We begin Part 2 by looking at an overarching issue: if Bill ever gets burned out on UFOs, especially now that he is so closely associated with the phenomenon. Moving on from there, we find out if Bill has an overall theory on what the UFO phenomenon is all about. He talks about the "special access group" within the Pentagon that deals with the UFO issue and what this group knows.

We also ask Bill if he is a proponent of the ETH aspect of UFOs and what his theories are on where "they" are coming from. This leads to Bill telling us about the importance of George Hoover of the Navy. Bill talks about Hoover's role in key esoteric events, his claims of being "the Corso of the Navy," and what the "big secret" about UFOs truly was and why that engendered deadly fear by the "powers that be."

We get Bill's take on the long-standing theories that the US government has had dealings with ETs. He shares a tantalizing story that was told to him by Philip Corso, which suggests that there was some limited communique between the government and aliens. Bill tackles a question from Richard in Wales about how extensive international knowledge is about UFOs and this extends to a discussion on the prevalent attitudes by governments with regards to UFOs.

Disclosure activism and Exopolitics: we find out what Bill thinks of this emerging trend from the last 10 years or so. Bill has a fascinating analogy about governments leaking UFO information with how serial killers avoid capture. Bill reacts to binnall's "generational theory" about disclosure.

Smashing the 4th wall, we talk about Bill's recent post @ the UFO Magazine blog where he talks about podcasts and we discuss some of the issues about podcasting affecting the mainstream entertainment industry. He also explains his gripe with some podcasts deciding what is credible and what is not. This leads to some discussion about Coast to Coast AM and how some of the online perception of the program is misinformed.

This segues into some talk about the unfortunate trend of trying to force the esoteric media to act as "gatekeepers" of information. We get Bill's opinion on whether or not this "UFO Taliban" attitude is cyclical or a constant force in the UFO scene. This leads to some discussion on turf wars over UFO stories, people who think they can become millionares with their UFO information, and the troubling aspect of "checkbook journalism" in Ufology.

Given his position in the UFO world and this his wife, Nancy Birnes, is also a big player in the UFO scene, we get Bill's take on the lack of prominent women in the field of Ufology. Next we look at the other big pillar that we like to discuss on the show: young people in Ufology. We get Bill's perspective on why there seems to be a lack of young people and what we can do to fix that.

We also discuss the seeming lack of black Ufologists of prominence and discuss why that seems to be the case in the UFO scene. Jumping back to the discussion on young people, we talk about how UFO Hunters is reaching young people and this leads to some discussion on the sci fi fans v. esoterica fans feud. We talk about how UFO Hunters has managed to about the "ghost hunters-ification" of the field, which happened with the ghost genre.

William J. Birnes is a New York Times best-selling author, a magazine publisher, and a New York literary publishing agent who has written and edited over twenty-five books and encyclopedias in the fields of human behavior, true crime, current affairs, history, psychology, business, computing, and the paranormal.

As publisher of the nationally distributed “UFO Magazine,” editor of The UFO Encyclopedia published by Pocket Books, and co-author, with the nation’s top radio talk-show host, George Noory, of A Worker In The Light, Dr. Birnes has added to his list of publications in the UFO/Paranormal field, which include: The Day After Roswell, Unsolved UFO Mysteries, and The Haunting of the Presidents.

William Birnes received his Ph.D. from New York University in 1974 while he was an Instructor of English at Trenton State College in New Jersey where he taught structural linguistics and historical linguistics as well as literature and writing. Professor Birnes was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, a Lily Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and a grants award judge for the National Endowment for the Arts.

His website is ufomag.com

www.ufomag.com
topics discussed:
1 Hr 24 Min.
6.22.08
328
Bill Birnes
Part 2 of 2