"It's NOT Bullsh*t!" Neil DeGrasse Tyson On UFO Files, Aliens, Wormholes And Steven Spielberg

15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson:But the Carl Sagan story turned movie. You know why? Because they don't show the aliens. It's left to your imagination. We see the handiwork of the aliens, but to see an alien, that forces you into the imagination of the storyteller, rather than into your own imagination, which often can transcend that. So I think that's the best film to capture an encounter with aliens. And it explored how we might react to it. Different occults rising up, you know, saying we have a new god or a new this. And people, you know, you know we would behave that way in the face of that information. But yeah, that one and 2001 A Space Odyssey also didn't show the aliens, just showed their handiwork.

15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson:No, no, no. In all fairness, if I had to pick one that had an alien in it, it would be The Blob from 1958 starring Steve McQueen. Why? That was The Alien. It came by Meteor or something. It was just a blob. It was non-humanoid. It didn't have eyes, nose, mouth. It was just a blob. And it came down transparent. Yeah, it did. It was a transparent blob. And then after it consumed its first victim, amoeba style, it was red for the rest of the film.

16:24Piers Morgan:Yeah, yeah.

16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson:And it could ooze under doorways and through air ducts.

16:29Piers Morgan:It was terrifying, but completely terrifying.

16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson:That's a good alien for you.

16:34Piers Morgan:Love it. Neil, great to have you back on our sense. So congratulations on the book, Take Me to Your Leader, an absolutely fascinating tome, as always, from Neil deGrasse Tyson. Great to have you back. Thank you very much.

16:47Neil deGrasse Tyson:Excellent. Thank you.

16:49Piers Morgan:Well, we've heard what the scientific approach to aliens might be, but how would people react if it actually happened? The new Sky documentary answers that question by telling the incredible story of the 1995 Roswell alien autopsy scandal. Here's a taster.

17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson:Footage has emerged claiming to be authentic US military vision of alien beings.

17:09Piers Morgan:When I first saw the footage, I saw hell fire. But none of us knew that it would take off like it did. Is it real or is it not? Could this really be genuine? And is this the smoking gun? What I just want to know is the truth. It's real. Talking about the biggest cover-up that's gone on on this planet. It's coming up within Congress. The answer really lies with the cameraman. I am the person who shot the bill. Joining me now are Gary Shufield, who was behind creating the original alien autopsy footage, and John Humphreys, the genius artist who created the aliens, and the director of that new documentary, The Alien Autopsy Scandal, John Dower.

17:54Piers Morgan:So welcome to all of you. Gary, you were one of the masterminds behind the hoax footage, although you and your co-producer Ray Santelli refused to call it a hoax. You insist the footage was a recreation of a genuine 1947 Roswell autopsy film, which you discovered in the 90s, and that by the time you brought the physical film canisters back to the UK, the film had almost completely disintegrated and oxidised due to poor storage. And you say you hired a team to recreate the entire autopsy frame by frame using the remaining scraps as a visual reference. And we can see some of this on screen so that viewers know, I think, what we're talking about here, some Yule here.

18:39Piers Morgan:Have we got that? Yeah. So this is what we're saying, which is a recreation of what you say was on the original film canisters. Now, a lot of people have been pretty cynical about this and think you never saw any original footage and this is all bullshit. What do you say to them? I say it's not bullshit. It's all real. Ray discovered the footage. We were both in America. He went to visit the cameraman in Florida and got introduced to the footage. None of us had anything to do with the UFO community. So we didn't have any prior knowledge. We didn't know what Roswell was or anything like it. And then eventually when we got the footage, as you rightly say, it had degraded and was in poor shape.

19:23Piers Morgan:So we had to recreate it, restore it, which is how we referred to it, because it contained real footage. And we've stuck by that ever since and we've never said anything else. We totally believe it's real and true and you're always going to get naysayers. This footage was entirely handmade inside a residential flat in Camden in North London. The visual illusion was meticulously masterminded by filmmaker and magician Spiros Milaris, who designed the shoot as a psychological experiment on belief. Now, John Humphreys, you're a very talented special effects sculptor. You've worked on Doctor Who, amongst many other things.

