7. X-Files vs Disclosure Day

In 1993, a TV show started filming in Vancouver. It ran for nine seasons, had 20 million viewers at its peak, and shaped how an entire generation thinks about government secrecy and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The X-Files was made in BC. And thirty years later, Steven Spielberg's UFO film Disclosure Day opened number one at the box office, the White House is releasing classified UAP files, and former intelligence officers are testifying before Congress under oath.

How did we get from "the truth is out there" to the truth actually being released?

This episode traces the cultural shift — from UFOs as entertainment to UFOs as news — and looks at three specific moments that changed everything. It also covers something the CIA just admitted in the most recent document release: that in the 1950s, the government ran a deliberate policy of debunking UFO sightings to protect secret military programs. The stigma that kept people quiet for seventy years wasn't an accident. It was engineered.

Plus: what Age of Disclosure — the documentary with 34 government insiders on camera, currently on Amazon Prime — gets right about why the secrecy started. And the Spielberg question: why did the most culturally powerful UFO filmmaker in history return to this subject at this exact moment, and why did he call it Disclosure Day?

Canada made the fiction. Canada is absent from the reality. That tension is what this episode is about.

Transcript

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In 1993, a TV show started filming in Vancouver. It was about two FBI agents investigating unexplained phenomenon. It was government cover-ups, alien conspiracies, things the official story could not explain. And you probably know what show I'm talking about. The X-Files. And here's the thing about X-Files. I've been thinking about it a lot recently. It ran for nine seasons. It had 20 million viewers at its peak. It shaped how an entire generation thinks about government secrecy and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. And it was made here in beautiful BC on Canadian soil. 30 years later, Steven Spielberg's UFO movie Disclosure Day opened number one at the box office. If you haven't seen it, go see it. I loved it. I actually cried at the end. The US government is releasing classified UAP files from the White House. Former intelligence officers are testifying before Congress under oath. And I keep thinking, we went from the X-Files to actual disclosure in 30 years. How did we get here? Hi, I'm Peter from BC. This is the Canadian UFO podcast. We are seven episodes in, and I want to take a step back today. Um, we've covered cases, we've covered whistleblowers, we've covered orbs and plasmoids and retrieval programs. Today I want to zoom out and talk about something a little different, which is the culture and how UFOs went from something you joked about to something senators talk about in the Russell Senate office building. So, how did we go from little green men to non-human biologics? And what does it mean that the culture shift started at least partly right here in BC, where they filmed the X-Files? So, something that the CIA just admitted in the most recent batch of declassified documents, um, the government confirmed that in the 1950s, the CIA panel recommended an official policy of actively debunking UFO sightings, not investigating them, but debunking them, specifically to prevent public panic and protect secret military programs. And obviously it worked because a separate document confirms that more than half of all UFO reports in the late 50s and 60s were actually secret U-2 spy plane crafts. And that Project Blue Book gave the public false expectations and explanations to cover it up. So the cultural narrative that UFOs are for crazy people, that seeing something in the sky and reporting it makes you a crackpot, that narrative was partly manufactured by the CAA on CIA on purpose, which makes the cultural shift we're living through right now even more significant because it means the stigma that kept people quiet for 70 years was engineered and it's finally break down. I've noticed this in my personal life with friends who are hardcore skeptics and even content creators who have been cont um hardcore skeptics. It's getting harder, if not impossible, to completely write off claims. We know for sure that the phenomenon is real, that there are things in the skies and the oceans that we can't explain. That doesn't mean that it's aliens, but the mere fact that we can collectively generally agree on the fact that it's happening and it's real is a very, very big and important leap from where we were a couple decades ago, even 10 years ago, when any mention of UFO could mean career suicide or just being socially outcast. Let's talk about the X-Files. I love this show. Um, and I think it's impossible to understand the current moment without understanding what that show did for an entire generation. Shout out to my millennials out there and Gen X. I grew up with the X-Files, I'm a Scorpio, I've already mentioned this. Um, I've always been open to believing in things like aliens and ghosts and psychics, but beyond my personal formation, the X-Files did something culturally significant. It made the idea of a government cover-up for UFOs feel plausible and mainstream and safe to think about. I don't know if this was the initial