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0:00:00
Ben Radford: Welcome to Squaring the Strange, the podcast that examines all manner of the mysterious and the mundane through a critical lens. So let’s square the strange.

(MUSIC)

0:00:10
BR: Welcome back to Squaring the Strange. I’m your co-host Ben Radford along with Pascual Romero who’s not here. But however the other co-host Celestia Ward is here.

0:00:34
Celestia Ward: I’m mostly here. I’m recuperating from going to conventions and I have the I have the deep sultry Con crud voice. I hope I hope listeners can bear with me on that.

BR: This is episode 70 and we’ll be doing sort of grab bag of topics ranging from Star Trek inspired content because you Celestia were at a recent conference over there in in Las Vegas and also awesome stuff on UFOs. So it’ll be a fun show.

0:01:17
CW: Yeah, we kind of put together a spacey sort of grab bag with a skeptical bent to it. I’m lucky in that I, for the past like five or six years, I have drawn caricatures at the Star Trek convention. And as a lifelong Trekkie, it’s sort of a really fun time for me. But I got to wrangle a couple of really cool guests in the science world to talk to everybody about particular subjects that are relevant to skepticism and to science communication with a Star Trek angle. But before that we’re going to talk a little bit about a different sort of sci-fi. Ben, we’re going to talk about Project Blue Book. You want to give like an elevator pitch as to what Project Blue Book was?

0:01:57
BR: Sure, Project Blue Book was one of the earlier attempts by the US government to try and understand what UFOs were and particularly whether they were a threat to national security. As you can imagine, that’s sort of the bottom line here. The government doesn’t really care if the average person sees a couple lights in the sky because there’s lots of lights in the sky. The government really only cares if there’s some reason to think that those lights in the sky are Russians, for example, or incoming missiles or surveillance drones or something else. So that was the main thrust of Project Blue Book and its predecessors.

0:02:40
CW: Did they find any evidence that these lights in the sky had, say, interfered in an election or anything?

0:02:46
BR: Not at the time. Since that time, some evidence has emerged. Basically, there were two goals of Project Blue Book. The first one, as I mentioned, was to determine whether or not these lights that people kept seeing in the skies were something that the government needed to be worried about, not in terms of alien invasions necessarily, but just in terms of what are our enemies doing? What are they launching and having over our skies. And the second one was to try and scientifically analyze UFO-related data. All this, keep in mind, for a little bit of historical context, was in the years after 1947, which is a banner year in ufology because, of course, that was when the alleged Roswell crash occurred. Also the Kenneth Arnold sighting, which was where the phrase flying saucer first emerged. And so the late 40s were a heady time in America for UFO related ideas circulating around. And Project Blue Book sort of emerged from that era.

0:03:52
CW: Well you’ve I know you’ve written about a lot of weird things, but you generally don’t get too involved in examining UFO-logy. How do you pronounce it? Is it ufology or ufo-ology?

0:04:01
BR: Usually just ufology.

0:04:03
CW: Ufology.

BR: Yeah, it’s sort of like bigfeets. You know, every now and then you hear some of the big feet. Like, no, that’s really not what people say.

CW: Semantics and usage are important to me for some reason, but ufology. You generally kind of steer kind of clear from that. Is there any reason why you don’t you don’t seek it out as much as you do other paranormal topics?

0:04:32
BR: Yeah, actually there’s a couple reasons. One is that it’s very easy to go down a rabbit hole. I consider myself to be an expert on maybe a half a dozen UFO related topics including alien abductions because that gets into, for example, the Aztec UFO crash in Roswell and various other ones that I’ve investigated, as well as early UFO reports, early meaning, say, for example, the 1800s. In a book that Bob Bartholomew and I wrote, we covered early reports, for example, here in the southwest of what people were claiming were UFOs in the skies. But in terms of UFOs in general, I leave it to the experts. And by far the main experts, well, one of the main experts was Phil Klass, who unfortunately died some time ago. And I met Phil a few times, and he was just a walking encyclopedia of UFO knowledge and did incredible original work in that. And followed up by Robert Schaefer, who up until fairly recently was a columnist for Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and I’ve known Robert for a long time, and he is far and away more knowledgeable about UFOs and all its intricacies than I am. And there’s also Jim Oberg and others as well. But yeah, what you find is that it’s such a deep well of conspiracy theory and hoaxes and frauds and genuine misunderstandings and alien abductions and men in black and area 51 and just there’s so much to master that it’s very difficult for one person to really have a good grasp on there and so that’s that’s why I I delve deeply into into a few topics I tread lightly on the others.

0:06:23
CW: Yeah, that sounds wise. I’ve actually attended like one UFO meeting in Las Vegas just to sort of see what it was like. Because in Nevada we do have quite a few folks that are in that sort of community. We’ve got George Knapp who’s a local reporter who’s gotten fairly locally famous working with Art Bell. Well, he’s gotten actually fairly nationally famous for reporting on weird stuff and breaking cases about aliens and abductions and Area 51 and Skinwalker Ranch. And yeah, you could dedicate a whole PhD to just the stuff that George Knapp has worked on, but I’m not going to. And the UFO meeting I attended was actually led by Zamora the Torture King.

0:07:09
BR: I’ve met Zamora. He was piercing himself in my presence, which was odd.

0:07:16
CW: He’s also a big ufologist, and I actually forget his real name, but it sticks in your head when you meet Zamora the Torture King.

0:07:23
BR: Tim Crivellent.

0:07:24
CW: Okay, well, he told us all about some conspiracies that he was sure were going on, and then people in the audience shared information about the fifth-level encounters that had happened every single time they went out to a certain spot in the desert.

0:07:39
BR: But does he know about the sixth level encounters? Because I do.

0:07:43
CW: What are those?

0:07:44
BR: I can’t tell you.

0:07:45
CW: Oh, okay. Just use protection, okay? Well, okay, so you’ve researched panics quite a bit, and the various UFO panics that happened around the middle of last century are pretty well-documented things. How much do you think Project Blue Book was directly a result of such panic among the population?

