We try to sort out the recent UFO shootdowns that have happened over North America. Ryan Sprague joins us to sift through the recent, dizzying news.

Will some use these “balloon” incidents to justify a “rekookification” of the UFO/UAP topic?  We discuss.

Thanks Ryan!

TRANSCRIPT

[intro music]

 This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.

 

JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold, and so glad to be with you. Today we are going to have a great conversation with really one of the foremost people, I think, in UFO studies today. I’m talking about Ryan Sprague. He is an author, he is a researcher, he is a TV personality, he is a podcaster, he’s a livestreamer. He does it all and does it all very well, and of course, he has his great website, somewhereintheskies.com, where you’ll find his livestreams and his podcasts and also his YouTube channel. So he’s doing great stuff.

 

I actually scrapped, Ryan, this week’s show – I didn’t scrap it, but I pushed it back a week so we could get – we’re recording this on Monday, it’ll be released on Tuesday. We’re trying to be as up-to-minute as possible because so much has happened in the world of UFOs, I would feel negligent if I didn’t have a UFO show. And who better to have it with than Ryan Sprague? Ryan, welcome to the show today.

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Always a pleasure, Jim. Yes, it’s been a very active couple weeks here in the UFO world. I’m sure we will dissect it piece by piece, and maybe we’ll figure out what these things were before the government does, who knows?

 

JIM HAROLD: [laughs] Well, we’ll see what happens. Let me ask you this question. I want to get your first blush, unvarnished opinion of generally what’s happened over the last two to three weeks.

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Right. Obviously, everyone in the world now knows about “the China balloon.” It was pretty scary when we first heard about it. I remember looking down at my phone and wondering, what the heck is going on here? And then, lo and behold, we shoot this thing down. So then that just ups the ante tenfold. And then, if that wasn’t enough, object after object was now being shot down in the skies over the United States and Canada.

 

So now we have an international string of incidents occurring, and somehow they all got wrapped into the UFO world. We’re smack dab in the middle of this thing and not really knowing what is going on, what these objects are or aren’t, and what our government – I should say the United States government – and Canada are doing about it. It’s been interesting. It’s been very dramatic, ups and downs, lefts and rights. I’m still trying to make sense of it myself. It’s very dizzying, to say the least.

 

JIM HAROLD: Absolutely it is. Really, the way I described it was surreal, because about a week and a half ago – it was a Friday; it was after what everybody agrees was a Chinese spy balloon, the one that was shot off the coast of South Carolina. But when that second object was shot down, it was kind of like – we were at a Sam’s Club or something, and it just felt surreal. I mean, absolutely surreal, like, is this something I’m seeing out of a movie? Because as far as I know, there had never been, ever, anything shot down over any part of America. NORAD had never shot down anything.

 

So one was wild, and then you’ve got the Canadian object, and then you’ve got another object, the one over Lake Huron. It’s just an extremely weird time. And I agree with you, and I think that’s very observant: this works on two different levels. On the first level is national security for both the U.S. and Canada. People, adversaries, are flying stuff over our territories. Not good. A lot of bad things could come of that. Then you get the UFO question layered upon that.

 

So I will ask you: Are we correct to layer the UFO-UAP subject over this national security situation? Does it pertain, is it pertinent tot his question of what’s happened over the last two or three weeks?

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: I would say so. Many will argue we’re dealing with some sort of prosaic surveillance equipment or even commercial balloons of some sort. Whatever we’re dealing with, at least to the public, remains unidentified. So right there, these are unidentified objects flying in our skies. The term “UFO” could not be more obvious right now. We’re not talking little green men. We’re not talking about space aliens visiting in their flying saucers. We’re talking about unidentified flying objects in U.S. airspace. We don’t know what they are. They were shot down, and supposedly we are not going to recover the debris – we can’t recover the debris, according to the military, according to the White House. Whether that’s true or not, I’m sure we can discuss.

