797. Esteban Carranza & Adam Pillon on the Cote UFO

0:01 There was nothing wrong with the camera at the time, and there was nothing wrong with the film, and it's a physical object on that piece of film. You can debate what it is, but it's present there, and it sure as heck looks like a UFO to me.

0:26 This little thingy was first called The Drop. because it looked like a little drop of rain, but then when they started looking at it and looking at it, they saw clearly a metallic disc shape.

0:42 It's cool just to have a piece of aerial film in general, and then the story behind it's even more exciting.

0:48 I think this photo is one of the very most important.

0:52 It's a government mapping agency that captured that photograph.

0:56 And it's been with the Costa Rican government.

0:58 It's always been like my absolute number one favorite UFO photograph.

1:03 It looked like the disc in the photo, what is out there, because I saw something out there and it's 100% real.

1:13 The abduction happened in 71. My husband was always with a camera because he loved to take pictures. Can I show you?

1:23 Yes, please.

1:24 And he said the light that he see that was a mother spaceship was huge, like a big city.

1:32 Wow.

1:33 Maybe they stopped the time for a moment.

1:55 Why they give me the permission to see?

1:57 Cote is a magical place. I don't know what will come next. But there is a very, very strong movement of ships in our space.

2:19 Welcome, Adam. Welcome, Esteban. I'm glad you are here.

2:23 And to talk about this fantastic image that I've been looking at for years. And so I'm going to ask, first of all, the documentary's out. It'll be linked on how to get that into the show notes and the text down below. But how did this whole thing come about?

2:40 Wasn't it you, Esteban? Did you find pictures in your uncle's? How did that all happen?

2:46 Thank you for having us, Martin. Pleasure to be here. This photo is actually way older than me. And I saw this picture as a little kid and I was immediately amazed by it. And then afterwards, fast forward several years. And when I read Leslie Kane book and I saw the picture right there, I saw the reference of the Cometa report. I started researching again on the picture that I recall seeing as a kid. And that's when I got in contact with the public registry of Costa Rica to obtain an authenticated or certified copy of the picture.

3:24 I started to get in contact with Leslie Kane. And then when my uncle sadly passed away and I received his research documents, I was amazed to find that there was a copy of the negative, a contact copy of the negative. And that's where the story basically started to get a very good reputation. drum scan and try to release to the public the clearest image that could be obtained through that negative. So several years later, when they were checking the pictures that were taken on this specific mapping mission, they saw that there was an object there.

4:00 And then a few years later, the Bilch's brother, pioneers in ufology in Costa Rica, released the image through the newspaper of Costa Rica. At that moment, the picture became famous and people were very curious to understand what was the thing with this picture, try to get copies. And of course, a lot of people approach the public registry or the offices of the geography department of Costa Rica to get printouts of the picture. That was the normal practice, just to get a printout of the picture. My uncle went a little bit further and he obtained a contact copy.

4:35 The cartographers of the National Geography Department explained to me that it was not uncommon at that time to make copies of the negatives. It's a process where you get a film reproducing what is called a positive. And the positive, which is the contact copy, looks like this. So it looks like an X-ray, but in general, this is a big copy of the negative itself. And the original negative is also this size.

5:03 Is that the piece right there with the image on it?

5:06 Yes.

5:07 Okay. But while you're holding.

5:08 It up, I could see that there's a lot of dents and things like that. And is that just from the way it's been handled over the years?

5:15 Yeah.

5:16 It's a 50 year, 55 year film.

5:18 Yes.

5:19 So it does have certain dents, but in general, when it was checked by the, by Michael Strickland in the scanning process, he was the person of the film studio. He said the negative is in pretty good shape actually for the, for 55 years. And what we heard from Mr. Loaiza from the cartography department, he told me that actually this copy is in way better shape than the original one that is in the public registry.

5:46 Oh, is that right?

5:46 Wow.

5:47 So the drum scanning that you did with that could be done absolutely with the original if they would allow it.

5:57 Yes.

5:58 And actually they allowed the And back in the 80s, they allowed Dr. Bahia and Dr. Haynes to examine the original negative, which is also a representation of the openness of the Costa Rican government in these aspects.

6:13 How about that? And so Dr.

6:15 Haynes and also Jacques Vallée did a paper together, a 19-page paper.

6:21 A couple of papers, yes.

