U.S. Phenomenon with Mario Magaña
Welcome to "U.S. Phenomenon" with Mario Magaña, a riveting podcast that dives deep into the unexplained and the extraordinary. Join Mario, the host as he explores the most intriguing paranormal events, alien encounters, and mysterious sightings across the United States. With his unique blend of real-life experience and passion for the unexplained, Mario brings you thrilling stories and expert insights in every episode. Whether it's alien abductions, ghostly apparitions, or cryptozoological creatures, Mario's engaging storytelling will captivate and keep you on the edge of your seat. Tune in to "U.S. Phenomenon" and embark on a journey into the unknown that will have you questioning everything you thought you knew.
U.S. Phenomenon with Mario Magaña
Exploring the Dimensions Beyond: UFOs, Government Disinformation, and Ancient Mysteries with Keith Thompson
What if our understanding of UFOs is far from complete, and these phenomena are linked to dimensions beyond our own? Join me, Mario Magana, as I sit down with seasoned journalist and UFO observer, Keith Thompson, to explore this tantalizing possibility. From his unexpected journey into UFO research at age 12 to his investigations into government disinformation, Keith shares compelling insights that challenge the conventional narratives surrounding UFOs. We'll discuss the societal pressures that lead many to dismiss these extraordinary experiences and the importance of maintaining curiosity in spite of widespread skepticism.
Our conversation takes us through the historical and enigmatic encounters that have shaped the modern mythology of UFOs, beginning with Kenneth Arnold's famous sighting in 1947. We'll challenge the Hollywood portrayal of UFOs as purely extraterrestrial, proposing a more nuanced understanding that includes spiritual and multidimensional interpretations. Keith provides fascinating anecdotes about encounters with "men in black," the mystery of UFO recoveries, and how official narratives might conceal deeper truths about advanced technologies.
Finally, we'll touch on the mysterious world of UFO abductions and the ancient mysteries that continue to baffle researchers. From Dr. John Mack's controversial work on abductions to the construction of ancient pyramids, Keith and I delve into these complex topics with an open mind. By questioning authority and advocating for a more inquisitive approach, we'll encourage listeners to remain receptive to the unexplained phenomena that surround us. Join us as we challenge established beliefs and explore the fascinating possibilities that lie beyond our current understanding.
Keith Thompson website
Book: The UFO Paradox The Celestial and Symbolic World of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
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Welcome to US Phenomenon, where possibilities are endless. Put down those same old headlines. It's time to expand your mind and question what if? From paranormal activity to UFOs, bigfoot sightings and unsolved mysteries, this is US Phenomenon?
Speaker 2:From the Pacific Northwest in the shadow of the 1962 world's fair, the space needle. This is us phenomenon. I'm your host, mario magana, where we explore the extraordinary and the unexplained. In this episode we will discover and we will cover everything all UFO, all UAPs. Our guest tonight is no stranger to this. He's an author and independent journalist, a radio talk show host, a former talk show host, a former Senate staff member. His articles have appeared in many different places, including the New York Times, the Esquire, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Idaho Statesman and the Pacific Sun. A UFO observer, a reporter, keith Thompson, has spent decades researching and investigating UFO encounters and other unknown aerial phenomena, leading us to this book, the UFO Paradox, and let me put this up here real quick. I want to get this in here so we can get this the UFO Paradox the celestial and symbolic world of unidentified aerial phenomenons. It is my pleasure to introduce and welcome to US Phenomenon Keith Thompson. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, mario. It's great to be here, looking forward to our conversation you know it's interesting when we discuss these things.
Speaker 2:Um, I know there's a lot of skeptics out there. Right, there's a lot of people who don't really understand this. And how far back does this go for you? Like the passion and you doing the research? This go for you, like the passion and you doing the research prior to you know, doing your normal daily job.
Speaker 3:Well, that's a great question, a good place to start. I've been following this for quite a long time, rather unexpectedly. I started out when I was 12 years old, in the sixth grade. I did not see a UFO, but it was my turn to give a current events report in our classroom, that is to say, follow a news story. Each of us had that assignment and when it was our turn we'd come and stand in front of the class Maybe we would have news clippings or other props, depending on what the story was about and then tell the class a story almost like a reporter.
Speaker 3:So at that time, living in Northwest Ohio, there was a fairly legendary now that we can look back on it UFO sighting in Hillsdale, michigan and it was on the national news for like three or four days in a row because it was a continuous sighting. It was called, as the phrase is often used, it was a UFO flap, a period in which UFOs are seen lights in the sky, apparent objects, interactions, the whole nine yards. So I told the story about how this this was reported and it came to be my turn, or, at the end of the report, it was my time to take questions from class members and one of them, I can still remember very well, said to take questions from class members and one of them, I can still remember very well, said what do you think they saw? And I said I don't know. But I said I pointed out that there had been a report that it might have been only swamp gas, because swamp gas is a phenomenon that occurs around swamps and bogs, where outgassing can become luminous, catch on fire and so there are often lights in a swamp. Well, that did not explain the story very well. So I said to my classmate. I said I don't know what they saw, but it sure didn't sound like swamp gas. Covered the whole story.
Speaker 3:At that point my teacher came up in front of the class with me. Her name was Mrs Lowry. She said something that I can still remember as if she said it today. She said to the class I think what Keith is telling us here is that it's important to keep an open mind and ask relevant questions. And then she turned to me and spoke to me in the way that teachers often do to students. She called me by my full name.
Speaker 3:She said Mr Thompson, that was a great report you have the makings of a reporter or maybe a scientist, possibly even a detective. And then she said with enthusiasm follow the evidence wherever it leads, on any topic. I couldn't have had a better assignment from a news director. If I were a journalist, I went on to become a journalist, it happened. So I chose the reporter designation rather than scientist or detective, although, as you can imagine, all three have something in common Sure, detective, try to find out who did it. And a smart detective doesn't say, well, I'm going to exclude him because he's a friend of mine. No, sometimes your friend is the culprit.
