Welcome everyone, it is time for the July 2021 Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio.

I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Plan Rad, Planetary Radio, and here is the Senior Space Policy

Advisor, the Chief Advocate for the Planetary Society, Kasey Dreyer. Kasey, great to be talking

to you again. Hey, Matt, happy summer for at least us in the Northern Hemisphere and I

guess happy winter for those in the Southern Hemisphere. Hey, it's a solstice wherever

you are on the pale blue dot, right? We have a special conversation today and it is extremely

timely because of something that has just been released. First, give us a little tease

of what is just ahead in this interview that you conducted. We are delighted to have Sarah Skulls,

who's a science journalist and author of the book, They Are Already Here, UFO Culture, and why we see

saucers, which I thought was a really interesting take on the motivations and people who really pursue

UFOology, which I believe is quite relevant right now as this episode is going to be kind of

talking about this Pentagon Department of Defense report on UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomenon,

that a lot of people I argue are jumping maybe a little too eagerly to conclusions about

the implications of this. She will be joining us. We'll go through her book. She has been writing

about this topic and understands and knows a lot of the people who've been showing up in this

discussion in the last few years. And we kind of trace through the context and history of why we

got to this report where it came from, who's pushing it to be released, and then also, of course,

talking about its implications. We actually recorded our conversation before the report was released.

We had seen hints of what was going to be in there. The report has subsequently come out. It does

not change at all. I don't think in any major way the outcome of our conversation. But it's

something that you're welcome to read. We link to it in the show notes here for this episode.

What I really want to impart today is not necessarily going through some kind of attempt to debunk

...