Secret Pentagon UAP unit & Varginha NHI 2026: NY Times legend Ralph Blumenthal

Our guest today is a man who changed the conversation around UFOs and UAPs forever. Ralph Blumenthal was at the New York Times for 45 years. Super hardcore investigative journalism covering everything from the mafia to the World Trade Center bombings. And late in his career, he turned his attention onto UFOs. He's notably the biographer of a man named John Mack who was a Harvard psychiatrist that was very interested in the abduction phenomenon and really put his career on the line to sort of bring light into that. And he was another sort of um pioneer in in making UFOs and aliens kind of less taboo. In 2017, Ralph co-authored a groundbreaking front page story around the Pentagon's secret UFO research program. It basically forced the government into saying, "Yeah, we're looking into this." Yeah, it's real. And it's really really switched the narrative around uh people being able to report what they see going on. Um and then it came out afterwards that, you know, there would be Air Force pilots who would see something and it was so stigmatized that they wouldn't report stuff. They wouldn't write stuff down. It would just cost them their jobs uh and too much paperwork. And after 2017, the the tide started turning on the government being forced into admitting that they're into this and that they maybe don't have all of the answers. So, we got to sit down and talk with him about sort of how he did all the work around John Mack. We get to talk about his latest article which covers the Vargia Brazil uh case where a crash landed and these girls interacted with an actual alien being. And um he got to report on that in January this year um just a couple of weeks ago. And we also get into a couple of things that we I wasn't planning on getting into, which is around hypnotism and some of the subconscious and the spirituality side of this because as you investigate these abduction stories, one of the things that stands out to me whenever I learn about them is all of these aliens, they don't speak English. Uh they have very thin lips and it's almost like their physical body, in my opinion, has devolved as in they didn't need it that much anymore. Um and everyone reports that they communicate telepathically. And Ralph actually got I think a better word, which is how they they communicate empathically. And I've heard it said before that rather than me telling you the word Thanksgiving, imagine all of a sudden you feel what Thanksgiving feels like. You smell the smells, you see the warmth, the candles, the fire, whatever that means. And that's kind of the way that that these beings have been communicating with people. So, it was a really fascinating conversation. Austin is out traveling the world, so it's just me today. Uh really appreciate you guys listening. Please like and subscribe if you haven't. Welcome to the Austin Math podcast. Ralph, it's great to meet you. Thanks for thanks for being willing to come on and have a chat. Terrific to be here. Thank you. Um, you know, I read your book, uh, The Believer around John Mack, and you you're you're so pivotal in the entire UFO world, most notably for, in my mind, at least for all the articles that you've written that kind of cracked the code or at least broke the stigma around talking about UFOs in the government. And you know, one of the things that was interesting to me is I was wondering like you were at the New York Times what, for 45 years? Yeah, 45 years. While you were doing that and you're about to write this article about UFOs and the government and ATIP, uh, did you ever worry that it was the wrong time? Like hindsight's kind of 2020, but you know, what was it like being about to publish this article? Yeah. First of all, Matt, I had left the Times. I had retired after 45 years um, in 2009. So, I was by then a contributing writer and I, you know, I sent in articles periodically, but I was basically freelancing. So I was no longer on on the staff. Um but I had good contacts at the paper and you know I'd done a lot of work for them so they knew me. So when I came to them um in 2017 with this story that Leslie Kaine and I had had come up with about the secret Pentagon unit to investigate UFOs. Um, I was no longer a staff writer, but I went right to the uh executive editor and um uh and they went for the story right away. I mean, it it didn't take a lot of smarts to see that this was a kind of a breakthrough that there was a secret Pentagon unit investigating UFOs after the government said it was no longer in the UFO business. um at the end of um uh 19 uh let's see 69 I guess with the end of blue book uh so he was a secret Pentagon unit and the head of it had just quit because of the interference he was getting you know at other high level high levels of the Pentagon so it was a good story all around incredible uh well I I thought that maybe well I know it's one of the ones that kind of ended up breaking it um when did you get involved when Did you get interested in UFOs? I mean, you've reported on so many things over your career. When did you kind of start getting into it and then was there a stigma back then or or whenever that happened? I mean, one of the things I had not reported on in my 45 year career was UFOs. I report on the mafia. I reported on Nazi war criminals, you know, hiding in America. A lot of investigative reporting on corrupt public officials, but not UFOs. So what happened is um I was at the New York Times correspondent in Texas in 2003 and um and I got there in 2003 and about a year after I got there in Texas I picked up a book a used book I like to go to the bookstores uh by a guy named John Mack who was a psychiatrist at Harvard head of the psychiatry department and a very eminent um psychiatrist uh who had gotten interested in the stories that people had told him of encounters with aliens, UFOs and and alien beings. And he was, you know, brave enough and courageous enough to pursue these stories. And he couldn't really get to the bottom of it. He he knew something had happened, you know, with these people. They were ordinary people uh from all walks of life, not looking to make a buck. If anything, they were kind of ashamed of of what had happened to them, even though, you know, it wasn't their fault. They didn't do anything wrong. Um, anyway, he wrote two books. I picked up the second book, and I was intrigued. Uh, so that goes back to 2004. And then about a week, I I thought I'd I'd call him up and interview him. I thought it was an interesting story. And a week later, he was killed uh in London. He was run over. Uh so uh uh but that got me hooked. So I had been working on this book about John Mack um uh when Leslie Kaine came to me in 2017 and said she'd been at a meeting where it was revealed that the um the Pentagon had this secret UFO unit. So I was I was primed, you could say, um you know, to look into the story, but I had not done any UFO reporting for the New York Times until then. Would you consider yourself always predisposed to the idea of aliens and that there's something else going on around here or? Well, I'm, you know, I'm inquisitive by nature. I I didn't rule anything out. I was interested in science fiction when I was a kid. You know, I read a lot of I mean, that was the the era of, you know, rocket ships and, uh, you know, missions to the planets and all that. So, um, I was intrigued by that. And I was around I was in Germany