 

However, the fact of the matter is there’s these mysteries in our skies that we’re just now hearing about. The real question, I think, is how long have we actually known about them? That’s something that I’m looking into right now. I’m currently speaking with several former NORAD staff members who have pretty much told me, “We’ve been tracking these things for a very long time. Don’t believe everything you hear that we’re just now turning on ‘balloon setting’ up there at NORAD and finding all these things.” I mean, take that for what you will, but interesting times nonetheless.

 

JIM HAROLD: The claim is that the reason that the shootdowns happened, that we located these kind of things – and this is in layperson’s terms, but the sensitivity settings of the radar were amped up and that it wasn’t that there were more things flying over us, but we didn’t know then. There was this acknowledgment gap. And by dialing up those settings, the claim from the government is, now we’re seeing them – thus the actions that took place, the shootdowns.

 

So there wasn’t an increase in activity; there was an increase in detection. That’s the claim. What you’re hearing from your sources is, “Ryan, that’s kind of B.S. We’ve known about these things all along.” Is that essentially what you’re hearing?

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Essentially. And again, these come from sources that I cannot name, obviously, just yet. It’s up to everyone else in the community and outside the community, anyone listening to this, whether they believe that or not. But I think the bigger issue here, Jim, is we’re getting so many different stories. We’re getting one story from the White House, one story from the Pentagon, one story from the pilots describing these things that they encountered in the skies before they shot them down completely differently. One’s an octagon, one’s cylindrical, one’s gray, one’s…

 

JIM HAROLD: One’s a balloon, one’s not a balloon. Exactly.

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Yeah. We’re not getting our story straight.

 

JIM HAROLD: And I think we leave that first one out of this discussion. We’re talking about those three – the first one we leave out of this discussion, the South Carolina balloon, Chinese. We know what that is. But we’re talking about those three subsequent ones that were shot down, right?

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Yes, that’s correct. The big question now is – they were shot down; we were supposed to be recovering them to try to understand what these things were, but all of trying to find these things has been terminated. The White House has said, “We’re not going to do it.” And I understand; it’s probably very difficult to find the debris that was shot down, for many reasons. The terrain in which they crash landed. Many reasons for things like that.

 

However, if you’re going to shoot something down, the next step is to figure out what it is you just shot down. I mean, we’re seeing whispers of Roswell all over again, and I think that’s why the term “UFO” and the UFO world is going crazy over this story. While it may not have anything to do with unknown craft from different planets, different solar systems, the fact of the matter is we don’t know what they are, and we’re saying that they are down there, but that we’re not going to recover the debris. This sounds exactly like Roswell all over again.

 

I can tell you this: I didn’t think in 2023 that I would be talking about weather balloons in the UFO field again, yet here we are somehow.

 

JIM HAROLD: One of the claims that I’ve read out there – and we talked about it on last week’s livestream that I did with Micah – was this idea that at least one of them was like a $12 pico hobby balloon put out by this Northern Illinois Bottlecap Rocket Brigade. Something like that is their name, just off the top of my head. Do you buy that? Do you think any of these objects are just simply hobby balloons, or do you think this is being used as an excuse to say, “Well, nothing to see here”?

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: I think both. I think we are probably dealing with hobby balloons, we’re dealing with drones that shouldn’t be in the airspace that they’re being located in, and I think we’re dealing with highly sensitive surveillance technology. Whether that’s United States technology or somewhere else is yet to be seen. Again, we’re hearing so many differing thoughts and theories, whether it’s in the media or from the White House and the Pentagon themselves.

 

So I think we’re dealing with a lot of different things, and it remains a mystery until they actually tell us what’s going on. And at this point, we just don’t have that information, and we can’t make any definitive conclusions until that data is given to the scientists who can then go look at this stuff. And now we’re even hearing that that’s not happened. You have groups like AARO, this newly established office within the Pentagon to investigate these things, and they’re not even being used for this right now, which is the specific reason that this office was established. We learned through President Biden that he has an interagency group looking into all this.

