Alien Encounters, Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. John Mack, and UAP with NY Times Ralph Blumenthal [#10]

este es ¿has conocido a mi invitado de hoy? es un renombrado periodista y autor durante la mayor parte de su carrera. Escribió para el New York Times. libros tanto de ficción como de no ficción su publicación más reciente es una biografía del difunto gran dr john mack titulada el extraterrestre creyente se encuentra con la ciencia dura y la pasión de john mack john mack fue un eminente psiquiatra de Harvard que desarrolló un interés en el fenómeno de la abducción extraterrestre arriesgó su carrera y su reputación para tratar de averiguar todo lo que pudo acerca de si conoció a ralph blumenthal entonces ralph obviamente quiero llegar a john mack y hablar sobre su libro pero usted mismo ha tenido una carrera fascinante así que si Podrías volver a cómo te metiste en el periodismo y cómo tomó forma tu carrera y cualquier momento que quieras abordar. Sería increíble si pudieras si pudieras darme eso. ism en un gran momento cuando la imprenta todavía era el rey y yo había sido el editor de mi periódico universitario city college of new york y eh fui a la escuela de periodismo de columbia que era y sigue siendo el tipo de escuela de periodismo de primer nivel y después de eso yo conseguí un trabajo en el new york times como copista, que es lo más bajo de lo bajo obtienes café para las personas que conoces llevan sus historias a los editores hacen lo que quieren um pero fue una gran ventana a Nueva York veces fue maravilloso estar allí, había gigantes eh en el campo entonces como los hay ahora, pero eh fue un momento maravilloso para estar allí y, por supuesto, era la era de las máquinas de escribir y eh era una era anterior, ya sabes , anti- diluviano um en muchos sentidos una era de dinosaurios pero um aprendí mucho de usted sabe viendo a los expertos en el trabajo y subí la escalera de corresponsal suburbano fui corresponsal extranjero en vietnam en camboya y alemania occidental um y luego yo volvió y comenzó a cubrir aplicación de la ley y política y muchos reportajes de investigación sobre corrupción política, um, hice muchos reportajes sobre criminales de guerra nazis que se escondían en Estados Unidos. Saqué la historia del hecho de que la CIA había proporcionado acceso a Estados Unidos a muchos criminales de guerra y científicos nazis. porque queríamos usar su experiencia, una historia muy vergonzosa, y luego fui corresponsal nacional en Texas, donde entra en escena la historia de John Mack, de la que podemos hablar más tarde, y fui reportero cultural durante un tiempo cubriendo la ópera y la música clásica. y Broadway, que fue un cambio maravilloso de la corrupción política, sí, todas las buenas noticias, y luego dejé los tiempos después de 45 años en 2009, eh, para trabajar como autónomo para trabajar en mi libro sobre John Mack y, ya sabes, hago otros proyectos y también enseño. Me convertí en un distinguido profesor en el colegio baruch de la universidad de la ciudad de nueva york donde todavía estoy trabajando en los archivos de la biblioteca a cargo de ciertas colecciones históricas sobre el gobierno reformado pero todavía contribuyo pero con los tiempos y sigo la historia de los ovnis uh um y uh, eso nos lleva al presente, sí, guau, todo un resumen, sí, carrera increíble, te has divertido y, como les digo a mis estudiantes de periodismo, es una carrera maravillosa, eh, para ser un periodista porque puedes viajar a todas partes conocer todo tipo de gente interesante nunca un momento aburrido por supuesto el inconveniente es que todos los días empiezas de cero y tienes que llenar esas páginas o conoces la web así que no es fácil especialmente hoy eh pero es sigue siendo una carrera maravillosa, sí, y es tu trabajo aprender, supongo, así que sí, siempre estás aprendiendo cosas nuevas, pero también has sido escritor y también te conviertes en un experto en todo y sí, es un gran desafío, especialmente hoy en día, donde podrías serlo. Si te pillas en algo, sabes que si te equivocas en algo, hay un millón de personas que te dirán que sí, así que incluso si se equivocan, es una vida maravillosa, sí, increíble, y también como acabo de mencionar novelas escritas. y tienes w RENON de no ficción, así no ficción que escribí un libro sobre la mafia y el gran caso de drogas uh conexión de pizza, que en realidad um un programa geográfica nacional va a función a partir de finales de este mes um National Geographic está haciendo un uh UH toda uh temporada de historias de la mafia, así que estaré en eso, sí, así que escribí sobre policías, escribí sobre el famoso club nocturno en nueva york, el stork club, que es probablemente el lugar nocturno más famoso, donde se reunieron todas las celebridades después de la segunda guerra mundial. después de la prohibición originalmente, así que, sí, tuve una buena carrera con los libros, sí, un milagro en el canto es uno al que definitivamente quiero llegar también en mi propio tiempo en algún momento, ya sabes, escribiendo sobre la aplicación de la ley, me interesé en el pregunta de si sabes prisión y penología y uh guardián de sing sing en ese momento leyes del guardián tienen un gran nombre para sabes que hay personas que piensan que los nombres determinan uh sabes historia um sabes que hay algo en eso de todos modos él entró uh uh ph enología y se convirtió en un gran reformador de prisiones y aunque tuvo que presidir más de 300 ejecuciones y la silla eléctrica cantó, fue un gran opositor de la pena capital porque vio que no servía de nada, no disuadía a nadie, ciertamente no ayudó ¿no sabías? revivió a ninguna de las personas que fueron asesinadas y no permitió la rehabilitación de las personas y, a menudo, se equivocaron con el acusado, él no lo hizo, así que ejecutaron el personas equivocadas de todos modos así que estaba muy orgulloso de que el libro sí sí absolutamente um por lo largo de ese camino sinuoso de giros fascinantes y vueltas en qué momento ovnis rozan UAP primer tipo de levantar la cabeza y apoderarse de su interés derecha así um como un montón de gente de mi generación creciendo, uh, sabes, justo después de la guerra, la segunda guerra mundial, para las personas que no saben, ese es el término, la guerra, me interesé en la ciencia ficción, eso era algo importante en ese momento, ray bradbury, isaac asimov, todo el grandes escritores maestros de la ciencia ficción, así que ya sabes, lo engullí como todos los demás en mi generación um y luego desapareció. Pasé a otras cosas. Comencé esto. Me interesé en el periodismo, así que um, realmente no hice nada en esa línea hasta era el corresponsal del new york times en texas y eh desde el comienzo de 2003 y um en 2004 recogí una copia de un libro un libro usado del que no sabía nada eh se llamaba pasaporte al cosmos por john mack era su segundo libro y um uh y pensé que es realmente una idea interesante que un psiquiatra de harvard, muy renombrado en su campo, haya escrito una biografía ganadora del premio pulitzer de la audiencia de lawrence de arabia y fue estimado en su profesión en harvard como profesor. de psiquiatría me interesé en toda la idea de la abducción extraterrestre y las personas que tuvieron estas experiencias que hablaron sobre las experiencias de encontrarse con seres extraterrestres, por lo que había escrito dos libros, tomé el segundo porque dije que no sabía nada sobre él, incluso eso. ough era bastante famoso en el momento ya que um um ganó el Pulitzer por Lawrence había sido entrevistado en el programa de Oprah Winfrey que había estado en el New York Times, que muchas veces me he saltado por completo uh Dada dado un montón de conferencias Harvard lo investigó porque sus métodos finalmente se aclararon básicamente, en otras palabras, tenía toda esta historia de la que no sabía nada, así que decidí, basado en este libro, que iba a llamarlo y ver si podía entrevistarlo. uh personaje muy interesante la conexión de Harvard, etc extranjeros y la siguiente que supe es que recogieron el papel y que estaba muerto um que había sido atropellado en Londres que había estado allí durante una conferencia sobre Lawrence uh parecía el camino equivocado como usted sé que los yanquis hacemos um uh en el Reino Unido y fue cortado por un tipo que había bebido demasiado, así que, por supuesto, el primer uh rumor que se extendió al instante fue que había sido asesinado porque era demasiado problemático para harvard uh y básicamente pude desacreditar esa conclusión Muy en mi opinión, eh, con los informes policiales, eh, es un completo accidente, sí, por eso, um, así que de todos modos, eso me ayudó a comenzar y me puse en contacto con la familia, um, que estaba de duelo en ese momento y no quería hablar de eso. sus materiales, pero finalmente me dieron acceso a todos sus archivos sus diarios su um sus escritos sus cintas de sus propias sesiones de terapia muy