0:07:59
BR: Well, you know, UFOs are fairly well known to come in in flaps, and this actually occurs in many different other areas as well. For example, lake monster sightings, as I’ve documented particularly with CHAMP, the Mansi photograph being published in 1981 and then that spurs other seemingly independent sightings, but in fact, it’s linked right to the first one. The government’s initial forays into researching UFOs really began in 1947 with Project Sign and later on Project Grudge in 1949 followed by Blue Book. But again, the dates are interesting because it wasn’t the late 30s. It wasn’t the 20s. It wasn’t before then. So it was very much a product of people in the public, in the public consciousness, seeing things and wondering what those lights are in the sky. And also keep in mind, as I mentioned earlier, that this was during the Cold War era. This was when it was not, and not that it currently is, but it certainly was not implausible that we were being monitored by Russian aircraft. This is before satellites and, you know, for example, Project Mogul, which is what the Roswell crash was, was a weather balloon, which was up there in the atmosphere trying to detect if there were underground explosions, for example, whether the Russians were testing nuclear weapons. And so a lot of the concern and panic and to some degree hysteria about UFOs was very much a product of that Cold War era. And then it later sort of became resurfaced in 1970s, 1980s, when people were suddenly rehashing the Roswell story 30 years later, people like Berlitz and others, who were suddenly sort of rehashing this essentially non-event at Roswell in 1947 as oh wow, there were aliens there and bodies and all sorts of things. So again, the flaps continued. This is classic psychology, right? You have confirmation bias and expectant attention. So once you start directing people’s attention to things, whether it’s anomalies in a haunted house or weird things on the water or in the woods or in the skies, people tend to see that because they’re primed to see that. And so if you say, hey, there’s UFOs in the skies, if you see anything weird or anything bright that you can’t figure out what it is, it might be an extraterrestrial. Then people are like, well, yeah, now that you think about it, yeah, I saw something weird in the sky the other day and of course, had that been seen in a different context, they would have thought nothing about it. But because UFOs are being talked about as being these weird things you might see in the sky, suddenly that gets lumped in.

0:11:03
CW: The neighbor was cursed by a witch, why I was cursed by a witch too!

0:11:07
BR: Exactly.

0:11:08
CW: Well, yeah, that sounds like there’s a mix of folkloric elements that go on and political elements that mix with spacey sort of, you know, death from the skies elements. And it’s a fun topic, but you’re right, there’s a bunch of rabbit holes. Now, speaking of rabbit holes, I have dredged somebody up from a rabbit hole here, and we’ve got kind of our special guest sitting by me right now. Ben, you’ve already met him. But to our listeners, I have F. Andrew Taylor here.

0:11:36
BR: I feel badly for people who have not met . He’s a fascinating man.

0:11:41
CW: Yes, Andy, as we know and love him. He’s also known as Fact Check Andy on the Geek Shock podcast here in Las Vegas, and he is a longtime reporter in the Las Vegas area. He’s covered a lot of weird topics. You’ve actually met George Knapp and talked to him quite a few times, haven’t you?

51. Andrew Taylor: Yeah, I mean, George and I are friendly. I mean, whenever I see him, we hang on talk for a bit. George is a fascinating cat because he does cover actual, real serious news. He covered a lot of the mob stuff, a lot of—he was the one who broke a lot of serious news. But he also was the guy that uncovered Area 51. I mean, I don’t think anybody knew about Area 51 until somebody came to him and said there was a thing up there.

0:12:26
Well, Andy is a treasure trove of knowledge. And in addition to being a longtime reporter, a man about town, raconteur, he’s also a caricature artist and cartoonist. I think two years running, the best editorial cartoonist in Nevada, I think.

FAT: Not running, but ten years apart. Yeah, I actually have awards in editorial, cartooning, illustration, photography, writing, community service, and I have a third place award for goat dressing.

0:12:56
BR: Ooh!

0:12:57
CW: Goat dressing. I have seen the photos. He had to wrangle a goat and put women’s underwear on it, is that correct?

0:13:04
FAT: They’re just, I think men’s BVDs, if I recall correctly.

BR: And was this in preparation for any specific act, or?

FAT: It’s a weird rodeo event that has its roots in the gay rodeo for some reason but it’s moved over to straight rodeo.

BR: I’m sorry I asked.

FAT: Yeah exactly you’ve got a whole bunch of people and you’ve got a bunch of tethered goats you had two person teams you both run at the goat one person grabs a goat and flips his legs up the other person puts underwear on the goat and then you both run away as fast as possible which is the only part of it that makes any sense at all. Yeah I can say I came in third place. It was a charity event. I’m pretty sure kid wrangling really helped them. I think the dressing children and dressing goats is not dissimilar.

BR: I suspect you’re gonna have a very colorful obituary.

FAT: That’s actually funny. Last night on the Geek Shock podcast we actually had solicited people to write my obituary so we had our first one come in last night.

0:13:57
CW: Oh I’m gonna get right on that. Yeah I’ve seen Andy’s goat dressing trophy. It’s the thing to behold. But yeah, in addition to all this stuff he’s done, he is also a caricature artist. And we have agents that get us various jobs. And an agent that uses both of us recently, I was not able to take this job, which made me very angry. But Andy had no prior commitments. So he was able to go out to Comic-Con and work as a very odd type of artist. He was pretending to be a forensic artist for the Air Force, hired by the History Channel to do a big promotional thing for Project Blue Book. So I thought, wow, that seems cool. And Andy, why don’t you tell us what exactly you were working on?

0:14:48
FAT: Sure. Well, there’s a new TV series being put together by the History Channel called Project Blue Book which is based on the actual events sort of very much sort of and They didn’t really have a way to promote it. So they’ve hired a bunch of artists to sit in this activation. They had a bunch of actors dressed in 1950s Air Force outfits they had Fake FBI people in the front take taking they actually had the form they actually had the Project Blue Book form they’d found.

0:15:18
CW: Was it actually, the form that was used in Project Blue Book, like 60 years ago?

0:15:23
FAT: Yeah, it was, I mean, copies of it, which I realized after a while because for a location that had city or country, there were no suburbs as an option. And so I was doing a lot of guessing on whether they really meant suburbs or actual country but they would write down their their alien encounter and stacks of forms would come back to us and we would grab whatever the top one was and do a quick five-minute sketch of it it was bizarre and wonderful and fun and I hope they do more of it I hope they really need to promote the hell out of the show because I would love to go everywhere and do these weird drawings.

0:16:02
BR: So what exactly were the people who had originals, were you basing it on some of the original files or did they have new people who were describing their experiences to you?

FAT: No, these were the actual people coming, that they were actually promoting the show to, as part of the thing. They would walk through these air conditioned container parks where they would see a little bit of, they’d hear a little bit of audio related to the show, and then they would walk into where we were and we were drawing the pictures. And in the same place we were drawing the pictures was a bank of really cool fake computers. And at the really cool fake computers, they would sit down and on an iPad, which kind of threw off the whole 50s vibe, but on an iPad they would send a message to space. They were typing in messages to send off to space, and I guess they really were sending these off through some way they were setting up for space.

0:16:53
CW: Well, really everything gets to space eventually. It’s hard to have false advertising there.

0:16:59
BR: So fact check Andy’s on the case. The 1950s did not have the iPads.

