It's time for another episode of I Haven't Read This Article, but I'm about to relay it to everybody listening.
Because it is important news, apparently.
Yes, because it has been recommended to me by someone.
Somebody who also hasn't read it.
Just say it.
Someone you've been calling.
Yes.
I hope you like these kind of intros.
Let's start with the headline, even if it gives it away, because we'll all have some where to go with it.
Yeah, we'll all have some context.
Okay, headline, here it is.
He's on his own in little quotations.
King Charles Ouss, Prince Andrew from Buckingham Palace.
Any presence that the palace is officially over, a source told the Sun newspaper.
I'm gonna go ahead and say it finally.
I've been waiting for this moment.
I hope there's drama in this.
Okay, Prince Andrew's office is being removed from Buckingham Palace.
It was in Buckingham Palace?
You had an office?
Yeah.
This is a funny dude.
Woo.
Yeah, no kidding.
I'm really hoping someone went in and wiped everything off of his desk.
King Chuck just comes in and rips everything off and yells, you're out of here.
Yeah, get the fuck out and punches him.
That's what I'm looking for with this.
Okay, it goes on.
It's not just hearsay from here.
This grace Duke of York, who stepped back from public duty three years ago after being accused of sexual assault,
retained his skeleton staff at the official home of the royal family.
How did we know this?
I feel like we've been covering this as much as we can.
He only has non-security staff.
Like any staff at all is just basically the people who can dress him and wipe his ass.
For without them, he would be useless.
So he's retained a skeleton staff to do exactly what Taylor just said,
at the official home of the royal family.
But he has reportedly now been told to move on and not to use the London property as an address
for correspondence.
Oh, this is serious.
Wonder how this went down.
Andrew, who settled the case brought by Virginia Geffrey, I just about said that all in one word,
in February, but made no admission of liability is believed to be
recruiting a new communications team, but must foot the bill for his staff himself.
This keeps on happening to him.
A source told the Sun newspaper, probably King Chuck,
any presence at the palace is officially over.
We already read that guys.
We already knew that.
We're all in this together.
King has made it clear he is not a working royal.
He is on his own.
He is making it clear because we didn't even know he had an office still at Buckingham Palace.
That was a pretty well guarded secret.
I do want to focus back a little bit on that oxymoron that King Chuck just said, a working royal.
Yeah, because those hands are so delicate, probably touching even more than two pens,
probably make that skip all off the phone.
Let me see if this is relevant.
Oh, I don't even know what that means.
It is a further blow to the 62 year old prince after I hate like old princes like why even
after Prince was 40, he changed his name to some weird logo or symbol.
Like even he knew there's no such thing as an old exactly.
Yeah, it's weird.
It's weird.
Is a further blow to the 62 year old prince after the home office this month made the decision to
strip him of his 24 hour arm security.
We covered that already.
That was in our year end update.
So don't worry.
We covered it better than that.
It's ever important part of that.
It shouldn't be that old and be a prince.
So just kick him out of the palace already.
Also, he's not a prince.
Don't worry.
Just British Andy, the lovable screw up.
Yeah, exactly.
And however, Andrew will join his brother Chuck, his own wife, Sarah Ferguson and other members
of the family for Christmas in Sangre.
We know that guys is believed to be retaining his royal lodge home on the Windsor estate.
And that concludes the past paced, enthralling saga of what's currently going on with regular
person Andy.
To be honest, I wish there was more drama in that.
Like throwing your shit out the window, like get the fuck out of here.
Throwing his prathatum as the friend of the lady.
King Chuck has his assistant throwing a computer out the window.
Yeah.
Like after he tried but failed to even look.
Everything else was a disappointment.
Yeah.
Well, no, I actually learned something
very important from this episode that has happened.
And that is, is that there is office space available in Buckingham Palace.
Oh, that is important.
Should be looking to rent.
The other important things we learned is that princes can be old.
We must not be ages.
Look for a place.
But they're probably creepy.
Yeah, they definitely are.
If we look at regular person Andy, who was once a prince, is a prince.
Is he still a prince?
No, he got that title taken away.
Why did we call him a prince here?
That's just that we know.
Again, they don't really treat it the right way.
Like we had to do that in the last article.
His name is British Andy.
He has no titles.
And we learned other stuff too, but this is an opener.
So who's keeping track?
And I think that about sums it up.
That's that's for your end, Taylor and Chelsea, to worry about.
