Jun 08 2009
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Interview on the Paracast
This week, David Biedny and Gene Steinberg of the Paracast interviewed me on a wide range of subjects, including UFO “reality,” human perception, Robert Anton Wilson, Tim Leary, government spies, and my UFO reading list. I would like to recommend the show to our readers as one of the few places to hear engaging discussion on the paranormal with a high signal-to-noise ratio. You can also join the discussion forums to interact with others who have a low tolerance for willful stupidity.
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June 8th, 2009 at 9:19 am
That was a good effort to defend Tim Leary, Greg, and I’m sure he appreciates it from acid heaven. Those Paracast guys are total pseudo-intellectual bozos, though. They obviously just “get” things enough to sell their t-shirts. They really came off sounding amateurish and childish by hurtling such insults at Leary. I would have hung up on them on the spot, of course, since otherwise they’re just dull and you had to spend a lot of time explaining the obvious to them.
(Howard Blum, btw, not Ralph)
June 8th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Kenn,
Wow. You took the time to listen to the show.
Apparently you don’t care if you are on the show again! I don’t think that they’re as bad as you make them out to be, but they do want to point out fuzzy thinking, which I something I don’t want to spend any time fighting against.
Just because David B. thinks Leary was muddle-headed doesn’t mean I have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Leary might have been stoned when he gave that talk!
June 8th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Well then more power to Leary! Tim Leary being stoned doesn’t give David B. the right too call him a moron, etc.–I mean, what would you expect? That was just crude and as a friend of Leary’s (and Wilson’s) I found it personally offensive.
But more than that, I’d rather be in the company of a backwater Christian who thinks UFOs come from Satan than someone like these babies drowning in the bathwater of their half-educated views about Wilson, Leary etc. I’ll go to the source if I want to hit that.
I can’t remember what pissed me off the time I did their show, but it was really stupid. No, I have no desire to be on their show again. I hope you weren’t holding back any opinions for the sake of not upsetting these bottom feeders.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Wowsers.
I guess I could understand having a strong reaction to someone insulting a friend.
If I remember correctly Kenn, yours was a good interview right? I thought it was but maybe Im misremembering.
As far as the show, Greg this is something that I’m genuinely curious about… do you think the producer of that TV show just lied to RH (about Doty being Falcon) just to get him off his back? Is that RH’s only source for that opinion? I find it interesting that he sounds quite convinced.
BTW, as a Anton Wilson virgin I’m not really sure where to start. Do you recommend anything as a ‘must read’ book to start with?
June 8th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I do indeed have some issues with Leary, and more than a couple of mutual friends disagree with me on my opinions about him. Fine, perhaps I happened to see him speak on one of his bad days, meanwhile, I’m simply not very impressed with him, and I know that I was not alone in that sentiment that day at ILM when he appeared as a special lunch-hour “speaker” there in 1991 - he was not so much stoned as he was confused and intellectually sloppy.
Meanwhile, I happen to think the world of RAW, and consider him one of the more intelligent folks to have ever walked on the face of this planet. By contrast to Leary, the couple of times I saw him speak, Bob was buzzed while also being absolutely on-target with his observations and incredibly insightful thoughts. So I’m not sure why Thomas thinks I lump him in with Leary, perhaps it’s indicative of his own reactionary attitude towards me.
Kenn hates the Paracast, oh well, he’s entitled to his opinion as well. And I surely don’t need to remind anyone what they say about opinions and anuses.
dB
June 8th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Good lord. Why would anyone lump RAW in with Leary. RAW loved Leary. Everything he did was predicated on Leary. Anyone who reads even one of RAW’s books all the way through knows this. dB here is talking through his opinion.
“Reactionary attitude”–haha! I guess Cliff’s Notes has one on Karl Marx too.
RAW’s best work can be found in the original Illuminatus! trilogy and the Cosmic Trigger books. Of his essays, I like Right Where You Are Sitting Now, particularly the essay on the French statistician Anderla, who calculated the accelerating information flow. A reader should be able to come away from that with more than just cooing about its “incredibly insightful thoughts”. Hoo boy.
RAW would really think that what was said on that show about Tim Leary stinks. It owes both men an apology.
I don’t really remember much about whatever interview I did on it–there are so many of these little webcasts–just that it ended with similar insults being tossed my way for many days afterward in its forum. Really childish stuff.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Hey, it just occurred to me that the old boy could stand a correction. If we take e-prime seriously (the practice of reducing passive sentence structure by avoiding the verb “to be”, as Greg explained on that program), RAW should have titled Right Where You Are Sitting Now differently. He should have called it Right Where You Now Sit.
