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Jeb and Blake go in research of... MOON MADNESS! Does the full moon drive people mad? Will this episode drive your hosts mad? Was In Search Of... not able to afford a fact-checker in season five? SO MANY QUESTIONS! This is our Halloween Episode for season five. This is our TIME TRAVEL episode for season five. This is... MOON MADNESS. Nimoy Fashion Alert: Extended show notes freely available on our Patreon Site.

⚠️ Heads up: this episode opens with combat footage from the Tet Offensive and includes graphic descriptions of battlefield injury, a child in medical crisis, and animal experimentation. If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text at 988.⚠️ Jeb and Blake look at the birth of NDE research: a field of study with a significant footprint in the metro-Atlanta area. Rats are bothered. Soldiers are wounded. Canadian teens are frozen. ...and we're here to talk about all of it. 📺 Episode Summary Despite the title, this one isn't really about proving there's an afterlife - and that turns out to be the most interesting thing about it. In Search Of takes the near-death experience and, instead of building a case for Heaven, spends most of its runtime on a much stranger question: when, exactly, is a person dead? We get four threads. A grievously wounded Vietnam veteran who watched his own body being worked on and then went back to the battlefield to talk with the men he'd already put in bags. An Emory physiologist chilling rats into a state he calls clinically-but-not-biologically dead. A Manitoba teenager whose heart was stopped for well over two hours in a snowbank and who came back with nothing to report but darkness. And a woman recalling a 1952 polio vision full of white light, a dead grandmother, and a complete moral audit of her own life. Between those, the medical talking heads keep circling the same admission: nobody agrees where the line is. It's a surprisingly restrained ISO episode ... and there's a very large name conspicuously missing from it. 👔 Nimoy Fashion Alert (NFA fashion consultant, Pedro Mendes) 👥 Who's In This Episode Tommy Clack — Army captain, artillery forward observer with the 25th Infantry Division "Wolfhounds." Wounded 29 May 1969 near the Cambodian border, losing three limbs; 22 months at the Atlanta VA and 33 operations followed. He finished college as an honors graduate, spent a long career at the VA, and became one of the country's more relentless veterans' advocates. He talks about the out-of-body experience, but - as Jeb found - he almost never leads with it. As of our recording he's still out there supporting veterans. Dr. Michael Sabom — Atlanta cardiologist. He's here to say that medicine can't pin down the moment of death. Two years later he publishes Recollections of Death, built on 116 interviews which form the closest thing the field had to a quantitative baseline. His later work takes a considerably more explicitly Christian turn. Dr. Vojin "Voja" Popović — Yugoslav-born physiologist at Emory, and the episode's designated rat botherer. Central casting could not have done better. He chills rats into apparent death and brings them back, drawing his line between clinical and biological death at the two-to-three hour mark. His actual career is a wonder: hibernators, ground squirrels, tumor-bearing hamsters, cooled dogs, hamsters submerged in oxygen-rich fluorocarbon, and a rat experiment slated for a Spacelab flight that never happened. Frequently co-credited with his wife, Dr. Pava Popović. Ted Milligan — Sixteen, and a student at St. John's Cathedral Boys' School near Selkirk, Manitoba, whose curriculum included a 27-mile snowshoe hike in temperatures around forty below. Found with no heartbeat, no breathing, and a core temperature below 25°C. By the time of filming he's a private in the Canadian Armed Forces. His account of the experience is the shortest in the episode and, for a materialist, the most instructive: darkness, then waking up. Dr. Gerald "Gerry" Bristow — The episode calls him "James." He's not. Later Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba and a genuine world authority on hypothermia; he and Dr. Robert Smith declined to do the sensible thing and kept working on a boy every indicator said was gone. An eyewitness account from anesthesiologist Dr. Arnold Tweed fills in what the episode leaves out, including the documented duration of the cardiac arrest. Dr. Fred Schoonmaker (d. 2005) — Denver cardiologist at St. Luke's, former fighter pilot, developer of a less invasive cardiac catheter, and a driving force behind Denver air ambulance service. He marks the difference between patients who know their visions weren't real and patients who insist theirs were. Dr. Janette Rainwater — Introduced as "Janet." A significant figure in Gestalt therapy, Berkeley PhD (1964), author of You're in Charge!, and the veteran of several hundred workshops. Her polio experience is the most classic NDE in the episode - light, deceased relative, life review, a very symbolic climb. Jeb's research turns up a detail the reenactment gets badly wrong, and it changes how you hear the whole segment. Rev. Loren Young (d. 2003) — Methodist minister and theologian out of Oak Hill, West Virginia; Duke, then a Bachelor of Divinity from Candler School of Theology at Emory; Southeastern Director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He arrives at the very end to say something warm about a merciful God right before the episode itself goes into the light. Dr. Raymond Moody — Not in this episode. Which is a puzzle. Moody was born in Porterdale, Georgia, earned his PhD at West Georgia College and his MD at the Medical College of Georgia in 1976, and in 1975 published Life After Life - the book that coined "near-death experience," sold in the millions, and made this a subject television wanted to cover at all. The episode borrows his title, his framework, and arguably his entire premise, films almost the whole thing in and around Atlanta, yet never mentions him. 🔍 Deep Cuts & Research Notes A partial list of what we get into, without spoiling the good parts: 🌡️ Why 98.6°F was never a real number, and what a 2020 Stanford study says it is now 🎞️ Jeb's video forensics on some footage that looked very familiar, and why "we already did this episode" keeps coming up ⛪ The Company of the Cross, muscular Christianity, Ted Byfield, and a school whose controversial history we found a bit jaw-dropping. 🐹 Fluorocarbon breathing, hamsters, and learning James Cameron didn't make that up for The Abyss ✍️ What happens to a story when a documentary gets someone's name — and age — wrong, and where that sits on the line between sloppy and deceptive 🍑 Blake's hypothesis for why Atlanta briefly became the center of American NDE research, and what it has to do with trauma centers, cardiac units, blue laws, and a media hub 📊 The selection problem sitting underneath all of this: we only ever hear from the people who came back 🧭 Where each of us actually stands on this, perhaps not quite where you'd guess ⭐ Ratings 🔮 Predictions Recap Skipped this week - Blake is pretty sure this is the last week we are missing the segment. He's found the recordings and I think we have it sorted out from here. 🌕 Next Episode We go in research of… Moon Madness. 📚 Related Books These are affiliate links — if you buy through them, the show gets a small cut at no extra cost to you. • Raymond Moody — Life After Life (1975) The book this episode is named after, by the man this episode never mentions. Coined the term "near-death experience" and set the template every account since has been measured against. • Michael B. Sabom — Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation (1982) Sabom's 116 interviews, published two years after he appears here. The attempt to put actual numbers on the phenomenon. • Michael Sabom — Light & Death (1998) The same researcher, eighteen years later, with the Atlanta Study and a much more openly Christian frame. Useful as a before-and-after. • Vojin Popović & Pava Popović — Hypothermia in Biology and in Medicine (1974) Our rat botherer's standard reference, and still cited in the modern therapeutic hypothermia literature. Expensive and hard to find, but it exists. • Janette Rainwater — You're in Charge! A Guide to Becoming Your Own Therapist (1979) Published the year before this episode aired. Reading it alongside her segment is the whole point. • James Raffan — Deep Waters: Courage, Character and the Lake Timiskaming Canoeing Tragedy The definitive account of what happened to the St. John's school system's outdoor program in 1978. Context for Ted Milligan's segment that the episode does not give you. • Susan Blackmore — Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences (1993) The materialist case, made carefully and without contempt. Anoxia, endorphins, temporal lobe activity, and the dying-brain model. • Bruce Greyson — After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond (2021) Four decades of research from the field's most careful living investigator. The best single answer to "what does this look like now?"

