Aliens? Yes! But Maybe No

The Ariel School Incident: Unraveling the Mystery of the UFO Sightings in Zimbabwe

• Aliens? Yes! But Maybe No • Episode 4

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Hold onto your tinfoil hats, folks, because in this episode, we're tackling the Ariel School Incident, where a playground in Zimbabwe turned into a close encounter of the third kind (allegedly). 

We're talking spaceships, aliens, and a whole bunch of kids who swore they saw it all. But were they telling the truth, or were they just a bunch of imaginative youngsters who got a little carried away? 

Get ready for a journey into the unknown as we explore this captivating and controversial event. You might even start believing in aliens yourself (or at least question your own sanity).

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Josh:

Aliens Aliens, yes.

Travis:

But maybe no. Hey guys, welcome to the show. Aliens, yes, but maybe no. I'm Travis and I'm Josh. This is an otherworldly podcast, as ambiguous as our title. All right, so, josh, what are we talking about today? What's the theme of the show Today? We're going to be talking about the aerial school incident.

Josh:

Right when we took the baseline quiz last episode, at the end you thought that it was a school of ufos like a school of fish and they had seen a human.

Travis:

Yes, totally reversed an aerial school. We watched the documentary episode encounters there's a series on netflix called encounters which covers a lot of this otherworldly phenomena. Right, I've watched a couple episodes on your recommendation, but we watched the specific one, episode two called Believers.

Josh:

Yes.

Travis:

It was very well done. I do have some thoughts on the subject matter, as it were, but we can dig into that a little bit after we get a little bit of an overview.

Josh:

Well, I didn't know that the school, school's name was ariel.

Travis:

Yeah, ariel, how convenient, right I thought it was something to do with the because yeah, they saw it in the sky. They saw in the sky it's a different spelling, so ariel in the sky is a-r-i-a-l and this is a-r-i-e-l and Zimbabwe.

Josh:

I'm really excited to get your take on this.

Travis:

Okay. Well, let's build that anticipation up a little bit. Let's give some context. You know which? I believe you have queued up and ready. I'm going to zone out, I'm going to disassociate for a little bit and stare at my phone Get your ducks in order. I don't have any ducks, and if they did, they most definitely would be in order. Yeah, so that's why I don't have ducks. It just seems like a hassle.

Josh:

All right, so I'm going to give you a quick overview of some context some context of this story the aerial school incident or the aerial school phenomenon. So on a Sunday morning in September 1994, at the aerial school in the small rural town of Rua, zimbabwe, the ordinary routine of a school day was about to be shattered by an extraordinary event that would leave an indelible mark on the lives of over 60 children.

Travis:

You're doing great.

Josh:

Thank you. It was recess time and the children ranging in age from 6 to 12 were outside playing on the expansive school grounds. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until some of the children noticed something unusual in the horizon. Hovering just beyond the boundary of the schoolyard, a metallic object, unlike anything the children had ever seen, began to descend. It was a saucer-shaped craft, sleek and shining in the bright sunlight. Saucer-shaped craft, sleek and shining in the bright sunlight. The object landed silently in a clearing and the children saw beings emerge with large heads, black hair and enormous black eyes that seemed to gaze right through you. These beings moved with a strange fluidity, almost as if they were floating rather than walking. They wore tight-fitting black suits that shimmered slightly in the light. Panic set among some of the children, but some stood rooted to the spot, unable to look away. According to many of the witnesses, the beings communicated with them, not with words, but telepathically. The message they conveyed was not one of harm but rather of warning. The children described a sense of urgency, with the beings conveying images of environmental destruction and the future plagued by disaster. It was as if they were trying to tell the children something important about the fate of Earth and humanity. The encounters lasted only a few minutes, but for the children it felt much longer. As quickly as the beings had appeared, they re-entered their craft, which then lifted off the ground silently, disappearing into the sky with a speed that defied comprehension. Shaken and bewildered, the children ran back into the school where they breathlessly recounted their experiences to the teachers and the staff. Of course, the teachers didn't believe the tale, thinking it was just an imaginative story conjured by the children.

Josh:

Word of the incident spread quickly, drawing the attention of news outlets and eventually UFO researchers, including renowned Harvard psychiatrist Dr John Mack, who interviewed the children separately. The consistency and detail to the children's accounts were hard to ignore. They described the same beings in the same eerie telepathic communication. Dr Mack then asked the children to draw the craft that was in the schoolyard. He found that many of the drawings had uncanny resemblances of a craft with lights around it and red light above it. Some of the students also drew the large-eyed, dark-skinned being in its black suit with long hair. The aerial school UFO incident remains one of the most compelling and controversial cases of close encounters with purported extraterrestrial beings. Despite this skepticism and the attempts to dismiss the events as mass hysteria or a collective prank. The sincerity and the consistency of the children's stories have left many convinced that something extraordinary happened that day in rua okay, so now we have context yeah so that's basically an accounting of what happened, right?

Josh:

yeah, that is the story. If if someone were to ask what was this aerial school incident about? Like that was it okay and now we're gonna talk about it okay, because I think we both have opinions uh, yes, I do definitely have opinions about it.

Travis:

Do you want me to start, or do you want to just like uh?

Josh:

I want you to start. I'm okay, I'm very curious to see what you have to think. Okay, first off. Actually, I feel like I already know what you have to think.

