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Joe Rogan Experience #1976 - James Fox

James Fox is a UFO investigator and documentary filmmaker. His new film, “Moment of Contact” is available to stream now. https://geni.us/MomentOfContact

James FoxguestJoe Roganhost
Jun 27, 20242h 28mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:0015:00

    (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

    1. JF

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. NA

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Hello, James.

    4. JF

      Hello.

    5. JR

      Good to see you, my man.

    6. JF

      Thank you so much for having me on.

    7. JR

      Oh, my pleasure. The moment I saw that documentary, I was like, "W-," uh, let me just be honest, off, off the bat. I loved your first documentary, but when someone says there's a documentary about a crashed UFO and it happened in Brazil, I'm always like, "Man, people tell stories." You know? I'm like, "Maybe it was one of those."

    8. JF

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      Like, I didn't think too much of it. When I hear stories, even Roswell, I always go, "Meh, I don't know. I don't know." It's so hard to know. 1947, you know, I think some shenanigans were going on, but what, what was it really, and how much of this is just people tell stories? And those stories grow and change over the years, and, and, you know, almost like the story becomes their real memory after a while, 'cause they've been doing it for, you know, so many, so many years. But then this one. This one, just right away, the way you captured all the, the information and the evidence and th- the eyewitness accounts, the photographs that people got, the, the depictions of the actual being, the fact that there was live beings, this is a re- it- and everyone that didn't even know each other having these, like, really similar stories about what they saw and when people got ahold of the wreckage. Like, when you first started making this documentary, did you have any apprehension, like, "Oh, this one may not ... How, how do I sell a documentary on a crashed UFO?" Like, "What's the best way to put this together?" 'Cause that's part of the art of what you do, right?

    10. JF

      You were skeptical. Let me tell you how skeptical I was.

    11. JR

      (laughs)

    12. JF

      Okay? So I was making my second documentary on UFOs in the late '90s. I just finished a documentary called UFOs: 50 Years of Denial. I started on my second film. It was 1999. And I partner up with a couple of guys. Boris Zubov has been a partner. I'm still working with him today. And this guy Tim Coleman, who's a British reporter. And, uh, we ... Like, mapping out the film concept, like, "Hey, we should cover this case, and we should do that." And he's like, "Hey, mate, we gotta do this amazing UFO crash in Brazil where these aliens were walking around the town." And I looked at the guy, and I thought, "I think I picked the wrong partner. This guy's fucking batshit crazy." And literally, I dismissed it on the spot, and I refused to even read one word about it. I said, "There's no way in hell that that happened and the whole world doesn't know about it."

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. JF

      So, and I, I have to remind your audience, I was making my second documentary.

    15. JR

      On UFOs?

    16. JF

      On UFOs.

    17. JR

      (laughs)

    18. JF

      And I dismissed it like this ... Like, how fast can you say Howdy Doody?

    19. JR

      It just always seems like if someone's telling you about something like that, like, you would have heard about it.

    20. JF

      Absolutely. I c- I can't tell you, Joe, how quickly I dismissed it, and I didn't look into it till 2011. Okay? So here's what happened. I'm going to ... I get invited by this guy, A. J. Daverde, to a place called, uh, Pernambuco in, um, in, uh, Brazil. And, uh, I'm speaking at a conference about a film I did called I Know What I Saw. And, uh, this guy calls me. Jeff Sagansky was very high up on the food chain, uh, in the entertainment industry. He's been kind of like my mentor and opening doors for me over the years. And I've asked him over a period of time, like, "Why are you so kind to me?" He's a very wealthy guy in New York. And he goes, "You know, Jackie Gleason told me one time that these things were real. Don't, don't listen to anybody else. I know for a fact. And so when I saw you as an independent, struggling young filmmaker, I always wanted to lend a helping hand. And by the way, you're going to Brazil. You gotta look into that Varginha case." And I thought, "Oh God, not this again," right?

    21. JR

      Aah!

    22. JF

      Swear to God. So I was like ... Well, I had a lot of respect for Jeff Sagansky. I mean, you can look him up. The guy's very famous. I mean very. Uh, he's big time. And I said, "Oh yeah, sure, Jeff, I'll look into that for you while I'm in Brazil," and, uh, just to be nice, right? But in the back of my mind, I was like, "I'm not wasting one second on that stupid case."

    23. JR

      Ugh.

    24. JF

      Seriously, I'm, I'm telling you honest-to-God truth.

