Speaker: Dude, that is a fucking drone, bro. There's a whole fleet of them. Look on aa. Two Navy pilots flying over Jacksonville, Florida spot a fleet of unusual aircraft flying directly in front of them. In the video released by the Pentagon, you can clearly see one of the objects. Oh my gosh. They're all going against the wind. The wind's 120 miles the West. Just imagine the movie Top Gun. These FA 18 Super Hornet pilots can fly at supersonic speeds, topping a thousand miles per hour. The object up ahead is moving just as fast. If not faster. That thing, dude. Then all of a sudden, the craft that resembles the spinning top tilts against the wind. Well, if there's thing, it's rotated. Then two weeks later, a second video was taken. This time, the Navy pilots are flying above it. The ship looks like a speeding bullet, skipping above the water. It's going so fast that the pilot. It can't keep it in frame, but eventually the pilot locks it into the radar. Woohoo. Roger. Uh, according to the US government, UFOs are real. Oh my gosh, dude. Wow. But they don't like to call them UFOs anymore. They don't like UFOs these days. The politically correct acronym is, uh, UAPs, they call 'em now, uh, unidentified aerial phenomena. They don't. This is Ralph Blumenthal. Ralph is a 45 year veteran reporter who wrote for the New York Times. He covered everything from the mafia to Vietnam. Um, I was not writing about, um, you know, psychiatric phenomena or space of UFO issues. I'm very firmly grounded in earthly, you know, stories, but I know him best as a New York Times go-to guy on alien abductions and UFOs. You were part of that New York Times investigation team that that broke the story on the Pentagon's long secret unit investigating UFOs. Right? Right. Can you tell me about that? Yeah. The head of a, then a still Secret Pentagon program called a IP, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was resigning. Luis Elizondo, who headed up the classified government program, resigned because he felt his work wasn't being taken seriously. By top military officials. So what did he do? He decided to go public. In 2017, Ralph Blumenthal and two other reporters at the New York Times published Elizondo explosive account of the secret program and the fact that the Pentagon had the secret office, uh, investigating UFOs, which nobody knew about in the article. The New York Times also published three never before seen cockpit videos of these so-called UAPs. Two years later, the Pentagon confirmed the existence of these videos and declassified it. But it's not just these three unexplainable videos. Navy pilots say they regularly encounter flying objects during their rounds, objects that they can't really explain. In a 16 minutes interview, a pilot describes an encounter caught on camera and witnessed by himself and three other Navy aviators off the coast of Southern California. There was four of us in the airplanes literally watching this thing for roughly about five minutes. I said, dude, do you, do you see that thing down there? And we saw this little white tic-tac looking object, and it's just kind of moving above the whitewater area. The tic-Tacs still pointing North South it goes. And just turns abruptly and starts mirroring me. So as I'm coming down, it starts coming up. The ship started mimicking his moods. Yeah, he was aware we were there. One pilot reports that he almost had a mid air collision with one of these things. Some say these vehicles have no detectable engine yet they could accelerate 600 G forces. These saucer like ships also have no wings yet. They could fly and mach five speeds. That's five times the speed of sound. They have been spotted flying through the air and through the water, yet sometimes they could evade radar. Or it could be the other way around. The radar detects them, yet they're invisible to the naked eye. Another leaked government video floating around the internet shows a triangular vehicle hovering like a kite through the air. If it's not a lens flare and it's not a reflection or a weather balloon, and it's not Elon Musk taking a joy ride on a new SpaceX prototype, then what the heck is it? Out of the 144 documented encounters. The government really doesn't have any explanation for any of this. It's interesting because out of the 144 sightings that they had, they only had an explanation for one of 'em, one, right? Uh, they featured that very prominently, like, Hey, we can explain this one. But, uh, the ones they can't explain, they didn't spend a lot of time on. So the government was a, again, not be, I think not being totally, uh, open or forth forthcoming about this. The bottom line is they don't know what these things are. The government is not benign, that these ships are real, but that doesn't mean that they're saying that little green Martians are behind the wheel. It could be a top secret US airship that not even these pilots are privy to, or it could be China or Russia or some other foreign adversary spying on us. There could be many explanations, right? That