íntimo cosas que sus mensajes de correo electrónico novias esposa etc y que me inició y me pasé los siguientes 16 años um la investigación de la historia de John mack y ahora sale el libro wow 16 años simplemente absorto en este nivel de acceso sí, debes sentir que conoces a john mack muy bien ahora, aunque lo conocí alguna vez, nunca lo hice porque como dije él Me habían atropellado cuando estaba en Texas para el New York Times, así que nunca lo había conocido antes, entonces um y luego era demasiado tarde, pero fue fascinante. Como biógrafo, tuve el privilegio de tener acceso a todos estos materiales. que sabes que los escritores siempre desean poder Tuve um y uh entonces tuve y tuve la plena cooperación de su familia a pesar de que no exigieron ninguna condición previa no vieron el manuscrito mientras escribía sobre él no lo dirigieron de ninguna manera no fue autorizado, pero conté con la cooperación total de su esposa Sally, quien murió poco después de cáncer, y sus amigos y colegas, todos fueron muy comunicativos conmigo, um, eso lo hizo más fácil, pero fue una tarea enorme para pasar por todos sus su material, sí, porque acumuló, acumuló tanto, sí, no tengo ninguna duda, me refiero a leer el libro, sí, puedo, solo podría comenzar a imaginar el alcance de las cosas por las que debes haber pasado. esto debe ser un poco porcentaje del tipo de cosas que has tamizado y encontrado muchas cosas que sabes que no pude usar en el libro era demasiado eh creo que obtuve las partes importantes eh vivió una vida increíble eh como erudito y profesor y uh muy amplio porque después de la abducción extraterrestre porque antes de la abducción extraterrestre estaba en muchas cosas interesantes de las que puedes hablar y después de la abducción extraterrestre estaba en otras cosas interesantes, sí, así que um , realmente fue una vida plena, sí, no, estoy realmente interesado en Básicamente, todas las cosas que le interesaban en este momento. Creo que tuve esto, supongo que dado que todos hemos estado encerrados y cosas así, he tenido más tiempo para pensar en las cosas y mirar las cosas y él estaba. interesado solo en los temas más fascinantes que tenemos disponibles realmente en cierto modo, ¿no fue como todo, desde pesadillas y ese tipo de cosas y solo psiquiatría general hasta sí, los secuestros y ya sabes, la vida después de la muerte, la supervivencia de conciencia, eh, ya sabes, llegar y él no estaba limitado en sus intereses, quiero decir, comenzó um haciendo básicamente una reforma social llevando servicios psiquiátricos, servicios de salud mental a las áreas pobres de boston cambridge y um se involucró en um, ya sabes campaña contra las armas nucleares para prohibir las armas nucleares lo arrestaron en el sitio de prueba de nevada con su familia protestando por las armas nucleares y se interesó mucho en el medio oriente debido a su libro de lawrence, así que fue allí para reunirse con colegas palestinos e intentar para comprender las raíces del conflicto árabe-israelí , muy oportuno hoy, se reunió con yasa arafat, por lo que tenía un amplio alcance y luego , cuando se interesó en la abducción extraterrestre, hablaremos sobre cómo sucedió. continuó a otras áreas anómalas que se interesó mucho en los círculos de los cultivos se fue a Inglaterra para investigar los silla de ruedas y um se interesó finalmente la vida después de la muerte y la supervivencia de la conciencia, que estuvo muy presente en su mente en el momento cuando se sabe que era um así que sí había mucho en su vida sí sí personaje muy colorido como de hecho y sí el interés que quiero volver a la vida después de la muerte y la supervivencia de la conciencia y ese tipo de cosas en un momento porque sé que uno de sus colegas en el New York Times también ha escrito un libro sobre eso, eso es la muerte sobreviviente en Netflix y también lo vi recientemente y descubrí que estaba atrapado por que hace un par de meses fue completamente revelador, sabes, um, como si siempre hubiera sido un poco o recientemente he sido bastante abierto de mente, pero honestamente, cuando mi novia dijo que deberíamos ver esto y me mostró cuáles eran los episodios. llamé y definitivamente era escéptico, pero es algo que es difícil de entender, no puedes verlo y solo dices basura, hay demasiado allí para descartarlo de plano, es en muchos sentidos como todo el campo de encuentro alienígena, eh, que el cuanto más sabes sobre esto, más intrigante se vuelve y las personas que son reconocidas como los detractores o los llamados escépticos no son realmente escépticos porque no tienen una mente abierta, solo dicen bueno, solo dijiste que es basura y estos la gente esta loca y la no saben de lo que hablan porque las personas no son enfermas mentales um no buscan publicidad al contrario huyen de la atención se avergüenzan de lo que han sido saben parte de ellos no entiéndelo, um, entonces , es una de esas áreas en las que realmente tienes que investigar para comprender que sabes entender más antes de pronunciarte sobre ello de una forma u otra, sí, y sobre las abducciones, quiero decir, obviamente, podemos entrar en solo un momento como cómo John se metió en eso, quiero decir, sé que tiene que ver con bud hopkins y todo ese tipo de cosas, pero puedes saltar a toda esa historia en un momento, pero sí, es solo uno de esos temas en los que incluso si como que no soy necesariamente el tipo más inteligente en ninguna habitación ni nada por el estilo, pero sabes que debes tener un cierto nivel de inteligencia para entender, está bien, john mack fue muy inteligente y si está pensando que esto es algo que debe ser mirado de cerca y no podemos simplemente mirarlo negro y blanco y decir está bien, eso es lo que está pasando, él fue brillante, eso es cierto, pero no fue arrogante al respecto, quiero decir, fue déjame enmendar que había un poco de arrogancia al respecto porque sabía que era brillante um y um pero fue muy paciente al explicárselo a diferentes audiencias, estaba dispuesto a ir al foso de los leones en harvard y otros lugares y enfrentarse a audiencias escépticas e intentar ganárselas, así que estaba muy dispuesto a hacer el trabajo y, ya sabes. enfrentar el ridículo y la vergüenza y ya sabes, la burla, um so um, ese es un aspecto interesante de él, era muy paciente de alguna manera, sí, así que continúa, luego dame la breve pequeña introducción como un breve resumen de cómo John Mack este es este distinguido profesor de harvard muy respetado que se especializa en psiquiatría y, doctor, cómo de repente se le abrieron los ojos o el interés se apoderó de las experiencias de abducción, supongo que sí, les gusta la palabra experimentadores porque es más neutral. todos los adoptados que tengo este tipo de tipo de ya asume la experiencia um bueno como yo mientras esbozo mi libro que por cierto se llama el creyente sabes encuentros alienígenas ciencia dura y la pasión de john mack um lo esbozo los pasos que llevaron a john mack a todo el campo de la abducción extraterrestre y esto es lo que sucedió, como dije, estaba haciendo todas estas otras cosas protestando contra las armas nucleares involucradas en causas sociales , eh, los esfuerzos de paz en Oriente Medio que surgieron de su libro sobre Lawrence um y luego um fue a esselin, que es ese grupo de expertos en el Pacífico donde se estaban realizando muchos experimentos psíquicos e investigaciones sobre lsd y también mucha psiquiatría de vanguardia e historia interesante sobre esalen que toco en mi libro de todos modos, salió y un colega psiquiatra en Checoslovaquia llamado stan groff, que es bastante famoso a su manera, le entregó un libro sobre emergencia espiritual sobre diferentes estados psíquicos de ansiedad y emergencia y uno de los capítulos era sobre encuentros con extraterrestres y mac lo leyó y tenía muchas dudas, pensó que no tenía mucho sentido para él saber que los humanos podrían encontrarse con seres extraterrestres, pero plantó la idea en su mente y luego se interesó mucho en algo llamado respiración holotrópica que stan groff estaba investigando en ese momento, era un método de relajación como la hipnosis en cierto modo, pero básicamente era auto-relajación con música y a través de eso, la gente podía entrar en estados alterados de conciencia, a veces volver a una vida anterior parecía recordar cómo era la vida en el útero recordando haber nacido a través de esta técnica de relajación, así que John Mack lo intentó y quedó muy impresionado porque lo llevó de regreso a su infancia, su preinfancia, su antes. nació en el útero luchando por nacer tuvo una visión de una vida pasada en rusia y pensó wow esto abrió los límites de su psique uh para ver que había más para usted sabe el e existencia en este mundo tridimensional que todos asumimos es realidad um tan um y en una de estas uh sesiones de respiración uh conferencias conoció a un colega psiquiatra que le habló sobre bud hopkins y bud hopkins era