Ranting Against the ETH at WDTRG?

(One of my earliest doodles. Lotsa technical SNAFUS but still a solid gag IMO)

It had been a while since I joined Seriah and Josh for a recording of a Where Did the Road Go? episode and I have to say I really missed the chance to chat with my homies about all the things we’re so passionate about –although I think that when it comes to UFOs, I am the one who is more obsessed than them.

So why rant against the ETH? For starters, because it’s so effing BORING! The people who peddle it as the only game in town –or rather, the only one worthy enough of “serious scientific consideration”– may have incorporated a few new things here and there (quantum me this, quantum me that) but in general their ideas are still woefully embedded in cheap 1950’s pulp fiction narrative. Their reasoning for favoring the idea that extraterrestrial visitors coming to Earth in structured metallic craft is really not that different from the plots fantasized by the likes of Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov in the golden age of Sci Fi –and the irony here is that most of those authors were viciously skeptical about UFO reports.

Also, the main sin of the ETH is all the data it takes out of the table: the high strangeness and consciousness-related stuff that makes the UFO phenomena seem just like a modern-day continuation of the same mystical experiences our ancestors had since before they invented language and writing.

Granted, the ETH cannot be entirely ruled out in principle, and even my pal and colleague Joshua Cutchin still acknowledges the possibility that the phenomenon may have several origins. But what can I say, nowadays I’m more of a “Unified Field Theory of Weirdness” kind of guy, and favor more the possibility that paranormal phenomena we’ve been trying so hard to study separately –UFOs, ghosts, cryptids– not only do have more in common than we care to admit, but that it may be just a single phenomenon perceived from different cultural, societal and historical angles; to me there’s no better illustration of this than the “ghost” in the movie Interstellar.

I love this movie so freaking much!

So if you wanna have a listen to the WDTRG? episode, click here.