for the New York Times uh when the landing on the moon happened in 1969. So I was always interested in it as a um you know as an area to explore but I had done a lot of other things as I said that were not related to you know UFOs and I I was just you know a reporter looking at you know different interesting stories and this was an interesting story. Yeah. I mean uh the believer was very good. Um, it was really what I liked about John Mack is just, you know, Harvard trained, seemed to be very intent on carrying forward the details, but also sort of open to the the spiritual or the consciousness or the the idea that there's something else going on that we can't explain. And, you know, so here's this hard-nosed guy and and I think he helped break boundaries as well with just taking it into Harvard and starting to document all these people and not just consider them quacks. Um, right. No, no, he was very courageous and that's what appealed to me. You know, every writer who devotes I I ended up spending 17 years on this book, but every writer who devotes um his or her time to a subject has to believe that the subject is is worth it. you know, the person is an interesting person and a good person and and I he was um so uh I I did like him and I think that's a prerequisite for writing well about any biographical subject. Do you find yourself when you were researching it, are you are you a believer? Do you believe all the you know he interviewed a lot of these his patients that had these encounters with different non-human intelligences supposedly that was what they said. Does it did it seem convincing to you while you were doing this? Well, it did. I mean, I I I retraced John Mack's journey uh as I you know, he he he didn't start off as somebody who who believed these stories, but he was intrigued enough to investigate them. He spent a lot of time investigating them. I mean, he was a very distinguished psychiatrist and he knew when people were faking it. So, uh he was, you know, legitimately, uh intrigued, um by the mystery of it. And I got to say, Matt, it remains a mystery. I mean, no one has the answers. Not certainly not the debunkers who who who think they know everything about this and say, "Oh, these are people they just had a nightmare or these are people who, you know, looking to make a buck or, you know, they have all kinds of explanations, but none of them really fit." Um, so we got to start off by saying this was and remains a mystery. Um but um I think Mack was very courageous to pursue it and as as you know from reading the book he got into trouble at Harvard um there was a committee investigating committee an inquisition he actually called it and I I kind of agree with that. Um that looked into you know that challenged his his interest in this field because it was it was so unorthodox. Um and and pe certain people at Harvard thought he was bringing Harvard into disrepute by pursuing it. Actually I I think I point out in the book it was the opposite. He was using good scientific method to try to figure out this mystery which remains a mystery. Why do you think it's developed that way? Okay. I think you mentioned in your book that uh every other culture in humanity has believed in, you know, spirits or non-human intelligences or had these and there's something about our western world where we just decided that there aren't any. And I think that that's interesting because it makes our our culture actually is an anomaly in that respect historically speaking. Like why do you think that is? Well, it's true. I mean if you look back at at the history of you know human belief and civilization uh many many civilizations throughout history have had a belief in the occult and um u you know whether it comes out of religious experience or whatever but I mean part of it was deliberate by the Pentagon to uh demonize and stigmatize um this field of of research because it was clo first of all the Pentagon was caught short. Uh the defense people never were able to figure out what these objects were going back to, you know, Roswell and the 40s and throughout maybe long before that, but certainly starting in the 40s and 50s and 60s. Um so they were afraid to come forward to the American people and say, "Look, we don't know what these things are in our space. You know, we're not equipped to deal with them. That they could be hostile." Uh so in order to uh protect themselves you could say the uh people in the government uh high level people uh started to ridicule the subject and people who believe you know who who reported these encounters. So um so that was really part of it that that it was a deliberate um effort by people in the Pentagon to um to ridicule uh the subject to throw throw people off. Um and that has persisted unfortunately even even through our you know groundbreaking 2017 story in the New York Times. Um it's still a difficult subject. How much do you uh how much do you know about and and lean into the idea of sort of the military-industrial complex? And so it does seem to be like there's some overlap here both with sort of some non-human intelligence interactions and and some strange things, but also possibly that our government has been trying to reverse engineer this kind of technology or maybe has had breakthroughs and is trying to keep it top secret and that could also be like a motivation for stigmatizing the entire thing or Yeah, definitely. Uh I mean um we know from our reporting um that there is a close relationship between um you know uh certain corners of the Pentagon and the uh and private uh industry that has been cont military contractors. Lockheed particularly for one um that have been working closely with the military uh possibly we think from our reporting to um reverse engineer some of this u uh alien technology that has has surfaced. Um uh so there is a close relationship also you know the freedom of information act that uh requires the government to turn over uh nonclassified information to citizens when they request it uh doesn't that doesn't apply to private industry. So you can't you know foyer a um a private company uh because it's not under the under the act. So, it is a great way to hide um information and I think that that is what has been going on that some of this technology uh is being exploited has been and is being exploited by private contractors and there's almost no way of of knowing what what what really behind it. Yeah. How convenient, right, that the government can kind of subcontract the work to a private entity and then there it is. There's your classification. You can't foyer anything. Um, have you do you have any examples of going and knocking on doors that you get told to be to to scram or you get told to uh you know there's nothing here? Well, um we it happens very often in our reporting that uh first of all almost everything in this field is everything important in this field is classified. Um so uh you know you can't really uh report classified information without landing in jail. So you have to be very very careful and you have to find people who are willing to who talk to you uh often people who who do have this classified information but uh are very careful about what they say. So people like Lou Alisando who headed the Pentagon UFO office for a long time. was called ATIP. Um um he's written a book which we reported on in the New York Times. Um uh he has revealed certain information which is very interesting about the government's