un artista um en nueva york y Cape Cod que tuvo un avistamiento de un ovni y se interesó mucho en los ovnis y comenzó a entrevistar a personas con historias de abducciones y escribió algunos de los primeros libros al respecto, incluido un libro llamado Missing time sobre conoces personas que conoces pierden el conocimiento y luego solo luego recupere un recuerdo de lo que les sucedió, fueron abducidos o se encontraron con extraterrestres de todos modos, era un fenómeno realmente no reconocido hasta ese momento y bud hopkins escribió sobre eso y john mack recibió una introducción a bud hawkins que él no quería tomar al principio porque pensó que sonaba demasiado loco y pensó que hopkins debe estar loco y las personas que tuvieron todas estas supuestas experiencias tenían que estar locas, pero como saben, la vida tendría ve cosas extrañas se encontró en nueva york y se encontró llamando a bud hopkins y en cierto modo cuento la historia en el libro es más detallada y fue a ver a bud hopkins y um qué hopkins le dio un montón de cartas eh de personas que había leído el libro de su brote libro y fueron informes de sus propios uh encuentro experiencias experiencias de abducción y um les dio a a a John Mack a ver, dijo que eres el psiquiatra sabes nos fijamos en estas cartas y decidir lo que sabe lo que está pasando con estas personas, así que John Mack hizo que tomó las cartas y tenía otras cosas que hacer, por lo que no las revisó de inmediato, pero poco después lo hizo y estaba asombrado de que pudiera haber algo como esto um que la gente que nosotros Descubrí rápidamente que eran personas comunes que no eran enfermas mentales, que no estaban siguiendo ningún delirio o agenda masiva y saben que podemos explorar eso más adelante con un poco más de detalle por qué pensó que eran normales, pero de todos modos, todos tenían básicamente un similar. historia cómo eran, ya sabes, vieron un ovni, vieron a estos seres, los transportaron a una nave o un barco, realizaron todo tipo de pruebas o experimentos, incluidos procedimientos reproductivos, tomaron óvulos de mujeres y esperma para hombres, aparentemente para crear una raza híbrida y luego serían. re-secuestrados más tarde para ver a sus hijos híbridos, estas son las historias, no todas consistentes al 100 por ciento, pero la historia básica que la gente estaba contando, así que eso fue lo que lo hizo comenzar y comenzó a reunir su propio grupo de estos experimentadores como él los llamó. y exploraron sus historias y terminó escribiendo el primer libro llamado Abducción y luego el libro que recogí en Texas Passport to the Cosmos donde exploró estas experiencias desde el punto de vista de un psiquiatra en gran detalle y esta fue su ventaja, por supuesto. porque él era un psiquiatra capacitado y otras personas como bud hopkins tan entusiastas como ellos no podían aportar el mismo nivel de experiencia y conocimiento eh beca eh y profesional que sabe experiencia para que el campo y podía modo que es usted sabe que lo metió en el campo comenzó a estudiar y uh uh que rápidamente se convirtió en convencido de que estaba en lo cierto, sí que es una historia increíble antes de que me refiero, obviamente, el tiempo que tenía la carrera -en con Harvard y lo pusieron en esencia a prueba básicamente um antes de eso, ¿tienes alguna idea al leer todas sus cosas, cuánta resistencia enfrentó en los primeros días o lo mantuvo todo muy privado? del mundo exterior sorprendentemente ben no lo mantuvo en privado casi tan pronto como se enteró por bud hopkins comenzó a pensar en hablar sobre lo que aprendió y en el libro sugiero que podría haber sido demasiado pronto lo hizo No me tomé el tiempo suficiente para estudiar realmente el fenómeno antes de que empezara a hablar de él, pero ese era su estilo, era muy impetuoso, muy apasionado y quería contarle al mundo lo que había encontrado y él era realmente uno de los pocos psiquiatras. Los artistas se habían encontrado con esto en términos de pacientes que les contaban historias, pero en general lo descartaron como una ilusión, no querían lidiar con eso, dijeron que debe estar soñando, debe ser una pesadilla o lo que sea, pero tan pronto como escuchó al respecto e investigó , decidió que era algo real al respecto, um, podemos hablar sobre la dimensión en la que esto se estaba desarrollando, pero sonaba real para él porque la forma en que la gente habló de eso después fue muy emocionalmente sobreexcitado cuando discutieron su experiencia así que um um así que él comenzó a hablar de eso y habló de ello a un club de profesores en harvard um muy rápidamente uh quiero decir dentro de un año digamos uh sí y luego convocó una gran ronda que es un conferencia en harvard um en diciembre de 91, así que dos menos de dos años después de que escuchó por primera vez sobre esto de bud hopkins y um donde lo expuso y de hecho trajo un experimentador para hablar con la audiencia, bueno, trajo una experiencia para hablar con el aud experiencia y trajo una cinta de una sesión que había hecho con una experiencia de una mujer que recordaba que le habían quitado el embarazo, ya sabes, en una nave espacial por extraterrestres en este programa de reproducción híbrida supuestamente y ella estaba llorando y llorando y fue una cinta desgarradora para escuchar lo que um por lo que empezó a hablar de inmediato y no se dejó intimidar y UM no un buen número de colegas pensó que estaba fuera de sí y um uh se encontró con un poco de resistencia que se da de baja a medida que sabemos que había ido por encima del de la colina sobre la pared y um pero había otros uh especialmente a las personas que habían sufrido éste, que sabía lo que había que saber que reconocían lo que estaba hablando de ellos reconocieron a sí mismos y que llegaron a su defensa y um y y y otros colegas defendieron sus métodos y dijeron que solo estaba siguiendo uh ya sabes evidencia evidencia anecdótica no había pruebas reales pero todavía estaba um uh ya sabes usando uh métodos científicos probados en el tiempo para entrevistar personas y tratando de entender lo que les había sucedido y aplicando sus habilidades para analizarlo y si es su primer libro en particular, ven el rigor que tomó para probar sus historias y comprender lo que estaba pasando y por qué rechazó todo. las otras explicaciones, de todos modos, para responder a su pregunta de una manera indirecta, um, tenía bastante oposición , tenía algo de apoyo y no se inmutó, simplemente comenzó a hablar sobre eso y eso ciertamente mejoró con el paso de los años, sí, sí, es increíble. un pionero, tal como usted dice, seguirlo es, hasta donde él puede ver, lo mejor disponible, es una palabra extraña usarla, pero evidencia como usted dice, es anecdótica como testigo, pero sigue siendo una especie de evidencia, ¿no es así? para la mayoría de las personas que escuchan o algunas personas que escuchan al menos van a pensar, sí, alguien dice que subieron a la nave espacial y que este xy y z les sucedieron como un sueño extraño o es un, sabes, es una pesadilla o tiene que ver con dormir p aralysis o alucinación gente viene con nada para decir algo más fácil de aceptar, supongo um, pero ¿cómo sí cómo lo hizo Juan tipo de diferenciar el hecho de que esta gente que estaba viendo y que estaba tratando con el lugar donde como usted ha dicho anteriormente, en esencia, normal, aunque no hay normal para los humanos, está ahí, pero lo más cerca posible, sí, bueno, contaré una pequeña historia con la que comienzo mi libro, hubo un renombrado científico inglés de la década de 1870 llamado Sir William Crooks Crolkes, um, que era bastante un científico eminente a su manera que en ese momento había un gran interés en las sesiones de espiritismo y las actividades paranormales, ya sabes, y su sociedad científica lo envió a asistir a una de estas sesiones de espiritismo y desacreditarlo, así que fue y quedó asombrado. ver estas cosas sucediendo, instrumentos musicales tocando solos en un gabinete cerrado y personas levitando y protoplasma emergiendo en una sesión y, um, en lugar de desacreditarlo, regresó y dijo algo muy famoso que yo como una especie de epígrafe en mi libro, nunca dije que fuera posible, solo dije que era cierto, así que si olvidas por un momento si cierta cosa es posible o no y todos están de acuerdo en que estas cosas no son posibles en nuestra realidad, no tienen sentido, no vemos que suceda en la calle, va en contra de todas las ideas que tenemos sobre, ya sabes cómo funcionan las cosas en la realidad, de todos modos, así que john y todos los demás acordaron que estas cosas no eran posibles y, sin embargo, las historias de que el las experiencias les estaban contando y la otra cita de evidencia como usted dice que él uh recopiló mostró que algo estaba sucediendo que iba en contra de lo que todos creían que era posible, así que, en primer lugar, las historias eran básicamente consistentes en que personas de todos los ámbitos de