SOUNDS PECULIAR

As a medium, podcasts have been enjoying something of a boom over the past few years. The democratisation of quality media production through high-specification computer equipment has allowed a plethora of previously marginalised voices their own access to what were once quaintly called ‘the airwaves’.

In the past, broadcasting (reaching a wide audience from a single source) was heavily regulated and controlled, mainly through frequency scarcity: only those authorised or licensed to have access to the airwaves were allowed to broadcast. In UK terms that, initially, meant the BBC, with commercial stations coming along in the 1960s.

In terms of radio, there have been amateurs since the invention of the medium, reaching a crescendo with the offshore ‘pirate’ pop stations of the 1960s that ultimately led to the BBC launching Radio 1. For the longest time, Radio 4 (or NPR in the US) has been the default home of quality ‘spoken word’ content, whether that was drama, current affairs, or documentary radio.

Now, anyone with a microphone and an iPad, laptop, or computer and the right software can produce a decent podcast and launch their work onto a waiting world. Not all of them are good, while many are far better than you might expect, sometimes surpassing the productions of ‘legitimate’ broadcasters like the BBC or NPR. When it comes to fortean topics, there are a host of podcasts out there, ranging from the polished and compelling to the amateurish and downright weird. SOUNDS PECULIAR is your insider guide to the best of the current podcasts dealing with fortean topics: all you have to do is sit back and listen... Podcast: The Paranormal Podcast Web: http://jimharold.com/ category/ the-para normalpodcast/ Host: Jim Harold Episodes Count: 500+ Format: Interviews, Features, Discussion Established: 2005 Frequency: Weekly Topics: Everything paranormal Claiming to be “America’s most popular paranormal podcast host”, Jim Harold has been presenting The Paranormal

Podcast since 2005 and claims a total of “over 31 million” downloads. Like some of the best podcasters, Ohiobased Harold comes from a professional radio background, although he was previously on the business side of broadcasting rather than the creative or presentational. He combined that with his lifelong interest in the paranormal to put together The Paranormal

Podcast around 12 years ago. According to podcast hosting company Libsyn,

The Paranormal Podcast is among the top two per cent of all podcasts in downloads, suggesting a significant audience.

The show recently reached its 500th instalment, focusing on the ‘Mandela Effect’. Author and researcher Stasha Eriksen is Harold’s guest in discussing this particular aspect of ‘false memory syndrome’. Around 2010, the phenomenon of collective false memory was dubbed ‘the Mandela Effect’ – cited as being a group recall of something, often in popular culture, that appears to be different – or to have changed – from how it was widely remembered. Self-described ‘paranormal consultant’ Fiona Broome originally coined the phrase after the apparently increasing tendency for people to misdate the death of South African freedom campaigner Nelson Mandela to the 1980s rather than 2013, when he actually died.

Several explanations for such faulty recall are discussed, including social reinforcement of incorrect memories or the impact of ‘fake news’, an increasing problem in the era of Trump. Perhaps the most interesting possible explanation is the question of alternative realities: perhaps in another reality you (and many others) once inhabited, the thing you misremember was in fact as you recall it. Either reality has changed, your perception has changed, or you have slipped into an alternate reality different in small ways from the history you recall. One of the most impactful examples of ‘the Mandela Effect’ as applied to popular culture concerns one of the main characters in the

Star Wars movies. The vast majority of people have seen the films, either at the cinema or on TV, videotape or DVD and know the main characters. One of those characters is fussy droid C-3PO, played by Anthony Daniels. If asked what colour C-3PO is, most people reply ‘gold’. What many people have never consciously noted is that C-3PO has one silver leg, from the knee down, and apparently always has had. Type ‘C-3PO’ into Google and it auto-completes to the phrase ‘C-3PO silver leg’ due to the fact that so many people have wanted to double check this for themselves.

A more recent episode tackled the supposed rivalry between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison in their efforts to invent a telephone for contacting the dead (#503). Guest William J Birnes (previously publisher of UFO

Magazine and a frequent

History Channel guest) promotes his book, which outlines the two scientists’ interest in a ‘spirit phone’, essentially a receiver for the frequencies of disincarnate spirits, something Birnes claims has been reclassified in recent times as EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). The angle taken here is how history tends to ignore or write out such maverick scientific interests in favour of those that can be packaged and sold to the masses (like the ‘normal’ telephone). They examine the process by which this removal of Fort’s ‘damned data’ occurs.

Such in-depth, discursive chats are central to The

Paranormal Podcast, and over 12 years the show has covered just about any paranormal topic you’d care to think of. Listeners might be annoyed by the lengthy ad breaks that pop up through the 90-minutes-plus run time of each instalment, and anything older than 90 days requires a subscription, but that gives free access to 12-13 recent episodes at any time. Shows still available at the time of writing include shapeshifters (#502, featuring Nick Redfern); demons, the Devil, and fallen angels (#501); haunted woodlands in Massachusetts (#499); haunted Disneyland (#498); the Mothman’s relocation to Chicago (#497); and the seemingly inevitable Roswell UFO cover-up episode (#491).

Strengths: In-depth discussions of each topic; a wide range of subjects.

Weaknesses: Frequent ad interruption; lack of access to older instalments beyond 90 days; a certain American credulity… Recommended Episodes: Shapeshifters (#502); Demons and fallen angels (#501); Haunted Disneyland (#498); Paranormal travel tales (#493); Roswell UFO cover-up (#491); Nazca lines (#490).

Verdict: Worthwhile chats and subjects, if you can take the credulity of the presentation and the commercial breaks.