Nimoy: Our voices have ascended into space, announcing our presence to the universe. Other men on other worlds may be listening. We await an answer from afar, placed by an intelligence we do not know. Matthew: Hello and welcome once again to the Intermillennium Media Project, the IMMP podcast. My name is Matthew Porter. Ian: And I'm Ian Porter. Matthew: I'm his dad. He's my son, and I've made him return to television. Ian: Yes, it's a we kept watching the occasional episode type where we go back to a show we've talked about before and watch more of it to see if that changes our thoughts or if there's more to be discovered. Matthew: Sometimes it's because we just enjoyed the sampling we did for our first podcast episode that much. Sometimes it's because there's just so much of this TV show or movie series. And sometimes, It's because it, it had such a huge impact on my youth, and sometimes it's all three. Ian: Yeah! Matthew: And we've got all three here. Ian: There's a lot of In Search Of! Matthew: Yes, when we, when we first talked about In Search Of last year, we knew we were gonna have to come back to this TV show. Ian: We knew we had to. I mean, it, this is a TV show where not only did we know we had to come back, But, in the middle of them talking every time, the theme song comes back! Da da da da da! Da da da da da da da! Matthew: And, it took a little bit of thinking because there is so much of this show. There are 144 episodes, and I believe I watched every single one of them at least twice when I was a kid. Ian: And four specials. Matthew: And four specials. I don't think we've Looked into those specials. We might have to do something about this. Ian: I'm not sure. Yeah. Matthew: They might show up on Patreon. Ian: Okay. Matthew: But there's so much and this is such an eclectic and varied show that we had to give some thought as to how we were going to approach it as we kept watching. We kind of watched a sampling of episodes for that, initial conversation last year. Ian: But, yeah, we got a general overview. Matthew: Right. Yeah. So we decided that for We Kept Watching, we were going to focus on specific kinds of topics. And I'm sure this is not, by any means, the last We Kept Watching in search of. We could do a whole podcast just about this TV show. So, this first We Kept Watching, we looked for all the episodes we could find across those 144 installments about UFOs and aliens. So we're joining Leonard Nimoy in search of aliens on this podcast. Ian: It is so different to watch this show and not bounce around from topic to topic, but to hear them get into the same discussion multiple times from slightly different angles. But when you're on the same topic, some of the, some of the ways this show presents itself are much more visible. You kind of see the underlying structure, I feel. Matthew: Yes, and it can get repetitive, but less so than I expected. Ian: Yeah, they did a good job, because we got everything from alien contacts, so it's all about trying to send messages out, to, people who talk about aliens having come to earth already, to alien cover ups by the government. We get a wide variety. So that one topic actually gives them a lot of different avenues of exploration and weird discussion. Matthew: And that's something that kind of surprised me when we approached this idea for this episode is how few UFO and alien episodes there were. Ian: Yeah. Matthew: Maybe there are one or two more you could argue should be in this category. But, we found six episodes. Ian: That's not as many as you'd expect. Matthew: It's not, because the aliens and UFOs are one of the ones that are most memorable to me from when I was a kid. And as are the ghost and supernatural episodes. But there are so many more weird history and missing persons and things like that that I watched and loved. But they didn't make as big an impression as ghosts and aliens did. Ian: Oh, goodness. Talking about impressions. There's a lot of like, Hey, we took footage of this area and satellite images. Show us this. And then you can realize partway and they don't have enough of that footage to cut away to something else. Yes. Even inside some of those episodes, they're repeating things. But it's interesting. I feel like they go to aliens sometimes in other episodes. Matthew: True, true. Sometimes that's their explanation for something is, Oh, must be aliens. Amelia Earhart disappeared? Oh, maybe aliens took her. Ian: Maybe aliens took her. I once again was blown back by the fact that In Search Of is written like you and your friend late at night And your friend is out of his mind rambling Be that with the assistance of some sort of substance or not Someone is rambling barely coherently, bewildering comments. Now take the transcript of that and have Leonard Nimoy read that transcript absolutely seriously. Matthew: Maybe that's why this show engaged me so much when I was a kid. Maybe it felt like I was hanging out with Leonard Nimoy, and he was rambling about the same kind of stuff I would talk with my friends Stephen and Eugene and Michael about in middle school. Maybe. Ian: Yeah, it's got that little bit of a casual flow