But with that, let's get on with our 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 officially 100 episodes in.
You think by this point that we would have reached the fringe,
but let's not focus on that.
It's really about the friends you make,
and more importantly, the assholes you learn about along the way.
It really is. Yes.
That's the most important.
I find this episode very fitting to bring us into the triple digits,
because originally the concept Chelsea and I always wanted to do,
and we've probably talked about this several times on the podcast now,
is talk about assholes in the UFO community.
It was founded on that.
It was founded entirely on that.
And it took us way too long to get there.
But once we opened that tap,
we realized what their true passions are,
and it is shitting on assholes,
or at least explaining them, explaining assholes to the world.
I can't believe we chose this to be our 100th episode.
I didn't even know we were at that.
It didn't already surpass it.
It really flies by.
For this episode,
we're going to take a look at our very own Night of Sidonia,
and that is Mr. Richard C. Hoagland.
Now, before I even start this episode off,
I do need to say that I think the C actually is fairly important,
because if you Google, there's a guy who went missing for 20 years,
and a case of identity theft of another Richard Hoagland.
At least I hope it's another Richard Hoagland,
because I didn't look at it for this episode.
But yeah, there is a Richard Hoagland in North Carolina
that is either a victim of or somebody who was victimizing others with identity theft.
Oh no.
Yeah.
And we can't confirm whether it's the same one.
I'm going to put on what I know about Richard C. Hoagland.
It is probably not him.
Although he probably claims that all the things that are happening there are about him.
But that'll probably like, you'll get that idea as we talk about this one.
We're going to look at the life triumphs,
as he would probably call them, of Mr. Hoagland.
What did we call him before?
Richie C.
We didn't call him anything.
I think you're thinking of Richard Doty.
Richie D. Yes.
He called him Richie D.
So this could be Richie's D.
Yeah. Richie.
We're going to look at this guy's life.
It's a very long one,
so there's going to be some things to it.
We're going to look at some of the things that he's famous for,
whether or not he should be famous for them.
And we're going to finish it up with a few forum statements that I found that are just hilarious.
Nice.
But we're going to leave that till the very end.
Can I just interject?
We consider him famous?
He is, I think, as famous as you can get in the UFO community.
Like, if you're going to put on a UFO conference,
and you can get him as a headliner,
like you're going to probably sell out.
Huh. I'm just trying to think like who, who,
if I was trying to draw people in the UFOs, who would I want?
Probably like Tom DeLong.
That's...
Well, yeah, but no, that's if you want the common person.
Like Richard Hoagland has really cornered the market on the UFO people.
And can be a conspiracy.
Yeah, exactly.
If you want to sell out the UFO convention to UFO convention attendees,
you bring Richard C. Hoagland.
Okay.
Richie C.
Do you just want to sell out?
You don't care who comes?
You bring Tom DeLong.
I'm already learning something new.
Who would be next?
What's his name?
The filmmaker might be next.
He's hanging out with George Knapp and at Jeremy Something.
Jeremy Corbell.
Yeah.
I think so.
Now I would go for David Wilcock just for Jason Giggles.
No, you let David Wilcock set up outside.
Jason, do your UFO convention.
Because that is where he is most comfortable.
Oh, there he is.
I just think it would be the most hilarious thing.
Yeah.
George Knapp though too.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
George Knapp, George Norrie.
Yeah.
Although I don't know if many people outside of the UFO community
yet know who George Norrie is.
Anyhow, let's stop speculating on this.
Let's learn about Richie.
George Norrie, he's more like known than I would say Richard C. Hoagland.
Yeah.
We're going to get into it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's just start.
Yeah.
This is coming up.
So he's been on many different shows.
He gives his bio out and it almost seems like he sends it out
as this is what you're supposed to read as my bio
to different hosts that he gets interviewed by.
So I just found one.
I want to go over it from a podcast that I find very odd
that he would show up on.
It's called Speaking of Young.
It's a Carl Young podcast.
Coming up again for some reason on this show.
Hold on.
Wait, what?
Like the psychiatry guy.
Yeah.
Interesting.
And this guy has nothing to do with psychology.
So I don't understand why he's here,
but let's go over his biography.
Richard C. Hoagland is a science writer and consultant
in the field of astronomy, planetarium curating,
and space program education.