 

So my question right now is, you establish a UAP or UFO office in the Pentagon – once again, to look at these things – and you’re not using them. That seems very odd to me, to say the least.

 

JIM HAROLD: Does that beg the question – was that establishment, that agency or that organization within the government, in the Pentagon – was that just for show, to shut up people like us?

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Could be. We could be looking at a Project Blue Book 2.0. I was told, however, that Sean Kirkpatrick, the gentleman in charge of AARO within the Pentagon – excuse me, within the Department of Defense. I should make that very clear. That is separate from the Pentagon. He was at the briefings, these classified briefings that many of our senators and representatives were a part of. They were told a little bit more than the public about what’s going on, and look, they still have a lot of questions as well. We saw members like Marco Rubio come out and say, “Uh, 99% of what we were told in there could be told to the public, but for some reason they’re not telling you guys, and that doesn’t seem right.”

 

Take that for what you will. You have a bipartisan approach to all this, bipartisan support of AARO within the Department of Defense, yet the White House isn’t using them when they should be. So I don’t know. It seems like a lot of inner workings within the U.S. intelligence apparatus that is kind of butting heads right now and dealing with this in different ways. I know where it’s all heading, but I am riding the wave, and I can’t wait to see what comes next. It’s like living in a new Cold War, almost. I don’t see that as a good thing, but I also do wonder what is going on in our skies, and will we know what these things were that were shot down?

 

JIM HAROLD: We’re talking with Ryan Sprague here on the Paranormal Podcast all about the events of the last two or three weeks in regard to these mysterious objects being shot down in our skies, and we will be back with Ryan right after this.

 

The Paranormal Podcast is brought to you by Grammarly. I enjoy writing, and I do a lot of writing for my work, a lot of emails, my email newsletter. It’s something that I enjoy. But the thing is, specifically with email, it’s very difficult to get the right tone across. I feel like there’s times when I’ve written an email that I thought, “Ooh, I got the tone just right” and the person understood what I was trying to get across. Maybe it was confident and made me look like I knew what I was doing, which is always a good feeling. But then again, I’ve sent emails in the past where, “Ooh, that sounded a little harsh. I didn’t mean it that way.”

 

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If you love the Paranormal Podcast, be sure to check out Jim Harold’s Campfire, where ordinary people share their extraordinary stories of ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and terrifying encounters. Find it for free wherever you listen to this podcast. Tune in to Jim Harold’s Campfire today. Now, we return to the Paranormal Podcast.

 

JIM HAROLD: We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast. Our guest is Ryan Sprague. He is really at the forefront of this and very tied in with what’s going on with all of these events, and reaching out to his sources and gathering all this information and sharing it on his podcast, on his YouTube channel, on his livestreams, and also, kindly, with us today.

 

Ryan, again, I’m nowhere near as – I’m more of a generalist in terms of – and I put this in the paranormal field because I don’t necessarily think that it’s spiritual or anything, but it’s unexplained, it’s anomalous, so I use those interchangeably. I’m more of a generalist. I’m not tied in like you are to the UFO community, and that’s okay. But even from where I sit – and I’ve shared this with you – I think there is a divide in government. I think there’s a divide in the U.S. government. When we talk about the government in relation to UFOs, we tend to think of it as a monolith. Do you believe that today, as we sit here in 2023, that there is a serious divide within the U.S. government on how to deal with the UFO-UAP question?

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Absolutely. You can trace it all the way back to the work of someone like Luis Elizondo, the former Director of AATIP, the once-secret Pentagon UFO program. The reason he resigned was for that very reason. There were different sections within the government that were not taking this topic seriously, so he got out. He said, “You know what? I’m going to go do this outside of the purview, because none of you are taking this seriously.”

 

And look at what has happened since then. Now, in 2023, we’re seeing all of these unidentified objects in our skies that we didn’t know were there. Not only that, you also have representatives like Marco Rubio, like Senator Gillibrand, putting legislation through saying that the government isn’t doing their job when it comes to this, and they’re not giving information to these groups that we’ve established to investigate UFOs.

