The Basement: Bryce Zabel | Disclosure Day, Dark Skies, and Hollywood UFO Deals

Today we're talking with Bryce Sable. He created five prime time TV series, ran the Emmys and was a CNN correspondent before his Hollywood career. "Now CNN corresponded to switch to writing fiction, and that's not a career change, that's a lateral move." In 1996, Bryce made an NBC show called Dark Skies. It was about a secret government cover-up of UFOs. I remember the show. And it's amazing how many things it got right 30 years ago. And while he was making it, the cover-up came to him. Men who said they were Navy Intelligence showed up at his house and his office. They wanted to feed him real secrets to write into the show. "When a government shows up at my door, I don't want his back taxes." Yeah, join the club. Today we're covering his career, his books, and his new podcast, which asks whether the government has been hiding the truth about UFOs inside our movies for 70 years. There's one more thing those men asked to do. Meet a stranger at a cemetery at midnight. Wild story. After our talk, I'll come back for a quick analysis of our conversation. Let's go down to the basement. Hey, you could watch the Y-Files on Spotify. New video episodes every Monday and Friday, and premium subscribers get fewer ads, which means fewer interruptions when things start getting weird. Rise, welcome to the basement. Hey, it's great to get into basement. I want to thank you so much for letting me into this special place to talk about all these things we're going to talk about. It's a great set, folks. I mean, this is really wonderful. It's really. I appreciate that. It's great. And, you know, I know you're just starting the basement, so I'm really happy to be in the inaugural class of these people. Yes, you are. It's a very small fraternity. Yes, but growing, but growing, unless there are last one, we'll see. Power Patrick and Einstein doing. That's. Well, there's a callback. Well, the truth of the matter is, those are my endangered desert tortoises that we have. And that's, I mean, this is amazing. I'm reeling from the thing because we don't have them anymore. One of them ran away. What? And one of them died, but they've been replaced by two other turtles, Wendy and Lilith. So the guys are gone and the women are in. Okay. And, you know, it's. I don't think of myself as a responsible pet owner per se. My son's excellent at it, for example, but not me. And my wife, Jack, you know, we say, "Indanger desert tortoises are good because half the year, you don't have to do anything, but put them in a box." Right? That's all you do. Yeah. You just put them in the box and hibernate them. And then the other half of the year just, you know, gets. Give them some cut-up zucchini and some lettuce and let them. Let them party. How long do they live? Long time, right? So long that it'll be my grandkids probably that end up having to deal with them. Well, I'm sorry. One ran away. He. Maybe he's happy. I mean, that's what we like to tell ourselves. You know, because they do. They can burrow. They can get under our fence. I think that's what our original fence. That one got away. And the other one, it's a sad story and I. I don't know why I would tell it here, but I will. During the. The COVID pandemic, we had. I always used to put every year when they came out of hibernation. I would get some kind of coconut core kind of thing that you'd spread around. And it was all ground very nice. It was a cushy landing for them, right? I liked it. But during the pandemic, they said we can't get that anymore. Here's our new supplier. And so, I put that stuff out and had larger pieces in it. And frankly, it got stuck in his throat. Oh, no! It's just the worst thing in the world. And now that I've lived it, I don't know if I can recover during this broadcast here. That's. That's a tough one. Losing a pet is hard. It is hard. Sometimes harder than losing a person. Yes, a lot. But anyway, if you think I should have been smarter about that. But you know what? I've been there too. Yeah. Yeah, I had outdoor cats for a while until I had two fewer cats. And then it was no more outdoor cats. It was living in Hollywood hills at the time. And my neighbor was saying, "You can't let your cats out here." It's like, "They've been outdoor cats for years. They lasted three, four weeks." Yeah. And that was it. No more outdoor cats. Well, so we've clearly established, and we're less than five minutes in, that both of us should not be trusted with pets. Can't be trusted. Okay. I can't be trusted with children either. Okay, well. The national debt just crossed $39 trillion. Money printer's still running. And if you've got a 401k or IRA just sitting there in paper assets, you might want to ask yourself, "What's actually backing that?" Gold is up around 35% in the past year. Silver over 125%. Meanwhile, major banks of rejecting gold could hit $6,300 in ounce, and silver $309. 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All in favor of them. I went to journalism school. At some point during journalism school, you have to pick what's your thing. So I went with broadcasting. I ended up getting a job at the hippie radio station in Eugene, Oregon. That was a good gig. That's the first time I ever talked about UFOs in public. I covered the Travis Walton story from afar, if you will. So you were on air? Yeah, I was the morning guy in that thing. But then I got hired at the TV station. So I became an anchor reporter in Eugene. I ended up also doing the weather there and the movies. Because the thing is, in a small market, it's like you say to yourself, well, who does movie reviews here? And the answer is, well, nobody. You go, I'll do them. Right. Then you get to do them. I remember reviewing Alien was one of my first movies to review. But mostly, you know, anchor reporter kind of thing. And that was a great gig. And then you know, I came to, I did a short tour of duty in Arizona and Tucson. And then came to LA as the first CNN correspondent there. And I got to tell you, as you will know, the news business is so interesting because if you're covering news, you are meeting thousands of people. Just one person after another every day is just crowded with fast getting to know yous. And I found that a lot of times, you were either meeting people on the best day of their life or the worst day of their life. Sometimes in the middle, but often on those extremes. That's true. It really taught me a lot about drama, comedy, all the things that I use now in a Hollywood script that I might write. Right. And consider that. That's true. So how do you get to sitting with Carl Sagan talking about Voyager? That's a trippy, wonderful memory for me. Well, how did you get picked for that? Okay. Here's the thing. I was the CNN correspondent. And the way these things work, you know, you jobs come and go because the person who hired you comes and goes. Right. So the news bureau chief at CNN got fired. And so I knew my days were numbered and they were. And I ended up at PBS in Los Angeles, working on an investigative news magazine called Newsbeat. And again, it was a sort of a nightly 30 minute, 60 minutes. It was 30 minutes instead of 60 minutes kind of thing. And I would do one story a week. And I noticed that nobody was really a lot of the people there were not thinking about space. And I always think about space. So I was like, who's your space person here? Well, nobody. Well, I'll do it. Right. Like the movie. Yeah, I'll do it. Just raise your hand and volunteer. So I did. And so I got to cover things like the early space shuttle stuff. And also the Voyager. And Voyager, of course, was the first unmanned thing that we sent that went out of the solar system. But on its way out, it did a short tour of duty past Saturn. And I believe this is the Voyager 2 that I'm talking about it at this point. I covered Voyager 1, I think, at CNN. But anyway, 2 was on its way out, and there was going to be a close encounter, if you will, with Saturn. And this is, and again, I'm just going to have to date myself. I mean, I used to be the youngest guy in the room, and I went to Hollywood. Now I'm probably the oldest guy in the room, but that's life, right? Anyway, so the year before I started working there, Carl Sagan had basically owned the station at KCET and Los Angeles, because he was doing cosmos. Oh, he was doing it out of there? Yeah, that's where he recorded all of this. Wow. So when I came to work there, it was like, oh, yes, you know, they didn't have plaques for Carl Sagan or anything, but everybody knew that he had put them on the map. It was a pretty big deal. So when they were about to have the encounter, I pitched them that they should do something called Saturn and Beyond. It would be sort of covering the live fly by and then talking about the future of space and that kind of thing. And they said, well, that's good. And I said, and we'll ask Carl Sagan. And because I thought the guy's got a KCET something for putting, you know, for putting him on the map like that. And so I just called him up and said, you want to, you want to do this thing? And he said, sure, I'll do it. So with that in mind, and he became part of that show, but here's the sort of my favorite year part of it. I was an on-air reporter and kind of a substitute anchor. But the main anchor was a guy named Cleat Roberts. And Cleat was sort of a mentor of mine, an early news mentor, right? And Cleat was the most respected journalist in Los Angeles at the time. I mean, he'd done it all. And he was toward toward the end of his career. And he would often sit on the set before we would go on and sort of, you know, just catch up and talk. And I was out there covering things and he stuck behind the anchor desk in his opinion, right? He remembered the good old days and he was such a great guy and he goes, you know, you remind me of myself when I was your age, which is the most lovely compliment any famous mentor could ever say to you. I was lovely. So I was producing Saturn beyond for Cleat to star in and to host, not to star in, but he was going to be the host. And about three days before we were due to go on, I mean, I wanted to anchor it, but whatever, I was the producer. Three days before I'm about to, you know, we're going to produce this thing. Cleat ends up in a contract dispute with KCT. And he says, I'm not going to host that thing. Forget it. If we don't have a deal, I'm not doing it. Let Bryce do it. And he wasn't in a real contract dispute. He just threw that he threw it to me. It's the greatest lovely thing. So anyway, this story is kind of intriguing because we get through the show. And, you know, you know, it is like you're a, you're a host. And by a host, not only are you hosting the show, but you're sort of hosting the event. Right. So Sagan comes on. We, we talked live about the Saturn and the space program and exploration of the solar system and all this stuff. And then the show's over. It's like, well, thank you very much. He's a lovely guy. He extends with the crew. It's all that. And I say, you know, I'll walk you to your, your car if you'd like, because I'm the host, right? I'm hosting it. And so he had to get to JPL to do some kind of interview, I think, for nightline with Ted Coppel or something. So we walk out there and. And we, as we're walking out there, I see his car. I'm driving a dots and B210 at this point, right? It's just not the sexiest car around this guy has some kind of foreign roadster convertible. I thought, wow, that's so cool. I would love that. And I don't know why I said this, but I just said, you know, Dr. Sagan, I have a question or two about the whole UFO subject. And he suddenly looks at me and he goes, yes, you know, with that kind of, sure, please go on. And I just said, well, listen, I just know that you've said many times that the universe is teaming with life. And yet at the same time, you're not a believer so publicly in UFOs, because you say the distances are too great that they couldn't possibly be here. But at the same time, you've talked about how an alien civilization could be so in advance of us that, you know, we'd look like primitives. So how is it that you don't consider the fact that if the universe is teaming with life, some of them are a million years in advance of us technologically, and they understand physics better than us where they have different life spans. Why, why don't you consider that they might be here? The stones on you. Wow. Well, I was young, I would say, you know, whatever. Wow. I'm glad you had what did he say? Well, he, he just, he, well, I mean, he looked at me like, and your point is, I said, well, no, I mean, you know, I was trying to be nice and, and all that. And we had that back and forth from about 15 minutes. And the specific answer to your question, what do you have to say? I wish I remember the exact quotes, but he stuck with this point of view, which was. Nobody's coming here. That's not how it works was in essence. And I said, but that's an opinion, right? But, but you, you're saying that the UFO, UFO world doesn't make sense because they deal in opinions and not facts. Well, isn't that an opinion too? You know, I, I was a little. I was, I was probably crazy, but he took it well enough, right? I mean, we had a nice back and forth. And about 15 minutes and he looks at his watch and he goes, well, I'm do it JPL. And he got in that lovely roadster of his and motored off. And I waved at him. And last time I saw him. But listen, the guy was brilliant. I think he was wrong about UFOs. Well, this is the 80s when you asked him that question at the time, were you aware that he had a bit of an arc? Yes. But he had evolved. Yes. And I, I didn't know his what you're referring to that in his early career. He was well, oh yes. Yes. Aware of UFOs. Very old. Very old Aliens might possibly have come here to explore or something. Absolutely. Great point. And while I was aware of that, I wasn't aware of it enough to sort of call him on it, right? Right. And that would have, because he certainly knew more about his career and life than I did at that point. So I stuck with sort of the more esoteric part of it. But I did kind of get my revenge on that. You know, I did a TV series for NBC called Dark Skies. And it took place in the 1960s during an alien invasion. And we can talk more about that, because that has something other interesting things. But here's the thing. I want to save the good stuff. Of course, here's the Sagan angle. Yeah. It had all these real characters in it. So toward the end of the season, when NBC had told us, well, you know, you're probably not getting picked up again. So just, you know, do whatever you want. And Columbia TV, which was producing it said, you know, do whatever you will, whatever you want, but don't spend a dime more than your budget. Okay. So my partner Brent Friedman and I said, okay, well, what do we want to do with this? And so in our final two episodes, we introduced Carl Sagan as a character. And we, our whole series took place at Majestic 12, the guys that were in charge of cover up. And so we made a Sagan, the chief scientist of the Majestic 12 cover up in kind of an homage to Donald Menzel, who was the earlier debunker, right? Yes, because he ended up his names on the Majestic 12 document. Yes, it is. Right. So we made him a guy that got picked up by Majestic 12. And he's all pissed off because they kidnapped him basically. And they say to him, you know, you're in no danger. You're in no danger at all. But if you'd really like to know what's going on, we can tell you in which case we'll keep driving and we'll bring you in and we'll show you what's going on. But if you need to get out right now, that's fine. We'll pull the car over. The choice is entirely yours, doctor. And so he made the deal with the devil. He said, if you'll tell me everything, I'll be your debunker. And that's what we said about it. And I think think Sagan made that deal too. I don't think we were wrong. No, I think we were right. I think if you really track him, it sounds to me like you have. So if you track that career as you do say, there is some inconsistency between where he starts and where he ends. And that shift, the timing coordinates with his rise in fame as well, which is very interesting. Yes, like his exposure increased. Dark skies, your books, especially AD is very prescient, like almost like you have a crystal ball. It's like we picked a racehorse that came in. It certainly is. Last thing on journalism. Yeah. You were award winning a vascular journalist. You have a, you have a favorite story. Well, the one I won the awards for was has nothing to do with UFOs or paranormal or any of that space was my beat, but I covered a lot. of other things. And we did a story who's called the People versus Dr. Manaya, I believe, is the one that we won the awards for. And that was just when we found a doctor, an eye doctor, who patients would come in and he would tell them they had a catarach and charge them for it. And they'd already had cataracts. They've already had the surgery and stuff. He would just tell people whatever he had to tell them to get them to have the surgery and charge them for it, even if there was no need for surgery. And so that was a pretty good, that was one where I got to play the Mike Wallace role where I was chasing Dr. Manaya down the sidewalk going, Dr. Manaya, isn't it true? That kind of thing. And so yeah, but I will say this, investigative reporting is such a valuable thing. And I'm, my hat is off to everybody who's doing it about the UFO topic for sure, but all on everything, I mean, thing, investigative reporting speaks truth to power. It holds people accountable. It's a really good thing. And certainly the, the ability that people have to be a good investigative reporter is so valued right now. I mean, we could use more of them. And frankly, it's expensive. That's what was so brilliant about that year and a half where I got to work at newsbeat. We were doing, it felt like doing the Lord's work, right? Because you got instead of doing at CNN, I would do three stories in a single day, but at PBS, I did one story in a week. And so that allowed me to do all the great stuff that you do is an investigation. You, what is an investigative report to do? You pick up the phone, you call people, you talk to them. And after you, and you write it down, and then you look at it later and go, hmm, interesting. And then you call somebody else up and you say, kind of come over and talk to you about something. And then when you're finally getting it all done, you put them on camera and then you cut it up and you give it to the people. So yeah, I, I'll only say this about it. The things I learned working at that PBS show newsbeat have been so valuable to me in terms of all the work that I've done since. And there's nothing I have done since that I didn't learn something that that benefited me from, which like even on creating a TV show, excuse me, one of the things you want to be able to do is make sure it sounds authentic. Well, how do you make something authentic? Do you make something authentic because you write a movie say about lawyers because you've