FAT: Right, exactly. Although that was actually one of the cool things. When I walked into the green room, there was my costume hanging on it. It was a white shirt and a beautiful vintage 1950s tie and a sign that said Andy Taylor, scientist.

BR: I assume you swiped it.

FAT: I took a picture of the shirt hanging on the coat rack, but I didn’t steal the tie as much as I wanted to because it was an actual Western costumes prop.

0:17:28
BR: I see.

0:17:29
FAT: It really was from 1950.

0:17:30
CW: Yeah, they count those. Well, I’m fascinated to learn that the so-called case reports that they were having conventioneers fill out were word-for-word the original Project Blue Book questionnaires. Because in reading about the actual Project Blue Book that started in, what was it, Ben, 52?

BR: Yes, 52.

0:17:49
CW: Yeah, the original one, one of the things about it that stuck out to me was that they regularized a questionnaire. So rather than just taking willy-nilly case reports here and there, they had a very, they put a protocol in place and were taking people’s information based on a specific questionnaire that they could then tally via computer and do some statistical analysis on because they were all the same questions.

0:18:18
BR: Right, well in the case of Blue Book, including by people who were involved in it. For example, J. Allen Hynek, who later was really big in ufology. Again, it’s sort of mixed bag because it was an attempt to quantify UFO sightings, which is good. I mean, if you’re trying to understand a phenomena, then quantification is important. That’s certainly good for a step. But you also, you know, any time you’re trying to translate a human experience into a binary yes no, what time of day was it, whatever else, you lose a lot of things. And eyewitnesses can be mistaken, they can misperceive things and so on. And so that doesn’t, certainly doesn’t make the information worthless. But it does add a confounding layer because, you know, in many cases people are simply mistaken and they will be sincere. I mean they’re not lying to you. That’s actually what they saw but they were looking in a different direction than they thought or they thought it was further away than it was or nearby or whatever else. And so this is one of the sort of inherent problems with eyewitness testimony whether the subject is UFOs or Bigfoot or ghosts is trying to quantify it is all well and good, but at the end of the day, when you’re translating it into a report, for example, of the kind that Annie was doing, you tend to lose a lot and there’s difficulties in trying to recreate exactly what was seen.

0:19:49
CW: Yeah, well, it’s the plural of anecdotes, which is a skeptical mantra, is not data. But if you’re going to get the plural of anecdotes, at least regularize it so that you have a similar template to look at when you do your analysis of it.

0:20:07
BR: Absolutely.

0:20:08
CW: So that was one of the strengths of Project Blue Book, is that they took an effort to regularize a protocol and have everybody fill out the same template when they were relating their experiences, which I’m glad to hear the History Channel bothered to do that. You’ll find out that Ben and I both have a bone to pick with History Channel for a number of reasons But hey, I’m glad they use the template. That’s kind of that’s kind of cool What were some of the weaknesses of the actual project blue book that that you can kind of put your finger on Ben?

0:20:37
BR: Well, you know keep in mind that Projecy Blue Book was a government enterprise and as a government enterprise It was not necessarily run at optimum efficiency. There were a handful of issues. In a report in October 1968, Hynek complained about several things regarding Blue Book. One of them was that there was a lack of attention to significant UFO cases and that there were a bunch of routine cases that he felt were sort of being taken over and the more extraordinary cases if you will, were being ignored. Now, there’s some truth to that, but of course the fact is that when you’re initially investigating anything including UFOs, it’s not immediately clear what is a routine case and what is an extraordinary case. He was complaining that the staff were inadequately trained, which again, it’s, you know, we’re talking UFOs here. And so this is an inherently difficult thing to assess, right? It’s a light in the sky. Well, tracking down a light in the sky, certainly in the 50s through 1970, it’s not always easy. I mean, these days, of course, we can track aircraft and things like that. But it’s an inherently elusive topic. So one of the arguments was that the people that were investigating these sightings weren’t adequately trained, they didn’t have a good grasp of statistics, they weren’t corresponding as closely as they should with scientists, for example. And basically, just the workload, I mean, Blue Book, as I recall, tackled over 12,000 UFO cases. That’s a huge number to really thoroughly investigate and with a relatively small staff, they were sort of overworked. They did some good work, but it’s not surprising that there were some cases that they were unable to explain, not because they were necessarily unexplainable or of extraterrestrial origin, but just because they didn’t have enough information at hand to determine what they were.

0:22:46
CW: Yeah, I’m looking at Wikipedia, it says 12,618 UFO reports total. Now you mentioned J. Allen Hynek. He’s the astronomer that they used for a scientific consultant, and he was also on Project Grudge and the earlier one, correct?

0:23:04
BR: I believe so. Sorry, 1947.

FAT: He’s also one of the main characters in Project Blue Book by the History Channel.

0:23:11
CW: That’s where I was going with that. Exactly. Andy read my mind. He’s mind-reading fact-check Andy here. He’s played by an actor that you guys will recognize from Game of Thrones. Mr. Aiden Gillen. He was Littlefinger.

0:23:28
BR: Oh, the dwarf. Yeah, I liked him.

0:23:30
CW: No, not the dwarf. Littlefinger.

0:23:32
BR: You said Little… Oh. Not Peter Dinklage?

0:23:35
CW: Not Peter Dinklage. I would probably be watching the very first episode immediately if this was Peter Dinklage, but Littlefinger was the skeevy guy who everybody cheered when he bit the dust. Oh, spoilers!

BR: Jesus!

0:23:49
CW: Somebody in Game of Thrones dies. I’m sorry to break it to you.

0:23:54
BR: I think he was also in The Wire, if I’m not mistaken.

0:23:57
FAT: Was he? Okay.

0:23:58
BR: Am I mistaken about that?

FAT: I don’t know. I haven’t seen the wire. Anyway, so based on just all I have to base it on is the comic book here that they were handing out as a promo thing and it looks like it’s Jay Allen Hynek and an Air Force captain as Project Blue Book sort of versus the Men in Black. They’re trying to hunt things down while the Men in Black are burying them. And from what I saw, I watched the preview of it that’s available on YouTube. You can seek it out and watch it. It sadly has that overused trope of, oh, there’s nothing to see here.

CW: The idea is to let the public know that there’s no such thing behind UFOs. It’s you’re all mistaken. The skeptic is going to put a wet blanket on everything. And we don’t want to actually look into anything too deeply. We’re just going to tell you you’re all wrong. And J. Allen Hynek is of course the brave, iconoclast, maverick scientist who was skeptical at first, but totally understands the truth of things once he starts looking into it. And if it weren’t for the gosh darn Air Force trying to quash him, he would get the word out.

