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A blizzard last week and beautiful weather this week, what a strange place. I'm really enjoying the early Daylight Savings time. It took a while to get used to, but it's like getting April in March and I'm all for that. No complaints this week, other than just being busy which is a good thing.
This week, we'll look back at this past week's Coast to Coast AM episodes, including what I'm already calling one of the top five shows of 2007. We'll look ahead to the late posted guests for next week's shows. We'll preview tomorrow's BoA : Audio with Marie Jones, author of Psience, we'll dip into the mail bag for info on this year's Coastie Contenders, we'll look back in C2C History, including the infamous Heaven's Gate incident and the fallout on Coast, and, of course, we've got Hot Newz, featuring C2C Spin-Off Products coming to a dollar store near you.
And ... we're off.
The Week That Was
When we left off last Friday, Linda Moulton Howe was the guest and the topic was the mysterious honey bees story. As I alluded to last week, I skipped out on this one, as this story bores me to tears. Open Lines followed, no word on any hijinks.
Saturday on "Ian", IP had Daniel Amen on to talk about neuroscience and brain stuffs. I have a lot of faith in Ian to deliver the goods, but not that much faith and, as usual, my own stuff kept me from enjoying the man they call Punnett. We'll turn it over here to Lesley's C2C Rewind : I didn't get to hear all of this show, but a lot of it seemed to be related to sex, which as far as I can tell is one of Ian's favorite subjects so he was really enjoying the interview. As always Ian took what could be a boring subject and made it at least somewhat enjoyable.
Saturday night on C2C proper, Robert Bigelow was the full show guest for a pretty good episode that just didn't deliver on its on-paper potential. The topic was, again, more Bigelow Aerospace and not so much NIDS. The bulk of the first hour or so was all about his space ventures which are fascinating, but fairly dry and pretty loaded with bureaucratic details. The middle portion, talking about NIDS and Skinwalker Ranch was good, but it was a little too much of an afterthought at that point.
There were some gems in there, including stories of Bigelow butting heads with the government over his space stuff and a lot interesting material about his dealings with other countries. Art also held his feet to the fire with regards to UFOs and his space ventures, which was refreshing and enlightening. Not a home run, but perhaps a triple.
Sunday night, Maurice Cotterrell was the guest and the topic was ancient civilizations and gravity and other nebulous esoteric stuffs. I don't recall much of this one, except that Art seemed more argumentative than usual and Maurice seemed a bit put off. I can't recall what it was all about, but you got that vibe. Perhaps Maurice was too vague about stuff and Art wanted details, I'm not sure. I tuned out after about an hour, because it didn't seem to get much traction.
I did listen to that first hour of callers, which was fun for a change. Art had three consecutive callers call in and think they were talking to the call screener and kept referring to Art in the third person. For the first caller, Art politely corrected him, the second time he was annoyed, and the third time he kind of flaked. It was some amazingly real comedy, an audio version of candid camera.
Monday night saw The Noor assemble a special impromptu Zodiac Roundtable, featuring Ed Neil, Tom Voigt, and Michael Butterfield. As noted last week, I love the Zodiac. I'm a total die hard fan. I even used to lurk on Tom Voigt's message board @ zodiackiller.com, a few short weeks before the fateful day I discovered "Rule by Secrecy". So my esoteric roots contain some trace Zodiac residue, for sure.
Anyway, as an armchair Zodiac afficionado, I can say that Noory did an okay job, trying to sort out the case, and did a pretty good job looking at some of the big picture questions. I think the roundtable suffered a bit, because it never seemed to know what it "wanted to be", felt sort of directionless, and the guests at times talked over each other, instead of building off of each other. One of the better roundtables in a while, more for topic than for execution.
Speaking of the Zodiac, in light of the serial killer's penchant for arcane codes and endless publicity, I'm wondering where Hoagland was during the nights in question. Not saying anything, just, you know, it kinda sounds like him.
Having listened to all of Monday night's show and knowing I'd want to dig into the UFO stuff on Wednesday, I got some sleep on Tuesday in favor of listening to Geoffrey Simmons talk about evolution. The usofe.com's DeSota does an awesome job here of recapping what went down, "I'll try to sum up what I thought Simmons was saying. He believes that living organisms are too complex and "optimized" to have developed through Darwinian evolution. So therefore he assumes that God is behind it. He had some very strange reasoning as to why he believes this. Things like the process of blood clotting and the fact that we don't have our anuses and mouths reversed.