In 1965, at the age of 19,
he became a curator of the Springfield Science Museum
in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The following year, he served as NBC television consultant
for the historic soft landing of a U.S. spacecraft
on the moon and appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
During the Apollo 8 lunar orbital mission on Christmas of 1968,
he was asked to become a consultant to CBS News
and served for many years as science advisor
to Walter Cronkite.
Together with Carl Sagan, Mr. Hoagland
co-created the, quote, pioneer plaque
and predicted life on Europa in its brown bacon paper,
The Europa Proposal,
published 37 years before NASA's announcement of water
being found on the planet.
He served for 10 years as a consultant
for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
contributing documentation on the orbiting
astronomical observatory project.
For the last several decades,
he has led an outside scientific team
in a critically acclaimed independent analysis
of possible intelligently designed artifacts
on the Viking images of Mars.
In 1993, he was awarded the International
Anxtra Medal for Excellence in Science for his research.
Mr. Hoagland appeared regularly
as the science advisor on coast to coast AM
with Art Bell and later with George Norrie
and produced the radio program,
The Night of the Encounter on WTIC AM
at Hartford, Connecticut,
which covered the July 14th, 1965,
Mariner 4 fly by of the planet Mars.
He is the author of Monuments of Mars,
A City on the Edge of Forever,
published in 1987 and co-author
with Mike Barra of Dark Mission,
The Secret History of NASA,
which reached the New York Times bestsellers list in 2007.
Currently, he serves as principal investigator
of the Enterprise mission,
which he founded in 1992
and is the creator and host of the late night
weekend radio show, The Other Side of Midnight,
airing Saturday and Sunday nights at midnight
Eastern time.
And he still is doing that.
It'll come up in a bit.
That's quite a lot of fairly impressive things.
It is actually, before, good, I guess.
Yeah.
And his coast to coast one's really short too,
so I thought I'd just do it really quick.
Richard Hoagland is a former space science museum curator,
a former NASA consultant,
and during the historic Apollo missions to the moon
was science advisor for Walter Cronkite.
And CBS News, for over 20 years,
Hoagland has been leading an outside scientific team
in a critically acclaimed independent analysis
of possible intelligently designed artifacts on Mars.
Richard and his team's investigations
have been quietly extended to include
over 30 years of previously hidden data
from NASA, Soviet and Pentagon missions to the moon.
I looked back through the catalog,
how many times do you think he's shown up
on coast to coast episodes, Chelsea?
Oh, a lot.
He was an advisor on With Art Bell and continued,
I don't know how many times I've listened to him.
I'm going to say well over 300.
That would actually be a good guess.
From 2003 to 2022,
which is the only part of the catalog you can actually look at,
he was on 207 times.
Wow.
So it's almost like a monthly guest at least.
Yes, I've heard him a lot on coast.
And basically, if you've heard him on there,
he's the guy who found a picture of a planet
and saw something there.
And he's always talking about those.
Like that's a big thing.
He's the guy.
He's got pictures and he's like,
oh yeah, there's a skyscraper in that.
And you're like, yeah, that looks like a desert
on Mars to me.
And the first episode I could find
just to give you an idea tonight's guest,
Richard C. Hoagland has had a long standing fascination
with Mars, believing the planet contains evidence
of a previous civilization.
While this is not a debated topic,
one thing is for sure, Mars is getting ready
for its close up.
By August of this year,
it will be the closest it's been to Earth in 73,000 years.
And as the red planet moves in,
it will be growing steadily brighter
and larger in the sky.
That's why they brought him on because Mars was getting close.
So they said, hey, let's do some Mars conspiracy stuff.
Yeah.
Why not?
That's all well and good.
And those bios really built him up.
Let's look at the Wikipedia page
to give it a little balance.
Okay.
Wikipedia is good for that.
Bringing things down.
Yeah.
I really love how it starts off.
First off, the first thing it says on his Wikipedia page,
which I don't know why I ever fucking close this stuff.
Why haven't you learned your lesson?
You got to leave every single tab open.
I do that.
And then the computer just sucks.
The very first sentence in his background
is,
Hoekland has no education beyond the high school level.
How did he get?
According to Hoekland's own curriculum vete, the CV,
he has no advanced training, schooling,
or degrees in any scientific field.
So why don't they lead with that on the bio?
Yeah.
It's not balanced.
I also love this second word here
because it's a very loaded word because it's a proven thing.
