Chelsea, have you ever applied for a job, maybe exaggerate a little bit on the resume
and you were really worried about them finding out or asking about it?
Maybe a little.
Okay. Well, this story might be somewhat relatable, although in the most extreme form out there. This
comes from Vox. I'm going to withhold the title for a while because it gives away the story.
It was posted December 27th, 2022, and it has to do with the US election that just happened
in November. So the biography of newly elected Congress member George Santos seemed quite
impressive. He's a 34 year old son of immigrants and had graduated from Barrett College, a public
college in New York, before going on to work at firms like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
Santos eventually became a successful financier who started an animal rescue charity. Here's
the problem. Everything about that apparently is a lie. As revealed in the New York Times on December
19th, it wasn't just that Santos exaggerated his resume. He had invented everything basically,
full cloth. The Times found that he apparently did not graduate from Barrett College. He did not work
for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup. There were no records of him being a successful financier,
nor were there of him registering his animal rescue charity that he apparently ran.
How did he get through the interviews?
I mean, it's just running for office. So I don't know how the other side didn't say like,
look into any of this. That's very true, especially in the States.
Yeah. And the Times also found that he had been charged with check fraud in Brazil. Further,
a number of outlets have found no evidence of Santos's repeated claims to be Jewish,
to have Jewish heritage, or to be descended from refugees fleeing the Holocaust.
Santos even described himself at one point as a proud American Jew in a campaign position paper.
Who is this guy?
He is going to be a congressman representing New York State.
Still is.
Yeah. Well, as of right now, like this all just came out.
In a media tour with Friendly Outlets Monday, Santos admitted to putting a little bit of fluff
on his resume. In other words, he conceded that he never graduated from college, never worked
for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, and wasn't Jewish, though he claimed to be, quote, Jew-ish.
That is, that's literally everything.
Yeah. Santos brushed off lying about basic biographical information as embellishment,
and he pushed back on the Times reporting about his criminal charges in Brazil. Quote,
I am not a criminal, unquote, he told the New York Post. And of course, the New York Post being like
the extreme far-right newspaper as well. The story has sparked one of the most bizarre political
scandals in American history. Members of Congress have committed murder in office. In fact, a member
of Congress has even killed another member of Congress. Even in the present day, we've seen
every scandal under the sun, from Anthony Weiner tweeting a lewd picture of himself to Marjolee
Taylor Greene's infamous Facebook post about Jewish space lasers. But it's hard to think of a
precedent for a scandal like this. So who is George Santos?
Yeah, that's my question. My bet for who he is, is his mom went out of town and he was left in
charge of his siblings and the babysitter died. And he had to think of a job quick and he had no
prior experience. So he had to make up a resume and then go to work.
And he was 34 years old. Okay.
Okay, no. I thought he might be a teenager. Which is, don't tell mom the babysitter's dead.
Yeah, I know. But that also does track with what is actually provable on his resume.
Babysitter probably would be something that might actually apply.
Okay, who is he really?
Just to give you a bit of an idea too, he's a Trump-style Republican.
Like he ran as I am very pro-Trump. I am also a gay Republican so that nobody can really fight
me on certain things because you know, a lot of conservative rhetoric is bad on that.
Okay, well that's probably made up to you.
Yeah, I don't know at this point, like literally everything.
Yeah, too.
The only thing I do know is I'm pretty sure the guy does like Trump in his policies.
I could see not being able to lie about that.
There are some things we do know about Santos, the openly gay son of Brazilian immigrants.
He was elected in November to an open congressional seat that includes a thin slice of Queens and much
of the North Shore of Long Island in Nizau County. I probably mis-said that word, but whatever.
Santos defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman by a margin of 54% to 46%.
This represents a major swing from 2020 when Biden had won the district by the same margin.
And that year Santos ran against incumbent Tom Sozi in a similar district and lost
handedly by a margin of 56% to 43.5%. The representative-elect is also an ardent
Trump supporter, so much so that he was at Trump's ellipse rally on January 6, 2021,
and has repeatedly falsely claimed that the former president won the 2020 election.
Also for all his alleged lying about his resume, it is clear that one of the companies that he
actually worked at, Harbor City Capital, has been accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission
of being a Ponzi scheme. As for Santos's other employment, he did spend a stint as a Portuguese
language customer service agent for Dish Network a decade ago. So those are the two jobs they can
confirm. Those are the two things they can confirm. Then those were on the actual resume.
He was just going back and being able to see what they could actually find.
It's not like he was talking about his work on the call center at Dish when he was running for
office. My theory could still check out. Yes. What we don't know, we don't know a lot. This ranges
from basic facts about Santos's biography to deal tales about his dealings with the Brazilian
criminal justice system and everything in between, including where he actually lives.
But most importantly, we don't know where he actually lives. He's never been able to confirm
it. Most importantly, we don't know where Santos's money comes from. The representative-elect loaned
his own campaign $700,000 during the 2022 election cycle and claimed an income of $750,000.
He also listed millions of dollars in assets, including an apartment in Rio de Janeiro worth
up to $1 million and a seven-figure savings account. This is not good. It's a major shift
in the fortune for someone who was evicted twice in 2015 and 2017 for failing to pay rent and had
been taken to court for not paying debts. Even in 2020, he reported income in one category,
compensation in excess of $5,000 paid by one source with no other assets. In 2020, the guy
was worth roughly $5,000 and now he has a multi-million dollar bank account. Santos has
provided no information about his finances on his media tour, except to concede that he owned no
property. He had previously claimed on Twitter to be a landlord who owned 13 properties.
