Mystery Drones & Saucer Nests - Guests : Piia Wirsu & Danielle O’Neal

Mystery drones continue to befuddle government officials, law enforcement, and alarmed residents across at least three states. The FBI admits it has no clue who is behind the persistent drone flights in and around New Jersey. Meanwhile, military officials in the UK remain perplexed by unknown objects that violated restricted airspace over three key air bases. In this episode, Jeremy and George explore possible explanations for the mystery drones and the curious lack of a more forceful response. Investigating the unknown can be daunting for professional journalists. In this episode, two courageous journalists from Australia describe their initial skepticism in pursuing a story about a series of bizarre events that troubled residents of one rural community. Danielle O’Neal and Piia Wirsu, reporters for ABC in Australia, found themselves deep down a UFO rabbit hole after asking questions about the appearance of “saucer nests” linked to UFO sightings. As they dug deeper, they discovered connections between the saucer nests of the 1960s and the crop circles that began appearing in large numbers in the 1980s. Reporting on UFO-related topics comes with its own set of risks, but the two persisted and produced a compelling five-part series that delves into the history of UFO lore and features contributions from some of the best-known investigators Down Under. ••• Check out Danielle and Piia’s EXCEPTIONAL journey of hardcore journalism into the wild wild world of all things UFO and SAUCER NESTS by listening to EXPANSE : UNCROPPED here : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/expanse/id1635088231 ••• Watch the three-part UFO docuseries titled UFO REVOLUTION on TUBI here : tubitv.com/series/300002259 Watch Knapp's six-part UFO docuseries titled ALIEN INVESTIGATION on NETFLIX here : https://www.netflix.com/title/81674441 ••• GOT A TIP? Reach out to us at [email protected] For breaking news, follow Corbell & Knapp on all social media. Extras and bonuses from the episode can be found at WeaponizedPodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  In this episode of Weaponized. You're telling me we don't know what the hell these drones are and New Jersey are? Is that correct?

• 0:39Speaker 02

  That's right. I'm going to tell you the real deal. Iran launched a mothership probably about a month ago that contains these drones.

• 0:47Speaker 03

  There is not any truth to that. There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States and there's no so-called mothership.

• 0:54Jeremy Corbell?

  If this is a normal situation, like an adversarial nation, no, no. And the reason is, is because these things are large enough to carry a payload. Man, a lot of these are really like explainable. But that I know for sure as far as the morphology or the shapes. What I do know is that the mystery associated with this is being perpetuated intentionally.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  It occurs to me that if this is a unique opportunity to do a real time, real life social study of how people would react on a mass scale.

• 1:34Speaker 05

  Featuring Australian journalist P. Awersu and Danielle O'Neal.

• 1:38Jeremy Corbell?

  Man, we need good journalists and especially in Australia, this is a global phenomenon.

• 1:44Speaker 06

  The Tully UFO case is kind of, especially in Australia, like a classic case UFO sighting among those really interested in this topic. The people that we spoke to on tape,

• 2:00Speaker 06

  we're speaking from an honest place. That this wasn't the only case in Australia. There has been hundreds of unexplained cases in Australia that he still think they need the same deep dive that we took into Tully.

• 2:14George Knapp?

  Secrets, cover-ups, and strange phenomena.

• 2:17Jeremy Corbell?

  UFOs and ideas that challenge reality itself. All these mysteries, all this time. We ever gonna get to the bottom of these?

• 2:25George Knapp?

  My name is George Knapp. I dig into news stories that others can't or won't.

• 2:30Jeremy Corbell?

  I'm Jeremy Corbell, and for some reason, people tell me things they probably shouldn't. And this is Weaponized.

• 2:42George Knapp?

  This is Weaponized. I'm George Knapp, coming from my spacious outdoor veranda here in Las Vegas. Jeremy, how you doing?

• 2:48Jeremy Corbell?

  Feeling good, man. Feeling like my hero David Bowie right now. Just, you know, life on Mars. What's going on on planet Earth, George?

• 2:56George Knapp?

  Let's talk about drones, New Jersey. So I can tell you that I think if Tony Soprano had not been whacked, this would not be happening. He'd take care of it.

• 3:06George Knapp?

  New Jersey is where War of the Worlds, the Orson Welles version, where the alien invasion started. Probably not a coincidence. It is the most densely populated state in the country. It's where I was born, where my family still lived, lives. And I don't know what the heck is flying around up there. Does anybody know?

• 3:25Speaker 01

  You're telling me we don't know what the hell these drones are and New Jersey are? Is that correct?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  That's right. It's crazy. I mean, that's crazy. That's madness that we don't know what these drones are.

• 3:38Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah, you know, I only have very little, but very specific information about what we're seeing globally right now. So it's not just New Jersey, but New Jersey's like a hub and a lot of people are reporting on it. You see a lot of misinformation intentionally and disinformation. For example, Chris Mellon just sent me some Newsweek article, and it's like opening line about how there's like this crash retrieval. You read it and you're like, okay, well, opening line, you know, there's this crash retrieval of something in New Jersey or something like that. They based it on a UFO, kind of like YouTube account that ended up going dark. And then it was propagated by a bunch of comedy or whatever, a satirical.

• 4:23Jeremy Corbell?

  New Jersey news website. It's so ridiculous. And at the end of the New York or at the end of the Newsweek article, then it tells you some facts. And that's exactly how misinformation and disinformation works. It's sad for me to see the spread because that means people want to spread just a bunch of bullshit. So here's what I know.

• 4:45Jeremy Corbell?

  And this is from personal contacts. This is not for me reading or looking at videos. I mean, I got hundreds that have come in from New Jersey just in the last week in my emails. There are people that I know that I trust durationally that have direct experience right now in real time with defending sensitive installations for the United States that are affected by this. And absolutely some of what's in the sky is absolutely explainable and traditional as far as shape and as far as propulsion. And remember, none of these things are really doing anything

• 5:29Jeremy Corbell?

  that are in the five observables, really. They're not, they're not doing like crazy movements that I've heard. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is people that are analyzing right now the actual military FLIR footage, which tons of it exists of these objects. There are some that are of absolutely non-traditional shape as well as the words were unconventional propulsion. I don't know what that means. That might be the loitering time. It might be the fact that some seem to be going out to sea. But here's the deal. Whatever's going on, it's being allowed to happen. So this comes to me from people that are, that deal specifically with national security and defense of our installations.

• 6:13Jeremy Corbell?

  We have the ability to track and trace anything in aerospace within vicinity.

• 6:20George Knapp?

  Supposedly.

• 6:20Jeremy Corbell?

  What's that?

• 6:21George Knapp?

  Yeah, supposedly.

• 6:22Jeremy Corbell?

  No, we do. Absolutely, we do. Now, sometimes things get through and we could talk about that. But absolutely, we do. Think about it, the Tic Tacs in 2004, all of that was being monitored by satellite, not by the ships and even the Spy One, which only goes to a scan volume of 80,000 feet. You and I know that to be true, but that's not like in the public domain. Well, this information I'm getting is not in the public domain yet. And people are like, dude, we don't know even the traditional ones? We don't know, you know, the origin of them. It doesn't mean it's not that it's, it could be very prosaic. But the disinformation, misinformation and the vague, the idea of creating confusion.

• 7:04Jeremy Corbell?

  That's why you have local law enforcement looking to FBI being like, yo, what the fuck? Help me with this. And that's also why you got FBI going to local law enforcement. Being like, what's going on? What can we do on the ground? You guys got some resource? I don't know, like big ass drones, like what can we do here? So you're getting all this like extra agency, like between different agencies, looking at it, being like, what's going on? So George, here's my only understanding. My only understanding is some are very traditional and some are not on film, definitively not. And then the biggest point is all of this is letting, all of this is allowed to happen

• 7:44Jeremy Corbell?

  right now and it's being seeded with mystery, which to me is the most interesting thing right now. And you said it, War of the Worlds, New Jersey. I mean, I met some of your family in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Super fun time to talk about that later. But what do you think is going on, George? No bad ideas. What do you think?

• 8:05George Knapp?

  You know, I don't know. It occurs to me that if this is a unique opportunity to do a real time, real life social study of how people would react on a mass scale to unknown objects zipping around in the sky. You know, the only information we're getting out of government types is we see no real threat. You know, the same thing happened over at Langley Air Force Base a year ago this month. Twelve nights in a row, the same thing is happening over sensitive restricted military airspace in the UK. They keep telling us there's no threat, presumably meaning whatever these platforms are, they have not attacked us. But I don't know, doing surveillance? What the heck are they doing?

