Clay Believes in Aliens, Buck More Skeptical

BUCK: And then there is this, Clay. I was not expecting to talk about this on the show, but it turns out that Congress is gonna hold their first open hearing on UFOs in 50 years. Two Pentagon officials are gonna be testifying at that hearing next week. There have been in recent years more and more people who have been coming forward to say, “Look. I don’t want to sound crazy, all right?

“I’m not trying to say there’s little green men about to overthrow the governments of countries all over the world, et cetera. But there is some weird stuff that at least deserves some explanation here.” It is funny. I have no idea where you fall. Are you Scully or Mulder? Where do you fall on this? For those listening, of course, that’s a reference to The X Files, which I didn’t see that much of. I saw some of. Are you a believer or a skeptic when it comes to UFOs, Clay?

CLAY: I’m a believer. I just… I think every generation thinks that they know everything, doesn’t matter what the subject is. If you went back and read in the 1700s people are like, “This era is the most brilliant ever,” and it’s always true ’cause you’re advancing in terms of the knowledge of society as a whole.

So I think that there’s tons of things we don’t know about the larger universe, and I believe that there is likely intelligent life somewhere else in the cosmos, and so I believe in UFOs. I think that not only does intelligent life exist, I think that they probably visited our planet at some point in time. What about you?

BUCK: I’m a little more skeptical. A little more skeptical. I don’t know. I’m not buying it. I feel like, first of all, it’s always… Why is it always so shady? Shouldn’t…? At some point shouldn’t we just have found some flying saucers or something?

CLAY: They’re way smarter than us.

BUCK: You think they’re way smarter than us? They’re way smarter than Biden.

CLAY: If they’re coming to our planet, then we can’t figure out how to get to their planet or their location, wherever it might be. So, yeah, I believe in alien life somewhere in the cosmos, and I think it’s visited here.

BUCK: The greatest alien-visits-earth movie is…? I guess this is probably an obvious answer but we haven’t really —

CLAY: Oh, this is a good question. You know, there’s a recent one that I can’t even remember. I think it had, like, Jodie Foster in it.

BUCK: Is it Contact, I think it’s called? Is that right? I think it’s Contact.

CLAY: I think that might be it. I thought it was pretty good.

BUCK: Yeah. I would have thought you would have gone E.T., given you got —

CLAY: Well, I haven’t watched E.T. with the boys. I haven’t seen E.T. in probably 25, 30 years.

BUCK: You haven’t watched E.T. with the kids?

CLAY: No, because it’s a sad ending.

BUCK: See, this is where Uncle Buck comes through big. Ordering unhealthy, delicious food for the kids, watching E.T.

CLAY: You don’t have to worry about the tears. I don’t want to watch super-sad movies. Like, E.T. has got a pretty sad component.

BUCK: You know what? Speaking of UFOs, you know what really busted me up back in the day? I don’t know if you saw this one. This is about Sasquatch, obviously — or the ‘Squatch, to those who are believers. Harry and the Hendersons.

CLAY: Oh, that was a tough one.

BUCK: That one was rough. That was like Old Yeller for me at the end, man. Harry and the Hendersons. Like, he was a nice Sasquatch! He was a good Sasquatch!

CLAY: You know what book broke me back when I was a young kid? Did you ever read Where the Red Fern Grows?

BUCK: I kind of vaguely remember it but not really well.

CLAY: There were two dogs, hunting dogs, and it’s even worse than Old Yeller. I know there’s people out there right now who are like, “Oh, thanks for bringing up Where the Red Fern Grows.” I just remember being utterly crushed — spoiler alert — but what happens at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows. So, I don’t even know that I would let my kids read that book. It’s like Old Yeller, except twice as bad.

BUCK: Yeah. So, there’s some very good times. There was a period, I think in late nineties, UFOs became a particular fixation, right? It became something. There was that movie Fire in the Sky, which was about aliens. Remember that was —

CLAY: That was an abduction, right?

BUCK: Yeah, the premise for a while was the alien abduction thing —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — where they grab some guy and of course after running to the town, having flashbacks. He’s like, “I swear the aliens all grabbed me,” and everyone’s like, “You’re crazy,” and then —

CLAY: Yeah, right.

BUCK: — that was a thing for a while. But, you know, UFO hearing, I’ve seen some stuff on this that does require… There have been some, you know, little lights flickering around the sky and, you know, there’s been some stuff that people in the military have seen and have —

CLAY: That they can’t explain.

BUCK: — and they can’t explain. So I’m all in favor of, like, let’s keep it real, let’s keep it rationale, right. But if they can’t explain it, well, then we should at least be open to the possibility that there are explanations that we either have not considered thoroughly enough or that we generally dismiss out of hand because they don’t want to deal with the possible reality.

CLAY: Look, this is the first hearing since, what, like 1968?

BUCK: In 50 years.

CLAY: I think Gerald Ford, when he was still a congressman, was the last person to hold hearings in Congress on UFOs. And, by the way, this was how crazy 2020 was. They had a story, like, in the New York Times where they’re, like, “Hey, we think UFOs are real,” and it was buried on, like, the 18th page (laughing) because there was so much chaos going on, people didn’t even really care that much about the fact that UFOs might be real.

BUCK: I feel like people also play little games with this. I’m sure, by the way, I remember once I made some passing reference to Wiccans and witches years ago on radio and members of the Wiccan community reached out and they’re like, “We know you were just kidding, but we’re out here, we’re real, and we actually have, you know, thoughts, feelings, hopes.” (laughing)

Like, they actually exist. I’m just trying to say, I’m not trying to offend the UFO community here but I do think… Right now — this is gonna be bad, but — I think we need to separate out unidentified flying object from intelligent other being, you know what I’m saying? Like, there may be some physiological explanation for why this little thing is flying around that’s not green space men and flying saucers kind of things. Just a UFO is a very broad term. That’s all I’m saying.

CLAY: By the way, I don’t even know that we can trust the government on anything. They’re claiming that they don’t have the technology to replicate what these UFOs are doing while there are fighter pilots out there in the air flying around and seeing these. So, they are claiming that this is impossible for them to otherwise replicate. The Arrival, by the way, is I think what I might have been talking about, the recent movie.

BUCK: It’s not Contact?

CLAY: It was one but it’s not that recent. I think that’s like 20 years ago. I think The Arrival is about where there’s a spaceship that shows up and they’re trying to give us a message and we have to figure out what that message is. It’s really well done. And Jodie Foster may not be in that one. I can’t remember who is.

BUCK: I tried to watch The Martian. I fell asleep. Not gonna lie. Not Matt Damon’s best. He wasn’t sending us his best on that one. But some of these other ones, I’m telling you. The X Files is a good watch. The original X Files is a good watch from back in the day.

CLAY: No, it’s fantastic, and the movies were good, too, that they made. That was Fox Mulder and the girl, Gillian Anderson. Man, she was hot.

BUCK: One day I’ll tell the story of years ago when I was making fun of some aspects of a Sasquatch movie, and it turned out that one of the actors who started the movie was listening to my show and called in.

CLAY: (laughing) Oh, that’s phenomenal.

BUCK: Yeah. Sasquatch movie on. That was a pretty good one, actually. Can’t remember what it was called; Primal Rage or something like that.