WEBVTT

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OK. stand there, there, there.

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You've got a circle for me?

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Hi everybody, my name
is Ben Mezrich, and I'm an author.

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I'm here to talk about UFOs.

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But I'll talk about how I got to UFOs

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because my parents get very upset
when I just talk about UFOs.

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I'm a non-fiction writer.

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I never really wanted to be
a non-fiction writer.

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I hated non-fiction growing up.

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I loved TV, really bad TV,

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like "Saved by the Bell"
and "Three's Company."

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My parents, fearing the worst,
made a rule when we were little

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that we had to read two books a week
before we were allowed to watch TV

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so I became a speed reader
so that I could watch "Three's Company."

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When I graduated from college,
I realized I wanted to be a writer.

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I locked myself in an apartment
in Boston nearby here,

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and I wrote nine novels in a year;

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not something I recommend to any of you.

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I was rejected by everyone in publishing.

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I got 190 rejection slips
- had them taped to the walls -;

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I look like a serial killer
in my apartment.

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I was even rejected
by a janitor at a publishing house

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because I wrote manuscript

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and sent it to an editor
who was no longer working there.

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They got thrown in the trash.

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An editor took it out the trash
and then rejected me.

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So it seemed unnecessary,
but that's what happened.

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I went on and on and on,
and eventually, I found my way,

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because I was hanging out in a bar
in Boston called "Crossroads"

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- Some of you may know "Crossroads" -

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and there was a group of MIT kids there,
and they had tons of money.

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And it was all in 100 dollar bills.

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I didn't know why they had
all this money in 100s.

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So I met the main guy; he invited me
to his apartment in the South End,

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and in his laundry was 250,000 dollars.

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I said, "Are you a drug dealer?"
And he said, "No."

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He said, "Come to Vegas with me."

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I went to Vegas, and that turned out
to be the lead of the MIT blackjack team.

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I joined the team, and I wrote a book,
and it became the movie "21."

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"21" was about to come out,
I was sitting at home,

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and I got a weird little email
from a Harvard senior, and it said,

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"My best friend founded Facebook,
and no one's ever heard of him."

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Another weird little moment in my life:

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I go out for a drink
and in walks Eduardo Saverin;

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- you've seen the movie -

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kinda looks like the guy in the movie,
not as good-looking.

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if you watched 21, it was the best looking
group of MIT kids you've ever seen.

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"Social Network" was the best looking
Harvard kid you've ever seen.

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Anyways, Eduardo walks in, sits down,
and says, "Mark Zuckerberg fucked me."

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As a journalist, I had to say,
"Tell me more!"

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And that became the movie
"The Social Network."

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So that's the kind of things
I normally write.

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About a year and half ago,
I heard about another story.

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It was about a guy named Chuck Zukowski.

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Chuck was a reserve sheriff's deputy
in Colorado.

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Chuck was investigating
a cattle mutilation.

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Out here in Massachusetts, we don't know
a lot about cattle mutilations,

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but in the West,
they are an enormous problem:

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over 10,000 cows and horses
have been found lying on their left side,

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missing organs, all of of the cuts
are surgical and circular,

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and bodies are
completely drained of blood.

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This has been going on since the 60s.

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It's such a huge phenomenon,
that in the 70s,

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three state governors got together,

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petitioned the Attorney General
of the United States

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and demanded an investigation.

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The FBI investigated,
involving 100 agents over 10 years,

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and found nothing.

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No one's ever been arrested,

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there's not a single fingerprint,
not a single footprint,

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these cows are just found lying there,
missing all their organs.

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It's really weird.

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Our sheriff's deputy, Chuck,
was investigating this,

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and he starts to think, "UFOs."

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He was immediately fired
from the Sheriff's Department.

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This is what normally happens
when you say UFOs.

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Anyways, he decided
to become a UFO hunter.

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He got an RV, filled it with his family,

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and started going up and down
the Midwest looking for UFOs.

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His family didn't believe,
his wife is a total skeptic.

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I interviewed her, and I said,
"How did you put up with this?"

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And she said, "Well, it could be worse!
He could be off having affairs.

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He's just in the mountains
looking for aliens!"

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So anyways, he starts
to make a weird discovery.

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Turns out that the majority
of UFO sightings

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occur along the 37th parallel
of the United States.

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It also turns out most cattle mutilation
are along the 37th parallel.

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It also turns out that almost all
of America's underground military bases

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are along the 37th parallel
of the United States:

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The Pentagon, Cheyenne Mountain,
Fort Knox, all the way over to Area 51.

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Chuck is investigating UFOs.

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He starts to have weird run-ins.

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You would think he's having run-ins
with the government

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because the government used to
investigate UFOs in this country.

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There was something
called Project Blue Book.

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After that, there were
two other secret projects,

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but the government
no longer investigates UFOs.

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It turns out Chuck was having run-ins
with a private corporation.

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This is true, and this is where we are
going down the rabbit hole a little bit.

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There's a company run by a billionaire
named Robert Bigelow.