uh uh research and you know uh surveillance technology that has picked up evidence of these uh craft. Um but he's very careful not to reveal classified information. So we we always hit up against this wall of classified information that you you really can't crack. Uh and that is there are people now in Congress who are questioning that and trying to get more information, you know, transparency, get more information disclosed. So hopefully we we will learn more. But um a lot of the information uh apparently for for foreseeable future is going to be off limits. Well, and it seems to me, I mean, if I just take game theory and how I'm how I would think about it from a private military uh like contractor is like Lockheed, let's say the government comes to you and says figure this out and they give you a private contract. You know, part of me thinks that if I was working on this and we successfully re-engineered it, what would be the motivation to even tell the government? Like sometimes I don't even know what the government might know because you you could just reverse engineer the tech and say nope sorry we don't have any success here and in your background you got it all working and and use that technology for new products. I mean there's certainly high level military technology, very sophisticated weapons and and aircraft and you know underwater craft that we've developed. We the United States um and that is uh certainly highly secret and the contractors certainly don't want to reveal that you know the information that went into that into those products. Um, so you're right, there's definitely um an incentive and not to talk about it and to use whatever they've learned for their own uh, you know, purposes and their own bottom line and they've done very well at it. It's so interesting because what we're really talking about at the core of this is power. And I mean power at its most raw form. I mean, being able to have any sort of machine that has greater technology for anti-gravity, warp drives, blowing stuff up, whatever it is, like it's actually raw power over humanity. And how do you check how do you check that? How do you even right knowledge is power? And and then to to whose benefit? I mean, is it to the benefit of the certainly it's largely to the benefit of the contractors who sell these products to the government for billions and billions of dollars. Um, and I mean it is there's a benefit to, you know, the citizenry too because we we are presumably safer with a more advanced military technology and surveillance um, you know, technology and and tools and uh, high you know highly sophisticated uh, you know, weaponry that we've developed. So you could say that you know people are benefiting from it in terms of their own security but our adversaries are developing the same things. Um so you know I don't know how far ahead we we are or maybe behind. So um it it is there is an arms race going on in this technology which is costing uh obviously a lot of money and um and and none of the nations want to cooperate on this because they are they're in an adversarial relationship. I was listening to um Eric Weinstein and Eric Davis just went on Jesse Michaels uh maybe last week and one of Eric Weinstein's uh main points and I and I I find myself being more and more convinced of it is the idea that a lot of theoretical physics has like a lot of doors of physics were classified in the 1970s because uh they're just too dangerous. like having the ability to have anybody uh well there's the example of the the he was a junior at uh Stanford and he had Fineman as his you know uh the guy he was writing his thesis to and he said I want to see if I can build an atomic bomb and Fineman's like well I can't tell you how to do it but I'll tell you if it's right or wrong and so this guy goes and takes all public information assembles it all and reports and Fman goes yep that that that'll do it you know and so all of a sudden to know that anyone in the world can access these physi access physics just math and understand how to create you know instruments of such power. I think that there was a decision made to kind of go, hey, we got to classify a lot of this and a lot of physics was taken underground into the military-industrial complex and then publicly a lot of the government funding went towards string theory and we've been on string theory for 50 years and it's re largely amounted to nothing as far as our advancements and I just find that very compelling. We you do have to rethink physics. I mean, a lot of the um technology that's been observed with these UA UFOs, UAP as they're called now, unidentified area, unidentified anomalous phenomena because they operate underwater as well. So, it's not aerial anymore. Um but um it defies physics as we understand it. I mean, we we think we know uh physics and we understand certain principles, but how do you account for craft that can, you know, stop in midair um for and instantaneously going in the opposite direction appear and disappear at will operate underwater at supersonic speeds. Um, imagine something going 700 miles an hour and more faster underwater with the water resistance. It's unfathomable by our physics today. So apparently these things have have developed a way of operating in in a kind of a bubble uh of its own of their own making. so that they can move through the atmosphere uh or underwater. Different media um at speeds and accelerations that would uh kill an ordinary person obviously and and would defy the rules of physics as we know them. Doesn't mean physics is out the window. It means our understanding of physics needs to be expanded to take account of this kind of technology. So um that that's really what's what's at work here. Um and you know skeptics so-called skeptics who say well this is impossible. You know this couldn't uh be by our by our understanding of physics. Well our understanding of physics is not complete. That's right. Um it it needs to be revised to take account of these things that have been observed by very credible observers and you know highlevel sensors. I mean, you have people like Dave Fraver, um, the fighter pilot, who visually observed one of these so-called tic tacs, these giant, uh, seamless, um, streamlined objects without wings, without visible propellant. Uh, he chased it. It it it got away from him. It went underwater. Um, so, um, how do we account for that? I mean it's it's not nothing that uh we can explain now based on our understanding of physics. What's your confidence level now that you've chatted with many people that are kind of close to it? Because it always seems to be no one's seen the smoking gun. Although we do seem to have all of this data to your point, military actual instruments have recorded all of these objects doing what they're doing. We just don't have it sitting in front of us. But considering from your vantage point and all the research you've done, what's your confidence level that that the government, the military, you know, we might actually have some crafts like this that they're testing out? Well, um my my confidence level is that the people I talked to that we've vetted carefully, uh in other words, we've checked their credentials, uh they're not insane, you know, they're people who who have achieved and maintain a high level, um security clearance in the government. um that these are people whose accounts we trust. So while I haven't seen a craft myself, I haven't put hands on