The Paranoid Strain

Dec 10 2024 162 ep. 54 mins 1k
The Paranoid Strain Podcast artwork

The podcast that explains why so many people believe ridiculous conspiracy theories.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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New! Unidentified--When UFO prophecy fails. Big time.

Dec 10 2024 28 mins  
It'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

New! Unidentified--The fascinating forgery of the MJ-12 UFO documents

Nov 25 2024 31 mins  
The 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. Hosted on Aca

New! Unidentified--Art Bell's time travelers and antichrists

Nov 12 2024 88 mins  
Yes, 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 we

New! Unidentified--From the High Desert...it's time for Art Bell

Oct 29 2024 29 mins  
After 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

New! Unidentified--Roswell--It wasn't aliens, dummies.

Oct 15 2024 31 mins  
As 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.c

New! Unidentified--Roswell: The mortician's tale, and the little alien bodies

Oct 01 2024 28 mins  
Continuing 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. Hosted on Acast. See acas

New! Unidentifed--So, what really happened at Roswell?

Sep 17 2024 31 mins  
We'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

Unidentified--Interlude

Sep 10 2024 4 mins  
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

New! Unidentified--The Roswell incident (as told by an expert UFO believer)

Aug 27 2024 43 mins  
This 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 kno

New! Unidentified--The pre-UFOs that set the stage for Roswell

Aug 13 2024 30 mins  
Roswell is right around the corner, but first let's consider the unidentified objects that appeared in the night skies before everybody decided they were shaped like saucers. To wit, we'll cover The War of the Worlds, the foo fighter phenomenon, a strange tale of crashed Martians in late-19th Century Texas, and much more. Next time--we go full Roswell, New Mexico. Hosted on Acast.