So what happens now? Dan Goldman, a fellow representative-elect from New York and a
former prosecutor, has suggested that Santos face criminal investigation for conspiracy to defraud
the United States, as well as filing false statements to the Federal Elections Commission.
In an interview with Fox, Goldman shied away from weighing in on whether Santos should be denied his
seat in Congress. Quote, I think the bigger question is not whether I think George Santos should be a
member of Congress. The bigger question is whether Kevin McCarthy and the Republican leadership think
that George Santos should be a member of Congress. End quote. However, as of now, McCarthy needs Santos
almost as much as Santos needs McCarthy. The Republican leader is facing a revolt among
hard-right Republicans opposed to him becoming Speaker of the House in January. With the slim
incoming GOP majority, it means McCarthy can only risk a handful of defections for a position that
requires a majority vote of the entire House. Shortly before the Time Story was published,
Santos endorsed McCarthy on Twitter. Further, because Santos represents one of the most
democratic seats in Congress, held by a Republican forcing him to resign under any circumstances
risk, it would be a difficult seat for a Republican to hold in a special election and a loss would
further imperil an already slim GOP majority. In the meantime, it's a matter of waiting for the
next shoe to drop. The Office of New York Attorney General Letitia James is already looking into some
of the issues that have come out and unsustainable as the current status quo might seem, the only
impetus right now for Santos to resign will be a sense of shame. And it seems very unlikely that
he carries that burden as he's gone on TV many times saying, I did lie a little bit. I'm sorry.
But is that, is that not wild? That is a wild story. And I quite enjoyed that.
Good. If you want to go read the story yourself, it's called Did George Santos lie about everything
by Ben Jacobs on Vox. Isn't it great? Or if you live that job? Yeah. Isn't it great how if you go
into any job interview personally with that much lying, like even a little bit of lying, you're
kicked out the door in like five seconds. This guy, no, no, he's probably going to serve for a
little while at least. Yeah, it's wild. I quite enjoyed that. That was, that was quite nice.
You're welcome. And with that, we're going to start the episode.
From the unexplained to the mundane. Come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe. Now nominated for four Emmys. It may not have the
same impact if you write to the judges nominating yourself, but they say it's just an honor to be
nominated. We are your award nominated hosts, Taylor and Chelsea here today to talk to you
about one of those strange enigmatic characters within the UFO community. I don't know if you
could technically say he's in the UFO community. I think he likes to stay out of it, but that's
mostly because he's so rich that who knows what the hell he's doing at any given time. That is,
of course, the hotel mogul known as Robert Bigelow. Now Chelsea is doing this episode,
so I'm going to let her take it from here. Yeah, Robert Bigelow. You know, I didn't actually know
that he was into hotels first until like recently. Actually, I don't even know if he's into hotels.
He just made money in hotels. He might not look them at all. We'll figure it out. It's true. I
mean, if I, well, you never know. I don't know that I actually get into that, but we'll get into some
stuff. So it's time for a lot of things. It's time to do an actual good guy in the community instead
of an asshole in the UFO paranormal community. I mean, to be fair, you know my position on
billionaires. There's no such thing as a good billionaire. So I can't say he's a good guy per
se in the community, but he's doing interesting things. He is doing interesting things. And it's
just time for some Robert Bigelow, male Jiggalo. Just kidding. Just kidding. It's a different guy.
I'm pretty sure. It never actually clarified in my research actually. So he could be male Jiggalo.
It is interesting. It's Rob Schneider who plays Deuce Bigelow. And it's just, it's an amalgamation
of both those names. So I'm just wondering if there was any sort of karmic comedy going on.
Yeah. Yeah. Universal comedy going on in that. I can't, nothing came up in my research. So I
cannot confirm nor deny that. Okay. So we can just- I don't even know what we can't confirm or deny,
but we can't. We can just leave this now shrouded in mystery and move on like it never happened.
Okay. So the point that I'm trying to make nonetheless is that today is the day we will
finally take a look at the man, the myth, the legend, the very opposite of asshole, but more
beloved saint of the paranormal community, Robert Bigelow. Notice I didn't say billionaire
because saints aren't billionaires. And he actually really reminds me of someone that would show up
in the venture bros. Like this eccentric person with lots of money. He wouldn't be a villain.
I don't think. I mean, then who would they be? That's all that show is. He would be someone like-
Like, um, would he be, Oh, what's his name with the giant head? He would be someone maybe that
would help. What's his face? Venture. Okay. I could definitely see him as a phantom limb like
character, but he's a villain. So yeah, no, I don't think villain, you know, he might be a villain.
I don't know. Okay. Let's get into this out of the venture bros because he's not actually in the
venture bros. He's a real person born May 12th, 1944 Robert Thomas, Thomas Bigelow it's pronounced
Thomas grew up in America's most wholesome town, Las Vegas, Nevada. At the time it was,
it still is. Robert took an interest in the nuclear weapons tests happening about 70 miles
Northwest of Las Vegas. And there started his passion in science at the age of 12. Bigelow
decided that his future was in space travel as we all did when we were 12 years old. I know I did.