Note: This episode briefly touches on the topic of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, please contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. Blake and Jeb crash headlong into S05E04 of In Search Of... on the topic of Daredevil Death Wish. Episode Summary This In Search Of episode asks a surprisingly straightforward question for this show: what drives daredevils to risk their lives? Rather than chasing aliens or cryptids, the episode plays it remarkably straight - functioning more as a documentary about stunt performers than the paranormal-adjacent fare we've come to expect. After a montage of vintage stock footage the episode profiles several working daredevils: Pat Jackson, a 42-year-old housewife who rides motorcycles through flaming boards; Roger Kober, a 22-year-old whose "slide for life" goes wrong on camera; Hank Wise and his "Iron Man" act (letting a truck drive over his body); and Chuck Strange, a demolition derby natural turned pickup-truck pilot whose Astrodome crash nearly killed him. The episode's most substantive segment features Kim Kahana's stunt school in California, where the veteran stuntman trains young performers in the difference between a daredevil ("a guy who just says, let's do it") and a professional who uses illusion and safety. Psychologist Dr. Samuel Z. Klausner provides the academic frame, describing stress-seeking as almost addictive - the euphoria of overcoming fear becomes a need that grows stronger with each attempt. Notably, the episode is produced by the same team behind That's Incredible!, yet takes a far more restrained, documentarian approach than that show's sensationalist style. The result is one of the most credible episodes of In Search Of we've encountered - and, consequently, one of the least weird. **EXTENSIVE NOTES AT PATREON**