 

A gentleman just came forward recently who worked for the UAP Taskforce who said it was not only – it wasn’t like pulling teeth to get the information out of these people, it was like pulling every bone of their body out just to get anything from them. And he works within the Pentagon. So I think what we’re seeing is a lot of different agencies using this topic in many different ways, whether it’s to maybe get funding, whether it’s to continue some sort of coverup within their own agency on what they know or don’t know about UFOs. I do believe there are factions within government that are wrestling with this topic and this issue right now.

 

You have those who want the information brought out and you have those who don’t, and I think that’s been going on for a very, very long time – probably back to the days of Roswell. I’m sure there were many people in the U.S. Air Force who wanted that information out and many who didn’t. I think we’re seeing that play out again right now with a White House sponsored program that President Biden wants to establish right now to deal with this issue and a separate entity, again, known as AARO, that was funded to do this very thing, yet they’re not being used for it. That’s very telling right there, more than anything.

 

JIM HAROLD: You had mentioned potential coverups or different fiefdoms. Why would you speculate, why wouldn’t they want to get the truth out? Especially if the naysayers say the idea of E.T. and interdimensional travelers and all the more I guess “out there” explanations are silly and they’re B.S., why wouldn’t you want to get all the information out there – unless there’s something they don’t want us to know?

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: There will always be a part of this conversation that remains unexplained. While many of these objects probably are balloons, probably are surveillance equipment, probably are hobby drones or balloons as well, there’s going to be a percentage that are not, and it’s that small percentage that has kept me going for so many years, investigating this phenomenon, that has kept people like Luis Elizondo invigorated to try to unravel this mystery for so long as well.

 

I think what we’re seeing, Jim, is kind of a modern myth in the making. We’re seeing a Roswell sort of scenario play out right now. When the U.S. government is not transparent with the public about what these things are or aren’t, that’s when we’re going to start theorizing. That’s when we’re going to start creating our own idea of what these things were that were shot down.

 

I honestly believe that there is a core phenomenon happening ,and the U.S. government is aware of it; they know it’s not China, they know it’s not Russia, they know it’s not ours. it’s something else, and what that something else is – I don’t know if we’re getting any closer to those answers. But I think what we’re seeing right now is – I don’t want to use that monolithic term of “the government,” but we have parts of the government using this to say, “It’s all balloons. It’s all surveillance equipment.”

 

I think I said it in your livestream recently: They were UAPs until they were shot down and we’re supposed to think they’re balloons, we’re supposed to think they’re hobby things, they’re China, they’re Russia. “But they’re not aliens. Let’s go back to the term ‘UFOs’ again.” That’s why we’re seeing in the media “unidentified object,” “unidentified object.” But for the past few years, they wanted to call them UAPs. Why have they all of a sudden decided not to call them that? I don’t know. But again, it’s very interesting.

 

JIM HAROLD: Words are powerful, and so are acronyms, and I think that UFOs have gotten associated with, let’s face it, what some would call “the kook factor.” So “Let’s make this kooky, let’s make it silly again, let’s do the Fife Symington thing after the Phoenix Lights,” where they had a person come in and dress up like an alien – which later Symington himself said he saw the Phoenix Lights and thought they were very interesting. But I guess what I’m saying is, I think I’ve just coined a phrase: I think the plan is to “re-kookify” UFOs. You can use that. Just give me –

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: I was going to say, you need to trademark that immediately, Jim. [laughs]

 

JIM HAROLD: Yeah. Re-kookify. I think that’s what’s going to happen. That’s exactly what I was going to ask you next. You anticipated it. There’s an old saying in politics: “Never let a crisis go to waste.” And what better way to say, “Oh, this escaped Pandora’s Box with all the New York Times and Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean and all the work she did, and it really brought it out there and de-kookified it. But now, here’s our opportunity to put it back in the box and re-kookify it,” and just make it “Oh, these crazy people with their UFOs, you gotta be joking. That’s ridiculous.”

