Episode 06: Let’s Talk Aliens

I'm Clayton Eckard, in 2022,

I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor.

“But here's the thing, Bachelor fans hated him.”

If I could press a button and rewind it all I would, that's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract.

Agreed to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young, listen to the love trapped on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the middle of the night,

Sasuke awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop, while was on his screen would change Sasuke's life forever.

“I said I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing,”

and immediately the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. Listen to betrayal season five on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Next Monday, our 2021 six-eye-hard podcast awards are happening live in South by Southwest. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year, and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is no.

Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much, I-Hart Radio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern 5 p.m. Pacific Free.

Itfeeps.com, or the Veeps app. Hey, Tender For Listeners. We want to hear from you. We just launched a survey and want to know about your favorite shows, your murder quests, and what you'd like to listen to in 2026.

Give us the gift of your feedback, and you might be one of our winners to get free merch, and a $100 Amazon gift card. Head over to www.tenderfoot.tv/survey for more. Thanks again.

Now, here's the show. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author, or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those of I-Hart Radio, Tenderfoot, TV, or their employees. This episode contains references to sexual assault and sexual violence.

Listener discretion is advised. I've been wanting to do a real sort of off-the-cuff conversation with everyone since on the sleep 2023, but now that we've explored some new stories, and we have a lot of cool new stories that we're exploring still and have yet to share. This is the time we should just actually break down.

One, our genuine thoughts on everything we've covered into some of the personal experiences we've had that kind of paint the picture a little bit better. And to me, that matters. The things that kind of go unnoticed is a lot of nuance when it comes to when you're conducting an interview with somebody.

And you're talking about something that's kind of weird.

“Yeah, I think something that people don't realize is so much gets left on the cutting room floor”

during these interviews, and we use the best pieces, but there's still so much more that you guys

never see, but we know about, and we desperately want to talk to anybody about it,

and what better conduit to do that through than this roundtable. I just listened to all five episodes just before we recorded this. So this is my first time hearing all five episodes, and they were fucking awesome. I mean, I think what's really unique about this season compared to last is that the investigation really took us all around the world this time.

And we got to see that this is a global phenomenon that's happening everywhere. And so many of the stories are so similar anywhere you are in the world. And it's creepy, but it's fascinating at the same time. So I guess I'd like to start maybe just, you know, we get right into episode one and just work our way up. Just to try to cover as much as we can.

Yeah, it's doing, yeah. So, you know, kick us off, like, where did episode one start? It started with the congressional UAP hearings? Yeah, I mean, okay, so you and I, both, we went to DC. This was, I'm pretty sure we were at A-bar together.

And we got a weird notice email from, I don't know, a journalist friend that was like

Are you going?

“And I was like, oh, we are now, I think we can get a flight.”

And we, we literally just, we booked the earliest flight the next morning.

And we arrived there and we were absolutely out of place. We, I mean, it was like a huge, weird college that wasn't really nice. Yeah, we were right in there. And you're like, where's the, not only where is the bathroom, but also where is the room that we should be in? Or, and what are all these other rooms for, you know?

Yeah, can I just say that I can't remember the reason why, but I couldn't make it so jealous. But what an experience, I mean, being in there, we weren't necessarily in that room,

but we were in the room adjacent, the extra fill room, I guess, a bunch of other people.

Oh, yeah, that, that part's interesting. So like, I mean, this is, they do this all the time, like every week, Congress meets and stuff. They meet and do stuff that we just don't casually watch on TV.

“Yeah, I mean, I don't, but this was probably a very filled time for that time, you know?”

Yeah, this was the event people wanted to go to. And there was a line out the door where we got there, people wanted to sit in and listen. Yeah, it seemed like, you know, it could, to compare it to TSA, like it seemed like, oh my gosh, there's a lot of people flying out this, this morning, you know, it's Christmas break. Yeah, it was like, okay, it must be a Thanksgiving thing.

