For episode nine, we welcome to the show Diana Pasulka, Professor of Religious Studies at UNC – Wilmington. Her books American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology and Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences are both classics in the field of Religion and Technology studies. We discuss how Pasulka’s early work on Catholic purgatory led her to the study of UFOs, the spiritual practices of experiencers, and the role of government (dis)information and popular culture in the rise of UFO religion. On the way, we touch on A.I., revelations, St. Teresa of Avila, sleep paralysis, and the perils and possibilities of new technologies.

LINKS
Diana Pasulka's Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture
American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology
Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences
"From Purgatory to the UFO Phenomenon: The Catholic Supernatural Goes Galactic"
Keith Cantu's Om-gnosis video podcast

For our eighth episode, we welcome the author Eric Wargo to the show. Eric is perhaps the world’s foremost expert on precognition. His most recent book, From Nowhere, examines precognition in its relationship to creativity in the lives of major authors and artists. We discuss the nature of time, dreamwork, memories from the future, and the four-dimensional brain. Along the way, we discuss figures like Virginia Woolf, Philip K. Dick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Sigmund Freud, and the sculptor, Michael Richards.

NOTES

Eric Wargo's work:

• Blog "The Nightshirt"
• From Nowhere: Artists, Writers, and the Precognitive Imagination
• Time Loops
• Precognitive Dreamwork and the Long Self: Interpreting Messages from Your Future

An exhibit of Michael Richards' Sculpture

For episode 7, we welcome the writer and scholar Erik Davis (4:06) to reflect on the journey that led to his new book, BLOTTER: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium. We discuss Erik’s writing for the Village Voice in the early 90s, his breakthrough monograph Techgnosis, and how his home state of California informs his oeuvre. In the second half of the interview, we discuss the academic study of “the weird,” perils and possibilities for the psychedelic renaissance, and how BLOTTER is a love letter to LSD.

LINKS

• Blotter book launch event 4/30
• Erik's website
• Burning Shore
• Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium
• Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information
• High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
• Led Zeppelin IV 33/13
• Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica
• Visionary State