The Paracast Newsletter
December 8, 2024
www.theparacast.com
Author and Comedy Writer Paul Seaburn Reveals Quirky UFO Cases on The Paracast!
The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022, 2023 and 2024 now feature better audio and fewer ads. We are also re-releasing some of our most popular classic episodes.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus a special version of The Paracast with all the ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Episodes for subscribers to The Paracast+ are now released 24 hours earlier. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz feature a visit from Paul Seaburn, author of “What Would You Say to a Naked Alien?” The book is a collection of his favorite reports of encounters with quirky extraterrestrials that turned out to be more fun than fearsome, and his thoughts about what he — and you — might do in the same situations. Paul’s long, strange trip to paranormal news writing began with a career in tech support, management and sales for two successful computer industry startups. A lifelong love of comedy led him to try standup, but his talent for writing resulted instead in a second career penning jokes for the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, other TV shows, many top comedians, an Emmy-winning children’s show, a jazz/comedy show on public radio and as a contributor to over 30 collections of humor, trivia and puzzles. Paul brought his writing and humor skills to the paranormal and strange news world at Mysterious Universe, where he could finally scratch the itch he’s had since his youth to become a cross between Robert Ripley and Johnny Carson. With this background, just how will he react to Gene’s penchant for terrible disk jockey puns? Paul’s site: www.paulseaburn.com
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers: A return visit from comedy writer and UFO author Paul Seaburn. The author of the quirky collection of alien encounters, “What Would You Say to a Naked Alien?” Paul talks with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about whether the mystery of the flying saucers will ever be solved. And what about the disclosure movement, and can it bring results? There’s also a wide-ranging discussion of the possibility of reverse engineering possible alien technology, and the surprisingly close relationship between rock stars and UFOs. Are they especially sensitive to experiencing such phenomena? Paul’s long, strange trip to paranormal news writing began with a career in tech support, management and sales for two successful computer industry startups. A lifelong love of comedy led him to try standup, but his talent for writing resulted instead in a second career penning jokes for the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, other TV shows, many top comedians, an Emmy-winning children’s show, a jazz/comedy show on public radio and as a contributor to over 30 collections of humor, trivia and puzzles. Paul brought his writing and humor skills to the paranormal and strange news world at Mysterious Universe, where he could finally scratch the itch he’s had since his youth to become a cross between Robert Ripley and Johnny Carson. Paul’s site: www.paulseaburn.com
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. And look for @theparacast on Bluesky Social, Facebook, Threads and X.
Disclosure: The Definition of Insanity
By Gene Steinberg
There is a curious phenomenon taking place right before our eyes. It may not be paranormal but the impact might just be.
For decades, since the early 1950s, perfectly serious people who chase the flying saucers have claimed that the U.S. government and other governments on Planet Earth know the truth: We are being visited by advanced beings from other planets.
UFO author Major Donald E. Keyhoe named those who possessed the secret “The Silence Group.” There have been other names, some reasonable, some imaginative, some outrageous. Among the latter, for example, is MJ-12, based on a phony set of alleged government documents claiming that the named individuals were among the keepers of the secret.
What made those documents doubly curious was a possible inside joke, that the notorious and fanatical UFO skeptic Donald Menzel was a member of MJ-12.
But MJ-12 was just a sideshow. Speculating that high-level Top Secret government agencies knew the truth was not so outrageous. That is, if we are being visited by spaceships.
Now I don’t have to dwell on the point, but Keyhoe’s efforts to bring about disclosure of the UFO secret failed big time. At least he sold a lot of books over the years.
For a time, it seemed that Keyhoe might be successful. In 1966, Congressman Gerald Ford (yes the guy destined to be appointed President of the United States after Richard Nixon resigned) led hearings to explore UFOs. Following a string of sightings in his home state of Michigan, he wanted action.
The Air Force ended up selecting the University of Colorado to study the evidence. The group they set up, known as the Condon Committee, worked from 1966 to 1968 to come up with the report. Alas, the committee’s head, physicist Edward Condon, prejudged the results from the get-go as demonstrating that there was nothing to the phenomenon.
