Hi, Reddit - this is Tom DeLonge, musician and founder of To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, and Lue Elizondo, former director of the US Government's secret UFO program. We’re on HISTORY’s groundbreaking series “Unidentified: Inside Amer...

What is the status on the analysis of that metal you acquired that was initially claimed would be proven to be not from this world?

LUE: We are working with elements within the US government to better ascertain the validity of the initial data that way have, regarding this material. It is too early to provide any definitive results but I think it's safe to say there is enough uniqueness in its properties that not, only our company, but elements within the US government are also interested in learning more about this material.

Have you ever been stopped by government forces from releasing your findings?

LUE: Yes.

Hey Tom, big fan of your musical endeavors as well as seeing you on the Joe Rogan Podcast. But I must ask...

In your professional opinion, is a hotdog considered a sandwich?

I would say you have to analyze the observables of a hotdog: the shape of the bun, the quality of the meat, the digestibility of the particles within it. That would lead me to say that a hotdog is more of a taco than a sandwich.

Have either of you had an encounter? If so, how did it change you?

When it comes to encounters that some people might call strange, there are a couple of things that stand out. There was one instance when I was wearing high powered night vision goggles that can pick up tremendous things up in the atmosphere. After about 6 months of scanning the sky, I did see something that zig zagged the highest part of the atmosphere. And it crosses the entire horizon in 3 seconds. And it blew my mind with those goggles because you can see everything in incredible detail. But this one thing was high in the atmosphere and displaying some of the observables that had been IDed by Lue and his team. And we focused on this on the first season of Unidentified.

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When you see something like that, it makes you freeze in your tracks and you try to make sense of it. And that is incredible to go through. So I commiserate with people who try to explain having seen something that is not a natural or normal thing.

What is your absolute favourite UFO/alien-related story?

My favorite story is really the Nimitz encounter in San Diego that we focused on season 1 of Unidentified. There's tons of times when stories have been leaked but the difference with the Nimitz encounter was we testimony of a top gun pilot that engaged this craft and a top gun graduate radar controller working with one of the most advanced radar systems on Earth who was able to corroborate the testimony. There's so much in this incident thats helped people to understand so that's why it rises to the top for me.

LUE: If I could share one anecdotal story of the phenomena I direct peoples attention to a collection of short stories to a novella called "Chains Of The Sea." In the second short story the author discusses the day UFOs arrived, from a science fiction perspective. Butn the way the short story describes the phenomena is very similar to people in real life that have described the phenomena, personal experiences. While I'm not endorsing this story as being truthful or accurate, I think it provides a fundamentally different perspective and it forces us to think about this phenomena in a different way. Though the book was written in the early 70s, the author had an incredible insight into modern day life and was able to incorporate aspects of artificial intelligent and geopolitical situations that we have today. So if anyone wanted a new perspective of the phenomena in an entertaining way, I would direct them to "Chains Of The Sea."

What hard evidence do you have of Extraterrestrial life existing?

LUE: I think that's the purpose of this organization, if hard evidence exists. It's been substantiated that UFO's are real. With the help of the show, we have established the validity that UFOs are real. THe question is what is behind the technology. We simply don't know. The imagination immediately jumps to something that is extra terrestial. Some considered it inter dimensional. The question is what does that mean? Some consider it aliens, others consider it part of the world today and if we have technology to interact. Anything beyond that will be questioned if it's real.

What is the craziest proof of UFOs you have ever seen?

LUE: The evidence that was presented to me in my near decade of working for AATIP, all of it was VERY compelling. But to me, the most compelling evidence is the reaction from our brave men and women in uniform who are trained observers, who would know the difference between an F16, a MiG25 and a European Tornado, coming face to face with this evidence, and experiencing an intense primordial fear, realizing they are witnessing a technology which has no match. These folks are a very rare breed who are trained to run towards danger, and not from it. To listen to testimony and hearing the anxiety and fear, to me, indicates that this is something we ALL need to pay attention to because there is a lot more to it than someone just misidentifying a sea gull, or something along those lines.

