High Strange - Episode 06: Let’s Talk Aliens

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

After everything we have seen and heard, it is time to stop circling the question. What do we actually mean when we say aliens, and why is it still so hard to talk about plainly.   Want more? Our High Strange music playlist is now available exclusively on Apple Music. Visit the link in our show notes or go to apple.co/highstrangeplaylist  To access our book list, go to apple.co/highstrangebooks  To find us in Apple Maps, go to apple.co/highstrangeguide For ad-free listening and bonus content, subscribe to Tenderfoot+ now! Members get all episodes ad-free plus bonus content throughout the season. Sign up at apple.co/highstrange. For Spotify, Google, and other Android users, visit tenderfootplus.com.   Follow along on social and the web: @highstrange on Instagram @highstrange on TikTok highstrange.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband, Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe.

That's your home. That's your husband. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart Podcast Awards are happening live at South by Southwest. It's the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much.

Iheart radio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at Veeps.com or the Veeps app. You know Roald Dahl. He thought up Willie Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roll Dahl, I'll tell you that story, and much, much more.

What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Tenderfoot listeners. We want to hear from you. We just launched a survey and want to know about your favorite shows, your merch requests, and what you'd like to listen to in 2026.

Give us the gift of your feedback and you might be one of our winners to get free merch and a $100 Amazon gift card. Head over to Tenderfoot.tv slash survey for more. Thanks again. Now here's the show. Hi Strange is released every Friday and brought to you absolutely free.

But for ad-free listening, exclusive bonuses, and early access to episodes, subscribe to Tinderfoot Plus at Tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast. and do not represent those of iHeart radio, Tinderfoot TV, or their employees. This episode contains references to sexual assault and sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised. I've been wanting to do a real sort of off-the-cuff conversation with everyone since, honestly, 2023. But now that we've explored some new stories and we have a lot of

cool new stories that we're exploring still and have yet to share. This is the time we should just actually break down. One, our genuine thoughts on everything we've covered and two, some of the personal experiences we've had that kind of paint the picture a little bit better. And to me, that matters. The things that kind of go unnoticed, there's a lot of nuanceance when it comes to when you're conducting an interview with somebody and you're talking about something that's kind of

weird. Yeah, I think something that people don't realize is so much gets left on the cutting room floor during these interviews and like we use the best pieces, but there's still so much more that like you guys never see but we know about and we desperately want to talk to anybody about it and what better conduit to do that through than this roundtable. So I just listened to all five episodes just before we recorded this. So this is my first time hearing all five episodes and they were fucking awesome.

I mean, I think what's really unique about this season compared to last is that the investigation really took us all around the world this time. And we got to see that this is a global phenomenon that's happening everywhere. And so many of the stories are so similar anywhere you are in the world. And that's, it's creepy, but it's fascinating at the same time. So I guess I'd like to start maybe just. just, you know, we get right into episode one and just work our way up just to we try to cover as much as we can. Yeah, yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. So, you know, kick us off. Like, where did episode one start? It started with the congressional UAP hearings? Yeah, I mean, okay, so you and I

both, we went to D.C. This was, I'm pretty sure we were at a bar together, and we got a weird notice email from, I don't know, a journalist friend that was like tipping us off. There's going to be a UFO conference congressional hearing tomorrow in D.C. Are you going? And I was like, well, we are now, I think we can get a flight. And we literally just, we booked the earliest flight the next morning. And we arrived there. And we were absolutely out of place. We, I mean, it was like a a huge weird college that wasn't really nice. Yeah. And you're like, where's the, not only where is the bathroom,

but also where is the room that we should be in? And what are all these other rooms for, you know? Yeah. Can I just say that, I can't remember the reason why, but I couldn't make it. And I'm so jealous. But what an experience. I mean, being in there, we weren't necessarily in that room,

but we were in the room adjacent, the extra fill room, guess, with a bunch of other people. Oh, yeah, that part's interesting. So, like, I mean, this is, they do this all the time, like, every week, Congress meets and stuff. They meet and do stuff that we just don't casually watch on TV. Yeah.

