Weaponized is a new multi-platform podcast from Audacy’s Cadence13 and Dark Horse Entertainment that explores unexplained phenomena, UFOS, conspiracy theories and potential cover-ups. Hosted by reporter and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and award-winning investigative journalist George Knapp, the weekly podcast will reveal never-before-seen-footage and documents to dig deeper into the paranormal and more.
Weaponized launched Tuesday, January 24th, with new episodes available every Tuesday on all podcast platforms and Corbell's YouTube page. Guests on Weaponized include everyone from whistleblowers and spies to historians and celebrities. Corbell and Knapp broke the news on the first episode (released January 24) when they revealed a military-filmed photo of a metallic orb flying over Mosul, Iraq, in April 2016. The image, captured in April 2016 by an intelligence-reconnaissance plane, was included in a classified briefing video on UFOs shown to multiple United States government officials.
Forbes spoke to Corbell and Knapp via email about how this podcast came to be. We also discussed how they gained access to some of the documents featured on the show and what interviews they are excited to share.
Risa Sarachan: How did the two of you come together to create Weaponized?
Jeremy Corbell: George and I have been working together for almost a decade now. He’s mentored me in the tradecraft and art of journalism. From my perspective, we were looking for a way to get objectively fascinating information out to the public so it could be assessed in real-time, uninhibited and democratized. I was personally looking for a visual medium to humanize the process we go through together on a daily basis to be able to break the type of stories we do. I suspect we both wanted to be able to report the news on our terms - but in the most powerful way possible. Weaponized is a vehicle; unconstrained by the boundaries of outside agenda. No rules - no holds barred - direct reporting. This is a journalist's Thunderdome.
George Knapp: We get invited to be guests on a lot of podcasts, and along the way, we have had many people ask us why we don’t have one of our own. Over the past few years, we’ve developed so many great relationships within the realm of the topics that interest us and have learned so much about what goes on behind the scenes–things that we aren’t always able to share –so we got to a point where we knew we had way more content in our back pockets than we could ever report through regular means. Some of the amazing people we’ve been privileged to meet deserve more than just a few minutes of air time. They need the space to really tell the world about the work they’ve been doing. We thought that now might be the time to jump in. I’m not sure how many more years I have to devote to these pursuits, so if we didn’t do it now, it might never happen.
Sarachan: What do you hope this podcast brings to listeners?
Jeremy Corbell: Like anything I do, I hope to push the boundaries and poke the bear. I want to find the edges of reality and see if I can push past to discover new territory. I suspect the listener will also be the type of person fixated and fascinated with the possibility that reality isn’t what it used to be [a George Knapp mantra]. That there’s more to discover - always and indefinitely. Along the way, I hope those who go on this Weaponized ride with us, laugh a little. We cover serious topics - however - I’m having a blast, and our audience probably will as well.
Ultimately, I have a personal mission that I hope our audience will benefit from. I want to find out the truth about UFOs. What they truly represent to humanity. I want to know what’s up. And if I get closer - I’m gonna tell people what I find. For some reason, people talk to me. They open up. And their trust is appropriately placed. Part of spilling secrets is knowing how to keep them. George and I are time-tested and bulletproof in that arena. The first thing George ever taught me was to protect sources, even when they don’t protect themselves. The second thing he taught me was that it’s the duty of journalism and science to investigate the unexplained, not to explain the uninvestigated. I take these two truths to heart; I implement them with unwavering resolve. I hope our audience is inspired and motivated to become active participants in engaging this UFO puzzle with us. It’s way more fun than sitting back and being a critic or commentator of life.
George Knapp: I hope it brings a greater appreciation for the men and women who toil in obscurity on our behalf but who aren’t recognized because they operate in a world where secrecy is paramount. The public tends to paint all government/military/intel folks with the same broad brush, namely that they are all devoted to keeping secrets and misleading the public on certain controversial subjects. That is simply not the case. Many of them want the same kind of transparency that we want, and we hope to provide them a platform where they feel safe in discussing the often-sensitive work they’ve undertaken, often over decades.
Sarachan: Weaponized features never-before-seen footage and previously-suppressed documents. How did you gain access to these?
Jeremy Corbell: It must be my charming personality that persuades people to trust me. That - or my mysterious beard. Enough said.
George Knapp: Some of it will be material I obtained from persons who worked for sensitive programs, documents and other materials that have never seen the light of day. But that doesn’t mean it is classified stuff. We have no interest in going to prison. Some of it will be based on FOIA/public records requests, and some of it will be old-fashioned leaks from trusted sources. We take our time to verify that the material is genuine long before we ever release it to the public on Weaponized or on other platforms. And then a lot of material that comes our way is from the general public, from UFO investigators and citizen journalists who act as our eyes and ears and collaborate with us. There is a lot of UFO-related information and interviews I have recorded or accumulated over the years that have never been broadcast. It’s time for some of that to come out.
