All language subtitles for Cosmosis - UFOs & A New Reality (2024) - S01E01 - The UFO Rabbit Hole

[pensive music playing]

[Woods] What I saw that night,
I can never forget it.

Ellsworth Air Force Base,
November 1977.

[narrator] At the time, Mario
Woods served in the Air Force

on the Security Police
Response Team

in the 44th Missile
Security Squadron.

That night in mid-November, Mario and
his new partner, Michael Johnson,

were guarding a nuclear launch facility in
a remote area of Ellsworth Air Force Base

in rural South Dakota.

The weather was freezing,
the sky was clear.

[Woods] And I just happened to look
to the east and I see these lights.

I didn't hear any motors whirring or
nothing. I go, "That's awful strange."

So I thought,
"What could that be?"

All of a sudden this idea
comes into my mind.

Sometimes at sea,
they would use lights

instead of radio communication
to talk to a sister ship.

And I just went "blip, blip,
blip, blip, blip" like that.

And all of a sudden the lights
went off, the lights went on,

lights went off,
lights came back on.

I go, "Wow, that's interesting."

[narrator] Mario called his partner
outside and repeated the exercise.

The lights in the sky
blinked back again.

When Mario tried a third time, the lights
in the sky turned off and stayed off.

[Woods] I said, "Well, I guess
the show's over."

And he didn't say anything. He just
turned and started to walk back in.

[narrator] Hours later,
just after midnight,

their flight security controller
received a call.

There was a major security breach detected
at the November 5 nuclear launch site.

Mario and his partner headed off to
investigate the CID 4 perimeter alert.

They arrived to a scene that would
change the course of Mario's life.

[Woods] So we arrived at site
just a few moments before 1 a.m.,

and there sat in front of us,

or up on top of November 5,

an object that was the size
of a Walmart building,

sitting 10 feet in the air
directly on top of a blast door

of November 5 missile site,
a Minuteman II

one-point megaton
weapon missile site.

Sitting motionless, quiet, no
whirring motors, no anything.

There's no cockpit. There's no access.
There's no writing.

All I saw was like an electrical
discharge on the exterior

of this gargantuan vehicle.

And it was a vehicle.

So as we got closer to this thing,
Michael Johnson never said a word.

We pull up at a 45 degree angle.

There's no way that I'm
going on that site.

The fear just came out of nowhere.
The--

Whatever fear I can describe
was just everywhere for me.

You know, we're humans.
We can be afraid too, right?

Something greater than us,
naturally, it's gonna invoke fear.

Uh...

When we pulled up, I remember saying,
"That's the object we were seeing."

No comment from Michael Johnson,
none whatsoever.

All of a sudden, the
light became so bright.

[tense music playing]

Dust particles moving through
the cabin like in slow motion.

Out of nowhere, this black ball,
it just shot out of nowhere,

and it came right down
in front of the hood.

It just went right, left,
up, down, stationary,

moved, and then just went...

...psssstz, and it was gone.

I kept saying, "Michael, Michael,
what's going on? What's wrong, man?"

No answer. No nothing.

I just sensed it.

And here, there's these--

There's four beings, there's three
small and one tall behind the three,

and they just approached me.

They didn't-- They weren't walking.
They were just gliding.

And I hear in my mind,
in my body, "Do not fear."

The clearest resonance
of a sound that I can't--

I can't even describe
how clear it was.

All of a sudden, I was-- I guess
I was just out, completely out.

And it was a flash. I opened
my eyes, gasping for air,

which was fine, and I
was in total blackness.

And I said, "Michael,"
I said, "where are we?"

And now all of a sudden,
it's after 6.

So we had five hours
of complete blackness.

[narrator] Mario and his partner were
found miles from where they disappeared.

There were no tire tracks or footprints
in the deep mud surrounding the vehicle.

[Woods] Can't just let it go. You
have to have an answer to the why.

[theme music playing]

[King] In December 2017, a bombshell
report dropped in theNew York Times,

written by Leslie Kane, Ralph
Blumenthal, and Helene Cooper

that exposed a secret
UFO program

running in the Department
of Defense called AATIP:

the Advanced Aerospace
Threat Identification Program.

This program had been involved
in studying military UAP cases,

three of which were documented with
leaked videos from Navy pilots

who had run into these anomalous craft
off both the east and west coast.

[pilot 1] That's not an L&S,
though, is it? It's not--

[pilot 2] That is an L&S, dude.

- [pilot 1] Well, if there's--
- [pilot 2] Look at that thing!

This article marked a watershed
moment for the field of ufology,

where suddenly there was hope that
more serious conversations about UFOs

would reach the mainstream.

[Chase] So the 2017
New York Times article

marked the beginning
of a remarkable push

for greater transparency
around the UFO issue.

And this was really
significant for two reasons.

The first was that
this was the first time

that we were seeing UFOs
being taken seriously

in a major media outlet
like the New York Times.

And the second was that
the release of this article

actually coincided with the
release of three videos

that had been taken
by Navy pilots

that seemed to show
these extraordinary objects

that they were encountering
in the skies.

And one of these videos was from one of
the most remarkable incidents on record,

the Nimitz incident.

[ominous music playing]

I was off the coast of California flying
a training exercise with my squadron.

We launched on
November 14th, 2004,

expecting to practice
our air-to-air maneuvers.

And so we were surprised and
alarmed when we were interrupted

and asked to divert to
some real-world tasking.

