THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
January 4, 2015
www.theparacast.com
Heaven’s Gate, the UFO Cult, Explored on The Paracast
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.
Announcing The Paracast+: You asked for it! For a low monthly or annual subscription fee, you will receive access to a higher-quality ad-free version of The Paracast, chat rooms, the all-new After The Paracast podcast, featuring politically incorrect color commentary, and other exclusive content. For more information about our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.
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: Do you recall the "Heaven's Gate" UFO cult that committed mass-suicide in 1997 as a way to ascend to the Hale-Bop comet's companion craft? So does this week's guest, Dr. Benjamin Zeller. His new book "Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion," examines Marshall Applewhite ("Bo") and his group of doomed believers and the emergence of new religion in the 21st Century. His book is an insightful, sobering examination into a darker side of UFO belief, and Ben is this week's guest on the Paracast. Dr. Zeller is a researcher and teacher of religion in America. He focuses on religious currents that are new or alternative, including new religions, the religious engagement with science, and the quasi-religious relationship people have with food.
Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet
Dr. Zeller’s Site: Benjamin E. Zeller
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.
Introducing After The Paracast
By Gene Steinberg
On November 30, 2014, I got involved in yet another radio show. But let me go back to the beginning: In 2002, my son, Grayson, and I premiered one of the first Internet radio shows, The Tech Night Owl LIVE. While some others had preceded us, it was exciting to return to my original profession.
Shortly after podcasts debuted on Apple’s iTunes, my tech show was added to the roster. My son left a few years later while finishing college to pursue his own life, but I kept the show going as a more traditional interview-oriented program.
As if one show wasn’t enough, I recruited the original co-host, David Biedny, to create The Paracast, later praised by one listener as “the gold standard of paranormal radio,” because of our honest cutting-edge conversation. We didn’t follow the prevailing wisdom about such offbeat and sometimes weird mysteries, and we often took guests to task for being illogical or downright deceptive.
When Biedny decided that the paranormal connection was injurious to his career as a writer and graphic artist, he bid his adieus in 2010. We had several rotating or guest co-hosts for a few months, but when Chris O’Brien joined us, I knew we had the right person to serve as my counterpart. My background is broadcast journalism and writing about consumer technology and, on occasion, a science fiction story. But I had followed the goings on in the UFO and paranormal fields for decades. I once edited a UFO-oriented magazine, and even co-sponsored a convention in the Philadelphia area (back in the 1970s). Chris, a professional musician, is also a seasoned field investigator who knows how to separate the signal from the noise.
It was the perfect combo, and thus Chris and I decided to pool our efforts. As a result, listenership to The Paracast, and traffic to the web site, has increased by several times. A number of regional radio stations around the United States carry the show via the Genesis Communications Network (GCN), and we are also featured on Boost Radio, IRN Internet Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn, iTunes, Blubrry and loads of other podcast repositories.
While The Paracast’s refined direction has garnered a high level of praise from listeners, some complain about the commercial glut. Since the show is aired on a terrestrial radio network, ads are part of the picture. It’s the price of free radio. You see, GCN required that we also post the online versions of the show with ads intact.
But after extensive negotiations, GCN agreed to allow us to also post a premium, ad-free version of the show to paid subscribers. Thus The Paracast+ was born. It’s the same show, but we upload a higher resolution copy direct from the master recording, and remove 41 minutes of ads. So it sounds much better, and if radio spots put you off, you have a way to avoid the fast forward button.
Since the free version includes a small number of ads that benefit The Paracast — the others are provided by the network and local stations — we hope you will find that some present useful offers for products and services.
A Paracast+ subscription is pretty cheap. It’s just $5.00 per month or $50 per year. So if you’re used to buying the occasional beverage at your neighborhood Starbucks, or a burger combo at a fast food restaurant, you only have to give up one of these each month to cover the cost of our premium service.
We wanted to make The Paracast+ indispensable, and give you more benefits. It’s not just the ad-free version, but a free chat room — we’ll add some special online events later — plus a brand new show known as After The Paracast.
