The Truth About Love at First Sight & What the UFO Videos Actually Show

People will go to ridiculous lengths to avoid paying fees. Adding extra items to an online order just to get “free” shipping. Avoiding ATM fees like they’re a personal insult. Or driving across town to save a few cents on gas. There’s actually a fascinating psychology behind why humans hate fees so much—and why “free” has such unusual power over our decisions. https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/page-one-economics/2025/apr/psychology-of-free-how-price-of-zero-influences-decisionmaking Most people dismiss the idea of “love at first sight.” How can you fall deeply for someone you barely know? Yet for some people, intense romantic attachment happens incredibly fast—and repeatedly. Researchers call this tendency “emophilia,” and it can dramatically affect relationships, judgment, and emotional wellbeing. Daniel Jones, who studies romantic attraction, personality, and deception at the University of Nevada Reno, explains why some people are wired to fall in love quickly, why those relationships can feel so powerful, and why understanding emophilia may help explain a lot of modern dating behavior. He is author of Falling Fast: The Perils and Possibilities of Emophilia (https://amzn.to/49gvbk9). Recently, the U. S. government has released videos and images showing unidentified aerial phenomena—objects moving in ways that appear difficult to explain with known technology. Some people see proof of extraterrestrial visitors. Others think there must be more conventional explanations. But what do the videos actually tell us? And what don’t they tell us? Robert Powell, founding board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies and an engineer with decades of experience in advanced technology development, joins me to separate speculation from science and explain what experts really know about these strange sightings and what is known about alien visitors. He is author of UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (And Don’t Know) (https://amzn.to/3RtNwEe). While it is pretty common to bring leftovers home from a restaurant, there is a danger associated with doing that. If you don’t handle that food and reheat it the right way, there could be some real problems. And they are problems you can easily avoid. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/fried-rice-syndrome PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS POCKET HOSE: For a limited time, when you purchase a new Pocket Hose Ballistic, you'll get a FREE 360 degree rotating pocket pivot and a FREE thumb drive nozzle! Just text SYSK to 64000 AQUA TRU: Take the guesswork out of pure, great-tasting water. Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://AquaTru.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ now and get 20% off your purifier using promo code SYSK. AquaTru even comes with a 30-day best-tasting water guarantee or your money back. RULA: This Mental Health Awareness Month, don’t just think about your mental health - actually take the step to take care of it. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Refresh your everyday with luxury you will actual use! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! DELL: With the Dell Pro laptop powered by Intel Core Ultra with vPro, no matter how many interruptions you have, your laptop won’t be one of them. With battery that’s optimized for the way you work, and built-in intelligence that quiets distractions the moment you’re trying to focus, your tech won’t slow you down. Find out more at ⁠⁠⁠https://Dell.com/Dell-Pro⁠⁠⁠ SHOPIFY: It's time to turn those "what ifs" into CHA CHING with Shopify Today! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 0:32Mike Carruthers?

  Today, on Something You Should Know. If you hate paying fees and you love free shipping, then there's something you need to hear. Then, understanding why some people really do seem to fall in love at first sight.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  The speed and ease with which people fall in love is an individual difference like anything else. We all exist on a spectrum. And so, love is absolutely real, even if it happens overnight. These people are feeling the same emotions, they're feeling the same commitments, they just feel it much faster.

• 1:01Mike Carruthers?

  Also, the dangers lurking in your restaurant leftovers. And there's new information coming out from the government about UFOs. What exactly do we know?

• 1:12Speaker 03

  There are several dozen documented cases of objects that had accelerated at extreme rates of speed that we can, with our technology, duplicate it.

• 1:27Mike Carruthers?

  All this today, on Something You Should Know. Now, here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping? Especially with the holidays coming. Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in shop cash. But not to one person. 1,000 people will each win $1,000 in shop cash.

• 2:00Mike Carruthers?

  And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place. So, instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for, and track your orders, all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with a thousand chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash Giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win.

• 2:44Mike Carruthers?

  That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

• 3:09Mike Carruthers?