I think that the air traffic controllers
on the other ship who were directing us

thought that they had a glitch
in their radar.

They were seeing these strange
tracks, these strange hits.

And so when we merged and were able to
pick up a visual tally on this object,

which we now affectionately
refer to as the Tic Tac,

I think that everybody was surprised
that there was something "there" there.

[King] What Navy pilots Alex Dietrich
and Commander David Fravor saw that day

was truly anomalous.

It was a giant white craft, the size of a
school bus, and shaped like a giant Tic Tac.

There were no visible means of propulsion,
no flight surfaces, no exhaust.

According to our physics, this thing
shouldn't have been able to fly.

But it wasn't just flying.

It was making crazy hairpin
turns, stopping on a dime,

and shooting off
at insane speeds

that would kill any human pilot.

But even more stunning
is the fact that the Tic Tac

was tracked dropping
from 80,000 feet in the air,

which is about two and a half times the
height of your average commercial flight,

down to the surface of the ocean
in 0.78 seconds.

That's 30,000 times faster
than our fastest planes.

[Elizondo] David Grusch is
an Air Force combat veteran

who also was a 14-year
senior intelligence officer

with the National Geospatial
Intelligence Agency

and the National
Reconnaissance Office.

So at NGA, David Grusch was
tasked with the UAP portfolio

and to act as the liaison
for the UAP Task Force.

The head of the UAP Task Force
gave him the initiative

to go and find out what the United
States government knows about UAP.

He goes around and starts
talking to colleagues.

And it turns out that some of these colleagues
that were just across the aisle from him

in different cubicles

actually had some exposure
to these programs directly

or knew others who had
worked on this program.

What he uncovered is a decades-long
UAP crash-retrieval program.

And he did this by talking
to many witnesses.

He says there are over 40, of people who
have direct exposure to the program

or who have worked
directly on that program.

Do you have any personal knowledge of
people who have been harmed or injured

in efforts to cover up or conceal
these extraterrestrial technology?

Yes, personally.

[Iandoli] The congressional UFO hearing that
was put forward by the Oversight Committee

was extremely interesting, but it was
also very profound and historic,

because for the first time in
history, you had US service members

coming forward with their
firsthand UFO experiences.

I have experience in
advanced UAP firsthand

and I'm here to voice
the concerns

of more than 30 commercial
aircrew and military veterans

who have confided their
similar encounters with me.

[Iandoli] You had Lieutenant
Ryan Graves there.

The Tic Tac object we engaged in 2004 was far
superior to anything that we had on time,

have today, or are looking to
develop in the next 10 years.

[Iandoli] You had Lieutenant
Commander David Fravor.

I was informed in the course
of my official duties

of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval
and reverse engineering program.

[Iandoli] And David Grusch.

And it was really good because
you had the two pilots,

Ryan Graves and Commander Fravor,
who have utmost credibility,

and all of their claims can be
substantiated by supporting evidence.

[King] I made it a point to be
at the congressional hearing

because this felt like
a historic moment.

For the first time, you had
whistleblowers under oath

talking about not just the
government and military cover-up,

they were also talking about
recovered craft and even bodies.

Nothing like this had
ever happened before.

If you believe we have
crashed craft, stated earlier,

do we have the bodies of the
pilots who piloted this craft?

As I've stated publicly already
in my News Nationinterview,

biologics came with some
of these recoveries. Yeah.

Were they, I guess, human
or nonhuman biologics?

Non-human, and that was
the assessment of people

with direct knowledge
on the program I talked

to that are currently
still on the program.

-[Iandoli] The big surprise in that hearing
was David Grusch -[tense music playing]

because he made
some really big claims

regarding recovered craft,
nonhuman intelligence,

recovered occupants,
nonhuman biologics,

and he did it all under oath.

And even when
congressional staffers

had tried to gain access
to that information

through having a meeting with David Grusch,
they were blocked and not able to.

And I can only imagine that if that's
happening, it's because somebody doesn't want

David Grusch to have that
conversation with Congress.

Mr. Grusch, as a result of
your previous government work,

have you met with people with direct
knowledge, or have direct knowledge yourself

of nonhuman origin craft?

Yes, I personally interviewed
those individuals.

[intriguing music playing]

The momentum coming out of the hearings was
like nothing that we had ever seen before.

For the very first time, we had members of
Congress taking the UFO issue seriously.

We heard from Senator Marco Rubio, who
told us that multiple whistleblowers

had already spoken to the Senate
Intelligence Committee

and had confirmed many of Grusch's
claims about crash-retrieval programs.

And sweeping new legislation was proposed by
Senators Chuck Schumer and Michael Rounds

in order to create greater
transparency around the UAP issue.

[Iandoli] In the UAP
Disclosure Act,

there's a lot of really
interesting indications

of what that language
is trying to propose,

specifically because of the
directness of the language they use.

And they define terms like "nonhuman
intelligence" very specifically,

which is repeated over 20
times in the language.

They're talking about
crash-retrieved objects

that originate from
nonhuman intelligences.

They're talking about putting together a
panel of nine people from different areas

to actually disclose
to the American public

what they find regarding UFOs
and nonhuman intelligence.

[King] Unfortunately, just as it felt
like we were making some real progress

with the disclosure movement,
it hit some major setbacks.

In December 2023, a small group of
congressmen blocked the UAP Disclosure Act.

Notably, those congressmen were representing
and had major ties to defense contractors

that were in districts where some of
these projects were allegedly held.

