THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
August 24, 2014
The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio
The Paracast Explores UFOs from the Skeptic’s Point of View
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
Why You Should Donate to The Paracast: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough to pay your humble hosts decent wages. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network or local stations. So we hope you're able to help fill the gap, if you can, to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch and utility bills. No contribution is too small (or too large . It’s easy to send a donation. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. Or use the Donate link on our forums, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. You can also send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.
Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! In the summer of 2010, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. But we need your help to add additional affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
Please Visit Our Online Store: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and an expanded collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt now featuring our brand new logo, just pay a visit to our online store at The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We also offer a complete lineup of other premium merchandise for your family, your friends and your business contacts.
About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present a special episode featuring UFO/paranormal skeptic Robert Sheaffer. According to his Wikipedia bio, "Sheaffer writes for Skeptical Inquirer (for which he writes the regular "Psychic Vibrations" column), Fate Magazine, and Spaceflight. He was a founding member (with Philip J. Klass and James Oberg) of the UFO Subcommittee of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), and is a fellow of that organization. He is a member of MENSA." In other words, he's a real smart dude, and he'll be asking the hard questions about the potential reality of UFOs.
Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet
Robert Sheaffer’s Blog: Bad UFOs: Skepticism, UFOs, and The Universe
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums We recently completed a major update that makes our community easier to navigate, and social network friendly.
Can You Believe a UFO Witness — Or Any Witness?
By Gene Steinberg
When all you have is eyewitness testimony about an unusual event, be it a UFO or some sort of spiritual apparition, the larger question is whether you can believe those accounts. Were they simply mistaken, were they just seeing things that weren’t there for some reason, or is the paranormal event pretty much as described?
Certainly seeing something weird or frightening that’s totally unexpected can cause all sorts of complications. There is that legendary test in law school where students see a staged crime, and are asked to describe the details of what they saw. It’s not surprising that the accounts are all over the place.
A very contemporary example is the tragic shooting death of a black youth, Michael Brown, by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Certainly accounts of this episode are not consistent. Some talk of Brown grappling with the officer before the shooting occurred. Other reports suggest he was running away, or had turned back to raise his arms to surrender. Others accounts combine these details in different ways.
Regardless, it’s clear that getting a consistent account about such an emotionally charged event is extremely difficult. Still, you have to wonder why the reports vary, and whether personal prejudices or agendas have something to do with it. Or perhaps it’s just that eyewitness testimony under extreme conditions of something unexpected is always going to be unreliable.
In a UFO sighting, scientific investigators will prefer to consider cases where there are multiple witnesses, to allow them to seek out the consistencies and inconsistencies and produce a reliable account of what happened.
But even interpreting what you heard — or think you heard — might yield uncertain results. Years ago, the late actor/comedian/musician Steve Allen used to play a little game with members of the audience during his late night shows.
So he’d have ten people come on stage. He’d have someone — perhaps himself — whisper a joke to the first person, asking that person to, in turn, whisper the joke to the next person. This transfer of information would continue until the last person was asked to recite the joke.
Not surprisingly, the end result of ten generations of verbal information transfer would yield funny results. But it’s not because the joke was funny. It’s the fact that the final version generally bore scant resemblance to the original story. This little test has been repeated over and over again in various forms, but the results are the same. If interpreting what you see is hard, interpreting what you hear is no easier.
Yet there is still an oral tradition in some societies, with stories and myths transferred verbally from father to son, mother to daughter, friend to friend, repeated over the years and the centuries. How is it that the tale you hear or read now bears even the slightest resemblance to the original? Is such accuracy even possible? If there is a way to train people to accurately report what they hear, it would be great to have this technique taught in our schools.
Still, those who rely on such oral traditions will affirm that one can learn to do it accurately, and I’m not about to dispute such claims.
But I still remain on the fence about the accuracy of reports about what one sees or hears. When I was on the beat as a broadcast news reporter, I would write up a story and later read accounts in the local newspapers. While the main points were essentially the same — after all we were all professional reporters — there were still unaccountable differences in the fine details. Even with the best of intentions, reports will differ and thus it’s best to read or watch several versions to get a roughly accurate picture of what’s going on.
Certainly, I see this phenomenon repeated over and over again on The Paracast. While some of our listeners are quite deliberate in quoting segments of the show. I’ve seen posts in The Paracast forums where someone lists the timestamp of when a comment was made, followed by the actual quote. I assume they are taking the time to go over the segment a few times to make sure the quotes are accurate. Yet some of the people who write us clearly misinterpret what they claim to have heard.
