Episode 66: The Alien Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill and the Search For Meaning
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Transcript
[00:00:10] Blue: Welcome to the third of anything podcast today. We have Matt bowman here with us and Matt recently wrote a book called the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, which is about the UFO abduction one of the earliest ones of Betty and Barney Hill and I found it to be a fascinating book. It’s Really tries to take a look at not so much the evidence for aliens or something like that But instead it’s it’s a serious look at the the cultural Impact around the incident that came from the incident how it mirrors America things like that So I found that quite fascinating. So I wanted to invite Matt to the show to Talk about his book and we just recently did a UFO episode where we talked about UFOs because of the government hearings and things like that So I thought this would kind of fit well with some of the things that we’ve talked about in the past So Matt, can you give us an introduction to yourself?
[00:01:08] Red: Hi, thank you so much for having me excited to be here I am an associate professor of religion and history at Claremont graduate university in Claremont, California My primary areas of interest are the history of religion and especially religion in the united states I’m also here the howard w hunter chair of Mormon studies, which means that I teach periodically classes about Mormonism And research and write about it as well What I’m really interested in and what led me To this topic is the fact that I’m interested in religion in the 20th century and especially in a series of arguments That have been going on among historians and scholars of religion for a long time about what happened To religion in the 20th century. There’s a there’s a very long standing and now largely abandoned Um theory called the secularization theory, which is the idea that as science advanced
[00:02:09] Red: as technology advanced as a modern consumer capitalism advanced that religion would inevitably fade and That’s clearly not true Um, just look around us, right religion is still kind of everywhere in the western world But it has taken on new forms and that is where My work comes in and especially where this book comes in What’s happening to religion is that traditional institutional forms of religion That is to say kind of denominations and that sort of thing those are fading But what is happening is people are pursuing different ways of following religious practice and belief We are into what we now call the new age movement into tarot into astrology into Um, really kind of a pick and choose religion what some people call a cafeteria religion the idea that you kind of Gather practices and beliefs from all sorts of traditions and put them together In different ways and that is where UFOs come in UFOs are are just a kind of fascinating example. I think of something that Really disrupts traditional boundaries of religion and science. Sometimes they are science. Sometimes they are religion They are ascribed all sorts of different kind of powers and influences and ideas and there are UFO religions out there Things that look a lot like traditional denominational religions, but they’re focused on UFOs There are also people who maintain really staunchly that UFOs are simply technology
[00:03:41] Red: There’s nothing religious about them and that’s what led me to the hill case Ultimately, I thought that this was a fascinating story That would allow me to explore some of these questions about how UFOs reflect What happened to religion in the mid 20th century how they reflect the social transformations of religion In the post world war two period and also I think these are kind of broader cultural trends in the united states Generally a lot happened in america in the 1960s in the hills. I think are a perfect example Of those processes in microcosm
[00:04:19] Green: That was great and that’s that is really what I Got out of your book is this search for meaning this journey that they were Going on And I really wanted to ask you about that but first for our listeners Perhaps we should summarize the the case so they kind of know what we’re talking about here Who are the hills and and what happened to them?
[00:04:45] Red: Yeah, that’s a great question. Uh, so betty and barney hill are the first americans um to describe Something that looks like a modern abduction. That is a story of being taken aboard a ufo Being examined medically by aliens then being returned With no memory of what had happened to them This is a story that has been repeated over and over and over since the hills first talked about it in the mid 1960s So they’re important for that reason Um, they lived in port smith new hampshire. Uh, they were married in 1960 It was a second marriage for both of them. Um, they were both, you know, they’re later thirties at that point Barney was black and betty was white and I think that’s um significant as well About a year and a half after their marriage They took a short trip to montreal canada a few hours north of their home in port smith On their return from that trip on september 19 1961 They were driving down in central new hampshire Late late at night. Um, it’s a bit unclear about exactly when but but sometime around midnight And they saw a strange light in the sky Betty hill described this light as looking like a star that was falling upward And the light seemed to be following them down the road and they they got out of their car a couple of times They looked at it. They had a pair of binoculars. So they looked at it through the binoculars And after the third time they looked at it. They were overcome with terror Barney who was standing outside the car left back into the car.
[00:06:28] Red: They drove home as rapidly as they could then After they woke up the next day Um, they had this sort of strange sense That something was wrong Betty hill began having nightmares nightmares of being captured by Small creatures Barney hill developed an ulcer Begin drinking more than his doctor stopped was wise And after a couple of years of this sort of anxiety and fear they went to a Psychiatrist a man named Benjamin Simon who used hypnosis in his psychiatry and he hypnotized the hills And when he hypnotized them um, they both told a story of being Taken aboard this craft um as they recalled it The light landed on the road before them smaller creatures got out took them back into it other craft Subjected them to medical experiments Interacted with Betty. She had conversations with these creatures And then they were returned to their car and told that they would forget about this thing And
[00:07:40] Green: this is all on on youtube, right this hypnosis session some of some of it.
[00:07:44] Red: Yeah, not all of it In fact, uh, the um, so the hills family, um, mainly Kathleen Martin their niece um has the recordings and they are actually also in the Special collections of the University of New Hampshire with all the hills as papers Um, they would prefer they not be made public um hills’s family But I believe there is um one recording of one of our new sessions like on youtube soon Go and listen to that if you like
[00:08:09] Green: I see
[00:08:10] Red: After that though the hills were convinced that these um recovered memories were genuine And I believe that I think they actually they 100 dot this really had happened to them And they entered into just all sorts of controversy after that because as you might imagine this story was controversial Many people did not believe the hill some people did Um, and what happened to the hills after that? I think well, they really created in many ways the modern UFO narrative But they also became a flash point for all sorts of other debates going on in the united states debates about race um debates about religion and culture and politics and their path I think their path towards increasing disillusionment um with contemporary Conventional authority be that authority government or science or religion. I’m really mirrored I think what happened to many many americans in the 1960s
[00:09:10] Green: That’s great. Yeah, like I said, that’s really what I got Out of the book, which it sounds like was very intentional on your part was about their their search for for meaning Kind of the the UFO thing in some ways was almost a side issue they they started in the in the 50s with the unitarianism and really wanting to Trust I guess I just kept the phrase I kept a modern phrase I kept thinking of is trust the science right trust the experts and you know, they really wanted to believe in expertise uh, and you know, of course at the time the expertise was psychiatry and Hypnosis and some things that you know from our modern perspective We would consider more pseudoscience, I guess or at least I would but and then they um or I mean hypnosis is probably real So I don’t mean I don’t mean to say But
[00:10:12] Red: what but what hemiosis does right? Yeah is is is an open question and and and more than you know science But also the state right? I mean one one one uh one statistic that just blew me away When I discovered it was a series of Gallup polls in the late 1950s and early 1960s that showed That upwards of three quarters of americans Around the time John F. Kennedy is elected president three quarters of americans said They trusted the government to do the right thing Um, which of course, you know compared to today. That’s almost boggling right that sounds almost ludicrous because distrust of not just the state right but distrust of experts distrust of authority of all sorts is uh Now very very um well out of fashion The hills were from a different time in that way So
[00:11:03] Blue: was that what was the percentage that had trusted the government to the right thing?
[00:11:07] Red: Uh, it depends on which poll you look at but it’s between 70 75 percent
[00:11:12] Blue: What would that be today if we were to pull that today?
[00:11:15] Red: Um, Brenda third
[00:11:16] Green: of that
[00:11:17] Blue: Wow, and I guess we can see in the course of the book That really falls apart that’s really unravels as they become disenchanted with the government’s response to their their ufo their their their experience and then they they get into all this uh, uh, new age Um new age stuff and the psychic phenomenon and all the all the they were pretty pretty much right there on the Vanguard of the stuff in the 60s, right?