  So if you hate paying fees or hate paying for shipping, I've got something to start this episode that I think you'll find interesting. Hello, I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Have you ever been online shopping and added something to your cart that you didn't really want just to get free shipping? Or driven across town to avoid paying a $3 ATM fee? Or passed up a convenient gas station to go to another one to pay a few cents less per gallon? Economists say this is a perfect example of the strange psychology of paying. Research shows that people often hate extra fees more than they hate higher prices,

• 3:52Mike Carruthers?

  even when the total cost is exactly the same. In experiments, shoppers preferred paying a higher product price with free shipping over paying a lower price plus shipping. Experts call it the pain of paying. A separate fee feels like a penalty. In fact, studies show many shoppers will spend more money just to avoid paying for shipping. It's the same psychology behind ATM fees and gas prices.

• 4:21Mike Carruthers?

  A $4 coffee barely registers, but a $4 ATM fee, that can feel outrageous, because it feels like you're paying for nothing. People don't just care about how much something costs. They care deeply about how the cost is presented. And that is something you should know.

• 4:43Mike Carruthers?

  Do you believe in love at first sight? I've always been a bit skeptical of the whole idea. I mean, how can you really fall in love with someone you hardly know? Maybe it feels real when you're 14, but in the adult world, I've never really bought it. But it turns out, there are people who are wired to fall in love fast, hard, and often. They crave the emotional rush of new romance, and that tendency can lead to incredible passion and serious trouble. Psychologists have a name for it. It's called emophilia, which is the tendency to fall in love fast, easily, and often. You may be one of these people, or may be in a relationship with one of these people,

• 5:28Mike Carruthers?

  and understanding it may explain a lot about your past and current romances. Here to discuss it is Daniel Jones. He researches romantic attraction, deception, and personality at the University of Nevada Reno, and he's author of the book, Falling Fast: The Perils and Possibilities of Emophilia. Hey, Daniel, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.

• 5:54Mike Carruthers?

  So the idea of love at first sight, as I said, I've always thought it was kind of teenagey, and I certainly never knew it had a name, and was never something that people would study. But obviously, they do. You study it. So why do you study it?

• 6:11Speaker 02

  The common narrative that we have in our culture surrounding relationships is till death do we part. And that's the part of huge expectation surrounding relationships in our culture. And most people believe that if it's real love, it's going to endure. But the speed and ease with which people fall in love is an individual difference like anything else. We all exist on a spectrum, and it's very real. And so, love is absolutely real, even if it happens overnight. These people are feeling the same emotions. They're feeling the same connections. They're feeling the same commitments that often come with love that takes years to develop. They just feel it much faster.

• 6:47Mike Carruthers?

  But it seems the definition of love may be important here because if someone falls in love fast, really fast, are they falling in love in the way that people who take longer fall in love? Is it a different kind of love?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  One of the things that we've done in our research is we've shown that the markers of love, the willingness to sacrifice, the willingness to put yourself at risk for this other person, to build a life together, all those things are present, they just happen much sooner. And the way I try to describe this very often is it's a threshold model. Everybody has a different threshold that needs to be met in order for them to cognitively and physically acknowledge, wow, I emotionally am feeling this thing called love. And so it stands to reason that physiologically people would have a different threshold for, and cognitively, emotionally, that needs to be met in order for them to acknowledge that they're in love, or feel that they're in love.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  And individual difference-wise, that threshold can sit at different levels across the population. So the difference between that and something like infatuation is where infatuation is cursory, it's transient, it is not something that lasts, it's whimsical. Where what we find with people who are high in emophilia is that they're feeling very real emotions. These emotions are backed by commitment, readiness, they're backed by physiological arousal. All the things that we would expect to be healthy markers of falling in love, they feel those love emotions just much sooner.

• 8:26Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I love the feeling of falling in love, but once you're committed, then it's hard to have that feeling again. But don't most people love the feeling of falling in love?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Most people love that sensation, once they have it. But the triggers for it and the threshold required, the amount of background information you need about somebody, the amount of time you need to spend with somebody, the emotional and cognitive threshold for feeling the love sits at a different level across the population. So, some people feel that rush and love it, and they feel it much faster and much sooner with less information about a particular partner, where some people may love it, but they've only felt it once in their life. So, it's not just the love of falling in love. There are also other cognitive and emotional elements that need to be present in order for somebody to say, "Oh, my God, I can't get this person off my mind, I'm ready to sacrifice, I'm ready to be with this person, I'm ready to share my life with this person." It just sits at a different level.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  And so, absolutely, I mean, the feeling of love is an amazing feeling, but it does take more buildup for some people as opposed to others. And therefore, while we may love it, just like a lot of different things, and one of the comparisons I often make is there's a construct in psychology called socio-sexuality, which is the comfort with people would have with having casual sex, or sex one and only one time, and things like that, one-night stands. And people have a different threshold for their willingness to do that. Some people, it's, "I know you for an hour, that's good enough." Other people, it takes a year. And so, that same threshold exists on a sexual dimension as well. Most of the people who have had sex say they love it. That doesn't mean they're going to do it overnight. Same thing with love.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  The rush of falling in love is exciting and a great reinforcing feeling, but that doesn't mean they're going to do it immediately, whereas others will.

