Transcript
[00:00:00]
Music: “Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.
Carrie Poppy: Hello! Welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal. No way! We take part ourselves.
Ross Blocher: Yep! When they make the claims, we show up, so you don’t have to. I’m Ross Blocher.
Carrie Poppy: And I’m Carrie Poppy. And we are coming to you from Drew Spears Productions.
Ross Blocher: People are watching us live as we are recording this. You are listening to a far more refined version of this, but if you want to go to YouTube, you can find the original messy version in all its hours and see our process.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah! (Chuckles.) All our stops, all our starts, all our corrections.
Ross Blocher: And it’s Maximum Fun Drive, so we’ll be telling you about that this episode, because it is the best time to support the work that we do, the Maximum Fun Network, all the amazing people that work for Maximum Fun.
Carrie Poppy: Yes! So, today we are especially going to be talking about Daniel Sheehan.
Ross Blocher: Daniel Sheehan, the lawyer, activist, who speaks on behalf of the UFO inclined. The alien community.
Carrie Poppy: And the people.
Ross Blocher: And the people, yeah.
Carrie Poppy: His autobiography is called The People’s Attorney.
Ross Blocher: Oh, that’s good.
Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles uncertainly.) Is it?
Ross Blocher: Well, now you’ve made me question it. I feel less certain of it being good, but it felt good at first.
Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) I saw it and I was like I’ve heard that before. The people’s attorney, that’s some other guy! And then I go, and I Google it and I’m like, oh, right. This is the thing that every single person says about themselves if they’re a lawyer.
Ross Blocher: It’s what you say if you’re a prosecutor. Yeah, okay. But we’re going to be talking about him in context of Contact in the Desert. Which is a conference that we’ve been to before back in ye olde 2017.
Carrie Poppy: That was the first time we went. Yeah.
Ross Blocher: And that was out in the desert at the Institute of Mental Physics, which I just like saying. So, I’m bummed we didn’t go back there.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. They have moved Contact in the Desert. It’s still technically in the desert; it’s in Palm Springs.
Ross Blocher: Right, but now it’s like at a posh resort in Indian Wells, California, which is about the same distance from where we are. So, if we got in a car right now and we’re like, “Let’s go to contact in the desert!” A) it’s not happening right now, but B) we’d have to drive like two and a half hours east. And we’d be getting pretty close to the Salton Sea, where I did that flat earth test.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, the flat earth test! Where you proved the Earth was flat. Yeah.
Ross Blocher: (Sighing with playful disappointment.) You can’t do it, Carrie. Just can’t prove it. Not to everyone’s satisfaction.
(Chuckles.) But then Joshua Tree is like 50 minutes above that.
Carrie Poppy: And Joshua Tree is where Contact in the Desert is held.
Ross Blocher: Used to be.
Carrie Poppy: Was held. You’re right. Was held.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. And that’s also—that was the same resort where we had gone for the holotropic breathwork investigation.
Carrie Poppy: One of my favorite events we’ve ever done.
Ross Blocher: Yeah! Which, funny enough, is going to come up in this investigation when you’re least expecting it.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, as holotropic breathing does! Maybe we should do a couple minutes of holotropic breathwork when it comes up.
Ross Blocher: Okay, just like lie down flat behind the table and (breathes heavily in rhythmic cycles).
Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles.) Yeah. We’ll start feeling something. It happens fast.
Ross Blocher: That’s true. Yeah. It’s wild. You know, I’m surprised I don’t try to do it more. Though, it does seem like something you should do as supervision.
Carrie Poppy: I think it’s probably fine if you do it for a short time. Wouldn’t do it for three hours like that one lady, though.
Ross Blocher: It’s one of those like—well, Wim Hof actually is very related, because there’s breathing exercises involved. And Wim Hof does so much stuff underwater that people are like, “I should do this near water!” Bad idea. Don’t do that near water. That’s how people die.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, yeah. Don’t do that near water. Yeah, yeah.
Ross Blocher: And it was missing the old location. And the old location had a very different feel, because you’re getting dirty. You’re waking up and walking around and tracking sand everywhere. So, you really feel like you’re in the desert.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, and it’s like all these old buildings and really quirky. And maybe this building’s toilet doesn’t work. And you’re like, (strained) “I love it here.” But this time they had it at one of these swanky hotels with no personality where they charge you $400 to eat a veggie burger.
Ross Blocher: Ugh! That place was really expensive. And I bought my single person ticket for 230 US dollars.
Carrie Poppy: Wow! I bought mine—oh yeah, something weird happened with mine!
Ross Blocher: Yeah, you had said, “I got a couples ticket.” ‘Cause Drew, Drew Spears—maybe related to Drew Spears Productions—
Carrie Poppy: (Joking flatly.) Unrelated.
Ross Blocher: Was going to come along with us and attend as well. And so, you said, “Well, I got the couples, the pair admission.” So, you save a little bit.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Super in love.
Ross Blocher: And then I was looking back through old texts on our three-person chain, and you said, “Something weird happened. They don’t have any record of us whatsoever having signed up.” But they very kindly offered the original price, rather than charging you the door price.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I don’t remember how or why this happened, but a similar thing happened at the Butterfly Exhibit at the Natural History Museum recently. And I can’t think of what the common denominator between these experiences could be.
Ross Blocher: That you were convinced that you had purchased it, and then it was not there waiting for you.
Carrie Poppy: And obviously like they had done something wrong. And then another time I go to the Haunted Hayride in Los Angeles—
Ross Blocher: Where my son works.
[00:05:00]
Carrie Poppy: And I meant to order four tickets, but I’d ordered like 16!
(They laugh.)
I don’t know, but it feels like a lot of these websites don’t work very well, Ross. And I don’t—(laughs).
Ross Blocher: They’re poorly built.
Carrie Poppy: I don’t know what the problem is, but they really should fix websites all over LA.
Ross Blocher: But I mean, compared to the Conscious Life Expo, this is kind of a steal, cost-wise.
Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah, because Conscious Life Expo, when you get the really high-ticket item, it can be like 600 bucks, huh?
Ross Blocher: Yeah, I got like the full access pass last year, and this year I got a little smarter. I saved some money and just actually looked at all the talks and picked the ones I was going to go to.
Carrie Poppy: Got it. Okay. So, we are referring now to Contact in the Desert. That’s where this talk happened, not Conscious Life Expo. So, Daniel Sheehan has gone to both places. We’ve run into him before.
Ross Blocher: Right! So, I’ve heard him give lectures both here, Contact in the Desert, and Conscious Life Expo. But we’ll be primarily talking about the Contact in the Desert experience. But I think it says something to the regular crowd that shows up at these UFO alien conferences, UAP, whatever you want to call it. It’s like the same group, and they’re fungible. They move around. They were sending us emails, tons of emails in advance saying A) will you be a volunteer? But B) we just got Linda Moulton Howe! And then C) will you be a volunteer again? And then D) we’ve got George Noory, Nick Pope, Clyde Lewis, Richard Dolan, Paul Heineck, Caroline Corey.
Carrie Poppy: A woman!
Ross Blocher: Oh, she’s so cute. Isn’t she just adorable? (Dropping his voice.) I’m Jimmy Church.
Carrie Poppy: She’s is so beautiful. She’s just so beautiful.
Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Andrew Collins, who was at your lunch. Actually, a lot of these people were at your lunch. Graham Hancock, Adam Apollo. This one’s a great name—Jonny Enoch.
Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah, that’s a good name.
Ross Blocher: And of course, you know who would never miss a conference like this?
Carrie Poppy: Whitley Strieber?
Ross Blocher: He will be at this year’s Contact in the Desert. He wasn’t that year, but the guy that we see at every one. He’s usually introducing people if Jimmy Church isn’t doing it.
Carrie Poppy: Ooooh, is it Alan Steinfeld? Of course.
Ross Blocher: That’s right! He was there too. And Seth Shostak was at Contact in the Desert.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, great! Oh, yes, of course. Sorry. I’m listening to this like I wasn’t there now.
(Ross laughs.)
Oh my god, Seth Shostak!
Ross Blocher: Was he there?! Yeah, remember you talked to him?
Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Yes, I had a really meaningful interaction with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, He’s cool.
Ross Blocher: What a great guy. This could just be the Seth Shostak appreciation podcast.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. He’s the guy who heads up SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Organization.
Ross Blocher: And he’s brilliant! I’ve listened to his podcast for years. Now it’s called Big Picture Science. It used to be Are We Alone? And you know, he’ll make wisecracks. He’s like one of those guys who makes puns all the time. You know, one of those people. And so, you think like, oh, this guy’s just kind of, you know, a practical joker. But then he’ll do like some orbital calculation off the top of his head. And you’ll be like, oh, right. You’re also a certified genius.
Anyways. Of course, the most expensive thing is room and board. So, we had to stay at the hotel next door. Because it’s the desert, so things are spread out. But thankfully, there were two hotels right next to each other. This was being held at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort and Spa. We were next door at the Hyatt Regency.
Carrie Poppy: Which does have a lazy river.
Ross Blocher: I’m so upset about this. You got to go, didn’t you?
Carrie Poppy: I did. I had never gotten in one of those inner tube artificial lazy rivers, and I was like, “I’m doing it!”
Ross Blocher: I wanted to do that. But they had limited hours.
Carrie Poppy: They had limited hours. I had to miss a talk to do it. But guess what?
Ross Blocher: Yeah, it was like 10 to 2 or something. I can’t do that!
Carrie Poppy: It is nothing like A Goofy Movie.
Ross Blocher: I love A Goofy Movie.
Carrie Poppy: I know, but that’s what I expected. I was like I’m going to float down a river, and then my dad’s going to be there playing the banjo or whatever.
Ross Blocher: (Singing.) After today, I will have been floating!
Carrie Poppy: But no! It’s just a bunch of children, concrete, probably urine.
Ross Blocher: (Giggles.) And chlorine to counteract the urine.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, and chlorine. Anyway, not worth it.
Ross Blocher: Alright. Yeah, that’s—well, you made me feel better about having missed it. Thanks.
So, we were there all Friday, all Saturday. And Friday we were there, ready, bushy tailed, got in at 8:45AM to sign in. As you walk in, they have a very long disclaimer telling you that you could be recorded. There’s nothing you can do about it. If you don’t like it, get the hell out of here.
Carrie Poppy: When I see this, I’m like, hell yeah. Great. Because it means we can record.
Ross Blocher: Oh yeah. Because I hope I show up in your footage.
Carrie Poppy: Oh! Oh, okay. (Laughs.) I just think that, you know, now there’s an implied contract between us that I can record you as well.
Ross Blocher: That too. Absolutely.
Carrie Poppy: This is a hot tip I’ve got for people who are worried about being recorded. Like, if you’re out in public and someone is recording you and that skeeves you out, also record them. Like, I’ve heard so many stories where people tell me that something like that happens. And then they’re like, “And now I don’t have it, and I can’t get the tape from them.” And I’m like create your own tape.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah. No, good reflex. So, after getting out of the lecture, I noticed there’s a big sign that says, “ABSOLUTELY NO FILMING OF PRESENTATIONS! Failure to comply may result in removal from the event. Thank you for your cooperation.” I read it that way because it’s all in big, gothic font. Very blocky. But yeah, like you say, you’ve already kind of told us that filming is happening, that we are in a public environment—which kind of makes recording law clear.
[00:10:00]
You know, it’s an understood public event. But also, if someone’s like shooting a spoon bending documentary, as they were when I was like at that spoon bending workshop, I love knowing that I’m on camera at some point. Hopefully, I’m going to show up in a spoon bending documentary. And maybe a few people will be like, “Is that Ross? That’s Ross, isn’t it?”
Anyways, this atrium is just gigantic for the hotel.
Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah, that’s right. You walk into this big—yeah, atrium is the word. Lots of floors above you. You can see everybody coming out on their balconies in this hotel.
Ross Blocher: And they’ve sold the design for Contact in the Desert. And they have these three posters that are over four stories tall that are hanging there. They’ve got past, present, and future. And they’re images that link together. So, on the left, you’ve got this Moai statue like from Rapa Nui, Easter Island. And he’s got galaxies above him, star clusters, but then you’ve got—in the center, you’ve got this big person in a space suit and the Earth behind them and then a UFO above. And then on the right, you’ve got this futuristic robot that looks like the iRobot design, and there’s like some weird kind of code-looking interconnected lights above it. So.
Carrie Poppy: Why do I think of Star Wars when I look at that guy on the right?
Ross Blocher: I mean, he’s like vaguely like a C-3PO kind of robot.
Carrie Poppy: Not a Stormtrooper?
Ross Blocher: Oh, you’re right, actually. If you had A C-3PO Stormtrooper, it would look much like that. (Chuckling.) Well done, Carrie! Yes, I believe that deserves some applause.
Carrie Poppy: (Clapping.) Thank you, thank you. A Star Wars reference!
Ross Blocher: Carrie makes them all the time. It’s hard to stop her.
(Carrie snorts with laughter.)
I cut most of them out.
Carrie Poppy: I just love it so much.
Ross Blocher: So, registration is to the right. Got my bright green wristband. And then I encountered you. You were just coming in at the time.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, hey! CE5, you just flipped over a photo of CE5, which came up in our last episode.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, ‘cause we were talking about close encounters of the fifth kind and kind of the special definition of that that—
Carrie Poppy: Steven Greer.
Ross Blocher: —Steven Greer has given the term. And now he has an app. And as I was looking back through the program, I was like, oh, I totally didn’t even notice CE5 was already on the menu.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, man. I wish we had done it. That’s a meditation where you talk to aliens yourself. No more of this waiting around for aliens to talk to you!
Ross Blocher: This is interesting though. It says CE5 and HICE. Hice? What does that stand for?
Carrie Poppy: Hmmm. High. Ooh, okay.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. You work on what you think it could be.
Carrie Poppy: Close Encounters 5. High Intelligence… Contact Emergence.
Ross Blocher: Close. Human Initiated Contact Experiences.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. Okay. Contact’s in there, good.
Ross Blocher: That seems to be Steven Greer’s new grift, and I don’t feel any problem calling his activities grifts.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. I don’t know much about him.
Ross Blocher: Is getting people to start their own contact with aliens.
I don’t say hi to you for long, because I am on my way to the Daniel Sheehan talk! This lawyer that we’re talking about—AKA Danny Sheehan.
Carrie Poppy: Yes. That’s what Linda Moulton Howe calls him.
Ross Blocher: Everyone goes back and forth between Daniel and Danny. But I have to find my way to the Endeavor Room. And oh man, what an endeavor. The map’s in the back here. This place was so confusing, and it took me a day to figure out that this map was rotated 90 degrees from what I had in my mind.
Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah. Oh, interesting.
Ross Blocher: The lady told me the directions, and I asked two more people, but I did finally get there. And it was standing room only.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay! So, I was going to ask, this is the first talk you go to. It must’ve been important to you. What had jumped out to you from the description?
Ross Blocher: Oh yeah! I’ll read the description. The name of the talk was “The Present Status of the US Government UFO Disclosure Project Through AARO”—A-A-R-O. And I think I just went to this particular conference wanting a little more of the hard like background of the crafts and the bodies and—give me some of that.
I was also really curious about like how are they going to cover the topic of AI? ‘Cause that was on the menu a lot.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah! It seems like that’s all over the news and all over America’s minds right now. And yeah, I didn’t feel actually like there was as much talk of AI as I expected at this conference or Conscious Life Expo.
Ross Blocher: I went to a couple AI based talks, and one of them really turned me off. And it just felt like a ploy, a grab like, “Hey, there’s this new space, and we’re going to find a way to make people afraid about it.” And it was very much like a fear mongering talk.