Despite the top-line conclusion, the report known as “Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,” the so-called Condon Report, had lots of compelling evidence of sightings that remain unexplained.
For a few years thereafter, it almost seemed as if the UFO era was mostly over. There wasn’t a lot of coverage in the mainstream media on the subject, though some of us who chased the flying saucers kept up monitoring of the latest sightings.
Yes, they didn’t go away, and the 1973 UFO flap cemented the mystery’s long-time presence in our culture.
As to Major Keyhoe, he was ousted from NICAP in 1969 as the result of mismanagement and financial irregularities. He may have been a first-rate author and lecturer, but he failed as director of that UFO club, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.
That was then, this is now.
The attempts to bring about UFO disclosure continue, but what about the results or lack thereof?
Among the current advocates for disclosure are a former emergency room physician, Dr. Steven Greer. His work to bring about the purported truth about UFOs included the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and the appropriately named Disclosure Project.
Public presentations before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. over the years earned a decent amount of coverage. But it was a matter of here today, gone tomorrow, as coverage soon waned.
CSETI continues to function, but it seems more focused on running high-priced tours where people gather and try to summon UFOs with highly disputed results.
On a more traditional level, a real UFO lobbyist has pursued a disclosure agenda over the years. Registered since 1996, Stephen Bassett runs a group called the Paradigm Research Group, designed to promote the quest for disclosure of what he regards as an extraterrestrial presence.
It’s fitting that PRG is located in an office at the National Press Building, located a mere 2 blocks from the White House.
Bassett has been a constant presence on both paranormal podcasts and traditional news outlets, including the major TV networks, The New York Times, Washington Post and other media outlets.
As listeners to The Paracast know, Bassett has appeared on the show on a number of occasions. Each time, he has claimed that disclosure will come in the near future.
It’s just around the corner, he says, more or less.
So far, it hasn’t happened, but his credibility grew considerably when The Times ran a series of articles, beginning in 2017, revealing a secret Pentagon project to study what they labeled as UAPs, government parlance for UFOs.
The latest iteration of the Pentagon group, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), continues to explore mostly military sightings with very mixed results. While many of the sightings they’ve investigated have conventional causes, the unexplained cases are dismissed with essentially the same conclusions delivered by the U.S. Air Force when it ran Project Blue Book decades ago.
In short, they claim that there is no evidence that the phenomenon represents evidence of the presence of off-world beings and technology. The sort of evidence AARO would accept is not thoroughly explored, but one might conclude it would involve physical evidence of one sort or another.
Yes, we know about Roswell and other alleged UFO crashes, but it’s not as if real evidence has been publicized. It’s pretty much about eyewitness testimony from witnesses of these episodes.
Meanwhile, Bassett’s disclosure quest continues. In 2023, he co-founded an effort to promote accurate UFO coverage in the entertainment industry, the Hollywood Disclosure Alliance. The alliance’s site provides an ever-optimistic view: “The Truth is Almost Here.”
Well, maybe it is, but disclosure advocates have been saying that for years. They continue to publicize the ongoing presence of UFOs, and their belief that extraterrestrials are among us.
Maybe they are right, but I’ve always felt that the UFO mystery won’t be easily solved. With the ongoing Pentagon UAP study, more scientists are taking up the cause and perhaps they will some day deliver final, verifiable conclusions about what’s really going on.
Maybe it’ll happen soon, but that story has become old news at this point. Maybe “The Truth is Almost Here,” but what does that mean anyway?
Will the current approach to demand disclosure deliver positive results? Possibly, but when? This week, next year, a few decades from now? It truth may be just around the corner, but when you turn the corner, nothing’s there.
Is the present approach any different from the one taken by Keyhoe in the 1950s and 1960s? Get the word out and hope for the best?
Maybepublic demand will deliver different results soon, but people have other priorities. Just listen to the cable TV news talking heads, or read a newspaper (either digital or in print). So maybe it’s time to find new ways to evangelize the message of the UFO presence in our skies.
But wouldn’t it be better to first demonstrate what the UFOs really are, and not just evangelize the same old message? Isn’t that the classic definition of….well just sayin’.
Copyright 1999-2024 The Paracast Company. 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!