a craft, I have not seen, you know, alien bodies, none of that. Uh I have talked to people who have conveyed information, you know, about these subjects in a way that I consider credible. So again, I will quote them. I the stories we've done in the New York Times and elsewhere um name names. We don't use anonymous sources because it's too easy to uh you know lose the trust of readers by not using actual people with titles that that can be checked. So um uh you ask my confidence level stuff that we report and there's a lot of stuff we didn't report that we we couldn't uh satisfy ourselves was up to the level of you know in other words we might have believed the accounts I might have felt it was probably right but I I wouldn't put enough faith in it to put that into print but the stuff that we did report on we were able to vet very carefully and my confidence level is very high. That that that that is accurate. People like uh um David Grush, the intelligence guy, who we broke a story in the debrief, Leslie and I, about him coming forward um with accounts of having worked on retrieved crashed craft um and who later testified to Congress and offered Congress, you know, uh information that he would deliver in appropriately uh confidential forums. um uh that my confidence level is very high that that they are accurate. It's so interesting. You know, one of the things you were just mentioning being being with the New York Times for 45 years, you I can already feel you have such journalistic integrity. Do you see that? What's your opinion on sort of social media, Tik Tok, everybody reporting on things? Have you seen sort of this lack of journalistic integrity around content uh just from your experience over the last few years? Do you think that that's harming a lot of things? It, you know, it cuts both ways. I mean, um, there's a lot of fascinating information that has come out on social media. Um, that is very interesting. We can use that as raw materials for our investigations, but um it doesn't come with the same level of um u confidence or integrity that you would, you know, get from a mainstream publication that has the long record of factchecking. You know, again, I mean, the the internet is is the wild west. There's there's good information, bad information, rumors, all kinds of stuff there. So, um you can't take it at face value. you can use it as a jumping off point. Um, I mean, one of the things Leslie and I found when we were doing our reporting uh for the Times is that we were harassed constantly by uh people on social media who who would uh grab onto a bit of information that we were checking out. They found out who we were talking to, for example, and would immediately put out, oh, you know, they're talking to so- and so. that means that this is going to be the story and it's going to come out. You know, they even mentioned the day it was going to come out which was wrong. But um so we were constantly being um uh secondguessed and and and and harassed and tailed by by these people on social media. So uh it was very uncomfortable. um every everybody we talked to u was you know could could be outed um as our source and before we even had a chance to verify the information. So um that was the difficult part of dealing with the with that landscape. Um who do you think but you know we're stuck with it. I mean that you can't go back that that's the world we're living in and you just have to tell I mean I I sometimes teach courses in fake news and um I tell my students you have to be very careful where you're getting your information and and um you know you you need to know who the sources of the the information are and that the uh information is fact checked first of all and and you have ways of factecking it yourself uh to see whether it's authoritative etc. So, uh, it's it's a tough world now. Very tough. Well, I think that, you know, trust in institutions is somewhat at an all-time low. At least it is in my mind because I think that a lot of these institutions, it's hard to say it because it's a blanket statement. So, it doesn't mean everybody, but I think that, you know, with the Epstein files and the amount of lies that have been caught with institutions, I think it's hard to figure out who you can actually trust for at an institutional level when sometimes it feels like a podcaster or somebody with a YouTube channel is going to break more honest news than an institution um theoretically. And so, yeah, you know, no, it's a different world. But I mean, the the the the good the the good part of the world we're living in is that anyone can be a citizen journalist, anyone with a cell phone, for example, can can videotape a confrontation in days when the you police might beat up on anybody and say that, you know, a person was a terrorist or out to, you know, attack the police and now there's a record of of what what happened. So we have tools at our disposal wielded by non-journalists uh that are very helpful in in in establishing the truth of a situation. Who are the top publications that you think are have the highest journalistic integrity right now? And are there any that you think have kind of lost that? I think the same ones that have been, you know, mainstream for a long time. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, uh, you know, Miami Herald, um, uh, LA Times, uh, you know, the the networks, um, uh, cable news channels, you know, MSNBC, CNN, etc. Fox maybe not so much. Uh but uh so uh I think people know who generally the you know uh trustworthy media are and um and everybody else I mean everybody needs to be checked of course still uh you you can't just assume that that a reporter is correct but but generally I think uh you know the mainstream media has uh many many of the publications and broadcast media have ways of of uh correct correcting mistakes. That is a important feature um to assess the reliability of of different uh outlets. Is there a bifurcation with these publications? Because you know I think what my mind goes to is what we had the virus six years ago and I feel like a lot of them reporting there actually was sponsored by Fizer and I think that there has been some stuff coming up with them where maybe they didn't seem like their journalistic integrity was fully there but I talking with you and I have actually no doubt that you're reporting it to the highest integrity that you can. So like how can how do you think somebody can actually interpret that or do you maybe not agree with that statement regarding sort of the mainstream media's approach to the v to the global pandemic? Uh look a different um different media uh have fallen down on the job. The New York Times did not report the Holocaust. I mean that's a famous case of falling down on the job. Um none of the mainstream media reported properly on AIDS when it was uh first detected. uh and uh they didn't report on it quickly enough and aggressively enough and so um um so different media, you know, have have fallen down on the job historically. There's no doubt about it. Um and hopefully they've learned uh in the process of uh you know not to look Watergate the biggest political scandal of our time uh basically the Washington Post had a free hand because no one else was was doing the reporting and the Washington Post was was hoping that other papers including the New York Times would would join them in in trying to dig out the facts. Um so that's a perfect example of just one one paper did it