A few months later, the All-domain
Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO,

which is ostensibly in charge of
investigating reports of UAPs,

released an historical report in which
they denied that their investigation

had uncovered any evidence
that such secret programs exist.

AARO has also denied having
heard from any whistleblowers

with direct knowledge of the
programs alleged by David Grusch.

[Woods] I testified for four hours
and 19 minutes to the minute.

Everything they requested, I
relayed and answered truthfully

and got nothing back in return

as so stated and so
promised by them.

So two weeks later, when the
congressional hearing occurred

with Sean Kirkpatrick, as he
testified before Congress,

he stated that there was no evidence of
any type of extraterrestrial vehicle

or any abnormal vehicle

or what have you concerning our nuclear
program and what had happened.

I really took issue with that
because I know what I saw.

[Iandoli] There are a number of indications
that point in the direction that AARO

isn't necessarily trustworthy.

We've had several AARO reports that
have been completely underwhelming.

They don't seem to be
transparent in their reporting

and how they're coming
to their conclusions.

They're lacking providing the data that
they're supposed to be reporting on.

And we know from several witnesses
who have spoken to AARO

that their testimony hasn't
been taken seriously.

And it doesn't seem like
AARO has followed through

and done a full investigation
on those incidents,

including Robert Salas,
Mario Woods, and many others

who have given their testimony
to AARO,

and either AARO followed up on it and
is not reporting on their findings

or they didn't follow up at all.

[Woods] I felt like my
four hours and 19 minutes

probably went into the trash can
or File 13,

or it was buried
with many others.

[Chase] The fight for UAP
transparency is ongoing,

but I also think that it's important
that people recognize that

we don't need to wait around for the
government to give us the answers.

The UFO phenomenon
is part of our reality.

It's not something that the government can
lock up in an underground bunker somewhere

and keep from us.

It's everywhere and it's
happening all the time.

[Madden] What I find most problematic
about the notion of UFO disclosure

is that people will only
think of it in terms of

gaining information
from the government

and not an occasion to rethink
things at a very fundamental level.

And I think those are two
independent questions. Right?

And I don't think the one need be
answered in order to begin the other one.

I think we have what we need to accept
that there is something about the world

that we're not quite getting and that
should occasion a new kind of reflection.

[King] Behind the headlines and all
this infighting in Washington,

something real is going on here,
something extraordinary.

The fact that we're not alone in the
universe, it's paradigm shifting.

It's huge.

It could be the biggest
story in human history.

So why aren't more people
talking about this?

Have you faced any
retaliation or reprisals

for any of your testimony
or anything on these lines?

It was very brutal
and very unfortunate,

some of the tactics they used

to hurt me both professionally and
personally, to be quite frank. Yeah.

There's a lot of stigma
around the phenomenon

and that stigma has largely been
generated by social engineering,

some of it probably intentional.

The unintentional part is because
people are made nervous and uneasy

by coming face to face with
things they don't understand.

It makes them want
to push it away.

And intentional social engineering
exploits this part of the human psyche.

And for example,
when you see things

being turned into laughing
stocks on the television

or sneered at, that's almost always
intentional social engineering

on the part of somebody.

[Masters] A lot of the stigma
that surrounds this subject

has to do with a
manufactured campaign,

an institutionalized
campaign to keep people

from talking about it,
especially scientists.

Scientists were used in this
divide-and-conquer strategy

where Project Grudge,
Project Sign, Project Blue Book,

were meant to sort of
quell interest in this

and to stigmatize people
that "believed" in it,

people that had sightings, people
that had abduction experiences.

So we're really dealing with
this cultural hangover of sorts

where we were forced by
these institutionalized agencies

to not talk about this,
to not be interested in it.

And unfortunately, we have
to fight to overcome that.

If we take the UFO question
seriously--

And not just the craft,
but the individuals inside.

--it could really help
shift us into a new realm

of understanding
humanity as a whole.

I think we should all just stop,
acknowledge that it's real,

and that it's much more
than cockpit videos.

But we first have to
get past the stigma

and start to recognize
that this is real

and recognize we can learn
a lot from it.

[pensive music playing]

[King] Once we allow ourselves to really
consider the reality of the UFO phenomenon,

the question naturally arises:

"What's the nature of the
intelligence behind this phenomenon?"

People that entertain these questions
and go down that line of inquiry,

often they experience
profound shock

when they realize that the
answers to these questions

could be much, much more complex
than they think.

[Strieber] The nature of the visitors
is a really interesting question.

What are they?
Where are they from?

And how do we find
the answers to that out?

We look at how they relate to us and what is
the deposit of information in our memories

about our relationship
with them.

This is how we find out
what they are.

[Chase] When I first started
looking into UFOs, I came into it

with many of the same default
assumptions that many people have.

Basically that if UFOs are real
and they're not human technology,

then they must be aliens.

I mean, that's the only way I'd ever seen
it portrayed in the media and elsewhere.

And yet when you start
to really dig into the data,

you start to recognize that the
extraterrestrial hypothesis has a lot of flaws.

[King] The modern UFO phenomenon has
been going on for at least 80 years,

but many people would suggest that it's
been going on a lot longer than that.

People have reported strange lights in
the sky or odd beings for centuries.

Also, UFOs seem to be
everywhere on this planet.

If you look at a map
of major UFO hotspots,

those UFO hotspots are largely
in population centers.