December 8, 2024
www.theparacast.com
Author and Comedy Writer Paul Seaburn Reveals Quirky UFO Cases on The Paracast!
The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022, 2023 and 2024 now feature better audio and fewer ads. We are also re-releasing some of our most popular classic episodes.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus a special version of The Paracast with all the ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Episodes for subscribers to The Paracast+ are now released 24 hours earlier. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz feature a visit from Paul Seaburn, author of “What Would You Say to a Naked Alien?” The book is a collection of his favorite reports of encounters with quirky extraterrestrials that turned out to be more fun than fearsome, and his thoughts about what he — and you — might do in the same situations. Paul’s long, strange trip to paranormal news writing began with a career in tech support, management and sales for two successful computer industry startups. A lifelong love of comedy led him to try standup, but his talent for writing resulted instead in a second career penning jokes for the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, other TV shows, many top comedians, an Emmy-winning children’s show, a jazz/comedy show on public radio and as a contributor to over 30 collections of humor, trivia and puzzles. Paul brought his writing and humor skills to the paranormal and strange news world at Mysterious Universe, where he could finally scratch the itch he’s had since his youth to become a cross between Robert Ripley and Johnny Carson. With this background, just how will he react to Gene’s penchant for terrible disk jockey puns? Paul’s site: www.paulseaburn.com
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers: A return visit from comedy writer and UFO author Paul Seaburn. The author of the quirky collection of alien encounters, “What Would You Say to a Naked Alien?” Paul talks with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about whether the mystery of the flying saucers will ever be solved. And what about the disclosure movement, and can it bring results? There’s also a wide-ranging discussion of the possibility of reverse engineering possible alien technology, and the surprisingly close relationship between rock stars and UFOs. Are they especially sensitive to experiencing such phenomena? Paul’s long, strange trip to paranormal news writing began with a career in tech support, management and sales for two successful computer industry startups. A lifelong love of comedy led him to try standup, but his talent for writing resulted instead in a second career penning jokes for the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, other TV shows, many top comedians, an Emmy-winning children’s show, a jazz/comedy show on public radio and as a contributor to over 30 collections of humor, trivia and puzzles. Paul brought his writing and humor skills to the paranormal and strange news world at Mysterious Universe, where he could finally scratch the itch he’s had since his youth to become a cross between Robert Ripley and Johnny Carson. Paul’s site: www.paulseaburn.com
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. And look for @theparacast on Bluesky Social, Facebook, Threads and X.
Disclosure: The Definition of Insanity
By Gene Steinberg
There is a curious phenomenon taking place right before our eyes. It may not be paranormal but the impact might just be.
For decades, since the early 1950s, perfectly serious people who chase the flying saucers have claimed that the U.S. government and other governments on Planet Earth know the truth: We are being visited by advanced beings from other planets.
UFO author Major Donald E. Keyhoe named those who possessed the secret “The Silence Group.” There have been other names, some reasonable, some imaginative, some outrageous. Among the latter, for example, is MJ-12, based on a phony set of alleged government documents claiming that the named individuals were among the keepers of the secret.
What made those documents doubly curious was a possible inside joke, that the notorious and fanatical UFO skeptic Donald Menzel was a member of MJ-12.
But MJ-12 was just a sideshow. Speculating that high-level Top Secret government agencies knew the truth was not so outrageous. That is, if we are being visited by spaceships.
Now I don’t have to dwell on the point, but Keyhoe’s efforts to bring about disclosure of the UFO secret failed big time. At least he sold a lot of books over the years.
For a time, it seemed that Keyhoe might be successful. In 1966, Congressman Gerald Ford (yes the guy destined to be appointed President of the United States after Richard Nixon resigned) led hearings to explore UFOs. Following a string of sightings in his home state of Michigan, he wanted action.
The Air Force ended up selecting the University of Colorado to study the evidence. The group they set up, known as the Condon Committee, worked from 1966 to 1968 to come up with the report. Alas, the committee’s head, physicist Edward Condon, prejudged the results from the get-go as demonstrating that there was nothing to the phenomenon.
