Alien Invasions with Olivia Taylor Dudley

Hey, everybody, Welcome back to Scare It All the Time. I'm Chris Klari, I'm Edvacola, and today we are talking about one of the most classic existential and frankly terrifying concepts in all of horror, alien invasions. Forget what you think you know from the movies, because we are going to dig into ancient legends of sky gods, tales of real life historical battles, and waves of mysterious airships appearing in our skies with no explanation. And the scariest part is that modern science tells us the threat might be much closer than we ever imagined. So grab your tinfoil hats and listen closely for the wail of a theremin, because the truth is out there and when it arrives, there won't be anywhere left to hide. What are we scared? When are we all the time? Now? Which is time? Full time scared? That Diamond. I am so psyched to finally bring this week's guest on the show. She is an actress, a writer, and director who is one of the coolest and hardest working women I've met in la You might know her as a lot of things. You might know her as Alice from the hit sci fi show The Magicians, or you might know her from her work in Paranormal Activity, The Ghost Tapes or Onyx, The Fortuitous and The Talisman of Souls, or if you're really cool, you'll recognize her from her work in Five Second Films, where she did everything but most memorably played Motherface in Dude Bro Party Massacre three. So it has been a long time coming, but Olivia, welcome to the show. Wow. Thank you. I mean, I'm a longtime fan of the show and a longtime friend of you. Chris. I'm very honored to be here. Good, thank you, lovely intro. Thank you. I'm glad that you know this is everything kind of worked out to the point that if this was the perfect time to have you on the show, because you're one of the biggest alien lovers or alien heads or alien. Fiends that I know. I fucking love aliens. And tomorrow your new alien movie, Touch Me, comes out in theaters nationwide. I've been looking forward to this movie since you described the script to me as one of the craziest things you've ever read, and the reviews out of film festivals have been glowing. But we haven't seen the finish film yet, so we turned to you, Olivia, what is touch Me? And why is it going to be everyone's favorite movie of twenty twenty six? I mean, touch Me is like a wild, psycho sexual alien movie with some tentacle sex. Do you guys curse why? I mean, that's not a curse. No, I was gonna say, tanical fucking you can say, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you can say whatever you want here. Touch Me is a wild movie. Addison Hymen, who directed it and wrote it, who I have now just deeply fallen in love with working with, wrote this batshit crazy movie that I got sent to me like a month before shooting, and I read the script and I was like, what is this? My friend was like, you got to do this movie? It's fucking crazy. I think you're the only person who might actually say yes to this. And I read it. I laughed out loud. I met with him like an hour after I read the script. We shook hands and we were off to the races and it's it's it's such a hard movie to explain because it's like holy unique, but it's basically about these two codependent best friends, Joey and Craig I played Joey, and pretty much their life is falling apart and they need money, and we learned that her ex is an alien, and he's a rich alien, and he pretty much invites him them out to his like compound in the desert, and they quickly find out that having sex with him will make your anxiety go away. So yeah, which in the. Movie, if someone's using that line somewhere right now. I mean, it is like a wild idea to think about, Like if you were presented with that, would you have tentnical sex with an alien to get rid of your anxiety? And I think a lot of people would say yes. Yeah, I mean depend unless your anxiety is tentacle sex with it alien, which for some people. But it's actually just his touch, Like even if he just touches you, it makes your anxiety go away. So they pretty much hope there's a scene where it's like, you know, I can do this with just touching, And that's not what I was told, That's not how I was sold on. This don't have to do all that. So it's really a movie about like addiction, because they get addicted to it. It's like a drug. And also like, my character has obsessive compulsive disorder, which I also have and the director has. So that was one of the things that I connected to the most when reading the script was it deals a lot with mental health and I love you know, I love genre. I love doing it because you can really tie in like very real human things with crazy storytelling. Yeah. I'm very excited for people to see it. Yeah, they love it or hate it, but most people seem to love it. I don't know. It's fun. It's really wild. When people say they wish there were more original movies, this is really exactly what we're talking with, what they're talking about. This is an extremely original movie made by very, very passionate people. So I encourage you all check out the trailer. We'll have have a link to the trailer in the show notes but and we'll put a link to get tickets in the show notes too. Yeah, and it comes out on VOD I think April second. So yeah, go out there see it in a theater if you can, if not rented on VOD or buy it on VOD when it comes out. And we'll be there probably tomorrow seeing it all together in a big group and maybe with Olivia's parents there. Gosh, we'll see how that goes. They already, So to wet your appetite for all of this alien action, we're going to be presenting a much less sexy look at alien invasions today. Unless you're watching the video version, in which case you're welcome. Yeah, if you're watching the video version, Ed is doing this nude, so that's that. I'm sorry, that's not you're welcome. Normally we would jump into the conversation about the week's topic with personal connections, but I think anything that Ed and I could offer, well, I guess off the top, we should say, as far as the three of us know, we haven't been invaded by aliens, so our personal connection to it is limited. Although Olivia, you have had experiences with aliens, so tell us about them. Oh she did. No. I mean I grew up on a ranch in central California and my family and the ranch is like definitely a vortex and pulls people in that are very much like into this kind of stuff, and we had experiences growing up all the time that were unexplainable. Like when I finally watched like skin Walk a ranch, I was like, yeah, it's. Like my house. I mean, this is my family. And like my grandma who lived on the ranch. Growing up, her and I would hunt for aliens, like that was our hobby. Every night. We had like this rock we carved chairs into and we would sit and look at the night sky and wait for aliens to appear. And we saw some shit. Yeah, and everyone that came there did. My mom. My mom was talking about it this morning when I told her I was doing this podcast. She's like, the noise is back. I'm hearing the noises again. And my mom loves aliens. She's a big reason why I'm into them. But yeah, I grew up in a place where this stuff was very normalized. It happened all the time. I don't know what is real in my memories versus like, you know, just drilled in my brain is what was happening. But yeah, I mean, like, are my abduction dreams real? I don't know, right, you know. I mean I think that's something. We did an episode on alien abductions and there was there's a lot of it's a very it's a very kind of gray area of what's real what's not. If it feels real, is it real? Like you know, there's there's a whole world of debate as to what a lot of those experiences are. I do need to know what's the what's the noise that's back. By the way. You know, I hadn't thought about it in a long time, and then when my mom brought it up, I was like, oh shit, you just brought up like a really deeply horrifying childhood memory. It's like this low hum rumble, like rolling sound that would happen on the ranch. The ranch is really big, and we have a lot of family. There's like a big family compound and there's different trailers and houses around, and like cousin Charlie down there, and my sister living over there, and like, you know, everyone Graham's in this house. So like what's cool about that is everyone would have the same experiences and then you would cross check them and everyone heard this sound and it would just happen randomly, and it would go all night long and you couldn't No one knows what it's from. Does it feel like it's coming from the sky. It's like it's coming from the ground ground. Yeah, but there's like nothing near us, right, Yeah. That's creepy. I feel like that actually is there's definitely an episode in like Mysterious Sounds, Ye Sky Sounds the Grounds. Yeah, definitely. People always hear explosions. I hear them all the time here in LA and people always say it's transformers, but no, not the robots, the electrical equipment. I mean those explode a lot here, they do. But some of these explosions, I mean, right after I moved out here, I heard if this is what a transformer exploding sounds like, I mean, there would be people would be dropping dead left and right from Heart Lake. It was so loud that woke me up in the middle of the night one night. There's all kinds of weird noises everywhere, and I think we just sort of sometimes we ignore them because we go about our daily lives and we can't spend the time to go what the fuck was that. But I'm particularly suited for this because I've been in the same place for sixteen years. Yeah, and so it's like I'm very familiar with the sounds I hear. Yeah, like I heard that again, and that's Oh, there's that weird beeping noise and that just it's weird. Yeah, I hear the explosions all the time in La, but I live near the subway being built. But it's never that in La. You have to ignore a lot of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get good at it. I use citizen app. Oh Man, comic Steve uses it and so constantly he's like man with the knife six feet away, and I'm like, who cares are from? Just re downloaded it this week because there's something happening, and I was like, I need to know if I can go outside. That is the opposite of touch me, alien sex. Citizen is a anxiety creational class. Like time, it's it's so crazy. I mean, I'll get this back on track in a minute, I promise. But citizen to me is like I don't understand. There's sure there's something to be said for you want to be informed of what's going on your neighborhood and whatever, but like citizen app to me just seems like it is a lot of stuff that you don't really need to know. It doesn't really affect your life that much. So well it does until it does, sure, but it's I feel like ninety percent of it or ninety nine percent of it is just stuff that you're like, Wow, there's a guy with a samurai sword robbing a bagel shop half a mile away. That feels bad. I don't like that, but it's like that's just I mean, people do crazy shit all the time. I don't need an alarm going off every time someone does not fucked up. I also, and I don't even have it, but then I get he fucking texts me like screenshots of it. Yeah, only text me if it's like really funny. There was one the other day that was really funny and I don't know what it was, but it was an alien invasion, so I'll move on from it. Yeah, I look, I love aliens. My dogs are named after aliens, so I'm like, sure. All I wanted to do growing up was work for Seti, and I named my dog Seti. Yeah, and I've got Seti al Fleeley Dallas Multipass, So all I've ever wanted to do is work. One of those things was an alien No. I mean Seti Institute, which. Is not an alien No, but it's with it. I mean, they don't dog, yes, and Seti looks particularly like. He looks like he's a big hairless dog. Setti's a big house dog. He's kind of like a cheapicabra style. There's a lot of alien in. Okay, sure, and we got Alf, which is an alien who eats cats. Yeah. And then the third one was multi pass, which is just a line from a movie. Just a line from just a movie. Just a movie. Okay, I know a fifth element is, but I'm just saying that. Also a wonderful person. By the way, she helped me make coffee when I was an into really yeah, she was like so sweet love. Well, speaking of movies that are not just movies, none of us have personally had alien invasion experiences. Real fast, before I move on. If you did see an invasion, do you do you do anything about it? And hey, don't you dare alien? You get out of here. Put it on Citizen Alf. Okay, let people know. Alien invasion three hundred feet from you. Guys crazy anyway. So great to get that alert the world. You. Hey, look, they try to do War of the Worlds on Amazon and I watched it as a screen life movie, so maybe next they can. Just do it on Citizens. I watched it. It was terrible. It's better than the House of Dynamite. All right, Well, just a side on the world. Sorry, yes, I I when that movie was in theaters. I was in New Orleans and I flew out as one of the last flights during Hurricane Katrina. So I flew through Katrina and it was horrible. It was just like a very traumatizing experience for everybody in. The original World. The World. So that's Spielberg World, the World Spielberg. Ye. Yeah, yeah, well that's not the original then yes, yes, emphasize. And they had to make them. We had to get out. And then we landed in Atlanta and we had like a few hours to kill and everyone was shell shocked, and they're like, go see a movie, and they took us to the movie and we also World, which I can't even find. I can't I can tell you how traumatizing that was after going through literally like the plane throwing us around. Yeah, and then we land and we watched that movie. I haven't watched it since associated I I don't even know what I don't I don't remember the movie Whatsoeppening. I revisited it recently. It's very good. It doesn't have much of an ending, but it's very good. They walked through a neighborhood with a plane that has crashed into it at one point in that movie, and I think I don't know if it's still there. For a long time, it was still standalect. With stereo lane at Universal. Yeah, I mean that's crazy. That is a bad combo. I mean, well, to your point about that movie, if anyone's watched it recently, it's a very good This is on topic with the show episode we're doing. It's a very good alien invasion movie because it shows that, like alien invasions can be instantaneous in fucking Nightmarish where I love signs and Signs will definitely come up in this episode, but there is a level of I don't know, something might be locked in my closet to signs where world of the world is like check out your window. Yeah, an alien fucking invasions happening. And by the way, they're obliterating and eating humans right now. Yeah, everyone is dead. There is no like I heard on the news. Yes, in that movie, I remember seeing in theaters and not being super psyched on it, But then when I rewatched it, I was like, I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I think I got so hung up on the the fact that there's a sequence in Spielberg's or the World's. This isn't really a spoiler, but if you haven't seen it, there's a sequence with an alien hunting people in a basement that feels very similar to the raptors hunting the kids in the kitchen in Jurassic Park. That's pretty good though, it is. But I got for some reason, I got like so stupidly hung up on him kind of