themselves. uh and and brought that scandal to light. So, you know, and and different uh uh stories are are begging for for the light of day every day and uh uh and papers are falling and and you know, broadcast outlets are falling down on the job. So, it has to be uh it's an ongoing struggle really. Yeah, it's so interesting. Um, I want to go back to John Mack and kind of some of the stuff you mentioned about it because it seemed like later in his life he started getting into and it inevitably gets to this point where you have these encounters with these non-human intelligences and they seem telepathic and it seems like consciousness comes into this and almost like a spiritual aspect comes into this. Were you expecting that? And sort of what's your take on the level of, you know, because it's kind of moving away from the military-industrial complex sort of side that we were referencing and it does seem like the more people get into this aliens, other existing creatures beyond, you know, multiple planets, it seems to get into something beyond just the physical as we know it and gets into spiritual spirituality. Yeah. Well, and this was a process I I traced in my book about John Mack. I found particularly interesting that when it you know he started out coming across these stories of patients with alien encounter stories and he immediately um was take you know he was captivate cap he he himself was captured by the stories he wasn't captured by aliens um but the more he looked into it the more he realized it was very complicated and there's really a whole range of paranormal experiences uh that remain unexplained what happens after we die. What are the near-death experiences that people are encountering uh where they see their lives flash in front of their eyes or they physically die their their their brain and heart stop and yet they seem to be recording uh information about their environment. So when they are brought out of it, when they come back to life, so to speak, they remember things that happened when they were clinically dead. Um uh what about all the clairvoyant stories of people you know u um a wife wakes up in the middle of the night her and and jumps awake with her heart pounding her husband's just been killed in a car crash you know 500 miles away. How does she know that? How does her body register that? These are all experiences that people have had. They're well documented and that remain uh outside of our understanding. So, it's not just, you know, alien spaceships and and bodies and uh but but there's a whole range of paranormal experiences that u are un unsolved. I mean, un not un understood. And John Mack realized this towards the end of his life that there was it wasn't just, you know, spaceships and aliens. It was a whole range of things that remained mysterious. And there's, you know, parallel dimension or whatever it is. there's stuff that we don't understand um that is is also going on and um there's a lot left to discover obviously. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I started researching after reading your book was hypnotism because I know he was somewhat of a junior hypnotist or at least he used it in his therapies and he wouldn't have called himself that completely um because I know that also has sort of a stigma around it and I re researching that you know hypnotism clinically the is recognized by all of the national health agencies as a modality that helps reduce chronic pain and can actually have clinically has shown meaningful, but then it also kind of gets attacked as highly suggestable. You know, you can kind of be highly suggestable in there. Have Have you ever looked into hypnotism? Because But John Mack being so there, like what? Have you ever and I'm actually considering getting a hypnotist on the Austin and Matt podcast because I want to talk to somebody who kind of does it on a could hypnotize your your it could hypnotize your listening on air. Yeah, that's right. Well, listen. I I got to tell you this. I I haven't really discussed this before, but you you pushed a button here. I I did practice it for a while as a complete amateur. Um, and I learned enough about it as a relaxation technique to try it out with people in my my sister and people in my family. Um, and it it worked. I mean, you can get people to um go into a a hypnotic state, which is a sleep-like state where they respond to commands and um are completely relaxed. Now, John Mack did not he was not a um a real practitioner of hypnosis. He didn't really trust it. Uh he didn't he wasn't expert enough. I mean, all psychiatrists study it, but he he wasn't an expert. He he wasn't really trained in it. But so, he basically used relaxation techniques. would just get people to relax enough to remember their experiences because one of the hallmarks of these abduction experiences is that somehow for whatever reason um the memory is is often clouded or wiped out of the minds of the people who who've encountered this. They they remember seeing a craft landing. they remember, you know, maybe encountering some kind of beings and then they don't remember anything and then years later perhaps uh it starts coming back to them. Oh, they were taken on a craft, they were subjected to these procedures, you know, so people's memories of of what happened often are are clouded. And he he realized that the way to uh enhance their recollection, was to put them in a state of relaxation, similar to hypnosis, but not necessarily deep hypnosis, and get them to remember. And some of the reactions were terrifying. women remembered often it was women who had who said they had pregnancies removed. Um they were they were impregnated by an alien being and then the pregnancy was removed and they don't know what happened to the the the baby you know the embryo uh the child and then later they were reabducted and shown their child. I mean these are stories that they told John Mack and have told other uh you know people in the field. It's a well-known area of of experience. Um so um u and these experiences came out under under relaxation and sometimes um the um victims or whatever you want to call them the people who had these experience were terrified reliving it. They were screaming they were it became very real to them as they remembered it. Now uh what was all behind that? Again it's it's very difficult to say but the the fact is that um it was well it's been well documented whatever it means um the stories come up again and again and this is what uh made a big impact on me studying the John Max story and looking into all the literature I did a tremendous amount of reading into you know other uh experiences pe experiences by so-called experiencers you other people who had these encounters, other psychiatrists, other investigators, and all the stories sort of end up being kind of similar. Um, so people have terrifying memories of this and they they would say things like, "Look, I know when I'm having a nightmare and I know when something happened to me that is clearly as as much, you know, in my consciousness as talking to you right now, Ralph, this is how they would put it." So um again I go back it remains a mystery but at least the accounts are very constant and um consistent. Do you have any interesting stories or anything that happened in your exper in your experiments with hypnotism with your family and friends? Well um no except that it worked. I mean I would uh What do you mean it worked? Well, I