la vida, um hombres y mujeres obreros profesionales, ya sabes, policías, médicos, psiquiatras , gente de negocios, eh, no importaba, um, básicamente estamos contando las mismas historias de mirarme, estás viendo el ovni y el es sintiendo la presencia de estos seres extraterrestres y niños con los que habló también john mack uh tan joven como dos años de edad contaría estas historias sabes hombrecito llévame al cielo vuelo en el cielo y sabes que john mack se dio cuenta de eso estos niños no estaban citando los libros que habían leído y apenas no sabían leer, eh, no iban al cine, así que no lo estaban inventando en base a, ya sabes, algún trasfondo cultural, ya sabes, que tenían de todos modos, así que el las historias eran básicamente consistentes y, sin embargo, había tantos detalles que eran completamente uh extraños y diferentes que la gente no podía estar recitando una historia sobre la que todos habían oído o leído um, las historias eran tan locas, realmente extrañas que dirías que no se podían inventar, nadie podía siquiera pensar en estas cosas, así que eso fue algo que notó, en segundo lugar, notó que estas cosas no sucedían solo por la noche, cuando las personas supuestamente dormían o tenían pesadillas, en algunos casos ocurren durante el día. gente le caminando alrededor de una mujer en una moto de nieve en un caso estaba conduciendo una moto de nieve la gente conducía sus coches y cuando ocurrieron en la noche um no eran necesariamente pesadillas porque las personas mismas diferenciaban entre lo que era una pesadilla, lo que realmente le estaba pasando o lo que sintieron que realmente les estaba pasando y, entre otras cosas, John Mack era un experto en pesadillas porque había escrito un libro sobre pesadillas y había realizado un estudio académico sobre las pesadillas para que la gente que conoces a los escépticos no pudiera decir oh, no entiendes john, estas son pesadillas, él sabía lo que eran las pesadillas y, como dije, la gente sintió la diferencia entre despertarse de una pesadilla o estar completamente despierto y ver sus puertas abrirse y ser, tú sabes, gris bajo, tú sabes, un robot entrando, um, así que eso había otra cosa, um, había, um, algunas citas de evidencia en la medida de las cicatrices y las marcas de pala después que la gente no podía recordar haber tenido antes, uh, de cualquier operación bu Cuando los vieron, vieron estas marcas en sus cuerpos después que parecían relacionarse con algunos experimentos o pruebas a los que habían sido sometidos en la nave. A veces, la hierba estaba presionada o el follaje se movía afuera donde recordaban un ovni que aterrizó y en en algunos casos incluso hubo testigos que lo corroboraron, lo cual es quizás el aspecto más llamativo de esto. Había un caso sobre el que escribió sobre dos niñas que se quedaron a dormir y afuera recordaron haber visto un ovni justo después, lo describieron de todos modos, tenían que dormir con la madre. de una de las chicas donde estaban pasando la pijamada bajó a verlas durante la noche y las encontró desaparecidas, por lo que entró en pánico y llamó a la policía, las buscaron por todas partes y no las encontraron y unas horas más tarde las chicas se volvieron. arriba en sus camas y luego uh relataron uh se recapturaron en tal vez una regresión hipnótica creo um este tiempo perdido donde dijeron que vieron el ovni aterrizando afuera y se los llevaron en la nave espacial durante unas horas y luego los devolvieron, así que en este caso hubo evidencia corroborativa de la madre que dijo que bajé a ver a las niñas y se habían ido, así que este fue un caso real de daño físico. ausencia que no siempre es el caso porque también hay ejemplos de personas eh que se sienten presentes entonces en otros casos parece ser un fenómeno psíquico donde el espíritu o el alma o la parte no corpórea del cuerpo que conoces es abducido o quitado y cosas muy complicadas de todos modos, así que preguntaste cuáles fueron las cosas que convencieron a John Mack de que estas historias son reales y luego, como dije, el afecto, que es el término psiquiátrico para el um, la forma en que las personas presentan estas historias fue muy convincente. para él lo hicieron no se lo estaban inventando ya sabes como uh pensando en cosas que decir estaban completamente atrapados en el momento y estaban llorando y llorando y maldiciendo y gritando y parecían estar pasando por eso experiencia de tener un embarazo eliminado o encontrarse con estos seres aterrorizados, así que nuevamente dijo que esto no suena como algo que la gente estaría inventando a medida que avanzan y tenía su entrenamiento psiquiátrico para respaldarlo, él había estudiado todas estas cosas, sí así que sí algo bien por qué, John Mack, creía que estaba en algo sí sí absolutamente porque no tenía ninguna razón para pensar que no era otra que la visión del mundo imperante escuchar, dijo a los llamados escépticos si tiene una explicación que da cuenta de todas estas cosas que acabo de exponer por qué los niños tan pequeños como de dos años y por qué las historias son consistentes y los detalles individuales y el follaje dañado afuera y la corroboración del testigo si puede darme una teoría que cumpla con todos estos requisitos, la compraré but he kept saying there was nothing to to indicate that anything had happened other than what the people said had happened um even though it seems impossible yeah i feel like these days well not even just these d ays it's clearly been happening for a long time but we struggle to take people at their word when it's something that doesn't sound just conventional you know we're all brought up to understand this physical world and you know it looks like reality to us and we take it as as the only reality there is and then we find out about things like you know love and god and you know near-death experiences that seem to challenge our idea of what reality is um so this has been a constant you know motif in uh in culture civilization throughout all of history that people live in one in daily reality and yet they are aware of things that don't fit that reality uh yeah yeah definitely so in terms of some of his cases um ii know this one wasn't an abduction one of the most compelling for me was what happened to aerial school yeah in rua um i don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that one and john's involvement but also if there's one that you think is maybe the most compelling or that john thought was his kind of most compelling example i mean the first one which which predated john mack was um betty and bonnie hill yeah is the most famous abduction case in history happened it happened in 1961 in the white mountains of new hampshire but it didn't come out until more than two years later because betty and bonnie hill kept it secret there were a couple they were driving home and they saw what looked like a plane at first and then a spaceship and then the car stopped and um they saw these uh the craft landed and these beings abducted them captured them and took them into the ship for experiments and the betty's dress was torn and some of this they remembered consciously which is another aspect of this that john mack found interesting that it's not all recoverable through hypnosis hypnosis being controversial itself because we don't understand completely you know how it works and what ideas can be implanted by a hypnotist but so let's say some of these memories at least are conscious memories um which is another reason john mack found them so compelling so it was not all you know recovered during hypnosis anyway but in this case the betty and bonnie hill remembered some things and then they didn't remember other things and they ended up at home and they didn't quite know how they got there and later they had a lot of troubling dreams and went to a psychiatrist a very eminent psychiatrist not john mack who was not involved long before he got involved this psychiatrist named ben simon who was quite distinguished in his own right he put them through hypnotic regressions and conscious interviews and he too concluded that something had happened to them that he could not explain um because in the regressions they remembered you know interactions with the beings and i tell i retell the story in my book there's a book about the abduction itself anyway so that's one case that is the gold standard let's say of abduction cases which to this day have not been explain ed um and then as you mentioned the ariel school is very interesting while john was under investigation at harvard he heard about a apparent landing of a ufo at a school outside harare zimbabwe in southern africa where 60 children were at recess in the schoolyard and they saw bright lights balls of light and a craft landing and two beings two small beings come out and they looked at the kids and the kids looked at them and the children described them later as very short