THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
January 15, 2011
The History of UFO Research Explored to The Paracast
Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM (Central Time) on the GCN radio network.
The Paracast Humbly Requests Your Donations: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network. So we hope you'll be willing 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. No contribution is too small (or too large
. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, right below our logo. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.
You Can Now Order The Official Paracast T-Shirt: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and a collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt, just pay a visit to our new online store at Welcome to The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.
Sunday, January 16, 2011: 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 hosts interview long-time researchers in the field, to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join us as we explore the realms of the known and unknown, and hear great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Co-host Christopher O’Brien joins Gene to present UFO historian Jerome Clark, author of such works as “The UFO Encyclopedia” and “Hidden Realms, Lost Civilizations, and Beings from Other Worlds,” delivers a fascinating overview of UFO research and some of the related mysteries.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Coming January 23: Co-host Christopher O’Brien joins Gene to present MUFON’s International Director, Clifford Clift, who explores the history of the UFO research body, their approach to investigations, and some of the most significant cases they’ve explored.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Mutual UFO Network: MUFON
Reminder: Don't forget to visit our always-active Discussion Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal (and note our new Internet address): The Paracast Community Forums.
Avoiding the Crazies
By Gene Steinberg
When you are involved in studying what many regard as a fringe topic, it goes without saying that some of the participants are apt to be regarded as wacky. I’ve heard that said about me on more than a few occasions, and I accept the label, especially since this field can be so weird at times.
My personal history is similar to many of you when it comes to exposure to these subjects. Back when I was 11, I was visiting my brother’s apartment, then located in Brooklyn, New York, and found a library book on the coffee table in the tiny living room. The title, “Flying Saucers From Outer Space,” authored by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, described the contents to a “T.”
I got permission to take the book home – and yes I returned it before the due date. That night, I devoured the breezy prose, and I was hooked. After school a few days later, I visited the nearest library myself in search of more flying saucer books, and found several. A lifelong interest was born.
I suppose I was lucky that my initial forays into UFO studies didn’t include some of the more outrageous books, particularly from people claiming they’d met blond haired humanoids, wearing silvery uniforms, coming from Venus and Mars. That was before science realized that Venus was a hot house, and Mars had all appearances of being a dead planet. Well, maybe there was intelligent life in the past, but these days you’d be lucky to find more than a few microbes.
These days, ET must come from another star system, simply because none of the other planets in our solar system seem hospitable to life as well know it, or even the arsenic-based variety revealed in a recent scientific paper that’s gotten loads of attention.
So that begs the question: If those early contact cases were genuine, why were they told that the visitors came from “nearby” planets in our own solar system? Were they just deceiving the experiencers, or was there a more mysterious motive at play?
Now I’m inclined to disbelieve most of these contact cases, particularly the ones where the encounters involved what appears, outwardly at least, to be humans from outer space. Yes, maybe some of them had a genuine paranormal experience of one sort or another, and perhaps embellished it in a bid to gain their fifteen minutes of fame. But the question becomes more confusing when you consider UFO abductions, or shall we say abductions involving strange, often frightening, creatures that may or may not seem human.
If you set abductions as the benchmark for potentially real events, there are apt to be cases going back hundreds of years involving extraordinary beings kidnapping, if only temporarily, regular people for their own reasons.
Regardless, can you regard such experiences as genuine, in the sense of involving some outside influence, or internal, perhaps a combination of sleep paralysis and a particularly frightening dream? The consistency of stories among abduction reports may be due, at least in part, to cross-contamination, although abduction researchers claim they try to withhold some details from the public to avoid that problem. Other possibilities may still involve unconscious processes that we do not quite understand.
As always, it’s the goal of The Paracast to attempt to find facts and discard the fiction. More often than not, that’s not such an easy process. You can’t, for example, duplicate an abduction in a laboratory unless it occurs during the course of some form of surveillance, perhaps a remote camera or other “spy” device. Certainly doing that is a fairly inexpensive and trivial process nowadays, but so far there have been no reports of any positive evidence acquired in this fashion. So there you go.
I like to think our reasoned, skeptical approach to these subjects is the right way to go. Consider what reviewers post about The Paracast. On iTunes recently, one listener complained we were too “wishy-washy” in our interviews, meaning we let the guests get away with too much nonsense. The previous comment complained that we were far too critical, and thus nobody except my friends comes on the show anymore.
When you see criticisms as extreme as these two, it’s clear to me that we are striking just the right balance.
The Paracast Copyright 1999-2011 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!
