Back of the Book — May 9, 2026


This is some of what we covered on this radio program. I am hoping to post more of what we did on this Web page soon.

You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday May 13, 2026, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held next Wednesday May 13, 2026, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.

Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday night of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:

These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.

WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.

Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.

WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.

This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display, and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.

For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display, and find Specify Date, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Good luck.

Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.

FBI UFO composite sketch
FBI Lab rendered graphic

Trump, his Department of Defense and the FBI's nonsense about UFOs or UAPs is so puerile. The release of these images is obviously meant to distract from the abysmal failure of Trump's Iran war, the Jeffrey Epstein files and the price of everything going up because of the war and other stupid moves by Trump. Besides images with a tiny dot here and there they have also released this Composite Sketch about which they say, Actual site photo with FBI Lab rendered graphic overlay depicting corroborating eyewitness reports from September 2023 of an apparent ellipsoid bronze metallic object materializing out of a bright light in the sky, 130-195 feet in length, and disappearing instantaneously. Yeah, that's called a fake image. UFO nuts were doing this sort of unsophisticated trickery in the 1950s! This is what the FBI does now?

We have such deeply incompetent people running the executive branch of the government now. Unfortunately they are so used to scamming people that they do it easily and pretty damned effectively. they won the 2024, election by scamming people that prices would come down, there would be no wasteful foreign wars and that the United States of America would be the first thing they thought about. And here we are with a government bent on revenge against anyone who took legal action against a criminal who had been president, or who spoke against him and the other right-wing jerks in politics, we have a Department of Defense that flexes its muscles by blowing up boats in international waters and killing people who may be fishermen, and who certainly are not posing a threat to the aircraft attacking them, they're kidnapped Venezuela's leader, who was as corrupt as Trump, and we're now involved in a war again Iran that has phony, and shifting, reasons and no plan for victory, or even an off-ramp. Yeah, in the face of this let's all look at the FBI generated pictures of flying saucers and be awed.

2002_XV93_occultation_diagram (25K)
2002_XV93_occultation_diagram
Original data: Arimatsu, Ko; Yoshida, Fumi; Tsutomu, Hayamizu; Takita, Satoshi; Katsumasa, Hosoi; Ootsubo, Takafumi; Watanabe, Junichi. Plot by P1X3LZIMMY, published under CC-BY-SA 4.0

A trans-Neptunian ice ball has made it to the news. This particular ice ball is called 2002 XV93, a plutino that's about 3½ billion miles from the Sun, appears to have an atmosphere. But it's only 300 miles wide so it should be too small to have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere. Not only is there the issue of this plutino not having a heavy enough gravitational field to hold an atmosphere but at that distance from the Sun any atmosphere should be frozen onto the surface of the object. One suggestion that makes sense is that maybe this is the result of some other object hitting the ice ball very recently and vaporizing some of the surface ice. If that's the case then the phenomenon shouldn't last very long.

The evidence for an atmosphere is based on the observations of 2002 XV93 a couple of years ago by a number of high powered telescopes in Japan. 2002 XV93 passed in front of a star and that transit was recorded. To the surprise of the astronomers the light from the star dimmed before being occulted by the plutino, and then it showed up dimmer after coming out from behind it and then got to it's usual brightness after 2002 XV93 moved a little more, presumably letting the star clear its atmosphere. Usually the star would be expected to just disappear when being occulted by a body like that. This is something that astronomers of all sorts have observed with the Earth's airless Moon for centuries. So I'm sure that 2002 XV93 will be getting more attention in the future.

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.

One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board, owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people board that was just totally out of hand.

In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.

Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board during the program.

Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.

There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.

We like to stay interactive with our listeners. Here are the various options for you to get in touch with us.

You can also send me E-mail.

And now you can even reach me on Twitter Twitter logo


WBAI related links

A WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site

Back to the Back of the Book page

Back to my home page.

The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2026, R. Paul Martin.