Speaker 3:And a scientist doesn't rule out of bounds or off the table certain phenomena simply because it doesn't make sense. It tries to incorporate the phenomenon or to decide what it is. And likewise with the journalist, you're really supposed to sort of put everything in the story and let the readers decide for themselves. That's a pretty high standard. These days that doesn't get followed that much. So that's how I got interested.
Speaker 3:I can't say I became a UFO investigator that day, or a full-time researcher, but it was in my mind. From that point on I knew that there was a basic pattern, Basic pattern in UFO sightings. Mario is something like this. Ordinary, credible people report extraordinary, incredible sightings as they do, they are almost instantly responded to by official agents of culture, whether it's science, media, academia, and instead of showing curiosity about what people are reporting, even though it doesn't fit our existing frameworks, the response very typically is well, that couldn't have happened, that wasn't seen. It was probably a misidentification of some celestial object like the moon, or this is maybe a hoax. So I've learned by getting to know UFO witnesses the pressures they face to keep their stories to themselves, because they can become a laughingstock.
Speaker 2:It's interesting when you say that too, because I was just going to ask you. It's like maybe more now since the pandemic. This seems to be more of a foresight. I know that there is a I think there's a hearing coming out this week. For those that are listening to the podcast, or if you're listening to us on the terrestrial radio, that has already happened, but if you're listening to the podcast, I believe this week right, there is a huge hearing that is coming out about UFOs, uaps, which I know that they have the designation for unidentified flying objects versus unidentified UAP as the designation. Are they still both? Are we still now? Is it moved to UAP moving forward?
Speaker 3:That's part of the quandary of all of this, mario. Good question Is there a difference? The main difference is the UAP unidentified aerial phenomena was considered at this point a little less charged with symbolic meanings. Maybe people would not necessarily assume it meant little green man, you know, for aliens, but it was considered more neutral. But it was created by the Pentagon because in 2017, the New York Times outed the Pentagon, which had been saying for really decades that there's nothing to this phenomenon, there's nothing in the sky that's not conventional, that doesn't belong there. So go home, people, return to your lives. We're the Air Force. We know what's going on in the sky. But it turns out no, a task force existed in the Pentagon secret no longer secret thanks to the New York Times it had been studying the phenomena. So, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 3:Now, this week, november 11, for those who are hearing this afterwards, a hearing will be held. I'll speak of it in the future, because it hasn't happened yet. It'll be a House, congressional. The congressional side, the House side of Congress, I should say is having a joint meeting of two committees. Four witnesses are going to testify. The question is how much empirical evidence is really going to come out of this what often happens in previous hearings, for example, a year ago, a witness will say I have concluded that it might, that, yes, we have, based on the evidence I've heard and the sources I've spoken to, yes, the US is in possession of spacecraft, non-human spacecraft and non-human biological material.
Speaker 3:Can you tell us where this is being held? No, not in public session. Well, can you tell us what exactly? No, not in public session. Have you seen it yourself? No, not in public session. Well, can you tell us what exactly? No, not in public session. Have you seen it yourself? No, but I've talked to very credible people. You're kind of seeing where I'm leading. I'm not questioning their integrity or their sincerity. If you're under a secrecy oath, you better obey it. You better abide by it. So when they say I can't tell you in public session, they can't tell you in public session, but it by it sure. When they say I can't tell you in public session, they can't tell you in public session, but it leaves a big gap between the claim and the proof of the claim or the outing.
Speaker 2:So whether that's going to be the same after this hearing is is yet to be determined, and I know that your book, uh, keith thompson, the author of the uf, the ufo paradox and the celestial and symbolic world of uaps, um, I didn't have a full chance to listen to it. I was cramming as much as I possibly can. I, tongue in cheek, have talked about this on this show a ton that the pacific northwest is the home of ufos, uaps, the first sightings, because of the kenneth arnold thing you know, everyone talks about how, oh, you know, roswell, roswell. I'm like no, it happened here first and maybe there are other encounters that have happened. But but I kind of want to puff my chest and say hey, the pacific northwest is home to the most paranormal ufo sightings, obviously with Kenneth Arnold going way back in the day.
Speaker 3:Exactly. I'm also a student of mythology. I love the Greek myths and other mythologies of cultures as a way to learn about the psyche of other people. And in mythology, a creation myth is the myth that a people, especially an indigenous people, will tell about themselves, or, for that matter, modern people who hold the Bible dear, the Old Testament. There's a creation story in there, called Genesis, that tells the story of how things came to be. The reason I mention creation stories is that you're right.
Speaker 3:The UFO phenomenon's creation story took place with Kenneth Arnold sighting in June of 1947. While he was flying over the beautiful Mount Rainier, one of the greatest mountains in North America, he saw nine objects flying in formation at fantastic speed, great altitude. He was able to clock all of that because he was a very skilled pilot private pilot, but had professional standing, or I should say skill level. He reported that they flew as if saucers were skipping over water. He referred to the motion of the way they moved, not specifically to the shape, but, of course, the way that was mangled by the news media at the time. It was reported that he saw objects shaped like saucers. In any case, the most interesting thing, mario, happened many decades later, after Kenneth Arnold had passed away and, by the way, after he'd spent many years being associated with the flying saucers. It didn't do his career and his social standing much good to be associated with something that was considered kooky by many. On the other hand, he got hundreds and thousands of letters from people who said I saw this stuff too, so I need you to verify it for me. Well, he wasn't in the business of doing that. Either he was the wrong man in the wrong place, you might say, or maybe the right man in the right place. But here's the interesting thing After he died, his daughter, kim Arnold, came forward in the.
Speaker 3:I believe it was around the 1990s, maybe the late 80s. She appeared on a national radio show and she told the host she goes, I'm coming forward. My father asked me to do this. Eventually, I'm coming forward to tell the rest of the story that he didn't tell. My father was always astonished at the idea that he had reported nuts and bolts, technological craft. That's never what he said.
