Chasing Aliens, with Jon Ronson and Daniel Lavelle (Part Two)

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sarenti. In this episode, we return for part two of our recent live event with All World Prize-winning journalist Daniel Lavelle. Lavelle joined us recently at Conway Hall to discuss America's obsession with UFOs, aliens, and the search for meaning beyond Earth. his wild road trip through UFO heartlands, Lavelle was in conversation with journalist, author, and filmmaker John Ronson.

If you haven't heard part one, do jump back an episode to catch up. But now let's return to the conversation live at Conway Hall in London. Well remote viewing is so I'm sure a lot of people here know about it, but there was a unit at Fort Meade in Maryland of psychic spies and every and for years like decades These psychic spies, Ingo Swan and Joe McMonamgore and various other people, would go there like every morning and sit in this shed and be psychic, like try and psychically divine things, would sound, and they were black op, which meant they didn't exist. And all of that sounds really exciting.

But actually the fact that they were black-up meant they had no budget, which meant they had no coffee machine, so they had to get their own coffee every morning, which like really rankled after 25 years. They couldn't get any repairs done because they were black-up. And also, like, they were just sitting in a room pretending, you know, trying to be psychic for year after year after year, and it was just driving them insane. Well, it's a similar story with uh Elizondo, because what Elizondo actually did was that he was getting money for what he should have been doing, which was counterintelligence, and then using those funds to pursue UFO spotting.

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