First, I would like to congratulate The Paracast on its 5th anniversary. It's an excellent show and I have enjoyed it immensely over the past two years that I have been "tuning in." Gene is a great host -- a consummate radio professional and someone with decades of experience in the UFO and paranormal field. I became frustrated with the show at one point -- but my faith has now been restored with the addition of Chris O'Brien, who brings a contagious enthusiasm to the program. The other occasional co-hosts have been excellent, as well. In fact, they represent the some of the very people I enjoy listening to most in this field.
Why is Ufology dying? The short answer is: because I am interested in it. I unfailingly become interested in hobbies and avocations that have become passe -- where the majority of practitioners and enthusiasts tend to be 60 and older. I love hobbies that have a golden age long past. I enjoy stories about the old timers and their adventures. I wish I could step back in time and see what it was like. In a sense, I have a nostalgia for periods I never lived through.
Two interests I have picked up that have had trouble appealing to the young are stamp collecting and ham radio. Both have organizations filled with old duffers trying to make their hobby appeal to the young. Since email has replaced most postal mail, young people have a hard time relating to it. Philately has become more of an antiquarian study. I think it will maintain its interest with a small group of collectors -- but no longer do we live in a time where you could buy stamp hinges at the corner store, so widespread was the hobby. Ham radio really impressed newcomers up till the 80s and 90s -- when short-range communication was replaced by cell phones and texting -- and long-range was made possible with instant messaging. It's no longer possible to impress a kid with "I'm talking to another ham radio operator in South Africa" and the kid replying "gee whiz!" Of course in emergency situations -- disasters and power failures, ham operators still maintain communication with affected areas.
Gene, Greg, Chris and Paul all indicated that no great UFO researchers are around who got started post-1980. I would say that with Ufology sensu strictu this might be true. But the great conspiracy researchers got their start after that (or were predominantly active) -- and they often included UFOs in different guises in their research. Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith come to mind. The whole Steamshovel Press and Excluded Middle thing (Greg Bishop is a "great" in my opinion). These people saw UFOs through the psychedelic lens of the counter-culture, futurism, cyberpunk, mind expansion, etc. Another great -- whether you like/agree with him or not -- is Jim Marrs. He is very widely read and includes UFOs in his conspiracy worldview. Tim Binnall credits Marrs with spurring his interest in UFOs, and Binnall definitely falls into the category of younger Ufologists. Binnall also brings a modern sensibility where women get to play in a field that was traditionally male dominated.
Born in 1960, I could have become interested in UFOs during a time when the study was still "classic". I certainly read the popular paperbacks and the school library had a few books on the subject. In the 70s I watched the popular documentaries of the time -- what was the one narrated by Leonard Nimoy? But my interest never coalesced into a serious obsession . Being a sci-fi movie and TV fan, I watched all the popular series and films: Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. I loved the X-Files. I think Futurama has the best depiction of Roswell in 1947. But I was led to a deeper interest in UFOs and other weird stuff through a different route.
I had always been fascinated by WWII and the Nazis -- by strange technology they may have had, their interest in the occult, speculation about their survival after the War. For someone growing up with war movies and TV series like "Combat" (which still holds up after all these years, I have discovered), the Nazis are the ultimate bad guys. Notwithstanding the true evil they perpetrated, they have an iconic appeal -- like when Indiana Jones sees that the Nazis are involved in the search for the Ark and says "I hate these guys" -- you know what sort of formidable enemy he was facing.
So I looked up some books on Amazon and came across Joseph Farrell's "Reich Of The Black Sun". I really lucked out with Farrell because not only did the subject of his book catch my fancy, I realized that I was reading someone with an impressive academic background -- an Oxford educated Ph.D in a humanities field who also is very knowledgeable about math and physics (much of which goes way beyond my comprehension). He is fluent in many areas of esoterica -- Pyramid studies, alternative history, paleo-ancient high cultures, speculative economics, Ufology, government conspiracies, JFK assassination, etc. Yet he doesn't not seem to be very well regarded amongst traditional Ufologist. He seems to be guilty by association of consorting with "bad" people like Richard Hoagland and Project Camelot. I don't know why these people seem to be vilified. They seem no more out there than the majority of people in esoterica, and Hoagland especially has very interesting ideas. People just don't seem to like him because he is a pompous ass or something. I guess I would rather judge him by what he writes than how he acts. Certainly pompous ass-ery abounds in all fields of endeavor. At any rate, I think Farrel is a sort of genius -- though I don't actually believe a lot of what he is saying. I just really appreciate the level of scholarship and argumentation that he brings to his subjects. I feel similarly about Zecharia Sitchin. I don' really believe it all, but I can get delightfully lost in the fantastic world that he has created.
The 'Thule'-society didn't accomplish or do as much as some people would probably like, I think the 'Nazi phenomenon, as in 'Übermensch' etc. ' fueled expectations back then to a much higher degree than it actually was. It was basically Nordic-mysticism clean cut. I'll gladly debate this.
(fuck the euro, for way too many reasons). 
) off to bitchslap the man. Awaiting repercussions.