in some kind of uniform uh kid-sized beams with mesmerizing black eyes that seem to send telepathic messages which is another feature of these beings according to other accounts and um 60 children at least saw this and went you know running to the adults who were uh quite surprisingly not present at the time they were all doing other things it was recess um children later drew pictures of this anyway john mack rushed to the school the aerial school interviewed the children it's on tape a lot of the interviews and asked them just to describe their experiences and these kids again who had not been readers of ufo literature and they'd not been steeped in movies they were you know 10 11 12 years old mixed-race children white black you know all all variations very diverse group of well-spoken children told what they had seen and what i just said they saw these beings and they heard their messages in their heads take better care of the planet and the children got the feeling that there was something sad about these beings and they felt almost a lot the children felt some kind of love for these creatures in some way which we've seen in other cases anyway and john mack captured all this on on tape and in interviews and video there's a film gonna come out at some point on this uh it's been mentioned in other articles and books i give a pretty full account in my book um so uh john mack was very good with children particularly because he'd written about childhood psychology he'd spent a lot of time with childre n he'd spent he'd even spent time sort of investigating the development of his three boy his own three boys he really brought his knowledge home he studied their interactions and their rivalries so again uh he was writing about something he knew well and you could see him in the videos literally getting down on the floor with the kids to meet them at eye level and talk to them and he was not leading them in any way you know tell me about the time you saw the alien uh he would say open-ended questions like well what did you see and what did you feel and what did this being say to you or what what message did you feel you were getting um so he was very non-judgmental you could get that sense from the tape um and um it's very convincing and again what made this case first of all it happened in in modern times it happened in 1995 or six i believe um with all the modern technology of videotape and audio tape and all that um and uh it's it's there for anyone to look at you can look at a lot of them are online uh john mack institute you know put them up as i said there's a film coming out the aerial phenomenon by one of the experiences john mack worked with randy nickerson um so that is another fame so we talked about two two famous cases now the betty and bonnie hill case where there's no video or you know audio there's only um records of their you know testimony both conscious and under hypnosis and now the aerial school case there are no videos of aliens that i know of landing the phenomenon is not has not been captured to that extent unlike ufos by the way yeah which there are uh pictures uh good pictures um so that's that's an area that remains to be explored yeah it is it is a really compelling one that aerial school i guess i guess the average person who's skeptical and and wants to look at that story and say nah i think they're probably going to say mass hallucination or mass hysteria right i'm assuming john looked into all that kind of thing and and gave his best conclusion based on what he knew well um yes he did actually and the way the children describe this if you look at the interviews or so they're very sober and they're very analytical the children and very matter-of-fact and you certainly don't get the impression that this is a case of mass hysteria where children are all repeating the same story the children are very thoughtful and um uh they're just they're just repeating what they saw what they heard um and you know what they think they saw and what they think they heard if you want to be very literal about it but um uh i think you come away from that uh if you look at the the videos or so saying well it's very convincing it's very hard to debunk uh anything of course is possible the children could be you know they're not really children they're robots you know instructed to say you can come up with any theory you want but it's got to fit you know the the facts and the fact is that this was a normal school and um and this strange thi ng happened which nobody can can really explain uh so uh it's it's quite compelling yeah definitely were there any other cases that you think john kind of hung his hat on was like well that i spent some time talking about in my book that you know in this field you think you've heard one case that is completely mind-blowing and then you hear about another case and that's even more mind-blowing and that you know is so each case sort of resets the standard and um bud hopkins at a conference by the way john mack attended a number of um very learned scientific congresses that that dealt with this subject one of which was at mit in 1992 and that drew and that's how i begin my book um that conference that mit did not sponsor it just provided a venue but it drew atomic scientists and psychiatrists and theologians and religious scholars and um you know a broad section of experts all grappling with this mystery of what was going on with these people so um and at this conference bud hopkins also attended and he made reference to a case he was investigating uh called the brooklyn bridge abduction of a woman who came to him and claimed that she had been taken by a spaceship with aliens from her 12-story window overlooking the brooklyn bridge in new york and that there were witnesses to the case cars stopped outside on the bridge and this ufo took her in and flew away and then plunged into the east river that was the story from witnesses and which is interesting because now when we get around to talking about uh you know the uap accounts and the investigation some of them mention these um craft uh objects operating uh in the water yeah um which is interesting they said immediate the medium it seems to be a trans-medium phenomenon whatever it is so it operates in the sky in the water anyway this account said that the the the ship that took in this woman and three aliens from a window went into the river the east river um and john mack was really taken with this case that hopkins w as investigating later wrote a book about the problem is that the the story kind of ends in the dead end because the two people who came forward originally to to tell about but hopkins about it could never be found they bud hopkins made contact with them received messages from them received audio messages received written messages but never found them physically to corroborate their story um so it ended in in a real mystery um tantalizing tantalizing because there's so much that was you know strange about that case and yet bud hopkins thought this would be the case that would make his reputation and that would be you know the most famous abduction case of all history and of course in the end um uh you couldn't it couldn't settle it like so many of the other cases you can't settle these things there's always some missing piece and um the proof that you know skeptics keep asking for show me an ashtray from a ufo you know show me a video of an abduction uh it doesn't happen i mean people set up cameras in their bedrooms to try to capture this it doesn't happen um you know the whole story was skin walker ranch where all these strange things were going on in utah the most important things that were observed by witnesses there did not make it to to videotape the camera so um you know you could say well it shows it's uh it didn't happen but i think it's more complicated than that yeah i think so um and i think a lot of other people thought the same when like based on john's research and one person that took an interest that i'm very interested in asking you about is the fact that dalai lama when he reached out to john or threw people to john and asked him to come and basically give him a briefing right a few days talking about this subject and his findings i'm i'm very proud of having in my book the believer yeah that um and because the story has never been told before dalai lama being in exile from china living in india uh is is very sensitive to uh political pressure let 's say from the chinese he's he's a uh non-grata china for sure and um and and yet he has a huge following as we know and he's taken as a you know a renowned spiritual leader but this was not a story that he necessarily promoted so what happened is a filmmaker who had done some work with tibetan buddhists got an invitation to recruit a group of um american researcher researchers studying um spiritual matters like