In a heartening development, there’s been a spate of discussions on humor in the paraweird.
I don’t have much to say here that is not said better and more entertainingly in the podcast episodes I’m linking in this post. I will only emphasize that laughter is the best medicine in the magical sense – it potentiates psi while guarding against fear, the morose, alienation, and taking yourself too seriously.
AP Strange and I had been working on a show to record on Project Archivist for a couple of months and as soon as the show was wrapped and published shows on the same topic popped up from Conspirinormal and Me & Paranormal You. All three shows are worth a follow and full of expansive archives if you are in a binging mood.
AP and I would like to express our thanks to Loyd Auerbach and John Tenney for their generosity in discussing humor and performance with us in preparation for our show. Loyd Auerbach has periodic Q&A sessions on Facebook, very interesting with great questions from his students, with archives at link.
Steve Berg on Fortean Comedy and Weird Nebraska – LISTEN AT LINK:
Humor and the Paraweird with AP Strange on Project Archivist – LISTEN AT LINK:
https://projectarchivist.podbean.com/e/ep-352-humor-and-the-paranormal-with-steph-and-ap-strange/
Ghost Dog is a Mystery Box 
Thanks for the links! Will make sure to listen at some point, might already have heard the interview with you and A. P. Strange on “Project Archivist” but I am not 100% sure.
Reminds me that I have been revisiting old episodes of “Exploring the Bizarre” and one reason I miss that show was the entire “Abbott and Costello of Forteana” comedy duo dynamic the 2 Tims (Swartz and Beckley) had going on. Their sense of humour about how finger-licking surreal ufology, cryptozoology, parapsychology etc frequently get on the grassroots level when portrayed accurately is something I often miss in Fortean media.
On a related note: I notice that quite a few guests on “Exploring the Bizarre” whom I rarely encountered elsewhere were young women, e. g. Samantha Scarlette and Jenny Ashford. Whatever psychological issues many old guard male ufologists have with women, Tim Beckley didn’t. Could also be the gender role distribution you have mentioned in the past, where women ufologists tend to be more interested in the weird mystical aspects of ufology and men more into the “normal” parts (whatever that means as far as ufology is concerned) – a pattern the 2 Tims are obvious exceptions to. (might be noteworthy here that the nonbinary Japanese electronic musician Haruko Tajima is something of a Fortean nerd and uses a ton of alien/elf/fae imagery in their public image often interchangeably…)
All this ties into your frequent discussions of gender issues in the Fortean world.
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