March 24, 2023 • 58 mins
Why did the US government suddenly admit it cannot identify all the strange stuff up there in the sky? It's a fascinating, disturbing question... and one that's haunted Payne Lindsey for years. In today's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel sit down with Payne to learn more about his newest project: High Strange -- a balanced, humanistic approach to one of the enduring mysteries of the modern world.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My
(00:26):
name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our superproducer Paul. Mission controlled decands.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
If you are like most people, fellow conspiracy realist, you've
probably thought about UFOs. A matter of fact, if you're
(00:47):
like sixty five percent of Americans, you're convinced that somewhere
out there in that big old universe there are aliens.
You just you don't know whether or not they visited Earth.
And honestly, these days, even if you're a more skeptical person,
you have also heard tales of strange things in the sky.
So basically, you know, everybody remembers during the pandemic, the
(01:12):
world's most powerful military actually came out and slickly said, hey,
there's stuff going on. Oh we don't know, and everybody
was like, uh, yeah, you know. Figures this of course,
this would be the time you say that and when
we ask what is up there? What's really going on?
That's the question at the heart of our pal, Payne
(01:32):
Lindsay's newest podcast, So to learn more, we decided to
go straight to the man, the myth, the legend himself.
Fellow conspiracy realist, please welcome back to the show, the
award winning filmmaker, director, podcast creator, also a dear friend
of ours, Payne Lindsay Payne. Thanks for hopping on man,
Thank you guys. Hey y'all doing dan good? Ready to
(01:53):
hop aboard the pain train. Yeah, really, we're really excited
about this topic. In particular, we're excited about your new show,
High Strange Pain Blow Behind the Scenes Like you may
have sent me a few things about this in the past,
and my goodness, dude, I can't tell you how excited
(02:14):
I was every time you'd send a little snippet of
somebody that actually had a UFO UAP siting and they're
just telling their story. Oh, y'all, you have no idea.
This show sounds amazing. Thank you, Thank you. I loved
sending you a little little nuggets like thous like who
would care the most? In my phone and that would
(02:35):
love this, and you actually did it. I was like, okay, cool,
does this sound okay? Is it? Guy? Am I doing good? Well?
It's hard to judge with me sometimes pain because this
topic just it just I don't know, it gives me
goosebumps thinking about it. There's so much wonder and awe
I think that exists in a lot of us when
it comes to this kind of UFO UAP phenomena, and
(02:56):
the possibility is right, what could it be? So I guess.
So let's get started. Let's talk about how High Strange began.
Since I was a kid, I always liked the idea
of aliens and UFOs, more so in the sci fi
Steven Spielberg kind of way. But it was always just
that really just you know, I bought like a little
(03:19):
alien necklace on spring break. It was like just glowing
the dark little guy, just stuff like that. I just
thought it was cool and fun, and a couple of
years ago, I was you know, I've been doing true
crime stories for maybe ever since I've made podcasts, right
so going on six years now, and all kind of
investigative stuff, and I just kind of had the loose
(03:43):
idea of what if I just kind of picked at
the UFO subject, right, and it was really just kind
of for fun, didn't know what it was going to
turn out to be. And you know, about a year
and a half into doing it, my whole viewpoint has
like changed tremendous lee to wow, it's like actually way
more real than I thought it was. Like, it's not
(04:05):
even now it's like, how do I deliver this message
to the person who's like nah, who doesn't want to
go there? Right? Yeah, And this is something that I
think is tremendously refreshing and pretty important to these sorts
of stories because, for let's be honest, for decades and decades,
this stuff was dismissed, right, and it was dismissed out
(04:29):
of hand. It became something fun you would see on
the X Files or Twilight Zone. But you have you've
done something really interesting by taking a fact versus fiction approach, right,
by like having a balanced conversation about a topic that's
really controversial to people. So how would you describe high
(04:51):
strange to someone who doesn't know much about UFOs? I mean,
the reality is, we all know what the term UFO
stands for, and we all kind of know the connotation
that comes with that. It's when you say UFO, even
though it means underdentified flying object, you mean like a spaceship. Right,
That's basically what has become. So everyone knows what that is.
(05:13):
It's made its mark and pop culture and there are
stuff that's happened, and if you just look at the
news that doesn't feel very explained, the doors still kind
of open all that stuff, even if you're a total skeptic.
So I just basically I'm just all I'm doing is
posing the question, quite literally, what's up with these UFOs?
And I don't really have an agenda other than trying
(05:37):
to actually figure it out. And that comes with me
talking to people who've had unreal firsthand experiences that you know,
I present to you and it's all for you to decide,
and I pick it kind of both ends of it.
But if you listen through the whole series, it starts
(05:58):
to kind of become like, well, it's hard becoming harder
to just blindly dismiss all of this as a whole.
And I think that that's the actual reality. And so
if you're just willing to have an open mind and
literally just press play, and I actually say that at
the end of the episode or my first monologue in
(06:19):
the show. I'm like, all you have to do is listen,
and it's like it's true, right, And I'll hold your
hand along the way a little bit, and I won't
offend the people who are to know all this stuff.
That's fine too, but um yeah, it's like, how do
I get my mom to listen to this and actually
take it seriously? Right? So there's a little bit of
that going on in there. I want to take you
back to twenty eighteen. You're spending a lot of time
(06:40):
in Colorado. You're investigating Crystalline Risinger's case for up and
Vanished season two. You're I guess maybe it's the first
time you head out towards crestone, and I'm assuming you
probably saw the watchtower, the UFO watchtower when you're traveling
out there, and can you tell us about encountering a watchtower,
(07:01):
meeting Candice who ran the place, and then like, did
you experience anything out there? Did you feel anything out there?
Did it have anything to do with you wanting to
make high strange? So it's funny because and I never
said this publicly, but I'll not say it now because
it's been long enough. But you know, my uncle actually
lives in Crestone and he's lived there for like twenty
(07:23):
five years now. He's like one of the og guys,
and I you know, he asked me not to like
tell anybody at the time we're doing the podcast. And
he's also kind of like my mole really like in
the town. Um so I was familiar with. You know,
he had talked about this UFO watchtower and it's weird
stuff he's seen out there, and so obviously was one
(07:43):
of the first places I wanted to go. I was like,
I'm gonna go check out this watchtower, and it's it's
really cool. It's a it's a really cool vibe there,
all these little trinkets and stuff in the holy yard
they have there. But the only like real kind of
weird thing I experienced there was and I go there
again in high strange is there's a certain point, um
(08:05):
like in the yard where it makes your compass kind
of go all weird. And I didn't even have like
an actual compass at the time. I just had to
use my phone, but it still did it on the phone.
It would just you know, north is this way you
find it and you start walking this way and it
just starts spinning around. So there's something magnetically or whatever
is happening right there, you know, Is it aliens? Probably not,
(08:29):
but there's something going on. They haven't been able to
explaining that one yet, so I don't know. But it
was weird. It was fun. I've heard that referred to
as an energy vortex, and I think candas there. But yeah,
the magnetic field anomaly there, that's okay, call me, they
call me an energy vortex. Just yeah, everywhere I go.
(08:51):
I have a quick question. We're saying UFO, which I
know is the sexier term, but it seems that there's
some revisionist history going on in terms of the government
now coin this less sexy term UAP, and in the
reporting around a lot of this stuff. You know, we
see there's a choice as to which one people use
UAP or UFO depending on the nature of the story.
(09:13):
And I see that you're using UFO and I fully
support that, But what are your thoughts on, you know,
rebranding this phenomenon in that way. I mean, it's probably
overall a good thing. I think that because there's such
a stigma with the word UFO. If you're actually trying
to conduct scientific studies about things in the sky that
(09:33):
you can't explain that are unknown crafts, then maybe the
UFO term needed to be updated for that reason alone.
But I obviously I say UAP or UFO a lot
in high strange and I honestly I just ran with
UFO's I've always known it is that UAP is like
(09:54):
the PC version of that or something. It's like the
it's like the nerds version, and it's like, okay, but
like you mean UFOs though, right, I feel like, yeah,
I feel like it's one hundred percent. I mean, you
can make a good argument by saying, okay, not everything
might be a physical tangible object, so UAP. But I
feel like, if we're being honest, the real reason Uncle
(10:16):
Sam has gone with UAP is because they felt like
people wouldn't take them seriously if they came out and
they said, hey, you know we we know we spend
millions and millions of year dollars. Some of it goes
to UFOs. That's just where we're at right now, so
they had to like class it up a little bit.
I have a theory about that, Ben. Do you think
(10:37):
it could be about search engine optimization. So when people
are obviously searching for UAP, like, it's almost like being
being able to change the way people think about a
thing by down the line. It's like a long, a
long tail change in how people when they search for things, right,
you won't find a lot of the old UFO content.
(10:59):
You'll find the newer UAP stuff, And it's almost like
you could control the narrative a little like Facebook. That
sounds kind of lame, meta Disney Frozen theory. Yeah, I
like I see that. It feels like it might be
kind of an add on effect though, because a lot
of the scientists this is something um a high strange
(11:22):
addresses to a lot of the scientists, the subject matter experts,
the pilots who have you know, actual video, a lot
of them from our understanding, Uh, we're just kind of
omerta about this stuff and didn't say anything for a while.
Did you run into people who had been hesitant to
talk in the past, or like, what kind of folks
(11:43):
did you meet? Yeah? I met this one guy. Um
he actually is featured in the last episode. His name
is Kevin Day. He was a radar specialist in two
thousand and four, this uss Nimitz incident, and um, you know,
he for several days saw these tic tac shaped objects
(12:03):
on his radar, basically just running circles around the F
eighteens and he's like eventually went to work the next day.
I was like, I gotta tell somebody about this. This
is like a legitimate safety of flight issue. And he
was basically just kind of laughed off. And he was
so upset about it that he actually ended up retiring
(12:26):
as a result of that. And then it wasn't until
thirteen years later and like twenty seventeen when the news
broke that oh yeah, that thing that you were experiencing, Yeah,
like that did happen, and he just you know, they
just gasol at him for thirteen years, and now he's
you know, just full steam ahead on trying to you know,
(12:47):
tell his story and encourage other people in the military
who've experienced something like that to come out and talk
openly about it. It's really important that that's a radar specialist,
not just a pilot who you know, visually saw something.