Travis:

Okay, first off.

Josh:

Actually, I feel like I already know what you think.

Travis:

Yeah, well, we talked about it a little bit.

Josh:

You love eyewitnesses and you believe children to a fault.

Travis:

They are great encounters of what actually happened. Yeah, so this documentary starts the way a lot of documentaries do with like some scene setting and establishing like the very basics, but it also starts with this cool silhouette of a guy smoking a cigarette.

Josh:

I knew you were going to bring him up.

Travis:

Yeah, man Dallin, that's my boy, Dallin, the ultimate prankster. Very cool guy. I'm sure that he was a very cool kid. I don't know if this is like a good jumping off point for my opinions of this show, but I'm already going into this, so I'm going to double down on it, this show, but I'm already going into this, so I'm going to double down on it.

Travis:

I think Alan did tell these kids that he saw something and I think they believed it, because children are very susceptible to impression and they see this guy. I bet he was a very popular person, Doesn't look like a very put-together person now, but those guys were always hitting their peak at that age and they were very persuasive. And so I believe he did say he saw something as a lie and had convinced enough people to believe that and then, because kids ultimately want to be accepted, they all started to believe it and some believed in it wholeheartedly that it became their personality. This was a school that had 62 kids in it but for some reason only four of them decided to speak out in this documentary and some used it as a way to explore their own spirituality right and discover who they were as an African, and some people just kind of really made that their personality, the sighting.

Josh:

Or hid it, and their personality became what it was because they were hiding it.

Travis:

Well, that was what Dr John Mack had said is that the people that had reported these things had felt shameful, Like they spoke out and then they felt like they were attacked. But I mean, who's going to attack a kid? That's a pretty cruel thing.

Josh:

I mean I would if they looked at me wrong.

Travis:

I know they're so easy to beat. Yeah, I would if they looked at me wrong. I know they're so easy to beat. Yeah, I could easily take a kid Easy. I could do it with one arm behind my back.

Josh:

There's some strong kids out there.

Travis:

I could do it with a series of headbutts. I could do it with both arms behind my back, jeez, and two legs for kicking.

Josh:

You do have a big head.

Travis:

I do. It's monstrous. I go to bed, my head falls really fast. Once that momentum gets going, it's night, night time for me, okay. So alan the super cool guy smoking cigarettes and there was another person that was smoking cigarettes. I thought that her exchange was pretty funny she's smoking in the school headmistress who they have is that the one that lived there?

Josh:

uh, yeah, that's the one that lived there which is really weird, that she not really, I don't know if I had a teacher that lived at the school that was I mean it's it was not really for like rural, rural areas that is.

Travis:

Yeah, it's room and board. That was like the entire aristocracy in england. You would have a live-in tutor, a person that would raise your kids. They wouldn't have to go to a school.

Josh:

You'd have a person who lived in your house, had a separate quarters do you think it was her house before it was a school, or vice versa?

Travis:

I think no, I think that she got hired and she needed a place to stay and applied for this job because it gave her a place to stay. And I don't know if Zimbabwe was a British Commonwealth or not, so a lot of those like British tendencies carried over into a lot of African culture.

Josh:

Well then I was wrong.

Travis:

It's not weird, I carried over into a lot of african culture. Well then, I was wrong. It's not weird. I've changed my mind, maybe, but for the time you know, it's a completely different country and their, their cultures, are different. I just that's how I feel. I didn't think that it was weird. I felt like it was a very normal thing for a school teacher to live there.

Travis:

I don't think she was squatting and living in like a custodial closet or whatever, with the mops just waiting for everyone to leave mop, and then you're my only friend.

Josh:

Well, I'm gonna finish cleaning up and then just falls asleep somewhere yep, uh, you guys are gone right sleeps at her desk I mean, she probably did that.

Travis:

Her name is judy bates, by far one of my favorite characters in this was judy bates, and then my boy dowan he was my least of course he was, because he's the prankster. You don't like pranksters. Judy did say that she did have an experience where she woke up. It was between the time where the kids saw or had this encounter and before John Mack showed up. Yeah, and she said she never spoke about it until this documentary.

Josh:

Yeah, she didn't want to.

Travis:

I don't understand why Like if she sees these kids that are taking a risk, why didn't she do the same thing? That's why I'm really skeptical, because all of these accounts are based on eyewitness testimony and a lot of it has to do with feelings, and feelings are subjective to the time that it's happening. If you have a feeling, you're going to associate that that's going to get tied into your memory and then sometimes I don't know if you've ever told a story about you know one drunk evening that you've had that tends to build as you tell that story, because you may get kind of tired telling that story and you want to amp it up. And I feel like that was the case with these kids is that they had maybe believed in the story, but they wanted to believe this was the case.

Josh:

But we have video footage of them telling the story as a kid and the same story, non-amped up, is them telling it, but that's no, it was.

Travis:

It was totally amped up like she talked about, uh, how the aliens had gotten into her mind and said they wanted to save the earth and before it was just like, well, it was my conscience or whatever that had gotten in her head I mean, it is a child, they don't know but that's also. That's a memory. I mean it doesn't have to be amped up if that is your memory and you have that documented. You're not going to want to discredit yourself in that way so one thing, this psychiatrist, john mack.