6:23 Two papers.

6:23 Yes.

6:24 Original paper, the initial paper, sorry, they did it just with a printout of the picture, and they analyzed the picture. Second paper was with the negative itself, where they could conclude that it was not something of the developing process, but that the object was present in the negative as well. I see. They wanted to make sure that it was not a mistake of the developing process.

6:46 All right.

6:47 So we should, for the person that's unaware of Exactly how this was obtained?

6:52 It's National Geographic or National Geography Department or Agency of Costa Rica. They were doing several map, they were doing a map mission. The cartographers were trained by the U.S. Map Service. What we understand by the cartographers is that after the Vietnam War, that U.S. was very interested in getting full cartographic maps of Latin America and basically donated services and equipment for that to be achieved. In the specific case of Costa Rica, the map-making camera, which was a very sophisticated camera that Adam can explain better, it was donated by the German government, a really big camera that was attached to the plane, and that shoot images every 13 seconds automatically. But for clarification, when the mapping

7:40 mission was taking place, they were just snapping the pictures, and that's it, they went back home. It wasn't until a few years later when they were checking the images for purposes of electrical distribution in Costa Rica, that they discovered that there was an anomaly on picture 300.

7:58 And I'm almost, in a way, surprised that they released that. That's going out on a limb, I think, to release something like that instead of just keeping it quiet.

8:08 They actually don't really know how, because Mr. Loaiza, the lead cartographer, he said that his superiors told him that this was supposed to stay quiet and that it was secret. And there was, and he assures also that there was a U.S. person involved in those communications that he was basically instructed not to say anything. And that four years later, for some reason, the picture appeared in national news with the pioneers in ufology, Bilch's brothers. Mr. Loaiza doesn't really know how the picture got out. But in general, generally speaking, in Costa Rica, we have no army and no military.

8:47 There's a lot of openness in this subject in getting information if needed. There are additional files of other sightings in the National Archives. Generally speaking, we're a pretty open country.

8:59 When I hear of these places similar, I often hear about when there's some type of UFO incident that the U.S., I don't want to say intervenes, but they show up. And I don't know, have you ever heard of a case like that where a lot of people are suggesting perhaps the Department of Energy or someone like that, some branch is going in after these UFO incidences?

9:23 It's really strange. And just wondered if you ever heard of anything like that.

9:27 I'm a bit surprised, yes, that this picture was not, I don't know, maybe locked down or something. I guess probably at least. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any incident in Costa Rica involving a crash or similar. So we haven't had any instance in which there's direct involvement, to my knowledge.

9:45 I see. Okay.

9:47 And Adam, let's talk about how you got involved in this whole thing.

9:50 I'm a filmmaker from Detroit, and my day job is making car commercials and commercials for hospitals and stuff like that. And my wife went to Costa Rica to visit a friend, Kelly, whom we also interview in the documentary. And Kelly had this amazing story of her own UFO sighting above the Arno volcano. And she told it with quite enthusiasm. And when my wife came home from that trip, She came home ready to make a documentary about it.

10:21 She thought it would be a great subject to dive into.

10:25 And I've always been a fan of the phenomenon and the different documentaries and the filmmakers in the field. But it seemed like a great opportunity and something really fun to make a documentary about. So we picked up the phone, started making some phone calls and got in touch with Michael Strickland, who is the drum scan technician who does the drum scan for us. And he got in touch with Esteban for us. The next thing I just kind of steamrolled and snowballed into us making this documentary. And I didn't have any real understanding of the prominence of the photo and how important in the world of ufology it was. I just wanted to make a cool documentary.

11:15 And I think we achieved that. And it was such an amazing journey just to kind of roll into.

11:22 Now, did you have any type of pushback anywhere along the way when you were making this film?

11:27 I think it was the opposite.

11:28 It seemed to have a life of its own and an energy that pulled us into it. So every time we picked up the phone and made a different call to somebody else, they answered and had great stories for us. And It really seemed to have this kind of momentum that it just kept... Every time we uncovered somebody else, it led to something else.

11:54 And it just kept pulling us in deeper and deeper.

11:57 I guess the only minor pushback, it was like a funny story. We were actually going to film at Lake Cote. And on the way, it's not that we got a flat tire. The tire was absolutely destroyed.

12:10 It was.

12:12 So that was part of the fun moments of the filming process.