mean, for example, I would um um when I was playing around with this, I would get people I say, "You're getting very very sleepy. You're getting very tired. Let's, you know, uh count from one to 10. And when I reach 10, you'll go into a deep deep sleep." And I go, "One, you're getting very sleepy." And and then uh when they reach 10, I said, "Now you're in a deep deep sleep. You can hear me, but nothing else. It's just my voice coming out of the darkness and you can respond to my commands. Now I want you to uh raise your right hand and you know raise their right hand. Um things like I mean hypnosis like that has been used to cure smoking and and other bad habit like every time you take a drag from a cigarette you'll feel physically ill from now on. You won't remember um this discussion. you won't remember my instructions, but you'll you'll just take a drag of the cigarette and you'll really feel sick. And that has helped people quit smoking. So, um things like that. I I played around with it as I said. Um I never uh you know did anything extreme. It was just a an amusing polar trick, you might say. Um but I I certainly hypnosis is a wellocumented uh you know uh procedure. Um and uh as I said John Mack didn't really go in for it because he he he got the same results just by relaxing people. Yeah. I recall this story my mom told me when she was growing up and she had a you know a childhood friend and they hypnotized one of their other friends and they were just playing around and they couldn't get her to wake up. They couldn't get her out of the trance. Like they, you know, they put this third one of the other girls in the neighborhood or whatever and they got her to go to sleep and they could not get her to wake up and they were shaking her and saying her name and it took forever to kind of like get her out of that state. And so I remember my mom telling me that when I was very little. And then when I was in college, there was like a hypnotist that came to our campus and like put on a funny comedic show. And one of the guys that was one of my very good friends, he got called up onto the stage and I saw him get hypnotized. And it's so strange. Like he was funnier than he usually was. Uh he was more serious when he was told to be serious. Like I I found I found it so interesting that you almost have this command over your emotional reactions as well. And and yeah. Well, what what's interesting is that it does it shows uh that there are levels of uh consciousness. Yeah. Um that uh you know we don't fully understand perhaps but um that you know people can be put into a a a state of relaxation where they filter out certain things and certain things become more real to them. So I mean this goes to the understanding of what happens to people who um have these encounter experiences. I mean um they they experience it later on they they don't remember it. Uh it comes back to them in fits and starts. So there are levels of consciousness that remain kind of mysterious. Well, and going back to the other point, we are still like the only culture in humanity's existence that sort of denies the other worldly, the spiritual, and just hasn't fully embraced it because this fits right in line with that. Yeah. But western science has taken us away from spiritualism uh into this very materialistic way of thinking uh that if you can't you know quantify it, if you can't touch it or uh taste it, you know or hear it, then it doesn't exist. Uh but many as you point out, many cultures over the millennia have uh believed in uh in different entities. And by the way, it's interesting that that many of the stories of of alien beings from ancient times uh seem to recognize that you know the these uh nonhuman um entities. Now whether this is all uh complete fiction you know or uh spiritualism that you know not grounded in any uh any physics or reality I I don't know but many cultures seem to have these these stories of beings that um uh and perhaps you know humanity has encountered them for for many many thousands thousand of years but uh um it's come down you know in interestingly enough the accounts in uh ancient and just old literature um put things in the in the current understanding. So for example in the 1890s there were many stories of strange flying machines before the Wright brothers before uh powered flight was invented of uh people who encountered strange beings in um like balloons and blimps or so. Um and uh it was sort of counterparts to uh UFOs but in in a kind of form that was understandable to people at that time. It's very mysterious how they would see these explain these encounters in their own way with their own technology. So the more you look into it the more uh un unanswerable it gets. So that's why I rem I I I I uh remain uh really attached to to great humility in in in this area because I don't claim to know the answer unlike so many so-called skeptics who will tell you exactly what this is um without understanding at all uh the history of of the phenomenon. But you have to come to this with with a great deal of humility because it's as I said the more you look into it the more um complex it becomes. Well even if you take a strictly materialist view that is an an an incomplete picture. I mean general relativity still needs things added to it. You look at quantum mechanics and somehow nothing exists at all. and like getting all the way down into exactly what matter is and what atoms are continues to get more and more mysterious, not more and more concrete. So, I'm with you that it doesn't it seems like the harder we look into the physical world, the more we're pointed to this isn't actually all that there is. And you know, and and then you feel kind of ridiculous because you're like, well, humans have kind of been saying that for thousands of years all over the place that there's something beyond this. And it's like, it's like humanity decided to go check that out real quick. They're like, "Are you sure? Let's go figure that out." And we're getting all the way to the point where all of our physics is breaking and reality as we know it is not what it looks like in front of us. And it just brought us all the way back down back around to what ancient texts all tell us. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the uh uh process is another question. So, uh yeah, it seems to be more questions than answers right now. Um but but on the other hand technology has taken us a long way. I mean our understanding of things has enabled us to reach the moon. So uh you know we know now a lot more than we knew you know years ago. Um it doesn't mean we know everything but we know some things now more for example now the the government now says for the first time in in many many years that these objects that have been reported on for so long are are real objects. They're not hallucinations. They're not figments of the imagination. Um they are uh objects, physical objects that we don't understand. We don't know where they came from. We don't know how they're how they are piloted, if they're piloted by intelligent beings. We don't know any of that stuff. How they come from thousand, you know, billions of miles away, if if they do, or if they come through a wormhole. We don't know any of that. But we know that these things are re that there's something there that we don't understand. There's something physically real and that is uh it is kind of a breakthrough. Well, and I think it's thanks to some of the like