Inside NASA's UFO coverup culture | Reality Check

Inside NASA's UFO coverup culture | Reality Check

July 7, 2026 · 1h 6m

About this episode

Ross Coulthart interviews Michael Gold about NASA's handling of UAP and the associated stigma in the scientific community.

In this episode of "Reality Check," Ross Coulthart sits down with Michael Gold, president of Redwire Space and a former member of NASA's UAP Independent Study Team, for a candid look at how the agency has handled the subject. Gold explains what the study team was actually asked to do, which was to weigh whether UAP was worth NASA's attention and what resources it could bring to bear, rather than to analyze the anomalous imagery already sitting in the agency's own archives. He is direct about the stigma that shadows the field, describing scientists warned they could lose their jobs, tenure and their ability to publish for simply asking the question, including a physicist and frequent guest of this show who lost his position after appearing on it. The conversation moves through the Apollo 17 triangle and the Apollo 11 blue lights, the Robertson Panel that helped set decades of ridicule in motion and the work Gold is now leading through the Disclosure Foundation to reopen NASA's archives alongside astronomer Beatriz Villarroel and physicist Maaneli Derakhshani. It closes where Gold argues where the real stakes sit, on national security, a race with China and his warning…

People in this episode

Host: Ross Coulthart

Guest: Michael Gold

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Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: NASA, Redwire Space, Disclosure Foundation, Robertson Panel

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