12:16 Is that really a very remote and hard to get to?

12:21 It's definitely not the biggest of cities and it's pretty much in the middle of Costa Rica and it's far from San Jose and there's La Fortuna which has its vibe to it but the lake itself seems to be fairly remote and there isn't a lot of commercial buildings around it.

12:42 And there's very few houses on the lake.

12:45 So if you go a little more towards the Arnold volcano, which is a mile or two away, you'll get a little more population, but right around the lake itself is very remote and isolated.

12:56 Yeah, Arenal Volcano and Arenal Lake are in general a big tourism attraction in Costa Rica.

13:02 There's hotels.

13:03 There's a lot of visitation. But Lake Cote, to get from Arenal to Lake Cote is a 45-minute drive. And not that many folks that are visiting tourism in Arenal, they even know that Lake Cote might be a place that they can visit. So it's a little bit far away, but it's just beautiful. The lake has a feeling that it transcends.

13:25 Nice.

13:26 Now, when you talk to the locals there, I know 1971 was a long time ago, but have they, do any of them ever talk about seeing something, anything going on there?

13:38 Absolutely. Before making the film, and before even knowing Adam, when I went to Lake Cote, I went there to do a little bit of paddle boarding, and I remember that I was trying to use my skeptic hat at that moment to go to supermarkets, gas stations, to the local pharmacy. And my question to everybody was like, what is all that nonsense of UFOs? Do you really see stuff here? Trying to really to be at the bunker.

14:10 And the response that I got was actually people saying, yeah, I've seen X or my grandma saw Y or my wife saw this. I just got actually very positive responses in a sense of a town that really feels that this is part of their day-to-day lives. Not in the sense of people saying, yeah, I saw these beings. No, they always say about seeing stuff in the skies. When Dr.

14:35 Bale and Dr. Haynes did their research on the picture, they also interviewed some local people that gave them references of structures or sightings coming out of the lake. Mr. Loaiza, also the cartographer, has heard lots of stories of stuff going in and out of the lake. So this has become also part of the town folklore, Martin. And that is maybe the reason that we see this. Also, the UFO restaurant by Emi and David is part of their identity.

15:06 And it's very interesting. Arenal itself, not only Lake Cote, but Arenal itself is also.

15:13 A UFO hotspot.

15:14 So people all over La Fortuna in general do have stories and share perspectives of this phenomenon as a reality and not as a what if.

15:25 I do remember, I think it was Leslie Kane, you mentioned her, saying that she thinks that is one of the best UFO photos there is. I do believe she said something like that, correct?

15:35 Correct.

15:37 She's a big fan and champion of the photograph. It really helped kicked off her interest in the topic. And in the late 90s, she got a copy of the Cometa Report. And the Cometa Report is a famous French report, which is their version of generals and admirals and people within the government saying that this phenomenon is real. And some of the most likely explanations for it is the extraterrestrial hypothesis, which is saying that it is likely being, we're likely being visited from.

16:15 Things not of this earth.

16:16 So in the late nineties, when she got this cometa report, it kicked off her journey into studying the subject.

16:25 And since then.

16:27 She's written a New York times bestseller book and she's helped author the 2017 article for the New York times, which exposed a tip along with Helen Cooper and Ralph Blumenthal. So it's been part of her understanding and study for a very long time.

16:47 Go ahead.

16:48 If I may share a fun story after reading Leslie's book. And as I mentioned, I studied, I went to the national registry of Costa Rica to get some information. The geography department is one of the offices in the National Registry of Costa Rica. So I went there. I think it was 2014. And I told them, I want to see this picture. Can I see the negative? And I told them, can you certify this picture? I'm an attorney.

17:14 So it is very common for us to go to the registry to get certifications of cars, properties, companies, etc. So I asked him, since you're in the public registry, can you certify this picture? And he said, yeah, absolutely. Just give me the print and I will certify it. And I told him, can you make two?

17:34 He said, yeah, of course.

17:36 So I wrote to Leslie at that moment. I think it was Facebook or something or maybe Twitter. But I think it was Facebook. And I told her, listen, I love your book. I'm Costa Rican attorney. I got this picture. I got it certified. Can I mail you a certification? I think it will be nice for you to have as well. And that was the beginning of, let's say, 12-year correspondence with Leslie. After that moment, we started chatting every now and then, UFO Matters. And she's probably, in my opinion, the most respected person in the field, but also the person that I trust the most in these aspects.