articles like the ones you've done because you know you hear stories of Air Force jet pilots and you know when there was a stigma if they saw something they were very much so encouraged to not actually report it and not write it down and not because it created they got in trouble for it and now it's encouraged to if you see something write it down and document it to some extent I mean I think there's still a lot of hesitation to come forward but uh officially Um the Air Force uh has and I think other branches have encouraged uh members of the service who see something anomalous to report it. Um as I said there's less of a stigma but there's still a stigma and u but uh in the old days you you you knew not to report that if you wanted to keep your career. Um I want to touch on the recent article you just put out. I think it was January 30th and uh around Dr. Itto and the Vargia case in Brazil. Um that is one of the most fascinating you know non-human intelligence interactions ever where these girls pretty much they they saw a crash in Vargia Brazil and then they actually encountered the being that was dying there on the wall and uh how did you get do you know James Fox? How did you get into being able to write that story for one and then what's sort of been the the the the aftermath of that coming out for you? Well, first of all, I knew about that case because John Mack looked into it. It happened in 1996 just when John Mack was looking into these things and he went actually he went to Brazil uh and interviewed those girls who saw this creature uh and he didn't have the whole story which has come out now in the 30 exactly 30 years since uh because James Fox has done a terrific job of going back and talking to witnesses including this uh Dr. Adelo who was a physician at the hospital who actually uh reported that he saw the being the alien being in the hospital bed who had a a suture a wound stitched up on its head um and then was taken away by the Braz by Brazilian military and apparently if you believe these accounts turned over to to US military and flown out of the country out of Brazil. Um so I knew about the case. Now, um, uh, Leslie and I had reported on an earlier film that James Fox made um, and we kept in touch with him and so that's how we knew about the case. But, uh, we actually Leslie attended a meeting in secret meeting with members of Congress and some of these Brazilian witnesses um, in uh, in January. And we got that story. We tried to give it to the New York Times, but we uh ultimately they didn't take it. So, we did it for the debrief where we broke the David Grush story. Um so, um uh there's been no, you know, uh I was going to say feedback, but uh you know, no backlash to that story at all. Uh as a matter of fact, all the facts have have held up. The question is, uh, can more information be brought out to, um, to verify that the US that a US mission did fly these beings, one or more, alive or dead, out of the country, out of Brazil in 1996. So, there's got to be some kind of record of of of missions that were flown. That's what members of Congress are trying to find out. So there's it's still under investigation, but we know more than John Mack was able to find out back in 1996, even though he tried. And kind of touching on the sort of spirituality, consciousness part that we were talking that we were speaking about earlier. Uh it's interesting to hear these ladies talk about their encounter and the doctor talk about his encounter where they were asked, "Are they communicating with you telepathically?" Because these creatures weren't speaking. And they almost said they're communicating empathically, like they communicate with feelings as if like a a tractor beam between the two eyes sort of connects there. And I think that that's I mean what a if these beings are real and if this really happened and it seems very compelling that it did that seems to me to it almost present a trajectory for us as a species to kind of going well the higher level if you want to if you want to traverse the stars like we have to keep going on this love conscious telepathic level and kind of advancing in that direction you know if if we're to follow someone who's already doing it. Yeah. Well it's very strange. I mean, one of the things the skeptics keep pointing out is, well, wait a minute. These these alien beings, they spoke English. I mean, they suddenly they they they know English. Well, the people who have had these encounters said, "No, I just felt these thoughts popping into my head. I don't know how they communicated, but it was telepathically." Now, Dr. Elo, the Brazilian neurologist said, uh, he, as you point out, it wasn't telepathic, it was empathic. He just felt the these emotions. So it wasn't so much thoughts as feelings that he he got from this creature. Um but um so many of the accounts this is what struck John Mack are consistent that so many people from all walks of life and from you know all parts of the world young old men, women um uh you know uh told the same basic story that they they encountered these these beings and uh they got telepathic messages. Now, did they all all these people get together and say, "Okay, let's agree on this story." Uh, let's say, you know, that the beings could, you know, they didn't all get together and and and make an agreement. Um, somehow they all had a similar experience. Um, and uh, you know, John Mack did go to um, Zimbabwe uh, in southern Africa to investigate another compelling case of these school children. um at a school outside the capitol uh Harrari um where during a recess uh they said 60 60 kids basically with no adults present said they saw a craft land and two beings come out and they got telepathic messages from these beings. Uh all the kids told again did the kids all get together and agree on the story they were going to tell. Um it's a fascinating case. It's one of the best documented cases around. There's a movie about it. Um, Randy Nickerson, one of John Mack's uh, abductees, experiencers, ended up making a movie about this, investigated the the case. John Mack went there to, uh, talk to the kids. Um, another mystery, but uh, again, all these stories uh, come with a kind of a compelling aspect that make it difficult to debunk. Well, and you know, this touches on I don't know if you've seen or listened to the telepathy tapes by Kai Dickens, which is another it's a podcast series where she investigates um this is not aliens. These are humans that are non-speaking and non-verbal and they have mental disabilities and she's finding out that they all are telepathic and they've been visiting each other at this place called the Hill, which is like a a telepathic realm. Um, and these stories have come out where one kid from Atlanta is talking to his mom about his best friend and has the name and then there's this kid in Seattle and he has a best friend and has a name and these two kids know each other and like they go to this place and they all hang out and it's where they go where some of these kids they don't even know they have physical bodies because of you know the the the way they've been born and stories of kids visiting their mom in their dreams. and telling their mom, "Hey, like you put too much ketchup on my hot dog. Like, would you lighten up on that?" And the mom wakes up the next day and is like, "Hey, did you did you like motions with them, did you tell me to stop putting so much ketchup on your hot dog?" And