But anyway, so this one was going to be about the government’s attitudes towards disclosure and projects around like revealing UFO info.
Carrie Poppy: Similar to the lunch that I just had with him. Okay.
Ross Blocher: So, from the description, “Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Divinity School educated attorney—” Like, wow, he went to Harvard College. Have you heard of that?
Carrie Poppy: Mm-mm. What’s that?
Ross Blocher: It’s a really like fancy, shi-shi, like East Coast Ivy League school.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, nice. Oh! Nice! Really smart people must go there.
Ross Blocher: Only the top people can go there. Yeah.
Carrie Poppy: Okay, wow. Wow, that’s really cool.
Ross Blocher: (Chuckles.) But also, the Harvard Divinity School. That tells you something about his background.
Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles.) Yes, that’s for the divine.
Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Yes. “Attorney Daniel Sheehan is uniquely qualified to ‘update’—”
[00:15:00]
I don’t know why they had to put that in quotes. “—the attendees at Contact in the Desert as to the status of the US Government Disclosure Project being undertaken through AARO.” A-A-R-O.
Carrie Poppy: How many air quotes we got in here?
Ross Blocher: A lot.
(Carrie laughs.)
And it also has like the random capitalization of a Trump tweet.
Carrie Poppy: Oh no! Really?!
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Who wrote this copy? I don’t know.
Carrie Poppy: Daniel Sheehan! That’s who wrote this copy.
Ross Blocher: They did not explain what AARO is. So, I assume that they assumed that everybody would know that it is the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
Carrie Poppy: (Playfully flippant.) Oh yeah. Everyone knows that.
Ross Blocher: We have talked about it on the podcast before, and we will be talking about a recent government report from AARO later. Get excited, everyone!
Carrie Poppy: (Skeptically.) A “government repooort”. I’m doing the air quotes. The Daniel Sheehan air quotes.
Ross Blocher: We can put everything in air quotes now.
And it gives more of his like bona fides, things he’s done, cases that he’s worked on. And it actually is like really impressive. Like, this guy has had some historical import. I’m going to save that for now, because it’ll come up in his conversation.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. Okay. I went back through my Google Drive and looked for this guy’s name and something popped up from 1993.
(Ross “wow”s.)
That I shared with you.
Ross Blocher: Yes! And that will be relevant. Yeah. You’re making me very aware of how many scare quotes and air quotes there are on this particular description.
(They chuckle.)
The word monitor. “‘Monitor’ the effective enforcement of the provisions, actively undertake any and all—”
Carrie Poppy: What?! These are all his like verbs that apply to him, right?
Ross Blocher: No, it’s talking about the organization that he created and what it’s supposed to do. But yeah, why would you be “monitoring”, quote/unquote, the effective enforcement?
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, you don’t want to use criticizing air quotes about your own activities.
(They laugh.)
Carrie hosts a “pooodcast”.
Ross Blocher: At Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, we “investigate”.
(They giggle.)
Yeah, why would you do that?
Carrie Poppy: It downplays what you’re doing.
Ross Blocher: Alright. I’m going to stop focusing on that, but it is a good question. So, yeah, like I said, it was completely full. And it was five minutes before it was starting. And it was like, yeah, the first conference of the day, usually that’s going to be lowly attended. You’ve got like, you know, like 12 people, sit anywhere. But there were about a hundred seats, and they were all full. And so, I started filling into the left, and there was a standing room only crowd along the back as well. So, I think we crammed at least like 130 people in that room.
(Carrie “woah”s.)
Yeah. And to the point where it was one of those situations where I’m leaning up against the wall, and I’m kind of near somebody, but then someone that comes up real close to me. So, then I half the space between us, and now I don’t have enough personal space on either side. Someone comes to sit at my feet. And it’s like, agh, now I’m boxed in, and I’m standing up! This is going to be an uncomfortable hour and a half.
Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah! Yeah, I’d leave.
(They laugh.)
That’s too many people.
Ross Blocher: This is the work we do though. Yeah, it’s a lot of people. Okay. But Danny’s not here just yet. Instead, there’s this woman who comes up in a blue dress. And I feel like I did a lot of work trying to figure out who she was at the time, and now I can’t—
Carrie Poppy: Monica Lewinsky.
Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) I think I would’ve noticed that.
Carrie Poppy: Blue dress! Blue dress! (Chuckles.)
Ross Blocher: I get the reference. Yeah. Are we drinking to that? Is that what’s happening here? Blue dress, am I right? (Laughs.) Okay.
Carrie Poppy: (Distantly off microphone.) No! (Laughs.)
Ross Blocher: And she was very high energy, and you could tell she had strong opinions, and she was just a fun person to introduce this. Also, like you could tell she had like Sarah Connor muscles, like muscles kind of popping out of her skin—yeah. Which actually is funny, considering one of the first things she said is, “Can we bring in an extra chair for Danny Sheehan’s wonderful, amazing wife, Sarah? Can one of the strong men go to another room and bring us an extra chair?” (Chuckles.) And I just thought is that necessary?
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, you didn’t need to gender it.
Ross Blocher: I mean, look how buff you are! I mean, you could pick up a chair, no problem!
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah! Sure, sure, sure. The gendering was not necessary.
Ross Blocher: I could probably be sitting in the chair.
Carrie Poppy: And then you were like, (snidely) “I’m not going to help! Just to prove to you women can do anything!”
(They cackle.)
Ross Blocher: “I’m for women’s empowerment. You do it!” Yeah, exactly. Also, I’m boxed in already. She also invited like some of us to come sit up in the front, and no one wanted to do that. Maybe I should have. But then she was saying, Hey, it’s okay. Dr. Mercola says that it’s great to stand for long periods of time when you’re at a conference.
I was like, oh, great. We’re already quoting Joseph Mercola.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, the natural news guy.
Ross Blocher: One of the internet’s chief quacks. And then she checks like how many people is it your first time at a contact in the desert? There’s a lot. And Danny will speak to this, that the movement has seen some growth.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay. So, are they getting a bigger turnout than they were in previous years?
Ross Blocher: That seemed to be the implication that I got throughout the course of the conference that like this is a good year.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. It’s hard to tell once you switch locations. But comparing it mentally to the last location, I didn’t have a sense of growth in terms of population.
Ross Blocher: But before she brings on Danny, she says, “Why don’t you make some friends with each other.”
(Carrie “oh!”s.)
Which is nice. It feels like being at church again. Like, that little moment, like, “Go around, shake each other’s hands, make some new friends.”
Carrie Poppy: Did you learn something?
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Well, there was a guy standing next to me and he asked one of those kind of disarming questions—
[00:20:00]
—like Linda Moulton Howe asked you. Not quite that disarming. But he said, “Which talks do you come here for?” I was like that’s a good question!
I said, “Well, I guess I’m kind of here for like the hard science stuff and the craft and the metal artifacts and that kind of stuff.” And I said, “What are you into?”
And he said, “I really love contactee talks and experiences.”
(Carrie agrees.)
And I don’t think I asked him if he was one, but he mentioned Bud Hopkins. He always comes up, that guy! Man, certain people can have so much effect for ill or good.
Carrie Poppy: Influence. Yeah, absolutely.
Ross Blocher: So, go out there, make something in the world, but make it good!
Carrie Poppy: Is Bud Hopkins dead?
Ross Blocher: Yeah, I believe so. I’m saying that very confidently.
Carrie Poppy: Or we would have seen him by now.
(Ross laughs.)
I mean, really, I bet we would have seen him by now. He must be dead.
Ross Blocher: A listener was just emailing about Richard Hoagland, the guy who came up with the face on Mars hypothesis, and I was like, oh, he must be dead. But I looked it up. No! And he’s like my dad’s age. Yeah. I thought, well, why isn’t he at these conferences?
(Carrie echoes him.)
There must be a story there. Maybe there was a falling out. I don’t know, but I’m supposed to be getting ready for this episode. I should stop doing web searches about Richard Hoagland.
Carrie Poppy: Well, you know what Richard Hoagland should do is get—
Ross Blocher: (Interrupting.) Support us at MaximumFun.org/join!
Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Yes. And also, he should get an agent that helps him get UFO affiliated talks.
Ross Blocher: Uh-huh. I know where you’re going with this.
Carrie Poppy: Because we learned recently that a bunch of these people all have the same agent.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. How did you find this?
Carrie Poppy: So, here’s what done happened. An industry rag… called Deadline reported on this Hollywood alliance of actors, producers, speakers, and so on, who believe that there is more out there, and that the government is not telling us everything. And—
Ross Blocher: And didn’t you have a friend who was included in that list?
Carrie Poppy: Well, I wouldn’t say he’s my friend, because he probably doesn’t know my name. But if that’s not a barrier, then yes, my friend.
Ross Blocher: An acquaintance?
Carrie Poppy: Michael Ian Black. I interviewed him on Bullseye.
Ross Blocher: A comedian, right?
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, he’s a comedian, he’s a writer, he’s wonderful. But yes, he kind of fell in with his crowd, and then recently on his Substack, wrote a kind of jokey, kind of backing off of what he had said. So, I don’t know.
Ross Blocher: But he went on TV to talk about those issues. Okay, anyways.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. But! Anyway, that Hollywood Alliance thing is run by this one guy, Sean—
Ross Blocher: You sent me the website too, or Drew did. It showed the executive board of this group, the Hollywood Disclosure Alliance.
Carrie Poppy: That’s them.
Ross Blocher: A lot of the people that we just mentioned are on this list and kind of represented by this group.
Carrie Poppy: And Sean West is the guy who seems to be an agent to the UFO folks.
Ross Blocher: Sean West. Not to be confused with Mick West, who is usually counteracting all of the evidence from these folks.
Carrie Poppy: Kanye West. North West.
Ross Blocher: Not to be confused. Nope! Different Wests.
Carrie Poppy: None of those. Mae West. No.
Ross Blocher: Also, no longer with us.
Carrie Poppy: Wicked Witch of the—? No.
(They laugh.)
Ross Blocher: That was a good list of Wests.
Carrie Poppy: Thank you.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. And Daniel Sheehan is on the board.
Carrie Poppy: There you go!
Ross Blocher: So, now the woman in blue gets our attention by like making bird noises?
Carrie Poppy: What? What?!
Ross Blocher: (Ross peeps and twitters.) Like, something like that. (Chuckling.) She wanted to get our attention. Like, “Stop talking to each other and making friends.”
Carrie Poppy: It’s like the Jimmy Church “I have free money” move.
Ross Blocher: (Laughing.) But it’s making bird noises!
Carrie Poppy: Maybe don’t send us into a million tiny conversations if you want our attention that quickly again.
Ross Blocher: I was just thinking that! I really want to know more about this woman. There’s a lot under the surface here. But she said she was honored to introduce Danny Sheehan. “He is one of the most authentic, caring, dedicated people I know. He’s been doing this for over 50 years. He’s got a beautiful wife, Sarah.”
Carrie Poppy: We’ve heard about Sarah.
Ross Blocher: We keep hearing about Sarah and how beautiful she is.
Carrie Poppy: She’s so beautiful. She’s a friend of Jimmy’s.
Ross Blocher: This woman never tells us what she does. But we know she’s on her way, and we’re going to make a seat for her, because some burly man was supposed to go get the seat for her.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, right! Make way!
Ross Blocher: So, we’re excited about her arrival. He’s the author of The People’s Advocate.
Carrie Poppy: Wait, just tell me. Are you going to be able to tell us when Sarah comes in during this talk?
Ross Blocher: Yes. It is a moment.
Carrie Poppy: Okay, good. Good, good, good. She’d be a dangling thread in my head. Where’s Sarah?! (Laughs.)
Ross Blocher: Yeah. No, wait for her. Anticipate her arrival. And we all give him a very hearty applause. And Danny Sheehan comes up. Tall guy. He’s got like a big—I’m trying not to use the word mop.
Carrie Poppy: Shock.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Shock. He’s got big, curly hair.
Carrie Poppy: Big, curly hair.
Ross Blocher: Big, white, curly hair. That’s great. Yeah. There’s just a lot of it. It
Carrie Poppy: It is great. Yeah. Kind of Doc Brown-y, but like a little healthier than Doc Brown. He’s using mousse. You know, he’s taking his biotin.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. You can tell it’s just somebody who has curly hair, and they’re not trying to fight it.
Carrie Poppy: No. Yeah. Would you?
Ross Blocher: Yeah, why would you? Why would you do that?
Carrie Poppy: Why would you? Do you see Drew’s curly hair? Good. Good.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, I can see it from here. So, he starts telling us about all the other talks that he’s going to be in that we should definitely check out.
[00:25:00]
He’s already reflecting on what we were talking about—hat this is getting more mainstream, that this used to be a real tinfoil hat topic, But he was saying how there’s been these big pieces of media coverage recently. And at the time he was thinking of the 2017 New York Times article. “Very unfortunate, glowing auras and black money.” About, you know, the Tic Tac video, the Fast Walker video, and the Gimbal video. Anyways, made a big hoopla, and everyone’s like, “(Gasp.) The government’s been hiding this stuff! And look, even the New York Times is reporting on it!” Great.
And then there was a 60 Minutes story. And he said, “Now you’re seeing more and more like normal people come into the movement!”
Carrie Poppy: Unlike me.
Ross Blocher: So, what he wants to do is use this talk to kind of get us all up to speed with the history of how the government has interacted with this topic. Which, yeah! Super helpful.
Carrie Poppy: Okay, yeah. That’s a big history.
Ross Blocher: I’ll certainly have little pieces of just things that I found interesting about his presentation. Like, maybe new factoids I hadn’t heard before. But I’m largely just going to stick with his telling. If I happen to know something is wrong, I’ll make my commentary. But I just like want to establish that some things might’ve gotten by me. Like—and I’m trusting his narrative largely. And his phone rings at that moment, and he’s like, “Oh, that’s probably Sarah.” The long-awaited Sarah.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, good. And he takes the call.
Ross Blocher: (Chuckling.) He doesn’t take the call. But he knows she’s on her way.
Carrie Poppy: I would be impressed if he did.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. I kind of wish he had. Okay. So, this whole issue started our government and aliens being in the same field together with a nuclear bomb. It’s directly related. And we’ve kind of heard that insinuated before.
Carrie Poppy: The Raëlians were, you know, really narrowed down on that.
Ross Blocher: Right, August 6th is their big holiday, because of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima.
Carrie Poppy: And yours.
Ross Blocher: And mine. Yeah, that’s—it is what it is. So, he quickly as an aside said, “And yeah, I know we talk here a lot about ancient aliens and visitation to earlier civilizations. I’m just going to kind of leave that alone. But this modern incarnation really started in the mid-’40s.”
So, he said one of the really important early interactions was told to us by Lieutenant Colonel Philip Corso. And this is a name that I’ve heard for years since the late ’90s.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay. I don’t remember this name. Lieutenant Corso? C-O-R?
Ross Blocher: Yeah, Corso. C-O-R-S-O. He had told all these stories about being there and involved when the Roswell incident happened, or maybe years later? But either way, he got to interact with the wreckage from Roswell.
Carrie Poppy: Okay, cool.
Ross Blocher: Then the bodies, and he told stories of seeing the bodies and where they were sent and all of that.
Carrie Poppy: Big if true!
Ross Blocher: Yeah. And he was legitimately a Lieutenant Colonel. And I guess head of the Pentagon’s R&D department. This is one of those details I’m kind of taking Danny’s word on. But he released all of this in a book called The Day After Roswell in 1997. So, 50 years after the events. So, it makes you wonder. Okay. How fresh is all this? How much has the memory changed, and what are your motives? But what was interesting is that Danny added a new story that I’ve never heard, which is that Corso was out one day by the Yucca flats. They were doing testing. And he went out for a lunch break, and he finds this downed craft and a bunch of aliens, and he talks to them telepathically. And they tell him…
(A pause. They start to giggle.)
