Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is the unexplained.

Thank you as ever for all of your communications, the steers that you give me in your emails, suggestions of guests and all that kind of stuff.

If you want to send me a guest suggestion or any thoughts about the show you know what you have to do, please go to my website,

the unexplained.tv, follow the link and you can send me a message from there and thank you very much to Adam Cornwell, my webmaster, for all of his hard work on this show through this year of 2019 and we are looking down the barrel at 2020, which is just astonishing to me.

You know as we sit here at the end of the year and I don't know where you are at the moment, I don't know what you're doing but presumably as we all do, you're thinking about what a new year might mean.

But I remember as I sit here being in this room and thinking about the term of the millennium in a 1999 into 2000, I remember my job at that time, I was working for Capital Radio in London and I had to go on air on the first of January 2000 and what I was doing here, I wasn't out partying that night, I was recording radio stations from around the world.

And recording the way that they saw the millennium in and so that I could go on the radio doing the news for London the next morning and I could actually play out recordings of how the world saw in that amazing event and to think that it's 20 years ago and I can remember listening to Art Bell at the time who talked a lot about the white who came bug and how that might affect the world's computer systems and tech systems as one century and one million years ago.

And one millennium clicked over into the next ultimately that didn't happen. A lot of people say that's because a lot of the groundwork was done to make sure it didn't and some people say it was never going to happen and that's a debate I'm sure that will go on but to think all of that happened 20 years ago is just amazing but you know I guess that's how life goes isn't it really.

I want to send you my good thoughts you know that I never make any predictions for a new year it's a superstition that I have but I want to send you my best thoughts for the new year that is to come and that's that's you know from me here in London in the quiet here now.

But thinking about the latest edition of the unexplained which we're about to do now the man we're going to speak with is a man who's been on my radio show and you know that every so often not very often but I ask somebody who's been on the radio show to come back and do a podcast with me so we can talk in a more expansive way about the things that they speak about this is the case with Ralph Pizzulo in Los Angeles who you will hear has had a remarkable life his father was in the US foreign service the service that station people abroad.

In various places like South America or Vietnam he's been in a lot of countries and done a lot of things and he was very young in all of those and gained a fascination for the people who carry out work for on behalf of the United States the people who do covert operations the military special forces and those sorts of people so Ralph has written extensively a fiction and nonfiction about such people knows a lot of these people because of his unique background he's a man who's got a lot of work to do.

He's also a man who's been involved in screenplays a totally fascinating guy with an amazing story who knows people that you and I will probably never meet so the guest on this edition we're going to go to Los Angeles and meet up at the end of the year this is with Ralph Pizzulo.

Thank you very much for everything that you've done for me over this year if you've sent a donation to the show thank you very much and if you haven't then please do consider that you know I operate.

My life operates on an absolute shoestring so if you've enjoyed what we've done here then please do consider leaving a donation for the show of course if you can't that's absolutely fine enjoy the show but if you'd like to leave a donation for the show the website is the unexplained.tv and you can follow a link there to make a donation if you have made one recently as I say thank you very very much indeed very very grateful you received so if you get in touch with the show please tell me who you are.

Where you are and how you use the show I think that's the last thing I was going to say before we get to Los Angeles and speak to the guest on this edition of the unexplained the return of Ralph Pizzulo.

Ralph thank you very much for coming back on my show. It's a pleasure thank you Howard for having me back well no listen one of the things about doing conversations and I don't call them interviews I call them conversations because that's what they should be on the radio is of course you've got all of the furniture all of the artifacts of doing radio around you you know you have the

commercial breaks that we couldn't exist without and various things which mean that you can only ever with some guests only ever scratch the surface so you can't actually go into the depths of things that you would like to and I felt with the conversation with you which was great and I wanted to talk with you again.

The difficulty was that there was stuff that we couldn't get into and I think also was one of those that I looked at the books done the research and I had a lot of specific questions that maybe didn't give you the chance to talk around things the way that we ought to so we're having a second bite of the cherry now and I think what we need to do for our listeners who are listening to us as a podcast and they don't hear the radio show out of the UK and there's no reason why they should can you first of all tell me a little bit about you because your background for what you do.

It's pretty unique and when I say that what I mean is that you write about these people who are involved in undercover operations but from a kid you lived it.

That's right. Yeah I had a very unique background my parents are both sons and daughters of Italian immigrants who came to this country in the turn of the century and they grew up in the Bronx of New York.

My father was a high school teacher and then he took an exam to join the diplomatic service which in the United States is called the Foreign Service.

None of us had I was five years old when he joined nobody in the family had ever heard of it before and suddenly we moved to Washington from New York City and we went on this big adventure which involved moving from country to country.

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