I mean, I don't. But this was probably a very filled time for that time. You know, like, this was the event people wanted to go to. And there was a line out the door when we got there. People wanted to sit in and listen. Yeah, it seemed like, you know, to compare it to TSA. Like it seemed like oh my gosh there's a lot of people flying out this this morning. Yeah, it's Christmas break. Yeah, it's like okay, it must be a Thanksgiving thing and so when we got there, we like the security line itself took kind of a long time and then when we got into the building, it's just kind of everyone's just doing their own thing. We had no clue where to actually go. And I jokingly said I played it in the tape in episode one for a second. I was like, do we just ask for the UFOs are? and I'm pretty sure we actually just did that we just asked somebody who said hey you you

UFOs yeah and they go yeah and they just yeah literally yeah yeah and some person was like ah this way and we just followed another person who was either there for the same reason or they knew why the fuck we were right or knew why the hell we were there he's like third floor I mean uh just kidding yeah I don't know yeah not in this building yeah but yeah we we we We got pushed to the over... The auxiliary room. Yeah. The back of the bus.

Yeah. We're like, okay, yep. Spill over. It was a much more like laid back environment. I mean, there were a hundred people plus in this room. And it wasn't like, yeah, no cameras, just like the audio feed and the TV is coming in for the room. Actually, no, there were cameras. I only know that because my sister sent me, my sister sent me a clip of me on the news that day.

In the auxiliary room? Yes. Weird. There's a picture of me and Dylan and like it's the most like, I mean, I think it was the angle. And we looked so unsurious in our suits. So we just look like clowns. Yeah. But all that to say, the experience in the spillover room was actually unique because the tape you heard is raw from the,

the actual congressional hearing. But in that room, we were kind of separated from the tension of everyone else. And there were moments where, towards the end, when David Rush was saying things like crash retrieval programs

and biologics recovered bodies. Non-human biologics. Yeah. Yeah, what was the reaction in the room you guys were in? Because I know in like the main room, the like room on cameras where everybody was, where Grush was at, where everybody was at, there, there was a little bit of ruckus. They literally started clapping. In the main congressional room where the hearing is going on, it was just dead silence.

People were very stoic. Nobody had any expression on their face at all. It was just give the facts, get it on the record. But in this room next door, people are clapping and gasping. whenever something crazy would happen and people were laughing and just like, it was such a different,

unique experience. It's such a cool way to experience it. I looked, I remember, I looked at you in the face when people started clapping. It was like, what is happening?

Because it felt just bizarre. I'm like, one, we flew here on a whim to go to this random, suspenseful UAP

congressional hearing where some whistleblowers was going to give some bombshell information. And turns out he does. Still a big mystery. But we're sitting in there and we're hearing this happen live. And it's like everyone in, at least the room that we're in, is basically, it felt like we're in a room full of fans.

Yeah, fanboy stuff. And a part of me was like, okay, is this like UFO fan people? But then I kind of backtracked a little bit and was like, like, okay, maybe some, yes. But there's also a level of people here who clearly weren't just UFO fan people who flew in or drove here from Virginia. There were other people there who seemed to have been people who probably touted this same sort of energy and this same topic for a long time and felt maybe vindicated or something? Well, think about how popular Star Wars is, Star Trek is.

