Historian Greg Eghigian Explores the UFO Culture

The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio

The Paracast Company

Science, News, Society & Culture

3.4 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2024

⏱️ 110 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Gene and cohost Tim Swartz explore the fascinating world of UFO culture with historian Greg Eghigian, author of “After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon.” The book is the result of researching the history of the global fascination with unidentified flying objects and aliens (a fascination for him since childhood). In this discussion, the Hollywood connection to the UFO mystery is explored. And, by the way, Gene is mentioned as one of the book’s sources. Eghigian’s next book project will examine the controversy surrounding the alien abduction phenomenon. In his “civilian life,” he is a Professor of History and Bioethics at Penn State University (USA). He is a historian of science and medicine, specializing in studying the ways in which society thinks about and treats people, ideas, and behaviors it considers to be odd or dangerous. He has written books and articles about the history of disability, the history of madness, and the history of criminality, among other things.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-paracast-the-gold-standard-of-paranormal-radio--6203433/support.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're in the Paracast. You're in the Paracast, the gold standard of paranormal radio.
0:28.3	And now, here's Gene Steinberg.
0:32.5	So we've got Greg Gigion back on the show to talk about an interesting book called
0:40.3	After the Flying Saucers Came, A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon.
0:46.3	And I think, Greg, a lot of this is about not as much the objects, but the people who got roped into it like me.
0:56.0	Is that true?
0:58.0	Yeah, I think that's fair to say.
1:00.0	I mean, you can't talk about this stuff without talking about the objects or the phenomenon
1:05.0	as some people would rather refer to it as, right?
1:08.0	But to me, the thing that I thought really needed sort of
1:13.7	addressing and talking about, because there's lots and lots and lots of stuff written about
1:17.2	the objects and the phenomenon was how people got involved, as you say, got roped into this,
1:23.5	how people responded to it, how people got upset about it and got upset with each other about it,
1:29.5	but how also some people found enormous exciting things to do and ways to meet new people
1:36.2	and exciting new ideas to sort of mull over. That seemed to me the interesting story, as a historian at least. That was what I wanted
1:46.8	to do was to try to get into some of that, especially for the uninitiated, right? Because I think
1:53.7	there are a lot of people, this is my experience when I talk about this, a lot of people very
1:58.3	interested in this topic, very interested in sort of finding a way
2:03.0	to sort of throw themselves into it. But the instance they do it, they tell me, my God, I don't even
2:09.7	know where to begin. I don't know who to trust. I don't know why somebody said this and another
2:15.5	person is referring to so and so. I don't know how to do that so in some
2:19.8	sense it's it's an opportunity to also I think speak to a lot of people who I think really are interested
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Paracast Company, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Paracast Company and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.