Joining us for the 19th episode in our special Quarantine Series is Distinguished Lecturer, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and investigative reporter for the New York Times, Ralph Blumenthal in New York City.
He earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University before joining the Times at the age of 22. Four years later, he was assigned as a foreign correspondent and was sent to Germany, Vietnam and Cambodia. Returning to New York in 1971, he became an investigative reporter specializing in stories about foreign and American corruption and organized crime.
In 1987, he led the Times team that exposed the Tawana Brawley racial hoax. A year later, he published his first book, Last Days of the Sicilians, on the FBI’s Pizza Connection drug case, and in 1990, collaborated with five other reporters on the book, Outrage: The Story Behind the Tawana Brawley Hoax, based on their investigative articles.
Mr. Blumenthal also led the Times team covering the 1993 World Trade Center truck-bombing, which won the paper a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage. The following year, he co-authored a series on the fatal crashes of USAir. It was nominated for a Pulitzer and won the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism, presented by President Clinton at the White House Correspondents dinner, and was a finalist for Harvard University’s Goldsmith’s Prize.
In 1994, he joined the culture news department as an arts reporter, where he shared a Times Publisher’s Award for a series on the Sotheby’s and Christie’s antitrust scandal — just one of over twenty Times awards he has received over the years. After September 11th, he briefly rejoined the investigative team covering terrorism. That same year, he was named a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to research the progressive career and penal reforms of Warden Lewis E. Lawes, “the man who made Sing Sing sing,” which inspired Mr. Blumenthal’s 2004 book, Miracle at Sing Sing: How One Man Transformed the Lives of America’s Most Dangerous Prisoners.
He is also the author of Once Through the Heart, on a police narcotics detective’s struggle to rescue his own daughter from drugs, and Stork Club, a history of the fabled nightspot, its renegade owner Sherman Billingsley, and the gangster era in Gotham. And, with John Miller, compiled the book, The Gotti Tapes: The Sensational FBI Tapes That Convicted America’s Most Powerful Mobster.
For the past twenty years, Mr. Blumenthal has taught journalism in the summer program of Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and at Baruch College at the City University of New York where he also oversees historic collections in the Newman Library Archives. He continues to contribute to the New York Times as a freelance and co-wrote the much publicized December 2017 story, Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program, exposing the United States government’s involvement with the investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena.
His latest book, The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, & the Passion of John Mack, was published by High Road Books of the University of New Mexico Press in March of this year. It is the only comprehensive biography of the late John Edward Mack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, and hero to many in the UFO community, and it is the subject of our talk today.
This interview was recorded on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. It’s 01:22:32 long and 71 MB. You can listen to it right here in your browser or download it directly to your computer. It’s also available on on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and on Amazon Music.
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SHOW NOTES
A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence by John E. Mack, M.D.
Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation & Alien Encounters by John E. Mack, M.D.
Booked Up Fine and rare scholarly books, Archer City, Texas
Whitley Strieber Interviews Ralph Blumenthal Dreamland, Mar. 19, 2021
Whitley Strieber Interviews Dr. John Mack Dreamland, Nov. 14, 1999
Nightmares & Human Conflict by John E. Mack, M.D.
Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens by John E. Mack, M.D.
Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies by C.G. Jung
“Glowing Auras & ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program” by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean, New York Times, Dec. 16, 2017 (see section below for more articles by Mr. Blumenthal)
Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by Kary Mullis, Ph.D.
Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods by Budd Hopkins
Cleveland Ufology Project The world’s oldest operating UFO organization
“Sane Citizen Sees UFO in New Jersey” by Budd Hopkins, The Village Voice, Mar. 1, 1976
Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions by Budd Hopkins
Esalen Institute Big Sur, California
Robert J. Lifton, M.D. Amazon Author Page
The Cassandra Complex: Living with Disbelief by Laurie Layton Schapira, Jungian analyst
William James, M.D. Amazon Author Page
The Oprah Winfrey Show with John Mack Aired on Apr. 18, 1999
“The Man From Outer Space” by James Willwerth, Time Magazine, Apr. 25, 1994
Ann Casement Speaking of Jung, Ep. 51 on “Integrating Shadow: Authentic Being in the World”
Daniel P. Sheehan Federal Civil Rights attorney
Eric MacLeish Boston Magazine Superlawyer
Spotlight Amazon Prime Video
“Scholars Seek the Hidden Freud in Newly Emerging Letters” by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, Aug. 18, 1981
“Did Freud’s Isolation Lead Him to Reverse Theory on Neurosis?” by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, Aug. 25, 1981
“Freud: Secret Documents Reveal Years of Strife” by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, Jan. 24, 1984
“Hotel Log Hints at Illicit Desire That Dr. Freud Didn’t Repress” by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, Dec. 24, 2006
Out on a Limb by Shirley MacLaine
Carrier: Life Aboard the Aircraft Carrier USS Nimitz PBS 10-part miniseries (also on Amazon Prime Video)
Joe Rogan Interviews Cmdr. David Fravor YouTube video, Oct. 5, 2019
Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference Held at M.I.T., Cambridge, MA by Andrea & David Pritchard (see chapter 24)
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs, & the Conference at M.I.T. by C.D.B. Bryan
Whitley Strieber See Speaking of Jung Ep. Q15 for books
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, Ph.D.