You don't have to be necessarily a UFO fanboy to be excited for this news that you probably knew was coming at some point in your life. But Steven Spielberg, all of his movies, E.T., close encounters. Like, there are people who are just deep down fans of wanting to play. believe. I guess that's why I felt weird because I was at Congress literally in a suit, out of place. I felt like I was at a church on a Sunday where I didn't know if I had all the right things in order and I was, you know, I was out of place. I was like, okay, are we doing this right? And then when people were clapping and awing and owing, I was kind of like, what the hell is going on. I'm kind of split on what that meant. I think there was, yeah, there was some people who were like,

yeah, we told you so. But like, I don't really like that energy. But I'm also kind of like, maybe they're right. Like, I'm like, well, I mean, I've always kind of thought that too, but either way, we're witnessing something that's profound to happen at Congress. And regardless, of whether David Grush is telling the truth or not, he testified under oath, under penalty of law, and made some very bold claims, and is someone who seems to say it in a very believable way. Yeah, I mean, being there, it felt like a very historic event.

I remember when we were sitting in that room, I was texting all my family and friends, just being like, wake up, go watch this right now. This is disclosure. happening right now. They're like, you're awake? Yeah, wake up at 10 a.m. Oh, I thought it was like, get woke.

You know, wake up. Yeah. I remember thinking, like, this is disclosure. Like, this is, he's the whistleblower. It's going to happen today and we're here. And I thought it was this, and it, you know, in a sense, it was, I think, the first step. It was the first step towards disclosure.

I mean, that is what happened. Yeah, it was a small step towards disclosure. But I think, in hindsight, I mean, that was, what, two or three years ago now? Yeah. And I argue, we're really not. closer than we were. There have been maybe three other meetings that were similar with other whistleblowers that have come out in Congress, but it kind of sucks to see we're this far into it

and nothing's really changed. We're really no closer to disclosure than we were at the very beginning a few years ago or at any point in history, I would argue. And that was kind of a bummer, but I'm curious what you guys think about that. I would first argue, is that actually true? I don't think that's actually factually true. I mean, I could see how it, I mean, one, the entire UFO narrative is exhausting. And it has been its entire existence. But I wouldn't say that David Grush's testimony and all this happened since then is a dead end. I would first say that I think everyone, everyone to a certain extent, I think people do.

just plain and simple want to believe. I think more people than are willing to admit want to believe. To play devil's advocate with David Gresh, as much as I love what David Gresh said, it didn't prove anything. It didn't push the needle forward. Yes, I was so excited when he said the things he did. Biologics, pilots, recovered crash materials.

These are all the things people who want to believe, have been waiting for someone of some credential to say. But there was no smoking gun. There was no proof. There was no video footage. There was no real. Right. It was nothing more than what we've heard since the 80s.

Which this to me brings me to the biggest question there is to anyone, period, about kind of anything, but especially this topic. What is proof to you? like straight up what is proof to you actually because what if so and so went to Congress and said hey the same things David Grush said anything

whatever hey we have uh we have all these spacecraft in Area 51 and we have we have uh nonhuman bodies we have nonhuman biologics and aliens here here's the photos then what? Does that become something where we just kind of debate whether or not it's true? Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart podcast awards are happening live at South by Southwest.

It's the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. IHeartRadio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at Veeps.com or the Veeps app.

I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show? made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand

and ended in a courtroom with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you.

Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said. and the search for accountability in a sea of lies.

Isn't you bristler? Listen to Love Trapped on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun. tells me to lie down on the ground.

He identified Tremaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Germain was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth until a confession changed everything. I was a monster.

Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roll Doll, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life.

His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful, Americans. And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's?

Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a Congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roald Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Yeah, I've heard you both say in the past, you know, even if with 100% certainty, disclosure happened,