However, we will see that he was actually serious. Unlike the rest of us. Cause I am definitely not
in the space travel business. Hey, if I had his kind of money, I would make something happen
of my space. That's true. That's true. But we, we differ from him. So here's a quote from Bigelow.
When I was 12 or 13, I made a commitment to myself to really get involved in something to do with
space and something to do with UFOs. If I ever had the money to do it. So I made a premeditated
contract to myself to get into some kind of field where I could make a lot of money. Like what kind
of 12 or 13 year old has that amount of foresight? Like I still don't have that amount of foresight.
Yeah. But we also didn't live in a day and age where land was dirt cheap and one of the most
expensive cities in North America and be able to grow with that. Like, like the guy grew up in a
city of what? Maybe 1000 people in the 1940s. Let me check really quick. Las Vegas population,
1945. Okay. In 1950, it had a population of 24,000 people. Okay. That's still not high.
And then today Las Vegas is one of the biggest cities in North America with 2.839 million people.
Oh my God. I did not expect that. Yeah. Actually. Yeah. He grew up in a very lucky time to do what
he did. Now, to be fair, maybe he saw that chance, but it's very much so. It only happened because
of the circumstances of where he was. Okay. Yeah. Let's go with that. So despite Bigelow's
limitations with mathematics, he resolved to choose a career that would make him rich enough
that one day he could hire the scientific expertise required to launch his own space program.
And sorry, Chelsea, just really quick. 1940, the population of Las Vegas was 8,400. Oh my God.
Yeah. That's crazy. Oh yeah. Right away, even as 12 years old, he was thinking ahead and I would
have literally never thought of that. Still haven't. He goes to the University of Nevada in
Reno in 1962 and studies banking and real estate and graduates in 1967. Oh, Robert is a fucking smart
guy. So he follows his father into real estate from the time he graduates through the nineties.
He develops commercial real estate hotels, motels and apartments and builds his fortune on the
hotel chain, budget suites of America. It's not even high end. It's budget. I love that.
A furnished units rentable by the week or month and catered to low income workers living on tips
or paycheck to paycheck. Eventually he unloads much of his housing stock in the boom years
immediately before the 2008 crash. He didn't unload all of it. I believe he still does own
some real estate. Don't know if it's still the hotel. It didn't really elaborate. So what I got
from that though is that he was a slumlord who made everybody pay week to week. He did. I did
read an article. I didn't put it in here. He was trying to evict some people during COVID. They
did go to court and he did say that they were very lenient with people. Yes, they were people who were.
Yeah, but he made his fortune off of people who couldn't afford to actually rent anything month
to month. It sounds like. Of course, this may be a gross misrepresentation of what it was,
but that's what those pay week to week people who live there long term are doing. They can't afford
to rent anywhere else either because they have bad credit or they just don't have the money for a
deposit. That's the problem with those. And he became a billionaire off that. So again,
exploitation always makes a billionaire. You are reading in between the lines. Yes,
I do appreciate that. So budget suites made him the fortune he promised himself. The Wall Street
Journal in 1999 said he valued his real estate empire at $900 million. Forbes estimated it in
2007 at $700 million. And today he's often called a billionaire, but he dismissed specifics of
it's not what matters. He said it's easy to say when you have the money, but it's not everything.
So given the title of this episode, let's first talk about Bigelow's venture into the space frontier.
Unless we have anything to add on that last part. No, no, I actually, I don't mind
when a billionaire actually says it's not about the money and he's not upset that it's misquoted.
As a very famous Donald Trump once sued the Forbes list for misstating his net worth. Oh,
great. That's a really great trait in a person. He's the king of lawsuits, that guy. So let's
talk about the space frontier. In 1999, Bigelow founds Bigelow Aerospace. He indicates that he
planned to spend up to $500 million US to develop the first commercial space station with the goal
of the station costing 33% of the US $1.5 billion that NASA expended on a single space shuttle
mission. Oh, to give you a little bit of history that you will most definitely need coming up,
NASA originally considered the idea of inflatable habitats in the 1960s for space and developed
the Transhab inflatable module concept in the late 1990s. It's a really interesting idea because
most places you'd actually want to set up a place like that, it's going to have some sort of atmosphere
that you can likely put into anything to inflate it. Or it's fairly easy to bring along your own
condensed gases, but it would be very easy to actually just get the gas wherever you are.
From space? No, like if you're inflating, you're likely on some sort of satellite or planet. Oh.
Like if you're on Mars, you're going to use Mars's CO2 based atmosphere to inflate it.
People are going to live in there. Yeah. They breathe CO2? No, but you're inflating it with
CO2, not putting it in the inside of it that you're going to live in. This is craziness.
That doesn't make sense. Okay. Have you ever been in a bouncy castle? Oh, it wouldn't go into it
where you breathe? I'm talking about the bouncy part. Yes. I'm talking about the bouncy part.
That makes sense. That makes sense. You just wouldn't want to poke a hole anywhere. You want
to wear very dull things. Okay. So the Transhab project was canceled by Congress in 2000,
and Bigelow Aerospace purchased the rights to the patents developed by NASA to pursue private
space station design. In 2006 and 2007, Bigelow Aerospace launched two demonstration modules to
Earth orbit, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. It was also planned for full scale space habitats to be used
as orbital hotels, research labs and factories. Impressive. I remember when they were talking
about that. Ever did come to fruition though. Yeah, it bugs me. He didn't actually invent
anything though. He just bought what he invested in as a society. Which you kind of see him through
this whole thing kind of being like, I'm going to get enough money, but then he kind of, he's not
the brain child of anything. He just kind of buys into all of it, into his interests. Yeah. And I
mean, can't say I can blame him. I mean, I can't say I would have the brains to be coming up with
my own ideas in space. Maybe I'd like go through old patents and be like, yeah, this one seems
interesting. I guess I'll find that. Yeah, but I also didn't commit my life to space travel.
