Yo…

There’s a wonderful late night ritual we don’t really talk about.

Typically it happens when I’m driving home under a dark sky punctuated by bright stars.

I turn on AM radio. Which is a marvelously archaic statement: a minor sort of analog rebellion. It’s the same defiance that undergirded the vinyl resurgence.

And I listen to callers recount strange UFO moments and unsettling paranormal experiences. Bizarrely the host of the radio show patiently listens and not just that, but follows up with questions that reveal a startling lack of judgment.

You would expect these callers would easily be dismissed for being “crazy.” Case closed, right? Yet the opposite happens and it’s part of the late night ritual. The host is willing to listen to what they have to say. It’s not that he believes everything they say. It that’s he wants to first understand what it is that they are saying.

Obviously I am describing Coast to Coast AM which airs on more than 600 stations in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Over 3 million listeners participate in this late night ritual: “Coast to Coast AM deals with UFOs, strange occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained (and often inexplicable) phenomena.”

It’s the closest thing we have to a real life X-Files. Life is normal until it’s not. Every so often somebody sees something and it defies easy explanation. And yet the key is not what they’ve see…that’s misdirection; the key is "defies easy explanation." Because sometimes we’re not smart enough or we lack the background and education to understand what we’ve seen. An astronomer views the night sky a lot different than you and I, right?

And yet even for the trained and the intelligent and the educated there are still moments that defy easy explanation. Seeing a UFO is basically a “how did you first meet?” story.

Meet CuteSo...there’s J Date if you want to try online Jewish dating...Ashley Madison...and now in the news...another niche dating site: ParanormalDate.com! Amazing: “Find your match that shares an interest in the paranormal, science, life after death, ghost stories, Bigfoot, UFO’s, alternative medicine and conspiracy theories.”

Wow you no longer have to hide your true self...on a first date! Though do you really wanna give away all the good stuff on the first date??

A Fine RomanceToday...today a moment of silence to reflect on the brave unknown souls who perished in the service of exploration. Often we do not know their names but we can celebrate their curiosity which propelled them; fueling their seemingly endless journeys across the stars. They may or may not have been human.

Tonight...tonight when the Sun has finally set and darkness covers the land like a blanket; look up with fresh wonder at the meager offering of stars and know with the simple understanding of a child: there is more than we can see and fathom.

July 2nd was World UFO Day an awareness day for people to gather together and watch the skies for unidentified flying objects (also check-your-car-brakes day and don’t-slip-getting-out-of-the-shower day). It’s also been 75 years since “something” happened at Roswell.

Modern LoveOn July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a "flying disc." The headline of the Roswell Daily Record was RAAF CAPTURES FLYING SAUCER ON RANCH IN ROSWELL. The Army quickly retracted the statement and instead said that the crashed object was a conventional weather balloon. So it begins.

At the time there was mild public interest in this mysterious flying disc but not any grand conspiracy theories or any evidence of a cover up. I dunno how much appetite there would be to respond with distrust for any government following the victory of WWII.

And for over 30 years the Roswell happening was mostly ignored by the media and the public. Until February 1978 when UFO researcher Stanton Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel; a key individual in the Roswell incident. That interview contradicted statements Jesse Marcel (by then a retired lieutenant colonel) said to the press in 1947. He now claimed and believed the debris he retrieved in 1947 was extraterrestrial. So it begins.

Crazy LoveA powerful moment during his Inside the Actors Studio appearance in 2006; Dave Chappelle said: “The worst thing to call somebody is crazy, it’s dismissive. "I don’t understand this person, so they’re crazy." That’s bullshit. These people are not crazy, they’re strong people. Maybe the environment is a little sick.”

Dave Chappelle is right: “The worst thing to call somebody is crazy, it’s dismissive.”Welcome science writer Sarah Scoles to  My Summer Lair; her book is They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers.Indeed: a non-fiction scientific book on UFO culture.

I dig books and documentaries like this: curious, questioning and searching for truths. There’s no value in being right and certainty is foolishness. On page 8 Sarah Scoles writes:

“Nestled among the unhinged conspiracy theorists and those who believe every UFO report like it’s biblical resided people I could identify with: logical, dedicated, skeptical. Many of them didn’t necessarily "believe" in UFOs at all, and most didn’t take the extraterrestrial connotation for granted. Nevertheless, in their spare time—between litigating court cases or teaching middle-schoolers or running planetariums—they scoured declassified government documents, Wayback-Machined old webpages, interviewed witnesses, and wrote up self-aware analyses of their findings. I undertook this project because I wanted to understand why these people spent so much time on a phenomenon that they weren’t even sure was a phenomenon—at least not one beyond the human brain."

I dig books like this: curious, questioning and searching for truths.

There’s no value in being right and certainty is foolishness. There’s way more than we don’t know than we know for sure.

Mulder: “Dana, after all you’ve seen, after all the evidence, why can’t you believe?” Scully: “I’m afraid. I’m afraid to believe.”

What do you believe? And why do you believe it?

The attached conversation convers the recent American government revelations, the distinction between aliens and UFO culture and Blink 182 front man Tom DeLonge who recently won an award for UFO Researcher Of The Year. Ummm yup.

Lemme know what you think. Or even better…if you’ve seen something…unidentified.

For all his technological acumen it’s bizarre visionary director James Cameron believes the only way to time travel is naked.

I Can’t Handle The Truth…That’s Out There,Sammy Younan-28-

Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair podcast: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.

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