Remember that video for Daniel Pinchbeck's 2012 from a few weeks back? In another of his promotional efforts for the paperback edition of the book, Pinchbeck (far right) recently taped an interview with Whitley Streiber for Streiber's "Dreamland" podcast, and the results are about what you'd expect a conversation between a man who's mulling over whether or not he's the living incarnation of Quetzlcoatl and a man who's convinced that he's been in contact with otherworldly "visitors" for much of his life would go... with a long, heated argument over what's going to happen when humanity's way of life comes to an end around 2012. If I had to grotesquely summarize the debate: Pinchbeck says Streiber's projecting a dark vision of the world that's the result of being brainwashed by evil entities, and Streiber thinks Pinchbeck is a crazy hippy terrified of reality.

You don't have to rely on my shorthand, though, since both participants have taken their side of the argument online. Streiber defends his otherworldly visitors at great length for "trying with all their might and main to help us through a difficult phase in the life of our species without destroying our independence by revealing too much of their breathtaking knowledge and technology to us," but he's still pretty sure that there's going to be a catastrophic "die-back" of the human race before things get better. Pinchbeck maintains the future's not ours to see, and that we still have time to build a better tomorrow if we put some effort into it. He also reiterates his interpretation of Streiber's "Faustian pact with these Mephistophelean entities" based on how Streiber writes about his relationship with the visitors in Communion and other works; on the podcast, Streiber calls Pinchbeck's theory an "obscene" product of "lunatic paranoia." Meanwhile, down in Fort Lauderdale, James Randi probably thinks these two deserve each other...