That his, uh—
Carrie Poppy: Ross just paused, put his fingers on his forehead, and sent me a message. (Laughs.) I didn’t get it.
Ross Blocher: Oh, okay, well. Let’s do it the old-fashioned way. So, they were saying that they needed his help to turn off the radar at the military base or wherever they were, the testing grounds, so that they could escape. And I’m thinking why would their craft not be able to regain altitude because the radar’s on? Or maybe they’re afraid of being detected? But that seems to never stop them on all these other occasions where we hear about craft. Anyway, I don’t like the story, but at the same time, it’s entertaining.
So, he goes and does it. He gets everyone to turn off the radar. And I feel like Corso is just not reliable whatsoever. My impression.
Carrie Poppy: And this is one of Sheehan’s main sources. Is that why he comes up?
Ross Blocher: Yeah, well I guess he gives us a date early enough that we can start this story early in ’47. And I left out an important detail about that. He didn’t include that in his 1997 book. That little aside story was left on an eight-millimeter tape for his grandchildren to see after he died, and then they heard the story about him helping the aliens during his lunch break.
Carrie Poppy: Do we have the tape?
Ross Blocher: Not that I could quickly find online. So—
Carrie Poppy: (Skeptically.) Okayyy, okayyyyy. Okaaaaay. Okay.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, I know. If it’s out there somewhere. He’s in plenty of interviews saying wack-a-doo things about personal experience.
Carrie Poppy: Let’s find those grandchildren. Or if you are one of Corso’s grandchildren.
Ross Blocher: If you are one of those grandchildren, please support us at MaximumFun.org/join. And then! We want to talk to you.
Carrie Poppy: Danny, he’s a delight. He’s a joy, but he’s not as delightful as my favorite time of year.
Ross Blocher: That’s probably the same as my favorite time of the year, which is MaxFunDrive.
[00:30:00]
Carrie Poppy: MaxFunDrive! Exactly! Segue. So, listen, it’s MaxFunDrive right now, which is the time that we ask our listeners if they will join us as members—or upgrade as members, if they’re already members. Because that’s how we get the show made, and every single year we need more people to join in order to just stay where we are and keep making the show.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, right. Well, maybe you’re a new listener, or maybe you’ve been listening for a while and you keep thinking, “Aw, I’d really like to support them, but I don’t know if I’m quite at that point in my life.” Well, if you happen to be at that point in your life right now, we would really appreciate your support of this creative venture!
Carrie Poppy: That’s right! MaxFun membership pays for our shows. And as you can see, we put a lot of energy, a lot of commitment into each one of these episodes. And we have some goals set up.
Ross Blocher: So, talking about goals, we’ve already passed the 250 goal. That means you’re getting another episode of Flavor Babies!
Carrie Poppy: Hell yeah! Flavor Babies!
Ross Blocher: (Singing.) “It’s time for Flavor Babies.” And—
Carrie Poppy: (Singing along.) “Flavor Babiiiiies.”
The show where you take two flavors, put them together and make a new flavor.
Ross Blocher: (Attempting to speak in unison with Carrie but not quite getting the words right.) We stick ‘em together and make a new flavor.
(Carrie laughs.)
Yeah! We always say that together. Right!
And then we have also passed the rubicon of 500!
(Carrie cheers.)
Which means that you have unlocked Ross and Carrie’s Cribs, where we show you all the cool things and the ridiculous things that we keep over from our investigations that now clutter our houses.
(Carrie giggles.)
And I was going to say upset our spouses; I don’t know how Drew deals with it.
Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah. Do my knickknacks upset you?
Drew Spears: (Off mic.) There’s only one.
Ross Blocher: Oh, there’s one!
Carrie Poppy: I have one knickknack that upsets you? Oh, okay. I have one lady mannequin head he doesn’t like, but it’s not from an investigation. That’s just from me.
Ross Blocher: It’s that box of Scientology materials that my wife really hates. But! You get to see it now, because we will create that video and share it on this YouTube channel—where you are not right now, because you are not watching the live (giggles) stream that we’re doing. You’re listening to this later as an edited, finished product.
Carrie Poppy: Or! If you’re listening to this in 30 years, and YouTube has gone defunct, we have found a way to archive it. Don’t worry. Go and Google it. If Google has closed down—
Ross Blocher: YouTube’s only been around since like 2005. Isn’t that insane?
Carrie Poppy: YouTube?
Ross Blocher: Yeah.
Carrie Poppy: That’s not that long. Changed the world.
Ross Blocher: I think that’s right. Anyways, at 1,000 new and upgrading subscribers—and we’re three quarters of the way there—what’ll they get, Carrie?
Carrie Poppy: They will get a special bonus episode of you, me, John Hodgman—the John Hodgman—sitting down, discussing Whitley Streeper’s Communion, while taking communion—that is red wine and bread—and eating bonbons. And we are calling it the Communion Communion Bonbon BonCon.
Ross Blocher: This has to exist! So, help get us there to 1,000 new and upgrading subscribers. And I guess we ought to mention—just in case we keep up with this clip!—our next goal is at 1,500 new, boosting, upgrading memberships. Guess what?
Carrie Poppy: I wanna be counted! I want to hear Judge John Hodgman talk about Communion!
Ross Blocher: At 1,500, we will pitch a talk to—
Ross & Carrie: (Clumsily getting in sync.) The Conscious Life Expo!
Ross Blocher: That’s right. So, we’ll say, “Hey, here’s the talk we’d like to give. Will you let us take one of the stages and give this talk?”
Carrie Poppy: Yep. And then you can come and politely applaud.
Ross Blocher: Oh, that’d be good.
Carrie Poppy: Or scream! You know what? Heckle us. At Conscious Life Expo, that would be kind of interesting.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Yeah, we’ll take heckling.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah! Yeah, I’ll think about it.
Ross Blocher: Alright.
Carrie Poppy: Alright.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, exciting goals!
Carrie Poppy: Yes, I am excited. I love MaxFunDrive. It’s also right in the middle of my favorite time of year, right before Easter.
So, did you know you can also get a gift membership for a friend or an anonymous MaxFunster? The recipient will get access to bonus content and your friendship.
Ross Blocher: And you’ve just helped someone else access all of this amazing content. And the bonus content is not just for our show. Oh no, no! It’s also for every show on the Maximum Fun Network, which is a lot of shows. And they’re all produced by talented, passionate people doing really funny, interesting, cool, insightful stuff.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. We’re talking about like thousands of hours of bonus content.
Ross Blocher: And so, your support of us also helps support the network and supports all of these boats. Keeps them afloat.
Carrie Poppy: Excellent. So, go to MaximumFun.org/join.
Ross Blocher: Okay. So, then the next big event is—oh, this one’s in June of 1947. So, Kenneth Arnold was a pilot.
Carrie Poppy: I remember this guy.
Ross Blocher: Yeah! So, he’s the one who gave us the term flying saucers. At least, he said that he saw like a whole squadron of craft, and they look like they were skipping like saucers.
Carrie Poppy: Like, if you skipped a rock along a lake. Yep.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, exactly. He was describing the motion, but it came to be in everyone’s mind like little, tiny plates as the description of UFOs. And coincidentally, that’s what people saw after that. He actually described them as being like kind of boomerang shapes almost, or crescents, I guess. Anyway, so that was another important event. And this was an interesting new thing I don’t think I’d realized before—that he had published that account in Argosy Magazine. And I don’t know if you’ve encountered this.
[00:35:00]
Carrie Poppy: I have! Yeah.
Ross Blocher: It was one of those really popular like science fiction stories, stories of high adventure.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. I think James Randi, I think, has like one short story in there or something.
Ross Blocher: Okay! Yeah. And a lot of great writers either got their start there or contributed stories. But it was interesting. Danny Sheehan characterized it as a men’s hunting magazine.
Carrie Poppy: Interesting. Okay.
Ross Blocher: I don’t think that’s right. Maybe at times it was.
Carrie Poppy: Maybe. Yeah, maybe it started that way.
Ross Blocher: And then of course, on this timeline: Roswell, 1947. This is a huge, central, pivotal event for the whole UFO narrative. And so, he starts going into that story a bit, and he talks about how a photographer was sent to take the photo of the debris. And this is like this famous, published photo where you see an officer like standing with the wreckage of this thing. And then there’s all this debate over like they had him take a picture next to the weather balloon wreckage, but that wasn’t actually what it was. It was something way cooler than that. ‘Cause the photo doesn’t look very impressive. Whereas other people will try to examine the things in that photo and find significance in them.
But! Apparently—this is the new info that Danny shares. He says that he was approached at a conference by a guy who said, “Hey, I got something really important for you. Want to meet me in my room later?”
(Carrie chuckles.)
And he’s like, (uncertainly) “Uh, yeah.”
(Carrie shouts “wow!”.)
“I’ll bring a friend with me.”
Carrie Poppy: Oh, theeere we go.
Ross Blocher: And so, this guy said, “I think I found the original photographer who took these pictures, and look at this one. If you look down, you can see the officer is holding a piece of paper. And it’s looks like a telegram. Maybe if we found the negative, we could zoom in and enhance it and figure out what the telegram said.”
Carrie Poppy: Maybe!
Ross Blocher: So, the way Danny tells it—and this is one I’ve got to look up and see if I can find it. Apparently, it was even featured by Dan Rather in a broadcast. So, I definitely want to learn more about this story, but apparently they did find the guy. He did have the negatives. They did like a big, massive blow up. And they had just enough like consonants that they could sort of build back the phrases. And they’re pretty darn sure that it says—
Carrie Poppy: “Western Union.”
Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) “I’m pregnant.” No, it said something about taking the craft to Wright Field. That was like the Air Force base at the time, what became Wright Patterson. And bring the bodies.
(They both “oooh”.)
So, they got very excited about that. It’s an interesting story.
Carrie Poppy: Well, did you go and look at the picture and try to blow it up and see what you could do?!
Ross Blocher: Well, now I will.
Carrie Poppy: Okay!
Ross Blocher: Okay, (typing) Roswell photo, bodies, telegram. Yeah, that should do it.
Enlargement of telegram. Here we go! At the UTA libraries. Oh, wow! Oh, you know what? This is actually cooler than I thought. Oh, it’s still grainy as hell.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. Yep. Looking at it, looking at it.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Interesting. It’s almost like over the shoulder of the guy as he’s squatting and holding this. And kind of good move on the photographer’s part to say, “Hey, look, you’re holding something that looks serious. Can we get a little photo of that?”
(Carrie agrees.)
But this enhanced photo is unintelligible. I cannot make out letters on this.
Carrie Poppy: The original photograph is at the University of Texas. Is that where you are? Okay.
Ross Blocher: UTA.edu.
Carrie Poppy: That is the place. Close up. Oh, wait! We’re high resolution, Ross!
Ross Blocher: Oh, you got it?
Carrie Poppy: You love resolution.
Ross Blocher: (Unconvincingly.) I love resolution.
Carrie Poppy: Here. I’m going to send you this link.
Ross Blocher: Ramey Memo.
Carrie Poppy: I’m not that impressed by the resolution on this high-res photo.
Ross Blocher: Okay. They’ve got multiple croppings of the note and then like multiple exposures. So, maybe you want to see it almost faded out, so you can get some of that low, granular shadow detail!
Carrie Poppy: I’m here for it.
Ross Blocher: Maybe you want it darker! And like each one of these is 77 megabytes. Okay, someone took this very seriously. “We scanned it with the R-SCAN Pro at 800 DPI.”
Carrie Poppy: So, wait, someone is claiming that they have a conclusive analysis of what is written on this note? ‘Cause this is—
Ross Blocher: Yes. I mean, the way Danny Sheehan presents it, yeah. Like, he feels confident that it says to take the remains. Carrie’s holding it up. Okay.
Carrie Poppy: Are you telling me I’m supposed to take the remains to someone? This is the high res!
Ross Blocher: This feels like an eye chart exam.
Carrie Poppy: The high res!
Ross Blocher: Well, I mean—and this is—you’re way zoomed in on a traditional photo. So, you’re seeing like—and it’s black and white, so you’re seeing like all of these points, you know, the individual grains of the photo. And it seems like one of these things… I’m surprised they haven’t—or maybe they have—subjected it to like an AI evaluation.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I’m looking at this, and I’m like—
Ross Blocher: This is so like in the low information zone, where I could make it say things. Like, the visual equivalent—
Carrie Poppy: It’s like an EVP.
Ross Blocher: —of an EVP! Yeah, I was just thinking that! That’s wild.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it’s like you can impose your impression on this image, but… I mean, maybe there’s some expert who’s figured out like, “Oh, if letters are this long, they should be verbs. And if the—(trails off).” Maybe there’s some of that.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Like, I get like impressions of words and then immediately doubt them.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. I mean, I’m looking at what I think is the clearest block of letters—
[00:40:00]
—the thing that looks most like letters. And my brain is telling me that it says YMCA, which seems… unlikely.
Ross Blocher: Okay. I feel like if you fed a lot of telegrams of the era to an AI algorithm and then you fed this, that it might give you an educated guess.
(Carrie agrees.)
But that’s what Danny feels he’s pulled from it. Anyways! So, then he mentions an earlier event that we’ve talked about on the podcast, but one that he doesn’t seem too committed to, and that’s this whole idea of a 1945 sighting of a downed craft. This was the one that Jacques Vallée presented on. He wrote this book.
Carrie Poppy: You’re holding up a book that says Trinity: The Best Kept Secret.
Ross Blocher: With a coauthor, Paola Leopizzi Harris. And yeah, the idea was that there were these two young boys who saw a downed craft and aliens, and then they had their memories of it like 60/70 years later or something. We found it shifty at the time, and even Danny Sheehan kind of admits that this is—“Eeh, you know, a lot of people think it’s controversial. So, I’m not going to put all my weight down on it.”
Carrie Poppy: That’s him talking?
(Ross confirms.)
Got it.
Ross Blocher: So, maybe that could even be the earliest of all of these accounts. But he says Roswell remains the litmus test for people’s credibility on this topic, meaning like you can kind of get someone’s reaction to Roswell and feel them out very quickly for whether they “get it” the way he does—now I’m using the quotes—or don’t get it.
Carrie Poppy: Interesting. So, how would you summarize your belief in Roswell if you were sitting across from Daniel Sheehan?
Ross Blocher: I would say Roswell was a real story. You had the air balloon. I would say that the government did have a mixed response and created confusion, because they just didn’t want people talking about things they were doing and handled it kind of clumsily. But it wasn’t until like 20 years later that you had a popular book on the Roswell incident that raised all of these issues of alien bodies and all of this additional narrative that’s come to be conflated with the original telling. So, there we go. That wasn’t a quick response, but that’s my response.
Carrie Poppy: But so, you don’t think it’s aliens?
Ross Blocher: No. I don’t think aliens are at all necessary for that story.
Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) What do you think Danny Sheehan would take from that?
Ross Blocher: He would say, “Oh, you’re one of them.”
Carrie Poppy: Okay. That’s the litmus test. Okay. Got it.
Ross Blocher: Guess who shows up?
Carrie Poppy: Saraaah!
Ross Blocher: Sarah, she’s here!
Carrie Poppy: She’s back! I believed in her. Okay. Does she have—? Okay. I’m seeing two different women. I feel very confident that Sarah is not a brunette.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, I’ve got a photo. But yeah, tell me what you’re picturing.
Carrie Poppy: First, I pictured a redhead, ‘cause Sarah’s a very redhead name. And then I pictured—
Ross Blocher: We have a lot of Sarah listeners.
Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah, that’s true!
Ross Blocher: Maybe not as many as Reading Glasses, but we’ve got a lot. Hello to my Sarahs out there.