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Robert Bigelow made his money
from Budget Suites of America.

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He then put most of his fortune
into something called Bigelow Aerospace.

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- You might heard of it -

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They have pieces
on the International Space Station.

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They make something
called the TransHab with NASA

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which is an inflatable gasket
that astronauts can live in.

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They are intending one day
to build hotels on the Moon.

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- It was their original project.

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Anyway, this is a real company.

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It turns out for the past 20 years,
they have been investigating UFOs.

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They're doing this in conjunction with
certain government organizations.

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If you get a copy of an FAA manual
that all of our civilian pilots use,

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and you look through it,
deep into the writing,

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what a pilot's supposed to do
if they see something in the air,

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they don't report it to the FAA;

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they don't report to their airline
because then they will be fired;

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they report it to Bigelow.

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Bigelow gets all this information.

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He sends out a well-paid for teams
of investigators who investigate UFOs.

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Chuck started having run-ins with them.

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He didn't really know what was going on.

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The story comes to a head at Roswell,
as all UFO stories do.

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If you know anything
about Roswell, it's very kitschy,

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you can go there now and eat a hamburger
in an UFO-shaped restaurant

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or go to the alien ball,
dressed as your favorite Wookie.

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But the reality is the story
behind Roswell is fascinating.

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In 1947, America's first nuclear base was
there: it's called Walker Air Force Base.

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They started to track something
coming through a storm

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in the middle of the night in July.

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Whatever that thing was,

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it was hit by lighting
and crashed on a ranch in Roswell.

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It's spread metallic debris
over 300 yards of this ranch.

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The metallic debris was covered
in weird hieroglyphics,

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it was made of the material
that people couldn't identify.

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The rancher sees all this crap
on his lawn, he calls up the sheriff,

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the sheriff calls the Air Force Space.

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They send out a team.

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The team gathers up the debris
and then puts out a press release.

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The press release
from the US Air Force says,

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"We now have
in our possession a flying saucer."

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This is true.

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Two hours later,
they rescind their press release.

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They gather up all the material,

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they go for inch by inch
and gather it all up,

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they put it on a plane,
first they land in Dallas,

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where they stage a photograph

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with a radar operator sitting amongst
the debris of a broken weather balloon.

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Everyone who was involved
in that photograph

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has since come forward
and said it was fake.

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The person who took the photograph,
the person in the photograph,

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and the person who ordered it.

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Anyways, the debris was then carted
to Area 51 where it is to this day.

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For whatever reason, the Air Force
will not release the files on this crash.

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Hillary Clinton, a few month ago,
was on Jimmy Kimmel,

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and she said
if she were elected president,

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one of the first things she would do

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was get the Air Force
to release the UFO files.

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Sadly, that is not to be.

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(Laughter)

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I don't know if she was trying to go
for the UFO vote with that.

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I don't think there was enough UFO people
to get over her over the edge.

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Every president we've had,
with the possible exception of Obama,

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has believed in UFOs and has tried
to get these files released.

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Jimmy Carter believed,
Ronald Reagan believed,

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Bill Clinton tried twice to get
these files released and couldn't.

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Hillary wanted to do it, we don't know
whether Trump will or not.

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These files do exist.

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For whatever reason, the government
will not show us what was at Roswell.

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I've seen documents which say it's still,
to this day, an unidentified debris.

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That's very strange.
This was a long, long time ago.

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So anyways, I dove into this story
about the 37th parallel,

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and I have come to believe
that there is a very good chance

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that whatever crashed at Roswell
was not from here.

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As I said, my parents hate me saying that,

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because the reality is when you talk
about UFOs, there's a giggle factor.

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Everyone assumes you are nuts.

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A respected sheriff
can't look at a crash site

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and say it's an UFO without getting fired.

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A journalist can't talk about UFOs

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without hearing X-Files music
in the background.

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And no scientist can look into it

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with the possible exception of the people
that Robert Bigelow has hired.

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But we don't know what they are doing
with the materials they find.

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So I want to leave you with this:

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the impediments to believing
someone has come here from another planet,

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have actually disappeared.

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We used to think
there wasn't life out there, right?

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Now we are all pretty sure
there probably is.

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We find an Earth-like planet
almost every day.

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We used to think these planets
are too far away, right?

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But we now know that's not true,

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Proxima Centauri, which is
one of these planets

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is reachable by current
technology in 40 years.

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That's not that long.

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So, those two reasons
aren't around anymore.

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The Catholic Church recently
put out a weird little edict

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where they said, "If we do
discover life on other planets,

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it will not affect Catholic doctrine."

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(Laughter)

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I think they're covering
their basis, right?

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But I think that there's a sea change
going on in the opinions

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of whether or not there's
life on other planets

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and whether or not
they could come here.

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And to be honest, looking at the news
that we are seeing every day,

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if a UFO landed
on the White House lawn tomorrow,

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it wouldn't even be
the top five strange things

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in the newspaper today.

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Anyways, thank you very much.
I appreciated it. Thank you.

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(Applause)