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The Paranoid Strain — Society & Culture
The Paranoid Strain

The podcast that explains why so many people believe ridiculous conspiracy theories.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Copyright: © 2017-2019

Latest Episodes:

New! Unidentified--Is the Lady of Fatima also a UFO? Sep 29, 2026

Show notes

This time, we consider how our three authors (Jung, Vallee, and Pasulka) think and talk about the overlap between the Venn diagrams of religious revelation and UFO encounter. There's a surprising number of similarities between the two, and we have a lot of fun considering that. Hope you like it. See you in a couple of weeks.

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New! Unidentified--Uri Geller pretends to talk to UFOs Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

We trek back to the 1970s, a ridiculous time when people believed all kinds of frivolous nonsense--not like our thoughtful, fact-based era, no siree! Anyway, a guy back then claimed to bend spoons with his mind. He also claimed to speak to aliens who were visiting Earth from UFOs. Our author Jacques Vallee believes some of this, which isn't great. But he doesn't believe all of it, which--thank goodness for small favors. Let's learn how to pretend to bend cutlery with psychic power!

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New! Unidentified--Jacques Vallee's control thesis Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

Vallee is an interesting guy, and he has one of the most fascinating takes I've heard on what UFOs might actually represent. I mean, I don't buy it, exactly, but it's at least semi-coherent, and unquestionably interesting. Enjoy!

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New! Unidentified--UFOs as Jungian archetype Aug 18, 2026

Show notes

We're finished with the mirage men, and now we'll spend a few episodes considering what it all means, you know? And by "it all", I mean "UFOs". We'll start with one of the first books published about UFOs by a major cultural figure. Carl Jung's Flying Saucers--A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky was first published in 1957, at the height of the first UFO craze. He has some interesting things to say, and also a bunch of cranky diatribes and paeans to nonsense, so we'll have a nice time taking a closer look.

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New! Unidentified--The translator spills the beans on CIA "UFOs" Aug 04, 2026

Show notes

Thanks to our interviewee Tanner Boyle, we wrap up the story of the fascinating Mr. Nedelcovic and the CIA mission that may have turned into the first modern alien abduction story. Next time, we get philosophical.

DON'T MISS: I was a guest on this excellent video--watch it, and I encourage you to subscribe. It's a great channel: Mirage Men - The Real UFO Coverup (it's not what you think)

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New! Unidentified--The CIA, the Translator, and the first modern abduction Jul 21, 2026

Show notes

For this episode and the next, we're covering a story I thought we were going to skip. But then, I found out that a very mysterious figure may, way back in the 1970s, have explained this even older story in a way that can shed light on the full extent of CIA-funded UFO fuckery, well beyond the borders of the U.S. Featuring a fantastic interview with perhaps the world's foremost expert on Bosco Nedelcovic. What more could you want? (I promise this will all make sense shortly).

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New! Unidentified--Project Serpo is disinformation, but can we blame Doty? Jul 07, 2026

Show notes

As we keep peeling away the many lies of Richard Doty and his Air Force handlers, we come to Project Serpo, a wild and essentially unbelievable story that nonetheless riled up the UFO world in the 2000s. Was Doty behind it? Hart to be sure, but the evidence seems strong.

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New! Unidentified--The disinformation agent versus Art Bell Jun 23, 2026

Show notes

In an event that, for our tastes, amounts to Richard Doty's disinformation chocolate landing in Art Bell's kingdom of weirdness peanut butter, we dive deep on a 2005 episode of Coast to Coast AM where the supposedly former disinformation agent faces the music under the intermittently pointed questioning of the normally gregarious host. Next time, we wrap Mirage Men with more evidence that (all? most? a great deal) of the key events of UFOs in the Cold War period were deliberately engineered by government agents.

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New! Unidentified--How the military destroyed Paul Bennewitz's sanity Jun 09, 2026

Show notes

We continue our quest to learn how and why the air force's intelligence agents--specifically one Richard Doty--fed the UFO delusions of scientist and entrepreneur Paul Bennowitz until his brain broke. It's a fascinating and sad story. Next time--Doty answers for his crimes.

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New! Unidentified--The Air Force invents a UFO conspiracy May 27, 2026

Show notes

This time, we start telling the sad story of Paul Bennewitz, a brilliant if somewhat eccentric engineer and entrepreneur who shared his UFO findings with the government, only to have them use his fascination with these phenomena to drive him insane. The real object? Confusing the broader UFO community. It's a fascinating story, if a rather dark one.

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