Carrie Poppy: And then I pictured a woman with white hair to match her husband’s white hair.
Ross Blocher: Well, that’s it! She has—this is, I think, very remarkable—she has the same hair.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, wow!
(They laugh.)
She sure does. Oh, wow! Yeah. They could be just borrowing the same wig.
Ross Blocher: She could fill in for him. Probably give the talk.
Carrie Poppy: That’s wonderful. Good for them!
(They laugh.)
Ross Blocher: Yeah. They figured it out. They seem to have a good thing going.
Carrie Poppy: Cut each other’s hair, go to the conference, she parks the car, he begins the talk. (Laughs.)
Ross Blocher: They can use all the same products. So, she comes up, and they’ve procured a chair for her—some muscly man. And they put it right next to the lectern where he’s speaking. And it’s just like slightly like to the right of him and behind him. So, she’s just kind of up there. If you’re looking at Danny, you’re looking at her. But she’s not saying anything. It’s just kind of weird. Like, she’s featured.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. Sorry. Let me picture this fully. So, he’s up at the lectern, and then she’s just sort of like to the side?
Ross Blocher: Sitting right next to him. Like, “Where should we put her? Let’s put her right next to Danny while he’s giving his talk.”
Carrie Poppy: So, she’s watching from the stage. She’s just gonna sit there—
Ross Blocher: Yeah. There’s no raised stage really, but yeah. She’s just like—it looks like she’s just looking over the edge of the lectern. (Laughs.)
Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah! That’s very strange. That’s the spot for your wife who has to stand there while you make an apology to America for your affair or whatever.
(They laugh and Ross agrees.)
That’s that spot.
Ross Blocher: That’s hilarious, yes. But at least he finally tells us what she does. She’s the executive director of our whole operation!
Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay. Meaning his nonprofit, or his school that shuttered, or—?
Ross Blocher: I would assume—oh, I want to hear more about that—either the Romero Institute or the New Paradigm Institute. This guy starts a lot of institutes.
Carrie Poppy: New Paradigm Institute closed down.
Ross Blocher: (Gasps.) Really?
Carrie Poppy: I’m so sorry.
Ross Blocher: Wait, when?
Carrie Poppy: Thank you for asking. I’ll pull up my chronology. New Paradigm College shut down amid covid and an ongoing property tax dispute, February 8th, 2022.
Ross Blocher: Interesting. Okay. But he was calling it New Paradigm College. That might be separate from his Institute?
Carrie Poppy: Maybe. Well, New Paradigm College started out of his nonprofit. They were also called—I want to say Earth Watch? Earth—something. Earth—not Earth Files! (Laughs.)
Ross Blocher: Not Earthfiles. Linda Moulton Howe’s got that locked down.
Carrie Poppy: But he does seem like one of those folks who, every time he starts something new, you start a new LLC for it, or you start a new nonprofit for it, and you find a new building for it.
[00:45:00]
And that building is—that’s got its own tax thing. And then, oh, this over here, that needs its own name.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. This’ll be an interesting story. At least, what I learned about kind of how he got to his current institute came by the way of some fallen other groups that he had.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay. That makes sense.
Ross Blocher: But it’s very sweet. He says, “I do a lot of talking, but she does all the work.”
(They “aw”.)
Carrie Poppy: Actually, that’s kind of a bummer. (Laughs.)
Ross Blocher: But you can—you know, he’s being self-effacing there. Obviously, they’re a power team. They work together. But I—
Carrie Poppy: We all know Sarah.
Ross Blocher: I involuntarily shout, “Woohoo!” ‘Cause I hear it on the recording.
(They laugh.)
And we all start clapping for her. So, I was moved. I was moved to woohoo.
Carrie Poppy: You’re right. You are impressionable.
(They giggle.)
Ross Blocher: Oh, great. Now I have to cut in the whole thing about us and food.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, alright, you can take it out. Oh, did you know that Daniel Sheehan taught a class at UC Santa Cruz?
Ross Blocher: No! It’s not my alma mater, but it’s my alma-place-I-was-raised.
Carrie Poppy: Could be. You could’ve got in. I believe in you.
Ross Blocher: I could’ve been a contender. Wow, he taught a class! On what? Just on law?
Carrie Poppy: He taught a class a few times there.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, it’s a good school.
Carrie Poppy: Most recent one I found, 2019—he taught a class called Trajectories of Justice, Standing Rock, Climate Change, and Trump’s Potential Impeachment. Looot of topics in there.
Ross Blocher: Yeah! I mean, I’m intrigued.
Carrie Poppy: 29 students enrolled.
Ross Blocher: He’s a man of diverse interests. It’s not just the alien thing.
Carrie Poppy: Sure. There’s JFK!
Ross Blocher: And there’s also like kind of pro-social issues, climate change. I mean.
Carrie Poppy: And the claim of this class is that it will enable the students to become experts on the potential impeachment of Donald Trump in the context of progressive American history. Too many ideas! Too many ideas.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Yeah. what is the call for that? I guess that they could be talking heads on news shows?
Carrie Poppy: Oh, that’s very lofty.
(They giggle.)
I figured that it was like—so, you know, when your friends bring this up, you know what to say. You know?
Ross Blocher: Okay. That’s the opposite of lofty, but okay.
(Carrie laughs.)
I mean, there’s worse things he could be teaching.
Carrie Poppy: Maybe.
Ross Blocher: Okay, so now he breaks into a bunch of government programs. As the government does, it starts getting organized around this. And this was also around the time that you had the US military—now you’ve got like a Pentagon to control things, and you’ve got your Air Force. And this top-secret program formed out of them sending important letters back and forth to each other, called Project Sign. And then in 1950, that was renamed Project Grudge. And I’ve heard about that one before.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, that sounds familiar.
Ross Blocher: And it was headed by this new Air Force thing. And this is Danny speaking. He says that the military knew, even in 1947, that these were real craft—meaning something else, not human. This is too advanced.
Carrie Poppy: Aliens. He means aliens, right?
Ross Blocher: Yeah. He’s not saying it’s aliens, But he is also saying it’s aliens.
Carrie Poppy: Right. Why don’t they just say it? Why do they do this?
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Giorgio Tsoukalos, what are you doing?
Carrie Poppy: No, I mean, really, why do this? Like, when we’re talking about germs, we don’t do this.
Ross Blocher: I guess it’s that—what is it? The bailey-motte approach where like when you’re with your crowd, you’ll say the more extreme version of it. But when you’re around other people, you’re well practiced at kind of retreating and saying something far more sensible. And you know, I’m just asking questions!
Carrie Poppy: Ah, yes. Uh-huh. Our friend, Stephen Bradford Long talks about that phenomenon a lot.
Ross Blocher: Oh, okay. But this was interesting. He also said, “It definitely wasn’t China in 1947. There’s no way they could be building craft like that then.”
Carrie Poppy: Okay, ruled out one thing, maybe.
Ross Blocher: But the reason he mentioned that was because Lue Elizondo, who’s been one of his clients—who’s like a major name in modern ufology and this whole disclosure movement—he apparently has said that they were Chinese craft.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. But he says no. Danny says no.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Danny’s—it’s just weird like—’cause they seem to be buddies, and he’s worked with him, but he’s kind of publicly shooting him down a little bit.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, I see. I wonder though, you know, with a listener less astute—I wonder if people even perceive those inconsistencies, or if the speaker kind of knows, if I don’t point it out, who’s going to follow this? Is Ross Blocher here?
Ross Blocher: And also, Ross Blocher is later on going to like re-listen to this multiple times and take notes and go look up the things that you said. Yeah. Fair point. And also, he’s got a delivery where I don’t think Danny Sheehan is looking at notes. He seems to be able to just extemporize and give the talk off the top of his head. And he’s one of those people. We encounter them all the time. Where you can just say, “Danny, talk for two hours.”
And be like, “Oh-kaaay, I’m on it.”
Carrie Poppy: “Can do.”
Ross Blocher: And just words come out. So, there is kind of like a lulling effect, I think, just to how he presents things. I bet you could miss a lot easily. Okay. So, then comes Project Blue Book. And I think anyone who’s been into like the UFO thing for a long time, you’ve probably heard of Project Blue Book. So, that was the major government program, through 1969. And he’s very down on this. The UFO community doesn’t like it, because they would kind of rule everything as swamp gas or—
Carrie Poppy: Which is true.
Ross Blocher: Searchlights, or clouds.
[00:50:00]
Or a misperceived natural phenomena. They had an answer for everything. But then they released a report where they said that there were 700 objects that were unidentified. And what do we do with that?! I immediately think, okay, yeah, sometimes you just don’t have a conclusive response. It doesn’t mean you think it’s not natural.
Carrie Poppy: Good on them for including it.
Ross Blocher: Yeah! Yeah, exactly.
Carrie Poppy: Good on them for including their negative results.
Ross Blocher: But for him, he just jumps on that like, “Aha! See, they had all these things that they couldn’t offer a solution to out of their creativity.”
Carrie Poppy: And I mean, of course I’m speculating, but let’s say they left them out. What would he be saying? Probably, “Oh, and they just have an excuse for eeeevery single one!”
Ross Blocher: Fair point. Yeah. It’s kind of a non-falsifiable position, where if you’ve got a bunch in that category, you know—heads, you win. And then if there’s nothing in that category, well—tails, you lose. That is a major component, I think, of conspiracy logic—that the absence of evidence becomes the evidence itself.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I always think of—I think it was—it was one of the flat earthers we interviewed. I don’t think it was my friend, Jaron. I think it was Mark Sargent. But one of them was saying, (conspiratorially) “Well, we asked them for this specific photo forever and ever, and then they supplied it!”
Ross Blocher: Which means “it took them that long to work on it, and they made it up”.
Carrie Poppy: Ah. Yeah. Okay, so you’re not happy if they give it to you, and you’re not happy if they don’t.
Ross Blocher: “Finally, Obama releases his birth certificate. Well, what took so long? And we’re gonna zoom way in, and we think they cropped this and digitally modified that.” Yep. There’s no pleasing that mindset. What you gonna do?
Okay, so then after Project Blue Book, you had already these unofficial groups that were just citizen organized. So, they’d be looking into ufology and collecting stories. So, I’ve heard this name before, but I wasn’t aware how this fit in. This was interesting. NICAP—the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena—was started like in the ’50s and went through the ’80s. And it’s just fascinating to me that the phrase “aerial phenomenon” was already sort of a phenomenon! Because now we talk about UAP, and originally it was Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. Now it’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon.
That was interesting. But apparently—
Carrie Poppy: Sorry, what year they were already saying aerial phenomenon?
Ross Blocher: Starting in the ’50s!
Carrie Poppy: Oh, wow! Yeah, because they went to UFO pretty fast then. Interesting.
Ross Blocher: And then you also had MUFON, we’ve heard of. The Mutual UFO Network.
Carrie Poppy: That’s a group of people who report their UFO sightings and go out and investigate them, to various commitment levels.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, and actually at this conference, I’ll meet the astronomer who reviews submissions to MUFON of new sightings. Yeah, that’s actually—that’s a pretty fun story.
So, he said—and I haven’t looked this up at all, but he said that NICAP was infiltrated by the CIA.
Carrie Poppy: I mean, CIA is in NICAP.
(They chuckle.)
Ross Blocher: (Claps.) Nice. Nice. Yeah.
Carrie Poppy: (Laughing.) Thank you.
Ross Blocher: Apparently, they were sowing discord and dissolved the group from within kind of thing, and no one could trust it anymore.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. Provocateur.
Ross Blocher: So, MUFON then created, I guess, the preeminent organization of citizen reporters at the time. Okay, so then his next big bullet point in this timeline is Jimmy Carter.
Carrie Poppy: Aw, Jimmy Carter.
Ross Blocher: And we’ve talked about this before.
Carrie Poppy: Enemy of the guinea worm!
Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Yes. And we love him for it.
So, while he was the governor of Georgia, he had this sighting. And Danny characterizes it as a full-scale UFO that Jimmy Carter reported seeing at the time. And when I was talking with Brian Dunning, the creator of the movie The UFO Movie THEY Don’t Want You to See, he was reporting on a story that Jimmy Carter had been seeing a release of barium gas from—
Carrie Poppy: Drew?
Ross Blocher: No, not your husband—Eglin Air Force Base. And it perfectly matched like how he described it, the location he saw it in the sky. Like, he gave an accurate account. And it totally made sense with the physics of it and why the colors of the gas changed over the appearance of the phenomena. So, it was kind of cool to the point where Jimmy Carter said, “Yeah, I accept that. That’s cool. That’s what I saw.”
Carrie Poppy: So, who did he report it to?
Ross Blocher: That’s a good question. I thought he had mentioned that, but I don’t have it in my notes. It certainly became public—like, either he reported it to somebody, or he just talked about it in interviews. He was the governor already, and then he became the president. So, for a long time, you know, Jimmy Carter’s sighting has been a big boon to this community. But Danny had nothing to say about that later explanation. I don’t know if he even knows. Maybe I should invite him to my hotel room sometime and tell him this—play the documentary for him.
Carrie Poppy: (Chuckling.) Helping a friend.
Ross Blocher: As he should. So, then he’s talking about some of his legal representation work that he does. And one of the people that he represented was McCord, who was one of the guys that was caught at the Watergate hotel. And he said, “Because we were lawyers—”
[00:55:00]
“—we were included in a little more information than most people get about that incident.” And he said, “It was related to the assassination of President Kennedy, if you want a buzz.” And that got the audience all like kind of nervously excited and laughing like, ooh! There’s a story there!
So, there you go. He was trying to bring it back to Kennedy, but he didn’t get distracted. He told a whole story that I’ve heard before, that at the time under Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush was the CIA director. And apparently, he wanted to do that forever and said like, “This is the greatest position. I want to be like J. Edgar Hoover and always be like the CIA guy.” But then Carter replaced him, and then he went on to be the president of these United States. So, what could have been if Jimmy Carter had left George H. W. Bush in his position? And then there was a whole story about Bush kind of getting revenge on Carter by withholding information from him.
You ready for a very weird story?
Carrie Poppy: Yes!
Ross Blocher: So, apparently because of this whole like breakdown in communications between them, Carter was behind this order to investigate extraterrestrial life and communication with aliens and did it through this science and technology group attached to the White House. At that time in 1976, Danny was a legal counsel at the US Jesuit headquarters. So, he was very much embedded with the Jesuits. And that gives us a little insight into his time at the Harvard Divinity School. And he said that he himself was a candidate for the priesthood even. While he was working at the U S Jesuit headquarters in their social ministry office, Rosemary Chalk, who was the secretary at the NAS—the National Academy of Sciences. She said, “Okay, we’ve been tasked by the president to do these studies. Could you assist like on a legal angle?”
And he sent this request up the chain like, “Hey, can we help out with this whole extraterrestrial thing that’s been asked for?”
And the Vatican came back and said, “No, you can’t.”
And so, he thought, oh, well, they just don’t understand the ask. So, like he wrote a nice letter and said, “Oh, well, here’s actually like what this is all about.”
And they said, “Yeah. No, you can’t do it.”
Now he’s been rejected by the Vatican to pursue this project that he’s interested in, but at this point he’s just not in that world. Now a new Congress gets voted in, and they cut the budget for SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Originally it was like part of JPL, and they got part of the funding from JPL. He was asked then at that time, again, you’re a lawyer doing all these cool projects, would you be willing to go around to Congress people and talk to them with astronauts and try to drum up support for SETI and get it funded again?
And apparently this was effective!
Carrie Poppy: I bet!
Ross Blocher: They reinstated the SETI budget! Yeah.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah. You walk around with an astronaut in astronaut gear, I’ll do whatever you want.
