Aliens? Yes! But Maybe No

Men in Black: Real Encounters or Government Conspiracy?

• Aliens? Yes! But Maybe No • Episode 7

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Men in Black: Are they real, or just a government-sized urban legend? 

This week, we're diving deep into the shadowy world of the MIB, exploring their creepy encounters, vanishing coins, and why they always seem to know your deepest secrets.

Get ready for a wild ride through conspiracy, close-up magic, and the ultimate question: Who's watching the watchers? 

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Josh:

Aliens Aliens, yes.

Travis:

But maybe no. Welcome to the show. Aliens, yes, but maybe Men in Black. I'm Travis and I'm Josh. This is an otherworldly podcast, as ambiguous as our title.

Josh:

Which you didn't say. You didn't say our title.

Travis:

Yeah, I said aliens yes, but maybe no.

Josh:

You said aliens yes or men in black?

Travis:

Yeah, I kind of gave it away. What we're going to be talking about today, I think men in black.

Josh:

I'm just going to let this discussion take us wherever it's going to take us, because I think it's interesting. It is interesting. There's I mean, there's a lot to it. I want it to be true. Okay, men in black. What are they? Who are they? We all heard of them. Yeah, did we hear about it before the movie came out? Did we know?

Travis:

I mean there was a comic and I was aware of the comic, okay, I read the comic and then the. The movie is based on that, but the comic was based on some of these experiences that we're going to talk about today. I don't know if I'm coming in. Can you hear me okay?

Josh:

oh yeah, I can hear you, but anytime someone mentions a comic they kind of sound like a douchebag no, they don't I read the comic before a lot of people a lot of their eyes glaze over Thor's paperback Spider-Man, edition 2. I don't know. I've never read a comic. I've read the comics and the newspaper. It's the same thing it's similar.

Travis:

Those are all comics that are in syndication that, like Garfield, you can buy actual Garfield comics. I'm a nerd and I like most of nerd culture, except D&D, fuck D&D.

Josh:

I actually am very intrigued by D&D. I've done a few intro games. Seems like it'd be really fun with the right group of people.

Travis:

I'm going to walk back. The fuck. D&d, d&d is the part of nerd culture that has always been too nerdy for me, and I don't say that in a disparaging way. I mean, I'm already a big dork.

Josh:

You'd just be ruined Getting into something like that.

Travis:

It would totally consume my life. And so, like, since I know what I know about myself, it like incorporates two things, which is like theatrics that I love, and then fantasy those two things I love very much. And I'm afraid that if I were to get into D&D and I've got friends that are like their big D&D what do you call them? Heads, d&d-ers? Yeah, their big D&D-ers and I've seen what it does to their life Totally destroys it.

Josh:

I know people who are really big into it and it hasn't destroyed it, but it's a big part of their life.

Travis:

My friends have been playing D&D next to a dumpster.

Josh:

That is not true. Yes, you just made that up. They lost custody of their kids.

Travis:

No yeah, they had cleared the bar, poor lawyers. Then, because of some things they said in a D&D campaign, they were disbarred.

Josh:

What the heck is going on right now. Are you? I'm serious, you're serious? Yeah, this sounds insane.

Travis:

It's insane. D&d consumes your life, ruins it 100%. Every time, every time it will Just once, yeah, just once. And that's why I say D&D, not even once. Yep, what a great introduction to Men in Black, the topic of our conversation today.

Josh:

Oh, comics yeah, you read the comics before. Is Men in Black something that we would have known before there's any cultural or entertainment access? I mean yes, Was it a popular myth in school or in?

Travis:

the workplace. I mean, do they teach this in school about the men in black? Or now we're going to cover the men in black.

Josh:

I mean like recess gossip, like the Marilyn Manson thing.

Travis:

You're going to have to explain to me what the Marilyn Manson thing is.

Josh:

As we all know, somehow in the 90s marilyn manson removed one of his ribs or two of us, two of his lower ribs, uh, so that he could fillet himself?

Travis:

yes, but he's also paul from the wonder yes, I've heard that too.

Josh:

Yeah, and every kid in every school in the entire country heard that knew about it. There was no internet. We don't know how it spread. Yeah, was men in black, something like that, like people like I didn't, wasn't aware of men in black.

Travis:

You know, as a kid that doesn't mean that my finger wasn't on the pulse, because it wasn't, yeah, you know of what was popular back then. I wouldn't mean I was a comic clarinet playing, briefcase holding. I didn't have a, I didn't have a briefcase. I did have a bag and I would wear what is essentially like a three-piece suit where I'd wear a vest, a nice button-up shirt and like a jacket.

Josh:

So anyone listening to this and if you've heard any of the past episodes when Travis is calling you weird, the epitome of cool. You don't need to listen to him, or do you? Did you own a trench coat?