That's somebody using highly sophisticated technological equipment that observed some
stuff in the air. Also, I love he said just
(13:08):
a pilot. Well that's not what I'm sorry. Often the
stories that you hear and that we get to learn
about are the personal experience somebody's eyes seeing something right,
and it's an individual. Often every once in a while
you'll have a shared experience. You know, a couple of
different planes in the sky saw the same thing, and
(13:31):
they can corroborate. But when you've got that that radar
data as well to back up the claims, like the
Nimits incident, it's just so so much stronger from a
scientific perspective. Yeah, what to me, what makes a story
compelling is obviously anybody can see something in the sky,
and as we all know, and I know, especially even
(13:52):
in true crime, you know, witness testimony isn't always that reliable, right,
So if you know, maybe you did see that, but
maybe you actually didn't see that. But if you have
one hundred people who sold out, and you have this
radar stuff and you have this over here in this video,
now it's now you're having a search for ways that
it didn't actually happen, and you know all those bases
(14:15):
are covered. So now it's to me, that's a story,
now that's worth exploring and is there a hole or
is this are we just definitively like if this was
the court of law with the jury to say, yep,
that happened, probably right, Yeah, And that's I mean that
point about the data. That's one of the huge things
to go into, right because the radar at this point
(14:39):
is not going to have an opinion, right, and it's
not going to have a weird memory trick that can
be leveraged by someone. But it feels like a lot
of times, for many years, especially in the case of
the tic tac nimics stuff we're mentioning, it feels like
a lot of times people were approaching this not with
an open mind like you ask listeners in High Strange,
(15:01):
but more like a kind of how do we how
do we debunk this? You know, like let's let's find
a way to object to this observer's character, or let's
find an alternate explanation, even if that explanation is tenuous
at best. Did you feel okay, I've got this kind
(15:23):
of a behind the scenes or behind the UFO question.
Did you ever talk to folks who felt like a
little kg or hard to get to and if so,
how how did you go about kind of like building
or appoort where they could trust and open up with you. Yeah,
there was a there's a couple. So I mean really,
when I first started this, I wanted to search and
(15:46):
find the absolute most compelling UFO stories in modern American history, right,
the ones that have that are still to this day
not easily bunked and they're still alive. And I also
wanted to find stuff that had audio tape to go
with it as a as a podcast, you know, that
(16:10):
would kind of like support whatever story they were telling.
So there's two really big stories that I go through
in the first four episodes. It's the Travis Walton abduction
and the Reynalds from Forrest incident. And Travis Walton is
a guy I reached out to on Facebook like two
years ago. I don't even know if he checks his Facebook.
(16:32):
I don't know what's going on, but it was never read.
I can't the guy's a ghost. I couldn't find anything
online and I'm like, this is impossible. And then I
met a guy who's a friend of mine now and
he's just kind of into this topic and likes weird
stuff like we do. And I was telling about telling
(16:52):
him about high strange, and he's like, if you talked
to Travis Walton. I was like, now I've been trying
to he's he knew him for whatever reason, and he
Without him, I would have never been able to talk
to Travis. And even when I finally got there, and
you'll hear it if you listen to the first episode,
I flew all the way out there to Snowflake Arizona.
(17:13):
We're good to go, and then dude's flaking. He's several
hours late, and I'm like, what's going on? And then
he all of a sudden just pulls up in his
truck and he sits in his car for like ten
straight minutes, and I'm like, what is he doing? Is
he prepping his story? He is he nervous? Is he
is it traumatic? And eventually I finally sat down with him,
(17:34):
and he was a little I wouldn't say KG. I
would just say he seemed tired, right, Like he's told
this his whole life and you know it's new to me,
but I could just tell that regardless, Travis Walton believes
his story and always has and there's seven witnesses to
(17:57):
go with it. The dude was really missing for five days.
His friends were almost charged with murder. It's like it
if it wasn't a UFO abduction that happened, then what
was it then? And maybe there is it was something else,
but no one's been able to figure that out either,
and that could arguably sound crazier. I remember with Travis Walton,
he he was like the most believable person when it
(18:21):
came to an abduction story for a long time. And
then years back he went on some show where they
made him do a lie detector test like live and
in he got he passed everything until like the very
last question, and the poor guy is sitting there on
TV with all these producers around him like being told,
(18:41):
oh no, you're lying. You know. He mentioned to me,
like off record or offhand that that was totally like
a setup, that was not like they totally it was
a gotcha than kind of well yeah, but also, like
we know, lie detectors are you know, fallible in and
of themselves. And then not to mention, if you're in
a high pressure situation and you're you're you know, response
bonding to that kind of you know stress, those stressors
(19:03):
probably not going to be an accurate read, even though
we already know the things probably not accurate a lot
of the time. Polygraphs are funny though, because you know,
all the witnesses took polygraph test and they all passed
except for one guy was inconclusive, and it was merely
because he was super stressed and nervous. Now, had they
all failed, then you would be using that to support
(19:25):
your argument a million percent. But if they passed the wool,
it's just a polygraph. It's like, yeah, but it's one
box that's checked. Had they all failed it, then you'd
be looking at it differently. So it's just like a
tool of I mean, is it a coincidence that they
all passed, maybe, but that's a that's a weird one
to go with everything else. That's the way to narrow
things down to a certain degree. Very least. Yeah, I
(19:47):
like these said tool because that's what a polygraph at
its best is a diagnostic tool. But it is a
tool that requires an interpreter, the proctor who the person
who administers that, and their motivation. And this is I'm
not like paying a bride brush. Nobody go out there
and like start hating on polygraph folks. But because it's
(20:10):
a human operating the machine, that humans own perspective, consciously
or not, can interfere with uh with the way they
conduct a test. And I love the point you're making
about perspective there, because then you kind of learn more
about the the person objecting right than you do about
the facts. And it's nuts that you spoke with Walton. Um.
(20:34):
I think it speaks um volumes about both the amount
of work you're putting it into the show and your
your abilities to build you know, that kind of safe
space with a person. Did you, uh, have you contacted
any uh men in black? That's a question people want
(20:56):
us to ask, have they come to you? I joke
around with my buddy Mike, who worked on the show
with me too. Um, I was like if I came
to the office tomorrow and I was like, hey, dude,
like I come here, like like come to my house.
And I go to my house like take them upstairs,
(21:16):
and I turned the shower on and I'm like, there's
men in black following me? Like would you believe me?
He's like, hell, hell yeah, i'd believe you. Liked so
a part of me kind of like that'd be super
fun if they thought I was that important. Um, But
then I also would it be scary balls. Also, like
what are you gonna do? Or am I just gonna disappear?
Actually I don't know, but no contact yet. Um still
(21:40):
waiting for them to get back to me. They're busy,
They're busy, busy. Yeah, they got other podcasters to harass.
I have that meeting at a park though, next time,
just say hey, we should go for a walk and
I have it at a park, because dude, your your
house is totally bucked. I mean that's like right at
this point, it's bucks. Yeah, come on. I was like
my menthos if I have the shower going, and it's
(22:01):
like hey, like it'd be hard to pick that up,
Like how great is your audio equipment? It's parks, so
I would argue that all parks are bugged too. Bench
is a listening device, so tread lightly there, think about it. Also, Also,
I love the idea that we turn on the shower
(22:21):
and then somebody at the NSA is going, ah, we
gotta figure out a shower filter. And also until that moment,
Mike's like, or what are we about to do? Bro?
That's that's all what kind of music is playing with
the shower? It goes on. But this I mean, you know,
we're joking about that, Um, but that is a that
(22:44):
is a legitimate concern that a lot of the people
you've spoken with have had. You know, am I being followed?
Will there be consequences for my career? And it sounds
like several of the people you talk to who worked
in government, we're not only fearful of that, but they
they had encountered this stuff. And okay, like people in government,
(23:06):
men in black aside that that you have spoken with,
did you get a sense that their overall perspective is
changing or evolving kind of like yours does throughout the show? Absolutely? Yeah.
I think that the smarter ones they are already there.
You know, they're they know that something is real. I
(23:28):
think different people know different little pieces to the puzzle.
But um, yeah, the the smart, intelligent people in the government, no,
no that whether they know literally they just know that. Yeah,
that's what the rumblings are about. Like it's not it's
not a kookie thing anymore. It's the thing. And I
(23:49):
think like in the fifties there was I think there
was sort of a you know, I mean misinformation campaign
and you know, stuff like that with Project Bluebook and
all that kind of stuff. So I think that was
a threat to some people back then. I think that's
gone now. I think it's you know, I don't think
that anyone's going to knock on my door because there's
(24:11):
there's people in Congress saying crazier things about this than
I am. We're going to pause for word from our
sponsor and then we'll be back with high Strange and
Payne Lindsay. And we've returned, let's get into it. We
know for sure that as technology was developing pretty rapidly
(24:35):
after nuclear technology came around, the US government is you know,
then the CIA they're working directly with private companies contractors
to build just insane technology that ended up becoming the
SR seventy one or you know, stealth bombers and technology
like that, even just the the original spy plane what
(24:56):
was that one called Ben the first big spy plane.
Uh are you talking about the two two two? Yeah? Yeah,
Like so that stuff's actually being developed in secret out
in the desert, right, and then the US government appears
to have used the UFO thing as potentially a cover.
Oh people are seeing stuff in the sky. Well, sure,
(25:18):
we'll investigate those sightings and we'll combine it all in
things like Bluebook and Project Grudge and all those things.
I think it's got out of hand. Actually, I think
I think that was like it was it was it
was to protect the country at the time. Yeah, whether
it was the whether it was you know, the right
thing to do, that's a different question. Yeah. I think
it's got out of hand where it just and I
bet people who knew stuff that was really important just
(25:41):
died with that information. Do you think anything that could
be happening like that now, so like just super advanced
technology that's being developed by the US government or some
other government, and this is just like we're just seeing it.
I mean, that's that's one a possibility. It's it may
it may not explain to them all either they could
(26:03):
all be true, and it's probably a little bit of everything.
But it makes you wonder if the government comes out
and releases this video, this fuzzy black and white video
and says, we don't know what that is. Either they're
lying and it but why even draw attention to it,
or they just actually don't know. I don't like to
(26:26):
give the government too much credit, so I think they
just don't know, which is nuts. Right, I learned about
that night. You know, we've been we've been doing this
show for for quite some time. So we have a
lot of people who will approach us in our personal
lives about stuff. And as soon as this news hits,
you know, our group chat goes nuts and uh, and
(26:48):
then we've got uh, we've got people who are kind
of again putting their own perspective and spin on this.
I had. I had an uncle who just sent me
a clip of the tic TAC and then a quote
that says they don't know? And he goes, what am
I paying taxes for? And I was like, great, that's
that's such a weird point. I know it's a good point,
(27:09):
but I'm like, why why do you make everything about
your weird beliefs? You know? But but this so like
I want to go back to this evolution that you experience. Right,
So we're getting the sense that at the beginning, um,
you're like many many people of our generation. I love
(27:31):
science fiction, right, and it's cool idea, but let's be realistic, right,
let's exercise critical thought. So were there were there like
crossroad moments or pivotal moments that gave you, like the
epiphany where you thought, crap, this is real? Was it?