• 8:47George Knapp?

  Pretty clear that whoever's flying them, number one, is either does not care that we see them, or two, that's the point of it, because they got these lights on there. You know, they're not hiding themselves. This clearly is some kind of a performance. They want to be seen, or they don't mind being seen. And I hope somebody is gauging how the public reacts to this, because it's valuable information. Secondly, you know, the information that you and I have received from a variety of people is that they don't know exactly where they come from. They don't know exactly where they go. They're just there at nighttime, flying around in a whole lot of places, across New Jersey and other spots. And that bothers me. I mean, why can't...

• 9:31George Knapp?

  You know a lot about these surveillance platforms and capabilities of like tagging something that's in the sky and following it. Why do we not know where these things go? If it's a Chinese ship, as some people have suggested, or a Russian sub launching in the UK, and they launch them and then they go back, that is way more embarrassing and more threatening for the US government to talk about and admit than, say, aliens or something, something unknown, truly unknown. If the Chinese or Russians could launch something like that over our bases, over our most densely populated state, that's truly disturbing, I think. So if it's an adversary, that's a problem.

• 10:15George Knapp?

  If it's some unknown party, some group of tech billionaires or something, testing something out, that's also disturbing. And then if it's the US government, over a populated area like that, over days and days, I think the officials would be pissed, mayors, governors, senators would be really outraged if that turns out to be true. We don't know what they are, and in the broadest sense, you could say they are UFOs. They are unidentified.

• 10:42Jeremy Corbell?

  Oh, 100%, they're... Well... I gotta step back for one second. So China and Russia. Really? Is that really an option? I mean, I just like, I like, come on. Like, I don't even want to entertain anymore of the bullshit. Like, okay, if it's that, we're really screwed. So, you know, I don't know. But like, everybody I've talked with in defense capacity is like, no, bro. No. So, so it just makes me wonder, um, what is the reason for allowing this to happen? Now, maybe I'm wrong, and maybe they are like extraterrestrials from another planet, and they're morphing into looking like planes, and like, you know, I'm just making jokes right now.

• 11:27Jeremy Corbell?

  No idea. But, but the thing is, is if this is a normal situation, like an adversarial nation, no, no. And the reason is, is because these things are large enough to carry a payload. Do you believe that with the microization of atomic weaponry, which is a fact, that anybody is going to allow that to happen with? Look, look back in history, George. You know better than anybody. When have we seen anything like this, like, at all? Would you say the Washington DC 52 flyover where we scrambled jets might be a little bit, like, on target with?

• 12:07George Knapp?

  Yeah, sure. There have been other little outbreaks here and there. In fact, we talked about them in the last episode of Weaponized, the Colorado drones that were floating around that nobody ever resolved. And I would compare it to the 2019 Pacific Coast stuff, the 2019 warships being buzzed by a hundred or so objects. And I raise that because, you know, can we knock these things down if we wanted to? Now, you and I have talked about this privately, about the kind of measures that were taken out there. They don't have to worry about shooting down a drone and crashing into somebody's house and killing someone if they're out in the Pacific Ocean. What can you say about what measures were taken to try to bring those things down that were buzzing our warships?

• 12:50George Knapp?

  And what could you say about what the UK is dealing with right now over these restricted airspaces?

• 12:55Jeremy Corbell?

  I can say that there were five different measures that were taken to try to take down these objects in 2019 over sea, that all of them were ineffective, completely ineffective, that they were never able to find launch or land point. And to this day, to the best of my resource of information, which I feel is pretty damn good at this point, and you know it's pretty good, we have not found that, George. And so that's what I can say. Most of them were technology electromagnetic types of deterrence weaponry. It's not like kinetic action.

• 13:36Jeremy Corbell?

  But at the same time, we have objects that are larger, some of them are larger, over New Jersey. They could carry a payload over, you said the most densely populated state, is that true?

• 13:49George Knapp?

  Yeah. Damn. Think about not a payload of a nuclear or explosive. What about a biological weapon? What if they were spraying something? Could we even tell that they were?

• 14:01Jeremy Corbell?

  So do you think honestly, or not honestly, just transparently, of course it's honest, transparently, do you think, if for one second, the United States military, who can track and trace everything to a high degree, do you think they just let these things roll around if they were that much of a huge threat with a payload?

• 14:23George Knapp?

  You know, it doesn't seem to make sense. It doesn't seem to make sense that they can't track where they're coming from night after night after night.

• 14:31Jeremy Corbell?

  Can they though?

• 14:32George Knapp?

  Maybe they, I don't know. Maybe they can't. That's really disturbing.

• 14:36Jeremy Corbell?

  I don't know.

• 14:38George Knapp?

  You know, that's really disturbing. If we can't see them coming in and we can't track where they go, if we don't know by now, that's kind of scary. I don't want to scare people, not trying to whip up a hysteria here or something, but it's kind of disturbing. Even though these drones have not attacked, they're not a threat as deemed by our government, but it's got to piss off the Department of Defense that they don't know where they're coming from and they don't know what's going on.

• 15:03Jeremy Corbell?

  We can track, like you can see, we can track that they go up, you know, the coast and they're up there during the night and then they go out over water and then it just stops. Like all of a sudden, the tracking is kind of stopped. And maybe I'm not up to date with everything and I don't know when this is going to be published, this episode of Weaponized, but I'm going to have to call absolute bullshit that we can't track because these are not demonstrating instantaneous movement and some of the observabilities, unless there's a cloaking thing I'm not seeing. But man, a lot of these are really like explainable, like that I know for sure. As far as the morphology or the shapes that look aerodynamic and then also just the type of propulsion, but that's a whole nother thing

• 15:47Jeremy Corbell?

  with FLIR footage. But there are some, like a handful, like not just a few, that are seen on FLIR not having traditional or conventional morphology and also not traditional propulsion. So, so look, man, I don't know. I don't, I'm just reporting the news here. I have no determination. I don't know. Maybe what I'm saying, it's not that helpful. You know, I don't know. But what I do know, and it's really freaking me out, what I do know is that the mystery associated with this is being perpetuated intentionally and that is verifiable objective fact. Like if you just take a second. So I don't know what that's

• 16:32Jeremy Corbell?

  about, George. I don't know. But I'm really interested to find out the ground truth on this. You know, what are we seeing and why? Why was this allowed to a high degree? Because that's true. That is just true. So with that said, back to Cherry Hill, New Jersey. So you got family there. Come on, man. Get a little personal. Tell me we went to some conference years ago, a decade ago, probably. I don't know. Went to some conference. Was it cool to like have your family there and kind of show them that you're into UFOs?

• 17:04George Knapp?

  Well, yes and no. Yes, it was great to see my family. No, it wasn't necessarily cool to show them how crazy I'd become into UFOs, but they seemed to enjoyed it. I got a text. I've been texting my cousin John Knapp in New Jersey to tell him, hey, keep an eye to the sky because there's weird stuff going on. He says, no, that's up in northern New Jersey. They won't come down here where the red gags live. We all got guns. Then he texted me today and said they did show up and we're ready for them. So, by the way, the Pine Barrens, which is an area where this thing supposedly crashed, is like the paranormal center of New Jersey. A lot of weird stuff happens in there. A lot of weird legends. My dad used to hunt in that area. So if I were a UFO and I was gonna crash, that's the last

• 17:49George Knapp?

  place I would crash because it's dangerous in there. You know, it feels like some kind of a social experiment. I know there's a lot of different answers to what's flying around up there. Hobbyists are sending their drones up to see what's going on. I think the police have drones they're sending up. I'm betting that our military is sending up drones to see what's going on. So not everything in the sky is some unknown. And I've seen a lot of videos that are posted on social media that appear to me to be planes, plane lights coming into airports. But some of these things are not as easily explained as that. And it's playing out in real time and somewhere, somebody is doing measurements

• 18:31George Knapp?

  on how the public reacts to this thing. That's useful data. That's good to have.

• 18:36Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah, so there's, so the people that I speak with are in real time dealing with the defense of certain facilities, as an example, that's one take. So what's disturbing to me is that seeing the way that the media, and it must be based on the desire of us, right, to play us a certain way. Now, I don't know this whole crash thing that you just said. I saw that and I was like, really? Because I looked at all the sources of it. It's like a deleted YouTube account. And then all the hoaxsters and hucksters, they start like putting that up. And so- I'm just so skeptical. I hope something crashed. I don't know.