Jeb and Blake tackle In Search Of...'s S05E03 topic of Lee Harvey Oswald. Episode Summary This In Search Of episode examines the assassination of President John F. Kennedy through the lens of (at the time this aired) newly discovered acoustic evidence and Cold War intrigue. Rather than accepting the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, the episode presents "new evidence" suggesting a conspiracy involving multiple gunmen, potential Soviet involvement, and even the extraordinary theory that the man killed by Jack Ruby may not have been the real Lee Harvey Oswald. The episode relies heavily on acoustic analysis of the Dallas police motorcycle tape (1978), testimony from KGB defector Yuri Nosenko, handwriting analysis of Oswald's Soviet diary, and the fringe theory of British investigator Michael Eddowes that a Soviet lookalike carried out the assassination. Notably, this episode aired just three weeks before the election of Ronald Reagan, and sits chronologically between two major investigations: Dr. James Barger's acoustic analysis work (1978) and the National Academy of Sciences' debunking of that analysis (1982). EXTENSIVE Show Notes at our Patreon site - free for reading.

Blake and Jeb discuss ISO's coverage of FAITH HEALING. The episode goes to places new and old. Jeb gives us historical context. Blake gets angry. Nimoy wears a lab coat.   EXTENSIVE Show Notes on our free Patreon page

Weirdumentary has a forward by Stephen Bissette who wrote a book also likely to be of interest to listeners: Cryptid Cinema (affiliate link) (A follow-up to that book is under construction and will include research by your's truly about the "4-walling" tour of the PGF.) I linked to Feral House's page for Weirdumentary above at the request of Gary. If you're curious about their catalog, we talked with their owner recently about monstrous food and they also produced Al Ridenour's new book about Carnival. This is not a complete list of the films in the book - and it also covers a few TV series including In Search Of... and Arthur C. Clarke's _____ (he had three ITV series covering topics similar to ISO with each season getting a slightly different name). 1970: Chariots of the Gods, The Unexplained 1971: The Hellstrom Chronicles, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow 1972: Bigfoot Man or Beast, Monsters! Mysteries or Myths?, The Devil's Triangle, The Legend of Boggy Creek 1973: In Search of Ancient Astronauts 1974: Deadly Fathoms, In Search of Ancient Mysteries, In Search of Dracula, UFOs: Past, Present and Future 1975: Mysteries from Beyond Earth, The Force Beyond, The Legendary Curse of the Hope Diamond, The Man of Miracles, The Outer Space Connection 1976: Beyond Belief, In Search of Noah's Ark, Mysteries of the Gods, The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena, The Legend of Bigfoot, The Legend of Loch Ness, The Miracle Healers, The Mysterious Monsters, World Beyond Death 1977: Aliens from Spaceship Earth, Journey into the Beyond, Mysteries of the Great Pyramid, The Lincoln Conspiracy, The Underground Doctors, The Unknown Force 1978: Are We Alone in the Universe?, Beyond and Back, Curse of the Mayan Temple, Manbeast! Myth or Monster?, Mysteries from Beyond the Triangle, Mysteries of the Mind, Mystery of the Sacred Shroud, Secret of the Bermuda Triangle, The Amazing World of Ghosts, The Late Great Planet Earth, The Lost City of Atlantis, The UFO Journals, UFO - Exclusive! , UFO: Top Secret, Unknown Powers, World of the Unknown 1979: Attack from Outer Space, Charles Berlitz's The Bermuda Triangle, Death: The Ultimate Mystery, Encounter with Disaster, Hypnosis and Beyond, In Search of the Historic Jesus, The Doomsday Chronicles, The Prophecies of Nostradamus, UFOs Are Real, World of Mystery 1980: Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World (TV), Land of Celtic Ghosts, Mysteries of the Mind, UFO Syndrome 1981: Search for the Titanic

Show less Jeb and Blake kick off Season 5 of In Search Of... by researching UFO COVERUPS! Links:  UFO Crash at Roswell Catalina UFO Footage and Reddit discussion of same Twilight Zone - A Small Talent for War Malmstrom UFO Incident Obit for Col. Donald Burggrabe Peter Gersten "the UFO Lawyer" Raymond Fowler Col. Robert Friend - and obit Jesse Marcel Sr. NASA Lifting Body Northrop Flying Wing Doak VZ-4 (not a saucer!) Avrocar Jupiter II (Lost in Space) Nimoy Fashion Alert! UFO Crash Sites in New Mexico:   There is a lot of Top Secret in this episode: Col Donald Burggrabe Raymond Fowler Peter Gersten Donald Ritter Jesse Marcel Sr. Col Robert Friend And was the model UFO in this episode a guest star from Lost In Space?