That's true. I committed my life to an incredibly broad range of obscure and fringy topics.
Yeah, exactly. And here we are. So on the 20th of December, 2012, NASA awarded Bigelow Aerospace
a 17.8 million US contract to construct the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module,
BEAM, under NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems, AES, program. In 2013, Bigelow indicated that
the reason he went into the commercial real estate business was to obtain the requisite resources to
be able to fund a team developing space destinations. It's only one way to get that money and it's from
taking it from the pores, damn it. Exactly. October 2017, Bigelow announced his plans to
put an inflatable space hotel into orbit by 2022. Wait, seriously? Huh? I wouldn't think an inflatable
one would work around Earth just because it would always be perpetually falling into Earth. Yeah. So
you'd need some sort of propulsion. Yeah. So the inflatable space hotel reminds me of that fun,
inflatable neon furniture from the 90s. You know, like couch and stuff. Just in space, yeah.
In space. And it's exactly the same after that. Exactly. And it just like, all the furniture in
there is like, that's what I think of when I think of it. That was bound to make a comeback,
obviously. The project was estimated to cost 2.3 billion in total and the cost of a three-day stay
in the hotel was estimated at $5 million, otherwise known as chump change. So he's really
going the opposite direction on this. This is not a pay by the week type thing. It's three days.
Stay by the three days upfront. Can we speculate about people who stay past their three days stay?
They're calling in the Slemlords and they're gonna- They're bringing in the space sheriff.
With the lead pipe to break the legs of the millionaires. Okay. That's what's in my mind.
Or maybe they pop in the bridge or I don't know. Because I'm just thinking, because they're
weightless, what's breaking their legs gonna do? If anything, you want to break their arms so they
can't hold on to things. Maybe they get kicked out into space. They just- On the fourth day,
if somebody's still in there, they just open the exterior hatch.
Sheriff's is both an eviction and a cleaning service.
I love it. Okay. So I know you're trying to distract me from the math I was just about to
talk about. You're welcome, by the way. So I'm sure you're doing the math. Taylor was. Taylor
was looking out for you. That math is so easy. I can even do it without a calculator. So don't
be scared. Don't look at your screen. Don't look at your screen. How much in a year? How much in a
year per room? You mean? Because they can save three days for five million dollars. Five million.
How much in a year per room? Oh no, I don't do that math. Okay. Okay. It's about 605 mil.
Yeah. I don't think they'd allow that. I don't know if they would. So anyway, 2020- Okay. I said
math too much and there's too many numbers floating around in my head. 2022 to 2023, which is the year
we're in now. That's a year past. So- That's not a year. Just so you know. That's very easy math.
It's not? 2022 to 2023 is not a year. What is it? Well, it could be a fiscal year, but it's-
That's two years. It could be a date. It could be a day. Technically, it had to be at least two days.
Projected date for space hotels was last year. So I'm sure you're like, hey, I don't think there's
hotels in space yet unless I miss something major or I'm just that poor and can't afford three nights
in space and it's a secret to everyone else. I'm on a timeline projectile right now and that timeline
I just gave you is 2017. So just stay with me until my timeline's complete, please. I will come back
to this. That was a long tangent for me to say that. So back to 2017. This plan was a part of a
partnership with United Launch Alliance, which I have to tell you what they are. The United Launch
Alliance is an American supercraft launch service provider that manufactures and operates a number
of rocket vehicles that are capable of launching spacecraft into orbits around earth and to other
bodies in the solar system and beyond. That's a bit of a lie, isn't it? Mostly yes, but we just
got off your opener. So it's not that big of a lie. That's not that big of a lie comparatively.
I mean, if you just wait long enough, it will go beyond the solar system. Exactly. The company,
which is a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Space and Boeing Defense Space and Security was
formed in December 2006. Launch customers of the United Launch Alliance include the Department of
Defense, NASA and other organizations. They're the etc. Bigelow has been working on the Bigelow
Expandable Activity Module, the BEAM, clever. Wait, wait, wait. Is that a bouncy castle?
The Infallible Neon Fetcher. I had to come up with a scientific name for a bouncy castle. That's
what I would call it. BEAM, yeah. The Activity. The Expandable Activity Module. Yeah. Yeah. That's
so much money. That's way too much money for a bouncy castle. And somebody else had to come up
with that name for you. You can rent those for like a hundred bucks. Yeah. They launched bouncy
castles. So developed by Bigelow Aerospace under contract to NASA for testing as a temporary module
on the ISS. Oh, interesting. I quite like the idea of the astronauts being able to take advantage of
a bouncy castle in zero G. Like that just seems fun. Yeah, it doesn't. Or not fun at all.
And also to see the International Space Station as I know it in my head with a bouncy castle off the
edge. Very excited to see this. I'm still just picturing like that neon inflatable couch with
like little flip flops from the 90s. I wanted those so bad. Yeah, that are partially see-through. Yeah.