• 19:17Jeremy Corbell?

  But the other thing I noticed is certain people are propagating this mythology of a mass delusion, a mass panic. And it's the it's the usual suspects, just the the absolute bottom of the barrel garbage, disinformation, crappy individuals.

• 19:36Jeremy Corbell?

  And the only reason I say this because people will send me, oh, look at this bullshit. Like from inside military, look at this bullshit. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. So I want to ask you, do you think that this is some mass hallucination that just happens to be picked up on FLIR camera and also by civilians?

• 19:55George Knapp?

  No, no, it's not a hallucination. People really see this stuff. They're recording.

• 19:59Jeremy Corbell?

  Mass panic?

• 19:59George Knapp?

  And you know what? If somebody expected them to panic, the public is not panicking. They're not panicking. They're curious. What the hell's going on? They want to know. They're asking elected officials at every level, and they're not getting any answers. And I think some of the people above them and and political positions are pretty frustrated by not getting any answers. You know, there was some kind of closed door hearing the other day, which there was a briefing. We've heard almost nothing out of that, you know?

• 20:24Jeremy Corbell?

  Oh, we're not going to. I'm completely done with the bullshit of Congress. Like, we're not going to. That it's a whole setup after what last happened. People will learn about that soon. There's actually this little article that came out where the last page of it, I think, is insightful because it tells the truth. It tells you what happened inside that room to a little degree, but there's more coming.

• 20:46George Knapp?

  Yeah, that Ojai magazine, that's a great photo, by the way. A heroic pose. I think people should maybe read that and and check it out because it gives a hint of what's going on.

• 20:55Jeremy Corbell?

  If they find it and they want to find it, it's it's great. You know, all 12 pages are there this time, you know? It's it's a really, it's just so funny, right? It's our 11 page, I think, with the cover, it's 11 pages. My little joke about the missing page that people don't understand yet. But I understand that, but they they will soon. So, yeah, there's an article, Ojai magazine. They asked me to to talk with them about UFOs. And in the middle of that months-long process,

• 21:27Jeremy Corbell?

  a bunch of shit went down. And they were right there and they were embedded with White House press passes. And and they also.

• 21:38Jeremy Corbell?

  Physically themselves, they saw the things that happened. And so it's like, man, I was like, thank God I got some journalists with me. Like some, some crazy stuff. So it's a cool article, Ojai Magazine. I don't, it's just barely hit the stands, but I'm really supportive of that last page. That last page is where they came to Congress with me, embedded in with White House press passes. These heroic journalists, man, I mean, they really went deep. And so I, I think people should read that last page. I do think that's important.

• 22:12George Knapp?

  Yeah, there was a sequence of events that haven't been fully reported yet that I think is, is coming out. Good. So we have some guests coming.

• 22:19Jeremy Corbell?

  Oh, I'm pumped. Yes. Can I tell you why I'm excited? Okay.

• 22:23George Knapp?

  Yeah.

• 22:23Jeremy Corbell?

  So this happens a lot, like we're, like where you threw down for me, people call me, they're like, we're with ABC. I'm like, what's that? And they're like, Australian Broadcasting Company. I'm like, cool, you guys need to catch up. And they're like, what? And I'm like, yeah, let's talk about UFOs then. I didn't know what they were gonna do. So they did like three hours or two hours with, with these folks and they were really sharp. So Danny and, and Pia and they're badass journalists. They have this cool podcast series that, that's, um, so, so this one's called Cropped, but that's like season four, but the whole series is called Expanse. And, and I didn't know what they're gonna do. And all of a sudden they're like, oh, we're putting something out.

• 23:06Jeremy Corbell?

  Oh my gosh, like it's, it's like old school broadcasting, but with like, where they, they, they have such production value. It's just beautiful. And the first few episodes, I mean, they had me hooked in the first episode because it's about saucerness in Australia and about a gentleman and what happened and how it just fucked his life. And then how it kept happening, but he didn't tell people because the UFO, um, you know, kind of fanatics were, were coming on their's property. And, and I can understand that. And so they did this incredible. Podcast series, an investigative journalism piece. I was so like proud, I don't even know them. I was like proud of them for the work they did.

• 23:51Jeremy Corbell?

  So I just really want to talk about it. And I am in it. And you know, there's some very revealing things. They definitely protected me when I didn't protect myself. All they said was that a purple room, they had much more dirt on me. But one of the funniest things is one of the episodes, I think, opens where I walk out at Congress and I'm ready to go to the first one, the one where Grush is at, and wearing this pink shirt. And you're like, all right, Barbie, go change. And I was like, I mean, that's true. That was so funny. You said that to me. So they even put in some humor. So I'm really excited. I want the world to know that these journalists in Australia take this seriously, that they're deep thinkers, they have incredible production. And I was so impressed with what they did.

• 24:34Jeremy Corbell?

  And that would be Pia and Dani. Because I gotta address these exotic accents. I'm look, I'm from the USA. What's going on here? Where are you from? Come on.

• 24:44Speaker 06

  I think it's the first time it's ever been called exotic. I think it's usually called bogan, but I'll take exotic. So we're from, we're from Australia. Dani and I are actually from like opposite parts of Australia. So I'm right down the bottom in Tasmania and she's from up north in Queensland. We actually have had a surprising amount of discussion around like Tasmanian versus Queensland accents. So I don't know if you can pick the difference, but that the Queensland's a lot more.

• 25:17Jeremy Corbell?

  New word I gotta look up. So yeah, so Pia, tell me, because I know I heard Dani's voice a lot in the episode, but when you called me, it was both of you. And we did this long interview. So what are your guys' roles with each other as journalists? And how did you get into this? And then answer whatever George asked you.

• 25:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. So we kind of worked to work together as a team. So we both worked together to build and craft it. We were both kind of on that journey of discovery through interviews and through research and that kind of stuff as well. And then it's actually really great doing it with someone like Danny and being able to have those really robust discussions as you're going through and you're trying to kind of do the mental gymnastics to try and like pull apart what you're hearing and what you're seeing to try and get to like the guts of it. And it's so helpful having someone there to be able to go through that process with and be like, hey, I've been thinking about this because when you're so

• 26:16Speaker 06

  deeply immersed in a project like this for several months, as it takes to make these, like you're dreaming about it, you're thinking about it, like it lives in your brain. So to be able to actually fresh that out with someone is such a valuable part of, I think, like the creative and journalistic process and just, as you were saying, George, kind of going on that journey of discovery. It was so good to be walking with someone doing that. And I absolutely do feel like it was a journey of discovery and something that I have probably become hyper aware of going through this is the amount of baggage that

• 26:56Speaker 06

  people bring to this topic. And, you know, myself included, from the media that I've consumed and the things that I've seen and I've read and that kind of stuff. You come in thinking that you know what you're going to hear or what the outcome will be and then actually just leaving that at the door and then going through and just really listening to what people are telling you. I think in every single interview we did, people said things that were really challenging and kind of forced you to stop and think and reassess. And I found I kind of went on this merry-go-round of like, you know, speaking to one person who had a particular experience and being like, oh, yeah, well, actually, that's, that's

• 27:38Speaker 06

  a really reasonable thing that you're saying and I can hear that this is really true for you and like all of that. And then you speak to someone with a really different viewpoint on that and you're like, huh, that's also reasonable and like you're also framing this in a particular way. So it was kind of like this roller coaster of, of discovery and going through that and trying to, yeah, get to, get to the heart of it as much as you can with this question, I think.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 28:35Jeremy Corbell?

  What I loved about what you did, because I didn't know what you're gonna do. I'm always thinking people are gonna try to hurt me, right? So I'm like talking with you and I'm telling you all this shit. And what you did, though, was you humanized these people that are telling you stuff. And I really want to back up a second. You say it's challenging. You said, Danny said scar tissue. You said baggage. I have noticed from going on the news in Australia that there's a sort of disconnect about this topic. In the US, there's almost a different one. It's like they're too interested. But in Australia, it's like they're still playing X-Files music when I go on news. I kind of stopped doing it. I was like just waiting to see if people caught up.

• 29:19Jeremy Corbell?