[00:11:45] Red: Yeah. Yeah, and of course, you know many many other people Move down these paths for other reasons right a lot of americans Lost trust in government because of the war in vietnam right or because of the watergate scandal that sort of thing The hills are moving down those paths too, but for reasons associated with ufo’s And similarly with the new age movement, right? The new age movement is is a very very complicated phenomenon But you know, it’s it had been running, I think in the subterranean areas of american culture for a long time But it really explodes in the 1960s In part because of this emerging distrust of authority, right in this sense increasingly The traditional institutional religions Romulans, you know with with hierarchies religions with authoritative doctrine were not to be trusted anymore And so people begin searching for their own sources of authority and their own sources of meaning and begin kind of combining creating a bricolage of all sorts Of religious practices and beliefs they took from all sorts of places from, you know, ancient religions To eastern religions to the western esoteric tradition To psychic phenomenon just beginning combining and recombining right and the hills find their way there too Through their ufo encounter which they find new age believers Believe them new age believers will tell them. Yeah, something happened to you And that was validating at a point when you know, their psychiatrist was telling them I don’t think you were abducted the government was not interested in their story and so on and so forth
[00:13:24] Green: And people actually believed that these aliens were really Delivering some kind of cosmic message to humans, right? Is that what the hills thought?
[00:13:33] Red: They come to believe that yeah, and I think that that’s an interesting Dynamic right and it shows I think the evolution of the ufo belief From the 1940s through the 1960s 60s I’m initially right now what we call the modern age of the ufo Begins in 1947 in 1947 Men named Kenneth Arnold who was an amateur pilot Was taking his plane out for a little turn Near Mount Rainier in Washington And when he landed that plane He told the people at the the airport where he landed and then he told reporters that he had Seen a series of what he called a disc shaped crack Hovering over the mountains moving very very quickly This was seized upon by reporters right and and and you know 100 years earlier 300 years earlier Who knows what people would have interpreted these things as but because this was 1947 Because this was an era of technology It was an era of you know the cold war and of jets and nuclear bombs and d2 missiles and so on People just assumed they must craft and they must be built machines And reporters called them flying saucers and that’s where we get that term But over the next five ten years people were seeing these things all over the place and not simply seeing things right They would see strange things in the skies But they would say ah these must be flying saucers just like what Kenneth Arnold saw And so you see the development of this narrative right and for the most part the assumption is These are craft. These are spacecraft.
[00:15:15] Red: They are like our planes, but they’re coming from other Planets and that’s what many people believe at that point now And that is often called the extraterrestrial hypothesis right the idea that UFOs are built machines Not so far unlike although maybe much more advanced than our own spacecraft and planes are But by the 1960s You begin to see another theory gain gaining a lot of popularity And this other theory is really related To the new age movement and to a set of Beliefs that were very popular in In certain circles in american culture going all the way back to the 19th century
[00:16:03] Red: That are influenced by hinduism and buddhism and eastern religions um these early american occult movements believed and taught that all Creatures all existence all human beings exist on a spectrum of advancement and development And that there are intelligent beings in the universe far more advanced than we are So advanced that they may have transcended physical form entirely and it’s our Destiny and our duty to progress and to advance ourselves to become more like these beings That have you know powers that we would call supernatural that exist on multiple levels of existence and so on As I say right and this was really generated by a religious movement called theosophy in the late 19th century um and theosophists right read a lot of hindu and buddhist writings and kind of adapted those things and combined them with some christian and western beliefs But these ideas really persist And by the late 1960s a number of ufo believers Begin to depart from the notion that these things are simply machines built on other planets and flown here Um instead they start to argue that these things are not simply machines Just technology that’s more advanced Rather um, they are Manifestations from other dimensions. They’re manifestations from higher powers They are representatives of intelligent beings That want to help human beings progress And while betty and barney, I think initially You know the first Few years particularly after they have these recovered memories of an of the subduction They’re pretty firmly in the first camp.
[00:17:56] Red: They think these things come from another planet And they often you know continue to believe that in certain ways But by the late 1960s They are becoming surrounded by people who believe not simply in the extraterrestrial hypothesis But in this interdimensional hypothesis this idea that these creatures um are from other levels of of existence That they have you know, they have messages for the for humanity They want to help humanity progress and so on and so on By the end of the 1960s the hills are coming to believe that as well And you will find if you you know if you go to a UFO convention, right? You will find representatives of both of these Theories there and sometimes they have very aggressive arguments with each other About which is the correct interpretation of UFOs.
[00:18:46] Green: That’s interesting. Well, it sounds pretty good to me I wish I could be convinced almost. I know you want to believe Bruce, right?
[00:18:55] Blue: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I really wish I could believe in Probably the extraterrestrial hypothesis would be my choice, but uh, I don’t But I definitely find you know as a kid who grew up geeking out over UFO books and things like that I definitely wish I could believe in them and I definitely have a desire to believe in them
[00:19:16] Green: Yeah, and to go back to the meaning thing about the um, I’m sure you guys have read that man search for meaning book where they uh He basically defines the primary uh motivation for for humans As as a you know, whether you’re an atheist or a religious person or whatever. I mean, we all want to live meaningful lives. It’s kind of what um differentiates us from other Animals in a way. I mean, I love my dog, but I’m not really sure if she cares all that much about a Meaningful right life. I mean, maybe you can make a case. I don’t know I would you agree with that matt is is is meaning a primary motivation of our lives
[00:20:07] Red: Yeah, well, and you and that is I think absolutely what’s going on with UFOs It may well be right that All of these different things that people see in the sky Are actually not one category of object Um, right some some things we see in the sky Um might be birds some might be meteorites Some might actually be some strange thing. Um, that we don’t yet have not yet identified on science Through science, right? But we call them all UFOs Or actually today, you know, the phrase is uh, not UFO, but uap unidentified aerial phenomenon We all know they’re UFOs. You can’t fool me. They are But that’s it right we call them UFOs because that that phrase UFO that word conjures up all sorts of It tells us all sorts of things about science It tells us all sorts of things about the universe About what our place in the universe might be it actually I think kind of teaches us humility in some ways it tells us we don’t actually understand the universe as as well as we might But it also tells us the universe is a meaningful place There’s stuff going on out there There are other intelligences with plans and ideas And that can be really powerful, right? And it is I think absolutely what the hills latched on to The hills found this story I think increasingly as our lives went on this encounter the strange thing that happened to them in new hampshire Became more and more and more a central axis around which their lives rotated and around which So many other things in their lives were kind of bent to It came to explain a great deal for them
[00:21:57] Green: Meaning memes I guess is what that’s what I call them Calls the broader category. I guess the downside is that when when we do get tied into our Beliefs do get tied into meaning it becomes very hard for us to be talked out of them Yes, be rational possible In some cases
[00:22:16] Red: Yeah, absolutely right and this you know, this I think happens to the hills Right and that that’s precisely what goes on with their hypnotists and with their experience of hypnosis and it reveals I think how kind of complicated This sort of thing is right. It’s pretty easy to say well, we should all be rational But uh, boy, you know, what’s rationality? And uh, what is rational? What’s not rational? The hills were hypnotized And under hypnosis they They came out of this hypnosis with memories Very vivid memories that were just really really powerfully affecting to them If you do listen to that recording of barney hill and in his hypnosis session, right where he’s talking About these creatures. He is Absolutely terrified. Um, it is real genuine emotion and after he was taken out of the hypnosis He still had those memories Um, right and he was just so he and his wife both were just so baffled Why it was that people didn’t believe them and it’s a really kind of intractable Intractable problem, right and it shows I think how complicated the human mind is How complicated hypnosis is certainly And how difficult it is Um for us to kind of suss out Um, well, you have to suss out what is real and what is
[00:23:41] Green: true
[00:23:41] Red: and what is scientific and what’s not scientific, right? You get when you start talking about ufo’s you you pretty quickly get down into uh, really kind of existential questions About the nature of reality And the nature of your mind So
[00:23:54] Blue: I have a comment and a question on that so first of all in a past podcast episode I mentioned that experience does kind of trump a lot of things So like if if the example I used was that I don’t believe in Bigfoot I I believe there’s good science that makes bigfoot a very very difficult thing to believe in By the way, I want to believe in bigfoot too, but you know, I don’t Let’s say I was out of walking in the woods and bigfoot comes along and he’s roaring in my face I’m not gonna say oh Science says this is impossible. I must be hallucinating like I’m not it’s not going to happen I’m going to believe in bigfoot at that point experience would trump any rational knowledge I think I have through science about bigfoot And I thought about that as I was reading your book And if I actually saw I never mind the hypnosis. That’s a separate issue I agree with you on that But if I actually saw something in the sky and I grabbed my binoculars and I look at it and I see people on this ship Which barney apparently saw through a binoculars You know, that’s my experience at that point And I’m not going to just assume I hallucinated Right.