• 10:11Mike Carruthers?

  So, let me ask a couple of quick questions and get some quick answers, just to frame this picture a little better. What percentage of the population would you say fit into this category?

• 10:22Speaker 02

  What a great question. So, I'd say about 15% to 20% of the population would fall in what I would call the high range of emophilia. And it actually, as an individual difference trait across the psychological field, it's what we would call a normal distribution, which means there are some folks who are high, some folks who are low, but the majority of people fall somewhere in the middle. And so, it has a nice, normal distribution to it with the surveys that we've administered across different populations and different cultures. So, with that distribution, I'd say between 15% and 20% would probably fall in an appreciably high category.

• 10:59Mike Carruthers?

  And when you look at those people, how likely is it that when they fall in love...

• 11:07Mike Carruthers?

  Quickly, that that love sustains, or that love goes away as fast as it got here?

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Well, you know, that actually varies with the people who are high in emophilia. Some people, the love does fade, but what we find more and more, which is really fascinating, is the love may fade once the honeymoon period or the rush of excitement period ends in the relationship and that more subtle companion that love takes over. But they don't necessarily fall rapidly out of love. What we find with people high in emophilia is they have that initial rush, that initial excitement, they're super into the relationship, that component fades, and then they fall in love with other people. And that tends to be the rush, the excitement, and they tend to get, be drawn to that rush and excitement, that they don't drop the partner that they're with, they just, "I don't feel

• 11:56Speaker 02

  the same way," or "I met this other person and they're so much, so exciting right now, I can't get them off my mind." So it's not that they drop the person they're with like a rock, it fades. And then the excitement and that seeking of the rush takes over for a new partner.

• 12:10Mike Carruthers?

  What else do the people who do this have in common besides this? Are they mostly men, mostly women, are they about the certain age, are they accountants? I mean, I don't know.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Right. No, I, you know, I have a lot of friends who are accountants, and they'd be horribly offended at what you said, "No, I'm just kidding." And there's nothing offensive about it, by the way, I should say. People, this is a natural individual difference, like extraversion or agreeableness. But as far as demographic concerns, demographics are concerned, we find that men are slightly higher on emophilia than, than women are. But aside from that, we don't find any constraining or demographic variables that would indicate that one population or one particular demographic is more likely to be emofilic than, than another, than another group. So really, it, much like extraversion, you wouldn't find extraversion, you know, you

• 13:07Speaker 02

  may find people gravitating towards certain professions based on their extraversion, but you wouldn't out of the gate find, you know, people, for example, in Colombia, be- More extroverted than people, for example, in Italy, that it's a robust individual difference across cultures, and that's what we're finding with hemophilia as well. But it's really important to understand, this is not a mental disorder, there's nothing wrong with people who are high in hemophilia, it's an individual difference, just like conscientiousness, and you know, when people are high in that end of the spectrum, it's a trade-off, like any other individual difference variable. There are some wonderful things that come along with it in certain circumstances, and there are some hardships or challenges that may be presented when somebody's high in hemophilia as well. So it's not a diagnosable

• 13:48Speaker 02

  category, it's not that if you score a certain score on the scale, you're suddenly an hemophilic, as opposed to if you're just slightly lower, you're not an hemophilic. It's scored on a continuum.

• 13:57Mike Carruthers?

  So I get if someone is falling in love at first sight in their teens, or even in their twenties, but in just a second, I want to ask you about what happens with people when they get older. You know, once someone is in their seventies, are they still inclined to do this?

• 14:17Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light, and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season, you create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Stonefire naan is made with real buttermilk and ghee. It's the perfect flatbread for any occasion.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  I put out stonefire naan with dips at every dinner party.

• 14:53Speaker 06

  I make naan grilled cheese when my daughter has friends over. I use stonefire naan to reward the humans who do my bidding.

