Kenn Thomas was in town for the last few days, so we took an hour to make a short “pop-up” interview about the impending release on October 26th of the (supposedly) last secret government files on the JFK assassination. Kenn believes that there will be some new information on Lee Harvey Oswald’s suspected visit to Mexico City as part of his connection to the intel community. We also discussed a new letter from Uri Geller saying he will confirm some of the details if they are forthcoming, as he claims to have done some psychic spying in regards to the events surrounding the killing. We also took the time to discuss Kenn’s new book Trumpocalypse Now! and his contention that the 45th President has used the idea of conspiracies as one of his tools for popularity. He also believes that the idea that Senator Ted Cruz’ father was connected with Oswald actually makes him a patriot rather than a villian (as Trump has suggested) since Kenn thinks they were trying to infiltrate pro-Castro groups, not join them as supporters. We visited Marilyn Monroe’s grave and completed the last 5 minutes of the interview there, talking about an article by Nick Redfern concerning what she might have known about UFOs and Area 51. Photo: Kenn also wanted to visit the grave of actor William Frawley, so I took him there. DIRECT LINK

Another in our occasional discussions of the book UFOs: Reframing the Debate was conducted at a park and in a pub in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I was visiting for a few days and both Susan and Robert were amazing hosts and made sure I had no reason to be alone or bored. We delved into the merits of the criticisms of the book and how our colleague Micah Hanks has called for renewed attention to altered states of consciousness and how this is important to the study of anomalistic experiences. We also talked about the difference between an unexpected, sudden experience and one that might be considered an “altered state.” Continuing the witness-centered theme, we debated the merits of the internal vs. the external narrative of a weird encounter and how language and telling the story changes the initial experience. I was challenged to defend my co-creation hypothesis and how that might change with multiple witnesses. We also looked at the idea that strange encounters may either be encoded in the DNA across generations, or give individuals a propensity for this. We ended with a back-and-forth on liminal states and Susan shared some of her own. This was a very fruitful discussion at the sort of high level that always excites me. Apologies for the occasional quality issues in the first 43 minutes. I tried to filter out all the wind noise, because I felt this interview was too important to lose. DIRECT LINK

When Royce Myers went to a UFO convention in the early 1990s, Mexican UFO promoter Jaime Maussan informed him that stars were parts of vast alien “motherships,” which were moving slowly across the sky every night. This (and other experiences) convinced him that some (or many) of those who are studying and promoting UFO study might not be looking at the subject with a logical mindset. He believes that the situation has gotten worse since then. With that in mind Myers founded the UFO Watchdog site in 1998 to investigate and document abuses of trust and lapses of logic and sanity in the field. In 2003, Myers was sued for libel by UFO personality Sean David Morton. Nothing that Myers had published on his site was found to be untrue and Morton was ultimately ordered to pay Myers’ $16,000 in legal fees. We talked about this and the recent sentencing of Morton and his wife for attempting to defraud the IRS out of $4,800,000 and various private citizens of thousands more. In the 1900s, Myers also investigated UFO sightings and cattle mutilations, and spoke  about some strange and inexplicable situations and reports he received. In the last half of the show, we also talked about other recent scandals and issues in the field, such as the Stan Romanek story and the Peruvian mummy controversy. DIRECT LINK

Time to catch up with Tim Binnall of Binnall of America and a long time friend and supporter of this show. This program was recorded in early August, before fugitive and itinerant psychic and scam artist Sean David Morton was caught and jailed to await sentencing, after his relatively lengthy 61 days on the lam. We discussed that situation and moved on to the mysterious Armen Victorian, who was a peripheral, but noted personality in UFO circles in the 1990s. I recalled the strange phone call I received from him. The late researcher and author Jim Marrs had a distinct influence on Tim’s entry into the field of conspiracy, the paranormal and other aspects of the strange. He was Tim’s first interview and opened this season of his podcast, which is one reason why Tim has decided to stop producing the show and move on to other projects (after Marrs’ recent untimely death.) At the end, we spent a few minutes on the East Coast Paraconference. Photo: Tim at the Aetherius Society world headquarters in Hollywood. DIRECT LINK

My longtime friend Miles Lewis and I always have lots to talk about. This time, we started out with a story I read recently that dealt with people taking megadoses (meaning 1000x the normal amount) of LSD and how they might be short-circuiting their brains. With that out of the way, we discussed the new book on Gef, the Talking Mongoose and our recent trip to the Roswell 70th Anniversary festivities and conferences. The talk roamed through a discussion of faked photos and the Stan Romanek drama before taking a detour into the subject of wishing machines. Then, Miles told me about his experience with a torturous mystery “hum” that plagued him for 26 days, and the community of people who hear various anomalous (and long-term) tones and hums. I asked if he wanted to move on to the MUFON “death spiral” as he calls it. He also talked about his many years of experience with the organization at the local level and how this is sometimes very different than the public perception of the group. There was a bit of talk on the scandal of selling confidential results and records of abductee research. For a bit of hope, we discussed how people can create new networks of detection, reporting, and study of UFOs. Photo: Miles speaks at Roswell, 2017 DIRECT LINK