0:25:06
BR: Well, let me just interject here what the findings of Project Blue Book were, because that’s sort of important to understand the story. So after…

0:25:15
CW: Wow, you’re going to mess with our fantasy by interjecting real history?

0:25:17
BR: Hey, this is… When we have Fact Check Andy on the podcast, I’m nervous about saying anything that’s not fact check, so here we go.

0:25:25
FAT: I appreciate that.

0:25:26
BR: You’re welcome. Basically, Project Blue Book determined that the UFOs they investigated fell loosely into four different categories. The first one was people who are hoaxers and fabricating things for publicity, just for fun because they wanted to have government officials coming by asking about their stories. So there were – a certain number of them were out and out hoaxes. Some of them they claimed were mass hysteria. So you had sort of fully adieu, the psychological phenomena where one person will see something and sort of influence the others. And then there were also people who had mental illness, who were having delusions, paranoia, schizophrenia, different things like that. But probably the majority of them were simply misidentifications of conventional objects, whether it be planets or aircraft or whatever else. And there were a small number of sightings that were basically left unidentified. That is, they couldn’t plausibly determine exactly what this was. And UFO believers seized on that. They said, okay, well, actually, first of all, in a handful of the cases, the explanation was very likely wrong. So, for example, one of the widely ridiculed explanations was swamp gas. And so, and people are like, oh sure, swamp gas, really? And so, you know, every now and then they would do, again, we’re talking over 12,000 cases and an overworked team and they’re…

0:27:01
CW: Well, come on, 11,000 of those had to be swamp gas, come on.

0:27:04
BR: You would think, right? So, a handful of cases that were probably misidentified by Project Blue Book were ridiculed by the believers saying, oh, see, all these skeptics, they just want to dismiss everything as swamp gas. Well, you know, I’m not justifying that, but again, people make mistakes, they make errors wherever else. And again, at the end of the day, there were a handful of, a small percentage of reports that were essentially left unidentified. And it’s important to remember that the UFOs, by definition, are unidentified. That is, they’re unidentified flying objects. And UFOs absolutely exist. There’s no question that people see things in the skies that are flying that cannot immediately be identified.

0:27:50
CW: I have a question for you as a media guy, as a guy who your jam is getting into media literacy and media criticism. And as far as this project, the actual historical project Blue Book goes, I was reading about it and it said that the government, you know, after the panel convened, they decided to launch sort of a debunking campaign. That’s actually how it was phrased when I read it. And that seemed to almost backfire in a way because they wanted to sort of let the public know, hey, there’s nothing to this. Here, you know, and they roped in some Hollywood types and really kind of had a public awareness campaign that, you know, if you see lights in the sky, it might not be what you think it is. And that led the conspiracy theorists to say, aha, the government is launching propaganda and trying to make us think what we’re seeing isn’t really there. And that can kind of have a backfire effect. What do you think about that approach, especially when the government is involved?

0:28:50
BR: Well you know the government is in a difficult position because if they’re trying to calm the public’s fears particularly about for example Russian attacks or surveillance or whatever else, what do you do? I mean if you just let these ideas foment then they go wild but also as you mentioned if you try and damp them down and explain them then people immediately sense a whiff of conspiracy theory. And again, keep in mind that this is the era, you know, Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Is that right? Or four?

0:29:23
FAT: Spoiler! Spoiler!

0:29:25
BR: Which one was it, Andy? Fact check me.

0:29:27
CW: 63? Okay.

0:29:29
BR: So, but you know, but keep in mind this was the era of conspiracy theories. There were people distrusting the government over Kennedy’s assassination and later Vietnam and things like that. So, the idea that the government would be trying to allay people’s fears can easily backfire into people saying, well, what are they trying to hide? But one thing to keep in mind here is that presumably there’s no way for the government to cover these things up, right? I mean, if they’re in the public sky, then anybody can see them. The government can’t go around putting shields in front of people’s eyes. If a UFO crashes in downtown Denver or Washington, D.C. or anywhere else, people can access these things.

0:30:15
CW: Well, I don’t know. If they’ve effectively gotten the net of chemtrails up, the government totally can cover up any evidence in the sky. Did you not get your memo?

BR: Well, if the chemtrail net is working, yes.

0:30:27
CR: Well, we’re going to have to let Andy go pretty soon here, but I wanted to get to a couple of things. Talking about the backfire effect, you could even, I think, lump this whole TV show by the History Channel into the backfire effect because some 50, 60 years later after Project Blue Book, we now have a whole TV show which is going way opposite direction than the actual findings. If you’ve seen any of the clips from this upcoming season, it is fully like X-Files, but just with aliens only instead of a whole range of paranormal things. There’s, you know, you see aliens in giant vats of goo, you see, you know, definite indications that the History Channel is approaching this as, aliens are real, here’s a cool dramatization of Project Blue Book that tried to cover them all up.

0:31:17
FAT: Yeah, and this is not the first time that Project Blue Book has been a TV show. 70s, I think, if I remember right, maybe early 80s. It was terrible. But that one actually, it tried to not say there were UFOs for sure, but it always kind of left the door open that could have been a UFO, could have been an alien.

0:31:37
CW: It sounds like In Search Of, well, it could be this Now Andy you got to be behind the scenes with the history channel promoting this and you had a ton of Case reports handed to you that you had to draw in like five minutes as a forensic artist How many do you think you drew over the course of comic-con weekend?

FAT: Probably I probably do five or six hundred.

CW: And you’re one of how many artists?

0:32:02
FAT: Four people at a time, but we had six artists all together.

0:32:06
CW: Yeah, so four times. So there were a couple thousand people who got to have their purported UFO experience documented with a forensic drawing from a recreated Air Force forensic artist, at least Andy in a vintage tie.

0:32:21
FAT: Which is all you need, really.

0:32:23
BR: Right, I mean, there you go.

0:32:26
CW: Close enough for government work, right? Now, obviously, all of these weren’t serious, but if you had to give an educated guess, how many of these reports that crossed your drawing table do you think were filled out with absolute seriousness, and how many were just complete bonkers, obviously somebody just having a laugh?

0:32:45
FAT: Honestly, I’d say the vast majority of them were people’s real experiences.

CW: Wow.

FAT: The vast majority were also lights in the sky. And with what little scientific background I have or journalistic background I have, I could debunk a good chunk of them just reading them. A lot of them are like, well, that’s clearly a satellite. And you’re describing the effect of a light behind you reflecting on the back of your head and on your glasses. So you’re not realizing you’re not moving your head enough so the thing is moving across your glasses. But yeah, I mean, most of them were lights. There were a few that were obvious hoaxes, just like, you know, mirrors, what Ben was saying. And then there were some that were like, well, maybe. There were lights in the sky that, you know, couldn’t explain. We were, as artists, we were all desperately waiting for the close encounters of the third kind. And, you know, we loved those and we got those. And we also really loved the hoax ones too, because there were some, yeah. One was clearly describing Stitch from Lilo and Stitch.