Josh:

John mack, he had the kids explain and draw, okay, what they saw. Right, they did not draw the same thing over and over again. It wasn't identical, it was their own perception, their own views, which actually made it more compelling because, like these 60 kids, if they all talked and said this is what it's going to be, they would all draw an identical thing. Yeah, they did not draw an identical thing for an eyewitness account. Like, if you have one or two eyewitness accounts, you can't take someone to court for an eyewitness account. Well, like, if you have one or two eyewitness accounts.

Travis:

You can't take someone to court for an eyewitness account. Well, no, that was talked about in this documentary and that's the thing is that eyewitness accounts are used in a court of law and have been used as testimony to sentence people to death. But there's a group of lawyers that are trying to rectify that with like DNA evidence and they are getting people freed because there was an eyewitness account that said this person had done this crime. And now they are. They're free because they've been acquitted of these charges because that eyewitness account was false and the DNA didn't match up with that eyewitness account. Those that only happens with the DNA evidence. Yeah, kim.

Josh:

Kardashian is part of that. Oh, you're invoking Kim. What happens with the DNA evidence?

Travis:

Yeah, kim Kardashian is part of that, uh-oh, you're invoking Kim, uh-oh it is dropped Kim Kardashian.

Josh:

She went to school to be a lawyer on top of all the other things. I respect her a lot, sure, yeah, she's my queen. Get it, get it, girl. She is in groups or she is in a group, I don't remember what it's called, but it's basically the reformation of prisons, and she has gotten a lot of people out that have been wrongly accused. Yep, so I gotcha. Oh, I said eyewitnesses weren't valid and you're like, actually, no, they are.

Travis:

No, I didn't say they are. I'm saying that they are. I don't think they're valid, but I'm saying they are used in a court of law to prosecute and sentence people to death. And then it is countered by the whatever the DNA that they're they're finding and using in these, in these cases, to vindicate these people that have been wrongly accused because of an eyewitness testimony.

Josh:

Yeah, but this is 60 eyewitnesses Also, it's 60 children, 60 children which are still eyewitnesses. If 60 children were molested by a priest and they came forward. Okay, but that's not the same thing, but the thing is.

Travis:

We're not talking about physical contact. We are talking about kids that claim they saw this thing and they're drawing different interpretations. Now, for a moment, let's acknowledge the fact that spaceships have been in pop culture for, at this point, at least 40 years since the 50s, if not earlier, if you're into comics and HG Wells and things like that. So there are interpretations and things like that. So there are interpretations and iterations of what these kids are drawing. It's in popular culture. It is permeated in everybody's consciousness from everywhere.

Travis:

If you've seen a sci-fi movie, you know exactly what an alien ship is supposed to look like and that is what was drawn was a version of that, but one kid described this alien as having hair like michael jackson. Yeah, I think that lines up with maybe that testimony that there was a gardener out in the yard and maybe the light had caught. It was like maybe the sun was setting or the light was just hitting the right, this gardener, the right way, that they thought it was an alien or an extraterrestrial, or if we had otherworldly or whatever your boys lie.

Josh:

False his, his prank. False if it was a gardener, because he said it was a rock well, he said it was a rock, right, but now, other people are saying it's a gardener no, that's what the head, the headmistress, judy bates, had said.

Travis:

She was like well, there was a gardener out there and maybe that's what they were confusing it as. But the guy yeah, my boy Dallin was like yeah, I saw a shiny black rock out there, and that's what. That's what I said. It was a. He said it was a spaceship. He didn't say he saw that there was a person out there. That was all I think in an effort to validate what everybody had seen. They had exaggerated what they had seen.

Josh:

I mean, they even mentioned one of the guys is like I know what a rock is.

Travis:

When you're okay. So let's go back to us talking about party time. Anytime you want to tell something to somebody in an engaging way, you're going to exaggerate it. I'm not saying that it's right or it's good, but you want to exaggerate it for the outrageous content purposes, right. You want to make your audience feel like, oh my God, what? No purposes, right. You want to make your audience feel like, oh my God, what? No way. And I feel like saying that it was an alien or like a spaceship. Was that first level? But then the people that they were trusting to believe them, their teachers and the headmaster I don't remember what the headmaster's name was.

Josh:

Kind of creepy, though he was kind of creepy.

Travis:

It did put off like some kind of weird vibes. Yeah, the way to convince them is they're like well, not only that, but we also saw an alien and it looked at me with their eyes their big dark eyes.

Travis:

It reminded me of Ralphie in the Simpsons when he caught Mrs Kerboppel and somebody else in the closet and saw them making a baby and the baby looked at him. Oh my gosh, I get it that these kids all felt like they had this shared experience. But I also I know, having kids of my own kind of the outrageous stories that get told and things that they don't maybe understand or maybe miss see, and they don't have the language to interpret what that is or understand.

Travis:

I mean their experience is very limited and sheltered. You know they're children. We want to protect them so they don't see. You know all the things that we see as adults.

Josh:

Yeah, we were staying at my parents' house a couple months back and my 12-year-old heard some clicking and she couldn't sleep. She had to get into the bed with mom and she thought it was a ghost. Yeah, it was the refrigerator.

Travis:

And that's totally. That's totally fine. I want to validate what these people experienced, but and that is what John Mack was doing.

