American Alchemy with Jesse Michels
Spielberg Just Revealed The Truth About Aliens (He Knows!)
25 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
There's something going on that's not being disclosed to us.
Chapter 2: What is Spielberg's history with UFOs and how does it relate to Disclosure Day?
As you probably know if you don't live under a rock, Steven Spielberg just dropped Disclosure Day, his magnum opus, alien movie to end all alien movies, the bookend to a career exploring the unknown and portraying it wondrously for global audiences. The Hollywood legend is no stranger to movies about extraterrestrials.
From Firelight, a movie he made at the age of 17 for $500 following a group of scientists as they investigate a series of strange abductions in their small Arizona town, to the legendary Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where civilian contactees and a group of elite researchers are led through synchronicities to converge on Devil's Tower in Wyoming for a face-to-face meeting with the Greys.
Chapter 3: What claims did Toby Hooper make about Spielberg and UFOs?
To E.T., where a lovable shipwrecked little alien is given shelter by a band of suburban kids. To the cold machines, lifeless invaders, raining terror on an urban New York landscape in the War of the Worlds. To this, Disclosure Day, perhaps the capstone to them all, and maybe the most mystical and esoteric of Spielberg's long list of alien movies, if I do say so myself.
Spielberg's interest in UFOs isn't new, and it's not superficial. In fact, he cast J. Allen Hynek, the chief astronomer of the Air Force's Project Blue Book in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and he portrayed Hynek's assistant, the French godfather of modern UFO research, Jacques Vallée, casting the legendary Francois Truffaut to play him.
You were the person that Steven Spielberg modeled the character of a UFO researcher on in his classic movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Famed UFO documentarian James Fox revealed a letter that Spielberg had sent regarding his 2009 documentary, I Know What I Saw.
Chapter 4: How are time travel and aliens connected in Spielberg's films?
In the letter, Spielberg praised the film, stating, At that time, in 2009, Fox was operating on a shoestring budget.
Chapter 5: What insights do CIA Hollywood liaisons provide about UFO narratives?
UFO documentaries weren't really a thing, and Spielberg took the time to call his movie compelling. My point is, Spielberg genuinely loves UFOs. He's not a fair weather fan going with the tides or riding off the modern surge of interest.
Chapter 6: What is the plot premise of Disclosure Day and its implications?
The movie for me is a summation of my life in science fiction. which has started when I was 17 years old.
Now, if you listen to Spielberg's interviews about Disclosure Day, you might be familiar with this narrative. He had five ideas for movies he wanted to make at this juncture in his life. He's now mostly spending time with family and just enjoying himself. And this concept, Disclosure Day, just happened to keep nagging at him. it rose above the rest organically.
Yes, he was also inspired by Leslie Kane's New York Times article in 2017 about the 2004 Nimitz incident with Commander David Fravor and his Navy crew seeing a Tic Tac UFO off the coast of San Diego. It also included details about the existence of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's UFO program named OSAP that ran from 2007 to 2012.
And finally, Spielberg notes as inspiration all of these whistleblowers coming out over the last decade, saying not only are UFOs real, but in many cases, they've seen firsthand evidence of them. So Steven started taking notes in his Notes app, he hit up his longtime writing partner, David Kopp, and magic ensued.
But you, the audience, might be wondering, is the timing of this movie literally concurrent with sequential data dumps of UFO evidence from the Department of War? Really just a pure coincidence? At South by Southwest, when asked if we are in fact alone, Steven caveated his answer with this. I only know what you know. I have no access to special information.
But Toby Hooper, the director of Poltergeist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and a close contact of Spielberg's, apparently said this. So we're sitting there, and all the producers, Bryce, everyone else is kind of talking, and I said to him, so Toby, you're finally going to have one up on Steven, because I know he's very competitive with his buddy Steven Spielberg. And he goes, what do you mean?
And I said, well, you're going to be the first one to put a crop circle on film. And he hasn't done that yet.
And he's like, yeah, I'm never going to beat Steven in that category.
And I go, what do you mean? Why?
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Chapter 7: How does the film portray the relationship between humans and aliens?
And he goes, you know, after Jaws, you know, he was like really a big deal. And apparently he had approached by some guys from Naval Intelligence or something. And they came and offered him a deal.
Chapter 8: What real UFO incidents are referenced in Disclosure Day?
And he actually say Naval Intelligence. Yes, he did. All right.
And and yeah, and he took it. And he got all sorts of information. I mean, Close Encounters is based on a true story. And I was like, what? And he goes, yeah, I mean, E.T. too. He got access to a bunch of really interesting case files and stuff.
And yet I ask you, is not an alien force already among us?
And President Ronald Reagan, during a showing of E.T. to high-level national security personnel at the White House, apparently said this as relayed to us by Spielberg himself.
And he said, I want to thank you for bringing E.T. to the White House. We really enjoyed your movie. And then he looked around the room and he said, and there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true. And he said it without smiling. And everybody laughed, by the way.
The whole room laughed because he presented it like a joke, but he wasn't smiling as he said it.
Accordingly, there's a long history of Easter eggs, little hints of UFO truths dropped by Spielberg that are way ahead of their time in all of his movies. He shows crates in Close Encounters of the Third Kind with the names Lockheed and TRW, two likely active legacy UFO crash retrieval programs at the time of the movie's making.
In the movie, Richard Dreyfuss even gets a sunburn due to UV damage when he comes into close contact with a UFO. That movie is probably the first time the wider public has heard anything about electromagnetic radiation damage or burns from a UFO encounter. But now the UFO whistleblowers we listen to most are talking about this all the time.
Well, that sounds like visible band light being blue shifted into the ultraviolet and you're getting literally a sunburn.
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