to it. Matthew: Yeah. Ian: It's very serious. And that means that when you're talking about the aliens and such, some of these topics, you see the little tricks they use to maintain momentum more. There's a lot of non sequitur tangents that are used to loop back around. Matthew: A lot of it is the same kind of techniques you still see today in these history channel kind of things about Ancient aliens and like where , This guy says a thing if thing is true, then maybe this other thing is the explanation and then five seconds later They're talking about that explanation as if they've proven it Ian: Yes Matthew: back up a little bit Ian: my favorite moment, honestly it made me laugh out loud, was watching one of these episodes and we go from , these shards we found match perfectly with modern electrical equipment. In Death Valley, groups of burros, wander around. It's like, What? Matthew: What? The burros are developing electronic devices? It's the only explanation. Ian: It's like, I'm sorry, In Search Of has just randomly pulled an axe out of nowhere, and I'm confused. It's like, Hi, what is the, what does the donkey know of the aliens? And then it uses the concept that they survive in the desert as a maybe, maybe like they were brought here by humans. We humans were brought here by something else. And I'm like What kind of leap did you make? How much did the guy who filmed the b roll of the donkeys in the desert pay you? I don't know why. Matthew: I think to some extent it might be they'll send these people out to do b roll and just film whatever you can. Oh, there's a bunch of burros there, sure, take a few seconds of them. We'll, we'll figure out a way to use it. And then later they did. Okay. Ian: That adds to that casual ramble kind of feel, where there's something almost observational comedy about it at times. Matthew: What's the deal with these electric burros? Ian: Okay, side note, the electric burro sounds like a bar. It absolutely does. But yeah, a lot of that kind of, that history channel style, like, What if this is true? Then act like it's true. Or, or that wild, Before you can properly think through topic A, let me throw topic B at you and spin it back around so it reinforces A. And by the time we're back at A, you won't have thought of the obvious issue. With what I pointed out. Matthew: And yet for all this silliness, all, all the things we're seeing in this today, it was so captivating. For a kid in the 1970s, desperate for more stuff about the unusual, because, partly because it was such a cornucopia, so eclectic, so many different things, you never knew what they were going to talk about from one week to the next. And, for the most part, they, the presentation at least, was kind of serious. So, as a kid, it's like, oh, you're grown ups on TV talking about the stuff that I think is cool. And talking about it seriously. Ian: Leonard Nimoy's presentation is completely serious. The editing and the production has an element, and I mean that not just because they cut in with their little disclaimer about it being a theory and such, but just in terms of how it edits and how it puts stuff, it does not shy away from showing this being a little odd. It, it has an element of like, we're opening discussion, but we're not, trying to sell you on anything, and the editing helps with that. Matthew: They acknowledge the weirdness. Ian: Yes. And the cinematography and the video production is calming and smooth. But it's also not always on the same topic. It kind of does its own thing at times. Which means it really feels like these are three separate voices, but that seriousness from Leonard Nimoy brings the other two together to create a very concrete, like, we're going to discuss this with all seriousness. Whether or not it's there, we're going to discuss it with seriousness. I, I can completely agree. It has that, it gives gravitas. Matthew: And over time, they lean a little bit more into recreations, reenactments of events. Sometimes with the original participants or encounterers who they are talking with, and they'll have them reenact their, incident. And that leans, starts to lean a little more into the kitschy, but early on, it seems as if they were very concerned with it. being taken seriously and presenting this seriously. And I think one example of that is the fact that the very first alien related episode that we watched did not have any UFOs. Didn't have any alien creatures talking to people or kidnapping them. It was about SETI and contact with other worlds through radio waves and radio astronomy. And listening for signals from other planets and the signal that was sent from Arecibo, from Earth to possibly contact people out there in the galaxy. And that way they could show lots of scientific hardware and scientific installations and talk with all these scientists. And again, that was, you know, I'd read so much UFO stuff, this seemed so new when I was a kid. This, oh, we're actually like, Maybe we should be talking to people by radio from other stars. It'll take a long time, but still. Ian: The early episodes, those episodes from 78 and such, definitely have a little bit more