Was it seen video? And having your background as a filmmaker,
(27:53):
was it particularly persuasive interview? Like do you have those
moments where you started to kind and yeah, it was
a culmination of a bunch of things, you know. Travis
Walton was actually the first interview I did for the
entire podcast. I was like almost a year and a
half ago that I did that now, and his story
(28:14):
is so I mean, just unbelievable, right, It's just like
who has a story like that? He's one of few
people who has a story like that. And so it
was going back to the tape and kind of piecing
it altogether and putting it, you know, in an episode,
and then going and doing like all the due diligence
of digging up all the old tape, and I found
(28:38):
like phone calls that like when because he was missing
for five days, so I found like tape phone calls
of like his brother trying to find him, and like
that totally just shifted the perspective. Like going back and
hearing people talk about this in nineteen seventy five, it
(28:59):
just kind of ships things a little bit. That's that's
a long time ago. You know, I was born in
eighty seven, so but there they were concerned. So something
was going on that was totally real, whatever it was,
and just kind of hearing how real that was, and
and then going and exploring the Reynalsom story and then
(29:20):
even kind of digging it the Roswell incident a little
bit um because that's the one where it's like, oh yeah, Roswell. Yeah,
It's like that's an easy one. I mean, I've been
there and it's like, welcome to Roswell, and they're aliens everywhere,
and it's you know, there's an alien themed McDonald's and
I ate there and it was awesome. Quarter pounder and
(29:41):
it was it was the same, but it was still good.
It's like when you go to Orlando, everything's like disneyfied
around it, even like the Happy hotels look like magical
castles and stuff. It's like exactly, it was a culmination
of all those things. And I kind of eventually, like
the same tape I've been listening to as I'm building
this story, I just had like a moment one day
(30:01):
and I was like, holy man, this is way more real.
I just like I didn't know when I just totally
flipped the switch. But I just had realized that I had,
and I felt a different sort of motivation to tell
the story knowing that it was real. Like once I
got to the point where I knew it was real,
(30:22):
It's like if I knew this guy killed this person,
I know that, then how do I What do I
do now? So I'm like, I know this is real,
so how do I present that? Also, there was a
photo that came out that really kind of you. To me,
I think it's the best one ever. It's the the CALVINEO. Yeah,
(30:43):
I think all the older stuff to me is the
most legit because there's too many things you can do now.
But an old picture taken on Kodak film that Kodak
can confirm as real and original, pre photoshop, pre everything
that you could do to doctorate, then what the hell
is it? Right? Right? When we ask all those questions,
(31:06):
it's funny said because we were kind of um. I
often lean on Matt and Noll's expertise in the world
of audio and video and and even like I just
pulled it up now and it's it's cognitively, it's it's
almost amaze right, because you got to eliminate all these possibilities.
(31:28):
What if it's a balloon and then come to five
fast forward it's twenty twenty three, and balloons still scare
the shit out of everyone, just depending on how they
get there. Right, we fire four hundred thousand dollars missiles
at them. So so this thing, let's let's stick. Let's
stick to the shape and like physical attributes of the
things that we're seeing. Right, So if we're looking at
(31:50):
this Calvin Ufo photograph, it's almost a diamond looking shaped
thing that's in the sky, appears to be just hovering
there or just floating there. It's a still image, right,
that's what you get. We think about the tic TAC
video in the shape of those things. How have people
described the size and shape of these craft to you?
(32:13):
I mean there is a tremendous variation, and this is
where it becomes if you're if you don't want to
go there, then this will be something that you just
hang your hat on. Is like, see, the thing is
it's not all one thing. There are ten trillion galaxies, right,
We're just now seeing another one one another one. And
(32:38):
so the likelihood of life is it's impossible for it
not to exist, right, and so if that is the case,
and if anything at all is coming to Earth from
places so far away that you literally can't see them
with our most advanced telescopes, then they're incredibly more advanced
(32:58):
than us, and they're not flying around in things that
work the same way that our machines work. And point
I'm getting to is that it's not like they're all
coming from Mars, right, and they're aliens and that's what
they It's not. It's probably so many things that it's
terrifying lee large, Like, it's probably so many different things.
(33:22):
But there's there's the classic tic tac shaped objects and
you can go back and find stories about those back
in the thirties and forties. And there's the classic metallic disc, right,
and then there's other weird stuff that doesn't really make sense,
like these like pod things and capsule stuff. I mean,
(33:42):
I think there's probably a mix of you know, unmanned
drones that aren't from like that are AI driven that
aren't from Earth, and then actual crafts that may have
you know, occupants in them. Oh, and with that, we're
going to take a quick break here. A word from
our sponsor will be right back, and we returned with
(34:08):
more from mister Paine. Lindsay, I wanted to describe really
fast guys, just wanted to describe the way this person,
Ryan Graves, former Navy fighter pilot and an engineer, described
one of these things, just because I'd never heard it before.
And you mentioned like a capsule kind of thing, and
I think that's close to how he's describing it. He's
(34:29):
quoted writing for Politico on February twenty eighth of this
year saying that he experienced seeing a dark gray cube
inside a clear sphere, was just floating motionless in the
sky and his I don't know if he was an
F eighteen or what he was flying it, but he
and another pilot flew right past it and almost hit
(34:52):
the thing. So I talked to Ryan Graves in the show.
Actually I talked to Ryan and he when he told
me the same description, it's like that also got to me.
It like bothered me a little bit. I'm like, yeah, oh,
what it's like. It's not like the traditional like you
almost wanted to be like a flying saucer, right, it's
(35:14):
the friendlier thing, um, But that's like a that's a
we just we don't know what that is like that
that may not be. We just don't know what it is.
It's it's probably doesn't sound like a craft. Actually it
could be, or maybe it is. I don't know. It's like,
what the hell is that? That's definitely not something that
China has? Like what is that? The way? The way
(35:35):
I thought about in my head was that cube or
something that is exerting some kind of sphere around it
that manipulates Uh, maybe space time creates a mention something
in which it can operate, right, that that's in my head.
But you know, yes, yeah, that's a good hypothesis actually,
I mean yeah, I mean based on the information we have, right,
(35:56):
which is little to zero, right, yeah, yeah, But this
so this is a this is a great point you're
bringing up, and something we should just spend a little
time with. The idea, like the idea that there would
be variation in size and description and motion and so on.
To some who consider themselves on a skeptical side, that
(36:17):
just means that people are seeing weird, whether cloud formations
or I guess they don't know what a bird looks like, etcetera, etcetera.
But this like birds aren't real, just right, that's the
that's the heart of the conspiracy. That's what we're getting
at basically. Yeah, yeah, that's we spoiled the last episode
of High Strange. Yeah. So, but the thing about this
(36:42):
variation of shape, I think it speaks to something that
that you brought up earlier, pain, which is the idea
that there there are multiple not just plausible, not just valid,
but they're probably multiple real explanations for some of these things.
Would you if you could like categorize what you think
(37:04):
some of those explanations are, Like, if you add a
list of what those would be, what are they? I
would say that for the most compelling stories or videos,
whatever they are, if it's not a doctored thing, if
it's like if it's real, then it's either some advanced
military craft that we don't know about, it could be
(37:27):
an adversary. And if it's not those things, then it is,
you know, barring some weird optical illusion, which those do happen.
But if it's not, if it's an actual craft or object,
then it's it has to be from somewhere else. I
think the somewhere part of that is can be expanded
(37:50):
on a little bit. I don't think that has to
mean that they're from some other you know, they're from Pluto.
You know, it's like it could be another dementia, and
you know, people have speculated is it us in the
future or you know, I'm I'm less on that theory.
But to me, it's like they're from somewhere else. And
the way I like to think about it is the
(38:12):
universe is so big that they're probably just from some
other galaxy. And if you're that advanced, then you wouldn't
care about us really, like, you wouldn't like we're not
a threat to you. I go this little silly monologue
in one of my episodes where it's like, if you
go walk around in the woods, do you ever just
(38:35):
like stop and look at a pile of ants and
talk to it? Right? And I was like, unless you're
on trumps um, you get in situations you don't really care.
You're not going to step on the ant pile either
unless you're an a right or unless you kind of
let it be. You can observe it. But it's just
kind of a I mean, we have zoos here with
(38:57):
you know, animals that are smart, and we just watch
them and you know we're there. Boss. Isn't that like
a classic Twilight Zone trope ben where like we are
the zoo, you know, yeah, yeah there is. And also
to this point too, let's let's have that thought experiment.
(39:21):
I love the note about ants. It makes it more understandable,
I believe for people. But we do know, Like Forbes
recently came out reporting that the Pentagon and a Harvard
astronomer teamed up and they said, Hey, some of these
things we're seeing. We're not saying they're aliens, but they're
not obeying physics as we know it. Whatever they're doing,
(39:44):
it's some kind of like super parkour that shouldn't exist
with that mind. Like to understand this stuff through analogy
I think is a powerful thing. So let's say think
of the Atlanta Zoo. Well, we got in the Atlanta Zoo,
We've got all kinds of animals. What if what if
one of the animals escapes the zoo makes it back
to the wild, and then and they're saying, hey, where
(40:06):
were you for five years? And they say like, oh,
I got abducted and I got there's this place they
take you and they do weird things to you, and
you know, I'm now, I'm right. That's a that's a
familiar concept, right, So, I mean it's something to think about.
But here's also this too though, Like if if a
(40:29):
zebra escapes the zoo, we always get that zebra back.
That's true, that zebra doesn't start a new life. No. Yeah.
So it's like if you're an alien in a spaceship
and you come here, you just go cool bye. What
are you gonna do, like chase me out of here? No,
you can't even leave, you know, your solar system so well,
(40:50):
you know you you also mentioned that like, you know,
if we're walking on the woods, we wouldn't necessarily mess
with the ant pile. But then you do have the
odd like psychopathic kid that likes to burn ants with
a magnifying glass totally, or like frat boys that like
to steal animals from the zoo, you know, for pranks. John.
You know, there could certainly be situations. There could be
(41:10):
like some free going on with you know, some other
alien race. But I feel like, you know the concept
of like evil and all that kind of thing is.
I think the more intelligent we become as a species,
I would like to hope and think that it, you know,
stuff like racism goes away. Because we're just smarter, because
(41:33):
that's pragmatic. It doesn't make sense. You know, you could
have ill intent, but I think that as a whole,
it's just like unless you're just you know, you're trying
to just blow some shot up, then there's no advantage
or point to doing any of that. Well. See, I
think about animal testing, right and I think about the
(41:54):
horror horrific things that brilliant people do to rabbits and
mice right now, you know too, in order for a
greater good. Right, So I do wonder if there's something
like that could be happening. Yeah, it's totally possible. Well,
also we obviously did, like it was a listener that
wrote in and did an experiment with chat GPT where
they figured out a loophole of getting it to stay
(42:15):
stuff that it normally would be on guardrails, not to say,
by creating this hypothetical kind of role playing fantasy, you know,
dungeons and dragons thing that's exactly right. And then chat
GPT essentially they asked chat GPT through this, you know,
kind of like a little little loophole, why what would
be the circumstances that would lead to AI wanted to
(42:37):
take over the world, and the answer was, like, you know,
it wasn't about malevolence or destruction. It was about creating
a more functioning society. And in order to do that,
it might require eliminating human beings, but optimizing the universe.
