Olav Phillips — July 13, 2014

[Christopher O'Brien]

i kind of wished chris hadnt interrupted the guest so much. i also thought that instead of concise questions chris kind of went on too long, not giving a chance for the guest to answer. i think that chris and olav were on the same page on some things and that it wasnt apparent to chris. maybe not the best guest but i feel he was mishandled during the interview. it all could have been handled with a little more grace.

If I don't appear tough enough, I'm an ass-licker giving the guest a pass. I lose. If I drill down, I mishandle guests. I lose. Yeah, I know, we make it look easy, but you can't please all the folks all the time—especially the ones that lurk for a year and then come out of the woodwork being all critical and whatever. meh

 

[Occum'sRaisin]

If I don't appear tough enough, I'm an ass-licker giving the guest a pass. I lose. If I drill down, I mishandle guests. I lose. Yeah, I know, we make it look easy, but you can't please all the folks all the time—especially the ones that lurk for a year and then come out of the woodwork being all critical and whatever. meh

lurk? ok. but i was hardly "all critical" and am disappointed to see that you have to be handled with kid gloves. i'll keep it in mind for the next time i "come out of the woodwork".

 

[Han]

i kind of wished chris hadnt interrupted the guest so much. i also thought that instead of concise questions chris kind of went on too long, not giving a chance for the guest to answer. i think that chris and olav were on the same page on some things and that it wasnt apparent to chris. maybe not the best guest but i feel he was mishandled during the interview. it all could have been handled with a little more grace.

I honestly think that Olav Phillips got off quite lightly, there were occasions when I was shouting (not literally) at my radio! for example when Gene asked him why if the "nazis" were so advanced they did not win the war, and he could not provide a satisfactory (to me) answer.

Asking questions or questioning answers is not rude, it is essential for an informative interview.

Sometimes it is not only the conclusion that is important, how you arrived at it also counts too.

I think that Olav came across as a genuine and nice person, but I think he was very nervous, and said that he was feeling unwell during the interview, at no point did I detect him feeling badgered or offended but obviously only he knows if he was..........

 

[fastwalker]

I fall in the category of: "I want to believe!" What got me started on the Paracast was my search for UFO podcasts I could listen to while I work. I saw a posted interview with Stanton and I listened to it and was very impressed that the interviewers were both knowledgeable and did not let Stanton rest on his laurels. Since then I have been fascinated by this show and I have now jumped into the forum, all because of the shows hosts. I would say that they gave Olav all the rope he needed as they usually do and he pretty much hung himself, however, I stilled learned a thing or two like the alternative 3, just started watching it...Thanks for providing reason guys in a field of soap boxes...

 

[stan w.]

Underwhelmed at best with Phillips.If I wanted conspiracy with indepth research, I would go with Marrs,Redfern etc.
This guy reminded me of Timothy Good,lots of speculation based on hearsay or third/fourth person accounts.
That being said,as a fairly new listener,apart from the tacky intromusic/sound effects,this is a great serious show on the UFO subject..
Well done Gene and Chris.
Regards
Stan from Ontario Canada

 

[Jeff Crowell]

I have to agree with Raisin a little bit. There were pretty clear times when Chris appeared to be trying to goad Olav into an argument and essentially pick a fight, but Olav seemed "agreeable" because what Chris was saying was pretty much common sense. Chris's points were valid and intelligent, and the fact that Olav was agreeing with him doesn't make him wishy-washy or weak-in-opinion to me. Quite the opposite; I thought Olav was level headed, relatively speaking, in some of his positions on conspiracies out here.

On the other hand, however, he did show a little shakeiness on some cases, and he did stretch believe into some less-scrupulous sources and individuals (Mars). Secret, underground bases are an example, however I will point out that he said during the interview that underground bases were not his strong suit and that there were other researchers in the field that knew quite a bit more than he did.

