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From flying saucers to flying saints: Belief and how we react to the “impossible”

A large group of people is watching the stars and the milky way from Zabriskie Point in Death Valley (digitally enhanced).
Siegfried Layda / Getty Images
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A large group of people watching the stars and the Milky Way from Zabriskie Point in Death Valley (digitally enhanced).

Today, we continue our week of special coverage with a show focused on belief, and how we react when we experience things that we think should be impossible.

A few years ago, Diana Walsh Pasulka published American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology, which looked at the mechanism of belief in extraterrestrial life, finding that this is becoming a new American religion. Now, she has a new book out, Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences, which looks at our experiences with non-human life forms, including UFOs, dreams, angels, and AI, and how these encounters challenge our assumptions about life. This hour, we talk with Diana Walsh Pasulka about her work.

Plus, Yale Professor Carlos Eire joins us to talk about the history of the impossible, including discussions of levitation and bilocation, and how beliefs form.

GUESTS: 

Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.

You can find all of our Astronaughty Week shows, where we explore the possibility of extraterrestrial life, in the player below.

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Lily is the senior producer for The Colin McEnroe Show. She's also a producer of the podcast 'Generation Barney.' She first worked at Connecticut Public as an intern in 2014. She has previously worked for WBUR, KUNC and as a producer for the New England News Collaborative's weekly show Next. Lily can be reached at ltyson@ctpublic.org.