doesn't mean just because they can't explain it doesn't mean that they are, they. Aliens, which just means, well, that's for sure. Explain it, that's for sure. And, and we were very careful in the New York Times, not to say, uh, that the, to draw any conclusions beyond what the facts are. These objects now are basically confirmed to be physical objects. They're not manifestations of insanity, they're not delusions, they're not, uh, swamp gas. They're not reflections off the desert floor with headlights. They're real things that can fly at unimaginable speeds. They have aerodynamic qualities that no one can explain. They appear and, and disappear seemingly at a moment. But they've been caught on radar. They've been caught on, you know, thermal imaging devices of, of the jets, uh, pilots, uh, the most highly trained observers we have in this country have seen them with their own eyes and they know what the differences between, uh, the planet, Venus, and another aircraft. Uh, so all these things basically confirm that. There's something out there that, that we don't understand. The government doesn't understand. They're not American, they're not our own technology. They're almost certainly not Chinese or Russian 'cause they don't have this capability. That's it. But at least they know they exist, like they say on the X-Files. The truth is out there throughout history, people have claimed to see many unexplainable things. Some people have video evidence like these Navy pilots, others just have their own memories. Maybe the answer is buried deep in our subconscious. On today's episode, we're gonna talk about one man who used hypnosis to help people recover memories from possible alien abductions. Sure, there are people out there who say they've encountered beings from another planet just to get attention, but then. There are other people who carry around these experiences in secret, and those are the people we're gonna talk about. I'm Javier Leyva, and this is Pretend Stories about Real People pretending to be someone else. John Mack was a respected Harvard psychologist who became fixated with stories of people claiming they were abducted or had some sort of encounter with an alien being. Here's Ralph Blumenthal again, who recently wrote John Mack's biography titled Believer Alien Encounters Hard Science and the Passion of John Mack. And he was naturally, as a psychiatrist, intrigued by this and, um, he tried to explain it obviously through, uh, his normal means. First of all, with these people, insane. Uh, were they tricking him? Were they sters? Were they looking to make money? And he rejected all those explanations because of his expertise. He, he was convinced they were not insane because they carried on their lives normally. In every other respect. They were housewives and professional people, and, and even children, in some cases, as young as two and three years old, who could not be accused of getting their information from books or movies they'd seen. They would say things like, um, little man, take me up in the sky. I fly in the sky. So he was intrigued by all that. Plus. I thought that, uh, this is a great story. A Harvard psychiatrist who takes seriously the, the, the, the prospect that people are getting abducted by aliens. This is not some, just some kooky guy that, that's saying all these things. This is a really respected. Professor at, uh, Ivy League University, and that's a very good point. First of all, he was highly esteemed. He had won Apil Surprise with a biography of Lawrence of Arabia. So he spent a dozen years in London in the Middle East investigating the story of Lawrence, and he'd written a book on childhood, n on nightmares. He had written a book on childhood development, as you said, he was a real heavyweight. He, he was a recognized expert in, in his field of psychiatry. So when he took on this subject, it was momentous. Plus he was willing to risk his reputation to take these, these, uh, issues seriously. He helped build the psychology department at Harvard, right? He, he did. He was instrumental in introducing psychiatric services for, uh, poor people in Cambridge. So he really was a, a, a model intellectual and an activist. And, and you said it earlier, why would such an, an esteemed professional at his field, like Mac risk everything, risk his academic reputation for believing these stories of people who claim that they been abducted by aliens? Well, that's the question. The stories of people who'd been abducted. Had been around for, for a while, but nobody gave them a lot of credibility because they're inherently unprovable. I mean, they're anecdotal and another psychiatrist might have said, nah, this is too crazy. You know, who wants to get involved in this? It, it was certainly a career killer. It was not regarded, you know, with high prestige. You were regarded as some kind of kook if you talked about it. But he said, I'd like to find out more about this. And, and that's what drew him in. And it's so funny because science is all about facts and a