plagiarizing himself, that I left the theater being like, well, whatever. But then when I rewatched it, I was like, Jesus Christ, this movie's really really good. That's really good. He's a good director. He hasn't done much recently. Well, he's got Disclosure Day coming out this year. Not to turn this into a movie podcast, but he's got Disclosure Day coming out this year, which, if you're on any alien disclosure subreddits, a lot of people think is literally going to be disclosure. Just a few weeks ago on this very podcast, I mentioned that I thought Close Encounter Is the Third Kind was like a government funded movie, and you laughed in my face. Well through a truly can app. I I okay, a couple things I was gonna say, what I wanted to pivot into was the fact that even though none of us have had alien invasion experiences, most people have had their ideas shaped about what an alien invasion would look like by the movies, because some people will tell you the government has partnered with Hollywood to soft disclose, as they call it, what we might know about the other species in the universe and what might happen should they ever choose to invade, which I think is like. A bit of a stretch. And then I also wonder if it's not a stretch, how do you know which every alien invasion movie is pretty different, So how do you know which one is the government being like, this is what it's going to be, Like, it's probably not going to be Independence Day. No, No, it's probably not going to be War of the Worlds. All of the Worlds. Would probably closer to World the Worlds because I feel like they're already here. It might be closer to Disclosure Day, which I also who knows, maybe the people that subreddit are just like plants from the marketing department being. Like, it's going to be actually show you real aliens. Also, that would be ridiculous, not the news. It's like, who saw Disclosure Day? This weekend, nobody so be a terrible way there people. There were people on Reddit who thought that the reason Trump came out and said that he is going to disclose the Alien files is because he wanted to beat Steven Spielberg to the punch. She could have done that by including that in Milania. That's true. The end of the Real Aliens is. And no one saw it, and so no one knows. Ten people who are like, you gotta wait till the end and. It's so good. And she eats a baby. I'm not saying it was her up saying the post credit stat is are you going to do? You have thoughts on like what would make it an actual invasion, because like aliens coming to visit, Like at what point is it an invasion? Well a rival, like what at what point arrival? Yeah, that's interesting because that's not really an invasion so much as like, hey, we're here. Yeah, it's an announcement they do. I mean that's We're going to get into some of that in the episode of like kind of what constitutes an invasion? I do that every episode too. I'm like, what about it is that we're getting to it? Because humans have always told stories about people who live in the sky or creatures or beings or whatever, and we've called them different things over the centuries. But I do think one of the things that's most interesting about the topic of alien invasions is that we've long been telling stories that sound like alien invasions, we just don't necessarily call it that. And so one of the first things I wanted to do was to go way back to before the word alien was even a thing and look at some of the stories that we were telling that today sound a little bit like alien invasions. But back then we're just stories about gods. And part of the reason they don't feel like invasion stories is because the people telling these stories already believed that they were ruled by these things, right, So part of what I think makes a modern alien invasion stories the idea that, for you, yeah, they make their presence known, and by the time we know they exist, we are under their thumb or under their feet or tentacles or whatever. One of the most interesting ones that I found, although there's not a ton of information about it, is the Aztec legend of the ct metal. According to Wikipedia, the tt metal were gods who were associated with the stars especially the stars. No, no, no, investors in planet Hollywood. No, no, no, they were. They were investors in the stars that can be seen around the sun during a solar eclips. Okay, sure, I think I also somebody got me like a name the star after me type of certificate, So I guess they are also investors in the stars. You have that somebody did it? What star is named after you? Know? AB seven? Oh shit? Something else? I thought we said it's name that robot? What robot? What name? What star am I named after? No? What star is named after you? It doesn't understand it's name. You have a star named after you. I feel like this is something you would have done or somebody would have done for you. No, but I've actually always wanted somebody to do that for me. We'll do it. We'll do a scare all the time for you, and then we'll post it on the Instagram. That's great promo for touching. I would up to eight dollars. We'll find out where it is. But yeah, I think it was one of those things, or it was a lock somewhere. It was like a someone did one of those certificates for me when I was younger. Wild Will be cooler if they had got me stock certificates. But I think of it this way. In a way, you're eternal. Sure, as long as the company who charged somebody to do that, it's continued. Yeah, I think for sure, cheap stars LLC. They're not here no more so. The Aztecs interpreted a solar eclipse as the which is the plural fort defensive fast. Somehow, I don't even know how. It did, but they interpreted the eclipse as the attacking the sun, causing the belief that during a solar eclipse these creatures might descend to the Earth and possess men. It was said that if the time could not start a bow fire in the empty chest cavity of a sacrificed human at the end of a fifty two year calendar round, the fifth Son would end, and these alien beings would descend to devour the last of men. What's a chest fire? I think it's literally they're saying that they have to sacrifice somebody, open their chests and create a fire in their chest cavity, and then you have to be able to light a bow like a bub sure with. It with it. And if you can't do that, the tits Mima are coming to devour all men on planet Earth. All right, Well, the first part's hard, the second part is pretty easy. Yeah, which what what do you mean the first and second being. A friend and lighting their chest on fires hard? Lighting the arrow is probably pretty easy. If the third step was then fire it at the sun, then it's like an impossible to ask. But they have fifty six years to do it. Fifty two years. Yeah, fifty two years to. Build it in you you could figure it out it out? Yeah, I feel like, I mean, how we find a piece of shit in your group within fifty two years to be like I found you? I feel like, once you empty out the chest cavity, how hard is it to start a fire in there? Can't be that high once it dries out. Yeah, you got. We don't know the rules. But this particular story did strike me as very invasion esque in the sense that they are already circling around within our galaxy and uh will potentially come to Earth and eat people. Is a very alien invasion feeling, totally kind of story. It's also nice to have some level of responsibility too, though, it's like, you know, the only reason we're not eating it's because I burn a guy every fifty two years, right, it feels good to have that kind of agency. I mean, most things in ads not to paint with the broadbrush, but most things in Astec culture, I feel like, revolved around ripping the hearts out of your neighbors and hoping that something happened because of it. So, you know, there was a lot of that. There was a lot of that. It got to the point where they were like, if we rip your heart out, the sun will return Tomorrowsis. Yeah, well, if you have to. There's definitely a joke to be hot between the citizen app and the ass texts. I just liked, could you imagine? Yeah? Then there are the stories of the Watchers from the Book of Enoch. Now, these particular creatures, there is so much lore out there. There is a lot of different kind They've worked their way into lots of different kinds of mythology and stories. And I am not a scholar of ancient Jewish texts, so I tried to piece together what the what the what the old books say about these things and not what the internet says about the Watchers. If you're not familiar, the Book of Enoch is a sort of controversial ancient Jewish text that contains a lot of wild stories about the origin of demons and fallen angels and the flood. It was written sometime between three hundred BC and one hundred eighty, which is a span of like four hundred years, and it's divided into five sub books, The Parables of Enoch, the Astronomical Book, the Book of dream Visions, the Epistle of Enoch, and the Book of Watchers, which is most relevant to this discussion. The Watchers are sky creatures in this case angels, although translated from the Aramaic for the awake ones, originating from the tradition that apparently these angels don't sleep. No, you gotta be who's gonna watch if you're sleeping? That's true, that's true. I feel like angels that don't sleep is like all those eyeballs. It sounds it sounds like the Gangster movie and Home Alone Angels with angels. The Watchers in Marvel Stanley's a Jewish Fella probably got it from this. Oh yeah, what that's probably I think that might be where kind of other lore grows from. Like people have used the watchers in other. Media like Superman and stuff. Like comes from space. No, yes, but I think it's something to do with I don't know. I'm not doing it, but there is a thing. The Watchers also do not behave themselves, and as soon as they come to Earth, fevers. Tired naughty angels. They are tired, naughty angels. They're hitting the truly unruly. I'm not going to get another one. I have to plug by. When my computer starts to die, I'm getting another one. Oh yeah. They do not behave themselves, and as soon as they come to Earth, they start causing trouble. According to no less of a sight than the Torah dot com quote. In one account, the angel is Zazel descends to Earth and teaches forbidden knowledge to women concerning female adornment, which facilitates lust. He also teaches men how to create weapons, which enables war. The quote from the Book of Watchers is this, and Azazel taught men to make swords and daggers, and shields and breastplates, and he showed them the things after these, and the art of making them bracelets and ornaments, and the art of making up the eyes, and of beautifying the eyelids, and the most precious and choice stones, and all kinds of colored dyes, and the world was changed, and there was great impiety and much fornication, and they went astray and all their ways became corrupt. So the first angel though, right, The first. Thing the Watchers did was come on down and get everyone fu And yeah. All you broads are way too plain, and all you guys are way too fucking weak. It's get some breastplates. Let's get some eyeshadow. Yep. They also taught magic, as described in for. The nerds who couldn't join the military dession. Yeah, they're like, you guys need something to do. How about close up magic? They they they taught them sleight of hand and h and they taught them charms and spells, and showed them the cutting of roots and trees, i e. Medicine. So they ended up doing a lot of work probably. I mean, yeah, it sounds more like an invasion of bad ideas than the invasion of aliens. But where the Book of Watchers really tips into X files alien invasion territory is when it starts to focus on the desire of the angels to mate with human women, which is where we get. Into some real up everything. The quote is. This and It came to pass when the sons of men had increased, that in those days there were born to them fair and beautiful daughters. And the angels, the sons of heaven, saw them and desired them. And they said to one another, come, let us choose for ourselves wives from the children of men, and let us beget for ourselves children. What about the men they're currently with, We sent them to war? Happens nobody's even there. Exactly how many of these angels did they send down? I don't know a number. Well, there's numbers for some other things coming up. I don't know how many angels came down. It's only seven. I think it's a lot more than seven, always up to so multiples of seven. And Chami Hassa, who was their leader, said to them, I fear that you may not wish this deed to be done, and that I alone will pay for this great sin. And they all answered him and said, let us all swear an oath and bind one another with curses to not alter this plan, but to carry out this plan effectively, which is sort of what we did. When we started this podcast. We were like, we're not gonna change, We're not going to change tack. We're just gonna curse ourselves with doing this forever. No, that would be different if the only way it would be one to one is if I was like, I think we should start a podcast to get girls, and then you're like, yeah, it's a good idea, and then I was like, I think I could probably do it alone. I don't think I need you here like girls. And then you're like, we need to make a pact so that you always together for the girls. Well, because that's what this sounds like to me. This is what happened when the angels toxic invasion. I'm not gonna lie. I kind of like were classic alien. This is this is this is. A very mr Men's rights and angel invasion. But now here's where things really went wrong. And they the human women became pregnant and bore large giants, and their height was three thousand cubits. Oh my god, that's such a Bible measurement. These devoured all the toil of men until men were unable to sustain them, and the giants turned against them in order to devour men. And they began to sin against birds and against animals, and against reptiles and against fish, and they devoured one another's. All these were they killing them, They are robbing them. Give me all your lizard currency. They devoured one another's flesh and drank the blood from it. Then the earth complained about the ones. This is well, the men went to war because the angel said, you guys should go kill each other. No, I'm sorry. The men angels that came down, oh yes, and impregnated the women. I only heard them described as a day So guys, well, the angels, the angels. The final result of all of this is the flood. So in the Book of Enoch or the Book of the Watchers, like the flood, Like Noah's flood. Noah's flood is partially to cleanse the earth of the essentially like genetic mistakes that the angels imparted upon the world. I think cubit cubit The only time I've ever heard it used in the Bible. I think is like describing Noah's arc size. It was like, bring me a bunch of wood by eight cubits. Well, yeah, three three thousand cubits is equivalent to approximately four thousand, five hundred feet. Big kids, so these kids were basically double the height of the Berje Caliph. If you go by these cubit numbers and. As long as they I mean as long if they started as normal kids size, then the lady. You then have to die picturing them trying to come out. I don't know how big they were when they started. Unless they just explode the women, that's more sci fi. That is more sci fi. I feel like if they came out at twice