And so when we got there, we, like, the security line itself took kind of a long time. And then when we got into the building, just kind of, everyone's just doing their own thing. We had no clue where to actually go. And I, I jokingly said, I played in the tape and episode

one for a second. I was like, do we just ask for the UFOs? Or? And I'm, I'm pretty sure we actually

just did that. We just asked somebody, he said, hey, you, UFOs. Yeah, and they just, yeah, literally. Yeah, yeah, and some person was like, ah, this way, and we just followed another person who was either there for the same reason or they knew what the fuck we were, or knew what the hell we were there. He's like, third floor. I mean, just kidding. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, not in this boring. Yeah. But yeah, we, we got, uh, we got pushed into the, to the over the auxiliary room. Yeah,

the back of the bus. Yeah, we're like, okay, yep. But it was, it was, it was a much more like laid-back environment. I mean, it was 100 people plus in this room. And it wasn't like, yeah, no cameras, just like the audio feed and the TV's coming in. Actually, no, there were cameras. I only know that because my sister sent me, my sister sent me a clip of me on the news. That day, I saw a killer room? Yes. We're here. There's a picture of me in Dylan and like,

“it's the most like, I mean, I think it was the angle. And we look so unserious in our, in our suit.”

So we just look like clouds. Yeah. But all that to say, the experience and these, the spill-over room was actually unique because the tape you heard is raw from the actual congressional hearing. But in that room, we were kind of separated from the tension of everyone else. And there were moments where towards the end when David Rush was saying things like crash retrieval programs and biologics recovered bodies, nonhuman biologics. Yeah.

Yeah. What was the reaction in the room? You guys were it because I know in like the main room the like room on cameras where everybody was, where Rush was at, where everybody was at, there, they were, there was a little bit of rockets. They literally started clapping. In the main congressional room where the hearing is going on, it was just dead silence. People were very stoic. Nobody had any expression on their face at all. It was just give the facts,

give it on the record. But in this room next door, people were clapping and gasping, whatever something crazy would happen and people were laughing and just like, it was such a different unique experience. Such a cool way to experience it. I remember, I looked at you in the face when people started clapping. It was like, what is happening? Because they felt just bizarre. I'm like, one, we flew here on a whim to go to this random, suspenseful,

UAP congressional hearing where some whistleblower is going to give some bombshell information and turns out he does. Still a big mystery. But we're sitting in there and we're hearing this

it felt like we're in a room full of fans. Yeah, fanboys. And apart from what I was like, okay, is this like UFO fan people? But then I kind of backtracked a little bit and was like, okay, maybe maybe some, yes. But there's also a level of people here who clearly weren't just UFO fan people who flew in or drove here from Virginia. There were other people there who seem to have been people who probably touted the same sort of

energy and the same topic for a long time and felt maybe vindicated or something. Well, think about how popular Star Wars is. Star Trek is. You don't have to be necessarily a UFO fanboy to be excited for this news that you probably knew was coming at some point in your life. But Steven Spielberg, all of his movies, ET, close encounters. Like, there are people who are just

“deep down fans of wanting to believe. I guess that's why I felt weird because I was at Congress”

literally in a suit out of place. I felt like I was at a church on a Sunday where I didn't know if I had all the right things in order. And I was at a place. I was like, okay, are we doing this right? And then when people were clapping and allying and ooing, I was kind of like, what the hell is going on? I'm kind of split on what that meant. I think there was, yeah, there was some people who were like, yeah, we told you so. But like, I don't really like that energy. But I'm also kind of like,

maybe they're right. Like, I'm like, well, I mean, I've always kind of thought that too, but

either way, we're witnessing something that's profound to happen at Congress. And regardless of whether David Grush is telling the truth or not, he testified under oath, under a penalty of law, and made some very bold claims. And it's someone who seems to say it in a very bold, livable way. Yeah. I mean, it being there, it felt like a very historic event. I remember when when we were sitting in that room, I was texting all my family and friends just being like, wake up,

“go watch this right now. This is disclosure happening. Wait, you're, you're, you're away?”