pop culture moment when we really embraced the cover-up. I know in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters, there was the government secrecy as well. And I think as soon as Roswell happened, the rumors of cover-ups happened. But correct me if I'm wrong, I think X-Files was the first show to really dive in, dive into it and wrap its arms around it. So obviously, the show isn't a reality show. It was a TV show, it was written and produced, but it asked the question seriously. It's not a comedy show, it was a drama, and I think that's why people liked it so much. So the question they were asking is what if the government does know something and they're not telling us? What if the truth is out there? That question planted a seed in 20 million people a week for nine seasons, and it was all filmed here where I live in beautiful BC. So if you watched the show, Vancouver stood in for everywhere. The forest of BC became the forest where alien encounters happened, the rainy streets of Vancouver became the streets where Mulder and Scully chased the truth. There's something poetic about the fact that the show that shaped how a generation thinks about UFO cover-ups was made in the country that is currently the most silent during the age of actual disclosure. Canada made the fiction, Canada is absent from the reality, honey. And I find that both funny and kind of irritating. So when did culture actually shift? I would argue there were three moments, at least from a mainstream point of view. The first, 2017, that was the Tic Tac video. The New York Times published it, the Pentagon confirmed it was real, the stigma starts cracking. So big moment, people. UFO video released to the New York Times. The Pentagon was like, yeah, we don't know what that is. That I mean, I talked about this a few episodes ago. It's a big deal, but it seemed to kind of go over people's heads or they didn't really care. We talked about it in episode two, but I want to add here that the response wasn't just hmm, interesting. It was the beginning of a permission structure. So if the New York Times is taking this seriously, if the Pentagon is confirming these videos, then maybe it's okay to say out loud that you've seen something that you can't explain. And that permission structure is what changed everything, in my opinion. The second moment um was in 2023. So very, very recently, David Grush testifies before Congress under oath that there are recovery programs and non-human biologics. So David Grush, I love him, he's an icon. One thing I should moment um mention that is a maybe not a current critique, but something that the um skeptics, I guess, are pointing out is that David Grush has never seen anything firsthand. Everything that he is, um, all the information he shared so far is given to him by other people. So again, one of the main problems we have with this whole disclosure project or process is that there's one, a lack of physical evidence, um, unless you count the videos, which I think you should. Eyewitness testimony is important, but I think what we're really missing is that physical evidence. So I do find David Grush credible, and I think a lot of people do, but we need more people who saw it with their own eyes. So David Grush doing that, it's not a TV show, it's not a tabloid. That's the US government listening to sworn witnesses describing that two years earlier, describing things that two years earlier would have gotten them laughed at or fired. The third moment, it's happening right now. The Trump administration is releasing files, a billion visits to the Pursue portal. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. Spielberg also making a UFO movie that opens number one at the box office. Senators are at disclosure forum. So we really went from the truth is out there to the truth is literally being released by the White House in 30 years. That's pretty fast. I'm so excited. Just reading that back again in my script here, it makes me feel really excited. If you haven't watched Age of Disclosure yet, it's on Amazon Prime. I think you need to. Uh, if you're a UFO buff like me, you probably have already seen it. I think I've watched it three times. Um, first time I watched it, I've made a really big deal about it. I got all my friends together. My friend has a um home theater. Well, it's actually just a big projector screen in a projector screen in his studio space. So it feels really cool to watch movies there. I made a big deal about it. I brought them in to watch it, and they really felt like eh, like they they just weren't moved by it. They were not impressed by two hours of, you know, guys from the government talking about things that they've seen or things that they know without actually showing any evidence. Um, that was really disappointing to me because I was so excited. The hype was so big, and I think it does a good job of getting people up to date with where we're at in the disclosure conversation. But the glaringly obvious gap is that it doesn't prove anything. So if you are curious about UFOs and that's why you're listening to the um this show, you should 100% watch it because it will get you up to date and it paints a very clear, concise picture of where we're at in the mainstream conversation of disclosure. But don't go into it and expect to see an alien on camera because that's not what it is. It is 34 government insiders talking on camera. They're