the height of the birds Khlif, it wouldn't even look like a birth. It would just like a woman taking off. Version. They're standing up already. Yeah, well they'd be standing up real quick if they weren't just in the middle of a conversation. So anyway, you said you were going to go to the pyramids, she flies to the sky. There's just like two huge legs replaced where she was like a giraffe coming out. Yeah. So yeah, the Watcher's story, you've got an advanced race of sky people who come to Earth and breathe humans until it goes so wrong that humanity has wiped out, which to me sounds again like ancient alien invasion if I've ever heard one, And if you believe the Book of the Watchers, this actually did happen as opposed to the city middle that probably never actually showed. This is a little surprising to me because my religious studies is not up to snuff or whatever. But well, the angels were always pissed that like humans got like free will, and so it's so you're telling me that they got an assignment. Well, angel angels were like, hey, did you get your check your mailbox today? From God? It says we got to go like call these ladies after we make them hot. I think I don't want to do this. I wish I was human. Two things. One, yes, I believe that part of the reason that Lucifer rebelled against the angels is because he wanted free will and he wanted to rain in hell and have free will. But uh, this book is not considered canon too. It's like the Book of Thomas. Yeah, it's one of the there's a there's a term for the books that aren't considered canon, but it's it's not the good ones, yeah right, the fun ones, the ones you want to read on a Sunday morning. Yeah. So, anyway, if you're into all of this stuff, you know that there are a number of references to things in the Bible that certainly sound like UFOs, everything from the Christmas star appearing and marking the birthplace of Jesus to descriptions of flaming wheels soaring. Through the sky. But we don't find much writing in the way of anything that sounds like the prelude to an invasion until much later in the fifteen sixties, when two events occurred nearly back to back that remain unexplained to this day. The first happened on April fourteenth, fifteen sixty one, over the German city of Nuremberg. Public Domain review dot org tells us quote, as the sun rose in the sky, residents of the city saw what they described as some kind of aerial battle taking place in its glare, complete with the erratic dance of orbs, crosses, cylinders, and the appearance of a large and mysterious black arrow shaped object, all followed by a crash landing somewhere beyond the city limits. Later that month, local artist Hans Glazer produced a broadsheet with a woodcut engraving of the scene and a detailed description of what was witnessed. If you're watching, we'll put the woodcut up on the screen, and if you're listening. You can check it out in the show notes, but the accompanying text reads quote in the morning of April fourteenth, fifteen sixty one, at daybreak between four and five am, which is way too early for an alien invasion, a dreadful apparition occurred on the sun. And then this was seen in Nuremberg, in the city before the gates, and in the country by many men and women. At first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood red semi circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter, and in the sun above and below, on both sides the color was blood. There stood a round ball of partly dull, partly black ferros color. Likewise, there stood on both sides and as a taurus about the sun, such blood red ones and other balls in large number, about three in a line and four in a square, also some alone. In between these globes there were visible a few blood red crosses, between which there were blood red strips, becoming thicker to the rear and in the front malleable, like the rods of reed grass, which were intermingled. Among them, two. Big rods on the right, the other to the left, and within the small and big rods. There were three also four and more globes. Okay, I lost track. Yeah, there's a lot of globes, says I. I really I think. That, uh, this one's fancy. Not gonna lie. But also the guy has the very last sentence was like there was three but also four. Yeah, yeah, I mean the description here leaves a little bit to be desired. I'll show you guys. I'll show the people here. They think the art that he made kind of helps. So this is this is what was described in the sky. That looks like a sublime T shirt. Yeah, I think it's you know, what's not helping is by putting a huge fucking face on the sun. Yeah, that's true. It kind of distracted me from the fact that this was a real event. Yeah, you do kind of go huh. They had a pen penchant for exaggeration. It was, yeah, exactly like this is a this is a bad narrator or whatever. So far, though, all of this, despite an incredible number of balls that we can't keep track of, it sounds like a children's like a chucky cheese ballpit. Up in front of the sun. It does seem like something that could be maybe a bizarre optical illusion or something. But then we get to the part where the shapes in the sky start to move. Quote. These all started to fight. Among themselves, so that the globes which were first in the sun, flew out to the ones standing on both sides. Thereafter, the globes standing outside the sun in the small and large rods, flew. Into the sun. Besides, the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. And when the conflict in and again out of the sun was most intense, they became fatigued to such an extent that they all fell from the sun down upon the earth, as if they all burned, And then they wasted away on the earth with immense smoke. After all this, there was something like a black spear, very long and thick sighted, pointed to the east. The pointed west. Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows, So there is no explanation for what this would have been. Some people think potentially some kind of like a mass delusion. The rest of Hans's writing goes on a lengthy religious tangent that tells us the battle was interpreted as a sign from God, and modern scholars have pointed out that this was a time of turmoil around the city, and the interpretation that these objects were fighting may have its basis in the militaristic mindset that everyone had at the time. So also, it was like two distinct lines and then two like people came out to the sun, which is very similar to like when we watch medieval ass movies and they'd be like, oh, the two people on horseback would be like, are we going to do this? Well, yeah, the troops around the battlefield and. Then they like cruise back and it was like, yo, we're doing this. So there is one meteorological explanation called sun dogs, which are bright, colorful patches of light that appear on either side of the sun. Sometimes they can be read around the outside and blue on the inside, which sort of sounds like some of the things in the description, but not really. I mean, that's a lot. They had a lot of balls in the air. They had a lot of balls, a lot of those. But another interesting explanation from this same site that I found this information on actually ties back and I like this explanation the most. This is really interesting to me. It ties back to an episode that we did last year, boy fireworks because a year prior to this sighting, in fifteen sixty a man, maybe one of the most Italian men ever, Venoccio Birnguccio, published De la Pirotechnia, Europe's first book on metallurgy, and it contains several chapters on the preparation and use of rockets in warfare and festivals. So some people. Think that this book may have made its way to a nearby town and what was witnessed was somebody basically trying fireworks for right time. That makes a lot more sense, but it doesn't make playing the huge like rod with an arrow on the back. It doesn't explain the big pointing black rod. No, it does. It does explain everything falling to earth and smoking. Yeah, you know, I. Mean the crazy thing is is back then you see a rod in the sky and it's you go, Rod, what are you doing? The thing is yeah, you'd be like, how did you get up there? Today? If I saw like a giant exactly I was described rod and its yeah, I'd be like, that's so must be some sort of new plane or a drone. If it made like a woo noise or whatever, I'd be like, interesting, I'm sure someone will tell me what that was. Good day. Yeah, but like then no, So I just I feel like we were probably invaded weekly and don't know, I remember the new Jersey fucking drones that no one that never comes up anymore. Stop talking about that? Yeah, he kind of did, kind of did just stop. We talked about for a hot minute. That was before this episode turned into almost like twice the length on paper of a regular episode. I wanted to get to the New Jersey drones, but I ultimately, you know, it just happened and we all kind of forgot about. What I was saying. It's like no one even made an etching of that. Yeah, no one bothered to even make this a part of history. Yeah exactly. Well no. You know why everyone forgot about it, I think is because during the campaign, during the presidential campaign, you know, one of the things that Trump just sort of off the cuff said was well I know what they are, and if I win, i'll tell you. Oh I forgot about that. And then and then after he won, he was like, oh, I don't worry about it. He was just sort of like, you know, so he either never knew that or you know, I think most people think that they were some sort of Pallenteer test project. But yeah, the New Jersey drones were kind of weird, not as weird as the next invasion, the fifteen sixty six invasion of Basil. Now, part of what's weird about this is that it is another sky battle that occurred five years later, about two hundred miles from Nuremberg in Basil, Switzerland. The National Museum of Switzerland post to the blog, telling. It a popular soccer team they do. Yeah, it's the only time I've ever heard that name in my life before this. Well, people who study ancient UFO appearances definitely have heard of this place because there is another wood etching, not quite as crazy. We'll bring that up on the screen a little bit. But this is this is what people saw. The strange sightings began when what was a dimly lit sunset suddenly turned Vermilion on the evening of July twenty seven, fifteen sixty six, after a total lunar eclipse overnight, A bloody sunrise awoke worried Baslers as the phenomenon bathed the city and read throughout the day. On July twenty eighth, fifteen sixty six. I think they meant they woke to a bloody sunrise, because you here, that's what, right, No, a bloody sunrise awoke the people of Basil. Well sure, I'm just saying. Let's it's the one from Rick and Morty where screaming No, I don't know. Yes, you are correct, sunrise can't wake you. So this is important though, because on July twenty seventh and twenty eighth, the sky was fucked up basically, and then on the morning of August seventh, fifteen sixty six, fiery, black, circular objects shaped like cannonballs appeared to engage one another in battle formation and later disintegrate across the afternoon sky. The sightings stimulated a great deal of concern and speculation amongst local inhabitants, who struggled to understand the meaning of what had just occurred. Word of the event spread through gossip and mass produced broadsheets, which kept the anxious, downtrodden, and spiritually hungry informed of news as they looked for science from God in every facet of life in such troubled times. Once again we have this artist description, and this one might be a bit less accurate, for reasons that will become clear in a moment. But let me bring this up so you guys can see what this invasion looked like. This is the day they realize from here on out, we're going to be neutral in all conflicts and hide people's money. We're not being involved with whatever this is. Oh I like this. Oh see again with the with the sun with the face. Yeah, that's fun though. I do enjoy this photo. This looks like a good time. This feels like something you might even put up in your house. Yeah, it sucks because they were described as cannonballs, right, Yeah, and so only with the white balls did they show a three dimensional I don't know why they didn't just do the same thing. But with white you know, I guess it's tough. As it gets farther away from the sun, they get darker. Right, I don't know, but I'm just saying they look like two dimensional dots otherwise. Right, what I'm saying is, get that artist here. I want to give my one star review on artist. Yelp. Neither of the men who published the broadsheet with this are. Ever worked again. If I was in charge, We're redesigning some of the graphics for the show, and these guys are on our shit list, so sorry, Samuel Aperius and Samuel Kakias. These are two Sam's who will never work here. Neither of these guys also saw this firsthand. They relied on first and second hand sources, as opposed to the first, which was witnessed by the guy who the scene that they chose to illustrate mirrors the events of the third and final sighting of these balls in the air on that day. In recent years, some people have theorized that it was probably some kind of a natural phenomenon that caused these sightings, but they haven't. People have suggested meteor showers. Those were right that many that close to that big. And are on fire. They don't look like cannon balls. They don't go right and left. Yeah, they don't go right and left. Commentary movements Aurora borealis, or optical illusions caused by uncommon atmosphere conditions like Sahara dust. Oh canonized cannonized because of the Sahara dust. These are common, so it's a What's weird to me is that maybe with both of these invasions, maybe you could have an atmospheric event that we explained heart of what people saw, but then the rest of it either needs to have been like made up the way someone would make up a story about a constellation or something, you know, where they're like, oh, it was a hunter, or it was something else, or it was multiple atmospheric things happening at the same time, two cities apart, like two not that far apart cities. But these are two separate SAMs working on the same image, or two separate SAMs talked about it. Because it's like multiple sources means that probably something multiple people saw it. Multiple people did see it. It was two SAMs worked on the art. Can't believe it, but a lot of two people to make that piece of shit. Yeah, no, that's interesting. But so far, everything you've described, like every story you've heard so far does sound like I watched football and there's always like a million pharmaceutical ads and they just sound like things where it was like, are you seeing meteors in the sky if like cannonball eyes persist for more than four hours down up too fast? Do you see color shapes battling each other? Yeah, so some of these I think so far just like people with ailments. Well, yeah, this is maybe a good place to pause though and get more what do you want? What I wanted to pause and ask though, was as a witness of UFOs, what's the most? Because these are two very dramatic UFO sightings, what's the most? What's the one that sticks out to you in your mind as a UFO that you've seen, You're like, that was like the one? Like what was? Do you have one that you feel like was undeniable or dramatic in some way? There there's I have a lot of memories