Yeah, wake up at 10 a.m. I thought it was like, get woke. Yeah, wake up. Yeah. I remember thinking like, this is disclosure. Like, this is, he's the whistleblower. It's going to happen today. And we're here.

And I thought it was this, and it, you know, in a sense, it was, I think it's the first step. It was the

first step towards disclosure. I mean, that, that is what happened. Yeah. It was a small step towards disclosure. But I think in hindsight, I mean, that was what two or three years ago now. Yeah. And I argue were really no closer than we were then. There have been maybe three other meetings that were similar with other whistleblowers that have come out in Congress. But it kind of sucks to see where this far into it. And nothing's really changed. We're really no closer to disclosure than

we were at the very beginning a few years ago or at any point in history. I would argue.

And that was kind of a bummer. But I'm curious what you guys think about that. I would, I would first

argue, is that actually true? I don't think that's actually true. I mean, I could see how it, I mean, one, the entire UFO narrative is exhausting. And it has been, it's entire existence. But I wouldn't say that David Grush's testimony and all this happened since then is a dead end.

“I would first say that I think everyone, everyone to a certain extent, I think people do just”

plain and simple want to believe. I think more people than are willing to admit want to believe to play devil's advocate with David Grush as much as I'd love what David Grush said. It didn't prove anything. It didn't push the needle forward. Yes, I was so excited when he said the things he did, biologics, pilots, recovered crash materials. These are all the things people who want to believe have been waiting for someone of some credential to say. But there was no

smoking gun. There was no proof. There was no video footage. There was no real. Right. It was, it was nothing more than what we've heard since the 80s. Which this to me brings me to the

what is proof to you? Like straight up, what is proof to you, actually? Because what if

so and so went to Congress and said, hey, the same things David Grush said anything. Whatever. Hey, we have, we have all these spacecraft in Area 51. And we have, we have non-human bodies. We have non-human biologics and aliens here. Here's the photos.

“Then what does that become something where we just kind of debate whether or not it's true?”

You know real doll. The writer who found up Willy Wonka, Matilda and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? I must have been. Our new podcast series, the secret world of role doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters

of his extraordinary controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful

Americans. And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. Okay, that was a spy. Did you know doll got cozy with the Roosevelt? Play poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film.

“How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever?”

And what darkness from his covert past, seeped into the stories we read as kids.

The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of role doll

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppi. Lucy Leppi has been found guilty.

But what if we didn't get the false story? A moment you look at the whole picture of the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast doubt, the case of Lucy Leppi, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it. To ask what really happened, when the world decided who Lucy Leppi was. No voicing of any skepticism are doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level

of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to doubt, the case of Lucy Leppi, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing, and immediately the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe.

That's your home. That's your husband. So keep this secret for so many years. He's like a seasoned pro. This is a story about the end of a marriage, but it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark. You're dangerous person who prays on a vulnerable and trusting people. You're trying to make a weapon good. Listen to betrayal season five, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Next Monday, our 2026 iHeart Podcast Awards are happening live in South by Southwest. "Just the biggest night in the podcast thing." We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. I Heart Radio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome.

Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern 5 p.m. Pacific Free at feeps.com or the feeps app. Yeah, I've heard you both say in the past, you know, even if with 100% certainty, disclosure happened. UFOs landed on the White House lawn and said, "Hey, we're here. Check us out." Even then 50% of people would say, "That's bullshit." That's AI. That isn't really happening.

“They'd come up with some excuse to not believe it. The other half might believe it. But I think”

what fascinated me to the most about David Grecious testimony and, you know, more recent testimonies is that people say people in really high positions of power and the military and the government are coming out and saying these crazy things. And then there's just no real response from people. It doesn't seem like maybe people are desensitized to it in a way, but it doesn't

were chaotic and afraid in the way that I think a lot of people were afraid that they would be.