Noory seemed a bit flustered and kept trying to steer him in a different direction. Simmons got kind of upset at this and wanted to take things more slowly. I was supportive of what George was doing because the guy was pretty dry and his reasoning was....flawed. George also kept trying to introduce the intelligent design through extraterrestrial manipulation idea but Simmons didn't seem too interested in pursuing it. Wednesday night, it was a sort of revolving door of Ufology as Noory had Olav Philips as the main show guest to talk about UFOs and technology, with regards to researching the phenomenon. Throughout the evening, along with Olav, Duncan Lunan appeared to discuss space echoes, Ted Philips was on later to talk about UFO trace cases, and some guy billed as Darby the John Titor expert was on in the final hour.
I enjoyed Olav quite a bit. He wasn't overtly foreign, despite having the name Olav, which was somewhat disappointing. Aside from that he had some realism to him that set him apart from the usual C2C crowd. Be that as it may, I wasn't all too impressed with his version of the UFOdex, but I will wait until both systems are really up and running to decide.
Ted Philips was excellent and worthy of a full show appearance soon. Amazing insight into the inner workings of Ufology back in the day. Noory asked some good questions and knew some good factoids in there, so I thought he did a good job.
I caught some of Duncan Lunan and he was decent. I skipped Darby, because I am sick of John Titor and I can't take anyone seriously who just uses one name.
Good episode, interesting format. Olav and Friends was a mild success.
Thursday night, originally scheduled guest Chris Duncan fell ill, Noory claimed it was demons, so they instead went to Open Lines. I listened to about half of this episode of OL, because Noory busted out a new C2C chestnut, the "secret door". Essentially this was C2C "stars" making unscheduled mid-show pop-ins to give updates. Noory even said "pop in", which amused me. Also amusing was that he kept calling it the "back door" and saying stuff like, "Who's going to sneak in the back door ?" Geez, Noory, I thought C2C was a family friendly program.
The first mystery pop-in was Louis Turi. He talked about Gary Busey some and Noory mentioned that Sci Fi may air one of the C2C pilot programs. Other backdoor men included Joe Jacobs, Dr. Sky, and Lionel Fanthorpe. I heard Jacobs and he was pretty interesting. I missed Dr.Sky and Fanthorpe.
Also mixed in among the pop-in guests was Glynis McCants, talking about "Dancing with the Stars", who she's apparently working with now. They also gossiped about American Idol like two teenage schoolgirls. Noory stunned me by knowing about this season's AI erotic photo scandal, despite being woefully behind the times on any other area of pop culture. Under Siege 2, anyone ?
Hands down one of the best editions of C2C all year, easily top five. Amazingly simple, the mystery pop-in line added a fun new dimension to the show that I'd like to see more of from Coast. If it were a staple of Friday nights, I'd give up my months long fatwa against Friday into Saturday Open Lines. I'm stunned that Hoagland didn't get in on this madness. I thought he had a direct line to C2C HQ.
In total, a very good week with a weird mix of theme episodes and quasi-theme episodes with some strong stuff on the weekends as usual. One of the better weeks of Coast in quite some time. Take a bow, powers that be, you've done well by binnall.
The Week That Is
We kick off the weekend with The Noor interviewing "psychic" Angela Moore. He must still be trying to fill that Sylvia Browne void. Friday into Saturday Open Lines follows.
Saturday on "Ian", Joan Wester Anderson is the guest and the topic is angels. I expect this one to be good, given that it's Ian and he is big on religion and that sort of metaphysical stuffs.
Saturday night on C2C proper, Art Bell has Dr. Stephen La Berge and Dominick Attisani on the show to talk about consciousness and lucid dreaming. And thus concludes the great run of UFO episodes we've had the last month or so from Bell. I expect this one will be decent, could be quite good, but could also be dry like warm ginger ale.