of shit happening on the ranch. In particular, I remember one night driving home. I haven't thought about this in so long, driving home from I think we had like a school assembly. I don't know. We were all at our school. We were driving up our up our road, and all of a sudden, the whole sky went white. And I remember I don't remember who was driving. I was very young. I just remember everyone being in the car like, oh, I can't see and it was white. It was just a whole sky. Pretty basic, but literally in one of our fields when we first drive up where the cows are, there literally was a bright light and I just remember I don't remember who was in the car. Fuck my Mom's like screaming watching this, being like here's me and I just remember we went drove straight up to the house, ran into the house, and I hid under my blanket. And there's no other way to explain it other than that. I remember my grandma was like, well, yeah, they're here, because my grandma talked that way to us all the time. Talk. My grandma very much believed it. She's in a rocking chair saying cryptic Ship. She would love this podcast. I feel it. The whole central Coast area where you're from has it's popped off with different kinds of sightings and stuff over like over. What's the closest kind of city I would know or talent to a central coast So. Like I'm from morro Bay, our ranchers. Outside of you has the big rock. Yeah that's our rock. Some people say Romaliens, but I mean it's a volkay now. But yeah, yeah, No, there's a lot that pops off up there. I mean, like I saw, I mean. There's you're close to like Hurst Castle that area. Okay, I'm trying to picture where in California. There's just a lot of old ship there. There's a lot of I don't know, there's it's a port town. There's I don't know, there's a lot that people are drawn to it, and so I don't know. I've just always described especially our property as a vortex, and like. This isn't directly alien related. But I think I've told you this before. There's an unsolved mysteries episode about a woman who went missing Inmorrow Bay in like the eighties. Wait, I don't think you've told me this. And she looks kind of like you what if? Oh what about power? And I look very good. I have to look it up, but I remember. Really yeah, I mean there's a lot of crime, so I believe it. But yeah, no, there's there's that whole Central Coast area is very kind of spooky and surreal at times. A lot of I mean our ranch is also haunted. That's a different episode, but like there's just I don't know, energetically, it's a weird fucking place. Yeah, well I was up there. Well you came and helped film on my. Yeah, Olivia Rohan directed a short film about alien abductions, and I was up there working on that short film a couple of years ago. And it is a very the vibes there are. I mean, the day we were there was really nice. The vibes felt immaculate. But I can see how it would get It could get kind of creepy real quick. Yeah, all right, well, hey, bright white light in the sky is definitely dramatic, more dramatic than any alien stuff. I've aliens come from the sky. Thanks, Ed, That's why we have that on the show. Do the research, but he knows. I'm a proxy for the audience. So by the eighteen hundreds, science had advanced to a point where much of the natural world felt like it was on the verge of being fully explained. Obviously it wasn't, but people felt that way. But people felt that way, you know, people like that age of laz We're done. Yeah, you gotta figure it out. Some day, Ed Olivia, I promise you guys here now, audience listeners, mark this down. My mom, when she was a teacher at a public school back in Pennsylvania, was cleaning out a closet and found a science book from the nineteen nineteen. You've talked about this, called the Book of Wonders. Yeah, and we still have it. I don't think I have it out here because I was afraid to it's very it's kind of, you know, a riddle, and it is. It is interesting. I've read through it. Some of the science is it, you know, at least as a star, as a basic understanding goes, you know, from the early nineteen hundreds, you're like, yeah, this pretty much is what now, like things have changed a little. But and then there's other stuff that is just wildly out of pocket. Well maybe it hasn't happened yet. Well, there's a section on what you eat determines your skin color. Oh, that happened, that already happened. There's a few things like that. But and then there's also I don't look cheeseburger color. Yeah, there's there's a couple of things. There's like, you know, it's a science book for students, but there's questions about like what is a ghost? You know, and things that I don't remember. But it's amazing if the textbook was like, no, we're asking you please write that, you know, you know book depository Dallas, But it's it's from a time where it feels like I think a depository put up your ass one of them. That's pository. What that's a depository? You deposit something? What's a repository. I actually don't know why you collect things. So what's the difference between this? Why am I putting all the things up my heads? Well, that's a you question, you decide no. But it's a book that feels like it's from an era where science was still asking some of these questions, like they weren't sure, like what is a ghost? What is it? You know? Because religion was still very positive. When science was still allowed to be sexy and. Yeah and interesting and not, people weren't getting shut down all the time. I don't know. Well, anyway, I'm not in school anymore. I don't know what the books are. Probably know these are the same questions being asked today. I wonder what. I didn't even graduate high school, so I'm learning more today than I have made. We actually offer a schedule all the time. Ged we'll be handing it to you with the and then also a star. This is going to be huge day. Lots of the mysteries that we saw in the skies for centuries prior to this period of time in the eighteen hundred were categorized. They were categorized, catalogued, and no longer the territory of gods and angels. We were looking at other planets through telescopes and wondering what might be out there, because, after all, if we were looking there from here, who might be looking back? And it was in this stew of science and wonder that the next branch of alien invasion lore was formed, this time around the ideas of structures on Mars evidence of a once thriving culture that might have designs on making their way to Earth. So have either of you heard of the Martian Canals? I think familiar, but I might be thinking of Venice. You might be thinking of Venice. And now those are very different. Although these also tie back to Italy. These Martian canals were a big deal around the turn of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century. The theory about these and rumors about them started to spread around eighteen seventy seven, when the Italian astronomer and statesman. As you mean the nineteenth into the twentieth century. Yes, sorry, yes, the nineteenth end of the twentieth century, when the Italian astronomer and statesman Giovanni Virginio Chipperelli reported observing about one hundred long, straight linear markings on the surface of Mars. He described them as Canali, not Connoli. Oh my god, now I'm disinterested. She never said anything. He described them as canali, which is Italian for channels, a term that he meant neutrally. He didn't mean to imply anything about their origin or how they were formed. And you can see some of the drawings he made. I'll show you guys right here. We'll put them up on the square gat. It's just a bunch of balls. Sun suns, fucking go on. Oh beautiful. So these were drawings that he made of what here's the straight lines. That's a good question. I don't know why there aren't straight lines in this one. But he's a better artist for sure, yea. Than Sam made these. These are beautiful. These were some of what he reported seeing. Now he was very curious as to what they were, but approached it fully from a question of natural formation. Problem was the English translation of Canali was less channel and more canal, which made people very excited about the idea, especially because the Suez Canal had been completed in eighteen sixty nine, and at the time the Suez Canal was like a holy shit, we did that kind of thing. We were People were hot on canals. Canals were having a year. I only know that from the we didn't start the fire Suez Canal. It was trouble in the Suez. Well yeah, I mean this was when they built it. There's trouble in the Seuel. Yeah. It didn't stay idealistic, like, no, it didn't, it didn't. This was the canal era, though, and people were hooked on the idea that this discovery of canals on Mars again not canals, Canali or channels. But people were like these were made by something. I wish it was local news at the time to make it like a Beanie Baby level story, like these people are crazy for canals. We're here to speak. You've been waiting for fourteen hours to buy a canal, sir. That's a good button. Sixteen crazy for canals, crazy for canals is good. Like in these buttons that are just text for me, you can use I can use some of Chipperelli's art. I don't think anyone owns that anymore for commercial purposes anyway, whatever the case. An astrologer named Perceval Lowell became the champion of those who believed the markings to be bands of vegetation. Kilometers wide, bordering irrigation dishes or canals dug by intelligent beings to carry water from the polar caps across the planet. Lowell and others described canal network studded with dark intersections called oases and covering much of the surface of Mars. He wrote books and articles about what he saw, but other scientists pushed back because no one else. Was seeing this. Wait, nobody else saw so correct. Part of the problem here was that Lowell and Chipperelli were both using not particularly powerful telescopes, and they were trying to view things on Mars through Earth's atmosphere, and there were visual distortions. So Schipperelli, it's a lens issue. It's a lens issue. Yet Yeah, Now, other scientists and astronomers around the world had more powerful telescopes and they were the ones saying, we don't really see what you're talking about there. But that didn't stop Percival Lowell from taking this idea and running with it. Boring evidence, much like today, was not going to get in the way of an incredible story. His ideas became so popular, though, that on August thirtieth, nineteen oh seven, the New York Times. Declared him of canals. This man's crazy for canals. The New York Times ran a headline quote, Mars inhabited, says Professor Lowell declares the planet to be the abode of intelligent, constructive life. On August twenty seventh, nineteen eleven, they published a headline Martians build two immense canals in two years. The subhead elaborates vast engineering works accomplished in an incredibly short time by our planetary neighbors. Wow, this guy really, I mean, conspiracy theorist extraordinaiy. He convinced the woman who wrote at least that second article was a woman named Mary Proctor, who is a popular astronomy writer and lecturer, and he had at least convinced her of what he was seeing, and she somehow convinced the New York Times to run these articles that Martians were building canals on Mars, and. In record times in a time that, like the sue has probably took fifty years. So yeah, I mean, can you imagine if the New York Times ran headlines. Like that, they might I mean, the failing New York Times. I mean, they believe anything. They were considered true, but they were still considered the paper of Record at the time, like they weren't like a trademark it's not, yes, but but they weren't. They weren't a local kind of yellow journalism, like yeah it was. It meant something the only news fits a print or is it the paper of record? I don't remember, but either way they made this up. People tried to take telescopic photography to prove one way or the other, but the photos were kind of beyond the recording capability of the cameras to like, you. Think it would be easier, like it takes eight minutes to expose plants not moving well to take a picture of a woman with. Her child at the time, then of mars, I think, I think variation. The same thing that was making it hard to see with the human eye was making it hard to actually take a photo. I bought I'm sorry you is yours better? I don't know, probably buying a telescope. Mine was about a telescope that I have, But first, no all, I was gonna say, this is reminding me I have a telescope that I need to sell, which was a gift from Ellie, my husband, who friends of y'all, big fan. Of photographer knows his lenses. Yeah, he does. And I wanted this like really fancy telescope and he bought it for me for my birthday and it's too powerful. I actually can't use it. Like it's massive. Do you mean it takes up half of our laundry room and it's too strong. We don't have like we keep buying attachments and we can't. It's blinding, like the moon is literally goes into your retinat It's like we need to downgrade the image to see it because. You look at something other than the moon. It's no, like you have to have ordinance. Okay, it's so I don't know. Honestly, it's above my pay grade. I thought. I was like I was like pursuing my dream, yeah, and I was like I need something simpler. Mine was during COVID. I bought a telescope because I'm like, we can't do anything. This was during COVID, looking at the sky and I bought the word telescope in the world, like it might as well have been for real, Like the company website didn't go anywhere, like it was all fake and it might as well have been for real, like a paper towel roll with a glass in either end. But it was so bad. And then I didn't know that like the little the thing on the top that like you add to a telescope so you can see like a bigger part of the sky. I didn't know to like calibrate it, so I just like slapped it on and so like I could never find anything other than the moon, and then I would like see the moon of like, oh my eyes are burned, Like I fucking died tonight. It was just the worst telescope. But the reason I bring it up besides it being so bad is like I wasn't prepared for there's like a haze and shit of like the atmosphere and all that stuff. So I can imagine how much of that might have played into the photography. Or they're like, hey, I've got the fucking paper towel roll guy, yeah versus. Yeah, I mean they the technology is still it's all lens and mirrors still, but back then it was much much simpler and I think harder. You know, they. Weren't modern telescopes i'd imagine are more finely calibrated to account for atmosphere conditions or whatever, Whereas back then it was a little bit less specifically tuned. But this theory was so popular that it wasn't until close up images of the Martian surface were taken by Mariner four and Mariners six and seven in nineteen sixty five and then nineteen sixty nine that people finally let this go and said, clearly, there's no canals on Mars. WHOA, I thought I was going to confirm the canals. No. They found craters and other natural features, but nothing resembling any kind of long linear channels. Those people died celebrities though, which ones anyone who said it because it didn't. It didn't get revived, like everyone was dead by the time they figured that out. Well, yes, that's true. Guy was eating out every night, being like, I'm a canal