20:00Piers Morgan:You built this extraterrestrial from scratch over a period of three weeks. So tell me about your role in this. Well, I was approached by Spiros, who told me that Ray Santilli had bought some alien autopsy footage, but it was really quite badly degraded. And Ray wanted to recreate the footage, restore the footage in a way, so that it could be broadcast. And so as a team of us, we set about sculpting the alien and trying to recreate what I've shown on film. Now, I understand the creature's brain consisted of three sheep's brains covered in clear jelly. You originally considered, or Malaris did, using dark raspberry jelly for the brain matter, but rejected it because it looked too dark on black and white film.

21:01Piers Morgan:The rest of the chest cavity was packed with a pig's pluck, the lungs, heart and windpipe, cow gizzards, chicken intestines and a leg of lamb. It all sounds very Silence of the Lambs. Well, quite handily. I lived right next to Smithfield Market at the time. So being a former butcher's boy, I had a bit of an idea how to approach this. it wasn't a massive budget. And so it was a very simple way of recreating the footage. Now, Gary, when the footage was released, the media reaction was obviously gigantic around the world. But when television executives and investigators demanded proof of the anonymous US military cameraman who supposedly sold you guys the film, you managed what people believed was a cover-up.

21:57Piers Morgan:He tracked down a homeless man on the streets of Los Angeles, paid him, shaved him and filmed him in a cheap motel room reading a scripted statement to pass him off to TV networks as the authentic 1947 veteran. Is all that true? Yes. The real cameraman didn't want to be exposed. He didn't want his name given out to anybody. We stuck to our promise. We never revealed his details or anything about him. So we had no choice but to replace him. Now, television networks bought the broadcast rights. Fox paid Santilli between$150 ,000 and$250 ,000 for the US rights alone. And it's been reported that you guys absolutely cleaned up by selling VHS tapes directly to the public.

22:44Piers Morgan:Is that true? Some of that's true. So what we did was we actually gave the footage free to the broadcasters. They all made their own version of the documentary. There's no one documentary that went out around the world. Channel 4 had one. Obviously, Fox had one and a lot of other broadcasters. And the deal we did was you can't say it's fake unless you can prove it. If you can prove it's fake, fair. But nobody, not one broadcaster, ever said it was fake. And in return, we got the home video rights. How much have you made from this? I really couldn't say. Well, give me a ballpark. I really couldn't say, honestly.

23:23Piers Morgan:Half a million, a million, ten million. ago. It's a long time ago. Spiros told us, Spiros told us, Gary, that you made 18 million. Is that true? Well, that's an interesting number. I wish my bank account would reflect such facts, but I'm afraid it doesn't. What would be a more accurate figure? Nothing like that. It was a very good project for us financially and commercially. That was our intention. What it unleashed around the world was a fast station because Roswell was not a household name back then we had a lot to do with that and um i think it was the governor of new mexico used our footage to try and get the blue book opened by the u.s government which is anybody who saw the blue book show on the history channel is where all the files are kept um and it's just gone on from there so i think we did the world of service by opening that door okay well let's bring in john dow the director of the documentary you're not as convinced are you by this um no i mean i i have been making documentaries for nearly 30 years this is easily the most bonkers thing i've ever been involved with and i made a film with louis about scientology so that's saying something i mean i i have moment i mean i want to believe i do want to believe that there is other life forms if only to you know as you were discussing with your last guest, Neil, you know, if only they can save us from ourselves.

24:47Piers Morgan:But I had moments speaking to Gary and Ray where I did believe this idea of these original frames from a 1947 film. But the more I went into this story, it is a totally bonkers story. And it is like entering a hall of mirrors. And I got very lost in it. At times, I think I'm still lost in it. And I still think Ray maybe saw something, but I find the whole issue of the original frames difficult to square with some of the contradictions in the story. And when you add in the cameraman who ended up being faked as a homeless guy in LA, does that add to your cynicism about this? Yes. although at each there were moments where i'd suddenly no this isn't true and then we'd speak to another character so that there are other characters in this series including um a gentleman called richard doughty who is a former um u.s air force intelligence officer who told me very matter of fact that he saw in his time this is a man who had access to area 51 he saw

26:09Piers Morgan:similar to Ray and Gary's. He also told me that the American government had a live alien from Roswell that they kept in captivity two or three years. So every time I found, and I came into this story genuinely believing Ray and Gary, if only because they told me it so many times with so much truth, I thought that the pair of them would be clinically insane to keep telling me the same story over and over again. Well, or... So I kind of did. Well, I'll come back to Gary. I mean, obviously, you could either be clinically insane or you could just be extremely smart, cunning operators who concocted all this, brought in John to create a brilliant recreation of the creatures, marketed it superbly, faked the camera guy who mysteriously didn't want to appear and got a homeless guy to do it, did all this, and made a ton of cash, in which case I would say, you know, well done.

