Paranormal conference season is here, and in 2020 every convention was going online. So on this #ParanormalTuesday, Mike and Wendy take a break from interviews for an open conversation: what would they like to see at paranormal conventions?
They look back on the conferences they've attended since around 2015 and ask whether the field has gotten a bit stuck. Everyone has the tools they like, and once in a while a new gadget, like the SLS camera with its stick figures, becomes popular overnight. But are we getting closer to answers?
Mike brings up Stanton Friedman, who spent his whole life defending ufology and never got disclosure. As he puts it, you don't need everything you've ever believed to be proven right. You just need one alien to show up. The hosts call for more real experiments, controlled and repeatable, drawing on Mike's psychology background and his college ganzfeld experiment, a procedure that comes out of the same research tradition as the Zener cards.
They also wrestle with the big questions. What if we're alone in the universe, or what if other life exists but isn't technologically advanced? What about non-human consciousness, elemental beings, or the idea that we're living in a simulation?
The episode closes with a Sunspot song dedicated to Art Bell and the wild Open Line Fridays on Coast to Coast AM, where anyone in the country could call in and say whatever they wanted.