“I think we almost went too far and now people don't even care about it. And maybe that's what I'm”

seeing more than anything is that people seem so desensitized and our new cycle and everything going on with media that when these claims are happening, it didn't even make the top new cycle of the day. You know, and that was a little disheartening, but also maybe it's promising for disclosure in the future at some point. Maybe we are ready for to learn something more about what's out there in the world if that information does exist. To kind of shift gears here, I want to say that in general,

I've always been of the mind where the UFO topic a decade ago to me was always kind of tiresome.

It was just something. But yeah, I me personally, I would I want to believe tiresome because it felt like it was so French. All of a sudden there was credible stories from whistleblowers and people from the government and things connecting a ways where hey, this is actually just real reporting, not just fun, send my fictional documentary kind of stuff you see on some TV network, right? And that sort of mentality is gone. What's here now is, I've like, everyone in the world because they have a phone

“and I don't blame them. I'm I'm YouTube. We want proof of everything, but what is proof exactly?”

And now I don't mean that in some like total weirdo abstract way. I really don't. I mean it in a way that's like, what is proof to you? Like actually, and what does that mean? This whole

topic has converged at a point in technology of us where it just so happens that AI can basically

make everything. That could be a drone. That's AI. That's fake. It's like everything's just kind of muddied. With technology today, you can no longer believe your eyes or your ears. And that makes you question what even can be real. What can be classified as real? What can we even agree on as real in today's media escape? And it's so hard to know. I mean, nobody has the answer for that, but I will say bringing it back to high-strange. What I loved about this season was that we focused

on archival cases or cases from decades ago when the waters were much less muddy. When you had real recordings of people from the 70s and 80s, when you have audio recordings of Dave Davies and Whitley Striber, when their children are very young, telling exactly the same story,

“decades ago that they're telling now. For me, I think, especially in today's landscape,”

that brings so much credibility to their stories. And it gives you sort of like a baseline of something to believe that is true. And I love that we focused on those cases in this season because you just, I think you guys did a really great job of putting those stories together and telling them in a way that's really manageable and understandable and give some real element of truth and investigation to this field. I would even counterpoint a little bit what you were saying.

Johnny Mack, who wrote the book on abductions and doing all of the research into people who are experienceders shockable. They've been doing this for so long without anyone believing them. There's been some legit people who aren't all French conspiracy. Right, who were just, hey, like, look, no, they're on the map. We're just talking about this stuff and been researching

this stuff. They're fucking whole life. So, like, Dave's brush is like, finally that, like,

told you so almost, right? He could be, could be. But you can also say, yeah, you know, all these people have been maybe making all this up. But there's just, if you really, really dig in and you really, really research the topic, there are so much that points more towards that there is something versus, in my opinion, pointing towards, it's all made up. That makes me think about the physical things that we've seen this season. I'm talking about

literally in Oregon. We went to Oregon for the McMenville UFO festival. And we kind of all split off into different camps and we're recording different things. And then telling you ended up in the middle of nowhere Eastern Oregon. Literally, we thought you were missing it for, like, 24 hours. We were like, okay, we'll give it about 12 more hours before we call the police. The amount of time your phone just straight up did not work.

Should we be concerned? We're like, still in, we're like, okay, well, in 12 hours if he has

'cause yeah, I was fucking. No, I was like, okay, I was like, oh, there was a lot of time he texted you.

“We were all checking to tell those like it, because he texted you then and then, okay,”

he lost service then. Okay, yeah, it makes sense. I did pull the mom with a being like, yo, you got to check in, call me when you get service, call me, make sure. And like, we knew you were like, so we would be on a call with you and like, yeah, I'm actually about to, I'm like, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan. Yeah, I mean, there was, I mean, there was no cell signal anywhere in like the part of Oregon. This like, hundreds square mile area that I was in in Oregon.