lot of this is really about. Belief and well, yes and no. Ralph Blumenthal says that John Mack didn't just take these people's word. He collaborated with other scientists across many disciplines to collect real data. The so-called skeptics who dismiss all this, and ah, it's crazy stuff, you know? This is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It is crazy. But you have to know the stories, and you have to know the research that's been put into understanding. Trying to con understand this before you dismiss it, that's all. Well, and from my experience, just early on in my research, I've reached out to certain people and, and they don't want to talk to me for the most part. I have found that a lot of the people that spoke to John Mack. Weren't looking for publicity, or at least they weren't putting themselves out there. Absolute. Yeah. Yeah. On the contrary, I mean, again, the quick answer of skeptics, oh, these people are looking for publicity, look, and they make a buck. They don't want to to come out with their stories because the stories are so crazy. It gets them in trouble at work and with their colleagues. It's embarrassing. People make, it's embarrassing, and even though they have no reason to be embarrassed. Because it's not that they didn't do anything wrong, they're just ashamed. I mean, who wants to tell a story that they would put about a spacecraft, had their eggs removed for as, as women, or had their sperm taken for production of a hybrid race? I mean, who's gonna, who's gonna, that's what. That's why the story is fascinating to me because what's remarkable is the shared experiences and their description of these aliens are, there seems to be a lot of consistency between all the different stories. In the 1990s, John Mack conducted hundreds of interviews with men and women of all ages, who claimed they had not just one, but recurring alien encounters. And one method he used during these interviews was hypnosis From what I've. Read and heard about John Mack. He didn't practice deep hypnosis like the kind that people used to recall past lives or re-experienced childbirth. His technique was more centered around relaxation. So he used mainly relaxation techniques and you, you listen to music, you relax. Not deep hypnosis, because later on his critics accused him of planting these ideas. Through hypnosis and you know, if you've studied hypnosis, that it is possible for a hypnotist, uh, to take advantage of a person's lack of defenses in the hypnotic state. But why use hypnosis if what these people experienced was real? Wouldn't that be a little hard to forget? I'm Will Boucher and I'm an archivist at the John Mack Institute. I used to work as a transcriber for John Mack. Will Boucher, who worked with John Mack explains it this way. They had found that people who had had these encounters seemed to. Have some kind of block or inability to access them if they weren't in a sort of relaxed state. What he found was that people didn't really need to be put under a, a deep hypnotic, uh, state. Just giving them permission to relax was enough for these people. To have permission to express what they believed they saw and felt and experienced. He tried to explain hypnosis because he found that the public was reset, was under the impression that hypnosis was like stage hypnosis. Here's Dr. John Mack in his own words. I am trying to demystify what this hypnosis matter is because really what what you do is you allow the person basically to relax, you induce a few minutes of relaxation. That's really all it is, and allows whatever's inside to come up and the guards that we generally have to are. Inside experience, uh, tend to be let down. And then these, uh, memories come back. And sometimes the memories from this process, whether you call it hypnosis or just deep relaxation, to me, are more reliable than what the person recalls consciously because there's less of the ego as we call it, or the self or the defenses distorting the experience. You get the raw power of the experience that way. Dr. Mack experimented with various breathing techniques. One method is called holotropic breath work. As you can hear in the background. In order to achieve the desired effect, you have to breathe rapidly for up to 30 minutes, maybe even hours. It's supposed to give you a natural high without ever using drugs. Dr. Mack was very good at getting people to talk hypnosis aside. There was something mesmerizing about him. He was a very, he was very charismatic guy. He was tall, had bright, you know, cobalt, blue eyes. He was quite strikingly handsome. He attracted men and women. He was just that kind of a magnetic personality and people trusted him. He got people to tell him his stories, and some of these stories were farfetched for. Even Dr. Mack, John Mack thought maybe this wasn't an alien encounter at all. Maybe these experiences look like alien encounters because we can relate to this sort of sci-fi imagery. But he would hold out the possibility that, that the beings. Or some kind of intelligence