  And I told you that straight out the gate, that like I'm suspicious of you because of how I've been treated by people in the media in Australia. Now, it's cool to have curiosity, but is it real curiosity? You said these strong words, scar tissue, baggage, but then you also talk about talking with people. And you said true to them. And I hear that, but at some point, we have to move beyond it and say, I understand people are, it's true to them. But additionally, isn't there objective, verifiable truth that somehow relates to what they believe? Like there are net saucerness, there are physical evidence, and I think we should talk about that, that we can say, oh, people make stuff up.

• 30:01Jeremy Corbell?

  But you know, what I've learned talking with people that really have experiences is there's verifiable evidence that correlates directly with their experience. I'm gonna give you an example. Commander David Fravor, there's a CIA memo that is still confidential or secret, and I have been exposed to it. And if it's real, which I believe it to be because I've cross-checked that, it tries to tell you that Commander David Fraber was hallucinating because of war nerves. Now, the thing is, verifiably, if he was hallucinating, then nothing would be picked up on radar. Right? Right. And he wasn't seeing that part necessarily. That was on another system. So I just want to kind of break the barrier here, which is that

• 30:47Jeremy Corbell?

  sometimes people tell you like it is. And I think that's important to listen to. And it's really sounded to me like you gave people the chance to tell you what they think. And I appreciated that so much. So let's dig into the guts of this. Are you ready? Let's dissect this with a scalpel.

• 31:04Speaker 06

  I have a scalpel ready, definitely.

• 31:07Jeremy Corbell?

  I just want to know, first thing is like, what inspired you to even tackle this whole thing around the Tully UFO case? Because that's like this famous case in your area. But the general public in the United States and maybe in Australia, I don't know, don't really know about it. Like, why? Why did you do this? Why did you jump in with both feet?

• 31:28Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, I think it's really largely unknown in Australia as well. Like you say, Tully's source and everything. I was like, what? So I think it is not particularly well known outside of Queensland, particularly in Australia. And I mean, Danny, you can answer as well. But for me, it's kind of that thing of like, people say, don't like, you walk into a shop and there's a sign saying, don't touch this. And like, you just want to touch it. And it's kind of like that thing of like, don't talk about this, don't cover this. Like, we don't do stories on UFOs. And it's like, well, why not? Let's actually approach this with the same rigor and the same intent that we would approach any other story. And try and just meet people as human beings first. And then to try and kind of get to what's actually going on here.

• 32:14Speaker 06

  So I mean, that was certainly a driving factor for me and kind of, you know, I'm so interested that you mentioned the X-Files things. Because I do feel like often, you know, speaking from an Australian perspective, when this topic is covered, it's kind of done with like a wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And for me, I wanted to Do it a different way, in a way that um is respectful of the people involved as a starting point and that actually genuinely has a um curiously skeptical approach of trying to understand um but coming in that with that openness. Um Danny, you can you can jump in as well, obviously.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I echo those same reasons as K R. And as well, like, it's just a topic that once you start diving into it, you can actually learn a lot about yourself and your own judgments and biases. And I think that was really powerful in this story as we were uncovering it. You don't usually feel those emotions as strongly with, you know, your run of the mill journalism topic that's safe to cover. But with this topic, you just constantly, these uncomfortable feelings of where that line of objective truth and subjective truth are, actually makes you realize a lot of your own, your own baggage, which was really good about this topic.

• 33:34George Knapp?

  There's a section, Danny, um of audio, I think it's in the first episode, where you address the idea of, you know, journalists are supposed to be skeptical, perhaps cynical. Um cynical is what journalists have done to the UFO topic. Of course, we should be skeptical. But yeah, you know, I for me, my own journey, and for Jeremy, I think the same thing. It it causes you to look at your profession. Uh when you hear testimony like you two heard uh all all along the way of your your series, that from credible people, and see them mocked by your fellow fellow journalists who really don't dig into it. I always think what we do, we're good guys, you know, we're riding to the rescue, we right wrongs, we expose

• 34:18George Knapp?

  things that people don't want exposed. And suddenly, when you do a UFO story, or UFO episode, or podcast, you're crazy. I mean, did either of you experience

• 34:28Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 34:29George Knapp?

  low back from your professional

• 34:31Speaker 03

  Alex. I remember walking into this big newsroom in the city, and I don't know, word had kind of gotten out that this is what we were working working on. And a colleague yelled out across the room. So have you found any little green aliens yet? And that's like, that's, that's what we were dealing with every step of the way in this. I think once we kind of come, come back to our colleagues and say like, oh, you know, this is actually what we're doing. This is what it's about. There was physical evidence that's still inexplicable. They start to kind of get it a bit more, but I think the initial reaction even now is, is that.

• 35:06Speaker 06

  I think a sad thing as well, George, like something I was really aware of going through this process is just how like weirdly polarised this topic is, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Like why it's something that people seemingly can't talk about a lot of the time without either going into mockery or, um, you know, just bringing down the shutters and being like, well, this is where I stand and that is the end. And that's, I think as a journalist who like, I'm a journalist because I love discovery. I love finding new things, like you say, uncovering things and, and trying to, um, try to get to the heart of things. And I think one of the ways that we do that is by actually having constructive dialogue.

• 35:47Speaker 06

  And so it seems nuts to me that it's seemingly so difficult in this space to have a constructive dialogue. And that was something that I found really interesting. And I'm still not really sure why it is particularly attached to this topic more so than other topics. Um, although I do think a lot of the historical precedent around how it's being portrayed, around some of the hoaxes that have happened, have all kind of coloured it in this way. That makes it kind of far more difficult to talk about just openly than it probably should be.

• 36:25Jeremy Corbell?

  I would love to ask you, just for the benefit of the people that haven't listened yet to your entire series, just the, the core beginning of your story. I mean, my, my question is going to be, did your goals kind of evolve throughout, through your production, kind of what you learned at the beginning? But I, I think we need to start just at the beginning. If you could just tell people, what is the Tully UFO case? Just tell us what it is in a synopsis that people will understand that it's, um, unique.

• 36:56Speaker 06

  Do you wanna jump in, Dani?

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. So the Tully UFO case is kind of, especially in Australia, like a classic case. UFO sighting among, among those really interested in this topic, but like Pia said, relatively unknown among the rest of Australians. So essentially what happened, nineteen sixty six, broad daylight, nine AM, banana farmer just driving his tractor through his neighbour's property to work. He thought he'd done a tire because he was hearing this hissing noise and it was just getting louder and louder. Hopped off the tractor near a lagoon, checked out the tyre, it was fine. But then he saw what he would describe as two saucers on top of each other. Um, very large in, in size.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  And then it took off through some tall treetops. Initially, he, he himself, not in this, not really in this space, just your usual farmer, tried to talk himself out of what he'd just seen, but knew it was very unusual and inexplicable. And then very soon after, he realised when he looked into that lagoon that he parked up at, there was this huge thirty foot perfect circle of woven flattened reeds in that lagoon. So ver- never been seen before in Tully, you know, would only be seen again in some unexplained phenomena in the future, but it was very unusual. Hundreds of people came out to see it, it was that weird.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  And the, the reeds in the lagoon that this thing was made out of was so symmetrical and perfectly woven, it was strong enough, even though it was floating, for men to go and swim out and stand on it. So it became called a saucer nest, flying saucer, saucer nest. Um, and it kind of would eventually be tied up in the world of crop circles because of that indentation, embedded earth marking that was left behind. But because of that marking, it became really hard for the farmer and people who then, you know, heard his testimony to just dismiss him. Because we had the sighting, but there was also this physical evidence to go with it.

• 39:01Jeremy Corbell?

  Question. Okay, so I didn't get that from your series. And maybe I don't know what a lagoon is. But when people could kind of, you said swim out to it or get out to it, that they could stand on it. So like, what do you mean? Are these plants that are growing underwater? Or what do you mean they could stand on it?

• 39:17Speaker 03

  So a lagoon is essentially, think like swamp, maybe? That could work.

• 39:22Jeremy Corbell?

  Oh, yeah, we got those. These, the, every girl.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Not like hugely large, maybe the size of a bigger than a tennis court, the swamp itself. And back when this all happened, it was full of these water reeds. So these kind of very fibrous, very tall reeds that well, filled this lagoon swamp. And they would all be perfectly up straight. But obviously, when this sighting happened, this nest was made in the middle of that lagoon with flattened reed, those flattened reeds. Did that make sense?

• 39:58Jeremy Corbell?

  Yes, I do think that reeds.

• 40:00Speaker 06

  Root hole is underneath, like is in the bottom of the swamp. And they'd all been lifted up, so it had actually been ripped out of the earth underneath the water.

