One of the great things about UFOs and alien contact is that it unnerves and demoralizes the kind of thinking that qualifies everyone in terms of "identities" or predicates.

The metaphor of alien-contact movies, from Starship Invasions (1977) to the original Day the Earth Stood Still _(1951) to _Cloverfield (2008), is that of our one planet, our one earth, being instantly united in the face of an extra-terrestrial presence. As 'Fox Mulder' announced in a late episode of The X-Files, in the face of a real alien incursion, "All bets are off!". In other words, the alien-contact metaphor -- or rather, in my case, at least, convinced reality -- relativizes every single human group-characteristic. Face to face with a truly other/Other, all persons on our planet become one -- instantly. St. Paul says this perfectly in Galatians 3:28.

The opening music is an excerpt from The Carpenters' immortal and unsurpassable version of "Calling Occupants of Inter-Planetary Craft". That track bursts the confines of the late 1970s and will never die. The closing track is a song of conversion, by Robert Wyatt. Note that Jesus Christ gets a solid mention.

Podcast 294 is dedicated to Charles Gaston.