UFO;

On Sunday night's program, George Knapp was joined, for the full four hours, by UFO research pioneer Richard Dolan , who discussed the challenges of investigating UFOs in today's 21st century world, where we're flooded with claims, videos and data of all types. "By unpacking the UFO mystery," he marveled, "we are really diving into many, many important issues that are critical for our own era." Dolan noted that researching the phenomenon can have a transformative effect on a person as they begin to see institutions like the government and media from a wholly different perspective. Additionally, he said, new scientific realms, such as alternative physics and the study of consciousness, emerge when one examines the implications of UFOs being real. Despite being marginalized and mocked by the mainstream, Dolan contended that the topic of UFOs could be a "profound gateway" to ideas that could transform the world. Regarding the overwhelming amount of UFO news and information which has become available in the modern Internet era, Dolan lamented that "every single day, here comes another rumor or another claim or another video we have to look at." In order to help determine the validity and origins of potential UFO photos and claims, he advised students of the phenomenon to utilize simple tools like Google date and reverse image searches to potentially solidify the sources of this information. "Yes, we want to be open minded," he mused, "but we have to be critically minded at the same time." Dolan expressed optimism that, as technology advances, the ability to analyze potential UFO evidence will surpass the ability of hoaxers and frauds to create it. Dolan also addressed the systemic problem which stands in the way of proving the existence of UFOs. "It's not so much the 'proof' that we're talking about," he said, "but who is authorized to deem something as 'proof.'" To that end, Dolan observed that the scientific community has been positioned as "an authoritarian, societal system" which is granted the responsibility of determining the legitimacy of UFO evidence. However, since that system is "intertwined with our political and national security hierarchy," the efforts of mainstream science to fairly examine the UFO subject must be looked at with great suspicion. Over the course of his appearance, Dolan also shared a number of stories concerning retired military officials revealing UFO secrets prior to their death as well as government sabotage and infiltration of civilian UFO research groups.