More for your listening pleasure

I haven't posted any Librivox links in awhile because I've mostly been listening to podcasts lately—though I recently finished listening to Dreams From My Father, which was terrific. Hearing President Obama read his own work more than makes up for the abridgment, and since I got the two-in-one edition from my grandparents for Christmas I still have The Audacity of Hope to look forward to!

Anyway, my new favorite podcast is the Paranormal Podcast, which features a thirty-minute to hourlong interview with an author/ investigator/what-have-you in each episode. It's not nearly as kooky as you might think—there are lots of tidbits to interest even confirmed skeptics (how the CIA employs psychics—"remote viewers" —on intelligence-gathering missions; the scientific aspects of after-death experiences; and suchlike). One of the psychics interviewed on the show posited that twenty percent of our thoughts don't actually belong to us, which is something even a die-hard skeptic would find difficult to reject out of hand (though I do wonder how one can possibly quantify it!)

And if you're interested in folklore, the episode on zombies is a must-listen. The guest author, Bob Curran, is from Northern Ireland, and he tells a wonderful, possibly-true story about a grandfather who comes back from the graveyard to visit his family. Well worth checking out on iTunes.