from some court, some sort of spiritual realm. John Mack thought maybe these people had a personal encounter with God, like Moses and the burning Bush, or Joseph Smith who was visited by God and Jesus near his house. Throughout human history, people have reported all kinds of stories and that depending where you are at that point in history, you'll perceive it in the imagery of your culture. So you'll see a burning bush or you'll see an alien being like you've seen on the X-Files. But that said, the experiencers themselves who've been interacting with these beings were very firm of the opinion that no, these, this is an actual species. I, you know, we've, we've spoken to them, we've seen them, we've held their hands. We've, we've communicated with them telepathically, they're, whoa, whoa, whoa. Speak to them telepathically. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe there's a much simpler explanation for all this. What if there was a medical reason, like sleep paralysis? Sleep paralysis is the feeling you get when you're in between sleep and being awake. You're awake, but you can't really move your body. Studies have shown that sleep paralysis is more common than we think. One study suggests that 40 to 50% of us. Experienced sleep paralysis at least once. But John Mack argues that his patients did not experience sleep paralysis. He says, many of these patients experience encounters in daylight and were wide awake. And it's interesting his fascination with this topic because he himself has never experienced an abduction, right? Right. He didn't, and he was a little disappointed in that. And neither have I, by the way, I've never seen a UFO, I never was abducted, I didn't have a, a dog in this fight, if you wanna say that. I came to it sort of like he did as an outsider, just intrigued by the phenomenon. But no, he never did have an experience of his own. When we come back, we're gonna hear firsthand what it feels like to encounter one of these beings. That's after the break. A patient of Dr. Mack named Ed, walked along the rocky shore of Maine with his wife and out of nowhere, ed suddenly became tense and couldn't focus on his surroundings. It's almost like he had this deafening ringing in his ear. His forehead began to sweat and his eyes couldn't focus. Was he having a panic attack? Something about this location triggered an unexplainable fear. A day later, it hit him. Ed remembered an overnight high school trip from the summer of 1961. He started getting flashbacks, which he couldn't explain. That's when he began to see Dr. Mack During his first visit, he told Dr. Mack that he remembered falling asleep with his friends in the back of a car off the coast of Maine. Then the next thing he remembers is being naked in a small room with a transparent curved wall. He says that he looked around and he could see the ocean swelling and the waves pounding against a rocky shore. In this pod, there was a female figure, and that being had long, straight, blonde hair, large dark eyes, a small mouth, and a triangular shaped head. Ed told Dr. Mack that he remembered being aroused. He says he doesn't remember much, but they definitely had intercourse. But when Dr. Mack put Ed in a hypnotic trance, he was able to recover more details from the foggy summer night. Under hypnosis. He recalled floating out of his car. He recalls being in the ship, but this time there were half a dozen beings, including the female with the long blonde hair. Ed remembers having an erection, but this time he remembers being embarrassed. He said that the female being could see right through him and read his every thoughts without saying a word, that being explained to him that she needed his sperm to create babies. And from that point on the being placed a tube over Ed's penis and extracted his sperm, you get the point, right? The sexual element, which Ed describes he has a, as a youth, he felt it was sort of something, you know, possibly satisfying or romantic. And yet when he was in this relaxed state and describing in more detail what happened from event to from moment to moment. It was more clinical, it was more of an extraction of genetic material from him. It wasn't a romantic visit, but it wasn't the, wasn't the sort of bravado sexual experience which he would've preferred to things. So one, one of his quotes that I, I thought was interesting, I'd like to get your thoughts on it, was, according to the abductees, the aliens will frequently communicate to them that they will not, or should not remember what had occurred sometimes that this is explained, that this is for their own protection. So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. You will remember when you need to know because it was something which he said, or which Ed said the beings communicated to him that, that he wouldn't have a full conscious memory of the experience. That said, there's many different theories that different experiences have about why these experiences are so difficult to remember. Are these beings good? Are they here