guy. You're crazy for canals. For me, I will be eating at any table for free. Yeah. No, they never found anything like it. They don't even really know exactly. Well, somebody probably has ideas, who's at a much higher pay grade than me, But no one's really entirely sure what even Chipperelli was originally seeing other than maybe he had a bum telescope. Isasion though No, but but I guess it would it would. We're invading their privacy. Okay, yeah, but I guess it would be like, well, if there's straight lines, there's no straight lines in nature, I guess, so it'd be like, if there's straight lines, then there's people, then people can invade. Well, there's another reason I've I've put this in here, and it's because. You'd like to waste our audience's time and our guests this time, because okay, good. It is the theory of these Martian canals that completely changed the idea of well invented eventually the idea of what an alien invasion might be. Because vegetation based. Although Day of the Triffids is the that's an alien invasion plant book, right, I. Don't know, only cross section books as kids. Okay, all right, Well, the seed was planted worldwide that our nearest planetary neighbor might be home to a species of intelligent life that could build, and if they could build, someday they might visit. And that is exactly the thought that HG. Wells had when he began working on War of the World in the mid eighteen nineties. There we go, he was, he bring us up all the time. But when was John Carter of Mars. Probably that's just after the Civil War, maybe before, because he's a Civil War veteran who goes who gets taken to Mars? Is that his name? Name's John Carter. Yeah. John Carter of Mars was originally published in nineteen forty. Get the fuck out here. No, you're thinking John Carter of Mars just typing like John Carter. Princess of Mars was serialized from February to July nineteen twelve. Really, it's that late. I'm gonna google it. You're probably look at some a I answer John Carter marsats for this book. It's really fun to see the dynamic in person. Well, it turns out he was right, you know what. Thanks ed Ah. She Wells recognized the terrifying logical conclusion of the canal theory popularized by Lowell. If Martians were indeed an advanced race living on a resource depleted planet, which they figured they would be depletion because that's what the canals are for, is to move the water around, their survival might eventually depend on the conquest of a younger, more fertile. World like yes. So. War of the Worlds was first introduced to the public through serialization in eighteen ninety seven, appearing in Pearson's Magazine in the United Kingdom and Cosmo in the United States. Yeah, well, this is a thousand years after we gave them makeup by we I mean angels. Yeah. True. And the serialization in Britain ran from April to December eighteen ninety seven and featured illustrations by Warwick Gobbul which depicted the Martian tripods and the heat ray for the first time. The marketing for this serial was unprecedented in the sense that the magazine Pearson's used red text on its covers, which was rare practice at the time, probably cost more. Wow, that really took off. They announced invasion of the Earth by men from Mars. Just above Olivia. They're announcing truck stop women. Yeah exactly. We would not have truck stock women if we did not have red text Pearson's red text. We didn't have time to swap out the posters. And Chris does complain every week that they have nothing to do with. Our show, But there's so much red text. There's a lot of red text. Red text to catch aw dude. It was the inspiration that Wells drew from ideas of evolutionary theory that led him to imagine Martians as beings that had evolved into something quote inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful. And it was that despair between how he imagined the Martians and how we were that really led him to frame the invasion as a critique of imperialism. And that's really why his work marks one of the most important moments in the history of alien invasion literature, because, without getting political about it, he was the first author to frame an invasion from above as an actual imperial invasion the way we might think of it today, with battles and death and subjugation of the week by the powerful. And I'm not crazy in my thought that or pointing out that sci fi for in its whole existence, has been like a proxy or a simile four usually things where it was like, oh. That's a sentence. You're telling me that literature means something. It means something that when you write this alien sci fi has always seemed to have been like, we're gonna tell stories that it wouldn't be published otherwise if I had just said these groups. But when you make it about an alien. Well, yeah, I mean genre has long been used to tell. Sci fi specifically is always like, oh, I'm writing a story about. Veh's a great vehicle. Think about that, is it's a vehicle i'd drive, I say, having written zero sci fi, you don't write an I don't write any sci fi. Damn, you're missing out. What are you talking about? Oh? I guess this newest thing is people have asked me to make it something else, which is why I think of it as something else. Now anyway, yes, ed, you are correct. Sci fi has been used as a way to explore different big ideas that might be boring or controversial, to controversial to publish without that layer of fantasy sci fi on top of it. Speaking of vehicles, though, sick, what are you driving out and getting into? I'm about to jump in my airship because what we are talking about next, the next invasion that we have to take a look at here is the United States airship invasion. Eighteen ninety six and eighteen ninety seven. It was around the same time that A. She Wells's work was being published in the Masses that a wave of airships from places unknown seemed to arrive on American shores, adding another layer of mystery to the growing body of rumor and innuendo that we could be on the brink of an actual alien invasion. So they didn't come through Ellis Island. They did know, they did not the glip glop Now it's just glip. I'm sorry, move on and enjoy the country. Glop tells people too much about what your bloodline is exactly. You don't want that, you don't need that. Over a span of months, really almost a year, from eighteen ninety six to eighteen ninety seven, Americans from Sea to Shining Sea began to report large cigar shaped craft floating through the air. And these weren't just a few witnesses. Everyone was seeing these things. I can tell from the looks on your faces. You're thinking, a blimp looks like a large cigar shaped aircraft, and you are correct. I was just looking in middle distance. I wasn't thinking anything. But it's not anything. For most of the time that we're recording this show. People are like, we don't actually see his angle a lot right. On November twenty third, eighteen ninety six, a story originally reported by the San Francisco Chronicle was picked up by newspapers across the United States under various headlines such as all in the air a mysterious airship puzzle. That's let mean all in the air sounds like a dating advice. Under various headlines such as all in the air, a mysterious airship puzzles the people of California and an airship residents of Sacramento are treated to a rare site aerial navigation or reality. The newspapers, yeah, a lot of these, a lot of we've we've done some headlines on this show from old newspapers that the whole story is in the head They were really good at that. The story was generally the same in this particular one quote about one o'clock last Monday morning, the inhabitants of Sacramento who were a stir at that claimed we've seen an airship passing rapidly over the city. Some means awake, Yes, I we need that back, just because the U up text that's like you astir is so much. Better, maybe more effective? Yeah, maybe dating a victorian. Some merely said that they saw a bright light, while others went so far as to say they saw a cigar shaped flying machine and heard human voices coming from it. Watch out, we have no breaks the loudest people ever if they were off in the sky. The residents of Oakland also say they saw the same site a few nights. Again, I've seen some weird ship in Oakland. Do you think the Oakland A's is for Oakland Airships? I think it's athletics, but he gets athletic. You know. I was in Moneyball, which was all. Well, I was cut out for Moneyball. We can cut this. No, I was in. Moneyball, which one Moneyball. We're not going to cut your story about being in Moneyball on the show? Was it the Bennett Miller won or okay? Yeah, yeah, I played young Robin Wright married to a young Brad Pitt. I think it. Yeah, it was great, but they cut the whole thing out, and uh, I'm only in it for a second. But that's had a great time. We didn't watch the ballgame with Bread Pitt and Phil Hoffman was great. That's I mean. Look, if you're going to get cut out of a movie, I think, uh. It's not fun to be cut out of an Oscar one. To be honest, I'm still in it. I'm waving the audience in one. Okay. Four days later, on April third, eighteen ninety seven, The Philadelphia and Choirer reported another sight a quote that mysterious airship still continues to show itself in the West. So it sounds like the New Jersey drones. I might have literally been waiting for the moment to bring this up. That it feels very much. Like that, the fact that's hung around and people are talking about it, and. I'm sure what it just got swept under the rug and everyone stopped talking about it. Well, not exactly in the same way that the New Jersey drones did, but that's a very good point. I did not as I was researching this, I did not think about the comparison between these airships and the New Jersey dronees. Well, let's put a pin in that. We'll get to the drones in the airships again in a minute. It's tru opened continue. That mysterious airship still continues to show itself in the West. It was first seen in California and it has now reached Kansas with rare modesty. It only makes its appearance at night and then, but little of it modesty. Yeah you up, rare no, no. You A blitz is the worst stir Oh, I'm oh, I got nothing until the morning. It's rare modesty on display if you're if you're a stir, I don't know if you're sending a US stir text that is not modesty. But back then it's via smoke signal or carrier pisions. I don't know how you're doing it. With rare modesty. It only makes its appearance at night and hold on, wait. Rare modesty meaning that normally these things are day flight. I think it's just describing. They're saying shy, Yeah. But it's rare that it's shy. I don't think they're using rare in the modern sense of the modesty itself is rare. I think it's that like fine, like with with rare modesty, like with with with style. Yeah. Kind I don't think it means rare as in like it's rare for a blimp to be modest. See I like blim out on display, That's what I'm thinking. And I'm thinking that like you can't sleep at night because it keeps like bunk into your house all night, and it was like, get out of your blimp. But in a rare display of modesty, it only came. Out nothing was modest. But these blimps. No they are. I'm not going to get into it. So with rare modesty, it only makes his appearance at night and then, but little of it is visible except the lights that are on board of it. The fact that the scores of people who have seen it at different times all agree in the descriptions which they furnish is certainly something in favor of the truth of the story. As the inventor appears to be working his way east, we in this latitude may soon have the opportunity of adding to the number of observers, But unfortunately the inventor never arrived. If there was a pilot of this ship, if the ship was even real, it was never found. According to an article I found in the archives of the Skeptical Inquirer, quote there are more than a thousand separate airship related newspaper stories from this period of eighteen ninety six to eighteen ninety seven. A conservative estimate of the number of alleged individual sightings would be one hundred thousand, as several sightings were said to have involved participation by entire cities and towns. So there was definitely an airship. It does seem there was definitely an airship, and many of the airship descriptions sound an awful lot like a blimp, a cigar shape floating through the air. The fact that you could hear people chattering on them. This is in America, This is all over. America, and it sorted in Sacramento, right. Yeah. I just saw a picture the other day. I don't even know how they know them from Connecticut. I only have the Facebook account for the show, and it was like remember Connecticut Facebook group or whatever, and it was a picture of the Hindum flying over like Stratford, Connecticut, And it was like, yeah, people were just cruising in zeppelins many years later, but like zeppelins, people were, hey, where you got to be somewhere and you got a lot of time to get there, take a zeppelin or whatever like that's people were doing it. So yeah, it could have been like the first one have. Been debunched pretty quick then. Well, but here's part of what's very interesting about this whole story. While we can probably all guess how the Skeptical Inquirer ultimately feels about these. Claims, that's a newspaper. The Skeptical Inquires a periodical, a magazine. Of Okay, you have so many fancy words. Yeah, we're learning a lot tonight. We're leaving here, gentlemen and gentle ladies. Even the Skeptical Inquirer quotes British aviation historian Charles Gibbs Smith as saying, quote, speaking as an aeronautical historian who specializes in the periods before nineteen ten, I can say with certainty that the only airborne vehicles carrying passengers which could possibly have been seen anywhere in North America were free flying spherical balloons, and it is highly unlikely for these to be mistaken for anything else. No form of dirigible i e. A gas bag propelled by an air screen. Or heavier than heavy or heavier than air flying machine was flying or indeed could fly at this time. Yeah, it's really good. Did you see that movie a couple of years ago that was about like the like the Aviationists or whatever, like the or the Balloonists. Oh it was like I didn't see it, but. Dark Haired Woman. It was like one of Amazon's first like big I thought there was some excellent effects in that movie. But yeah, there were there was balloon based Yeah, there be people were doing balloon shot. There was a lot of balloon shit going on. Yeah, I found one thing that sort of I can quibble with mister Gibbs Smith here, Oh, get him on the horn, which is that I found a man named Henri Guifhard of France who designed a success. How could he even see in front of the grocery bag with a baget hanging out of it to see what was in the sky? He pulled that bag get out and said, what if this could float? Because he designed the first successful airship in eighteen fifty. Two airship meaning cigar shaped airship sort of. It was a three hundred and fifty pounds steam engine capable of producing three horsepower three horsepower. That's the opening of my online dating profile, I described myself. He's a rare, modesty, three horsepower kind of guy. He said shaft early on, and I've been trying to work it back in. It's definitely in this. You would like it. Let's Get Haunted episodes. Oh yeah, we should get you on. Let's