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The Paranoid Strain

The podcast that explains conspiracy theories to normal people


Latest episode

  • 21. New! Unidentified--The fascinating forgery of the MJ-12 UFO documents

    31:24||Season 6, Ep. 21
    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.

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  • 19. New! Unidentified--Art Bell's time travelers and antichrists

    01:28:32||Season 6, Ep. 19
    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.
  • 19. New! Unidentified--From the High Desert...it's time for Art Bell

    29:07||Season 6, Ep. 19
    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.
  • 18. New! Unidentified--Roswell--It wasn't aliens, dummies.

    31:43||Season 6, Ep. 18
    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.
  • 17. New! Unidentified--Roswell: The mortician's tale, and the little alien bodies

    28:36||Season 6, Ep. 17
    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.
  • 16. New! Unidentifed--So, what really happened at Roswell?

    31:01||Season 6, Ep. 16
    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.
  • Unidentified--Interlude

    04:50|
    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.