to harm us? I mean, what? What are their intentions? The initial impression that people get from these experiences is the terror and the fear, and if you can't move past that, you are gonna see these alien beings as cold and heartless and robotic. The most common answer is that. They're here for their own purposes to exploit the human race, to extract genetic material, to help them create a sort of hybrid race that's part human and part alien. But John Mack was of a different opinion. He felt that this effort to bring the alien race and the human race together was almost a. Safety that this was a precaution that they were taking because they felt that the environment was out of control and that the human race was in a few hundred years doomed to extinction. Many of the people who spoke with Dr. Mack had frequent experiences and they do seem to check in on people and asked them for updates of how their life is going, and they do this process where it's described as like an upload and download where they will stare into the eyes of the person. And sort of suck in their past years of experiences and sometimes download some information too. And it seems that they are kind of caring. But that said, they don't seem to actually intervene. This is how a bird must feel when we tag them and release 'em and don't intervene when there's a predator coming to get them, because we don't want to get in the way of of nature. It almost seems like that same kind of relationship where we don't want to hurt the bird. We can't really intervene either. There is a distance there. May I ask about your personal experience? Is, is it okay to share? Yeah, sure, sure. So, so tell me about it. What, what, what happened? How old were you and describe this situation. You would ask me what the most scariest experience I ever had when I was a child. I would say it was when I was in my room at night and there was some kind of blue light that scared me at. And I sat up in bed and I was frightened and I was looking around the room and it was enough to make me jump outta bed and try to get away from the windows. And I stood in the hallway outside my room and my recollection was that I must have stood in that hallway the entire night. It wasn't until I was in my twenties and I was actually recovering from illness, and as I was recuperating. From this illness. One night I woke up because I had felt a strange sensation of being lifted outta bed, like being someone like pulled the sheets tau from all sides, so you're just gently being lifted. It felt really strange, so I opened my eyes. And looked around and there's these beings standing around my bed in my room, and I'm not being held by a sheet. I'm just off the bed by a couple feet in the air. There's nothing underneath me. And these beings are doing something and it's, it's a little personal. Right? There was, but did you have one of those, were they extracting genetic material or, yeah, they, they were. Yeah, there was. There was something going on. With a, a needle under my reproductive organs, and there was some extraction going on, but I also felt kind of drugged and kind of out of it. And I tried to reach down and I grabbed the being's hand and I didn't really have the strength to, to push away, but I was, I was still aware of what was going on. 10 years later. I there meeting, speaking to one of the experiencers who worked with John Mack describing the needle in the reproductive organs going in exactly the same place between my legs as as it had occurred to me. I was having experiences like every three months. Every three months. Oh God. Yeah. For like a couple of years. Yeah. After that initial experience I was being, I was having, I would hear what sounded like an out tune radio in the evening. If I heard the sort of out tune radio sound. I knew that meant that that night there was gonna be some strange experiences happening that meant they were nearby. It's like it was some sort of, um, like a warning signal or. D describe these beings when they're in your own environment. When they're in our environment, they look very gray. They're, they're pale. Their skin is very taut. They're thin, their heads are large, but not especially, it's, you know, they're, they're smaller in all proportions, so it's more like their, their chins are very small and their mouth is very small, and their nose is small and their ears are not there. They're imperceptible if they're there. They're tiny. They're, they're like five feet tall maybe. And yet nonetheless, those, nonetheless, those are the tall ones. There's also these like three foot tall ones, which I'm pretty sure are robots. This sounds silly. I can't say this without it sounding so, so silly. Part of the story. You just have to suspend your disbelief, you know? Right. Well, here, let me phrase it this way. One set is biological. They're five feet tall or so. They're very. Thin, they're frail, they're quiet. They have these black expressive eyes. They're kind of beautiful and graceful and slow. Then you have. A set of small