0:33:44
CW: Didn’t you, I remember seeing something on your Facebook with a giant duck in the sky.

0:33:50
FAT: Yes, that was one that was clearly somebody having fun. It was a giant flying duck they were talking about. Silver duck, but yeah.

CW: And I don’t mean like a duck like you’d see migrating, like in a V formation. I mean like a giant yellow rubber duck.

0:34:03
FAT: Yeah, well, that actually didn’t have color, so, but it was, in the description, it was a silver duck, silver duck-shaped spacecraft.

0:34:12
CW: Are there any other really weird, wild ones you remember?

0:34:15
FAT: Well, the creepiest one, the one that actually made me go, huh, was somebody who was in a hospital for after some surgery and woke up and there was a figure sitting at the bottom of the bed, which is, as I recall, that’s something that can happen. It’s like a waking nightmare kind of thing.

0:34:33
CW: Hypnagogic.

0:34:34
FAT: That’s the word I’m looking for. No, I wasn’t. I had no idea what that word was. I knew there was a thing, but I couldn’t remember what it was called. Anyways, that was a fun one to draw, but also it was like, ooh, that would be creepy. That would be something that would make me doubt my senses.

CW: Yeah, we’ve talked about the whole hypnagogic experience on the podcast and it is Pascual, our co-host, who isn’t here today. I actually had a lot of experiences like that and he describes it as bone chillingly terrifying.

FAT: I would think so. Yeah, I’m scared just drawing it.

CW: Well, thank you very much, Andy, fact check Andy, for joining us. Andy and I do a couple of podcasts around town sometimes. You can meet both of us at ScoopFest 2018 in October. That is for a local podcast called the Ice Cream Social.

FAT: October 11th and 14th.

CW: And then Andy is on Geek Shock every week in Las Vegas with the Geek Shock guys, the ugly couch guys.

FAT: Coincidentally most of the cast of Geek Shock are former cast members from Star Trek The Experience.

CW: Which leads into our next few segments as well, because right after Comic-Con, we had the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, and I was able to chat with a couple of very special people there.

(MUSIC)

0:35:45
CW: Hey strangers, it’s Celestia. I’m at the Star Trek convention at the Rio in Las Vegas, Nevada. And boy, you see a lot of awesome science-y people at the Star Trek convention. It’s just one of those shows that brings in the science crowd. And I was lucky enough to wrangle a little bit of a talk here with Dr. Erin McDonald, space and science educator and consultant, formerly of LIGO. She came in from LA to chat with us Trekkies. And she is a Trekkie. She’s possibly one of the coolest people I’ve met. She’s got Live Long and Prosper tattooed in Vulcan on one arm and the TARDIS on the other arm. I’m trying not to fangirl here, but Dr. Erin, tell us about yourself.

0:36:41
Erin McDonald: Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, it’s just absolutely an honor to be here. It’s been, it’s my first time at Star Trek Las Vegas. I’ve been doing conventions for about five or six years now teaching the science of science fiction and this is a huge opportunity to be able to come and talk specifically Trek which means a lot to me. So yeah my background is in LIGO. I did my doctorate in gravitational waves and general relativity. I’m not bitter. It’s totally fine. But yeah, and from that, I realized, you know, when I was procrastinating, writing my thesis, I realized, you know, I’ve got the skill set to actually calculate warp drive. And being a big Trekkie, I was like, well, that’s happening. And so that’s kind of how I started getting in the science fiction realm. And it’s just been absolutely fantastic. It’s a great way to connect with people and it’s a great way to teach science so I really enjoy that.

CW:  I Was lucky enough to go to your talk as was Dr. Angie we were both in the audience and you you laid out some things that I really appreciate about Star Trek She put up a graphic of a of a warp bubble that really it sort of reminded me of a gravitational mullet it was like all business in the front and party in the back. And you want to have that dip and then the uptick that propels the ship forward. And you explained it very well. I love how also you brought up the fact that Star Trek makes a wonderful effort, unlike a lot of shows, to kind of at least keep that believability intact by just throwing in a phrase or two. I love what you said about tachyons, which I discovered are real in that they’re theoretical. So tell us about that.

EM: Yeah, so a lot of people are used to hearing tachyons associated with technobabble in Star Trek, but actually tachyons are a theoretical particle that particle physicists have been trying to discover. All it is is it’s just the idea that, well, any matter is gonna bend space-time, it’s going to dip it like a bowling ball on a trampoline, but tachyons do the opposite. They actually like invert space-time and constantly travel faster than the speed of light because of that. They’re basically, you can think of riding a surf, right, that you catch a wave and you’re propelled way forward. Tachyons are always doing that. The problem is, is that we can theorize about them all we want, but because they’re constantly traveling faster than the speed of light, that’s so out of our realm of physics and understanding that we don’t know how we would even try to detect them if they do exist.

0:39:34
CW: Well that’s the great thing about sci-fi, it can be way out in the realm of the… and yeah you mentioned even particular episodes, the blink of an eye, which reminded me of that there’s an Orville episode which which patterns itself quite quite on a parallel to that where one of the Crew members becomes a deity in their culture because every time they beam down and beam back up like like thousands of years have passed now another wonderful thing about Star Trek and and the Orville and all the shows that are patterned on the Star Trek model, galaxy quest etc Is it it? It attracts and it fosters and it’s often created by people who are in science, in the real science, the capital S, know what they’re doing. So tell me about your inundation with Star Trek.