27:08Piers Morgan:But a lot of people are torn. I'm sure the documentary won't really. I mean, there's no way that John can definitively say you faked it, but there's also no way of anyone outside of you in your small group of people knowing that you didn't, right? In other words, how do we know? Okay, so John said that he believed this because we told the same story time and time again, no changes, no mistakes. It's so much easier to remember the truth than to remember lies. So that's how I'd answer that one. Except that I've interviewed a lot of serial killers and psychopaths and people, and they're very, very good liars, and they train themselves to repeat this.

27:51Piers Morgan:I'm not saying you are. I'm just saying I have interviewed a lot of people who are very, very good at not tripping up when they've concocted a story to suit a purpose, which in their case is to try and get out of lifetime in prison. In your case, the motivation is obvious, which is you command enormous public attention and then you flog your VHS tapes and make yourselves millionaires. I mean, you can see the modus operandi if you want to be cynical about it. You can, but that still won't change anything that I feel about everything. I was there with Ray in America when he came across the footage.

28:28Piers Morgan:I was in his office when the footage arrived. And he opened the tins and there was a terrible smell that came off them. And we knew straight away there was a problem. So I was with him every step of the way. That stuff doesn't happen if it's all made up, because I'd swear on anything that I witnessed these things, dealt with these things. And then we had governments come and visit us. Like the Chinese government came to see us with papers and everything to watch the footage. And they said, you have the same footage the Americans have got. Other governments came as well. and everyone agreed that what we had, the Americans had it.

29:04Piers Morgan:And then much more recently, about five, six years ago, an astronaut died. They went through his files and there was an email from a gentleman at the CIA confirming that our footage was real. It just doesn't get any better than that. OK, let me... Wow, that story is a bit ridiculous, Gary. I'd have to call you up on that science story. That bit I don't buy. Which bit? you're referring to Kit Green the CIA scientist correct but you've seen the I've never understood about that story Gary which is why we didn't put it in the film sorry to get too granular about this but if Kit Green is saying that your film is the original 1947 autopsy film it can't be because you yourselves have said it's a restoration in a Camden flat involving John's wonderful sculpture and we should give a shout Shout out to one of the real heroes of the restoration, Trevor, from the East End, from Smith's Market, who did an amazing job.

30:05Piers Morgan:He's one of the stars, Trevor the Butcher. But, you know, if Kit Green, the CIA scientist, Gary, is saying this is the real footage, but it's not. It's you yourselves have said it's a restoration based on these frames. And I'm still I still haven't seen a definitive original frame.

30:30Piers Morgan:Well, a restoration thing in the first place. The fact that we did such an extraordinary job that we were able to convince governments, Kit Green and others, that it was the real footage, I think is a compliment to us and the team behind it. OK, let me just go to John for the final word here. John, you did brilliant work in recreating this alien. do you believe the story that Gary has been telling all these years? Do you absolutely 100 % believe him or is there a little bit of doubt? I have no doubt. They showed me images and that's what I work from. I've worked on quite a few films where you get given a very grainy picture of an ancient sculpture and you have to recreate it as a new piece.

31:23Piers Morgan:And I'm pretty good at analysing quite grainy, very degraded images and eking out what's in there. So, yeah, this is what I was told at the very beginning. This is what I've based my image on. And I believe it's true. I think if you look at the universe, they reckon there's 26 sextillion planets in the universe, which means for every grain of sand on the Earth, every grain, there's a planet in space. And if you believe in evolution, then you've got to believe that some life form exists somewhere else. Oh, I'm sure of that. It's just whether the Roswell autopsy was real or not. And I guess, well, Gary, you know, you may take the secrets to your grave.

32:14Piers Morgan:Maybe you're telling the truth, maybe you're not. I mean, John, did you make much money, John, from this? I made some money. I'm very proud to be my position. I was paid for my work, but I was... And that was that. It's like I work on any film. You get paid, you walk away from it, you know? Fascinating stuff. Well, gentlemen, we'll leave it there. The documentary is a great watch, and we just don't know. But, you know, certainly you put up a very good argument, Gary, for why it should be genuine. and you've got a movie about it, people can watch it and make their own minds up, but I think we can all agree that John's work on the cadaver of this alien was magnificent.

