The Micah Hanks Program

For centuries, humans have wondered whether alien life exists on other worlds. Today, astronomers agree that in the coming decades--perhaps within some of our lifetimes--we will discover alien life in some form. But if it ends up being intelligent, will humankind be capable of communicating with them? To know the answer to this begs further questions about the origins of language, and how that relates to the development of consciousness.

Joining us for a deep discussion about this is Samuel Zinner Ph.D., a multidisciplinary scholar of languages and history who has lectured in the recent past on the origins of language. Zinner, also a lover of science fiction, muses about how understanding language and its relationship to consciousness might also aid us in understanding how alien life--and even intelligent extraterrestrials--might develop, and if discovered, how we might be able to successfully interact with them. We discuss everything from how communication with aliens might occur, to how language and myth are related to the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena on this edition of The Micah Hanks Program.

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If you are able, please consider supporting the following charities that are offering relief for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Visit our Coronavirus Charities Page to learn more.

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• SpaceX's Dragon Crew-1 capsule launches, NASA's first 'operational' mission of commercial crew program
• The 2020 Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks on Monday Night
• The Rings of Ancient Trees May Hold Tales of Epic Space Explosions
• SMiles Lewis Anomaly Archives 'Streamathon' Update
• 'He came back from the dead': Lost Mount Rainier hiker starts to recover after rescue in whiteout conditions
• Samuel Zinner, Ph.D. profile from Academia.edu
• The Abrahamic Archetype: Conceptual and Historical Relationships between Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Samuel Zinner
• Solaris by Stanislav Lem
• Arrival, starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker

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During the Cold War, U.S. Intelligence agencies learned that the Soviet Union was funneling large amounts of funding toward unlocking mysteries of the human mind. This prompted similar efforts on part of the United States, eventually culminating in the CIA's Star Gate remote viewing program.

Could psychic phenomena really be used to gain intelligence about the enemy, and if so, what else could be learned with the help of techniques like remote viewing? Could knowledge even be obtained about phenomena like UFOs in this way, and if so, how reliable would it be? Our guest this week is Paul H. Smith, Ph.D. (Major, U.S. Army, Ret.), who not only wrote the handbook used in the Star Gate remote viewing program, but who continues to teach the art of seeking targets with the mind to this day. He is the author of The Essential Guide to Remote Viewing, and he joins us for an in-depth discussion about the government's remote viewing program, unidentified aerial phenomena, and much more on this week's edition of The Micah Hanks Program.

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Supporting our sponsors is one way you can support this show. We are confident that Danny and the folks at Buy Two Way Radios offer the very best products and quality deals. Please visit their site by clicking here, to learn more about the two-way radios and other fine products for recreation, and for emergency preparedness, that they offer.

We have partnered with the fine folks at AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. If you would like to advertise with The Micah Hanks Program, all you have to do is email [email protected] or click the link below to get started: AdvertiseCast: Advertise with The Micah Hanks Program

If you are able, please consider supporting the following charities that are offering relief for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Visit our Coronavirus Charities Page to learn more.

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• Russian actress to defy Tom Cruise in Hollywood race to space
• KleinVision's AirCar completed two take-offs and landings during its maiden flight in Slovakia
• The U.S. Air Force's Secret Spy Drone Makes Public Debut—On Instagram
• 'Sprites' and 'elves' found frolicking in Jupiter's skies
• I Am Excited About—and Feel Vindicated By—All the Talk of UFOs
• Remote Viewing Instructional Services: Paul H. Smith Online
• The Essential Guide to Remote Viewing: The Secret Military Remote Perception Skill Anyone Can Learn

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It was the most high-profile case involving a hacker in the history of Britain, and at the time the story broke, one of the biggest stories in the UK, if not the world. Gary McKinnon, a Glasgow-born computer programmer, was arrested at his apartment flat in Wood Green, north London. The charge: hacking United States military computer systems within just weeks of the September 2001 terror attacks.

McKinnon was dubbed "the 911 hacker," although his reasons for hacking really had nothing to do with the terror attacks. But the most incredible part of McKinnon's story hadn't been the fact that he, a UK hacker with a dial-up modem, had accessed numerous U.S. government computer networks. It had been what he was looking for... and claimed to have eventually succeeded in finding: evidence of Unidentified Flying Objects, and efforts by the government to cover them up.

This week, we dive into McKinnon's story, as well as other claims from over the years about alleged suppression of secret advanced technologies on The Micah Hanks Program.

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Enjoy The Micah Hanks Program? Check out Micah's other podcasts here.

Supporting our sponsors is one way you can support this show. We are confident that Danny and the folks at Buy Two Way Radios offer the very best products and quality deals. Please visit their site by clicking here, to learn more about the two-way radios and other fine products for recreation, and for emergency preparedness, that they offer.