Sarachan: What interviews are you most excited to share with listeners?
Corbell: I’m most excited to release the interviews and reveal the relationships that George and I have had to keep secret all this time, of course. Together, we have developed sources far beyond what I imagined possible. We can reach anywhere and anyone. So I have a duty to this first and foremost. To protect the trust people have put in us - into our work.
You need to see it from my perspective to understand my sense of duty and loyalty to this path of journalism with George. I’m a former mixed martial athlete turned artist, turned untrained investigative filmmaker with a penchant for being unsociable. George is a veteran journalist and legendary investigative reporter. Between tussling with the mob and calling out corruption, he broke the Area 51 story back in 1989 - I was just a boy. He’s an O.G. who decided to roll the dice so that he could direct my passion and my intent to get to the core of it all. And also that somehow together - we were stronger as a team. That has certainly paid off for the both of us - but it wouldn’t have been my bet. So I’m just grateful out the gate to be having so much fun with my good friend and Sensei in journalism. The UFO topic is a briar patch of disinformation and misinformation that envelops a wild west of unsettling half-truths. The whole damn thing is a mystery. It’s bat country. It’s Vietnam in the ‘60s. It’s good to have someone like G-Man to watch your back.
Knapp: The interview I am most excited about is one I can’t reveal right now. It’s coming in the very near future, someone who has never spoken publicly about the area of his expertise. But I’ll add this, we want this to be a much broader discussion than merely UFOs/UAP, government secrets and coverups.
As a journalist, I have covered mobsters and organized crime, political corruption, public health scandals, despicable treatment of animals and endangered species, the abuse of public lands, and many other serious topics that continue to interest me. We intend to dig into way more than UFOs with the help of guests. And both Jeremy and I have met and stay in touch with well-known artists and entertainers who share some of our interests and who’ve said they would like to join us for a few hours, names most people would recognize.
Sarachan: Why do you think everyone is so consumed with the question of "are we alone in the universe?"
Corbell: We’re born into bodies and occupy space from an isolated perspective from the get-go. It’s only natural to want to discover the boundaries of our existence. Where do we begin, and where do we end? Where does that which is not us begin and end? Is there a relationship between inner space and outer space? Can we transcend our own sense of self to experience the world as it is, and not as we perceive it to be? Have other people from other places or planets, times or dimensions, already walked our evolutionary path? Could we learn from them? And if you don’t understand that Weaponized courtesy that stops you from sleeping - you must be an alien. So take me to your leader so I can see what kind of psychedelics they use.
Knapp: It is one of the two central questions of human existence. One, what if anything happens to us after we die? Two, is there another intelligence out there, or perhaps living here? If or when we can establish that we are not alone, that another intelligence exists, perhaps is already here, it changes everything. It would be the most profound discovery in human history. It is a noble pursuit, one that has bedazzled and befuddled humanity since the dawn of civilization. We’ve seen these strange things in the sky since the beginning, on every continent, throughout every culture. It would be awesome to see some solid answers during our lifetime. Maybe it would mean we start thinking of ourselves as Earthlings instead of as warring factions fighting over resources and table scraps.
Sarachan: George, what originally brought you to this topic in your career as an investigatory journalist?
Knapp: My journalistic mentors at KLAS TV, Robert Stoldal and Ned Day, both had an interest in a secretive base in the Nevada desert, one that–strangely enough–disappeared from maps in the 1970s. The place is now known all over the world– Area 51. In the 1980’s I started hearing rumblings about secret technology being reverse-engineered out in the Nevada desert, technology that might be from somewhere other than Earth. It was an outrageous idea at the time that I started digging into it. I was far more interested in the government’s response to the UFO phenomena than in the phenomena itself because it became clear very early in my research that the public was being lied to, and that ticked me off.
Sarachan: How did you go about selecting your guests?
Knapp: We both came up with a long list of guest ideas. Some of them were longshots or merely wishful thinking, others probably hard to get, and a few we felt would agree to come on the show because they trust us, people who have a story to tell but needed a safe space in which to tell it. Obviously, the primary qualification for one of our guests is that the story they have to tell would be of interest to a general audience, as well as to the die-hard UFO folks who we hope will follow us regardless of the guest or topic.
Corbell: I don’t know how George is going to answer this question - so I’m just going to tell you the truth. It’s a precise technique we call Cosmic Roulette. The exact methodology is classified 33 levels above Top Secret, so if we told you - well, you know the rest. I would rather decline to answer and have you around as a loyal audience member for the next 12 months of our show. It’s going to be a ride - there will be some turbulence and mortar fire - but you can bet your boots that your curiosity will be Weaponized.