[00:25:03] Blue: I mean, I I’m aware hallucinations are possible But I feel like I can tell the difference between hallucinations and not because I when I wake up from a dream I may not know it’s a dream while I’m in the dream, but I can tell afterwards and so I can completely understand why They felt the need to be validated in some way over this initial experience that was so overpowering for them Now the thing that bothered me though is when they got to the hypnosis Now, I’m not an expert on hypnosis. I don’t know anything about it But I know of at least two real life cases of quote recovered memories through hypnosis And in both cases It split families apart over supposed recorded recovered memories and the memories that were quote recovered They would grow increasingly bizarre over time to the point where they there’s no way they were acting You know, they were actually true and each time they would go into hypnosis They would remember more and then and just just off the wall stuff was starting to come up as accusations over time and in both cases the people believed them so strongly that it ripped families apart And no one could talk and you couldn’t even reason with them over These memories that had been quote recovered. So I’m left with this this idea That recovered memories from hypnosis are strongly believed, but they’re just simply not real Or at least they don’t necessarily have to be real And again, I don’t know anything about this But you must have researched this can you maybe talk about because I know I cringed at the point where Betty and Barney Hill go and And decide to get hypnosis.
[00:26:44] Blue: It’s a legitimate psychiatrist that’s helping him He doesn’t believe that the memories that come out of hypnosis are real And he even tells them that up front and yet he still Puts them into hypnosis and then they end up believing these memories Just like always seems to happen with the recovered memories in hypnosis And I was really kind of even bothered by that that this otherwise legitimate psychiatrist Is using hypnosis and is trying to convince them. Oh, it’s not actually a real memory And of course, they’re going to believe it at this point that it’s a real memory So help me out with that and yeah And was that just the way they thought of it back then? Do we still think of it that way? Like what what’s happening here?
[00:27:27] Red: Yeah, that yeah, that’s well, that’s a lot of stuff. So well, I’ll Back up a little bit and and start with where the hills are coming from here Um, I think it’s important at this point to say something about the hills is religious background Right they are Unitarians and that’s significant because in the mid 20th century Unitarianism is presenting itself as a modern scientific religion. That is unitarians argued in favor of science in favor of empiricism But also in favor of human capacity, which is to say right unitarianism said All human beings Are rational all human beings have the capacity to perceive reality to understand reality to interpret reality as it actually is This is why I think many unitarians are They’re in favor of psychiatry and psychology as medical practices because they are scientific They’re rooted in research and so and so on But they are suspicious of traditional psychoanalysis. That is Freudianism because of course Freudianism maintains that in fact human beings are not terribly rational That we are all kind of You were buffeted on all sides By our by our unconscious by emotions that we don’t fully understand and and don’t fully control that we do things For reasons that we can’t even really explain to ourselves a lot of the time And unitarians are pretty wary of that because that’s not how they want to understand human nature And the hills I think one thing that I think is pretty consistent with them all the way through this whole experience Is that they say we know what we saw?
[00:29:17] Red: And not simply we know what we saw right, but we can interpret what we saw correctly Um, so for instance, right if you were to run into a bigfoot in the woods Um, you say you saw this big hairy, you know human -like thing standing on its hind legs in the woods What you just said right was that you would interpret this as bigfoot now bigfoot as a category Is something that you’ve kind of drawn from american culture and from all sorts of movies and from bumper stickers You know and there’s all these kind of cultural interpretations That may or may not have anything to do with that big hairy thing that you see in the woods Yeah, and I think that’s also the case with what the hills saw right they brought to what they saw Um, this whole kind of cultural baggage of ufo culture Right and and you know and Betty Hill recalls right saying to her husband. This is before the recovered memory She when they’re after they see this light in the sky and they’re driving home Betty Hill says to her husband, do you believe in flying saucers now? And that phrase flying saucers right points us to this whole kind of cultural Movement that had begun with Kenneth Arnold and the reporters who called what he saw flying saucers, right? And by the way, Barney’s answer was no, I don’t believe in them after seeing yeah, which I think is also very interesting Right because Barney Hill, you know, he is associating that phrase flying saucers with all sorts of things that he finds Disreputable and and not terribly persuasive So, you know, so that’s the first thing I think here right is to kind of separate
[00:30:59] Red: Whatever kind of and this is what I think of the psychologist Carl Jung in his book Flying saucers and modern myth of things thing in the sky. This is a point that he makes Which is to say right what there are absolutely Things that people see in the sky that they can’t interpret. They don’t know what they are We don’t know what they are But what we tend to do is to project onto those things Our cultural baggage and to say ah, there’s a straight. I see I saw a strange light in the sky If I’m an American living in the early 1970s and I see a strange light in the sky The first thing that’s going to occur to me is the extraterrestrial hypothesis The idea that this must be a spaceship coming from another planet Um, if I were in a different culture a different time a different place I might project onto that strange light in the sky something else Right these strange things in the sky aren’t self -interpreting We make of them what we will And that process is often unconscious and that’s I think in part what happens to Betty and Barney now hypnosis
[00:32:07] Red: There is a fairly and and there has emerged I think in the last 60 years or so a fairly large and for me persuasive body of evidence that human memory Well human memory is Is not like a diamond mine You know if you if you think about memory as a diamond mine How you picture it is that you can go in there And if you’re a hypnotist or a psychiatrist you can go in there You can dig up memories you can excavate them From the dirt where they’re buried and bring them back out and that will reproduce the past We know now that that’s not how memory works Right every time you remember something if the two of you think back to you know sixth grade Right, and you’re probably maybe thinking about your sixth grade teachers right now Right what you’re actually doing is regenerating that memory Now you are of course taking it from kind of neurons that have fired off and all of that But you are seeing that memory through what is happening in your life right now You’re perceiving that memory a new you’re recreating it in your current context And that’s how that’s how memory works is we recreate our memories every time we go back and Access them and that means then that our memories are never a perfect reproduction of the past And there and and this is what benjamin simon tells the hills right and this is what he tells John fuller who wrote who wrote the first book about the hill case He tells them that memories recovered under hypnosis are not necessarily accurate reproductions of the past, but they are Accurate productions of culture or I’m sorry of emotional reality
[00:34:00] Red: That is the stories that we tell under recovered memory That are they do access our emotional reality. They access how we’re feeling they access Things that might have unnerved us in the past and they can reproduce those feelings And that’s why benjamin simon hypnotized the hills Because he said clearly there was something that was going on here That caused you both stress and distress and I want to bring those feelings of stress and distress to the surface And help you work through them He tells them before the hypnosis and after Don’t expect right that you’re going to get a realist A genuine story about what actually happened to you here.