    25. JR

      (laughs)

    26. JF

      And it was 2011. So I go to Brazil with the inte- with no intention of looking into it. Zero. Okay? I wasn't even gonna ask one question. And it just so happens that nuclear physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman, rest in peace, and, uh, he's there at the conference. And somehow, the case gets brought up. It wasn't about that case, but it gets brought up, and he's like, "Oh yeah, I was in Brazil when that went down." And he's one of the smarter guys. Stanton Friedman?

    27. JR

      Yeah.

    28. JF

      He is not an idiot. I mean, he's one of the reasons why him and Don Schmidt and Kevin Randle are one of the reasons why we're even talking about Roswell. And, uh, he's like, "Oh yeah, I was here when that, when that happened. I met some of the witnesses." So then that kind of piqued my interest. I was like, "Uh, okay. Well, got Stanton. I can't completely dismiss coming from Stanton." Then I met a couple of people at the conference, so I thought, "Uh, oh, okay. Well, I ... piqued my interest. I gotta be honest with you." And that's how it all started. And that was, like, in 2011. And I was gonna include a segment of it in The Phenomenon, but-

    29. JR

      The interview with Stanton, is that ... did you get that?

    30. JF

      I got that in 2013.

  2. 15:0030:00

    What is this channel's…

    1. JF

      blame you. Okay? I'm not here to convince anybody of anything. I'm just telling you what I saw. It was very impressive what I saw, very impressive. If it was a fake, my God, that was well done. Bet it- I mean, he should be making movies with Spielberg. So anyway...

    2. JR

      What is this channel's name who has this again?

    3. JF

      Chuck Clark.

    4. JR

      Chuck. What are you doing, Chuck?

    5. JF

      So... Well, let me finish. So Logan Paul, he's like, "I wanna, I wanna go to this guy's house." I said, "H- I got the guy. He's got the information." Logan's all kinda... This is all behind the scenes. So (laughs) Logan Paul takes... Uh, I put him in touch with this guy, and this guy lives in the middle of nowhere. I mean, it was like... Logan Paul takes a Mercedes with a bunch of guys and $100,000 in cash, a big brick, and he goes out to this guy's house in the middle of the desert, and Logan calls me in the middle of nowhere, and he's like, "Are you sure your contact's legit, dude? My phone doesn't work. I'm in the middle of nowhere. I got 100K cash in my pocket. I can't find this guy." (laughs) I said, "No, I'm sure he's good," you know? And, uh, so Logan goes in there and meets Chuck Clark, and Chuck Clark's like, "Yeah, got the tape right here." And so he says, "I'll give you 100 grand for it," and the guy says, "No way," and so Logan Paul was the... Gonna re- reveal this for the first time. Logan Paul has got a button camera on his je- on his dress- on his clothes. So Logan Paul's like, "All right, well this guy doesn't wanna... You know, he's gonna die with it, so let's get, you know, let's get this thing on camera." So Logan's like, "Well, let me see it at least." So Logan, like, looks at it with this thing and, "Oh, could you show it to me again?" Gets another angle, gets another angle, and, uh, and then he leaves. So Logan's like, "I don't know if I wanna go public. I mean, I, I don't really own the video. I, I don't know. I... seems like a bit of a gray zone." So I said, "Look, you know, this is a story that might be of interest to Bob Lazar, because maybe Bob Lazar c- should see this video, and he can make a determination." I'm just saying. Or maybe George Knapp or Jeremy Corbell might be interested. This is not my domain. I'm not a Bob Lazar big guy. I don't know m- a muff about... Bob La- I met Bob Lazar in the early '90s, and he told me... I came up to him at a conference, and I said, "Hey, thank you for coming forward," and he said, "I, I didn't have a choice." That was my only... I, I don't know anything about the case. I know you know way more than I do about the case, but I'm just saying. I'm just putting this out there because-

    6. JR

      How do I know more about the case than you?

    7. JF

      Well, I, because I-

    8. JR

      You literally make documentaries-

    9. JF

      I do.

    10. JR

      ... on UFOs.

    11. JF

      I do, but I, I, (sighs) I mean, you got one person's account-

    12. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    13. JF

      ... and it's fascinating, and I believe that Lazar believes what he's saying. But I've talked to George Knapp about this, and George said same thing. I said, "Maybe, I mean, just maybe," and I'm not out here attacking Lazar or Corbe- nobody else. I'm just saying maybe he was used as a disinformation plant that seeds some real information and some bogus information just to kinda test the waters and the reaction from the public. I, I don't know.

    14. JR

      Most certainly, that's possible.

