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Jason interviews Leslie Kean, investigative journalist and author of UFOs: Pilots, Generals and Public Officials Go on the Record, about her ten year effort to collect, validate and present the most credible evidence of the UFO phenomenon.
That was interesting bit, at mark 55:00. We don’t know much about physics yet. An interesting interview all round. Thanks.
Also, watch the documentary “the day before disclosure”. It’s on youtube.
Jason, You did a great job with the interview. The research and preparation would put many professionals to shame. These forays into non-techie stuff are interesting and really set the podcast apart. Keep it up!
Great interview Jason. I can tell that Leslie was was very pleased with it. I have to say that it is really refreshing to hear people discuss the topic with an analytical mind, and not to stray into speculation and conjecture. I also liked the way you likened her arguments/evidence to be like that of a prosecutor’s in a court of law.
One thing that compelled me to write this comment was something you mentioned at the end of the podcast. It was a problem that you were having with finding your links to pass on to Leslie. When you mentioned you were wishing that you had “organised your links better” I immediately thought of a great webapp that I have been using called Historious (link). It’s a bookmarking app, with two nifty innovations that have changed how I think of bookmarking:
1. They have a “hacked” the functionality of your browsers bookmarking tools by creating javascript bookmark. You put the bookmark in your toolbar, and whenever you are visiting a page that you want to store to Historious, you click this JS bookmark, which fires of a call to their server to record the page to your account. This allows you to bookmark pages you want to remember really quickly.
2. Instead of asking you to tag the URL and write a description, Historious will instead download and store the content of the page to their servers. They do this so that they can act as a search engine over the content of that page i.e. to find pages based the page’s content. So you don’t have to file, tag and categorise links, you just have to remember the basic content.
Anyway, I reckon that you should check out that app as it has changed the way I think about bookmarking. I can now basically bookmark all pages that I have found interesting and be able to find them without too much trouble. It’s also a bootstrapped startup and I think they are doing a sterling job and worthy of support.
Cheers.
A counterpoint to what was said about the Phoenix Lights: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/03/23/phoenix-lights-again/
@roshan, @Scott – Thanks so much! I’m really glad you guys enjoyed the interview. I think it’s fun to shake things up on occasion. I realize that not all of our listeners are interested in the UFO phenomenon, but hopefully enough are that it was worth doing. Plus, I was able to indulge my own curiosity. 😉
^ Previous post to above link:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/03/06/why-i-dont-believe-in-ufos-the-phoenix-lights/
>Previous post to above link:
>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/03/06/why-i-dont-believe-in-ufos-the->phoenix-lights/
Counterpoint to counterpoint.
That is not the event that was discussed in the book.
@Donovan – Thanks so much for the link.
That explanation has already been debunked. The thousands of sightings of the massive, slow moving black object occurred between 8:15 PM and 9:30 PM with the most widely viewed sightings occurring at 8:15 PM and some even before that. The high-intensity magnesium flares mentioned in the article and offered as the official explanation were dropped between 9:30 PM and 10:00 PM by the National Guard and was an altogether separate incident. The amateur video of these flares are what is typically shown on TV as the “Phoenix Lights” and really have nothing to do with what most people saw.
The haughty, patronizing and dismissive nature of the Discover article is particularly shameful considering that it’s supposed to be a scientific magazine (admittedly popular science), so you’d think the editors would insist on arguing against the established and documented facts of the case. While no one can claim for sure that what people saw was an extraterrestrial craft, it sure as hell wasn’t the flares dropped by the National Guard.
Also, the ridicule in the article’s comments are a perfect illustration of how badly people want a prosaic explanation, even if it’s an incorrect and unscientific one. The reason for this (at least in part) is that it allows people to resolve their temporary cognitive dissonance, move on with their lives and as an added benefit – feel smarter and better informed than all those ignorant dumbasses who think there might be more to it.
Anyway, I’m all for prosaic explanations and I don’t need UFOs to be extraterrestrial in origin to make my life more interesting or whatever, but I won’t accept explanations that don’t fit the facts either.
Thanks for the answer, Jason. I wasn’t aware of the two separate events.
I enjoyed the show too. Nice change from the norm
@Yeti – Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed the show. I get bored talking about the same stuff all the time, so I have to mix it up on occasion.
I really enjoyed the interview’s style, pace, content and dialogue between Jason and Leslie. I commend Jason for taking the risk to do the show.
The bit about unknown aspects of physics was very interesting and it would be a great other off-topic idea for a show.
Leslie’s book would also be a great summer read! 🙂
@Philippe Monnet – Thanks so much for that. 😉 I really felt like I bumbled some questions, so it’s a relief to hear that it still came out okay.
I agree – the unknown physics stuff is fascinating. It would be fun to get someone like Michio Kaku on the show as he talks about that topic a lot, but maybe someone a little less famous and more likely to respond to my email. 😉