of a PBS vibe instead of a History Channel vibe, where it's talking about this scientific element. It's opening up, what does this make us question about what we do know, what we don't know, it's very It's very serious, go learn more, go find out, go explore the world kind of stuff. Seeing all these episodes, going from season one to two to season five episodes in this, when you've suddenly got like, in this recreation, it's just Low down camera showing the, the rock cliff as three people in booty shorts walk vaguely in a direction for a long shot. I'm like, Huh, and then the, the, I admit, to me, the slight jump scare that is Leonard Nimoy with a late 70s, early 80s mustache. Matthew: Oh, yes indeed. Ian: Going up in the middle of a field and talking and it's like, we didn't have footage for this one and now you can see him. And Leonard Nimoy, the disembodied voice, has a very different feeling than Leonard Nimoy. Selling humans haircare products in the middle of the desert. Matthew: Yeah, it seems like they shifted that. Maybe as the show found its footing, maybe got a little more of a budget. It went from all of the host segments being in a studio with lots of , photographic prints of blurry UFOs and Astronomical photos. He was, more and more he was out in the field, even if it was just to drive up in a jeep outside of a military base and then do a stand up in front of the gate. At least it was more dynamic. At least he was out there doing things. It kind of gave the illusion that he's one of the investigators out trying to get the truth. Ian: I will say that because they take everything seriously, but they did not rehash topics in the same way. If they talked about Atlantis in an early episode, they talk different things about Atlantis if they do another one. , they do actually do new stuff each time to some extent. Matthew: That's true. Even watching all the episodes we could find on a particular topic, like we did for Aliens, it didn't seem ever as if we came upon one that was just, well, here's another Alien episode. They all had a good focus and they all were interesting. We had the one about radio signals and Radio Wave SETI. We had one, well, there was one that was generic in search of UFOs. That was really just a recap and reenactment of two or three mid 70s UFO sightings. They probably chose those because they could quickly and easily and cheaply go interview the people who had encountered these things. And they had, uFO captives, people who claim to be abducted, and a particular specific UFO incident in Australia. They were all focused enough that they were different, and they could start with new groundwork. Here's some stuff about radio astronomy, and cosmic background radiation, and what these radio telescopes do, and how we might use them to contact aliens. Here's kind of a three minute history of flying saucers since 1947, and then we'll talk about these. Three groups of people in the 70s who encountered something. Ian: That does two interesting things. On the positive side, it definitely makes it that you're not expected to have seen all the episodes. And that means it's starting fresh each time, and that means each one is giving you this new perspective. Seeing them all together, you get this vague overview of UFOlogy and alien concepts across time. popular culture in the 80s. But, the negative is the fact that they got all their scientific more PBS sort of stuff done in seasons one and two. Season like four and five, those later seasons, really start to get all over the place and start to have a little less footing before they start their adventures . Matthew: And speaking of how much this series was not overrun with aliens, there were no UFO or alien episodes in season two. And none in its final season, six, either. Ian: That's pretty impressive. You kind of expect that a show that does this kind of discussion of the fringe science aspects To have a lot more aliens as topic, but no,, they sprinkled aliens as a, topping to a little cupcake of, of weird science. Everyone say a while, but it wasn't the core filling of this dessert. Matthew: And that becomes the problem with shows that aren't too focused on one topic. They run out of good stuff, and they search for the really questionable reports. And rehash things and the like. Ian: The one thing In Search Of was not In Search Of was new topics, they had a lot of them. Matthew: To the extent that there was any The repetition and what seemed like a little bit of a rehash was , their season one episode that was just in search of UFOs, which was just on sightings of flying saucers. And then in season three, UFO captives, which were reports of people being abducted. By UFOnauts and then returned and they were kind of similar though Even those had different focuses one was about sightings and the overall phenomenon one was about the phenomenon of of so called abduction Ian: I almost feel like they took very different Tactics in some ways because I felt like the UFOs one was about. Oh There's people who are visiting. Let's talk to them. It was very much the optimistic UFO And then the UFO Captives was bookended with this family