18:13 And I always say, why not? Why does she even have time to talk with a random attorney from Costa Rica? And that really speaks a lot about her character. She's a great person.

18:25 Yes, she is.

18:26 Yeah, she's been on many times and we've met up a number of times.

18:30 And even in Washington, D.C., the last time I saw her, I think it was the 25th of June. But anyway, yeah, she's really solid. And she has taken this journey along with us and given a lot of credibility to a lot of this topic and also She's very she has been very cautious about an outward appearance of people and things related to this topic. So it doesn't turn off people in our government who are trying to get answers.

18:59 Just be really careful about she's very cautious about things to make sure that we don't appear to be the tinfoil hat people.

19:07 One of her best qualities, I believe. Yes.

19:10 When we first got in contact with her and reached out to her, she didn't say yes away.

19:15 But she didn't say no.

19:18 But she wanted to know that we were going to be serious and thoughtful and do enough research into it. And we weren't just going to make a mockery of it. And she really helped us along the way in clarifying some of the things. And she was a tremendous person to work with in that respect. And she didn't dictate how to make the film work. by any stretch of the imagination, but she was very helpful and she made the film so much better just by being present there and being able to bounce some questions off of her and she being able to share some of the rough cuts with her she was able to kind of help gently guide us into the best film possible so I can't thank her enough and The one word I use to describe her is integrity. In my world of commercial

20:16 filmmaking and advertising, there isn't a whole lot of integrity in advertising.

20:21 But when I met Leslie there, she was on top of it 100%. She was amazing.

20:29 I have to also say that she has done a lot. She was instrumental as well as you spoke about the 2017 article. She's one of the three authors, Ralph Blumenthal. Helene Cooper and her. And it's really changed everything because I've been doing this show now for, it's coming right up in another month for 15 years.

20:50 And it's really, I've seen like such a.

20:54 Change, a sea change with so many people, including scientists that are actually looking at this when they never would before. So I have to ask you, Adam, you're newly jumped into this. What do you think so far of the possibilities of what people are seeing?

21:10 I don't consider myself an experiencer in the way some people are, but I've definitely seen strange lights in the sky that I can't explain. It's been a lifelong fascination of mine. Jumping into this topic, it's been quite the journey and met all sorts of interesting people along the way. It's only reinforced my beliefs, but I'm open to all sorts of perspectives and considerations. And I think what's really important is having a dialogue about it. And I think when people can talk openly and share their stories and tell their truths, that's where real disclosure happens. And we've met so many people along the way who were so kind and open in sharing their truths with us that it's only reinforced kind of the ideas that I've had

22:07 for a long time about us maybe not being alone. We don't get to prove out that it's something from out of this world, but we do prove that it's something anomalous on that piece of film.

22:18 And if there's.

22:19 Something on that piece of film, then the world of possibilities is wide open. And I think having an open dialogue and being able to listen to people's truths is where you're going to find real disclosure.

22:34 All right, let's talk about the other side of this. The people who have over the years tried to explain it and explain it away as a bubble or something like that. Can you go into, I don't know either one of you who wants to tackle this, but what the people are saying that they think it is and then your response to that idea, whatever it is.

23:00 One of the common questions things that come up when people are trying to debunk it is they'll be like, oh, it's a chip in the glass housing for the camera. Well, it's not present on picture 299 or 301. It's only present on picture 300. And it would have been present at least from 300 on if it was a defect in the camera housing. Some people have tried to say that somebody threw something from the plane.

23:31 And That seems like a very....

23:35 Talking to Sergio, who was on the plane, and knowing that there were cartographers there to do a job and didn't even notice it and didn't find it until two years later, kind of leads me to believe that it wasn't something just thrown from a plane.

23:52 And if it was, say, a particle of dust or.

23:55 Something inside of the camera housing, the camera wouldn't have worked. It's a Zeiss RMK1523 cartographic camera. It is not an iPhone. It is not a 35 millimeter point and shoot pocket camera. This is a very specialized, highly tuned, highly engineered piece of equipment that is essentially the 1971 version of spy equipment.

24:23 They were there to do a very serious job and There was nothing wrong with the camera at the time, and there was nothing wrong with the film.