seen a lawyer show? That's not authentic. Authentic is to go talk to lawyers or doctors or whatever. So what what investigative reporting teaches you is, yeah, don't get your information off the net off the internet these days as a primary source. Create your own primary sources first. That's why I respect some of the people that have done some some work in this. My first need to know partner Ross Colthart has certainly done some excellent work on this. And George NAP, you know, I think anyone who cares about this topic is just in awe of what George has done. He's the best to ever do. He's phenomenal. And so I think those guys have really helped take us. Well, look, Ross gets his own accolades for whatever. Let's focus on George for a second because George goes back and right here in Las Vegas where we're recording. George didn't take no frame answer. He has an incredible memory, but he also asked people questions. He listens to the answers. I've been on coast to coast with him a few times over the years. And first of all, he's a great interviewer, but he also listens to everything everybody says. So it's not like you say something. And then he then he goes, okay, no, our next he doesn't do that. He's listening to what you're saying. And he wants to know more about it because why a good reporter is insatiably curious and won't take no for an answer and doesn't tolerate bullshit very well. And that describes that man. That's why he's a friend of mine. And I'm also I couldn't hold a candle to him as a reporter. He's just the best. Yeah. And it always has been. And even when he's talking to I don't want to use the word crazy, but the more out there stories, he's always respectful. He's asking good questions. No, his famous John Lear interview is fascinating. With some of the stuff John says is like, wow, but George just kind of leans in and asks the right questions. Fascinating. Nothing wrong with letting people tell you their story. The only wrong is believing it. If you don't have 100% right? So yeah, of course you got to listen to this. But what I think another thing that makes, let's call it the nap style because he's not the only one practicing that this day. There are other great people who are doing journalism on this topic. And the thing is, it doesn't matter how outrageous something is or isn't. You still have to, you have to still say to yourself, well, is there a way for me to validate this? You don't take anything at face value. You have to say, there's more to the story than what this person just told me because that's the other thing you learn doing journalism. You go, there are a lot of different points of view about things. And one of the things that I found so frustrating about, you know, network journalism or just mainstream journalism in broadcasting is that because the time is so short and this applies not just to long form, but it certainly applies to regular reporting. And this is my criticism and it's been particularly strong about UFOs, which is the basic way to cover a controversial story in broadcasting is to find somebody who says yes, somebody who says no, interview them both and then do a stand up where you say some say yes, some say no, I say maybe. That's what qualifies as a journalistically balanced report. But sometimes a story isn't balanced. Sometimes there's actually some facts that support saying yes or no. Sure. And we don't see that that often. No, we don't. Certainly not in local markets, you really don't. No, you don't. I guess one of my idols are heroes is Art Bell because not only would he be respectful of the person telling the story, he just had such an instinct for spotting the story and knowing, all right, I've got a beginning, middle, and end. Here's how we're going to tease it out. He just, he saw it, you know, miles away. Here's an interesting thing about Art Bell. By the way, I know Art Bell or new Art Bell and I was on his show, I think in '96, I was on Art Bell show and I put him on dark skies. I made Art Bell a member of Majestic 12. I forgot about that. He was a member. He played William S. Paley. That's right. He talked about forever. Now I remember that. Wow. And listen, I don't think art would take exception to what I'm about to say. The difference between Art and, you know, George Nabb is Art was an entertainer with a show. George is a journalist who sometimes is on a show, right? And Art would let things stand just because, well, I mean, that's what they say, right? So on the show that I was doing with Art Bell, I was on to talk about, this is one of my first interviews ever on the UFO topic. I wasn't interviewing him. He was interviewing me because of dark skies. But as the show started, somebody had called in saying, I'm seeing some lights up in Monterey or something. I don't even remember the location. But this is the California coast. And Art just said, well, we're going to be following this story very carefully tonight. And so every time we go to a commercial break, he'd say, and now the lights seem to be down. Yeah. I mean, we just, and it was, it was, it was a show. Did it, is it listed in any books? Is it great UFO sighting today? I don't think so. Probably not. No. But listen, he classic radio guy. Yes. Really good at what he did. Great voice. Just anything. And, and, you know, he, he stood his ground and he did, he was, look, good guy. I mean, he wrote a book. I think they're quickening. I mean, he, he, he, he was a great guy. He's a scary book. And, and, I mean, a loved art. And, and by the way, putting him on majestic 12, I remember when my partner Brent and I thought we would do that. And I went, well, he's like, well, why, why would art bell do that? I said, it's, it's ironic. It's subversive. Let me call him. And I, I called him up. And there's this kind of long pause. And then he, and then he says, I think the first thing he said is, do I get to keep the mustache? Of course he did. He didn't. We made him. I think that was the thing. But anyway, it was fun. He, and he saw, he saw the joke. I mean, which is a lovely thing. For someone to not take themselves so seriously, they can't do something like that. I think it gave him fun. He and his wife of the time came to the set and we hung out all day and he had a great time. Yeah. Yeah. And, and to be honest with you, did a very good performance. Sure. Because he was a performer. He's a performer. And what a, what a great nod to the audience. Absolutely. And they had to just go nuts for it. Well, you know, that's the kind of thing where 90% of that audience had no knowledge of anything, just another actor, you know, in a scene. But for the 10% who were sort of UFO curious, they knew, and they thought it was pretty wild. I love it. You know, I put those jokes in my show as all the time that nobody gets except for that once liver, but it's so special to them, because you know, good stuff can just work on a couple of levels. Sure. And as long as one of the levels hits most of the people, you're okay. Yeah. So how did you become the, what got you interested in space and this sort of thing? Does this go back to Dad and the Apollo? That's a good, yes, yes, I'm, there's two stories here. One is space, one is UFO's, let's talk space first. When I was, I grew up in Hillsboro, Oregon, which is a suburb of Portland. And when I was 15 years old, I was live in large. I had started working as a fry cook at the Arctic Circle drive-in. And I started at $1.10 an hour and I had worked my way up to $1.35. Wow. Right? Pretty cool. And I got to be a fry cook, eat all the burgers and fries you wanted. It was sweet work, right? But I was interested in space because during the '60s, it was our article of faith for my family. I was just a little kid, but we would get up at four in the morning on Mercury flights and Gemini flights. And everybody would watch the TV together. So I sort of had this burned in. My father was a history teacher. So I had this idea burned in. Well, okay. So dad wanted to get up. Yeah. And get everybody up. He got everybody up. It's like he would come in at like 430 or something. Okay, they're, they're going to launch in half an hour or whatever it was, right? And so we would all watch it. All right. Flash forward to 1969 when again, Bryce is living large, making big bucks, you know, clearing almost $10 a day. Wow. Yeah. Not bad for a 15-year-old. So I was working. The manager at the Arctic Circle was a bask separatist named Mariano Bilbao, okay? And Mariano was a tough, he's the best kind of hardworking immigrant you'd want. What's a bask separatist? He wanted the bask region of Spain to separate from Spain. Oh, I thought they all want that. Do they? I don't know. At the time, I. They're the descendants of Atlantis, they want to be their own thing, man. All right. Well, then, then I withdraw the character. He was just a Spanish immigrant. We'll call it. No, he was basked. He was basked. Hardworking. Yes. All right. And so he put up the schedule and on July 20th, 1969, years truly was on the schedule doing the main cooking at the Arctic Circle. And I went to Mariano and said, "Hey, you know, the moon landing, can I get the night off?" And he said, "No." The schedule? No. No, you can't have the night off. Why? Well, I want to see the moon. You can't get out of this to watch TV. And I said, "Okay. Could we put a TV in the Arctic Circle?" Put a TV in a restaurant? No. And I said, "Well, what about a radio? Radio. Stop talking." Right? He was done. I was not going to see it, okay? So I report to work on July 20th, 1969. And it's about 35, 40 minutes before Armstrong and Aldrin are going to be on the moon's surface. And I just can't handle it, man. I just can't handle it. And I call up my dad and the thing you have to understand is my dad was one of those tough guys. And imagine the guy from Wonder Years, you know, that was my dad kind of guy. So this was a hail marry of the highest order that I was about to parlay here. But I called him up and I said, "Dad, I just really want to see the moon landing. Can you come and get me?" And then I take the phone and I'm holding it out here because I know he's going to be screaming. He's going to be saying, "You made a deal. You have to be responsible," et cetera, et cetera, right? And then he says, "Well, how does he say?" And he says, "You know, you'll be fired." And I said, "Yeah, I know." And long pause, and he goes, "I'll be right down." So dad comes down, picks me up, takes me back home. We sit around the TV, we watch the moon landing, about 35 minutes into the moon landing. He turns to me and he goes, "I think it's time for you to go face the music." But it's me back in the car, drives me down to the Arctic Circle. I get out at this point, Mariano Bilbao is there because he's been called in, that Bryce is abandoned, is posed. Sure. Right? And he does as expected. He fires me on the spot. And my father, God bless him, I mean, because he never, this was not his style. He goes to Mariano and he goes, "You know, you are making a very big mistake because this is going to go down to the defining moment of our times. And you are always going to regret what you did tonight." And he turns to me and goes, "Son, get in the car." And he drove me home. And of course, I never worked at the Arctic Circle again. Wow. And your dad was right. He was right. And he had an instinct for how important it was that it's more important than being a fried cook. Absolutely. We need to say. No, I have to say. I mean, that was a tough one though because, you know, I kid about the salary and all that. But, you know, there were lessons being learned, of having a job at a young age and all that. Oh, yeah. You know, but these things happen. These things happen. They do. So, let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll talk about how Hollywood enters the picture. I love it. Let's do that. Before we get to Hollywood, we want to talk about your basement experience. Well, listen, I was thrilled to go to the basement to talk to you because the way I came to actually first really appreciate the UFO topic involves the basement, okay? Okay. I think when I was like 12 or 13, my family didn't have a lot of money or anything. So, and there were no video games. So, there weren't a lot of things for me and my friends to do, but ride bikes and, you know, that kind of stuff. But we came up with a way to have some fun. We would go down to my parents' basement because I don't know. Nobody has basements in Southern California where I live now, but they had basements back then. So, we went into the basement and my parents had kept every issue of look and life magazines, okay, in the basement. And they were just molding away in the basement. Nothing really happening to them. When my friends and I came up with a reuse purpose, we would take a, you know, these are extended format magazines and we would take them and we would roll them tight, right? And they would become like lightsabers and we would have magazine fights in the basement where you would hit each other's magazines and then the guy who's, and they paper would be flying and everything and the guy won who disabled his opponent's magazine. Now, I admit, but at least it was environmentally friendly, right? You got to at least say that, okay. So, we're down there having a basement battle and I'm, you know, I pick a magazine up and I start to roll it up and then I realize there's this kind of cute French actress on the front cover, okay? And her name was Cecille Aubrey and it was a life magazine from June 26, 1950. I was not alive during that, of course, but these are old, old magazines. And so I, I stop because I'm 13, you know, and I'm just starting to be interested in women. Of course she stopped. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, this is interesting. So I'm, I find her, you know, I open it up and I'm looking to see this Cecille Aubrey, who I think is like some kind of, she's being promoted as this French ingenue kind of thing, right? Maybe the article and there's all these pictures of Cecille Aubrey. Is it open this way? No, it did not. I wish it had. Okay. That would come later, but that's a story we don't need to cover here in this. And I wrote down this quote because it's so interesting. They described her as frisky, hurt, sugar and spice bundle of adolescence. Love it. Yeah. How could you beat that, right? Right. I mean, so, you know, my friends, I were looking at that and then I'm, you know, we're going to get back onto the, you know, the battlefield. And as I'm posing up the magazine to roll it up, something catches my eye. And in that magazine is a picture of the McManville UFO photos. Remember those? Sure. 1950. There's two of them. And the trends from McManville, Oregon, actually took these pictures on a, on a camera that the guy had his name was Trent and the article is called Farmer Trends Flying Saucer. But these were where we see the, the telephone pole is in front of it. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, I'm sure probably on the video version of this, you'll probably show people what they look like. Sure. They're pretty great photos. Yeah. Anyway, my friends and I stopped and we're like, what is this? Because the thing, the thing that's so great about those photos and I'm kind of obsessed by them over the years is that they're either true or they're not. They're either a hub cap suspended or they're actually a flying saucer that's better than anything the government's been releasing right now where you're actually looking at it. And there aren't a lot of ways to fake those flying saucers in those photos and they have stood the test of time. They have. They have been reviewed by commissions. Bruce McAbee did a whole study on them. I mean, they stand the test of time. But what's interesting and gathered the attention of me and my friends is that we lived just of 20 miles from McMindville, 20-30 miles from McMindville. This was live. local. So we're looking at these two pictures of UFOs and going, damn, these are, this is almost more interesting than Aubrey. Almost, you know, almost, not quite, that we're 13. But it was right here. Yeah. That's what we thought. And we go, and every time my parents and I would drive to the Oregon coast to, you know, go to the beach or whatever, you drove through McMinnville. They have a big UFO festival there right now. And so that's where I started to first say, what is this? You know, what's going on? How do live cover that story? Respectfully. They did. It was only a single page. I think it has both, as one big blowup of one of them and a smaller of another and as a picture of farmer Trent with his camera, right? The thing is, I literally went to high school with people that in their later lives, you know, provided health care for, for the Trent's. And everybody always said about the Trent's. These people, you know, are pretty well salt to the earth. They ain't, they ain't making stuff up. But more than that, if this blows my mind because today, of course, we all funds, we take a zillion photos, right? But he comes out there. He's got a camera with a, a fresh roll of film in it, right? I mean, he may have taken a few pictures on it. And he takes these two photos. What does he do? He doesn't run to the local pharmacy with the developing thing and get him developed. No, he holds on to him for a few months because he's a frugal man. And, and he doesn't develop them until he's used up the entire roll, right? But those photos became the, you know, the biggest things. And to this day, to this day, I think they stand the test of time. I urge anyone to look at him and say, what's the deal with that? Because here's the thing, they're not orbs. No, they're nuts and bolts. Yes. Something is flying in Macminville, Oregon in, in, in, in May of 1950 that is anomalous. Yep. So this is less than three years from Kenneth Arnold and Roswell. So yeah, propaganda machine is not in full effect yet. And, and, you know, again, I'm sure people have their own interpretations as, as they always would, but, but life at that time was not into debunking or, or anything. They, I mean, it, I think they portrayed it like, like people magazine might have portrayed it later. You know, it was like, here's an interesting story, right? Sure. But, and they, and they, and they put it in there because they thought that it was a really good photo. But I, I just want to give you one example of how, of the problem we face in euphology for trying to get to the truth of certain things. So years later, I, I have been not to that many UFO conferences. I was selected as a speaker to one at the IUFOC, I think, in, in Phoenix. And so I put together a, a PowerPoint. And what I've made for that PowerPoint, I was trying to make the point that the media never covers, covers these stories accurately or appropriately, right? They always either make fun or whatever. And I was trying to make a point of, this is what should have happened. So I made a time and newsweek magazine with the, with the McManville photos in them, right? And I put that up for the audience and said, remember these magazines? And everybody's like, yeah, yeah. And I said, no, you don't. They're fake. I made them, right? Just