We have partnered with the fine folks at AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. If you would like to advertise with The Micah Hanks Program, all you have to do is email [email protected] or click the link below to get started: AdvertiseCast: Advertise with The Micah Hanks Program

If you are able, please consider supporting the following charities that are offering relief for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Visit our Coronavirus Charities Page to learn more.

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• 'The Mandalorian' Season 2 premiere is a strong start
• Sean Connery has passed away at age 90
• Huge spider assumed extinct in Britain discovered on MoD training site
• In a New Movie, COVID Mutates and America Is Still Locked Down in 2024
• Pristine 'fireball' meteorite contains extraterrestrial organic compounds
• Researchers examine drop in average body temperature over the past two decades
• Theresa May saved my life – now she's the only hope for the Human Rights Act

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Some of the most famous minds of the 19th century became swept up in the allure of Spiritualism and mediumship. No less among these had been Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who became one of the staunchest defenders of Spiritualism, even authoring a two-volume history of the religion. However, his friend Harry Houdini, while initially open to the possibility of mediumship as an avenue toward making contact with those who had crossed over, soon became convinced that it was a sham. In addition to placing strains on his friendship with Doyle, the experience pushed Houdini toward the pursuit of exposing all mediumship and paranormal claims as nonsense.

However, following Houdini's death on Halloween in 1926, even the world's greatest magician would become the target of attempts with reaching the dead through seances and mediumship. On this special Halloween edition of the program, we explore Houdini and Doyles relationship with the occult, and how even in death they each remained highly influential on the world of the occult.

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We have partnered with the fine folks at AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. If you would like to advertise with The Micah Hanks Program, all you have to do is email [email protected] or click the link below to get started: AdvertiseCast: Advertise with The Micah Hanks Program

If you are able, please consider supporting the following charities that are offering relief for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Visit our Coronavirus Charities Page to learn more.

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• Rare Halloween full moon will shine on Saturday
• NASA to announce mysterious moon discovery on Monday
• Cars can't crush the diabolical ironclad beetle, 2020's latest horror
• Do we have to toss Halloween out the window this year? Public Health experts weigh in
• Ireland, The Original Home of Halloween
• James Randi, dazzling magician and skeptic, dies at 92
• Harry Houdini, "A Magician Among the Spirits"
• Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Edge of the Unknown"
• An Actual Recording Of Arthur Conan Doyle's "Spirit" From A 1934 Séance
• Reports of Spiritual Contact With Late Magician Are Called "Piffle."
• Widow Says Medium in Trance Gave Key Words Left by the Magician.
• Freethinker Offers $25,000 for a "Spirit Communication" With Magician.
• 'He Has Not Come,' She Says at Hollywood Test on Tenth Anniversary of Death.

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It was an Autumn afternoon like any other. The date was October 24, 1961, and Joan Carolyn Risch had just returned with her daughter from shopping after a dentist's appointment earlier that day. Her husband Martin had traveled to New York on business, leaving at home Joan alone while her infant son slept upstairs, and her daughter Lillian played across the street at the home of their neighbors, the Barkers.

At around 2:15, Barbara Barker said she saw Joan across the street wearing what appeared to be a long trench coat, and perhaps carrying something red. The children playing nearby said they thought Joan had probably been chasing little David, who might have run out into the driveway. Mrs. Barker would have never guessed that this would be the last time she ever saw Joan Risch… a woman whose disappearance would remain one of the strangest and most disturbing events in Massachusetts history.

This week we are joined by Michael C. Bouchard, an author with decades in law enforcement whose book Masquerade examines the strange events leading up to the unsolved disappearance of Joan Risch.

The story doesn't end here... become an X Subscriber and get access to even more weekly content and monthly specials.

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We have partnered with the fine folks at AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. If you would like to advertise with The Micah Hanks Program, all you have to do is email [email protected] or click the link below to get started: AdvertiseCast: Advertise with The Micah Hanks Program

If you are able, please consider supporting the following charities that are offering relief for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Visit our Coronavirus Charities Page to learn more.

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• An Atlantis might wait beneath the Great Lakes
• Another 'man in jet pack' seen above LAX as China Airlines crew 'spots mysterious flier at 6,000ft' and FAA alerts cops
• MYSTERY: Is someone really flying around LAX in jet pack?
• The British Royal Navy is testing out jetpack assault teams
• Exoskeleton Suits Turn Factory Workers Into Human Robots
• Joan Carolyn Risch - The Charley Project
• Masquerade: The Joan Risch Cold Case - A Cop's Perspective
• Also by Michael C. Bouchard: Forever Searching: Lost in the Smoky Mountains

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The Second World War had barely ended by the time reports of "flying saucers" began to make headlines in 1947. What were these mysterious objects, and were they friends, or foes? Soon, speculation about what world superpower might possess such technology shifted to a novel proposition: what if they could be evidence of extraterrestrial visitation to Earth?

