
Astonishing Legends Charles Fort - Our Supernatural Father Part 1
Mar 27, 2022
02:07:54
Charles Fort's Enduring Legacy
- Charles Fort pioneered gathering bizarre phenomena reports into consolidated volumes despite ridicule.
- His work inspired the term "Fortean" and numerous podcasts, networks, and fiction worldwide.
Fort's Skepticism of Explanations
- Fort skeptically questioned mundane explanations, like why frogs rained without accompanying pond debris.
- He challenged accepted scientific reasons by asking why expected evidence was missing.
Harsh Childhood Shapes Fort
- Fort had a harsh childhood, including physical abuse and solitary confinement by his father.
- These experiences greatly shaped his resilient and contrarian character later expressed in his work.
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Introduction
00:00 • 1min
Who Was Charles Fort?
01:25 • 1min
Charles Boy Ford, Wild Talents, Joins Us to Night
02:54 • 4min
Mister Fort - The Man Who Invented the Supernatural
07:07 • 4min
Astonishing Legends - A Quote From John Knowles
11:12 • 1min
The Story of a Blanket for Tiana
12:35 • 4min
Astonishing Legends in Two Thousand and 14
16:42 • 2min
The Story of Frogs, Blood, and the Meat Shower Man, by Charles Fort
18:22 • 4min
The Story of Charles Forton
22:22 • 4min
What's the Difference?
26:46 • 1min
Why Does It Rain Frogs From the Sky?
28:05 • 4min
Charles Fort Quotes - Astonishing Legends
32:21 • 5min
The Fort Boys, a Charles Nelson Rockefeller
37:35 • 5min
Toddy's Dad Was a Stamp Collector and a Naturalist.
43:04 • 4min
What's the Difference Between Parenting and Child Raising?
47:04 • 2min
The Kingly Business
49:14 • 3min
Charles Fort - The Man Who Invented the Supernatural
51:58 • 4min
The Fort's Approach to Physicists
55:31 • 2min
The Dog Who Said Good Morning
57:25 • 5min
I'm Going to Give You Nine Pies
01:02:13 • 6min
Liquid Iv in Bulk
01:07:58 • 2min
Theodore Dreiser - A Novelist's Introduction
01:10:18 • 6min
'Sister Carrie' by Charles Fort - A Book Review
01:15:49 • 6min
Theodore Dreiser and Charles Fort
01:21:26 • 5min
The Outcast Manufacturers - A Little Excerpt
01:26:45 • 4min
The Outcast Manufacturers and Theodore Dreiser
01:30:19 • 5min
Charles Fort's Book X
01:35:44 • 2min
The Talking Dog
01:37:29 • 5min
The Manuscript of X
01:42:30 • 2min
Are There Various Worlds One Within Another?
01:44:48 • 3min
What's the Point of a Fort?
01:47:29 • 5min
X, the Letter Y
01:52:14 • 4min
The Martial Project, a Non Prophet Journalism Ages Web Side About Criminal Justice
01:56:38 • 4min
Dodding Is Junk Science
02:00:18 • 3min
Is There a Trout in the Milk?
02:03:45 • 3min
Psychics and Psychiatry
02:06:19 • 6min
The Eye Pad on the Railing
02:11:55 • 6min
Perhaps most everyone listening to this show is familiar with the term "Fortean," meaning something related to the paranormal, the supernatural, or just generally strange phenomena. But where did that term come from? How did "Forteana" come to describe many of the topics we cover on the podcast? We owe that cognomen and a good deal of our inspiration for our reportage to the work of one man, Charles Hoy Fort. Fort (b. August 6, 1874 - d. May 3, 1932) was a journalist, author, and researcher best known for his collection of accounts of extraordinary incidents and bizarre phenomena. These reports and Fort's commentaries and speculations on them mostly ended up in four books: The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). Within these volumes of nonfiction are found testimonies of rains of meat, frogs, blood, manna, black rain, and unbelievably large stones, poltergeists and spontaneous human combustion, vampires, animal mutilations, UFOs, and alien abductions – anomalies we're familiar with nowadays. Fort is also widely credited for coining the term "teleportation." However, there were likely no other compilations of these incredible tales in Fort's time or before, aside from local newspaper reports. For that reason alone, those of us who are fascinated by such subjects owe him a debt of gratitude. For over 30 years, Fort pored over magazines, books, newspapers, and scientific journals in New York and London libraries and had amassed thousands of notes on odd occurrences. By his own account, Fort would become discouraged by the futility of his endeavors and purpose and claimed to have tossed into the wind around 48,000 notes once while sitting on a park bench at The Cloisters in New York City. Yet his defiance at the dismissal or ridicule from contemporary scientists, or the mystification by religious thinking about these happenings, kept him working until the end. Fort's theories about the causes of such impossibilities would evolve or vacillate throughout his oeuvre, sometimes even within the same book. Whether speculating that the paranormal is the prank of some kind of "Cosmic Joker," to these aberrations being the vestigial byproducts of extraordinary primordial human survival skills, Fort remained compelled by their occurrences regardless. As suggested by the title, The Book of the Damned, Fort postulated that the facts of these cases were "damned" to be excluded by science. Yet no amount of scoffing from anyone would keep the data from these baffling events from proceeding – "they'll march" on, and so did Charles Hoy Fort. We're glad that they, and he, did.
Visit our webpage for this episode for a lot more information!
Visit our webpage for this episode for a lot more information!
