Full Of It #214 - The Ariel School Incident

im absolutely beside myself because i forgot to reply to the pod about arrival so please excuse this slightly out of date comment but arrival is probably my all time favourite film. whenever we were asked about our favourite films or films we’d recommend on my film degree (which i have recently graduated from xx) it was always the first film i’d think of. i was always hesitant to call it a sci fi film because i feel like it puts a lot of people off watching it when i feel like really the sci fi alieny elements are purely just a device used to tell this human story of louise and her life, and selling it as a sci fi alien flick is selling it very short. as far as the ariel school incident it’s weird. you’re immediate assumption upon hearing that all the kids described them as being stereotypical grey aliens you want to say that they’re clearly making it up then but then you realise that there’s realistically no way for them to have known that grey aliens were a stereotype and universally recognised thing because of where they were and the time period. in a similar vein, it’s not completely out of this world (pardon the pun) to assume that a bunch of kids pulled together to prank everyone but that explanation loses merit when you consider that they’ve maintained this story for so long. you’d think that as they grew up someone would come out and say “oh yeah that was all a load of shit”. i don’t want to make this comment too long but i have to mention nope. i went to watch it on release day and loved it. i really didn’t like us at all, i felt like jordan peele was just too ambitious and tried to tackle too many different thing in one film meaning that none of them properly landed. whereas with get out and nope they felt a lot more focused on what they were trying to say, making them a lot more successful from a story telling point of view. keke palmer was incredible and she balanced out daniel kaluuya’s more subtle character amazingly and i loved their dynamic. it was also visually stunning and i love what peele did with the alien/ufo. i won’t go into it too much so as to not spoil for anyone that hasn’t seen it but it was a really interesting and fresh idea for an alien film. i really feel like he is one of the most exciting directors working at the minute and i’m always looking forward to what he has coming next. anyways that dragged on far too much, see you next time xxx

Lovely pod Olympia! It bothers me a bit that only kids were involved. If aliens were smart enough to send out a message in the language of humans about pollution / dangers of technology, then why weren’t they smart enough to send that message to adults with power to make a difference. The fact that they know about pollution suggests that they know about a bit about societies and consequences of human actions on earth. So they should’ve known that telling their message to kids in Zimbabwe was not the best move. Perhaps they planned these kids to be the ‘future angels of good news’ but it doesn’t line up with their mentioned knowledge of the earth. You could all place it in a scenario of ‘aliens felt that somethings wrong with the earth, but they didn’t know what age group they were talking to’ but it all sounds a bit sketchy. This thing probably happened but I’m guessing it was fake, like with actors. If it did happen, that would be sweet of course.

Gerben Groeneveld

NEW DITA LORE DROPPED!!! Dita saw aliens with her tids

hepandeerus 2

Why on earth (or not!) would the aliens come to earth, with that message, to those kids? What could they do about it? Also, it seems like technology is the only thing that's going to help us now.

Lazzy Doo

What’s that smell? What’s that sound? What’s that wet thing? Or wait that’s sweat! ITS TOO HOT!! Look up, look down, look all around, What is this? Lumps lost the plot. So, come and listen! Brilliant POD as per pour les agês. Just come in here for the chatter with Olympia and love every minute, subject or off topic (majority of the time).

Stuart Barber

I simply must comment this week as I've been meaning to suggest Burley if you ever wanted to do another tour video (and you mentioned your fave witchy village in this pod so no unrelated entirely). There's the Bisterne Dragon, the white witch Sybil Leek and there's some smuggler nonsense too. Might not be enough for a whole video but if you ever needed an excuse to visit the village again - there you go! This is the first time I've ever heard of this incident and it sent me down a total rabbit hole which led me to something called "Skinny Bob". Apparently, there is a large community of people who believe there are a set of leaked KGB videos from 1942 that show an alien lifeform called, "Skinny Bob" who is your typical grey but with a cranium that could rival Jimmy Neutron. Anyway, felt the need to join in as I am an eternal lurker. Much love, Rude.

Rude Velvet

Fab pod as always! I’m such a big fan of anything a bit mysterious or other worldly (eventhough I’ll be bloody terrified when it gets to the night time now). At first I wondered if maybe this was an activity gone wrong on the teachers part. Like a piece of interactive learning that maybe got out of hand, but then the fact they didn’t shut down the story would make you think it’s not. I am leaning to the opinion that this was legitimate now, but it’s real depressing to think we might have been given an early warning about mucking up the planet and we just carried on anyway!

Long post alert!!! Oh wow I love you bringing up mass psychogenic illness! Having all my expensive wallpaper (college degrees) in psychology not to mention being a HUGE medical history nerd, I wrote a research paper on the Dancing Plague of 1518 in Strasbourg. Frau Troffea just stepped into the street one day and started to dance. People, hundreds of them, just joined in. It lasted two months before it just stopped as suddenly as it started! No one could explain why they were dancing they just did. People started to die! But the others danced on. Doctors first ruled out supernatural possession, alien invasion, and even things such as too much blood or hot blood. Some doctors thought it was Ergot poisoning. A mold in grains that caused similar psychogenic and unusual symptoms and was believed to be the cause of the illnesses and possessions that started the Salem witch trials. The only thing they could do to treat it was to open up dance halls with music so the dancers were not in the streets scaring other people are bringing in more dancers. Finally it was believed to be mass psychogenic illness. It was not an easy time then and they believed that Troffea had such a mental break from reality that she just simply started dancing without explanation seeing this, others suffered a similar detachment and joined in. I know it’s not aliens and I know this is super long I just wanted to share because I totally geeked out on it!❤️❤️

Karen Shupp

the aliens made your phone start speaking in French to you 👁👁 jk. I 100% believe the kids. Kids tend to be very honest, sometimes too honest. like they'll tell you you're fat or something lol. I loved this pod so much that I immediately went back and listened to it twice. very excited for more alien shit 💖 p.s. it's been so hot in Pennsylvania, my bussy is boiling

Kyle Ross

Okay this one pod alone has made me a believer. What the actual. It did make me think a lot when you said about the kids not having the words or life experience to properly describe what they experienced. For instance the bizarre description of a flute sound could have been something like a pneumatic release or air lock. That kind of pressurised, breathy mechanical sound is unlikely something a child would have heard before, so they equated it to a wind instrument instead. This would have massively traumatised me when I was a kid. There was a book that I was absolutely terrified of in our school library about alien encounters but I just couldn't stop myself reading it. The two things I remember from it was an illustration from an encounter where people said they saw a large, metallic, bullet-shaped craft zooming down a motorway with multiple people visibly screaming inside. The other was the advice that if you ever encounter an alien that you should never think about being abducted because they will read your mind and take that thought as a request!? Why the bloody hell was this book in a children's library!!!? Anyway, another enlightening Full of It, looking forward to the final installment in the alien trilogy! I realise the theories are not exclusively about aliens but have you ever considered a pod on the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle? Did a quick search of the feed but couldn't find one.

Mark Hall

There was a similar sort of incident that happened in Austalia in 1966. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westall_UFO

Ted Palicz

Your thoughts about having something to look forward to, can apply to small stresses too. I always have difficulty on Sunday night, feeling anxious about going back to work the next day. I have found that if I have something nice planned for Monday afternoon- board games with my husband, a cuppa with my sister etc., it makes Sunday night and Monday much more bearable.

Smuggy Goatlin