0:40:05
Yeah, so I’m one of those that it’s never too late to become a fan, that I didn’t really discover Star Trek until I was well in college, that I was doing a degree in physics and a lot of physicists and Star Trek fans kind of are in that intersection Venn diagram and so I was able to be exposed to Star Trek at that time and absolutely loved it. I fell in love. I connected with the science. You know I’ve always been a sci-fi fan but just had never been exposed to Star Trek and immediately took took hold to it. I love that you mentioned Galaxy Quest because that is my number one favorite movie of all time. Completely underrated. People love it so much. So yeah, it’s fantastic. But you know, I was able to kind of connect with it and I think the technobabble and the science and the attempt to make the science seem real and the love for science that they have really comes across in Star Trek, that it is, it goes so much further than most science fiction in trying to connect the science to what they’re talking about. So, you know, a great example of that is the Heisenberg principle, that you can never know exactly where something is or exactly how fast something is going. The more you learn about one, you lose knowledge about the other, and that has to, that basically is what makes transporters impossible. There’s no way we can exactly know where all of our fundamental particles are in order to rebuild us. That’s a problem. Star Trek ignores that, but they acknowledge that they’re ignoring it by putting in a Heisenberg compensator. And that one throwaway fix, fixes it. And you’re like, okay, I’m kind of on board with this I have no problem with it because you acknowledge the problem and you addressed it and we’re gonna let it go It’s in the future. Heisenberg is an issue. We fixed the issue with a compensator

0:42:14
CW: I loved that you mentioned that in your talk and and also just the transporter problem It’s a philosophical thing as well that that skeptics and scientists and philosophers have discussed Discussed the other thing about Star Trek is as a whole show I mean the philosophy behind it is you rarely see a Star Trek episode that resolves with magic. Oh Well, you’re the chosen one. So things are gonna all work out again Just use the force and close your eyes and there’s always been that that dichotomy between the Star Wars somewhat mythic fantasy, space opera, and the Star Trek, which is a bunch of competent people who know what they’re doing, who do run a computer simulation and figure out the problem, which is the way science works. So it makes total sense that people gravitate, if I may, toward that genre, that particular type of sci-fi. And skepticism as a whole, you know, people in the skeptic movement are all about public science education and television I mean Carl Sagan acknowledged what a gigantic factor that television and movies could be in the education of the masses So, you know, how do you feel about how well Star Trek is able to sort of subliminally slip in the whole idea of this is how science works and we’re making it fast and exciting on TV, but there’s a whole process there.

0:43:39
EM: Absolutely, I think that’s fantastic. So, you know, especially, I think Voyager does one of the best jobs of having science be well represented. And it has to do with the fact that Janeway is a science officer as an origin, and they do a great job of never letting us forget that. That any opportunity, Janeway recognizes their situation is not ideal, but they are able to take this opportunity and opportunities come up where she’s like, you know guys, we’re the only ones out here, this is unprecedented. As a scientist, we should study it, just for the benefit of Starfleet and the Federation. And I love that they introduce that scientific concept to the masses. And along the lines of what you were saying with using sci-fi to connect with the public is absolutely spot on. You know, when I started giving these talks about six, seven years ago at conventions on the science of science fiction, a lot of convention organizers didn’t quite understand how passionate people would be about it. And you know, it’s an audience that may not necessarily go to a university on a Thursday night to hear a public lecture, but they absolutely will pop into a convention where, you know, it’s a fandom that they already love and they have the opportunity to learn a science talk and bridge that gap. I have met so many people who are just so enthusiastic about science. You know, when we started giving these talks, myself and a couple other scientists at conventions, we were booked in rooms of 200, 300 people and they were having to turn away 500, 600, 700 people at the door because it was so popular. So it’s just great to see that. And for me, personally, I didn’t have any female STEM mentors growing up. I didn’t know any woman who worked in a STEM field. I just loved space and dinosaurs and aliens obviously, and X-Files was on and so I you know got introduced to Dana Scully I have red hair, she has red hair, deeply obsessed with her and I I was obsessed I wore I had the worst haircut because I was like 11 and I wore pantsuits like Dana Scully, then later on, when I discovered Captain Janeway, she became my mentor to help me get through the later part of my professional training. And that slump in graduate school that makes you want to run away and cry and quit and never go back to it. I didn’t have a female mentor to turn to, but I had Scully and Janeway. And so, for me, the importance of media and the importance of pop culture really can change people’s lives, and representation is so important in those, because you don’t know what people have or don’t have in the way of representation or inspiration, and if pop culture can give them that, then that is equally as valid as anything else that they’re going to encounter.

CW: I agree wholeheartedly, and people who seriously get into science like yourself and get their PhD and work their asses off They get a love for it early. You don’t you don’t decide at the age of 37 Oh, maybe I’ll get my PhD in gravitational physics And I love how you encapsulated how some of the episodes are lessons in themselves. You talked about the wormhole episode that hinges spoiler alert on it talks about the fact that many sci-fi shows just have a wormhole that goes from point A to point B And we actually covered this on an episode early on about time travel that one of the theoretical ways I believe I picked it out of Krauss’s book the physics of Star Trek Was that because if one part of the wormhole is moving through space? It’s going to kind of get a time lag or a time increase and so the other side is always going to be in a different time zone, so to speak. And I love that you covered it. Speaking of time, I did take the time to ask Dr. McDonald here what she thought of Joshua P. Warren’s discovery of the space-time anomaly about 50 miles from here. And do you care to give us your expert opinion as a former scientist at LIGO?

EM: I mean, I giggle wholeheartedly at this. Yeah, it’s hilarious and ridiculous and is just has no concept of like error bars And you know this idea that you cannot precisely measure something to you know milliseconds or microseconds if your noise is a second you for example, you know taking it to the extreme. But yeah, it just it cracks me up and it reminds me so much of that time when it was a few years ago but there was a paper that came out of Italy where they thought that they had found photons that were traveling faster than light and it was going through fiber optic cables I believe and I was just out of graduate school I think when that came out and my response was uh that’s a graduate student who was too lazy to actually measure the optics cable like that you know straight up they were like they saw the label said, you know, 300 meters or something like that. And they were like, yeah, that’s probably right. And then just allowed that to go forward. And yeah, precise measurements are important. And people do not respect error bars or statistics as much as they should.

0:49:05
CW: I love that. That’s a good quote. People do not appreciate error bars or statistics as much as they should. Dr. Erin McDonald, who, by the way, I have to congratulate you. She has just met Kate Mulgrew behind the scenes. Congratulations on that.

0:49:20
EM: Yeah, we’re like, what, half an hour from that happening? It happened half an hour ago. I’m a little emotional. I dedicated my PhD thesis to Captain Janeway, and I met her for the first time last year at a convention, and I was just in the chain of autographs and if you’ve ever done this before you know it’s just you get a few seconds, and they’re lovely, but it’s they’re inundated there’s so many people and I kind of stunned her when I gave her my thesis and she was very kind but I was stunned to meet her she was stunned to have that and it was beautiful, but awkward. And so I had hoped for an opportunity I was gracious enough like I was so lucky to have gracious people who heard me comment about Kate Mulgrew and Captain Janeway’s inspiration and they were able to arrange me to meet her and she was wonderful and fantastic and I’m still emotional and I’ll cry later about it into a beer. But yes, it was fantastic and I just, you know, this idea of characters It’s so kind when you see actors who appreciate that connection and they take responsibility for what their characters are able to bring to people and she is one of those who absolutely understands the impact that Captain Janeway has had on humanity.

