Government Transparency & UFOs: Inside Military Programs and Classified Briefings

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Natural Sciences, Science

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2026

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Shermer sits down with attorney and bestselling author Kent Heckenlively for a tense, thoughtful, and surprisingly cordial conversation about UFOs, government secrecy, and the idea of "catastrophic disclosure."

Heckenlively argues that something real is being hidden. Not necessarily aliens, but information powerful enough to disrupt energy markets, military spending, and political authority. But beyond stories and secondhand testimony, where is the kind of evidence that would settle the question once and for all?

The episode takes up congressional hearings, whistleblowers, classified briefings, Cold War secrecy, optical illusions, advanced military technology, and why, after nearly 80 years, the UFO story continues to produce more questions than answers.

Kent Heckenlively is an attorney, science teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. His books have covered such topics as scientific fraud, bias at Google, Facebook, and CNN, promising medical therapies, as well as behind-the-scenes looks into the COVID-19 Task Force. His books have sold more than half a million copies. His new book is CATASTROPHIC DISCLOSURE: The Deep State, Aliens, and the Truth.

Transcript

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0:00.0	First atomic bomb is exploded, I think, July 16th, 1945.
0:06.0	Then we drop the bombs on Hiroshima Nagasaki.
0:09.0	August 15th, Japan officially surrenders.
0:13.0	August 16th, one day after Japan surrenders,
0:18.0	this spaceship crashes near the Trinity site where it is found by two young boys on horseback.
0:26.9	One of the military guys comes out years later and very publicly says,
0:31.4	we told the public garbage.
0:33.2	We didn't show them the real stuff.
0:35.2	The UFO sightings that culminated in sightings over Washington, D.C.
0:39.3	And reading this stuff from 1952 was fascinating because it didn't seem like the official stories had changed much.
0:48.3	You know, you had Air Force personnel saying, yes, we saw these things on radar. We sent pilots up. They saw things.
0:56.2	They alluded us. And also, the same line, which has been going on 73 years now, is nobody should
1:05.1	feel embarrassed to report these.
1:13.7	All right, everybody.
1:14.7	It's Michael Shermer.
1:16.7	It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer show.
1:18.9	Yes, as always brought to you by the Skeptic Society.
1:23.2	Go to skeptic.com and you can subscribe to Skeptic magazine.
1:24.2	You can make a donation.
1:28.7	We are a 501C3 nonprofit science education organization, and we duly appreciate your support. Okay, my guest today is Kent Hecken Lively. Did I pronounce that
1:36.9	right? I forgot to ask you before we came on. Who's an attorney, science teacher, and a New York
1:43.8	Times bestselling author.
	...

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