Project Blue Book: UFO TV Creators Talk Shop
About this episode
The episode features a discussion among UFO TV creators about the intersection of drama and real UFO cases.
What happens when the creators of two UFO television series compare notes on how to turn the phenomenon into drama? Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman welcome their friend David O’Leary , creator, writer and executive producer of History’s Project Blue Book , for a conversation about two shows that feel almost like secret-history bookends. Project Blue Book lives in the 1950s; Dark Skies begins in the 1960s. Both combine real people, authentic UFO cases and government secrecy with dramatic license—and, strangely enough, both produced exactly twenty hours of television. From J. Allen Hynek and Edward Ruppelt to Majestic-12, Roswell and the Washington UFO wave, three UFO TV creators finally get to talk shop. O’Leary also reveals just how personal his interest in the unexplained has always been. Long before creating Project Blue Book , he studied cognitive science at Vassar and conducted a sensory-deprivation telepathy experiment for his thesis. After selling the series, he had his own startling UFO sighting—a glowing green object moving through the trees above his Los Angeles neighborhood—and says…
People in this episode
Hosts: Bryce Zabel, Brent Friedman
Guest: David O’Leary
Topics covered
- UFOs
- television
- drama
- history
- government secrecy
- cognitive science
Keywords
- Project Blue Book
- UFO television
- dramatization
- cognitive science
- sightings
- government secrecy
- J. Allen Hynek
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: History, Majestic-12, Vassar
Places: Roswell, Washington, Los Angeles
More episodes of Sound, Light & Frequency
- The X-Files: The Truth Is Complicated
- ET Walks Into a Bar
- Peaks and Valleys of Woo
- Life After Contact
- Stranded on Earth
- Making (and faking) Aliens
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