Get Haunted. You would love it. They're awesome. They're the girl us basically, they're great. Oh we're the men them, or we're the men them, we're boy them. To keep with your girl aspect. Giffard designed this engine with enough power to spin a propeller at one hundred and ten revolutions per minute. Here that Lady's three horsepowers enough. He packed a bag forty four meters or one hundred and forty four feet long with hydrogen to bear the weight of the engine, and climbing from the hippodrome of Paris, traveled at a speed of six miles an hour to cover a distance of around twenty miles. So granted this was in France, and I believe mister Gibbs Smith was saying the only thing that could have possibly been in North America would have been these free flying spherical balloons. But it is possible someone had invented a blimp like device that could fly a little bit. But I couldn't get from Dave No. But this was forty years before people saw these airships in the United States, so it's possible. You know something that I don't have a quote in the research here, but something that came up in the research quite a bit was the idea that inventors often work in secret. They don't want people to steal their ideas. So theoretically somebody took some of this science for France and maybe figured out how to do a blimp and they were testing it in secret, which is part of what brings us back around to the New Jersey drone flat. And that's how I feel about a lot of alien not invasions, but just UFO stuff. It was like, oh, that was just like a skunk Works project that Lockeed was doing or whomever. And we didn't tell you that was a stealth bomber. There's some material that we'll actually get to about that too. Ed not to always tell you we're going to get to it. But it's fine. I'm glad Olivia is nowhere to be today. Guys. She's more busy than us, but we've kept you've seen our setup. She knows she's hostage. We don't need a gun to let people know they can't leave this place. People need to see the reverse of what I'm seeing. I'll take a picture before we finished so I can put it up on the screen. So yes, I think you know. One thing that I excized from this episode, as I said earlier, is a discussion of the New Jersey drones. But I do think it's it's very astute that you guys point out that these airships were similar to the drones in the sense that they were a not impossible technology for the time, but the way in which it was appearing seemed very bizarre and somewhat impossible. And it came into my brain because of the hangaround aspect, like people were like still here, yeah, still seeing still here. But then they're still walking to the grocery store. Now you've got place to sit be I have to go buy a very heavy wool swim outfit too, because the summer is around the corner. Yeah, they got to go take a dip. We did an episode on Sharks where they were just like, no one knew that sharks exist. Well, no, no one knew. My biggest fear. Yeah, well, well you've probably listened to the Sharks episode, but you if you haven't, you should. You'll get the creepy Crawley's but also. Listened to half of it and then had it turned off. Okay. One of the things that shocked me to the point that I remember researching it more than I do some facts on the show was that for a long time, people didn't think that sharks were really that much of a threat to people, like they you know, pirates and stuff. Knew that you know that you know, if someone went overboard there would be you know, sharks are around. It was dangerous, but generally it was belie eve that sharks, uh, the people were too big, and that if a shark swam near you, you So. There was somebody at one point there was like, oh, you're. So cute, and all of society geez was like, oh, they're cool, because like there's no way they can possibly tackle a meal as big as humans. But also going to the beach for fun and pleasure was not as was not a giant cultural thing until I forget what it was, but like the nineteen twenties or something, and as soon as people started going to beaches and started disappearing the next year. Also women were like, I'm wearing a fucking full outfit of wool. Yeah, and I disappeared without a shark. I got in the water and sank to the bottom. Like the central where I'm from, Warro Bay, that's the guy is like one of the highest concentrations of great white breeding grounds. So growing up white great whites, tons of great whites right off the shore, and like people, a lot of shark attacks. So I grew up not being so terrified of sharks because like Jaws was like very real to me. Yeah, I mean, sharks are This thought just struck me now. But I wonder how much of an increase in shark attacks there were when people started surfing, because surfing get bit all the time because they look more like an elongated animal than a person if you're a shark bottom. And I feel like Steven Spielberg was able to create way bigger scare factor for sharks, and he ever where with aliens for sure. Yeah, he'll do thirty forty alien movies and never have the effect. I just saw Jaws and Theaters not too long ago. It's amazing. Ripped, Yeah, yeah, that movie is the best movie. Do you think there's a correlation between sharks and aliens? Though? How so, I'll don't get him. I always say that. I always say that the sea is the space is space space. Yeah, and then every time I say it, he's like. Oh yeah, the second half of the episode, I'm just not talking. You're animated, you're a different person. Yeah. No, you'll never I don't. I don't think. I mean, you'll never make aliens really as scary as sharks. Because aliens are to this point theoretical and sharks are very real. But what if tomorrow a shark was caught and and it was like, don't kill me, I'm an alien, And then you're like, oh, fuck, sharks were aliens. You'd be like, aliens are as scary as sharks. Yeah, well, look, I'll riff off of that in a way that is. You have to octop a lot of episode. Are we going to go down the octopus? Are aliens? I thought that was going to be like one of the main things we talked about. No, I wasn't mention them, but they do seem alien. Ass you're obsessed with tentacles. I have had my fill. So there was never an official explanation for what people saw across America at the turn of the twentieth century when these airships seem to invade our country and they're. Ropping octopus on the. Well, oh, that's the one thing I was going to say about the drones and these airships. Is one of my favorite, I think kind of ridiculous alien theories that I've seen online is and it's a theory that became very popular post drone sightings in New Jersey. Was that. Well, no, you understand, these are UFOs. They just disguised themselves to look like technology that we are. Normalized. Yeah, so that they blend in better, and that that's what these airships were in the eighteen nineties, were actually aliens disguised ridiculous as Captain Nemo. Hey, I'm going to take the form of cutting edge technology. You've never seen. That's ridiculous. Well, if they had showed up as a fuck and whatever they used to call bicycles, a b millipede or whatever, that makes. Sense for the Jersey drones, but not for this. Yeah, if they had showed up as the cast of Jersey Shore, that's that's different. That's true. Ed you've you've I think you derailed the episode. No, I think you've. I think you've inviting me on because this is. A good episode, gonna be forty hours log. There was never an official explanation for what people saw at the turn of the twentieth century, nor was there ever an explanation for the next alien invasion that unfolded over the skies of America, and this time shots were fired. Oh shit. According to here in Los Angeles, yeah, I know this. According to Celebrate California and a medium article that I've linked to in the show notes quote. On the evening of February twenty fourth, nineteen forty two, radars picked up an unidentified target one hundred and twenty miles west of Los Angeles. Anti aircraft batteries were alerted at two fifteen am and were put on green alert, ready to fire. A few minutes later, the Army Air Force kept its pursuit. Those seemed like two different things to me, but this is a quote from the article. The Army Air Force kept its pursuit planes on the ground, preferring to await indications of the scale and direction of any attack before committing its limited force. Radars tracked the approaching target to within a few miles of the coast, and at two twenty one am, the regional controller ordered a blackout. Now, blackout is something that we've never witnessed in our lifetime, or we've witnessed blackouts because the power goes out. But in the nineteen forties, during World War Two, they would blackout entire cities so that they couldn't be seen from above by people who might be looking to drop bombs. So at two twenty one am, in Los Angeles. The entire city was blacked out. Yeah, and to your point, Army Air Force was pre nineteen forty seven, oh okay, nineteen forty seven we officially split established the Air Force. Prior to that, Army was like the Air Force was part of the Army. Gotcha. And I feel like I only know this because my grandmother was like a whack or like women of the Air Corps, Army Corps or whatever, and so I know there was like a differentiate they split sick. Yeah, that's cool. But also if case people don't know when you want to meet me there this year, because we'll do it every year on the anniversary of this. They still do it. They hold it in like San Pedro or whatever wherever it was, and you can go and they still turn the searchlights on on that night and they people dance to old time music like the Ink Spots and shit, and people dress in like they dress like Dapper Day at Disney, where they like wear old nineteen forties clothing and men wear I don't know, thrift store bought forties Army uniforms, which I won't do because fuck soul and valor. But uh, yeah, they do it. They hold an event every year there still to like commemorate that, and they like have dancing and drinks. And then at the time it originally happened, they stopped the dancing and drinks and put on like any like a siren, and shoot rockets in the sky. I don't I think they do fireworks maybe, but they do. It's pretty fun. They've been doing it for a long time. Well, so get this, this is what they're commemorating. The blackout happened, and then the information center was flooded with reports of enemy planes, even though the mysterious object that they tracked in from the sea seemed to have vanished. At two forty three am, planes were reported in your Line Beach, and a few minutes later a coast a coast artillery colonel spotted about twenty five planes at twelve thousand feet over Los Angeles, and at three h six am, four batteries of anti aircraft artillery opened fire, whereupon the air over Los Angeles erupted like a volcano. This is where things get kind of weird. What happened on the West coast A lot of these. Well, I mean, there was a European theater in a Pacific theater, and we're the closest to the Pacific, I guess. Despite the intensity of the barrage, no enemy planes were shot down and no damage was reported on the ground. The only casualties were three people who died from heart attacks during the chaos. I don't know. That's how I feel about dogs. On fourth of July, how many. Event ago, in the aftermath of the Battle of La the United States government claimed it was a false alarm. Representatives and military commanders stated that the enemy planes had likely been weather balloons, which we had had just wait when was Roswell nineteen forty seven, so we would hear weather balloons again in nineteen forty seven, and that the explosion of anti aircraft shells and the sky had caused the sun of explosions on the ground. However, many met this explanation skeptically, including several eyewitnesses who insisted they had seen aircraft. And this is where this gets really interesting, because, according to a city full of eyewitnesses and reporters, whatever came soaring over Los Angeles that night does not sound anything like what. The military claimed. According to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, one witness put the number of planes at fifty three were shot down over the ocean. A battery near Vermont Avenue takes out another. Head of town. The headline the headline of. The Examiners War extra red air battle rages over Los Angeles, and even the normally more stayed Los Angeles Times said quote roaring out of a brilliant moonlit western sky. Foreign aircraft flying both in large formation and singly flew over southern California early today. It drew heavy barrages of anti aircraft fire. That's amazing, the. First ever to sound over United States continent mental soil against an enemy invader. There is even a famous photo of the chaos that erupted in the skies above La. But I have it, I do. It is justustratingly hard to discern what is happening. Oh that's sick. That is a sick I want that. I kind of want that. I would never my body, but I would. I do like that as like a print. Yeah, that's like a dope friend. You drink enough, truly's you're gonna wake up a row. Guys, we're all getting scared all the time. Tattoos today. But yes, this is a famous photo. Obviously you can't see really what is being shot at there. To be a premiere. Yes, yeah, it looks like But the weirdest thing that makes this feel like an alien invasion are the descriptions of what some eyewitnesses saw. Because a number of these people didn't even see these planes that people swore they saw. They saw something that sounds a lot like a UFO. These quotes come from the February twenty sixth and nineteen forty two edition of the La Times. Quote. We went to the window and saw a brilliant red object. It was clearly visible against the background of the blacked out city. It was moving slowly across the sky toward the sea. Then it turned, well, I mean it turned and seemed to come straight at us. It was a huge thing, cylindrical in shape, with brilliant spots of light all over it. We were terrified and dived for cover under the dining room table. Another man said, there was no doubt about it. It was a plane, a big one, and it was hovering slowly and noiselessly over the ocean. It was a fearsome thing to watch. We were all paralyzed with fright. So obviously eyewitness reports not always the most reliable, especially in wartime during a heightened state of alert. But this mystery or active Japanese and tournament camps. Yes era, You know, there was a large gap between the official explanation that these anti aircraft guns accidentally fired on a weather balloon and dozens of planes dog fighting was something mysterious in the sky. Yeah, I mean that's to me. I guess I would again do nothing about it. I would just sit there in awe like these people. But just you see some wild shit, you have to just be like I would also write a newspaper article about it. Be like last night I saw some wild shit. Yeah, like that's that's you can call it an air balloon, you can call it whatever. But like last night I went outside and saw these glowing craziness. Yeah, and then you guys fired upon it. Like I'm like, this seems like the government. Now it's this comes a conspiracy corner. But I'm saying, like we do enough for these episodes where like nobody gaslights like the government. It seems like, well, I I'll put forth this theory, put that a pin because I do think I do think that the Battle of la As this came to be known is a really