Your Paracast Newsletter — June 11, 2011

[Gene Steinberg]

YTHE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
June 11, 2011

The History of UFO Research Explored on The Paracast

Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM (Central Time) on the GCN radio network.

Here's How You Can Help The Paracast: 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.

Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! Last summer, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. Now we want your help to add more 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!

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, June 12, 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: Gene and Chris explore the early history of UFO research with author Colin Bennett, author of a new edition of “Flying Saucers over the White House: The Inside Story of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and His Official U.S. Airforce Investigation of UFOs.”

Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet

Coming June 19: Gene and Chris explore the incredible mystery of the Men In Black with Nicholas Redfern, author of “The Real Men In Black: Evidence, Famous Cases, and True Stories of These Mysterious Men and their Connection to UFO Phenomena.” Real, fake, jokesters, government agents, or evidence of frightening paranormal encounters?

Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet

Nick Redfern's Site: FINAL EVENTS

Reminder: Reminder: Don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.

Throwing a Guest Overboard
By Gene Steinberg

The Paracast hasn’t had a good time with guests who make outlandish claims they are unable to back up. Take the two interviews we did with contactee Jim Sparks, who made two appearances on The Paracast, one on March 4, 2007, the second two weeks later.

Now when you listen to the show, you’ll see that we come across as gentle and understanding about his experiences, and the emotional anguish he claims to have suffered. At the same time, he was asked one question, which may have seemed random and straightforward at the time, but was a not-so-subtle inquiry that revealed strong evidence of deception.

Sparks was asked how often, after spending a full day aboard a spaceship, he had to use the bathroom. This may seem a basic human need, and we wondered what sort of facilities ET might offer to deal with such matters. Well, Sparks said he didn’t, didn’t think about it, and that he has what you might regard as an iron bladder that can sustain itself without need of relief for a prolonged period of time.

Understand that he was undergoing what he presents as an extremely traumatic experience, one that no human can or should be able to accept with equanimity. You can also imagine that Sparks was probably caught flat-footed during the interview, since that wasn’t the sort of answer he expected, so he had to improvise real fast, and the answer just wasn’t credible.

On October 10th of last year, Chris and I interviewed Anthony Sanchez, who was promoting a forthcoming book on secret underground bases, alien and otherwise. It didn’t take much questioning to reveal that Sanchez hadn’t really done his homework. He seemed oblivious to the fine details of the Shaver mystery, a classic tale of underground races, and went on to quote a fanciful book containing speculation, perhaps proven or otherwise, written by someone using the publisher’s “house name,” although he was represented as a former secret agent.

In Sanchez’ case, he must have been embarrassed by how things turned out, since he quit the UFO field briefly a couple of days later. When he returned, he began to offer his promised book in electronic form, but, to this day, has refused to send us a copy.

Our May 29 session with Joshua Shapiro, on the crystal skulls mystery, has received more comments in The Paracast Community Forums than just about any other topic we’ve dealt with in recent months. Although there may be some mysterious aspects to the crystal skulls, Shapiro left me unimpressed, particularly when he suggested that it was up to scientists to disprove his contentions, rather than the other way around.

Shapiro is a gentleman, and he came across as a really nice person, but he also conveyed the impression that he has been so busy drinking his own Kool-Aid that he hasn’t considered the extreme nature of his claims. But we’re not giving up on crystal skulls. If there is a genuine mystery behind them, we want to get to the bottom of it, so there will be more discussions on the subject in the very near future

Among all the classic episodes of The Paracast, I think you will agree with us that we don’t shout down guests, as some talk show hosts are wont to do, nor do we insult them. Although The Paracast has a reputation that conveys a different impression, the fact of the matter is that we’ve always given guests a chance to have their say. We will be forthright in our criticisms, however. We aren’t going to let anyone get away with fantastic claims without delivering the required fantastic evidence. They will be asked the appropriate questions and we do invite listeners to post their own questions in our forums to flesh out stories and evidence.

In the end, though, it’s up to you decide which guests offer credible information, with a reasonable amount of evidence, and which guests utterly fail at the task. You’ll also notice that certain guests will never be invited on the show simply because they are so blatantly phony, we won’t waste three hours of our valuable time interviewing them. Although co-hosts have changed over the years, that promise will never be broken.

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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!

 

[Gene Steinberg]

I know you guys are looking for ratings and want to go mainstream, and I'll put in a listener request here in Calgary at QR-77 to consider carrying the Paracast, but did you know they put Art Bell in the UFO Hall Of Shame on UFO Watchdog, slamming him for being more concerned about ratings than anything else? To quote: "The only thing Bell is big on are ratings for his show. Someone summed Bell up rather well, "Bell's the crackwhore of UFOlogy."