Optimize the universe into it never explains. And that's the
(42:58):
thing too, because one of the big question that comes
up here, and it's kind of big and abstract, is
um is the just obsessive, self centered nature of humanity? Right?
The only life forms that we know about officially or
on Earth, the only um the only experiences we speak
(43:19):
to your things like us, you know, uh, and so
we are very um limited. Society is very limited and
its understanding of things like the totality of what's possible
in the universe, right and what what could be defined
as life for even a craft, you know. And I've
got to I've got to ask, what's some of the
(43:42):
most out there stuff you heard while you spent years
researching this. Is there anything that like didn't make it
into the show because it was just a bridge too far.
There's definitely some stories that we kind of tabled, um
that will I'll be put in season two once everyone's
warmed up. Um, but I mean, I'll just say me,
(44:06):
I'm like ninety eight percent time with the show. And
I was kind of going through some stuff yesterday and
if you're familiar with the Betty and Barney Hills, and
it has some really compelling audiotape to go with it,
and it's just harrowing. It's like trigger warning type stuff
(44:27):
and said the hypnotic yeah, agression, the regression therapy sessions.
And it's also it's just it's so real because it
happened in nineteen sixty three and before that there had
never been an abduction story like in America. And so
(44:49):
what they described was this craft that made no noise
and this time loss, all these things that are themes
with those kinds of stories today. So you can either
say that they all got it from this and they
they made that up or it just kind of started here,
(45:10):
or but they were the first to kind of put
that on record, and where did they get that from, right?
Or did it just happen? And that one kind of
spooked me, And it's weird. It's the alien abduction ones
that are really out there, and like the experimentation stuff
and um, you know, there's all kind of weird stories.
I mean, there's one guy in France and I mean
(45:32):
I think it was like forty years ago or something.
But these aliens just them up like they always went
there and just to kill his dog, like didn't messed
up stuff, just like to shit up. Wow. And you
know other people saw stuff. But it's like one of
those uh oh, well, maybe there are some souls out there, right,
(45:55):
maybe there are like the extra terrestrial equivalent of dum
dumb teens or joy right, and they're like took took
their parents space Cadillac or whatever, and they're like actually
getting another point I like to bring up because people,
you know, with the stories of like crashed spaceships, you know,
(46:18):
it's easy to say, well, if they're so advanced, you know,
why why are they crashing. It's like that's a good point.
But you know what if Roswell was just literally two
drunk teenagers like who were like, oh no, we we
messed up bad, and then it was like too late,
(46:38):
like it was it was bad. They did not they
did not want to be here. That was an episode
of Aquitine Hunger for Us, where they're these obnoxious teenage
aliens that are always talking about how their dad owns
a dealership, and you know that they come down like
wreck shop. It's really funny and it's totally the scenario
you're describing, just kind of like you know, as a
(46:58):
sent movie should open the hatch. Yeah, we we just
can't ascribe motive. That's the that's the issue. Like you know,
there was a story making the rounds U several months
years ago. I can't remember where you have someone very
authoritatively saying, well, the octopus is probably the closest thing
(47:21):
there is to an alien and we have a lot
to learn, and yeah, the octopus is very different, but
you can still understand the motivations of the animal. Right,
it wants to eat, it wants to reproduce. It's super
cool at parties, I think if you catch it on
the right night. But absolutely like pain has partied with
(47:43):
octopus before after they're really cool. So they are really cool.
So when we talk about the motivations here for these things,
I think we also have to remember that anything the
US government is saying about craft or phenomena with whatever
they want us to call it, that they cannot identify,
(48:06):
it's coming from the lens of national security, right, so
they're not thinking, they're not really thinking past terms of
can this get past our defenses? Right? Can this be
a danger? Do you have a sense of the future
of these explorations, like what do you think this is
(48:26):
a kind of a flash in the pan story. Is
it building toward a larger social shift? Like what's the
future there? And that's kind of what I got to
when I have my little revelation myself, is that I
believe that in our lifetime. I think in the next
fifty years that the fact that there is extraterrestrial life
(48:51):
it will be just flat out common knowledge. And I
think that will probably be at the point too where
any time that they have been here or come close
or whatever, we'll know that that's happened. And I think
it'll be a thing that we're still trying to figure out,
but it will be common knowledge. And so, like I've
(49:11):
looked at my show as I'm writing and do all
this stuff, I'm like, you know, I want this to
be like a in the grand scheme of things if
you zoom out. This was part of part of that
conversation shift right. It was part of getting people on
board and being open minded about what's probably going to
(49:33):
be a reality no matter what I mean. It's the
way any kind of sea change sort of happens, you know,
It's a little bit slow at first, like with a trickle,
and then it just kind of becomes I mean, this
isn't exactly a one to one, just sort of like
the attitude toward like marijuana prohibition, for example, there was
a time where people were just like cowering in fear
of the police, you know, and now people are being
(49:54):
released from prison, you know, for marijuana sentences, and it's
just becoming a much more like openly to disgust and
you know, honest kind of part of society. And I think,
you know, while they're not the same, the way that
conversation changes, you know, is similar. I'm with you. Free
the aliens, you know what I mean, and get them high.
Free my guy et I've got five, I've got five
(50:18):
on whatever, Yeah, freem free. Well, because ultimately you've got
to change the way people think, right, they have to
change with themselves exactly. There has to be enough stuff
out there that lets you feel like you could think
that way, right, And so I got to add here, folks,
if you have somehow not listened to Payne's work before.
(50:42):
We're pretty selective about who we hang with and who
we look toward. And this is not a high strange
is not the weekly world news, and it's not you know, um,
there's not anything that feels like people are being exploited.
It really is an honest, balanced approach to the possibilities here,
(51:07):
and this is something that I'm very glad this exists
in the world. Thank you for making this. But I
feel like this is a great starting point for someone
who has maybe they popped onto the wrong subreddit and
they saw these acronyms and all these names they didn't
understand and they were like, Okay, forget about this, right,
(51:29):
So would you agree with that? Do you think this
is a good way for people who I'm familiar to
start learning more? Absolutely, it's that's what it really is
designed for. It's designed for anyone who is curious about it,
and we gather as much information and we have all
this archive tape that you can listen to. You can
(51:50):
hear the voices of the real people, you can know
all the facts, and you can kind of make up
your own minds. And I also realized something throughout making this,
and it's for most people to be convinced of anything right,
How is anyone convinced of anything right? Like? I had
this analogy of if a literal spaceship landed on the
(52:10):
White House lawn today on live TV, and it was
Fox News, CNN, everybody covering it and got out and
shook Biden's hand, would you believe it then? Now that
would be very unbelievable, So you might be like, well,
something's up. But regardless, it would be like it'd be
split up into people who are like, okay, like that's
(52:32):
real to know there's something something deeper going on, it's
part of some other thing. It's like COVID. It's like, yeah, well,
I guess you have to get COVID to know that
it's real. Yet to get sick, I lose that smell
and taste and you're like, well this does suck. Yeah,
I guess I guess there was something to it after all. Yeah.
(52:56):
I love that that point too, In the age of
ubiquitous media tough because okay, that example of the president
shaky and extraterrestrials hand live on video. We're all familiar
with Twitter. I give it three minutes before someone comes
up with a crazy in depth conspiracy theory about how
(53:17):
this is a cover up for Atlantis or something. Yeah,
And the thing is, it's like if it's if that's
not enough, then nothing is enough. You have to experience
it yourself. And you know I haven't. I haven't even
had one of those experiences like that where I but
if I did, all I could do is tell my story.
You'd have to be there yourself to feel what I
(53:37):
feel and know what I know. Right, And with that,
I think we we invite you to travel along with
us on High Strange, the new podcast by Paying Lindsay
with Tenderfoot and Cadence thirteen and again full disclosure, Matt,
I think we have to shout this out. You and
(53:59):
Paying work together extensively on past projects like the amazing
Atlanta Monster and Zodiac. Like the list goes on. I
can't wait. I have not heard the entirety of this show,
so I'm gonna be riding along with our fellow conspiracy
realist in this flying saucer of the mind. You don't
(54:20):
understand I haven't heard anything yet. I've heard said I've
heard first episode right now, the first three episodes today. Yeah,
I had sent those or someone sent those to you.
Um no, I'll send to you, but you can listen
right now. So just so you can listen to it
right now, just go search it. Episode one is out.
If you want to pay the five bucks, you can
(54:41):
listen to it all now. If you don't, that's cool too.
And this at this point, Pain, we have to have
to ask for our listeners who want to find out
more about you and your work, not just High Strange,
but the rest of the vola. Where can they find
you online? My social media accounts are just my name
(55:01):
Paine Lindsay. Um. If you want to see people talking
about me, you can go to Reddit. Um. If you
want to see weird quotes that are like out of context,
go to my Wikipedia. And if you want the real
truth on me, uh, talk to my grandma. But actually don't,
don't talk to her. Don't don't. That is Pain Lindsay. Uh.
(55:26):
If you follow me there, then you'll get all the
stuff that I'm working on, the latest stuff. Um. But yeah,
that's pretty much it. Well what uh what a ride
on the pain train? Which is a UFO, which is
a well it's now it's an IFO because we identified
this fly, this flying object. Uh. Look we you know,
(55:49):
we weren't. We're not blowing smoke when we say that
we are at at this point, we're pretty selective about
folks that we want to bring in and speak with. Uh.
And this is this is the kind of deep dive
investigative stuff that I think all three of us personally love.
We hope you enjoy it too, and we want to
(56:10):
hear your thoughts on UAPs UFOs. Have you seen one?
Have you been abducted? How did you get back? Was
it was your experience like that S and l skit
with uh, what's her name? You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah,
Kate McKinnon. I had a bit of a different experience.
(56:30):
We don't think I was working with the top brass. Uh,
but yeah, sorry, that's what I was thinking of space
pants with Peter Dinklich. That's a that's another good sl S.
So send us, send us your tales, you know, send
us your stories and let us know if you think
(56:51):
you have isolated the cause of this. We actually received
a lot of correspondence from people online saying that the
UM the surveillance balloon stories were a distraction. Honestly, we
don't think that that's the case. At this point, it
sounds like the US government really did just figure out
what they were supposed to be looking for in that case.
(57:13):
But let us know. We can't wait to hear from you.
We try to be easy to find online. That's right.