But yeah, I just, you know, we went out there for, for the UFO Fest and I just decided to break away, take a rental car and just, you know, with nothing but a dream, just go to a bunch of random little towns and just like, hope I'd run into something. In the 80s, there was this string of cattle mutilations that happened all throughout eastern Oregon. And as the story goes, all of these ranchers all over the area would find these mutilated cows. And it's not necessarily weird to

find dead cows on a property as big and as expensive as eastern Oregon is and these ranchers, which are hundreds of square miles each. But what was weird about this subset of cattle mutilations was that they all had the same type of mutilation. They would have the genitals cut off, they would have the tongue taken out sometimes like the cheek and the eye taken out. But what was weird about it is that happened in the 80s, it was written off as a satanic cult at the time.

And that became the narrative, the global narrative and the zeitgeist. And there were two camps of people. Some who thought it was a satanic cult and some who thought it was aliens. And

“that's why in today's pop culture, you'll see things like cows being zipped up into UFOs,”

being tractor-beamed up. It comes from these stories in eastern Oregon of these mutilated cows that were very unexplained and nobody ever really found an answer. There were a lot of theories,

but it was never solved. But I was curious, you know, was that still going on? Is that still a

thing? Were these people around? Were the people who were there in the 80s still around? Were they want to talk? And luckily, you know, all three of our brains combined, we figured it out. I went out there and I struck out a few times and then luckily you guys found a name on line that led to one thing and led to another. And then before we knew it, we had four or five interviews of just all these people telling the same story across hundreds of square miles, which was we own cattle,

where multi-generation cattle ranchers, and we're all seeing these weird mutilated deaths of our cattle, and they're completely unexplained. Nobody's helping us. The police can't help. We have no answer and we need help. And that was the through line of all these stories. And it was creepy to be out there on the ground seeing that. And documenting it. And we didn't talk about it in the season. Maybe it'll be next season who knows. But yeah, so I went to one ranch and the ranchers

wanted to remain anonymous. So I'll keep them anonymous. But they told me, when I got there, one rancher connected me to another and they said, "Hey, we actually have a mutilated cow on our property right now. She died nine days ago and it has all the classic symptoms of everything. Tongues gone, genitals gone, no blood on the scene. It's been flattened as if it were dropped from a great height and it just landed on the ground." And there was a bunch of other weird stuff about like

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

Controversial Life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans and he was really good at it.

You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, because that was a spy. Did you know dog got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Play poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congressman and then he took his talents to Hollywood. We worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film.

“How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever?”

And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of role doll on the iHeart Radio app apapagas or wherever you get your pagas. In 2023, a story gripped the UK of looking horror and disbelief. A nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child

killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppi. Lucy Leppi has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the full story?

I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast doubt, the case of Lucy Leppi,

we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it. To ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Leppi was. Listen to doubt, the case of Lucy Leppi, on the iHeart Radio app, apapagas or wherever you get your pagas. In the middle of the night, Sasuke awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop. But was on his screen, would change Sasuke's life forever.

I said I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing and immediately the mask came off.

You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband.

“So keep this secret for so many years. He's like a seasoned pro. This is a story about the end”

of a marriage. But it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark. Your dangerous person who prays unvolverable and trusting people. You're trying to make a weapon good. Listen to betrayal season 5 on the iHeart Radio app, apple pod casts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Next Monday, our 2026 iHeart pod cast awards are happening live in South by Southwest. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative

talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is. Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be unfold display. Thank you so much. I heart rate you. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at a p.m. Eastern 5 p.m. Pacific free at feeps.com or the veeps app. Part of this is probably a little legal. So I'm not going to say all the details. Oh god. But when

when I saw this cow, my first thought was like, I got to collect some samples of this fucking thing. Like,

I'm probably two hours from cell signal on this ranch. I mean literally middle of the desert, nowhere. No one's looking. I had a knife and I had a cup. So I, you know, I cut off some samples of the dirt. I cut off the samples of the cow and then I shipped it to a through an undisclosed male carrier called United States.

