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In November of last year, I spoke to David Halperin, who taught in the Religious Studies

Department at the University of North Carolina until he retired in 2000.

We talked about his book The Intimate Alien,

which pushes aside the Believer skeptic dichotomy

to propose a new framework from which to view the

UFO question. The question is not what are they or where do they come from

the question is what do they mean?

My name is David J Halperin.

I was a teenage UFO investigator back in the 1960s and I grew up to become a professor of religious studies.

For 24 years I taught Judaic studies

in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina

at Chapel Hill.

My areas of special interest were religious traditions of heavenly

ascensions and other worldly journeys which I think I realized even while I was studying them,

were my teenage euphology in a more respectable guise that as I describe in my book intimate alien the hidden story of the

UFO at the age of 12 going on 13, I became utterly convinced that UFOs were real and that it was my destiny to solve the mystery of what they were and what they meant

for us.

And gradually as I went off to college I let go of the belief, but the UFO, if I let go of the

UFOs, they never let go of me.

And I remained really, I was quite aware of this,

...