For me, it's pretty simple. When those videos came out in the NY Times, that TTSA did the analysis on, it was a really big deal. To some people, it looks like a blob but they've never seen what those thermal cameras are capable of catching. For example, if you were to see a jet on the same system, it would look exactly like a jet, you'd see all the details like the wings and exhaust, it looks like a really high resolution black & white movie. So when people see the Gimbal video, that's demonstrating many of the observables that the Pentagon hadn't defined, it's just mind blowing! And that's why it's so important to listen to pilots, radar operators and other trained observers like we have on Unidentified. That video evidence blows experts' minds. Now that the video evidence is out, it's almost too good to be true and a lot to digest.

There are some topics in UFOlogy that are famous, but controversial even among those who believe in UFO phenomena. Are there any cases or other bits of lore that you do not accept as genuine - either hoaxes or honest mistakes?

LUE: The field of UFOlogy is fraught with potential landmines. There's a distinct difference between what we think, what we believe and what we know. And too many times we confuse what we believe and think with what we know. As a result there is a tremendous amount of controversy associated with this. It's not unexpected that people will fill in gaps of information with beliefs. And we should try to avoid that temptation as much as possible. There is a lot of lore out there on this topic. But I think to say that anyone out there knows what this is, is a mistake. There are a lot of charlatans out there that have made careers selling books and videos to unsuspecting people and these narratives should be challenged by facts and evidence.

Hey guys appreciate your work, so Ill make this short. Do you have any new UAP footage that you may be releasing in the near future?

Footage is not really the most important evidence at this time. And I think people need to start focusing on more types of evidence because it might mean a lot more, that's why the physical evidence we have is so important and why we need to study it, because it might go a lot farther than footage. Chris Melon, from TTSA, has written some terrific OpEds about this, but there is a possibility that the US government has collected additionally video evidence that may have not been catalogued as UAP evidence while they were monitoring other aircrafts. That's why the select committee on intelligence and their taskforce, that they proposed, is so important. That's where this footage would end up. Meaning people would have the right to question and see it.

LUE: The short answer is yes. In the new season of Unidentified, you are going to see a capability that's never been out before that TTSA is introducing for the first time ever, that uses artificial intelligence to analyze video and determine whether or not it's been fake or doctored. In order to responsibly provide new video evidence to people, TTSA will need to run footage through this program to properly vet and authenticate it. In the new season of Unidentified, audiences will have a front row view to this ground breaking new technology that insures audiences it's truly authentic.

If there is an extraterrestrial life that makes itself clearly known to us, do you think it would be mechanically based or “flesh-based”?

Your work as a musician was super helpful to me growing up, thank you for it!

I tend to think it would be both. I imagine that sending out some type of a drone to inspect would make sense. We do that now already. And we've done that in our solar system. But, it could make sense that there's some type of life form that has a biology component to it and even potentially that life form is a type of machine or computer or AI that is meant to look around and collect data. For example, while we might create a robot right now to gather samples on Mars, but meanwhile we are already growing organs in labs, so imagine there's some future where we are able to fuse biological and mechanical components.

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But it's fundamentally hard to answer a question like this because the universe might not be what we think it is and we have to be open to that possibility.

What was it that made you want to dedicate so much time into UFO research? Was there one piece of damning evidence that made it so you couldn't look away?

My interest in this subject has always been a part of my life. To search for who we are and where we're going and what this is all about. Questions about existence have been something I feverishly search for since high school. But if I was to say one moment that made me want to dedicate my life to it in a way that music wasn't my total priority, it would've been when I met a group of generals with a particular branch of the military that really helped me ask the right questions and understand the complexity of this subject in a way that was so fascinating and unnerving that there was no other choice than dedicate a large part of my life... I seemed to be the only one at the time that could create a vehicle to help people understand their existence. So for me, I felt this was something I could give back to the world to be beneficial if I could pull in the right people to do it with me which happened with TTSA. -- Tom

What does disclosure mean to you?