interesting moment in both American history, and you. Would love to time travel to that night, but. You can't every year go to this San Pagri. We're doing it this year. We'll book some fucking posts on the internet. You allie were going. And obviously Feelings could probably put on a little hocking uniform. They made be size uniforms so we can we have costume design our friends. But I think it's a really interesting turning point in UFO history and in American history because it does come before Roswell as this sort of we know something happened. And I think when the government approaches these sorts of stories, I do think there are bad actors. Sometimes I do think there's a malicious intent in these cover ups, but I think generally the attitude is just look, there's millions of people in this country, and when something like this happens, they just want to know. They just want an explanation. And if you go if what you really know is well, the Japanese sent some planes, we don't know if we shot any of them down, and they might have been taking pictures or they might have been trying to hit a target. We don't really know, it's just easier to go, guess what, it was a fucking weather balloon. We made a big oopsie, you know, and people just go, Okay, well it's seemed I mean, that just happened. I hate to bring up modern news, but that just happened with like the New Mexico Airport shut down, where it was like, actually it was whatever, and nobody talked about it ever again. Yeah, yeah, you're right, and then I just forgot about it. I can think about it until right the second. Yeah, And sometimes that probably is to cover up something shady, and I think sometimes it's just a kind of systemic like, look, here's the answer. I don't know, you know, well, like they'll figure it out internally, but you just need to know this and everything's fine. Sometimes it's not fine. That's why it's scary. Rarely it's not fine. I think, as far as we know. What year is forty two, that was forty two, Rosbell's forty. Seven, forty seven, which is when the first split off from the army. But it is funny like this has so many people who witness it and blah blah blah, and it's commemorated all these years later. Every year with this crazy thing like this event you can go to. It would be kind of like, do you remember years ago, which is the most fucked up thing ever? Years ago, when like Hawaii had that alert that like a nuclear miss or like some missile attack was happening. They're like, oh, our bad, it was like a test or whatever. Terrifying. It would be like if every year people dressed up and danced for that event is what this is in LA. But yeah, we should definitely go. We will. This brings us to the last invasion that we're going to discuss on the show today. Although as I've threatened both of you with there may be a part two of this episode. You might be the first person come back for a part. There is. There is. There are so many places to go with these alien invasion stories. But the most famous invasion I think that's ever hit our shores occurred a decade after the Battle of La in July nineteen fifty two, when another American city was besieged by something mysterious in their skies, but this time the city in question was Washington, d C. Okay, I found a website called we Are the Mighty Dot. What I need to know the dot. I think it's just a dot com. Okay, sure, they seem to be some sort of like a military history website. It sound like a band. This is a this is a well reported incident. I felt that their description of it was fairly concise and nice and neat, which is why I use we are the Mighty. They detail the events like this. In the summer of nineteen fifty two, Washington, d C became the center of one of the most extraordinary UFO events in American history. Over two consecutive weekends, July nineteenth to twentieth and July twenty six to twenty seventh, radar operators at both National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base detected dozens of unidentified objects moving across restricted airspace. These objects did not simply appear as static anomalies. They moved with purpose, accelerated rapidly, and changed direction in ways that defied the capabilities of any known aircraft. Commercial airline pilots and air traffic controllers witnessed the same strange lights darting across the night sky. Some described them as glowing spheres or streaks of white light. And what made these sightings impossible to dismiss was the simultaneous confirmation across multiple radar systems, all of which aligned with visual reports from trained observers. This is a question for you, Yeah, Andrews, if I'm not mistaken, is in Maryland. It's on the. Coast, It's on the water, Battle of Los Angeles, kind of Long Beach, San Pedro Water, it seems like. And the New Jersey is on the coast, or at least like right there. It seems weird that we don't have a lot of alien invasion stories from Kansas or Kentucky or because they come from the sky. It sound like they had to take a boat here. Well, it's interesting that all these events it seems like we've spoken about today have been coast. Coasts, and at least in the sightings of the drones, people did claim to see them coming in and out of the water itself, that they were launching from beneath the water. For the New Jersey Joe from the water. Yes, now these were not seen going in and out of the water. Ever. I do think the middle of the country has lots of alien activity and a lot of abductions. You got a lot of cattle mutilations. You watch McCall. It's in the cornfields. You got yeah, you got those are yeah signs. Yeah, we're just describing. I got a lot of UFOs to show up at, like nuclear facilities that tend to be in the middle of the country. No, there, tend to be in the on the water because nuclear facilities in an insane amount of water to stake. No. No, no, nuclear missile launch siloce Oh okay, got nuclear weapons, but not nuclear power plane power plan. So the situation escalated to the point that the US Air Force ordered fighter jets to scramble, and pilots made several attempts to intercept these things, but each time they approach the objects, they either vanished from radar or accelerated out of visual range. Eggs and and planes. Is anything else that scrambles my mind? Yeah? Okay, well that's like some fucking that's your brain on drugs. That's fear of trips episodes. Yeah. In some cases, radar operators reported that the objects seem to circle behind the fighter jets as if anticipating their movements, and to those who want. To ask, what got your ass? To those who monitored the situation firsthand, the objects displayed intelligence control and technology beyond anything the United States or the world had at that time. Quote. Growing national anxieties compelled the US Air Force to respond publicly. On July twenty ninth, nineteen fifty two, the Air Force held a massive press conference, its largest since the end of World War. Two, saying I wish we had never made our own organization army would have had to deal with this fucking five years earlier. The briefing was led by Major General John Samford, director of Air Force Intelligence, who addressed the nation with it. Him and his son would later have a successful Junkyard business. Samford, not Sandford. Oh come on, now, that's on you. You didn't say it in the way that I can understand. I'm three truly is in? He three truly unruly. In He attributed the radar sightings to a temperature inversion, a meteorological condition which layers of warm and cool air can bend radar waves, producing misleading returns. Oh, that's a good answer. The visual sightings, he claimed, could be explained as misidentified stars or meteors. He maintained that these unexplained ca did not pose a national security threat, but his statement, which was delivered on national television left the door open to possibilities the Air Force could not fully address. I think there's two incredibly interesting connections to note in this final tale of alien invasion over the skies of America. The first is that this case is one of the examples cited as a potential counter intelligence operation in Mirage Men, my favorite books. Everyone who listens to the show knows he loves it. The theory basically goes that what was witnessed was a test of some kind of Russian technology, and they wanted to measure what our response to it would be. The key thing, though, is that what was witnessed was not necessarily an advanced kind of flying machine, but essentially some kind of lure designed to look like an advanced flying machine, so that we would point all of our radar and all of our systems at it, and they could gather data about what we could observe in what we couldn't observe. Rip got blessed to America v. Russia. I feel still going, and not in the way that exciting the way that it used to. Yeah, like now we're all like China, But it's like that's ridiculous. As long as people keep telling my niece and nephew that you should learn Mandarin and to make more money. It feels like we're not actually adversaries. So I missed the time when this was happening. Yeah, Anna wants to send Felix to a Chinese preschool. There you go. I think she's probably not wrong. Well, she grew up in the South. No, but she did like she's away. She speaks Korean or something a little bit. Yeah. Anyway, Yeah, kids are going to be speaking Mandarin. Probably could so, Yes, it'll never make America better, like our adversarial attitude with Russia. I agree with you that we don't have the kind of adversarial relationship with any country the way that we used to have with Russia. I think that's probably a good thing because that was leading to the end of the world. So it also led to a lot of sick advance it did it? Did it? Certainly did? I also, though, think about this story when I hear stories about the tic TACs witnessed by pilots and sailors off the coast of San Diego. The New York Times of failing in New York Times from previous in this episode mentioned they put headlines out about the tic TACs. Yeah, it seems like a number of people witness something extremely inexplicable shooting around the ocean at impossible speeds. But it's really not that different from this nineteen fifty two wave where a lot of the there is some eyewitness corroboration and testimony, but a lot of the evidence comes from people not being able to get a lock on an object that they can't tell what it is. Radar is going out technological problems that seem like it's an advanced craft when really it might be a drone that is firing some kind of advanced signals or lasers. It's making it look like it's popping all over the radar. It's two things. It's the Mission Impossible movie where they were like, oh, we're getting fired on dead Reckoning part one or two where they were like, oh, it's it's firing on us, Oh my god, but it was just the AI telling them that actually a torpedo coming. But also Independence Day where they were like, I mean, the radar can be on the fritz, but sonar right is for sure correct and they were like, wow, look at that crazy. D This we don't have. But to your point about the water. I think it's a it's possible that aliens live underwater. Occupy. But I do wonder when I hear some of these stories, particularly the tic TACs, because you know, a lot of the reports coming out off the coast of San Diego from like I forget when the original tic Tac thing was two thousand and five or something. It was, it was quite a but not before. It was well before we heard about it, well before we heard about it. But but my point is, Flornado featured prominently in uh some like It Hot. Yeah. And also are they in San Diego in Top Gun? They are corn absolutely yeah. No, No, they're in Miramar, which is close by Coronado. Is more like Navy seals training. My point is, you know, I know guy stuff. It's my point is that I find it curious. I'm willing to believe a lot of the stories, the TikTok stories. It seems like there's something strange going on there. But I do find it curious that so many of these sightings are coming off of a handful of particular battle cruisers in a particular place off the coast of America. And if these really are aliens, or even if it's an alien intelligence that's been here a long time. I'd be curious to know why they seem to be so interested in just a couple of American battleships that don't really seem that special in most ways. And that makes me think, well, you know, who would be interested in American battleships would be Russia or China or whatever. But it doesn't explain everything. So you know, there's a poster directly behind Chris, and I wonder if I can change the camera to there, which I've been thinking about the whole time you've been speaking. Are you controlling this camera remotely? At it? Now? I can do it with my hand. Does that camera look like it can be right there at all? Look for the red fund right. There behind Chris. I'm doing it with my hand. Is a movie called The Final Countdown, which fucking slaps we I can zoom in. I forgot zoom down? All right there? It is The Final Countdown? Have you ever seen this film? Chris? I actually haven't seen The Final Countdown? So basically, The Final Countdown is a modern day aircraft carrier is, for whatever reason, transported back to nineteen forties World War two and or with the Korean War one of. The kind of Philadelphia Experiment kind of thing. We're so close to it's back, it's back anyway, you're going to be crooked the rest of the anyway. Is this not closing? Help? It is a movie about a modern day, you know, aircraft carrier gets sent back to like World War two, ur the Korean War, where they were like, since we're here, we have all these like modern jet you can change in modern shit and we can just like blow up fucking whomever you thought. The butterfly was going to have an effect future these motherfuckers. Yeah, so it's like measure Smith's versus F fourteen's. It's no fucking brainer, right, But I think about that. So, how many of the do you think of these alien invasion stories we've heard were actually time traveling military? There is there's a lot of people who believed the whole time. Also that I've had to pee this whole time. Those are the two things going through my heads that I've had to pee And what if it was a time traveling military, do. You want to go back in time when we took a break and go pee. I feel we're close to the end. We're getting close. Yeah. The other reason that I think the nineteen fifty two Washington UFO invasion is notable, and particularly notable right now, is because of a discovery made by the Vasco project. And this is much harder to explain than the idea that there was some sort of crazy technology being tested against us. I know we talked about VASCO somewhere, maybe on a live show. Memory of it and you to catch you up? Is that where you buy things in bulk. No, No, to catch you up if you aren't familiar, VASCO stands for vanishing and you can put these letters on screen vanishing and appearing sources over a century of observation. Okay, they disappear. This is everyone does this as like a fun joke and up being a ton of Yeah. But also, where's the over So why is it not Vozoka? I think they just didn't use that. Oh yeah, here we go. It's you know, they get to pick and choose what letters they're going to use. I don't even know what costco is. This is vasco No, but I understand. But now that I'm thinking about acronyms, I don't think it's like cost over surplus like I'm saying, so