Ross Blocher: Yeah! Got to meet astronauts, shake their hands. Sure. Okay. Yeah. We’ll fund you. We were crazy. Yeah. You’re telling us that’s real science? Okay.
‘Cause yeah, SETI’s always been one of those easy targets for politicians who don’t really understand science to say like, “Why are we spending money on this looking for aliens?” kind of thing.
Anyway, so now SETI’s really excited and very happy. And so, they reach out to him and say, “Hey, well, you’re involved with the Jesuits. Could we get a report on sort of religious attitudes toward the idea of establishing contact with other aliens, extraterrestrial life?”
Carrie Poppy: Sure. Sure, we can combine those ideas. Why not?
Ross Blocher: And so, he actually gets approval for that. And also, as part of this job, he gets to access documents from the bluebook Project. All of a sudden he’s really excited by this, and this is a cool new topic, and he’s getting deep into it. And he tells the story of getting to go to this secure facility and access a room full of documents. And in the boxes, he’s finding this microfiche—like, this film that you can scan. You know, old system, where you had these high-resolution images. So, he puts it under the enlarger. And he only gets three microfiches in—whatever the plural is. He finds a bunch of photos on the scanned document. And one of them is like a series of photos of this downed UFO in the snow. And this is how—
Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm. A downed UFO. Okay.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, like it’s crashed and left like a trail. It’s dug into the earth, but there’s also snow everywhere.
Carrie Poppy: Just my brain starts short circuiting and going like, “Well, it’s not flying then. How can it be a UFO? It’s not flying. It’s on the floor.” Floor object.
Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) We need to rename it!
Carrie Poppy: Unidentified Floor Object, okay.
Ross Blocher: It’s no longer a meteor, it’s now a meteorite! Fix it, please.
Carrie Poppy: It short circuits me.
(They chuckle.)
Ross Blocher: Fair. Okay. So, he sees this, and he kind of panics and says, “Oh shoot, I need to make some documentation of this.” And he is not allowed to take photos or anything, but he did sneak in a yellow legal pad. So, he takes that out, he pulls this thing up on the enlarger, and he traces on his legal pad the symbols that he’s seeing on this UFO. Does he describe these symbols? Does he show them for us? No.
Carrie Poppy: Great. Perfect.
Ross Blocher: He doesn’t have visuals for his presentation.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, he didn’t even take a picture of the legal pad where he drew the thing in person?
[01:00:00]
Ross Blocher: Not that I’ve seen!
Carrie Poppy: Okay. Great. Maybe Linda Moulton Howe can help him go get hypnosis and remember it.
Ross Blocher: Recover that? Yeah. But it gets even better. So, he’s walking out. He’s all nervous that they’re going to catch him with this piece of contraband. He wasn’t supposed to take anything in. And now he’s kicking himself all the time. He says, “I could have stayed in that room longer!”
Carrie Poppy: And the contraband’s just his notes?
Ross Blocher: Yeah, that he’s hiding like under his—
Carrie Poppy: This doesn’t seem necessary, this secrecy.
Ross Blocher: —crook of his arm. Because, I don’t know—he feels like, “I wasn’t supposed to copy that piece of info.”
Carrie Poppy: They’re not going to show you the microfiche if you can’t like take notes on it. That’s not how it happens.
Ross Blocher: Who knows! That’s not the part of the story I questioned, but you’re right that I should question it.
Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) That’s the part of the story I’ve been involved in before.
Ross Blocher: Absolutely. He’s like, “Oh, why didn’t I stay there longer? No one was rushing me out. But, okay. So, I have this traced series of symbols, and I copy them perfectly. And as I’m walking out, I’ve still got this—” He’s got a briefcase. They don’t search the briefcase. So, like, why—
Carrie Poppy: Why is he hiding the thing under his arm!?
Ross Blocher: Exactly! Why not just put it in the briefcase?
Carrie Poppy: I need a drawing.
Ross Blocher: They say, “Hey, hold it. What have you got there?”
And he says, “Oh, it’s just my briefcase.”
And they say, “No, no, under your arm!”
(Laughs.) So, it’s like he could have just put it in his briefcase!
Carrie Poppy: But we’re not worried about what’s in your briefcase.
Ross Blocher: So, these two guys in suits, they want to look through his notepad.
Carrie Poppy: Not suits!
Ross Blocher: And he says that they flip through it, but the way they flip through it misses the side of the paper that he drew symbols on.
(Carrie “aaah”s.)
So, yeah, nice little like James Bond moment. I got away with my drawings here. If you thought that story was needlessly complicated, here’s where it gets more complicated.
(Carriel laughs.)
So, he takes it to William J. Davis, and that’s his superior at the Jesuit order. Father, I have sinned. I don’t know. It’s like, you know, “Hey, let me confide in you. I found this.”
And I got all excited for a second, like William Davis! And I was thinking of William B. Davis, who plays the cigarette smoking man on the X-Files. No, different. This is William J. Davis. So, he shows his very accurate reproductions of the symbols to his superior. And that guy looks at him coyly and reaches down into his drawer and pulls out photos of the same incident of this downed UFO. Okay. So, you—
Carrie Poppy: Well, it sounds like we don’t need to hide them in microfiche, but okay.
Ross Blocher: But all of a sudden you’re wondering, okay, why does this random priest have this?
Carrie Poppy: Because they’re clearly all very bored.
Ross Blocher: Okay, so the priest says, “Dodie”—not Richard Doty, just Dodie, his sister—the priest’s sister gave the photo to him. And now he has it in an envelope, this 8×10 photo. Where did she get it?
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, so far we’re just describing the concept of mail.
Ross Blocher: It came next from Michael, who worked at the Washington airport?
Carrie Poppy: Oh, Michael.
Ross Blocher: So, Michael got it and then gave it to Dodie. But Michael had a pilot friend who had taken the original photo out the window of his plane. Okay. So, now—
Carrie Poppy: So, Dodie’s friend, Michael’s, pilot friend took the picture outside of a plane, and now we have it.
Ross Blocher: There’s way too many people in this story. It’s a terrible story. I don’t believe any of it, but okay. So, the pilot takes the photo. He gives it to his friend, Mike, who works at the Washington airport. Because he’s too nervous that he’s going to get in trouble for having it. Mike takes it to the drugstore to get it developed there. Because, yeah, he doesn’t want, you know, any governmental sources knowing that he has this now.
Carrie Poppy: Sure, so it’s film at this point. Okay.
Ross Blocher: So, then he takes that print to his best friend. Oh! Oh, goodness.
Carrie Poppy: (Laughing.) There it is.
Ross Blocher: I messed it up. Mike is the best friend. I don’t even know—
Carrie Poppy: I can’t believe it though! It’s just so classic. We all knew Mike was the best friend. As soon as you said it, I was like there’s no way it was Mike. Mike wouldn’t do that.
Ross Blocher: So, I don’t even know the name of the air traffic controller. Okay. The pilot gives it to the air traffic controller who gives it to his best friend, Mike. Mike is also nervous. He gives it to his wife and says, “Do something with this. Maybe give it to your priest. ‘Cause I just—I don’t want to have this.” So, she gives it to the priest. That’s how he got it. And then all of a sudden, Danny Sheehan comes in. And he’s got this photo and shows it to the priest who just happens to have this in his desk, because this long chain of people couldn’t handle the hot potato.
Carrie Poppy: Wow!
Ross Blocher: It’s the weirdest story ever. I just don’t know what to even do with it. It’s like—it’s too intricate to be false. Why would you construct that?
Carrie Poppy: I’m impressed that he retained all those levels of communication.
(Ross laughs.)
That’s the point at which most minds go, “Oh, the provenance is lost. We’re not sure where it came from.”
But Daniel Sheehan’s like, (mockingly) “No, I know!”
Ross Blocher: I just don’t know what to do with this story, but—
Carrie Poppy: “There are eight people, and I have them in order!”
Ross Blocher: I had to share it with you.
(They chuckle.)
Okay. So now, because we’ve got this task force that’s focused on talking to different denominations and their attitudes about UFOs, “Sarah and I—” So, somehow Sarah’s come into his life, and I guess he’s given up the priesthood? Because—or maybe they become an item later? I don’t know. You know, he never explains this transition, which I’m now very interested in. But she and he set up this Christic Institute. So, that was their original group that was meant to help people out with legal representation.
[01:05:00]
And their first big case was that of Karen Silkwood. And there was a film made about this, which I saw over a decade ago, and now I really want to watch again—where Meryl Streep played Karen Silkwood. She was a whistleblower at a power station. Plutonium was getting stolen, and like she kind of blew the whistle on unsafe working conditions and like things going missing. The idea is that they kind of killed her off. Because she was going to release this information that they didn’t want out there.
Carrie Poppy: This is the theory. Yeah.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, that’s the theory, for what it’s worth. And she was on her way to talk with a reporter from the New York Times when she died in a car accident. So, we have the movie about it. And then I guess he wasn’t representing her so much as her family, who was trying to seek restitution, and they successfully represented them. And thus was born the Christic Institute. And he said that they got a 10.5 million civil judgment handed to them—this, you know, company running the reactor.
Carrie Poppy: Wow. And is Daniel Sheehan—is his bar license in California?
Ross Blocher: I don’t know.
Carrie Poppy: For some reason, I have him placed in California in my mind. But—
Ross Blocher: He does eventually move to California, yeah. And that’s, I think, where the current institute is based.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, hell yeah. On his website, he has a JFK assassination flow chart that’s completely bonkers looking.
Ross Blocher: Oh, really?
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Ross Blocher: Okay, alright. I do want to hear his JFK theories. Oh, wow! That’s some like bonkers, high level, red—
Carrie Poppy: Dylan Louis Monroe.
Ross Blocher: Yes! Yeah, totally. Like, red strings connecting all the murderers kind of person who’s been isolated in a room for three months working on this theory and hasn’t eaten.
Carrie Poppy: Yep. Relatable.
Ross Blocher: So, the way Wikipedia tells it, the Christic Institute lost its nonprofit status after a federal case was dismissed in 1988, and they were penalized for filing a frivolous lawsuit. And then they founded the Romero Institute. The way that Danny Sheehan tells it, he was involved in getting six indictments related to the Iran Contra affair, and then George H. W. Bush came into office. He pardoned those people involved, and then he sicced the IRS on Danny Sheehan’s group to make them lose their 501c3 status. And then he said that the Romero group was out in California, and they said, “We like what you’re doing. We’re going to let you take over.” They brought them all onto the board, and then the whole Romero group just abdicated and handed over the keys to them, essentially.
Carrie Poppy: It seems like he has a… mmm. An eventful organizational history in general.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. So, I feel like that might be his cleaned-up version of what happened.
Carrie Poppy: So, I don’t know if he’s practicing or claiming to practice in California, but I can only find three Daniel Sheehan’s in California at the bar.
Ross Blocher: But he could be barred in another state.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, he could be barred somewhere else.
Ross Blocher: Okay. I mean, the next place I would check would be Washington, DC, because he’s done a lot of advocacy work there and spent like 20 years Washington-adjacent, working on the Disclosure Project—which we’ll talk about in just a moment. But wherever you read about the Christic Institute and the Romero Institute, they’ve also been involved in things like representing the victims of the nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island. They prosecuted the KKK and American Nazi Party, you know, and various other things that sound good and just unrelated to aliens. So, yeah, that’s all cool and interesting.
But then! He gets involved with another prominent figure in the UFO movement. And that is! Dr. John Mack.
Carrie Poppy: John Mack!
Ross Blocher: So, this is where you found the article about them being connected.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I just went into my archives and looked up Daniel Sheehan’s name and found this 1993 article I’d saved because it related to Satanic Panic.
Ross Blocher: We keep mentioning Bud Hopkins showing up all the time. John Mack is another one of those figures who’s like very key to the whole abduction narrative and advocating for people who say that they’ve contacted aliens. And at the time, he was the head of the Department of Clinical Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Have you heard of Harvard?
Carrie Poppy: Mm-mm. What is that?
Ross Blocher: Okay. Well, they have a divinity school, and they have just like kind of a—they have like a law school, they have a medical school. You know, but they’re well regarded. I think they go back to like the 1600s or something.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, nice. That’s cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ross Blocher: Well respected.
(Carrie chuckles softly.)
So, John Mack, he was just sort of tasked with interviewing people when the military had someone come out and say like, “I saw an alien, I saw a craft.”
They’d say, “Okay, well, we need to give you a psychiatric evaluation. And here, we’re going to have this nice fellow from Harvard do it for you.” And so he started—
Carrie Poppy: And then what done happens?
Ross Blocher: He started hearing enough of these stories. And! Danny Sheehan was very quick to tell us, “Now he wasn’t doing hypnosis on these people.”
[01:10:00]
Because he recognizes that maybe doesn’t sound so credible. He says, though, that John did have the patients do holotropic breathwork.
Carrie Poppy: Oooh! I didn’t know this detail.
Ross Blocher: Which, as we have experienced, when rapidly breathing out and in, that you can have visions.
Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah, you are making yourself hallucinate.
Ross Blocher: So, it sounds like he was having them assist their memory retrieval by another method than hypnosis.
Carrie Poppy: Hallucination.
(Ross agrees with laughter.)
Yes. Also known as Imagination.
(Ross agrees.)
Um, yikes. Okay.
Mr. Daniel P. Sheehan, by the way, appears to be in good standing with the DC bar. Yep. DC bar member status, good standing, active, admitted 1976.
Ross Blocher: That checks out.
Carrie Poppy: The business address is in Santa Cruz! And—
Ross Blocher: Santa Cruz! (Gasps.)
Carrie Poppy: And I see his email here. I’m going to send you his email in case you want to send him an email.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, send me that! Next time I’m in Santa Cruz, maybe we should connect and tell him about Jimmy Carter.
Carrie Poppy: It’s very sweet that that’s where your head is at. Carrie must be telling me to hang out with Daniel Sheehan.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, wait, what is Carrie telling me to do?
Carrie Poppy: Oh! I just thought you might want to email him and like ask him for an interview or whatever.
Ross Blocher: Oh, yeah, sure! That too.
Carrie Poppy: Or just hang out with him in Santa Cruz!
Ross Blocher: Yeah, hang out at the hotel. So, now John Mack is this respected psychiatrist. But he’s being exposed to all of these stories coming out of people, and these seem like very sane, otherwise respectable people. I’ve got to take these stories of abductions and alien contact seriously. Well, it just so happens that his mother tells him there’s kind of a friend of the family, this Hopkins family. And there’s a guy named Bud! Bud Hopkins.
Carrie Poppy: Mmm! I didn’t even remember he was involved in this.
Ross Blocher: You should talk to him! He’s been getting a lot of interviews with people like this!
Carrie Poppy: Bud is no bud to us. Why do you keep doing thiiiis?
Ross Blocher: Bud! Why must you be involved in every wrong turn in this narrative? There’s Bud Hopkins, but butting in!
Carrie Poppy: Oh my god. Budding in.
(Ross cackles.)
When did he die? When did this end?
Ross Blocher: Couldn’t have been soon enough! Is that your point?
Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) No, I do want to know when his influence is—I mean, it’ll never be ended, but where it…
Ross Blocher: Where it did end?
Carrie Poppy: Where he died.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. What do you got?
Carrie Poppy: August 21st, 2011.
Ross Blocher: 2011. Oh, not that long ago. We were making a podcast then. A few months into our podcast, we lost Bud. Well, so now John Mack has kind of this encouragement to be taking these stories seriously. And Daniel Sheehan wants us to know, “By the way, John Mack is totally respected. He also won a Pulitzer for writing a psychobiography of T. E. Lawrence, the guy who inspired Lawrence of Arabia. Interesting!