Travis:

They feel well. John Mack Okay, so John Mack, to give a little bit of history, he was a psychiatrist that dealt with child psychology or psychiatry. He was primarily dealing with children, so that made him more adept at talking to these kids and ultimately he was brought into this by a friend of his I think his last name was H-U-H-N, something like that was brought into this because of these phenomena that were happening and he was just curious and was like, if people are having these experiences, I want to know what it is that's causing them.

Josh:

It was strictly out of curiosity At first. He didn't believe what was happening.

Travis:

I don't. I still don't think there's nothing that after watching this episode and I haven't done the amount of research that you or All I've done is watch the episode. Your wonderful wife have done, but at the end I don't feel like he believed it. He just wanted to draw attention to the fact that these people had been having these experiences and we needed to listen to them and not assume that they were crazy.

Josh:

Yeah, we're not going to drug them.

Travis:

That was the ultimate, yeah, he never said aliens were real.

Josh:

Well, he never said anything like that.

Travis:

The difference between psychology and psychiatry, a psychologist listen, they're like when you see that image of somebody laying on their couch and talking about their feelings. They're talking to a psychologist.

Josh:

Yeah.

Travis:

A psychiatrist is a doctor that can prescribe you drugs. Yes, harvard thought that he was committing malpractice because he wasn't medicating these people. Because Harvard felt like they were Crazy. Well, yeah, to use the curazy word, the C word, yeah, they thought that they were mentally unstable.

Josh:

Oprah used it, so I can. She was in the documentary Oprah's on word. Yeah, they thought that they're, they were mentally unstable. Oprah used it, so I can.

Travis:

She was in the documentary oprah's on man, so you gotta trust oprah yeah.

Josh:

So some of the credentials that john mack had was he was a tenure at harvard, single-handedly built the first outpatient psychiatric ward. Okay, let's, let's say the united states.

Travis:

Let's take it easy with the single-handedly, because nothing's done single-handedly he did it. Let's say he did it with one hand okay, I'm sure he had a team of people. I I feel like you're going off book. I don't. I don't understand what. What's happening here, but uh, yeah, I'm sure he had a team of people to build.

Josh:

Whatever it was that he was there to build I was actually using a direct quote from the, the documentary oh, dang, okay.

Travis:

well, that's a, that's an artistic for us, okay.

Josh:

Yeah, I take things very literal and I want everyone to know that he did it with one hand. Okay, so this guy is nothing to scoff at, he's an accomplished.

Travis:

He's very accomplished. I mean anybody that graduates from Harvard in any aspect, through any course of study. I agree should be taken very seriously.

Josh:

And I believe he was in the right at all times hashtag believe john mack, huh, yep all right, mack was right. Yeah, mack and me that's an alien movie.

Travis:

Well done, thank you. Is that why? Yep? Is that why mack is called mack? Because john mack? Yep, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. Maybe you are going to get me on this train.

Josh:

Oh yeah, I know I will. It's all connected. I'll get you Alright, get you real good.

Travis:

That didn't sound threatening at all. That was like a come on.

Josh:

Yeah, that didn't go well, did it? It went fine, it went good, okay. So I don't think he was in the wrong at all. I think that he wait a second. I'm not. We're not assigning blame here. What is, what do you?

Travis:

mean, well, the entire top executives or whatever, in charge of harvard. It wasn't, it was sure the dean the, the old crook of the 80s college party movie, right like we'll say let's just call him. We'll call him the dean, right? Well, the dean yeah was trying to end. This is the dean is a team of people.

Josh:

Yeah, including his colleagues.

Travis:

Some of his colleagues. Sure, yeah, they accuse him of malpractice because they didn't like that he was seeming to validate these people's experiences, um, and they just wanted to kind of brush all this under the rug. They didn't they, they didn't want to address it and they didn't. They thought it was kind of a waste of his time.

Josh:

They thought that they should have given these people tranquilizers because they were clinically insane, and he did not agree. He said that there's something here.

Travis:

Well, and when we say these people so he interviewed actually 200, there were 200 people under this study where he talked to them about this experience and he said, yes, they're all experiencing a shared thing. But at least my impression of what he was saying was that doesn't necessarily make it true, that just makes it personal to them. So they feel like they experienced this thing and I just want to find out why and what it is that they were feeling. And so that was the whole course of his study.

Josh:

Yeah. So when his colleagues were saying like yeah, now he believes in aliens, I got mad because that's not what he was saying. He wasn't saying that at all. He's like something happened and I want to know what it was. And he never said the aliens were real. He didn't say anything about anything other than just medical, psychological things.

Travis:

Yeah, he said they weren't psychologically unstable and that's why he didn't want to prescribe tranquilizers to them. That they were mentally fit. Yeah, and so he's, yeah, like.

Josh:

I said and ashamed.

Travis:

Yep, that was a universal feeling is they were ashamed of what it was they'd experienced. I don't think it was the experience that made them feel ashamed. I think it was sharing whatever it was that they had seen and then being laughed at and people not taking them at what they were worth Like. Let's take this rock thing, for example. This kid Dallin, my boy Dallin, said he saw this rock. Rather than address that, they told people they didn't say hey, no, it was just a rock that you guys saw. Let's go out there and let's look at this. Let's stand where you were. Let's look out in the field, let's see what it is that you are looking at. Let's go out and investigate this.

Travis:

Seemingly nobody was willing to do that. They just said no, you're fucking crazy, you stupid kid. Go back to playing jump rope or whatever. And so that's what I felt like John Mack was trying to do, but he was years too late. Well, this happened in what? 94, right? Yeah, so I think this is 94, 95 when he was asked by his friend to go and investigate this.