So if BEAM performs favorably, it could lead to development of expandable habitation structures
for future crews traveling in deep space. BEAM is launched to the ISS on the 8th SpaceX cargo
resupply mission on April 10, 2016 and was birthed at the ISS on April 16, 2026. What? That can't be
right. Sorry, can you say that again? I cannot. Okay. Hold on a second. These inflatable technologies,
man. They go through time so strange. Oh, 2016 and was birthed at the ISS on April 16, 2016.
So that's six days later, not 10 years later. Okay. And was expanded and pressurized on the 28th of May 2016.
I mean, it could have been theory just been they inflated it at the ground and just were
letting it float up. Inflated it with helium. Yeah. I'll see you in 10 years.
Although originally planned to be a two year test, it had exceeded expectation and it is used as
additional cargo storage at the ISS to this day. Oh man, that seems less fun. I know it's and if
you were to look at it, it looks like it's like a hut, a white hut. A yurt, if you will. A yurt.
A yurt. That was the one I was looking for. I wasn't about to search my brain for that word.
In March 2020, Bigelow Aerospace laid off all 88 members of staff and halted operations.
The guy that came up with the beam name was laid off. No. Yeah. He was a part of those 88.
He was integral to those 88 people. I mean, to be fair, he probably got those people those jobs up
until that point. He kept them employed until that point. So they're all the same.
They're all laid off. They halted operations after over 20 years of business and the move only
partially credited to the coronavirus. I don't think we need to go into what that is. I've given
you a lot of information, but I'm just going to leave that one a mystery if you still don't know
what that is. Quick question. Do you know if they liquidated their stock to say like get cheap things
for kids birthday parties by chance? No, they did not do that. Oh man. Unfortunately. I know.
So they still have it for the liquidation sale. Okay. Perfect. As you hear Furious taping.
In March 2021, Bigelow sued NASA for 1.5 million US alleging he was not paid according to contract
for product testing and development. Beam is now under the ownership of NASA since the Bigelow
aerospace suspending of operations in 2021. So that's the aerospace story. Any questions
about aerospace? Did NASA also hire the genius behind beam? Unfortunately not. Oh, it was not
liquidated. Well, he might be up for sale on TV. He might be. Okay. I'll keep my eye out. We're
looking for kids performers. Might be on Fiverr. Yeah. Creator of beam. Genius behind beam.
So now let's talk about anomalies research. Sky is an eccentric millionaire that I will never be.
Bigelow has had an interest in UFOs since forever. I can relate. We can probably all relate. While
mine dates back to the late eighties, Bigelow's dates back to the 47th. He's got Roswell like
almost in eye shot there. Yes, he does. A landmark year for flying saucer fever after the crash of
something still mysterious in the desert outside Roswell. So Taylor was bang on on that. Also that
May when he was three, so cut to the fifties, Mr. Bigelow said his maternal grandparents, Tom and
Delta Thiebaud, driving down from the mountainside outside Las Vegas after dark when a glowing object
flew toward them, filling their windshield and terrifying them before streaking off.
We're late getting back home and so shaken. Mr. Bigelow said that my grandfather couldn't drive a
car for a while. As to what happened to them during the missing hours, Mr. Bigelow said they
wouldn't talk about it. Bigelow has had his own anomalous experiences, including one that I don't
talk about, which is a direct quote from him. They're starting when he was about seven. He chalks
them up to just dreams, he said, but they left an impression on a child growing up in the dawning
age of rocketry, atomic testing clouds in the Nevada desert. I was totally hooked, he said.
In 1992, Bigelow established the Bigelow Foundation collaborating with Bob Lazar.
Do we have him on a list of some sort? Bob Lazar is one of our good guys in the community.
Him and Jacques Vallée make up a very short list. And Bigelow's in a gray area now. Through his
foundation, he has funded many studies of UFOs, psychic ability, and related issues. It is said
that he's funded Bud Hopkins, Johnny Mack, Bob Lazar, and Linda Moulton Howe, who received a
research grant from Bigelow in 1994 to study plant and animal tissues associated with mutilation
cases. And sorry, Linda's on that list as well. Bob Lazar fills the same category as I would say
Robert Bigelow fills. I wouldn't even know how to do anything with Linda Moulton Howe. Oh yeah, sorry.
I meant Bob Lazar, he's a great guy. I'm just going to interject here quick. This is the only
instance in what I'm going to talk about where Bob Lazar comes up in here. However, I have heard
Bigelow speak about him a few times because they are friends and whatever it is I just said. If
you're not sure who Bob Lazar is, please refer to our future episode on Bob Lazar that will probably
be out now. But not, but who knows? Yeah, who knows? For the majority of you at this time,
probably not. Who knows when we'll do that? How did this friendship come to be? No idea. But in
digging into this a little, I could find limited information, but here's the limited information I
could find. Lazar and Bigelow formed a company together called Zeta Reticuli 2. Obviously,
this is after the brains of Beam was laid off and they probably lost his contact information or
couldn't afford him. Maybe he went on to bigger and better things. And Bigelow financed a small lab
for Lazar to conduct work. In an interview, Bigelow says the following about Lazar.