Speaker 3:What he told us, his family members, was that these objects moved, that they seemed to be breathing, they seemed to be pulsating and they had various densities. They were blue-white light and they had various densities, from opaque to translucent, changing their shape and form and, according to Ken Arnold to his daughter, beating almost to the rhythm of the human heart. He also said to her, kim, it was like I didn't think it was from another place, other galaxies. I thought it was from another dimension. That's always right here. It felt to me, kim, like these objects were somehow related to what we call death, where we go when we leave this world. Now, regardless of the factual whether that's a good interpretation on his part, that was his deep intuitive sense. Not that it was like spacecraft or high tech, but it was like almost a living organism that was changing its shape and form, human heart and seemed related to death. So it's more as if this was a religious experience rather than an extraterrestrial experience. If it had been reported in the terms which he kept to himself, by the way, the details he just provided, he was not interested in going public with that. It was bad enough to be associated with something goofy like flying saucers. Okay, there's one additional detail that really just messes things up, but I mean that in a good sense, because it makes us open up to the full range of data.
Speaker 3:When he returned to Boise, idaho, that night, which is where he and his family lived. He was at Mount Rainier. He flew back home from his day's work, landed at the airport, got in the car, drove to his neighborhood. When he came into his house and got settled, suddenly there appeared in the house orbs of light, o-r-b-s. Round balls of light blue, red, yellow, suggestive of paranormal phenomena. Some phenomenon that had never appeared in their home before and certainly made no sense outside of a spiritual or paranormal display was suddenly appearing in the house. And again, he didn't report that either. So whatever he encountered you may say geographically, mount Rainier that day, it connected him to a larger field of reality such that it followed him home.
Speaker 3:It went home with him. It hitchhiked, if you will. So that's a part that has never been told about the opening story of the contemporary flying saucer phenomenon, and I write about this in the book. So what that requires is that we open our minds to the idea that, to whatever degree, the creation myth of UFOs is very different from what we've thought. Then this whole phenomenon, to the degree that we assume it must be extraterrestrial in the Steven Spielberg close encounters of the third kind sense, tells us more about what Hollywood and how Hollywood likes to portray this and how that may be different from what the actual phenomenon is in many cases there's so much when you talk about uh kenneth arnold's time, uh, back in the 40s, late 40s, uh, I mean I'm sure that was a strictly, I mean they got to be the biggest taboo thing.
Speaker 2:And then you go back and you think about this piece to the, the incident that happened at uh, maury island, the maury island incident that was. I mean, some people think it was a hoax and maybe maybe wasn't. Um, you know how these men in black started to show up uh to to investigate. Was this because there was all these sightings that were starting to happen that were kenneth's sightings, this incident, roswell, these things started to add up. The government had to probably spin something up uh to move forward, to say what is going on out here yeah, there is a.
Speaker 3:It really begins the whole question of whether we can trust what our government has told us, and I think, by and large, we cannot trust it. There has been deliberate disinformation. Now, however, just to say it has been deliberate disinformation. Now, however, just to say it, there's been disinformation. You know, disinformation almost invariably depends for its success on there being kernels of truth in a larger fabric of mistruth. If a cover story for a phenomenon had no details that were accurate, it wouldn't be believable. So a good disinformation approach is to take certain details that were accurate. It wouldn't be believable. So a good disinformation approach is to take certain details that happen but place it in a larger category of facts in order to keep it from connecting, keep people from perceiving.
Speaker 3:So why has the government taken this stand of essentially poo-pooing this phenomenon, disregarding it? Well, there are two clear hypotheses. One is they know what it is and they don't want us to know because they're afraid we'd be freaked out. That's basically it, society. The other is maybe they don't know. And in which other area of government competence is it considered a good idea for government officials to say things like come out and hold a news conference, especially if you're a military official with a chest of ribbons, right or metal, right you're the top guy from the department of defense, or joint chiefs of staff. You're not going to give a news conference that says, yes, there is something flying in our airspace with impunity, at enormous velocity, conducting right-angle turns, disappearing on the spot, reappearing someplace else. We don't know what it is, but we'll keep you posted.
Speaker 2:No, that's not going to be told.
Speaker 3:So I think that there's a large hypothesis, a large reason to I personally give a lot of credit to the idea that this phenomenon, whatever it is, is so far beyond our kin that they don't know what it is either, except that it has enormous advantages in terms of speed and technological prowess and the ability to conduct maneuvers. So it could be extraterrestrial, but if so they may. Apparently we're under observation. It could be extra dimensional, like the twilight zone. It could be from other dimensions, beyond time and space. I think what this phenomenon is telling us, at minimum, is we don't understand time and space very well Even without the UFO phenomenon. There are really vital debates going on right now around quantum physics about time and space, and our preliminary thinking has evolved a lot since Einstein.
Speaker 2:To put it simply, so we're very far from understanding this, to put it simply, of what technology has become since the 1900s, from you know the, the buggy wagons, and you know the automobile engines, and now you know, moving into the, the stealth mode of, you know the b2 bombers and things of that nature. Do, excuse me, do we think that maybe there may have been an inkling of re, like reverse engineering, into some, maybe some of this UAP UFO type, if there was a crash that happened, that they, you know, reversed engineered, possibly to get graphite, to get some of these metals or these different rare things to bring us up to speed? Is that something that you think may be a path to where we would say the path to technology? Yeah?
Speaker 3:Well, up to speed is a great figure of speech. I love it. Getting us up to speed right. About a year and a half ago, a former military official named David Grush, g-r-u-s-c-h, came forward and revealed, after his own personal investigations into this phenomenon with using military intelligence clearance that allowed him to talk to people supposedly and I always say supposedly and allegedly he talked to real people. That's not the supposed part. I don't think there's any doubt that David Grush really dug deep, made contact with people who did tell him things and they claim things like I know those who are on the inside who are working with this material, or I myself am on the inside, but I don't have whistleblower status. I have the same security clearance issues you do. You can't quote me by name and I can't you know it's the understanding Well.
