For as long as we have looked to the skies, the question of whether life on Earth is the only life to exist has been at the core of the human experience, driving scientific debate and discovery, shaping spiritual belief, and prompting existential thought across borders and generations. And yet, the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence has been largely seen as a joke, banished to the realm of fantasy and conspiracy. Now, for the first time, the full story of our national obsession with UFOs — and the covert, decades-long search by scientists, the United States military, and the CIA for proof of alien life — is told by bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff in a deeply reported and researched history.
It begins in 1947, when two headline-making sightings of strange flying objects — the first near Mount Rainier, Washington, involving a pilot named Kenneth Arnold, and the second a ranch on the outskirts of a New Mexico town called Roswell — prompt the US Air Force’s newly formed Department of Defense to create a series of secret programs to determine how unidentified phenomena may pose a threat to national security. Over the next half-century, as the atomic age gives way to the space race and the Cold War, the search continues, bringing together an unexpected group of astronomers, military officials, civilian contactees, and true believers who bring us closer, then further, then closer again, to answering one of our most enduring questions: What exactly is out there?
Drawing from original archival research, declassified documents, and interviews with senior intelligence and military officials, Graff brings every moment of this extraordinary quest to life, transporting readers from secret military meetings and congressional hearings, where the validity of the search is debated, to the cluttered offices of UFOlogists and hoaxers determined to see the truth revealed, remote observatories where astronomers monitor the stars, and even the halls of the White House, where staffers and presidents alike eagerly await answers. Filled with twists and turns, and populated by an unforgettable cast of characters, UFO is a thrilling story of science, national security, the secrets of space, and the enduring mysteries of the universe.
Garrett M. Graff has spent nearly two decades covering politics, technology, and national security. The former editor of Politico and contributor to Wired and CNN, he’s written for publications from Esquire to Rolling Stone to the New York Times, and today serves as the director of the cyber initiative at the Aspen Institute. Graff is the author of multiple books, including the FBI history The Threat Matrix, Raven Rock, about the government’s Cold War Doomsday plans, and the New York Times bestsellers The Only Plane in the Sky and Watergate: A New History, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.
Shermer and Graff discuss:
- government security and secrets
- How long can secrets be kept?
- what the government is really hiding
- cultural context for UFO flaps and waves of sightings
- why David Grusch’s testimony about a secret government program to recover crashed UFOs could be accurate but still not represent alien contact
- Kenneth Arnold and the first flying saucer
- Roswell and why we know that it wasn’t aliens
- The Fermi Paradox: “Where is everybody?”
- why 90-95% of all UFO sightings are explainable
- anomalies and how to treat them
- SETI and the search for aliens out there
- Avi Loeb and the Galileo Project
- President Clinton’s investigation into UFOs
- UFOs as a modern myth or religion
- Will the UFO phenomena ever be resolved?
This episode was released on November 14, 2023.
