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Gods, Ghosts & UFOs
This is a podcast about all the things they said weren’t real.
The Kickstarter "Project Story”
In case you didn’t make it through the whole video up top, here’s one more shot at summing up what Gods, Ghosts & UFOs even is.
"This is a show about liminal spaces. As cracks in the facade of our consensus reality get bigger, we're here to try to see what's on the other side.
Minus all the boring parts.”
Jordan, from the pilot intro
If you’ve ever bothered to look, you know that there are plenty of paranormal slash supernatural slash metaphysical podcasts and YouTube channels and subreddits and indie publishers and blah blah blah. Maybe you’ve also noticed that most of them are either drunk on their own sauce, or they're full of winks and giggles (aka contempt).
Can't there be some kind of middle road? We sure hope so!
Our goal is to walk that narrow path between rigid cynicism and blind credulity. And we’re convinced that people (like us, like you) can be simultaneously curious about UFOs, religious experiences, consciousness, and material science without having to commit to any particular interpretation or dogma.
But first, who even are we?
None of us were comfortable reading a bio for the pitch video, so here are the proper introductions...
Jordan (J.E. Petersen on the Internet) lives in Los Angeles with his growing family (baby #3 due in April), and suffers from a lifelong obsession with movies, which was in no way ameliorated by seven years of film school and an MFA in screenwriting. He’s also a devout Mormon heretic seeking enlightenment by avoiding meditation.
Mallory Everton is a creator and performer from Portland (the Oregon one). In 2020 she co-wrote, co-starred, co-directed (and edited) her first feature film Stop and Go, a Covid-era roadtrip comedy that premiered at the SXSW film festival in 2021. Prior to that she created 2 seasons of the web series Freelancers, and wrote and acted in the first 9 seasons of the sketch comedy show Studio C, which has over 1 billion (with a B) views on YouTube.
Tom Maxwell is a writer and musician. A member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers from 1994 to 1999, his songs have appeared in dozens of movies and television shows, a Super Bowl commercial, an Academy Award-nominated documentary, and a Tony Award-winning Broadway soundtrack. As a writer, he's been featured in The Oxford American and The Library of Congress, among others. Tom's also a member of the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.
All three of us are, independently, writers, producers, and podcasters who, by strange serendipity, discovered that we had a shared interest in the numinous.
Naturally (inevitably?) we talked about starting a podcast. But! The last thing we wanted to do is become one of those shows where three random people talk about paranormal stuff for hours.
So this is what we came up with...
The Format
(Not to be confused with that band from the early 2000's)
Every episode is going to start off with something in the headlines. In our pilot, we had to take on UFOs, thanks to the huge number of quote-unquote drone sightings happening all over the east coast back when we recorded it at the end of 2024.
And because we can’t help ourselves, we try to find the best takes on those headlines and metabolize them for ourselves.
Whenever possible, the topical conversation will open the door to talk about personal experience. In a turn of somewhat shocking synchronicity, one of our hosts actually had his first true UFO sighting right around the time we recorded.
His reaction ended up being a perfect illustration of how we’re trying to approach this stuff, which goes well beyond material tangibility.
The real goal of every episode will be to let the headlines and the personal experiences (ours and yours!) lead to thoughtful, productive conversations about the larger questions around that particular topic.
We’ll also have help.
First, and we swear this isn’t just a gimmick, but we decided to bring in an AI correspondent.
The thinking behind this is that these LLMs are built on the foundation of vast stores of human experience and knowledge. What better way to take the public’s temperature on a subject than to ask something doing its best to synthesize the collected wisdom of humanity?
Anyway, we named it Agnes, and here’s its take on UFOs.
But because neither we the hosts, nor our suspect AI correspondent, can be relied on to supply the best perspective on any given topic, we’ll also bring in an actual expert as often as possible.
Let’s sum up.
Every episode will:
Talk about some “headlines”
Relate some personal stories (ours or yours!)
Dive a bit deeper into the topic
Consult Agnes, our AI correspondant
Call in an expert
It’s kind of a heavy lift!
How to Produce a Premium Podcast™
Creating a show that (emphatically) isn’t just three random people chatting for an hour about “cool stuff” takes a lot of time and resources.