So wherever there are people looking
up at the sky, they find UFOs.

This would suggest that there's
a much more local presence

and even maybe an omni-presence
on this planet,

which when you think about it

is probably more than the extraterrestrial
hypothesis can account for.

But perhaps the biggest clue that UFOs
might not be extraterrestrial in origin

could be the beings themselves.

[Masters] There is some
variation among these beings

that are described in
association with the UFO.

And more often than not,
they're described as human.

Human-looking, human-like,
humanoid.

You have different variants. You
have short Greys, tall Greys,

ones that look like hybrids
between them and ourselves.

But all of these, importantly,
are upright-walking hominins.

They would be classified as us in the same
way that our ancestors were upright-walking.

With close-encounter cases, you
often have these humanoid beings.

And debunkers have used that
for years to say,

"Well, you know, if there were really
extraterrestrials visiting Earth,

what are the chances that
it would be humanoid?"

[Masters] It's highly unlikely that you
would get the same morphological form

on a different planet.

And at the same time, people
often forget that the universe

is about 14-and-a-half
billion years old.

So the likelihood that we would have something
that looks and acts so much like us

that evolved in the same way
and at the same time,

but is just slightly more advanced
than us is very unlikely.

[Elizondo] There's also this trend of
people coming away from these experiences

with dreams, or being given
prophetic visions or prophecies

that are very terrestrial
in nature.

These are about nuclear
de-proliferation.

These are about the environment
and taking care of the planet.

Even sometimes extremely
traumatic encounters

lead to people having this
new-found care for the planet,

a new-found care for their communities in
ways that maybe they didn't have before.

And so it's very odd
that you would see ET

caring so much about us,
caring for the planet.

Why do they care so much about
what happens here with us, to us?

[Chase] Another
clue that we have

that the extraterrestrial hypothesis
doesn't account for all the data

is that these types of
encounters have been going on

potentially all the way back to
the dawn of human civilization.

But it's only in the last
80 or so years

that we've started to think
of them as extraterrestrials.

How we think about these things changes
over time and across cultures.

And it actually makes a lot of
sense that in a space-faring age

that we would look at UFOs

and assume that they were spacecraft
coming from other planets.

[King] We're so used to thinking
of the UFO phenomenon

in extraterrestrial terms that it
can be difficult, even jarring,

to adjust to the idea that we could be sharing
our planet with these strange beings.

But with the numbers that
we see and the amount

of cases that there are
throughout history,

that might actually be the case.

This is what's called the
ultra-terrestrial hypothesis.

[Bishop] The
ultra-terrestrial hypothesis

is the idea that there are other
intelligent humanoid beings

living on the Earth.

And they have been for thousands of
years, and they're just hidden from us

and live in a different space
than we do,

whether underground
or in an inaccessible area.

And they appear
to be alien to us

because they have followed
a different evolutionary path.

It's definitely possible that we are sharing
the planet with nonhuman intelligences.

But the idea that they're so
close is very alarming to people

because if we were to have
the realization

that they're right here, we'd
throw a lot of people off.

[Chase] One of the most compelling
pieces of data that we have,

that we might actually be sharing this
planet with nonhuman intelligences,

is that many of these
unidentified craft

are seen coming into
and out of the water,

something that's become known
as transmedium travel.

[King] The idea that there might be
highly advanced intelligent species

living in our oceans actually
isn't as absurd as it sounds.

Seventy-one percent of the Earth's
surface is covered by oceans.

Humans may live on land,
but Earth is a water world,

and we know shockingly little
about the oceans.

Less than 25% of the seabed has
been mapped to modern standards,

and less than 5% of the ocean's
volume has been explored.

We know significantly more
about the surface of the moon

and even about
the surface of Mars

than we know about
our own oceans.

If there is an intelligent
species living in our oceans,

it's entirely possible that we don't
even know that they're there.

[Chase] Tim Gallaudet is a
retired rear admiral in the Navy

and also used to be the
Navy's oceanographer.

And more recently, he's become
a part of the Sol Foundation,

where he actually wrote a white paper
about unidentified submersible objects.

In this paper, he talked about this
really fascinating case from the 1960s.

It was a joint exercise
between Canada and the

United States off the
coast of Nova Scotia.

And what Navy divers reported
to see during this exercise

were two unidentified craft
on the seabed.

And even more remarkably,

they claimed to see nonhuman beings operating
on this craft and trying to fix it.

And allegedly, film actually
exists of this encounter.

And although this remarkable footage
has never been made public,

when someone
like Tim Gallaudet

references this sort of a case in a paper
like this, we have to ask ourselves why.

[intriguing music playing]

[King] There's another way to
think through the idea that UFOs

might not be from
another planet,

but from right here on Earth.

Some have hypothesized
that these craft and

beings might be coming
from another dimension.

This is often described as something
like existing in a plane of reality

that's on a slightly different
frequency, like radio waves,

where we can only tune into
one station at a time.

It's been argued that this could explain why
this phenomenon is often described in ways

that suggest that it is both physical and
non-physical, both here and not here,

and how they seem to be able to appear out
of thin air and disappear just as quickly.

[Chase] Of all the hypotheses about the
potential origins of the UFO phenomenon,

the interdimensional hypothesis
is by far the least understood

and the hardest to grapple with.

The reason for that is that
although they're fundamental

to several different theories and hypotheses
about the structure of the universe,

we don't have any solid proof that
other dimensions actually exist,

and there isn't even any solid consensus
on what other dimensions would be

or how they would operate
even if they do exist.