Blake and Jeb go In Research Of PAST LIVES with Leonard Nimoy. Subjects include reincarnation claims, past-life regression therapy, and some truly baffling Nimoy wardrobe choices. Link to YouTube Episode (while it lasts) Topics we cover include: Nimoy wandering a Los Angeles graveyard in a strange quasi-military sport coat, and Blake's detective work tying the filming location to Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights. The famous Pollock twins case from Hexham, England, where two girls were said to be the reincarnations of their deceased sisters — and how later research complicates the story. Dr. Lucia Capacchione's art-therapy / inner-child work and how the show uses regression narratives to explain modern psychological problems. Playwright A.J. Stewart (Ada F. Kay), who became convinced she was James IV of Scotland and wrote Falcon: The Autobiography of His Grace James IV King of Scots as if from the king's own perspective. Whether past-life regression therapy produces evidence of reincarnation or just vivid, therapist-shaped fantasy, and why skeptics are so wary of hypnosis-based "memories."   NFA (Nimoy Fashion Alert): Cemetery Detective Work: Using the 2nd NFA shot, I was able to decipher the tex on the dark tombstone. It is a lot darker in real life with a modern shot. That "Find a Grave" entry includes the exact location where Nimoy was standing for this episode's cemetery shot. Jeb asked for an animated gif of the woman in the castle with secret doors: The cover of Robert and Loy Young's book about reincarnation: The twins at the heart of the British (Hexham!) reincarnation story: And I can't help but scream - DON'T GO NEAR THE EDGE!!! This episode is such a cliffhanger. Deeper reading & sources mentioned: Pollock twins case write-up at the Society for Psychical Research's Psi Encyclopedia Psi Encyclopedia on famous past-life claims (including A.J. Stewart / Ada F. Kay): Ada F. Kay / A.J. Stewart biography (reincarnation claim & Falcon background) Evergreen Cemetery (Los Angeles) – history and the Japanese "Garden of the Pines" section Lucia Capacchione and inner-child / expressive-arts therapy Skeptical overview of past-life regression therapy (Harriet Hall, Science-Based Medicine): General background on past-life regression and why psychologists consider it pseudoscientific

Jeb and Blake ponder Atlantis and "healing holes" in the waters off the coast of Bimini. (Weirdly this is almost literally true as Blake ended up actually in Bimini just a week before this ep released. More on that soon.) Links for Shownotes: Roby Yonge on "The Beatles Paul is Dead" Neptune Memorial Reef "Psychic" Irene Hughes Bimini Wall Edgar Cayce Beachrock The Healing Hole More on the crystal ball from 2010 (Cayce related)   Nimoy Fashion Alert: Other interesting images from the episode: Hemingway's Healing Hole: Robey Yong and Irene Hughes re-enact their experiences. Doc Raymond Brown and his crystal ball Marcel Vogel and some crystals - he was also in S01E01 on talking plants.

Flashback to January 2018: In this episode of MonsterTalk, we return to discussion of the Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis (UTH) and what seems to be its growing influence in paranormal circles. It's been used to explain UFOs, mothman, bigfoot, fairies, dogman, ghosts and many other phenomena which defy scientific demonstrability. Now it crops up again in a new film event titled Alien Intrusion which turned out to be a stealth evangelical creationist film which suggests that aliens and UFOs are actually demonic. We are joined by MonsterTalk alum Joe Laycock, Natasha Mikles and Jeb Card to discuss the UTH and Jeb's Paranormal Unified Field Theory (PUFT) as it relates to this film and the work of John Keel and others. In Research Of… MonsterTalk Joe Laycock Natasha Mikles Jeb Card Music Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys

This is part 2 of our 2-part coverage of The Mothman Prophecies movie. If you haven't listened to Part-1, please turn over the record and start again. Additional show notes available (for free) on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/posts/s4-bonus-mothman-129987183