    15. JF

      Yeah. I, I really-

    16. JR

      Most certainly, that's possible.

    17. JF

      Not my domain.

    18. JR

      It's al- also, I would imagine if you're gonna give people access to classified information like that, you'd be very careful, and you would probably...... add in some stuff that's not true.

    19. JF

      Yes.

    20. JR

      So, it doesn't matter whether or not, a- as long as like, they have a bunch of stuff that's absolutely provable nonsense-

    21. JF

      Yes.

    22. JR

      ... on top of the stuff that's-

    23. JF

      Yes.

    24. JR

      ... probably real, then they get discredited.

    25. JF

      Yes.

    26. JR

      Which, you know, I mean, look, there's a lot of weird stuff about the Bob Lazar story, a lot of weird stuff about it. And the, the st- the, the one that sticks in my mind, and I know this probably shouldn't because it's possible to do, is that it's been consistent. His story's been absolutely consistent since the late 1980s.

    27. JF

      Yeah.

    28. JR

      Now, that's possible, to develop a narrative, and if you're disciplined, and he's obviously very intelligent, you could just like, craft the longest con the world has ever known and make no money from it and turn your life upside down, and have the feds search your property, which they did-

    29. JF

      Doesn't make a lot of sense.

    30. JR

      ... on, on video. It doesn't make a lot of sense. If they thought that he really was in possession of Element 115, and that there really is, uh, a stable version of this element that we discovered in a particle collider, or we, we accurately, they predicted it and then proved it to be real in a particle collider. But that wasn't until like, the, the 2000s. When was it like, when they ... I wanna say, was it like 2011 when they, uh, officially discovered Particle 115, or Element 115? But this element, he said was stable, wherever these beings are from, and they use it to propel their craft through a, a means of bypassing normal propulsion systems with some insanely sophisticated method, where they can pick points in space and they essentially just instantaneously traverse these points in space.

  3. 30:0045:00

    Yeah. …

    1. JR

      systems. He's clearly brilliant. You listen to the guy talk, he's off the charts intelligent.

    2. JF

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      And you would say, "Let's bring that fucking psycho over here. Let's, let's have that guy go down there." I mean, this guy's out there in the fucking desert shooting AK47s and shit. He's a wild man.

    4. JF

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      Right? So, you bring that guy, and you tell him, "Hey, uh, tell us what this is. Go to work." And he's walking around there and he's like, "What the fuck is this?" Like, that's the kinda guy you'd... If you were at the end of your rope-

    6. JF

      Yeah, I-

    7. JR

      If you know, if, especially if you're a brilliant person, if you're a brilliant person and you happen to be a general or happen to be someone who's in charge over there, and you are thinking, like, "We gotta look outside the box. Like, we gotta do something, we gotta bring in other perspectives," and you gotta bring in someone...... that's not gonna be able to communicate with other scientists. This is part of the problem. They can't share data. They can't, they can't p- peer review with other scientists all over the world because it's top secret shit. So everything has to stay within this small group, very small group of people, and none of them are cracking it. All of them they bring in, they're fucking stunned and baffled. So you keep funneling new people in. They do experiments. Something blows up, some people die, and you're like, "Okay, hm, uh, w- we'll try some more. What else you got? Well, we got this guy at Los Alamos Lab. He puts fucking rocket engines in the backs of Hondas, and he's a propulsions expert. He's kinda nuts, but maybe bring him in."

    8. JF

      Yeah, so, uh, I'll get back to my domain because I... this is the stuff that I know, and I know primarily 'cause I went and interviewed the witnesses.

    9. JR

      I just went off on a tangent there.

    10. JF

      But you know, it's all good.

    11. JR

      I'm gonna, I'm gonna Bob Lazar our day.

    12. JF

      Okay. (laughs)

    13. JR

      (laughs)

    14. JF

      I just don't know the case well enough to comment on it. I mean, more than that, uh, the reason why I shared that, that video story is not because I'm sitting there telling you that's the definitive piece of evidence that the world's been waiting for, but it's very compelling, it's never been released, and I'm giving you guys a lead on that. This guy has it, Logan Paul-

    15. JR

      So Logan Paul... Just put it out on your podcast.

    16. JF

      Uh, he might do that. So anyway, so-

    17. JR

      Yeah, I mean if the guy sues you, the money that you'd make from having that-

    18. JF

      (laughs)

    19. JR

      ... and releasing it would probably be way worth it.

    20. JF

      Uh, you know, and, uh, I hope if, if, if the two guys that shot it, one was 19, the other guy was close to 30.

    21. JR

      So those guys are still alive?

