Ryan Sprague is a fellow UFO Reframer —meaning he was one of the authors who participated in the anthology UFOs: Reframing the Debate, published by Robbie Graham— and even though we’ve known each other for quite a while, this is the first time we had a chance to record a conversation for his incredibly popular podcast Somewhere in the Skies.
Prior to scheduling the recording, Ryan had texted to tell me he was trying to do a sort of “getting back to his roots” approach with his show, and that he was totally fed up with the narrative which co-opted the public UFO discussion ever since the release of the 2017 article in the New York Times, which revealed the existence of the ‘secret government program’ (or programs?) which covertly investigated UFOs —i.e. what some of us refer to as “the Tic-Tac bullshit.”
Now, don’t get me wrong: I still find the testimony of David Fravor, Ryan Graves and Alex Dietrich —the US Navy pilots who came forward to discuss their alleged encounters with UFOs— very compelling and interesting. But what I for one resent is that there are people out there in the field who think this is ALL we should talk about, or that these cases are *the* most important and solid ones we have to prove the reality of UFOs —they certainly are not, and the fact that to this day the US government refuses to provide more data to back up the testimony of their former pilots, only serves to give more ammunition to skeptics like Mick West, who have every right to doubt the official narrative until it is substantiated with actual evidence.
(Also, every time I see the damn black & white grainy still images from the Tic-Tac video or the Gimbal used in the headline of a mainstream news UFO article, I silently scream inside my head. It is by now the modern equivalent of what the X-Files music was 20 years ago)
Which is why I was delighted when Ryan told me he wanted to discuss other things for this episode —I mean sure, we had to touch the ‘Tic-Tac BS’ briefly, but most of the time of this 2-hour plus conversation was devoted to IMO much more interesting stuff.
And by the end of it I couldn’t help getting a bit philosophical and “starry eyed” by putting my passion for UFOs in a broader perspective. I am, after all, almost 50 years old as I type this and hence one of the ‘greybeards’ in the community by default, and if my experience can help some younger folk to avoid making the same mistakes I once did 20 or 30 years ago, that would be great —unfortunately, one of the things you also learn as you reach my age, is that humans never ‘learn by proxy’, and you actually need to let people learn from their own errors; even if that only leaves you to say “I told you so” to them once they realize (by themselves) where they went wrong…
So without further ado, please enjoy 🙂
PS I know there are several other podcast interviews I did in the past which I haven’t ‘plugged’ here, and the fact I chose to do it with Ryan’s is not a sign of favoritism. With one or two exceptions, I’ve always enjoyed all the conversations I’ve had through Skype or Zoom, and greatly appreciated the invitations to talk about one of my favorite topics from the podcast hosts who wanted me on their show. I don’t care about numbers of popularity rankings (I mean, this site only gets a dozen visits daily on average, for Christ’s sake!) I only care about the quality of the conversation and having fun.
Absurd by Design 