beings, which operate seemingly as a collective, which are modeled on them. They have the same kind of general impression. They even have like a simulated nose and mouth, but if you look close, it's just, it's just a, a molding, it's just a shape, and they look a little bit more. Like a shiny, uh, car. You know, they, they look waxed and, and they seem to be some kind of, uh, sentient, intelligent robotic beings that are based on the design of, of, of their creators. And those are the ones that usually enter into people's homes at first and, and might, uh, remove the people from their homes, bring them into the alien environment. Where you'd actually see the, the biological beings. And so I would be having those experiences regularly. And it was exhausting and it was frightening. But eventually, was it, yeah. Was it frightening? That's what I, I would never sleep again. Well, exactly. Yeah. But at a certain point you have to. And each time they would extract this genetic material? No, it was, no, it was different. Sometimes it was, they were just, uh. Like holding their hands over my body, like checking something about me. It was, it was almost like a physical one. It was almost like a physical, except it's, it seems like they're examining more than just your physical body. It was, uh, a series of these events, but eventually they, they, it became more rare and then it would be like, you know, once a year or so. Did it stop? Did it just stop one day? Yeah, actually it, many of the Experiencers who John Mack had interviewed throughout the 1990s reported that around the year 1999 or 2000, they got messages from the being saying they weren't gonna be around as much anymore. And I myself had that same experience in, in a way it almost sounds like you, you miss them. Absolutely. Yeah. The, the, the nature of of being with them is so different. The, the sort of the telepathic communication. I think that if humanity had the ability to, to communicate telepathically with each other. So many of the difficulties that we have in our experience here would be, would be removed or lessened. We would be able to experience people's feelings and thoughts and hopes without having to stumble over words in the process. And I've had my own personal experience. Nothing. Nothing like never encountered a being. This happened, my and my wife was right next to me. We were driving on I 40 on our way back to Memphis, Tennessee. It was nighttime, and we were probably tired, but not that tired. And all of a sudden, and I cannot explain it right over us, not really far above us, but like over our car, it, it just went right past us. This green flame, this neon green flame, and then it just disappeared. And it was gone and we both saw it as exciting as these things are, and yes, as enmeshed in the alien counter community as I am, I try to maintain some skepticism. And I'm aware that when meteors are burning up in the Earth's atmosphere, they often release a greenish gas. And it's quite beautiful. It sounds like it, uh, was larger in your case, but you always have to look for the mundane explanations first. Wait a minute. So my story seemed too farfetched. Eh, last question. How do you address people in your own life who are skeptical about everything you just told me? I'm satisfied if they just say that. Yeah. Uh, he believes what he believes. You know, it doesn't have to be accepted by everyone. It doesn't need to be believed by everyone we're describing something, which we believe is true. It may be true whether you believe it in it or not. That's usually satisfying enough. Whether or not we believe these stories is one thing, but to have a serious psychologist devote his career to setting these encounters makes you wonder. Maybe all these people aren't lying. Maybe their shared experience can easily be dismissed. On top of that, you have all these unclassified Navy pilot videos and you have to ask yourself, maybe we're not alone. Here's Ralph Blumenthal again. The people who dismissed John Mack is, ah, these people are crazy. Or he, you know, he was um, going off the deep end. Uh, they have to read these 13 case studies 'cause they're very detailed. They really are. Very impressive. What was, uh, Harvard's reaction when he published his first book? Well, it's interesting. First of all, he made no secret of his research. There were a lot of, uh, very, uh, influential people at his talk and they came away saying, well, this, this is crazy stuff, and why does he believe in this so much? And then he, he gave another lecture at Harvard not too long after that where he brought in tape recording of a woman basically screaming about how she had a pregnancy removed by alien beings. For hybrid reproduction apparently, and, and people didn't know quite what to make of that. So little by little, Harvard started getting concerned. And then he went on Oprah and then he had his bestseller. He, he said, I'm gonna go in and talk to the deans and tell 'em what I'm doing, but he was too late. By the time he walked in, they already