April 5, 2026 — Palmer & Shaver: Dean Bertram

The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio

The Paracast Company

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3.3 • 691 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2026

⏱️ 110 minutes

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Summary

Gene and Geneva present a return visit from Dean Bertram, who has studied the influence of sci-fi and paranormal pioneer Ray Palmer and his sometimes partner, Richard Shaver, during the early days of the modern flying saucer era. He is currently shooting a feature documentary about Palmer and Shaver, and the birth of modern UFO belief, titled “The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers.” A short, stand-alone segment from that upcoming film, “The Shaver Mystery,” has been touring the film festival circuit for almost 2 years, and has won over a dozen awards, including ten awards for “Best Short Documentary.” Dean has a PhD in history from the University of Sydney, Australia. His doctoral dissertation was titled “Flying Saucer Culture: An Historical Survey of American UFO Belief,” and his writings have featured in a range of publications, including Fortean Times, People Magazine, The Spectator, and The Australian. He hosts the podcast Talking Weird on the Untold Radio Network. Wisconsin. His site: www.theshavermystery.com.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're in the Paracast. You're in the Paracast, the gold standard of paranormal radio.
0:28.2	And now, here's Gene Steinberg.
0:32.7	Return with us now to those thrilling days of yes, no, I'm not going to do that.
0:39.3	But we are kind of going back through time through the official Paracast Time Machine and I'm joined of course by
0:44.9	Geneva and by Dean Bertram who returns to the show and we're talking about his new
0:52.6	movie documentary okay his new movie documentary.
0:55.3	Okay, his new movie documentary.
0:58.5	It's all about the man who invented flying saucers.
1:03.5	It doesn't mean he built a flying saucer.
1:05.9	Okay, okay?
1:07.3	This guy didn't build a flying saucer.
1:10.2	But why do we say, Dean, that Ray Palmer is the guy who invented flying saucers?
1:17.9	That's a great question, and there's obviously many points to the answer.
1:22.8	I think it's worth noting, as I've talked to you before, and as you well know, but maybe all of your listeners don't, that it was John Keel that popularized the phrase. He suggested that Raymond Palmer, who we're talking about today, was the man who invented flying sources in an article in 14 times, as well as in an earlier article he wrote for a pop culture journal. He said essentially the same thing. So this is going back to the mid-70s and early 80s when John Kiel said that.
1:46.7	Mind you, the FBI had made similar claims in reports when they'd investigated Palmer earlier in the source of history in 1947.
1:54.4	They thought maybe Palmer's writings in the magazine amazing stories where he popularized something called the shaver mystery
2:01.3	and also had all kinds of 40 in tales in what was originally a science fiction magazine,
2:05.9	became increasingly a magazine interested in, I suppose, anomalous and 14 events,
2:11.3	that he popularized the idea so much of advanced alien beings in space-faring vehicles that America was ready for it when the people
2:20.5	started seeing strange things in the skies in 47. Now also the arch-skeptic Donald Menzel also
2:26.0	suggested something similar that the whole flying saucer thing was pretty much kicked off by
2:29.5	Ray Palmer in the pages of amazing stories and then onwards through fate and through Flying Sources magazine,
	...

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