“)
June 8th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Kenn Thomas, speaker for the dead.
Yeah, tell me about _my_ ego…
Kenny, don’t fret, we’ll never waste our precious time having you back on our “little webcast”.
dB
June 8th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
I think you made my point there about childishness, deebs. Here’s to one day that you might understand why RAW probably would have disliked you calling his good friend and mentor insulting names on your little computer, from which I am happily blacklisted.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Hi all
- Well this interview area was set to get many of us riled in one way or another. Last year I saw Kenn talk in Liverpool, England and liked his style then - I now like him even more for being one of the FEW researchers who aren’t concerned about their net ‘PR rating’ and speak up about these pseudo-rationalist hosts who really need to stay firmly in a 1970s paranormal reality tunnel. Let’s face it - for all their claims to separate the UFOlogical wheat from the chaff they, in my mind, just don’t cut it when it comes to handling anything more than ghosts and archaic banter over Roswell.
Anyone who generalises Tim Leary’s contribution to post-war culture as ‘moronic’ I’m afraid immediately shows their inability to see things from the kaleidoscopic, mosaic-like structure that is undoubtedly demanded when examining things through the lens of the UFO either/and/or a psychedelic framework. To mistake Leary’s occasional liaisons with the CIA post Black Panther period or assuming just because the CIA bought a large chunk of Lysergic acid from Sandoz ergo [get it!?] he was part of a counter-cultural mind-op is plain silly. This argument has been done to death and I’ve never seen anyone present a case that impacted significantly on what he achieved in other ways.
The Paracast has this dubious fetish for ‘intellectual integrity’ - apparently Leary was lacking this and Biedny made sure Lloyd Pye was told something similar in their awful encounter with him on the show. Leary was an academic and also a prankster - where is it written that you should carry out a process of cultural catalysation with ‘intellectual integrity’? - This was the whole reason Leary left the academic framework.
A wider issue is perhaps that The Paracast take their highly dubious definition of intellect and what constitutes ‘proof’ into the wider UFO and exopolitical field. This has led to numerous clashes with guests that genuinely had something to say but they won’t be back anytime soon I suspect. I would be as bold as to suggest that their take on these issues is pretty dated - it’s a ‘paranormal’ meta-framework that no longer applies to complex cases that require a degree of parallel processing as seen in the psychedelic space - one that to an extent exists *outside* the true/hoax framework that Biedny and Steinberg are so fond of.
I think it’s fair to suggest that discussion of Leary and psychedelic culture as well as the link between entheogenic experiences and the iconic ‘Saucer’ demands those involved to have seriously perturbed their nervous systems. Just as when I asked, Jeremy Vaeni admitted he hadn’t tried any serious psychoactive prior to interviewing Dennis McKenna - I feel The Paracast should give out a similar disclaimer prior to any discussions approaching these areas. Biedny may claim to have experience in this area - but I’d suggest *if* it did ever happen - the experience needs repeating at a higher dose and more frequently. There’s a certain humility in the face of complex issues such as the role of the UFO that is lacking from the Paracast as a whole.
I’m pleased you went on though Greg and I wish more guests would tackle the topics you do in the manner which you did. Kudos to you and Kenn.
PS: Your Peter Robbins interview is great.
davID, Exopolitics UK
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June 9th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Thanks Kenn, for the book suggestions. FWIW I remember enjoying all of your Paracast appearances (after checking I remembered you had had quite a few visits).
@davID, I find it ironic that someone who associates with the ‘Exopolitical “Movement”‘ to such an extent that they promote it in their signature, would attempt to take others to task about intellectual integrity.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:36 am
I think The Paracast is awesome.
June 14th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Gareth,
Been away from the UFOs for a few days…
Thanks for the kudos.
I don’t know how (T.V. producer) Seligman got Doty ID’d as Falcon. Why a television producer should be privy to information that escapes everyone else is curious to me.
It’s just not that important to me to check up on it. Actually, it’s up to Hastings, as he came up with the info. He has not answered on the source (for Seligman’s quote/opinion) yet, or indeed his other source for the “Doty was Falcon” theory, which was Doty himself (who told this to Linda Howe.)
June 14th, 2009 at 9:40 am
David,
Thanks for your compliments. I don’t know if we would agree on everything, but the fact that you listened to the program is more than most people are willing to do.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Gareth wrote:
“@davID, I find it ironic that someone who associates with the Exopolitical Movement ” [snipped]
- Exactly the tired response I expected from a Paracast groupie on the exopolitics issue. ZZzzz. Old hat.
Let’s just leave it agreeing that your sense of irony and mine are at polar opposites.
=