Show 398 Notes: Travis Taylor & Leslie Kean

Simulcast on YouTube and KGRA Radio

Tuesday March 31, 6:00-8:00 PM EDT (-4GMT)

BIO: Travis S. Taylor (“Doc” Taylor to his friends) has earned his soubriquet the hard way: He has a doctorate in Optical Science and Engineering, a doctorate in Aerospace Systems Engineering, a master’s degree in Physics, and a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, all from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Added to this is a master’s degree in Astronomy from the University of Western Sydney (Australia) and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Auburn University (Alabama). Dr. Taylor has worked on various programs for the Department of Defense and NASA for the past two decades. He is currently working on several advanced propulsion concepts, very large space telescopes, space-based beamed energy systems, next generation space launch concepts, He is a licensed Professional Engineer in Alabama.
In his copious spare time, Doc Travis is also a black belt martial artist, a private pilot, a SCUBA diver, and races mountain bikes. He has also competed in triathlons, is a marathon runner, a CrossFitter, and has been the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of several hard rock bands. He has written nineteen science fiction novels, two textbooks (including this one), and over a dozen technical papers. Dr. Taylor has appeared and starred in several television programs including the History Channel’s The Universe and Life After People, National Geographic Channel’s hit shows Rocket City Rednecks and When Aliens Attack, and The Weather Channel’s 3 Scientists Walk Into a Bar. He currently lives with his wife and two children in north Alabama just outside of Huntsville in view of the Saturn V rocket that is erected at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.

BIO: Leslie Kean is an independent investigative journalist and author of Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife (2017, Crown Publishing Group), a personal story of research into astonishing and thought-provoking information suggestive of survival past death. In 2010, her book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (Crown Publishing Group, 2010) was a New York Times bestseller. She helped produce a 2011 documentary based on UFOs for the History Channel, made by Breakthru Films, an award-winning independent film company. Kean has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, FOX, The Colbert Report, and NPR and in USA Today, Vanity Fair, US News & World Report, and Columbia Journalism Review, among other media. Beginning in 2012, she contributed a series of articles to the Huffington Post and in 2017 she co-authored a groundbreaking front page story for the New York Times about a previously secret Pentagon program studying UFOs.

Before writing UFOs, Kean co-founded the Coalition for Freedom of Information, an independent alliance advocating for greater government openness on information about UFOs. In this capacity, she was the plaintiff in a successful, five-year Freedom of Information Act federal lawsuit against NASA, which had withheld information concerning a crash of an object in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in 1965. In 2007, Kean co-organized a landmark Washington DC international press conference on official UFO investigations, which received media coverage around the world. She was also a producer for the 2009 independent documentary I Know What I Saw directed by James Fox. She co-organized a 2013 international conference providing a platform for scientists, government officials and journalists studying UFOs to present data, and she lectured at American University in 2014.

Previously, Kean worked as a freelance writer and radio producer. In the 1990’s she was an on-air host for a daily investigative news program on KPFA radio, a Pacifica station in California. She contributed articles to dozens of publications here and abroad including the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Providence Journal, International Herald Tribune, Globe and Mail, Sydney Morning Herald, The Nation, and Journal for Scientific Exploration.. Her stories were syndicated through Knight Ridder/Tribune, Scripps-Howard, New York Times wire service, Pacific News Service, and the National Publishers Association. While spending many years reporting on Burma, Kean coauthored Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit: The Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity (Aperture, 1994). She contributed essays for a number of anthologies published between 1998 and 2009.

The below image is screenshot of a South Portland, Maine third grade, “Remote Learning” class.