Michael Shermer with David J. Halperin — Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO

About this episode:

Listen to the Science Salon Podcast # 124 (audio-only):

http://bit.ly/ScienceSalon124

UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin — but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It’s about us, our longings and terrors, and especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them and to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, and as a species.

In the 1960s, Halperin was a teenage UFOlogist, convinced that flying saucers were real and that it was his life’s mission to solve their mystery. He would become a professor of religious studies, with traditions of heavenly journeys his specialty. With Intimate Alien, he looks back to explore what UFOs once meant to him as a boy growing up in a home haunted by death and what they still mean for millions, believers and deniers alike.

From the prehistoric Balkans to the deserts of New Mexico, from the biblical visions of Ezekiel to modern abduction encounters, Intimate Alien traces the hidden story of the UFO. It’s a human story from beginning to end, no less mysterious and fantastic for its earthliness. A collective cultural dream, UFOs transport us to the outer limits of that most alien yet intimate frontier, our own inner space. Shermer and Halperin discuss:

• What is religion and what role does it play in peoples’ lives?

• What is myth and what role does it play in peoples’ lives?

• what Carl Jung believed about UFOs and why,

• The Day the Earth Stood Still film as a Christ Allegory,

• why he’s an atheist but fascinated by the power of religion,

• why he’s a UFO skeptic but compelled by the power of alien beliefs,

• the origin of alien eyes,

• the origin of alien abductions,

• the true meaning of the Roswell incident,

• John Lennon’s UFO experience,

• Will religion fall into disuse with the rise of the nones?, and

• the future of religion in a post-COVID-19 world.

David J. Halperin taught Jewish studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, until his retirement in 2000. He has published five nonfiction books on Jewish mysticism and messianism, as well as the coming-of-age novel Journal of a UFO Investigator: A Novel (2011). He blogs about UFOs, religion, and related subjects at www.davidhalperin.net.

This dialogue was recorded on May 7, 2020 as part of the Science Salon Podcast series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society, in California.

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