I’ve been thinking about Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times who passed away in 2013. Settling into my still-early fifties inspires reflection on influences, and his go back to the late 1970s, when U.S. cinema was turning the corner from the occasionally thoughtful and subversive to basically the genesis of what we have now: spectacle and artifice.

Ebert and my love and appreciation for film are so inextricably bound up that I cannot think about one without the other. When great actor passes away — a Robert Mitchum or a Paul Newman — we remember…

Inside Outside

In recent weeks, the author and podcaster Sam Harris, in no fewer than three separate podcasts, has stated repeatedly and unambiguously that someone in or with connections to the U.S. government has personally reached out to him so that he can begin to wrap his brain around the fact that UFOs represent a non-human intelligence and think about how he might help prepare the public for that disclosure.

In more than thirty years as a working journalist, that’s not a sentence that I ever expected to write or even thought was within the realm of possibility, but here we are.

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Think Different

On Sunday, The New York Times published a guest essay online by Dr. Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester who is active in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Declaring himself to be unimpressed by the UFO phenomenon, Dr. Frank asks rhetorically:

“If we are being frequently visited by aliens, why don’t they just land on the White House lawn?”

That they have not done so is one of his “common-sense objections” to the theory that extraterrestrials are behind those pesky Tic Tacs and flying pyramids.

Let’s unpack this, the UFO/White House Lawn Gambit —…

Twilight of the Skeptics, Part II

This is the second article in an occasional series Trail of the Saucers is publishing this fall about Skeptical Inquirer magazine’s latest fusilade against anyone who dares entertain the hypothesis that non-human intelligence might be behind the UFO phenomenon. — The Editors

Skeptical Inquirer, the “magazine for science and reason,” put UFOs on the cover of the September/October issue under the banner of “UFOs (or UAPs) Hit the News.” …

Twilight of the Skeptics, Part I

This is the first article in an occasional series Trail of the Saucers will publish this fall looking at Skeptical Inquirer magazine’s latest fusilade against anyone who dares entertain the hypothesis that non-human intelligence might be behind the UFO phenomenon. — The Editors

Skeptical Inquirer, the “magazine for science and reason,” put UFOs on the cover of the September/October issue under the banner of “UFOs (or UAPs) Hit the News.” …

Showtime!

After Congress was briefed on the classified portion of the Pentagon’s UAP report in June, D.C. power player and scientist Robert McGwier participated in a panel discussion on the Canadian UFO and paranormal radio program Spaced Out Radio and said he’d heard from an acquaintance in the closed-door session.

The briefing, he said, included the National Security Council and members of Congress — just how many of the latter, it wasn’t clear from McGwier’s off-air remarks during one of the show’s breaks, which are live-streamed on YouTube while radio listeners hear commercials. …

A Trail of the Saucers Investigation

The recent U.S. government report on UAPs and comments from current and former intelligence officials repeatedly fall back on the refrain that those ‘Tic Tacs’ and other mysterious objects buzzing Navy warships may be advanced aircraft built by Russia or China.

They say that — but they know it’s not true.

In yet another example of a UFO puzzle piece hiding in full view and ignored by the mainstream media, emails published in 2016 by Wikileaks refer to regular tracking of UAPs that’s allegedly recorded them arriving from “deep space” and disappearing beneath the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of…

UFOs and History

While the Pentagon and Congress hide behind the fig leaf of “national security” on UAPs, it would be refreshing to have a respected, credentialed scientist go on national television — or better, formally address Congress — and just come out and say what Christopher Mellon and Lue Elizondo clearly want to, but can’t or won’t: We’re not alone.

Alas, that already happened — more than half a century ago.

Ufology occupies an unusual, contradictory place in American culture. It’s a relatively young discipline that has more in common with journalism than with science. It continues to expand, drawing new talent…