Although the flying saucers were a new development, ideas about life from other worlds was hardly anything new. This week, we go in search of the history behind the concept of extraterrestrial life, and how our ideas about it have evolved over time to include speculations about life on Mars, and whether the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis is indeed the best solution to the UFO mystery.

The story doesn't end here... become an X Subscriber and get access to even more weekly content and monthly specials.

Enjoy The Micah Hanks Program? Check out Micah's other podcasts here.

We have partnered with the fine folks at AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. If you would like to advertise with The Micah Hanks Program, all you have to do is email [email protected] or click the link below to get started: AdvertiseCast: Advertise with The Micah Hanks Program

If you are able, please consider supporting the following charities that are offering relief for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Visit our Coronavirus Charities Page to learn more.

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• NEWS: Lost Photo Of Lincoln Of His Deathbed Surfaces — But Some Historians Are Skeptical
• Fake Asteroid? NASA Expert IDs Mystery Object as Old Rocket
• UFO sighting is Mint; 1978 story of sighting over Clarenville and Random Island NL featured on new collector coin
• Retired RCMP officer remembers Clarenville UFO experience
• UFO sightings across Canada have spiked during the pandemic
• THE ET HYPOTHESIS: "Nikola Tesla Promises Communication With Mars" (1901)
• "A Signal From Mars"
• "Marconi Believes He is Receiving Signals From the Planets" (1920)
• The 1st UFO book? Forgotten Mysteries by R. DeWitt Miller
• FURTHER READING: Mars and its Canals by Percival Lowell
• Life on Other Worlds: The 20Th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate (Amazon)
• The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900 (Amazon)

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Music featured on The Micah Hanks Program includes songs composed by Caleb Hanks (The Clerk Chronicles), Decepticons (Dreamland, Start the Machine) and Micah Hanks. All songs are either in the public domain, Royalty Free, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, or are used with permission of the creators. Please note that some links to books and other items on this page may feature Amazon Associate links.

At the height of the Cold War, the entire world was on edge. Desperate times often lead to desperate measures, and during this tense period, the Central Intelligence Agency began a program aimed at testing to see if the human mind could be controlled. They aspired to become "mind hackers," and the program that resulted was Project MK Ultra, one of the most notorious endeavors ever undertaken by an agency within the U.S. government.

This week, we go in-depth into the history of the program, its operations, and the personalities behind the CIA's illegal quest to hack the human mind... all this, and more on this edition of The Micah Hanks Program.

The story doesn't end here... become an X Subscriber and get access to even more weekly content and monthly specials.

Enjoy The Micah Hanks Program? Check out Micah's other podcasts here.

We have partnered with the fine folks at AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. If you would like to advertise with The Micah Hanks Program, all you have to do is email [email protected] or click the link below to get started: AdvertiseCast: Advertise with The Micah Hanks Program

If you are able, please consider supporting the following charities that are offering relief for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Visit our Coronavirus Charities Page to learn more.

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• Bright Flash Lights up Dark Skies Over Parts of Eastern US
• Egypt unveils 59 ancient coffins in major archaeological find
• Evidence of a cat recognizing and mimicking human behavior
• Dinosaur feather study debunked
• Strange alien planet has weird orbit and scorching temperatures
• THE MIND HACKERS: MK-Ultra: A Brief History
• "The Cia Chemist Who Sought The Secrets Of Mind Control."
• Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents In Nixon Years
• President Gerald R. Ford's Executive Order 11905: United States Foreign Intelligence Activities
• C.I.A.; What Did the C.I.A. Do to His Father?
• O.S.S. Exhibition Catalogue

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Some have called it the "ultimate" Cold War-era urban legend. It is a story of two space programs: but rather than those of Soviet Russia and the United States, this tale involves the theory that apart from Russia's "public" program, there was much that it also kept hidden away in the world of black projects.

During the early years of the Space Race, a pair of Italian brothers began to intercept strange transmissions from within a makeshift command center outside Turin, Italy, where they claimed to have recorded evidence of Soviet space missions that went horribly wrong. If true, such claims could shed new light on the hidden history of space exploration, and the grim lengths that some were willing to go to, which might have included Russian cosmonauts who went into space... and never came back.

Were secret space missions carried out by the USSR that led to cosmonauts being lost in space? This week, we go in search of answers to the secrets of the Soviet space program.