24:33 And it's a physical object on that piece of film.

24:37 You can debate what it is, but it's present there. And it sure as heck looks like a UFO to me.

24:48 And also, Michael Strickland goes into detail on why this is not a lens flare or a reflection of the camera itself. But also one of the things, Martin, that we see a lot is that people make comments on this photo by looking what is normal to see is just a crop version that shows the disc in a big size. And just people would assume that the entire picture is just this big disc and the shoreline of the lake. But in reality, this is a huge picture that covers a huge amount of terrain and And the disc is this little tiny thing that appears on one corner.

25:27 So Michael explains a lot how this is not a lens flare in the documentary or any reflection. And then Don Sergio explains a lot of how this was such a precise camera that is not a malfunction of the camera. As Adam says, we are not saying exactly what it is because we do not know. But I would like to encourage all your audience to go into the website of the Cote documentary. They can download the raw format of the drum scan, play with it, do zooms in every corner of the picture, see how clear you can watch.

26:04 You can witness not only the object, but also the trees or the buildings or the roads. You have such a great quality in all the images and surroundings that It turns, I will be extremely surprised if this was not something anomalous. But again, I don't know exactly what it is, but it does have striking similarities with other reported sightings, such as Westall UFO five years earlier.

26:33 I was going to say that it's important to note that the negative that he held up earlier there is nine inches by nine inches. for a quick reference, if you've ever seen a movie in IMAX, that's 70 millimeters or two and a quarter inches. So when you go into the biggest movie theater you can to watch the biggest IMAX film you can, you're watching something that's a fraction of the size of this actual negative.

27:01 It's like I said, it's not.

27:03 Just a point and shoot 35 millimeter camera. It's a very specialized tool used by the government to do very serious municipal work.

27:13 And it's pretty remarkable.

27:16 Now let's talk about what we know.

27:19 How high was the altitude.

27:23 Of the plane flying and where do they try to figure out about where this is between the plane and the ground? And if so, do they try to figure out what size the object or whatever it is could be? Do they try to Is someone trying to do the math on all that?

27:41 A lot of people have tried and it still remains a great mystery. One thing that we do know that the flight path that the plane was flying along was 10,000 feet in altitude. So the plane was flying at 10,000 feet above the ground. The scale of the photo is 1 in 20,000. So we know the scale of the photo and we know how high the plane was, but it's really not it's too, there's no way to really tell the altitude of the disc itself.

28:14 That still remains one of the great mysteries.

28:16 And a lot of people have analyzed the shadows and the lighting and tried to come up with their best guess of how high it was.

28:26 But it still remains a great mystery. We know that if the disc itself was at ground level, then it would be approximately 84 meters in diameter, which is quite large. But that figure changes drastically the closer you get to the plane. If it was only a handful of yards away from the plane, then it would be much smaller.

28:51 But as it stands, we know that if it was on the ground, it would be 84 meters.

28:57 Now, has someone taken a really close look at image 299 and 301 to see if there's any i'm sure you have i mean obviously you'd be talking about if there was something on there but so that was 13 seconds ahead and 13 seconds after so is there a way you would have you can't tell what direction the things was going in if it was moving or any of that but.

29:23 Or if it was adam mentioned also at some point that if it was still maybe it was still Maybe we know so much information now that we didn't know back in the 80s or some theories at least. If we follow Dr. Putoff's theories on how they move or how they could be moving, it opens certain questions.

29:44 For instance, Dr.

29:46 Bailly and Dr. Haynes were under the assumption of whether this, because people were arguing because of some of the shadows, whether this object was coming out of the lake or going into the lake. And what they concluded, picture 299 and picture 301 doesn't show any disturbances in the water. But also nowadays with current theories, we would wonder whether it will cause a disturbance or not if it was considered a transmitting object. But to answer your question, I guess the main researchers of picture 299 and picture 301 were actually the best of the best, Dr. Haynes and Dr.

30:22 Bayek.

30:24 You can see all sorts of trees and roads and a lot of things, but you don't see the disc in 299 or 301. It was only in 300. And so it leaves a lot to the imagination, which is why we encourage people to go and take a look at the scan for yourself and keep that dialogue open.

30:45 One of the things I find.

30:48 Interesting about it is it's not exactly the disc itself isn't exactly flat.