This is part 1 of our 2-part coverage of The Mothman Prophecies movie. This is in lieu of S04E21 (see below) but we hope you enjoy the content and after part 2, we return to our regularly scheduled episodes list. "So... Air Disasters Predictions, Jeb? What do you think we'll get?" Well it turned out to be more than we expected. During our research for this episode we ran into a bit of a puzzle. It turns out that one of the key figures in the episode is still alive and has become an important figure in the world of conspiracy and out of an abundance of caution for our own sanity (as regards potential litigiousness) we've decided to shelve this one for a while. Will we come back and fill in the gap when we think the coast is clear? I don't know - but we didn't want to leave a hole in your listening so we decided to do something... more ambitious. So what we did instead was we recorded a 4+ hour deep dive into the 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies.   Extensive show notes available (for free) at our Patreon page. https://www.patreon.com/posts/s4-bonus-mothman-126932315

Jeb and Blake go in search of John the Baptist's resting place. Content Warning: Human remains on screen. Discussion of murder.   Beheading John the Baptist (wiki) Salome (play) In 2018 the murder of Bishop Epiphanius took place and rocked the religious community -- not important for this episode but it popped up a lot in my searching. San Silvestro "head" shown in intro Same - but wiki article Nimoy Fashion Alert  (NFA Wardrobe consulting by The Hogtown Rake, Pedro Mendes) The "head" of John the Baptist at San Silvestro: Art historian Michael Patroconni (Petroccione?) I think Jeb and I found this to be the most fun part of the episode: Gerald Larue obituary Herod Antipas (the Herod that executed JTB) Wadi El Natrun The Cave of John the Baptist

Blake tries to talk Jeb off the ledge as we return to the classic theme of "ancient astronauts" in this throwback episode titled: Earth Visitors. Some links relevant to our discussion: Dejah Thoris (character) MUFON/Harzan scandal Roman Dodecahedrons (archaeology) Frank Frazetta Boris Vallejo We mention Zecharia Sitchin. Research suggests humans grow more neurons than did Neanderthals. A bunch of this episode comes from the work of Maurice Chatelain, who we shall refer to as "Shadowlane." His book Our Cosmic Ancestors sports one of the more interesting book covers we've seen while researching this show. He also wrote Our Ancestors Came from Outer Space. Maurice Chatelain's credentials appear to have been somewhat overstated in the episode. We'll be talking about several "Out of Place Artifacts" or OOPAs in this episode. Let's start with the "Boot Print" aka The Meister Print. (pictured below) See also this article by Glenn Kuban. Very compelling stuff. I guess. I mean it sort of looks like show print. This interesting looking skull also sent us down some research holes. The text of the episode seems to be talking about the Del Mar Skull but the image doesn't look like a close match. A lot of "shapes on the earth" are discussed. The shapes require you to do a lot of work. We'll get into that in the episode. But one is the Maltese Cross that is absolutely stunning, so long as you ignore that some of the points are hundreds of miles from the alleged anchor points and that the temples allegedly at each point were centuries apart. Skeptical response via CSICOP. Also - this is supposed to be a "pyramid" but seems to be more of what geometry wonks call a "triangle." I'm trying to find the type of terminal behind our statistician. And - behind the scenes I've managed to contact him and he assures me that the episode required many takes and that his students reported they made him sound like he believes in the whole ancient astronauts thing... More on this if I hear back from a rather lengthy email I sent him today (12/13/24). Read even more about the Monte Carlo Method! Vintage ad for the The Outer Space Connection. According to Scientific American, the idea that indigenous Americans were here for a very long time (from across the Bering sea) really kicked off in the 1930s. Read more about The Elephant Slab hoax. This montage of Kachina dolls really impressed Blake: Nimoy Fashion Alert! Native Jewelry Artist Preston Monongye Engineer Charles Ruggles Could he be LARPing J. Allen Hynek? Finally we get to the Cosa Artifact. And - of course, The Jupiter Menace (1982)

Jeb and Blake head out to sea in research of the mystery of what happened to the crew of The Mary Celeste.  Links: The Dei Gratia Nimoy Fashion Alert  (NFA Wardrobe consulting by The Hogtown Rake, Pedro Mendes)  Attorney Fred Flood In 1913, The Strand Magazine provided an alleged survivor's account from one Abel Fosdyk, supposedly Mary Celeste's steward. The Mary Celeste (1913 article) Per "WhatTheFont" website identifier, that font is (appropriately):  JOLLY ROGER!  Meanwhile on Skull Hut Island...   Pop Culture: Dead Calm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mystery_of_the_Mary_Celeste Read it, it's a time. Hammer film -Jeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(Doctor_Who)