• 40:10Jeremy Corbell?

  Okay, so the reeds were physically ripped out and then woven in a way where they're not just floating like straw? And people could swim out to them or kind of move through the tall reeds and then walk on it?

• 40:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, like they could stand and sit on it, it was so strong, which was very weird.

• 40:30Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah, like what does that? Fly saucers?

• 40:34Speaker 06

  Fly saucers, it's interesting.

• 40:37Speaker 06

  I think he's probably about to say as well, but there was like some investigation at the time. And some of the sort of official theories that were put forward in correspondence and reports were that it was a helicopter, which doesn't make a lot of sense because it's obviously not where you would put a helicopter down in the middle of a swamp.

• 41:02Jeremy Corbell?

  I could fly a helicopter over a swamp a thousand times and I'm never going to rip up the reeds and be able to sit on them. So, okay, let's not be ridiculous. I don't know what it is, but that's, sorry, go on.

• 41:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, well, the other main one that was put forward was that it was like weather. So like a willy willy, so like a tornado in the water. We had the other one put forward. But the people who Danny spoke to in Tully. They don't, they don't buy that. They don't think that's a

• 41:31George Knapp?

  There's not a lot of

• 41:32Speaker 06

  explanation for what they saw.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  No, they have willy-willys, but kind of even to this day, back then, people who know this landscape say that they're not strong enough. And also has, there's been no precedent of that happening ever before. So they just don't buy it as a legitimate explanation.

• 41:50George Knapp?

  Especially because there were a bunch of them. That wasn't just one, there were a bunch of them over time, right?

• 41:56Speaker 03

  And all concentrated on this, very, uh, very strangely. We were only able to discover them being concentrated on this same property. Um, and speaking to other property owners. They said they've never seen anything like it, even if they had a similar lagoon, that kind of thing.

• 42:11George Knapp?

  I remember telling Jeremy about the term crop, uh, uh, about the saucer nests term. I think he thought I was making it up, but that was the term long before crop circles. Came along and, you know, it, Australia is where it started. Um, I, I know skeptics came and, and gave these witnesses a bad time. But also supporters, true believers came in the droves. And they were a pain in the butt, right? For the, the people who saw this.

• 42:40Speaker 06

  Yeah. So basically, once, once word spread through the town, it sounds like pretty well, everyone got in their car and drove out. And so, yeah, they kind of drove onto this person's property. With or without permission, largely without, um, and sort of these, you know, billowing clouds of dust as like hordes descended. On this property, they flattened fences, they flattened crops, um, all just trying to go and, and get a look of this, of this thing. And so, um, we obviously called like a lot of people in Tully to, um, put this story together. Not all of them that we spoke to, but pretty well, everyone who was there at the time was like, oh yeah, I went out and looked at that. Um, so it was definitely like a thing to see. And actually even the other day, we got a, um, message from a colleague.

• 43:26Speaker 06

  Whose mum sent the podcast then being like, oh, I was living in Tully when this happened. I remember the like hoo-ha over this. So it was definitely, yeah, um, created quite an impact.

• 43:37Jeremy Corbell?

  Isn't it amazing? So one of my primary natural habitats is a place called Pioneer Tower in California. And when you're driving through that area, you you can't kick up dust. Like, people get pissed, even if you're not on their property. The idea in in in in Australia, where people would just go on private land. Oh, my gosh, like, I know what that's like in the US, when you have, like, kind of this vast expanse, you're very protective of, like, who's coming this way and the dust from the cars. So that really like resonated with me. I was like, oh, dude, I get it. Now, the thing that really freaked me out about your guys' reporting is what I see and George sees all the time. I I want to talk about George's investigation into crop circles, because I was always like, what the fuck is that?

• 44:21Jeremy Corbell?

  But he did some cool investigation back in the day on that. I want to get to that. But first, something that really struck me from your podcast. If I understand it, is that this phenomenon didn't stop. Like, the the farmers kept experiencing it, but they kept it quiet because they were so terrorized by just what happened by by public interest. Did I get that right? And can you explain that to me, either and both of you?

• 44:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. So you've got it right, Jeremy. So essentially, it wasn't just hundreds of, like, locals and people coming out to see it. The media came out, too. As you can imagine, this was a huge story locally, and it even went global. And so, as you probably know, like, once a story reaches that level of media attention, you start to get all kinds of opinions coming in. And as we spoke about with the whole, with all the baggage tied up in the UFO topic, a lot of ridicule and judgment and hurtful cartoons that really made this farmer out to be like some kind of attention-seeking bogan, which is like a word to say, like, what is it? You know, just like, just like

• 45:36Speaker 03

  redneck movies, I don't know, an equivalent, I don't, just like a farmer who doesn't really know, who's, you know, he's not really, like, a very dismissive way to say someone who, like, lives in the country.

• 45:50Jeremy Corbell?

  Okay, that's so horrible. Yeah, we have terms like that, yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, not to be believed was essentially the the um, the insinuation of a lot of the media coverage. Especially as like these helicopter explanations and willy willies and maybe birds were running around and somehow created this saucer nests. Those kind of explanations were being thrown around, then it's like his believability just kept being called again and again into question, which really wore away at this farmer very quickly and, you know, over his entire life. And so in the years that followed nineteen sixty six, so essentially it was the neighbour who ran a banana farm, who had the UFO sighting and discovered the saucer nest and the actual property where it happened was a sugarcane farm.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  And so the farmers who lived on the sugarcane farm, the neighbours, in the years that followed nineteen sixty six, they started, they were daily checking because they were really kind of intrigued about what this was and knew it wasn't usual for them or the area or anything like that. So they were doing daily checks of the property in the lagoon. And about two years later, after the nineteen sixty six sighting, they started to see more and more of these. So they never had a UFO sighting like the banana farmer, but over the decades, the family, the farmer who still lives there today, who was seven years old at the time and still lives on the same property. He said the family recorded anywhere between forty to fifty of these mysterious saucerness on the property, mostly in that lagoon.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  But over the decades, but as you said, that ridicule that poured down from the initial reports meant they kept it like very quiet. They would correspond with UFO groups in Brisbane and there was some photographic evidence of the nineteen sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine nests and when they went out to do some samples and testing on them. Um, but yeah, they kept it largely quiet because they didn't want that same judgment to pour down on them.

• 47:48Jeremy Corbell?

  So, so something was created.

• 47:50Speaker 06

  Such a significant impact. It's like when Danny says daily checks, like wading through swamps with crocodiles in them, like their backs were thick with mosquitoes, like it wasn't like they just wandered down to the back paddock, like they, they went to lengths to try and keep a track of what was going on because it clearly had a really significant impact on all the people um who were involved, both the banana farmer who was the neighbour who saw the UFO and the farming family whose land it was.

• 48:23Jeremy Corbell?

  I want to hear George's opinion on something because I'm the last person he tells things to, apparently. So I want to, I want to hear his opinion on something. But George, to my left is my desk. And on my desk, I have documents that include original Polaroid eight by 10 photographs studied by EG and G in Los Alamos National Laboratory. And this is new information that we got to meet up. It includes saucer nests. Can you tell me what is up with this thing? Like, how did this get tied to the UFO thing? What

• 49:06Jeremy Corbell?

  did you do, George, to look into this when this was kind of popular, where now it's like stigmatized?

• 49:13George Knapp?

  Well, the saucer nest stories have a great heritage in later years in the UFO world. The US, they document in their podcast, some years later, crop circles appeared in the UK and became a really big deal, got a lot of coverage. And the same kind of phenomena or explanations were presented. Oh, this is dust devils. It's some kind of a natural phenomena, weather. And then Doug and Dave, these two old barflies come forward and say, we made them. Well, you know, taking a board out in the field and stomping down grain isn't the same as what our guests are describing, this weaving of these, these crops. It's almost like, you know, really, we-

• 49:57Jeremy Corbell?

  In water, in water.

• 49:59George Knapp?

  Yeah. And, you know, so the explanations that have been offered really don't match what people are seeing with their own eyes. And I was in a couple of them in the UK. And, you know, it's, I don't know how the heck it could be done, even if you tried to do it and fake it. And obviously Doug and Dave, two old good natured fellows, weren't going all over the UK and doing these gigantic crop circles at night. It's typical of what is used in the UFO world to dismiss this stuff. And a lot of times, our journalism colleagues will accept it because it's too uncomfortable to maybe accept something else, another explanation that's not as easy to go down, right?

