Chasing Aliens, with Jon Ronson and Daniel Lavelle (Part One)

In this gripping first part of a live Intelligence Squared event, journalist Danny Lavelle—whose own life journey from homelessness to award-winning reporting mirrors the liminal space between belief and doubt—unravels the cultural and psychological forces behind America's UFO obsession. Far from a simple tale of alien encounters, Lavelle reveals a world where government programs, mental health, and human fallibility collide. He traces the myth’s rise not to hard evidence, but to a cascade of misinterpreted footage, flawed witness accounts, and the deep human need for meaning. The episode exposes how a single New York Times exposé on a Pentagon UFO program ignited a global frenzy—only for Lavelle to discover the program was a rebranded, mythologized version of a bizarre, privately funded 'ghost hunt' on Skinwalker Ranch, backed by a billionaire and a man who claimed to have seen a tubular apparition resembling the cover of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. As Lavelle dissects viral videos like 'Tic Tac' and 'Go Fast,' he dismantles their 'alien' explanations with simple physics—parallax illusions and camera glare—yet refuses to mock the trauma of abductees, whose brains show PTSD-like responses even if their experiences are neurological. The episode ends with a haunting twist: the disappearance of a former Wright-Patterson Air Force Base scientist linked to Tom DeLonge’s UFO movement, fueling conspiracy theories that crumble under statistical scrutiny.