Bob was intriguing because he knew so much, Bigelow said during the recent interview. He's a smart guy,
he's no dummy, he's a smart man, he's a smart guy, and very creative. And so again, I say that the
ponderance of evidence to me is in his favor and that he's by large legitimate. Just a quick
Cole's notes of Bob Lazar for anybody who has not listened to our future episode that may or may
not be out at this point. He worked at Area 51 allegedly. Allegedly, he was also a very famous,
or a very intelligent scientist at the time. And it's hard to corroborate his story. He went out,
had a tell-all expose. I believe it was with George Knapp, was it not? Yeah, it's with a few
people. George Knapp, I believe it was George Knapp. But the story's very messy. At the end of the day,
he worked at Area 51, nobody knows what he actually did. Because no one can corroborate it.
Yeah. And he's a weird guy. He's a really weird guy. That's about it in a nutshell. So he does
tell some stories about Lazar on the Joe Rogan experience, and he's apparently been friends with
Lazar even before he came out with these claims. Lazar, that is, not Robert Bigelow saying he's
friends with Bob Lazar. Anyhow, that's that, and Bigelow believes Lazar is telling straight facts.
So take with that what you will. Next, I found a post on Scientific Research, whatever that is,
it was a website I found, by Angela Thompson Smith, PhD, who worked at the Bigelow Foundation
between October 92 and April 94, who said she looked into some of these things. It was a fairly
long article, so I just took some things to just talk about them real quick and see what they're
up to with this foundation. The first was the Mount Wilson Ranch. Besides Robert Bigelow's
interest in the Northeast Utah Skinwalker Ranch, there was also mention of Jacques Vallee.
Jacques Vallee. You get me every time. Jacques Vallee's Bin Science Volume 4 of Bigelow Visiting.
1996, another ranch which he subsequently purchased. This ranch was near Pioche, Nevada,
and was called the Mount Wilson Ranch. What is interesting to me is that Angela and Bigelow
were aware of the details of unusual events at this ranch as early as 1993. I've actually never
heard of this ranch. Back in March of 1993, the foundation received some information about another
ranch about 50 miles north of Pioche, where there had been reports of UFO sightings. The ranch was
historically the site of many gunfights and early deaths. One of the ranch occupants told interesting
stories of UFO sightings. In his partner, were in their pickup truck one night and saw unusual
lights that drew their attention. The two men thought that each light was an individual object
and that all the lights moved in unison. Colors were off white and yellow white. Men estimated
that the lights were about a football field distance, but there was no noise, no static on
the radio. Later they had another sighting of several lights over a dry lake bed. This light
moved erratically and kicked up a lot of dust from the lake bed. Third sighting was of a single light
that seemed to dart up and down above a mountain. And that is a brief summary of the Mount Wilson
Ranch. Next is Fife, Alabama. In April 1993, Mr. Bigelow asked me to travel to Huntsville,
Alabama to follow up on some UFO sightings and cattle mutilations that had been happening in the
area. In Alabama, I met a couple of local newspaper owners, the Bakers, who had reported extensively
on the UFO flap over Fife, Alabama, and a local policeman who was investigating the sightings.
After a while he opened up to me and talked very frankly about the UFO sightings, cattle,
mutilations, and abductions that were happening in Alabama. On the last day of my residence in the
Lake Gunterville Lodge, I had a rare UFO sighting. From the balcony of my room I saw a large round
red and white light rise up vertically. It appeared to rise vertically out of the lake. It did not
wink with strobe lights and soon disappeared into the clouds. And that's Alabama. Next, Area 2000.
So do you think in all these scenarios that he's buying them because they're in the middle of
nowhere? They might be interesting. And worst case scenario, he'll just open up a budget motel.
From my understanding, he's done. If the motel's at this point, aside from a few that he's hung
on to, that wouldn't make sense, would he? Because he wants to have like all this money to continue
buying these things. And sorry, I should say maybe not budget motel, inflatable motel like you see in
space. Yeah, it could be. However, he didn't do that with Skinwalker. I know that for sure. Oh yeah,
he sold it. I forgot about that. Sorry. He sold it. I'll talk about it a little. Yeah. I think it's more
just he was interested in the phenomenon and instead of just being like I'm interested in this,
let's send a researcher. He was like, I'm gonna buy it. Like no one does. Unless you were me.
Next one, Area 2000, which I also haven't heard of. Also in the spring of 93, Bigelow funded a radio
show which commenced on the 4th of July, 1993. It was called the Area 2000 radio show. I thought
this was an area, physical area. I was gonna wonder what happened with like with all the other
other 1998 because we all better. Areas, right? Areas. Yeah. Yeah. This ran for six months until
Bigelow lost interest in it. Angela's job was to find interesting relevant news stories and have
them ready for the Las Vegas journalist, George Knapp to read on air. Oh, that's so sad. Did he
lose interest in this? I love George Knapp. I'm bored. I'm fucking bored of you, George.
Later, Linda Moulton-Hal joined the station as a news presenter. What? How did this stop? I've never
even heard of this. But it was 93, wasn't it? Yes. Okay. Show generated reports of sightings and
other experiences and we followed up quite a few UFO sightings around the country. That was a quote
from who I'm not sure. Oh, probably Angela. I was talking about her. Whatever Angela was.
It works for him. Of course. So that's the end of Angela. We're not talking about her anymore.
Bye, Angela. Goodbye. In 1995, Bigelow founded the National Institute for Discovery Sciences,
which is NIDS, to fund the research and study of various fringe sciences and paranormal topics.