Here's a breakdown of what goes into each episode:
Topic research and fact-checking (20-30 hours)
Guest booking (aka experts)
Interview prep
Outlining and scripting
Agnes (AI) segment development
Recording!
More recording!
Content editing and narrative structuring
Sound design and mixing
Music sourcing
Mixing and mastering
QC, baby
Clips and other shareable content
Graphics and artwork design
Show notes and documentation
That’s at least 50-60 hours of combined work from a whole team, including:
Three hosts (research, preparation, recording)
Producer (coordination, scheduling, management)
Editor (content structuring, narrative flow)
Sound designer (atmosphere, effects)
Audio engineer (mixing, mastering)
Researcher (fact-checking, source verification)
“It means money.” - Mal
We're asking for your support to produce the first 8-10 episodes, which will set the standard for everything that follows. Your backing will help us:
Pay our team reasonable rates
Maintain complete creative independence
Build a sustainable model for future episodes
Hopefully that first bullet sort of goes without saying. The reason platforms like Patreon and Substack do so well is because most people agree that it’s a good thing, actually, when creatively talented people get paid for their work.
A Tale of Two Funding Models
There are, generally, two basic ways that can happen for a show like this:
Way #1: Corporate Funding
This is when a big (or at least biggish) company pays the creators to make the show, but then the company also owns it, which is only fair, since it’s their responsibility to make it profitable. The creators win because they don’t have to worry about whether or not they’ll be able to pay rent, but they also don’t get to have final say on what their show is or becomes.Way #2: Independent Patronage (plus advertising)
The creators own the show completely, but they’re also on the hook for whatever it costs to make, regardless of whether it ever makes any money.
Given those two standard models, you can see why most independent shows are unedited interviews and conversations. Even with minimal costs, it can take months or years to be able to grow an audience enough to even break even.
To get a show like this made, you typically need to sell it to someone who has the money to make it. But we felt very strongly that that would defeat the whole purpose.
Gods, Ghosts & UFOs must be completely and totally independent from the start. This isn’t about ego, it’s about trust. If we’re on someone else’s payroll, how can you be sure we’re not pulling any ontological punches? How can we be sure the people paying us won’t influence what we talk about, even inadvertently?
We’re making the bet that there’s enough hunger out there for this kind of show that we can get at least the first set of episodes off the ground with this campaign.
Then, hosting GG&U on Substack will allow us to build the kind of patronage that can keep it going as long as people like you want it to.
In the meantime, we’re fairly confident we won’t run out of material…
Metaphysical Grist for the Metaphorical Mill
In our ongoing efforts to examine the stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into consensus reality, here’s a brief survey of potential topics…
Non-Human Intelligences
UFOs/UAP sightings and encounters (duh)
Cryptid sightings and research
Ghost encounters and hauntings
Poltergeists and possessions
AI Consciousness
Consciousness
Near-death experiences (NDEs)
Psi phenomena (remote viewing, telepathy, etc)
Dreams (dreams, precognitive, traveling)
Synchronicities
Simulation theory
Historical Mysteries
Lost civilizations & megalithic structures
Sacred geometry and ley lines
Ancient astronomical knowledge
Cross-cultural deity patterns
Universal mythological themes
Modern Mysteries
Temporal anomalies (eg missing time)
Secret facilities and hidden technology
Mysterious disappearances
Strange internet phenomena
Scientific anomalies
Spiritual & Metaphysical
Indigenous knowledge systems
Contemporary religious experiences
Sacred sites and power places
Different dimensions and parallel universes
Past life memories and reincarnation cases
If you’re looking to be shoved outside the bounds of your ontological comfort zone, you’ve come to the right place.
Join Us
The word “community” is farcically overused lately, but that really is what we’re after. The only way to survive in a world of informational and spiritual chaos is to reach out and grab the other hands that are reaching out.
So, yes, we hope you’ll support our efforts to produce the first raft of episodes, but then the larger goal is to convince you to stick around for the long haul.
Because the search for truth is, and has always been, a communal effort.
If you feel that call, join us.
*The above was copied and pasted from our Kickstarter project page.