Travis:

No, never wore a trench coat.

Josh:

Did you own a trench coat? No, never wore a trench coat In the rain to keep your zoot suit crisp.

Travis:

I did want to have a zoot suit. For a brief period I was actually in a swing dance group called Swing Kids and we did think about getting zootsies, but we thought that was too weird.

Josh:

Hmm, that's a good call. Yeah, so yeah, men in Black. I hope everything that we hear is real. I want it to be real. I want, sure, I want this more than anything.

Travis:

Uh, you want men in black to be real. You want people to come to your house and tell you don't do things I would. And then do some up close magic at you.

Josh:

I would. I would love that. I don't think I would be afraid, I think I would.

Travis:

All descriptions of the men in black sound terrifying to me, but no one's been harmed. That I've read.

Josh:

there have been threats, though yeah, empty, empty, no alien threats with beautiful lips, that's.

Travis:

That is the thing, is the beautiful?

Josh:

lips. Yeah, that's how they get you.

Travis:

Yeah, that's how they get in the door.

Josh:

You just get lost in those red lips so, yeah, it's a myth, it's a legend, its existence may or may not be true, just because it's been firsthand experiences most of the time, which is.

Travis:

Much of what we've talked about on this podcast is firsthand experiences. Yeah, there have been a few confirmations here and there of like the government stepping in, saying like no, uaps are, they're a thing, trust us, they're out there. It's just we don't know what they are exactly, or do we?

Josh:

we don't know what this is all about. We just have the stories and the myths and legends and some sighting stories all right.

Travis:

Well, let's uh, let's talk into the dossier a little bit. Early sightings harold dolls he had an encounter in 1947 near maury island, washington. So this is something that I've you know reading through all this information is that it doesn't exist on one coast or the other, or in just middle america. This is like these accounts have been pretty broad, worldwide, like nothing that I've read and I'm just a dumb just spread. I'm just, I'm just a dumb idiot like I don't.

Travis:

They say that romans have had encounters with like uaps, but as far as like the men in black are concerned, the first documented incidents of that happened in 1947 with harold doll. It involved a man in a black suit warning him to stay silent about a UFO sighting. So he was out on a lake fishing and he saw three donut-shaped things in the sky. One fell and killed a dog and his son got hurt somehow, and so shortly after the men in black showed up and they threatened him into silence. His partner, gray Barker, wrote a book called they Knew Too Much, which further solidified the MIB as figures of secrecy and intimidation within the ufology community. So that has been debunked, though that is a myth. He has retracted his statements there. Wow, and that was one of the first. Yeah, and so this whole movement, that the men in black exist. Their etymology was this incident that was fake.

Josh:

But what if the Men in Black came back? After he talked about the Men in Black and told them we're serious?

Travis:

Good job. You did a good job by redacting it. Now we're going to keep you and your family alive.

Josh:

Sure, you can speculate that I could do that?

Travis:

Yeah, how do we know? The Men in Black didn't come in here and tell you hey, travis is coming over, make sure you wear pants. And now I show up and you're not wearing pants. Maybe they came and said no, no pants is a good thing, because I do what I want.

Travis:

Yeah Well, so does this guy, so does everybody. But then something changed where he took back what he wanted. But to speculate that somebody had said the men in black came and told him not to say, that is, I think, silly well, just keeping my options open. You know, we're just options open that they exist and closing all other options I have no agenda.

Josh:

Okay. So he came out, confessed it was a hoax. Yeah, you're saying that this may have been the foundation for future narratives it was.

Travis:

This is considered the first men in black sighting. There weren't previous men in black sightings I mean, it could be two things.

Josh:

It could be aliens Some of the descriptions they have of these creatures are very alien-like or it could be the new government programs that have just come in, because these are now funded secret programs. But there's more and they evolve. It's not just a simple men in black, not someone you'd see in New York walking down the street in a suit, but it also could be that it could be I mean, this guy didn't say what they look like other than just men in black suits, right?

Travis:

I mean, that's the whole reason why they're called men in black is because this first incident, we wouldn't say this is the first sighting of men in black. Had they not shown up being men in black, they would be men in purple or aliens in G-strings.

Josh:

Oh what is a leotard, but a full-bodied G-string?

Travis:

That's true. Yeah, it all goes right into your butt.

Josh:

Yeah, I wanted to talk about how they looked, but there are a couple other accounts and sightings, like the Bender incident. So albert k bender, a prominent ufologist in the 50s, claimed that his ufo research was stopped because of three men in black and they threatened him into silence. It's all detailed in his book, which was published in 1956, called they knew too much about flying saucers. So the first one that you were talking about with harold doll, that was 47, this was in the 50s. Yeah, this is yep. Just a couple years later. And I mean books were big in the 50s, reading was getting very prominent. The literacy rate was going up like crazy because their schools same thing with like music or movies. You know there wasn't a million bands, there wasn't a million movies. I mean, what was there was there? So when a book comes out, people are going to be reading it. So let's talk about what these guys look like, okay they look very cool.