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Yeah.

 

JIM HAROLD: I think that’s what we’re in the midst of, and I think that some of the biggest cheerleaders for that are the mainstream media. I saw a headline, something about the problem with belief in UFOs or interest in UFOs. That was the gist of the headline. And now it’s like “conspiracy theorists.” So now people who are interested in UFOs are conspiracy theorists. That’s the Scarlet Letter in 2023, right? “Misinformation.” “Dangerous.” I think that’s where they’re trying to box in people who are interested in that.

 

And I’m not just talking about people who are true believers and believe anything in the sky are space aliens. But reasonable people who say exactly what you said – and this is my belief – most of these things are totally explicable by mundane, prosaic explanations. They’re either fixed-wing aircraft, military aircraft, heavenly bodies, drones, for goodness’ sake, these days, hobby balloons, whatever it might be. Unfortunately, there are people who hoax things and make things up. That’s sad but true; it always will be. But there’s a small percentage that legitimately deserve further investigation, and because you believe that doesn’t make you a kook. But I think that’s where certain people want people like us to be placed.

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: I think you’re right. You know what else is dangerous? Having the U.S. President say, “I don’t make any apologies. I will shoot down anything that’s in the U.S. airspace.” [laughs] To me, that just says – and look, I agree with what the president did. I do, to a certain extent. However –

 

JIM HAROLD: I think he should’ve shot it down sooner. That’s just my bias, but go ahead.

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: I completely understand that. My issue with that is, now you’re sort of empowering the public to just go ahead and also shoot down whatever the heck they want to shoot down in the skies, too. So I think what we’re seeing here is – yes, these things could be a threat, potentially, if we don’t know what they are. They could be a threat both in terms of national security and also to our pilots out there, flying. These things are coming into their airspace.

 

But at the same time, I think if they were just a little bit more transparent with us with what is going on, that would alleviate a lot of the paranoia going on right now. Now everyone’s looking up at the skies and wondering, “Oh my God, what did I just see? Was that China? Was that one of ours? What’s going on, what’s going on?”

 

Again, we’ll see where all of this heads, but I think you’re right; I think this is a way that they can kind of put the UFO topic back in its box, wrap it up nice and tight, and say, “We’re going to put that one back under the tree and we’ll go back to it next year” or something like that. I think you’re right. I think we’re seeing that happen right now.

 

I personally refuse to let that happen because for every one of these balloons, there’s 20 people out there who’ve seen something that’s not a balloon, that’s not a drone. That’s where I’m at right now. I think we need to, again, focus on the stuff that cannot be explained. Yes, I think we should solve every one of these UFOs with a prosaic explanation if we can. But again, it’s that 1% that keeps people like me going, and that 1% that could truly change the entire conversation – change humanity, to be completely honest.

 

I would just urge people not to forget that. No matter where this topic heads in 2023 with all of this going on – I’m hearing another balloon was possibly just spotted off the coast of Hawaii as well – don’t forget there’s a core mystery to this, and that we’re still trying to figure that out.

 

JIM HAROLD: Another theory that I had shared with Micah Hanks on our livestream was this. Perhaps the shootdown of those three objects – maybe the government knew exactly what they were, knew they were of no harm, but shot them down as a display of power.

 

In other words, I think the U.S. came off looking very weak after that first Chinese balloon. I mean, I understand all the explanations of you have to be careful of citizenry and damage on the ground, which makes sense to a point, but I think if they had shot it down early – I’m sure they ID’d, when that was over Alaska, I’m sure they knew what it was. I don’t think we’re spending trillions of dollars for the U.S. military to be inept, and I don’t think that they are. So I think they knew what it was. I think they could’ve shot it down right away over probably an unpopulated area.