(MUSIC)

CW: Well, a very heartfelt thanks to Dr. Erin McDonald for talking to me. We were both rather excited, though you could probably tell we were in the midst of our con excitement. If you’d like to see more from Dr. Erin McDonald, you can find her on YouTube and Facebook if you search out Dr. Erin Explains the Universe. Some very fun clips and videos talking about the science behind some of your favorite sci-fi moments and video games. So check her out. And now we’re going to get to another special guest that I was lucky enough to attend the Star Trek convention with, Dr. Angela Matkey.

(MUSIC)

0:51:43
Angela Matkey: Hi Celestia, I’m so happy to be here. We’re having a terrific time. I’m glad that we could take a few minutes out to talk today. And thank you for telling me about this wonderful convention. I’ve been hearing about your visits to it, and I’ve been wanting to for years. So thank you very much for making it special.

0:52:10
CW: You mean making it so. Well, Angie, I can call her Angie because she’s my friend. But Dr. Angie has been enjoying quite a few panels along with me. There’s more to a Star Trek convention than just walking around with pointy ears on. They have panels talking about everything from, they had a panel on media literacy in Star Trek, which turned out to kind of be a tour of concepts that you’d find in comic theory and visual storytelling. They touched on the Borg as zombies, mythic themes and Shakespearean themes in Star Trek. And there’s of course the science of Star Trek, left and right. We love all those. So does anything stand out in your mind that’s been a favorite?

0:53:04
AM: Well, for me, Star Trek has always been something of competence porn. I love seeing smart people do a good job.And I have been struck by that in the Star Trek universe since I was a young lass watching it with my mother. The Horta scared me a little bit, but it was still always something to aspire to. The thing I have been the most struck about, though, in people asking questions in panels and such is that Star Trek has meant so much, not only because they watched it with parents or a treasured relative or a good friend, or even just when they came home from school, it was a source of love and affection. But it often served as the only beacon of hope for some people in very tragic scenarios. We had a woman in tears nearly asking a question of one of the guests and talking about her very tragic home life. And Star Trek was the one hour a week where she felt safe and where she got to see people in an environment that was other than the environment that she was living in, which has been very moving to hear those kinds of stories and hers is not the only one.

CW: Yes, I think you make a really good point with Star Trek providing something for a lot of the people who started watching it at a young age. It was always my my cool-down period after school every day at three o’clock on Channel 5. And there’s a certain routine in the whole way that a Star Trek series and episode is structured. If you’ve watched any of it then you know there’s certain, there’s a chain of command, there’s certain things that happen, there’s expectations, and there’s procedure. And it kind of mirrors the scientific process because of that. And just as an indication of how many science people are here and have gravitated towards Star Trek, you’ve met quite a few other people who have Starfleet medical scrubs and indications that they are in medicine.

0:55:05
AM: Well, I did see a woman yesterday in a panel who had Starfleet medical scrubs on, so I, of course, had to go out and get some immediately. I do wear my Starfleet medical pin on my white coat at work when I can and I have had the best response from patients. Some of my nurses have been completely dumbfounded that I was a geek like they were, but they had only just met me. So it doesn’t take long to learn what a geek I am. But of course I went out and bought some Starfleet medical scrubs as soon as I possibly could. The concert last night was wonderful with the Numbata Pops, but we had a bit of a problem prior to it. Just before they opened the doors, one of the members of the orchestra collapsed, and they had to call EMS in, and there were three of us emergency physicians here on site, so this definitely attracts people of all ages. We sadly learned later that the player died, but it sort of illustrates the point that when we were trying to comfort a friend who was one of the people who did bystander CPR, that though she did exactly the right thing, even with bystander CPR, which is most successful in young people, that it’s not as miraculous as TV would have you believe. The original purpose was to give the best chance of survival possible to someone who is otherwise generally healthy. And doing CPR on someone who has very severe cardiac disease, who is very old, it’s just not likely to have a good response.

0:56:53
CW: Yes, yesterday night, as Angie was talking about, was the gala concert with the Nevada Pops. And as about a thousand Trekkies lined up waiting for this concert, we had the announcement made to us in the line that there was going to be a delay due to an extreme medical emergency. And, of course, Angie’s ears perked up, and she rushed over to see if she could help as did as she said to other emergency doctors I always feel extra safe when I’m around you Angie and unfortunately, you know, it was a severe cardiac arrest situation and there wasn’t much that could be done but It it was a learning experience in that. I found out that in as Angie as dr Angie put it immediate bystander CPR can really help somebody who is in the right demographic. This gentleman was in his 40s. He was not an 85-year-old man on bed rest with two heart cells left. He was somebody whose immediate CPR could benefit. So it’s just good to know these things. And luckily, a number of people in the POPs orchestra were able to to give him that CPR for a good 15-20 minutes before EMTs showed up and to their credit they the band played on they they let everybody in and with one player short they did the concert and dedicated a song to the gentleman and as he was at the hospital now I did get a word that unfortunately he did not make it but it’s a very strange instance of life-mirroring art. We talked about competency porn, and that was a fantastic crew up there. They played the concert. It was an amazing concert. I’m lucky enough to know a friend on the Nevada Pops, Rachel. Hi. At the end of it, we got to meet Rachel, and she said, well, that was the hardest concert I’ve ever played. And we just chatted with her and it was a moving moment. I mean, the music was amazing and wow, you feel like you’ve shared an experience.

AM: I spoke later with the flautist who gave a really beautiful and moving performance and she told me about that the other player did not make it, and there were tears in her eyes, but she still played her solo just beautifully. And I suspect she would have done beautifully even if she, even if all these other things had not happened. I also played the flute for 12 years. I would never be able to play this that well. She just was so wonderful. And it is a mark of the professionalism that we could see with this orchestra. And there were very few times when I noticed that this was the only player of that particular instrument and I did happen to notice when it was missing, but at the same time I also noticed that everybody pulled together and were able to be sort of the same kind and giving community that the whole Star Trek community is. And boy, you talk about competency porn, they were competent as it comes. So even when you do everything right, though, sometimes people still die.

0:59:59
CW: Yes, yes. And yeah, the conductor, the first words he said was, you know, thank you for your patience. We had a delay, but the show must go on.

AM: Of course, he did have to move the tribbles from his podium before he could proceed.

CW: Yes, yes. There were tribbles all over the stage. That made for that made for extra ambiance. He had to knock a few off before he began. Now, we should also talk about the fact that Dr. Angie, as I mentioned, is an ER doctor. She flies all over the country and works at different ERs that have crisis situations where they need extra staffing. And so I consider her my go-to for so many things. She has spoken on skeptical topics at skeptic conferences around the world. And this year, as she did last year, she is taking on a special duty at Skip Track in Atlanta coming up in September. Dr. Angie, tell us about that.

