Need to Know is a podcast and video program developed by journalist Ross Coulthart and writer-producer Bryce Zabel to analyze UFO and UAP developments. The series grew from their prior collaboration and combined Coulthart’s investigative reporting with Zabel’s experience in television, media history, and disclosure advocacy. Its conversational episodes respond to breaking stories while situating them within a longer narrative about secrecy and public knowledge.

The hosts discuss sources, documents, hearings, official reports, witnesses, and the media treatment of new claims. Coulthart has sometimes used the program to add context to reporting released through NewsNation or other venues. Because source-protection limits what can be shown, some consequential statements rest on the host’s description of confidential information. The podcast records those assertions clearly but cannot by itself provide the missing corroboration.

Need to Know closely followed David Grusch, congressional hearings, the UAP Disclosure Act, AARO, alleged retrieval programs, and the Nimitz case. Its combination of reporting and advocacy has helped maintain attention between major news events. It has also produced disagreements when a host stated a strong conclusion without presenting supporting evidence, illustrating the tension between privileged sourcing and the public’s ability to evaluate the claim.

The program’s importance to UAP disclosure is its continuity and access to central participants. It preserves how leading advocates interpreted events in real time and often identifies the policy consequence of a new development. Its most durable contribution comes when confidential reporting is later matched by documents or on-record sources, and when the hosts distinguish what they know firsthand from what they infer about the larger system. The archive also captures the hosts’ own revisions and disagreements, an important check on a narrative built partly from protected sources.