But Hoekland asserts he was a curator of astronomy
and space science at the Springfield Science Museum
from 1964 to 1967,
an assistant director at the Gengre Science Center
in West Hartford, Connecticut, 1967 to 1968,
and a science advisor to CBS News during the Apollo program,
1968 to 1971.
In July of 1968,
Hoekland filed a copyright registration
for a planetary preservation
and show script called the Grand Tour.
So now I'm wondering how he got to all this stuff
if he has no, his different time back then.
I know.
He became curator of the astronomy and space science
at the Springfield Science Museum at the age of 19.
Like it literally seems like he won the science fair that year.
And they said, look at the prize.
You get to run the science place.
Yeah.
And then Walter Cronkite was like,
we got to find somebody that has some experience
in space science.
Well, this is where I think they get the idea
that this guy knows what he's talking about.
It's going to come up here.
So a popular planetarium lecturer
at the Springfield Science Museum,
Hoekland produced a program called, quote,
Mars Infinity to 1965, end quote,
to coincide with the Mariners three and four missions.
He designed a room with special equipment
to display the relative position of the Earth, Mars,
and the Mariners during their trips
and thereafter contracted with NASA
to relay the picture of the Martian surface
on a near live feed to the general audience.
This is really his claim to fame
and how he says he worked with NASA.
He always brings it up that he worked with NASA
and he contracted with them.
This is really what he means.
Hoekland co-hosted a radio program for WTICAM
in Hartford, Connecticut, the Night of the Encounter,
along with Dick Bertel covering the July 14th, 1965,
Mariners four flyby of the planet Mars.
Local newspapers had noted the radio progress
to be the history's first laser audio transmission.
So I think part of it is just him getting in the news from that,
brought it to the attention of people in the news community
that this guy knows science.
Add to that, this guy is an absolute bullshitter,
world-class bullshitter, that he was able to talk
some people that actually think he knows what he's talking about.
That's how a lot of people get places, for sure.
See it a lot on this podcast.
I did actually find this.
It was from the local newspaper.
It's a 35 year anniversary, but it's from a local newspaper
that says before Mariners three and four,
even left the launch pad a popular planetarium lecturer
at the Springfield Science Museum,
19 year old Richard Hoekland had embarked
on an ambitious project called Mars, Infinity in 1965.
Hoekland outfitted a large room in the museum
with 200 seats surrounded by space murals, pictures of Mars,
projection screens, closed circuit TV equipment,
a status board and an exhibit about extraterrestrial life.
A ceiling model of the solar system was designed
to show the relative positions of the Earth, Mars,
and the two Mariners during their seven and a half month trip to Mars.
And then David Wilcock has on his website
a little blurb about this as well.
I just wanted to compare how much brown dozen goes on.
Okay, let's compare it.
Compared to like what just happened.
In 1965, at the age of only 19,
when most young people were still chasing after the opposite sex
and enjoying their newfound freedom to drink beer legally,
Hoekland became curator of the Springfield,
Massachusetts Museum of Science.
Obviously, Hoekland was a quote boy genius,
unquote of astronomy, to have secured a job like this at his age.
His creativity and desire to quote think big, unquote,
led him to design and produce a giant commemorative event
for Mariners for fly by of Mars.
The first time that our species had sent a probe
to another planet in the solar system.
He had an audience of 2000 people at the museum
and 5000 more press and scientists watching at JPL,
which is the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.
Clearly, this was no small feat for a man at an age
where most people are lacking in self-confidence or knowledge
of what they really plan on doing with their lives.
Then when Hoekland was only 20,
he served as a consultant to NBC regarding the first soft landing
of a human built probe on the lunar surface.
Subsequent opportunities emerged,
leading to a spot on the night show, among other things.
This is the obvious reason why Hoekland did not pursue
a quote higher education, unquote.
He was already at the cutting edge.
Of course. And who would want education at that point anyway?
No, of course. We don't need to back up what you're thinking.
Shit.
Yeah. He needs to back up a few inches.
Yeah. How did he fly under our radar so that we...
This is right on par with David Wilcox.
Well, and funny enough,
it did come up in the David Wilcox episodes
because he's the one who helped him with his research originally
and told him to stop fucking using Russian scientists.
Yes.
And he also introduced him in 2004 to the coast to coast community
when they both did an episode together with George Norrie.
They did.
So this isn't the first time he's come up.
I also really want to make sure that we all notice this,
that David Wilcox said that he had an audience of 2,000 people,
yet the newspaper said there were only 200 seats in the entire arena.