Josh:

And he was the last of the people to show up.

Travis:

He was the last of the people to show up and actually made these kids feel heard. But when you're a kid and you want to tell a story and impress an adult, you're going to exaggerate some things and some things are going to become very personal and you're going to internalize that.

Josh:

But something traumatic happened. You think it was all imagination.

Travis:

I don't think it was traumatic. I don't think it was traumatic for anybody. I think that what they had done, I think the trauma came from the aftermath of relaying the story. I don't think that the event itself was traumatic.

Josh:

What's your boy's name? Again, dallin. What if think that the event itself was traumatic. What's your boy's name again, dalin? What if it was traumatic for him and he?

Travis:

blacked it. He's a cool. He's a cool ass guy who's wearing like a cool cigarette and smoked a couple cigarettes, like in silhouette leaning against a fence post one time made him look real cool, cool guy man, cool guy on campus.

Josh:

But what if it was traumatic so traumatic that he forgot it?

Travis:

okay, but you're introducing a what if? To a thing that he said he made up. I get what you're saying, but we are we're talking about the things that are reported on. We can't speculate on.

Josh:

You want to know my speculation on him.

Travis:

On an outside story.

Josh:

Yeah, what was his name? Again, darren Dallin Dallin.

Travis:

D-A-L-L-Y-N. I cool name, yeah, cool spelling. You got a beer like yours. You're kind of a cool guy, thank you. Yeah, he looked like you. No, like, uh, yeah, better, worse I don't.

Josh:

I mean he was a good looking guy. I don't want to. I don't want to discount his looks.

Josh:

We're both like half cock right now just talking about no he's a good looking chap, but here here's what I thought, and it is strictly hypothetical, this is just my non-professional opinion. He wasn't the popular kid in school. I think he was friends in the group of the popular kids. I don't think he saw what happened and I think he felt left out and I think when all these kids started talking about what was happening, the aftermath and the backlash was traumatic for those kids and I think it was just as traumatic for him because he was not a part of it. But he was there and I think he has a lot of regret for not being in that.

Josh:

Okay, I think he wanted to be accepted because he was one of the most passionate people about this in this whole documentary and he was saying like no, these guys are liars, like I mean.

Travis:

He was very I didn't think he was passionate. I mean not as passionate as and I didn't write this person's name down, but she was wearing like a print dress, she had blonde hair. She was the most passionate. I think Dallin was apologetic and I feel like he felt sorry about what he claimed to have done by calling it a lie. Me calling him a cool guy is just like my personal feeling and I'm projecting on him because he's just seemed like a cool guy. I feel like you know maybe he wasn't a cool guy in school, but I do know how susceptible kids are to somebody who is claiming to have seen something and they all want to believe and feel a part of that.

Josh:

Yeah, imagine if 60 of your classmates saw something and you didn't, and you were calling them liars. Those 60 kids are going to gang up.

Travis:

We're saying there were 62 kids, but we're not.

Josh:

I think he lost friends, just as they lost friends, sure, yeah, yeah. I feel sorry for him and, honestly, other than the one woman that wouldn't seek a counselor because of her issues, because she was afraid yeah, I think that he was the runner up for being the most mentally unhealthy. I think that, and the person that lived at the I think she was totally fine.

Travis:

I think that she You're okay with her encounter of being abducted no. Have we talked about her abduction? Briefly, yeah, she got abducted. Well, she claims to have been abducted.

Josh:

This is the headmistress that lived there. She got abducted. They came back three times and asked Claimed, claimed. Yeah, she specifically told the truth of them coming back.

Travis:

Her truth.

Josh:

Universal them coming back, her truth, universal truth of them coming back. And then the third time, each time they said, hey, do you want to come with us? Do you want to come with us? And she said, no, yeah, I have to finish things here. That took a big turn. That was crazy. Yeah, I love to believe, but that was a hard belief for me uh, yeah, I, I didn't really take her testimony into account. You disregarded her.

Travis:

I did.

Josh:

But she was your favorite character, Not character person. I liked she's a real person.

Travis:

I mean, she's a real person. I liked how kind of down to earth she was.

Josh:

Yeah.

Travis:

And she'd been doing this for a very long time and she wanted to protect the children, and so I think her saying this was a way to kind of like diffuse what had happened to the kids and say like, well, no, this happened to me too, and then that took a lot of pressure off the kids. I think she's a very protective person and maybe fabricated.

Josh:

To the point where she thought, sure yeah, where she was wanting to potentially commit suicide, josh like humans are born liars and we love to lie.

Travis:

It's one of our greatest joys. I mean we like to exaggerate.

Josh:

Children aren't as innocent as we think. Having kids myself, they're pretty conniving and they lie a lot.

Travis:

They do they lie, but they're also pleasers they want to make.

Josh:

They're not pleasers, they just don't want to get in trouble.

Travis:

Some of them, some of them, though, my kids. They just wanted to make us happy. That was it. Oh, in their own way, and they went about it, you know, in crazy ways, but you know all kids do that.

Josh:

Yeah, I did that when I was a kid. I went above and beyond to do different things Make a game night. When my parents were on a date and they'd get home at like midnight, I'd be in a suit, right. They're like hey, welcome to the game night. They're like, oh, you're supposed to be in bed. Yeah exactly, I was just like nope, I got all these games ready for you I've.