[00:34:40] Green: They never doubted it though, right? They did not They believed him fully. Yeah,
[00:34:45] Red: and I think that had something to do with their unitarianism, right? They’re their confidence in themselves their sense, right get human beings perceive reality Um, we understand reality. We can be trusted, right? And of course, there’s a kind of like deep and interesting arguments about democracy here as well, right? Because one of the premises of democracy is that citizens can make rational choices You know citizens can can make good well informed choices And that’s you know, that’s what unitarian thought about democracy But it’s also what they thought about science and about these things, right? And that’s where the benjamin simon this psychiatrist in the hills come to this disjuncture And they perceive simon as telling them you people don’t really understand yourselves Um and to be fair, you know simon simon was a bit of a little an elitist He did you know in letters after this case, right? He he wrote to other people and he said frankly the hills aren’t really capable of having a scientific discussion with me So i’m not even going to engage you that with them in this right? He is a bit of a snob But that that does not help right the hills as he’s trying to tell them Um, you know, you need to think about this story as expressing an emotional truth rather than a an experiential truth Because they perceive him as basically being an elitist who’s telling them, you know What happened to them and they bristle against that I think as as many many people would So it’s the kind of intractable problem here Right is it’s two ways of understanding human nature two ways of understanding reality budding into each other
[00:36:23] Blue: So what does it mean to be an emotional truth? So you you kind of get into this in the book particularly with barny that his encounter with the aliens could be very easily read as the feelings he has as a black man trying to live in white society where there’s always this Suspicion of him and he’s always kind of the outsider It’s a little less clear in the case of betty. What what emotional truth would be it was being recovered So what do we mean by recovering an emotional truth? And and is that something that’s actually true? Or does hypnosis just generate completely made up stuff?
[00:37:00] Red: Yeah, what what Simon felt right and as and and it’s important I think to Um to point out the Simon it does not only ask them about you know This moment you saw this strange light in the sky, right? And what happened after you thought strange light in the sky? He’s interested in the context surrounding that and the context surrounding that was That the bills had taken this trip to Montreal Now it did not go particularly well In part because they they didn’t speak French. They had trouble with the language and Barney Hill it appears From a couple of different sources. It appears that he was wary of the entire trip We know he took a pistol And that he took a pistol because he was worried about how not simply him being a black man But him being a black man in interracial Relationship with a white woman how that would be received By people he is whenever he remembers going to a hotel going to a restaurant All of this is kind of freighted as he’s talking about these memories
[00:38:10] Blue: With
[00:38:10] Red: this worry That are these people are going to treat me badly I mean they’re going to be threatened and so what what Simon eventually came to believe Was that this was a really tense trick and I should also mention that they had to cut the trip short Because a major storm was approaching and so they were really you know They were driving near midnight right because they were trying to get home Because of this major storm We also know that they turned off the main road and they both recalled that Now the hills didn’t really explain why they turned off the main road They were on that would take them back to their house Simons Simon eventually came to believe that They got lost and that they were arguing and Barney was under a lot of stress And he was very kind of annoyed about what was going on And and he eventually kind of came to tell this Story now with Betty. This is also significant. Betty Hill had nightmares, right? She had nightmares for a couple weeks After the the this trip and in these nightmares she was captured By small creatures who took you know took her into the ship and and did essentially what the memories that she recovered under hypnosis later on Simon never doubted those nightmares. He said yeah, these are probably our real nightmares These are nightmares that she actually had And he kept pushing trying to discover if Betty Hill had told Barney the narrative of these nightmares Simon eventually came to believe that she had or that if she did not tell them to Barney that at least she told them in Barney’s hearing She told the story of these dreams.
[00:39:56] Red: And so Simon thought Barney under hypnosis took this the story of Betty’s nightmares and interwoven With his own worries and fears and anxieties about racial persecution and thus Generated this story now. What is interesting about Betty’s stories that she recovered under hypnosis is they do closely mirror her nightmares There are some I think key differences, but in many ways, right? They are kind of reproduction of these dreams that she had in just the first couple of months after and that she had written down Yes, and I yeah, that is a good point and she wrote these down Now I think one thing that she did do while she was writing down these dreams was to put them in a narrative format And she she confesses that right. She says I had a bunch of dreams They were not A reproduction of this single kind of coherent story. I have kind of turned them into this single coherent story They wrote them down
[00:41:00] Green: I thought you kind of dropped a bombshell maybe in the last like few pages where you also mentioned that um Their their experience Was very similar to an episode of the outer limits Oh
[00:41:14] Red: In some ways not
[00:41:16] Green: exactly but in
[00:41:17] Red: some ways. Yeah It’s actually the the experience is not at all similar to the plot of the episode but but the creature in the outer limits episode has um Large bony ridges Going up from the top of its eyes back to the sides of its head and under hypnosis Although importantly not in the nightmares. I’m not in Betty’s nightmares But under hypnosis the hills describe these creatures as having Large slanted, you know kind of the quintessential alien eyes Um, right.
[00:41:49] Green: Okay.
[00:41:49] Red: Now Betty. I think though I think what’s what’s significant about this is that the story that Betty tells Is not like the story that Barney tells it is in Kind of the basic narrative beats There were creatures in the road. They took them into the craft They subjected them to medical experimentation. Then they took them off That that kind of basic framework is there But for Betty this whole experience is is not nearly as terrifying as it is for Barney Betty is fascinated by it. Um, she’s very interested in this and um We know that Betty was interested in UFOs before this experience Her sister had seen a UFO Um, she you know, she knew enough to ask her husband Was do believe in flying saucers now after that, right? She was kind of following this And for her the whole story I think seems to be very much a kind of expression of of her real Of a hunger that she had all the way back to being a child, right About how to learn about the world how to master the world how to make a difference Yeah, how to how to really I think um find ways to change the world for the better And that I think really shines through in the conversations that she says she has with the alien She’s asking them questions about who they are and where they came from and how she can learn more Um, she wants to introduce them to scientists, right? She wants to kind of create this sort of relationship between this other civilization and humanity She doesn’t have the same kind of abject terror that Barney does The story does different things.
[00:43:37] Red: I think for the two of them in ways that reflect I think they’re different kind of um, they’re different places in america in 1960 or so
[00:43:47] Blue: So let me read a little bit from your book says because the state did not respond to their experiences as they hoped it would They grew increasingly frustrated about the role it should have in their lives That in turn cast doubt upon those scientific authorities and more upon whether or not legally enforced Disaggregation would bring about the sort of integrated society. They hoped for um, and so Then from the yeah, that’s like in the opening introduction to your book and then in the book you Detail how UFOs went from being perceived by the air force and scientific authorities Um from being seen as a scientific question to being seen as pseudoscience Um, how did that happen? How did what happened that it went from and it seems like we’re coming full circle We’re we’re we’re starting to treat Uh, UFOs as a legitimate scientific question again as to what they are and to try to figure it out um with the congressional hearings and things like that but uh What happened that went from starting at that point to treating it as pseudoscience that then created this kind of negative reaction for betty and barney hill Um, and then how have we come back around on that?