And there were also 5,000 more people watching.
So like clearly the guy does not do research.
Editors note, and unfortunately something got missed in the original script,
the local newspaper also identifies Richard C. Hogan as a lecturer
and not the curator of the planetarium.
This may be part of the reason why Wikipedia used the term asserts in some of his legacy.
I actually didn't catch that.
And so I'm glad that you circled around back for that.
And I feel like David Wilcox probably took a little bit from that intro
because I just got a little glimpse there of some memories from the David Wilcox episode.
When he said, while most teenagers are out drinking or whatever it was,
I feel like that's something David Wilcox would say,
except he was the one that became an alcoholic apparently after like one day of drinking.
That's why he's got to really bring it up.
He's recovering.
You're always recovering.
You gotta milk that shit.
And then I gotta have, I have one more thing already.
This is going to be a long episode.
Yep.
For someone with no education to be telling David Wilcox,
you can't use all Russian sources.
Yep. That came up in the episode.
It is hilarious.
I just gotta say that is beautiful.
Okay, that's all I had to say.
Okay.
So in 1976, Holden continuing on with his big time celebrity status,
an avid Star Trek fan initiated a letter writing campaign that successfully persuaded
President Gerald Ford to name the first space shuttle, The Enterprise,
replacing the previously slated name of the prototype vehicle Constitution.
Hogan authored the book, The Monuments of Mars, A City on the Edge of Forever,
which is just plucked straight from the title of a Star Trek episode.
A City on the Edge of Forever is a title to a very famous Star Trek episode.
Guy does not have original thoughts.
Just throwing this out here.
No, I mean, he never learned how to source things or have original thoughts.
No.
He also co-authored the book, Dark Mission, The Secret History of NASA,
which was ranked 21st on the November 18th, 2007 New York Times bestseller.
Richard Grossinger, the founder of North Atlantic Books,
writes that Monuments became the most successful title published by North Atlantic
and that at its peak, the book sold over 2,000 copies a month,
which is kind of big, I think, for the UFO community.
Grossinger also reports that Hogan wrote much of the book while in Los Angeles,
County Jail.
That one comes up later.
I found the story for that.
Okay.
Hogan ran the now defunct Enterprise Mission website.
It is still very much so up there.
If you go to enterprisemission.com, you can take a look at all the 90s glory that is
every single one of these guys' websites.
How come these never come down?
They still pay for them, apparently.
I'm trying to look at it.
EnterpriseMission.com.
Sorry, EnterpriseMissions.com.
EnterpriseMission.com.
Oh, here we go.
Here we go.
This looks like every other type of guy website I've been to.
Yeah, you have the very 90s star background.
And it's just banners.
I also really like if you just go to the third banner,
that is actually the logo that he uses for his podcast,
other side of midnight.
If you'll notice, he always keeps the NASA logo close as if there's some sort of
connection between him and NASA to give him some sort of power.
He also has the Egyptian stuff there,
which he brings in as ancient alien stuff.
It might come up later on if we have time or not.
That inclusion.
But did the Chinese actually discover on the moon?
Now I want to know.
It's bait.
Okay, continue.
Hogan ran the now defunct EnterpriseMissions website,
which he described as quote an independent NASA watchdog and research group.
The EnterpriseMission, attempting to figure out how much of what NASA has found in the
solar system over the past few years, has actually been silently filed out of sight
and classified material and therefore totally unknown to the American people.
Hogan appeared regularly as the science advisor for Coast to Coast,
a rate night radio talk show until being replaced by Robert Zimmerman in July of 2015.
And of course, that's not Bob Dylan.
That's a different Robert Zimmerman.
I was just going to say.
Hey, yeah.
And plus I've never even heard of that guy other than Bob Dylan.
No, I remember hearing his name on Coast to Coast and I'm like, wait, you mean Bob Dylan?
And that's what I would connect.
You could actually have to understand him instead of a raspy ass voice.
So it wasn't.
And it didn't end every single sentence with an inflection tone up.
While Hogan makes frequent reference to his receipt of the International
Anxtrum Medal for Excellence in Science in August of 1993, the organization that awarded
the medal of the Anxtrum Foundation, Aktee Bolig, founded by Lars Jonas Anxtrum, was not
authorized by the university or the Royal Swedish Academy of Science to make use of the academy
and her Jonas Anxtrum Memorial Medal.