• 15:00Speaker 05

  Right, it's perfect for camping trips.

• 15:03Speaker 06

  Dance for it, feeble mortal.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  Sorry, is he talking to me, or?

• 15:07Speaker 06

  Dance, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. From our tradition to yours, stonefire.

• 15:13Mike Carruthers?

  Together we know. I'm speaking with Daniel Jones about love at first sight. He is the author of a book called Falling Fast: The Perils and Possibilities of Emophilia. And so if somebody is high in emophilia in their twenties, so they tend to fall in and out of love quickly and frequently, is it something they, I don't know, that they get it out of their system? Or if they're doing it in their twenties, they're probably still doing it in their seventies?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  That's a really, really good question. So what we find is that the general population fluctuates, you know, like you say, early twenties, people will be probably the highest they are in emophilia at that stage. But let's say we have a bunch of 70-year-olds in the room, and somebody who is higher than the average person at 20 in emophilia will be higher than the average person at 70 in that demographic in emophilia as well. So while personality and individual differences, traits, across the spectrum, do vary across the lifespan. Generally speaking, people, based on their percentile or their rank among the population within the demographic, who are high, will stay high compared to the demographic as they get older.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  So while emophilia may indeed fade over time, it's a great study that we really still need to do, we don't find, I would argue that it wouldn't necessarily mean that somebody who is high in their twenties would then suddenly be low comparative to 70-year-olds. Somebody who's high compared to 20-year-olds in their twenties will be high compared to 70-year-olds in their seventies.

• 16:48Mike Carruthers?

  And so it would seem that somebody who is looking to get married and fall in love for the rest of their life would be wasting their time going out with someone who is...

• 17:03Mike Carruthers?

  High on emophilia because it's doomed.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  You know, that's a really, really good point. One of the things that I always argue about personality, and I do this with my class when I teach as well, is personality defines your predispositions, not your destiny. So being aware of the fact that you're high in emophilia and you have these propensities to meet that love threshold much sooner, much easier, doesn't mean that the relationship is doomed. It means that the relationship might require extra work on your part as somebody high in emophilia, that you have to put up guardrails faster, you have to be prepared to deal with those emotions and communicate with your partner better. It may require you being with a therapist, who's a couples therapist, that can walk you through those periods of when the honeymoon area ends and that more companionate love

• 17:51Speaker 02

  begins, that you acknowledge that is a natural process through the evolution of love. And if you fall in love with somebody else, you're going to repeat that cycle eventually. It's just going to come at a different timeframe. So people can work with individual differences, much like I would consider myself somebody low in conscientiousness, but I've been successful only because I put guardrails in my life, forcing me to stay on top of things. And so somebody high in emophilia, for example, may be able to compensate in a relationship that really matters to them, something that they're, somebody they're really committed to. If they're, if, you know, forewarned is forearmed, and knowledge is power. So if these people are aware of their emophilic tendencies, they absolutely can put safeguards

• 18:34Speaker 02

  in place that allows a long-term relationship to function.

• 18:38Mike Carruthers?

  But you've been researching this. How likely is that? How often does that actually happen, or that's just hypothetically possible?

• 18:46Speaker 02

  I'm saying it's hypothetically possible. I've been, you know, throughout the research that I've done, I have seen emophilic people stay in relationships for long periods of time. So in all the surveys we do, we often ask, how long have you been in your relationship? How frequently have you been unfaithful? Things like that. And I know empirically, it's true that people have stayed in relationships eight, 10, 12 years and been faithful who are high in emophilia. I haven't dug deeper, to be honest, in why they've been able to be successful in those situations. And I will acknowledge that those types of people who fit that profile are not common, but they do exist.

• 19:24Mike Carruthers?

  Do you think that most people who have emophilia

• 19:29Mike Carruthers?

  Get it, that they know it, that they understand that this is who they are? Or do they tend to think something's wrong with me? Or I mean, how self-aware are they?