“I don't think what matters to Portland to the FedEx store. Maybe that's actually it's surprising”

to close to what I actually. Okay. All right. I mailed some pieces of this cow back to our office and they still sit in this office somewhere. I got to tell you where. But it's still sealed up in here. I'm, I'm with him. We've sent this in for testing. We're ready for results. And we'll see. But anyway, that's, I mean, more or less that's the story. You know, I traveled all over Oregon. I talked to, I think in total, four ranchers in a sheriff and all of them told me the

same story that this is a very real phenomenon. None of them have an answer for it. And they're all a little bit terrified of what the answer might be. And all of them for the most part, I'd say four out of five truly deeply believed aliens were involved. And that it must be UFOs involved. So one thing I want

“to clear up really fast, because when I made high streams season one, one of my friends bought me”

this little Etsy thing where it was a cow being abducted by a UFO, the classic kind of thing. Right. And it's kind of just a ridiculous symbolic, it's a trope, right? But when you look at this for real, you have real farmers, real ranchers, this is their business, their real cowboys, their out there, these animals themselves, they're not just pets, they're a business for them. And so when you start kind of breaking it down, when you have these ranchers saying something

weird happened to my animal, which is like, they're like, they're like, almost kind of the equivalent of someone who has horses or something. And they're like, one of my horses is named or is hurt. And I raise horses. I wouldn't do this to my horse. It's kind of the same idea. It's like, okay, nothing to gain from them by making this up. They're kind of like yelling into the void. Maybe some journalists in Portland are going to pick it up and they'll do it one time.

And they're like, yeah, there's some, there's still weird cattle things going on down there. But what is actually going on? It's such an unbelievable thing that if you're not informed,

But it's not made up at all. You have real ranchers who are literally only saying,

I don't know how my animals died. And I want to know why, to the extent where I will call this sheriff's office, I'll put up a reward. And 10 years later, I'll talk to you about it because I still lose sleep about this. And there has a tint about some extraterrestrial explanation. But they're also strangely like, but maybe because everything else becomes equally as weird. Yeah, it's one thing to hear these stories on the podcast through the lens of like this

beautiful theatrical edit with all these cool music tracks and sound effects and everything. It mean like high strange. Like something like a podcast called high string. Well, you hear it through that lens and you think, oh, it's just like a story. It's just like a movie.

“That's what I mean. It's like, it's kind of fantastical for you. It's very fantastical.”

But under that lens, under the service of that, when you're really sitting in the room with these people, you realize they fully believe it's not even a belief like they're living this every day. They're they're they're thinking us for covering this like they were very thankful because we have no clue what the hell is going on. And we hope that we find out one day. So thanks for keeping this in the zeitgeist. And the thing is like, none of them have answers,

but when I think when your brain doesn't have an answer, it tends to fill the void with something. You said this in, you know, one of the episodes. And it's a very real phenomenon. And I saw that happen with all these people where they didn't have answers. So they did with any rational human being would do is go and Google the answers. Google their questions and see what answers appear. And every time they all, I think, diverged onto the same, the same place in the internet,

which was catamutallations in relation to UFOs. And it was all of the pictures and all the videos seeing catals that have been mutilated all over the world in exactly the way that their cows were. And that gave them this understanding that, oh shit, this isn't just happening to me. It's happening everywhere and it's called catamutallations and it's UFOs causing it. So I think it was like almost like a retroactive process where like, these people saw their cows

getting mutilated had no idea what to think of it. Asked the authorities, they didn't know, asked their friends and family, who, by the way, also had similar things happened, but didn't want to talk about it publicly with me. It's happening all over the place out there.

“But I think they only could come to that final answer, which is the only thing that we have today,”

which is catamutallations in aliens. And who knows if that's real or if it's not real, I don't know. But the facts are, it's definitely really happening. Those cows really died. I saw them myself. And these people seem to believe that it is aliens. So make of that what you will. Well, I mean, they may seem to believe that they also definitely don't know what it is. That's the real thing. Is that they're not trying to sell any of anyone's story.