Travis:

This is the last suit they're gonna wear, and the only difference between one man in black and another man in black is they make this shit look good.

Josh:

After these encounters, there's been hundreds and thousands of different encounters. There's been a couple of pictures, a few videos.

Travis:

One video. There's one video that we saw and then there's one photographic evidence of what they claim to be a man in black, but it could just be somebody wearing a suit standing on a corner. So the thing that I have picked up on a lot of this is that these people see something and then they get paranoid about it and they think that now everything they do and say is going to jeopardize their safety. They're looking for reasons to back that up. There was one account of somebody who said somebody had broken into their house and they just assumed that was a man in black. And they're looking for stuff when it could have just been a home invasion type thing.

Josh:

They could have just got burgled.

Travis:

Yeah, they could have been burgled.

Josh:

So, yeah, the accounts vary a lot how they're described, the situations, what's said but there are some things that are very common, like their appearance. I know you are very infatuated with how they look, travis. Would you like to describe how they look?

Travis:

yeah, uh, desperately, I've been waiting for this chance. Creepy, creepy, okay, back to you, josh. That's weird, because earlier you were saying beautiful Off-putting, I would say Uncanny Valley, like close enough to human but far enough away that it's a little unsettling.

Josh:

Yeah, I would say, like a dolphin pretending to be a human.

Travis:

Yeah, because they're hairless, waxy skin. But doesn't that just sound insane to describe Like?

Travis:

if that was the case, it would be a huge thing, but the accounts are like oh no, I was alone, I was in my house. Some of them are preceded by a phone call. These visits to somebody's house, and they ask them outright well, are you at home alone? And if they say yes, then suddenly there's somebody at their door. Why hasn't somebody just lied? If they are aware of the men in black and know that they only visit when they're alone, why not lie or set up a camera to?

Josh:

capture it, yeah, and why aren't? In today's age, there's a ridiculous amount of cameras.

Travis:

Well, and that's another thing that I wanted to talk about, you see a lot of these accounts drop off very steeply after dan akroyd's experience. What in like 2002 so not a lot of men in black sightings have happened since the advent of like modern day cameras or what happened?

Josh:

or the anachroidon in o2?

Travis:

he had been working on a show. He had like 26 episodes that he'd recorded. They were, I guess, recording the series finale or the season finale. None of them have been aired. Like accounts of the story seem a little weird, like why would you have 26 episodes in the? Can I say that to you and me, who have 26 episodes of this show and we haven't released any? But why would you have as dan akroyd have 26 episodes recorded and none of them released?

Josh:

well, I do everything dan akroyd does know.

Travis:

So he had been recording the show, not released anything yet he was still in talks with the head of the SyFy network. What you hear is that the head of that network was hoping for something else from the show. They got Dan Aykroyd to be on the show. They thought it was going to be more comedy-based.

Travis:

Dan Aykroyd was really looking to explore some of his more niche hobbies, which was exploring the existence of ufos yeah, he was into a lot of the spiritual stuff too, and yeah so the the reason that he was outside very some say he was out having a smoke break, others say he was getting a call from britney spears or on the phone with Britney Spears which I think is silly, but the accounts are all about the same is that there was a black sedan that had just appeared across the street that he didn't notice before.

Travis:

He saw somebody in the driver's seat and then somebody appeared outside of the car and was mean mugging him. He turned for a second and when he looked back to see if the car was still there, it was all gone. He said there's no way that it could have passed without him knowing it. But also, like it's Dan Aykroyd, he could have been pulled in a you know a hundred different directions. It's New York city, downtown New York. There's a lot going on. He could have been talking to somebody for longer than he thought he was and when he turned back around, the car was gone.

Josh:

Yeah, it could have been two separate things two separate things.

Travis:

It was just a driver of like a hired car, like a town car.

Josh:

Yeah.

Travis:

And standing outside and saw Dan Aykroyd and was like maybe squinting at him to see oh, he should. That looks like.

Josh:

Dan Aykroyd it If you make eye contact with anyone in New York, you're going to get mean mugged Sure, or nice mugged. Maybe New Yorkers aren't known to be the friendliest people.

Travis:

Yeah, or just mugged. I found New Yorkers to be very, very welcoming to us, oh cool. They were very kind and very blunt and I appreciated that Not one of them were mean or cruel, which I experience a lot more here, just like mean and cruelness, than I did when I was in New York Interesting.