UFOs landed on the White House salon and said, hey, we're here, check us out. Even then 50% of people would say, that's bullshit. That's AI. That isn't really happening. They'd come up with some excuse to not believe it. And the other half might believe it. But I think what fascinated me to the most about David Greshers' testimony and, you know, more recent testimonies is that people say people in really high positions of power and the military and the government are coming out and saying these crazy things. And then there's just no real response from people. It doesn't seem like maybe people are desensitized to it in a way. But it doesn't seem like people by design maybe. Yeah. And it could be by design. But it doesn't seem like people really were

chaotic and afraid in the way that I think a lot of people were afraid that they would be. I think we almost went too far and now people don't even care about it. And maybe that's what I'm seeing more than anything is that people seem so desensitized in our news cycle and everything going on with the media that when these claims are happening, it didn't even make the top news cycle of the day, you know? And that was a little disheartening, but also maybe it's promising for disclosure in the future at some point. Maybe we are ready for to learn something more about what's out there in the world if that information does exist. to kind of shift gears here, I want to say that in general, I've always been of the mind where

the UFO topic a decade ago to me was always kind of tiresome. It was just something, well, yeah, me personally, I want to believe. Tiresome because it felt like it was so French. All of a sudden, there was credible stories from whistleblowers and people from the government, and things connecting in ways where, hey, this is actually just real reporting, not just fun, semi-fictional documentary kind of stuff you see on some TV network, right? And that sort of mentality is gone. What's here now is, I feel like everyone in the world, because they have a phone, and I don't blame them, I'm you too.

we want proof of everything. But what is proof exactly? And I don't mean that in some like total weirdo abstract way. I really don't. I mean it in a way that's like, what is proof to you? Like actually. And what does that mean? This whole topic has converged at a point in technology of us where it just so happens

that AI can basically make everything. That could be a drone. That's AI. That's fake. It's like everything's just kind of muddied. With technology today, you can no longer believe your eyes or your ears. And that makes you question

what even can be real, what can be classified as real, what can we even agree on as real in today's media escape? And it's so hard to know. I mean, nobody has the answer for that. But I will say bringing it back to High Strange, what I loved about this season,

was that we focused on archival cases or cases from decades ago when the waters were much less muddy, when you had real recordings of people from the 70s and 80s, when you have audio recordings of Dave Davies and Whitley Stryber, when their children are very young, telling exactly the same story decades ago that they're telling now. For me, I think, especially in today's landscape, that brings so much credibility to their stories.

And it gives you sort of like a baseline of something, to believe that is true. And I love that we focused on those cases in this season because you just, I think you guys did a really great job of like putting those stories together and telling them in a way that's like really manageable and understandable and give some real element of like truth and investigation to this field. I would even counterpoint a little bit what you were saying. Johnny Mack who wrote, you know, the book on abductions and doing all of the research into people who are experiencers, Jacques Valet. They've been doing this for so long without anyone believing them.

There's been some legit people who aren't all French conspiracy. Right. Who were just, hey, like, look. No, they're on the mountaintop. I'm over here just talking about this stuff and been researching this stuff. Their fucking whole life. So, like, David Rush is, like, finally that, like, told you so almost, right? It could be, could be.

But you can also say, yeah, you know, all these people have been maybe making all this up. But there's just, if you really, really dig in and you really, really research the topic, there is so much that points more towards that there is something versus, in my opinion, pointing towards it's all made up. That makes me think about the physical things that we've seen this season. I'm talking about literally in Oregon. We went to Oregon for the McMinnville-Urudeville-Sew. UFO festival and we kind of all split off into different camps and we're recording different

things and then Dylan you ended up in the middle of nowhere Eastern Oregon literally we we thought you were missing for like 24 hours we were like okay we'll give it what we'll give it about 12 more hours before we called the police the amount of times your phone just straight up did not work should we be concerned we're like nah it's Dylan we're like okay we're like okay Okay, well, in 12 hours, if he has not responded, we're definitely sending out an alert. I'm glad to know you guys had my back, because I was fucking... I was like, okay, I was like, I was like, what was the last time

he texted you? We're all checking each other. I was like it. But he texted you then, and then, and then, okay, he lost service then? Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I did pull the mom move of being like, yo, you got to check in. Call me. When you get service, call me, make sure.