alien abduction and bring them to the dalai lama for a week of discussions and he picked john mack among them so um in 1992 mack went off and met with the dalai lama and these other people they all told stories about what they were researching including alien abduction and the dalai lama by the transcripts i was able to get which was supposedly secret but john mack kept a copy showed there was no big revelation to the dalai lama he was very familiar with spiritual things happening and unexplainable things in another dimension and he was intrigued by the research that john mack and others had done in alien abduction but he wasn't really surprised but just his reaction he spoke pretty good english so it's all in english and i tell the story in my book yeah i thought it was just amazing that the fact that he invited him along i mean most people that don't really investigate this kind of you know this topic and look into it look past the veil as it were i don't think many people would assume that this kind of thing would happen that somebody like the dalai lama would invite people researching alien abductions to come and talk about uh the fact that he i mean in retrospect you say well sure he'd be interested i mean he's a spiritual man and he's into different things but uh you know there it is a controversial topic alien abduction and uh there's a ridicule factor that anybody who gets into it has to deal with that in some way or other and i think that's why they kept it kind of quiet uh but i got the transcripts yeah it was an incredible find um so on that you mentioned that yeah the dalai lama is obviously very spiritual and has like that kind of way of looking at it let's have a like go down that road in terms of john john max changing i won't say that he had like a hard view on it and and it changed to another hard view but it was constantly evolving and you know slightly changing i suppose his way of looking at this phenomenon or this this thing that was happening and and i guess at some points he did think maybe it was more on a potentially on a spiritual plane or something like that and maybe not necessarily entirely in our physical reality yeah well when he heard about it from bud hopkins bud hopkins was very attached to the idea that this was a physical phenomenon happening in reality and david jacobs a professor at temple who did some very good work in hypnotic regression of his own experiences he was also a big factor in this field he also felt along with bud that this was something pretty much happening in reality and that these a liens were bent on producing a you know hybrid race and it was pretty evil stuff actually uh very traumatic and um and real really essentially real and john started questioning this uh increasingly and said um it's got to be happening in some other dimension that penetrates our dimension in a real way for the people experiencing it but um it's not necessarily happening in our everyday reality and of course that caused some strains with the experiencers he was dealing with because they thought he was running out on them like you know weaseling out uh the reality because it was very real to them and they kept saying this is real this really happened so he couldn't quite decide in what reality this was happening but what what he brought to it which is interesting and this is what separated him from bud hopkins later and they had a kind of a falling out over it but they reconciled later um was that mack was hearing from his experiencers that they felt transformed by the experience in some way that they felt a kind of a love for the beings that they felt the divine spark of the cosmos and they felt uh they got a message to take better care of the planet uh because the planet was being destroyed by nuclear waste and by nuclear you know weapons and um by pollution and that humans had to take better care of the planet that these were the messages the telepathic messages that experiencers felt that they were getting so there was a transformative element to these experiences that it was not just for me it was traumatic but not only traumatic that they felt you know these terrifying experiments performed on them and procedures and all that their pregnancies removed as they explained it and uh but at the same time it was not totally negative and they they felt that they were being missionaries into a new you know future uh etc and uh that different differentiated mac from uh hopkins and jacobs um and it caused him other problems because people thought he was projecting uh onto the experiences that he wanted he wanted the experience to be transformative and so it was you know uh that he was imposing his own view on on this whole uh strange business um but um but in the end he thought it was not totally physical uh that it was in some other reality and he moved on to other things he started seeing abduction as related to other uh you know paranormal or anomalous areas such as you know crop circles and she investigated in england um um other mysterious phenomena like you know bigfoot um and eventually near-death experiences you got very interested in that yeah and plus along the way he got interested in a lot of story he heard about this mineral moldavite uh which has supposedly has mysterious properties it's identified with the grail in in literature that it uh it has a according to the stories this mineral which comes from the you know the moldow region of uh bohemia and czechoslovakia germany that um this stone can move it turns up in unexpected places so he was very interested in that story explore that he got a piece of those little stones for himself to investigate ii did too by the way i yeah i ordered one and uh uh so far to stay put after reading your book i want to get one as well i think you're gonna have a bump in moldavite sales yeah um so he got interested in these other things uh mac and as i said especially towards the end of his life um survival of consciousness and it looked as if he was ready for the next stage in his existence which is you know working from the other side as he told people um so um you know it wasn't suicide to step in front of that uh rushing car in london but um in some ways he was uh open to you know a new experience you could say so that like like lawrence by the way who was killed in a motorcycle accident um and uh he he also as john mack wrote uh seemed to be ready uh for for death in a way because he had done so much in life that he couldn't duplicate lawrence yeah uh could never recapture that imp ortant part of his life so anyway he was interested in a lot of john was interested in a lot of stuff at the end of his life that was way beyond alien abduction yeah definitely and a lot of other really interesting subjects that need to have more light shone on them i think um just a quick question do you know if he ever looked into like lucid dreaming and that kind of thing did he ever go down that road he looked into a lot of aspects of of dreaming and his connection to these uh episodes because he was always constantly being told that he didn't understand um that these people were going through sleep paralysis for example and uh now there are aspects of sleep paralysis that coincide with the alien abduction experience um because a writer named david hufford wrote a whole book on the terror that comes in the night about the old hag syndrome people including hufford himself experienced the sensation that malignant awful evil beings would climb into their beds at night and try to stran gle them and it was a visceral thing i mean you could smell the evil of these beings and as i say huffer who was a noted scientist social scientist himself experienced this so there were connections between alien abduction and things like you know old head syndrome which seemed to occur during a moment at night when the victim was in a sleep-like state okay and and and sleep paralysis mimics some of the uh accounts of people suffering alien abduction they're paralyzed they can't move their partners beside them in bed are switched off and can't speak can't react can't be roused so um so these were the experience that there was this overlap uh between um you know the old hag syndrome let's say and alien experiences but they didn't only happen but the aliens didn't only happen at night they happened in the daytime people driving their cars walking around so people who explained all as sleep paralysis or a nighttime phenomenon or a nightmare uh could not explain these other occurrences if it's not you don't have nightmares when you're driving your car you know down the road you're suddenly having a nightmare so that didn't explain it so uh and mac who had studied nightmares knew that so uh there was some overlap it is interesting the old heck syndrome did seem to mimic some of the uh abduction accounts but not all of them yeah yeah that's the thing