Brodsky Book Shop Taos, New Mexico (Now closed. Accepting online orders.)
Ralph Blumenthal at Contact in the Desert Virtual conference, June 26-27, 2021 (“See” you there!)
ADDITIONAL LINKS
The Last Time There Was a Craze About UFOs & Aliens by Daniel N. Gullotta, The Bulwark, Jun. 9, 2021
I’m a Physicist Who Searches for Aliens. U.F.O.s Don’t Impress Me. by Adam Frank, Ph.D., New York Times, May 30, 2021
The Pentagon says UFOs are real. So why do we still dismiss them as a joke? by Charlie Burton, British GQ, May 18, 2021
BOOKS BY RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The Believer Alien Encounters, Hard Science, & the Passion of John Mack
Miracle at Sing Sing How One Man Transformed the Lives of America’s Most Dangerous Prisoners
Stork Club America’s Most Famous Nightspot & the Lost World of Café Society
Once Through the Heart A Police Detective’s Triumphant Struggle to Rescue His Daughter from Drugs
Outrage The Story Behind the Tawana Brawley Hoax (with Robert McFadden, M. A. Farber, Charles Strum, E. R. Shipp, & Craig Wolff)
Last Days of the Sicilians The FBI’s War Against the Mafia
The Gotti Tapes The Sensational FBI Tapes That Convicted America’s Most Powerful Mobster (with John Miller)
NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLES WITH RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Do We Believe in U.F.O.s? That’s the Wrong Question Jul. 28, 2020
No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public Jul. 23, 2020
Navy Reports Describe Encounters with Unexplained Flying Objects May 14, 2020
‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects May 26, 2019
‘Project Blue Book’ Is Based on a True U.F.O. Story. Here It Is. Jan. 15, 2019
On the Trail of a Secret Pentagon U.F.O. Program Dec. 18, 2017
2 Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen’ Dec. 16, 2017
Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program Dec. 16, 2017
People Are Seeing U.F.O.s Everywhere, and This Book Proves It Apr. 24, 2017
NASA Adds to Evidence of Mysterious Ancient Earthworks Oct. 30, 2015
Scholars Seek the Hidden Freud in Newly Emerging Letters Aug. 18, 1981
Did Freud’s Isolation Lead Him to Reverse Theory on Neurosis? Aug. 25, 1981
Freud: Secret Documents Reveal Years of Strife Jan. 24, 1984
Hotel Log Hints at Illicit Desire That Dr. Freud Didn’t Repress Dec. 24, 2006
Full Archive of Ralph Blumenthal’s articles for The New York Times
ADDITIONAL LINKS FOR RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Alien Nation: Have Humans Been Abducted by Extraterrestrials? “A prestigious Harvard psychiatrist, John Edward Mack, thought so. His sudden death leaves behind many mysteries.” by Ralph Blumenthal, Vanity Fair, May 10, 2013
An Adventure in Democracy Blog with Ralph Blumenthal
Ralph Blumenthal and Dan Aykroyd on The Believer Video interview with Skylight Books, Mar. 17, 2021 (replay available)
Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism Awarded to Ralph Blumenthal and Douglas Frantz, New York Times, USAir (series), 1994
BOOKS BY JOHN MACK, M.D.
Abduction Human Encounters with Aliens
Passport to the Cosmos Human Transformation & Alien Encounters
A Prince of Our Disorder The Life of T.E. Lawrence
The Alchemy of Survival One Woman’s Journey (with Rita S. Rogers, M.D.)
Vivienne The Life & Suicide of an Adolescent Girl (with Holly Hickler)
ADDITIONAL LINKS FOR JOHN MACK, M.D.
A Harvard Psychiatrist Says Alien Encounters, While Traumatic, May Be Our Gateway to God by Anita Baskin, Omni Magazine, July 1994
John E. Mack Institute Their mission is to explore the frontiers of human experience, to serve the transformation of individual consciousness, and to further the evolution of the paradigms by which we understand human identity.
In memory of John E. Mack, M.D. (1929-2004)