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The Paranoid Strain
New! Qanon: How we got here - The Book of Revelation, and why the world isn't ending
Season 5, Ep. 18
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Yeah, there's still a little sex-trafficking teaser at the beginning of this one, but it also inaugurates our next topic. That is--how did the apocalyptic year-2000 obsessions of the 90s seed the ground for the eschatological focus of the Qanon cult? Over a few episodes, we plan to answer that question, and in the process, we plan to revisit some of the best cultural touchstones of our youth. Yes, I'm basically talking about the X-files. But that show as great! Anyway, we're definitely on the downward slope of this series, and we hope you enjoy the ride. See you in a couple of weeks.
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22. New! Unidentified--When UFO prophecy fails. Big time.
28:33||Season 6, Ep. 22It'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.
21. New! Unidentified--The fascinating forgery of the MJ-12 UFO documents
31:24||Season 6, Ep. 21The 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.
19. New! Unidentified--Art Bell's time travelers and antichrists
01:28:32||Season 6, Ep. 19Yes, 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. 19After 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. 18As 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. 17Continuing 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. 16We'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.
15. New! Unidentified--The Roswell incident (as told by an expert UFO believer)
43:26||Season 6, Ep. 15This 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.