to the medieval period and it's demons and witches and, and, uh, christianity, uh, the enemies of Christianity, um. And then the Victorian period it's fairies, um. And then we get to the aliens in the 20th century as our sort of explanation for the anxieties that we have. And I think you did a really good job of walking us through how that anxiety in the 20th century sort of evolves from the peaceful Nordic visitors telling us to be peaceful to the reptilians who are destroying our planet.

Ron

And I can't wait to see what comes next. Honestly, I hope our next alien visitors are kinder fuzzier. I can't wait to see Gen Z's aliens, I guess.

Don

That was actually one you were bringing up that especially the early 20th century stories tend to. The stories tend to mimic cultural representations that happened right before. But then I'm thinking like what Doug says, like I haven't heard a story of someone being abducted by a xenomorph and or with um, what was the? The movie? A few years ago that one was nominated for best picture um alien movie, yeah, where they're trying to figure out the language.

Ron

Oh yeah, arrival Right, and like nobody has a squid story, right when they've been.

Don

So that seems to be shifting a little bit. Like the alien abduction story still relies on the, the gray, or the reptilian, or the right, the nordic. We haven't moved past those in our encounter stories that I know of, do you?

Ron

no, there has to be, I think, like a sort of magic, uh culmination of variables, right? It like it, that it needs to be a standout image, popular Everyone saw it but also in some way reflect, like we were saying, the anxieties of the time or the concerns of people and I think, yeah, I agree, the xenomorph to me has never been an alien, he's just a monster Like. To me, alien is a great monster movie.

Doug

It's not. It's not about aliens actually. That's my biggest problem with it is that the movie called Alien is the least about aliens of any alien movie I've seen.

Ron

It's the most about aliens. It's called Alien. It should just be called Screamin' Space or something.

Doug

It's just the same movie. No one can hear you scream. Oh, come back for the next episode where I rip someone's head off over my favorite horror movie franchise.

Ron

Thank you, guys for taking this trip in a saucer with me. Uh, uh, thank you on cannibals out there for listening. I hope you enjoyed. Um, until next time, please send us in all of your strange phenomenon so that we can explain them and psychoanalyze you as well. Uh, thanks, ron, this was super interesting. Yeah, appreciate it. Take care everyone. Bye-bye, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hey, Uncannibals. Sorry, we were having so much fun pontificating about humanity and the nature of the supernatural that we completely forgot. We promised to tell you what we all thought about whether or not aliens have visited the Earth. We voted and wrote it all down, and then we just left it on the table.

Ron

Yeah, we were like whatever, that's not the most interesting thing here. So who wants to go first? We wrote down what we thought each of us believed right About our two questions.

Don

About the two questions, the first question was do aliens exist in the universe? Yes, and the second question is have aliens visited the?

Doug

earth. I believe that both of you think they exist I definitely think they exist.

Ron

I I put down that I I think doug believes they exist, because he literally told me and I also imagine you go there and I put down that don does not think aliens exist because he was incredibly cryptic and withholding the entire time oh, don't let that mistake you, he's great at being secretive do you notice, I didn't.

Don

I feel so special, I feel so seen by aliens. Well, I have to. Actually I waffle on this so I I'm winning this I think, as a waffler, I think my current belief is no, I think that, but I think that's like within, like the last month or so what?

Ron

what happened in the last month to destroy your belief?

Don

come on man, yeah, where'd the hope go?

Doug

I was reading an article that no, no, it's not about articles, it's about fun, so please but I did put that you both believe in aliens thank you.

Ron

Yeah wait, what was this article?

Don

you can't just leave it there it was about the, the fermi paradox and the mathematics of uh, that the original calculation for the Fermi paradox was was wildly off and that it's not that unusual that maybe we are the only ones in the universe.

Ron

So I think I always thought the answer to the Fermi paradox was just the man, the immense distances, like sort of it exists and we have estimates the distance of space Right and so, but now they're saying that that might not be the case.

Don

And uh. Underestimates the distance of space right and so, but now they're saying that that might not be the case, and uh, and that maybe it's much more unlikely that life has uh existed anywhere else so cool article like I'm not like. I'm not like I'm not waving a flag for it and just like I don't know.

Doug

That's boring though yeah, um, in terms of, and then the next one was UFOs. We've been visited correct, yeah, it doesn't have to necessarily be so. This is what's interesting is now. Obviously I don't think you do, but here's what I have for Don. So on my paper I have a scratched out. I have Don no, scratched out, like I decided last second. I was like maybe he does and I said yes to both of you. I said yes at the end, but now I know it's no.

Don

I think that's a perfect representation of what I just said, that I waffle between the two.

Doug

So do you feel even more seen? That's the most accurate representation.

Ron

I put that Doug does believe we have been visited by aliens. Shocker, I put that Don does not believe we have been visited by aliens.

Don

And I put that Ron does not believe we visited by aliens. Yeah, and I put that, uh, that ron uh does not believe we've been visited by aliens, and I put that doug absolutely believes it, because doug believes that wrestling is real.

Doug

So he believes everything. So I definitely didn't say that, folks. If you go back to the wrestling episode, I did explain, kayfabe so let's just not get it twisted, but uh yeah, what'd you say wrong?

Ron

I, I do not believe aliens have visited us.

Doug

I think they exist, but I think there are too many rational explanations for um the, the ufo sightings in general across the last couple of decades and I'd like to clarify, like I think visitation doesn't necessarily mean, because we're also assuming they visited people and I don't necessarily think that that would be the case. If anything, I think that they would make an incredibly safe trip. Not visiting like human beings. I think if we go back to the zoo theory, if you will, I think they would look at what we do to each other and go. I'll take, you know, the most remote location and go there if we're going to go anywhere.

Ron

I don't know. I feel like if they saw video games they'd be like okay.

Don

Oh, space Invaders. Yeah, look, they like to shoot us. Oh EVE Online.

Doug

They make corporations in space instead of how fun? Well, Doom is pretty good. I know we got to talk about Doom in one of these episodes.

Don

I think that you're right, though, doug and eve, if I believe that aliens have visited I. I'm a a current fan of the zoo theory and and I that are like the prime directive, like if they visited they would take they would take caution to make sure that we don't know that they visited.

Doug

Yeah, so okay, okay, okay, boys all right.

Ron

Thank you everyone. Uh have a safe and happy rest of your day or night Bye, thank you.