Aloha, Ladies and Gents. Whelp, it’s official. Yer lookin’ at the new monthly guest host of Dreamland with Whitley Strieber. Only not Whitley Strieber when I’m hosting because that would be confusing. When will I debut, you ask? Glad you did. This Friday.
I wanted my first guest to symbolize the sense of going in a bold, honest direction with voices and angles you might not hear on other shows. As I hope you would expect, I am not engaging with distractions and campfire tales for their own sake. To that end, I am honored that writer/historian Alicia Puglionisi took a chance and graced us with our inaugural episode. Alicia is the author of In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire and Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science. We talk about the former in the free half and the latter for Unknown Country subscribers.
I really, really need your support on this one because I know YOU will love it, if you’ve been following my work at all, but I am certain that exposing, for instance, the racist origins of Mound Builder myths in America or sexism in psi research will not be taken well by a large portion of the paranormal-stories-only-please audience. We need to change the focus of public discourse on these topics. I can’t do it alone.
For my part, I see inheriting this large platform once a month as our chance to influence popular discourse together. I only said yes to Whitley because… well… childhood dream come true–and also to shine a spotlight on the overlooked aspects of these subjects, which inevitably means hearing from new voices.
If you like the direction I’m going and can afford to subscribe to Unknown Country, that’s a great way to support the site and the show. But you have another role to play, should you choose to accept it. Be a bullhorn for change. Talk it up on social media and in the comments sections wherever you listen or watch on Friday or over the weekend. I believe it’s important to be vocal because it gives anyone watching who is on the fence about whether to hear me out or keep going with the same-old-same-old the sense that there is already a community of people who get it available for them to be a part of.
The timing of this couldn’t be more perfect. Normally, I release ye olde Paratopias every Friday. However, since I don’t want to pull focus from my first Dreamland, and since I am releasing a brand new nearly 3-hour Paratopia Halloween Spooktacular on the 31st, I will forgo the normal Friday Paratopia release and ya won’t even feel it!
Oh, and lastly, the Kindle version of my new book is on sale in the US and UK until Friday. I’ve got to make coin somehow. It’s like donating a few bucks to my nonexistent Patreon, but ya get a book that really does exist out of the deal.
Alright. That’s it. That’s my pitch. Thank you for hearing me out.
See ya Friday!
JayVay 