The first episode of After The Paracast debuted on November 30, 2014. It features irreverent color commentary on the episode of the week, plus other subjects that seem to fit — or not. By irreverent, I mean that we don’t always take ourselves seriously, so on one episode I wondered if indigenous tribes had fact checkers on hand to confirm the accuracy of oral tradition before it’s passed on.
In yet another episode, Chris and I speculated about life after death. Is there a heaven and a hell, and do we go to one or the other depending on how we conducted ourselves in this life? What about theories of multiple universes or a multiverse? Does passing over or dying in one reality automatically send you to another? Do we confront karmic consequences, or do our life essences or souls reincarnate so we can do it all over again? And if reincarnation is a real phenomenon, do we recall the mistakes of our previous life, consciously or otherwise, so we can attempt to do better?
And what about a sort of matrix reality, where we are all lying dormant somewhere, perhaps the energy source that carries our individual souls. Is our entire life a fabric of our imagination or a collective imagination?
So many possibilities, and we aren’t done yet. But one thing is sure, and that is that each episode of After The Paracast will be different and the subject matter will not always reflect that week’s episode of The Paracast. In the future, we plan to bring on special guests. Sometimes the conversation will continue where The Paracast left off, and sometimes we’ll have guest interviews that are solely available to subscribers of The Paracast+. This is very much a work in progress.
Granted, it’s a new service and not everything is perfection just yet. I welcome your suggestions on how we can do better, and if you are experienced at web development, perhaps you can help add critical features that will make it easier for listeners to discover the premium shows. We’re looking, for example, for ways to present an encrypted or password-protected RSS feed, so you get an automatic link to each new episode as soon as it’s posted.
If you want to know more, please point your browser to Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio. There you’ll find easy instructions on how to sign up and access the premium content.
Fans of The Tech Night Owl LIVE can join Tech Night Owl+, at Introducing Tech Night Owl+ | The Tech Night Owl LIVE — Your Ultimate Tech Radio Resource. You’ll be able to subscribe to ad-free versions of our tech show for the same price as The Paracast+.
To each and every one of you, I hope 2015 will be your best year yet!
Copyright 1999-2015 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 4, 2015
www.theparacast.com
Heaven’s Gate, the UFO Cult, Explored on The Paracast
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.
Announcing The Paracast+: You asked for it! For a low monthly or annual subscription fee, you will receive access to a higher-quality ad-free version of The Paracast, chat rooms, the all-new After The Paracast podcast, featuring politically incorrect color commentary, and other exclusive content. For more information about our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.
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: Do you recall the "Heaven's Gate" UFO cult that committed mass-suicide in 1997 as a way to ascend to the Hale-Bop comet's companion craft? So does this week's guest, Dr. Benjamin Zeller. His new book "Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion," examines Marshall Applewhite ("Bo") and his group of doomed believers and the emergence of new religion in the 21st Century. His book is an insightful, sobering examination into a darker side of UFO belief, and Ben is this week's guest on the Paracast. Dr. Zeller is a researcher and teacher of religion in America. He focuses on religious currents that are new or alternative, including new religions, the religious engagement with science, and the quasi-religious relationship people have with food.
Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet
Dr. Zeller’s Site: Benjamin E. Zeller
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.
Introducing After The Paracast
By Gene Steinberg
On November 30, 2014, I got involved in yet another radio show. But let me go back to the beginning: In 2002, my son, Grayson, and I premiered one of the first Internet radio shows, The Tech Night Owl LIVE. While some others had preceded us, it was exciting to return to my original profession.
Shortly after podcasts debuted on Apple’s iTunes, my tech show was added to the roster. My son left a few years later while finishing college to pursue his own life, but I kept the show going as a more traditional interview-oriented program.
As if one show wasn’t enough, I recruited the original co-host, David Biedny, to create The Paracast, later praised by one listener as “the gold standard of paranormal radio,” because of our honest cutting-edge conversation. We didn’t follow the prevailing wisdom about such offbeat and sometimes weird mysteries, and we often took guests to task for being illogical or downright deceptive.