As you might expect, the unreliability of human testimony serves the ends of the skeptics. If someone reports seeing something strange flying around, making weird, pinpoint maneuvers that appear to be way beyond what Earth technology can do, they have to be wrong. Maybe the witness misinterpreted a conventional aircraft or some other phenomenon. This may be especially true with distant lights in the sky.
It’s certainly true that over 90% of the UFOs reported to the major organizations tend to have mundane explanations. The mystery lies in the unknowns, but is it fair to dismiss them all because people tend to get things wrong? When there are multiple witnesses, and they are carefully questioned without leading them on, there’s apt to be a more consistent account of what happened.
However, the skeptics may come up with yet another excuse, that some witnesses are liars. Maybe not conscious liars, but perhaps the will to believe is playing a part in their interpretation of what they saw. They read all about UFOs, are steeped in stories, movies and TV shows about classic events in the field, such as the Roswell crash, and thus their impressions of what they saw are highly colored.
That’s one of the explanations for the controversial descriptions of what happened in Roswell, NM in 1947. After the initial story about a crashed flying disk went out over the wires, a “correction” claimed it was just a balloon.
So for most people, the Roswell case was buried for some 30 years until such investigators as William Moore and Stanton Friedman looked into the case. After interviewing most of the surviving witnesses that they could locate, they concluded that a flying saucer, an alien spacecraft, crashed at Roswell, and that it’s very possible the bodies of the pilots were recovered.
Again, skeptics continue to claim it was a Mogul balloon all along, and that the alleged witnesses are only remembering what happened decades later, with the actual events colored by their influences, cultural and otherwise. It’s true that accounts may change over time, but when widely disparate people tell similar stories, you have to wonder what is really going on.
Then again, people are sometimes convicted of serious crimes very much as the result of eyewitness testimony from human beings. Sure, forensic evidence may be the key to understanding what really happened. But when people identify a potential suspect without a valid alibi, it may be enough to convince a jury that they got the right person, particularly if the scientific evidence is lacking or inconsistent.
But if nobody really knows what they are seeing or hearing, which appears to be what the skeptics want you to believe, why rely on anyone’s word for anything? Why, in fact, should we rely on what the skeptics tell us?
Copyright 1999-2014 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
August 24, 2014
The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio
The Paracast Explores UFOs from the Skeptic’s Point of View
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
Why You Should Donate to The Paracast: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough to pay your humble hosts decent wages. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network or local stations. So we hope you're able to help fill the gap, if you can, to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch and utility bills. No contribution is too small (or too large . It’s easy to send a donation. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. Or use the Donate link on our forums, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. You can also send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.
Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! In the summer of 2010, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. But we need your help to add additional affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
Please Visit Our Online Store: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and an expanded collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt now featuring our brand new logo, just pay a visit to our online store at The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We also offer a complete lineup of other premium merchandise for your family, your friends and your business contacts.
About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present a special episode featuring UFO/paranormal skeptic Robert Sheaffer. According to his Wikipedia bio, "Sheaffer writes for Skeptical Inquirer (for which he writes the regular "Psychic Vibrations" column), Fate Magazine, and Spaceflight. He was a founding member (with Philip J. Klass and James Oberg) of the UFO Subcommittee of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), and is a fellow of that organization. He is a member of MENSA." In other words, he's a real smart dude, and he'll be asking the hard questions about the potential reality of UFOs.
Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet
Robert Sheaffer’s Blog: Bad UFOs: Skepticism, UFOs, and The Universe
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums We recently completed a major update that makes our community easier to navigate, and social network friendly.
Can You Believe a UFO Witness — Or Any Witness?
By Gene Steinberg
When all you have is eyewitness testimony about an unusual event, be it a UFO or some sort of spiritual apparition, the larger question is whether you can believe those accounts. Were they simply mistaken, were they just seeing things that weren’t there for some reason, or is the paranormal event pretty much as described?
Certainly seeing something weird or frightening that’s totally unexpected can cause all sorts of complications. There is that legendary test in law school where students see a staged crime, and are asked to describe the details of what they saw. It’s not surprising that the accounts are all over the place.
A very contemporary example is the tragic shooting death of a black youth, Michael Brown, by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Certainly accounts of this episode are not consistent. Some talk of Brown grappling with the officer before the shooting occurred. Other reports suggest he was running away, or had turned back to raise his arms to surrender. Others accounts combine these details in different ways.