• 19:40Speaker 02

  All of the above. So, one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about emophilia is because I want people to know that there's nothing wrong with them. They're not deficient, they're not disordered. They just have a different threshold for love as other people. And so, I've had a lot of folks talk to me and say, you know, "Up until this point, I really thought there was something broken about me, something wrong, I couldn't control myself." They blamed themselves. And then there are other people who are self-deceptive about either emophilia, and they say, "No, no, no, no, no, Mike, this is the one. This is really the one now, and I'm really committed to this person." And then, six months later, things change. So, there are the self-deceptives, there are the self-blamers. And what I want to do is really bring the common narrative into, it's just another individual difference.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  If you don't like certain aspects of emophilia, where you're on the spectrum, you can work on those things. You can put in guardrails, you can make your life what you want it. These are just predispositions, they're not destinies. And so, there we go. We can work on this type of stuff. And so, yeah, I would argue absolutely, there are people who blame themselves, people who are self-deceptive and don't think there's anything wrong with it, and they're just running from relationship to relationship. And then, there are people who, I hope, will listen to this podcast and realize it's not their fault, but they do have to take responsibility for their behavior.

• 20:57Mike Carruthers?

  When people get to their later years, if you've studied this, and look back, and they have been high in emophilia for most of their life, are they happy they were? Do they regret it? Do they wish they had found that special someone a long time ago? Or they just, they don't have anything to compare it to? How do they look at it?

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Really fascinating question. The best I can answer is this. People who are high in emophilia generally have a little bit more extroversion. Their self-esteem doesn't vary tremendously. So I'm not seeing any life satisfaction outcomes that are different, high, low, or otherwise. But what I can answer is that somebody who's extremely low in emophilia, somebody who falls in love once, if ever, it's much harder for them to move on if that relationship dissolves because the threshold for them falling in love is so high, the probability of this happening ever again is actually quite low. And so somebody who is extremely low in emophilia is going to struggle to find a partner that

• 22:00Speaker 02

  matches the partner that met their threshold that one time. So one of the things that we do know in the relationship literature is that people who have a crushing blow to their relationship life often can trigger depression. Having a very strong love goes sour can alter life outcomes, as we all know. So if you have one person who has met that threshold in 60 years and that person passes away, or there's a divorce, or you separate, or something happens to the relationship, the pain can be tremendous, especially if that threshold is so high that nobody is really going to ever meet that again. So my argument is emophilia is a trade-off, and it can be very functional in helping people

• 22:42Speaker 02

  move on because their threshold is lower for finding a new love.

• 22:47Mike Carruthers?

  I saw something in the material about you that about how people who are high in emophilia need to be very wary of narcissists. So talk about that.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Most of us have dated a narcissist. And because of their ability to charm and promote themselves in a way that is extremely flattering, they create a rush of excitement. Well, if you're high in emophilia, you're prone to feeling that rush of excitement. You have a lower threshold for falling in love, and you interpret those feelings as love much faster. So when a narcissistic person meets an emophilic, it's a match made in hell, is what I often say. And so one of the things that I would argue is that if you're high in emophilia, make sure that you acknowledge those red flags. As you're going through the dating scenario, don't gloss over them, don't rush through them, talk to a trusted friend, a therapist, a counselor, find somebody with whom you can bounce these relationships off of, because very often, we do find that people high in

• 23:41Speaker 02

  emophilia find themselves in relationships with narcissistic people, because narcissistic people have that excessive charm and excitement in the early stages. And that's what an emophilic often gloms on to.

• 23:52Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is a whole other way of looking at love at first sight that I certainly have never considered. So I appreciate you educating me and sharing all your information. Thanks.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  I want to compliment you. Your questions really pushed, um, deep down, some of the, I've been on a lot of podcasts with this, and this is the first time somebody really challenged me to think.

• 24:13Mike Carruthers?

  Well, good. Thank you. Yeah, I have heard that before. People often tell me, you ask the questions that I would ask. And so I'm glad you, I'm glad you felt challenged by it. I've been talking with Daniel Jones. He is author of the book Falling Fast: The Perils and Possibilities of Emophilia. And if you would like to read that book, there's a link to it at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Daniel.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks, Mike. This has been a really fun conversation.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season, you create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  Stonefire naan is made with real buttermilk and ghee. It's the perfect flatbread for any occasion.

• 25:23Speaker 05

  I put out Stonefire naan with dips at every dinner party.

• 25:26Speaker 06

  I make naan grilled cheese when my daughter has friends over. I use Stonefire naan to reward the humans who do my bidding.

• 25:32Speaker 05

  Right. It's perfect for camping trips.

• 25:35Speaker 06

  Dance for it, feeble mortal.

• 25:37Speaker 05

  Sorry, is he talking to me?

• 25:40Speaker 06

  Dance. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. From our tradition to yours, Stonefire. Together we naan.