Carrie Poppy: That’s cool.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Very cool. But—
Carrie Poppy: Somewhat a jack of all trades.
Ross Blocher: But writes this review about his interviews with over a hundred people, and he sends it to the New England Journal of Medicine. Heard of it?
Carrie Poppy: I’ve heard of it.
Ross Blocher: And so, they reject it. They don’t want to touch this thing. And he’s all upset. So, he goes and publishes elsewhere. He writes a book called Abductions: Human Contact with Aliens. And now all of a sudden, Harvard is kind of focusing the laser light on John Mack and saying, “Hey, what are you doing? You’re making us look—what’s all this alien stuff? This is embarrassing.” And so, they kind of call him up for potential expulsion. That’s the way Danny’s spinning it. And so, Danny is representing him, and that’s how he gets tied in with John Mack.
Carrie Poppy: I don’t have a good sense of the timing on John Mack. What years are we talking about here?
Ross Blocher: Early mid-’90s. I think ’94 is kind of when all this was happening. At least, that’s when John Mack contacted Danny Sheehan for representation is in 1994. And I think it was in the context of, “Oh, they’re trying to rake me over the coals here, and I should be free. I have tenure. You know, my job shouldn’t be threatened by this.”
Carrie Poppy: Uh-huh. Just a few years before Susan Clancy did her work on abductees from Harvard.
Ross Blocher: Oh! Whew! There’s so many threads here! They’re all interconnected. So, Danny Sheehan has this whole tactic where they’re going to start rogue having all these talks with contactees at Harvard in a grand rounds. And finally—
Carrie Poppy: Great. Maybe I’ll be there.
Ross Blocher: This committee backs off. And they’re like, “Oh, you know what? Never mind. We’ll leave you alone. You can keep your position here at Harvard.” So, that’s very interesting about aliens. But! Did you know that today just happens to fall on the great two two-weekday of Maximum Fun Driiiive?
Carrie Poppy: Oh my goodness, I didn’t know that, but now I do. And I’m so happy, because it’s one of my favorite couple of weeks of the year!
Ross Blocher: It means it’s the time to support the show. You’ve been listening. You like us. Hopefully. I mean, you’re listening to us. Maybe you’re a glutton for punishment. I don’t know. But you’re like, “This should keep on going. I’m going to support them at MaximumFun.org/join.” And what will they get?
Carrie Poppy: They will get all sorts of gifts they might want. They might want bonus content at $5 a month or more, including your series on the Creation Museum, lots of good interviews, our famous firewalking episode.
Ross Blocher: Yes! Lots of movie reviews, commentaries, Carrie telling her childhood story of Caroline—
Carrie Poppy: Caroline Opals and the Mystery Boxes.
[01:15:00]
Ross Blocher: (Laughing.) Caroline—Opals is her last name. Okay. And it’s not just our show. We’ve got well over a dozen items in there over the 10 years that we’ve been with Maximum Fun. And there’s more coming. Carrie’s recent talk on creativity and madness—really good. And over 600 hours of bonus content from all of our shows.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, all the MaxFun shows together.
(Ross confirms.)
I said thousands earlier, and I want to retract my statement. It’s 600.
Ross Blocher: Over 600.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, if you need 400 more hours, you should listen twice.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Or just stay a MaxFun member for years and watch the bonus content flow.
Carrie Poppy: There we go. And if you do $10 a month or more, you can get our pin.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, you get to choose a pin. And I get it. You may see ours that says, “That’s not how that works,” and you may be like, “Oh, I really like that, but I also really liked the one from this other show I listen to.” Well, guess what? Because you have unlocked the $10 a month level, that means you are eligible for the pin sale! You can buy more pins later on, and you can be like, “Give me five copies of ‘that’s not how that works’.”
Carrie Poppy: That’s right. Do you want the right to buy? We’ll give you that!
Ross Blocher: That’s how that works.
Carrie Poppy: Then if you do $20 a month or more, you can get the fantastic chess handkerchief.
Ross Blocher: This is really brilliant.
Carrie Poppy: I really love the colors too. It’s yellow and green. It has this great drawing imagery around it with images from all of the different shows.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, really fun, lively artwork. And you get the fun task of figuring out which one goes to which show. It’s a little mystery in each illustration around the edge. And you’ve also got a functional both chess board and checker’s board.
Carrie Poppy: Pretty cool.
Ross Blocher: But you can wear it on your head too. It’s amazing.
Carrie Poppy: And you know what else you can wear on your head is the Maximum Fun bucket hat!
Ross Blocher: Oh yeah. That’s your other option at $20. If you’re like, “I don’t need no fricking chess board!” You can get this bucket hat. And that’s a nice design.
Carrie Poppy: The size is 7 and 1/8 inches.
Ross Blocher: One size fits some. If you feel like you have an average head. This bucket hat could be for you.
(Carrie laughs.)
And it’s got the MaxFun rocket on the front, of course.
Carrie Poppy: It’s really cute. I hope I get that too. I haven’t gotten it yet.
Ross Blocher: And boy, I got to say, I’m also really excited about this $35 per month leadership squad incentive, because you not only get everything else that we’ve talked about, but you get Maximum Bag!
Carrie Poppy: Fits a woman!
Ross Blocher: Yeah, we tested this, and Carrie fits inside the Maximum Bag. It’s that big. It’s a large bag.
Carrie Poppy: It could be the trunk of Ross’s Prius C. It’s so big, it fits me.
Ross Blocher: I quickly ran into work with it today to put stuff in it, and it got looks! People are like, “Woah, what’s up with that bag?”
Carrie Poppy: (Chuckling.) You were like, “It’s maximum.”
Ross Blocher: “Why is that so big?”
Carrie Poppy: It’s really big. (Laughs.)
Ross Blocher: Yeah, it’s like intended-to-start-conversation big.
Carrie Poppy: But it’s perfect for if you carry like a blanket to the beach or something, and you’re like, “Ugh, I just have my arm around this big ol’ honking thing,” but it’s light—that’s the perfect bag for that.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. However big you’re thinking, just think a little bigger. That’s the size of the Maximum Bag.
Carrie Poppy: (Giggles.) That’s right. That’s right. Then $100 a month or more, you get the HQ Access Pass, a quarterly virtual hang time with MaxFun hosts and staff.
Ross Blocher: You know, some people get so much out of Maximum Fun that they give it that level. And that’s amazing!
Carrie Poppy: And we get so much wonderful email from people who were affected by the show, so many great comments. I had someone, maybe he’s listening out there—I had someone wave at me through the door of Drew’s car and say, (shouting) “I love your podcast!”
(Ross “aw”s.)
Yeah, fantastic.
Ross Blocher: That’s wonderful.
Carrie Poppy: It’s very impacting to be able to be part of something that you feel that way about.
Ross Blocher: Yeah! And sometimes someone will write us and just say, “Hey, you got me through my undergrad degree. I had all this time where I had to be holed up alone working on this project, and you helped me keep my sanity.” Wow! Oh my goodness. Or “I backpacked across Europe and listened to your whole catalog” or something. Like, how cool that we are traveling in your ears on all of these pursuits or helping you through tough times sometimes. Like, you know, you just don’t think about that. When someone tells you, it’s really touching.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. We hear hospital stories too—people who like listened while they were in the hospital. Yeah, it’s a cool thing to be a part of.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, we’re honored.
Carrie Poppy: So, will you please join us as a member by going to MaximumFun.org/join?
Ross Blocher: It’s that simple, and there’s so many ways to do it. You can join starting at $5 a month. And that’s so helpful in keeping the show going, and then we’ve got all the other tiers that we’ve mentioned. But you can also upgrade. So, you can get up to the next level. Or you can boost, which means that wherever you’re at, maybe you don’t want to go all the way up to the next level, but you can still just add another dollar or two monthly. And a new option! This is really cool. You can also prepay for the year if you’d like to.
Carrie Poppy: Yes, that is cool! Get it done. So, will you go to MaximumFun.org/join? J-O-I-N.
Ross Blocher: Well spelled!
Carrie Poppy: (Laughing.) Thank you.
[01:20:00]
Ross Blocher: So, the next chapter in his alien life is that he was contacted by Steven Greer in 2001. So, we’ve talked about Greer on the show before. One of my least favorite people in the whole UFO movement. He just feels like such a flimflam salesman to me. He’s always like promising alien technology for a free energy device, and it’s going to be released within five years. And then, you know, he just hopes everyone will conveniently forget that he promised that. That kind of guy. Or he creates an app where you pay 10 bucks so you can contribute your human-initiated contact experiences.
So, I don’t know, for whatever reason Danny’s okay with him and spends 20 years working with him on the Disclosure Project. Which is this side hustle that Steven Greer’s had about getting former pilots and people who’ve worked like in any level of government to share their information. If they’ve seen something, say something. You know, which in principle, fine. So, he does that for 20 years. Next, Danny Sheehan is retained by Lue Elizondo, another figure who’s come up over and over, very central to that 2017 report in the New York Times. And he was then the head of the Aerospace Threat Identification Program at the Pentagon. Another one of these people who has like—
Carrie Poppy: ATIPP.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, that’s right. And he’s another one of these people who legitimately worked for the government. But now he’s—
Carrie Poppy: The government’s lot of people.
Ross Blocher: Right. And they’re still people. Right? I think Linda Moulton Howe forgets this sometimes.
Carrie Poppy: Weeeeell….
Ross Blocher: Like, just ‘cause you work for the government doesn’t mean you have like perfect retention or you’re right about everything that you talk about. You can still be a human and get things wrong.
Carrie Poppy: But some of them are dogs in alien bodies, aliens in dog bodies.
Ross Blocher: Oh, that’s the famous Poppy theory.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. They’re working for the government also. So. You never know. You never know.
Ross Blocher: You never know! So, he’s the one that took those videos and released them to the New York Times. And oh, wow, this is so crazy. We can’t explain these things.
Well, yes, we can. And we had Mick West come on the show. He explained all of them quite credibly, and to me, convincingly. And then the Pentagon denied that they knew anything about Lue or that he’d ever worked for them. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s what Danny’s saying.
Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles.) Oh, I mean, that’s possibly cause for concern.
Ross Blocher: So, as retaliation, they had Lue lose his security clearance. And I think maybe this is where Danny Sheehan got involved. Like, oh, let’s help you get that back. And the officer who raised the challenge to Lue Elizondo’s security clearance ended up having his security checked over this. Kind of a “you were acting out of line”.
Carrie Poppy: I see. I mean, I wonder how uncommon these security checks are. It seems like you would be doing that somewhat regularly.
Ross Blocher: Good question. Yeah. Certainly in Scientology, you get sec-checked all the time.
Carrie Poppy: That’s true. That’s true. But I would think if you work for the government—you know, they’re checking your bag a lot. I don’t know. I don’t work for the government. Despite many internet comments, I don’t work for the government and don’t know how often they check your bag.
Ross Blocher: People are saying on the internet that you work for the government?
Carrie Poppy: Oh, have you not gotten like, “You’re a CIA agent?” This is more an X/Twitter thing. But people will tell me like I work for the CIA or whatever, because I make this podcast. You know when the CIA was like, “We gotta fund a bunch of podcasts”?
(They laugh.)
Ross Blocher: I’m trying to think if like I’ve gotten this kind of correspondence and ignored it, but I don’t think so. Interesting!
Carrie Poppy: Oh, really? I feel like it’s mostly an X/Twitter phenomenon.
Ross Blocher: Where I am not, so. Okay. Aw, I’m missing out!
Carrie Poppy: I mean, I’m not saying it’s every day. But no, yeah. It’s totally—
Ross Blocher: A fair amount.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, enough! I’m going to give a total of 18.
Ross Blocher: Alright. Interesting. Do you ever reply to them just to mess with them?
Carrie Poppy: I do reply to them, but uh… I guess I usually—what do I usually say? I think I just usually say no. (Chuckles.) Yeah. I mean, I always—
Ross Blocher: Are they offering you secrets?
Carrie Poppy: No, it’s an accusation. So, I’m clearly like an agent of the government trying to preserve the status quo.
Ross Blocher: You’re a paid shill.
Carrie Poppy: Which doesn’t really sound like me, but okay.
Ross Blocher: Interesting. ‘Cause I know some of my other skeptical podcaster friends—Brian Dunning gets that kind of thing all the time. And I’m like where’s everybody, you know, that’s accusing me of working for Monsanto or getting my shill bucks?
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, you gotta get on Twitter.
Ross Blocher: From like the vaccine lobby or whatever it is. Okay. I just need to be on X.
Carrie Poppy: Gotta get on there.
Ross Blocher: Oh, he does mention the Paradigm Institute at the Conscious Life Expo talk—that they will have classes on worldviews. That reminds me so much of Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis’s approach.
Carrie Poppy: He said this at—?
Ross Blocher: The Conscious Life Expo talk that I attended.
Carrie Poppy: 2024?
(Ross confirms.)
That’s interesting.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, Paradigm Institute will have classes on worldviews, but if they’ve already been—
Carrie Poppy: So, maybe New Paradigm College is different from Paradigm Institute?
Ross Blocher: Oh, maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Carrie Poppy: Okay, here are the initiatives of the New Paradigm Institute. Restoring public trust, advancing scientific inquiry, cultural impact in education—not a verb—preparing for the future.
[01:25:00]
National global advocacy for UFO and ET transparency, educational outreach and public awareness, research and documentation, strategic litigation for information release and community engagement, and grassroots mobilization.
Ross Blocher: Dude loves to start up an institution.
Carrie Poppy: Ooh, there’s a press kit! Should I get it?
(Ross confirms.)
I see that in their press kit, they have imagery from that Congressional hearing quite recently. So, this press kit was made pretty recently.
Ross Blocher: Oh yeah. Okay. Oh, I mean, they were all about that. That’s their whole reason for living is to have congressional hearings like that one.
Carrie Poppy: In loving memory of Dr. John Mack.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. When did he pass away?
Carrie Poppy: 2004.
Ross Blocher: 2004. Okay. Not as recently as Bud Hopkins.
So, now that he’s given us a lot of his history with all of these different movers and shakers in the UFO movement, now he gets to like the more recent congressional action that’s happened on UFOs. And he’s super excited about this. All these people are super excited. We’ve talked about it on the podcast. So, he tells us that Congress has now passed a bill establishing a new government office. And originally, it was going to be called the Unidentified Aerospace and Undersea Joint Program Office.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. Too many vowels.
Ross Blocher: There’s so many acronyms in this field, and Congress isn’t helping things. And I’m curious about the whole undersea thing. That’s interesting. Why did they feel the need to include—?
Carrie Poppy: Oh, I hope the UFO people start doing a sea thing. The sea’s cooler than space.
Ross Blocher: (Singing.) “Under the sea—”
Yeah, I’d go to that lecture. Yeah. Tell me all about—
Carrie Poppy: I’m not getting on that submarine though. I will not get on the submarine. You cannot make me!
Ross Blocher: And he was joking like, “Yeah, the problem with that name is you can’t dance to the title,” and that got a good laugh from the audience. He said that a lot of Congress people, even across the aisle, have been taking this up as a cause that they care about. And he mentioned Marco Rubio, who happens to be, I guess, Lue Elizondo’s representative. Maybe they talk to each other. I don’t know.
Carrie Poppy: Adam Schiff is my representative.
Ross Blocher: Maybe that’s what convinced Marco Rubio to get passionate about this. But yeah, I mean, there’s been a long tradition of Democrats as well. Like Harry Reid was really into UFOs and disclosure. But actually at the Conscious Life Expo talk that Danny Sheehan gave, he does make a point that now that you have this kind of extreme right-wing fringe, that they’re actually really pro-disclosure. And you can tell. And I think we’re pretty clear that he’s sorta of a liberal bent just from the things he does and what he’s been involved in over the years. You could tell he was kind of slightly amused by this. But you know, the Matt Gaetz’s of the world and Nancy Mace and—oh, I’m forgetting the guy’s name. Tim… something that sounds vaguely like my name.