cost goes it cost company? Is it cost consideration? I don't know. That's a great question. It's an episode some research and find. Out the day I found out Smart and Final, which no one who's listening outside of Los Angeles would know that that it's actually named after two people that blew my mind. Yeah, it's their last names. It's like David Smart, What yeah. I mean Destiny, Yeah truly. Yeah. To catch you up if you aren't familiar, do you need to go peace? I have to pee so bad legs under the table. I I know. We've talked about VASCO somewhere. It might have been in a live show or in a New Fear un Locked, which if you're not subscribed to the Patreon to get the New fearon locked, head over there and do that. You're missing out on half the shows that we release. But to catch you up if you aren't familiar with VASCO, VASCO stands for Vanishing and Appearing Sources over a century of observation. It's the name given to a project led by Beatrice Valario at Stockholm University, and the primary aim of this project was to find vanishing stars, or essentially light sources that were visible in old photographs of the sky that are no longer there today. Well, yes, stars disappear, that they burn out, they would go away, and. They take them the emails. I know, he eats fucking planets. I'm just saying. And this project was to try to make a full catalog of the stars that we used to be able to see that we now can no longer see, and that would help us understand both natural. Ways that stars might disappear. As well as unknown or potentially artificial stellar processes, which would be the idea that somebody has a civilization has potentially built a dice in sphere around a star, which would be like a way of gathering energy from a star, but would then make it impossible for us to see the star because they've built a structure. Around so that the same people who make the fans. It's the same name. I don't think it's the same scientific because. That I don't know how the fuck those fans work. This works, So are their magicians that family to do this. Beatrice Vlario and her team and also a a It sort of became an open source project where they've sent a lot of these photos out to citizen scientists are literally comparing photos of the sky taken before nineteen fifties, so before any satellites or any man made objects would be in the sky, and then comparing those two photos that were taken much more recently the present day to figure out where you see you star disappear. So far, they've examined around six hundred million celestial objects in the US Naval Observatory catalog with the current catalog of the pan Stars Project, which is the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System. I ask rapid response to what. Yeah, exactly right? That seems that. Seems more like an alien invasion. Yeah, a question than anything. Yeah, what are they up to? According to the data, they found one hundred and fifty thousand objects for which there is no equivalent in the New Sky Atlas and on its own. You know what, if your star's. Gone, it's probably gone. It's gone. It's fucking it was a cheap star. It was on its way out. I mean, your star is probably not long for this world either that. We're going to get you. We'll make it a new star as best we can. Well, ask what's got fresh fresh st Yeah, on its own, it's not that strange that one hundred and fifty thousand objects disappeared. They expected a lot of changes in the night. Sky, ridiculous to expect. What's strange is that they've discovered points of light that are visible on one plate in the pre nineteen fifties photo sets, but not the plate taken directly before or directly after. Oh shit, they were cruising anxiety. They were like they were just passing thrill. That the object coppeured and disappeared in the space of minutes or hours. That is was the terminal exposure. So modest, rare modesty of the shit you up? What is it? You? So this got a couple of rare modesty UFOs. The positions of these objects don't correlate to any known stars, and we're taking. A look in the commerce for those positions. The photos were taken before any man made objects were sent into space. They also appear significantly less often in the Earth's shadow, suggesting that these objects might not be self illuminating, but are reflecting light from the sun. Oh shit. Interesting. As an example, I have this image that will put up in the show. If you're watching it, keep I keep expecting him arounds like Ronald McDonald. So it's kind of hard to see. But you've got they're traveling in groups. On the right, you can see three points of light circled that are no longer there. In the same time, and one of them is there on the light. Two of them are there, not the same points of light, but the same point. But there's a couple of little baby boys. But there's like a big fatty and a big fatty in the. Top everything within the circles that have disappeared. Wouldn't I mean, I was. Going to cut that out, but yeah, I guess I have to keep it in. Wouldn't it be a. Lot of different variables in this as far as like the photography, like stuff in debris in the sky. If they used my weird Amazon telescope. So they have statistically tried to account for all that stuff. All these photos were the pre nineteen fifties photos were taken by the same telescope at the same observe. Now screaming all of this there. They've tried to account for whether or not there were any kind of imperfections in the glass of the telescopes that might account for some of this. Spring at Rick and Morty twice in one episode. But I do love the like Morty mindblowers, it was a smudge, you're saying it's a smudge on the lens when he sees the man in the moon. They are not a smudge. Summer. They are very confident that they have accounted for anything else that could explain these appearing and disappearing lights. Okay, this is where we come back around to the story of the nineteen fifty two invasion of Washington, DC. Because whatever these objects are that they were photographing in the sky, they appeared and disappeared in the sky on that very same day in nineteen fifty two. According to an article in Supercluster, there are other strange correlations too. Quote their entire data set spans two thousand, seven hundred and eighty days, beginning in nineteen forty nine and running up to nineteen fifty six. Transients are seen in the Palamar plates. Transits are seen in my neighborhood, because these tell you that much. This telescope is the Palamar telescope here in southern California. So these transients are seen in the Palamar plates on three hundred and nine of those days. Of course, they could. Have been in the sky on each of those twenty seven hundred and eighteen days, but not always in the telescope's field of view, right. Like, whatn't a falling star like a dine's like whatever? Well, it's it's the speed with which like things can appear and disappear. Like if you if you looked at the sky and you saw a meteor write or something burning out, that would be one thing. But this is outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Got it. Now, they don't know how far. From the Earth these points of light are. They don't They're not able to measure. Was this a very very tiny thing up close or a very very big thing far away? Get better jobs. Well, this is nineteen forty nine and nineteen fifty six. There's only so much could do. Sure, These these objects are seen on three hundred and nine of those days, and there were one hundred and twenty four atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in that same period. Why that's outrageous Based on joint probably different time, Based on joint probabilities, we would expect fourteen transients to occur by chance alone on one day after a nuclear test, says Valerio's colleague, Stephen Brule. But why because just statistically that's how many you could expect. But why are there transience period and why are there like fourteen that after we do tests? Well, are they common to be like what are you doing or here? Or are they just meant like at all times? I think I think he's saying based on the number of whatever these things are. I think this guy used to come here and explain himselfs. I think what they're saying is based on the total number of these things that are seen, whatever they are. The probability would be that you could expect to see up to fourteen of them in a shot on a day after a nuclear. Test, and helping notice that the multiple very good. The number of transients actually observed one day after a nuclear test was twenty three, which is sixty four percent more than expected if it were to be by chance. There's only a one to one hundred chance that this association would occur by chance. They also reported an eight and a half percent increase in probability that a transient would be seen for each reported UFO sighting. There's less than a one in one thousand chants that those findings were due to random chance. In their paper published in Scientific Reports, Vilarial and Brule suggest that there are only two possible explanations. One is that there are some kind of unknown atmospheric phenomenon triggered by nuclear weapons tests, though they deemed that to be unlikely not very exciting, so I would deem it to be unlikely too. I mean, you could have actually started the sentence with published anywhere that would publish them. Part of what's crazy about their reports here is that they have been published in well review viewed scientific publications, and all of their science is open to peer review and is currently going through multiple rounds of peer review currently currently with to this point, not too much pushback in terms of here's an alternative explanation. There are some people who are saying, well, just broadly, it is very unlikely that aliens are visiting Earth, so therefore I won't ascribe to that theory. But there is not much in the way other than some kind of unknown. Yeah, they don't have an answer thing. There's no answer, and we can't We can't test this anymore because the Partial Test Ban Treaty does not allow for atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. That's nice. So the only other. The only other explanation is that whatever these things are are alien probes curious about humanity's nuclear ambitions for valarial there's no doubt, she says, quote, no natural or instrumental explanation proposed so far accounts for all seven properties simultaneously. By she means there's a there's a list of seven that they say have to be accounted for to explain it. Seven seven Once. Again, that's going to have a seven and seven as soon as this is done. Way, the only hypothesis currently consistent with the full set of observations are artificial objects and high altitude orbits prior to Sputnik, which is where we will leave this article, or leave. With Russia doing something first. Well, now, the other thing that I didn't specifically say is that there's not like five or ten of these things. They catalogued thousands and thousands of whatever these things are. So it's not just like, oh, maybe someone sent a satellite to space a decade before we knew that they did. This would be like. Somebody was launching barrages of things into space and had no idea. So we'll leave this episode there with the idea that maybe the scariest thing isn't the threat of an alien invasion, It's. That they are already here, maybe in the oceans, probably in the oceans. Before we let you go, Olivia, this has been a marathon episode. I don't know how. You're fun as hell. Can I come back? You can come back. This episode only takes us up to alien invasions of the nineteen fifties. I was gonna say, we have so much more ground to cover. We have battle Los Angeles. I'll happily talk about. Yeah, we got a lot to cover. We have to put alien invasion on the fear tier before we go. So, Olivia, you're our guest this week. Where would you place alien invasions on your fear tier? Zero being not afraid at all? Ten being the scariest thing you can imagine. That's a that's a tough one, because an alien invasion sometimes sounds kind of sexy and fun. Well especially everyone will touch me coming out in the area. Touch me, coming to theaters tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. You know, I would say five. I think my curiosity of it makes it sound exciting. You said sharks ten? Ten? Ten? Sure, ed, what about you? Oh, I'm thinking I know he's coming down from his truly, No. I wanted to grab a fourth, truly, but I just felt I could feel it my bone. That'll really wreck my day because only because they're unruly. I'm gonna go I kind of want to say, hi, I kind of want to go like eight, yeah, because it just seems like the day we run into something that's objectively an alien invasion and not a skid daddle boy or whatever just cruising. Yeah, we're kind of we're cooked, right. Yeah, it's stilling to say five because when it happens, it's a fucking ten. Yeah, So I would say like eight because I'm like a like a little I'm like people like me, so maybe aliens would too, So maybe I'll be made a court gester or something on their ship. So it's not the worst. But like, so I would say eight though, as in like I would turn to whomever's next to wee being like, are you fucking seeing this? Are we going to be enslaved? And then as time goes on they might they might like what I'm into the then tonight, so I'm gonna go in eight. I'm gonna go eight as well, because my curiosity is great, and I would of all the ways to die. Dying in an alien invasion is probably pretty sick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dying alone and you're seeing something that no one else has ever seen and all that, and I think that's very cool. But one thing that frightens me about alien invasions that we didn't even really get into discussing here is like part one the ways in which you might. Die in an alien invasion. Oh god, could be unimaginably horrific. Because there's things we can't even imagine. Yeah, we think of explosions or. Whatever, that's it called whatever in the sky, Fire in the sky. Fire in the sky was truly burp. Firing the sky is really scary. Fire in the sky is very scary. But yeah, we don't even know what they would do to our bodies, what they would do to our minds, what they would do to our flesh, you know. So I think it's the degree of terror should it happen, is extremely high. So change my number day eight. It makes all right, You're you're up to eight, all right, Trims, that's a great place. That's a great place to be on the fear tier right below sharks for Olivia, And I think flesh eating bacteria for us. So with that we will leave the topic here for now and until next time. Go check out Olivia's movie Touch Me. Go find Olivia on Instagram at. I mean Olivia Taylor Dudley easy to find is such a long name? Is there anywhere else on the Internet that people can I mean probably No. That's my main spot, all right, So check out Olivia on Instagram. Check out the movie Touch Me this weekend. And thank you so much for being here, Olivia. This was awesome. Thanks for having me. It was an honor. We'll do a. Part two until next time. I'm Chris Klari and I'm Ed Vacola. The show is Scared all the Time and we will see you in the Alien Invasion. Hope not bye bye forever. Scared all the Time as Cope by Chris Calari and Edvacola. Written by Chris Calari, Edited by Edvacola. Additional support and Keeper of Sanity is test Fightful. 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