30:52 It kind of has a slight angle to it.

30:56 And to me, that was very reminiscent of what we saw in the famous gimbal video.

31:02 You know something we should do, Adam? Actually, I think it would be nice for the audience that we should upload to the website or the drum scan is we should upload also a normal, of course, not drum, but a normal scan of picture 299 and 301. That could be cool.

31:18 Yeah, we could add that to it. All right.

31:20 I'm going to link the website there below the show anyway, so people can check it out to see if you follow up with that.

31:26 That would be a great idea.

31:27 Yeah.

31:28 Did they actually do the same type of scan with those two images?

31:33 No, because in those two images, we do not have a contact copy. I only have a picture 300. I don't even think that there's actually a contact copy for 299 or 301.

31:46 So when you look at the very original picture of this, when they were working on it, do you see anything at all that would catch your eye? Or do you just have to go focus in and focus in before you catch anything?

32:02 The original big picture?

32:03 Yeah.

32:04 If you were just looking at the original big picture, which is actually the one that is behind Adam in his screen.

32:10 Oh, yeah.

32:10 Okay.

32:11 You will see all this amount of land.

32:13 Oh, there it is.

32:14 But then you start focusing. You'll see what is this little tiny dot over here.

32:19 Right over the lake.

32:20 Right there.

32:20 You can't even really see it unless you're kind of.

32:23 Even if you have.

32:25 The original prints from the 70s that I have here, you immediately see something that looks crystal clear. Crystal clear metallic thing, but of course we do not know what it is, but you see a crystal clear object. But then when you have the opportunity of doing a drum scan and zoom in, that's when you get the wow factor.

32:47 Now, this was not color. This is black and white. Is that correct?

32:51 Yeah, that's correct.

32:52 And yeah, I wonder if it would have been any different if it was color as far as anything, any other thing, information you can get out of that. When it was worked on, there was some work, according to a person that was trying to debunk the photo, he said that it was cleaned up many times. But that doesn't mean that the image of the saucer itself was.

33:19 That's what he was trying to infer, that was cleaned up. But the black and white negative itself had, from what I saw, some scratches and things like that.

33:31 Is that what?

33:32 He purportedly cleaned up when he did that?

33:34 Yes, I would like to clarify on that one because when I got the original drum scan, the first one, first drum scan that I did with Michael Strickland, I was not doing any UFO project. I just had inherited this scan from my uncle, and I was like, I want to do something really cool here. I was following on a hunch. I wanted to see what were the shadows of the object. So I contacted Michael and told him, can you do a drum scan? He said, yeah. And that was it. So I sent him the drum scan to him. And of course, Michael, he's used to preparing great projects for his clients. And of course, if he's going to see certain scratches, he's going to do a little bit of cleanup of those scratches. But that was part,

34:20 not an instruction of mine, that is part of his extremely professional work. So I got this beautiful first drum kit. That's the one that we released through UAP Media back in, I believe, 2022. And I started hearing from a particular fellow in X saying, you clean up the negative because you don't see the scratch. And I'm like, that's the drum scan I got. If you want to pay for a new drum scan, be my guest. But then when we did the film, I had that concern specifically. And we told Michael this time, I want raw format drum scan, no cleanup at all. I'm not looking for a beautiful picture.

35:00 I want it exactly as it is in the negative. And if you see in the one that is available in the webpage, it does show the scratches.

35:09 Considered untouched, basically.

35:11 Exactly.

35:12 It's as clean of an image as you can get in terms of just it's light passing through a prism and reassembling it digitally. And there's no manipulation to the photo whatsoever. So you'll see all the original scratches. There wasn't any real color correction done to it to make it pop more or do anything like that. It is as direct from the negative as you can get. And we scan it down to the individual granulars of silver in the film emulsion. So we go into it in such detail and we show the process of the drum scan so you can see how it was done. And we clean the film, physically clean the film with a solvent to make sure there isn't any kind of debris or tape marks or anything like that on the film,

36:02 which there never were. But you can see the actual drum scan process in the film.

36:07 That's all really interesting. And so I guess one of the questions or thoughts I had is, Because when you make a film like this, you go in with this ambition.

36:20 What is your ambition?

36:22 Are you hoping that more people will take this particular case seriously or the topic in general?

36:31 Either one of you.