getting abducted story, and this, this report from that one family, and it had a little bit more of a, a fear element. It was more of a, what are they coming here to do, kind of, scare UFO story. And so even then, it gave two different perspectives on the UFO story. the UFO concept in popular culture, I felt. Matthew: That's a good point. The first one, In Search of UFOs, it was more about the mystery and wonder. What is happening? It almost had more of a Close Encounters vibe, even though Close Encounters wouldn't come out for a few years yet. It was more of a, something's happening, and people are seeing things and reporting these things, and we're finding, burned circles on the ground that seem to indicate that something landed. What does all this mean? And then you're right, the second one, UFO captives, was more about the horror aspect, like something is being done to people and who's doing it and why. Mhmm. And the UFO Australia was kind of, was kind of a combination of these with a bit of air disasters. Ian: Yes, definitely. Because Matthew: it was about a specific encounter in Australia in which a, light aircraft reported seeing and, and, being intercepted by some large unexplained craft that wasn't known to air traffic control and eventually the aircraft in question disappeared. I understand that years later what appeared to be debris from that aircraft did wash up but but for, for years there was no real explanation as to what had happened to this after these bizarre reports that it made over the Ian: That was interesting because it definitely was like, they had a little bit of , Australia's history with UFOs in general, but it was centered on a singular story in that sense. It had a through line, an episode plot in a way that others don't. Matthew: Yeah, apart from the historical ones, not too many in search of are so focused on one incident or one event. Ian: One of the ones I really was unhappy with, I will say is , the later in Season 4, one Earth Visitors. Matthew: Yes. Yeah, it seemed to come into our Alien theme, but, I don't know. Ian: It was in the Alien theme, absolutely, but it was one of those episodes where we've got to acknowledge this was written from a perspective in a time, and it was painful nowadays to watch a story that kept on taking everything of every other culture it ever interacted with and acting with the, well, since we know they couldn't have done this on their own, there has to be another reason. And it's like, wow, that's every time, repeatedly, it's just belittling and ignoring the The actual efforts of the people that it's talking to and about. Matthew: Yeah, and this was the 70s, this was kind of still in the heyday of the Van Daniken and Chariots of the Gods and all the kind of the beginnings of the ancient aliens sort of thing. And, and you're right, it's shameless. A lot of it is based on trying to connect alien stories and tales with Southwest Native American folklore. Mm hmm. And yet, they're describing it as, as like, Here's a description of Indians. And, and, Here's what Indians believe and know. And what their folklore says. I'm sorry, you're talking about how many different nations across more than two continents. Yeah. And you're summarizing them with folklore. Half a dozen words, and then you're gonna tell us what they believe and how what they believe really means that everything they know was taught to them by aliens. Yep. Come on, guys. Ian: That's one of the ones where it's like, I could feel that they're running out of steam. It's like, yeah, like, why does this look like a spacesuit? And I'm just sitting there eating a bit of toast. No, it doesn't. Matthew: Right. Why does this ceremonial mask look like a space helmet? Well, they're both designed to fit human heads. That's gonna be a pretty big design constraint. And I've never seen a spacesuit helmet look like this ceremonial mask. Ian: Yeah. I would love to see a parody episode that goes in the opposite direction. Why is this doorway in this building? The size of a human. Matthew: That's a great idea. Yeah, this passageway on West 53rd Street in New York City is Approximately the same exact dimensions as this doorway in the Great Pyramid Ancient Egyptians must have built This office building in New York City. Ian: Exactly. That's the sort of like leaps this does. And the moment you flip it, it's wild that they wrote that. But that episode is just full of that. It's painful to watch because of that, that flaw. But it's, it's important to recognize that like, this is, This is where these discussions started, and at least this one it's easier to notice when they're doing that mistake, it's easier for newer things to try to get away with saying such things without taking the responsibility of the fact that they're being that awful and they should change. Matthew: And there's one other part of that Earth Visitors episode that struck me more, not in the, oh, you guys are being, you know, racist and everything. It's more of a, oh, guys, I've got some things I can teach you. Because they were talking about the fact that there are petroglyphs that They were, they were saying that these