1:01:04
AM: Well, I’m very excited about the Skip Track this year. I’m the assistant director. Derek Colanduno has done a terrific job. We are working hard. We’re going to have a wonderful presence in the Dragon Con parade. Thank you to Margaret Downey. Thanks Margaret. We will have folks from all over the galaxy as well as wonderful magic shows from Kurt Anderson. Margaret Downey also has scored us a delightful celebrity to ride in my car for the parade. We will have John Delancey in our section of the Skeptics Parade. John Delancey has long been a supporter of skeptic activities and has spoken at the Reason Rally, and we’re just absolutely delighted to have him.

CW: Yes, we saw him here on the first day he was one of the speakers, and as listeners may know, he also played Clarence Darrow in a one-man play. So, in addition to playing Q for the Star Trek universe, he’s played a very important lawyer in the Scopes Monkey Trial.

1:02:10
AM: On the first day, he had a discussion with Corbin Bernson, who played Q2. So, they had a Q and A session. I’m not sure who the A was, but, no, it was wonderful. It was so wonderful. And we got to hear John De Lancie’s plans to sail from California to New Zealand. So I am very, very excited to hear more about that.

1:02:32
CW: Oh geez, I hope he makes it okay. That sounds like a, that’s nothing I would do on my spare time. But thank you for letting us know about the Sceptrack. Now listeners who want to get registered for DragonCon, you can go to dragoncon.org and you have to buy a little membership and then you can get down there and see all the events they have many different tracks and skip track which was Which is run by Derek Colin Duno and Angie. Dr. Angela Matt key is going to be Co-hosting co-emceeing co-directing. Do you have a preference for your title?

AM: I think officially that makes me the assistant director We’ll have Kurt Anderson and Brian Brushwood will do their wonderful Magic and Mayhem show. The wonderful Jamie Ian Swiss will be appearing. We will have special guests from Snopes.com. Of course, the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe will be there. We cannot wait to see them again. And so much more, I can’t even begin to tell you.

CW: It is a packed weekend. Labor Day weekend is… I’ve gone three years in a row. I won’t be there this year due to immovable circumstances. But yes, I’ve got an ensign on board that will be beaming out right around that time. But it’s a fantastic weekend. Bring your stamina. It is a wild weekend and a wonderful weekend. A weekend full of learning. You’re going to make friends that you will retain for a lifetime. The people watching is amazing. I mean, yes, I think the Star Trek con is a nice appetizer for Dragon Con. Do you find that you’re enjoying the the cosplay and the people watching here, but you’re also anticipating getting to Atlanta for Labor Day weekend?

AM: The thing that’s so special to me about Dragon Con is it’s a labor of love for most people. It is volunteer and the costumers who show up at Dragon Con are so passionate about what they do. And I can’t tell you how much I love not just the competency porn element of it, but also just it’s so rare to find people who are passionate about something and are unashamed to express that passion. And I think that it’s the thing I like best about Dragon Con is that this is a convention full of people who have a passion. There are many different tracks that they can go to in order to let their freak flags fly and to celebrate their passions with others who share the same passion.

CW: Yes, there’s a great sense of community and that’s that’s one of the reasons why people go to conventions, a great sense of community. We’re feeling that this weekend and if you’re able to get to DragonCon, you will feel it too. Thank you, Dr. Angie, for taking the time to talk to us. It’s always a pleasure.

1:05:20
AM: Absolutely delightful. Thank you so much, Celestia. I would not have had nearly as much fun without you.

(MUSIC)

1:05:25
We would like to thank our sponsor level patrons, Amy Freshour-Kelly and Dr. Angela Mattke. If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor or just throwing us a buck or two per episode, check out patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange. Every bit helps us keep the lights on here in strange studios and we could not keep bringing you content without the support of our generous friends. If you’re looking to provide moral support, head on over to iTunes and give us a 5-star review. Every positive review helps us move up the podcast charts. Thanks again, strangers.

(MUSIC)

BR: All right, that was very cool hearing from Dr. Angie and Dr. Erin. Thanks for arranging that, Celestia.

1:06:26
CW: Hey, it’s my jam, man. I love the Star Trek con.

1:06:30
BR: Good stuff. This is a fun episode.

1:06:32
CW: It’s a little more freewheeling when we run around a convention and just chat with people, but there’s so much fun stuff to be learned from everybody, including the History Channel guys and the Project Blue Book artists and astrophysicists you happen to bump into at a convention?

1:06:51
BR: Speaking of the History Channel, I was remiss, and I apologize to our listeners and to you personally Celestia, I was remiss in noting the one year anniversary since the time that the History Channel screwed up and posted their special episode on Amelia Earhart and the photograph that turned out not to be of Amelia Earhart and it was in July 2017 after some discussions on this podcast and elsewhere the History Channel promised that they would keep researching the new evidence that entirely demolished the whole premise of their show and they would be updating it and they promised transparency. That was in July 2017. If you check your calendars folks you’ll find that it’s actually August 2018, so it’s been over one year, and we’re still waiting for the History Channel to explain how it is that they managed to put together a slickly produced, yet entirely bogus, show on a photograph that was not, in fact, Emilie Earhart. So, still looking forward to that. Any time now is fine.

1:07:56
CW: Ben, you are nothing if not thorough, and I knew he’d bring that up because you do like transparency when people promise transparency you like having it happen and As as we all should so who knows maybe maybe after the project blue book series runs its course on History Channel They’ll have some time and budget to I don’t know hire a bunch of artists to draw Amelia Earhart sightings

1:08:20
Is that her on UFO is that my dear heart on a Bigfoot? Oh cool. It’ll be just as accurate.

1:08:28
Exactly.

1:08:28
Anyway, we could do a whole show on the accuracy of the history channel.

1:08:33
Not today we can’t, but thanks everybody for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a new episode of Squaring the Strange. Take care. Bye-bye. Squaring the Strange is a production of Kronos Creative LLC, copyright 2017. Theme music by Shriek Back. Additional music by Memory, Guitard and Feathered, and Pascual Romero. Content producer, Celestia Ward. Audio engineering, producing, and editing provided by Pascual Romero at Cronus Creative Studios. Additional support provided by Ashley Romero, and of course, our listeners and patrons.

1:09:08
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of Squaring Strange and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Cornell’s Creative, The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of Squaring Strange and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Cornell’s Creative, Center for Inquiry, our advertisers or any affiliated organizations and employers.

Transcribed with Cockatoo