Anyways, there are these freedom caucus Republicans who are really into making all this public, and he’s willing to have those bedfellows if they’re making this case.
Carrie Poppy: Or they’re willing to push to make it public. Who knows what would happen if it was actually made public, how they’d react to it.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. And as we said when we were covering that one congressional hearing, it was pretty across the aisle. It was slightly bent on the side of Republicans, but there were plenty of Democrats actively involved in—
Carrie Poppy: It’s something everyone could get behind.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Disclosure. And you know what? I’m for it, because there is enough public interest. We can point to like, “Oh, it’s ridiculous we’re spending, you know, $4,000,000 on researching whether the government’s hiding UFOs.” I kind of feel that’s worth it, you know, if it clears the air. But! Will they ever be happy if they don’t get the answer they want? That’s another question.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. I mean, different people will feel different ways about it. Some people will be convinced, and some people won’t. But yeah, no, I agree. But it’s also just this implied like they haven’t been giving us the information before. And once they give me the perfect amount, I’m going to be satisfied, I promise.
It’s like, you are? How do you know that? So, you’re not even describing what disclosure is, what it’s going to look like, when it’s going to come, who it’s going to come from. But you’re certain you’ll be satisfied with it? Okay.
Ross Blocher: And every time we go to one of these talks, they’re always talking about like the great future when finally this is all out there, and everyone agrees.
I’m always thinking of the dog catching the car. You know, like just what would they do if all of a sudden we’re all like, “Yes, okay. We all believe! Everybody believes! Do you believe? I believe. Do you believe? Oh, we all believe! That’s great.” Then what happens?
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, (laughs) let’s go to lunch.
Ross Blocher: I mean, ‘cause I would be for it. Like, sure. Make the announcement at the same moment, like Linda Moulton Howe was proposing. Let’s see what happens. Does anything come of it?
Carrie Poppy: Sure. If there are aliens here, they should speak up by now. I am for that. If you’re listening to this and you’re an alien, I do vote for you to come forward.
Ross Blocher: Write in the chat, alien, after you support us at MaximumFun.org/join.
So, then thanks to Marco Rubio and others, we get the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, which passes in May 2022. So, this is Bill 4503.
[01:30:00]
And it orders the Pentagon, Director of National Intelligence, and others to “start up a group to extract from all US military surfaces and intelligence agencies and defense department agencies and contractors any information they have about the UFO phenomenon going back to—” About what date do you think they would want to scour the records?
Carrie Poppy: Oh, 1942.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, 1945. So, January 1st, 1945. Go find all your records. Reveal if they recovered any advanced saucers, if they—
Carrie Poppy: They’re doing this to every agency of the government?
Ross Blocher: Yeah. They’re saying like, “Just go out there.”
Carrie Poppy: This is massive. Okay.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Find any info you can about all of this. This is your task. This is what you are to do.
“Any information about reverse engineering of other craft, whether there’s been any efforts undertaken to intimidate people who try to come forward with this news.” So, that’s a big component of this. “And then you must deliver this report to the Senate and the House Intelligence Committees both. If anyone is intimidated in this process, they can be represented in court.” And of course, Danny was especially excited about that.
He’s like, “That’s what I do! I’m happy to help you if you are being intimidated.” Okay. So, he’s all excited about that. That’s a great movement in 2022. And it’s supposed to happen in calendar year 2023. But then he’s not as excited about this. In December of 2022, then the house passes resolution 7776, which thins down that earlier program. And then it also changed the name, as they all do. So, now you’ve got this AARO, the All-domain Anomalous Resolution Office. Which he was just personally annoyed by. He’s like, “Oh, you’ve so dumbed it down now that what does it even mean? What are you even talking about? We’re not talking about flying craft. What is this anomalous—?”
Carrie Poppy: Oh, doesn’t like the name AARO. I see.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. So, he’s kind of joking about that, but as long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to, that’s all good. Also, in the wording, they stopped using the phrasing UFO. And that’s where we got this UAP thing. And then he also felt that there wasn’t a sufficient amount of accountability, protocols on like how this is supposed to actually take form. He felt there were too many loopholes that they might use to decide not to be honest or forthright. So, anyways, he says still, this is good news overall, but there’s some problems now.
So! This is convenient timing that we’re mentioning this, because AARO just happened to have released its first volume of its report, and the rest is due later. But Sean Kirkpatrick, who we’ve mentioned before, he was the head of the program. He’s now stepped down, but he waited around long enough to see this volume published. And that was just a mere 16 days ago.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, it’s that recent?
Ross Blocher: Yeah, this is fresh. So, it is a 63-page document. And it talks about the history and AARO’s mission. “AARO methodology applies both the scientific method and intelligence analysis tradecraft to identify and help mitigate risks UAP may pose to domain safety and discover, characterize and attribute potential competitor technological systems.” But rather than reading the entire thing, maybe Carrie, do you want to share the executive summary?
Carrie Poppy: Sure. Yes. If we skip on down to page seven, we get to section two, the executive summary, which says, “AARO found no evidence that any USG investigation, academic sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology.”
Ross Blocher: Ooh, that must’ve been crushing words to this crowd.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, or just, “Oh, the disclosure has not come yet.”
(Ross affirms.)
It goes on: “All investigative efforts at all levels of classification concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification. Although not the focus of this report, it’s worthwhile to note that all official foreign UAP investigatory efforts to date have reached the same general conclusions as USG investigations.”
Ross Blocher: “Although many UAP reports remain unsolved or unidentified, AARO assesses that if more and better-quality data were available, most of these cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena. Sensors and visual observations are imperfect. The vast majority of cases lack actionable data, or the data available is limited or of poor quality.”
Carrie Poppy: Okay, I’m skipping down a little here. “AARO determined, based on all information provided to date, that claims involving specific people, known locations, technological tests, and documents allegedly involved in or related to the reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology are inaccurate. Additional claims will be addressed in—” Volume two?!
Ross Blocher: Yeah, there’s more coming.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, wonderful. It’s like Toy Story.
Ross Blocher: They’re mandated by the end of this year to release the full report.
So, you get the flavor of it. And I can’t wait to read through the whole thing in full detail, but essentially—
Carrie Poppy: Project Twinkle?
Ross Blocher: They did not get what they wanted. What’s Project Twinkle?
Carrie Poppy: That’s one of the projects. “Summer 1949 to summer 1950, Project Twinkle was established in the summer of 1949 to investigate a series of UFO reports witnessed by numerous observers in Nevada and New Mexico.”
[01:35:00]
“Described as green fireballs streaking across the sky, moving in odd ways. And in at least one account, the fireball navigated near an aircraft. The literature is not clear if Project Twinkle was officially supported by the original Project Grudge, who was managed by the USAF’s Cambridge Research Laboratory.”
Ross Blocher: Wow. Yeah, this is a section very relevant to the talk Danny Sheehan has been giving that I’m looking at right now that talks about all of these different UAP investigatory programs since 1945. And that includes ones he mentioned like Project Sign, Project Grudge. Apparently Project Sign was also called Project Saucer, Blue Book, Twinkle—that you just made me aware of—Bear.
Carrie Poppy: Project Bear!
Ross Blocher: There’s nothing like a good project name, I guess.
(Carrie agrees.)
So, it’ll be interesting to see what they say like the next Conscious Life Expo, at the next Contact in the Desert. ‘Cause two steps forward, three steps back.
Carrie Poppy: But also, whenever we go to Conscious Life Expo or Contact in the Desert, sometimes it will be right after some major media event that involves like objects in the sky or whatever. And I’ll be like, “Oh, certainly they’re going to mention this.” And then the speakers don’t, or they barely do. And so, I wonder if this will even make it on the docket.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. I remember that happened once. I think there was big Mars Rover news while we were at one of these conventions. And like, they just didn’t bring it up!
Carrie Poppy: Nothing. Nothing!
Ross Blocher: Isn’t this your bailiwick?
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. At Conscious Life Expo—was it this year? There was like some big news in the sky, and it was on the TVs down in the lobby. And then I went upstairs and was like, “Everyone’s going to be talking about this.” And no.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, and maybe like one or two people do. But yeah, it’s not the uniform buzz that you would expect. Which is kind of strange. But they’re all updating their slideshows now, I guess, and talking about government obstructionism.
Carrie Poppy: I want to make a spreadsheet of all these projects.
Ross Blocher: (Chuckles.) Yeah, it’s wild!
Carrie Poppy: All these good names, Twinkle, Bear.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, Twinkle and Bear in particular are pretty good. Yeah. I feel like it’s part of that symptom of people liking to start new things rather than maintaining old systems. They’re like, “I don’t want to be the person who kept this thing going that so-and-so started. I want to be the person who founds this new group. And our goals and mission are slightly better!”
Carrie Poppy: Unless that person was forgotten, and you get to like reclaim. People also like that.
Ross Blocher: Oh yeah. And then say it’s yours.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, like the—who are those people? The White Rose Movement that Marsh told us about? And they kind of cribbed the idea from a better movement earlier.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Yeah. And I guess if you’re bringing one back, it’s like bringing back an old name. Like, you know, Shirley had its heyday back in the ’30s and ’40s. And not as many people named Shirley anymore. Let’s come back!
Carrie Poppy: Just Ross’s niece. It seems like such an old woman name! But I guess they may one day be old ladies.
Ross Blocher: I know! These things are cyclic, just like Project Twinkle. We brought it full circle.
Carrie Poppy: Thank you. Thank you.
Ross Blocher: So, of course, as he is wont to do, Sheehan now is involved in setting up the New Paradigm Project. So, he keeps using that word, paradigm.
Carrie Poppy: Huh. Okay. So, we had the New Paradigm College, then the New Paradigm Institute, and now we have the New Paradigm Project?
(Ross confirms.)
Got it.
Ross Blocher: And it has eight tasks! (Laughs.) He doesn’t list out all eight.
Carrie Poppy: Oh, good. Good, good, good. New Paradigm Task 1.
Ross Blocher: But he says that one of them is to “bird dog”. I like the wording here.
Carrie Poppy: Always start out with jargon.
Ross Blocher: “To bird dog the enforcement of this new provision.” Yeah, apparently it just means to like keep a really close eye on and make sure that everybody’s doing what they’re supposed to and—
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, hall monitor. (Chuckles.)
Ross Blocher: Calling it out like, “You haven’t been conducting interviews, and you’re sitting on this data, and why aren’t you talking to this person who wants to talk to you?!”
Carrie Poppy: Oh, wow. To identify yourself as the person who does that is really something.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, I guess it takes a certain type, right? But I find this—
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah. This official finger pointer.
Ross Blocher: He fills such an interesting role though, as like the resident lawyer and legal scholar of this movement. And he’s probably helped them be really effective.
Carrie Poppy: Was Stanton Friedman a lawyer before he died?
Ross Blocher: Well, originally he was a nuclear physicist. That’s where he gets his credo from.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. He wasn’t also a lawyer?
Ross Blocher: Not that I know of.
Carrie Poppy: Then yeah.
Ross Blocher: But he would say—
Ross & Carrie: (In a deep monotone.) Yes.
Ross Blocher: And he points out that you have people, again, from both sides, like Kirsten Gillibrand and Marco Rubio that are already complaining that this new office is being underfunded. And Danny said, “We won’t let them get away with underfunding it.”
(Carrie laughs.)
So, he then does kind of like a brief summary of like, “Look at all these things we’ve been doing over 50 years of action! And now we have the New Paradigm Project. And guess what? It’s a nonprofit, and we’re accepting donations. So, get out your checkbooks!” And you know, he’s kidding, but also not. Give us money.
Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) That’s funny. ‘Cause New Paradigm College I think stopped being able to accept donations.
Ross Blocher: Interesting! He seems to have at least three different entities that use the paradigm name, which is super confusing. But he says that another role of this group will be to help usher humanity into a new worldview. We’re going to have to adopt one. We’re no longer the center of the universe. That was already a fight with the Catholic church, which he’s close to.
[01:40:00]
So, present in his mind. But he says, “We’re going to learn all the more that we are not the apex of the pyramid of all intelligent life in the universe.” And as of 2021, now we’ve admitted that there are other planets with the James Webb telescope. And he said that even in 2009, under Pope Benedict, the Catholic church made a statement about life outside of our planet. And he said, “I immediately, in 2009, flew to meet with Dr. José Gabriel Funes,” who was the head of the observatory for the Vatican. And I guess wanted to like make sure he had the right mindset, but he said, “Oh, this guy was already on top of it and said, ‘We’re not talking about like single cellular life form floating under an ice sheet somewhere. We’re talking about full, functional other races with human-level intelligence.’”
Carrie Poppy: Wow. Oh, are we?
(They chuckle.)
Ross Blocher: Interesting to hear that their chief astronomer was kind of down with the Danny Sheehan model of things.
Carrie Poppy: So, Danny doesn’t claim to have any personal communication with aliens, right?
Ross Blocher: I’m pretty sure not. I mean, just from having heard him in two talks, just kind of free-wheel for over an hour and a half on his stories, you’d think it would come up if he’d had a dark visitor stand by his bed at night, or if he’d been in a craft, or anything like that. As far as I know, he’s just been so inspired by interacting with others and wanting to protect their right to tell their story.
Yeah, that’s a good point though. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t have any personal experience.
Carrie Poppy: But you feel like he buys it? You do.
Ross Blocher: Yeah, you kind of have to, right? Or could this just be like a clever racket to be involved in this space as a lawyer?
Carrie Poppy: Mmm—I mean, well—
Ross Blocher: I get sincerity from it.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, lawyers can take jobs not just because they agree with the message, but because they agree with the rights of the messenger. But it sounds like he’s making a—it sounds like he’s saying he believes all of it in such a strong way that…
Ross Blocher: Yeah, if he doesn’t believe it, then he’s openly lying and misleading people.
Carrie Poppy: Openly lying. Yeah. Okay, fair.
Ross Blocher: Like, yeah, I feel he could focus on the free speech aspects of it, you know, without fully signing on the way he does.
(Carrie agrees.)
So, he ends this all with this really poetic thought about how we’re going to have this profound shift of interacting with the intelligent non-human, and “there is an octave of human worldviews that ranges from the totalitarian to the reactionary.” Oh yeah. That’s what he was calling the right wings, the reactionaries. But hey, they’re on our side right now. “To liberal, to utopian, and all of them are going to interact differently with the presence of UFOs and extraterrestrial life. And we can’t rely on the dialectic of good and bad.” And this is where you can tell he’s really prepared this endnote. “The reality is this is going to be confirmed within our lifetimes.”
Carrie Poppy: (Sighs.) Always with this. Always with this!
Ross Blocher: Yeah. And he says—and he even clarifies like better than Jesus did on the “some of you standing here”. Like, he included himself in that. And you know, he’s in his—
Carrie Poppy: Ross is pointing to himself and pointing to the invisible other.
Ross Blocher: Well, the invisible Daniel, who’s more advanced in age than I am. So, you know, yeah. Sounds like it’s coming real soon!
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he’s 78.
Ross Blocher: So, yeah, it’s got to come soon, right?
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, well, unless he’s going to live a reeeally long time.
Ross Blocher: We’ve got to put him like on our watch list of people like Nick Delgado, who says he’s going to live to 190 or whatever it is. Like, great. Now I’ve got to watch for you in the obituaries.
Carrie Poppy: We should make all of these people just the standard bearers for their thing. So, if you guys were like, “That’s it! There’s no disclosure!”
Ross Blocher: Sorry! You had your chance.
Oh, if only anybody would agree to that.