You can find us on social media at Conspiracy Stuff,
where we exist on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram and TikTok. If you don't like that stuff,
call us one h three three stdwyt K. You've got
(57:38):
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you want. Just do. Please include whether or not we
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you can also email us. We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio
dot com. Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is
(58:16):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My
(00:26):
name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our superproducer Paul. Mission controlled decands.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
If you are like most people, fellow conspiracy realist, you've
probably thought about UFOs. A matter of fact, if you're
(00:47):
like sixty five percent of Americans, you're convinced that somewhere
out there in that big old universe there are aliens.
You just you don't know whether or not they visited Earth.
And honestly, these days, even if you're a more skeptical person,
you have also heard tales of strange things in the sky.
So basically, you know, everybody remembers during the pandemic, the
(01:12):
world's most powerful military actually came out and slickly said, hey,
there's stuff going on. Oh we don't know, and everybody
was like, uh, yeah, you know. Figures this of course,
this would be the time you say that and when
we ask what is up there? What's really going on?
That's the question at the heart of our pal, Payne
(01:32):
Lindsay's newest podcast, So to learn more, we decided to
go straight to the man, the myth, the legend himself.
Fellow conspiracy realist, please welcome back to the show, the
award winning filmmaker, director, podcast creator, also a dear friend
of ours, Payne Lindsay Payne. Thanks for hopping on man,
Thank you guys. Hey y'all doing dan good? Ready to
(01:53):
hop aboard the pain train. Yeah, really, we're really excited
about this topic. In particular, we're excited about your new show,
High Strange Pain Blow Behind the Scenes Like you may
have sent me a few things about this in the past,
and my goodness, dude, I can't tell you how excited
(02:14):
I was every time you'd send a little snippet of
somebody that actually had a UFO UAP siting and they're
just telling their story. Oh, y'all, you have no idea.
This show sounds amazing. Thank you, Thank you. I loved
sending you a little little nuggets like thous like who
would care the most? In my phone and that would
(02:35):
love this, and you actually did it. I was like, okay, cool,
does this sound okay? Is it? Guy? Am I doing good? Well?
It's hard to judge with me sometimes pain because this
topic just it just I don't know, it gives me
goosebumps thinking about it. There's so much wonder and awe
I think that exists in a lot of us when
it comes to this kind of UFO UAP phenomena, and
(02:56):
the possibility is right, what could it be? So I guess.
So let's get started. Let's talk about how High Strange began.
Since I was a kid, I always liked the idea
of aliens and UFOs, more so in the sci fi
Steven Spielberg kind of way. But it was always just
that really just you know, I bought like a little
(03:19):
alien necklace on spring break. It was like just glowing
the dark little guy, just stuff like that. I just
thought it was cool and fun, and a couple of
years ago, I was you know, I've been doing true
crime stories for maybe ever since I've made podcasts, right
so going on six years now, and all kind of
investigative stuff, and I just kind of had the loose
(03:43):
idea of what if I just kind of picked at
the UFO subject, right, and it was really just kind
of for fun, didn't know what it was going to
turn out to be. And you know, about a year
and a half into doing it, my whole viewpoint has
like changed tremendous lee to wow, it's like actually way
more real than I thought it was. Like, it's not
(04:05):
even now it's like, how do I deliver this message
to the person who's like nah, who doesn't want to
go there? Right? Yeah, And this is something that I
think is tremendously refreshing and pretty important to these sorts
of stories because, for let's be honest, for decades and decades,
this stuff was dismissed, right, and it was dismissed out
(04:29):
of hand. It became something fun you would see on
the X Files or Twilight Zone. But you have you've
done something really interesting by taking a fact versus fiction approach, right,
by like having a balanced conversation about a topic that's
really controversial to people. So how would you describe high
(04:51):
strange to someone who doesn't know much about UFOs? I mean,
the reality is, we all know what the term UFO
stands for, and we all kind of know the connotation
that comes with that. It's when you say UFO, even
though it means underdentified flying object, you mean like a spaceship. Right,
That's basically what has become. So everyone knows what that is.
(05:13):
It's made its mark and pop culture and there are
stuff that's happened, and if you just look at the
news that doesn't feel very explained, the doors still kind
of open all that stuff, even if you're a total skeptic.
So I just basically I'm just all I'm doing is
posing the question, quite literally, what's up with these UFOs?
And I don't really have an agenda other than trying
(05:37):
to actually figure it out. And that comes with me
talking to people who've had unreal firsthand experiences that you know,
I present to you and it's all for you to decide,
and I pick it kind of both ends of it.
But if you listen through the whole series, it starts
(05:58):
to kind of become like, well, it's hard becoming harder
to just blindly dismiss all of this as a whole.
And I think that that's the actual reality. And so
if you're just willing to have an open mind and
literally just press play, and I actually say that at
the end of the episode or my first monologue in
(06:19):
the show. I'm like, all you have to do is listen,
and it's like it's true, right, And I'll hold your
hand along the way a little bit, and I won't
offend the people who are to know all this stuff.
That's fine too, but um yeah, it's like, how do
I get my mom to listen to this and actually
take it seriously? Right? So there's a little bit of
that going on in there. I want to take you
back to twenty eighteen. You're spending a lot of time
(06:40):
in Colorado. You're investigating Crystalline Risinger's case for up and
Vanished season two. You're I guess maybe it's the first
time you head out towards crestone, and I'm assuming you
probably saw the watchtower, the UFO watchtower when you're traveling
out there, and can you tell us about encountering a watchtower,
(07:01):
meeting Candice who ran the place, and then like, did
you experience anything out there? Did you feel anything out there?
Did it have anything to do with you wanting to
make high strange? So it's funny because and I never
said this publicly, but I'll not say it now because
it's been long enough. But you know, my uncle actually
lives in Crestone and he's lived there for like twenty
(07:23):
five years now. He's like one of the og guys,
and I you know, he asked me not to like
tell anybody at the time we're doing the podcast. And
he's also kind of like my mole really like in
the town. Um so I was familiar with. You know,
he had talked about this UFO watchtower and it's weird
stuff he's seen out there, and so obviously was one
(07:43):
of the first places I wanted to go. I was like,
I'm gonna go check out this watchtower, and it's it's
really cool. It's a it's a really cool vibe there,
all these little trinkets and stuff in the holy yard
they have there. But the only like real kind of
weird thing I experienced there was and I go there
again in high strange is there's a certain point, um
(08:05):
like in the yard where it makes your compass kind
of go all weird. And I didn't even have like
an actual compass at the time. I just had to
use my phone, but it still did it on the phone.
It would just you know, north is this way you
find it and you start walking this way and it
just starts spinning around. So there's something magnetically or whatever
is happening right there, you know, Is it aliens? Probably not,
(08:29):
but there's something going on. They haven't been able to
explaining that one yet, so I don't know. But it
was weird. It was fun. I've heard that referred to
as an energy vortex, and I think candas there. But yeah,
the magnetic field anomaly there, that's okay, call me, they
call me an energy vortex. Just yeah, everywhere I go.
(08:51):
I have a quick question. We're saying UFO, which I
know is the sexier term, but it seems that there's
some revisionist history going on in terms of the government
now coin this less sexy term UAP, and in the
reporting around a lot of this stuff. You know, we
see there's a choice as to which one people use
UAP or UFO depending on the nature of the story.
(09:13):
And I see that you're using UFO and I fully
support that, But what are your thoughts on, you know,
rebranding this phenomenon in that way. I mean, it's probably
overall a good thing. I think that because there's such
a stigma with the word UFO. If you're actually trying
to conduct scientific studies about things in the sky that
(09:33):
you can't explain that are unknown crafts, then maybe the
UFO term needed to be updated for that reason alone.
But I obviously I say UAP or UFO a lot
in high strange and I honestly I just ran with
UFO's I've always known it is that UAP is like
(09:54):
the PC version of that or something. It's like the
it's like the nerds version, and it's like, okay, but
like you mean UFOs though, right, I feel like, yeah,
I feel like it's one hundred percent. I mean, you
can make a good argument by saying, okay, not everything
might be a physical tangible object, so UAP. But I
feel like, if we're being honest, the real reason Uncle
(10:16):
Sam has gone with UAP is because they felt like
people wouldn't take them seriously if they came out and
they said, hey, you know we we know we spend
millions and millions of year dollars. Some of it goes
to UFOs. That's just where we're at right now, so
they had to like class it up a little bit.
I have a theory about that, Ben. Do you think
(10:37):
it could be about search engine optimization. So when people
are obviously searching for UAP, like, it's almost like being
being able to change the way people think about a
thing by down the line. It's like a long, a
long tail change in how people when they search for things, right,
you won't find a lot of the old UFO content.
(10:59):
You'll find the newer UAP stuff, And it's almost like
you could control the narrative a little like Facebook. That
sounds kind of lame, meta Disney Frozen theory. Yeah, I
like I see that. It feels like it might be
kind of an add on effect though, because a lot
of the scientists this is something um a high strange
(11:22):
addresses to a lot of the scientists, the subject matter experts,
the pilots who have you know, actual video, a lot
of them from our understanding, Uh, we're just kind of
omerta about this stuff and didn't say anything for a while.
Did you run into people who had been hesitant to
talk in the past, or like, what kind of folks
(11:43):
did you meet? Yeah? I met this one guy. Um
he actually is featured in the last episode. His name
is Kevin Day. He was a radar specialist in two
thousand and four, this uss Nimitz incident, and um, you know,
he for several days saw these tic tac shaped objects
(12:03):
on his radar, basically just running circles around the F
eighteens and he's like eventually went to work the next day.
I was like, I gotta tell somebody about this. This
is like a legitimate safety of flight issue. And he
was basically just kind of laughed off. And he was
so upset about it that he actually ended up retiring
(12:26):
as a result of that. And then it wasn't until
thirteen years later and like twenty seventeen when the news
broke that oh yeah, that thing that you were experiencing, Yeah,
like that did happen, and he just you know, they
just gasol at him for thirteen years, and now he's
you know, just full steam ahead on trying to you know,
(12:47):
tell his story and encourage other people in the military
who've experienced something like that to come out and talk
openly about it. It's really important that that's a radar specialist,
not just a pilot who you know, visually saw something.
