Paul Giamatti’s CHINWAG with Stephen Asma

🌒🌒🌒 Ever since they tackled the hollow earth, Paul and Stephen have wanted to talk about weird moon conspiracy theories. Was the Apollo moon landing faked or was it really a movie set? Why does the American flag appear to be flapping on a windless moon? Where was Neil Armstrong’s camera in that famed picture and what about those eyewitness accounts of Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin playing the slots...

⭐️📬🌎 Deep into the Chinwag Mailbag we go! Caroline writes about an incredible near-death experience that’s left her feeling like a ghost in her own life. Then, how almost dying can alter religious convictions and spiritual reality, DMT, the Bahá’í faith, and Victor Hugo! Paul Giamatti is an award-winning actor and producer. Stephen Asma is a professor and author specializing in the philosophy o...

⚾️⚾️⚾️ Part 2 of Paul and Stephen’s Chinwag turns to the religion of baseball with writer, comedian and passionate fan, Alex Edelman. If Paul is gonna talk sports, it’s bound to be about its spiritual pull and ability to expand space and time. They’ll get into all of it: superstition, Mark “the Bird” Fidrych, the legendary Bart Giamatti, George Grella, how “home” is a concept and not a translat...

💬🛸🩻 We’re diving back into the Chinwag Mailbag! Billy C. wants to know how Paul would like to see UFOs portrayed in films. Should paranormal encounters be big and fantastical, or what about - no special effects at all? Then, Paul’s got some obscure film recommendations and of course, Betty and Barney Hill, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky make an appearance...

🦈🦈🦈 Paul and Stephen welcome brilliant writer and comedian Alex Edelman for a deep chinwag on spirituality, religion, improvisation, and paranormal leanings. Listen as they dive right in with why the CIA should use Baby Shark in its interrogation program, the importance and virtue of repetition in the process of joke writing, the Socratic method in comedy, and how AI and Chat GPT will affect th...

📖🫱🏽‍🫲🏾👽 We’re diving into the Chinwag Mailbag! Paul in Australia writes to Paul and Stephen with a topic of biblical proportion! He brings to Chinwag the theory known as Paleocontact, which states that our ancient ancestors experienced contact with other non-terrestrial civilizations. Do ancient texts support the idea that paleocontact goes back to the Bible? Then, Chinwag listeners have ask...

🐒🐒🐒 Paul and Stephen are thrilled to talk Bigfoot with acclaimed actor Jesse Eisenberg who stars in the fantastic new movie Sasquatch Sunset. Sasquatch Sunset is an unprecedented look at a year in the life of a family of Sasquatches, as they forage, mate, and hope to find others like them in the forest. What do Sasquatches do in private, and how do our stories and beliefs about Bigfoot relate t...

🎭👻👯‍♂️ The origin story of Paul and Justin Theroux’s friendship, formed 30 years ago while messing around backstage and onstage in a depressing Chekhov play. Justin’s memory is razor sharp and deep, and he shares the moment Paul first experienced fame after his breakout appearance as Pig Vomit in Howard Stern’s Private Parts. Also, theaters are spooky places and Justin reminds Paul of the eerie...

🧘🏻‍♂️🧘🏻‍♂️🧘🏻‍♂️ Paul and Stephen are joined by Paul’s old friend, perpetually youthful actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux. Learn all you ever wanted to know about the Oakwoods temporary housing in LA from former inhabitants Paul and Justin. Then rattlesnakes in Runyon Canyon, coyotes in Central Park, and how the Lindbergh kidnapping made pitbulls popular and led to Petey the dog on The Li...

👓🎥🐦 On this Bonus-Wag, Paul and Stephen ask Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris about his ground-breaking invention of the Interrotron camera and how it takes the viewer closer to a documentary subject. Also, what John le Carré says in Errol Morris’s film The Pigeon Tunnel that makes Stephen wonder if being a spy is similar to being an actor. And what separates a good actor from a bad o...

📽️📽️📽️ Paul and Stephen are excited to meet Academy Award-winning Director and avid book collector Errol Morris. Stephen’s funky blue lighting and Paul’s floatation tank-talk mark the start of this Chinwag and in just a few short turns, the conversation goes from the idea of the bodhisattva in Buddhism to the weirdness of Florida, in particular Vernon, FL (aka “Nub City”). In typical Waggy fashion...

⚔️🇳🇴🦈 Paul and Stephen talk about Stephen’s trip to Norway and his readings from an 8th Century book of spells found in the floorboards of an old church. Is Iceland or Norway known for delicacies like rotten shark? They’re not sure, but still not fans (of the shark meals). And listeners out there, do you want to hear Paul and Stephen explore Berserkers? Let us know! Also, if your genetic analysis...