are electronic signals. They're essentially showing sine waves and triangle waves. They leapt from these geometric shapes in the petroglyphs to There was a crashed alien spacecraft, and other aliens came to repair it, and they must have used oscilloscopes like we have And the early Native Americans saw these patterns. and recaptured them and recreated them in their artwork. And I'm thinking the the Southwest Native Americans were, were very familiar with peyote and mescaline. And one of the widely reported effects of some of these, for them, ceremonial substances. is visualization of repeating geometric patterns. I think there are plenty of other places where early Native Americans may have seen repeating geometric patterns besides alien oscilloscopes. This is speculation, but it's saying it seems more likely than crash aliens fixing things with parts from a Heathkit store. Ian: Absolutely. I'm also going to go from a different angle as well. Oh! I have a flat surface and a paint medium. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Let me move my brush along a surface in regular, repeatable patterns, and mathematics will lead me to certain things just based on trying to chart things on an X Y plane of paint. Guess what an oscilloscope does? It charts things! With a flat surface and a brush. The fact that They are both drawing something means that certain math applies and a repeating oscilloscope pattern is also repeatable paint pattern on its own as well. There's an element there. It's just like, triangulation over all of France. Yeah, Matthew: I can pick three important spots in Europe that make a triangle with roughly the same dimensions as the pyramid. Well, congratulations, you had a lot of spots to choose from. Ian: Yeah. They do a lot of like, from this satellite image, let's draw this out. We made a cross with this. Okay? How many other ways can you form that? Matthew: Or Ian: this one's a triangle and it points towards the Nazca lines. Yeah, I think it also points to like a Starbucks somewhere. What is your point? Matthew: The cross in Greece was fascinating. This guy took satellite imagery, which was a cool new thing, and plotted the points of various temples in Greece, ancient Greek temples. And Connected them together so that they made a Maltese cross. It wasn't just a plain, you know, two whim cross over 300 miles in in size. And he thought, well, this was obviously, this is proof that somebody who could see this from outer space directed where to put these and yeah, I guess so, but a couple of things. One, there are a whole lot of Of temples and sacred sites from ancient Greece all over that area. I don't think you picked all of them. I think you picked a selection of them that happened to make this Maltese cross. And I don't know that your positioning was all that accurate when you put the points down. And for another thing, if ancient Greeks wanted to make a complex and regular, image or pattern across large distances. I am very confident they could have the Greeks knew geometry. They named geometry. Yeah. This would not have been beyond them if they really wanted to. Not that I think that's what happened. I think they just cherry picked data and drew a picture over it. Ian: Yeah, you want to tell me that you find actually every single known location, and you cross every single one of them with a connecting line, and you somehow wind up with like a shaded image of Wallace from Wallace and Gromit just giving you the side eye? That's like, that's something, but a basic geometric form developed by Greeks in terms of, landscaping and urban planning, and I'm gonna be like, yeah, that's what they did. Matthew: I bet you could do that. I bet you could pick specific sites across the ancient Greek world, and as long as you picked the right ones and drew your lines in the right places, you could have a 300 mile across picture of Strong Bad's face. Yes! And say, it's obvious he was inspired by ancient aliens who inspired Greece. Ian: Check me out! I'm the EU! This is where the entirety of our listener base learns I can't do a strong bad voice. Matthew: The one thing in that Earth Visitors episode that really got me, that still fascinates me, and I don't know what the explanations are, are the out of place artifacts. The things where some complex assembly of something is inside a rock that appears to be older than this thing inside it could possibly have been made by humans. That's fascinating. Some of those are still a mystery to me. I don't leap to, well, aliens did it a million years ago, but it's still fascinating. I love to read about those things or hear about them. Ian: That is very fascinating. I am absolutely with you. And I'm, I admit, I was surprised to learn about the fact that France's uranium deposits make a perfect triangle. Like, that's, that's also fascinating, but differently so. So yeah, I mean, that's one of the things, even in the episodes where they're going astray, where their, their efforts are not the best, or Their leaps in logic have the worst problems to them. They have, you know, all the strange disconnections and the unfortunate racism that we