to show people, ask questions don't always believe things. Okay. If you go to the McManville UFO conference website under their history section, they have my magazine. Oh, no. And they list, they are showing it as the real thing. And I have written them letters. I have social media posted about it. I've told friends to talk to them about it. And they won't take it down. Oh, no. Yeah. Definitely. We keep part of the problem. Yeah. I absolutely believe it. I mean, and so you, I say that only, you know, I'm not trying to be alarmist or I'm just saying, yeah, got to ask questions. And, and honestly, I wish the people there would just take it down. They should take it down. They should. I mean, it's yours. Yeah. But I don't even care about that. You know, I think to a certain amount, when I see people that take a picture of something and then they put copyright in the court, listen, if we're trying for transparency and to prove that the UFO UAP issue is honest and needs to be taken seriously as an anomaly, I'm not interested in copyrighting everybody's little UFO photo. I think, I think you should give the, they should have the narrative of how that photo or video came to be, but they should release it to the world. You're not trying to hold onto it to, you know, to make money off it. You're trying to help us reach a decision about what is going on. Anyway, so that's how I became interested in UFOs. Those fakes that they money the waters, they make it so difficult. They do. And I feel it's so weird. I mean, I never for a million years, I don't even know how they got it. I never in a million years, though, thought that this was just meant to be kind of shock value for an audience as an entertainer. I was just saying, there they are, but that's what happened. Well, how did you make the shift into screenwriting? Oh, didn't you have the first sci-fi original? I did. I abs, and it was about UFOs. Here's how it's it's interesting. Okay. So here's the thing. If you're a TV news guy and you're an anchorman or a reporter, you're going to get fired either your boss is going to get fired or your show is going to be canceled or you're going to be fired because somebody different looking is coming. You are going to be fired. And so at a certain point, when various jobs were ending, I had started dating my wife, Jackie. And I sort of realized I was going to have to, if I was going to stay in the news business, the two of us were going to have this terrible pulling apart, you know, because we both have to be looking. I met her in the mayor's office. She was a radio reporter. I was a CNN correspondent, right? But we were each, if you're going to pursue that career, that broadcasting career, you can end up in a different city. Sure. You're going to have these problems. And Jackie said, you know, have you ever considered writing a screenplay? That's your fallback. I had never seen a screenplay. This is before the internet. And I said, no, I don't. And you know what we did? Hey, this is so weird. We got in the car. We drove down to Hollywood Boulevard, found some guy on the street of Hollywood Boulevard who was selling screenplays of movies that have been made. We bought a couple of them. And I read them and I thought, this looks pretty simple. There's not a lot of adjectives. It's pretty straightforward. Right. And so I wrote, they say, right, what you know, right? So the first thing I wrote was about something else that I gave it up halfway through because I said, it's been good therapy. It's not a great script. Then I wrote a script called ENG, which stands for electronic news gathering. And because that's what I knew, I knew the world of TV news. And that got me an agent. It got sold. They made 102 episodes of it up in Canada. And and and so did you know how unlikely that was? Not at the time. You were like, this is easy. Well, that's what I thought. And then the very the second script I wrote also became a TV series here in the US. And so I thought, I thought, I at that point, I was certainly realized this was pretty luck. I mean, it's luck plus skill, but you have to be in the right place. Sure. Whatever. And I just thought, well, you know what, as long as people keep paying me to do this, I'm going to keep doing this. And so I just stop being a broadcast journalist, even though it in a heart and by training, I still feel that I am that person. Certainly podcasting gives you the ability to do those things these days without having to work for NBC or somebody. But I just turned my attention to drama. And I found, as I said earlier, one of the greatest pieces of training anybody can have to be a screenwriter is to have been in news because you you experience so much real life in such a calm, you know, condensed space of time, right? And so it being a journalist was the greatest thing absolutely in the world. And I do think if I have a superpower as a writer, it's simply that I've experienced a lot of things, not because I saw a lot of movies. Now I've seen a lot of movies, but at the time, I had more experience than movies. Do you remember where you were when you saw your first thing on TV that you wrote? Who's with you? What was that like? Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. It was a CBS drama series called KO Brian, which was about a female surgeon in New York City. It was like Grey's Anatomy without the sex. It might still be on the air if we'd put the sex in it. I couldn't be a big mistake. But anyway, CBS put it on at 10 o'clock at night. And of course, I'd already seen it by this point a thousand times in the edit rooms or whatever, but we had a little party for some friends. I've already wore surgical scrubs and everything. And we had a few TVs. And I just remember watching that and thinking, oh my, I mean, oh my. What a moment. It was, it was a beautiful moment in a way that never that exceeds, you know, I had seen myself on the air on tape to report. as a reporter. So that's very personal, but you don't say, now that's art. You just go, "Well, that's today. I wonder what I'll do tomorrow." But when you see something you wrote, oh goodness, that gets to you. And you know what? It is a thrill that never reduces. Really? If I had something on tomorrow night and you and I were watching it, I'd still be giddy. I'd still be, there'd be tingling in my fingers. You know, I'd just be, "Oh my gosh, here it comes." And what's so interesting about that, I think, is that, again, you've seen it so many times. You wrote it. You shot it. You were in the edit room. You've seen it posted. You've, you know, so many times, so many, many times. And it's never the same when you watch it on the air. No, that's special. Just like you and I are having experience right now. Okay. Now, I don't know if you watch all your shows. Never. Okay. But I will be watching this one. And I guarantee you that when I watch it, I'll get that tingle because I'll say, "Well, that's how it looked." I didn't, you know, because you have one experience from where you are. And then you have another experience where you're interacting with the finished product. That's right. And that's what I think, I mean, listen, there are a lot of knocks on Hollywood. It is not a perfect world. Trust me. I mean, I've been kicked and abused and lied to and you name it and you've had it too. You know, so it's not perfect, but it is exciting. And you know what's interesting about Hollywood, if you're like, say you're a bank manager, okay? You're going to have a good chance to still be a bank manager tomorrow, right? In Hollywood, you could be fired tomorrow. On the other hand, in Hollywood, the phone could ring and somebody goes, "Hey, are you represented by anybody?" Well, yeah. Okay. Who can I call? And then suddenly, you're working on something. And it's cool. You know, like I worked on Taken with Steven Spielberg. That's a thrill. I bet it is. How do you replicate that? I mean, that was beautiful. I want to talk about taking it a little bit later. Yeah, yeah. So take me through Dark Skies was, did the network ask you to do that or did you pitch it? We just came up with it. Dark Skies is, I understand it's an old show, but it is an important show for sort of the whole idea of how is disclosure being managed because it's tracking. Well, thank you. But what's interesting about Dark Skies, in addition to the show itself, which I believe one of the critics when it came out called it the most subversive show on television, which I still bask in that one. That's it was. I'm surprised it made it on the air. As was I at the time. But what's, you know, AJ, what's so interesting is that the thing that happened outside of the show while making the show was potentially even stranger than the show. And that I think is the takeaway from it for me because what happened in a, this is a short version of a big story. But what happened is, and this goes back to what we were just talking about, watching something live that you've done. My partner Brent Friedman and I had created Dark Skies. And we'd come up with briefing books that didn't look dissimilar to this thing, right? We had these briefing books that were classified briefing books. And they had all these fake documents and timelines and stuff in there. And the premise of the notebooks was we put a little gold foil seal on them. So it had to break it. And they said there were top secret on the outside. And they said that if you violated the terms of looking at them, you'd be up for trees. And I mean, they were great. And then they were wrapped in in brown paper, wrapper and with twine around them. So when we took these to the networks. Oh, so that was the pitch brilliant. So we took that to the network and we left them with these things. And we just had this. We got two out of two offers in the same day. But when we left them, we just had to smile because they were so interactive for the time is before the internet. It meant that some executive was looking at this thing saying they could be up for treason if they didn't treat it properly. And so they had to cut the twine. They had to take off the paper. They had to break the gold foil seal. And then what it said in there is you have been chosen basically to help get out the truth about UFOs. And it has to be done under the cover of fiction. So now you are part of the conspiracy to tell this disclosure. Wow. Right. So really in gold. It was in fact some there's some group that called it one of the 12 best pilots pitches ever in Hollywood Bibles. It was a Bible and a pitch. Okay. So suddenly my friend Brent Friedmeyer are on the fast track. And a series of things started happening, which I could either tell you about him from the biggest to the littlest or in chronology. I'm kind of at sea, but I'm going to I'm going to go with chronology for a moment here just to show you how so we're cruising along. I've already created TV shows I know what this is like. And I know how gifted we were. You know, this was great. They're going to an NBC buys it and they order it to pilot. So while we're shooting the pilot, the first weird thing happens. I get a postcard. I'm we're shooting. This is in production. And while we're shooting, I get a postcard in the mail. And on the one side of it, and I will give this postcard to you guys if you want to put it in the show, on one side is the cover of a science fiction book. All right, called flying eyes. All right. But on the other side, it's been typed in a real typewriter with a dark black ribbon. It's all caps and it is not written as a sentence. It's written one word, one word, one word, one word. And it says, we are watching you. No kidding. Now, sure, that could have. But we're sent to your home. It was sent to my home, my home address. We are watching you. Okay. So that happened during the pilot and the truth is, I went to my partner the next day and said, did you send this to me? And he's like, what? What are you talking? And so obviously he didn't like it. No, just me. Okay. Just me. And oh, well, to backfill, it's not like I wouldn't have been on somebody's radar because you did mention it. The first film I ever had made was called official denial. And it was the first film on the sci-fi channel. Okay. And it was about somebody who was being abducted. Right. And the government believed him. My inspiration was Whitley Strieber. If the government thought Whitley Strieber was actually being abducted, I thought, what if they wire up his house when he's not there? So the next time he's abducted, they can be told about it instantly and try to shoot down a UFO. Right. Operation forced encounter. That's right. So that's what that movie's about. So anyway, now jumping head to dark skies and you get this card, the pilot gets produced. NBC likes it. I think it gets a WGA award. It does. Well, it got nominated for a WGA award. Yes, it did. And the main titles of the series won the Emmys. Won the Emmy. So now we're fast forwarding. Now we're picked up. NBC says we're ordering 13 hours of this thing. You know, get to work on the scripts. We're going into production on the series and all of that happens. In the fall, when the show is coming out, we're having a party at my house. All right. It's a premier party. 200 people are in the backyard of this party at the house I live in today. These are people I know. These are people that include studio executives and network executives, all the actors, all the crew, everybody. And I know them all because I'm the producer of the show. Is this your majestic 12 party? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody has a little badge that we made that that we are actually using in the series. So we thought, well, that's a party favor. Nobody'll get rid of. Sure. So we may have already a majestic 12 badge. In the middle of this and we got TVs outside. We got TVs inside. In the middle of this, some guy comes, one of my producers says, there's this guy that's looking to talk to you. You better talk to him. And this guy introduces himself. And I don't know who he is. He's the only guy in a party at 200 people. I don't know who he is. And he doesn't have a badge. Right. And he says, he's about 30 years old. Nice, enough looking guy, jacket, collared shirt, not dissimilar to what I'm wearing right now. And he says, listen, the people I work for have sent me here to tell you that you've done a really great job. You know, we're just really impressed by what you have been able to do. What do you mean by that. I'm asking the guy and he says, Oh, well, you know, you got a lot of things right in the pilot. Yeah, which has aired yet. No, it does not aired. It's airing that night. And so me being the wisest I am at the time, I'm I'm thinking the guy is full of nonsense. So I go, Oh, yeah, you've seen the pilot. Yeah. Well, yeah. And he said, and we've read your other scripts. We yeah. Okay. We've read the other scripts. Yeah, the ones that we're working on. They've they've had access. So I'm like, Okay, you've seen the pilot. What happens after the crop circle? You know, I'm full swagger. And he goes, Oh, yeah, that's a great scene. And then afterwards they take the guy back to the majestic 12 headquarters. And they do that operation to pull the ganglion out of his head and all that. And I had to go, Yeah, that's exactly what happens. Right. So he had seen the pilot. Did he tell you who he worked for? Yes. But what's interesting is I threw him out of the party. I said, you know, I don't know who you are. I've got 200 people here. I got a party to run. You need to leave. So I told him to leave about an hour later. I'm going into the kitchen, probably to check on or derives. I don't know what I'm just going to the kitchen. And I see this guy talking to my partner Brent Friedman in the kitchen. No, in by the barbecue right outside. Okay. So I go over there. And the guy has started chatting up Brent. And he says he's from the office of naval intelligence. Oh, yeah. He says his name is JC to call him JC didn't say his name was he'd call me JC. And they basically are saying, Look, we'd like to, you know, we're all about trying to encourage slow drip disclosure. And we would like to, you know, strike some kind of arrangement, some kind of deal with you guys. Okay. What do you mean? Well, we would help give you some information that might be useful to you. And you would try to accommodate that into some of your future scripts. Right. Now at that point, to be honest with you, I don't know if I'm coming or going. I mean, I got a lot of my mind. Yeah, it's hard to produce a show. Sure. It's hard to have a party in your backyard. And this is a surreal conversation. Totally surreal. Totally surreal. But there's something about him that you believe him. Well, he was a credible nice, nice enough guy. I mean, to be honest, he knew the scene. He knew the scene. He'd, he'd obviously had some accident. No, it's not like the dark skies pilot was locked up at Fort Knox. And no one could ever have seen it. Right. But you're not sending screeners to DC. We're not sending them to O and I for sure. I don't know. So he has your paper scripts, though. Yes. He said, yes. Yeah. This is NBC. Yes. So here's the part that gets very strange. Okay. I threw him out a second time. I said, I said, look, this is all fascinating and everything. But I don't have time to deal with this right now. And I, you know, it's really time for you to go. And he goes, got it, understand. And then he looks at me. I'm standing there with Brent and Brent's wife. And he says, anybody have a piece of paper and a pen? And I don't Brent doesn't. But his wife says, ah, and she gets something out of her purse. She's got a bank deposit envelope. She rips off the back part of the envelope and hands it to him with a pen. And the guy turns away from us and goes, now this happens in about 30 seconds, right? 