Travis:

I've made tickets. Here's a ticket. You get one ticket for each ride. Uh, you give it to me and then I'll give it back to you, but you have to pay me a cookie yeah, I remember that night vividly.

Josh:

I got it all ready in minutes and I waited for hours just waiting. Oh, trauma oh days feel so long when you're a kid yeah, yeah, you just want to grow up yeah, which is weird. My daughter doesn't want to grow up, she wants to stay a kid for my kids, which is great.

Travis:

That means you're doing a good job as a yeah, that's what I'm thinking that's how I take it yeah, like great.

Josh:

I want you to enjoy your childhood, yeah I don't want to get old nope, and I lie and say getting old is great. It's not.

Travis:

Oh, it's the worst oh geez, by far it's the worst thing. Worse than sharks, worse than bears the sharks aren bad. No, compared to getting old. Oh man, sharks pale in comparison. Okay, so let's get back on track. Yeah, what were we talking about? Travis hates children.

Josh:

No, I don't. Now we're getting into tricky.

Travis:

Travis thinks all children are liars and the human race is a big lie I do think kids lie, but I don't think that's a fault of being a kid. I think that that's just a natural, uh, learning part, like you have to. Kids are okay. Let me collect my thoughts. Kids are sociopaths and they need boundaries, and that's how they figure out how put religion aside, um, I they're not sociopaths.

Josh:

Their brain hasn't developed for them to think outside of themselves.

Travis:

Well, that's sociopathy. That is exactly what sociopathy is.

Josh:

Yeah, but they're not diagnosed sociopathic.

Travis:

You don't act like within a boundary of consequences, you just do whatever you want and fuck it, I don't care. Like that's sociopathy, yeah, and that's what kids are. They're a little sociopaths. They need boundaries to help them define what is, without getting too moral, but what is right and wrong. Like hitting somebody in the face is not good because that hurts that person. But a sociopath wouldn't care about the pain you're inflicting. They're just acting on what it is they're feeling in that moment, and kids just need that little bit of guidance. Yeah, right, right, I agree. Moment and kids just need that little bit of guidance. Yeah, right, right, I agree. So I don't think kids suck.

Josh:

I just think that lying is part of growing up and it is part of being a oh yeah, I lied non-stop, a pleaser, and I was blown away when my parents would catch me yep, my parents used to gaslight me and say, like you used to tell the truth all the time, and now you're just nothing but a liar.

Travis:

All you do is lie, and I'm like. All I said was I ate two cookies instead of one, please.

Josh:

I told you we were going to get off track. You were talking about the end one of the lines.

Travis:

Yeah, so there's a couple lines of text that appeared at the end of this documentary. One of them was 62 kids had all claimed to have seen this thing, but we only got to talk to four of them for this doc and they only had archival footage of those same four. I don't know if they had recorded all 62 kids anyway footage of those same four. I don't know if they had recorded all 62 kids anyway. But the last line was 10 years after this incident, dr john mack was killed by a drunk driver and I was like not to be government cover-up right, it's like the aliens got him in the end.

Travis:

They didn't want to be discovered so they got him.

Josh:

It was a government cover-up yeah, yeah.

Travis:

So, uh, that's that was the parting shot of that documentary is just thought it was really funny. Like you said, uh, it was a government conspiracy and they got it.

Josh:

No, that is exactly what I thought or the dean of harvard got him, got really drunk and yep ran into him.

Travis:

Yep, just following him around all night and then just stepped on the gas yep could be, or it was your boy dallin.

Josh:

It was dallin, maybe, probably. Maybe he's smoking like he had secrets yeah, he was.

Travis:

I mean, he was still. Where did this incident occur? I?

Josh:

don't know. I do know that naturally I believe what these kids are saying. I think that they may have embellished a little bit here and there, well, well, well, how the tables have turned.

Josh:

But I do believe that they had an experience and I think that it was a phenomenon, okay, and as a kid, especially in the 90s, they weren't able to comprehend what was going on, yeah. So I think they did see something. I think it was potentially extraterrestrial. So I think they did see something, I think it was potentially extraterrestrial. I don't think the initial thing was exactly like what they were drawing and what they were saying was exactly what happened, but I do think something happened, yeah, and that is where I stand on the topic, okay. Yeah, I mean, there was no attempt of a cover up anywhere. It was just these 60 kids saw something and it was a mass sighting.

Travis:

I mean 60 kids were enrolled in the school. I don't know that there was at least, and I'm only commenting on the information that was given to me in this documentary.

Josh:

Right.

Travis:

All 60 kids didn't see it, but there were 62 kids that were enrolled and were interviewed for this. Now it doesn't say that all 60 kids share that same experience. It just said that they were all present during this sighting. That doesn't say that all 60 kids share that same experience. It just said that they were all present during this sighting. That doesn't mean that they saw it. That just means that they were present. For me, if you've been around or have been a kid and you just weren't self-realized like Athena as an adult, but if you were a kid, like your attention span is so short and if you're playing on one part of the playground, your attention, no matter how calamitous or attention-grabbing it might be on the other side of the playground, you are going to be so involved in what you're doing you're not going to catch it. So for them to say that 62 kids shared this experience, I think is very, very skeptical.