Speaker 3:so Grush said he has been told there are at least 12 recovered craft, some of which are in pristine condition, so they didn't crash. It's hard to say. Let's assume it's true. Were they given to us? Was there a trade? Did they abandon them? Did they abandon a ship and go off in another ship, allegedly in pristine condition?
Speaker 3:Secondly, the thing that a good skeptic might say, not necessarily a debunker how is it that these craft are always is it only on military land? How come they never land? And this is not meant to debunk or ridicule the question how come it doesn't behave this way is very often used to dismiss the whole thing. So I'm very careful when I raise those questions. But it is interesting that somehow they always land or are captured or the crash material is recovered on ground, where the military gets in so fast that there's nobody domestically to confirm. Now, with Roswell, I want to be very clear. There's a good case that, oh, it's clear, something crashed at Roswell. I want to be very clear. There's a good case of oh, it's clear, something crashed at Roswell.
Speaker 3:The government has held to this idea that it was a certain kind of meteorological balloon. They've changed their story a few times, by the way, they officially came out when it crashed. They said we have recovered one of the disks, one of these disks that have been talked about, these UFOs, we've recovered one. Then the next day they backed off. They said no, that was a misinterpretation. It turned out to be a weather balloon. Well, right, there did they put out the UFO story, knowing that they were going to retract it? Why would you lead with the fact that it was a UFO, a craft, a disc, and then pull back one? One hypothesis about roswell is they actually were happy to use the ufo cover story because what was actually recovered was either something top secret on our side or something top secret that had come through russia and we'd gotten hold of. In other words, we might have been considered something of our own ownership that we wanted to hide. So we were willing to call it a flying saucer.
Speaker 3:Again, something crashed and there's also very good evidence that the military went door to door in the Roswell area, knocking on doors, saying have you picked up any of the crash from the crash field? No, sir, if you have and you're not telling the truth, you'll get in very serious trouble. Now remember this is the late 1940s. World War II had just ended, we were just entering this very frightening Cold War period with Russia. The Soviet Union, who had just been our ally, now was our mortal enemy. To be told that kind of you know, you would really think twice about keeping stuff under your bed if you'd recovered metallic foil or something.
Speaker 3:So anyway, the Roswell case at this point, I think, is it's almost too deep a rabbit hole to get into. But as far as David Grush, I think his claims will probably be vetted again. He himself is not speaking at the hearing. I don't think Whether he'll be there or not is an open question. But whether there has been any further, you know specification. Are there dates, people, locations where this material is being held, physical material as well as biological material? By the way, he claims what he's told is that we have offloaded the material to the aerospace corporations. They're almost like quasi-government. Mcdonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin are so much a part of our national security apparatus they're almost like nation states in and of themselves. So the idea is McDonnell Douglas does have it, or other aerospace companies, and yes, they are attempting to back engineer it and they may have already succeeded in back engineering. I put it all very tentatively because I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't think many people who claim to know don't know either, but they, they, um, they promote, promote the ideas it's interesting, someone who worked at Boeing in 1997, 98, 99, you know having to work on a unmanned drone plane back in those days was called Dark Star, made out of graphite, and at that point that's when the Boeing-McDonald Douglas merger happened and obviously Boeing was in need of McDonald Douglas because of them not being fared well as to the military contracts and they thought if they merged with McDonnell Douglas they would have a better chance at some of these military contracts. Ie, fast forward, we're talking about 97. Now my plane I no longer work at Boeing. I work, you know, after I got laid off, I went back in. I went in, I went back to school, got into media. But this is the interesting piece that you know us working with graphite and you know this. This plane, this unmanned plane, was going to be stealth. It was, you know, and that's what it was. It was there for. It was we were building a stealth version of the B-2 bomber with graphite Quite interesting stuff to work with in the advanced composites world and it was like it looked like black hair, looked like jet black hair, these fibers that were pre-impregnated with the catalyst to cure the graphite. And when it was done, after we laid it up and put it in a tool to mold into this wing set. We sent it to the autoclave to get cured and cooked and off to manufacturing and the plane went.
Speaker 2:But fast forward to moving to the technology. It is interesting to me to think about that and it shows to us why a lot of us out here are very skeptical of the government to say, oh, you know, the retraction of some of these stories, is the government hiding something from us? Was it a balloon? Was it russia's? You know, during that cold war time, to think, if it was russia's, you would think that Russia would say, oh, yeah, hey, by the way, we lost something, but maybe they didn't because they knew that this that could trigger, you know, world War III. And they're like, well, it wasn't a we're not going to say, you know, don't ask, don't tell type of situation.
Speaker 2:Fast forwarding to moving to now we're, you know, with the, you know, know the whole pandemic, everyone's seeing something. And then the tiktok, the tiktak thing comes out and now we're talking about evidence that is all over youtube. I mean these videos and you, these pilots, you know, sharing this information that finally was released, uh, or maybe unclassified. Maybe you might want to shed some more light in that regards To the average Joe and, you know, to the average person who may be out there, who's never had an experience of seeing anything remotely close to anything other than, oh look, there goes all this. You know Starlink satellites or you know, I just saw the space station go by, you know space station go by.
Speaker 2:You know, for those who are skeptical of ufos, uaps, is this something that that? I mean, this tic-tac thing, is this thing? What are we seeing here? I mean, what is like, is this a hoax? Is this possibly some stealth new military, you know phenomenon that maybe we're looking at, or is this really? Was that really ufo stuff? Was that something that we see now and we're like, wow, that is, that is the first evidence that is like raw, pure, not something in the sky, that it is actually recorded for infinity. It's there for the entire world to see now well.
