The Paranoid Strain

In which we review the downfall of a once-respected psychiatrist, as John Mack publishes his findings only to have them completely torn apart by a wide variety of critics. Worse, we learn how he was taken in by an undercover skeptic who fed him a totally unbelievable story which, as you might expect, he believed. Next time--we do a deep dive on the elder statesman of abduction research, Budd Hopkins. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we wrap up the last bit of Strieber, before turning our attention to John Mack, a celebrated and respected psychiatrist who, late in his career, turned his attention to investigating, and then advocating for alien abductions. We learn why John Mack became obsessed, and how his friends, colleagues, and especially the vaunted institution he worked for tried to deal with this pillar of the psychiatric establishment embracing woo-woo nonsense. More on Mack next time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hearkening back to high school English class, we compare and contrast my and Whitley Strieber's unusual experiences. Also, we hear from my real-life parents, who do their best to recall what really happened with my lightning strike. I hope you find them as adorable as I do. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whitley Strieber's alien abduction gets a whole lot weirder, but no more convincing. And to try to help us understand what is, and isn't, believable about that whole tale, Fearful Jesuit tells a strange but (he swears) true story that happened to him. Why is his story more believeable than Whitley's? We'll find out next episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back, baby. With cowbell! Seriously, though, we're ready to walk through one of the most famous abduction stories of the 1980s, the influential story of author Whitley Strieber and the aliens who brought him along for a quick visit. We also talk about the film version, which yes, stars Christopher Walken. As Strieber. So it's Christopher Walken dancing with aliens. Fun! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're done with Betty and Barney, but not with the subject of abductions. Not by a long shot. This episode, we talk about two different pieces of media, and how they talked about abductions. Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind has a more optimistic view, but by the time Mulder and Scully came around, alien abduction had become a completely terrifying experience. Why is that? Well, you'll have to wait for next episode to find out...We're taking one episode off, so we'll see you at the end of April. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The final part of our story of the Hills' strange encounter. We discuss the cheap hatchet job that Saint Carl Sagan did on the Hills' story, which came out quite tawdry in spite of Sagan's good intentions. Plus, we provide our suggestion for the best bet as to the real-life phenomenon that generated the Hills' legendary experience. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode, we deep dive into a TV movie adaptation of the Barney and Betty Hill story, starring and produced by James Earl Jones. An interesting film, and well intended, we examine the ways that it compromised the Hills' own conclusions about their experience in favor of a story designed to normalize interracial couples for a mainstream 1970s US audience. Enjoy!theparanoidstrain.comfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrainpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Barney and Betty's story goes public, and the US media decides they made up this alien story because of how hard it was to be an interracial couple in 1960s America. It's infuriating. Enjoy!theparanoidstrain.comfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrainpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Barney and Betty Hill had a weird night on September 19, 1961. Of that there's no doubt. But in this episode we investigate how the mid-century embrace of hypnosis as a psychological tool may have helped to generate the abduction story that would set the stage for the abduction mania of future decades.theparanoidstrain.comfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrainpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're ready to take on the story of Barney and Betty Hill, whose UFO encounter launched the abduction phenomenon, and whose personal story is even more fascinating. More on the Hills in two weeks.theparanoidstrain.comfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrainpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back for 2025. This episode, we wrap up the story of The Seekers, the failure of their 1950s UFO prophecy, and the book that made them famous. We also dive into the ways cognitive dissonance theory interacts with other prophetic movements, including the early Christians. See you in two weeks.theparanoidstrain.comfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrainpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The last part of our encore presentation. hope you enjoyed it--see you next week.In which Fletcher slowly loses what matters most to him, secures his legend, and goes down, senselessly, in a hail of bullets.Full lyrics, credits, and gorgeous fold-out album style artwork (it's a .zip file): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zj0Mbk4JNrHajuAwHC3fOGzY8ZHeTDOg/view?usp=share_linktheparanoidstrain.comfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrainListen to the music as an album on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/paranoidstrainorchestra/sets/upon-a-red-horse-act-v-shutting-downpatreon.com/theparanoidstrainLike it? Please do spread the word. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Part IV of our re-post of the best thing we've done.In which Fletcher finally gets on the radio, tells us what 2001: A Space Odyssey is really about, and sees his life begin to fall apart.theparanoidstrain.comfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrainListen to the music as an album on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/paranoidstrainorchestra/sets/upon-a-red-horse-act-iv-five-minutes-to-midnightpatreon.com/theparanoidstrainLike it? Please do spread the word. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In part 3, we discuss our hero's magnum opus.theparanoidstrain.comfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrainListen to the music as an album on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/paranoidstrainorchestra/sets/upon-a-red-horse-act-iii-the-red-horse-and-the-swordpatreon.com/theparanoidstrainLike it? Please do spread the word. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Part 2 of our repeat posting of Upon A Red Horse in honor of the New Year. Original liner notes followIn which Fletcher, our hero, becomes a big deal in the UFO world. And reveals what really happened to JFK.theparanoidstrain.comfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrainListen to the music as an album on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/paranoidstrainorchestra/sets/upon-a-red-horse-act-i-the-riderpatreon.com/theparanoidstrainLike it? Please do spread the word. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Because it's the holidays, and because we know many of you haven't had the chance to hear it, we re-present the best thing we've ever done. Part 1 of 5. The original liner notes follow:In which we hear the origin story of Marvell James Fletcher.theparanoidstrain.comfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrainListen to the music as an album on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/paranoidstrainorchestra/sets/upon-a-red-horse-act-i-the-riderpatreon.com/theparanoidstrainLike it? Please do spread the word. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's time for us to review one of the most fascinating after-effects of the UFO mania that followed the Arnold sighting. We'll learn how some incredibly lucky social scientists wrote a book about perhaps the world's first apocalyptic new age UFO cult, the Seekers. It's cognitive dissonance a go-go on this week's Paranoid Strain. We're skipping next episode for the holiday--see you in early January. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The lion's share of today's episode concerns the weird story of the MJ-12 (or Majestic-12) documents, which first surfaced in the early 80s, and purported to trace the government's UFO coverup back to the Harry Truman administration. Only, like, they were fake. We also talk about cognitive dissonance in advance of our next big story, on the 1950s UFO cult The Seekers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yes, this is part of our Unidentified UFO series, but it's also just a super-sized digression to share with all of you some of the craziest stuff Art Bell ever put on the air--the Time Traveler and Antichrist call-in shows of the late 90s and early 2000s. I hope you enjoy this very odd compilation as much as I enjoyed putting it together for you. Back to regular programming next week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After a little housekeeping to wrap Roswell, we kick off what will be a regular visit to the library of the greatest conspiracy and weird stuff broadcaster in history, Art Bell. We'll hear how he shaped a young Jesuit, what made him so great, and how his show featured some of the most interesting Roswell stuff of all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the episode subtitle implies, we're gonna talk about why the Roswell "aliens" were almost certainly military test dummies. While we're at it, we'll explain why that's true in spite of the fact that those dummy tests didn't happen til years after Roswell. How? By explaining what science now knows about how memory works and--more importantly--doesn't. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing our skeptical look at Roswell, this time examine the story told by town mortician Glenn Dennis--a fascinating combination of real events, confabulations, and total crap. We also look into the eyewitness reports of little--well, not green men, but kinda orange? Anyway, eyewitnesses claimed they saw little dead aliens. But they didn't. We explain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back a week late, but I hope you agree it's worth it. Having heard the pro-UFO version of Roswell last time, we now seek to learn why so many dedicated investigators have looked into this situation and decided it's sound and fury signifying nothing. We've got a couple more episodes worth of Roswell stuff in the pipeline, and I look forward to sharing more with you in a couple of weeks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey. We need an extra week coming back from summer, so here's a little taster of Dana Unicorn doing something silly to tide you over. See you next week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This time, we hear the full story of Roswell--or, at least, the full story as it's told by those who are convinced that a UFO crashed there. This is audio captured during the great 2017 Paranoid Strain road trip, and we heartily thank Dennis Balthaser for allowing us to record and share his expertise with you. While we may disagree with his conclusions, we deeply appreciate his knowledge and his presentation. Next time: The skeptics get their turn. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roswell is right around the corner, but first let's consider the unidentified objects that appeared in the night skies before everybody decided they were shaped like saucers. To wit, we'll cover The War of the Worlds, the foo fighter phenomenon, a strange tale of crashed Martians in late-19th Century Texas, and much more. Next time--we go full Roswell, New Mexico. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're fully on the UFO beat now, and addressing one of the most vexing questions asked by any scientist in the previous century--Enrico Fermi's question about aliens. That is, "Where is everybody"? We explore many solutions that have been proposed for this conundrum, and also investigate fellow scientist Frank Drake's equation that seeks to quantify exactly how likely it is that we will encounter alien life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As promised, we're finally talking about UFOs in the UFO series. This time, we cover the long-overdue return of the Mother Plane prophesied by the Nation of Islam, as well as the decidedly odd interstellar object discovered back in 2017, that seemed briefly as if it might be a sign of extraterrestrial intelligence, Oumuamua. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On our way out of the ancient aliens door, we explore a few miscellaneous but still really interesting sub-topics, including out-of-place artifacts, the Ancient Aliens TV show and its discontents, and finally a book that suggests, convincingly, that HP Lovecraft's cosmic horrors were a major inspiration for Erich von Daniken's bullshit, and everything that came later. Next time, swear to god, we'll cover a topic that actually isn't ancient aliens. Weird, right? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We discuss the woe-is-me posturing of non-scientist Graham Hancock, and his ludicrous theories about an advanced civilization wiped out by the last ice age, which spread its knowledge far and wide, and thus is responsible for all of the ancient structures we normally credit to people like the Egyptians, the Mayans, etcetera. I should mention we had a strange interference pattern occur during the recording process, but I'm sure nothing untoward, or very Stupid, happened. See you in a couple of weeks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the end of the Zecharia Sitchin part of this very weird series. But there's still more Ancient Astronauts to come. This time, we learn more about the Annunaki, and how apparently they need human gametes. These Nibiru aliens are straight-up freaks, yo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're continuing our tour through the life's work of Zecharia Sitchin, this time exploring in-depth his very strange rendition of the ancient Babylonian Creation myth. According to Zechy, an unknown 12th (Why 12th? It's weird) planet did a bunch of shit to our inner solar system, including creating the Earth and Moon, before retreating back on its 3600 year orbit. And the ancient Mesopotamians learned all about it from their alien, Annunaki overlords. It's a hoot! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We finally introduce arguably the second-most-important ancient aliens conspiracy theorist, shipping executive, amateur researcher, and adorable little old man Zecharia Sitchin. He's just as wrong and bull-headed as von Daniken, but we find him both more imaginative and more pleasant than his Swiss rival. Plus, we have an expert, Dr. David Miano, who's ready to shed some much-needed knowledge over Sitchin's nonsense cavalcade. Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Somehow, we're still talking about Ancient Aliens, This time, we're continuing with our examination of Philip Coppens' work in this area. We consider his best arguments for the idea, find them wanting, and then tear apart the crystal skull and metal library nonsense. Come on along. It's a good time. See you in two weeks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Don't let our title fool you. We haven't gone soft on the horsefeathers that is Ancient Aliens theory. But in this episode, we do find the best, most rigorous book on the topic written by an enthusiast, try to give him the benefit of the doubt, and then realize that his worldview is still fatally flawed. Plus, we talk strawmen versus steelmen arguments. Fun is had by all! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 4 is all up in that Basque. Ok, so that joke deson't work. But the episode does! Learn why von Daniken acolyte Nick Redfern is pretty sure the Basque people of Northern Spain and Southern France are totes aliens, you guys. Oh, and if you have a "negative" instead of a "positive" blood type--guess what? You're an ET, too. Come explore this very dumb idea with us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're still digging down into the Erich von Daniken rabbit hole, touching on some other authors who have followed EvD's lead in speculating about the extrarrestrial origins of the stories underpinning Judaism and Christianity. In other words, you're about to learn why Jesus isn't just your co-pilot--he's in charge of the whole goddanged UFO. Also, we'll learn why a trained Christian minister has spent the past fifty years or so explaining how a hidden UFO performed all of the miracles of the Exodus. Including the big special effects moment with the sea parting, the Jews passing, and the Egyptians drowning. It's a hoot. See you in a couple of weeks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Introductions done, we dive into our first subject in this grand UFO series--that is, Ancient Aliens and the man most responsible for bringing them to us, Erich Von Daniken. In addition to being a hilariously self-regarding fabulist, EVD is also just a very weird dude with quite a checkered legal past. We get into all of that, as well von Daniken's extremely weird inter-stellar sex orgy theory of space exploration. It's nice to be back. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seems like we've been promising this for ages, but it's finally here. Welcome to our next (very) long series, which we've called "Unidentified", because we think it's a cool name, but also because if we just called it "UFOs", or something, we'd be selling our ambition short. Yes, we're going to cover all of the standard "are aliens visiting us" stuff--abductions, ancient aliens, Roswell, and seemingly a million other topics. But we're also intending this set of shows to be about a lot more. The whole concept of human and non-human intelligence--what it means for a piece of the universe that experiences itself to meet another, very different intelligence. Anyway, we've got lots of ambitious stuff to cover. We hope you like it as much as we like creating it. Welcome to Unidentified. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And here's the second part of our rundown of the Paul is Dead musical conspiracy theory. In this episode, we consider the long-term implications of this brief mania, as well as the modern conspiracists who just won't let it go. UFOs start in two weeks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back! But we're not doing UFOs yet. First, we're doing a two-parter on one of the most famous music-related conspiracies in modern history--that is, the sudden mania that gripped The Beatles fandom, who for very confusing reasons in 1969 started thinking that Paul McCartney had secretly died and been replaced with a doppelganger, whose voice also somehow was a dead ringer for the tragically dead young genius. This whole thing burned out and became an in-joke quickly enough, but its brief era of cultural mania is super-interesting and a lot of fun. We hope you agree. Happy to be back with you. The second part hits in two weeks, and then it's UFOs as far as the eye can see. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To keep you company while we work on new content, we're breaking apart one of our classic episodes into digestible chunks. Enjoy one of our personal favorite episodes, and we'll be back with you in the new year with great new stuff.www.theparanoidstrainfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstraintheparanoidstrain at gmailpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To keep you company while we work on new content, we're breaking apart one of our classic episodes into digestible chunks. Enjoy one of our personal favorite episodes, and we'll be back with you in the new year with great new stuff.www.theparanoidstrainfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstraintheparanoidstrain at gmailpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To keep you company while we work on new content, we're breaking apart one of our classic episodes into digestible chunks. Enjoy one of our personal favorite episodes, and we'll be back with you in the new year with great new stuff.www.theparanoidstrainfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstraintheparanoidstrain at gmailpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To keep you company while we work on new content, we're breaking apart one of our classic episodes into digestible chunks. Enjoy one of our personal favorite episodes, and we'll be back with you in the new year with great new stuff.www.theparanoidstrainfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstraintheparanoidstrain at gmailpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To keep you company while we work on new content, we're breaking apart one of our classic episodes into digestible chunks. Enjoy one of our personal favorite episodes, and we'll be back with you in the new year with great new stuff.www.theparanoidstrainfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstraintheparanoidstrain at gmailpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To keep you company while we work on new content, we're breaking apart one of our classic episodes into digestible chunks. Enjoy one of our personal favorite episodes, and we'll be back with you in the new year with great new stuff.www.theparanoidstrainfacebook.com/groups/theparanoidstraintheparanoidstrain at gmailpatreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

They're finally here! The big, huge files that taken together make up the full Qanon series. There are seven in total, Collect them all!patreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

They're finally here! The big, huge files that taken together make up the full Qanon series. There are seven in total, Collect them all!patreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

They're finally here! The big, huge files that taken together make up the full Qanon series. There are seven in total, Collect them all!patreon.com/theparanoidstrain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.