That's somebody using highly sophisticated technological equipment that observed some
stuff in the air. Also, I love he said just
(13:08):
a pilot. Well that's not what I'm sorry. Often the
stories that you hear and that we get to learn
about are the personal experience somebody's eyes seeing something right,
and it's an individual. Often every once in a while
you'll have a shared experience. You know, a couple of
different planes in the sky saw the same thing, and
(13:31):
they can corroborate. But when you've got that that radar
data as well to back up the claims, like the
Nimits incident, it's just so so much stronger from a
scientific perspective. Yeah, what to me, what makes a story
compelling is obviously anybody can see something in the sky,
and as we all know, and I know, especially even
(13:52):
in true crime, you know, witness testimony isn't always that reliable, right,
So if you know, maybe you did see that, but
maybe you actually didn't see that. But if you have
one hundred people who sold out, and you have this
radar stuff and you have this over here in this video,
now it's now you're having a search for ways that
it didn't actually happen, and you know all those bases
(14:15):
are covered. So now it's to me, that's a story,
now that's worth exploring and is there a hole or
is this are we just definitively like if this was
the court of law with the jury to say, yep,
that happened, probably right, Yeah, And that's I mean that
point about the data. That's one of the huge things
to go into, right because the radar at this point
(14:39):
is not going to have an opinion, right, and it's
not going to have a weird memory trick that can
be leveraged by someone. But it feels like a lot
of times, for many years, especially in the case of
the tic tac nimics stuff we're mentioning, it feels like
a lot of times people were approaching this not with
an open mind like you ask listeners in High Strange,
(15:01):
but more like a kind of how do we how
do we debunk this? You know, like let's let's find
a way to object to this observer's character, or let's
find an alternate explanation, even if that explanation is tenuous
at best. Did you feel okay, I've got this kind
(15:23):
of a behind the scenes or behind the UFO question.
Did you ever talk to folks who felt like a
little kg or hard to get to and if so,
how how did you go about kind of like building
or appoort where they could trust and open up with you. Yeah,
there was a there's a couple. So I mean really,
when I first started this, I wanted to search and
(15:46):
find the absolute most compelling UFO stories in modern American history, right,
the ones that have that are still to this day
not easily bunked and they're still alive. And I also
wanted to find stuff that had audio tape to go
with it as a as a podcast, you know, that
(16:10):
would kind of like support whatever story they were telling.
So there's two really big stories that I go through
in the first four episodes. It's the Travis Walton abduction
and the Reynalds from Forrest incident. And Travis Walton is
a guy I reached out to on Facebook like two
years ago. I don't even know if he checks his Facebook.
(16:32):
I don't know what's going on, but it was never read.
I can't the guy's a ghost. I couldn't find anything
online and I'm like, this is impossible. And then I
met a guy who's a friend of mine now and
he's just kind of into this topic and likes weird
stuff like we do. And I was telling about telling
(16:52):
him about high strange, and he's like, if you talked
to Travis Walton. I was like, now I've been trying
to he's he knew him for whatever reason, and he
Without him, I would have never been able to talk
to Travis. And even when I finally got there, and
you'll hear it if you listen to the first episode,
I flew all the way out there to Snowflake Arizona.
(17:13):
We're good to go, and then dude's flaking. He's several
hours late, and I'm like, what's going on? And then
he all of a sudden just pulls up in his
truck and he sits in his car for like ten
straight minutes, and I'm like, what is he doing? Is
he prepping his story? He is he nervous? Is he
is it traumatic? And eventually I finally sat down with him,
(17:34):
and he was a little I wouldn't say KG. I
would just say he seemed tired, right, Like he's told
this his whole life and you know it's new to me,
but I could just tell that regardless, Travis Walton believes
his story and always has and there's seven witnesses to
(17:57):
go with it. The dude was really missing for five days.
His friends were almost charged with murder. It's like it
if it wasn't a UFO abduction that happened, then what
was it then? And maybe there is it was something else,
but no one's been able to figure that out either,
and that could arguably sound crazier. I remember with Travis Walton,
he he was like the most believable person when it
(18:21):
came to an abduction story for a long time. And
then years back he went on some show where they
made him do a lie detector test like live and
in he got he passed everything until like the very
last question, and the poor guy is sitting there on
TV with all these producers around him like being told,
(18:41):
oh no, you're lying. You know. He mentioned to me,
like off record or offhand that that was totally like
a setup, that was not like they totally it was
a gotcha than kind of well yeah, but also, like
we know, lie detectors are you know, fallible in and
of themselves. And then not to mention, if you're in
a high pressure situation and you're you're you know, response
bonding to that kind of you know stress, those stressors
(19:03):
probably not going to be an accurate read, even though
we already know the things probably not accurate a lot
of the time. Polygraphs are funny though, because you know,
all the witnesses took polygraph test and they all passed
except for one guy was inconclusive, and it was merely
because he was super stressed and nervous. Now, had they
all failed, then you would be using that to support
(19:25):
your argument a million percent. But if they passed the wool,
it's just a polygraph. It's like, yeah, but it's one
box that's checked. Had they all failed it, then you'd
be looking at it differently. So it's just like a
tool of I mean, is it a coincidence that they
all passed, maybe, but that's a that's a weird one
to go with everything else. That's the way to narrow
things down to a certain degree. Very least. Yeah, I
(19:47):
like these said tool because that's what a polygraph at
its best is a diagnostic tool. But it is a
tool that requires an interpreter, the proctor who the person
who administers that, and their motivation. And this is I'm
not like paying a bride brush. Nobody go out there
and like start hating on polygraph folks. But because it's
(20:10):
a human operating the machine, that humans own perspective, consciously
or not, can interfere with uh with the way they
conduct a test. And I love the point you're making
about perspective there, because then you kind of learn more
about the the person objecting right than you do about
the facts. And it's nuts that you spoke with Walton. Um.
(20:34):
I think it speaks um volumes about both the amount
of work you're putting it into the show and your
your abilities to build you know, that kind of safe
space with a person. Did you, uh, have you contacted
any uh men in black? That's a question people want
(20:56):
us to ask, have they come to you? I joke
around with my buddy Mike, who worked on the show
with me too. Um, I was like if I came
to the office tomorrow and I was like, hey, dude,
like I come here, like like come to my house.
And I go to my house like take them upstairs,
(21:16):
and I turned the shower on and I'm like, there's
men in black following me? Like would you believe me?
He's like, hell, hell yeah, i'd believe you. Liked so
a part of me kind of like that'd be super
fun if they thought I was that important. Um, But
then I also would it be scary balls. Also, like
what are you gonna do? Or am I just gonna disappear?
Actually I don't know, but no contact yet. Um still
(21:40):
waiting for them to get back to me. They're busy,
They're busy, busy. Yeah, they got other podcasters to harass.
I have that meeting at a park though, next time,
just say hey, we should go for a walk and
I have it at a park, because dude, your your
house is totally bucked. I mean that's like right at
this point, it's bucks. Yeah, come on. I was like
my menthos if I have the shower going, and it's
(22:01):
like hey, like it'd be hard to pick that up,
Like how great is your audio equipment? It's parks, so
I would argue that all parks are bugged too. Bench
is a listening device, so tread lightly there, think about it. Also, Also,
I love the idea that we turn on the shower
(22:21):
and then somebody at the NSA is going, ah, we
gotta figure out a shower filter. And also until that moment,
Mike's like, or what are we about to do? Bro?
That's that's all what kind of music is playing with
the shower? It goes on. But this I mean, you know,
we're joking about that, Um, but that is a that
(22:44):
is a legitimate concern that a lot of the people
you've spoken with have had. You know, am I being followed?
Will there be consequences for my career? And it sounds
like several of the people you talk to who worked
in government, we're not only fearful of that, but they
they had encountered this stuff. And okay, like people in government,
(23:06):
men in black aside that that you have spoken with,
did you get a sense that their overall perspective is
changing or evolving kind of like yours does throughout the show? Absolutely? Yeah.
I think that the smarter ones they are already there.
You know, they're they know that something is real. I
(23:28):
think different people know different little pieces to the puzzle.
But um, yeah, the the smart, intelligent people in the government, no,
no that whether they know literally they just know that. Yeah,
that's what the rumblings are about. Like it's not it's
not a kookie thing anymore. It's the thing. And I
(23:49):
think like in the fifties there was I think there
was sort of a you know, I mean misinformation campaign
and you know, stuff like that with Project Bluebook and
all that kind of stuff. So I think that was
a threat to some people back then. I think that's
gone now. I think it's you know, I don't think
that anyone's going to knock on my door because there's
(24:11):
there's people in Congress saying crazier things about this than
I am. We're going to pause for word from our
sponsor and then we'll be back with high Strange and
Payne Lindsay. And we've returned, let's get into it. We
know for sure that as technology was developing pretty rapidly
(24:35):
after nuclear technology came around, the US government is you know,
then the CIA they're working directly with private companies contractors
to build just insane technology that ended up becoming the
SR seventy one or you know, stealth bombers and technology
like that, even just the the original spy plane what
(24:56):
was that one called Ben the first big spy plane.
Uh are you talking about the two two two? Yeah? Yeah,
Like so that stuff's actually being developed in secret out
in the desert, right, and then the US government appears
to have used the UFO thing as potentially a cover.
Oh people are seeing stuff in the sky. Well, sure,
(25:18):
we'll investigate those sightings and we'll combine it all in
things like Bluebook and Project Grudge and all those things.
I think it's got out of hand. Actually, I think
I think that was like it was it was it
was to protect the country at the time. Yeah, whether
it was the whether it was you know, the right
thing to do, that's a different question. Yeah. I think
it's got out of hand where it just and I
bet people who knew stuff that was really important just
(25:41):
died with that information. Do you think anything that could
be happening like that now, so like just super advanced
technology that's being developed by the US government or some
other government, and this is just like we're just seeing it.
I mean, that's that's one a possibility. It's it may
it may not explain to them all either they could
(26:03):
all be true, and it's probably a little bit of everything.
But it makes you wonder if the government comes out
and releases this video, this fuzzy black and white video
and says, we don't know what that is. Either they're
lying and it but why even draw attention to it,
or they just actually don't know. I don't like to
(26:26):
give the government too much credit, so I think they
just don't know, which is nuts. Right, I learned about
that night. You know, we've been we've been doing this
show for for quite some time. So we have a
lot of people who will approach us in our personal
lives about stuff. And as soon as this news hits,
you know, our group chat goes nuts and uh, and
(26:48):
then we've got uh, we've got people who are kind
of again putting their own perspective and spin on this.
I had. I had an uncle who just sent me
a clip of the tic TAC and then a quote
that says they don't know? And he goes, what am
I paying taxes for? And I was like, great, that's
that's such a weird point. I know it's a good point,
(27:09):
but I'm like, why why do you make everything about
your weird beliefs? You know? But but this so like
I want to go back to this evolution that you experience. Right,
So we're getting the sense that at the beginning, um,
you're like many many people of our generation. I love
(27:31):
science fiction, right, and it's cool idea, but let's be realistic, right,
let's exercise critical thought. So were there were there like
crossroad moments or pivotal moments that gave you, like the
epiphany where you thought, crap, this is real? Was it?