Speaker 3:Well, you just touched on all the you know. Your question contains all the hypotheses beautifully put. There's no doubt there's a physical. These objects are physical objects by our criteria. They appear on radar, they appear on other sensors. They leave a heat signature, a thermal imprint consistent with an object geometrically than any other kind of object would pass muster. They leave ground indentations, burn marks on witnesses and at the same time, the paradox that's why I call the book the UFO Paradox the paradox or the contradiction is these same craft or objects of parent craft, but certainly objects that do appear.
Speaker 3:Various shapes, saucer shape, triangle shape, balloon shaped, cigar shaped, just about every shape has been reported. So it raises a question about the degree to which individual witnesses, through the filters that they bring, are seeing something but imposing their own interpretations on it. Something is there In any case. These same apparent objects then disappear on the spot or they break into balls of light, like in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. You may remember that high-res scene coming around the corner and the lights, you know orbs. The orbs are very commonly reported. So the idea of full-blown Spielberg-type craft, those are sometimes reported, but a whole range of luminous phenomena. And is there something about the light, the nature of the light, that causes an altered state of consciousness in the witness. So they're seeing something, but it takes over the consciousness of the witness through the logic that it imposes.
Speaker 3:I think there is a logic to this intelligence and I think it is an intelligence. I would grant that. I just don't know that it's, strictly speaking, an extraterrestrial intelligence. It has parallels to what we call poltergeists. Now people say, oh, why bring poltergeists in? We're talking about UFOs. But what's the question? What is a UFO and what is a poltergeist? A poltergeist actually does appear to be a real phenomenon manifestations of phantasms of light and energy that are often related to unresolved emotional issues in a household. That's why in horror stories the poltergeist is generally a haunted house, because a family might have unresolved family trauma and it is thought that that in some way evokes or gets externalized. So is this phenomenon real but in some way closely connected to our own psyche? Unreal, but in some way closely connected to our own psyche? The collective psyche is it like a thermostat that's reading us and then projecting images of ourselves in some way?
Speaker 2:it's, and when you talk, and when you talk about this, the first thing that came to my mind was, uh, the movie men in black, where they took the I, I take my pen here and you know they're like, okay, take a look at this and they're like that's what I feel like you're describing to us, to the average listener, who may not understand. Is that kind of what kind of the same thing, where it's like an altered state right.
Speaker 3:If you've only seen the movie Men in Black versions 1, 2, and 3, I guess by now I don't know how many franchises it been made. It appears to be comic and ludicrous. But if you really delve deeply into the research on the men in black phenomenon, it would very often happen like this Somebody would see a UFO in the early sightings, 1950s, 1960s. Somebody would see a UFO from their home, or they'd see it out in a field and then they'd drive home, put the car in the garage, go about their business. There comes a knock on the door. They open the door and there are two men, usually two, two or three. They're wearing ill-fitting black suits, they have pasty skin, their eyes seem a little unfocused, they seem a little robotic and the witness who opens the door to them feels almost as if they are under the influence of something. It's something strange. And the men in black say Mr Jones, did you see anything strange today on your way home? Anything strange today on your way home? Okay, now, right there, if there are men, whatever form they're in, whatever they're made of, are they human? Are they non-human? Are they agents of the same intelligence coming to like a trickster phenomenon? If you saw the sighting earlier in the day and they come to your home and say did you see anything strange today? It would be best not to tell anyone about it. And then they attempt to smile. That doesn't make any sense. So it's again. It's almost like a secondary effect. You've seen something strange in the sky that caught your psyche. Did you bring it home with you and somehow lure these apparent agents? And are they human agents? I know this sounds absurd. I would never even have considered such a thing except I got permission from my sixth grade teacher who said follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Speaker 3:So I report on phenomena, what people report. I don't believe it or disbelieve it, but I make notes and I bring it forward and put the reports in circulation. And I find I hear from people all around everywhere. I get letters and emails saying dear Mr Thompson, can you help me understand what I've seen? Well, the answer generally no. I can't help you understand it. But I can at least give you a pat on the back and say I can encourage you not just to lie to yourself. You had a real experience. Whatever you saw, I don't know what the source of it is. Something can manifest, materialize and then dematerialize or demanifest, almost like turning off a TV set and it resolves into a dot on the screen and then goes black. I can't explain that, but I can give you a little pat on the back and say you've seen something, you've experienced something, and be mindful who you talk to it about, not because you're going to get men in black at your doorstep, but because everybody knows. I'll give you a good example.
Speaker 3:The movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind opens with that famous scene. Air traffic controllers are talking with three different pilots out there TWA, pan Am and American, I think and they all are reporting something that shouldn't be in the sky. Is this one of ours? Is this one of yours? Twa? The tower says we don't have anything up there, but we see it as well. We see something. We see it on radar. Do you want to report this? We see something, we see it on radar. Do you want to report this?
Speaker 3:Twa, do you want to report an unidentified flying object? And there's a pause and the response comes back negative. And then he goes to each of the other pilots Do you want to report it? No, sir, negative. And the third guy says I wouldn't know what to report Now what was being said in that? Well, these were three wise pilots who already knew that if they were to report a UFO, that will be translated as oh pilot claims to see spaceship. No, an unidentified flying object is a description, an interpretation is spaceship Right. So it reported that they saw a spaceship and their neighbors would want to know did you see the little green men too? They knew that they didn't want any such connection.
Speaker 2:Well, they pay a big price for coming forward.
Speaker 3:I'm often asked given your research, do you recommend that I tell people about my own experience, whatever their experience was? And I generally respond don't tell the world, don't hold a news conference, don't necessarily go on a podcast interview unless you feel that's your true calling, but tell somebody in your life, maybe your counselor, a member of your family, your mother, your father, your priest, your pastor, I mean your counselor. Counselor, there are all kinds of people, but get, don't unburden yourself.
Speaker 2:Yes, share it with somebody who's not going to mock you but will help you hang out with this and help hang out with the mystery, because that's what it is it's interesting because you think a pilot holds a high regards to a job title, right, you know, very well educated, you know you come out and say, hey, by the way, I saw this. You know, unidentified flying object. They're like, oh, like you said, little green man. You know, you saw whatever. Our guest this evening, keith Thompson, the author of the UFO Paradox, the Celestial and Symbolic World of the UAP, I got to ask you this.