I will say that I enjoyed the discussion on residual Nazi projects as being explanations for UFO and flying saucer sightings. As many, I'd heard this theory proposed before, but never really gave it much consideration. Olav gave the most convincing argument yet that I'd heard (admittedly, I'd not heard many). However, did the Nazi's split the atom? My BS'o-meter spiked at that time. Atomic testing leaves residual radiation, not for days, or weeks, but for years. We would have seen evidence of atomic testing performed by the Nazis into the 1950s and 1960s.

The Nazi's had rocket propulsion and were knocking at the door of other technologies (such as atomic), but they never developed them. Why? Because the Nazi's ran out of resources, made bad wartime decisions, and Hitler lost all confidence, capability, and morale at the end of the war. This idea that the Nazis, and Hitler himself, were obsessed with the occult and the supernatural is nothing more than Hollywood BS. There was even a time during the early days of the war that Hitler did find out some of his middle command were consulting psychics for direction, and issued a decree to run all psychic's out of Germany as a result. Most did leave for fear of their lives. The idea that Hitler and the Nazis were all-into the occult, Satanic powers and rituals, and the paranormal is a romantic and starry-eyed notion that contributes to the evilness of the regime, but very little of it is rooted in truth. I think there's plenty of truth to the evils committed by Hitler and the Nazis that we don't have to entertain such ideas outside the boundaries of entertainment.

My take on this interview is that it went very well, especially for a guest who was a PC first timer. He seemed level headed and rather intelligent and I'd sort of like to see him on again in the future.

My two cents.

Peace.

J.

 

[E. L. Wisty]

Olav Phillips got off very lightly indeed! In a previous podcast, Anthony Sanchez was embarrassed on air for thinking that Commander X was a real person, as opposed to Tim Beckley's house-name for authors to use if the "non-fiction" potboiler they're churning out for his publishing company is so blatantly made-up that he can't expect anyone who actually exists to put their name to it. And quite right too - if your "research" is so abysmal that you don't bother to determine if the author of the books you're quoting even exists, you're not a researcher at all, you're simply reading every trashy UFO book you can lay your hands on and believing the bits you happen to like. That's called "being gullible"; actual research is a bit more demanding of your time, dedication, intelligence, etc.

Olav Phillips made a similar blunder by admitting that he thought "Alternative 3" was a documentary. I think it's fairly well established that it was a hoax intended to be transmitted on April 1st, that because of scheduling difficulties went out a couple of months late, causing a lot of people to miss the joke. If grainy bootleg youtube footage isn't to your taste, you can get it on DVD, complete with extras including interviews with the people who made it. I rented it not so long ago. The supposed whistleblowers include American astronauts who don't exist. The Jim Keith book replaced these fake names with those of real people such as Buzz Aldrin, but if your "research" includes bothering to watch the source material you're quoting, the alleged astronauts are clearly not the real thing. One dead giveaway is that the closing credits include a cast list! Which includes several people who were very familiar actors on British TV in 1977 - this was never meant to be anything more than a joke! By the way, although it ended up going out on the wrong day, the intended transmission date is still listed in the end credits - April 1st 1977.

More worrying was the way he positively drooled over all that cool Nazi technology - he seemed to be going out of his way to put the entire blame for everything bad that spectacularly evil regime ever did on the shoulders of one conveniently long-dead madman named Adolf Hitler, while praising other aspects of the Third Reich to the skies! Well, when you start rambling about how the Americans could never have developed the A-bomb if they hadn't pinched a whole lot of sciency stuff off those wonderful Nazis, one has to wonder...

At least Chris did press him on that one, because the idea that only the Nazis were clever enough to invent an A-bomb therefore they must have had it first, but for some reason failed to use it to win the war, raises worrying questions about dear old Olav's political affiliations. Just listen to him fawning over that Nazi supergun! (I think he's describing, in a very confused way, the V3 cannon intended to obliterate London - it was set in concrete and couldn't aim at anywhere else - which was fortunately never completed.) Did he actually describe Nazi technology as "awesome" at any point? Probably. He sounds like the kind of guy who would.