[King] The thing that makes the
interdimensional hypothesis so appealing

is also the same thing that makes
it ultimately meaningless.

We don't really know
what dimensions are,

or how they work, or if
they even exist at all,

and so the interdimensional hypothesis
is vague and flexible enough

that it can hold any sort
of concept that you build on it.

And who knows, maybe some of those
ideas will turn out to be correct.

But for now, anything that we say about
other dimensions is mere speculation.

There's nothing you can
really hang your hat on.

[Chase] Another wild hypothesis that's
been gaining traction over recent years

is the extra-tempestrial
hypothesis,

and this is basically the idea that UFOs
are us coming back from the future.

And there's one person who's really done
a lot of work to flesh this idea out:

an anthropologist by the name of Dr.
Michael Masters.

[Masters] A lot of what I study
as an anthropologist

is the way humans have evolved
over the last 6-8 million years,

since we stood upright

and started to diverge from the
common ancestor with chimpanzees.

And over that time, there's a
number of craniofacial changes

that are consistent with what
we would expect to see

in our descendants
if those trends continue.

Namely, we have encephalization,
an increase in brain size.

We have increased
neurocranial globularity,

which is an increase
in the width of the skull.

We have big, round heads that,
along with our chin,

is a characteristic of anatomically
modern Homo sapiens sapiens.

And those traits together are just
the trade-off of the brain and face.

So our brains have gotten
bigger, expanded mediolaterally,

our frontal lobes move forward,
and in association with that,

our mid-and-lower face has
retracted and gotten reduced.

Our teeth have gotten smaller.
And if that trend continues,

we'd expect to have bigger,
more rounded heads,

and even reduced
and more retracted faces.

So in looking at the biological
evolution of our species,

it makes sense to connect the past, the
present, and this perceived future,

since these beings are
most commonly described

with those same characteristics
we would expect to see

with the continuation
of the same trend.

[King] Something that's really interesting
about the extra-tempestrial hypothesis

is that it could help
us answer one of the

most perplexing questions
about these beings,

which is, why do they look
so much like us?

Maybe the answer is that we
share an evolutionary lineage.

But that's not the
only mystery that the

extra-tempestrial hypothesis
could help us answer.

[Masters] There's a lot
about this phenomenon

that seems to indicate
that time is involved.

We don't fully understand
time yet.

We know that it emerges
from something fundamental,

but we don't yet know what that
fundamental aspect of this universe is

that time emerges from.

But if we look at these crafts,
a lot of contact experiences

involve missing time,
distorted time.

There's a number of
cases that I mention in

my second book, The
Extra-Tempestrial Model,

where you have grass growing
at a very rapid rate

as someone's running
from one of these UFOs.

The trees around Travis
Walton's abduction

sites in proximity to
the craft that took him

grew faster than the trees
farther away,

even though they were planted
at the same time.

Corporal Armando Valdez in Chile from
1977 aged five days in the 15 minutes

that his men were in the same position
as he moved closer to this craft,

as indicated by his watch that read five
days in the future and his beard growth.

So there's all these indications that the
space-time metric is being engineered.

That space and time are
moving at a different rate

in association
with these machines.

So we have to wonder:
If they can manipulate time,

could they use that technology
to go back through time?

[Chase] Many people would argue
that time travel isn't possible

because it seems to present us
with some irresolvable paradoxes.

One example of a paradox like
this is the grandfather paradox.

This is the idea that someone
might go back in time

and perhaps stop their grandfather
from meeting their grandmother.

But then that begs the question, who
went back in time to make that happen?

But we do have some models of the universe
that might allow time travel to exist.

And one of these models
is called the block universe.

[Masters] The idea of
the block universe, or

the landscape time, as
it's oftentimes known,

is the idea that all moments from
the very first instance of matter

coming into creation
in this universe

to the last moments where that matter
disappears from this universe,

all time and all space
is one massive block.

So if you move through time
in this way,

you're not able to change anything
because the past is already there.

It's already structured
in a certain way.

You can visit it, you interact with
it, but you don't change anything.

So a lot of people get hung up on this
idea that you can change the past.

In the block universe,
you can't.

[King] While people can argue about
whether time travel is possible or not,

the reality is we don't
even know what time is.

It's one of the most difficult
problems in all of physics.

Considering that we don't even
know how time works,

how it functions, or what
it fundamentally is doing,

maybe time travel is possible.

[Chase] The problem with
all of the existing

hypotheses for the origin
of the UFO phenomenon

is that none of them
seem to fit entirely.

It doesn't seem like there's going to
be any one answer that really fits.

So how do we move forward
from here?

[Strieber] What is this?

Are we talking about
extraterrestrials, time travelers,

ultra-terrestrials,
inter-dimensionals?

What are we talking about?
The dead?

All of the above?

Let's keep the question open.

That's where the exploration is.

The frontier is facing what we
don't know as an actual unknown.

And instead of filling the unknown with
a bunch of beliefs and suppositions.

[Elizondo] As we look at all of these
seemingly disparate hypotheses,

there are two routes
that you can take.

You could say no to all of them.

At the same time, you could say
yes to all of them.

And that tends to be
my approach.

I like to say yes, because when you
say yes, you broaden the field,

and you're able to
collect more information,

and you're able to go down this
path without putting a noun on it.

Because when you put a noun
on it, you put a limit on it.