• 25:51Mike Carruthers?

  You've probably seen those videos the government has released showing strange objects in the sky, objects that appear to move in ways that seem impossible. If you haven't seen them, they're pretty amazing to watch. These objects accelerate instantly, change direction without slowing down, and sometimes appear to have no visible means of propulsion. That raises some pretty big questions. What are we actually looking at? Is this secret military technology, optical illusions, something explainable that just looks bizarre, or something else entirely? I've always been pretty skeptical of UFOs, or UAPs as the government now calls them,

• 26:35Mike Carruthers?

  but when military pilots, radar operators, engineers, and intelligence officers all start talking seriously about these sightings, you have to at least pay attention. So what do we really know and what don't we know? Why has the government become more open about this now? And why was it so secret in the first place? And is there actual scientific evidence behind these claims? Here to help separate fact from speculation is Robert Powell. He has 28 years of engineering experience in the semiconductor industry. He co-holds four patents, and he helped develop some of the first flash memory technology used in today's cameras, PCs, and video cameras.

• 27:19Mike Carruthers?

  He's founding board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies and author of the book UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know and Don't Know. Hi, Robert. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Hi, Mike. Thank you for having me on.

• 27:36Mike Carruthers?

  So, I'm a skeptic. I've always kind of been of the belief that, you know, if aliens actually came here, if UFOs were real, that they wouldn't land in the swamp, they would land next to the Washington Monument, or they'd land in Times Square, and they'd come out and say, "Here we are." And they've never done that, so I'm skeptical. But where are you on this? And why do you care?

• 28:01Speaker 03

  I'm normally skeptical. I'm normally a skeptical person and that's the way I began my journey in studying UFOs. And I also used to think, okay, why don't they land on the White House lawn? But in a way, you know, that that's because we are very human centric. We think that's the way we think is the way some other intelligence should think. But then, why the White House lawn? Why not the Kremlin lawn? Or why not not on anyone's lawn? But going back to your question, for the last 20 years, I've studied this subject.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  And what really excites me about it is because if UFOs, at least a percentage of these reports, represent an alien technology, that would be the most impact to humanity in probably, arguably, 2,000 years.

• 29:10Mike Carruthers?

  One day UFOs became UAPs, at least according to the government. And I'm not even sure what a UAP is. But but why did they do that? And what is a UAP? What does it mean?

• 29:21Speaker 03

  UAP, of course, everyone knows UFO, unidentified flying object. But UAP is unidentified anomalous phenomenon, which really is a broad catchall subject. And the reason it came about was in about the year 2019. A gentleman by the name of Jay Stratton, who was out of the Office of Naval Intelligence, was the head of the United States UFO program. And he wanted to brief Congress on the seriousness of UFOs.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  And so the term UFO had so much baggage about little green and gray aliens and all of the craziness in it that he felt to be able to get Congress to have serious attention, he needed to change the name.

• 30:23Mike Carruthers?

  So what do we know? What do we actually know about UAPs?

• 30:29Speaker 03

  What we know is that there are several dozen documented cases of objects that had accelerated at extreme rates of speed that there is no way we can with our technology duplicate it. Some of those cases, there's radar data that supports it. And in other cases, there are multiple witnesses who see a craft standing still and then suddenly accelerating and disappearing in a matter of one to two seconds.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  So both of those, the radar data and the multiple witnesses, those type of accounts support an object in the air doing something that we are not capable of doing with any of our aircraft or missiles.

• 31:29Mike Carruthers?

  Well, and I've seen some of those images and they're always these, you know, dark, grainy, you know, it's, it's not a big technicolor picture. And so it's really hard to get a real sense of what's going on. And I understand that that's what pilots and people see, but, but again, it's always like, why can't it be much more clear? And just because objects are moving in an unexplainable way, it's still a big leap to therefore aliens are involved.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Right. I think the only thing you can truly conclude, at least that I feel comfortable, is that there's intelligent control of this object. And whatever that intelligence is, it's far more advanced than we are.

• 32:23Mike Carruthers?

  And we're, we're certain that nobody on earth in some other country doesn't have some technology that could do that.

• 32:33Speaker 03

  No, no one does because some of these measurements have shown an object accelerating at hundreds of G-forces. And to give you an example, an F-18 or an F-35, actually, direct linear acceleration is only one to two G-forces. And when it's banking, it may be able to hit seven or eight G-forces, but nothing in the range of hundreds of G-forces. And if a human being or any living creature was in a craft, hundreds of G-forces would

• 33:18Speaker 03

  just turn you into a liquid mush.