it doesn't answer all the questions yeah the reason i asked about lucid dreaming i had somebody on this podcast a few weeks ago and he we went deep into that and he's an expert lucid dreamer and and on lucid dreaming and he believes there's a lot of connection with you know consciousness and and survival of consciousness and past lives and all these different things around lucid dreams so i just wondered whether it had been something that you know john had looked at as well um he would because he looked at all the possibilities yeah yeah exactly exactly that was immediately what i thought when when i put these two together in my head um but if we can just uh before we wrap up on on john and get back to talking a bit more about the kind of the current state of ufos and things before i leave you um i was just wondering on john if we could go into the survival of survival of consciousness and life after death a little bit more and if you could just talk briefly about his his looking into that and his findings after looking so uh towards the end of his life uh john moved on from uh alien abduction only to other things his uh scope of interest widened he got very interested in crop circles and he went to england as i said to investigate that and he actually laid down in one of them and felt tremendous energy and one of his aides who went with him was very skeptical and thought that she didn't feel it and she thought that it was a sign of machinery around and maybe someone had made these crop circles but um it seems to that while some of the crop circles are man-made as hoaxes or whatever others are not so um uh anyway that that he he he wrote about that he was very taken with that and then he got very interested in the case of a young woman um who uh was very brilliant um who had some para normal gifts of her own ability to to see things remote viewing etc who was studying her name was elizabeth targ who was studying um uh the effects of distant prayer on uh aids patients and she found that age patients who were prayed for did better than those who were not prayed for it was an interesting finding and she got some heavy funding for that and it was quite striking and then unfortunately she developed the same kind of brain cancer that some of the people she was studying had and she died from it and john mack was very close to her and her uh husband she married when she took ill and um and became aware that after she died people were her husband and other people receiving messages from her even after she died and he was planning a book on this um and uh very interesting uh accounts and as i end my book with this these episodes where john mack after he died he was seen or his spirit uh was seen by people and friends of his who recounted um connections to him and things he said um and you know very interesting i put it at the end of the book because i did not want it to interfere with the credibility of the book these are completely unverified you know their anecdotal accounts um but they come from people who knew john mack well and uh you know they they said this is what happened i saw that you know he came back to me like this and that and um one episode i talk about in the book a woman he went to the crop circles with um had a dream where john mack came after he died he came out of a crowd and walked up there and said let's go to a restaurant she said you know you're dead and he said of course and they went to a restaurant they sat on a banquette and he was wearing a short sleeve shirt and she was wearing a sleeveless blouse and their arms touched and she felt tremendous he at coming off his arms and she said john you're burning me and he said that's so you'll know i'm real that's the dream she had um and other people had similar dreams so anyway this was his latest um obsession you could say passion as i say in the book uh survival of consciousness and uh it's interesting like everything else he did yeah a timely passion as well like you say because he died not long after kind of really getting into that one didn't he i suppose yeah and lots of weird little things i mean i definitely wouldn't put it past john mack to have come back and communicated with some of the people he knew from what i know of him after your book writing the book that i was getting downloads of information often during the night could be my brain working overtime uh just wrestling with problems or it could be some you know information from the cosmos yeah put this and put that in i don't know uh you know i'm not saying definitely all i'm saying is i got a lot of good ideas at night uh lying there and suddenly things would pop into my mind like many scientific um advances occur with just an idea popping into the mind of the scientist this is a well-known phenomenon it's not you know methodical in every case where a scientist follows you know a list of clues and then suddenly solves the mystery at the end of the path um suddenly some solution will appear and where that comes from um is rather intriguing yeah definitely i think that's one of the reasons i find john maxwell fascinating is for the man that knew so much he was also so much more aware than most of us are how much we don't know if you see what i'm trying to say that he was um he was very yeah aware of our limitations i guess of of what we can understand at the moment um but but he understood at the same time that that's not the limitations and barriers we see are not necessarily where the real limitations and barriers are um yeah absolutely amazing character and thank you for writing such a great biogra phy about him that allowed me to to kind of get to know him a little bit before we jump in and talk a bit more about yeah ufos and stuff now um and your stuff with the times is there anything else you want to say just about john to kind of wrap it up very charismatic charismatic character tall you know uh imposing cobalt eyes he was magnetic to men and women i mean yeah both in terms of uh supporters and followers uh he was attracted to other women which he often laid to his uh loss of his mother in childhood his mother died of uh appendicitis when he was eight and a half months old so he was searching searching his whole life for a missing uh you know female figure which led him to some romantic adventures during his marriage um but he was not a sneaky kind of guy he just said i feel attracted to other women and he had some women who he worked with who helped him in his research but he was he was in many ways as i say at the end of the book i regard him as a heroic figure because he w as willing to explore controversial areas um risk his career uh he was not intimidated he could have walked away and said this is not going to help me in my you know professional life this is kooky uh but he said why wouldn't everybody be uh consumed by this you know this is a real mystery and it is it is a mystery uh and he didn't solve it i didn't solve it in the book and uh it may never be solved but it's out there yeah no it's amazing and it's a mystery that's linked to ufos not it's kind of on the same spectrum but it's at the same time they're different partly because it's so much of a leap for your average person to go from okay so ufos and things are real okay but to being you abductions is a whole other kettle of fish but um but yeah it's uh it's a massive leap but it's still in the same sort of topic so let's go on more on to that and ii guess if you want to knit back to maybe your first published ufo related articles i think you did so you definitely did some before the the big one that everybody talks about and it's probably going to go down in history is like you know a culture changing moment maybe in in the media um but anyway yeah start wherever you want to start and tell me a little bit about what went into it big piece i wrote i mean i've been working on the john mack book at that time for uh quite a number of years but in 2017 a colleague of mine leslie kane and i was off the times by that i was a freelancer but she came to me with a story of a meeting in washington dc around a secret pentagon unit called the advanced aerospace threat identification program that was tracking ufos and it was the first indication that the government uh didn't give up the search for ufos with with blue book and at the end of 69 1969 that they were still involved so we presented that story to the new york times and got a very good story out of it the head of the program louis elisando had just resigned because he wasn't getting enough government support but that there was this uh secret um unit in the in the government the pentagon investigating ufos and there'd been a lot of uh incidents to investigate there'd been a series of incidents off the california coast with the aircraft carrier nimitz um in 2004 and turned out that there were other encounters similar of the ufos