not anonymous, they have their names detached, um, talking about what they saw, what they know, what they believe is being hidden. Joe Rogan called it one of the best UFO documentaries ever made. And like I said, the critics mostly hated it because of the lack of proof, I guess. But the audience, like me, loved it. So please check it out. Um, I think the split is interesting, um, and that the way people are thinking about it and how it's split between loving it and hating it is telling because the critics applied the old framework of extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is all speculation, where's the proof? And the audience applied a new framework. So we've had congressional testimony under oath, we've had Pentagon confirmations, we've had classified files released. At what point does the burden of proof shift? The film's central argument, and this connects directly to what we've covered in episode four, is that the secrecy started during the Cold War for a specific reason. Not to hide aliens from the public, but to win a technology race against the Soviets. The people making decisions in 1947 weren't thinking about transparency. They were thinking about making sure America got there first. And that decision, made in a completely different world, has shaped what we know and what we don't know for the past 70 years. All right, Mr. Steven Spielberg, the UFO community loves him. There's a lot of um rumors and lore that he uh is a, I guess, unofficial insider and knows more than the average person, but he did just release Disclosure Day. It opened number one. I was so excited to see that. It's his first UFO film in nearly 50 years, and I want to revisit something I mentioned briefly in episode one because I think it's important. There are people in the UFO community who believe Steven Spielberg knows more than he lets on, like I just said. Close Encounters of the Third Kind released in 1977 describe the phenomenon in ways that serious researchers find uncomfortably accurate. The lights, the behavior, the way the craft move, and now, at the exact moment the US government is releasing classified UAP files, Steven Spielberg releases a film called Disclosure Day. You can't write this, people. Like what honestly are the literal chances? I'll have to ask Claude that after I record. I'm not saying he's an insider because I don't know, but I find it interesting that most, the most culturally powerful UFO filmmaker in history has returned to this subject at this specific moment, and that his film is called Disclosure Day, like it's literally so black and white. It's not encounter, it's not first contact, it's disclosure day. Like he knows something about the timing. That's how it seems. Here's where I land on all of this. The culture has obviously shifted, the permission structure changed, the stigma is breaking down, and sweet Canada, the country that made the X Files, the country with nearly 10,000 digitized government UFO documents, the country that has officially filed Shag Harbor as a UFO in 1967 and never retracted it is still not officially in this conversation. No parliamentary hearings, no Canadian grush, no government statement since Dave Grush testified or since Pursue files started dropping. Two Manitoba conservative MPs have quietly made contact with Washington disclosure advocates, which is fantastic. Canada's own chief scientist recommended a UAP office in 2025, but nothing has happened. So the X-Files asked, What if the government knows something it's not telling us? In Canada's case, I think the answer might just be yes. And in three weeks, the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies is holding its annual conference in Toronto. Scientists, former officials, serious researchers are all going to be here. The conversation is coming here. Whether the government wants to or not, I am going to be attending, so you will have to stay tuned on my recap. We started this season with the question why is Canada so quiet while the rest of the world is talking? And I think today's episode gets a part of the answer. The stigma was engineered. The CIA built it deliberately to protect secret military programs. And while the rest of the world is slowly dismantling that stigma through congressional testimony, document releasing, movies, documentaries, um, all of that, Canada is still operating inside an old framework. We're a smaller country, we work slower, we have different resources, so there could be explanations. But the one you don't want to talk about, the one that's serious, the one the CAA built 70 years ago, and that we somehow never quite left, that framework might still be um ruminating in the halls of Ottawa. So we're not gonna stop pushing, we're not gonna stop looking into it. So next week we are going to Montreal to revisit a story that I recently heard on a podcast called Area 52. If you haven't heard that show, please check it out. They have some of the best content ever. And when I heard this story, a UFO story, a UFO slash abduction slash encounter with like 10 to 12 people. It's absolutely insane. I'm gonna dive into it next week, so stay with me to check it out. That is episode seven. I'm Peter from BC. Thank you for tuning in. You can find me at the Canadian UFO podcast on Instagram or email me at the Canadian UFO podcast at gmail.com. There is a lot of country up here and even more sky. I will see you next week.