Joe Rogan Experience #1510 - George Knapp & Jeremy Corbell

First of all, George, pleasure to meet you.

Joe, great to talk to you-

An honor.

... great- great to see you in person-

For real. Thank you.

... finally.

Great to see you too. And Jeremy, good to see you again, my friend. Hey Joe, good to see you, man. This is, uh, we're get- we're doing this often. Yeah. This is becoming a thing. Uh, George, uh, I think that you're probably, like, one of the most important figures when it comes to journalism and UFOs. And when you, uh, broke the Bog- Lazar story, was that... is that '89? When was that?

1989.

'89. 1989, um, I, I remember reading about it, I remember hearing about it, I remember watching clips on television and watching countless Bob Lazar interviews. It all came out of you. I mean, did you think at that time... I mean, what was your thoughts about UFOs before you had met Bob Lazar, and how much did it change while you got to know him and hear his story?

Uh, changed quite a bit. I had not really given it much thought at all. Uh, you know, probably the same level of curiosity as most people. You go about your life, you pay your bills, you go to work, you, you love your family, uh, and it's always out there somewhere, "Hey, I wonder what the deal is on that?"

Right.

But not- had not really dwelled on it until... There was a day in 1987. Into the studio comes a guy named, um, John Lear. And I had heard sort of a- a little bit about him. His family was famous. His dad developed the Learjet, the eight-track tape. John had run for the state senate and he had a certain amount of credibility with our news organization, KLAS-TV, because he had helped us break a really big story. And the story was the stealth fighter, the F-117. He had told my boss, Ned Day, managing editor, about this amazing plane that was invisible to radar flying up in Tonopah and Area 51. We had an interest in Area 51, not UFO-related, but Ned broke that story, it went national. So John Lear comes into the station one day with a stack of what turned out to be UFO documents, he plops 'em on Ned's desk, and says, "Ned, this is gonna be the next biggest story, the biggest story in history. It's a UFO cover-up. Aliens are here. Technology's been recovered." Ned takes a look at it and says, "I'm not doing this story. If it was true, I'd already know, know about it. Uh, this is crazy." Well, I'm eavesdropping, as I tend to do. I'm a curious person. So I's... As he's going out, I said, "Lear, let me take a look at this material." And I looked at it, and I thought, "Well, this is kind of interesting." I wa- at the time, I was, uh, producing and hosting this little public affairs show, 30-minute interview show. It would air Sunday morning at six o'clock. Nobody watches it. It would be, uh, interviewing a city councilman, a county commissioner. What the heck? I'll put Lear on there. And I let him go, and he told me this big sce- scenario about secret treaties with aliens and, uh, recovered technology and a giant cover-up. Some of the information sounded outrageous. Some of it seemed like it would be worth checking out. Suddenly, the phone starts ringing off the hook. I, I'm getting calls about people that, "W- who was that guy? What was the deal on that UFO stuff? Is it real?" I had him on again six months later, and the response was bigger. Had him on a third time with a guy named Bill Cooper, I regret that, um, and he told him an even more elaborate conspiracy-