and maybe jets off the east coast in 2014 and 2015 with the theodore roosevelt so these were a matter of interest to the government and nobody knew that and it wasn't public so we broke that story in the times and then we interviewed a number of pilots who told him these encounters and things they saw um and uh it it made this put the story you know squarely in the front of the news uh because he was a mainstream publication reporting this was all on the record we had no unnamed sources and no you know anonymous uh tipsters or so it was all names and um important people with their affiliations harry reid former senate majority leader and uh so we told that story and it's had a lot of effect yeah yeah absolutely and there's been subsequent articles that have come out since right that you've that you've worked on again with the same colleagues yes we followed that up with a number of other pieces uh uh the last one reporting on briefings to congressional committees about possible possible recoveries of materials from ufos it's not a lot of that information is classified we could not get much it's very closely held we don't know very much about it but it's at least congressional committees we're told that research is going on into some of these materials for possible purposes of reverse engineering to see if we can duplicate the amazing aerodynamics of these objects uh again you know nobody knows what they are nobody knows nobody is saying that they are extraterrestrial that they come from other planets that they contain aliens because that's way beyond the information available so in the times um we've been very careful to limit the discussion to the fact that th ese are unidentified objects just what the word says or unidentified aerial phenomena as the new term says the breakthrough the important thing is that we now know seem to know that they're physical and that they exist they're not spiritual they're not imaginations imaginary they're not um you know archetypes spiritual things they're actual physical things but we don't know anything beyond that yeah beyond the fact that they just seem to be way beyond our capabilities i guess from that you know the question always comes up well could this be chinese or russian technology or even our own technology and the answer we get from our sources is no uh the chinese and russians don't have anything uh as far as we know that is this far advanced that can appear here and reach hypersonic speeds and operate underwater as well as in the skies so yeah and we wouldn't be risking our own technology in our own airspace so uh that seems to point to an extraterrestrial hypothesis but no one is saying that no exactly not quite yet i mean even if it was all terrestrial and all man-made somehow it would still be absolutely you know life-altering in the sense that this technology is so far ahead of what we've seen at least from what i can tell and from what much cleverer people than me say well certainly if yeah if another country on earth or we the us has this technology that would as you say be mind-blowing uh because we're doing things that nobody thought we could do in that case but uh it does seem very hard to imagine that a secret like that would have been kept until now and that given all the you know the close encounters with navy craft that we would allow another uh earthly adversary to do that to us or that we would be doing it to ourselves it's pretty hard to imagine yeah yeah absolutely um i mean it's easy to see some similarities between yourself and john in the sense that you've both had these amazing careers where you've traveled everywhere you've been involved in some amazi ng things and you're in also in a subject that is not so widely and easily accepted or it's becoming more so now but i'm sure when you first kind of started dipping your toes into these waters it was not quite so open but anyway yeah i'd love to know a little bit about how the attitudes have changed from from your point of view a at the new york times but if you don't want to go too into that specifically also just in the kind of mainstream it's that word mainstream oh there's a lot of the mainstream media yeah i mean a lot more information out than when we started uh it has become a you know acceptable area of i'm not saying we did that single-handedly but i think we moved the needle uh definitely and i think that uh it's taken some of the ridicule factor off uh used to be you know career ending if a navy pilot or you know sailor said they saw these things it was a meant a quick trip to the psychiatrist now personnel are being encouraged to come forward with these stories so that's a big breakthrough so i think that has shifted i you know i don't think we did it single-handedly but i think we had a major part uh to play in that and i'm proud of that um um so you know we're waiting for more developments we're watching we're talking to our sources all the time to see where it goes it's not clear uh this report is as as we record this interview the report in uap report is supposed to come out in june i think yeah which answer will be delayed because uh there's so much to do and it may not be ready in time for six or six month deadline after the passage of the defense authorization act last december so it may not come out right in june it may be delayed it might parts of it may be classified uh only parts of it will be public a lot of questions about it but uh so i'm not making any assumptions that there'll be a big disclosure you know coming uh within a matter of weeks from from this interview now but uh we'll see do you have any expectations or things like that that you can that you feel comfortable to say now i'm sure you've got your own private expectation but anything that you would feel comfortable to share i feel comfortable speculating i don't think you know we're talking to people all the time for what might be in the report uh people are very hungry for for details want to know how much does the government really know obviously not everything has been put out the the three navy videos that we put out in our reporting have been extremely popular they show up every time you know anybody reports on the phenomenon um and then many more videos we know that there's longer parts of the videos that we did show that have not been released a lot of it yeah is is held back some of it is classified sometimes that was still not public so one of the most amazing ones recently i think that i saw was that object or it seems like a you know i don't know if it's a craft or whatever but this thing you see goes is flying along above the water it goes into the water comes back out splits into two i think and then i can't even remember whether it just zips off or goes back under but there are videos that have been taken some have been authenticated by the government not all of them uh but then nobody knows what they are yeah do we i mean i expect that that water is going to feature in this report because there's been a lot of like uh at least rumor and a lot of smoke around that concept that like we said earlier so uh yeah one of the pilots we interviewed saw a disturbance in the water so clearly there's something to do with you know underwater capabilities but uh more than that we don't know yeah yeah that's there's a lot going on that needs to be figured out um anyway let me ask you one last thing because i am conscious of the time um so one thing i like to ask all my guests is just if you could pass on a message to anybody that's listening and or watching um what would you say listen keep an open mind um i mean uh you know charles fort th e great anomalist uh great hero of mine said except only temporarily uh that was his uh his phrase so um he also said he compared this field to uh looking for a needle no one ever lost in a haystack that never was so uh uh you know keep your skepticism keep your healthy you know disbelief but be open be open to what people are bringing forth uh and you know being a skeptic doesn't mean closing your eyes and ears to everything that doesn't seem possible of course it's not possible everybody agrees it doesn't seem possible and yet um these accounts uh are hard to uh explain away so just keep an open mind and see what comes that's all perfect love it thanks so much ralph i really appreciate this and again thanks for for writing about john mack and and bringing him to everyone's attention real pleasure thank you all the best thanks ralph thank you thanks for listening to my conversation with ralph blumenthal i hope you enjoyed it as much as i did please give us and rao for follow on social media if you'd like to know more about the wonderful john mack please follow the links in the description and get the book i really recommend it thank you ralph for giving me your time and for introducing me to the amazing john mag be nice be happy be cool