In this episode of Sound, Light & Frequency, Bryce and Brent take on Contact (1997), Carl Sagan’s beautiful, brainy, and decidedly UFO-free journey into alien possibility. But beneath the film’s awe, wonder, and cosmic longing lies a more provocative question: what did Sagan really think about the mystery of contact — and was there more going on beneath his public skepticism than most people realize? Using the film as a springboard, the hosts explore the strange space where science, belief, Hollywood, and hidden history all seem to overlap.

This episode also carries an unexpected personal edge. Bryce recalls his own face-to-face encounter with Sagan after a live television appearance, and he and Brent reflect on why the famed astronomer later found his way into the mythology of Dark Skies. Along the way, they touch on the long and complicated road that brought Contact to the screen, the emotional legacy Sagan left behind, and one of the most famous quotations he never actually said. Thoughtful, surprising, and just a little subversive, “Sagan Makes Contact” looks at one of popular culture’s most revered science storytellers from a distinctly Sound, Light & Frequency point of view.

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For forty-four years, Brent Friedman has carried a story he has never fully told in public. A few fragments slipped out here and there, but never the names, never the full context, and never the larger implication of what it all meant. In this episode, that changes. Brent finally revisits a startling conversation from the summer of 1981, when an older family friend with extraordinary government access shared something so unsettling it stayed with Brent for the rest of his life. It was the kind of moment that sounds impossible — until you hear the details — and the kind of confidence given only because the speaker believed no one would ever believe it.

That same year, the scrappy UFO thriller Hangar 18 was floating provocative ideas into the culture long before most people were ready to take them seriously. Bryce and Brent use the film as a portal into a bigger conversation about secrecy, storytelling, and the uneasy space where Hollywood and hidden history may overlap. As Brent tells his account in full for the first time, Bryce adds new pieces that don’t close the case so much as deepen it — and together they point toward the central question behind Sound, Light & Frequency: what if movies and television weren’t just reflecting the mystery, but helping us live with it?

Hosted by Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman.

Find us on iHeartPodcasts or wherever you get your podcasts (just search SOUND LIGHT FREQUENCY).

Visit us at SoundLightFrequency.com 

Sound, Light & Frequency is produced by Stellar Productions. Executive Producers are Bryce Zabel, Brent Friedman, Nick Johnson, and Jackie Zabel. 

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In “Presidents' Club,” recent headlines about Obama and Trump circling the alien/UFO question become a launchpad—not for breaking-news punditry, but for what Sound, Light & Frequency does best: following the secret thread between Washington and Hollywood. Bryce and Brent start with Obama’s very movie-ready riff about aliens, Area 51, and the possibility of a conspiracy “hiding it from the president of the United States”—and then immediately ask the real question: who knows more about UFOs, the presidents, or the screenwriters? 

From there, the episode dives straight into the ultimate “president meets ET” portal film: Independence Day—where President Whitmore isn’t read in at all, until his Secretary of Defense leans in with the immortal understatement: “Mr. President, that may not be entirely accurate.” 

Along the way, you’ll hear how the Pentagon almost cooperated with the movie—right up until two forbidden words showed up in the script: Area 51. And yes, Bryce and Brent relive the goosebump factor of Whitmore’s speech (“we will not go quietly into that night…”)—because if Disclosure ever goes public, that’s the kind of voice you’d want at the microphone. 

Then it gets delightfully weird in the best way: the guys trace “Area 51 on screen” back to Spielberg’s Raiders coda (Hangar 51!), recreate the behind-the-scenes story of Independence Day being screened at the White House (yes, that White House blowing up…while Bill Clinton watches with a bowl of popcorn), and bounce through other presidential-ET pop culture detours like Mars Attacks! and its dark punchline politics. 

Finally, “Presidents' Club” widens the lens to the real-world presidential UFO hall of fame—Carter, Ford, Reagan, and more—plus the uncomfortable takeaway that the Commander-in-Chief may not be “read in” the way the public assumes. 

Bryce also shares a taste of what a presidential disclosure statement might actually sound like (from his work with Richard Dolan), before Brent tees up a chilling next-episode thread: a Reagan-era insider who claimed he had a higher clearance level than the President—and what that suggests about how secrets stay secret. 

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Steven Spielberg is Mr. Close Encounters—the filmmaker who arguably made UFOs “respectable” on screen, starting with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (and its three distinct cuts: 1977, 1980, 1998). In Episode 2, hosts Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman revisit the granddaddy of UFO cinema and explain why that movie still feels like it was beamed in from the phenomenon itself: the five-note language, the lights, the “orbs,” the stigma of reporting, and the obsessive pull that turns an ordinary guy into a human compass pointing straight at the truth. 

Then the episode pivots to the question that won’t go away: Did Spielberg ever get offered “the deal”—the same kind of covert approach Bryce and Brent say they received around Dark Skies? The guys lay out the folklore, the timing, and the circumstantial breadcrumbs, including Spielberg’s overt attempts to get cooperation (and the pushback he says he got), plus the larger “two factions” idea—some parts of government discouraging UFO talk while others may be using the cover of fiction to normalize it. 

And because this is Sound, Light & Frequency, it gets personal. Bryce shares what it’s like to be in Spielberg’s orbit—developing a UFO pilot for him, working on Taken, and sitting with Spielberg and Hanks on an Emmy night—yet still finding him a “man of mystery” on the UFO question. Brent brings the episode’s most hair-raising anecdote: what Dark Skies director Tobe Hooper once told him during a crop-circle scout—an offhand, no-BS story suggesting Spielberg had been approached and briefed. Hooper isn’t here to confirm it, but Brent and Bryce explain why they take the memory seriously. 
Finally, the guys drop the episode’s ultimate rabbit hole: Serpo—the rumored “exchange” story that sounds eerily adjacent to the film’s ending. Coincidence? Reverse-inspiration? Or something stranger, where the line between history and Hollywood gets fuzzy by design? Either way, “Mr. Close Encounters” is a smart, funny, deep dive into why Spielberg sits at the center of UFO pop culture—and why his “truth-to-fiction” ratio still haunts the conversation. 

Hosted by Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman.

Find us on iHeartPodcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Visit us at SoundLightFrequency.com 

Sound, Light & Frequency is produced by Stellar Productions. Executive Producers are Bryce Zabel, Brent Friedman, Nick Johnson, and Jackie Zabel. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the Hollywood premiere party for the NBC series Dark Skies in the late 90s, a stranger—“J.C.”—crashed the celebration and claimed he was sent by the Office of Naval Intelligence. He offered the series creators Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman a chilling bargain: help “slow-roll” UFO disclosure through their NBC series, and he’d provide insider truth—then he scribbled a cryptic “formula” on a bank envelope and called it “Sound, Light & Frequency,” the “secrets of the universe.”

In this debut episode, Bryce and Brent relive the night that became Ground Zero for their current active investigation into Hollywood, UAPs, and secrecy—and ask the question that still can’t be denied: who else in showbiz was offered “the deal”?

Our podcast focuses on the treatment of non-human intelligence and the UAP issue in movies and TV series going back to “War of the Worlds” and looking ahead to the upcoming Spielberg film “Disclosure Day.” 

Please follow us on X, and YouTube. Our website home base is SoundLightFrequency.com. 

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