And the academy has long authorized only Uppsala University to use their medal for the
Anxtrum Prize awarded yearly by Uppsala professor to physics students.
Mr. Anxtrum stated in May 2000 that although his award to Hogan was a mistake, he acted
in good faith and with good intentions.
That's good.
It's usually included in his bio that he won the Anxtrum Medal when it was accidentally awarded.
And by accidentally, the wrong Anxtrum group awarded it.
That's the only time they've ever actually awarded it.
And the guy says in hindsight, he kind of lied about the things that we got awarded for it.
So that in a nutshell is the life and time of Richard C. Hogan, Richie C.
Let's talk about some of the claims that he has made.
First off, he claims that he was the original person that hypothesized that there is a water
ocean on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and that there is likely going to be life in it.
He says he wrote a paper in 1980 that outlines this and he was the first person to write about this.
I found that he was the first person to write about this.
I found this guy I love.
He is a math professor.
His name is Ralph Greenberg.
And he just listened to Richard on Coast one time.
And he's like, this guy's full of shit.
I need to actually look into some of his claims.
And like his entire hobby after this is talking to our bell about how much full of shit Richard has.
So let's go through this story.
This comes right from Ralph Greenberg's blog.
I guess they were blogs back in the day.
It's just a green screen and that it's from washington.edu.
So it's his blog and it's it's cited nicely.
So there's stuff in there.
Oh good, because he has more than a high school education.
Yeah.
Okay.
So it was during the summer of 1996 that I first listened to the late night radio show
Coast to Coast hosted by Art Bell.
I was intrigued by the show, but also quite bothered by certain aspects of it.
I saw great potential in a show like Coast to Coast and we'll say more about that on another page,
reflection on the Art Bell show.
But we're not going to talk about that.
We're going to talk about the rest.
That was not.
I had never heard of Richard Houghland before listening to that show.
The first topic that I heard him discuss was his theory that ancient artificial structures exist on the moon.
The first time that I heard Houghland discuss Europa was one night in July of 1996.
As a recall, I had only recently learned the theory that Europa might have a liquid water ocean
and that life might exist in such an ocean.
The Galileo spacecraft had just recently started to send back photographs from Jupiter's system,
which generated a lot of excitement and discussion.
That night, Richard Houghland mentioned in his article,
the Europa enigma, which he wrote for the January 1980 issue of Star and Sky magazine.
Houghland also made an accusation that a scientist named Stephen Squeers and NASA
were trying to steal credit from him.
Houghland's assertion was that NASA might have discovered that life really does exist on Europa
and wanted to make sure that they would get credit rather than him.
The assertion was based on a news report about a lecture that Squeers had given in England.
At the same time, Houghland posted a press release on the Enterprise mission website,
making the same accusations against Squeers.
It was also the subject of an interview by Michael Corbin.
My reaction was that it was extremely irresponsible for someone to make such an accusation
on a nationwide radio show based merely on a news report.
As I learned only recently, neither Houghland nor any of his associates even bothered to
contact the author of the news report to determine whether the accusation was accurate.
They also did not bother to contact Squeers himself.
In fact, the accusation turned out to be entirely unjustified.
I also did not realize the hypocrisy implicit in Houghland's accusations against Squeers at that
time. That only became apparent to me some six or seven months later.
Europa was in the news rather frequently between 1996 and 1997.
During Houghland's rather frequent guest appearances,
Art Bell would often mention some recent news item about Europa, and either he or Houghland would
bring up the subject of Houghland's 1980 article, always giving the impression that it was he who
first proposed both the idea that Europa might have had an ocean of liquid water and the idea that
life might develop in that environment.
Art Bell would then usually add some sarcastic comments about the
scientific community not giving Houghland his due credit.
I also recall hearing callers to Art Bell's show mention that Houghland has been far in advance of
the scientific community in proposing the possibility of an ocean on Europa,
and therefore his current ideas should be taken seriously.
This happened just two or three times, but I gradually became aware during the following
two years that it was rather widely believed that Houghland really was the first proposed
that important idea.
And just so we're on the same page, this article that they're quoting in Star and Sky Magazine,
Star and Sky Magazine is an amateur astronomy magazine.
So it's not a scientific paper than you wrote.
It's just an article that he wrote for amateurs.
Yeah, and it seems okay for Richard Houghland to take it from an amateur.
No, he wrote it.
He wrote it as an amateur.
Oh, he wrote it in an amateur magazine.
