The History of UFOs

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Sally Kohn: I want to go back for a second to this kind of recent interest in UFOs. She says it's not just that there are things that can be spotted in the sky. But other people can sometimes observe or report, but you have this whole thing of like, well, there's stuff. And so when the things that came up with Air 51, that's where they tested the YouTube spy plane.Kohn: The late Senator and Senate majority leader Harry Reid was friends with a guy who had a company that was working on contracting out for development of spacecraft to sell to the military. He also happened to have an interest in this. We need to be telling a

Paris Marx is joined by Kelsey Atherton to discuss the renewed interest in UFOs, where the conspiracy theories of aliens in the sky came from, and whether flying saucers might really be watching us.

Kelsey Atherton is a military technology journalist. He contributes to Popular Science and has written for Slate. Follow Kelsey on Twitter at @AthertonKD.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Kelsey has written about how the military’s culture of secrecy breeds UFO conspiracy theories, why sensors are an important aspect to consider, and the truth of Area 51.
A U-2 pilot took a selfie with the Chinese balloon shot down earlier this year.
The military later confirmed the Chinese balloon was not actually spying on the United States.
One of the balloons that were shot down likely belonged to a hobbyist group called the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade.
In 2019, a bunch of people online planned to hold a “Naruto run” at Area 51.

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