described. Even in those, this was a group that had enough research mentality that they did at least find something fascinating. There are gems even buried in the, the dirt episodes. Matthew: Yes. Yes. And one thing that watching these all together impressed upon me was what an active field this was at the time. That there was active research being done, there were still stories coming to light. We talked about the call from space episode, the first one we watched for this about the radio signals. And I realized that they were talking towards the end about the, the big ear radio telescope. And it, it was just a few months after that episode aired that the Wow! signal was picked up by that radio telescope. Ian: And Matthew: that's a, that's a signal that it was, they were analyzing this data for SETI and a remarkable, anomalous signal came through. And it's called the WOW signal because the person analyzing the data drew a circle around this part of it and wrote WOW at the margin before handing it off to someone else to look at. And there have been various, it hasn't been detected again, and there are various explanations. It might have been earth based signals or, or something else. But the fact that one of the most well known bits of information from that radio signal SETI world happened, not during or before, but just after this In Search Of episode about the very same people and place. Ian: I found something very similar about the next and the last of the Alien episodes we watched, which was being the UFO cover ups one. Yes. And it's so fascinating because I could see how pop culture shifted things in the discussion because this is all about all these different instances. This is about the United States Air Force's work trying to build UFO shaped ships was one of their topics. It was like our own homemade UFOs as one of the topics in their stuff. But this was discussing the Roswell incident, but it was not full of just Area 51 and those pop culture. pieces. This was a lot more like, here's a guy saying he went and found the metal scraps the desert, and here is Hangar 18 on Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. That was this high tech epicenter for them. It felt very much like it was still early enough in the pop culture interest that it wasn't echoing to itself in that sense. Other influences hadn't changed what they were talking about. Matthew: And about Roswell specifically, these days it's easy to think that the whole Roswell controversy has been this constant tension and has been in the eye of researchers non stop since 1947. And that is not true. It really was unknown and not very well researched or, or There wasn't a lot of interest in it until the mid to late 70s until and I think specifically this episode of in search of is a big part of what brought Roswell to public attention because that was because they were interviewing retired major Jesse Marcel. The Air Force officer who was part of the investigation or part of the collection of debris from the crash outside of Roswell, who was in the papers and involved in the, I think it was a public information officer. So he was involved in releasing these. Different and conflicting news reports or press releases from the Air Force and this was one of the first times that he gave interviews and spoke on camera and talked about the fact that no, you know, you haven't heard the whole story about what I saw there and how weird it was and why you had these conflicting reports. And again, I think there are a lot of interesting complex things happening at that point that didn't have to do with aliens. But the fact that now we had an Air Force officer saying you haven't heard the whole story. That kicked off interest in Roswell, and it kicked off so much of what came later, all the way into the X Files and such. The whole idea of, the government knows more than it's telling you. Ian: Yes. It really had that, like, it wasn't breaking news because it wasn't new, but it had this, we're gonna reopen this and connect dots for you kind of feeling. Right. Matthew: Right. It was saying, you know, there's, there's this thing that's been around for so long and you haven't heard about it until we're telling you and we're giving you these interesting speculations. But at the same time, in search of, it didn't just jump into and ride the, it must be aliens and there's no explanation. They talked with Air Force people. They got the Air Force's assurances that, we've studied this thing and there's no threat or anything. And they talked about Hangar 18 and the fact that there are the reports that there are cryogenic chambers in there that are preserving the bodies of aliens. And they talked to Air Force people and said, well, yeah, there are huge freezers in there because it's for doing cold temperature tests on engines. That's why we've got all this, cryo equipment in Hangar 18. It's not where you would store bodies Yeah, and they didn't say well, and this is part of the cover up They just said well, we we talked to people who who are authorized to know this stuff And here's what they told us and here are them telling his here's them telling it to