• 33:23Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I wouldn't like that.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  No, it would be difficult to survive that.

• 33:29Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  I mean, our, an F-35 will fall, will come apart at around 13 to 15 Gs.

• 33:37Mike Carruthers?

  When you look back in history, when did people first start reporting about aliens or spacecraft? When did we first hear that?

• 33:48Speaker 03

  There's very few cases that you can see in history that would make you think, okay, this sounds like a craft that has come into our atmosphere, right? And it is being explained in the terminology of that time in history. But if you look in modern history, and I've done this and looked at it, beginning in 1942 is when you see a sudden increase in reports of these strange moving objects in the sky. So it actually began during the middle of the Second World War. And at that time, they weren't called UAPs or even UFOs.

• 34:33Speaker 03

  They called them foo fighters.

• 34:37Mike Carruthers?

  And it is curious that it would start in that era, which is roughly, I would imagine, the time when stories of aliens and UFOs were in the books and newspapers and movies and things like that.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  Well, you know, of course, the famous one was 1933 with Orson Welles, right? In his radio broadcasts of the Martians invading the Earth, and a lot of people believed it. You know, amazingly, that did not cause a wave of UFO reports in 1933. There was still basically no reports of UFOs. It didn't really begin until 1942. And we were not even aware of these reports till people started going through the flight logs of pilots during the Second World War.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  And both German, Japanese, American, English, and French pilots had reported strange spherical lights that would move along with their aircraft during a mission. And that is the very first time that in the modern history where we've had a lot of reports in the beginning of UFO sightings.

• 36:02Mike Carruthers?

  Is there any evidence that these UFO sightings seem to happen somewhat randomly in various places around the Earth? Or are they concentrated in certain places, or I guess above the Earth? But is it just everywhere and anywhere? Or is it, you know, right over New Mexico or something?

• 36:25Speaker 03

  UFO sightings are all over the world. I mean, there's no nation that has not had UFO reports. What makes them more prevalent in certain areas? We don't know the why. But there are, for example, within the United States, there's more sightings in New Mexico and in Colorado, and then the northeastern United States. We also know that they're more prevalent around nuclear installations.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  So we've actually done a study where we looked at nuclear military installations versus non-nuclear military installations. And do we see more reports of UFOs in one over the other? And the answer was, we do see more reports over the nuclear installations.

• 37:19Mike Carruthers?

  By far?

• 37:22Speaker 03

  Yes. And we did a statistical analysis. And statistically, there are more UFO reports over military installations that are they have nuclear weapons on the base.

• 37:39Mike Carruthers?

  So maybe they're just looking for a gas station to fill up for the ride home.

• 37:44Speaker 03

  That could be. Although, all the signs are, whatever means of propulsion they use, there doesn't seem to be, it's not like our typical type, chemical or nuclear. It's some other method that, you know, we have not yet discovered.

• 38:06Mike Carruthers?

  So one of the characteristics of, you know, conspiracy theories or things like that is that in order for it to stay secret, everybody has to be quiet. And people have a tendency to talk. And why, you wonder, hasn't anybody come out and said, I met this alien and I saw him and, you know, we had drinks together and this is what he said, you know, from some reputable source. But it's always these little hints and little snippets of video and it's never like, boom, here it is.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  I'll tell you a story and, you know, it's purely a hearsay story, but it comes from a very reputable source. So, the very first UFO program in modern times was called the UAP Task Force. And that was created by the gentleman I mentioned earlier, Jay Stratten, who came out of the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence. So Jay...

• 39:19Speaker 03

  I know well, and I've been over to his home. I've had dinner with him and his wife. You know, he's a fairly intelligent guy. And he seems very honest, right? He told me that he had seen dead aliens. And so I said, well, wait, Jay. I mean, you're in, that would be top secret information. How could you tell me that? I mean, that, you know, why should I? You know, that just doesn't quite seem right.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  And he said, well, the, the problem is I did not see this as part of my naval duty. I was at a defense contractor when they showed it to me. So he said, in his opinion, it did not fall under his top secret classification as something he could not talk about. As a scientist, I like to have some kind of evidence, like radar data, multiple witnesses. But here I just have a single witness. He happens to be the head of the UAP's task force, right? So is he, is he just BSing me?