Josh:

Yeah, I imagine the East Coast people are too busy to be mean. Yeah, Over here we have a lot of time on the West Coast to fester, just soaking up those rays, that Western sun.

Travis:

That's a weird story and it happened to everybody's favorite Ghostbuster, dan Aykroyd.

Josh:

What happened after he saw the guy? He just disappeared. He just disappeared, yeah, and the show got canceled. The show got canceled. Two hours later he said and he thinks it was related he feels it's related.

Travis:

yes, Nobody else felt that way. They said it was creative differences.

Josh:

I mean I don't want to get stuck on Danny Aykroyd, but did he say that the guy looked weird Like no eyebrows, no, because that's kind of what people have been saying yeah of what people have been saying yeah, they no, he was across the street looking he was just in a suit and in a, in a car and he appeared and disappeared just miraculously.

Travis:

He was there and gone, okay, in the blink of an eye so that leads us to behavior. So we know how they look, naturally they're just weird yeah, creepy, they speak in a monotone like a monotonous voice. Big uh they're yep big.

Josh:

In the video we saw of the two guys walking into the hotel it looked like a kid on a kid's shoulder, wearing a sure they were just trying to get into a club yeah, that's what it looked like yeah, I actually couldn't really tell because the perspective was hard.

Travis:

There was one other person that was in the like those two doors that separate the outside yeah, the outside from the inside, and they passed through those doors so quick. I didn't really get a good chance to look and see how, if they weren't that much bigger than that hotel worker yeah, and we couldn't see their face because we're wearing hats and sunglasses but they came in looking for the owner of the hotel and the head of security because those two people had reported seeing like a triangle or spaceship outside of their upper floors.

Josh:

Yeah. So these guys, they walk in in most of these situations and are very intimidating, like they're just straight up trying to alpha you.

Travis:

they act as though they have authority yeah, they'll often show badges that say security on it oh really, or a version of that. Yep, they'll say interesting, no name though, and they refer to each other by number. Weird, so kind of like in men in black, where their names get reduced down to the, the first letter, like j and k, very similar to that where you're like one, two, two hundred yeah, so no names, yeah, numbers very secretive sure, naturally but with that secret behavior, they also know a lot of information about you personal information, personal information which is wild.

Travis:

So in one of the early instances where a piece of metal was found, they're like you need to go get me that motherfucking metal right now. No more motherfucking metal in your motherfucking house. And so that is very scary because the reports will say like how did they know that I had salvaged this piece of metal? I didn't tell anybody, I didn't even tell my partner, and that's most of these encounters.

Josh:

It's just like I was alone in the woods and I saw this. How come you're here telling me not to tell anyone about it? Yeah, but.

Travis:

I just think that that's very convenient them being alone and then told not to tell about it, and then they tell about it, but they're told not to tell about it, so so that like compounds the myth, and people and that is what I think peaks everybody's curiosity is like oh shit, this guy is like a whistleblower on his own personal experience and it's telling the world what happened to him specifically, and then he's being silenced by people that we don't even know exist. But we're going to have to take his account.

Josh:

Yeah, it is bizarre because I mean having thousands of these encounters and people coming forward with them. They're all doing the exact opposite of what these men in black are telling them to not do.

Travis:

They're all saying don't talk about this. And so what do they do? They write a book about it.

Josh:

It's strange If there are UFOs or something like that. I imagine that these people are pretty high strung. If you see something, you're gonna have those pins and needles. Your senses are going to be a little more enhanced. You're going to have a little bit of I'm being watched feeling.

Travis:

Yeah, yeah you're gonna be sus, you're gonna have a general sense of sus sussery. Yeah, paranoidanoid.

Josh:

That's the word.

Travis:

Yeah, yeah, I only say that like five times an episode, but you are. If you claim to have seen something, then anything that happens after that, especially if you're like in a heightened sense, you're going to attribute to that Like the whole world revolves around you. So you're going to look at everything that way. Yeah, like we were talking about before the show. Everybody's favorite topic to talk about is themselves and they're going to think that everything that happened to them is actually part of a worldwide conspiracy, when it may have just been an owl in a tree that looked like the flat bush monster or whatever.

Josh:

I was watching a TV show recently where they were going in and talking to people and they're coming forward with some of their stories and almost every person that these two people were talking to that had these encounters. One of the main questions they asked was why me? Why am I special? Why did they come to me? It's just like like it's not because of you.

Travis:

You were picked. If it did happen to you, it was 100 random yeah no, nothing about you especially. You're just somebody out in the woods. You happen to be isolated at the time of this, whatever it was yeah, and if you're listening and you had an encounter and you thought you were special.

Josh:

I think you're special for other reasons, yeah, but not for experiencing.

Travis:

You've got great red lips and a very waxy skin and I love that hat and suit that you decided to put on. Very demure, very uncharacteristic of you.