Yes.
He's never written a scientific paper nor had anything peer reviewed.
No, I wouldn't think so, since he has graduated.
No credentials to do so.
Yeah.
Early in 1997, I came across an article in Science News which mentioned the idea of an
ocean under the ice of Europa was first proposed by John S. Lewis in 1971.
This was inconsistent with the impression that Richard Houghland's statements gave.
It was my first clue that the version of history we were hearing on the art bell show
might not be right.
It was not Houghland's idea at all.
It comes straight out of the paper, Is There Liquid Water on Europa?
by Cassin Peel and Reynolds, written in June of 1979.
Strangely enough, not that much earlier than when he posts his article the year after.
This poor guy, like he comes in, he's like, coast to coast is going to be awesome.
Yes, it's fine.
He's obviously not heard some of the other stuff that's on there, but he's.
No, this is actually, I like this part because he's like, oh no, this is an error that seems
to be there and they don't seem to know it.
Like, listen, as far as I know, Richard Houghland has never responded to the substance of my
criticism over the issue.
He's not even corrected or modified the misleading statements which is quoted above,
taken from his website.
And sorry, I edited it out a little bit, but he specifically put articles on his webpage
that say he was the one who discovered this.
It's still there introducing his article, the Europa Enigma.
However, in May of 1998, I succeeded in putting some heat on Houghland by challenging him
to a debate concerning several issues.
In my letter to Houghland, which I also sent to Art Bell and some of his regular guests,
I wrote concerning the Europa issue.
Well, you have often stated that you were the first person to propose the idea that
Europa might have an ocean under a crust of ice and that life might evolve in such an environment.
My contention is that the actual history of those ideas does not support your claim of priority.
To my surprise, and without telling me in advance, Art Bell confronted me with my challenge on the air.
That occurred on May 26th, two weeks after I sent that letter.
Parentheses, ifacts, are a copy of that letter again on that day, knowing that Houghland was
scheduled to be his guest that night.
Houghland refused to debate and was extremely insulting when he talked about me.
He did allude to Europa and said that Terence Dickinson and Arthur C. Clark gave him credit for
the idea that my challenge on the issue was political.
That was all.
Poor guy. Yeah, like he did all this research.
It's out of his field and he looked it up and he's like, hey, yeah, he's just trying to correct the
error and he's like, I'll debate him on this. Yeah, he just wants the best.
So that's his assertions that he's the one who proposed that there's water, a liquid ocean on
Europa. Next up, his biggest thing that most people know him for is his monuments of Mars.
In 1972, the Viking 1 space probe did a flyby of Mars, which was pretty monumental.
It was the first close-up view of the red planet we ever had.
And you know what Richie C. thought was so great about it?
The fact that it found evidence of life on Mars, but not just any life on Mars,
but advanced civilizations.
Houghland claims, quote, the face on Mars, unquote, is part of a city built on Sidonia,
Planitia, consisting of very large pyramids and mounds arranged in geometric patterns.
To Houghland, this is evidence of an advanced civilization that might have existed on Mars.
The area on Mars known as Sidonia, he sees a lot of things that he says, oh, this is definitely
an old city. There's the face on Mars, which most scientists and NASA chalk up to what's
called face paranoia. It's where we see faces where they really are just naturally occurring
phenomenons. Like there's so many places around the world that are known as like giant head.
Yeah. Down with pins. Hell, there's one in South Dakota that people purport to see dead
presidents on a mountain all the time. Yeah. People travel on mass to go see that.
Like crazy. Yeah. Just naturally occurring. So crazy. Yeah. And again, our buddy here,
Ralph Greenberg, actually did a great breakdown of why all of his claims are stupid on this.
Mostly because what he's saying is look at the alignment of all these buildings that I found.
These angles line up to very specific numbers that are very important. And therefore it needs
to be constructed by somebody who knew about these. But unfortunately, we're not going to go to my
buddy Ralph Greenberg this time around. We're going to go to this blog I found called Bad Astronomy.
It is old as hell. Like it's this is all written in 2004 as well. But this is what they say.
Well, yeah, that's true. It can drink though in most of Canada.
Hogan took an image of the Sedonia region, found his objects, then connected them with lines. He
then measured the angles between the objects and manipulated them mathematically. He took ratios
dividing one angle by another and performed trigonometry taking the sine cosine and tangents
of the angles and then went about seeing if those numbers had any special significance.