    22. JF

      They're, they lived in Los Angeles, and they're definitely still alive. Yeah, they should be.

    23. JR

      So if those guys are still alive, let's put together a documentary.

    24. JF

      Con- con- Te- Well, I'd like to see the original tape 'cause it's gonna be a lot better condition than our old VHS tape.

    25. JR

      Tell these gentlemen I'll get you on the podcast. Come on.

    26. JF

      So-

    27. JR

      Tell the story.

    28. JF

      ... contact me @jamescfox.

    29. JR

      Oh, don't put your email. What are you crazy?

    30. JF

      No, that wasn't-

  4. 45:001:00:00

    So what did Lonnie…

    1. JF

      are associated with the craft are reported. One of the best, most well-documented cases in US history took place at Socorro, New Mexico, April 24th, 1964 at five o'clock with a police officer that was on duty by the name of Lonnie Zamora. The best case in US history. The best documented case. The first military officer, uh, to arrive on the scene got there, the- the- the bushes were still smoking. I mean, the imprints in the ground of the craft, the footprints, they got diagrams of this stuff. And I spent five years going back and forth to Socorro, New Mexico. I got to know the wife, Mary. I got to know the daughter, Diane. The son, Michael, his coworkers. I went to the National Archives with Ray Stanford, he wrote the book on it, Socorro Saucer and the Pentagon Pantry. Phenomenal case. And what I learned was that the, um, the Air Force, according to his own family, Lonnie Zamora's family told his daughter this, I have this on camera, the Air Force wanted him desperately not to talk about the beings. Like do, they discouraged him to talk about the beings, and I tell you why. It's one thing when you see an object, unknown object like David Fravor saw up in the sky exhibiting a technology that seems to defy conventional propulsion, and it's another thing altogether when you've got beings on the ground. The Air Force didn't want him talking about that, and that was one thing that his daughter and his wife told me clearly. And his wife said, "What, Lonnie was never the same after that, that case." But...

    2. JR

      So what did Lonnie see?

    3. JF

      Lonnie saw two beings at the base of a, of an egg-shaped craft that was landed in an arroyo in Socorro, New Mexico in broad daylight. Lonnie looked out the window of his patrol car, he saw something that caught his eye, and then this object landed. He drove, he- he was actually in hot pursuit at the time. He gave up pursuit to go investigate what was going on, and he sees this object on the f- on the- on the- in the arroyo, in the desert, on the ground. It's such a well-documented case. And he rolls down his car window and he's looking out and he is going, "Did, am I looking at like a- an overturned ca- what the hell am I looking at?" And then he sees two little figures, he said they were childlike, at the base of the craft, and one of them locked eyes with him. And, uh, his wife said he was never the same after that. But, um...

    4. JR

      H- how did he describe them? What'd they look like?

    5. JF

      He said they were child, uh, they were small, childlike. Small. And they had white coveralls, tight coveralls. This is a close encounter of the third kind.

    6. JR

      What'd they say their faces looked like?

    7. JF

      Uh, I, he didn't give a lot of detail. I've got... The only... So I went to Lonnie's house. I got to know his- his wife quite well. Lonnie had passed a couple years prior to that. And I, I don't know how far down the rabbit hole you wanna go in this case, 'cause we could talk on this case for three hours, but whatever. Um, I could tell you that I got access to, he had this black duffle bag, and it was with his wife's permission. He had kept all the original newsprints from, like the articles that had come out, and that's where I got the details. And he also talked about it in some recordings that I got from his family and other researchers. It's in the movie, The Phenomenon. And, um, that's where I got the primary description, 'cause the, uh, it was Richard T. Holder was the first military officer on the scene. The FBI got involved later and- and- and, uh...

    8. JR

      How long were the, was that thing sitting out there for?

    9. JF

      Uh, the object was sitting on the ground not for very long, just a few minutes. Lonnie saw the beings and he went, like, around to get a closer look. I mean, he was like, "What the hell am I looking at?" And he, he drove his car around to get a closer look and he lost contact with, for a second while he drove around to get a closer look. Now he's within 50 feet of this egg thing sitting on the ground. And he gets outta the patrol car, it starts, uh, it- it starts making some weird noise and it has a blue flame that comes out, and he said it was, it was not like a, like a rocket flame where it would hit the ground and dust everything up, but it pierced the ground like a knife through warm butter.... and, um, then when it got about 20 feet off the ground, it went completely silent with no flame, no nothing. You could hear a pin drop. And there was a symbol on the side of the craft. It was in yellow, and it was about three feet tall, and it was, uh, like a V like this, two lines and a line on top. And, um-

    10. JR

      Let's get a photo of that, uh, symbol that, that he recreated.

