The Proof Is Out There in Tony Harris’ eye-opening new History series

Tony Harris joins History with The Proof Is Out There.

Tony Harris is well-known among true crime fans, but his new series on History is moving him from crime stories into the truly unbelievable. The Proof Is Out There, which airs its first episode tonight, sees Harris bring his expertise from shows like Scene of the Crime with Tony Harris to the world’s plethora of inexplicable video, audio and other evidence.

Can Tony and a panel of experts get to the bottom of what actually happened in cases of potential conspiracies, UFOs and other phenomena?

He’s certainly going to try, and ahead of the show’s 10 p.m. premiere, he spoke to Precinct TV about why he joined forces with History and why he’s so excited about this literally fantastic new show.

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Precinct TV: You’re known and loved for your work in the true crime space, so what made you want to start hosting a show about the paranormal?

Tony Harris: If you’re a journalist, all you live to do is take on huge questions. That’s what you do. That’s why you do investigative journalism in the first place. That’s why you do any form of journalism. Any form of journalism is digging into something.

And there are few bigger questions than Are we alone in the universe? I don’t know what I’ll find in this exploration. All I know is that I’m fascinated by it. It’s one of the huge existential questions of our day and time, and I’m happy that History and A&E have given me an opportunity to explore it. It’s been amazing so far.

PTV: That makes you somewhat of the middleman in The Proof Is Out There. You have to take these fantastic things and explain them or make them relatable to the audience. How do you do that?

TH: A lot of people say to me, well, if this stuff is unbelievable, why are you doing it? I say look, I think we call a lot of stuff unbelievable because we can’t explain it based on our understanding of science, technology, and in the physical world as we know it today. And that’s the key point—today. All of those areas; technology’s evolving, science is a technology. The physical world, we’re learning more about all the time.

What I’m finding really interesting is that we’ve been able to assemble a team to take a look at these clips, and they’re everywhere. Everybody’s got a phone, obviously, and more and more, they’re turning those phones to the sky and they’re capturing stuff. And they want people like me and they want teams like mine to take a look at it and explain what they can’t explain. To take what they consider to be unbelievable and explain it to them. We’re happy to do it.

Let’s be honest about it; there are a lot of hoaxers out there. I hope part of the service that we perform here is that we can knock some of that stuff down and we can sort of cull the hoaxers from the space. Because they’re muddying the waters in a significant way and making it harder for real academics or real scientists who are looking at this material in a serious way to come to determinations, and to bring us all together around a fact-based analysis of what we’re seeing. And that’s journalism. That’s real journalism.

And if you’ve got The Washington Post and you’ve got the New York Times with dedicated reporters to this space, if you’ve got a Harvard professor that’s about to release a book on this space…come on, let’s get serious about it, and let’s learn what we can learn. I’m excited.

PTV: How would you describe The Proof Is Out There? So many of these paranormal shows have the same ultra-serious tone and style, so how is this going to be different?

TH: Everyone made it clear to me, all of this stuff is not super-serious. We’re not taking ourselves super-seriously. We’re going to have a bit of fun with this. When we find clips that make us stop and say, “Whoa,” then we apply some rigor to that stuff.

But no, don’t take yourself too seriously—which is probably part of the reason why they wanted me to do it, because I never have—and have some fun with it. And there’ll be opportunities for you to allow your personality to come through. I think at some point in one of the episodes I say something like, “This is pretty funky stuff.” You don’t usually hear folks on History Channel calling something funky, but I do.

PTV: Is there anything that particularly surprised you? Or anything that Tony Harris can’t wait for The Proof Is Out There viewers to see?

TH: I’m going to describe a sensation for me, and I’m curious if after watching the season, the viewers end up with some sense of the same sensation that I have. And I say this understanding that people may be way ahead of me already, but here’s the thing. You never know how the work is going to impact you. You know that it is going to advance your understanding and knowledge of a particular story, or a particular individual, or a particular space.

But I will tell you that in doing the work on this first season, I have been left with a desire to understand more fully the connection between science, space, spirituality. And I will tell you that in working on this show and working through the clips that we examined for the show, I came away with a greater desire to understand those connections even more. I’m curious to hear back on my Twitter feed or whatever, from the viewers of this series. their own experience of watching this show. Because I’ve had one and it’s been eye-opening for me.

The Proof Is Out There premieres tonight and airs Tuesdays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on History.