[00:45:04] Red: Yeah, boy, there’s there’s another book length question. Uh, but I will I will I will do what I can Yeah, so initially um In 1947, of course, we have the Kenneth Arnold siding and then that is followed up fairly rapidly with a whole lot of other sightings And there may be a couple of things going on here depending on your interpretation of it One might be that in fact there are a lot more sightings in after 1947 over the the five ten years after that Um, there are a lot more of these strange things in the sky another way of interpreting it might be That people begin to identify strange things they see in the sky as Flying saucers as UFOs, right? And so there are more reports of flying saucers slash UFOs at that point But there is a legitimate government interest in this early on We’ve got records Um from you know the military from the air force in particular saying, you know, this is something we need to take a look at This is something we need to pay attention to And there are a series of government studies About these things. Um, they’re called um project sign project grudge and then most famously project blue book What happens is that these various studies and these various government projects Conclude repeatedly that there’s not much there Um, there’s not much of interest here now whether or not that’s a legitimate conclusion is also open to debate one of the first major turning points here is in something called the robertson panel Which is called in 1952 Led by a very well respected scientist named Howard robertson.
[00:47:01] Red: That’s the name And this panel meets and looks at a series of cases that have been gathered by the air force over the previous five years or so And the panel concludes that there’s nothing here And in fact the panel concludes That the major threat of UFOs is not that they are machines from another planet or another dimension or whatnot But rather their major threat is that they’re going to make Americans anxious Is that Americans don’t need another thing to be worried about in the early 1950s? And that these stories of alien craft and and and alien invasion and so on are only going to make things worse And so the robertson panel encourages Um quite explicitly encourages the government to try to debunk these things and to more or less say You know, there’s nothing nothing to see here, right? Everyone move move on move on and there are indeed actual instances of this kind of thing happening, right? We there there’s a there’s a Famous story in the side of a evening post In which the air force decided to participate in and and Overwhelmingly all other air force people say is you know rational people won’t pay attention to these things They’re you know, they’re there’s there’s nothing here Move along everybody now that Depending on your point of view Where the government comes down here is either simply, you know following the evidence, right?
[00:48:34] Red: A series of studies in which people say, you know, we don’t really think there’s anything here Or you might I think also with fairness say that the government’s the the robertson panel particularly is A fairly hastily arranged meeting they really meet for three days None of the scientists on the panel had been all that involved in in the ufo studies before alan heineck Who was a very well respected astronomer who had been? The primary contractor That the air force had had was working with to investigate these things He felt that the robertson panel was Basically not taking this thing seriously And then they just were brushing brushing off a lot of reports that that heineck felt had some legitimate teeth to them So you could go either way on this right, but it is true I think that over the 1960s then and again later on With Well later on in 1968. There’s another committee formed by the government called the condon committee chaired by edward condon at the university of colorado And the condon committee concludes the same thing Um, they say, you know, there’s nothing here the major threat is people paying too much attention To ufo is and ufo is we’re going to make americans anxious and they’re going to freak us all out So we shouldn’t pay attention to them Heineck again is very frustrated with the condon committee. I mean says they’re not taking this seriously enough There’s sufficient evidence here for a serious investigation And critically heineck says both the condon committee and the robertson panel Are being condescending to people when they’re saying, you
[00:50:19] Red: know, americans don’t Americans shouldn’t be worrying about ufo’s so let’s try to make people stop worrying about them by dismissing and downplaying them So there’s a lot of moving parts here, right? And you can interpret this process in a number of different ways um, I personally I think, um Um, tend to think that generally speaking, um, the the scientific investigation here is probably correct But I also think that heineck is correct to say that these different panels and different government reports Um, tend to come off as fairly condescending and paternalistic That is to say, why why are people even bothering with this? and Heineck said right, he said the vast majority of these cases can be explained As misidentifications as perhaps hoaxes things like that Um, but he said there’s a small there’s a small minority of these cases that we can’t explain No, we don’t know what they are and those are the ones we should be paying more attention to and in the end that actually That resonates with me. I think
[00:51:32] Green: I love how Sympathetically you portray uh betty and barney hill in the book. I mean you really it seems like you have a lot of um You bend over backwards. It seems to me to really to really Look at things from their perspective Even though I kind of assume you’re not a uh, super big, uh, UFO enthusiast, but you know betty I mean betty at least really went kind of I don’t want to say crazy But she really got out there, right? I mean there’s something on the the uf on the wikipedia where she’s they’re talking about her at a UFO conference and she’s um showing pictures of random airplanes and things and even the Uh, uh random lights in the sky and even the ufo enthusiasts are basically booing her at that point and yeah, yeah accurate
[00:52:28] Red: Yeah, you know near by by the natley 1970s and the 1980s Um, well, she receives a let she receives some communication. I think from from ufo investigators Um, who were her friends who were her allies um john fuller who I mentioned before or john fuller is a journalist Who wrote um the first book length study of their case and he john fuller absolutely believed You know that this had happened to her um many other of their allies Who shared that kind of sympathy they did as well and these people by the end of betty’s life Fuller sends her a letter saying like look, you know You need to be a bit more discerning you need to be a bit more skeptical You you know you you took us out to this field and showed us ufos And they seem to us to be you know lights on a train and street lights and things like that Um, yeah, and I I think it’s important though to contextualize where betty goes here um in the fact that that uh her husband uh barney dies quite suddenly in 1969 Um, he was only in his mid 40s. It was a massive cerebral hemorrhage In the morning. He was fine and healthy by the by bedtime. He was dead And that was a deep deep profound shock to her And I suspect right that a lot of the paths she follows Um in the 1970s through the 1980s Which is to say she grows increasingly interested in this broader world of the new age movement, right? That is to say not simply right believing in the extraterrestrial hypothesis, but also dabbling in psychic powers In past life regression Um, she could consult some mediums. Um, she grows interested
[00:54:26] Red: In the ancient aliens theory, right? Which has become very popular over the last 10 years because of the history channel show The notion that human civilization has been guided Since it’s very inception By intelligent creatures from other planets and perhaps other dimensions who have kind of shaped and molded us as we’ve gone Betty hill really becomes plugged into a lot of these things And I think in part because Um, well because she and barney are told Shortly before barney’s death by the in 1966 67 By a guy named robert holman who was a ufo investigator whom they were friends with and had a lot of faith in Holman becomes convinced that the hills encounter is really Meaningful not simply for the hills Um, but for the sort of broader history of humanity um We call the new age movement the new age movement because Many of its advocates subscribe to This belief that emerged from the theosophy movement that has roots Really far back I mean interpretations of eastern religion and so on and the idea that humanity is approaching a massive psychic spiritual transcendent awakening That human civilization is about to change dramatically that we’re going to have a kind of mass consciousness raising Um, and and our society will never be the same after that Holman thinks this is true. Um, holman believes in this and and he becomes convinced that the hills experience Is a sign of this Um that betty and barney have an important role to play in this coming awakening of humanity Um and betty hill I think comes to believe that too And I I think this is this is a place where she goes
[00:56:21] Red: Um after the death of her husband when she’s feeling I think kind of lost in a drift Um, you know, she really seizes on this experience And and very much I think comes, you know holds to it because it is something that gives her life meaning Um, it is something that that yeah that that allow us or I think some sort of connection Even to her husband and to this thing that happened to them that that came to dominate What was going on? You know in their life, um from birth to death
[00:56:56] Blue: So I can you do a good job of drawing in the point of view of betty and barney hill So I can imagine after having this weird experience where I see something in the sky that I can’t explain But but I’m convinced can’t possibly be just a plane or a meteor or something like that because I grab my binoculars I’m looking at it. I can see people on board A ship or whatever and they’re in uniforms and things like that I mean it was what barney claims he saw even prior to the hypnosis is fairly detailed
[00:57:29] Red: um,
[00:57:29] Blue: so they they they report it to the air force And I can imagine how I might feel Based on reading your book if the air force who has this attitude that Our job is to convince people That they didn’t really see anything Our job is to convince this is pseudoscience It is science has ruled it out And the authority of science the weight of the authority of science has told us that there’s just no such thing as UFOs and The guy does his job. He’s taking down the report of what they saw and they’re reading the room And it’s obvious that he’s just not taking them seriously And I can imagine how I might feel, you know, if I’m in their shoes at that point So I can see how that might drive them to go try to find people who seem like scientific authorities You know in their minds But are willing to take them seriously and this seems like this is what’s happened and why they kind of started down this road Is that correct?