And the problem is that
as we study these cases,

any limit that we set up, it
just blasts through that limit.

[Bishop] The weirdest thing I could think
could be true about the UAP phenomenon

is that it's all true.

And that's hard to put your mind
around, but that's me at this point.

I don't like to filter anymore.

[King] None of the hypotheses for the
origins of UFOs are entirely satisfying.

They all have flaws, which
has caused many people

who've spent a lot of time studying the
phenomenon to come to the conclusion

that what we're dealing with
likely doesn't have

one explanation,
but many explanations.

It's like when you're taking a test in
school and you don't know the answer,

so you just fill in the bubble
next to "all of the above."

And that's not a bad strategy when
you find yourself in a situation

like the situation we find ourselves
in with regard to this phenomenon.

And that answer could very
well turn out to be correct.

But when we do that, we need to
recognize that hedging our bets

isn't the same as
knowing the answer.

[Chase] Because none of the
hypotheses totally fit the data,

it suggests that there's
something fundamental

that we're not getting right
about the UFO phenomenon.

We need new models and new
frameworks to think about this.

And one of the most exciting
new frameworks

comes from a philosopher
named Dr. James Madden.

[Madden] Okay, so let's talk about the
moniker "unidentified flying object."

I think when people in the past
have talked about the UFO,

they have been primarily
questioning

the unidentified
and the flying part,

and they've left out
the object part.

I would like to counsel
against that.

So, what a lot of philosophers have claimed,
going all the way back to Aristotle,

and more recently people like
Graham Harman have argued,

if you have attributes
distinct from your parts,

if you are able to persist
through changes in your parts,

and if you have control
of your parts,

then that thing is an object
in and of itself.

It's not merely an aspect of something
else, it has being of its own.

Interestingly, if we
take that seriously,

then it seems like it's
not only things that

are smaller than us that
we have to recognize,

but it's also things that
are much larger than us.

[King] The UFO phenomenon rarely
behaves in the way we would expect

if these were simply beings
coming from somewhere

for reasons more or less
like our own.

In many cases, they don't even appear
to be structured craft at all,

at least not in the way
that we think of them.

Reports range from tiny lights
high up in the sky

to fiery objects that are as big
as a football stadium.

There often aren't obvious beings or pilots
associated with these objects either,

and when there are, they almost never behave
in ways that make any kind of sense to us.

It makes you wonder if there's some
bigger picture that we're missing.

[up-tempo electronic
music playing]

[upbeat music playing]

[Madden] An example that Harmon
likes to use is with a pizza shop.

Okay, so let's say we've got a
local pizza chain that we go to,

and the people who work at the restaurant,
the equipment, the customers,

if you separated us
out of that environment

of being put together, we're
not gonna get the pizza.

You only get the pizza

when these things are all put together
into one thing that's working together.

So we could say then the
pizza restaurant has powers,

it has attributes,
it has aspects

that are not just aspects
of its parts.

Also, the pizza restaurant will survive a
complete replacement of all its parts.

Like, all the equipment over
time can be replaced. right?

The management
could come and go.

All the workers
could come and go.

All the customers could come
and go, but we could still say

we have the same
pizza restaurant.

And finally, we have to admit
that there's a kind of control

that the pizza restaurant
has over its parts.

We all behave differently when we're at the
pizza restaurant than we're at the library.

And so there's a kind of effect that the
pizza restaurant has on us as parts of it.

Well, if that's the case,
and I think it is,

then we've got to say the pizza
restaurant is an object.

It's a thing in its own right. It
has a kind of life of its own.

It's doing its own thing.

Now, let's think about the corporation
that owns the pizza restaurant.

Once again, I think we could say it
has attributes its parts don't have.

It will persist through the
replacement of those parts,

and it controls all the things
involved in it to some degree.

You and I, if we work for the
corporation, are gonna behave differently

because we work
for the corporation.

We're not really in control
of that thing.

So it looks like we're
gonna have to say

something on the scale
of a corporation is an object.

And now think of what we just did
there as our scale got bigger.

It got bigger in terms of space,
it got bigger in terms of time.

Well, we might push this
further, and we might think,

"Well, what about not just
the corporation,

but the economy that the
corporation participates in?"

It looks like now the economy is starting
to look like an object in its own right

that's sort of running us
from top down.

And then some other philosophers, one
I have in mind is Timothy Morton,

makes the point that not only the
economy, but the environment,

or something like
global warming,

or all the plastic in the world,
seems to be doing stuff,

seems to be doing stuff
beyond our control

that has effects on us, that has a
persistence that goes beyond us.

And Morton will make
the case that some of

these objects are what
he calls hyperobjects.

And hyperobjects are objects that
operate at such grand scales

that human beings
cannot really grasp them.

So we only see or encounter these
hyperobjects at their very edges.

I can't encounter the economy directly,
but I can encounter my paycheck.

I can encounter whether
or not I can buy a home.

Or similarly with the environment,
I can't grasp the environment,

but I can grasp the blizzard
that I had to drive through,

or the strangely warm day
in the middle of the winter.

We encounter
something like a craft,

or we encounter something
like one of the Greys.

And I'm trying to make the case that
that is just like the pizza restaurant.

It's an encounter with this much broader
thing that goes beyond our ken.

I'm suggesting that we think of the UFO
as the unidentified flying hyperobject.

Maybe what we're encountering
with the UFO

is in fact a singular thing operating
at scales of time and space

beyond what we can
actually deal with.