• 50:39Jeremy Corbell?

  Well, we're Doug and Dave in the sixties going to private property in sugarcane fields in Australia and going in the lagoons with crocodiles and weaving, hand weaving. I mean, were they doing that?

• 50:53George Knapp?

  No, of course not. Danny, I think you make the point somewhere in your narration that, look, I don't know how anyone would do this, even if they were trying to fake it, right?

• 51:03Speaker 03

  And that's what people on the ground in this area who knew the farmers who were very busy running their own farms, but also who know this landscape say, they just, they can't make sense of how it could have been faked.

• 51:15Speaker 06

  One of the gentlemen that we spoke to was actually a tracker. His dad was a tracker. They were sort of co-opted by the police when tourists went missing and that kind of stuff to help them find them by studying the landscape. So some of these people had like a very in-depth knowledge of this landscape. And they were, they said, we can't explain it. We don't know.

• 51:37George Knapp?

  I remember one of the things that you say in one of your episodes is that skeptics were amazed that these things would pop up, even though people did not see flying saucers for any or even any of them at all. How does, how do the saucer people know to form these circles and land when nobody's around, which of course presumes that they have to land to create these forms to begin with, correct?

• 52:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, so for the farmers who own that property, they've associated, obviously they trust the UFO sighting from the banana farmer a lot, knowing his character and knowing his, his believability and their point of view. So for them, they've always associated it with this idea of some kind of landing or some kind of pressing down to create them. But yeah, as you said, it kind of was their life mystery and it still is how they never saw anything but discovered so many dozens of these, of these nets.

• 52:38Jeremy Corbell?

  I got a question. Did you guys, like, I love this type of investigation. I love, so ninety, ninety, maybe eight percent of what George and I talk about with people when it comes to UFOs, UAP, their personal experiences, that there's an ethical concern and a legal concern. So we report on very little of what it is that we do every day. Did you guys uncover any evidence or connections during your research that kind of surprised you and altered your understanding or kind of the course of how you were looking at the Tully case?

• 53:16Jeremy Corbell?

  Like, during the process, did anything surprise you and make you change your course?

• 53:27Speaker 06

  I think the thing that kind of speaks closest to that for me was when Shane Panese, who was seven years old, he was the sugarcane farmer's son. He was seven when the first saucer nest appeared. And he spoke about canisters of film going missing. And he, his father, their family, believe that that was taken by AZO, which is basically like the, you know, Inspire Surveillance Network in Australia. And Shane said that his father

• 54:09Speaker 06

  was told that by someone in the defense force. And that was something that we had long, robust conversations about how to tackle it, whether to include it. Because to what you were saying earlier, George, this idea of like, cutting out things that make us uncomfortable is something that happens in the media all the time, or just simplifying things because it's hard, it's easier for people to digest, and it's easier for journalists to make simple stories where it's like, it's either true or it's not true. Like, there's no gray area, you know, to crop circles, for example, it's, they're either all hoaxes or they're either all not. Whereas, you know, the truth. Probably lies somewhere in the middle.

• 54:49Speaker 06

  Um, and so with these missing films, we thought really hard about how to cover that and how to include that. Um, and certainly, um, you know, Danny went to, to great lengths to try and dig into that. And it's one of those things on the face of it, you hear someone say that and you have like.

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• 55:42Jeremy Corbell?

  Well, tell that story because our listeners won't understand it, the missing films. One of you tell that.

• 55:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, yeah, so, um, as part of their surveillance, they got hold of what was at the time, a very high tech camera that they placed down in this lagoon that would basically trigger off, um, if there was movement. So they stayed just not that impressive. Back in like the sixties and seventies, it was a big deal. Um, the farmer went down there one day, the whole roll of film had rolled through, so it had been triggered. There was a saucer nest that was there. So they were like, great. This is where we get our answers. This is how we find out what's been happening. They packaged it up. They took it to the post office. Um, and then what Shane, who, um, was the, um, son of the, the farmer said,

• 56:29Speaker 06

  um, was that it on its way to be developed in Melbourne, um, which is, uh, down the bottom of Australia, it disappeared and the canister turned up empty. Um, and it is their understanding that it was taken by ATO, who is this, um, like spy agency basically in, in Australia.

• 56:52Jeremy Corbell?

  And that, and that's like a federal mail, like they put it in some sort of federal mail and ship it? Is that what happened?

• 56:58Speaker 06

  Yeah. So Australia Post, they would have parcel it up, taken it into the post office. Um, and.

• 57:06Speaker 06

  They believe that ASIO had a man in the Tali post office who was able to then remove the film so that the canister arrived empty. And you discovered other folklore around that happening in other instances as well.

• 57:23Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah, George and I have specifically dealt with this. And it's kind of like astonishing to me. I know that's a hard part of the story to tell because it's something where you feel like the, I assume it's something where you feel like the witness is like very credible. And then they're like, by the way, our shit got stolen by the government. So that's your problem, right? You're like, how do I tell that? Is that what you're thinking?

• 57:48Speaker 06

  That's a hundred percent the dilemma. Yeah.

• 57:51Jeremy Corbell?

  Right, because you can't prove it and it feels conspiratorial. But in fact, you know, the camera was there. You know, it captured this, I assume.

• 57:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:01Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah. So then all of a sudden it's gone and it'll be the best evidence ever, right? Right. So George and I have dealt with this. There's actually a famous case, and George, this is where your Akashic Raku needs to come in. There was an individual who took some really high quality photos of UFO, UAP or video. And they willingly gave it to the government. They were like, oh yeah, absolutely. You can have this. And they're like, we'll bring it right back to you. And it was decades later and it was put in his mailbox. And that's the only reason we have him now with a note being like, you should have this. We kept it from you. Do you know the case?

• 58:40George Knapp?

  I don't, but I mean, there are a lot of cases like that where they give it to the government and it's never seen again. I mean, a bunch of them.

• 58:45Jeremy Corbell?

  So I usually hand deliver stuff. You know, I try, you know, because I'm like, I don't want that to happen anymore. You know, we've had some weird experiences.

• 58:54Speaker 06

  I think it's something that really, really did surprise me was this thread through it. Because as part of Danny's digging to try and find out the likelihood of whether this story was true or not, she discovered that there were UFO groups who were monitored by ASIO in like the 50s. And that seemed, that really surprised me. That was something I didn't expect.

• 59:18George Knapp?

  And here as well. I mean, not only did they spy on UFO researchers and watch UFO groups, they infiltrated those groups. One of the biggest ones was taken over by CIA people. They were elected as officers.

• 59:32George Knapp?

  Yeah, it's hard to believe. I mean, You go far enough down the rabbit hole, you want to say to yourself, oh, come on, I can't believe that. But it turns out to be true. Now you two are down there. I think, well, we'll talk about whether you can ever escape. It gets into your, under your skin. It's hard to walk away from it. Once you realize that there's this whole other world that everyone has made fun of for so long. And holy cow, some of this is absolutely true.

• 1:00:00Speaker 06

  And I think something else that surprised me as well was like the number of, like, I think you come at this topic, well, not everyone, but certainly as we were discussing earlier, like mainstream media, certainly in Australia, comes at it like a bit win queens, nudge, nudge. But then the UFO researchers that we were talking to, they're scientists, they're, and I was like, that also surprised me. I was like, oh, I thought it was people like, without that kind of scientific bent. But they were very much like, coming from a scientific viewpoint of like, well, can we just get some data and look at this? And I was like, yeah, that's a very reasonable proposition.

• 1:00:40George Knapp?

  That's what bothers me is that scientists who've never studied it make fun of it. Journalists who have never reported on it dismiss it. You know, if you've already worked on it, you've done the legwork, you've done what you two do, and you can find an explanation for it, fine. But to never have done the work to dug into a, investigated, looked at the evidence, and then dismiss it. That's what always bothered me, you know?

• 1:01:03Jeremy Corbell?

  You've got these, and I'd love to see if you have photos of the Sausage Nest, you can send us, we can like put up so people can see them. Because that's 1960, very legitimate, you know, the whole story. But then there seems to be this mimicry. And there's, there appears to be this thing where people are like, oh, we're going to do this on land, and we're going to make them really complex and obviously made by companies and people. But there's this era of purity that like existed before. And this goes back into historical texts. If you just look at lithographs and that kind of thing. So I just, there's a deeper story here. And I've always been allergic to it. I'm like, what is this? Crop circle thing, George, you know, but he lived a different life than me.

