Podcasts 2023: Series High Strange investigates the existence of UFOs
New podcast High Strange attempts but largely fails to take an adult – and tinfoil-hat free – look at the history of UFOs.
What is it about UFOs – unidentified flying objects, for the uninitiated – that is so fascinating?
Is it the desire for a different life or the anxiety of a potential threat that makes those sightings in the sky, often captured on blurry or grainy footage, so enthralling?
New podcast High Strange attempts but largely fails to take an adult – and tinfoil-hat free – look at the history of UFOs.
X-Files fans delight: this series is for you.
Host Payne Lindsey says the time to look more seriously at UFOs is upon us, with navy pilots reportedly having come forward with video evidence and the US Congress and NASA meeting about UFOs.
“In short there’s no wide-eyed alien saying “Take me to your leader” here but there is a record number of strange sightings in the sky throughout the entire world that no country on earth has been able to rationally explain yet,” Lindsey says.
“This question – are we alone – has been an everlasting drive throughout human history.”
The podcast’s heavy production – all dissonance and synthesisers – enhances the sense of conspiracy rather than diminishes it. Yet it’s unclear how this podcast is any more credible than, say, cult television series Twilight Zone.
All that is not to say this podcast is not worth the listen. Especially if you’re a science-fiction fan.
Listeners get to hear things like the late American astronomer Carl Sagan explain why Earth is just a “pale blue dot”.
“The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena,” he says. “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.”
This is a very serious production about a very kitsch topic and the podcast art vaguely resembles the opening titles to Stranger Things. Perhaps High Strange might have benefited from a dose of the Netflix sci-fi blockbuster’s irreverence.
And then there’s host Lindsey, who just comes across as so damn highfalutin’.
Here’s his explanation for, as he describes it, “stepping off the hamster wheel” and interrogating the possible existence of UFOs.
“We all have shit to do but even if we found all the answers it’s not going to change my life today or the responsibilities I have tomorrow,” he says.
“But maybe it’s a big enough question worth leaving the monotony of my daily routine.”
And this is an interesting point. Maybe the reason UFOs have endured in the collective imagination is because of the sense something is missing in the modern world.
Perhaps it’s a subconscious attempt to replace spirituality.
And maybe listeners will simply find in High Strange a reprieve from the daily grind.
The truth is on your favourite podcast app.
In the queue
Alien Kidnap Club – Interviews with people who claim to have had contact with extraterrestrials
Our Strange Skies: UFOs Throughout History – the long and weird history of UFOs in a digestible format
ESA Explores – the latest, and verified, news on the European Space Agency
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