And he found that they do indeed appear to relate to one another. What the fuck is he doing?
But this isn't how he explains it on coast to coast. He says it. These numbers make sense.
They show that somebody meant to put these here, like look at these angles and what they add up to.
But this is how we're going to explain why this is stupid. He found that these numbers
corresponded to such mathematical constants as e, the base number in the natural logarithm system
equal to about 2.718. He found pi 3.1415 and multiple of simple square roots, like the square
root of two, all the radical square root of three. Amazingly, he seemed to have found an intricate
relationship between the placements of these objects on Mars. If true, this could not have
happened naturally. There must have been some intelligence behind the quote city. Hoagland
claims that over time he became so convinced that the relationship in the city, he calls the city
on the edge of forever, cannot be coincidence. Hoagland claims that over time he became so convinced
that the relationships in the city cannot be coincidence and represent an artificial structure
that he all but abandoned his claim about the face as he says himself. But simultaneously,
we do not want anyone to lose sight of the fact that the face at a more fundamental level has
almost become a secondary part of his debate for many years. Hoagland's geometric relationship
model for Sidonia, with its potential for quantification and testing of the foundation of
the quote intelligent hypothesis itself in the form of specific predictions made by the hyper
dimensional physics theory derived from the alignment model, has already stepped to the
forefront of the debate over the artificiality of Sidonia of late. Because of the quantifiable
basis for the model, the face itself has been relegated to a secondary confirmatory status,
rather than the linchpin around which all decisions vis-a-vis the artificiality of
Sidonia must be anchored. So if the math he did turns out to be wrong, then his claims,
really all of them are wrong too. Well, I mean, what are the odds that his math is right? So yeah,
and it's a very famous photo. If you just type in face of Mars and Google, you'll see it. First
glance, this is in Sidonia, it looks like a face because we see faces. That's just how it works.
You can find secondary photos of it, looks like a hell. His mathematical analysis is so full of
holes, flaws in this direction, that it's completely worthless. This not only destroys his
claim about the city, but by his own words, everything else he says to. How specifically
is he wrong? First off, his claim of measurement accuracy are too high. Given that he measured
these angles off of photographs, throw off his amazing relationships, he claims one angle is
exactly 120 degrees. But if his ruler is off by a tiny bit, then his angle might be 119 or 121
degrees. This is in turn completely negating all the fancy math he then does before he even
turns on his calculator. Second, by picking and choosing which features to use, he uses a hill
in one spot, but not another very similar hill next to it. The ups the odds of finding what he
wants. A suspicious person might assume he initially drew lines from all the available features and
only kept the ones he liked. That makes a mathematical relationship seem a lot stronger than it really is.
Third, even if he didn't pick and choose, the odds of finding relationships are extremely high,
even with random numbers. For one thing, he had lots of measurements to choose from. He only shows
a few connections in his drawing, but in fact, given that he shows 17 points, there are literally
thousands of angles between all of them he could have used. Don't believe me? Draw three points on
a piece of paper, then connect them. You have made a triangle. Of course, there are three angles.
Now draw four points randomly on a piece of paper. Don't make a square. Connect every point to each
other. You'll have six lines, the outside of the four, and two connecting opposite vertices.
How many angles do you have? I count 16 when I do this, but some of these angles are equal due
to geometry, so really there are 14. And that's with four points. The numbers increase very rapidly.
By the time you draw 17 points as Hoagland did, the number of angles to choose from is staggering.
Some of them are bound to be close to special values simply by chance. But even that isn't
everything. Fourth, by taking ratios of these angles and using trig functions, he is forcing
lots of his measured numbers to be in small ranges of values mostly between zero and pi,
which is why all those numbers are important and below 3.14. This is good stuff. Outside of that,
he's always going on coast coasts or other shows with a picture that the Mars rovers have taken
and saying he sees something in there that's definitely man-made. If you look at the photos,
barely ever do you see anything that you'd say, okay, I see what he's looking at. And then the
rest of it, you can just chalk up to mere coincidence because he likes to say nature
doesn't make right angles. Nature makes right angles all the time. And I think we're going to
have to cut this here as this is going to be a two-parter episode just due to how long this
episode turns out it's going to be. So we're going to end this here. Stay tuned for the stunning
conclusion of the Richard C. Hoagland episode. There's a few moments that you're not going to
want to miss in the next one. As for now, 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. Hey. Thank you for listening
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