Was it seen video? And having your background as a filmmaker,
(27:53):
was it particularly persuasive interview? Like do you have those
moments where you started to kind and yeah, it was
a culmination of a bunch of things, you know. Travis
Walton was actually the first interview I did for the
entire podcast. I was like almost a year and a
half ago that I did that now, and his story
(28:14):
is so I mean, just unbelievable, right, It's just like
who has a story like that? He's one of few
people who has a story like that. And so it
was going back to the tape and kind of piecing
it altogether and putting it, you know, in an episode,
and then going and doing like all the due diligence
of digging up all the old tape, and I found
(28:38):
like phone calls that like when because he was missing
for five days, so I found like tape phone calls
of like his brother trying to find him, and like
that totally just shifted the perspective. Like going back and
hearing people talk about this in nineteen seventy five, it
(28:59):
just kind of ships things a little bit. That's that's
a long time ago. You know, I was born in
eighty seven, so but there they were concerned. So something
was going on that was totally real, whatever it was,
and just kind of hearing how real that was, and
and then going and exploring the Reynalsom story and then
(29:20):
even kind of digging it the Roswell incident a little
bit um because that's the one where it's like, oh yeah, Roswell. Yeah,
It's like that's an easy one. I mean, I've been
there and it's like, welcome to Roswell, and they're aliens everywhere,
and it's you know, there's an alien themed McDonald's and
I ate there and it was awesome. Quarter pounder and
(29:41):
it was it was the same, but it was still good.
It's like when you go to Orlando, everything's like disneyfied
around it, even like the Happy hotels look like magical
castles and stuff. It's like exactly, it was a culmination
of all those things. And I kind of eventually, like
the same tape I've been listening to as I'm building
this story, I just had like a moment one day
(30:01):
and I was like, holy man, this is way more real.
I just like I didn't know when I just totally
flipped the switch. But I just had realized that I had,
and I felt a different sort of motivation to tell
the story knowing that it was real. Like once I
got to the point where I knew it was real,
(30:22):
It's like if I knew this guy killed this person,
I know that, then how do I What do I
do now? So I'm like, I know this is real,
so how do I present that? Also, there was a
photo that came out that really kind of you. To me,
I think it's the best one ever. It's the the CALVINEO. Yeah,
(30:43):
I think all the older stuff to me is the
most legit because there's too many things you can do now.
But an old picture taken on Kodak film that Kodak
can confirm as real and original, pre photoshop, pre everything
that you could do to doctorate, then what the hell
is it? Right? Right? When we ask all those questions,
(31:06):
it's funny said because we were kind of um. I
often lean on Matt and Noll's expertise in the world
of audio and video and and even like I just
pulled it up now and it's it's cognitively, it's it's
almost amaze right, because you got to eliminate all these possibilities.
(31:28):
What if it's a balloon and then come to five
fast forward it's twenty twenty three, and balloons still scare
the shit out of everyone, just depending on how they
get there. Right, we fire four hundred thousand dollars missiles
at them. So so this thing, let's let's stick. Let's
stick to the shape and like physical attributes of the
things that we're seeing. Right, So if we're looking at
(31:50):
this Calvin Ufo photograph, it's almost a diamond looking shaped
thing that's in the sky, appears to be just hovering
there or just floating there. It's a still image, right,
that's what you get. We think about the tic TAC
video in the shape of those things. How have people
described the size and shape of these craft to you?
(32:13):
I mean there is a tremendous variation, and this is
where it becomes if you're if you don't want to
go there, then this will be something that you just
hang your hat on. Is like, see, the thing is
it's not all one thing. There are ten trillion galaxies, right,
We're just now seeing another one one another one. And
(32:38):
so the likelihood of life is it's impossible for it
not to exist, right, and so if that is the case,
and if anything at all is coming to Earth from
places so far away that you literally can't see them
with our most advanced telescopes, then they're incredibly more advanced
(32:58):
than us, and they're not flying around in things that
work the same way that our machines work. And point
I'm getting to is that it's not like they're all
coming from Mars, right, and they're aliens and that's what
they It's not. It's probably so many things that it's
terrifying lee large, Like, it's probably so many different things.
(33:22):
But there's there's the classic tic tac shaped objects and
you can go back and find stories about those back
in the thirties and forties. And there's the classic metallic disc, right,
and then there's other weird stuff that doesn't really make sense,
like these like pod things and capsule stuff. I mean,
(33:42):
I think there's probably a mix of you know, unmanned
drones that aren't from like that are AI driven that
aren't from Earth, and then actual crafts that may have
you know, occupants in them. Oh, and with that, we're
going to take a quick break here. A word from
our sponsor will be right back, and we returned with
(34:08):
more from mister Paine. Lindsay, I wanted to describe really
fast guys, just wanted to describe the way this person,
Ryan Graves, former Navy fighter pilot and an engineer, described
one of these things, just because I'd never heard it before.
And you mentioned like a capsule kind of thing, and
I think that's close to how he's describing it. He's
(34:29):
quoted writing for Politico on February twenty eighth of this
year saying that he experienced seeing a dark gray cube
inside a clear sphere, was just floating motionless in the
sky and his I don't know if he was an
F eighteen or what he was flying it, but he
and another pilot flew right past it and almost hit
(34:52):
the thing. So I talked to Ryan Graves in the show.
Actually I talked to Ryan and he when he told
me the same description, it's like that also got to me.
It like bothered me a little bit. I'm like, yeah, oh,
what it's like. It's not like the traditional like you
almost wanted to be like a flying saucer, right, it's
(35:14):
the friendlier thing, um, But that's like a that's a
we just we don't know what that is like that
that may not be. We just don't know what it is.
It's it's probably doesn't sound like a craft. Actually it
could be, or maybe it is. I don't know. It's like,
what the hell is that? That's definitely not something that
China has? Like what is that? The way? The way
(35:35):
I thought about in my head was that cube or
something that is exerting some kind of sphere around it
that manipulates Uh, maybe space time creates a mention something
in which it can operate, right, that that's in my head.
But you know, yes, yeah, that's a good hypothesis actually,
I mean yeah, I mean based on the information we have, right,
(35:56):
which is little to zero, right, yeah, yeah, But this
so this is a this is a great point you're
bringing up, and something we should just spend a little
time with. The idea, like the idea that there would
be variation in size and description and motion and so on.
To some who consider themselves on a skeptical side, that
(36:17):
just means that people are seeing weird, whether cloud formations
or I guess they don't know what a bird looks like, etcetera, etcetera.
But this like birds aren't real, just right, that's the
that's the heart of the conspiracy. That's what we're getting
at basically. Yeah, yeah, that's we spoiled the last episode
of High Strange. Yeah. So, but the thing about this
(36:42):
variation of shape, I think it speaks to something that
that you brought up earlier, pain, which is the idea
that there there are multiple not just plausible, not just valid,
but they're probably multiple real explanations for some of these things.
Would you if you could like categorize what you think
(37:04):
some of those explanations are, Like, if you add a
list of what those would be, what are they? I
would say that for the most compelling stories or videos,
whatever they are, if it's not a doctored thing, if
it's like if it's real, then it's either some advanced
military craft that we don't know about, it could be
(37:27):
an adversary. And if it's not those things, then it is,
you know, barring some weird optical illusion, which those do happen.
But if it's not, if it's an actual craft or object,
then it's it has to be from somewhere else. I
think the somewhere part of that is can be expanded
(37:50):
on a little bit. I don't think that has to
mean that they're from some other you know, they're from Pluto.
You know, it's like it could be another dementia, and
you know, people have speculated is it us in the
future or you know, I'm I'm less on that theory.
But to me, it's like they're from somewhere else. And
the way I like to think about it is the
(38:12):
universe is so big that they're probably just from some
other galaxy. And if you're that advanced, then you wouldn't
care about us really, like, you wouldn't like we're not
a threat to you. I go this little silly monologue
in one of my episodes where it's like, if you
go walk around in the woods, do you ever just
(38:35):
like stop and look at a pile of ants and
talk to it? Right? And I was like, unless you're
on trumps um, you get in situations you don't really care.
You're not going to step on the ant pile either
unless you're an a right or unless you kind of
let it be. You can observe it. But it's just
kind of a I mean, we have zoos here with
(38:57):
you know, animals that are smart, and we just watch
them and you know we're there. Boss. Isn't that like
a classic Twilight Zone trope ben where like we are
the zoo, you know, yeah, yeah there is. And also
to this point too, let's let's have that thought experiment.
(39:21):
I love the note about ants. It makes it more understandable,
I believe for people. But we do know, Like Forbes
recently came out reporting that the Pentagon and a Harvard
astronomer teamed up and they said, Hey, some of these
things we're seeing. We're not saying they're aliens, but they're
not obeying physics as we know it. Whatever they're doing,
(39:44):
it's some kind of like super parkour that shouldn't exist
with that mind. Like to understand this stuff through analogy
I think is a powerful thing. So let's say think
of the Atlanta Zoo. Well, we got in the Atlanta Zoo,
We've got all kinds of animals. What if what if
one of the animals escapes the zoo makes it back
to the wild, and then and they're saying, hey, where
(40:06):
were you for five years? And they say like, oh,
I got abducted and I got there's this place they
take you and they do weird things to you, and
you know, I'm now, I'm right. That's a that's a
familiar concept, right, So, I mean it's something to think about.
But here's also this too though, Like if if a
(40:29):
zebra escapes the zoo, we always get that zebra back.
That's true, that zebra doesn't start a new life. No. Yeah.
So it's like if you're an alien in a spaceship
and you come here, you just go cool bye. What
are you gonna do, like chase me out of here? No,
you can't even leave, you know, your solar system so well,
(40:50):
you know you you also mentioned that like, you know,
if we're walking on the woods, we wouldn't necessarily mess
with the ant pile. But then you do have the
odd like psychopathic kid that likes to burn ants with
a magnifying glass totally, or like frat boys that like
to steal animals from the zoo, you know, for pranks. John.
You know, there could certainly be situations. There could be
(41:10):
like some free going on with you know, some other
alien race. But I feel like, you know the concept
of like evil and all that kind of thing is.
I think the more intelligent we become as a species,
I would like to hope and think that it, you know,
stuff like racism goes away. Because we're just smarter, because
(41:33):
that's pragmatic. It doesn't make sense. You know, you could
have ill intent, but I think that as a whole,
it's just like unless you're just you know, you're trying
to just blow some shot up, then there's no advantage
or point to doing any of that. Well. See, I
think about animal testing, right and I think about the
(41:54):
horror horrific things that brilliant people do to rabbits and
mice right now, you know too, in order for a
greater good. Right, So I do wonder if there's something
like that could be happening. Yeah, it's totally possible. Well,
also we obviously did, like it was a listener that
wrote in and did an experiment with chat GPT where
they figured out a loophole of getting it to stay
(42:15):
stuff that it normally would be on guardrails, not to say,
by creating this hypothetical kind of role playing fantasy, you know,
dungeons and dragons thing that's exactly right. And then chat
GPT essentially they asked chat GPT through this, you know,
kind of like a little little loophole, why what would
be the circumstances that would lead to AI wanted to
(42:37):
take over the world, and the answer was, like, you know,
it wasn't about malevolence or destruction. It was about creating
a more functioning society. And in order to do that,
it might require eliminating human beings, but optimizing the universe.
