What Next - Congress Wants to Know: Do Aliens Exist? | 2023 In Review
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While the What Next team spends some time with their families this week, we revisit some of 2023’s biggest, strangest, and best stories. Regularly scheduled programming resumes Jan. 2.
In a recent public hearing, three government officials told Congress that not only are “unidentified anomalous phenomena” real, they’re a major national security concern. But one witness took his testimony even further, claiming the government possesses materials of “non-human origin.” How much do we really know about UAPs – or, as they’re more commonly known, UFOs? And now that Congress is involved, are we about to learn a whole lot more?
Guest: Garrett Graff, contributor at WIRED magazine; author of the forthcoming book, “UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here—and Out There”
Originally aired July 7.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Spark your creativity with the Sims. Sometimes you might feel like you're not creative |
| 0:07.0 | and you have to go in search of your creative spark again. Maybe this is catching up with creative |
| 0:11.9 | friends, experimenting with a new look or trying out a new recipe. |
| 0:16.0 | And thanks to The Sims, inspiration is just one game and one spark away. |
| 0:21.0 | Ready to spark something? Download the Sims 4 and play for free. |
| 0:27.0 | Hey everyone, here at what next our job is to ask questions. |
| 0:34.6 | And this year we asked a lot of serious ones |
| 0:37.4 | about war, politics, fascism, health care, |
| 0:41.2 | but some of our questions were a little less orthodox. |
| 0:45.0 | Questions like, has Pickleball invaded our towns? |
| 0:49.0 | Do aliens exist? |
| 0:51.0 | And is Stephen Spielberg actually cursed? |
| 0:55.0 | Since it's the holidays, we wanted to take a break from the headlines |
| 0:58.4 | and listen back to some of our wackier questions. |
| 1:01.6 | So if you're on a little vacation from the news right now, first of all, |
| 1:05.1 | we forgive you. And second of all, we promise these shows are going to be like unwrapping |
| 1:08.5 | a present, the kind you actually want to get. Today we are asking a timeless question, is the truth out there? |
| 1:20.6 | Because it turns out this was a big year for unidentified flying objects. |
| 1:25.0 | Even Congress got involved. |
| 1:27.0 | This conversation aired back in July. |
| 1:29.0 | It's still one of our favorites. Last week things got a little weird in Washington. |
| 1:45.0 | The subcommittee hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena or |
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