they were like, "Yeah." And then she puts less and they visit her again the next night. And they're like, "That was perfect. That's how I like my hot dogs." And so, it seems to me that our brain, both by touching on hypnotism, what humans have said for thousands of years through contemplative meditation, it is capable. And if the telepathy tapes are real um or have any sort of semblance of reality, then you know these kids are non-verbal uh you know have have you know they're handicapped and so does the brain do something else? Are we are we right now ingesting our five senses? And so that's where all of our brain power is going. But if you take some of those senses away, what else gets developed? And what a whole other area of paranormal research. I mean, there's experiments that were done at Princeton uh years ago of people who uh able to affect the generation of random numbers. It was a machine that spewed out random numbers and by concentrating these people affected that um generation of random numbers to a statistically significant extent. I mean this has come out that John Mack was very close to a woman um who who was doing a lot of experimentation with the power of prayer. Uh did prayer help keep you know certain um uh cancer patients or leukemia patients alive uh when people who weren't being prayed for died? I mean again it's statistically significant. It wasn't 100% perfect every time. If you pray you absolutely guarantee that it didn't work that way but was there a significant increase in the survivability of people who were prayed for? And it seemed that there was. So you're right that there's some things that powers of the brain that we don't understand yet. Um and considering that we're a fairly young species compared to the age of the universe. Um I mean human beings are what maybe two million years old or so coming from you descending from you know u apes. Uh so maybe two million years isn't really long enough to understand the u development of the brain. And uh modern humans of course are much younger, you know, maybe 100,000 years old or whatever you want to pick. Uh but maybe um we we won't understand this until, you know, we've been around for three and four million years, you know, who knows? But the age of the universe 13 billion years allows for a lot of development of other races if in fact uh that there is life elsewhere than on earth which you know many scientists seem to believe that statistically is is the case. Um so the brain you know one of the striking things you just uh brought this up in in the way you asked the question. It is amazing that the uh alien beings that have come come down to us in the descriptions, okay, seem so much like humans. I mean, they have two arms, two legs, a head. Um they're humanoid, you know, less of Yeah, less of a maybe, you know, eyes are slanted, but they vaguely resemble uh humanoids. So the question is well if these beings come from such a distant part of the universe uh how come they they resemble us well maybe they are us maybe they were us before maybe there are us to come uh maybe they exist in another dimension I mean the questions are endless but uh it is intriguing the more you look into it the more um the more questions arise and again there is no explanation that I'm aware of that has come that that explains uh all these very very strange uh aspects. How does that make you live your days? How do you wake what do you wake up in the morning and how what do you think about? I don't think about it that much. I I do like everybody else. I eat my three meals. I go to sleep. Uh you know, I'm not obsessed with with that. But um I think you have to, you know, part of your life has to be devoted to wondering, well, what does it all mean? you know, is there life after death? You know, uh is there a supreme being? Uh you know, what does it all mean? I mean, yeah, you you have to, but it it doesn't affect all the other things you have to do to get through the day. That's right. Still got to do your laundry. That's uh you know, right? Still got to do your laundry. It doesn't doesn't stop doesn't stop the laundry from accumulating. Um Ralph, this has been really fun. Thanks for being willing to chat. And then you go, you have you have a A kids book, right? Yeah. I want to put in a little plug for my kids. Oh, please. I picked this my kids. UFOs. UFOHS. My wife and I wrote this book. Um it's a non-fiction picture book uh to introduce young people to uh the idea of of UFOs. Uh because um often teachers and librarians and parents don't know how to come to grips with this subject. kid will see something on TV and ask you know what about spacia you know and uh parents and and teachers are not really equipped with the facts uh unless they happen to be really interested in the subject. So we wrote this book to uh give a sort of base knowledge of what of of the mystery. We call the subtitles mysteries in the sky because it is a mystery. the the objects we now know from government has agreed they are real but where they come from why they're here who if anyone is behind the wheel th those things are not known but the fact that there are objects that I start the we start the book with the story of a kid on a tennis court who sees a UFO in Florida and it really it was a true story that came to me from the John Mack book guy who became a psychiatrist uh studied under John Mack. Uh he told the story of being on a tennis court as a kid with his friend and they saw a UFO and other tennis players uh at the time saw it too. What did it mean? Where did this again? Nobody knows but it was real. So it's a it's just a way of introducing the subject taking it out of the uncomfortable you know area of of sensationalism and no aliens in this book just you know craft that have been seen and um and it raises the question so we hope it'll uh it's it's done very well so far and it is a nice way of introducing the subject to to young people. I really appreciate you writing that. What what would you say the age level is for that book? Oh, you know, 3 to 10. Okay. Um, and it's also good for for grown-ups like librarians and parents and teachers because it it it show it gives them a way of introducing this subject to young people because, as I said, kids will come up and say, I saw this show on TV and it said that the aliens parents could, well, we don't know about aliens, but objects have been seen. Pilots have seen them. Military has seen them. We don't know where they come from. We don't know what they, you know, why they're here, but it's certainly a mystery, but uh it's something that a lot of people are wondering about and studying and hopefully there'll be some answers coming at some point in the future. Yeah, that's right. I really appreciate this because I think that subsequent generations, if you're raised from a young age sort of understanding this, then there's less stigma to overcome. And so just as the population keeps growing and expanding, we're going to have new people that that that accept these assumptions at baseline and as opposed to growing up thinking they're not real at all and then having to unlearn that later on in life. So I think it's awesome. I really appreciate you writing that book. I I picked up a copy for my kids. So we're going to be reading it. Yeah. Right. Ralph, it was really great to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming on today. Real pleasure, man. Thank you. All right. Take care. See you everybody.