[Chase] Most people who spend any
time exploring the UFO phenomenon

find that the more they learn,
the less they know.

And honestly, what could be
more exciting than that?

[Kripal] I love UFOs precisely
because we don't understand them.

If we had an explanation that worked,
there wouldn't be much to talk about.

As an intellectual or someone who
claims to be an intellectual,

I'm interested in questions. I'm not
really that interested in answers,

because answers is where you land
and it's where you stop thinking.

And the UFO is so
interesting to me

precisely because none of
these theories really work.

[King] How do we even
begin to process

a phenomenon that's so good
at evading our understanding?

I'd suggest that the only way that
we're going to find out any answers

is to take seriously
the accounts of the people

that have experienced
the phenomenon themselves.

[Strieber] There is an extraordinary
conversation going on

about UFOs and
technology and weapons,

but not the experience, not the actual
experience of being face to face with this,

because basically the military
doesn't want to deal with that.

And the scientific community
has no idea how to deal with it.

The result is our response
so far is incoherent.

It becomes coherent when our social,
cultural, scientific worlds

begin to understand
how to integrate

the material that is being left by the
close-encounter witnesses in the culture.

Because unless we
do both together,

the technology, the beings,
and the encounters,

we will never get a coherent
picture of what's going on.

[Chase] It can be really easy to
overlook experience or narratives

because they're just so weird.

They're full of absurd and often contradictory
details that just don't make sense.

And a lot of people find
that it's just easier

to go about their lives
under the illusion

that they have things
more or less figured out.

[King] There are so many situations
on record where people see a UFO

and then for whatever reason, it
triggers a precognitive experience,

or they believe that they see
a ghost, an apparition,

or experience
poltergeist activity.

And sometimes all of
these things happen

in what the paranormal researcher
John Keel used to call window areas:

places where the boundary between
the normal and the paranormal

seems to be thinner.

So let's take a look at a case that involves
everything I just mentioned and more.

A case involving UFOs
and other phenomena

among multiple generations
of a family over decades,

which eventually led them all
to a very special ranch.

We brought the crew down to East Texas
to hear about this incredible case

that's never been public
until now.

[Courtney] When I was a kid, my
grandma would take me out in the yard

and we'd look at the constellations
and watch the stars,

and she'd teach me about the
Big Dipper and the North Star.

And it was something that we'd
look forward to every night.

And not just because I
got to stay up late, but

because I got to learn
things and observe.

One night we're out and
we're looking at the stars

and then next thing we know we see a
star that wasn't there the night before.

And it was really bright. It didn't look like
any of the other stars that we had seen.

It wasn't moving like a
plane or a satellite.

So as we're looking at
this object in the sky,

it starts to not only get
brighter as we observe it,

it starts to change colors.

And it's not changing colors the way
that you would see a star twinkling.

It was more dramatic than that, almost
like it was signaling us something.

Once we noticed it,
it was like it noticed us.

And then as we're trying
to make sense of it,

it then immediately just takes off
clean across the sky from west to east

and then just stops on a dime.

The biggest feeling at the moment was
probably just sheer astonishment.

I just had no classification
for it.

It was just something
I had never seen.

After we saw the UFO together,
she opened up and told me about

other anomalous experiences
that she had seeing UFOs

as a kid and that she saw them
pretty often

and that she even saw them
with some other family members.

[Hazel] Once when I was about 11, my
younger sister, we were in the front yard,

and she was standing up
like frozen like.

And I saw the object
coming down,

and I thought it was
gonna get my sister.

And I started throwing sticks at it, but
it didn't help any. It just kept coming.

I was angry, because it
shouldn't have been there.

[Courtney] She didn't necessarily see
it as something overtly threatening,

that it was something that happened and
it was a part of our reality and that,

frankly, not everyone
believes it,

even though it does happen.

[Hazel] Sometimes when I see this
object in the sky, I would feel safer.

I don't know why, but
it never bothered me.

[Courtney] At that time,
I didn't know what a UFO was.

I never heard of any
of her experiences.

But once we saw that together,

it opened up the ability to have
this conversation with her about it.

And part of me just thinks that maybe it
was something that she knew was out there

that she wanted to make sure that I had the
opportunity to witness and experience.

I mean, my grandma would
talk about all sorts

of anomalous experiences
and she'd talk about

having dreams or visions
and seeing something unfold.

Sometimes she'd have a dream about something
that happens in your life and calls you,

and then whatever she dreamed
is really happening.

And, look, I don't know how or if
it's connected to UFOs in any way,

but I can tell you that
people in my family today

and going back multiple,
multiple generations,

that people have precognitive dreams
and that they dream of something

or have a vision of something, and that
something comes true with precise detail.

And it's not until I got
older that I realized

that that wasn't the
norm for most people.

[pensive music playing]

When our family was brought from Africa,
they were brought up to Houston County

and they were bought
by the family

that used to own this property
that we're sitting on.

And so we had been looking
for this land for a long time

because I had ancestors who had
died there during slavery.

My grandmother even
picked cotton there as a kid,

but we kind of had lost
where this location was.

And so it was a significant
part of our family history

to be able to tie the whole
story back together.

After my son was born, I kind
of went on this rabbit hole

of trying to build out
my family history

and find all of my ancestors and trace
them all the way back to slavery.

And I knew where pretty much
everyone was,

with the exception of an ancestor who had
died during slavery on a plantation.