had a letter prepared saying, we've formed a committee to investigate you. And he ultimately overcame that. Right. Yes, he did. And in the end, Harvard said, look, you know, they didn't find anything wrong that he did. They just said, well, you were a little too enthusiastic. You know, he remained a professor in good standing. And he went on to, to investigate a lot of other weird things. Did you ever interview him personally or is this just a No, because, uh, what happened is, um. Uh, the story I tell in the book, I picked up a copy of his second book, passport to the Cosmos, and I was blown away by the idea of a Harvard psychiatrist into the, in interested in this strange field. So I said, I'll give this guy a call because a Harvard psychiatrist who writes about aliens. That's interesting. So a few days later I pick up the paper and I find he is been run over and killed in London. Uh, by a, a drunk driver and he was there for a conference on, on Lawrence of Arabia, and he went back 30 years after his book to talk and looked the wrong way, like, you know, Americans do in London. He got run down, killed. So I never did interview him, but that got me interested in this story. And I contacted the fa, his family, they gave me access to his archives and I had access to everything. His notebooks, his private journals where he wrote about his, his ideas, his. Flexions, how do you think John Mack is gonna be remembered? The government is spending billions and billions of dollars to study black holes, millions and, and hundreds of millions of light years away. Un But something like, what's the explanation for people who, uh, have these very vivid memories of encountering aliens? There's no money for that. I think there should be some serious study given to that. Anyone who says they wanna get government money to study alien abduction is not gonna get too far. So I don't know how he'd be remembered. I'm hoping that my book will recall his courage. I, I sort of let his work speak for itself, but at the end I say I do think he was a hero to risk his reputation and, um, and to do what he did. He made mistakes. Uh, he certainly made mistakes. He was a flawed human being. He had a complicated personal life. He was traumatized by the loss of his mother. He had relationships outside his marriage. He experimented with drugs. He did a lot of things that might raise an eyebrow today, but essentially he was an honest person and um, and I think brave to risk his career. All right. That wrapped up the series on hypnosis. I would love to know what you think. By the way, the song you're listening to right now is from a friend of mine. The artist is Sene from the album reference material, and the song you're listening to is called, who Are You Even? You should Check it out. I'll have a link in the show notes. Also, next week, I'm going to wrap up the year with one last episode titled The Truth About Santa. I've had several of you submit stories about Santa Claus and I even learned of a really twisted origin story I had never heard before, so stay tuned for that. Of course, that episode is not for young children. I wanna take this time also to thank everyone who listens to this show. You have no idea how hard it is for an indie podcast like mine to survive. And so if you listen to any True Crime podcast that's independent like Moms and murders, Southern Fried True Crime, true Crime, bullshit, uh, crime lines, the Fall Line FBI, case file reviews, twisted. There are so many great independent podcasts out there that I just want to thank you guys for supporting little shows like ours and for supporting us on Patreon, our Patreon supporters. I can't thank you enough. 2022 is gonna be wild. Um, John and I from Criminal Conduct, already selected season three's case and it's, it's pretty amazing and infuriating. Case, uh, I hope we could get the accused killer put behind bars for sure and for pretend there's just some crazy stuff out there. I'm teaming up with Rebecca Sebastian from the Dialogue and Criminality podcast. So we're gonna bring you a series on cults, and the first episode of the new year is gonna be a doozy. I've actually been holding onto this one for quite some time now, maybe like six months. I interviewed a KGB agent, and I know you heard me talk about it in, in the past, and you're like, where's this KGB interview episode that you keep talking about? Well, it's finally, finally, finally coming out in January, so stay tuned. Because I never, in my wildest dreams would've thought I would've spoken to a real former KGB agent. Anyway, I, I can't thank you guys enough for listening to this show. And we're, by the way, it, it's almost a hundred episodes. I've never done a hundred anything before, which is nuts. So four and a half years of doing pretend and a hundred episodes. I can't thank you guys enough. I am just blown away by all your support. So remember, just tell a friend, tell a friend about pretend, and we will see you next week for one more episode of 2021. The Truth About Santa, take Care.