Speaker 2:I recently did a radio show podcast about a guy who's been abducted for the last 50 years of his life. Where does abduction fall into your book here? In regards to how many people have you encountered who have shared stories with you? Our guy talks about the gray. I mean, he really goes into the depth. The story is so crazy that people ask me when I interviewed him do you believe his story, mario? And my answer to them is that is his truth. Why do I not believe him? Believe him, I've never had, no one's ever, taken me anywhere. You know. Well, I mean, that's not true, but I've never been taken to a spaceship where I'm like, oh, hey, by the way, I was taken by the greys. Well, I mean, this is his story, his story that he shared with us and quite grateful that he was able to share his story in your book. How many do we do? You talk about encounters.
Speaker 3:You know people yeah, abductions, yes, I do talk about abductions. I even have a chapter called the alien abduction impasse and, by that way, and to give you kind of cut to the chase, I think there is an impasse in the subject because we there isn't clarity on how to explain it. But I put it this way I've never had had a UFO abduction. My goodness, I've never seen anything and, for that matter, I've never seen a UFO. I've never seen anything in the sky that struck me as anomalous. So it's just for my own background. I don't comment. I've had experiences, however, of non-ordinary paranormal experiences that broaden my perspective about what is real, but just not specifically the UFO phenomenon. Broaden my perspective about what is real, but just not specifically the UFO phenomenon. In any case, what I've come to conclude about the abductions is are they real? Do they really happen? Are these real events in real time? And I always say, if you or I had the same experience, we would believe it was real. What I'm referring to is as the experiences as reported by the experiencers. They're describing something that is not merely psychological, according to any psychological syndrome. That question has been asked exhaustively, including by the late Dr John Mack of Harvard, who fatefully got interested in the abduction subject and studied it and then ended up getting in trouble at Harvard because Harvard would come to him and say, dr Mack, john, we don't want this subject. And Mack would say to his colleagues who were likewise men and women of science, who hopefully had signed on precisely to ask difficult questions and not take things on faith or push them off the table in advance because, well, that couldn't be true. Dr Mack said the consistency of the reports, the consistency of the details, people being taken out of their beds, out of their cars, levitated. They experienced being levitated. They experienced being levitated by a beam of light, again at surface level. These are absurd, this is ludicrous, and I say that surface level, put those words in quote absurd, ludicrous. We know that doesn't happen, says the debunker. The debunker pretends to be a skeptic, but a debunker is generally the person who the media turns to and he or she will say things. Well, we know from the laws of science that these things don't happen. It couldn't happen. We know the laws of science Well, the laws of science are as accurate and up-to-date as they are.
Speaker 3:There was a time when, in the 1700s, villagers were reporting fiery rocks coming from the sky and would report it to the men of science and they'd laugh oh, the villagers must have had too much mead last night too much beer. They're reporting fiery rocks in the sky. Turns out there were fiery rocks called meteors, and they land and they had burn marks. At first the scientists thought, well, the villagers are burning the rocks and claiming they fell from the sky. So yes, that didn't happen until it was allowed to happen through a scientific explanation. So back to abductions. I don't know, I can't tell you how to explain where they're from, what the source of them is. But there is a consistency to the details that the answer is yes, they're real because they happen. But there are also perplexing details, aspects of it that make it easy for debunkers to say well, what about that? Well, what about that part? So it's easy to find things that don't fit our normal sense of reality and that makes it easy to forget that very often our sense of reality is temporary, it's tentative, it's provisional.
Speaker 3:For example, galileo, using his computations and a device called a telescope, came to the startling conclusion that the Earth circles around the sun. The sun doesn't orbit around the earth. He began to broadcast this, so to speak, in his community and he got a knock on the door from the authorities of the time, from the Vatican, which was before science was fully developed. The Vatican called the shots on what's real and not. They told the astronomer Galileo no, that isn't true. The earth stops saying the earth spins around the sun or will put you under house arrest. And he said don't take my word for it. He was wonderfully naive, you might say, in believing if you just use my own empirical methods, you can see for yourself. Look at my computations over my table and then use my telescope. They said no. They famously refused to look through the telescope, which would have given them the same information. So that's an example of human blinders.
Speaker 3:Not being willing to look through the telescope is now a metaphor for all the ways in which modern science says well, that couldn't be. We know it couldn't be paranormal. There is no such thing as the paranormal, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition except it's widely reported. We've all had experiences that are far beyond chance about synchronicities. I think of my old friend Jim from high school. Haven't seen him since high school. I'm going to call Jim one of these days.
Speaker 3:I say Next thing the phone is ringing, pick it up. He goes. Keith, you won't believe it. It's me, jim, from high school. Yeah, I do believe it, jim. I was kind of just thinking about you this week. We write that off to coincidence, but coincidence is the term for the connections that happen between the mental realm and the physical realm that aren't supposed to happen. You have a thought of an owl. You open the curtains and there's an owl on your porch that's never been there before. Those are called callings. We get callings from the universe and in fact I say the UFO is a calling from the cosmos to expand our maps, to create better maps that include phenomena that we haven't yet explained, but which is interacting with us even as we speak explain, but which is interacting with us even as we speak, our guest, keith thompson, an author of the wonderful book, uh, the ufo paradox, the celestial and symbolic world of uaps.
Speaker 2:We're going to get really interesting, because I know you were just talking about the church business there, um, and how they used to be. You know astrologers back in the day and I know that we did a show long ago called church versus the stars. Uh, quite an interesting podcast, uh, so we thank charis astrology for that. Um. What's interesting to me is that and we'll get into the the religion piece, and this may be for a lot of christians or people that are. This may be for a lot of Christians or people that are religious. This may be interesting to them.