• 1:01:45Jeremy Corbell?

  And he actually went out there and saw them and was with scientists, was with people. And that is so different. So there is a correlation between what we're calling crop circles or saucer nests originally with UFO thing. But what happens if our government or other governments want to confuse the issue like they're doing over in New Jersey right now? What is it that they're trying to do? And it's so easy. Just put out some bullshit information with good information and then you've got to be confused.

• 1:02:14George Knapp?

  Well, it's the kind of thing, if you could put out an explanation that allows people to move away, whether the explanation fits the facts or not, it could work, you know, for crop circles. Doug and Dave can make some crop circles. But as you two know, Nancy Talbot, working with one of the people you talked about in your series, she was with a scientific organization that studied those crop circles in the UK. And they found that some sort of high energy or heat beam had been used to bend the nodes of the plants. They weren't smashed, they weren't broken, they were bent by some kind of an energy source, which suggests that it's not as simple as two barflies smashing this with a board of wood, right?

• 1:02:56Speaker 06

  I think one of my frustrations as we were looking into this is the fact that certainly some of the UFO researchers that we spoke to kind of spoke about this like cringe in the scientific community around, he actually said like, you're better off announcing that you're studying witchcraft than announcing that you're looking at UFOs or crop circles and the like. And for someone who is like quite science minded, I want to see like the data, I want to see like how we have formulated these ideas, I want to understand it. I find that incredibly frustrating because.

• 1:03:33Speaker 06

  We cannot prove or disprove it if we don't even look at it. And so I find that like a frustrating part of it, certainly in Australia, particularly because it was the RWAIF, the Royal Australian Air Force, that was looking into these in the nineties. They stopped looking into it because they're like, well, there's no national security interest for us here. So there's been no kind of like really systematic governmental look at what's happening. So it's like, so we talk about these things that have happened and it's like, don't know, no one went and got samples, no one went and looked, no one documented it. So we don't really know. So we kind of, it's, it, it makes it really hard to assess the evidence when the evidence isn't necessarily there.

• 1:04:15Jeremy Corbell?

  Why the fuck was the government involved anyway with reeds that were wrapped around themselves in a farm? Can you explain that to me? I have no idea.

• 1:04:26Speaker 06

  Well, I think it is a bit like in the context of it being the Cold War era, right? In the sixties and so UFOs and associated things were seen as a potential security risk because it could have been Russia with some kind of like new missile that we didn't know about. And so I think that was, that was the interest of the Department of Defense in looking into UFOs is like, is there a foreign adversary who has some kind of like whack technology that we should definitely be around?

• 1:04:54George Knapp?

  There's a guy who enters your narrative named Bill Chalker and you describe him as a big, long-haired surfer dude. I, I was in Sydney about 10 years ago and Bill was my unofficial guide. We spent a lot of time together, a great guy, maybe the best UFO researcher in your country's history, very important and important to this story as well. Danny, can you tell us who Bill Chalker is and how he was involved in this investigation?

• 1:05:22Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, definitely. So Bill is a lifetime UFO researcher, but as Pia said, has a background in science. His, his day job was very scientific. He worked as a chemist. And so Bill is one of Australia's leading.

• 1:05:39Speaker 03

  Field workers, researchers in this space, and we were really lucky to kind of speak to them for the podcast. And it is because this story among those who were interested in this space became quite famous, the Tully sauciness. Bill, um, Bill actually went out himself as well and interviewed the farmers involved and had a long history of tracking the Tully, the Tully sauciness case over the decades, right up until, um, right up until the, this man who, the farmer who had the sighting passed away just two years ago. Um, but Bill was really able to give us an insight into how our Australian government used to collate all of these cases. So things like Tully, but also like thousands of other

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  UA, yeah, unidentified aerial sightings, they were called in our country back then, like they would accumulate them into files. So the air force would put all of this together into UFO files that eventually would all be in the same place in Canberra, which is our capital city. And it was like this amazing collection of data all together that could allow someone like Bill, who actually managed to get access to these files, even though they were like, you know, government property, could go through them and really make sense of things that maybe hadn't been looked at in an entirety together. It was actually like an amazing resource that our government had was all of these unexplained phenomena, events put together in the same place.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  But obviously we don't do that anymore. We stopped doing it in the nineties. But Bill, yeah, Bill was able to give us the through line of not just the Tully sauciness, but other unexplained phenomena and cases that he thought were really important to painting the picture of that this wasn't the only case in Australia. There has been hundreds of unexplained cases in Australia that he still think they need the same deep dive that we took into Tully.

• 1:07:37Jeremy Corbell?

  Did, did anybody like in your, in, in your work, I mean, let's just be real honest here. Did anybody, do you doubt anybody? Did they fucking lie to you? Is there anybody that straight up lied to you? Or you doubt what they said? The veracity, what you said and you included it?

• 1:07:56Jeremy Corbell?

  Or unincluded.

• 1:08:00Speaker 06

  Pia, is anything coming to mind for you? I think, um, I think by and large, the people that we spoke to on tape, um,

• 1:08:15Speaker 06

  were speaking from an honest place.

• 1:08:18Jeremy Corbell?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:18Speaker 06

  Um, there were certainly people during outreach that I had questions about. Um, not necessarily that they were intentionally lying, but I had doubts around um, the veracity of what they were saying, um, and that sort of thing. But I think the people that we spoke to on tape, and particularly because so many of them were just like these

• 1:08:42Speaker 06

  everyday farming people from like Far North Queensland, which is like a very salt of the earth place. Um, that it it made it hard to dismiss them on face value because of the kind of people they were. Because a lot of them, this was the first time they told anyone this stuff because they didn't want to be assigned with that label. Um, and so I think it's hard to assume that someone has been like holding something against their chest for like that long a time to then like pull it out when we approached them and went to some lengths to secure them on tape and that kind of stuff.

• 1:09:25Speaker 06

  So I think certainly in terms of what was included in the podcast, I think everyone was speaking from an honest place.

• 1:09:34Jeremy Corbell?

  I I asked it just because George and I have people coming to us with absolute lies all the time. And they're usually from our government, which is so weird to me. They're they're straight up on this, on that, this is what I do. And I'm like, uh huh, and the verifiable lies. I just wonder like why the interest in lying, but that's a personal, um, wrestle that I'm having right now. Um. George, what do you think about all this?

• 1:10:01George Knapp?

  Well, yeah, there are official liars here. It's hard to believe that a government agency would go to that much trouble to dissuade or distract UFO investigators. Who the hell cares? You know, I met with Bill Chalker, but there's another guy, the German I know named Keith Basterfield, who as a youngster was out interested in the Tully incidents and became part of your podcast. Pretty credible investigator, correct?

• 1:10:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, certainly been looking into it for a really long time. It's very well documented. Yep.

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  He's very open to saying, this case, I don't believe there's anything here. Like, he was probably among the most, at least through the interviews, became across as very skeptical. So when he was telling us that he thought something was truly unexplainable, you could really take that, take that struggle.

• 1:10:52George Knapp?

  I'm sure Jeremy has a lot more questions. My last one for you two would be an obvious one. Are you done with it? Now that you've seen that there's this whole other world that you can investigate as journalists, are you done? Are you moving on? Or maybe you might come back to this at some point?

• 1:11:11Speaker 06

  I think I, I don't know, Danny, do you want to go? Do you want to go first?

• 1:11:16Speaker 03

  Well, my email is, as I think you want to be, Jeremy, my email is absolutely flooded with people who are reporting things that they've experienced at the moment. So that becomes, that becomes hard, right? Like, how, how many do you really look into? How many do you respond to? What do you do with this influx of information?

• 1:11:36Jeremy Corbell?

  It's all true. It also becomes a duty. I feel like, so it's impossible. No, so I'm using AI right now to try to be helpful. I'm learning to do that after all these years, right? It is unimaginable about amount of communications to a singular human being, to me and George, every day for decades, for George for decades. For me, you know, a good 10 years. But you have a sense of duty, don't you? I mean, if this is true. So Danny, if there is truth to any of this, don't you feel like it's an important story?

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Oh, it could be the most important story that we've ever, we've ever tackled like as a society. Yeah. Which is very, a lot of pressure, don't you guys think?

• 1:12:30Jeremy Corbell?

