In the first half, photojournalist and investigative reporter Paola Harris discussed her conclusions on the UFO phenomenon and her ongoing research. In her book Connecting the Dots, she includes interviews with some of the foremost authorities in ufology, including Phil Corso, Corrado Balducci, Linda Moulton Howe, and others. For Harris, the firsthand accounts and depth of information offered by her subjects are an especially compelling and exciting part of her work as an author.

There's also no substitute for conducting her own field research— going to the places she writes about, and talking to the people involved in UFO incidents, she explained. Taking into account the geopolitical situation in each place she visits is also key to doing high-quality research and finding the truth. Time is often of the essence, Harris continued, because witnesses can die or important details can be missed.

Among the cases Harris discussed were the "Friendship Case" in Italy, where, she claimed, a group of extraterrestrials lived among the residents of Lake Como. She recounted her discussion with Jesse Marcel, Jr., in which he described his father bringing home pieces of the alien craft that crashed at Roswell. Along with legendary ufologist Jacques Vallee, Harris said she's also visited Jose Padilla, who, as a young boy, was reported to have witnessed a downed extraterrestrial craft in San Antonio, New Mexico in 1945.

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In the latter half, Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester Matthew Cobb talked about the historical arc of neuroscience. Cobb's background also includes the study of insect behavior, which inspires his research on human brains in certain ways. Almost all animals exhibit behavior that suggest various types of complicated brain activity, which is often hard-wired in their DNA, he went on. Even tiny animals like ants and bees, with their tiny brains and simple neural cell arrangements, display very sophisticated behavior due to their brains' remarkable work.

Despite the strides that brain research has made over the past century, the fact is that much of the brain's operations are still a mystery to scientists, Cobb said. Not merely a "computer in our heads," the human brain is fantastically complex, containing billions of neural connections and miles of "circuitry." In addition, the brain constantly processes its interactions with the rest of our body, as well as outside stimuli like what we see, our encounters with others, exterior physical conditions, and so on. In this way, all aspects of what we call our personalities arise from the physical processes of the brain, noted Cobb. Special brain scans, which measure brain activity, are remarkable in what they can show us, but they can't tell us things like the sex of the subject, their level of intelligence, or even whether they're conscious at the time of the scan.

News segment guests: Howard Bloom / Mish Shedlock