you on camera Ian: It leaves that open of you know, here's what the one person says here's what the other person says Discussion. Matthew: And it brought up a point that I think too many people don't realize or don't think about about Project Blue Book, in that this was the Air Force's investigation, or one of the Air Force's, its best known investigation into the UFO phenomenon. And yeah, there were a lot of things that were just sort of explained away with questionable explanations. But the Air Force was not UFO phenomenon. That's not the point of something like Project Blue Book. The Air Force is a military organization, and they were interested in investigating, Is there a threat to U. S. military superiority and national security? And they concluded, no, there aren't enough of these things happening to be that concerning. The vast majority of them we can explain comfortably. The few that we can't yet explain, they don't appear to be any threat. That's mission accomplished for the Air Force. They weren't in, they weren't scientists in that they weren't trying to explain an overall important phenomenon for society. They were trying to see if this impacted their jobs. Ian: It put Bluebook in new context. That made me want to re Like, because so much of, so much of the modern discussion starts with this assumption that you have a preconceived notion of something. Right. But every episode of In Search Of starts from square one. The only thing it assumes is that you're curious. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And then it presents its stuff from there. It makes its mistakes, it does everything else sometimes, but it never starts with a presumption in that sense. Yeah. On the part of its audience. Matthew: And one of its strengths and one of its challenges is also the fact that there wasn't that much other material about a lot of these things. So many of the topics on on In Search Of, well, I couldn't just go online and read more about it. The Big Ear and SETI. I couldn't go out and, and just read more that night about Roswell or UFOs. I could go to my weirdly stocked library the next day and get some stuff. Ian: Where's the in search of about that library? Honestly, the more I hear about your local library, the more I was like, You had an odd library. Matthew: It was wild. I, I owe so much to whoever stocked that ostensible children's section in that library. Ian: Oh, goodness. Thank you to whoever it was. Ha ha ha ha Matthew: ha. So what was your favorite of the episodes that we watched for Aliens? Ian: Okay, favorite of these episodes. I'm split between That early one of Calling to Space, or, I kinda liked the UFO Australia one, it was the later season, had it's more flaws in it, but that one's narrative through line was very good. Matthew: Yeah, you're right, that was, it was so focused, it was more of a story. With a beginning, a middle, and an ambiguous end. So that was good. Maybe this goes back to the ones that I remember being so important to me when I was a kid. But, for me, it's probably between that first episode, A Call from Space, or UFO Cover Up. Because it did set the stage for so much that interested me after that. Ian: That makes a lot of sense. Matthew: But you're right, UFO Australia was good because it was, really a story that pulled you along. Ian: It needed that structure, I thought. Matthew: And to the extent that other episodes have that kind of structure, it's in tiny pieces. Like the UFO captives. We actually got, , three different stories. Each one was a story with kind of a beginning, middle, and end, but you got so little substance because they were. Three different segments in a 22 minute TV show. Ian: Yeah, it did not have enough body there to hold it together. Matthew: I wonder if it's only after the, the show lasted as long as it did that they started to realize, you know, we don't have to cover the entire phenomenon in one episode. We can focus on one story and tell that story like they did for the Australia plane Ian: disappearance. Hmm. That might be the case, where they feel they've got that flexibility. Matthew: That kind of makes me wonder how that shifted with the revivals, of the show that happened later on. Mm hmm. That that suggests maybe we're heading into our final questions. Ian: I think it does. Matthew: But first please do stay tuned for those final questions where we talk about whether we recommend this and and what else we want to see in this world. But in the meantime, if you're enjoying the Intermillennium Media Project and you want more, please go to immproject. com where you'll find all of our back episodes, including that prior episode about In Search Of. And for even more, you will also find a link to our Patreon. That's one of the best places to support us. And for starting at three dollars a month, you get a whole bunch of additional audio content, things that don't quite fit the the theme of the main podcast feed. And you can also support us and get really cool stuff on our shop, which you will also find a link to on immproject. com. And we would love to hear from you. We don't have our radio telescope set up