30 seconds. But and he's very purposeful. And he's writing something. And then he folds it in half and he hands it to us. And he goes, you know, you may want to put this in a safety deposit box or something. Maybe if we don't make a deal 10 or 15 years from now, maybe you'll look it up and you'll see we were on the level. And Brent says, can we look at it? And he goes, oh, sure. So we look at it. And the only way I can describe it right this second is it kind of looked like an equation with symbols in it. And I didn't immediately understand everything about it. But it was clearly his intention to write it. I mean, he didn't make this up. We share this picture with us. I can't share it with you right now because we're doing it on our sound light and frequency podcast later. But I will come back on and talk to you about it sometime or what I feel bad even saying that that's okay. But you'll understand why. So we say to him, what is it? And the guy goes secrets of the universe sound light and frequency, which is where the title of the current podcast comes from. Now the reason I'm not sharing it right now is, but what Brent and I, it had been lost for a number of years and we got our hands back on it just recently in advance of this. And so we've decided to try to investigate it a little bit so that we can sort of, we're going to present our findings and put release it to the public on the same day. That's all. That's the only reason we're sitting on the actual thing right now. And it had been lost because Brent had been living in Hollywood and then he moved to the San Juan Islands and they got a different safety deposit box. And his wife, he was smaller and his wife moved the stuff into his office. And about about two years ago, this is so funny how things happen because people say, well, why didn't you hold on to that wall? I was busy with raising three kids, making TV and movies and stuff. I had other things to do. So I started to write a book about this, which I never have finished. And I wrote, I called Brent up and I go, I need, you know, you've had this thing for a quarter of a century man. It's my turn. And he said, okay, fine. And he looks for it. He couldn't, he couldn't find it. And I said, that's just not, I mean, you know, Brent and I are fast friends, but this was a problem. I mean, so I said, hey, it's not okay. You know, I mean, I trusted you with this thing and it's a key part of this story. And I need to see it. And he goes, I, I can't find it. And I said, when's your daughter coming home from college and goes, she's going to be here this weekend. I said, tell her, I'll give her $500 if she can find it. And she found it. And what had happened is the glue from the envelope or whatever had stuck inside a couple of pages. And as she went through every book and every folder, she found this thing again. So we've only recently sort of re-found it. And, but it's clearly the one. I mean, it's clearly the thing. So we're looking into it. So it's just symbols. It's, it's like, it's more like an equation. It's not really an equation. It's a drawing, it's a, it's a drawing with stuff in it that you'll see. I wish I could be more specific. I mean, I want you to speculate on it. But we need to, you need to save that reveal. I think so. I mean, I think with the, I, as, as the more I've looked into it and the more I talk to people about it, people are like, well, that's not bullshit. That's something. And is it, is it the secrets of the universe? I don't know. But if you think about sound light and frequency, many people do say those three things are pretty primal in terms of understanding our reality. And in fact, Tesla is widely reputed to have said, if you want to understand the secrets of the universe, think about energy vibration and frequency or something along those lines. Right. So maybe this guy was an acolyte of, of, of Tesla. But the story doesn't end there. No. No. Okay. Because he leaves. And, um, you know, the, the next week at the office, you know, Brett and I look at this thing and I go, you know what? I don't have time to think about this new view. Put it in your safe deposit. We'll worry about it later. This guy calls and says, Bryce seems to be a bit of a problem. He's talking to Brett. He, I'm not sure he really understands what we're, we're talking about. Um, this is JC. Yeah. And he says, maybe he needs to meet my superior. And so JC and his so called superior arranged to come to our office at dark skies to talk to us about a deal. Okay. So I, you know, I was very busy, but that's pretty tantalizing. One does kind of want to hear what they have to say. Right. Yes. So we said, okay, but I told the security guys, we're going to talk in the conference room that has a glass partition. So everyone can see you in the conference room in case anything untoward is happening. And I said, I want you guys to stand outside the conference room and look tough. Look like you're not to be messed with. Right. So they did. And JC showed up. He was kind of the good cop. He brings a guy, maybe 10, 15 years older than him who I believe Brett and I've always called him the captain. We didn't call him anything in the meeting, but we believe he was introduced as a captain. No credentials shown. We asked for them uh, I didn't ask him at the party because to be honest with you, people say, well, why didn't you? It's because I'm sorry. I'm in the middle of. No, I get it. Yeah. And who knows? He could be a wacky guy. You don't know. Yeah. And so I thought I don't have time to vet the guy at a party. I'm not going to worry about. So yeah, we did when they came and the guy at the so-called captain guy, he came dressed in a bomber jacket with a lot of insignias and patches and stuff. Jeans boots. He looked like an avi- seal. This is how I always looked at him. If you, if the, if the JC character looked like he had in an intelligence background, the, the guy he brought looked more military, really felt tough, Navy seal. And he didn't look like he was happy to be there. He was very condescending to, to me and Brad. He, he, he sort of felt like you, seriously, I gotta go talk to these Hollywood guys, right? He was very tough. He was not, not there to win over our, us for friends or anything. And, you know, again, I've talked about these things for an hour, I'm sorry, an hour in a podcast or whatever, I don't, I don't want to waste your hour here. No, you're not wasting it. But we had a, I want to know what the deal was. We had an out, well, the offer was made a little more specific. Oh, but to go back to the identification. Yeah, I did say, well, who are you? You know, you know, you say you're from Illinois, prove it or whatever, he goes, that's not the way it works. That was a favorite line of his because he said, you know, if we're going to make a deal, then that information will be available to you. And he said, and by the way, you know, we've already done a preliminary investigation on you guys. If we make a deal, we'll, we'll do a more detailed one. I mean, how weird is that? So a guy is going to investigate. They've already done a preliminary investigation on me, but I don't get to know who they are. It sounds like a threat, a little bit. It's very threatening like that postcard. Was there a dollar figure? No, no, because, well, I mean, okay, here's what went down. His whole thing was, it's, there's so much complexity in all this. I, you know, I, there's no way I'll say it perfect or anything, but you recall in the 1980s, there was that special UFO live or something. And it was on, I don't know where it was, but they purported, they had a bunch of people in shadowy interviews, and they were talking about an alien and strawberry ice cream and things like that. And remember, that was Richard Dodie and they called themselves the aviary. That's right. And it was the Air Force. That's right. These guys falcon exactly. And of course, the Air Force has been a lot less forthcoming over the years than the Navy. That's right. Even recently. Less or worth coming in much more destructive. Yes. And that, you know, the Navy, well, not perfect, seems to be on the front lines of a lot of this stuff right now. These guys said, and this will just probably make you laugh. And again, I'm not vouching for everybody. I'm just trying to be a, a good pragmatic relayer of what happened. Sure. Right. As opposed to saying, this is, this is what I believe. I just can tell you what was said. What he said was, he either said, we are the aquarium or think of us as the aquarium. Which area or aquarium aquarium? Because they were the Navy. Right. So right. This down there. There's an episode. Hecklefish is an episode to be made there. Hecklefish will have things to say about that. Yes. You have the aquarium. All right. Now, over the years, I've told that to people who are in the UFO UAV. Hold on. Keep us in the room. You say, no. Yeah. Say, I'm not interested. To the, to, oh, no, we did not say we're not interested. Didn't say no. No. Well, in the room, this goes on about an hour and a half and it got kind of contentious. Whereas the, the good cop, JC was always trying to say, well, I think we can agree, you know, but this guy, I, I felt like, okay, you want to ask us for this deal. And the deal was simply going to be some version of we will brief you on certain key things that you should know. And you will find ways to incorporate them into your series. You know, no, nothing beyond that at this point. Which is a, you know, kind of a weird thing for somebody to be in your office telling you about. Why doesn't it take over an hour? Because I said to the guy, so, well, because I thought, maybe this is real. And even if it's not real, if it's disinformation, I know about Richard Doty and that shit, I think you did know. Yeah. I'm thinking, I'd like to hear what they have to say. So I said things like, well, okay, you know, that's all willing. Oh, I know what the first thing I should tell you though is what they did say you got a lot of things right. But the captain was there to say what we got wrong. And what he said we got wrong is we had these biological ganglions that infested a human's brain. And if you could get it out of them, you know, you could bring them back from the brink and all that. And he was disgusted by the ganglions, this guy. And he said, and this is, this, I've never forgotten this phrase. He said, that's not the way it worked. That's not the way it's done. That's not the way it's done to which I said, well, how is it done? Right. Now, we only did the ganglion, not because we believe ganglions are the real thing. This was a TV series. We're looking for a little horror of fact. Sure. Right. And he said, it's, um, I don't know if you use the word implant, but that's what he was talking about. It's, it's implants. They're technological, they're biological, fusion, whatever, but it's an implant. You don't need, you don't need all that stuff. Did they had the JC tell you what you got right? Yeah. Specifically. I think that they were saying certain things like, um, you know, the fact that we had Betty and Barney Hill in the pilot. That was right. The fact that we said JFK was killed over Roswell, uh, possibly the implied might be right. They definitely said Roswell was right. I mean, you know, connecting JFK to UFO, that's, that's canon now. Yes, but it wasn't when we did it. No, we just made it up. Our idea then was what, what is the, let's take the unified field theory of conspiracy is what was our grand idea. We said, let's take the two biggest conspiracies of all time, UFOs and Kennedy. Let's put them in an atom collider and see what happens and that became our series. Okay. Um, I mean, we've traced the Kennedy assassination all the way through the Mori, Mori Island incident in Fred Christmas. Yes. Guy Bannister at all goes back to JFK. Yes. And, and then the Lester memo comes out a few years ago and confirms a lot of that. I, it always feels like I'm involved in the Mandela effect or something. Right. Because when Brent and I wrote all this, there was no internet for us to get this from. We'd never read any book that said anything like this. We just made it up. Only now, like you said, it's almost canon. So, well, Jacques Valle, I would say that this is your creating the myth and the myth is creating. I think, I think that's possible. Because I mean, you cover majestic 12 of the series. They said that was, we got that right. And you got that right. I mean, here's the thing. I started saying to this guy, I started asking him questions, right, to, to see what they were going to tell us. Did you know about the majestic 12 Jamie Shander, right? Yes. Or issue all that. Well, that's what we based the show on. We, we just said, if, if Roswell was real, then majestic was real. And, um, and if JFK was in office 14 years after Roswell, then whether he knew about it or was trying to know about it or didn't know about it, Roswell and Majestic infected the undercurrent of Washington DCs during the 60s. So, that was our point of view on the whole thing. I think that's what's written for you. It felt, wasn't it? Yeah. Well, he, I, Stanton was a friend of mine, and, and I, um, I once optioned his book, Top Secret Magic about his quest to validate the majestic 12 documents. Now, we could, we could do a whole show arguing Majestic 12 documents. I think they're real. I don't think all of them are real, but I think I, I, I subscribe to the Eisenhower briefing document being authentic. You do. Now, not everybody does by any means. Stanton did. Stanton, he did. He, he got a couple of things wrong. He did. But he got some things right. But nobody was more willing to go to a research facility. And, you know, there's like iron pants, man. He would just sit himself down and go through boxes after boxes and find stuff. Um, I don't know about the majestic 12 documents. There's some, some things about them that I just don't like. Well, you're right to be skeptical. You know, I mean, I don't, but I still believe there's a group. Yeah. There has to be a group. I, I guess that's really, I think we agree. Yeah. My, my take was, there has to be somebody in charge after Roswell. The, you, you wouldn't have Roswell. And, excuse me, and leave nobody in charge. So for our purposes of the show, we said, for our, because remember, we're making these briefing books. We said, well, at least we can Xerox, the majestic 12 documents and put them in. And we don't have to write them. Right. So we just, and, and also every television series, if you think about it, needs a base. If it's a hospital show, it's the ER. Now, if it's a legal show, it's the law of this. If it's a police station, I mean, police show, it's the police station. So what was ours? It was majestic 12. Right. Okay. So that's really why we got between it. And, and I, again, I, I respect your thought about majestic 12. It, it's going to be debated until it's not debated. At some point in this disclosure process, either we're going to see the documentation that proves how they were all done, or we're going to see the documentation that proves that some of them were real. Because Dodie's in that mess. Yes, he is. And that's what I think. Brent and I thought was going on when these guys came to the office, right? And the only thing. And again, this story gets so strange. And I'm not vouching for the credibility of what the other person said. I'm only vouching for the fact that I was there and saw it happen. That's fair. So at a certain point, I was asking the guy questions. And you probably know this, but just a few years ago, David Grush told his story for the first time in my house to Ross Koltard. And I didn't know that in your house. Yeah. The same place where this party happened. And many of the things that Dave and with us, the story we were talking about later, possibly, but many of the things Grush has said, crash retrievals and reverse engineering and biologics and that kind of stuff. These guys were implying if not stating outright. So that felt very familiar to me that they were saying this. But as I got more detailed, the guy just put up because that's not why we're here, right? He just, he wasn't going to talk about it. And finally, he got so upset with me. I mean, I really was not rubbing the guy the right way. He goes fine. And he reaches in his pocket and he pulls out this little vial. Okay, it's a little glass vial with a black screw top. And he puts it on the table because there, that's what this is all about. And we're like, what? And I think Brent picked it up first. And it had little flakes in it, little gold flakes in it, which I presume might have been gold or whatever, I don't really know. Exactly. But there's no liquid in it. But Brent said it kind of looked like a snow globe to him that they were kind of floating around in there. I didn't see that. When I picked it up, it was just half full with these little gold flakes. But what the guy was saying is there's mining going on on the moon. And that this is a big part of it. Now, I can't tell you that I found evidence of mining on the moon or whatever. But that's what he said. Okay. How do we know what's misinformation? How do we know David's not part of a program? Well, he seems way, way, way more authentic as a witness because you can know a lot about him. Which is not to say that the story I'm telling might not be 100% true, but it could also be 100% false. I'm not being false. Neither is Brent. We're just sort of telling it. But here's how it ended because it takes it to a far stranger finale. I started, I said, I don't, I was running a TV show and guys are telling me they want their world reflected in my scripts. That ain't the way I roll at this time. And so I'm saying I don't really understand this. What are you proposing? Are you saying you want us to hire writers that you recommend? Are you saying you're, you want to rewrite our scripts? What are you going to do there? And he goes, and I said, no, I want to know. I want to know because it doesn't work that way. I said, I got writers out here who, who depend on residuals to feed their families. And I want to know, are you planning some kind of impact with this writing thing? Are you trying? And he's like, we're not have, you know, and he got very upset. And they left in a huff. Did they give you any examples of what they would want in the show? No. Well, I mean, I think because yeah, yeah, they did. Actually, actually, no, no, actually, they did have once, here's a specific example, which is what got me into the confrontation with them in the first place. He said, well, are you doing any shows? We haven't seen anything where you're doing shows that take place in the water. Because I think I had asked him the question that started that. I said, if you're the Navy, why are you investigating UFOs, which, you know, are generally in the air? What do you have to do with it? And, and, you know, obviously, well, a lot of them are seen in the water. And that's when he brought up. So are you doing stories about that? Because you're going to need to. Now, we didn't really know about that back then. I mean, not a lot, not like we do today. Right. And so, but, you know, again, Brent and I had set dark skies. We, the leader of majestic 12 in dark skies was from O and I. I mean, he was a Navy guy. He was a Navy Captain, our guy. And so that's one of the things they said. We got right that we, we, we had it in the Navy. But here's where things just take such a bizarre. I mean, all I can tell you is life is weird. So, Bryce, here's this. And I'm a producer and I go, well, wait a second. You can't be shooting in water all the time. You got to get tanks and you got people in scuba gear. I'm, I'm dissecting this thing is a production problem. Right. And he's, I can just see the guy getting read, you know, he's just, and then, and then when I started talking about and what are you going to do about these scripts? Because I'm a journalist, right? So I'm grilling the guy. And he didn't like, he doesn't like that. And they left in a half. Okay. So, you don't grill him. So here's the craziest part that will just, you'll, your, your audience will hear this and go, I don't know what to make of this because I still don't, but all right. So a few more days go by. And again, they're not calling me because I'm off doing show stuff, but they call Brent. And he doesn't take the calls, you know, three or four calls go by. I don't think he's taking them. Finally, he picks up. And it's just the show in the air at this time. Yeah. How's it doing? Before you were banished