ExoAcademian

For those who’ve spent decades searching for answers to the elusive yet seemingly ever-present enigma colloquially known as the UFO Phenomenon, the last several years have been a whirlwind of activity and revelations. It is well understood by those veteran to this field that elements within the U.S. government spent decades not only covering up details that made it abundantly clear that there real...

Over the course of the history of this podcast, I have taken several opportunities to publish a special edition of the podcast, where I answer audience questions, in a feature I call The Inquiring Mind . This week’s episode mark’s the occasion where I do this for a 4th time. Now, since the 3rd edition of the Inquiring Mind, which launched several months ago, you could say a few things have changed...

For those who look at the UFO Phenomenon as a primarily “nuts and bolts” enterprise, elements of this enigma that veer into the domains of the spiritual and the paranormal are often seen as superfluous to the main point of the exercise. From the point of view of traditional ufologists like this, the central point is that some kind of biologically-based alien intelligence is here, in our midst, buz...

When we think back to the dawn of the modern UFO era in the 1940s, and the subsequent reports of sightings and interactions ever since - whether they be of the quintessential flying saucers, black triangles, tic tabs, or orbs, the focus has largely been on how these strange and sophisticated craft and/or phenomena seem to suddenly appear in our skies. Where are they coming from? Who are they? What...

In the long history of strange events occurring in the lives of human beings, the drive for understanding has been, not surprisingly, shaped by the model of reality prevalent at the time. Thus, while our distant ancestors saw the appearance of strange, awe-inspiring non-human intelligences as a manifestation of angels and demons: entities normally bound to the spiritual domain beyond this mortal c...

In the long history of the modern UFO Phenomenon, a key and iconic moment stands out as of particular import. I speak of a rumored crash of a sophisticated aerial vehicle in the desert terrain near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. The event prompted an initial acknowledgement by the government that this was indeed a moment of the greatest significance: the crash of an actual alien craft, apparently no...

When strange and sophisticated aerial vehicles were first spotted buzzing in and around our skies in a series of flaps during the period of the 1940s, many assumed these represented the visitation of an extraterrestrial species. The beyond next-gen characteristics of these advanced craft – where they could travel at incredible rates of speed, hover in place, and make 90 degree turns on a dime – su...

2017 was the year that saw a sudden uptick of mainstream interest in the notion of UFOs following revelations arising from a groundbreaking article in the New York Times. This article described so-called “unidentified aerial phenomena” - modern nomenclature for what had traditionally been referred to as “unidentified flying objects” - UFOs. These revelations suggested these objects and/or phenomen...

Over the course of the history of this podcast, we’ve covered events and experiences that are so bizarre, seemingly irrational and even absurd, that one can’t help but come away from an exhaustive examination of this data wondering how on Earth it fits into our notion of reality at all. Put simply, I don’t think it does. But not because the data is somehow in error.  After all, at this point, ther...

In recent years numerous accounts involving the UFO Phenomenon have been made public that contain a broad assortment of bizarre, paradigm-stretching, and, for many, credibility-challenging, elements of so-called High Strangeness - i.e. elements that seem to contradict our consensus understanding of the possible. Recent books such as Skinwalkers at the Pentagon have helped to turn the spotlight on...

When it comes to the so-called UFO Phenomenon, the levels of complexity go much deeper than the general public and the political and media mainstream generally realize. In other words, the conversation that’s – finally – being had in those circles, because of revelations arising primarily since 2017 – is still a far cry from the nature of the discussion being had by people really familiar with the...

Over the last several episodes we’ve been discussing some of the more bizarre, even absurd, elements of the UFO Phenomenon. For anyone who’s taken the time to do a truly deep dive into the data behind this Phenomenon, it is clear that there is much to make sense of here: much that doesn’t fit well with certain cookie-cutter, predetermined hypotheses meant to make sense of the data. Two episodes ag...

Last time on this podcast we discussed Jacque Vallée’s ground-breaking and genre-stretching book Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers, which highlights striking parallels between elements found within what’s commonly referred to as the UFO Phenomenon, and distant tales that come to us from so-called faerie lore. That is to say, once you crack the veneer of more recent 20th and 21st...

Near the middle part of the 20th century, American society became obsessed with a newfangled fascination. This pastime that took the public’s imagination by storm, prompted serious and excited discussion around interplanetary visitors. The dawning of this new era in pubic life was fueled by a series of sightings of what quickly became known, colloquially, as “flying saucers”. More generally, the t...

In the two previous episodes of the podcast we covered the key elements of the case of Terry Lovelace, a man who’s had a lifetime of experiences with apparently non-human, alien intelligences. Lovelace’s case is punctuated by events known as abductions, which involve human beings being visited by these alien others and then transported, by way of their technology, up into craft, either situated ab...

In last week’s episode we kicked off a discussion of a certain kind of alien interaction: the kind – well attested to in UFO Phenomenon literature – where human beings are repeatedly interacted with by non-human intelligences, and often from a very young age. As time goes on that interaction often includes abduction – that is, the taking of these people from their homes, up onto what appear to be...

Over the last several months we’ve been discussing how the totality of the data behind the UFO Phenomenon may include different patterns that, perhaps, suggest that different actors and agendas serve as distinct parts of that whole. Distinguishing segments within the meta-category known as the UFO Phenomenon can, perhaps, help us to better understand what’s actually going on. Within that totality,...

It was at this time last year that the inaugural edition of the Point of Convergence podcast was launched. In that very first edition I discussed some of the broad brush topics I planned to cover in the coming weeks and months. I didn’t know exactly what direction the podcast would take, but I had a strong sense that it would attempt to weave together topics that are often taken as distinct and di...

As we approach the one year anniversary of the Point of Convergence podcast – now only days away – it’s useful to stop and reflect on the sheer wealth of the diverse and captivating material we’ve covered during the past 12 months. Over the past 50+ episodes we’ve pivoted between a micro and a macro view of this phenomenon, discussing the mind-boggling details of individual encounters with these b...

In last week’s episode I postulated that part of the reason why it’s so difficult to make sense of the actions of the intelligence behind the UFO Phenomenon is because, in reality, that broad range of activity is not the result of a single actor. The data ends up looking nonsensical and contradictory to us because in one case a so-called “alien” intelligence says or does one thing, and then in the...