[00:58:36] Red: Yeah, I think absolutely. Well, and especially for betty. I think barney is a bit more wary Barney is reluctant to call the air force in the first place And I think that has to do right with well, what what historians call the politics of respectability, right? Barney hill is a black man in an estate with very few black people He and betty both are quite involved in the civil rights movement And and one of the real tenants of the civil rights movement And when I say civil rights movement what I mean here is The movement led by folks like martin wither king that is trying very hard right to gain black people equal access To political authority to cultural authority to to participate in american life. That’s distinct. I think from other other black movements um like say the nation of islam And malcom x who say essentially like we want to be separatists. We want to go off and do our own thing But for someone like martin wither king, right? part of Working for equality and gaining equality was to demonstrate black respectability and to show right the black people will wear suits Black people will get educated. They’ll they’ll participate in all the respectable venues of american life So for barney, right calling The air force and saying I just saw this strange thing in the sky and it terrified me And I think it might be an extraterrestrial craft that felt to him very Disrespect respectable,
[01:00:10] Blue: right?
[01:00:11] Red: It was not the sort of thing that a respectable human being did So he was pretty wary about calling Um the government betty though was gung -ho for it, right betty betty was really interested in this She wanted to dig in further and she had I think more confidence than barney did That when they called the air force they’d be taken seriously She’s the one who says later that she was expecting representatives from the air force to come out and to talk to them Um and and to take down their story, right and to launch a full investigation And when that didn’t happen betty hill was quite annoyed with it
[01:00:49] Blue: So you you raise a number of interesting epistemological questions and this podcast deals in epistemology quite a bit So I think this would be interesting to our audience So you quote thomas Guy rin did I pronounce that correctly?
[01:01:05] Red: Oh guy rin. Yeah. Yeah, the story of science. Yep.
[01:01:08] Blue: Yeah, so he has this idea that science is something that’s identified through consensus and institutional weight um, so There is this kind of concept That that is becoming common amongst our institutions and in the air force and this is what betty and barney are bumping into That there’s this idea of a scientific authority. It’s the consensus. It’s the institutional weight There’s this institution of science that gets to decide what’s true and what isn’t or at least that’s how some people interpret it And then from daniel thers and ronald numbers Uh, they talk about how science boundaries were determined by quote the academy military and industry And then michael golrin claimed and I don’t know if I pronounced that right or not that the idea of pseudoscience Um is less useful as a way to identify a body of ideas or a method than as a way to mark Where the boundaries of science as a professional discipline are at any moment? so there’s there’s kind of certain things that are treated as that pseudoscience and certain things that are treated as that science And ufo’s are are firmly institutionally in the pseudoscience camp by the time betty and barney hill Come and report their incident to the air force I would really like to have you maybe elaborate on this and talk through Just historically, where were we at? How did they how has it looked at? How has that maybe changed? Since then also and then give me your own feelings. Do you agree or disagree with this view of science?
[01:02:49] Red: Yeah, yeah, this is a good question and again a very very large one. Um But yeah, here we go. Uh, so One thing that is happening in america in the 20th century is the professionalization and institutionalization of science Um, and I I want to be clear here right when I’m talking about science. Um, what I’m talking about Here is um, what The bulk of people who have power in america call science, right and what they say is science And and which is a different I think question and kind of philosophical debates about how do we define science as a method an idea? um One of the interesting good clarification
[01:03:34] Blue: Thank you.
[01:03:35] Red: Yeah, one of the interesting things here that is happening in america in the 20th century is this Um, I in a number of different vectors. Um, the first is that we have emerging in american higher education Um, the german model of higher education, which is to say that there are undergraduates and there are graduate students Graduate students receive degrees. They receive credentials the phd degree For instance, right or the ma degree, which are certifications by this university Um, that this person is an expert Now that american universities begin granting phds in the late 19th century and increasingly they’re granting more and more of them And more universities begin to grant phds and this becomes kind of a network of people who are certified Um by universities as experts in whatever field this is Now that increasingly then these people these phds is credentialed scientists increasingly begin sometimes intentionally and sometimes not to marginalize Amateurs and actually they begin to use that word amateur to describe people who are doing science without degrees Now this is a real departure From how science quote unquote had worked in the western world Since the scientific revolution, right when you had people, you know I mean all the way back to isaac newton, right?
[01:05:09] Red: Who are just doing and you can go through the ranks there’s nearly Almost all major scientific discoveries Before the late 19th century are done by people without these degrees who are doing science as an avocation Um, benjamin franklin, right and to take another example those people though those so -called amateurs Are increasingly marginalized By the academic elite Going into the early 20th century and it only persists and gets even more and more and more of the case So by the mid 20th century, right? Science becomes largely assumed to be the domain of people with phds Who work at universities? Now beginning in world war one The government Begins to reach out to universities to these people with phds And to say we want your advice. We want to consult with you. We want to draw on your expertise Woodrow wilson’s administration In during world war one reaches out to scientists to help coordinate the war effort He’s looking to economists. He’s looking also to physical scientists to help develop materials needed for the war And that only that escalates massively in world war two In world war two the government and the military in particular begin to invest very very heavily In universities and in turn they begin to draw these people with phds Into government and of course the the famous example of this of course is the manhattan project in which is Which kind of cements and solidifies this real nexus an intersection between the state and these professional phd university -based scientists
[01:07:07] Blue: After the end of world war two There is a lot
[01:07:10] Red: of debate About what should happen now Like should the state simply step away should the state pull all this funding that it’s been I mean we’re talking billions of dollars all this money that it’s been dumping into universities And just let universities go back and start doing this all on their own again And there are a few people who advocate advocate for that but for the most part these professional scientists at universities Want to keep all this money that is coming to them from the state And the state in its own turn Feels as though you know these people have proven themselves. They develop the atomic bomb right and and there’s a real worry On the part of the state that should the state step back from this relationship with these scientists That the soviet union will overtake the united states Because of course, there absolutely was A fair amount of soviet espionage In the manhattan project and the soviet union They they explode their first atop of 1949 and they were able to do that so quickly largely because of espionage so the state Has an investment as well in maintaining this relationship And so you have emerging what one scientist involved in all of this I mean alex weinberg calls big science And what other people including dwight eisenhower call the military industrial complex
[01:08:43] Red: And he called you know other scholars have said this is really the military industrial scientific complex So this this creation of a network of really tightly interwoven University scientists military officials and also corporations increasingly military contractors like lockheed martin And going and so on and so on these these groups are very working very very closely together And receiving just massive amounts of money from the state and so All of this then leads to the question of ufo’s right an accusation that many advocates for ufo’s People like donald keo who was a former military officer and probably was a visible public advocate for ufo’s In the 1950s and 60s His argument is these people decided that ufo’s are not a scientific project that they are pseudoscience But keo says they decided this because they know They have secret knowledge about ufo technology that they don’t want to be made public So they’re actually so keo says they are actually being unscientific. They are not following the data In response to that the air force scientists and the people whom the air force is consulting with Who disagree say no, you’re being unscientific And because this nexus of influence these universities the military These large corporations who employ all of whom employ scientists, right?