• 40:42Speaker 03

  I don't know for certain, but I, I have no reason to believe he would do that.

• 40:49Mike Carruthers?

  But that goes back to what we were talking about before is why is it so secret? If they're dead aliens, put them in the Smithsonian and let's all have a look.

• 40:58Speaker 03

  Here, here's why he tells me that's so secret. He says that the United States is trying to reverse engineer these craft, and he claims that we have one or two of these craft. And that we've been trying to reverse engineer them for decades, but have had no success. But nonetheless.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  He indicates that our fear is that Russia and China may also have a craft. So the view is any nation that is successful in reverse engineering, how these craft operate would have a huge technological advantage over any other nation. And so as a result, they don't want our enemies to know anything about it.

• 41:54Mike Carruthers?

  Just because there's dead aliens doesn't, and you were to display them somewhere, doesn't mean you have a spacecraft. I mean, let's see the aliens. If they're lying around dead, why not see them? It doesn't mean, I don't see how that's a threat with our, or a concern with our other nations like China and Russia, so what?

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Right, right. There's no concern about the dead alien bodies. The concern is, he says they also have the craft.

• 42:25Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I don't want to see the craft, and then keep the craft secret, but let us see the aliens. Seeing the aliens doesn't reveal anything about the craft, it's just the aliens.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  That's true. They can show the aliens.

• 42:40Mike Carruthers?

  If you don't want to show the aliens, put their clothes on display, or, you know, give us a hint, give us something.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Right, right. No, that's, I like your argument. That's not a, you know, that's a good point. Now, I suspect, right, in the government, when in doubt, you go ahead and classify it. So that, I just suspect that they automatically classify everything.

• 43:09Mike Carruthers?

  So since he said there are spacecraft that we've seen or we have, what do they look like? How big are they? What, even if you can't reverse engineer them, you could describe them?

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Yes, supposedly, this one was a disc-shaped object, kind of like an egg shape. And they are unable to get into the inside of it. So all that they have is the exterior appearance of the object.

• 43:42Mike Carruthers?

  What do you mean they can't get inside it?

• 43:45Speaker 03

  I guess the material is too difficult to penetrate.

• 43:51Mike Carruthers?

  And the dead aliens that he claims he saw, what'd they look like?

• 43:59Speaker 03

  The typical gray type alien is what he describes. So, four to four and a half feet tall with a large head. Two arms, two legs.

• 44:14Mike Carruthers?

  Doesn't that seem kinda cliche? Like, you know, he, we, it just seems like

• 44:18Speaker 03

  It does.

• 44:18Mike Carruthers?

  That's the average alien in any TV show from the 50s, or the, a movie from the 50s.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  Well, actually, I think in the 50s, the aliens were more our size.

• 44:31Mike Carruthers?

  Oh, okay.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  But, starting in the 1980s, they dropped, they dropped in size.

• 44:39Mike Carruthers?

  Well, we can probably thank ET for that, I imagine, in the 80s. Well, it's a topic I think everybody's interested in, and, you know, I'm still very skeptical about it, but, but I watch those videos and wow, you have to wonder. I've been talking with Robert Powell. He's author of a book called UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know and Don't Know. And if you'd like to read it, there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Robert, thanks for coming on and talking about this.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  Thanks, Mike. It's been a pleasure talking to you today. I've enjoyed it.

• 45:19Mike Carruthers?

  When you leave a restaurant with leftovers, food safety experts say you should get them in the fridge within two hours. And when you do reheat leftovers, hotter is better. The USDA recommends you reheat food to 165 degrees all the way through. That's especially important in a microwave because microwaves heat unevenly. So you should stir it midway through, get it really, really hot, and then let it cool down. One leftover that deserves special attention is rice. Cooked rice can contain spores of a bacteria. And if rice sits out too long, those spores can produce toxins that will survive reheating

• 46:04Mike Carruthers?

  no matter how hot you get it. That's why fried rice syndrome has become a real food safety concern.

• 46:12Mike Carruthers?

  The trick is to refrigerate rice quickly, store it cold, and avoid reheating it more than once. If you ever wonder whether leftovers are still safe, food safety experts have a simple rule: When in doubt, throw it out. And that is something you should know. Something You Should Know is produced by Jeffrey Havison, Jennifer Brennan, executive producer Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 46:44Speaker 00

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