32:55Piers Morgan:So thank you all very much. Thank you, Piers. Thank you. Finally, we can't talk about science fiction, if it is fiction, that is, without hearing from YouTube's biggest movie buffs, Will Jordan, a.k.a. The Critical Drinker, and Gary Buechler, a.k.a. No Jolly. Well, welcome to both of you. Been a while, guys. Great to have you both back. Massive movie coming out, disclosure day. a Spielberg classic to add to his roll call of amazing science fiction films. Critical Drinker. Have you seen it? Is it any good? What are you hearing about this? In terms of what I've heard from it, it's been bizarre. There's been almost no chatter, no anticipation about it online whatsoever.

33:37Piers Morgan:There seems to be very little interest in this movie, and I'm not entirely sure why. It's a Steven Spielberg film. I mean, maybe we've reached that point where, you know, Steven Spielberg doing a movie just isn't firing up people's imaginations like it used to do 10, 15, 20 years ago. Maybe we've got to that point now. Yeah, I mean, you know, I've seen some reviews which are terrible and others loved it. It's like there's very little middle ground. And it puts the whole Roswell thing at the heart of stuff. Now, I'm old enough to remember all the Roswell stuff. It could part of the issue be if you're young, you probably don't know anything about Roswell.

34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson:You probably don't unless you, there's a lot of documentaries out there, but that is kind of ancient history. And I think also part of it is, you know, Spielberg's had his time. I've seen the reviews as well, and they are split and they are crazy. A couple of my friends have seen it and said it's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. It's kind of a slog. I'm going to see it tomorrow. uh spielberg's had his time it almost feels like some of the reviews are apologetic that they don't want to criticize the the king of film at this point but i think he's way past his prime uh you know it's it's interesting that he's decided to dip his uh fingers back into genre a little bit although people like me actually believe aliens exist so uh it but i think with this one it's just far too late we have a 94 year old john williams god bless him you know doing the score for this and it i just think it's too late it would have been nice to have a follow-up quicker to to et or what i think is his best ufo film close encounters of the third kind which is absolute genius absolutely but that was that was a long time ago i've never watched any of his uh

35:29Piers Morgan:science fiction i don't watch science fiction full stop ever well you're missing well that's your loss, Piers. That's your loss. Well, I don't think it is. I feel like I've gone through life perfectly happy without ever watching any of it. If it's not real. You don't know. If it's not real, there's weird little bells going off and weird little creatures. That's not for me. Well, I think the interesting thing about science fiction is that it kind of broadens your horizons. It gives you different perspectives on things. Oftentimes, science fiction is going to be some kind of interesting spin on things that we deal with in our current world.

36:03Piers Morgan:But usually, when it's done it well it's not trying to preach at you and tell you how you should see things it opens your minds to different perspectives on things which i think is the furthest i go i used to i love the star trek tv series in the 60s when i was a kid that's the far as i go in so because i genuinely believed in captain james t kirk and spock and uhura don't we all yeah they felt very real to me it's when you start seeing weird little creatures flying around and you know well there's all different kinds of science fiction on a serious point uh the jolly do you believe the roswell thing is real i've just interviewed the two guys who basically you know some people think they recreated it and faked it other people think that they believe their story they found the original footage they read they recreated it from original footage and it was the roswell autopsy what do you think

36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson:uh there is a lot of frauds in ufology uh that that is no secret but i think it it happened i think there was a lot of smoke there and i've read a lot of books on the subject and yes i do believe something happened particularly with uh the military changing their story originally going out there and saying yeah we got a ufo and then oh no no it was it was just a weather balloon and then on the 50th anniversary, the military just came up, pulled this one out of their butt that they were running some tests with dummies, and the aliens they found were dummies. And when they do stuff like that, it makes me believe it more, particularly when they pull that out on a 50th anniversary.

37:43Neil deGrasse Tyson:So I am a believer in aliens and UFO. I don't know what they are, but I definitely think Roswell happened. Yes.