 

Now, the only thing is, okay, yeah, supposedly the U.S. could have gotten some kind of intelligence by letting it run its mission, but that seems kind of backward to me. It’s like, even if it’s just the optics of letting the Chinese government basically run roughshod – and we have spy satellites flying all over the world, and spy planes, and the other countries do too – but there was something different about this. It was closer, somehow. I think intellectually most of us realize there’s spy satellites over the U.S. all the time, and we’re not shooting things out of space yet, thank goodness. Hope that doesn’t happen. But this seemed different. This seemed more intrusive, especially to the U.S., which has a reputation of being somewhat impenetrable because of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Even though that’s false, because ICBMs don’t respect oceans. But there’s something different about this, about the optics of it.

 

So maybe somehow, and with the knee-jerk – not knee-jerk, but strong reaction from people about this, and “That should’ve been shot down sooner,” somebody somewhere in the White House or the Pentagon said, “Okay, let’s go in the other direction. Let’s just start shooting stuff out of the sky to show this shall not be repeated.” I have pointed out Nixon used a similar strategy with the Soviets during the Cold War; he wanted the Soviets to think he was crazy. It was specifically called “the madman theory.” The idea was “don’t mess with Nixon because he’ll put his finger on the button as soon as he’ll have a cup of coffee, so let’s not mess with the U.S. while he’s president.”

 

What are your thoughts about that? Do you think that was the justification, maybe, for these shootdowns – a flex of power and to say “don’t tread on us anymore”?

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Absolutely. I think in terms of optics, this was a very clear message from the president of what happens if you do try to send your surveillance equipment over here, especially so low and within the range of our pilots out there flying commercially and whatnot, and over our military training facilities nonetheless.

 

JIM HAROLD: Nuclear facilities too.

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Absolutely. I just learned yesterday that many members of the U.S. Air Force who were once a part of these “UFOs and nukes” cases testified with AARO, the group within the Pentagon. So they are speaking to them, and they’re trying to understand what happened to these individuals retroactively.

 

But to your point, yes, I do believe that they are using this mystery to their benefit in terms of showing the rest of the world what happens if you mess with us. And look, every country does it. Just like you said, everyone’s spying on everyone. That’s just the way the world works.

 

JIM HAROLD: Allies spy on each other. [laughs]

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Right. So I think, again, what we’re seeing right now is the United States playing their cards close to the chest. They’re not going to give out all of the information they have, because honestly, they probably do need to keep some of that.

 

JIM HAROLD: Oh yes.

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: And a lot of it probably does have to do with national security. So I understand that, for sure. I just wish that what we would see right now is more transparency on what the objects were. If, like you said, they do know what some of these objects were, and you have members like Marco Rubio and Gillibrand saying, “They could tell you guys this tomorrow and it wouldn’t affect national security” – then you have to wonder, why? Why are they doing that?

 

Also, I think there are things in the skies they still can’t explain in any conventional way, and that will always be a part of this as well.

 

JIM HAROLD: So what can the average person do to try to help move this along? If Senators Rubio and Gillibrand are frustrated, what can little old Jim and Ryan and people watching or listening to this do to try to compel and insist on some transparency? I’m like you; hey, I’m a very patriotic American. I know our country has our faults, but I still think it’s the best game in town. I’m a big respecter of our military. I try to be respectful of the president, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, because that office is worthy of respect regardless of what you think about the person in it. And I understand the need for national security and keeping some things secret. It makes perfect sense.

 

However, it’s extremely frustrating when you see what seems to be an obvious coverup of something that could be disclosed – as you said, the senators mentioned this could be disclosed, the vast majority of it, to the American people to no harm. That is frustrating. So what can we do to try to get our representatives at all levels to be a little more transparent with us, if anything?

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Reach out to them. As local as humanly possible. There have been huge strides in the past few years of individuals reaching out to their representatives, and then that just works its way up the chain, to the point where people like Senator Gillibrand or Rubio then put pressure on the establishment to look into this stuff and to be a bit more transparent with the public that are literally paying their paychecks. We’re seeing a reactionary thing going on here. When you reach out to your representatives, how work for you, the public, they, on your behalf, will then go up and say, “We need to look further into this.”

