Alex! I know you have said many times before, and I'm paraphrasing this - but the effect is, "I don't want platitudes nor fanboys". I get that. But man, go ahead 'n take a seat, and lap up your medicine, Alex. I'm gonna throw some fanboy out there.
Your show is awesome. I'm a total fan. It's had many iterations along the way, we all know that. I remember when you broke the news that you were moving to Skeptiko 2.0 and I was like, woah, this is a cool journey. I had no idea how much more was to come. Some shows have been better than others. Some have been amazingly meaningful to me. All have been super valuable, and some that I didn't like at the time mean more now in hindsight. I really like where you've evolved. You are asking truly important questions. Many that frankly, IMHO, we aren't gonna solve in this life. But they are key to our existence, and thay give layman like myself keys to meaning and agency for adventure to inquire and examine.
I was lucky in a serious way to find your show when it was based on your website way back in the beginning. I think I may have found you at episode 30. I can't recall exactly now but it was something like that. I devoured those early shows like a hungry dog. The back catalogue was a Godsend and I whipped through it all in a few months (well less but who's counting). Followed by a brief stint of post binge depression. But that didn't last because more shows were in the hopper, seemingly all the time.
Things I like the best about your show... You made it obvious to me there was something of conspiracy in culture and online culture specifically, early on, via the "Unbelievers" who stalked your show in a seriously dark way and gave you 1 star ratings and truly awful, hateful written reviews daily, for years. It broke me in really early for the upcoming fake news push (still to come, many years later) that online "opinion and mass culture baseline" were not to be believed like first person experience could offer (say, in a room, or after a few months within a real community). Second, your show addressed themes that were present in my life from an early age. (ie... I grew up in what I think was a haunted house, I was raised in a somewhat odd religious household and later broke free from religion yet thankfully not from my truly awesome family... I was always dedicated to the discovery of science, I flirted with atheism in my 20's but also had many personal experiences in spirituality that made me hunger for why I was so pulled by spirit... thankfully through your show rejected atheism in my 30's, thank you for that... I've had continued insights into things some would call woo or paranormal, in spite of my previous separation from specific religion... I have a very close connection to a visceral spiritual moral hierarchy and mandate, and I have come across a few experiences and brushes with evil that I have been frankly thankful to be able to manage and defend myself against).
These are all things that happen in life. Many of these happen to many of us. But they are all so easy to bury, and be distracted by iPhones, money, excitement, career, travel, etc. All while blowing off the connection to other humans and their very real individual spiritual experiences along the way.
Early on - It was great to see you address, but even greater to see you move past, the tit for tat arguments with debunkers. At the time I liked it. Probably because I had discovered I was under their sham of a "Bio-Bot" paradigm and resented that and was breaking free. Other things that seem amazing from the show were the NDE deep dives, Mediums, conspiracy (of course), and the serious helpings of behind the curtain science culture discussions. All amazing. All things no one else was or can talk about with any credibility. Finally, and THANK YOU - for starting to adopt your long form show format. It's been said before, and it's true, the show doesn't even get started until past to 1 hour mark. That's when the main course is served in a discussion, time and again. Please, please, please - keep doing long form. This is something the sham "FauxCasts" can't, nor will attempt to do because truth is what longform reveals - and truth is not what is being served these days. But many of us hunger for it none the less. Your show has introduced many other great podcasts. It's been somewhat of an Oracle for podcasts and authors. Through contact with your show I've read many books along the way too.
Many of your fans don't post here of course. However, it seems, you have many dedicated spitits on a meanigful human journey stopping in to see how your adventure is progressing. Well done Alex! Your journey is legend, thank you for sharing!