[01:10:20] Red: because by that point The bulk of institutional weight The bulk of financial weight the bulk of public prestige Is sitting in that nexus in that intersection It is easy for them For a government report to be issued stating ufo’s are a pseudoscience And that report is signed by major academics who are working at all of these different universities That are receiving all this federal funding For them to say ufo’s are pseudoscience and for then the bulk of the american public, especially at a point, right when National trust in the government is quite high. It’s easy for that to be believed Right, and that is what these academics who you quote who I cite That is what they’re arguing right is that pseudoscience Becomes in the mid 20th century A a boundary that is largely drawn By people with phd’s People in these large powerful institutions and they are able to deem Pseudoscience what they want to call pseudoscience Now one more thing that i’m done My follow -up to that is this is not necessarily to say of course that they are wrong When when the when the air force says There is no real scientific data Behind ufo’s there is as as the the conden report says right There is nothing really to be gained scientifically by studying ufo’s.
[01:11:57] Red: It’s entirely possible that they’re right But it is also true At the same time that when donald keyho says All of these people decided that this was pseudoscience And they did not do their due diligence That the robertson panel right only took three days and they just flipped through a bunch of reports and they made a decision That’s true too Right, and this is another conundrum that the hills are caught between Right is that they they feel dismissed they feel as though they’re not being paid much attention to And they’re not necessarily wrong about that But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are right About what they saw and that they are right about their abduction happening Both those things can be true at the same time
[01:12:44] Blue: So let me see if I can summarize What I kind of understood To be the point of view is it’s not your point of view, but the point of view of the establishment at the time was Like we could have a debate or discussion about what defines science versus pseudoscience philosophically That’s not really what was going on. It really boiled boiled down to That there are certain people who are authorities who get to decide This counts of science that this doesn’t now. Maybe they’re doing that right. Maybe they’re doing that wrong We could debate whether they have good individual Philosophies that they’re using by which to make this delineation But at the end of the day They’re by through a sort of authority based approach. They’re deciding what counts of science and what doesn’t Is that yeah, and yeah, and
[01:13:36] Red: and and people you know people in the media follow them Um, you know if and I cite a few of these people in the book, right? Like james conant brian, right who was president of harvard when james conant and who was a chemist, right? Who was a trained scientist when he writes a book and says You know this stuff is science and this stuff is not because james conant is the president of harvard His voice carries weight Right, right and other people will tend to fall in line with that And that is I think I think it is fair to say right that is Largely what happens with ufo’s is that when a lot of these elite powerful people with big megaphones Decide and and again right it’s a separate question about whether to decide correctly or incorrectly But when they make this decision that this stuff isn’t worth investigating anymore Largely the media falls in line And and you know and hollywood falls in line and and the students of these people at these universities fall in line And follow the experts.
[01:14:40] Blue: Yeah Okay, so from page 61 of your book Finally the air force drew a veil of secrecy over ufo investigations in one more one more effort to prevent the Sightings and a credulous public’s misinterpretation of them to damage national security Now you kind of already hinted at this but I want to dig into this a little bit It’s one thing For them to decide This is pseudoscience and in fact i’m not sure I entirely disagree with that decision I think that that at least the vast majority of ufo Sightings and the way it gets treated is more or less pseudoscience, right? But it’s another thing altogether to decide that this is going to damage national security If we don’t shut people down
[01:15:30] Red: From having beliefs in these things, right?
[01:15:33] Blue: That struck me as Interesting, I won’t say positive or negative or anything, but that it’s interesting that they went that far, right? But how might ufo investigations damage national security in the minds of the air force at this time?
[01:15:49] Red: Yeah, yeah, so This is another place where I think we need to try to put ourselves in the minds of americans, right and in The high cold war period and that is the late 40s through the late 60s There was A real worry I think and this this comes out in the report of the robertson panel It comes out in the report of the conan committee that ufo’s are going to cause a national panic And that if americans believe That our world is being visited by extraterrestrial creatures with powers far beyond ours That that is going to do a couple of things first. It might simply cause fear and terror in the streets, right? People not going to work People, you know Shutting down the economy not leaving their homes trying to flee all sorts of kind of you know national chaos Right and national chaos importantly. I think based on largely Nothing as far as the air force was concerned, right these sightings were not there was no science behind them Nothing worked Nothing of scientific work in an investigation is what the conan committee said So that’s one fear another fear. I think That they were worried about is a diversion of resources um, and that largely because of The cold war and this sense of national competition with the soviet union um, which was Wait very very heavily on americans minds, right?
[01:17:21] Red: And there was a sense, right that we need national mobilization That americans need to be committed to the defeat of the soviet union We need to be devoting our scientific resources our economic resources all towards this competition and ufo’s are An irrelevant dead end off of that then there aren’t they aren’t going to help us at all And so of course the air force does and these documents exist There is an order coming down from the top of the air force To local air force bases to tell them don’t speak publicly about ufo cases Don’t talk to the media about ufo cases unless you can clearly and convincingly debunk them Right, so there is in some sense, right in an attempt to kind of control the narrative on the part of ufo’s To dismiss these things Right to say this is not something we should even be discussing Because it is such a drain on our natural on our national resources and such a threat to our national psyche Right, this is and this gets back to our our hypnosis conversation from a little while ago Right, this is a period of american history In which there is what we might call today a fair amount of overconfidence
[01:18:37] Red: About psychology and psychiatry We see that with hypnosis right the beddy and barney hill believe even before they went in to To see benjamin simon that hypnosis would be able to solve their problems Right that hypnosis would be able to recover their memories and to help them figure out what had happened to them um It’s widely believed in america in the 50s and 60s the hypnosis had near magical powers Right that if you hypnotize someone i mean your brainwashing right is the term that comes out of this period And there’s you know, there’s all sorts of movies and radio shows and so on About how hypnosis could actually like turn you into a communist, right? There’s right fear about this and so when the air force begins saying right We can’t let a national panic happen And if we let ufo’s continue if we let research in the ufo’s continue It’s going to cause a national panic and they were perhaps overstating that But there was a sense right that that psychology was powerful enough to accurately predict such a thing That we understood the human psyche well enough that we could foresee Some kind of disastrous huge um national riot happening because of this
[01:19:52] Blue: So okay, I got a couple questions around this and this is I actually find this part of the story that you brought up particularly interesting I I got a sense and I don’t know that I can point to anywhere specifically in the book to back myself up here But I got a sense that it wasn’t so much always about a fear of a national panic as it was that They really just didn’t want The the masses, you know the unwashed masses To have a different opinion from them on What count it as science am I wrong or is that something that actually is part of the story here?