Despite the top-line conclusion, the report known as “Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,” the so-called Condon Report, had lots of compelling evidence of sightings that remain unexplained.
For a few years thereafter, it almost seemed as if the UFO era was mostly over. There wasn’t a lot of coverage in the mainstream media on the subject, though some of us who chased the flying saucers kept up monitoring of the latest sightings.
Yes, they didn’t go away, and the 1973 UFO flap cemented the mystery’s long-time presence in our culture.
As to Major Keyhoe, he was ousted from NICAP in 1969 as the result of mismanagement and financial irregularities. He may have been a first-rate author and lecturer, but he failed as director of that UFO club, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.
That was then, this is now.
The attempts to bring about UFO disclosure continue, but what about the results or lack thereof?
Among the current advocates for disclosure are a former emergency room physician, Dr. Steven Greer. His work to bring about the purported truth about UFOs included the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and the appropriately named Disclosure Project.
Public presentations before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. over the years earned a decent amount of coverage. But it was a matter of here today, gone tomorrow, as coverage soon waned.
CSETI continues to function, but it seems more focused on running high-priced tours where people gather and try to summon UFOs with highly disputed results.
On a more traditional level, a real UFO lobbyist has pursued a disclosure agenda over the years. Registered since 1996, Stephen Bassett runs a group called the Paradigm Research Group, designed to promote the quest for disclosure of what he regards as an extraterrestrial presence.
It’s fitting that PRG is located in an office at the National Press Building, located a mere 2 blocks from the White House.
Bassett has been a constant presence on both paranormal podcasts and traditional news outlets, including the major TV networks, The New York Times, Washington Post and other media outlets.
As listeners to The Paracast know, Bassett has appeared on the show on a number of occasions. Each time, he has claimed that disclosure will come in the near future.
It’s just around the corner, he says, more or less.
So far, it hasn’t happened, but his credibility grew considerably when The Times ran a series of articles, beginning in 2017, revealing a secret Pentagon project to study what they labeled as UAPs, government parlance for UFOs.
The latest iteration of the Pentagon group, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), continues to explore mostly military sightings with very mixed results. While many of the sightings they’ve investigated have conventional causes, the unexplained cases are dismissed with essentially the same conclusions delivered by the U.S. Air Force when it ran Project Blue Book decades ago.
In short, they claim that there is no evidence that the phenomenon represents evidence of the presence of off-world beings and technology. The sort of evidence AARO would accept is not thoroughly explored, but one might conclude it would involve physical evidence of one sort or another.
Yes, we know about Roswell and other alleged UFO crashes, but it’s not as if real evidence has been publicized. It’s pretty much about eyewitness testimony from witnesses of these episodes.
Meanwhile, Bassett’s disclosure quest continues. In 2023, he co-founded an effort to promote accurate UFO coverage in the entertainment industry, the Hollywood Disclosure Alliance. The alliance’s site provides an ever-optimistic view: “The Truth is Almost Here.”
Well, maybe it is, but disclosure advocates have been saying that for years. They continue to publicize the ongoing presence of UFOs, and their belief that extraterrestrials are among us.
Maybe they are right, but I’ve always felt that the UFO mystery won’t be easily solved. With the ongoing Pentagon UAP study, more scientists are taking up the cause and perhaps they will some day deliver final, verifiable conclusions about what’s really going on.
Maybe it’ll happen soon, but that story has become old news at this point. Maybe “The Truth is Almost Here,” but what does that mean anyway?
Will the current approach to demand disclosure deliver positive results? Possibly, but when? This week, next year, a few decades from now? It truth may be just around the corner, but when you turn the corner, nothing’s there.
Is the present approach any different from the one taken by Keyhoe in the 1950s and 1960s? Get the word out and hope for the best?
Maybepublic demand will deliver different results soon, but people have other priorities. Just listen to the cable TV news talking heads, or read a newspaper (either digital or in print). So maybe it’s time to find new ways to evangelize the message of the UFO presence in our skies.
But wouldn’t it be better to first demonstrate what the UFOs really are, and not just evangelize the same old message? Isn’t that the classic definition of….well just sayin’.
Copyright 1999-2024 The Paracast Company. 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!