They're basically saying, hands up, my animal got killed. Can anyone help me figure out

how this is happening? Yeah. I would love to just push this thought experiment a little further down the road and bring up that. Whitley was the butt of the joke of episode one of South Park. Wait, was he actually episode one? It was the, this is when they did the probe joke, right? probe joke. Wow. This is one of the biggest turns out. One of the biggest cartoons in the history of, I mean, humans. If you don't know what South Park is, then you don't know what anything is.

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

“What I believe, same as these ranchers. This is what happened to me. How do you deal with that?”

I will say this. Whitley's treabler's story is polarizing. When I look at Whitley's story, when I take into account that he's been several best selling novels based on his stories. He's also been movies. And that's all good. I mean, to be honest, if this ever genuinely happened to me, I would hope to have done the same thing. So I'm not going to use that as some sort of discounting factor here. But at the same time, as a storyteller myself and as a kind of journalistic mind,

the first place my mind wanders is, and I kind of asked him this sort of off the cuff,

way where it's that I'm trying to disprove anything. That's where I think that this becomes a stupid debate.

“Whitley's treabler 100% believes that that happened to him. Now, he also made blockbuster movies”

in novels about this. I do want to ask two things. I want to ask about the implant. It is here. You felt it. I didn't. What did it feel like? Well, like describe the shape of it. Did it feel like anything or did it just seem like it was like a sister? What was your takeaway? I'm not a doctor. So to me, it felt like a baby from a baby gun. Imagine a slightly smaller baby maybe? It was like a skin tag kind of thing. We're like, oh, that. He's like right here. I'm like, oh,

under a skin, under a skin, like in his earlobe. I do wonder that. So he says in his interview, that it activated 30 minutes ago. Did he give you any more information about what that he was talking about? He did what was his theory on what that was. It sounded like he was saying

“he was like recording or it was listening, right? Like what was going on with that? He basically told”

me that he believes this implant of his in his ear makes him smarter more creative. And that is not

always on in that when it does turn on that he's more active and more in tune and can access

more of his own brain. And I kind of challenged it and then his response was actually kind of neutral. He was basically saying to me that he wishes other people have the same thing. And not like any, I'm better than you kind of way. In a way where he's like, it's a shame that this is like some technology that would benefit other people. There are parts of what Lee's streamer story that from a human standpoint, maybe I have trouble seeing between the lines of where his incredible

fiction narration blends to his real life. And I don't know what those lines are. I don't know what that great area is. But without a doubt, I do think something did happen to him. We have so many stories we've researched and people we've talked to in saying UFO encounters

that we've not even included in this first installment. To the point where we just said, okay,

screw it, we're doing an entire season three as well. Dropping in June. High-strange is a production by Tenderfoot TV in association with by-hard podcasts. Created hosted and edited by myself, pain-lensy, executive producers, or myself, indoneled all-bright, editing by Mike Rooney, Cooper Skinner, and myself. Original score by makeup and vanity set, sound design mixing and mastering by Cooper Skinner, additional production

by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington, Eric Quintana, Sean Nourney, and Meredith Steadman. Our cover art is by Polygon, special thanks to Orange Rosenbaum, and the whole team at UTA, the Nord Group, Station 16, and Beck Media, and Marketing. Check out the show's website at HighStrange.com. And if you're enjoying the show, please help us out by rating and reviewing the podcast, and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening.

I'm Clayton Nackard, and 2020, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor.

“But here's the thing, Bachelor fans hated him.”

If I could press a button and rewind it all I would, that's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. A great adate me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young, listen to Love Trapped on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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

Listen to betrayal season five on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be unfolded display.

Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern 5 p.m. Pacific free at feeps.com or The Veeps app.

“Your favorite shows, your merch requests, and what you'd like to listen to in 2026.”

Give us the gift of your feedback and you might be one of our winners to get free merch

and a $100 Amazon gift card. Head over to www.tenderfoot.tv/survey for more.

Thanks again. Now here's the show.