January 15, 2011
The History of UFO Research Explored to The Paracast
Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM (Central Time) on the GCN radio network.
The Paracast Humbly Requests Your Donations: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network. So we hope you'll be willing 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. No contribution is too small (or too large
. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, right below our logo. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.You Can Now Order The Official Paracast T-Shirt: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and a collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt, just pay a visit to our new online store at Welcome to The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.
Sunday, January 16, 2011: 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 hosts interview long-time researchers in the field, to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join us as we explore the realms of the known and unknown, and hear great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Co-host Christopher O’Brien joins Gene to present UFO historian Jerome Clark, author of such works as “The UFO Encyclopedia” and “Hidden Realms, Lost Civilizations, and Beings from Other Worlds,” delivers a fascinating overview of UFO research and some of the related mysteries.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Coming January 23: Co-host Christopher O’Brien joins Gene to present MUFON’s International Director, Clifford Clift, who explores the history of the UFO research body, their approach to investigations, and some of the most significant cases they’ve explored.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Mutual UFO Network: MUFON
Reminder: Don't forget to visit our always-active Discussion Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal (and note our new Internet address): The Paracast Community Forums.
Avoiding the Crazies
By Gene Steinberg
When you are involved in studying what many regard as a fringe topic, it goes without saying that some of the participants are apt to be regarded as wacky. I’ve heard that said about me on more than a few occasions, and I accept the label, especially since this field can be so weird at times.
My personal history is similar to many of you when it comes to exposure to these subjects. Back when I was 11, I was visiting my brother’s apartment, then located in Brooklyn, New York, and found a library book on the coffee table in the tiny living room. The title, “Flying Saucers From Outer Space,” authored by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, described the contents to a “T.”
I got permission to take the book home – and yes I returned it before the due date. That night, I devoured the breezy prose, and I was hooked. After school a few days later, I visited the nearest library myself in search of more flying saucer books, and found several. A lifelong interest was born.
I suppose I was lucky that my initial forays into UFO studies didn’t include some of the more outrageous books, particularly from people claiming they’d met blond haired humanoids, wearing silvery uniforms, coming from Venus and Mars. That was before science realized that Venus was a hot house, and Mars had all appearances of being a dead planet. Well, maybe there was intelligent life in the past, but these days you’d be lucky to find more than a few microbes.
These days, ET must come from another star system, simply because none of the other planets in our solar system seem hospitable to life as well know it, or even the arsenic-based variety revealed in a recent scientific paper that’s gotten loads of attention.
So that begs the question: If those early contact cases were genuine, why were they told that the visitors came from “nearby” planets in our own solar system? Were they just deceiving the experiencers, or was there a more mysterious motive at play?
Now I’m inclined to disbelieve most of these contact cases, particularly the ones where the encounters involved what appears, outwardly at least, to be humans from outer space. Yes, maybe some of them had a genuine paranormal experience of one sort or another, and perhaps embellished it in a bid to gain their fifteen minutes of fame. But the question becomes more confusing when you consider UFO abductions, or shall we say abductions involving strange, often frightening, creatures that may or may not seem human.
If you set abductions as the benchmark for potentially real events, there are apt to be cases going back hundreds of years involving extraordinary beings kidnapping, if only temporarily, regular people for their own reasons.
Regardless, can you regard such experiences as genuine, in the sense of involving some outside influence, or internal, perhaps a combination of sleep paralysis and a particularly frightening dream? The consistency of stories among abduction reports may be due, at least in part, to cross-contamination, although abduction researchers claim they try to withhold some details from the public to avoid that problem. Other possibilities may still involve unconscious processes that we do not quite understand.
As always, it’s the goal of The Paracast to attempt to find facts and discard the fiction. More often than not, that’s not such an easy process. You can’t, for example, duplicate an abduction in a laboratory unless it occurs during the course of some form of surveillance, perhaps a remote camera or other “spy” device. Certainly doing that is a fairly inexpensive and trivial process nowadays, but so far there have been no reports of any positive evidence acquired in this fashion. So there you go.
I like to think our reasoned, skeptical approach to these subjects is the right way to go. Consider what reviewers post about The Paracast. On iTunes recently, one listener complained we were too “wishy-washy” in our interviews, meaning we let the guests get away with too much nonsense. The previous comment complained that we were far too critical, and thus nobody except my friends comes on the show anymore.
When you see criticisms as extreme as these two, it’s clear to me that we are striking just the right balance.
The Paracast Copyright 1999-2011 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!