 

And now, like I said, they just passed language within the last National Defense bill that says it’s okay to come forward. There’s no repercussions; if you worked on some sort of UFO project in the past, you can now talk about it. Or they’re going all the way back now and looking at UFO cases from 1945 and onward, looking at this from a retroactive approach to see if anything going on in the past has anything to do with what they’re seeing in the skies today, and that’s huge. That is an enormous stride that has been made by the pressure of the U.S. Congress and by the pressure of the public that went to the members of Congress to try to get these answers.

 

So what we’re seeing is a ripple effect. If they’re going to keep being nontransparent and keep the public in the dark about this, we’re going to push harder. All I can say to your audience is, keep pushing. Keep pushing for UFO disclosure, however you decide to define that term. You’d be surprised at what can happen, and we’re seeing it play out right now.

 

JIM HAROLD: You talk about one person making a difference. Think about the reporter in – I think it was Billings, I’m not sure – but somewhere in Montana, the one reporter who I believe took photographs of this or brought this to the forefront, if I’m hearing correctly. One person. Because the truth is, if that person doesn’t do that, maybe it never comes out. I don’t think that “the government” voluntarily would’ve said, “Hey, there’s something in our skies. It’s probably of Chinese origin.” I think it took an individual citizen to say, “Hey, what is that?”

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Exactly. It took one person to get a clear shot of that balloon to make this whole thing bust wide open. And it took just a few people to leak those U.S. Navy videos to the New York Times, and then they’re backed into a corner and they have no option but to approach it, to acknowledge it. Where it goes from there is a completely different story, but I strongly commend reporters like that for doing what they did to keep this conversation alive, and to keep the pressure on. So I think it’s awesome, and I hope we see more of that in the journalistic world moving forward in 2023.

 

JIM HAROLD: Very cool indeed. Something else that is cool indeed is everything Ryan does. So Ryan, can you tell people what you’re up to? You’ve been doing such great work. I saw your interview with Richard Nolan and something you released over the last couple of days, your latest livestream. You’re doing such great work on both the livestream and the podcast and everything you do. So tell people what you’re up to and how they can find it.

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Thank you, Jim. In terms of the story playing out right now, I’ll be interviewing Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, one of the Navy pilots who chased the Tic-Tac UFO. She’s going to be coming on Somewhere in the Skies to talk all about the stuff going on right now, her thoughts and theories on this story playing out and why this is all happening and why we need to remain vigilant and keep looking up in our skies and wondering what’s out there, because there’s a lot of stuff out there that’s not balloons and not surveillance equipment. So I’m really looking forward to that.

 

Everything I do, like you said, can be found on my YouTube channel, just Ryan Sprague. Podcast is every Monday at somewhereintheskies.com, or wherever you get the Paranormal Podcast. Just staying busy and riding this wave as long as I possibly can, Jim. It’s making my hair turn grayer and grayer every day, but I wouldn’t change that for anything.

 

JIM HAROLD: Ryan Sprague. He is one of the best. Make sure you check out everything he does. Ryan, as always, thank you for being a part of the show.

 

RYAN SPRAGUE: Thank you, Jim.

 

JIM HAROLD: And thank you for tuning in to the show. We certainly appreciate it. We, as I said before, “scrapped” the planned release of a show that we’ll have next week, which is a great show with Mitch Horowitz talking about uncertain places – which is not really UFO talk, but more kind of metaphysical talk. He’s always fascinating. That’ll be on next week. We wanted to make sure to get this in this week to react to late breaking details. I emailed Ryan on Sunday, and within minutes he was back and said, “I’d love to be on the show.” So appreciate him taking time from his busy schedule, and appreciate you tuning in.

 

If you enjoy the show, please tell your friends. Maybe even text them a link from this very episode. I think that’d be a very cool way for them to find it and hear everything Ryan has to say about this. And make sure to check out all of Ryan’s stuff.

 

We will talk to you next time, and I’m sure Ryan agrees: keep your eye to the sky. Bye-bye, everybody.

 

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