Robbie Graham and Robert Brandstetter challenge us to look beyond UFOs, extraterrestrials and disclosure. 

photo by: Skeptiko

On this episode of Skeptiko…

Robbie Graham:  I would be surprised if there were not an extraterrestrial component to the UFO phenomenon. But again, I would be very surprised if the extraterrestrial hypothesis could be proved to be a catch-all answer for the riddle.

That’s Robbie Graham, author of a new book, UFOs: Reframing the Debate. What debate? Well that’s a real Skeptiko question like, how does frontier consciousness science, like the recent near-death experience science published by Dr. Sam Parnia as part of his AWARE study, how does that factor into the UFO question?

Robert Brandstetter: And they had one piece only that they could use, even that case couldn’t prove anything.

Alex Tsakiris: Respectfully Robert, you’re misrepresenting that research. The lead investigator, Dr. Sam Parnia – who’s a worldwide, recognized expert in resuscitation – his conclusion is that consciousness survives bodily death. Dr. Pim van Lommel, Dr. Jeff Long, every researcher who’s actively involved in study near-death experience has come to the same conclusion; you can’t take their work and then just put a spin on it based on your interpretation of it.

And does UFO research lead to the kind of deep spirituality I like to talk about?

Robbie Graham:  I don’t feel I’m any more spiritual than I was when I first became attracted to the subject, when I was a teenager. I consider myself to be a spiritual person but I’ve shaken my dogmatic attachment to UFOs.

And since I’m always keen to look at the conspiratorial angle, how does the deep state factor into this, and what about disclosure?

Robbie Graham:  I mean, it really ultimately comes down to where you dinned on how trustworthy and decent governmental structures. If you take them to be fundamentally corrupt and when you recognize that official interactions with the UFO subject have been characterized almost exclusively, well totally exclusively for the past 70 years by deception and by psychological warfare, why do you believe anything that the same official bodies have to say on the UFO subject on a hypothetical disclosure day? Well, you would believe it because you desperately want to believe it.

All that and more coming up on this episode of Skeptiko.

Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris and today a show on UFOs. One of our guests Robbie Graham has been making the rounds with this very, very interesting new book that’s getting a lot of attention, UFOs: Reframing the Debate and we’re going to hear from him in just a minute.

I putting this together, one of the things that struck me is how surprising it is to me that UFOs are still a taboo subject or that UFOs are not understood as being part of this broader information, anti-establishment, screw-the-mainstream-media kind of movement tha...