Podcast Episode 10 is Up: Interview About Mike Bara’s “The Choice” (Plus Some Hoagland on the Side)

Yet another bonus episode of my podcast has been posted. This episode is my first ever interview that I conducted, so I apologies if it sounds shaky in places. The interview is with a man who goes by the pseudonym “expat,” and he requested that I refer to him by that name throughout. He runs the blog, “The Emoluments of Mars” (yeah, I tripped over that second word in the recording) which is also known simply as “Dork Mission.”

Readers of this blog who may be familiar with Richard Hoagland’s own publications may recognize both of these titles as plays on Hoagland’s books, “The Monuments of Mars” and “Dark Mission.” The latter was co-written with Mike Bara, and this interview was about Bara’s own, single-author book, “The Choice.” Most of that book is about normal new-agey stuff with the basic premise that we can shape the world with our thoughts during the events of 2012. He also has a lot of other claims in there, such as saying that astrology is a perfectly valid science, Newtonian physics doesn’t work when things rotate, the sun budded off planets, and some other stuff.

In particular, the reason for this bonus episode is that a year ago today, on November 10, 2010, Bara was interviewed on Coast to Coast AM. Expat managed to call into the show and challenge Bara about one very minor claim. What ensued was …

Okay, if you want to know, listen to my podcast. 🙂 Suffice to say for now, it was interesting, and we talked a bit about how to conduct an interview on talk radio and how to treat guests and callers. I explore the call with Expat and go a little more deeply into some of Bara’s claims that Expat has some particular expertise on (namely rocketry, engineering, etc. — the flip side of space exploration about which I have next to zero knowledge).

Please let me know what you think, either by e-mailing me, posting here in the comments, or to the shownotes page for the podcast episode. As I said, this was the first interview I’ve ever conducted, and considering that I have another one scheduled to do with Karl Mamer (“The Conspiracy Skeptic”) in about a week and a half, feedback on how you think this went would be good.

Hopefully I will also have a blog post up within a day or so looking at some of Bara’s other claims during that episode of Coast to Coast, but I have a meeting in 12 hours and need to go to bed. The normal, regularly-scheduled podcast episode for November 16 will return to the normal format and will discuss some of the rock and dust claims related to the Apollo Moon Hoax conspiracy. The nascent Q&A section needs some Qs if it’s going to persist past its debut episode, so feel free to send in questions.

Edited to Add: The above-mentioned future post has now been made.