the Saturday nights. Well, this is all happening right after the premiere. Because the premiere did well. Did it did well enough? I mean, the numbers on the premiere in 1996 would be a hit show today. Right. But we're just modest in those days, but well enough. It was selected by NBC to be the lead show in their Saturday night trilogy. They had hundreds of buses around LA with dark skies posters on them. They had skywriting planes with dark sky. I mean, they were putting a lot of money and promos and marketing into this thing. Was ex files around? Yeah, it was. It was. People always sort of felt like they had to choose between our show and their show. But I felt like ex files is all about sort of the suspense of, is it? Or isn't it? Our, we, we, first of all, we wrote this pilot, you know, before really even knowing much of all about ex files. And we also wrote it to be not a tease in the very first scene of dark skies. You see a UFO and it ain't man made. Right. So we're not teasing anybody. We're saying there's an alien problem here on earth. Okay. So a few days go by after the captain and JC come out and it's gone badly. Right. I also have to, you could either laugh about it or get concerned about it because, you know, it is kind of scary that anybody would come out and be mad at you who, who looks as scary and tough as this guy. But, you know, with now that it's decades later, I'm probably safe. I'm probably out of the woods on that one. But anyway, they call JC is apparently a called Brent and God is assistant three or four times and Brent's not taking the calls. And finally Brent takes the call and JC says, well, that could have gone better. Right. And he basically the conversation was price really seems to not be hitting it off with my superior. Maybe we need to do something else. Okay. And they said, we think maybe there's one more thing we can try before we have to just give up on this thing. And Brent, Brent said, well, what would that be? And they said, there's a ship that's going to be in Long Beach coming up. And there's a guy on the ship. I think he said was an admiral, but I could have that wrong. But there was a guy on the ship that we needed to meet. And we could not come on the ship because you can't be logged onto a ship. You can't log on a couple of Hollywood screenwriters to talk about UFOs on a ship. That's a bad idea. Now on the other hand, if you're a complete conjub, it's also a good idea for you to say they can't come on the ship. Sure. Because you don't have to show the ship. But what they said is that this guy, the admiral I call him, was going to take short leave of some kind to visit and pay respects to a friend who had passed. And this is the part where I'm going to tell you, you're just going to probably laugh out loud and you're or hit your head on the table. I don't know which, but they wanted us to meet this guy at a cemetery at midnight. Come on. See? That's what they said. What? That's what I said. Now we can't do a we work or something cemetery midnight. What's that about? It's crazy. And it's insane. Okay. I'm not, I'm not arguing that it makes any sense. But then if the phenomenon is playing with you, sometimes it doesn't make sense. So I don't, I don't know. So again, I'm relaying what they said. Now, Bren and I thought, my first thing was it's an initiation, right, if they're testing us to see if we're either dumb enough or goable enough or brave enough to go do it. Bren thought there might be something there that they're going to show us, but then as we talked about it, we said, yeah, we'll get there. There'll be two six-foot graves there and we'll each get popped in the back of the head. And that'll be that to this little thing. And my first reaction, of course, was, hey, I have three children and I'm married and I'm not meeting anybody at a cemetery at midnight, whether it's real or it's not real. Nope. Okay. Brent, who didn't have kids at the time, was almost willing to do it, but we had taken a vow that all for one won for all. You know, we weren't going to do it unless we bolted it. And ultimately, we decided not to do it and we ended the relationship. They did call a few more times, we never took their calls again. And I completely agree. There are things that sound light and frequency, sequence of the universe, this formula, the postcards, we are watching you, the guys coming. I mean, here's what I would say. I don't know whether to vouch for or against the authenticity of this. I have, as a reporter, been lied to by experts, they did not strike me as lying to me. I'm just saying that. I'm just saying my impression was that these were serious people, but I would say this. You know, you've heard of the phrase an MM RPG, a multi-media role playing game, right? It felt like Brent and I were in that that somebody had constructed a game around us and that we were unwitting players in the game. So even. That's kind of how you started the show. Yeah. Is it like an ARG? They wanted us, if you think about it, our entire pitch for selling Dark Skies was we must use the cover of fiction to tell the truth. What happened to us, just like you was talking about, maybe you create the thing with the JFK thing? Well, what happens? You guys show up at our, into our lives and say, we need you to use the cover of fiction to slow-drip disclosure. So our heads were reeling, you know, I mean, what's real, what's not real in this thing? And it felt like, well, let me put it this way. Somebody spent either a lot of time or a lot of money or probably both to do this to us. Because if these guys were actors, they're pretty freaking authentic actors. If it was a scripted thing, then somebody spent some time scripting it. Yeah, but it's not easy to get your unaired pilot. It's not easy. It's an actor. It's definitely not easy. Did the network get involved in this? Do they. We never told the network. Yeah. And that was not. we. see, my biggest concern, by the way, about even considering it as a deal, was Sony, which was producing this, or Columbia TV at the time, and NBC, did not really care to hear that Bryce was getting his ideas from the government. That would not be something they would want to hear, and I didn't want to tell him that. And frankly, Brent and I felt that if we even really entertained the thing, aside from the Cemetery at Midnight Bullshit, we felt if we actually entertained it and did it, we would be giving up agency over our own project that we would. you know, I mean, how would that have even worked? How would we have been compromised, and what would people have thought about it if they found out about it? So we just said we're out. I mean, we took it far enough, but things started to feel like they were coming in us. Just think about it. You get the postcards. We are watching you, and then you get a guy that crashes your party. Then he brings somebody to your office, and then they persist, and they're talking about a cemetery at Midnight. And if you want to go there, I'll tell you another story that happened, and it involves Stephen Spielberg. Let's hold that until after the break, but last question, because we have a lot of Spielberg to cover. Oh, yeah. That's. there's your transition, I guess, yeah. Yeah, right. But before we go. Yeah. Are there any shows where you've spotted what you'd consider implanted information? I think that's impossible to know. I mean, one of the reasons Brent and I started to do sound light and frequency as a podcast, we were less trying to create another podcast, but we wanted a format that would become an active investigation, because we know what happened to us, and it doesn't make any sense to think that, hey, if Friedman and Zabel turned it down, that's it. Let's walk away. That's never approach anybody in Hollywood ever again about this. That would make any sense, right? So our feeling was by telling these stories, because, you know, listen, like I said, I used to be the youngest guy now. I'm probably the oldest guy. What do I gain by taking these stories and never telling them? So I feel like it's time to, I feel all of us who have been impacted in the phenomenon have an obligation to bear witness to our piece of it. And if enough of us bear witness to our pieces, we assemble a mosaic of contact and disclosure. So I'm only offering my piece of it to find just so that my part of the mosaic is in there, and I'm encouraging other people to come forward if they can and tell us their story in the same way that there are whistleblowers like David Grush, and, and, you know, even what Lou Elzando has done and all that. If there are other people coming forward in Hollywood, that tells us something. So by virtue of telling this story to you and for Brent and I to be telling it in our own words, what we're really saying to people is, hey, if you got a story like that, here's a safe place to tell it, and we've already had one person come forward, the director of lawnmower man, a man named Brett Leonard, has contacted us and we've done a show with him. And he basically said that at roughly the same time he was contacted by someone who said he was with the Defense Intelligence Agency. And so we are, we're hearing and we've heard, we're developing another case where somebody else said that they have been approached. So maybe it wasn't just us. I've heard you, I think, use a, the film metaphor about disclosure being hard cut versus a dissolve. And the hard cut sounds like it would be difficult on society for talking about like the Robertson panel or the Berking's report, or we in the middle of a dissolve now. I mean, if we're talking about it that way, it's a great metaphor in, in a movie you can either do a slow dissolve from one scene to the other or you can just cut to it, right? And so in the disclosure world, the way that would be a hard cut would be, you're not thinking anything is happening, the president or the pope or somebody walks out and says we're not alone. We have bodies. Here's one of them right now, right? And everybody goes, oh my God, I mean, that's the hard cut. The slow dissolve is you slowly dip your toe in the water. You slowly leak this out, right? And when Richard Dolan and I wrote AD after disclosure, this was before the New York Times article of 2017. And so we were like, you know, a hard cut seems more likely because that would mean something happened, like a Phoenix lights incident would happen today. And we'd have, we'd all have our cell phones and we'd instantly talk about it on social media. So that's the president at the podium. Yeah. That's the hard cut. I think we are living in a slow dissolve right now. I mean, the evidence to me seems pretty strong. You've got, you've got that New York Times article that kicks things off. But what have we had since we've had the Lou Elizondo's, the David crushes. We've had, you know, every day seems to bring a new whistleblower or a new book from somebody. And these are, you know, if you look at the age of disclosure documentary that was just out, there's like 30 people who have actual credentials who are talking about it. And yet you can go talk to somebody on the street and go, what do you think about this? They're not completely aware yet, but they're closer to aware than they were. I think we're in slow drip disclosure right now. I think it's a slow dissolve and you, do you believe they're telling us the complete truth? No. No. Do you think some of the information dripping is false? That's a different question. I can't judge it, I don't see anything that I think that is dripping, that is completely false. Instead, what I see are people like Hal Putoff who say, you know, I've told you this much stuff, but in realities, there's that much stuff that I know and there's a whole bunch of guys like him, almost all the guys in the age of disclosure thing. That doesn't mean anybody's lying. just means they haven't. been given the Allie Allie income free to talk. I saw one show that you did with James Fox and he said exactly what I believe and you guys were talking about it, which is, hey, if you want to resolve this thing, just absolve everybody of their NDAs. Just let anybody come forward and testify. We'll get to the bottom of it. Just give them license. - They kind of need to because, you know, if your statement is cleared through the Pentagon, you still have your clearance, you're still on the payroll, you still have your pension, I'm skeptical of what you're telling me. - Yeah. - And 'cause it's, you know, I've been at this awhile and it all goes back to Dodie in the '80s and Bill Moore and it's just been a mess ever since. I don't know who to believe. - It is, you are not wrong. I mean, the frustration that you must feel and your listeners must feel is what I feel, which is, you don't have to tell me everything to tell me something. And so we may even need to use the word disclosure with the capital D because I don't believe anybody's walking out to a podium and saying to the media, there's a five terabyte hard drive for each of you with all the world secrets on it. That's not going to happen. I don't expect that to happen. But another word that would be good for me would be confirmation. I'd like to at least have somebody in authority confirm we're not alone. You know that Roswell thing? Yeah, that happened. We're looking into it. A lot of this is classified. We're not going to tell you everything. But there you go. That would be better than nothing. - It would, I mean, if you look at Obama and Trump can be more different people. - Correct. - And yet they're both kind of said aliens are real. - They got in a fight about it. - They got in a fight about a lot of stuff. But those are two very different men. - Absolutely. - Same thing. - Yeah. - And Edgar Mitchell is a very, an astronaut says Roswell happened. - Yep. - So it's very frustrating. You were talking earlier before we came on and was a nice story about how Elizondo said, if you knew what I know, you'd be very somber. - Yeah. - Why would we be somber? - Well, you'd almost have to, he's not amplified on that. But you'd be somber, I suppose he is saying, if you knew the things I knew, they're a little disturbing and that would cause you to be somber about the whole thing. And by the way, I want to answer more of that, but there's a little quick sidebar here. My partner Brent Friedman on Dark Skies, when he was a young man, grew up next to the secretary of energy in the Reagan administration, fellow named John Harrington. And Brent was hired in 1981 to drive Harrington's cars across the country, because he had just taken a job with the Reagan administration in the Navy department. And then he was later promoted. And John was one of Reagan's, John Harrington, was one of Reagan's great friends. And like I said, Brent, like me, didn't have the world's friendliest dad, but John Harrington taught him how to throw a ball and all that, they were neighbors and friends. And Brent got to DC and I'm really condensing. But Harrington, later that night after dinner, after the cars were delivered and everything, on the back porch with just Brent told him that he had been briefed at an underground facility in West Virginia for several months, and that he cried himself to sleep every night. - Wow. - And Brent said, many things, like why are you telling me and whatever, but Brent said, why would you cry yourself to sleep? And Harrington said, because I have two daughters, and this is the world they're going to grow up in. - What did he mean by that? - Well, he didn't give the specifics like none of these guys do. He just said that the reality that he was encountering was disturbing and he was shaken by it. And according to Brent, Harrington was a strict Calvinist, a very religious man. He said something else that was quite strange. He said, aliens was done on day three, but he was there for a couple of months. So what else was it? I mean, I'd like to know that. Also, though, in times to come, Harrington has not commented on this, of course, but the idea that he told Brent that he had been briefed at a West Virginia underground facility. There were no known West Virginia underground facilities in 1981 when he told it to him. - No, I'd be racking my brain trying to think about it. - But a decade later, they broke the story of Greenbrier. - That's right. - Hotel. - The Greenbrier Hotel. - Which was a large underground facility in West Virginia where they were going to evacuate Congress in the nuclear war. - That's true. You guys, there's an episode on that. - And when David Grush was at my house practicing his interview that he would do for news nation with Ross Coltard, I asked him, do you know John Harrington? And Grush said, oh, I know John Harrington. And most recently, Grush has called Brent Friedman and said, do you think we can get, can I get an audience with John Harrington? Can you help me? So obviously, they're taking the Harrington story that Brent has told for years. This is the story, by the way, that when I first met Brent, he told me that story and that's why we became fast friends and decided to do dark skies together. - Wow. - And it turns out it's, in my view, a true story. You don't try to subpoena or otherwise get John Harrington to tell his story to the Congress. I mean, Grush works for the House Oversight Committee and he's asking Brent about John Harrington, that's pretty credible stuff. - Yeah it is. - Right? So anyway, to your question about somber, I tell you that only because, yeah, if you're crying yourself to sleep at night, that's something has made you somber at best, right? Now, I like to be an optimist about life, right? I have come down to look, I understand there are two points of view on disclosure. One is that people have a right to know and the other is what Jack Nicholson says, and a few good men in words written by Aaron Sorkin, which is, you can't handle the truth, okay? Now, I happen to think both are true. - I agree. - Okay, and that's what dark skies was about. We made it as soliloquy between these two guys. - Yeah. - You can't handle the truth, people have a right to know. So I do believe that, although I have come down strongly today, I feel like the clock has run out. 80 years is plenty. The people do have a right to know, good, bad, or indifferent. So I'm in favor of tell me, you know, let me decide if I can handle it or not. I just feel like we have to know. - Well, tell us about after disclosure because you don't argue about UFOs or aliens in the book. - Right. - This is what happens after. - Yes, I think, Richard Dolan and I became friends 'cause I called him up after I read one of his earlier national security state books. And we decided to write this book. Because we said, you know, there's been like 5,000 books trying to prove UFOs are real. Let's not write that. Let's not write that book right now. Let's assume other people have done that. Let's write the one book nobody has written. Let's write the book about what happens after we all agree they're real. - Yes. - Me, that's pretty interesting. - It is. - What's the world gonna look like? And so we, and you know Richard Dolan by reputation and all that, he's a brilliant historian and thinker and he knows more about what's happened