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We have partnered with the fine folks at AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. If you would like to advertise with The Micah Hanks Program, all you have to do is email [email protected] or click the link below to get started: AdvertiseCast: Advertise with The Micah Hanks Program

If you are able, please consider supporting the following charities that are offering relief for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Visit our Coronavirus Charities Page to learn more.

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• NEWS: A Student Just Proved Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Possible
• 'Grand claims' of life on Venus lack evidence, skeptics say
• LOST IN SPACE: The Lost Soviet Cosmonauts
• The Story of "Italy's Amazing Space Watchers"
• A Skeptical Take on Lost Cosmonaut Rumors
• Notes on the space tracking and sensational claims of the Judica-Cordiglia brothers
• Phantoms in Space: James Oberg Investigates

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Last week, the search for extraterrestrial life got quite a boost after a team of researchers announced that they may have discovered signs of life on one of Earth's nearest and least hospitable neighboring planets, Venus.

It would be ironic if we were to discover the likely presence of life on such an otherwise inhospitable world, especially since this had been the planet which figured heavily into the early claims of many of the so-called "contactees." These individuals began coming forward in the middle 1950s with (often absurd) stories of having met benevolent space brothers, who frequently hailed from planets like Venus.

This week, we revisit the tales of the contactee era, along with the bizarre story "Valiant Thor," a purported Venusian visitor that came to Earth and even spent several years in the Nation's Capital.

The story doesn't end here... become an X Subscriber and get access to even more weekly content and monthly specials.

Enjoy The Micah Hanks Program? Check out Micah's other podcasts here.

We have partnered with the fine folks at AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. If you would like to advertise with The Micah Hanks Program, all you have to do is email [email protected] or click the link below to get started: AdvertiseCast: Advertise with The Micah Hanks Program

If you are able, please consider supporting the following charities that are offering relief for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Visit our Coronavirus Charities Page to learn more.

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• NEWS: Here comes the first day of fall! The autumnal equinox is Tuesday
• Update on Arecibo Observatory Facility After Telescope Damage
• Astronomers Have Discovered a Surprise Asteroid Orbiting Closer to The Sun Than Venus
• UFO UPDATE: Former Defense Minister: If you see a UFO, take as many photos as possible
• Japan Defense Ministry to draft UFO protocols in response to U.S. footage
• Former Blink-182 Member Claims He Helped Set Up Briefings With Donald Trump About Aliens
• THE CONTACTEES: A Brief History of Contactee Claims
• The Bizarre Story of Valiant Thor
• Dunning on Stranges and Harley Andrew Byrd
• Huck Magazine Article on the Aetherius Society

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On Monday, Oct 22, 1973, the Ohio Lancaster Eagle-Gazette carried a most unusual headline. "Helicopter Nearly Tangles With UFO" the story read, which recounted a harrowing tale of an Army Captain, Lawrence Coyne, and three other servicemen who had the fright of their lives a few days earlier, while flying back to Cleveland after a routine medical examination.

1973 was one of the most significant years in the history of UFO sightings, and what has become known as "The Coyne Encounter" was one of the many that occurred that year which caused it to be so memorable. This week, we explore this notable incident in-depth, as we look at the primary narrative, what additional witnesses say they saw, and how skeptics attempted to solve this lasting UFO mystery.

Chapters in This Episode

• Intro 0:00
• News 3:29
• Life on Venus? 16:56
• Forbidden Knowledge 24:07
• I: The Coyne UFO Encounter 35:16
• II: Background 49:22
• Shades of Valentich 59:12
• III: Comparisons: Craft Analysis 1:03:45
• IV: Dubious Skepticism 1:24:37
• V: Additional Witnesses 1:31:29

Coronavirus Charities: If you are able, please consider supporting the following charities that are offering relief for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic:

• CDC Foundation Coronavirus Relief
• No Kid Hungry Responds to Coronavirus
• Direct Relief: Coronavirus Pandemic
• American Red Cross: Give Blood
• Doctors Without Borders: COVID 19
• Feeding America
• Meals on Wheels
• Homeless Shelter Directory

Enjoy The Micah Hanks Program? Check out Micah's other podcasts here.

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• Protector of Brazil's Indigenous Groups Fatally Shot With Arrow by Isolated Tribe
• Wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington: Detroit, Oregon, looks like a bomb went off
• COVID-19 quarantine was lonely and isolating. Then Bigfoot stepped in.
• Is There a Way to Darken Satellites for Astronomers?
• NASA is hiring private contractors to retrieve moon dust
• Phosphine Detected In The Atmosphere of Venus - An Indicator of Possible Life?
• Army Helicopter's UFO Scare Still A Mystery, 40 Years Later

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