And, like, we knew you weren't lying because we would be on a call with you. And you're like, yeah, I'm actually about to... I'm like, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan. Yeah, I mean, there was, I mean, there was no cell signal anywhere in, like, the part of Oregon. This, like, 100 square mile area that I was in an Oregon. But yeah, I just, you know, we went out there for the UFO Fest, and I just decided I'd break away, take a rental car, and just, you know, with nothing but a dream, just go to a bunch of random little towns and just, like, hope I'd run into something. In the 80s, there was a string of cattle mutilations that happened all throughout Eastern Oregon. And as the story goes, all of these ranchers all over the area would find these mutilated cows.

And it's not necessarily weird to find dead cows on a property as big and as expansive as Eastern Oregon is in these ranches, which are hundreds of square miles each. But what was weird about this subsect of cattle mutilations was that they all had the same type of mutilation. They would have the genitals cut off. They would have the tongue taken out sometimes, like the cheek and the eye taken out. But what was weird about it is that happened in the 80s. It was written off as a satanic cult at the time, and that became the narrative, the global narrative and the zeitgeist. And there were two camps of people, some who thought it was a satanic cult and some who thought it was aliens. And that's why in today's pop culture, you'll see things like cows being zipped up into UFOs, being tractor beamed up.

It comes from these stories in eastern Oregon of these mutilated cows that were very unexplained and nobody ever really found an answer. There were a lot of theories, but it was never solved? But I was curious, you know, was that still going on? Is that still a thing? Or were these people around? Were the people who were there in the 80s still around? Would they want to talk? And luckily, you know, all three of our brains combined, we figured it out.

I went out there and I struck out a few times. And then luckily you guys found a name online. That led to one thing. It led to another. And then before we knew it, we had four or five interviews of you. just all these people telling the same story across hundreds of square miles, which was, we own cattle, we're multi-generation cattle ranchers, and we're all seeing these weird, mutilated deaths of our cattle, and they're completely unexplained. Nobody's helping us.

The police can't help. We have no answer, and we need help. And that was the through line of all these stories. And it was creepy to be out there on the ground seeing that and documenting it. And we didn't talk about it in this season. Maybe it'll be next season. Who knows? But yeah, so I went to one ranch, and the ranchers wanted to remain anonymous, so I'll keep them anonymous. But they told me, when I got there, one rancher connected me to another, and they said, hey, we actually have a mutilated cow on our property right now. She died nine days ago, and it has all the classic symptoms of everything. Tongue's gone, genitals gone, no blood on the scene. It's been flattened as if it were dropped from a great height, and it just landed on the ground.

And there was a bunch of other weird stuff about like the time it took to deteriorate and, you know, animals and predators not wanted to scavenge the bones and just a bunch of weird stuff generally. You saw this one though. But I saw it. Yeah, I got to go there. It was. You have pictures, right? I've got pictures and videos and we'll put those on social. Can we post them?

Yeah, we'll get them on social. Next Monday, our 2026 IHeard podcast awards are happening live in South by Southwest. Since the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is... Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. Iheart Radio.

Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at veeps. Or the Veeps app. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him.

If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it.

This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime.

He pulls the gun. Tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Tremaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Germain was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth

until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, Roaldol, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was on? also a spy?

Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans.

What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Did you know Doll got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman

and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Part of this is probably a little illegal, so I'm not going to say all the details.

Oh, God. But when I saw this cow, my first thought was like, I got to collect some samples of this fucking thing. Like, I'm probably two hours from cell signal on this ranch. I mean, literally middle of the desert nowhere. No one's looking. I had a knife and I had a cup. So I, you know, I cut off some samples of the dirt. I cut off some samples of the cow.

And then I shipped it through an undisclosed mail carrier. Called United States. I don't think he drove to Portland to the FedEx store. Maybe, though. That's actually, it's surprisingly close to what I actually did. Okay, all right. I mailed some pieces of this cow back to our office, and they still sit in this office somewhere. I'm not going to tell you where, but it's still sealed up in here.

