Episodes

Oops! Forgot to upload the episode. In this one, we get the denoument of the Budd Hopkins Manhattan alien abduction story. Next time, we hear from more skeptical, but still sympathetic, researchers who have examined abduction...

In this episode, we wrap with the sad end of John Mack's once-fine career, then dive deeply into the most "important" "alien" "abduction" that pioneering researcher Budd Hopkins ever covered. Yes, this is the story of a woman...

In which we review the downfall of a once-respected psychiatrist, as John Mack publishes his findings only to have them completely torn apart by a wide variety of critics. Worse, we learn how he was taken in by an undercover ...

In this episode, we wrap up the last bit of Strieber, before turning our attention to John Mack, a celebrated and respected psychiatrist who, late in his career, turned his attention to investigating, and then advocating for ...

Hearkening back to high school English class, we compare and contrast my and Whitley Strieber's unusual experiences. Also, we hear from my real-life parents, who do their best to recall what really happened with my lightning ...

Yes, it really happened.

Whitley Strieber's abduction, and the film it inspired

How the way we look at abductions changed between the 1970s and the 1990s

Barney and Betty Hill, part 5

Barney and Betty Hill, part 4

Barney and Betty Hill, part 3

Barney and Betty Hill, part 2

Barney and Betty Hill, part 1

We're back for 2025. This episode, we wrap up the story of The Seekers, the failure of their 1950s UFO prophecy, and the book that made them famous. We also dive into the ways cognitive dissonance theory interacts with other ...

The last part of our encore presentation. hope you enjoyed it--see you next week. In which Fletcher slowly loses what matters most to him, secures his legend, and goes down, senselessly, in a hail of bullets. Full lyrics, cre...

Part IV of our re-post of the best thing we've done. In which Fletcher finally gets on the radio, tells us what 2001: A Space Odyssey is really about, and sees his life begin to fall apart. theparanoidstrain.com facebook.com/...

In part 3, we discuss our hero's magnum opus. theparanoidstrain.com facebook.com/groups/theparanoidstrain Listen to the music as an album on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/paranoidstrainorchestra/sets/upon-a-red-horse-act...

Part 2 of our repeat posting of Upon A Red Horse in honor of the New Year. Original liner notes follow In which Fletcher, our hero, becomes a big deal in the UFO world. And reveals what really happened to JFK. theparanoidstra...

Because it's the holidays, and because we know many of you haven't had the chance to hear it, we re-present the best thing we've ever done. Part 1 of 5. The original liner notes follow: In which we hear the origin story of Ma...

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 apo...

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 adminis...

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...

Plus the very last Roswell stuff.

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...