historically in this topic than most people or anybody. And I feel very privileged that for an entire year, Richard and I sort of had this ongoing discussion with each other where we would call each other up and go, you know, I was just thinking, what about this and what about that? Trying to ask ourselves, what is really going to happen after disclosure? Now, I say that and I always have to buy it back a little bit because it does depend on what's disclosed. If you get a little disclosure like a confirmation, maybe people will rock on. If you get full disclosure and somebody goes, and by the way, there are 17 different species here. Some of them are interdimensional. Some of them are time travel or whatever. Some crazy ass disclosure. I can't handle that. That's going to freak some people out. So it depends. I just, I really don't know. But Richard and I were able to talk about that a lot and the one thing that we sort of came to a conclusion about that we tried to implement, which is, if you're trying to look for clues about the future, try to look a little bit in the past as well. So for example, 9/11 happens, what happens? We close the stock market for a few days, right? That'll probably happen. The great depression happens. What happens then? We close the bank's down so that people don't withdraw all their money. There will probably be a time of great disturbance. How great can't say yet. But we'll probably get through it. We'll probably muddle through it. And that's, I think, where we come down on it. But I just think that the thing that we both discovered together, and it was such a, I would call it joyous, maybe it wasn't joyous to him, but it It was to me, because I thought I'm really involved in thinking about something that people just, the only people I could think of that were thinking about the things I was thinking of at the time were probably the gatekeepers, you know, the secret keepers, you know, who have to think about those things. But I, I wasn't saying any evidence, anybody else was thinking about it. Let's face it, if there's a disclosure that just starts with we are not alone and escalates to and some of them are here now, whoo, that's a big piece of disclosure by itself, right? It's going to affect the economy, stock market banks, etc., but it's going to affect law. What about aviation law? What about all the pilots that got fired because they said they saw a UFO? What about the military? What are we going to prepare for with the military? What about education? What are we going to tell our kids? What about all these history books of the last 80 years? Are we going to rewrite all those? What about energy? These things are not flying around on gasoline, right? So just pick anything in the world. What about culture? What you and I are doing right now? How will that change? Well, it'll change a lot. We'll have, we won't be speculating as much. We'll be saying, geez, that's pretty out, we'll be looking at some image over there and going, yeah, I can't deny that's real. So I do think it's a big deal. Anyone who minimizes it is probably wrong. On the other hand, there seems to be evidence with so much happening all the time. It is so disturbing in our, you know, the world seems more complex and strange than ever. So probably, it might not be as bad, but it depends. You know, you always got to go. It depends. Didn't David Rush kind of get us part of the way there? He did. And nothing happened. No. And we've had a few hearings since then. We've had, and David Fraver and all these things, nothing's happened. I, I, I, I'm frustrated by that as well. Well, I'm, I'm curious what, why do you think nothing happened? You've talked to so many interesting people and, and spent so much time thinking about it. I think, I mean, we can only speculate, but I think there's a lot of water being muddied and Lockheed and Raytheon are very important. Right. I, I think that's really who's driving the narrative. My old podcast partner, Ross Colthart, said on our last show together, he said, I can now state categorically, um, that the tech tech is made by Lockheed Martin. It's Lockheed Martin technology. He said. Yep. I don't believe that, but I, I don't know. Do you? I do. You do. I do. I do. All right. We'll see. That's interesting. Just, if you notice on those videos, so you think the tech tech that's zipping around and do, that, that, that we do that now. We have that. I think so. Yeah. Interesting. But notice the videos that are being released now from the Navy are cropped in so we can no longer see the angles and be, yeah, they're cropped. So you can't use trigonometry anymore. Yeah. Where we've seen one video that definitely looks like a UFO. But when you do the trigonometry, it's, it's a balloon going 40 miles an hour. But on the screen, it looks like it's crazy, but it's just parallax. Um, so I think 99% of it could be explained. That's the 1% that, you know, that concerns me. And I just don't think full disclosures ever going to be there. I mean, I think that the government probably has some type of anti-gravity research, at least, if not technology, chief energy for energy, but you can't let your adversaries know you have it. Let's, let's extend that argument though on full disclosure. It also depends on what full disclosure is. Of course, I, the assumption when Rich and I started writing our book was, you know, we were in a top down world. And we still are to a certain extent that, that people who know things don't like to share and whatever. But a lot of the tools of observing the reality around us have devolved into the public sphere. Yes, the government and private enterprise probably have better versions of a lot of things. We have a lot of stuff now that allow us to see what the reality of the world we live in is. And I think one thing that's changed about disclosure is we may be living in a world that can also go bottom up that more and more people can be involved in helping to solve this problem. And I have thought for years, don't sit around and wait for the government to tell you what they know. They will tell us probably kicking and screaming, totally agree. Bottom up is the way I'd like to see it happen. I don't want to hear from any more senior military intelligence people done with that. I feel that. I feel you. I want the guy who sweeps the floor, who smuggles out a piece of something and risks his life and job and blows the whistle. That's the guy I want. The Bob Lazarus, you know, who I find the most credible. There's plenty of holes in his story and it's been semi-consistent, but that type of story. Well, AJ, the frustration, I think, is that we, a lot of people, if you read the internet and read it and X, there's a lot of people going, yeah, just, you know, you people are all just grifting liars and show us the, and I agree with that. I'm part of the show me the saucer crowd. Sure. I want to see it. Part of the problem with the current situation where people are, are fessing up from within government is nobody's allowing, nobody allowed Lou El Osando to take a piece of the Roswell wreckage out of the Pentagon. I mean, that's not how it works. Right? I mean, if you do get to talk about this, that's all you get to do. You don't have the evidence, the people who have the evidence have it and they're not sharing it and they're not sharing their work. So there is a preponderance of evidence, if you will, that is given to us by people who claim to have seen and know things and it's pretty extreme, but nothing is going to change the world and turn it upside down like authentic, real evidence, right? Or another mass sighting, potentially, where everybody stops what they're doing and says, what is going on here? By the way, just to tell you what I'm kind of working on, one of my latest projects, I'm doing it with Lionsgate. It's called Undeniable and it's exactly that premise. The premise is, it's seen from the world of a television newscast, all right, right what you know, right? And they actually hired me to write it as a, it's a seven part scripted podcast. We have, we start production next month, there's cast already, it's been brought in because I want to create the IP to sell the TV series, because nobody wants to spend any money anymore. So that's fine, but the premise of it is exactly what we're just talking about, which is in the opening episode, there's a plane crash, okay, it's a mid-air collision and the news people are covering the mid-air collision, but the thing is, it's a mid-air collision with an anomalous object and some kid on the plane has taken a video of the mid-air collision and has texted it out as they're crashing on the Indianapolis freeway system. So suddenly the news people start to cover a plane crash, but now they're covering an anomalous object and so what I'm trying to do in that story is tell the story that takes you from day one, nobody knows anything to day seven, we're all agreed, we're not alone, you know, the week that could change the world. And I bring that up only because I want to say the thing that is going to change our world, it's probably something you and I aren't thinking of right now. Of course. Yeah. That's just the way things are. There's something lurking, like I didn't see the New York Times writing that article in 2017. No, but he saw that coming, right? I mean, who saw that, right? I mean, the air force probably did. Yeah. I mean, we knew, you know, it was great, Tom DeLong, the year before it announced to the Stars Academy, but you know, things weren't happening in an intense way and the pace has picked up, obviously. So, and I don't think everyone saw David Grush coming, but again, you're so right. I mean, David Grush, I believe, is telling the truth. He seems to have the proper credentials and all that, but I wish he had been able to get out with a piece of the craft or, you know, with a biological sample or something, because I want to see it. Well, since, since his statements have to be cleared through the Pentagon, yeah, why don't just the Pentagon give the statement because the president needs to tell them to do it. And so far, President Trump has not told them to do it. Now, you could, we could have a long conversation that would give both the tact on the media for being both pro and anti. You can't even speak about Trump anymore in an internet world, but I mean, he has the power to do that. Now, what he's doing instead, he promised to do it. Yeah. So, I don't know, maybe he will, maybe he won't, but that, it would take something of that magnitude. It would. lots of files and a lot of subjects that seem to hit some bumps. Yeah, they did. How long do you think Stephen Spielberg has been an asset for the IC? That's an interesting question. First of all, of course, his movie, Disclosure Day is certainly interestingly timed. I doubt that the people at Universal that are putting it out are doing anything that other than a victory dance in the office complex because how great to have people talking about UFO and UAP when files and videos are being released. There are reviews on that are amazing. Yeah, and yeah, I would say this about Spielberg, a couple of things. First, he has always denied being an asset of anybody. So I'm just, of course, of course, I'm just saying, let's. And I was have joking. But it feels like he knows something. Well, okay. So let's just state for the record, he says, no, in his interviews that he's doing for his movie, he says, I've just been studying this a long time and these are the conclusions I've reached. And I think it's very clear that if you're Stephen Spielberg, people do seek you out and tell you things if they know your interest. So he's had some great conversations as have you and as have I. We've not everyone who said anything to you as have you put on the air and vice versa. He knows some things. Now, I will give you a specific story, though, when we were shooting the Dark Skies, two specific stories, when we were shooting the Dark Skies pilot, we were creating a crop circle north of holly, north of LA and it was hard to create a crop circle. So these people that go these guys with a board and two guys have created all the crop circles, I'm skeptical because we had like 14 people on it for two days and it still looked like crap, you know, compared to, you know, some of the real ones, but there were a couple I could not debunk that I tried to. Yeah. So who knows? Anyway, what I do know is that our crew that was out scouting locations for the crop circle scene ended up taking a break that night. I was not on that location scout, but Brent was. And Brent was talking to our director, Toby Hooper and you probably know Toby Hooper because he directed Texas chainsaw massacre and poltergeist and he knows Steven Spielberg very well. And Toby Hooper, who is a man he's he's passed on, but I did shoot the pilot with him and I know him to be a very, very direct and honest guy. I mean, he never pulled a punch about anything ever. So, but he told Brent, when Brent said to him, you know, you're finally going to get to do something Spielberg, you know, hasn't done. You're going to do something first. You're going to make a crop circle, which by the way, Spielberg is making a crop circle or did make one for disclosure day, but this is a while ago. And and Toby said, yeah, well, you know, yeah, but I'm never going to be ahead of Steven because you know, Steven knows a lot of things and Brent's like, well, like what? And that by the way, that was a very bad Toby Hooper impersonation. I won't do that anymore, but what Toby, but what Toby's told Brent is that Steven Spielberg had told him that he had been given direct information in a, in a, what I want to say, in a semi, in an unofficial capacity that, that people had given him information for close encounters. He said that Toby said that to Brent, which of course he, he hired Jay Allen Heineck as consultant. He used Heineck's close encounters. Heineck coined that phrase, right. And had a cameo in the film. True, but I think what Toby was saying to Brent is, yeah, of course he brought Heineck again, right? But Heineck Heineck's last words are one of his last words, according to Don Schmitt, the Roswell researcher who worked with him on Kufos. One of Heineck's last words were, why won't they tell me even now? Really? Yeah. So I think we, we know that Heineck knew a lot because he investigated a lot. Yeah. But he didn't know a lot because the, you know, the guys, you know, came around, you know, and told them things. Like Heineck pressed the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who famously had a standing desk and he was in his office and challenged him. Why, you know, I've worked loyally for you guys. I've done what you've asked me to do. And according to Heineck, who told this to Don Schmitt, Rumsfeld comes around, see, that's the problem though, because it's three sources. But ever, it's still a good story. Heineck watches as Rumsfeld comes around his standing desk and gets in his face and says, don't you ever ask me about that again. So Heineck didn't know everything. What Kobe was implying to Brent or said to Brent, not implied, Spielberg's heard from real people, the people that know shit. They've talked to him. So, you know, I don't know what that means, but that was the allegation. Now, I, as we talked about, I, I did work with them on the taken series. So I, we had some meetings talking about UFOs and my take on hearing him talk about UFOs, is he's like you and me, super interested guy who's read a bunch of books and talk to a lot of important people and has a lot of ideas and theories and everything. I didn't get from him that he knew things. I didn't know. Well, close encounters, that's what 1977. Yeah, he basically covered the planet, the planet Serpo legend. He sure did or started it. We're under the other. Yeah, before anyone heard of that, which I thought was a dody story. Yeah. But what's, I think, interesting about Spielberg, who's, he is the UFO alien director for sure, is, and now I don't know what disclosure day, what the theme is going to be. But it feels like his point of view has gotten a little darker over the years, where you go from close encounters with, sure, it's a, it's a friendly exchange. Then you get to war the worlds. I think you make a great point, AJ. I might take on disclosure day. What it means is Steven Spielberg is 79 years old as we record this. He's going to be 80 near Christmas this year, okay? Over the time, from close encounters, actually scratched that from when he was a kid in Phoenix, where his first movie as a kid was about UFOs. Was it? Yes. Two hours and 30 minutes of UFO Spielberg kid movie. Wow. And then he made close encounters in 76, 77. Anyway, from that moment until disclosure day, he's had his name on as a writer, a director, or a producer on 30 alien projects. Throughout. Okay. I believe that people should look at disclosure day. And I'm not going to comment on the film one way or the other at this point. Let's let people have a, you know, a pleasurable experience, having it envelop them. But as you watch it, I would ask people to consider this is likely to be Spielberg's closing argument about UFOs. Okay. This is the one where he's put all the things that he thinks he knows into one basket. Wrote up the story on his own, 55 pages, single spaced, gave it to his, his writer and expanded into this film. And now he's directed it with loving care. When you see disclosure day, that's what he thinks is true because he's, he's been interviewed multiple times. And he keeps saying, ah, this is the true story. Well, why would you say it's the true story? If it's only what you think you know because you've talked to a few people and read some books, you know, he, he's saying it's a true story because he believes what he's saying and, and, you know, without spoiling anything, it's very clear that what he's saying is there's a, a private cut out organization, whether it's not majestic 12, it's called something else in the movie, but there's something out there that's in charge of all this stuff that there are abductions that have happened. They start in childhood and that there are human alien hybrids out there. That's what the movie is saying from the trailer and from, from the interviews everybody's been doing. So there's no spoiler for me saying that, but he must believe it. What would lead him to believe that because he, he knows things. Well, that's the question, isn't it? What would lead him to believe that? Well, he's, he's either heard it from a trusted source. Listen, I, I'm not going to be the guy that's on a crusade to say he was read into any program or not. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. But I would be the person to say he's thought about it probably as much as you and I have thought about it and maybe more, right? And he's had a, I've been, I've been blessed and that I've been able to talk about UFOs to all kinds of great people. I've talked to you about UFOs to Buzz Aldrin, to Stan Lee, to Carl Sagan, as we said. I, it's a blessing and I, I'm happy and grateful that it happened to me. And for Spielberg, it's probably two or three times that he's probably talked to everybody about it. So it's not impossible that Steven Spielberg has come up with some pretty interesting thoughts on his own that he didn't need to be briefed in about. However, he is saying things that sure make him sound like he's confident of what he's saying. I mean, I picture that meeting with with JC and a 28 year old Spielberg and this is Steven, you want to be the biggest director in the world. Yeah. Here's what we need you to do. Well, you've hit my soft spot because I know that what happened to me felt very authentic. Yeah. And at the same time, it's quite obvious that nobody only went to Friedman and Zabel and Dark Skies. If what happened to me was an authentic experience, I'm not the only guy that that's ever happened to. There were people that had happened to before and people that had happened to after. I don't know who all they are, of course, but so you'd have to at least put that on the table and say that's certainly a possibility. And you hear those rumors all the time, whether it's close encounters or ET of these other movies, there's always the rumor of there's some government man that says, you got a lot of that right. Yeah. Well, that's what they told me. But again, and you're very, very well versed on this as is your audience. You've also got the entire historical precedent of Richard Dodie and his disinformation and the fact that people have been disinforming. So for example, my own story doesn't mean it's true, but it doesn't, it doesn't mean it's not official. It may very well be have been an official approach to us for another reason, either to feed us disinformation that we would put in the show or to find out what we would do if fed disinformation. During the middle of it, Brent and I felt like we didn't call it a multi media role playing game when we were in the middle of it. In the middle of it, we said, I feel like we're in a movie. And I don't know how this movie ends and I don't know if it's a thriller or a comedy. I mean, that's how we kind of looked at it. Yeah. You know, and, and yeah, that kind of story twist is create. That's the craziest part of that story. It's crazy. Oh, I'm going to give you the short version of this. There's one other weird thing that happened in dark skies in the summer before. Well, no, while shooting the pilot, all right, I did get those postcards. That to me, let's put a pin in that. Those postcards we are watching you. There were two of them. Put a pin in that. While it was on the set one day, I get a call from the Columbia TV executive. And he says, hey, listen, there's another project shooting here on the lot. And you got to get your guys out of the black suits right now. And I said, what are you talking about? Because we had men in black in their black suits. They were the agents of Majestic 12 in our script. And he said, well, there's a movie. It's a comedy. It's men in black. And they don't want you in black suits. You're guys in black suits. I proceeded to say, well, you know, this goes back to the 50s. You know, and I started talking to a gray Barker and Sure. And Mori Island. Yes. All the stuff you were talking about. And I'm, you know, I was pretty well versed on this at the time. And I'm citing chapter and verse. And he cuts me off. And he goes, Bryce, let me put this in words that you can understand, which by the way, is one of the most condescending things anybody could ever say to you. But, you know, I'm from Hollywood. That's not the, it's not the most condescending thing that's ever been said to me. But he says, let me put this in words that you can understand. And I'm, this is an exact quote. I am not mincing one word. This is the exact quote. He said, get your actors out of the black suits today, or we will shut down your production and burn the negative. Wow. So there was no room for debate. Nope. They were the bigger, you know, this was being produced by Amlin. And, and Barry Sonnenfeld was the director. And, and again, I'm not, I'm not pointing finger at Spielberg or Barry Sonnenfeld. I'm talking about what executives told me and what lawyers told them and whatever and whatever. So we, we had to accommodate them. Because that wasn't an empty threat. They would have shot you. Yes. They would. Yeah. And so we felt very powerless. And remember, at the time they're doing this, we've just been picked up. I mean, we're shooting a pilot. I mean, but we're going to shut down. We're going to burn your negative. But molders in a black suit every week. I know it. It's crazy, but it gets crazier. So we said, okay, so we shut down production briefly and started putting everybody in blue and green and brown suits. And we started looking into, and we couldn't call them men and black. We were told under no circumstances. Can you call them men and black? So we had to change the name, do a find, replace, and all of our script to call them cloakers is what we called them cloakers. So when you see cloakers in a dark skies episode, that's why. So we did that. And we, we thought, well, this is over. Okay, we did what we needed to do. Flash forward one year. Now it's the summer of 96. We are on the schedule. We are the lead show on NBC Saturday night. It's a home run. Okay. Couldn't be better. And we're going to produce 13 hours. It's already been purchased for that. Okay. By NBC to Sony/Columbia TV. And we receive a call from the same executive. He says, I have to come over and talk to you. And he comes over and he says, listen, I've just come from a room full of lawyers and we have a problem. And the problem was they things had escalated. Well, Brent and I thought we were home free. Things had escalated. Lawyers were talking to lawyers. And again, I don't know, I don't know how this drives back to the creative team of men and black, but lawyers were talking to lawyers who were talking to executives who were talking to us finally. And we were presented a list of 19 non-negotiable demands for what had to happen in our pilot. We had to they wanted us to reshoot our pilot. 19. Yeah. Like what? No elevators is an example. Men and black had an elevator. No elevators. I couldn't have an elevator because you had one going to a secret. Yes. No secret. No secret organizations in Washington, DC couldn't have that. And here's a good one. No autopsy. No alien autopsy. Now, I'd already put an alien autopsy in official denial my sci-fi film. We had an autopsy in dark skies, but what was the ex files, but an autopsy every few weeks with molder and scully doing them, right? I mean, nobody owns autopsies, but we were told you cannot have an autopsy. You can't have a farmer. I was told there can be no farmer in dark skies because we have a farmer in men and black. And it was pretty frightening. And what happened is they told us we had to do these things. And so dark skies was scheduled to have 11 days of reshooting. 11 days on a pilot that NBC had already bought and produced and had delivered to them. Now we're having 11 days of reshoots. And so the aired pilot was that it hadn't aired yet. It was going to air in a couple of months, but I mean the one that we saw was was the reshot. Yeah. Oh no. If you want to ultimate irony, by the way, though, when they finally put the DVD out for dark skies, the people who put it out shout factory called me up and said, so we're putting your DVD. There's two versions of the pilot here. What are they? Interestingly enough, Sony without knowing that they did it had sent the original version of our pilot out internationally. And and then there's the NBC version that finally got aired. And if you if you get the dark skies DVD set, it's like going to film school. You see these two different. They're both on there. They're both on it. Oh, that's brilliant. And you prefer. Well, it's funny. Okay. It it was bad to have this done. And before I answer which I prefer, you need to understand something in the middle of this. Well, Brent and I were sort of pushing back going what's going on here. We were called into the Columbia TV office and said, you guys better lawyer up because this is getting serious because you know, there are accusations that you've stolen your script. Wow. And of course, nothing could be further of course truth. And there was a moment, you know how you and I are sitting across the table from each other. There is a moment when Brent and I are in the dark skies offices at two in the morning sitting across from each other. And I remember the conversation. It was like, so what are you going to do when we can't work in Hollywood anymore? And I said, well, maybe I'll go back into journalism. And he said, who's going to hire you to be a journalist if you've just been fired from your show? And and the thing that they were going to do, they wanted Sony to give the money back to NBC and not produce the show at all. And there's a nice twist in it in that remember we had 19 nonnegotiable demands. Donald Meyer bought the show for NBC. He used to run it. He's passed on. And Donald Meyer, when he heard about this, well, it's very interesting. I got sent to NBC where I was supposed to sell the 11 days of reshooting. And I was like, why would I do that? But they made me go there and say, it's going to be better, which I'll get to in a minute. But all Meyer, during all this, basically said, so I bought this thing. I've got it in the office here. We're going to air it. Scrum. I didn't make any deal to get rid of it. We're going to air this thing. I love this guy. So I know. I didn't know this until just very recently. It's a, it's a new discovery. I didn't understand why the nonnegotiable demands became all right. You can still do your show. We, and Brent and I, by the way, came up with another notebook about this big explaining, you know, the creation of Dark Skies and all that because our lawyer told us to. And, and so between that notebook, sort of explaining things and all Meyer saying, I'm going to air it anyway. Screw you guys. It now became all right. Well, we're still going to do a reshoot. You know, we're going to, we're going to try to accommodate all parties. All right. And so what Brent and I decided to do in the aftermath of that is we said to ourselves, okay, we could pout. We could hold our breath till we turn blue because we have every right to we are being abused big time right now. But if we're going to reshoot for 11 days, let's go reach and some of those scenes are going to reshoot are just to replace black suits with green and blue and brown suits. Let's go read those scenes over and ask ourselves, could we make them any better? So we sucked it up and did some judicious rewriting. And so this is a long way to answer your question, but which version do I prefer? It's hard for me to tell because we we said, right, you got to love your first born, right? So I did that one's great. But we did fix a few things in the second one. We mourned the idea like Majestic 12 originally, you got on an elevator in the state in the capital building and went down below. And that's where Majestic was. And so I loved that most in the original, but in the revision that they made a shoot Majestic what you had to drive out of town into Virginia and clear a gate and drive your car in, you know, which wasn't nearly as good. Now, but on the other hand, certain things didn't get touched. Like the Betty and Barney Hill scene we had in it's the same in both versions. The autopsy got some rewriting because they made us make a few changes. This feels overly aggressive. Very another production company. The only reason that happened is if if dark sky, dark skies had been at one company and men and black had been at a completely different company, both companies would have said to the other F you. We're not, we're not doing anything about it, but they were at the same company. And so because they were at the same company, suddenly there was somebody besides, there was somebody to appeal it to. And, and, you know, let's face it, dark skies. I love it. Thank God they gave us 40 million to make these episodes. And I, not me, they gave 40 million to produce it. And, and I'm proud of it. I'm extremely proud of it, but I understand that men and black at the time was a huge film. You know, you had Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. I don't buy it, but you're an unared pilot. Yeah. And that's a guaranteed blockbuster. So what do you care what they're doing over here? The only reason I tell you the story is, you know, as I said, we all have to sort of, we have to sort of just tell our story, right? And so I don't think you can analyze the dark skies story with the JC and the captain and the cemetery at midnight. And the we are watching you postcard without also saying that in the middle two months before the show actually aired on NBC, this happened. You know, you can draw your own conclusions. Are they related? I don't know. They could be. They might not be. I just know living it, Brent and I felt like we are, we're done. Where our careers are ruined. We're out of here. As we were recording this, two of the hottest movies in theaters right now are created by YouTubers. Oh, there you go. So this is, this is our time has come, which, yes, means dark skies could come back. It could. I'd be, again, I don't own it, even though I created it, Sony owns it. I would love a phone call. You know, I said, one of the great things about Hollywood is the phone can ring. I'd love the phone to ring and somebody go, Hey, you guys want to reboot dark skies? I'd love it. But they could do whatever they want to Sony's exactly listening right now. You're listening. They're fans. They're fans. They're, yeah, please bring it on. But you know, you never know. And I went in on that project, Sony. Yes, you should be. You need to be a consultant. Did they move you to Saturday night? No, we started on Saturday night. Is that was at a good slot? No, no, no, because there were no DVRs. It was a death slot. Yeah. First of all, they made us be at eight o'clock. We were very violent. So we shouldn't have been on at eight o'clock. That's family hour. We should have been the 10 o'clock show. And, and before DVRs, let me just ask you, on most Saturday nights, when you're a young person, are you trying to stay home on Saturday night? No. And so what happened is you immediately, you know, we appealed to a lot of people. I mean, people were like really intrigued by it. But then they'd miss an episode or whatever, because they had a life. Well, they didn't get to rewatch that episode. They couldn't watch it on YouTube. They couldn't DVR it. They couldn't, there's nothing. So they just, so it, it's not a good way to make a habit. So it was bad. But, but it wasn't for lack of trying. I give, I mean, NBC is the hero in this thing. Not only did Ole Meyer save us, but NBC put, you know, you know, believed in the show enough to, you know, do everything possible to make it succeed. And I loved that. I thought that was great. You know, it is interesting that you say, maybe they'll call you about a remake. You know what I keep hearing is I tell this story to people and you'll probably hear it yourself. People would go, you know, I don't know about this dark skies thing, but you should make a movie about what happened to those guys, because that's kind of what it feels like sometimes. That's a good movie too. Right. And, and the, the only thing I always say when people ask me, say something like that to me, I go, yeah, well, we'd have to do a slight rewrite. The movie would be Bryson Brent, take the deal. I'm curious about the deal because, you know, if they want you to put certain storylines in, that's different to me than force you to take things out. Right. Like those 19, I know that bothers me. But if you have a connection in intelligence that says, here's a storyline that might work for you. I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah. But, you know, the part of the problem, I'm not part of the problem, but a reality is I didn't need those guys. I was well read on this topic. I had many conversations with people at the time. And you mentioned John Lear earlier, just to continue and finish the dark skies thing. After we sent the guys packing over the cemetery at midnight thing, the next week, I'm in my office working, and somebody comes in and says, there's a guy named John Lear in the lobby. What? And Brent, and I were like, what? John Lear is in the lobby. And, you know, I don't know if your audience is aware of who John Lear is. They are. Okay. So, and I, you know, Brent and I were aware of John Lear because he had sort of, I think he issued his Lear statement or whatever about reverse engineering and all this stuff. And he also had a lot to say about the moon, if you remember. So we were very busy. And, and again, I sort of paint myself as the difficult person in this thing, but I wasn't trying to be difficult. I was trying to put a show on. And so when somebody said, John Lear has showed up in your lobby without any foreknowledge. He didn't call and say, I'm coming by. I just said, well, you know, I'm in the middle of a meeting here and I can't talk to him right now. So Brent and I made John Lear sit in the lobby for two hours. And when he, but we finally sit down with him and he comes in, he was, he was nice enough. You know, he told us the things he, he came to tell us things. I don't know that he's related to the JC captain thing. I don't know, but it happened right on the heels of it, right? And, and I think he felt dist by, you know, me making him wait on the lobby. He sent me a letter which I'm still looking for. I'm trying to find it that it was a pretty nasty letter afterwards. I bet where he just basically said, well, I can see your little TV series is so much more important than finding out what the truth really is. But he's a strange guy because a lot of it sounds crazy, but he got a few things right. He sure did. He sure did. And, and he, you know, it was just a weird time for me because I thought to myself, I've just put up with these two guys who say they're from O and I. And now I got John Lear sitting in my lobby. And I got a show to run because, you know, the thing about doing a television show and I'm not sure everyone understands this, but you're not focused on one thing at a time. At any given moment, you have a script that's in that's being broken in a writer's room. You have a script that just came out that's waiting for notes. You have a production draft that's going into pre-production. You have a show that's shooting. You have dailies that are coming in. You have the first assembly of a future episode that needs to be looked at and notes done. You have another episode that you're trying to lock for the network. Then you have another show that's going in to be scored. And you got to meet with the musician or something like that. There's so much going on. You become hysterical at times. And at the same time, like I said, I had three kids that were little kids. So that was a tough, you know, I'm not sure John felt my pain, but, but yeah. Shift gears for a quick second because I love all alternative history. And you wrote two books award winning. Yes. Right. Yeah. So just one that fascinates me. In your book, what happens with