Topic: Fortian

In 1884, a sharecropper named Bass Lassiter witnessed a minute-long shower of red liquid falling from a cloudless sky in Chatham County, North Carolina. Professor Francis P. Vendable of the University of North Carolina investigated the site and conducted a microscopic analysis, concluding the substance was partially decomposed biological blood. The event remains an unexplained Fortian anomaly, as no atmospheric or animal explanation could account for decomposed blood falling in a localized area.

Gordon White names Charles Fort’s "Book of the Damned" as his number two pick, identifying Fort as the "fountainhead" of high strangeness studies. Fort collected "damned facts"—anomalous events that science could not explain—to argue that the scientific paradigm is as limited as the religious one it replaced. White praises Fort’s 1919 writing style as brilliant, funny, and foundational for the entire paranormal genre.

The host selects Charles Fort’s "Book of the Damned" as his number one pick, noting that despite its age, it remains the most original and provocative work in the field. They discuss Jeffrey Kripal’s claim that Fort "invented postmodernism" by predicting the end of the scientific era. They also lament the decline of the "Fortean Times" magazine, which they feel has moved away from Fort’s original spirit of challenging the materialist context.

Larry E. Arnold, the world's leading authority on Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC), joins the program to discuss his lifelong research into the phenomenon. Arnold founded Parascience International in 1976 and authored the comprehensive 500-page work, Ablaze. The discussion highlights the graphic nature of SHC cases where bodies are reduced to ash while limbs often remain untouched, challenging conventional explanations like falling asleep with a cigarette.

The conversation shifts to the decline of organized Fortean societies and the compartmentalization of paranormal research. Arnold advocates for an open-minded scientific methodology that avoids immediate denial or debunking of "pyrophenomena." He emphasizes that fire remains one of humanity's least understood tools and calls for honest curiosity in investigating anomalies that currently reside on the "to-be-solved" shelf.

Greg Carlwood asks about the trend of "history hoaxes" and "phantom time," where the timeline of human history is allegedly manipulated. White responds by arguing that our fundamental understanding of time as linear and metronomic is a Northwest European error. He suggests that anomalies in history often emerge because we do not have a correct model of time, which traditional cultures view as cyclical or stacked.