When Biedny decided that the paranormal connection was injurious to his career as a writer and graphic artist, he bid his adieus in 2010. We had several rotating or guest co-hosts for a few months, but when Chris O’Brien joined us, I knew we had the right person to serve as my counterpart. My background is broadcast journalism and writing about consumer technology and, on occasion, a science fiction story. But I had followed the goings on in the UFO and paranormal fields for decades. I once edited a UFO-oriented magazine, and even co-sponsored a convention in the Philadelphia area (back in the 1970s). Chris, a professional musician, is also a seasoned field investigator who knows how to separate the signal from the noise.
It was the perfect combo, and thus Chris and I decided to pool our efforts. As a result, listenership to The Paracast, and traffic to the web site, has increased by several times. A number of regional radio stations around the United States carry the show via the Genesis Communications Network (GCN), and we are also featured on Boost Radio, IRN Internet Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn, iTunes, Blubrry and loads of other podcast repositories.
While The Paracast’s refined direction has garnered a high level of praise from listeners, some complain about the commercial glut. Since the show is aired on a terrestrial radio network, ads are part of the picture. It’s the price of free radio. You see, GCN required that we also post the online versions of the show with ads intact.
But after extensive negotiations, GCN agreed to allow us to also post a premium, ad-free version of the show to paid subscribers. Thus The Paracast+ was born. It’s the same show, but we upload a higher resolution copy direct from the master recording, and remove 41 minutes of ads. So it sounds much better, and if radio spots put you off, you have a way to avoid the fast forward button.
Since the free version includes a small number of ads that benefit The Paracast — the others are provided by the network and local stations — we hope you will find that some present useful offers for products and services.
A Paracast+ subscription is pretty cheap. It’s just $5.00 per month or $50 per year. So if you’re used to buying the occasional beverage at your neighborhood Starbucks, or a burger combo at a fast food restaurant, you only have to give up one of these each month to cover the cost of our premium service.
We wanted to make The Paracast+ indispensable, and give you more benefits. It’s not just the ad-free version, but a free chat room — we’ll add some special online events later — plus a brand new show known as After The Paracast.
The first episode of After The Paracast debuted on November 30, 2014. It features irreverent color commentary on the episode of the week, plus other subjects that seem to fit — or not. By irreverent, I mean that we don’t always take ourselves seriously, so on one episode I wondered if indigenous tribes had fact checkers on hand to confirm the accuracy of oral tradition before it’s passed on.
In yet another episode, Chris and I speculated about life after death. Is there a heaven and a hell, and do we go to one or the other depending on how we conducted ourselves in this life? What about theories of multiple universes or a multiverse? Does passing over or dying in one reality automatically send you to another? Do we confront karmic consequences, or do our life essences or souls reincarnate so we can do it all over again? And if reincarnation is a real phenomenon, do we recall the mistakes of our previous life, consciously or otherwise, so we can attempt to do better?
And what about a sort of matrix reality, where we are all lying dormant somewhere, perhaps the energy source that carries our individual souls. Is our entire life a fabric of our imagination or a collective imagination?
So many possibilities, and we aren’t done yet. But one thing is sure, and that is that each episode of After The Paracast will be different and the subject matter will not always reflect that week’s episode of The Paracast. In the future, we plan to bring on special guests. Sometimes the conversation will continue where The Paracast left off, and sometimes we’ll have guest interviews that are solely available to subscribers of The Paracast+. This is very much a work in progress.
Granted, it’s a new service and not everything is perfection just yet. I welcome your suggestions on how we can do better, and if you are experienced at web development, perhaps you can help add critical features that will make it easier for listeners to discover the premium shows. We’re looking, for example, for ways to present an encrypted or password-protected RSS feed, so you get an automatic link to each new episode as soon as it’s posted.
If you want to know more, please point your browser to Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio. There you’ll find easy instructions on how to sign up and access the premium content.
Fans of The Tech Night Owl LIVE can join Tech Night Owl+, at Introducing Tech Night Owl+ | The Tech Night Owl LIVE — Your Ultimate Tech Radio Resource. You’ll be able to subscribe to ad-free versions of our tech show for the same price as The Paracast+.
To each and every one of you, I hope 2015 will be your best year yet!
Copyright 1999-2015 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!