Josh:

Very demure, yeah so some of the tactics that these men in black use when they come they threaten them gonna kill you yeah, or your family members, like.

Travis:

One incidence was uh, it was basically like you have a very pretty wife. It would be a shame if something were to happen to her.

Josh:

So they do threats, they do, they intimidate a lot. Yeah, they do up close magic Surveillance. Maybe there's been some instances of memory wiping.

Travis:

Sure A neuralyzer.

Josh:

Yeah, some accounts suggest that there's more sinister actions, like disappearances of people or destruction of evidence or, like you said, burgled, yeah, burgled their turrets, yeah, and I think magic up, up close magic.

Travis:

I think it was bender. They showed up at his house, they showed him a penny. The penny went from copper colored to silver colored to blue and then dematerialized. And they're like huh, do you believe us now? Now, don't talk to anybody. And he's like yeah, man, you made a penny disappear, incredible yeah, that was dr herbert hopkins.

Josh:

He was a researcher. He claimed that a man in a black suit visited him. Confirmed details about the case he was investigating.

Travis:

This was the one that they called ahead of time right, Called ahead of time to make sure he was home alone and then turned on his outside porch light and as he was doing that, he saw somebody outside of his house walking up the steps.

Josh:

I don't know, okay, but what I do know is they knew what he was investigating, yeah, and they made a coin vanish as a scare tactic yeah, I know, I know, I know and warned him to destroy all his related files. So this is 1976. Magic stores were popping at this time. Yeah, this is like.

Travis:

It was huge. Mandrake the Magician was around at this time, a magician that my dad really liked. I think Doctor Strange came out at about this time in the comics world.

Josh:

Yeah, magic was happening. You could get magic tricks in the back of comic books. Some serial prizes were magic tricks. I mean, this was all outside of hand. Yeah, and spies were super big.

Travis:

Spies were big, like all through the 80s. I remember reading in the back of comics I actually ordered a pair of sunglasses that allowed you to see behind you, so like in the little corners it was like oh, the mirrors, yeah, yeah I had a pair of those.

Travis:

Okay, they sucked. Oh yeah, all of them. They were terrible. All you got was like the side of your face and your ear, but the idea of it was so cool and you it was it like fed that paranoia that somebody was always like sneaking up on you, so you ordered it.

Travis:

Did you put the money in the envelope like coins, like a check, a check, yeah wow, okay, my parents wrote a check and then they we put it in an envelope and we mailed it away so yeah, when I heard about this guy's story with the coin, I laughed out loud.

Josh:

It's funny. I thought it was it very funny.

Travis:

It's up close magic, it's just really funny. But imagine like a David Blaine type character back then, or a Criss Angel, a mind freak. He would be killed, yeah, he would be thrown into a lake with rocks tied around his head or burned to the stake as a witch, and he probably would have escaped. He would if he would have set the whole thing up of set the whole thing up.

Josh:

Yeah, when I first read this I thought just the coin behind the ear, disappearing thing. But researching a bit more, there was a copper penny and it started turning silver and then green and fuzzy and then it disappeared in front of them. No, no hand movement is what you described.

Travis:

Right, but it was just him that was there, so it's just his accounting. A lot of these accounts, I felt like the game of telephone, and when people stop paying attention to how outrageous the story is because maybe they've heard it before or they've heard parts of the story, you're going to start amping it up to get people's attention. So eventually you're like, oh my God, no way.

Josh:

Well, and we've talked about people do that with their own memories too. People do that False memories are created that way. Where it just slowly, over time, it's skewed slightly to where all these small skews turn into a completely different story.

Travis:

Yeah, you tripped over a sidewalk and suddenly you got pushed out of a second story window.

Josh:

Yeah, but that Dr Hopkins account kind of highlighted that the men in black's ability to perform seemingly impossible feats, and it focuses on suppressing UFO related evidence.

Travis:

This is scarier to me than any accounts I've heard about abduction. So, like the travis walton thing, I didn't see fire in the sky until I was like in my mid to late teens, but that was a terrifying movie. That is not something I wanted. I do not want that to exist. Nobody wants to be. It's just like a child abduction. That is the worst possible thing that you you could live through. It's like having your kid stolen or being a child and being taken. And that was a thing in the 80s. It's still a thing today. Some of these accounts, you know, could probably line up with alien abduction. They're like well, my kid went missing. Well, there was a weird person buzzing around our neighborhood asking a bunch of questions. That could have just been a pedophile doing the same thing and snatching kids or people or whatever. I'm not saying that the two are related. I'm just saying that this is how these myths get started. Parts of them are based in reality, at least the reality as far as these people are concerned as far as these people are concerned.