You can tell this is before Beam Guy. I know. I know. It just doesn't have the same pizzazz
anymore. Yet. This organization studies UFOs, cattle mutilation, black triangles, et cetera,
et cetera. And deputy administrator, Colm Calher, was quoted as saying that organization was not
designed to study UFOs only. We don't study aliens. We study anomalies. They're the same thing in a
lot of people's minds, but not in our minds, unquote, but in our hearts, unquote by me. By the
way, the organization attributes the black helicopters to the military. And that is just
a fun fact for you there. That does not have really any bearing on anything else other than
that was their finding on that. I've literally not given you anything else. Following year in 1996,
Bigelow purchased Skinwalker Ranch. I don't think I really need to say more about that here because
that would be its own episode that I don't even think we would even know how to begin to touch on.
So touch on it. We will. At some point, I think we will. Maybe a little as best as we can. I think
we've alluded so much that at some point we have to at least- Acknowledge it. I found it really
awkward to say touch it a little. Skinwalker Ranch. I don't even want to touch it a little.
Okay. So episode maybe maybe not forthcoming. So if anyone's listening to the future,
did we do it? I don't know. Let us know.
Bigelow purchases the ranch for $200,000. Can you imagine? How many acres was it? Does it say?
This is not even a price you pay for real estate. How many acres was it? A lot? It's gotta be a
quarter section at least, right? At least 400 acres? 600 acres? It has to have been in something
that I- Nah, I don't know about that. 512. Yeah, about a quarter section. Okay. Mr. Bigelow said
he saw interdimensional forces at play through portals at certain paranormal hotspots like
Skinwalker. He also said that he had frequently visited the ranch without experiencing the kind
of chilling events others reported, as if some intelligence were selecting the people to act upon.
Bigelow quotes, I slept like a log every single night, he said. I don't know why he then didn't
rent it out as, and saying this is the best sleep you'll ever get. I put some inflatable domes up on
it. Inflatable couches everywhere. It's like going back to Blockbuster in the 90s. It's the 90s,
but taunted and you'll sleep so well. You won't see shit. And no human was physically harmed,
but he said he and other visitors often carried strange things home. Like, as sulfurous. What?
Like a good sleep. Yes. Like feeling super rested. And he also stole so much shit from that place.
He owned it. He does seem like the owner who just like, he goes into the lab and just starts
stealing shit, but he can't do anything about it. He's being really secretive about it, but he
technically owns everything. Like test tube just sitting there, he puts it in his pocket. Typical.
It's typical of eccentric. Got a trench coat on with so many pockets. Just like filled with shit.
It's not even good shit. I hope it's more useful where it was, especially for you.
Okay. So the stuff that people are actually carrying home is things like sulfurous stink in
a certain part of their house. His wife felt the presence of a faceless creature pressing down on
her side of the bed. That's a very weird thing to say upon reading it just now and thinking about
it. I don't know how you would feel the presence of something having no face unless you saw it.
Yeah. That really sounds like a, oh, what's it called? Hague syndrome? What's the actual term?
Old Hague. Old Hague syndrome, but like faceless. Yeah. It could also be like hat man or
a lot of different things, but usually those people are witnessing no face. Yeah. I mean,
yeah. Shadow people like it had no face. He sold the ranch in 2016 because he was bored
for about 500,000. Just kidding. He wasn't bored. He probably was though.
To another billionaire. And he made a pretty good profit. He did make a really good profit. He sold
it to another billionaire. Realty tycoon, Brandon Fugal, who has continued his own private on-site
research. So from now on, it's just passed from eccentric billionaire to eccentric billionaire
doing testing and the paranormal there. Oh, the main mysteries at Skinwalker Ranch were never
solved, Mr. Bigelow said, but he added lots of things have never been made public that we have
things that I personally initiated that we have photographs of. I don't know what he's holding
on to. In April, 97 Bigelow donated $3.7 million to the University of Nevada to found the Bigelow
chair of consciousness studies, which allows students to take undergraduate courses dealing
with their psychology for college credit. In December, 2017, Bigelow was reported by the New
York times to have urged Senator Harry Reid to initiate what became the advanced aerospace
threat identification program or AATIP, which is a government study led by that was led by Louise
Elizondo, who we know from our episode on Tom DeLong. That one is actually in the past. So it's
up there if you want to go look. Program operated from 2007 to 2012, tasked with the study of UFOs
and was funded by 22 million over five years until it ended. And it was began with the US Defense
Intelligence Agency. Bigelow is of course convinced that extraterrestrial life exists and that they
have visited Earth. And you both Bigelow, I just don't have all that money to do all this fancy
stuff with. We can just vaguely talk about it on our podcast. Yeah, exactly. That's the most we can
do. The Institute was sadly disbanded in 2004. An article by Dale Stevens, who sat down with a former
staff member of NIDS, claimed that NIDS fell prey to a variety of internal problems. This is a good
one. Including air management, lack of direction, lack of creativity. I mean, they lost the beam guy,
lack of funding and negative culture. Again, Chelsea, the beam guy isn't there yet. He's not
there yet. Oh yeah, this is after before before. Yeah, they haven't found the beam guy yet. I'm just waiting for you to also say boredom.