I'm with him. We've sent this in for testing. We're waiting for results. And we'll see. But anyway, I mean, more or less, that's the story. You know, I traveled all over Oregon. I talked to, I think, in total, four ranchers and a sheriff. And all of them told me the same story, that this is a very real phenomenon.

none of them have an answer for it and they're all a little bit terrified of what the answer might be and all of them for the most part I'd say four out of five truly deeply believed aliens were involved and that it must be UFOs involved so one thing I want to clear up

really fast because when I made high strains season one one of my friends bought me this little Etsy thing where it was a cow being abducted by a UFO the classic kind of thing, right? And it's kind of just a ridiculous, symbolic, it's a trope, right?

True. But when you look at this for real, you have real farmers, real ranchers, this is their business, they're real cowboys, they're out there. These animals themselves, they're not just pets. They're a business for them. And so, when you start kind of breaking it down, when you have these ranchers saying something weird happened to my animal, which is like... They're livelihood. Almost kind of the equivalent of someone who has horses or something.

And they're like, one of my horses is maimed or is hurt. And I raise horses. I wouldn't do this to my horse. It's kind of the same idea. And you're like, okay, nothing to gain from them. by making this up. They're kind of like yelling into the void. Maybe some journalist in Portland, Oregon will pick it up and they'll do it one time and

they're like, yeah, there's still weird cattle things going on down there. But what is actually going on? It's such an unbelievable thing that if you're not informed, I would totally understand why your first thought would be that this is entirely bullshit. But it's not made up at all. You have real ranchers who are literally only saying, I don't know how my animals died. And I want to know why. To the extent where I will call the sheriff's office, I'll put up a reward.

And 10 years later, I'll talk to you about it because I still lose sleep about this. And they're hesitant about some extraterrestrial, explanation. But they're also strangely like, but maybe because everything else becomes equally as weird. Yeah, it's one thing to hear these stories on the podcast through the lens of like this beautiful theatrical edit with all these cool music tracks and sound effects and everything. You mean like High Strange? Like something like a podcast called High Strange. But you hear it through that lens and you think, oh, it's just like a story. It's just like a movie. That's what I mean. Yeah, and it's like...

It's kind of fantastical feeling. It's very fantastical. But under that lens, like, under the surface of that, when you're really sitting in the room with these people, you realize, like, they fully believe. And it's not even a belief. Like, they're living this every day. They're thanking us for covering this. Like, they were very thankful. Because, like, yeah, we have no clue what the hell is going on.

And we hope that we find out one day. So, thanks for keeping this in the zeitgeist. And the thing is, like, none of them have answers. but when I think when your brain doesn't have an answer, it tends to fill the void with something. You said this in, you know, one of the episodes. And it's a very real phenomenon, and I saw that happen with all these people

where they didn't have answers, so they did what any rational human being would do is go and Google the answers. Google their questions and see what answers appear. And every time, they all, I think, diverged onto the same place in the internet, which was cattle mutilations in relation to UFOs. and it was all of the pictures and all the videos seeing cattle that had been mutilated all over the world

in exactly the way that their cows were. And that gave them this understanding that, oh shit, this isn't just happening to me. It's happening everywhere, and it's called cattle mutilations, and its UFOs causing it. So I think it was almost like a retroactive process where these people saw their cows getting mutilated,

had no idea what to think of it, asked the authorities they didn't know, asked their friends and family, who, by the way, also had similar things happen but didn't want to talk about it publicly with me. It's happening all over the place out there. But I think they only could come to that final answer, which is the only thing that we have today,

which is cattle mutilations in aliens. And who knows if that's real or if it's not real? I don't know. But the facts are it's definitely really happening. Those cows really died. I saw them myself. And these people seem to believe that it is aliens. So make of that way you will.

