Aug 29, 2026
First, housekeeping about our upcoming visit to DragonCon in Atlanta next week (come say hello if you plan on going!). Ben and Celestia lament the latest measles news, pay respects to Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, and discuss the ever-present "rule of threes" when it comes to celebrity deaths. Then for our main topic Ben talks about Jose Escamilla and his decades-long obsession with what he termed "Roswell rods" or "skyfish." They were an ill-defined phenomenon, somewhere between UFOs, interdimensional cryptids, and light-speed bacteria. Still, Escamilla took them seriously enough to make several films and set up scientific-ish protocols to guide his research -- which, weirdly, led him to Tiger Woods. A unique thing about Roswell Rods is that even the fringe believers couldn't quite swallow this particular mystery, leading to a public debunking by Joe Rogan himself. So, what can we learn from Escamilla and the strange, short life of Roswell rods?