In this episode of Radio Wasteland, we welcome UFO researcher Greg Bishop as our guest. We ask Greg how and when he became interested in UFOlogy.
Greg co-founded a magazine entitled The Excluded Middle, a journal of UFOs, conspiracy research, psychedelia, and new science.
Greg’s writing has appeared in the L.A. Weekly, Fortean Times, UFO Magazine and Magical Blend, among others. In 2005, his book Project Beta was an attempt to set the record straight on the Paul Bennewitz disinformation drama.
Radio Wasteland: How did you get pulled to this? I explained to you earlier that I really kind of came from this fiction level, that the fiction drew me in. And then, I hit our bell and I like going to sleep to it, and it was exciting, and I was kind of sucked in from there. What drew you into this topic?
Greg Bishop: I have no idea, but I do know that when I was a kid we’d go to the library every week and, for some reason, I went to the paranormal, UFO, Bigfoot, crypto, ghost section of the library, and I read every book in it from when I could first read up to when I went into Boy Scouts or something, we stopped going to the library so much.
Radio Wasteland: Me too. I was all about those … when you said ghost stories, I was all about those anthology ghost stories. Like when I was a teenager and stuff you can pick up at book fairs and such.
Greg Bishop: Yeah, exactly. And it was just, they’re fascinating stories, but in the book, they’re saying, “These are all absolutely true.” And so you’re like, “Oh my God, this is great stuff.” What could be better for kids? At least when I was, at the time. I find that now too, when I go speak to kids at schools, elementary and middle school kids, anytime you tell them something that they’re “not supposed to know” they’re automatically very interested. And they shouldn’t be. They should have a healthy, disrespectful curiosity about things. That’s the only way you’re going to ever really ever get anywhere and advance and learn is to have this healthy curiosity and this idea that what’s being told you is not the whole story.
Greg Bishop: So I think that’s where my interest came from? And it just developed from there. And then I stopped thinking about it when I was a teenager because you get older and then you can drive, and there’s girls, and beer and stuff. But then, after I got on a college, I got into a horrible, severe depression and I read an article about it, and it just came all back into my life, and it actually kind of saved my life.
Radio Wasteland:Yeah. Well I mean you got to have purpose. I think going back to what you were first starting to say is I think there’s something about being a weird kid, a kid that’s drawn to the weird stuff. I think it keeps magic in your life a little longer than later in life when you come to settle down you actually have something to care about. So I think it’s really the weird kids of this world. I mean, look at the NASA and JPL employees that tout their love of Star Trek and Star Wars. It’s like-
Greg Bishop: There’s that light there. I go and speak to groups and sometimes, especially groups like Mufon and all that and my message sometimes, if I can get to it, or if I feel like saying it is whatever that thing is that’s deep down in your soul that you really think that you want to do with the subject. Go do that thing because you could change everything with that attitude. You can go out and talk to 100 more abductees and fill out the form and do the thing that you’re supposed to do. Or you could say, “Wow, this is a lot weirder than I think it is. So let me take it in the direction I want to take it in and see what we come up with.”
Greg Bishop: And that’s what’s needed is people having, once again, that healthy curiosity and disrespect for what somebody’s telling them to think. Or what they’re telling people to ask, or whatever. And I think that’s where the innovation comes from, if it comes out. That’s where it comes from in any field, but it’s really needed in UFO study. And I think it’s happening. It’s definitely happening. Happening in a way that it hasn’t the entire time I’ve been interested in it, which it’s a great thing. Some of it’s crap and some of it’s wonderful, but that’s what’s going to happen when things start changing.