Josh:

Well, Bender's testimony that Albert Bender said he was being silenced by the three men in black and he said that they're from the planet Kazakh. I don't know why the men in black gave him that information.

Travis:

That's the thing, is you're right? Why would they give him that information? Don't tell anybody about this, but here's all my personal information I'm going to give you.

Josh:

Here's the last four digits of my social security number.

Travis:

Here's all my personal information I'm going to give you. Here's the last four digits of my social security number. Here's my address. Why would they do that?

Josh:

Yeah, that's very strange.

Travis:

It is such a silly name for a planet.

Josh:

Yeah, it really is. It sounds like a planet on Dragon Ball Dragon.

Travis:

Ball.

Josh:

Z. The hard part about this. I want it to be true. So bad. There really is just no concrete evidence. No, it is myth and lore there could be. I'm sure there is a government organization out there, I would absolutely agree that there is.

Josh:

Yeah, I mean it would be weird if there wasn't. Honestly, yeah, but with aliens I mean maybe, but I I just don't believe that, sadly, I mean, the government would want to conceal some of this to make so there's not mass hysteria, like just mass psychological effects on people. But they're still creating that psychological effect just on individual levels.

Travis:

Okay, I know you want to believe, but let's talk about just in sheer numbers, right. As prevalent as UFO, uap sightings are, why aren't men in black sightings as common as that After somebody has spotted a UFO or a UAP or whatever term you want to use? If they are supposed to show up after every sighting, why don't we have more accounts of men in black showing up?

Josh:

Maybe because what the men in black are doing is working.

Travis:

But how is it working?

Josh:

We're still hearing about you're right you're right, and it could be that they aren't doing it anymore. Maybe it was a from this time to this time, but now civilization they've already collected all their evidence.

Josh:

Yeah, maybe civilization is ready and we can handle something, so there wouldn't be mass hysteria. But you're right, I mean there's places that you can go in the world where you could see a UFO every night. I mean there's tons of places like that where it's very, very, very common. The numbers don't make sense, like there should be the exact amount of numbers.

Travis:

Yeah, it should correlate to the number of sightings.

Josh:

Yeah.

Travis:

And with that correlation would come evidence. You know people showing up. You have a camera system in front of your up. You have a camera system in front of your house. I have a camera system in front of my house. We're not the only people on the world that have cameras at our house. There are hundreds of thousands of cameras out there. If people were showing up to houses, we would have documented evidence of it.

Josh:

Yeah, the other thing I just thought of is Is this going to be a hot take? Oh, this is a hot take. If there are multiple species of aliens, maybe there is a species of aliens that was not supposed to be somewhere at a certain time, or something. If they have an organization schedule of their visits and then they show up and someone sees them and they're like you weren't supposed to see. That, do you not tell?

Travis:

me, I was never here. I was never here. Yeah, exit stage left.

Josh:

It's not what I would say even though this topic has been contested a lot, because there's not a lot of proof and there's a lot of funny things you would call what whack jobs uh, paranoid freaks.

Travis:

Paranoid freaks yeah, whack jobs, I'm sorry I apologize, yeah me and my paranoid freaks are we're very comfortable with how we refer to ourselves. Yeah, I get it.

Josh:

I mean each other, not ourselves just remember that's a a zoot suit wanting briefcase briefcase carrying middle school businessman sweater, vest, owning middle school business man bow ties yep with a clarinet in his backpack because he was too embarrassed that people would make fun of him. That is me.

Travis:

That's who's making fun of you right now yeah, going home to read my lord of the rings so this whole topic still captivates a lot of people. It also kind of shines a little bit of light on the paranoia that people have with the government and their secrecy well and how, like their understanding that government is so big and it's a big bureaucracy, of course there's going to be these little like hidden pockets of people that are pulling money in from taxpayers that are yeah, they're trying to silence.

Travis:

Government has no idea where all of our money is going, sure, yeah, which is bonkers, because that's why calculators exist yeah, I mean pete, yep, they'll love that idea that there's like these little pocket agencies that are sprung up just to intimidate and make people afraid the cool thing about this is that no one can be right or wrong.

Josh:

There's always going to be a debate because there isn't.

Travis:

That's like evidence. That's like saying my version of blue might be different than your version of blue because you're seeing through your eyes, like your idea of blue could be red and your whole world could look completely different to me. But like I'm like, I'm not really interested in going down that road well, I'm just saying this.

Josh:

This debate will go on for a long time. I'm not going down that road. Geez, I was that took a dark turn, didn't take a dark turn. It's just like I'm not trying to manipulate you.

Travis:

It's like one of those annoying things Travis, you're safe here, you're fine but it's one of those things that people will say like well, it can't not, not be true, but it can't be true. Those two things can exist. Like, yeah, they can exist, that's, that's fine. There's a lot out there that we don't know. Yeah, but just saying like it exists, because I don't think the government is using their funds properly or whatever, because it's silly to me.