[01:20:31] Red: No, no, I think that is that that’s absolutely accurate as well I think and there there is and this is especially I think coming from the american scientific establishment Right, that is to say people like conant, right these really kind of highly respected Nationally known almost scientific celebrities for lack of a better word, right These folks and again because of the cold war And because of the sense that the cold war would ultimately hinge on science Right that america had the advantage in the cold war because the americans developed the atomic bomb first And that the united states needed to be first To any of these new technologies and we might recall here, right? There was actually something of a national panic after the soviets were the first to launch a satellite into orbit sputnik um, that did cause National terror right and and headlines across the country and state legislatures calling emergency sessions to to dump more money Into scientific education in their states, right? Yeah, there absolutely was right worry that if american citizens Did not have correct understandings of science and if american citizens were not going to school and becoming Scientists in order to pursue new research and technology that would help us to beat the soviet union We would lose the cold war
[01:21:56] Blue: Right,
[01:21:56] Red: and of course the ufo is already dead end off of that. There is nothing You know, there was nothing there according to the air force and so they wanted to spear American scientific education back in the direction of what they considered to be genuine real useful science
[01:22:14] Blue: So now there’s this idea that comes up in hollywood in particular all the time That the government has to protect the public in the hollywood version There are right aliens and the government has to protect the public from the knowledge that there are aliens Because if the public knew that there actually are aliens, which by the way you just mentioned donald kihel believed this right Um, then it would cause this national terror and society would fall apart I I think I just recently saw a video from michael scherman or somebody Who he was talking about how they’ve done tons of studies that have shown that this just isn’t the case that the The public isn’t going to fall fly off the hinges just just because they found out That there’s such a thing as an alien, you know or something along those lines And I have to confess I’ve always found that story difficult to believe I mean that there’s tons of people around who I think would be ecstatic to find out that there’s Aliens right there probably are some people who would be very bothered by that And I always wondered where that story Came from and I felt like when I was reading your book That like this is where the story came from that hollywood had bought into this story Because it was actually coming from thus the quote scientific authorities that this is what was going to happen If we were to find out, you know that if we people started to believe that there was aliens And it was interesting twist because in the hollywood version there are aliens and in this version there aren’t aliens But it’s like the same story other than that
[01:23:45] Green: to be fair. It might it might cause a lot of people to Change their worldviews drastically. I mean who can say how much how that would affect society as a whole I mean, I I don’t think anyone it’s probably impossible to predict Don’t you think whether that would be a positive or a negative for the world?
[01:24:04] Blue: Yeah, so okay you’re to be fair I don’t obviously don’t actually know what would happen, right? But the idea that it would cause society to fall apart always seemed like a stretch to me and again Maybe I’m wrong. Okay. I’m just my own feeling is that this doesn’t feel like it would for some reason cause Society to fall apart and yes, it’s this story that gets told in movies In hollywood over and over and over again It’s so it’s one of the tropes that’s so well And I accept it as a trope. I accept it that when they pull out that trope Oh, the government’s protecting us from the knowledge of the aliens I just I just for the same reason I accept that wizards can fly right It’s it’s it’s just a trope that I accept that when it comes up in a movie. I go, okay Yes, yes, of course In this movie world if the humans were to find out there’s aliens their society would fall apart So that’s why they’re doing this and also every single grocery bag has, you know A little celery stick sticking out of it because that’s just the way it is, you know I I I’m not I I don’t translate this into real life It’s just a trope that I accept as part of storytelling in movies, right? But I never think it didn’t seem like a realistic trope to me and maybe I’m wrong You’re welcome to disagree or argue with me over that But I how I always wondered where the trope came from, right? Yeah, why is it this trope exists?
[01:25:33] Blue: And I think what you’re saying is it’s because that was what they believed at the time It’s it’s an averted version of it. I
[01:25:40] Red: think I think that is accurate, right? I think they they did worry about this and in fact Well, this is an interesting crap side note But we do know that in the past 10 years NASA has given money To well, there’s there’s a center at Princeton For religion society and NASA gave them I believe it was a million dollars For this group to do research into how American religions would respond to the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence Right, so this is something that is still being researched and still being looked at And it absolutely was the case in the mid 20th century That there was a great deal of fear that this would cost panic in the streets Now that in part derived from early 20th century psychology Early 20th century psychologists had a real Well, we would actually today probably call it racist But there was a lot of worry among early 20th century psychologists about as you as you put it the unwashed masses Right about what they call crowd psychology mob psychology, right and the sense that people Who were not sufficiently educated? Were governed by their emotions and were you know, and were incapable of rational thought and were maybe always on the brink of panic And and always on the brink of turning into a mob and of course many of these Many of these experts were white and they said well, just look at Africa, right? Look at look at Asia. You see mob mentality at work in all of these places And we need to protect Americans from that. So yes, that this is I think a very very kind of apt Um connection that you’re making okay.
[01:27:29] Blue: All right. I was I was excited to figure out where the trump came from just for what it was Sorry, go ahead Peter
[01:27:36] Green: Okay, I do have kind of a what could be a good final question if if we want to go there
[01:27:42] Red: Yeah, why
[01:27:43] Green: don’t we okay? Unless unless Bruce wants to interject
[01:27:46] Blue: go for it. Go for it. Okay.
[01:27:47] Green: Well, I thought you’ve done an excellent job mad of explaining your motivations for Writing the book and you’re about your research your academic research into religion and meaning and how that intersects with The the hills experiences and UFOs in general I I’m curious though if you could take us back to that moment That I assume sort of aha moment where you heard about this case and you got into it and you were like This is my next book. This is where I want to go.
[01:28:26] Red: Oh, yeah, that’s a great question. Thanks for it Um, so I mentioned at the top right that sort of interest I have and in in how american religion Trans forms In the 20th century right and how we moved we were moving increasingly towards I think what is still happening today a de institutionalized individualized kind of bricolage collage of religion And I was and I and I hit on UFOs pretty quickly As a way to get to that in part because I think you know UFOs are just kind of a fascinating case study I’ve I’ve said I think Before in our conversation that they are mirror in a sense people see you in ufo’s whatever they want to see They see themselves ultimately they see their own ideas and anxieties and priorities reflected back to them and that’s certainly the case in U of what ufo isn’t a religion Right, there are there are actually there are flying saucer religions that exist in the united states and many other religions grapple With this problem in interesting ways, too. I initially actually was thinking I might write about Scientology Which I think is another kind of fascinating example of Of how religion adapts to science right and how and how these languages and ideas Intermingle, but there have been some really good books on on Scientology Published in the past 10 or 15 years and I didn’t know that I had much to say and also, you know, I didn’t want to get sued So I was looking for something else And then I discovered Well, I had known about the hill case for a while because it is of course kind of a a classic case in america and ufo Lore, right?
[01:30:08] Red: It’s one of the founding cases. I’m up there with with uh, canard Arnold Um, and so I was poking around them a bit and I and I found um this book That the hills niece cathleen marden published 10 or 15 years ago about the case Which was the first full book on the case Since the one that john fuller who was the journalist and ufo believer had written about the hills back in the mid 60s So I looked at marden’s book and I discovered in that book That she had donated The hills papers to the university of new hampshire After she herself used them in the writing of her book Um, and I thought wow that’s really fascinating, right? I did not know there was a hill paper collection I did not know other papers were available Um, and so I went up to the university of new hampshire to take a look and I thought wow Yeah, I found actually what is a really I think magnificent collection There are hundreds of letters to and from the hills and that collection letters that the hills wrote themselves Betty hill it turns out was sort of a a real Inventorate diarist And memoir writer she she wrote many many many different small accounts Of her life and her husband’s life She wrote lots of stories Fragments and memoirs. She didn’t eventually publish an autobiography But a lot of drafts for that autobiography are in this collection as well There’s just a vast amount of data And stories about About the hills In this collection, and I thought this is it, you know, this is I gotta use this collection I
[01:31:51] Red: There was nothing better for a historian Then finding a really rich new collection That other historians have not gotten into yet and and no other historian Other than cathleen marden has spent time in this collection before and so I hope it allowed me to tell A story that really didn’t just kind of recap what happened to the hills But got into who they were and how they thought and their own, you know, their own kind of personalities
[01:32:20] Blue: All right. Well, I could probably go on for hours, but we’ll let you get back to your family We know you can’t
[01:32:27] Unknown: ambrose
[01:32:31] Red: Well, thank you folks, this has been a lot of fun.
[01:32:33] Blue: Yes, it has and thank you for talking with us matt
[01:32:36] Green: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much matt. This has been a real honor for me Have a good day guys
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