36:33 My goal with making this film was really just to make a cool and interesting film. I didn't have a pony in the race, so to speak. I just wanted to do something that was different than... my day-to-day of making commercials. And when my wife came home with such enthusiasm about it, it came at a time in my personal life where I was looking to start some new adventure and have, you know, I make films for fun.

37:02 And my real intention and goal was to make a interesting and compelling film. And I would have I had a couple other ideas at the time too, but this one won out because it was just so intriguing. And so I think my original intention was just to make a good film. And that was followed up by the intention to just be honest and truthful and listen instead.

37:28 Of judge and push an agenda. And I'm not privy to....

37:35 And the internal workings of the Pentagon, nor do I really care to be. I think in talking with people who've had experiences is where you really get the best look at the phenomenon.

37:49 Yeah, I agree.

37:50 In my case, I had several intentions. First was to follow the footsteps and honor my uncle with the Richards he did back in the 80s. But Martin, I'm a big fan of Old cases and not new cases, because in old cases, we don't have the discussion about drones or Chinese secret tech. One of the reasons that also motivated me to show this more is for people to see that this is a decades long or centuries long, depending on who you talk to, phenomenon. And it's not fair just to say UFOs are starting to appear now because it is secret tech from the Chinese, from the Russians, or from the US. The reality is that sightings have happened for quite a long time. And to show an official government photograph with appropriate chain of custody, with a

38:45 crystal clear image from 1971, it does help change perspective for some folks. So that was also part of my motivation here. And that is also part of why I prefer the older cases rather than the new cases.

39:00 I got it.

39:00 I got it.

39:01 So you mentioned earlier, Adam, that your wife met this girl, Kelly, did you say her name? I can't remember what her name was. And she came back all enthused about her situation. And you said that you actually interviewed her. Is that also in the film?

39:17 Yes, she's in the film as well.

39:19 And My wife, Kelly is originally from Michigan where we're from. And so they were friends for.

39:24 A long time.

39:25 And my wife always wanted to go to Costa Rica and Kelly had, moved to Costa Rica a few years before that.

39:33 And she lives in this pink.

39:35 House on the side of a mountain across from the Arno volcano. And she has pink hair and she's just this eccentric personality. But Yeah, she's such a fun person to talk to. And when you listen to her recount her own story of her own personal sighting of a UFO or the Arnold volcano, you can really feel that enthusiasm coming off of her.

40:00 And it gives her goosebumps when she talks about it.

40:03 And so she's a really fun person to talk to and spend some time with. And I think one of the, the photo itself is very intriguing and, It has such a great chain of custody and a lot of prominence. And it's been a very important photo in the world of ufology. But I personally find the personal, the stories of experiencers to be more enticing. So I think she's sharing her story with us. And then when we interview Emmy and she recounts, Emmy recounts her story with David, it's, those are the real fascinating moments.

40:41 Things in the film to me.

40:42 So I think not only do we get a good look at the photo itself and its history, but we get to spend time with people who had real life experiences. And like Sergio Loaiza has had multiple experiences throughout his life that he outlines for us in the documentary that weren't just taking this photo. Those moments are really the things that I find to be super intriguing.

41:10 I totally get it.

41:11 I'm always very interested in when I am like a speaker at an event or something like that.

41:18 And I have a table.

41:20 I decided recently to put a little sign out there.

41:24 Hey, have you had a sighting? Would you like to talk about it?

41:26 And boy, I'll tell you what, I've had some great discussions with people that one I put on YouTube.

41:33 And I can't find the woman's. She signed a release. I can't find a release anywhere.

41:39 To let her know that her video has 45,000 views on it. And she has no clue. I don't think she does, but I would hear from her. But anyway, I love hearing those fresh stories. And you'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't be surprised, if you go out in the world today and you bring up the topic, which I try to do if I'm in the right type of setting, that you will hear things that are just incredible. So many people, there's a big percentage of people that have had something happen and their life.

42:09 And it's fascinating.

42:11 Since we started making the film, I've gotten all sorts of people reaching out to talk with us about.

42:18 Their own experiences.