Josh:

Well, I'm just saying the lack of evidence is going to make it so that this debate is around for a very long time, which will make it always one of the bigger topics in the unexplained phenomena realm. Sure, which is cool. You know, it's something we needed to talk about, we needed to dive in. I don't think we'll know for sure. I want it. From what I hear like it could be something else. It could be people.

Travis:

It could be a guy in a Hawaiian suit with too much sunscreen on his face walking up to you and talking to you about it. It's probably not going to be men in black, you about it, which it's probably not going to be men in black. I would feel like if you were trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Why dress exactly the way everybody expects you to dress?

Travis:

because they got some old information about how we dressed and weren't able to update it by just being out among people and seeing that nobody wears a suit anymore, just casually.

Josh:

Yeah, I'm not going to speak for them, because I believe that they should speak for themselves, oh my God. But I would like to think the best of them.

Travis:

So this is just a plea to the alien overlords to not bug you. Please leave you alone.

Josh:

Okay, got it. Yeah, I just want them to know that I care and come at me, all right. So yeah, if you guys have any stories I'd want to hear more, you can get ahold of us.

Travis:

Sure, I would love. I would love for you guys to send us drawings of these men in black that you've seen. I think that is more helpful than pictures. I want to see a drawing. I want to see somebody's artistic interpretation of what a man I'd be down with that.

Josh:

I'd frame that. Yeah, I'd frame it. Yeah, put it on a shirt. Yeah, if you guys have uh any feedback or insults, don't bother.

Travis:

Uh, you can, you can send us whatever you want.

Josh:

We never learned how to read jokes on you. Yeah, we're gonna go into a quiz okay, very, very exciting.

Travis:

What the fuck is this? I've never even heard of this.

Josh:

I don't know. Our researcher would not tell me any information.

Travis:

Rendlesham.

Josh:

Forest, yeah, so next week we're going to talk about Rendlesham Forest because of Are we saying that right, or is it Rendlesham Good? I don't know when is it located.

Travis:

Oh see, so here we go.

Josh:

No, don't scroll ahead. This is the issue that last time I think it's friendless on because I scrolled ahead we were sent this quiz while we were recording, so travis couldn't do research like he did last time. I asked what we were gonna be talking about, what the quiz is about, and was told no information.

Travis:

So because you can't even be trusted around me I can't.

Josh:

I mean, it's kind of fun, though, not knowing what we're going to talk about.

Travis:

Yeah, so this is going to be our baseline quiz. This is my nightmare, though Not being prepared.

Josh:

This is what we're going to talk about next episode. We are going to take a quiz to figure out what we know, so that you know that we actually don't know anything, right? Yes, typical end of the show quiz. Yep, how are we going to do this?

Travis:

I'll just read the questions and then we both answer your answer.

Josh:

I'll give mine and then we'll submit the quiz and we'll kind of go over and see how great we did, okay. So first question what year did the? Now you got me all worried about the pronunciation.

Travis:

That's fine. We can always fix that in the edit. It'll just be like what year did the correct pronunciation forest incident occur?

Josh:

yeah, so what year did the rendlesham? Rendlesham, I'm gonna say rendlesham rendlesham.

Travis:

You can say rendlesham too. That's the both, I'm sure.

Josh:

Well, you know what this is already proving?

Travis:

how Contentious.

Josh:

When you listen to the next episode, we will have the correct pronunciation. So when did this Rendlesham forest UFO incident occur? Okay, so it's a UFO incident. Okay, is it A 1953, b 1971, c 1980, or D 1999? I mean, that sounds like a 70s forest, so I'm gonna say 1971. I'm going with 1980 okay, where is rendall's sham?

Travis:

I did both you're doing every pronunciation, that's fine where is this forest located?

Josh:

is it a scotland, b massachusetts, c england or d australia?

Travis:

I'm gonna say scotland because it sounds like something out of a arthurian, I'm gonna say england similarly okay I guess england is a little more arthurian right. Yeah, but you didn't have to be from england to become the king of england. There have been scots that have been king of england and okay.

Josh:

Next question what military branch was involved in the forests incident? A army, b marines, c navy or d air force? I'm saying navy, I'm gonna say air force. No, I'm gonna say navy too, because the navy's seems to be a little more transparent when it comes to talking about this stuff. The Air Force is the one that's just like nope, nothing here.

Travis:

Same with the Army. They're all grunts anyway. Oh careful. And the Marines are pretty tight lipped.

Josh:

Yeah.

Travis:

And they don't have Marines in the UK. They have. Whatever, they have their own version of it.