Carrie Poppy: David Steward died. Jesus isn’t real! Not coming back!
Ross Blocher: Right. He’s not coming back. Sorry, Seventh-Day Adventists. And that’s it. He signs out with that deep, philosophical thought about the revelation to come. And he says, “Okay, well, that’s all the time that they’ve given me.” And everybody claps for him, and we’ve done it.
Carrie Poppy: And this was off the top of his head?
Ross Blocher: Yeah. He really did just deliver this straight to the audience.
(Carrie “wow”s.)
Yeah! He’s one of those people. And he’ll restate things over and over. And he has, you know, stories that he tells over and over. And he did this at Conscious Life Expo. And comparing the notes here, retold a lot of the same stories.
Carrie Poppy: Okay. My friend, Gene Baur, who founded Farm Sanctuary, where I used to work—he has this gift. Like, I mean, he can just fill the air. And I like Gene’s content more, but we would take him to an event. And if a speaker was running late or the music is still getting set up, we’d just be like, “Gene, can you go up there?”
And he’d just get up! (Chuckles.) And he’d be like, “Well, boy, let me tell you about Farm Sanctuary,” and then he could just go! No script, nothing!
Ross Blocher: It’s a special skill.
Carrie Poppy: 45 minutes if we needed him to.
Ross Blocher: I’m envious of that sometimes.
Carrie Poppy: It’s a long time to talk. When they did the sound check here, I ran out of things to say at 30/45 seconds.
Ross Blocher: (Chuckles.) It was very entertaining though.
I’ll shoot forward in time to last month when we were at the Conscious Life Expo, because Danny Sheehan gave his talk. And then he finally started taking questions from the audience at the end. And I had a really burning question that was just kind of bugging me, that he hadn’t addressed—what I thought of as sort of a plot hole in this whole synthesis of aliens visiting our planet and disclosure.
[01:45:00]
And I have my hand up right with the first group of people. And very few—maybe like three people have their hands up. He calls on Linda Moulton Howe. She gets up and does her whole like, “The tall whites! They’ve been documented working beside people at factories and blah, blah, blah!” And she’s doing her thing.
(Carrie giggles.)
Alright. That’s fine. And then he calls someone from the second row, and then call someone from the first row. So, I’m thinking like maybe with the lighting, he can’t see as far back as me. And I’m keeping my hand up. You know, where you do that thing where like I’m insistent enough on this now that I’m going to raise my hand earlier during your response, so that you see mine first. And then I’m like maybe my sweater is obscuring my hand. Like, I’m under the light here, but like I’m going to take off my sweater. Can you see my bare white flesh better?
(Carrie “wow”s and laughs.)
Yeah. Like, I’m trying to get his attention.
Carrie Poppy: Shine your phone spotlight on your hand.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. Yeah. Like, I’m this close to putting on face paint and like ripping off my shirt and waving it.
(Carrie laughs.)
But he’s not calling on me, and he starts calling on people farther back than me. I’m like, well, he wouldn’t recognize me! He wouldn’t have anything against me where he doesn’t want to answer my question. But finally, he goes to call on a woman behind me, and she said, “I want you to talk to him. He’s been raising his hand for a long time.”
And there’s a guy next to her who’s been kind of visually sympathizing with me. He’s like, “Yeah, yeah, this guy’s been trying.”
So, I’ve got these advocates in the audience. I’m like thank you.
Carrie Poppy: (Cackles.) It’s democracy now.
Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) And then he says, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you under the light there.” And I’m like—
Carrie Poppy: You what?!
Ross Blocher: I’m—not intentionally, but I’m like sitting under a light that’s shining on me, and I’ve got my hand up. It was weird. I just have no idea.
Carrie Poppy: “I didn’t see you under the light there!” Light is famously for that!
(They laugh.)
Ross Blocher: For making you stand out! Anyways.
Carrie Poppy: That’s really crazy.
Ross Blocher: It felt like a government conspiracy. I was very upset. But I did get to ask the question. I can’t remember exactly how I said it, but thankfully I have a recording. So, you ready for this?
(Carrie confirms.)
Clip:
(The muffled buzz of talking amongst the crowd.)
Speaker: —he’s had his hand up forever.
Ross Blocher: Thank you.
Danny Sheehan: Who has? Oh, I didn’t see you with the light. Here he is. Yeah.
Ross Blocher: Thank you, I appreciate it. So, I just wanted to follow up on something you were saying earlier that I’ve been wondering about. Clearly, the problem isn’t just the government or religion, because if the aliens wanted us to know about them, then there’s nothing they could do to stop them. Like, I’m getting kind of a mixed narrative—that the aliens kind of talk to individuals and want them to know about their presence. But also, they don’t just come out, so what’s the deal?
(The crowd chuckles.)
Danny Sheehan: That’s a good question. Let me see if I’ve ever heard that question before.
(Laughter.)
Yeah, I did. By the way, this is a paramount question. You know? And I’ve always resolved that if I actually encounter one of these beings, it’s going to be one of the first questions that I ask them. You know, and say, “So, what’s the story?”
Ross Blocher: And you may have heard the audience kind of on my side like, oh, yeah! Yeah. What’s the answer to that?
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, why do they both want us to know and not want us to know?
Ross Blocher: Right. And if they really wanted us to know, then we’d all know. That would be disclosure.
Carrie Poppy: I mean, depending on what their powers are.
Ross Blocher: What are we grinding our wheels—? But you know, the proverbial White House lawn, they could land on it.
Carrie Poppy: They could do that. Yes. Yeah.
Ross Blocher: We could say boo about it. So, first he says like, “Oh, well I get that all the time,” but then he just blusters on for the longest time, and he got off on this talk about, “Well, this would be very difficult, because then you’d have everybody like hearing from the aliens, and we’d have to determine who’s credible and who we can really believe about these things.” And I’m thinking—
Carrie Poppy: Oh, we’re suddenly thinking in those terms, are we?
Ross Blocher: Right, right. Yeah. But also that’s working within the same model right now, where it’s just like Moses—like, someone went up the mountain and talked to the aliens by themselves and came back. And how do we trust them now?
Carrie Poppy: Oh right. That’s how you get Raëlianism.
Ross Blocher: But my question was why aren’t they just cutting out all the middlemen and just revealing themselves to everybody directly? It’s the same as the argument from divine hiddenness. Like, we know that even if there is a God—you know, he could choose, if you wanted to, to show up on this little table next to us right now as a big pillar of flame. You know, like right as I said it. And then I’d be like, “Well, you can’t turn purple!” And then it would turn purple, and I’d be like, “Well, shoot.” You know, in the same way, this is like alien hiddenness. So, he talks about this whole standards of evidence and how you determine who’s believable for like—I don’t know, like four minutes, it feels like—and totally evades the question, and then moves on to somebody else.
Carrie Poppy: How strange. He must’ve felt stumped.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. And I don’t think he gets the question all the time, because he didn’t have a ready answer for it—as glib as he is on so many other things and can produce speech ad nauseum. So, anyways, I didn’t get a satisfactory answer. But I did have multiple people approach me right after the talk—like, beeline for me and surround me and ask me like, “So, tell me more about your point. And I thought that was really interesting, what you said. Why do you think that the aliens aren’t revealing themselves?”
Carrie Poppy: “You created a problem for me. I have cognitive dissonance now. Can you fix it?”
Ross Blocher: And I was saying, “Well, I mean, can we be honest right now? I don’t believe that they’re here. And I think that there’s a community that has sprung up around the idea that they could potentially be, or how cool would it be if they were, and that’s gotten enough of a following.”
[01:50:00]
And one of the guys that I was talking to said, “Oh, so they’re doing it for the money?”
And I said, “I mean, that’s part of it. Or—maybe, for some people.”
Carrie Poppy: Wait, who’s “they” in that sense?
Ross Blocher: The people like Danny Sheehan, the people like Linda Moulton Howe, the people putting on this conference.
(Carrie affirms.)
The questioning was kind of turning into like, “Well, why are we doing all of this? Why is this conference in existence if nothing’s ever going to come of it?”
So, I was talking to them about that curse by Philip J. Klass. The idea that long after I’m gone, you’ll be on your dying bed, and you’ll still have the same questions in your mind about whether this is true and whether the big reveal is going to happen. And you won’t know anything more about the nature of UFOs and what they are than you do right now.
You know, it was just this moment. Usually, we’re undercover. Usually, we’re just in receptive mode, but I had people asking me for my honest opinion. So, here we go! And it formed kind of a nice little group, and we had a fun discussion. Until they told us, “Got to clear out the room. Next speaker’s coming in.”
Alright. Well, that was it for my experience with Danny Sheehan, important mover and shaker within the world of ufology.
Carrie Poppy: What an interesting fellow. I feel like I don’t have my head really wrapped around him entirely. I feel like if I hung out with him, I would be like, “Oooooh, here’s the other 50% missing from this personality.”
Ross Blocher: Boy, what I would pay just to have a recording that follows those speakers for the next 15 minutes, like after they leave the crowd.
Carrie Poppy: You can follow them for 15 minutes!
Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) I’m busy saving money on car insurance.
Yeah, I’m just curious, like once they’re away from the public glare, how do they offload? Do they say, “Man, those mooks. I can’t believe everybody was buying that.” Or do they say, “How can I serve the cause of the aliens better?” I don’t know!
Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Yeah, I picture one of the other speakers coming out and patting them on the back and being like, “Oh, you know, they were really listening to you. They really felt you up there.” That kind of thing. We’ll never know unless we follow them.
(They laugh.)
Ross Blocher: Well, that’s it for our show. Our theme music is by Brian Keith Dalton.
Carrie Poppy: This episode was edited by Ross Blocher.
Ross Blocher: Our administrative manager is Ian Kremer!
Carrie Poppy: You can support this, and all our investigations—
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Carrie Poppy: Ross, MaxFun never pushes us around.
Ross Blocher: No, they don’t!
Carrie Poppy: It’s really nice.
(Ross agrees.)
I feel like if we had been on some other network, we’d get pushed around.
Ross Blocher: It’s like the opposite of that Matchbox 20 song.
Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm, mm-hm. Mm-hm, mm-hm. I know the one you mean. Yeah, they never push topics on us. They never push us to talk about things a certain way.
Ross Blocher: No! I’m trying to even imagine that. I’m trying to like picture Danny Baruela being like, “We were really wondering if you could talk about Jellybeans.” I don’t know. He wouldn’t do it.
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, well he does smash candy, so that’s something… yeah, yeah.
Ross Blocher: Maybe that’s why I thought of Jellybeans, yeah.
Carrie Poppy: Good point. But yeah, they give us like so much creative freedom. They really believe in like the artists who make those shows should own those shows and have control over those shows.
Ross Blocher: And I’m wearing my “The Future is Cooperative” shirt. They are a co-op now! They’ve made the transition. Maximum Fun is officially a co-op, meaning it is owned by the employees. That is an amazing thing. That is a trend that should continue in these United States and around the world. The success of the company goes to the people who make the company. That’s awesome!
Carrie Poppy: Yeah, that sounds right.
Ross Blocher: And do it now before you forget. ‘Cause I know you’re thinking like, “Hey, I’m driving on a seven-lane freeway. I should really be focused on the road.”
Carrie Poppy: Yes, please.
Ross Blocher: But—well, okay. As soon as you can, maybe pull over and go to MaximumFun.org/join. Yes. Be safe.
Carrie Poppy: So, again. We have passed 250. We have passed 500. We have passed 750. We are on our way to 1,000 new and upgrading members.
Ross Blocher: That’s that Judge John Hodgman show! You got to have it. We got to have it. Help us get there, please.
Carrie Poppy: And of course, if we get to 1500, we will be pitching a talk—a live talk by me and Ross at Conscious Life Expo. Think of the awkwardness. You can make it happen..
Ross Blocher: Yeah! Yeah, imagine how uncomfortable that will be. Imagine how angry some people will be, no matter what we say.
Carrie Poppy: Uh-huh. Or maybe they’ll all be like, “This is great. I never thought about it this way.”
Ross Blocher: Yeah, or maybe we start a whole new expo.
Carrie Poppy: Everyone just follows us on out! (Chuckles.) Clears on out.
Ross Blocher: Yeah. We have some real talk about aliens, and people are like, “You know what? You make some good points.”
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Ross Blocher: Help make that happen.
Carrie Poppy: By going to MaximumFun.org/join, J-O-I-N. And remember!
Ross Blocher: In the words of Danny Sheehan—
Clip:
Danny Sheehan: And say, “So, what’s the story?” You know, obviously, how come you haven’t come earlier?
[01:55:00]
But this question is one of the kind of comparative unknowables right now, about what it is exactly. We don’t even know, as I said, what the juridical structure is of how they relate to each other. We don’t know whether they have treaties with each other, whether they’re part of some sort of federation. Even though you hear it bandied about, “Oh, you know, the Galactic Federation.” We don’t know what the nature of that is, or what their protocols are.
Ross Blocher: Well, I think we have people here who are in contact, maybe you can clarify?
(Chuckles from the crowd.)
Danny Sheehan: Well, (stammering) yes, but the fact is that people don’t believe them. You know, so that doesn’t get you through, of just saying, “Yes, you know, I’m in communication with them, and here’s what they say.” Because you have three or four different people who say they’re in contact with different elements of them, and they say different things. You know, for example, you know, Marshall Summers. You know, of the allies of humanity is asserting that there’s a particular species of extraterrestrial beings that are communicating with him, and that they’re giving him all kinds of information about what the nature of the people are, et cetera.
There’s other people that think that they’re in communication with the Arcturians, and there’s—this is important investigative information that we need to undertake at the New Paradigm Institute. We need to take in the information, evaluate their credibility, et cetera. Even though nobody likes to have their credibility examined, because they think, “If I’m telling you the truth, you ought to believe me.” But we have to figure out what’s going on. So, we’re going to take in all the data that we can. For example, as Linda raised, you know, I’ve talked to any number of people who’ve said, you know, that “I got abducted, and the fact is there was one of the tall whites right there in the room along with two military—American military officers.” You know? And what are they doing together? You know, what’s the agreement that they’ve got? How do we know—?
And we can’t just automatically say it’s true because the person tells us, even if they tell us in complete sincerity that they’re sure that they’ve had this experience. We have to exercise responsibility on behalf of the people to determine what is really true. And even just having trials, there’s people have approached us at the Institute, and they want to do a program called X-Trials. What they want to do is have particular instances where people are asserting that a certain set of things have happened, and they want to have a trial about it. And they want me to represent the protagonists, who are asserting that this happened, and then bring on, you know, antagonists that are the real people who disagree with this, and put a real jury in the box of real people. You know? And then present all the evidence, do the cross examination, use the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to have the hearing, and then put the question to the jury. And then put cameras in the room, in the jury room, so that the discussion among regular citizens about what they think about the witnesses and whether they believe them or not or what information was more credible to them.
And that whole process is under discussion now, but the reality is that even if, in fact, a given jury were to come to a particular conclusion—even though the juridical system that we have right now just sort of puts a tack in that and considers that to be established fact, they do that for functional purposes. It doesn’t necessarily metaphysically mean that’s exactly what happened—so, we have to examine all the different methods by means of which we can do an analysis of this, so that what we’re putting out to people is reliable, so that people can really rely upon this. And they don’t believe it just because they want to believe it. They believe it because it’s convincing. And that’s what we need to do. Okay? I don’t want to keep people over it, because there’s other things you need to do with it.
Music: “Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.
Transition: Cheerful ukulele chord.
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About the show
Welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal, but take part ourselves. Follow us as we join religions, undergo alternative treatments, seek out the paranormal, and always find the humor in life’s biggest mysteries. We show up – so you don’t have to. Every week we share a new investigation, interview, or update.
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