42:19 And it's really pretty commonplace if you start talking about this. I found that more people have had experiences than not had experiences to some degree, whether it was seeing something strange in the sky or even other paranormal experiences. And once you kind of start talking about it and people are like, oh, you're not going to judge me. Let me tell you about this thing or that thing. And so it's been a lot of fun just to make the film, but it's been amazing to hear all the different stories and to meet different people who had great stories to share. And we weren't really planning on making a second UFO documentary, but Because of all the people that we met along the way and all the stories

43:05 that were told to us along the way, we started a second documentary kind of exploring some of those subjects and the people who have kind of shared their experiences with us because we made this film.

43:19 I think this has been great.

43:21 Esteban, is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we close it off today?

43:25 Yeah, one of the things that Adam was mentioning about the stories behind and people, Sometimes in the field, when we are checking an image, we're checking a video, especially in social media, people just focus on the video itself or the image itself, and they do not know that there's a whole story behind that, that people's lives have been changed or affected in some way. What I love about the documentary is how Adam and Megan shows us this human side behind a picture.

43:59 And.

44:00 Sometimes we must remember in the field that behind every story, behind any picture, there's a story. And we must remember when we are investigating a non-human phenomenon, we should always remember that the most important aspect is the human interaction and the people that are behind it. We cannot forget our empathy with the humans behind every story.

44:28 I think I agree 100%. There was an image investigator. He worked with the Navy for years. He passed away a few years ago, Bruce McAbee. And I remember discussing images on the show with him. And he says, the number one thing is the people involved. He says, without really good witness testimony, a picture is not worth too much.

44:51 I really liked his thoughts on that.

44:53 Yes.

44:55 You're familiar with Bruce. You've heard of Bruce.

44:56 Absolutely.

44:57 Yeah. Great. I read some of his work and great researcher. And also I figure I'm, as I mentioned, I'm an attorney in my field. You can have people convicted based on testimony.

45:09 Right.

45:10 But in UFO reality, sometimes it feels that testimony is not enough. People want to see a landing live when there's so much testimony and so much evidence over the years. As I shared in the documentary, I have never seen a UFO. My question is why not me instead of why me? When I started researching this field, I was like, yeah, of course there's must be life elsewhere in the universe.

45:35 I'm not 100% sure that there's debris or something crashed here on earth, but let's start researching. But now 20 years later, and especially after 2017, my reaction is I'm 99% sure. that there has been recovered tech, recovered bodies, et cetera, based on the vast evidence that there is, based on the declarations of serious individuals from Congress, from intelligence, from the words by President Obama. And the only reason I do not say 100% is because these eyes have not seen them. But the amount of evidence would be sufficient for any court of law to rule that this is 100% real.

46:20 And I think it's great that you've never seen something, and yet you're fascinated by the topic. Same with many really great researchers. Stanton Friedman never had a UFO sighting, and he was one of the best.

46:33 So it's all great. And I didn't think Jacques Vallée had a sighting, but he did.

46:38 We had lunch with him at his place in San Francisco, my producer girlfriend and I, and he told us his story when he was young, a UFO sighting. Of course, that sparked his interest, which it does often. And that's why I'm here, because I had a UFO sighting. But it doesn't mean that just because you haven't had one, that this isn't a fantastic topic to explore, a puzzle to try to solve.

47:09 One last thing. I recently did a TED Talk, first TED Talk in Costa Rica on UFOs. I did a UFO disclosure from a risk analysis perspective as an attorney as to ask the question, what will happen if we open the newspaper tomorrow saying, yes, there's a non-human intelligence interacting in the sense that as humanity, people are not mentally prepared. And I believe that is a bigger risk than disclosure itself. But that being said, I just want, when we are talking about all the events that have happened after 2017 and My main question for your audience, if we go back in time 20 years, would we ever think that there was going to be an item on the Pentagon's webpage titled UFO? I mean, that for me is just wow.

47:57 Yeah, that's right. That's really good.

47:59 I want to thank you both so much. It's been a real pleasure. And I'm going to watch your movie now.

48:06 Thank you so much for having us. This has been great.

48:10 Thank you, Martin. We really appreciate you having us on and talking to us.

48:13 Yes, thank you.

48:14 Thank you.

48:15 All right, so everyone, next, actually, December 1st, we do have Dr. Eric Davis is going to be on the show. He just confirmed with me, so I just thought I'd throw that out there. Our next show should be Tony Woody, who is a naval flight engineer who had an amazing sighting, and it's a great interview, so that should be our next one.

48:35 Thanks so much, and remember to keep your eyes to the sky.