Josh:

Mariners, yeah, mariners own version of it mariners, yeah, mariners. Next question what was the alleged shape of the unidentified object witnessed in rendall's ham forest? A circular, b, triangular, c, saucer or d diamond.

Travis:

What's the difference between circular and saucer?

Josh:

a saucer would be like two saucers put together, like two lids, and a circular would be like two saucers put together like two lids and a circular would be like a Frisbee.

Travis:

Yeah, I'm going to say triangle, I'm going to say diamond.

Josh:

Oh, that's fancy. So next question which of the following is not considered a possible explanation for the incident by skeptics? A, a hoax.

Travis:

Okay, okay. I just want to be clear. Which of the following is not considered a possible explanation for the incident by skeptics? I just wanted to be clear in my own head what the question was asking. So skeptics people that don't believe this happened, this is something that they're not considering, that it is. Is that correct? Is that, like a correct rewording of that is not considered a possible explanation by skeptics? So people that don't believe in it already, they're not thinking about this. They're not thinking, yeah, I guess they're not. I don't know. This is not a thing that they would say, well, let's look at the yeah, let's look at the answers.

Josh:

So A a lighthouse, or D a weather balloon.

Travis:

Not considered.

Josh:

Which of the following is not considered a possible explanation.

Travis:

This feels like a trick question. Does Now I have to think about? Like, what does Jordan know about us? Is she setting us up for something that is going to totally embarrass us? So we're going to say the wrong thing. I'm going to say hoax. I'm going to say hoax, I'm going to say a lighthouse?

Josh:

I'm still not completely grasping the question.

Travis:

Yeah, so of all these things, skeptics don't consider the Rendlesham incident to have been a lighthouse A lighthouse. I'm going to say a weather. Actually, I'm going to take hoax back and say a weather balloon.

Josh:

I think the hoax was thrown in there just so I would pick it. So I'm on to you, jordan. Yeah, last question a sergeant reported receiving a telepathic message in which language? A binary code, b klingon, c morse code or d latin?

Travis:

this is so silly because these are all like Earth-based languages, like Klingon is totally made up. Binary may be a universal code, because it's computer language, but that's invented here. Yeah, this is the kind of thing, man, that makes me Grinds your goat. Yeah, it does. It really grinds that goat up. Okay, I'm going to say, say I don't want to say the wildest thing on here, which would be klingon. Yeah, that'd be crazy, yeah I'm gonna say binary. Okay, that's what I'm gonna say too. I'm gonna say binary that's.

Josh:

That's a rough one. I'm very curious.

Travis:

But how do you get a telepathic message in binary? It's just like one zero, zero, zero, zero, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one one. Yeah, okay, now that I say that out loud, I'm like, yeah, I can totally understand it.

Josh:

So that's weird. Well, we're gonna find all this out. We're gonna know everything about this forest.

Travis:

Okay, so submit yep, I submitted.

Josh:

I'm gonna view for accuracy. Uh, you were right. The incident occurred in 1980. I said 71. Oh my gosh, it was located in England, not.

Travis:

Scotland Got it.

Josh:

It was the Navy, that was the military, I don't know. Triangular.

Travis:

Got it, weather balloon Got it, binary Got it, you got 100%. Holy shit you cheated. Maybe this 100%. Holy shit you cheated. Maybe this is my new tactic, Like don't do any research. Maybe I'm a secret genius.

Josh:

Or you too received a telepathic binary message. Yeah, but I don't understand binary.

Travis:

I mean Latin. Sure, everybody understands Latin. This is incredible. This is like the greatest moment of my life. That's crazy.

Josh:

Don't tell my kids. So it was not a diamond, it was a triangle, it was not a lighthouse.

Travis:

It was a weather balloon. I'm glad I redacted my hoax and said weather balloon and then it was binary, so I only got two correct man this feels good. This is probably like what gold medalists feel. No, I think this is better. Well, I'm really happy for you. This is better. Wow, I feel incredible. Right now I could take on a moose.

Josh:

Well, I'm excited to find out what all this is about Me too.

Travis:

Sounds like you're halfway there. I'm already bookmarking.

Josh:

I don't even think you need to do any research.

Travis:

I'm already bookmarking websites right now trying to figure this out.

Josh:

Yeah. So thank you for listening and being a part of this, and we are excited for you to hear the next episode as much as we're excited to learn about it. So until next time, keep dreaming, right? No, stop bookmarking, don't Hold on, hold on. You're going to know so much stuff. Rendlesham forest, rendlesham, rendlesham forest. Okay, rendlesham, rendlesham. I think I got it correct, at least once.

Travis:

Yeah, I said yeah, that was Rendlesham.

Josh:

Okay, well, thank you everyone for listening. Until next time.

Travis:

Okay, bye, bye.