JFK? Okay. I just, you know, if you think about it, dark skies in one respect is alternative history. Yes it is. So I, and like I said, my father was a history teacher who wasn't alive when I wrote these two books. He probably was rolling over in his grave over these two, but I wrote two books. The first one was called Surrounded by Enemies. What if Kennedy survived Dallas? And the second one was called Once There Was Away. What if the Beatles stayed together? These two great mythological things. So what happened in the Kennedy one is I just thought, okay, I don't think it's a great way to look at it to say, oh, if Kennedy didn't die in Dallas, he'd have stopped the Vietnam war and everything would have been wonderful and blah, blah, blah. I just thought that's not practical, particularly if, uh, pretty good if Kennedy survived, but had been shot at, two things would have happened. The public would have known somebody tried to kill the president in broad daylight. And Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy would have become the first conspiracy theorist because they would have known it wasn't a matter of who tried to kill Kennedy, but like who didn't want Kennedy killed. That's right. There are a lot of suspects at that time. Sure. And Bobby Kennedy being fiercely protective of his brother would have said, well, John, it's not going to look pretty, but we are going to protect you. We are not going to let these mofos take you down. Did they bring Dallas at a retirement in that story? Probably not. No, no, you want to stay a fart. But in fact, he's one of the suspects. Of course he is. And in fact, if you think about it, JFK and Bobby would have been the conspiracy theorist. What would they have done? They just sat down as they do in the book. That very night JFK comes back from Dallas and they sit down in a darkened oval office and go over all the suspects and who they think was behind it and what they're going to do about it. And I don't think it's a terrible spoiler. But to say, once you start investigating an attempted murderer of the president, it doesn't stop neatly. You don't get to control the investigation, right? And so what happens in the book is that they start looking into JFK to find out who killed them. And that means you're turning over a lot of rocks. And some of those rocks have women under them. Yes, they do. And that would have been a painful thing because remember, people love JFK. I love JFK. I mean, what a great leader and what a charismatic person. At the same time, though, people loved his wife. Oh, yeah. They thought Jackie was pretty cool. And if they found out that JFK was cheating on Jackie with more than a few women, I don't know that that would have been a good look for him. That would have been a pretty bad optic and could have changed the public view. But even even as the public view was changing, you'd have also had people looking into, okay, well, if you think they did it, what did JFK do to them and what it's there, you know, there's just a lot of things that could come out. And so in my book, JFK doesn't get killed by a bullet, but he gets killed by an investigation. I'm not killed. His reputation and his career gets destroyed. Does he finish out his term? No, he does not. He resigns. I need to check out this book. It's sort of it's one of those where Bobby has to go to him and say, you know, Jack, the votes aren't there for you. Well, someone say they weren't there in the first place. Yeah. Well, that's true. But I mean, if he survives and gets reelected, 68, you know what's so great about it, though? I had the greatest time writing both of these books because instead of writing them as a novel, I wrote them as an anniversary edition of like Rolling Stone. So it was Rolling Stone writing the story of JFK's survival in Dallas. And it was Rolling Stone writing the story of the Beatles, figuring out how to stay together instead of breaking up. And I just had the greatest time. And you know, one of the things that's so wonderful when you're writing and things are working, things to start clicking, right? So particularly with the Beatles, I found myself saying, well, okay, I got to, I got to write John Paul, George and Ringo. Well, we all know who they are, right? So that's the number one thing I write or needs. You sort of need to know, you can describe the same event, right? But if you have four distinct people looking at it differently, they're all going to talk about it differently. And you know, who turned into the character I loved to write the most? I mean, Lenin was great. He's easy to write. And you know, George, he's got that spiritual thing, but he's also got an ironic sense of humor, I guess. And Paul, of course, is the commercial guy, but I loved writing Ringo because what was so great about Ringo, it's true in life, but it's also in my book where everybody else is talking. And Ringo is always just kind of sitting there. And as he did many times, he'd listen. And then he'd be the guy that pitches in the thing that ties it all together in this self-deprecating wonderful way that he had. And I'm not sure people even remember it, but, you know, he should have got credit on certain songs. I mean, he's the guy that said, you know, mate, it's like it's like I'm working eight days a week. What? Yeah. And it's like how you feeling when you go, well, it's been a hard day's night. And he came up with those. So yeah. Yeah, the Peter Jackson documentary is worth, which is amazing. So great. You know, it's the greatest thing of Peter Jackson documentary is what we think. John and Paul really just hated each other at the end, right? Yep. And there were moments, but there is a moment where George Harrison is the one that storms off. Sure. And what happened episode? John and Paul go into another room to talk about it. And there was a microphone there. I what? That's like the greatest find in in Beatle history. And you got John and Paul talking on a microphone about George. And they're not talking like guys that don't get along. They're talking like two guys that want to save the band. And I believe it's John that's saying, yeah, well, we can get clapped in here. Don't worry about it, right? But they're not mad at each other now. They're on the same team, even at this time, where the original let it be documentary is written. And you, if you watched it back then, you went, oh boy, these guys, who? You know, this is, this is a train wreck. No, but they, but the Peter Jackson, they goes to show you a little more information changes perspective. It also applies to our UFO thing. The more information you have, the bigger the lens, the more you see the accuracy of what's going on. That's right. Fascinating. So what are you working on now? Are you still doing the podcast with Dolan? Yes. It's called Need to Know. Did it with cold heart for three or years doing it with Dolan. But mostly I'm concentrating right now on telling this soundlight and frequency story because I really feel it's on one where, you know, there are a lot of people doing, I guess, solo UFO podcasts. And, you know, I know how to do that. But I feel like the one contribution I can make right now is to try to burrow in on the Hollywood thing. Well, I love your approach. How you kind of take one piece of media per episode. Yeah. Before we take off. Yeah. Maybe just can tell us how that podcast works. That the format is very unique. Yeah. We like this. We're not reviewing movies, but we, we are sort of telling the story of dark skies, not as the primary story. It's just woven in. And at the same time, what we're trying to do is to take alien and UFO movies that people have seen. And instead of reviewing them like, well, the camera work could be better here and that kind of thing. We're actually asking ourselves, what does this movie say about alien life? What does this movie say about UFOs? You know, what, what, what can we learn? And then ask ourselves is did Hollywood add something to Eufology? Because that's, it's the chicken and egg argument, right? Did, did Hollywood say something first? And then we think it's true. And we, and we refer it in Eufology. Or did something go on in Eufology that Hollywood got wind of and say, and, and I think if you want to know the truth, it's both. I mean, it probably says yes. Yes. Yes, he did. Maybe even UFOs, but he said, if the myths are. vibes, it'll find a way one way or the other. - Yeah, yeah. So, I've just been really, you know, listen, it's good to like your work, right? And I'm really enjoying sort of rolling up my sleeves and trying to learn more. And I hope I've done justice to some of it in talking today about sort of what happened at Dark Skies. Not that I think a 30 year old show, you know, opens up the world in any way. But it is reflective, just like some of these older movies, you think about the day the Earth stood still. What does that tell us? What ideas did it put out there? What was the first movie ever made about flying saucers? It was called the Flying saucer in 1950. And, you know, who were the writers of some of these films? Some of them came from the, you know, the US Army Signal Corps and intelligence and things like that. Did that impact what they wrote about? And coming across things which I know you and your audience is aware of the Robertson panel, which the CIA convened in 1953. Okay, and that could be a need to know, that could be a white files, okay? But what makes it a sound light and frequency is that one of the things that Robertson panel in 1953 recommends is that they should try to marginalize this whole UFO thing and get people's minds off it. And maybe they should reach out to Hollywood. And in specific, they say, what about Walt Disney? And then, and so Brandon and I then go, well, if you're going to reach out to Walt Disney, what do we know about Disney today? The Disney Company is the number one per layer of alien content on the planet. They have, they own the X files. They own the alien franchise. They have the Marvel franchise. They have, they have so much alien content. Is it related? I don't know, that would be speculation, who knows? But the whole thing's been fascinating. Thank you for bringing it up, because it's been fun. And we're sort of halfway through it. And I'm hopeful that as we get to the end A, we're going to show off that formula. And by the way, the day that we're doing that, I'm mailing it to you, all right? And you can put it up wherever you want. But the other thing is, it's just given us a chance to sort of, at the end, to try to say to people, okay, we don't know exactly what's happening maybe. But here's what we've learned. You've been on the ride with this. This is what we learned. You could do this on your own show, of course, because you're, you're taking everyone who listens to the Y files on a large investigation. And, and they're learning with you. And conclusions are being made and debated. And that's healthy. So I think that's really terrific. And so, yeah, I'm enjoying that. And the other thing, by the way, though, and I'm sure you feel the same way. UFOs can marginalize people. We've seen it happen, right? And for years, I sort of fought against being just the UFO. I don't want to be the UFO guy. I want to be a writer-producer, right? Not just a UFO guy. Even though it's taken on a big part of my life. But one of the things is that my wife and I are producing a film called "The Last Battle" in the fall, quite likely, in Europe. And it's about the last battle of World War II in Europe. And it's a true story. And it is. And it's cast. It's got cast now, which I can't talk about the cast, because they haven't put the press release out. But it's a hell of a story. And it's true. I can't wait to see that. It's so good. Can I give you the 30-second version of it? Sure. OK. Last week of World War II in Europe, what do we know? We know that Hitler kills himself on April 30th. Well, you really are a conspiracy show. Good for you. OK. Let me rephrase. OK. The world believes Hitler killed himself on April 30th. And on May 8th, Germany surrenders. Yes. OK. Well, what we know-- and it's a true story-- and it's from a book by Stephen Harding, the author, that I've adapted into the screenplay. What happens is there are some Americans in the middle of that week who, you know, they just really want to end the war. They don't want to be the last guy to die in Europe. They want to go home and marry their girls and have babies. They just want to be done. They want to get normalcy. But these guys get set up to a castle in Austria. All right. OK. And they're told, listen, take your tank and go up to this castle leader in Austria because the Nazis are holding a bunch of high-value French prisoners of war there. I know this is a great one. It's fantastic. The generals, the premieres-- all the people who actually hate each other, because they all blame each other for losing the war, right? But they're all cooped up together as POWs, high-value POWs. So the Americans do what they're supposed to do. They go up there. They fight their way in. They manage to prevail. They take the French out of the cells, and they put the German guards in the cells. And the French do what French do. They get out the best wine. And everybody starts celebrating, right? And it's like fantastic. And in the middle of the night, they start getting sheld. Yet why? Because Himmler has sent 200 angry, liquored up, pissed off Waffen-SS officers to surround this castle and kill everybody involved so they don't testify at war crimes trials. Kill everybody, including the Nazis. Yes. And so then-- Yes, that's the twist. So the Americans have to go to the Germans. They just locked up and say, you know, let me ask you a hypothetical. If we give you your guns back, who are you going to shoot? Us or them? And the German guards led by a German gongal who-- there's no good Germans in this thing, but he's not a bad, bad German. And that he's the guy that says the war is over, you know? It's over. We're going to fight for peace. So yeah, we'll fight with you. And so what happens is you have this mythic battle in a castle where you've got Americans, Germans, and French-- the French are these old French guys, you know? And the Germans are these older young German guards. And the Americans are outnumbered 20 to 1. There are like 10 of them and 200 of them off an SS. So these guys are in a castle holding them off. And it's just so full of interesting things. For example, they run out of ammo, both sides. Yeah, you can't write this. And you can. I mean, I did write it, but I-- And so literally, it comes into the castle keep where people are fighting with knives and maces and all this stuff. Yeah. And it really happened. It's a great story. Ring scene. It's so wonderful. It's amazing. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for letting me even tell that because-- Oh, I can't wait to see it. You know, it's funny, though. It's a Hollywood story, though, because yes, he wrote the book. But the way it happened is I was standing in my sister-in-law's kitchen years ago. And I end up standing next to this guy. I don't know him. He doesn't know me. I tell him I work in Hollywood. He says he's the editor of World War II magazine. And we're talking. You know, I've heard about a story. I don't know if it's any good. He tells me the story. And I go, if that's not a movie, I don't know what is. Can I option it from? He says, fine. So I write a treatment about this thing. And I show it to him. And this is Stephen Harding. And Harding reads the treatment. I'm going to take it down and sell a movie. He reads the treatment. And he goes, this is great. Do you mind if I write the article first? And I said, yeah, sure, because I want to option it. So he writes a major article for World War II magazine. I option it. And I'm so excited about the article that I say, I'm going to inspect the script out. So now I write the screenplay. So I take six months and I write the screenplay. And I show it to Harding because now I'm going to take the script out. And he goes, oh, wow, this is really good. Do you mind if I write the book? So he takes a year and a half to write the book. I put the script in a drawer. He writes the book. The book becomes a big hit. It's on the New York Times bestseller list. We take the script and the book out, and now we're making a movie. Oh, God bless. I can't wait for it. It's a great story. Yeah, it is. It's fun. The podcast sound, light and frequency, highly recommend. You haven't heard anything like it. If you're into UFOs, this is the podcast. So this should be a huge show. It's amazing. Bryce Abel, thank you so much. Oh, it's great. Yeah, thank you. I really enjoyed it. Me too. Bye, everybody. That was Bryce Abel, one of the best storytellers I've had down here. We covered his years and news, the Dark Sky's saga, Stephen Spielberg, and his book about what happens after we admit we're not alone. So let's untangle some of this. Dark Sky's is real. MVC put it out on the air in 1996, and it's opening title sequence one and any. McMinnville Photos, Bryce talks about Areal 2, shot on the Trent form in Oregon in 1950, and printed in Life Magazine that June. Optical physicist Bruce McAfee studied the negatives and found a real solid object in the sky. Skeptics still call it a hoax, but the photos are good. Now the bigger idea, that the government has quietly steered UFO stories through Hollywood. That part isn't fantasy. In 1953, a CIA group called the Robertson Panel recommended using mass media to take the mystery out of UFOs. The record show Walt Disney's name came up. Government touching Hollywood on the subject is on the books. The man who came to Bryce's house and call themselves Navy Intelligence. That I can't prove, and neither can he. But he told it straight, it could be real, it could be disinformation. Whichever it is, I believe him. I think someone showed up, and I kind of tend to believe it was maybe intelligence. The thing that got me is the West Virginia story. In 1981, a man named John Harrington told Bryce's partner he'd been briefed inside an underground facility in West Virginia. At the time, no such place was public. Eleven years later, the Washington Post exposed the Green Briar, a secret bunker built to hide Congress in a nuclear war in West Virginia. Harrington named it a decade early, and I've covered the Green Briar hotel. It's a fascinating place, and it has been expanded. Now, what I respect about Bryce is he never asked to believe him. He lays it out on the table and lets you decide. His new podcast is called Sound, Flight, and Frequency, and it's not really a UFO show. It's an investigation into whether our movies have been doing the government's work for 70 years, and spoiler alert, they have. His book with Richard Dolan is AD After Disclosure, it's on Amazon, and check out his podcast where he analyzes movies and TV shows looking for hints of disclosure. We pulled on The Men in Black, JFK, and Morielin Thread in this episode, and Majestic 12 and another. They're both linked down below. Until next time, be safe. Be kind. Another U. I appreciate it. I feel the crap get out and got stuck inside my home with MKL truck.