LUE: I've said this before and I'll say it again, I think disclosure is a process. I don't think it's an event. I think we're in the very throws of that process right now. I think most people would agree that change worth having doesn't necessarily come easy. I think disclosure might mean different things to different people. Some people might say disclosure is an acknowledgement by the US government that UFOs exist. Because of our work on Unidentified, we've just seen that happen. But I don't think we have enough data, and I don't think we have a good understanding of what this phenomena is. I think we are still searching for answers. So while I believe the process of disclosure has just begun, I don't think it's finished. And I don't think we should confuse disclosure with confirmation. There's a lot more work to be done.

Over the past 20 years, while researching this subject, disclosure meant to me the moment the government comes out and tells us everything they've know about UFOs, but my ideas of what needs to happen for our world to come together and deal with this subject has changed from just disclosure to having more of a strategic conversation and building upon a foundation of trust and real science. Everything I thought for the most part has been completely changed or has been adapted to new scientific discoveries to where I actually feel a lot less sure about things from when I first started out with this just because I've been exposed to so many ways of thinking. The more I know about this phenomenon the less I think disclosure is the way to do it. Because just disclosing the data isn't enough, you need to have dialogue that generates consensus and studies that come to conclusions about that data.

What is the best way to convince a non believer?

LUE: Our job is not to convince anyone. Our job is to show the facts & data. What's so interesting about Unidentified as a show is that it's the only one like it and our job as investigators it provide information to the jury, so to speak. At the end of the day it doesn't matter what Tom, myself of TTSA think. What matters is what the audience thinks. What matters is what the people think. Our job is to elevate the truth and speak the truth. The truth always speaks for itself. So, on the show, we are trying to represent data in a very transparent way for the audience to form their opinions from.

You mentioned turning your focus away from touring to focus on UFOs. Are you still making music though?

Yes, I've been working on an album for a year which is probably the best record of my career, if not one of the best, and that's getting ready to come out at the end of this year or beginning of 2021. That's become a major focus for me as of fall of 2019, when I started touring again. Music remains a HUGE priority for me, mainly because it brings people together and interacts with all of the initiatives coming from TTSA, including the organizations, media and entertainment divisions. One of my goals is to bring the science, the data and research together with the media and the music, to allow people to come together and interact with it in a more modern way. Music if the big vehicle for that, which is very much a priority in my life again.

Hi Tom and Lue - big fan! How can we get involved in the cause?

LUE: Engage your congressional reps, and watch Unidentified. I'm not trying to be self serving by saying that. Truly, the more that watch Unidentified, the more likely there will be more seasons. And we know leaders in Washington DC watch Unidentified, and there are senior leaders in government that are referencing Undentified to make important decisions about UFO phenomena. If people want to support the effort, they should support Unidentified because, for the first time, people in Washington DC are taking this seriously, because of Unidentified.

There is a lot of ways. Right now, what you can do, is follow the announcements coming from TTSA and socialize them in your own circles and occasionally we will announce things when we need your help. For example, when it got into the media that the select committee on intelligence in the Senate was putting in language about accountability and reporting mechanisms regarding the UFO/UAP subject. We really needed people at that time to overwhelm the senators and congressmen with support and gratitude for them finally going after this issue in a way that we felt it always needed to be addressed. A little of that goes a long way because we are ultimately trying to get people to want this bad enough that lawmakers have no choice.

Lue, can you tell us how many UAP encounters were studied by AATIP, and still remain unidentified? You've mentioned before that "there's a lot more than those 3 videos" (paraphrasing). If you can't give an exact number, can you give us a ballpark figure?

LUE: I'm not at liberty to provide an exact number or a ball park figure but I can say numerous incidents. Not only were we able to recognize the reality of the phenomena but there were trends we were able to ascertain and that's how we have the observables that we use today.

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Yes, season two of Unidentified premieres this Saturday, July 11th, at 10/9c on HISTORY.