Simulcast on YouTube, Facebook & Twitter | Tuesday, August 11, 2026 @ 8:00 PM EDT (GMT-4)
Martin Willis welcomes historian Matthew Bowman, author of The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America. Published by Yale University Press, the book examines the famous 1961 New Hampshire encounter that became the model for the modern alien-abduction story. Bowman explores the Hills’ reported experience, the controversial role of hypnosis and the case’s connections to civil rights, religion, government secrecy and America’s growing distrust of institutions. Was this an extraterrestrial encounter, a psychological event or a mystery that remains unresolved? The book’s distinctive angle is excellent for your interview: Bowman treats the Hill story as both a UFO case and a window into American history, without making the conversation depend entirely on proving or disproving an abduction. Yale University Press describes the Hills’ experience as the template for later alien-encounter stories and emphasizes their lives as an interracial New Hampshire couple and civil rights activists.
Upcoming Virtual Zoom Lecture August 18th: https://portsmouthhistory.org/event/lecture-three-ways-of-looking-at-ufos/
BIO: Matthew Bowman is Associate Professor of Religion and History at Claremont Graduate University, and was appointed the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies, with a joint appointment in history and religion, in 2019. He is a specialist in American religious history, with particular interests in Mormonism, new religious movements, and the development of the concept of “religion” in the United States. He teaches courses on North American religions and Mormonism in the department of religion, and on the history of the United States in the department of history.
Prior to his arrival at CGU, Bowman held positions at Hampden-Sydney College and Henderson State University. He received his PhD from Georgetown University in 2011, and has regularly appeared in the national media to comment on Mormonism and American religion. He has written for the Washington Post, Slate, The New Republic, and the Huffington Post, and has appeared on MSNBC and NPR.