yet, so please do not beam signals from space, but you can contact us on Discord, you can contact us on BlueSky and on Mastodon, and you can contact us via email and honest to goodness physical United States mail in our post office box. And you'll find all of that on our contact page on immproject. com. And Ian, where can we where can we find you? Ian: I can be found at itemcrafting. com or itemcrafting on bluesky, as well as itemcraftinglive on Twitch! Come join me as I play games and make props! And how about you, Dad? Matthew: You can find me at bymatthewporter. com, where you'll find a link to things that I'm doing, including my YouTube page where I review movies and movie theaters. You can find me as ByMatthewPorter on BlueSky and ByMatthewPorter on mastodon. social. So, Ian: so final Matthew: questions, Ian: final questions. This one would be a watch or No watch, yeah. I guess for this being a, we kept watching, we kind of are saying we're watching in that sense. I also want us to say, is this a, do you think this was good to keep going or was it not? Matthew: I, I think it was. Our usual TV question is binge or no binge. And you're right. We've sort of answered that question of the fact that we couldn't help ourselves, but come back to it. But I would, in answer to that question, I would recommend, I think, if you've got access to the whole series, I would recommend the approach that we took. You can dip into it, you can watch it from the beginning, you can just watch episodes at random. But it is interesting to pick a topic, like Aliens, and see what it has to say about that topic overall, and how that changed over the course of the six years or so that this series was on the air. And I look forward to doing that in the future with other topics. There are plenty of other topics that that this series returned to, in ways that'll be interesting to see. Ian: Oh yeah, this is not our last episode of In Search of We Kept Watching, it's just a fun well to go back to every once in a while. That's right. Problems, problems and positives, there's always more to discuss. Matthew: So I do still recommend watching it, I recommend kind of giving a shot to this approach to it. I do, as you pointed out and as we discussed earlier. Yeah, be aware that it is a product of its time, it is sometimes going to be very cringe, it is sometimes going to give you information that has been contradicted or corrected by research that has happened in the many decades since, but it's still interesting both for its own content and as a time capsule of weirdness from the 70s. Ian: Oh yes. I think this was worth going back to. Yeah, it's a good base line. It's an interesting watch and I Mean, I gotta say that theme song is still so much fun Ian: It really is Like like getting like getting smacked and mugged by a trumpet Matthew: And once again, not just the theme song, but there is some good music throughout the episodes. These little suspense building stingers and bits of mystery music as, as Leonard Nimoy describes something that's showing on screen. It's, it's well done. It makes it very immersive and it helps guide the sorts of wonder that they are hoping that you'll, you'll feel learning about these things. Ian: It's just good to see Leonard Nimoy and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I like him. Matthew: Yeah. Maybe we'll return Between this Ian: and Mission Impossible. Matthew: Yeah. Yeah, maybe we'll return to his previous show sometime and watch more Mission Impossible. Ian: Absolutely. Matthew: Well, our other usual question is, revive, reboot, or rest in peace? And again, we talked about this somewhat on our previous episode. any additional thoughts now that we've immersed ourselves in In Search of UFOs? Do you want to see More of this, sadly, without Leonard Nimoy. Or more, more of this kind of thing. Ian: Yeah, I mean, it's gotten its revivals and such, I admit. I don't know if I need to see more of them dive into aliens right now. Yeah. I think that they can let the aliens topic rest. They have, as we talked about, so many other things they discussed. And, I don't know if they have a lot of other discussions to go into. Matthew: I would say, in search of. The 1970s to early 80s TV series, when it comes to aliens as well, can rest in peace with the knowledge that it's still there for us to watch and enjoy, if we want to, and it has influenced so many other things. It has practically got whole cable TV channels that do what it was experimenting with in syndicated TV in the 70s. Ian: Absolutely. Matthew: So I don't think we need a revival. I don't think we need a reboot, but, it made its mark, and we will go back and watch more of it in the future as well. Ian: Oh, yes. We're absolutely going to explore it more. Matthew: And listeners, thank you for joining us on this search. We're glad you came in search of with us. very much. And it was fun to return to this, but we will be back soon with more things that we haven't talked about yet on the podcast. So join us again in a couple of weeks for more tales of media from the 20th century. Ian: And in the meantime, go find something new to watch.