This week, we're taking time off for the holidays - so we reached into the Chatter archives for one of our favorite shows from the last year.

In this episode, Shane Harris sits down with veteran journalist Leslie Kean, who has done groundbreaking and widely admired reporting on unidentified flying objects. And, no, that does not mean aliens. Kean's bestselling 2010 book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, was a sober account of credible, first-hand witnesses to unexplained aerial phenomena. In 2017, Kean co-authored a major New York Times article that revealed a secret Pentagon effort devoted to the study of UFOs. More recently, the U.S. government has begun to standardize UFO reporting by military personnel and has declassified more information about what it knows about strange objects in the sky. Kean's reporting played a significant role in those disclosures. 

Kean discusses her early career as a journalist, her travels in Burma, and her interest in Buddhism. She talks about the important questions that remain about UFOs, and what the U.S. government may be on the cusp of answering.  

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

Among the works cited in this episode are:

Leslie Kean's website: https://www.lesliekean.com/ 

UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/114166/leslie-kean/ 

"Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program:" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html 

"Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" (Office of the Director of National Intelligence): https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf 

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