Josh:

They mentioned that there was chaos on the playground and everyone was screaming and running away. A bunch of kids ran away. I think that's the normal playground stuff, though.

Travis:

That's just kids running around like if you've seen recess.

Travis:

It is chaos, it is pure anarchy, it is constant noise it's, it is, it's constant noise just kids running around and shrieking and so for something to have happened off in the distance. And then everybody claims they saw it. I just I don't believe it. I feel like it was, and maybe not just dallen, I'm sure he had, uh, you know, his little group of friends or whatever. They claimed to have seen something and they spread that around and people wanted to believe that that had happened I think you're just siding with him because he smoked cigarettes and he's cool he's a cool guy with a sweater and a cigarettes man.

Travis:

I think John Mack was cool. John Mack was cool. I thought. I'm not saying that he wasn't. It's not Dallin or John Mack.

Josh:

I think that documentary could have been twice as long. I think they should have interviewed more people. I wish I could have seen, because they probably have videotape of them interviewing him, of Dallin yeah.

Travis:

I think they could have cut it in half. Oh really, yeah, I don't.

Josh:

I was fascinated the whole time.

Travis:

I feel like a lot of it was this one person feeling attacked and talking about her experience personally, and that was it that kind of dictated the discourse of this documentary, at least as far as the kids were concerned. They cut back to her as a kid giving her testimony and then her as an adult talking about how, you know, the aliens didn't want people to be technology.

Josh:

Well, that's like your problem, man.

Travis:

That is like my problem, man, and that's me as a skeptic.

Josh:

That's I think there was a lot more that happened in the show.

Travis:

Well, sure, I mean, and we talked about it, we talked about all kinds of stuff, but I think that's my role on this is I'm the skeptic, I'm the person that's going to cry foul that's fine and believe the government Just kidding, I'll get you, which actually brings us to the next episode.

Josh:

Okay, is there trivia? There is trivia Farts. You keep talking about wanting the government or the military to release footage. Sure, yeah, so I'm going to give you just that.

Travis:

Okay, is this the New York Times article that we're going to talk about? Because we didn't talk about that. This was referenced in this episode. They said, yeah, the New York Times covered this phenomena, and all they did was cover the UAPs the unidentified aerial phenomena Right, that was what I read these articles before this podcast, through a paywall, mind you.

Josh:

Man, yeah, I'm sorry for your, your trying times.

Travis:

Well, they are trying times but, yeah, all all those that that series of articles they talked about, like people identifying things that maybe they didn't really understand.

Josh:

Well, you have been mentioning that. You want the proof, you want the tape.

Travis:

Oh boy, here we go, here's. Is this going to be your gotcha moment? No, it's just You're setting me up to fail another quiz.

Josh:

I just don't want to hear that bullshit anymore, so I'm going to do an episode about military tapes. Okay, love it episode about military tapes. Okay, love it. Next week we're going to talk about military UAP and UFO videos, okay, and we have a little baseline quiz to see where we're at, okay, so first question, travis.

Travis:

Oh boy.

Josh:

How have the military UAP UFO videos been released to the public? Was it hackers leaked the videos on the web and it was picked up by news outlets? Whistleblowers worked with Congress to retrieve the footage for public disclosure. An unknown source delivered the footage by mail on a USB drive? Or footage was released by the Pentagon and leaked from military personnel?

Travis:

Well, my paranoid freak sensibility says an unknown source delivered the footage by mail on a usb drive. But I kind of have the feeling its footage was released by the pentagon and leaked from military personnel.

Josh:

Final answer the usb drive is the most badass sure way like I imagine, like an underground yeah, like a parking garage trench coat, some clandestine meeting happening. Yeah, in some darkened alley yeah, so you say footage released by the pentagon and leaked from military personnel that is what I think as well. Oh shit, I don't know the answer, because these are all pretty convincing answers hackers leaked the videos on the web and was picked up by news outlets.

Josh:

Sure man, I mean, I could believe that a whistleblower saying like, hey, this is important, you guys need to see this why?

Travis:

why I'm gonna throw that one out is because I mean, how recent is. Are we claiming these events happen?

Josh:

I believe this was 2017 okay, that's uh reasonable.

Travis:

If this was like pre-90 or pre-2000s hackers, releasing on the web is not a feasible way of getting information out there. Yeah, and the whistleblowers. I mean we've talked about whistleblowers, that keeps coming up.

Josh:

Next question what are the names of the three UFO videos released in 2017? Is it Click, Clack, Gumball and Flypast?

Travis:

Kickback, Cymbal and Bycast.

Josh:

Oh my, god, these rule Tic Tac Gimbal and Go Fast. Cymbal and bicast. Oh my god, these rule tic tac gimbal and go fast. Or paddywhack, thimble and baja, blast what are they, oh my god, what are the name of these videos those rule.

Travis:

I'm gonna say click, clack gumball and fly pass. That's your answer. That that's my answer. Yeah, okay, I. You're going to say Tic Tac, gimbal and Go Fast.

Josh:

Why do you say that?

Travis:

Because I bet the ship they saw went really fast.

Josh:

So they're going to go fast. Yeah, yeah, okay, that is the one I'm going to pick, because I know.

Travis:

Okay, perfect, continuing my streak of wrong answers.