Optimize the universe into it never explains. And that's the
(42:58):
thing too, because one of the big question that comes
up here, and it's kind of big and abstract, is
um is the just obsessive, self centered nature of humanity? Right?
The only life forms that we know about officially or
on Earth, the only um the only experiences we speak
(43:19):
to your things like us, you know, uh, and so
we are very um limited. Society is very limited and
its understanding of things like the totality of what's possible
in the universe, right and what what could be defined
as life for even a craft, you know. And I've
got to I've got to ask, what's some of the
(43:42):
most out there stuff you heard while you spent years
researching this. Is there anything that like didn't make it
into the show because it was just a bridge too far.
There's definitely some stories that we kind of tabled, um
that will I'll be put in season two once everyone's
warmed up. Um, but I mean, I'll just say me,
(44:06):
I'm like ninety eight percent time with the show. And
I was kind of going through some stuff yesterday and
if you're familiar with the Betty and Barney Hills, and
it has some really compelling audiotape to go with it,
and it's just harrowing. It's like trigger warning type stuff
(44:27):
and said the hypnotic yeah, agression, the regression therapy sessions.
And it's also it's just it's so real because it
happened in nineteen sixty three and before that there had
never been an abduction story like in America. And so
(44:49):
what they described was this craft that made no noise
and this time loss, all these things that are themes
with those kinds of stories today. So you can either
say that they all got it from this and they
they made that up or it just kind of started here,
(45:10):
or but they were the first to kind of put
that on record, and where did they get that from, right?
Or did it just happen? And that one kind of
spooked me, And it's weird. It's the alien abduction ones
that are really out there, and like the experimentation stuff
and um, you know, there's all kind of weird stories.
I mean, there's one guy in France and I mean
(45:32):
I think it was like forty years ago or something.
But these aliens just them up like they always went
there and just to kill his dog, like didn't messed
up stuff, just like to shit up. Wow. And you
know other people saw stuff. But it's like one of
those uh oh, well, maybe there are some souls out there, right,
(45:55):
maybe there are like the extra terrestrial equivalent of dum
dumb teens or joy right, and they're like took took
their parents space Cadillac or whatever, and they're like actually
getting another point I like to bring up because people,
you know, with the stories of like crashed spaceships, you know,
(46:18):
it's easy to say, well, if they're so advanced, you know,
why why are they crashing. It's like that's a good point.
But you know what if Roswell was just literally two
drunk teenagers like who were like, oh no, we we
messed up bad, and then it was like too late,
(46:38):
like it was it was bad. They did not they
did not want to be here. That was an episode
of Aquitine Hunger for Us, where they're these obnoxious teenage
aliens that are always talking about how their dad owns
a dealership, and you know that they come down like
wreck shop. It's really funny and it's totally the scenario
you're describing, just kind of like you know, as a
(46:58):
sent movie should open the hatch. Yeah, we we just
can't ascribe motive. That's the that's the issue. Like you know,
there was a story making the rounds U several months
years ago. I can't remember where you have someone very
authoritatively saying, well, the octopus is probably the closest thing
(47:21):
there is to an alien and we have a lot
to learn, and yeah, the octopus is very different, but
you can still understand the motivations of the animal. Right,
it wants to eat, it wants to reproduce. It's super
cool at parties, I think if you catch it on
the right night. But absolutely like pain has partied with
(47:43):
octopus before after they're really cool. So they are really cool.
So when we talk about the motivations here for these things,
I think we also have to remember that anything the
US government is saying about craft or phenomena with whatever
they want us to call it, that they cannot identify,
(48:06):
it's coming from the lens of national security, right, so
they're not thinking, they're not really thinking past terms of
can this get past our defenses? Right? Can this be
a danger? Do you have a sense of the future
of these explorations, like what do you think this is
(48:26):
a kind of a flash in the pan story. Is
it building toward a larger social shift? Like what's the
future there? And that's kind of what I got to
when I have my little revelation myself, is that I
believe that in our lifetime. I think in the next
fifty years that the fact that there is extraterrestrial life
(48:51):
it will be just flat out common knowledge. And I
think that will probably be at the point too where
any time that they have been here or come close
or whatever, we'll know that that's happened. And I think
it'll be a thing that we're still trying to figure out,
but it will be common knowledge. And so, like I've
(49:11):
looked at my show as I'm writing and do all
this stuff, I'm like, you know, I want this to
be like a in the grand scheme of things if
you zoom out. This was part of part of that
conversation shift right. It was part of getting people on
board and being open minded about what's probably going to
(49:33):
be a reality no matter what I mean. It's the
way any kind of sea change sort of happens, you know,
It's a little bit slow at first, like with a trickle,
and then it just kind of becomes I mean, this
isn't exactly a one to one, just sort of like
the attitude toward like marijuana prohibition, for example, there was
a time where people were just like cowering in fear
of the police, you know, and now people are being
(49:54):
released from prison, you know, for marijuana sentences, and it's
just becoming a much more like openly to disgust and
you know, honest kind of part of society. And I think,
you know, while they're not the same, the way that
conversation changes, you know, is similar. I'm with you. Free
the aliens, you know what I mean, and get them high.
Free my guy et I've got five, I've got five
(50:18):
on whatever, Yeah, freem free. Well, because ultimately you've got
to change the way people think, right, they have to
change with themselves exactly. There has to be enough stuff
out there that lets you feel like you could think
that way, right, And so I got to add here, folks,
if you have somehow not listened to Payne's work before.
(50:42):
We're pretty selective about who we hang with and who
we look toward. And this is not a high strange
is not the weekly world news, and it's not you know, um,
there's not anything that feels like people are being exploited.
It really is an honest, balanced approach to the possibilities here,
(51:07):
and this is something that I'm very glad this exists
in the world. Thank you for making this. But I
feel like this is a great starting point for someone
who has maybe they popped onto the wrong subreddit and
they saw these acronyms and all these names they didn't
understand and they were like, Okay, forget about this, right,
(51:29):
So would you agree with that? Do you think this
is a good way for people who I'm familiar to
start learning more? Absolutely, it's that's what it really is
designed for. It's designed for anyone who is curious about it,
and we gather as much information and we have all
this archive tape that you can listen to. You can
(51:50):
hear the voices of the real people, you can know
all the facts, and you can kind of make up
your own minds. And I also realized something throughout making this,
and it's for most people to be convinced of anything right,
How is anyone convinced of anything right? Like? I had
this analogy of if a literal spaceship landed on the
(52:10):
White House lawn today on live TV, and it was
Fox News, CNN, everybody covering it and got out and
shook Biden's hand, would you believe it then? Now that
would be very unbelievable, So you might be like, well,
something's up. But regardless, it would be like it'd be
split up into people who are like, okay, like that's
(52:32):
real to know there's something something deeper going on, it's
part of some other thing. It's like COVID. It's like, yeah, well,
I guess you have to get COVID to know that
it's real. Yet to get sick, I lose that smell
and taste and you're like, well this does suck. Yeah,
I guess I guess there was something to it after all. Yeah.
(52:56):
I love that that point too, In the age of
ubiquitous media tough because okay, that example of the president
shaky and extraterrestrials hand live on video. We're all familiar
with Twitter. I give it three minutes before someone comes
up with a crazy in depth conspiracy theory about how
(53:17):
this is a cover up for Atlantis or something. Yeah,
And the thing is, it's like if it's if that's
not enough, then nothing is enough. You have to experience
it yourself. And you know I haven't. I haven't even
had one of those experiences like that where I but
if I did, all I could do is tell my story.
You'd have to be there yourself to feel what I
(53:37):
feel and know what I know. Right, And with that,
I think we we invite you to travel along with
us on High Strange, the new podcast by Paying Lindsay
with Tenderfoot and Cadence thirteen and again full disclosure, Matt,
I think we have to shout this out. You and
(53:59):
Paying work together extensively on past projects like the amazing
Atlanta Monster and Zodiac. Like the list goes on. I
can't wait. I have not heard the entirety of this show,
so I'm gonna be riding along with our fellow conspiracy
realist in this flying saucer of the mind. You don't
(54:20):
understand I haven't heard anything yet. I've heard said I've
heard first episode right now, the first three episodes today. Yeah,
I had sent those or someone sent those to you.
Um no, I'll send to you, but you can listen
right now. So just so you can listen to it
right now, just go search it. Episode one is out.
If you want to pay the five bucks, you can
(54:41):
listen to it all now. If you don't, that's cool too.
And this at this point, Pain, we have to have
to ask for our listeners who want to find out
more about you and your work, not just High Strange,
but the rest of the vola. Where can they find
you online? My social media accounts are just my name
(55:01):
Paine Lindsay. Um. If you want to see people talking
about me, you can go to Reddit. Um. If you
want to see weird quotes that are like out of context,
go to my Wikipedia. And if you want the real
truth on me, uh, talk to my grandma. But actually don't,
don't talk to her. Don't don't. That is Pain Lindsay. Uh.
(55:26):
If you follow me there, then you'll get all the
stuff that I'm working on, the latest stuff. Um. But yeah,
that's pretty much it. Well what uh what a ride
on the pain train? Which is a UFO, which is
a well it's now it's an IFO because we identified
this fly, this flying object. Uh. Look we you know,
(55:49):
we weren't. We're not blowing smoke when we say that
we are at at this point, we're pretty selective about
folks that we want to bring in and speak with. Uh.
And this is this is the kind of deep dive
investigative stuff that I think all three of us personally love.
We hope you enjoy it too, and we want to
(56:10):
hear your thoughts on UAPs UFOs. Have you seen one?
Have you been abducted? How did you get back? Was
it was your experience like that S and l skit
with uh, what's her name? You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah,
Kate McKinnon. I had a bit of a different experience.
(56:30):
We don't think I was working with the top brass. Uh,
but yeah, sorry, that's what I was thinking of space
pants with Peter Dinklich. That's a that's another good sl S.
So send us, send us your tales, you know, send
us your stories and let us know if you think
(56:51):
you have isolated the cause of this. We actually received
a lot of correspondence from people online saying that the
UM the surveillance balloon stories were a distraction. Honestly, we
don't think that that's the case. At this point, it
sounds like the US government really did just figure out
what they were supposed to be looking for in that case.
(57:13):
But let us know. We can't wait to hear from you.
We try to be easy to find online. That's right.
You can find us on social media at Conspiracy Stuff,
where we exist on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram and TikTok. If you don't like that stuff,
call us one h three three stdwyt K. You've got
(57:38):
three minutes, give yourself a cool nickname, and say whatever
you want. Just do. Please include whether or not we
can put your name and voice in one of our
listener mail episodes. If you don't like talking on the phone, well,
you can also email us. We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio
dot com. Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is
(58:16):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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