Regardless, it’s clear that getting a consistent account about such an emotionally charged event is extremely difficult. Still, you have to wonder why the reports vary, and whether personal prejudices or agendas have something to do with it. Or perhaps it’s just that eyewitness testimony under extreme conditions of something unexpected is always going to be unreliable.
In a UFO sighting, scientific investigators will prefer to consider cases where there are multiple witnesses, to allow them to seek out the consistencies and inconsistencies and produce a reliable account of what happened.
But even interpreting what you heard — or think you heard — might yield uncertain results. Years ago, the late actor/comedian/musician Steve Allen used to play a little game with members of the audience during his late night shows.
So he’d have ten people come on stage. He’d have someone — perhaps himself — whisper a joke to the first person, asking that person to, in turn, whisper the joke to the next person. This transfer of information would continue until the last person was asked to recite the joke.
Not surprisingly, the end result of ten generations of verbal information transfer would yield funny results. But it’s not because the joke was funny. It’s the fact that the final version generally bore scant resemblance to the original story. This little test has been repeated over and over again in various forms, but the results are the same. If interpreting what you see is hard, interpreting what you hear is no easier.
Yet there is still an oral tradition in some societies, with stories and myths transferred verbally from father to son, mother to daughter, friend to friend, repeated over the years and the centuries. How is it that the tale you hear or read now bears even the slightest resemblance to the original? Is such accuracy even possible? If there is a way to train people to accurately report what they hear, it would be great to have this technique taught in our schools.
Still, those who rely on such oral traditions will affirm that one can learn to do it accurately, and I’m not about to dispute such claims.
But I still remain on the fence about the accuracy of reports about what one sees or hears. When I was on the beat as a broadcast news reporter, I would write up a story and later read accounts in the local newspapers. While the main points were essentially the same — after all we were all professional reporters — there were still unaccountable differences in the fine details. Even with the best of intentions, reports will differ and thus it’s best to read or watch several versions to get a roughly accurate picture of what’s going on.
Certainly, I see this phenomenon repeated over and over again on The Paracast. While some of our listeners are quite deliberate in quoting segments of the show. I’ve seen posts in The Paracast forums where someone lists the timestamp of when a comment was made, followed by the actual quote. I assume they are taking the time to go over the segment a few times to make sure the quotes are accurate. Yet some of the people who write us clearly misinterpret what they claim to have heard.
As you might expect, the unreliability of human testimony serves the ends of the skeptics. If someone reports seeing something strange flying around, making weird, pinpoint maneuvers that appear to be way beyond what Earth technology can do, they have to be wrong. Maybe the witness misinterpreted a conventional aircraft or some other phenomenon. This may be especially true with distant lights in the sky.
It’s certainly true that over 90% of the UFOs reported to the major organizations tend to have mundane explanations. The mystery lies in the unknowns, but is it fair to dismiss them all because people tend to get things wrong? When there are multiple witnesses, and they are carefully questioned without leading them on, there’s apt to be a more consistent account of what happened.
However, the skeptics may come up with yet another excuse, that some witnesses are liars. Maybe not conscious liars, but perhaps the will to believe is playing a part in their interpretation of what they saw. They read all about UFOs, are steeped in stories, movies and TV shows about classic events in the field, such as the Roswell crash, and thus their impressions of what they saw are highly colored.
That’s one of the explanations for the controversial descriptions of what happened in Roswell, NM in 1947. After the initial story about a crashed flying disk went out over the wires, a “correction” claimed it was just a balloon.
So for most people, the Roswell case was buried for some 30 years until such investigators as William Moore and Stanton Friedman looked into the case. After interviewing most of the surviving witnesses that they could locate, they concluded that a flying saucer, an alien spacecraft, crashed at Roswell, and that it’s very possible the bodies of the pilots were recovered.
Again, skeptics continue to claim it was a Mogul balloon all along, and that the alleged witnesses are only remembering what happened decades later, with the actual events colored by their influences, cultural and otherwise. It’s true that accounts may change over time, but when widely disparate people tell similar stories, you have to wonder what is really going on.
Then again, people are sometimes convicted of serious crimes very much as the result of eyewitness testimony from human beings. Sure, forensic evidence may be the key to understanding what really happened. But when people identify a potential suspect without a valid alibi, it may be enough to convince a jury that they got the right person, particularly if the scientific evidence is lacking or inconsistent.
But if nobody really knows what they are seeing or hearing, which appears to be what the skeptics want you to believe, why rely on anyone’s word for anything? Why, in fact, should we rely on what the skeptics tell us?
Copyright 1999-2014 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!