Sunday night, Bell's guest is Dr. Laurie Nadel, who will be talking about more stuff related to intuition and consciousness. This sounds too much like the previous night's offerings, though I'm sure they will be worlds apart in hard science. This also may be better than the previous night's episode, since Bell could build on that one going into this one.
Monday, The Noor welcomes Dr. Peter Moscow to the show to discuss his "mini meme machine", which sounds more like an "aura detector" than anything. Be that as it may, how long till Noory busts out the Mini Me jokes ? Could be good, could be crap.
Tuesday, Jonathan Gray returns to C2C to discuss Egypt. From what I can recall Gray is a strong guest and a student of all things esoteric and Egyptian, so I expect good things. The preview makes it sound like he's got some interesting material to discuss. Probably the best episode, on paper, in an otherwise dreary week.
Wednesday, Larry Dossey joins Noory for more alternative science overkill, this time with non-locality and healing. Something tells me I will miss this one.
Thursday, the week wraps up with Chris Doyle talking about demons. Should be good to great, especially after such a science laden week. I expect this one will be a sound for sore ears.
All in all, rather drab stuff. I'm sure one or two episodes will surprise me, but I'm not looking forward to much of the offerings this coming week.
BoA : Audio, Season Two
This week : Marie Jones, "Psience"
Critically acclaimed alternative science writer Marie Jones guests on BoA : Audio to discuss her book "Psience". We discuss the seemingly antagonistic relationship between esoterica and mainstream scientific research.
We discuss defeating the two problems facing esoteric research : funding and fear of ridicule. We cover the latest in multiple universe and multiple dimension research as well as the zero point field. Plus the contagiousness of paranormal experiences, deja vu, ancient religion as a window to new science. And what all this new science might mean to both finding answers to esoteric enigmas and the everyday layperson.
Her website is www.psience.blogspot.com
You can hear an MP3 preview of our Marie Jones on BoA : Audio on MP3 * Just right click and then "save target as". Or you can listen to it in Streaming Audio.
Next Week : Surprise BoA : Audio special
A lighter edition of BoA : Audio, decidedly different, featuring a variety of esoteric names.
Following that, we'll be taking two weeks off for a short Spring break and will resume on 4.21.2007. All these details will be discussed @ the end of this week's episode.
binnall report mailbag
binnall,
where are this year's Coastie contenders ?
Chris in Pittsburgh, PA I know ! I'm a clown shoe. We've been so busy @ BoA that we've neglected posting this year's Coastie contenders so far. Rest assured, we've got an unofficial, on-paper tally going that just needs to be formatted and filled in at the site. It's one of the many things we hope to do during the Spring break of BoA : Audio.
Question ? Comment ? Gripe ? Query ? Love Letter ? Write to tbinnall@hotmail.com and we'll sort it all out.
This Week in C2C History
3.23.1999 : Art Bell channels future Noory while interviewing James Van Praagh, "After the bottom of the hour break Art and James talk about the movie "What Dreams May Come" and the depictions James disagrees with. "
3.26.1997 : All hell breaks loose and Art Bell is about to thrust into the national spotlight ... "mass suicide of 39 people at a mansion near San Diego was the top news story and the bulk of discussion to. Info has it that they were all members of a cult called W. W. Higher Source. Art is baffled with this one, must have something to do with the nature of life."
3.27.1997 : Follow-up the next day ... "Art reminds us that he predicted the original news about the suicides would change drastically, and it has. Art is going to give us the real story to, the one the networks won't tell you. Art has been contacted by virtually every news source, like Nightline and Larry King."
End Notes
Stick the fork in this edition of the binnall report, for it is done. Thanks for joining me on the ride.
Plugs : Tomorrow @ binnallofamerica.com, Marie Jones is our guest on BoA : Audio and we'll be talking about her book "Psience". Sunday, Lesley's C2C Rewind @ The Debris Field. Monday, R.Lee's Trickster's Realm. Tuesday, Lesley's Grey Matters. Wednesday, Khyron's K-Files. Thursday, Hot Newz, featuring the 2007 C2C Softball Team. Friday, binnall report.
binnallofamerica.com ... it's going to be a happening.
On that Gorilla Monsoon tribute, we'll close out our weekly missive. Until you hear from me next week, this is binnall ... signing off.