  No, no pressure. Be a human. Just be a human. Be a journalist. There's no pressure. Be the best journalist you can be. And don't stop. I, I hope you don't quit. I hope you guys tackle it again. You know, I don't know if like your company needs like good material or what, but from a human standpoint, man, we need good journalists and especially in Australia, this is a global phenomenon. Like I just, I was so stoked on what you guys did. I was pumped to listen to it. And I just hope you keep going. I do have four rapid fire questions, then I'm done.

• 1:13:02Jeremy Corbell?

  Ready?

• 1:13:02Speaker 03

  Let's hear it.

• 1:13:04Jeremy Corbell?

  Each of you, what have you learned about the UFO phenomenon, human psychology, or societal dynamics from creating the podcast?

• 1:13:12Speaker 03

  You go, Pierre.

• 1:13:14Speaker 06

  Um, I think I've probably learned,

• 1:13:22Speaker 06

  how difficult it is for humans to grapple with complex information. We are so prone to just simplify, simplify, simplify. But we lose a lot of context when we simplify it to the nth degree. If you want like a short rapid fire answer, that would probably be it.

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  I've, I think for me, it's the fact that we as humans generally, if we don't understand something, I think the default is to dismiss it because that's uncomfortable to grapple with something that we don't understand. And that it can be really, really hard to shift your brain to being like, I don't understand that. Lean in, find out more.

• 1:14:04Jeremy Corbell?

  Okay, four more rapid fire. How do you hope the podcast contributes to the broader conversation about UFOs and unexplained phenomenon?

• 1:14:15Speaker 06

  I mean, from my perspective, I hope that it humanises the people who are involved in the discussion. And I also hope that people who would never in their lives listen to our UFO podcast, listen to it and can connect with the people and with their experiences first, rather than seeing a label on it and, you know, disengaging.

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, making one small step towards the mainstream media seeing this as a topic that should be taken seriously, like all other topics in our society.

• 1:14:58Jeremy Corbell?

  Okay, three more.

• 1:15:01Jeremy Corbell?

  Looking back, is there anything you wish you had done differently or any questions you still wish to answer?

• 1:15:10Speaker 06

  I mean, so many questions I still wish to answer.

• 1:15:15Speaker 06

  I mean, which I mean, I think goes to that point of like, you put your foot in your rabbit hole and then you suddenly got your leg in the rabbit hole and all of a sudden you're down the rabbit hole and there's a lot of questions. And so, yeah, absolutely still questions to answer. And I think, I think the question foremost in my mind, particularly in the era that we are living in right now, is whether it can ever actually be definitively proven that UFOs and that like some kind of being or something is behind them, whether

• 1:15:56Speaker 06

  that can ever actually be proven. Because now with the rise of AI, with the rise of digital manipulation, it makes it really difficult to have hard and fast truths. So my biggest question is, is this ever going to actually be already put?

• 1:16:14Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah, I completely disagree. It can be proven. It could be proven today if it wanted to be proven. But anyway, Danielle, go.

• 1:16:22Speaker 06

  Biggest question. Well, mine's a bit more niche, but I've just been getting all of this correspondence about all of these different.

• 1:16:29Speaker 03

  Strange things that just need to be explored more like there are just around our own country, Australia, like there's so much that generally people won't know about. So for me, it's like diving into all of those different rabbit holes.

• 1:16:43Jeremy Corbell?

  Okay.

• 1:16:43Speaker 06

  So in terms of like proving it though, I'm really curious about this because I like I genuinely am very curious because how can someone like bring something forward and what have people go, that's been digitally created, that's not an authentic, whatever it is.

• 1:17:01Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah, but I'm interviewing you, you're not interviewing me. So I'm sorry. If we yawn at the last question, because I got to wrap up with George, last question, I would spare you the second to last. Last question, question I should be asking everybody every time we do a podcast. Is there any question I'm not asking?

• 1:17:21Speaker 00

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• 1:17:52Jeremy Corbell?

  What question do you want to be asked? You just went through all this.

• 1:18:00Speaker 03

  I think, I don't know, Danny, do you have anything foremost in your mind?

• 1:18:07Speaker 03

  Um, I don't know. I think for me, it's like, why has, why has, but I don't have the answer to this question. That's the problem, right? Like, why, why is this topic so uncomfortable for people to deal with and talk about? Like, why is it like that? I know there's obviously been so many different strategic campaigns over the decades and so, but today, why, why is that still the response? Like, and but I don't know the answer to that question.

• 1:18:35Jeremy Corbell?

  Oh, you don't know? Okay, yeah.

• 1:18:36Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:18:37Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah, I mean, I got ideas, but I don't know. Okay. So now, Pia, you're not off the hook. Go.

• 1:18:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I think

• 1:18:49Speaker 06

  the question.

• 1:18:53Speaker 06

  I think it would be a question around belief and believability as it relates to this topic because I find it a really interesting. I find the language that's used around it quite interesting. And I feel like speaking to people, actually, the very first thing that we needed to do was actually just create like a glossary of terms of like, when we say this, what do you think that means? Because when you say UFO, this person and this person have wildly different ideas about what that actually means. So actually trying to even have a conversation around agreed labels is really difficult.

• 1:19:36Speaker 06

  And so I think there's something around like, systemizing the language or having an agreed set of terms and everyone agreeing on what that means before you start the conversation. But I think also like that idea around belief and the language around, do you believe? I think makes it sound like a religion, not like something that can be like scientifically or, you know, can be investigated. So I think, do you believe in UFOs is a leading question.

• 1:20:08Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah, it's a horrible question.

• 1:20:10Speaker 06

  And so I think the way that the whole topic is framed as you either believe or you don't believe is like, well, actually like, what evidence have you seen or what evidence have you seen, I think is a more rigorous way of having a conversation.

• 1:20:28George Knapp?

  It was great to meet you two. Love the series. Encourage people to check it out. I hope you stick with the topic. You know, this topic needs journalists like you who are willing to ask questions and go places that are a little bit uncomfortable.

• 1:20:43Jeremy Corbell?

  Man, I'm, I'm inspired, truly inspired. The, the way that they put together their podcast was amazing. Yeah, man, I'm really glad they're on it. I'm really glad they're on it in Australia. I think Australian media should pick up on what they're doing.

• 1:20:58George Knapp?

  It just reminds you that there are things you can do as an investigator. There are things to investigate. You know, scientists, I remember interviewing a bunch of people over the years who'd just say, well, you know, there's not much to look at. You know, they're here for a minute and gone. But there is physical evidence. There was a guy who he specialized in what they call landing site trace cases, not just saucer nests, but physical manifestations where a craft appears. You can study burns in the ground or indentations or marks in the plants, things of that sort, if you want to look at it. But most scientists do not, and most journalists do not.

• 1:21:35Jeremy Corbell?

  Honestly, listening to it made me understand you better because you had said that word saucer nest, and I had no idea what they're creating. They're just like, dude, we used a bunch of your stuff in there. I'm like, okay, okay, I'll check it. And then the opening scene is like this saucer nest, kind of like crop circle thing. It made me kind of understand you better and where you're coming from as a journalist because you lived all this stuff before I jumped in. It was cool, man. I think they're great, and I think it's important, and I think people got to get over their preconceived notions and look at the evidence.

• 1:22:09George Knapp?

  Some of those things where they weave these strands of these plants, how do you do it? I don't know how you do it. And so I hope that people will keep an open mind about that general topic, and I hope people will check out their podcast. It was a lot of fun. I listened to it today.

• 1:22:24Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah, I mean, we should say, we should say saucer nest because that's the real thing. Like, remember, their thing was on water with alligators and shit inside of it, and it wove it to the point where people could sit on it. So it's not just like straw that's like stamped down. So that was a realization for me.

• 1:22:43George Knapp?

  I suspect our two guests are hooked. They don't want to admit it, that they're going to go down this rabbit hole, but it's hard to get this topic out of your head after you've gone as far as they've gone.

• 1:22:52Jeremy Corbell?

  Yeah, it is, man. It is, and I'm grateful for that. Well, anyway, thanks, man. Exciting episode, exciting journey as usual, and I can't wait till we next meet in person. There's a lot we can talk about.

• 1:23:04George Knapp?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And in New Jersey, keep your eyes to the skies.

• 1:23:08Jeremy Corbell?

  Always.

• 1:23:09George Knapp?

  Get some photo.

• 1:23:10Jeremy Corbell?

  Get some photos, get some photos.

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  Never Had so few Had so much to tell But could say so little