Then one day my son,
who was about 3 at the time,

had a dream, and he woke up
in the middle of the night

and he was almost
in a trance-like state.

And he said,
"I saw my grandfather."

I'm thinking he's talking
about my wife's dad

'cause he had just come
and stayed with us.

"You saw Papa Willie?" He's like,
"No, it was my grandfather."

I'm like, is he talking
about my dad? He's like, "No."

I said, "Who did you see?
What was he doing?"

He said, "He was my grandfather and he was
in the house and the house was on fire

and he couldn't get out.

And he was sad because
he wanted to see you.

And he said that he had something he wants
to tell you, but he died in the fire."

And when he said that to me, I
immediately just started crying

because I knew who he
was talking about.

And my great grandfather
was a Southern gentleman,

a leader in the church and
a leader in the community.

And he did die in a house fire
shortly after I was born.

And he never got to see me
in the hospital.

And so for him to tell
that story at 3 years old,

you know, we never introduced the
concept of great, great grandparents.

We never told him this story.

He's barely articulate, but he's
explaining something that we know is true.

But at that moment,
I knew who it was.

I knew he had a message
for me, but I also still

felt like I didn't
want him to come to me

and present himself to me, because I
still think that would freak me out.

And so I knew it was real
and I knew it was there.

And it probably wasn't
for another seven months

before, you know, I got up the courage to ask
him to tell me what he wanted to tell me.

And so fast forward
to Father's Day,

I found myself at the cemetery
in front of his tombstone.

So I just said, "Hey, I'm here. I heard
you had something you want to tell me.

What do you want to tell me?"

And I just hear, clear as day,
"buy the little red house."

And that was all I heard,
"buy the little red house."

We were looking for real estate
at the time, a vacation home.

But it turns out we had one little
listing of a little red house

on some acreage not too far
away from that cemetery.

So I reached out to my realtor and told him,
"Hey, take everything else off the list.

The only thing I want to look
at is this little red house.

Like, I don't know what is up with it, but
I need to look at this little red house."

Our realtor set up a date for
us to go look at the property.

And, I mean, it was, like, way
out in the middle of nowhere.

You gotta drive miles down
a dirt road to get there.

And when we get there, he says, "Oh,
wait, I think we're at the wrong place."

And I'm like,
"Why do you say that?"

He said, "Because my GPS
says we're at a cemetery."

And I'm like, "A cemetery?"

And he showed me, and he showed
me the name of the cemetery.

And I just instinctively
knew at that moment

where we were, because
I had always been told

that the name of the family who owned our
family as slaves, and that if we ever found

that cemetery, we would find
where our ancestors were buried

and also find the place
where they lived.

And we get up to the property
and we knock on the door,

and then the guy answers

and says, "Sorry, I don't know what y'all
are doing here. This place is not for sale.

This must be a mistake. I'm not
looking to sell this place.

You might want to go talk to a
neighbor or talk to someone else."

Kind of knew in the back
of my mind where we were,

and so I asked him, "Is there a creek
that runs in the back of the property?"

And he was like,
"Well, yeah, there is."

And I was like, you know, I named the
creek and I said, "Is it this creek?"

And he was like, "Yeah,
it's actually that creek."

And he's like,
"How do you know that?"

And I told him a story about how my
grandmother used to pick cotton on a place

along this creek, and
they had to follow the

creek all the way back to
our family's property.

And that struck up a
conversation between us,

and we talked for a while, and eventually
he let us tour the property on a ATV.

He still said, "Look,
I'm still not selling,

but if you want to go back there and see
and just confirm." He let us do that.

[pensive music playing]

Maybe a couple of weeks later, to our
surprise, our realtor reaches out and says

the guy decided that he actually
wants to sell us the place.

And he wrote me this
beautiful handwritten

letter and basically said
that after meeting me

he felt compelled to sell us this place and
that he wanted me to be able to spend time

with my son there and build
those memories together.

After this kind of wild series of events, I'm
now the owner, and my grandmother is also

the owner of the land where
our family was once enslaved

and where she once
picked cotton.

And I don't really know how to explain
it, but I felt like we were led there.

And so you can imagine, I mean, this
ranch, at least to us, is a special place

and it has an energy,
and you can feel it.

And we've had a history in our
family of anomalous experiences

and they still continue
at the ranch.

For most people, they see a door
swing open or they turn around

and an object is moved
or missing.

They see it as a
scary experience.

And frankly, at first I did too.

But now, especially if I'm at the
ranch, I see it a little differently.

It's almost like I recognize
who or what that might be

and what type of message they
may be trying to communicate.

And by and large, I think that
they're happy that we're there

and that they are glad that
we're stewarding the property.

I hope a future for my sons
where these types of gifts

and experiences
aren't ostracized

and aren't frowned upon and
aren't demeaned and negated

and, you know, all the
other negative words

that come along with it,

and that we can start
to normalize this,

because it is normal, and it is something
that a lot of people experience.

But if we all stay silent about it
and we don't lean in and listen

and uncover these beautiful stories
and mysteries that are, I think,

waiting in many families, then we're
doing our children a disservice.

The future I want for my sons is I want
them to know that anything is possible.

And in the meantime, I'll just cherish
the time that I have with my son

as he's approaching
that age that I was

when my grandmother started teaching
me about all of these things.

And we'll be at the ranch looking
up at the stars together.

[pensive music intensifies]

[inaudible dialogue]

[dramatic music playing]