With guest host Tom Gjelten.

The Pentagon's secret UFO program revealed. We're talking to Luis Elizondo, the man who once led the government's search for UFOs, plus one of the journalists who pulled back the curtain on the search for the unexplained. For alien life. Mysterious flying objects that leave trained Navy pilots stunned.

Is the truth out there?

Really?

Highlights from this show:

Luis Elizondo, a former Department of Defense intelligence official who oversaw the Pentagon's UFO program, couldn't say whether the objects like the ones in the video above were from somewhere else in the universe than our planet.

But the physical underpinnings of long-distance space travel — traveling at the speed of light — are to us what instantaneous telecommunications would look like to people 150 years ago. Seemingly impossible, but not actually impossible.

"What we’re really looking at here is a paradigm shift in the way we think about things," Elizondo said.

Leslie Kean, a writer who's searched for the truth about UFOs, explained why the Pentagon would be so interested in this stuff: “If they’re flying around and interacting with military aircraft, this is something that needs to be taken seriously."

A writer in upstate New York, Cheryl Costa, said that early "UFO" sightings were by allied airmen in World War II: "We all thought it was the Axis powers had something really special and fantastic." The Axis powers saw the same craft, and thought they belonged to us.

And finally Susan Lepselter, an anthropology professor at Indiana University Bloombington, pointed out that the times we live in have a lot to do with the fears that inform our thinking about UFOs — from the nuclear era to global warming.

"Our sense of precariousness is very high right now," Lepselter tells us. "When you think about an alien or UFO, it reminds us we are all citizens of Earth.”

Guests:

Leslie Kean, journalist and co-author of New York Times' piece on the Pentagon's UFO program, author of "UFOs: Generals, Pilots And Government Officials Go On The Record." (@lesliekean)

Cheryl Costa, writer of the New York Skies UFO blog for the Syracuse New Times. (@costa_writer)

Susan Lepselter, professor of anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington and author of "The Resonance Of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity And UFOs In The American Uncanny."

Luis Elizondo, former director of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, director of global security and special programs for To the Stars Academy.

From The Reading List:

New York Times: Glowing Auras And 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious UFO Program — "In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find.

Which was how the Pentagon wanted it.

For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times."