Josh:

Next question Uh-huh, what decade are the videos from? So the videos that we're talking about here with that were released in 2017. Okay, were they from the 1960s and 70s, the 1980s, the 1990s or the 2000s to current day?

Travis:

I'm going to say 60s and 70s, 2000s to current day. I'm going to say 60s and 70s I think the aliens saw, if they came here and visited, which again I want to stress that I do believe in aliens. We are living on a planet and finding life everywhere, in places that we did not think it was even hospitable for life, like there are incredibly hot water that's being released from the center of the earth, yeah, like sulfur hot spots and they are finding living organisms down there in the most inhospitable places.

Travis:

Yeah, things where things shouldn't live, yep, where things shouldn't live and so extrapolating that into like where we are in the universe. I do not think that we are. I don't feel it's possible for us to be alone.

Josh:

And so you think the 60s and 70s.

Travis:

I do think the 60s and 70s.

Josh:

Yeah, because of that.

Travis:

No, because I think if these videos do in fact I'm not saying that they don't exist, but if they are true the government is so slow at releasing things that that's going to be a jumping off point for them, as they're going to start from the earliest documented experience, the earliest documented recorded phenomena, and then move forward from there. They're not going to start with I don't me personally, this is I'm probably wrong, as I've been proven to be I don't think they're going to start with the most recent and then work their way back and say like see, we've been, these have been here all along. I think they're going to say like, okay, look, we're going to gradually declassify this information.

Josh:

Yeah, okay, I'm going to say the 90s, 1990s. All right. Last question for our baseline what is theagon stance on the footage? The uaps are real and sightings have been increasing in recent years. The videos are a hoax and the military is not seeing uaps at all. The uaps are enemy tech that are releasing to the public as a counter. The videos are not from the us military and cannot be legitimized okay, so I think it's.

Travis:

The ap's are real and sightings have been increasing in recent years. I remember hearing about this thanks to the good work of tom delong of blink 182. I remember this happening during like covid lockdown. Some of the comments were like the government has finally acknowledged aliens exist and all we can talk about is toilet paper.

Josh:

In 2020?.

Travis:

What no, well, I imagine that was when we were all talking about toilet paper. Yeah, 2020, 2021. Yeah.

Josh:

Yeah.

Travis:

Yep. So I think the government did recognize the UAPs are real, but they didn't say that they were necessary. They just said they were unidentified aerial phenomena. Okay, kind of like the you know any testimony. They are just legitimizing that people have seen these things and they are willing to investigate these sightings. That's my feeling.

Josh:

That is my answer as well, for similar reasons. Okay, so let's see what we got.

Travis:

So I got the first one right, or you did, we both did Well we both did so. I only logged my answers.

Josh:

I only logged your answers as well.

Travis:

Oh boy, the first footage was released by the Pentagon and leaked from military personnel. Yep Congratulations me. Okay, so Click, clack, gumball and Fly Pass was mine. Josh correctly guessed Tic Tac, gimble and Go Fast.

Josh:

These were all names made up by my wife Jordan.

Travis:

Yeah, the other three and it's really funny.

Josh:

It is funny. Yeah, she is brilliant.

Travis:

Yeah, and potentially a rapper yeah, yeah, we did hear some freestyle from her earlier.

Josh:

Maybe we'll get that, that's true.

Travis:

Maybe when she decides to be a guest we can get her to freestyle for us?

Josh:

yeah, or it'll be a bonus episode of just her rapping. So what decade are the videos from? You said 1960s and 70s. That was incorrect. Yeah, I said 1990s. That was incorrect. Yeah, it was 2000s to current day. Wild, that is wild.

Travis:

So you're completely wrong oh, I mean yeah, it's backward completely wrong last question what is the pentagon stance?

Josh:

on the footage, the us are real and sightings have been increasing in recent years. That is what we both said and it is correct. Yeah, so you got two correct.

Travis:

I know I feel like I am growing. I'm like the Grinch after learning about Christmas as my heart is growing, at least in this case, two times.

Josh:

Yeah, it's more so. Your opinion is growing growing.

Travis:

Um, I don't, maybe a little bit. Yeah, we'll get you, I think. I mean, this is not like opinion stuff, this is like facts that I just don't, I don't have yeah but uh, I'm learning how to understand all these paranoid freaks out there yeah, and we'll hopefully change that to you being a paranoid freak. That's fine man, that's my goal.

Josh:

I want you to go insane, sure Big tent.

Travis:

Yeah, this is a big, it's a big tent community. I'm sure they're very welcoming and cool and chill kind of people.

Josh:

When we're done with this podcast, you will be wearing a tinfoil hat.

Travis:

Okay, all right, well, challenge accepted. Yeah, oh, it'll happen. The only reason, though, I'll be wearing a tinfoil hat is because that's where I'm keeping my warm tater tots.

Josh:

Okay, that's uh probably something you should keep to yourself I'm gonna have to actually look into that.

Travis:

Uh, more on that. On our next episode, I'm gonna be testing out a tinfoil hat not for the reasons you guys think yeah, well, thanks for listening.

Josh:

If you guys want to contact us, our info is in the description. If you want to make fun of us or tell us that we're wrong, or argue with us, like we mentioned before, we don't know much.

Travis:

Yeah.

Josh:

We're eager to learn, so if you can teach us something, sure, we are all for it, and thank you for listening. We'll catch you next episode. Bye, bye, bye, bye.