    11. JF

      Yeah. You'll see, you'll see, you'll see fake symbols, because Richard T. Holder asked him to draw a different symbol. I actually have the original symbol, um, on a document from Dr. Hynek.

    12. JR

      Why did someone ask him to draw a fake symbol?

    13. JF

      Because, because he said that if, if anybody else claimed to see the same craft with that symbol, they would immediately be able to identify a hoaxster.

    14. JR

      Oh. So which was the real one?

    15. JF

      The real one is that one right there with the two lines in that upside down V right there. That's the real one.

    16. JR

      That's the real one?

    17. JF

      Yeah. And I've got the document in Dr. J. Allen Hynek's own handwriting. Ray Sanford and I went to the National Archives and, and found it. It was a huge find.

    18. JR

      So they did that on purpose just in case some copycat people started coming up with-

    19. JF

      He did. Richard T. Holder ... And I met Richard T. Holder's two kids and talked to them about it. I me- I talked to his wife about it, and they said, yeah, he was, he was told that's not the genuine. That's the one right there, right there that you're looking at.

    20. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    21. JF

      That's the real one, no question. So anyway, my point is-

    22. JR

      So he drew ... Is that his handwritten note over there that shows it?

    23. JF

      Yeah. That's, yeah, that's definitely ... I've actually had ... I actually found the original, one of those. There it is. That's it. That's the document that w- that I found with Ray Sanford at the National Archives in 2013. This is in Dr. Hynek's own handwriting.

    24. JR

      Hmm.

    25. JF

      "Enclosed suggests any resemblance to the ..." and he draws this symbol of Socorro. Maybe we've ... Yeah. I mean, it was kind of-

    26. JR

      So this-

    27. JF

      ... a genius move, quite honestly.

    28. JR

      So this was the case that turned J. Allen Hynek?

    29. JF

      So, yeah. So what happened was, Jacques Vallee was writ-

    30. JR

      So that's what it looked like, similar? So- so similar to a Tic Tac?

  5. 1:00:001:12:24

    Not one witness came…

    1. JR

      and wound up crashing. And that these things survived, and they got out, and the fact that one guy handled one of them and got this im- insane infection, and died very quickly afterwards, and he was a very young and healthy military man. And the fact that all these people have the same story. They all have the same, uh, depiction of the disc, the, the craft. They have the same depictions of seeing these beings.

    2. JF

      Not one witness came to us. We had to track down every one of those witnesses, and there's a story behind each and every one of them that I could go on for an hour for.

    3. JR

      I'm sure.

    4. JF

      I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say-

    5. JR

      You wouldn't be boring-

    6. JF

      (laughs)

    7. JR

      Bro, we got a gravity bong over there.

    8. JF

      (laughs)

    9. JR

      We could be here for days. (laughs)

    10. JF

      (laughs) Oh my gosh. I'd be like (sighs) .

    11. JR

      I know.

    12. JF

      (laughs)

    13. JR

      But there's nothing that goes better than marijuana and aliens.

    14. JF

      It, it, when I went... Every time I'd get back from Brazil, I'd get home, and people... And I'm out there for a month, knocking on doors, talking to witnesses, chasing people down, trying to convince them to come forward. Like, crazy.

    15. JR

      Yeah, this is not like a, uh, uh, a quick venture-

    16. JF

      No, this went on-

    17. JR

      ... to make this documentary.

    18. JF

      ... 12 years.

    19. JR

      That's insane.

    20. JF

      And so-

    21. JR

      Wow.

    22. JF

      And so, I'd come home from a trip in Brazil, and I'm telling you, man, it was like my mind was just torqued. I was so... I'm in another alternate reality, and I'm thinking, "Oh my God, I'm coming to the realization that this fucking happened." Right?

    23. JR

      When that man...... takes you to the spot.

    24. JF

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      And he gets overwhelmed with emotion.

    26. JF

      Yeah. He was gone for 25 years. Marco Leal. Thank you, Marco. And, and co. I said to Marco-

    27. JR

      If, unless that guy-

    28. JF

      "We don't have a story. We gotta find, we gotta find Carlos De Souza."

    29. JR

      Yeah. Unless that guy is a Daniel Day-Lewis-quality actor-

    30. JF

      We don't need Brad Pitt anymore, nor Leonardo DiCaprio. This guy-

Episode duration: 2:28:37

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