episode 4
No person has done more to bring credibility to the study of UFOs and the paranormal than Jacques Vallee.
At the beginning of Ep. 4, we will meet Vallee, a respected technologist, computer scientist, and writer who will tell us why UFOs might be so much more than just spaceships — and how they play a crucial role in the history of human culture. He will also elaborate on what this might mean now that the government is finally studying them openly... and alongside voices like Kripal, we will learn that we might be on the verge of a total shift in how we understand the universe around us.
To appreciate this further, we will visit a school in France dedicated to the study of miracles, and we will see how many people take this idea very seriously.
Our interviews will explain the connection between miracles and experiences like alien encounters, but also, the dark side of this kind of thinking — for example, experiences like Whitley’s, which were highly traumatizing, as well as the rumors that flew during the Satanic Panic in the United States, and even cases of demonic possession and the increasing frequency of exorcisms performed in today’s America.
We’ll also hear from some individuals who are still focused on the nuts-and-bolts hypothesis as well as its ramifications for our culture, like Christopher Mellon and Penn State professor Greg Eghigian, who will walk us through the history of our cultural obsession with the idea that aliens are visiting us. The nuts-and-bolts approach and the philosophy advocated for by Kripal seem to represent two different attitudes toward how to move forward with this phenomenon: on the one hand, objective scientific study, and on the other, more imaginative considerations of what might be possible. The question we’ll seemingly be left with is, can these two ideas be reconciled? Or is it possible that they will split those advocating for more open- mindedness in a fatal way — allowing skeptics and deniers the opportunity to shut down any further investigation?
This will lead us back to Vallee, who seems to suggest a middle ground: a way to study UFOs in a scientific and objective way but also to imagine the wildest possibilities. In revisiting with Vallee and the rest of our characters, we’ll see that we are standing on the verge of what could be an unprecedented era in the history of science, one that might change everything we think we know about the universe — if only we continue to embrace the possibilities.