Seriously, there's WAY too much material bordering on "Nazis were cool and I wish they were still around apart from some of the really bad stuff that was all Hitler's fault anyway" in this utterly incoherent interview for comfort. Anybody needs to think twice about trying to make the Third Reich sound cool in any way whatsoever, especially based on evidence which is somewhere between vanishingly small and non-existent. Unless their political agenda is very, very right-wing indeed, or they're too stupid to think twice about anything. Or indeed once.

 

[#teamsheepsquatch]

I was happy to hear some talk about various conspiracy topics but the content did seem shallow. Maybe its because Olav was nervous or because he was not familiar to the Paracast hosts and listeners, but he came off under informed. I for one don’t consider myself an expert on any of those topics that were discussed, however I knew just about all of the info that was covered. I would like to hear Olav come back on the show and take the time to expand on some of the topics.

 

[Jimi]

How could Olav Phillips possibly have thought that Alternative 3 was a documentary?!

It's patently obvious to anyone that has seen two minutes of the film that it's a spoof. You can only conclude that he hasn't watched it and was therefore passing off reading someone else's drivel online as research.

Thanks to Gene and Chris's exceptional knowledge and brilliant interview abilities this man was fully exposed as a gullible internet fraud. Personally I think Chris was right on the money, interjecting to make sure that Phillips did not get away with talking rubbish, whilst giving him more than enough airtime to get his superficial and highly speculative views across.

 

[SnakeEyes]

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forums here. Actually this is my first post!

Anyways, I listened to this episode today (I know I'm behind actually just found out about The Paracast from Chris's interview on Open Minds, so I've got to delve into the archives) and just wanted to say that I was glad Chris & Gene called Olav out on some of the stuff he was saying. I felt a few times like he was just kind of coasting through the interview expecting "soft ball" questions and that the hosts seemed to know more then he did on some subjects. But don't get me wrong, Olav was still infomative on some stuff, which I wasn't aware of. That's always a good thing. We need more info/idea sharing going on in the world.

And to comment on something that Gene said in an episode where someone was upset about not being able to download episodes and felt it wasn't worth their time and left, well I'm here, so for every person that leaves I guess there really is someone just discovering The Paracast. I wish I would have found out about this place sooner.

Cheers!

 

[TrivialSublime]

I think one of the questions I didn't hear on the show was "Where is your evidence for thinking X, Y and Z" or "Why do you think this is the case?" I think we got a lot of opinions and conclusions without an explanation of how he arrived at his conclusions.

He seemed like a mini Joseph Farrell to me (i.e. a less knowledgeable version).

Definitely have to agree with Technomaget. Olav seems like a less informed version of Farrell. I have commented before on Farrell’s light little laugh when confronted with either unexplained or conflicting material in interviews and he still continues to make the rounds and is somehow considered more believable then an Olav. Maybe this is about degrees of believability. There are many on the UFO lecture circuit whom have developed quite a patter of what I would call pretend authority. After all these characters that come on The Paracast are free and you get what you pay for.

And I will add for what it’s worth and I am sure at great personal risk, Chris, you were a bit snarky when he mentioned your specific subjects. Not a problem with me, an observation. I have much respect for you as being the person that identified the trickster for me. Something I have experienced over the years and never had a name for. I’ve met it a few times and the last time was after reading your book and knowing what was happening and just going with it.

 

[Bananas]

Honestly, with a format like this that is constantly chopped up into snippets of discussion, (not a criticism, just a statement of fact) if guests went into detailed explanations on how they arrived to their conclusions, they would spend 80% of the show discussing resarch methods and the reliability of information. If you find what the guest is saying interesteing, look into it yourself. Spend a weekend shifting through the material and references the guest makes, then write your criticism. Take nothing the guest says as anything more than a person talking.

I mean, the last show on the 20th was nothing but discussing the foolishness of taking any of these people at their word, about anything.

EDIT: The reason why the format poses a huge problem, in my mind at least, is that it interrupts the flow and gives guests time to compose themselves, and in some cases think up an explanation to a tough question on the fly, when in a free-flowing conversation their answer would either be "I don't know" or a blatant, easily falsifiable lie.