Speaker 2:Where does just hypothetically saying this and this is going to be probably the most absurd question of all questions but could it be that we were placed here, we were put here on this planet by some phenomenon other than what a lot of people believe to be God or Jesus Christ, by some, possibly aliens or another life form brought us here, wrote the book, which is, you know, what people would call their version of the Bible, and then, to keep us from going rogue or going, you know, and destroying ourselves and say, okay, we're going to put this here and here's what's going to happen.
Speaker 2:They're going to follow this book to keep themselves within line, the 10 commandments, things of that nature. Do you believe that there may be some tie to religion and ufos, uaps and other life forms that may be outside of our? I mean, this is definitely not. This is not good for church business and you know, please lord, if that, if, if this question is crazy, uh, you know, don't come for me, but, um, I I asked because could it be? Could this be that, because we're so locked into our own little world of being here on this little planet called Earth that it could be a possibility?
Speaker 3:Well, for those who are religious, what I'm about to say may seem a little heretical. I'll give a heresy here. I think religion, religious phenomena, are too important. Religion is too important to be left to religions. Namely, I think the UFO experience is religious in the deepest sense, not that it necessarily verifies what's in the Bible or in established religions, but is of the same kind of phenomena, same kind of events that these books, the Bible, the books of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the books of Buddhism, hinduism.
Speaker 3:But see, you've got to expand the maps considerably. And when you look at multiple traditions, what was Ezekiel's wheel? What was the wheel that Ezekiel saw? I'm not saying, oh, he really saw a UFO. No, that would be a confusion of two frames of reference. The modern UFO frame of reference for describing things is different from. It's a way to describe things that might have been seen in the Bible as well. So Ezekiel's wheel was seen by Ezekiel the burning bush. What was the burning bush? What happened to St Paul on the road to Damascus?
Speaker 3:These are they're called miracles, or they're moments of transformation, when something big appears, usually to a prophet, somebody who goes on to become a prophet, because they tell the story and they are assumed to have the full story about everything. Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints paid a big price for his own claims to extraordinary phenomena. So I think, yeah, you could say the abductions are an extreme form of religious phenomenon. What do religions speak of? They speak of gods, very often coming from the sky. We think of God in the heavens Right.
Speaker 3:The celestial framework is exactly where UFOs are situated, although we now have some growing evidence that UFOs are seen coming in and out of bodies of water. But in any case, yeah, I think you could say this is is a kind of religious phenomenon, and maybe the reason it isn't recognized as religious is because it appears in a form that feels like it's high tech, and also, we are to a large extent a secular society, a kind of post-religious society doesn't mean there aren't many religious people in our midst, but the overall worldview now is sort of beyond religion for many people. So if what happens to someone who has a religious experience but doesn't have a religious framework, it would be easy then to explain it in terms of extraterrestrial. So these are some of the mysteries that you really enjoy unraveling when you poke deeper and more deeply into these sightings are.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, keith, it's. It's interesting that you know, listening to you, you're blowing my mind. It to me. It's a great conversation, uh this evening, uh, being shared of things that are more of like investigated, researched, not more like hey, by the way, I had this, and it's refreshing to me to have someone on to really go down who said, look, this is what I've done for such a long time. I've done the footwork, I've investigated, I've done my research. Here's what we are providing for evidence, and this is what's great about this and I can't wait to finish reading the book. My research here's what we are providing for evidence, and this is what's great about this, and I can't wait to finish reading the book.
Speaker 2:Here's something that also intrigues me about a lot of things, and I know that the world is so connected nowadays with cell phones and video cameras and us being able to have this conversation via the internet, and what's interesting is when you go back and you start to go back in time and we're we're going to take the let's, let's go back and take the us, us phenomenon, uh, time machine, and go back to when there was not nothing. There was the mayans and the incas and these pyramids that got built and and you talk about the pyramids that were built in the giza pyramids and the these pyramids over in mexico. Like it's crazy to me if I'm like, okay, wait a second here, time out. Like, hey, it's not, like they picked up the phone and said, hey, by the way, let me take a selfie of our, our pyramid and send it over to you. Like it quite interesting to me to think that how in the hell were these pyramids built?
Speaker 2:Now, now, I know they're like, could this be another phenomenon that related to you? Know another, you know, like some type of phenomenon, an alien who said, hey, here's the math and here's the science, here's what it is. Or was it really that we were so advanced at one point in time of our lives that, when we were wiped off the planet, that we had to start all over again? So I ask you this because of your connection with your book here well.
Speaker 3:I will say a good researcher is one who knows the limits of his own thinking. So I will say, I, you're, you're moving into, um, ancient archaeology now, sure, and it's important to, I mean I it's just not a field I know really well. But I do know that graham hancock is one researcher who was putting forward original thinking, empirically based, evidence-based. It doesn't mean the evidence is 100% accurate, but that isn't what evidence is. Evidence is support for a thesis. And then you evaluate the evidence. Does it stand up? And does it stand up according to what, to what criteria? But in any case, have we had continents that are lost? Did Atlantis or something like Atlantis exist? And what are the pyramids? How did they get there? And another is the cryptology field, the cryptids, the Bigfoot phenomenon. I am not a Bigfoot researcher and I don't say that because I'm trying to put the Bigfoot people down. It's just that I don't know. I don't know that body of evidence very well, but I do know that there are frequently Bigfoot or Wolfman-type figures seen in vicinity Sure, or wolfman-type figures seen in vicinity Sure. So it points to a larger. You call it a meta-phenomenon, a super-phenomenon that distributes all sorts of local phenomenon. You can have Bigfoot, your people get some Bigfoot experience. You get saucers, you get this, and by that you get means.