How do we know this won't happen to you ... where do you draw the line? What is your opinion of UFO Watchdog? Who are these guys? Should genuine ufologists pay any attention to them? Or are they just some skeptical debunkers who like to dish out dirt?

J.R.

We ran UFO Watchdog for about a year when Royce Myers was on hiatus. We even integrated the site with this one, with direct back and forth links. However, he since decided to resume control, so we returned the domain and the actual site to him. Unfortunately, only some of the material our crew (along with volunteers from the forum, including Michael Schuyler, who spent long hours on the task) researched and wrote for UFO Watchdog were kept. The new design, using Joomla!, a popular content management system, was abandoned. Don't ask me why.

In saying that, however, I agree that you have to draw a line between doing a good show, paying your bills, and sacrificing one's morality in the quest for ratings. We want people to listen to the show, but not at the expense of our souls. If we went that route, Chris and I would actually have some money in our bank accounts, but we won't sacrifice the credibility that has been built for The Paracast over the past five and a half years.

 

[tyder001]

Putting Art Bell in a ufo hall of shame is like putting Babe Ruth in the hall of shame of homerun hitters. It's stupid! Not because Bell is a paragon of virtue. But, because his show (Lawd the mess it's in now) But, his original show was always entertaining and brought more interest in the internet age to the idea of a internet talk show (he would stream it and offer it free waay back in the mid 90's.) Also, contrary to popular belief he did not simply roll over and agree with everything his guest said. I well remember many times when he would say "Well, I'm not buying it Professor" or I'm agnostic on this or that. Also, the Paracast is (imo) blazing a new trail and I would put this show in the Hall of FAME. But, ya don't have to deride anybody else to rise above em. Ya just keep plugging along. Good job Gene and Chris.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Putting Art Bell in a ufo hall of shame is like putting Babe Ruth in the hall of shame of homerun hitters. It's stupid! Not because Bell is a paragon of virtue. But, because his show (Lawd the mess it's in now) But, his original show was always entertaining and brought more interest in the internet age to the idea of a internet talk show (he would stream it and offer it free waay back in the mid 90's.) Also, contrary to popular belief he did not simply roll over and agree with everything his guest said. I well remember many times when he would say "Well, I'm not buying it Professor" or I'm agnostic on this or that. Also, the Paracast is (imo) blazing a new trail and I would put this show in the Hall of FAME. But, ya don't have to deride anybody else to rise above em. Ya just keep plugging along. Good job Gene and Chris.

Art Bell might be a candidate for a Gray Basket category, one that we wanted to include in UFO Watchdog, actually. He has certainly done good work, but he has to be dinged for pandering to his audience and promoting fakers and frauds in the paranormal field.

 

[tyder001]

I think more "gray baskets" would be more productive to research than the black and white baskets. Gotta agree with you there. But, I was referring more to the whole "interest" in the paranormal/podcast field. Babe Ruth was a womanizer and a partier and could be a pretty crude guy. But, that doens't take away his overall impact on the game. But, everybody isn't a baseball fan so I'll stop the sports analogies. Keep up the good work and if I haven't said it: Thanks for a great show/forum format and the abillity to interact with the host and guest.

Steve.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

It's a matter of paths taken rather than offers received.

As I said, I'd probably consider Bell for a Gray Basket if I had the authority to make such moves. But I don't. We had the site, but no longer. Myers took it back last spring, and that's his content, his conclusions. I agree with a lot of it, but I might question a few choices here and there. But that's all right.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

I didn't, no. But I did meet the late Long John Nebel — the originator of the all-night talk radio format — on a few occasions. Nebel was every inch the temperamental bastard you expected him to be. And that was confirmed to me by others who knew him rather well, including Jim Moseley.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

I made it a bit more clear. As far as Art Bell is concerned, there were certainly a few areas of concern about his family and how they were treated. But I'm not getting into the gossip game. That's not a factor in how he is to be judged as a talk show host.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Good call on that one Gene. What about the condemnation by UFO watchdog for his coverage of the Heaven's Gate story? Quote: "Some say Bell is responsible for the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult."

j.r.

You're asking me to judge whether some said something or not, and that's not something I can answer. Perhaps they have (I honestly don't know), but I think that would be a stretch.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Royce Myers isn't someone to lie about anything, so I expect that those statements were made. I agree that the older material needed revision, and perhaps better references to source material. We updated some of it. Of those updates, some were retained, and some weren't.

In the end, he is responsible for the content, and if you have any questions or concerns about sourcing, he's the one to contact.