👔👔👔 Paul puts Stephen in the hot seat for Part 1 of this rigorous round of “Ask the Philosopher!” This is not just your basic Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. You’ll learn the importance of Pythagoras, besides that theorem you learned in grade school (with an obligatory mention of passing gas). Then, hear about the mindf*ck of Zeno’s paradox, famed thinker and nudist Diogenes, all about cynics, r...

🐙💭🪸 Paul and Stephen have a few more questions for resident Octopus expert, author, philosopher and biologist, Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith. When does consciousness emerge in the evolutionary process and does it exist in every bit of matter - even a grain of sand? Then, do Octopuses have language and what is its function? And controversial questions abound on whether animals dream, the role of...

🐙🐙🐙 The Octopus is fascinating and mysterious, and as Paul and Stephen discover, a cephalopod that offers incredible lessons in consciousness, intelligence, awareness and being. The octopus might also be the closest we have to studying the alien mind. Peter Godfrey-Smith is an author, Professor of Biology, philosopher of science and skilled scuba diver who’s looked right into the eyes of many a...

📊🔢🧮📐 Paul and Stephen dig into our Chinwag mailbag for this SETI-inspired question (that’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence to any novice listeners). The Drake Equation is explained and let’s just say there’s A LOT of math involved. It’s been 60+ years since last estimates were made on the odds of finding intelligent life in the Milky Way, and Chinwag listener Rick B. wants to know, ho...

🦑🦑🦑 The sea is deep, but it’s no match for Paul and Stephen’s boundless appetite for aquatic mysteries. Follow them as they dip into the strange world of three famed squids: The Giant Squid, the Colossal Squid, and the Bigfin Squid (a BigFoot squid, really??). Then, other Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs) like humboldt squids, giant albino crabs, boat-attacking-squids (!), megamouth sharks,...

📫💭📆 We love our loyal Chinwag listeners and we love your letters! Keep ‘em coming and we may respond to them on the air! Miss B Havin wrote to Paul and Stephen and shared a message she received in a recurring dream about Paul. Does Paul understand the message therein? What does water represent in a dream, and what’s the least lucky month of the year? Put your ears on this Bonus-Wag and find out...

🔱🔱🔱 Paul and Stephen wade through the deep waters and history of such aquatic mysteries as Atlantis and The Bermuda Triangle. Listen in as Stephen details Plato’s telling of Atlantis, with all its craven needs, imperialist ambitions and loss of virtue. The weird link between Atlantis and UFO/paranormal activity is legend, but did you know of the lasers in Atlantis and its connection to The Berm...

👐🏼✝️👐🏼 Paul and Stephen have a few more questions for the "Long Island Medium," Theresa Caputo. Listen in to hear how she learned to interpret the messages she receives from departed souls and spirits? How Catholics respond to her abilities, and do demons and negativity in the spirit world get her down? And does she fear losing her gifts? T his bonus is Medium-well! Get it? Dig in Waggers! Pau...

🐄🐄🐄 Recorded live from the (possibly haunted) Marines’ Memorial Theatre in San Francisco at Sketchfest 2024 with special guest, comedian, writer, and host of the Beautiful/Anonymous podcast, Chris Gethard. Chris heard about a lot of brushes with the paranormal during his time at Weird NJ, and he relays one of the spookiest stories imaginable about a band of silent, menacing cows leading the way...

🙋🏻‍♂️🍕🖋️ Paul, Stephen, and comedian Christ Gethard answer the weirdly awesome questions from our live audience at Sketchfest 2024. Have you noticed conspiracy theories have gone from “fun” to “crazy”? You have? Perfect segue to Chris’s rumored involvement with Pizzagate and the real reason behind that fake (but really creepy!) satanic ritual on The Chris Gethard Show with Will Ferrell (uh, rat...

🗑️🗑️🗑️ Recorded live from the (possibly haunted) Marines’ Memorial Theatre in San Francisco at Sketchfest 2024 with special guest, comedian, writer, and host of the Beautiful/Anonymous podcast, Chris Gethard. Is it possible someone doesn’t find Paul charming? Hear the real story behind how Paul ended up in a dumpster on Chris’s public access series, The Chris Gethard Show. Explore more folklore fr...

🧟🪦🧟‍♀️ Paul and Stephen learn the history of zombies with spiritualism expert Lisa Morton who shares the influence of these phenomena in popular culture, folklore and horror films. Who brought the idea of zombies to mass awareness and what cultures first wrote about these mythical characters? Also, the impact of Bela Lagosi’s film White Zombie, how it gave way to Voodoo zombies, Sci-Fi zombies,...

🖤🖤🖤 Welcome Waggers! Come for the ghosts, stay for the vomiting ectoplasm! Paul and Stephen walk through the myriad ways folks talked to the dead throughout history with spiritualism expert and author Lisa Morton. En route they discuss spirits, mediums, oracles, ouija boards, priming, and rampant charlatanry in the business of ghost-hunting. Hear ghostly experiences from the legendary Stanley H...