Speaker 3:Jacques Vallée is a researcher who was one of the first to surface the story, back in the early 1970s, late 1960s, of a larger perspective. For all of this, he feels that the UFO phenomenon, rather than being strictly extraterrestrial as we might think, is in fact the latest manifestation of a larger phenomenon, a larger intelligence that is in some sense controlling or shaping the human belief system by exposing human beliefs to something that is just outside our framework. Just outside, for example, the whole idea of recovered spacecraft can be back-engineered. That would suggest well, it's close enough to what we know, that we can glean from its. We can it's. You know the saucers are out here, that the technology that's recovered stands here, our knowledge stands here. So we try to close the gap. Can we figure out enough about that? The idea that it has been reverse engineered suggests that it's close enough to what we know.
Speaker 3:But on the other hand, take a look at this idea. Imagine taking a cell phone into the Amazon and you find the one tribe that has had no human contact and you agree to make contact and you give them a cell phone and say this is for you to make contact, and you give them a cell phone and say this is for you Good luck. How would they begin to back engineer that? So, while it's tempting and encouraging, there's a certain solace that comes from yeah, we've got the craft. Mcdonnell Douglas has them. We've got to make them reveal what they've got because or have already back engineered it are we using it ourselves? It's a nice mythology, but it's also possible that whatever would be recovered would be so far beyond our ability to make sense of our guests as we get close to wrapping things up.
Speaker 2:Uh, kenneth thompson. Uh, the author of uh. The ufo paradox. The celestial and symbolic world of uap Paradox. The Celestial and Symbolic World of UAP. I want to finish on this note Go get the book. I'm excited to finish reading or listening to this, because I don't have time to read anymore. I swear, if you're going to do a podcast, a radio show and produce it all yourself, it takes a lot of work. I want to end on this note. Here let's talk about the disclosure initiative, about the Rockefeller piece. I want to maybe give some insight to that for us.
Speaker 3:I'll give a little background Around. What year was it now? 1993, I think I was already known for my work in this field. I'd written some material. Let me pause about that date. I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 3:But I get a phone call one day and it was from the office of Lawrence Rockefeller, the philanthropist from New York City, from the great family, the Rockefeller family. I knew that he had an interest in the UFO phenomenon but I didn't know why he'd be calling me. So he was planning to put together a meeting at his family ranch in Jackson Hole, wyoming, to bring together leading researchers. He chosen me to participate with the idea of pitching the then still new Clinton administration. Bill and Hillary were both known to be interested. They both had told their supporters. We're going to try to get to the heart of this. We want to know what they are too. So long story short. We're going to try to get to the heart of this. We want to know what they are too. So long story short. We decided to.
Speaker 3:The group decided to pitch Could you release the material on Roswell? Let's keep it narrow. And the people who were surrounding Rock, surrounding President Clinton, did express interest. They were surprised to hear that the story was as the evidence was as good as it seemed to be, and so, long story short, they made an inquiry and the Pentagon came back with we don't have anything on Roswell that is different from what has been told. So it was an example of an attempt to get to the heart of the Roswell story and not succeed.
Speaker 2:Our guest this evening, keith Thompson. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for blowing my mind this evening, taking me on a celestial adventure outside of the paradox of, you know, my own studio. But, man, it's what a great gift for us. If they want to find your book, you can get it on all kinds of different platforms. I'm listening through PAMP what is it? Amazon I've gone through there. I also have it on audible as well. Um is where I'm listening to. They can buy it on Amazon. Uh, a copy of it as well. We'll have links within the podcast. If you're a subscriber to the podcast, if you're not, and you're listening via the radio show, the terrestrial radio stations, I would say, go to your uh favorite. I would say go to your favorite podcasting platform and search for US Phenomenon with Mario Magana. Keith, as we wrap things up here, any parting words to the average person who may be out there, that is just the biggest skeptic of UFOs.
Speaker 3:Well, I would make a quick distinction between a skeptic and a debunker.
Speaker 2:I'm a skeptic, I debunker. Okay, I'm a skeptic.
Speaker 3:I'm a true skeptic. I think you are too. I don't know. Someone says this is true. My first response is oh okay, that's interesting. How could I find that out? How could I verify that? How did you know that? How do you, how did you learn that's true? Could I have a look at your evidence? Could I see it? In other words, is it something that could be confirmed by anybody who has the same evidence? That's the gold standard of science.
Speaker 3:To be a skeptic doesn't mean you're caustic or dismissing or rude. That's the debunker. The debunker is the one who often claims to be a skeptic but then will engage in character assassination and dismissal and ridicule and scorn. So as for people who are open, I would say be open-mindedly skeptical. Be skeptical of claims, but be open to the possibility. There's more here going on.
Speaker 3:There's a Zen master in the Zen Buddhist tradition named Suzuki Suzuki Roshi. His title was Roshi, and so Suzuki Roshi had a truism, a parable, if you will, an aphorism in which he said in the beginner's mind are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few. So if you're an expert, you know it all. You know there's not many possibilities left. You've got it all figured out. His advice was always be a beginner. Stay with beginner's mind. There's things we don't know, but keep open to the possibility that there's more than we know.
Speaker 3:But don't believe anything either. There's no need to believe anything without evidence. But don't rule it all off the table in advance by claiming that you're an expert. Our society reinforces a certain kind of expertise. Well, I can tell you there's nothing to that. You could just write there. The haughty scornful wouldn't want to take the opposite position now, would you If somebody with authority said well, that's not real. It takes courage to say well, actually I experienced it, and so did he, and so did he. It's very easy to shut down. Sure, the authorities, figures say this is where we're all dealing all the time with the government nothing to see here, move along.
Speaker 2:Nothing to see here, move along nothing to see here.
Speaker 3:People return to your little lives. We've got it all under control.
Speaker 2:Goodbye all right. Our guest this evening, uh, keith Thompson. Uh, what a, what a pleasure. Thank you so much. We'll'll have all the links provided available on the podcast for my entire team Jeff Jens, sophia Magana, mark Christopher and Sophia Magana, obviously, and myself, mario Magana. Be sure to look up at the sky, because you never know what you might see. Good night. You're listening to US Phenomenon with your host, mario magana.