This bores me. Oh, morale fueled by annual layoffs. This was compounded by the elusive nature of the
field of study. In one example, when my acquaintance, newly hired, asked for direction, the response
given was to spend a couple of hours a day surfing the web for items of interest. Also boredom. With
that article by Dale Stevens summarizing why it was shut down, that unfortunately concludes the anomalies
research. So now we move on to the consciousness studies. In June 2020, four months after bone
marrow disease and leukemia claimed the life of his wife of 55 years, Diane Bigelow, Robert founded
the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies to support investigations to life after death. He kind
of reminds me of Houdini on this one, but he's the one that it was his mom that died. He was trying to
find a psychic that could actually contact his mom, right? Yeah, but he was doing it through debunking
as opposed to how funding the research. Yeah, Bigelow holds a contest seeking the best available
evidence of survival of consciousness with prizes of 500,000, 300,000, and 150,000 for second and
third place. As is usual with people holding contests for proof of the afterlife, if you didn't
get that from his wife dying. Led a fairly tragic life with the death of loved ones. Bigelow's
interest in consciousness grew after the 1992 suicide of their 24 year old son, Rod Lee,
father of a baby son and yet an unborn daughter. Son Rod II grew up to struggle with drug addiction
and would also die from suicide at 20 in 2011. So this contest took place in 2020. I never did find
a winner. I don't know if he also just got bored and didn't like complete it. Or not awarding it.
Or what happened with it. I couldn't find anything to finalize that thought in this. So now I just
scoot on to the next thing I have written down. In January 2021, he put up an award of 1 million
US for anyone who could demonstrate the existence of life after death. So with both of those,
there's nothing more. Who won? If he found it, I'm assuming he didn't find it. Who got the 1 million
or what's going on? If he's bored or not, who knows? Yeah, he's probably bored. He was actively
going around doing some media with these two contests he had. He was on the Joe Rogan show.
He was on a few other little things kind of promoting it. And with that, in my notes,
I conclude with a photo of Robert Bigelow, which I'll put on the socials, hopefully,
of him smiling nicely with a space background. And that's how we end this episode is of me looking
at this picture. And you have many closing thoughts. I'm just wondering, did this change
your view at all of Robert Bigelow, either in a positive or a negative light? You know what,
I don't know that it changed. I think I was just like, hmm, that's the history. Okay. And it just
kind of gave me a little bit more information on him. I don't think he's bad. I know for a while,
you kind of thought he was a pretty great billionaire that's funding like sci fi research.
Yeah, I think he's pretty cool doing that. But also at the same time, like, what is actually
coming from him? Yeah, exactly. No, it has an interest in it. And he's taking all of that
information for himself. He's not really doing anything with it. Exactly. And when you look at
like what he did with Skinwalker Ranch, he learned nothing and just kind of turned a profit on selling
it. Yeah. But he also says that he has pictures that he has that prove something, but didn't do
anything with that. Yeah. Plus, he's probably making all that money from George Knapp writing
that book on it. Yeah. Well, and that's a bunch of media stuff on it. I think it's just kind of
that billionaire mindset where it's like at the end of the day, even if you made all that money
to do a certain thing, like you have to corrupt yourself to make that much money and you kind of
destroy the whole purpose of it. Yeah. I never thought of it that way. So I'm glad that we're
here to discuss this as we're always here as Journey to the Fringe to discuss these things.
And you're right, because at the end of the day, he's out for himself. He's not out there to better
anything really. And everything he kind of touched just kind of dissolved into nothingness and didn't.
Because he either got bored or wasn't making money. Got bored. Yeah. He didn't really. Yeah,
I don't know that he at the end of this, I can say that he really, I came away being like, wow,
he contributed to this. But he did even Beam, like anybody can go through copyrights and be like,
I'll just make this idea. If I had enough money, I could skim through or I could pay somebody,
several people to skim through NASA, the Pentagon for things that they have patented that they're
not doing and say, hey, let's just take that. Just to say that you had your hand in it and you
can fund it. Yeah. So I guess that's the takeaway. We didn't really get, I was impressed at 12 that
he was like, I'm not that good at math, but I want to do something in space. Yeah, but no,
if you look at, if you look at billionaires biographies, they always have this like,
like from a young age, they were destined to do this. The one I'm seeing it with right now,
Chelsea, I know you listened to Behind the Bastards. They just did Sam Bankman Freed from FTX.
And they have that little like cult of personality behind him and how like he talks about from a
young age that he was destined for greatness and his whole, he needs to make a lot of money to do
good in the world. And like all he ended up doing was defrauding everybody. And I should say sorry,
allegedly defrauding everybody because the suit's still in court. But you know,
who else was destined for great things? Charles Manson. Yeah. Well, I don't know if he was
destined. He did things. He did. Large in nature. He knew that he was destined for greatness. And
so there's also that. Yeah. Considered the billionaires. Yeah. And let's face it,
if he were to have actually been a billionaire when he did those things,
the biography would look very different. It really, really would. It would look very,
very different. Incredibly. You bring up a very nice point on that. Yeah. That's the story of
Robert Glow. Well, thank you for bringing that to us, Chelsea. I don't know whether or not to call
him an asshole of the UFO community. I think enigmatic is the best way to describe it. Being
somebody that you can't fully understand for we are not rich enough to do that. That's true.
That's an interesting character. I look forward to doing more of these spotlights on people because
they're always weird when it comes to this group. Yeah. But anyhow, that's probably a great place to
end this off. I have been Taylor here with Chelsea. We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank
you all for listening and we'll see you next week. See? Thank you for listening to Journey to the
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