Well, I mean, they may seem to believe that. They also definitely don't know what it is. that's that's the that's the real thing is that they're not trying to sell any of anyone a story they're basically saying hands up my animal got killed can anyone help me figure out how this is happening yeah i would love to just push this thought experiment a little further down the road and and bring up that whitley was the butt of the joke of episode one of south park Wait, was he actually episode one? It was the

stereotypical... This is when they did the probe joke, right? The probe joke, stereotypical. This is one of the biggest... Turns out one of the biggest cartoons in the history of humans. I mean, yes. If you don't know what South Park is,

then you don't know what anything is. But like, how much did that push the narrative? Like, how much do these ranchers not want to come forward and be like, we think it could have been alien? We think it's non-human, right? You're now the... butt of the joke because you're saying the thing that you actually just believe, right? Maybe Whitley is in the same spot where he's like, I'm just saying my experience, what I believe,

same as these ranchers. This is what happened to me. How do you deal with that? I will say this. Whitley's treebre's story is polarizing. When I look at Whitley's story, one, I take into account that he's made several best-selling novels based on his stories. He's also made movies. And that's all good. I mean, to be honest, if this ever genuinely happened to me, I would hope to have done the same thing. So I'm not going to use that as some sort of discounting factor here.

But at the same time, as a storyteller myself and as a kind of journalistic mind, the first place my mind wanders is and I kind of asked him this sort of off the cuff where does this sort of fictionalized version maybe blend with the real version not in some way where it's that I'm trying to disprove anything that that's where I think that this becomes a stupid debate Whitley Streber 100% believes that that happened to him now he also made blockbuster movies and novels about this. I do want to ask, two things. I want to ask about the implant in his ear.

You felt it. I did. What did it feel like? What, like, describe the shape of it? Did it feel like anything? Or did it just seem like it was like a cyst? What was your take on? I mean, I'm not a doctor, so I have no idea.

To me, it felt like a BB, like from a BB gun. Imagine like a slightly smaller BB maybe. It wasn't like a skin tag kind of thing Where I was like, oh, that He's like right here I'm like, oh Under his skin Under his skin

Like in his earlob I do wonder that So he says in his interview That it activated 30 minutes ago Yeah Did he give you any more information About like what the hell He was talking about

What was his theory on what that was It sounded like he was saying It was like recording or it was listening right Like what was going on with that He basically told me that He believes this implant of his in his ear makes him smarter. More creative.

And that it's not always on, and that when it does turn on, that he's more active and more in tune and can access more of his own brain. And I kind of challenged it. And then his response was actually kind of neutral. He was basically saying to me that he wishes other people have this same thing.

and not like in a, I'm better than you kind of way. In a way where he's like, it's a shame that this is like some technology that would benefit other people. There are parts of Whitley Streber's story that from a human standpoint, maybe I have trouble seeing between the lines of where his incredible fiction narration blends to his real life. And I don't know what those lines are. I don't know what that gray area is. but without a doubt, I do think something did happen to him. We have so many stories we've researched and people we've talked to, insane UFO encounters that we've not even included in this first installment.

To the point where we just said, okay, screw it. We're doing an entire season three as well. Dropping in June. Hi Strange is a production by Tenderfoot TV in association with IHeart Podcasts. Created, hosted, and edited by myself, Payne Lindsay. Executive producers are myself in Donald Albright. editing by Mike Rooney, Cooper Skinner, and myself. Original score by makeup and vanity set.

Sound design, mixing, and mastering by Cooper Skinner. Additional production by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington, Eric Quintana, Sean Nernie, and Meredith Stedman. Our cover art is by Polygon. Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and the whole team at UTA. The Nord Group, Station 16, and Beck Media and Marketing. Check out the show's website at highstrange.com. And if you're enjoying the show, please help us out by rating and reviewing the podcast and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening.

In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband, Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband.

Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart Podcast Awards are happening live in South by Southwest. It's the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is creativity, knowledge, and passion. We'll all be on full display. Thank you so much. IHeartRadio.

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