Greg Eghigian on Unraveling the History of the UFO Phenomenon

Air Dates: November 18-November 24, 2024 

Across human history, we have looked to the heavens and seen things that didn’t make sense. Greg Eghigian chronicles how those human experiences were translated by believers, skeptics, investigators and hoaxers in the aftermath of the Second World War into the UFO phenomenon we still talk about today.   

Eghigian is a historian of the human sciences and medicine as well as modern Europe. He earned both his Master’s and Doctorate in Modern European History from the University of Chicago. He is now a professor of History and Bioethics at Penn State University. His past work has focused on how societies use science, technology, and medicine to define and treat people and behaviors deemed to be troubling, bizarre, or outright dangerous. In recent years, the modern history of supernatural and paranormal phenomena has caught Eghigian’s captivation. His 2024 book, “After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon,” depicts the social effects of claimed UFO sightings in the backdrop of the Cold War. He also has two other book projects in the works; a broad overview of the history of madness from the ancient world to the present and a study of the alien abduction phenomenon in the late-20th century. 

Eghigian describes how historical events affect the reporting of UFO sightings. On this episode, he explains, “throughout the history of UFOs, people inherently turn to kind of the mental tools that exist at any given time to make sense of it. The ‘50s and ’60s saw a renaissance of New Age thought and New Age philosophy. So, it is no surprise that these folks who believed that the turn of the millennium augured something fantastic, something wonderful, and that we could sort of find inspiration in our new cosmic brothers and sisters, right?”  He continued, saying, the 1970s saw “an economic downturn and stagflation, the very end of the Vietnam War, and Watergate.  It’s a really tough time. And it seems to me reflected in a lot of the, not just the UFO literature, but in a lot of the interest that happens during the ’70’s and early ’80’s in paranormal phenomena in general, which oftentimes, as I say, took kind of a dark spin about reality and about the future.”   

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