A very special episode as Gene and guest cohost Tim Swartz present former New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal, co-author of the recent series of groundbreaking Times articles. coauthored with Helene Cooper and Leslie Kean, that revealed a secret Pentagon program to investigate UFOs and spurred serious discussions about the phenomenon by politicians, academics, and scientists. He is author of “The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack,” about the Harvard psychiatrist who investigated possible UFO abductions. Blumenthal also led the Times metro team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the 1993 truck-bombing of the World Trade Center.

February 20, 2022 — Ralph Blumenthal with Tim Swartz

The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives. Join long-time paranormal writer and researcher Gene Steinberg, a team of knowledgeable guest cohosts, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories about the amazing history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries. When strange things occur that confound traditional scientific dogma, from strange objects speeding across our skies, to frightening creatures in remote areas of the world, and incredible reports of haunted houses, The Paracast will be there to separate the signal from the noise. NOTE: These episodes are the network versions with ads. If you want a commercial-free version of The Paracast, please subscribe to The Paracast+. Check https://www.theparacast.plus for details.

News

Gene and cohost Tim Swartz introduce Paul Schatzkin, a biographer of obscure 20th century scientists. He has been described variously as a visionary, gadfly, serial entrepreneur, Internet pioneer, staunch McLuhanist, author, occasional bomb-thrower, guitarist and songwriter. His two books are: “The Boy Who Invented Television” about Philo T. Farnsworth and “The Man Who Mastered Gravity” about T. Townsend Brown. As to Farnsworth, he invented a thing called “the television” — which over the course of his lifetime (1906-1971) became the most ubiquitous appliance in the history of human civilization. Every video screen on the planet — including the one you are looking at now – can trace its origins to a sketch that 14-year-old Philo drew for his high school science teacher in 1922. Schatzkin’s second book — exploring the mysterious life of T. Townsend Brown (1895-1985) — is “the biography of a man whose story cannot be told.” “The Man Who Mastered Gravity” is a tale that lives in the Venn diagram between science, science fiction and pseudo science, with elements of world history, international espionage, and cross-generational romance. He was also involved in the early creation of a UFO research organization, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), which was later placed under the direction of UFO field pioneer and disclosure advocate Major Donald E. Keyhoe.

April 21, 2024 — Paul Schatzkin and Tim Swartz

Gene and cohost Tim Swartz present the all-encompassing views of Dr. Thomas F. Lawson, a psychologist and original thinker who has done extensive research into the ontology and history of super ancient Egypt and how all of its structures/temples/pyramids are part of a “Messianic/Mashiach Plan,” now culminating and which, he says, will create a “new heaven and a new Earth.” After personal research in Egypt, Dr Lawson developed and presented a number of PowerPoint lectures on antediluvian civilizations whose members fled after a world-wide cataclysm circa 11,000 B.C. to Egypt. This ancient, technological knowledge was used to build the pyramids and recorded this history on the Egyptian temple at Edfu. In 2009-11, Dr Lawson was privately invited to explore the Sphinx enclosure by the then Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Dr. Zahi Hawass as part of a five man “quiet” team with Raytheon Inc to use a new LIDAR tunnel detection system to surreptitiously search for the Atlantean Hall of Records. He has over 25 years experience in design, development and implementation of strategic, tactical and operational planning and systems analysis within numerous federal government, intelligence and defense environments. He is a highly experienced multi-discipline FAA Project and Air Traffic Control Facility Manager and Operations.

April 14, 2024 — Dr. Thomas F. Lawson with Tim Swartz

Gene and cohost Tim Swartz present Dr. Simon Young, a British folklore historian based in Italy. He has written extensively on the nineteenth-century supernatural. His book Magical Folk: British & Irish Fairies, came out in 2017.The Boggart (from Exeter University Press) and The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends (from Mississippi University Press) came out in 2022. Dr. Young has undertaken the biggest folklore survey of its kind, on behalf of the Fairy Investigation Society and released in 2024 The Fairy Census 2: 2017-2023. His earlier collection, The Fairy Census 1, came out in 2017. The census, revived more than 60 years from the last one, gathered details of as many fairy sightings from the 20th and 21st century as possible, and to measure contemporary attitudes to fairies. He is also the editor of Exeter New Approaches to Legends, Folklore and Popular Legends, which provides a venue for growing scholarly interest in folklore narratives, supernatural belief systems and the communities that sustain them. As well, Dr. Young teaches history at University of Virginia’s Siena Campus (CET). Over the years he has run courses on the History of Christianity, Italian Food History, Italian Media History, Contemporary Italian History, WW2 in Italy and Italian Renaissance History. For more information about the Fairy Census, visit its website at: www.fairyist.com. His blog can be found at: www.strangehistory.net

April 7, 2024 — Dr. Simon Young with Tim Swartz

Gene and cohost Tim Swartz remember one of the key figures of the early UFO field, as we interview Linda C. Powell, news editor for The Anomalist. She is the author of “Against the Odds: Major Donald E. Keyhoe and His Battle to End UFO Secrecy: A Biography.” In UFO lore, one man is largely responsible for the twin pillars of current belief: that UFOs represent extraterrestrial technology and that the government is hiding this truth from us. His name is Donald E. Keyhoe. He was a 51-year-old retired Marine Major when his own investigation of a famous 1948 flying saucer case led him to believe that the US Air Force and the CIA knew the Earth was under surveillance by beings from other worlds and were keeping it secret from the public. For the next 21 years, he devoted himself, at great personal cost, to exposing the official cover-up of what he believed was an alien visitation. Thanks to his highly-placed contacts in the military and secret informants in the Pentagon, Keyhoe became the first major figure to truly challenge the official view that UFO reports belonged in the domain of “kooks and fuzzy thinkers.” He eventually led what became the world’s most powerful civilian UFO organization for its time, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). You’ll also learn all about Gene’s early encounters with Keyhoe between 1965 and 1975, and some of the controversies that arose over Keyhoe’s attempts to run NICAP as a lobbying arm for UFO disclosure.

March 31, 2024 — Linda C. Powell with Tim Swartz

A main focus of this episode is Bigfoot as Gene and cohost Tim Swartz present Greg Ogles, who got into investigating Bigfoot in 2013 and is the founder of the Alabama Bigfoot Society. Initially he just wanted a diversion in his life as his profession can be quite stressful. Greg has hunted and fished all of his life so being in the woods in remote places was not new to him. In his regular life, he is the traffic analyst for the largest city in Alabama. As an analyst, he’s trained in investigative techniques which he has translated over to investigating the unknown. So throughout the history of mankind, we have always been curious about the unknown, making new discoveries and trekking our way into the wilderness. Greg’s first thoughts were to fully document all of his encounters. As a skeptic he thought there would be little film that he would have to edit. Then one cold day in Alabama, everything changed! His company is Relic films, a production company that seeks out the truth about America’s greatest Legends and Myths. With the use of modern technology and the study of ancient Indian cultures he attempts to uncover the hidden truth about what is real and what is just a story.

February 20, 2022 — Ralph Blumenthal with Tim Swartz

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