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HOPKINS: Trying to speculate as to the ultimate meaning of all this is always tough. Certain things seem very clear to me. We know what they’re doing, I think, beyond any doubt at this point. As to why they’re doing it, that’s speculation. It definitely seems to me, though, that what they’re doing is for their purposes, not for ours. The hidden religious hopes that I think everyone has would connect with the idea that they’re coming here to help us. It’s certainly nice to think that. Our paranoid fears that many people have are they’re coming here to take us over, I don’t see a sign of either one of those being true. They seem to be here for their own purposes. Now, they could take what they need. Our DNA, our genetics, they could create their hybrids to solve some particular evolutionary problem that they may be facing. Who knows? And they could just simply leave and then leave us alone again, which would be quite wonderful. But, I don’t think it’s possible to say. I don’t have enough to go by, enough information, to say what they’re here for. They’re not here, that’s for sure, to help us plug up the ozone layer hole. They’re not here to take over our supermarkets. They’re here for their own reasons. And I’m not sure what those are. NOVA: There are those who say that the abduction stories are so similar not because they’re real but because we all share the same cultural images of UFOs and aliens. Why is this, in your opinion, not enough to explain the many apparent similarities? HOPKINS: One of the most important things about these cases, as they emerge, is that they come from all around the world, even from essentially illiterate people. Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, New Guinea, I mean cases have been reported exactly like the cases we get here from people who were totally illiterate. There is no possible way that this could have bubbled down. Also, one could do a simple test. You ask the man on the street to explain what a UFO abduction is about, and he may get one or two things right. But, most people really don’t have a clear idea of what happens. NOVA: You had said—and it’s been said that the best evidence for the reality is experience, is the similarity of these stories. In other words, what do you mean by that process? HOPKINS: Well, these accounts, of which we have literally thousands upon thousands, are so extraordinarily similar. To start with, in the sequence of events, Robert—Edward Bulwark, who’s a folklorist, has broken down these various accounts into separate units of what happens, and has found out that not only are the same things reported again and again, but they’re reported in the same sequence. Which is very, very different, obviously, from a fantasy or a whatever. And the details are so incredibly similar. Which I am stunned by every time I interview somebody. The power of these accounts, or the emotional resources behind them, where people are really extremely upset and going into it—which is not the kind of thing one finds behind a fantasy—the power of that, mixing with the fact that the accounts are so similar around the world, again, supported by the evidence in all the cases. You know, if somebody said the UFO came down in the yard there, where that tree is, you might look at it and find a broken tree branch, or several of them broken from the top down. That sort of thing. The background is always supported there. Which, of course, doesn’t happen with a fantasy. It only happens with reality. And the evidence is absolutely there in every case. And, of course, you don’t get in fantasies or imaginary experiences this—the fact that everyone is remember- ing the same thing the same way. And you have multiple—many multiple 16