Professor at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study and host of the popular science podcast What the If?!? Matthew Stanley teaches and researches the history and philosophy of science. In the first half, he discussed how Einstein's groundbreaking theory of relativity was further developed in the midst of WWI's chaos, and eventually accepted in 1919 (this year marks the 100th anniversary of its "proof.") The proof came from an expedition led by Cambridge astronomer A.S. Eddington to observe a fleeting solar eclipse, which provided evidence that light has weight. This in turn, Stanley recounted, brought widespread publicity and acceptance of Einstein's theory and made him famous. While relativity didn't quite provide the elusive theory of everything that would unify all of physics, "over the last hundred years, general relativity has passed every test we have asked of it," he cited.
Shaped by the brutalities of the first World War, Einstein became a pacifist, and critic of what he viewed as unchecked nationalism. Yet, after 1933, chased from his home in Germany, Einstein wrote a letter to FDR warning that the Germans might get the atomic bomb, and this may have jump-started America's Manhattan Project. Hitler argued that Einstein's Jewish background invalidated his scientific ideas, and that only Nazi science was correct. Even though Einstein didn't work directly on the bomb project, because it was based on his physics, he felt responsible for this "terrible new kind of weapon." After WWII, said Stanley, Einstein dedicated the last years of his life to peace activism and civil rights, and sought to get nuclear weapons banned as a way to try and undo what he felt he'd done.
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In the latter half, UFO and paranormal researcher Len Kasten shared his research into various ETs and aliens, the alleged Project Serpo exchange, as well as a Nazi secret space program and ET collaboration. According to Kasten, a swap took place in 1965 when 12 astronauts traveled to Serpo (a planet in the Zeta Reticuli star system-- 39 light years from our location) via wormhole technology, and stayed there for 13 years. It was always light on Serpo because binary suns lit the planet, he added. The native beings of Serpo, called Ebens, had nine visits back and forth to Earth, Kasten claimed, and he believes that Earth has sent their own spaceship to their planet at this point. The Ebens, he suggested, were the same type of ETs who crash landed in Roswell.
While Kasten characterized the Ebens as beneficent in nature, the race known as the Reptilians are more callous to humanity. He outlined how they preceded humans on our planet, arriving from the Draco system, bringing the dinosaurs in tow as a food source, and settling in Lemuria. He pinned the mysterious disappearances of people on the Reptilians, who treat us like "farm animals." In a sense, the Allied Forces did not win WWII, though Hitler was defeated, Kasten posited. The Nazis, he continued, went on to achieve a highly advanced space program with bases on Antarctica and Mars (where they first developed nanotechnology).
News segment guests: Lauren Weinstein, Steve Kates