37:51Piers Morgan:Critical drinker, are you a believer? Do I believe that there's other alien life out there somewhere in that infinitely vast universe? Probably. I mean, it's an awfully big waste of space otherwise. Do I think they've come and visited us here on Earth? Eh, I'm yet to be convinced. I mean, they probably have, haven't they? I mean, I just keep thinking. Law of probability is like there are gazillions of planets. Of course there must be other life. and probably more sophisticated than us. And they probably have come here and we wouldn't know if they had. Well, I mean, if they're monitoring our TV and movie broadcasts and so on and they see that that's a representation of human culture these days, man, I wouldn't blame them for giving us a white purse.

38:35Piers Morgan:I mean, they might have taken one look at Keeping Up With The Kardashians and just pissed off again. Yeah.

38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson:I think our entire planet's the universe's best reality show.

38:45Piers Morgan:Yes.

38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson:I think we're just entertainment or an ant farm.

38:47Piers Morgan:Or maybe they spent a few hours in Donald Trump's truth social feed and thought nothing could be as alien as this. We're out of here. Or Blue Sky. Quite possibly. Polymarket says that the US will confirm that aliens exist by the end of the year. $50 million placed on this market with 14 % saying Disclosure Day will happen before the end of the year. and not a huge number, but 14 % are betting that disclosure day or predicting disclosure day will happen. Do you think that's likely, Nandradi?

39:25Neil deGrasse Tyson:No, no. I think even if whatever president, but let's just say Trump goes out there and announces that aliens are real, half the country is automatically not going to believe them based on party politics, and it would go the other way. I think the only way that we get confirmation, if it's just a citizen and with AI now, it's almost impossible. It's really bad for UFOlogy right now because you can easily fake stuff. So, no, I think there is a faction in the government that does want this out. And I think there's a bigger faction that doesn't want it out. And with this, with the disclosure film, I won't spoil the ending.

40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson:I know the ending, but with the disclosure film, it's going to be very similar to what we've had in real life, which is blue balls. All they talk about is, man, I know these really crazy things that I can't tell you, but I'll talk about it in a skiff. Like that's all, that's all it's been. They haven't really shown us any aliens, any, any tech or anything. It's just talking about, wow, man, we see some crazy stuff. Wish I could tell you. And we're tired of it, you know? And Critical Drinking, when I talk to Neil deGrasse Tyson,

40:40Piers Morgan:the movies, his favourite science fiction movies are the ones that don't depict the aliens as humanoid. Do you have a favourite science fiction film? Oh, when it comes to aliens, I guess the quintessential one has got to be Alien because it does a superb job of making the concept of extraterrestrial life absolutely terrifying, a genuinely alien creature with a life cycle and a purpose that we can't even begin to understand. So that would be one of my top picks. Close Encounters, as we mentioned earlier. A great movie from Spielberg that I don't think gets the attention it deserves nowadays. I think it portrays alien contact at the opposite end of the spectrum, not as something terrifying and horrific, and they're out to kill everyone, but it's a benevolent, it's a conversation.

41:29Piers Morgan:It's about making contact with them for the first time. And yeah, probably as a recent one, Project Hail Mary. Very much enjoyed that. That straddles a middle ground of you've got a wildly different alien life form that has to make contact with our human protagonist, but there's a universality to it. They're united by a common cause, and they eventually even form a friendship of sorts, which I think is a wonderful, heartwarming little story. And Nidrodic, just finally, breaking news today that Doctor Who has been cancelled. I mean, that was, again, something from my youth. How do you feel about this?

42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson:It's sad, and I'm happy it happened because you took a show. You'll know more than me, Piers, because you live there. I guess you too will. It was part of your culture. It was, and we've never, we don't have anything like that, even close in the States. There was a point where like one-fifth of your country was watching Doctor Who, and they have taken this show that was for everyone. It was a family show and they made it for the smallest demographic possible. And unsurprisingly enough, nobody watched it. And what they did was what's been happening to a lot of Hollywood now is absolutely remove masculinity from it completely.

42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson:And that's the majority of your audience. And they decided to double down and triple down, not listen to the fans at all, or I don't know, outright attack the fans. and now they are cancelled as we thought it would be and there's really no way to fix it. They can try to reboot it but with Doctor Who the continuity matters and they messed so much of it up and again vilified so many of the fans I don't know how you come back from this so RIP Doctor Who.

43:17Piers Morgan:Exactly. I think we can all agree with that. Gentlemen, got to leave it there. Thank you both very much indeed. Thank you. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate and entertain. And we'll do it all for free. Independent, uncensored media has never been more critical and we couldn't do it without you.

43:54Thank you.