Episode 06: Let’s Talk Aliens

Summary

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High Strange – Episode 06: “Let’s Talk Aliens”

Podcast by Tenderfoot TV & iHeartPodcasts | Released: March 13, 2026

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Overview

This special episode features an unscripted roundtable discussion between Payne Lindsay (host), Cooper Skinner, and Dylan Harrington, reflecting on the season’s investigations into UFOs (now “UAPs”), cattle mutilations, government whistleblower events, and how to even define “proof” in an era overwhelmed by misinformation and technological skepticism. The conversation is candid and winding, filled with personal anecdotes, memorable moments from reporting, and lots of thoughtful, nuanced debate about both the seriousness and the absurdity of alien phenomena in pop culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Behind the Scenes: Congressional UAP Hearings

Timestamps: 05:34 – 14:36

• The team reflects on traveling to Washington D.C. on short notice to cover a congressional UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) hearing (ep.1).
• They describe the surreal, almost out-of-body feeling of being present at a historic whistleblower event, albeit relegated to an “auxiliary room” next door.
• The difference in room atmospheres:
  • Main Chamber: Dead serious, “stoic” (Payne Lindsay, 10:04).
  • Overflow Room: “People are clapping and gasping… laughing… It felt like we were in a room full of fans,” Cooper Skinner [10:27].
• Memorable Quote:
  • “Being there, it felt like a very historic event… This is disclosure happening.”
    — Payne Lindsay (13:32)
• They debate whether the revelation of crash retrieval programs and “non-human biologics” by whistleblower David Grusch (under oath) moved public and political understanding forward at all.

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2. The Elusive Nature of “Proof”

Timestamps: 15:56 – 19:48

• The hosts get philosophical: what would constitute proof—beyond stories and testimony—when any evidence can potentially be faked (or dismissed)?
  • “What is proof to you? Actually?” — Cooper Skinner (16:01)
• Even with sensational claims (and hypothetically, even if aliens landed on the White House lawn), public opinion would still split along lines of trust, doubt, and conspiracy.
• Discussion on the numbness or “desensitization” of the public:
  • “People don’t really respond… maybe we almost went too far and now people don't even care about it.” — Payne Lindsay (17:34)
• Technology has muddied the waters: with AI, deepfakes, and drones, our senses are easier to fool than ever before.

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3. Investigative Highlights: Archival UFO Cases & Cattle Mutilations

Timestamps: 19:48 – 32:09

• The show’s focus this season: investigating older, well-documented cases (e.g., from the 1970s & ‘80s) for which evidence is harder to dismiss as manufactured.
  • “That brings so much credibility to their stories.” — Payne Lindsay (19:48)
• In-depth segment on the famous Oregon cattle mutilations:
  • The team splits up while attending the McMinnville UFO Festival and pursues local stories.
  • Dylan describes his investigations in rural Oregon, interviewing ranchers and law enforcement.
    • “All of them told me the same story: this is a very real phenomenon… and they're all a little bit terrified.” — Dylan Harrington (27:08)
  • Details the largely unpublicized trauma of ranchers: multi-generational families losing cattle in a consistent, bizarre fashion (tongues, genitals removed with “surgical” precision, bones left untouched by scavengers, supposed absence of blood, and in some cases, animals flattened as if “dropped from a great height”).
  • Dylan admits to collecting physical evidence (shipped back to their office) for independent testing (26:06–27:08).

Notable Interaction:

• “When I saw this cow, my first thought was like, I gotta collect some samples of this fucking thing.”
  — Dylan Harrington (26:19)

• Ranchers see themselves as reluctant witnesses, seeking help—not publicity:

  • “They're not trying to sell anyone a story. They're basically saying, hands up, my animal got killed. Can anyone help me figure out how this is happening?” — Cooper Skinner (32:09)

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4. Personal Experience vs. Public Mockery

Timestamps: 32:30 – 34:43

• Conversation about social stigma and the ridicule attached to claiming UFO/alien encounters, as seen in culture (e.g., South Park’s jokes at Whitley Strieber’s expense).
• The effect of pop culture in erasing space for serious discussion about these experiences.
• Comparison between fringe pop narratives and the subdued but sincere reality lived by witnesses.

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5. Whitley Strieber’s “Implant”

Timestamps: 34:43 – 36:43

• The team discusses Whitley Strieber—the best-selling author who claims to have been abducted and implanted by non-humans.
• Cooper shares his personal interaction:
  • “To me, it felt like a BB, like from a BB gun. Maybe it wasn't like a skin tag… it was under his skin, like in his earlobe.” — Cooper Skinner (34:55)
• They debate how to separate Strieber’s real belief and experience from his literary embellishments.
• The implant, according to Strieber, sometimes “activates” and enhances his mental capacities:
  • “He believes this implant… makes him smarter, more creative, that it's not always on, and when it does turn on, he's more in tune and can access more of his own brain.” — Cooper Skinner (35:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the public’s attitude:

  • “It was nothing more than what we've heard since the '80s.”
    — Dylan Harrington on David Grusch’s testimony (15:57)

• On the paradox of disclosure:

  • “Even then, 50% of people would say that's bullshit, that's AI… The other half might believe it.”
    — Payne Lindsay (16:51)

• On life in the field:

  • “We thought you were missing for like, 24 hours. We were like, okay, we'll give it about 12 more hours before we call the police.”
    — Cooper Skinner (22:02)
  • “I cut off some samples of the dirt, I cut off some samples of the cow, and then I shipped it… back to our office, and they still sit in this office somewhere.”
    — Dylan Harrington (26:32)

• On the pop culture cliche of UFOs & cows:

  • “It's such an unbelievable thing that if you're not informed, I would totally understand why your first thought would be that this is entirely bullshit, but it's not made up at all.”
    — Cooper Skinner (27:56)

• On the human cost:

  • “I'll talk to you about it, because I still lose sleep about this. And they're hesitant about some extraterrestrial explanation, but they're also strangely like. But maybe, because everything else becomes equally as weird.”
    — Cooper Skinner (29:57)

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Conclusion & Closing Remarks

• The team highlights that these are not just stories—they’re unsolved mysteries that shape the lives of real people, from ranchers to renowned writers like Whitley Strieber.
• The conversation underscores the impossibility of finding satisfying “proof” for everyone. But the continued search, open-mindedness, and skepticism are what fuel the show’s investigation.
• Tease: The hosts announce there are even more stories not yet covered, and a third season is in the works (36:43).

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Episode Breakdown (Selected Timestamps)

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------------|----------------| | UAP Congressional Hearing Adventures | 05:34–14:36 | | What is Proof? Public Skepticism & Tech | 15:56–19:48 | | Classic Cases & Cattle Mutilations Investigated | 19:48–32:09 | | Social Stigma, Pop Culture & Owning Your Story | 32:30–34:43 | | Whitley Strieber’s Alien Implant Story | 34:43–36:43 |

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Tone & Style

• The episode maintains a tone of open-minded skepticism—never falling for every story, but never glibly dismissing what’s genuinely strange.
• Candid, colloquial, and frequently irreverent (occasional profanity used for emphasis).
• Not afraid to show both the absurdity and the weight of the high strangeness at the heart of the subject.

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For listeners considering a deep dive:

This episode is a perfect jumping-in point, offering a personal, sometimes funny, sometimes unsettling look at why chasing the truth about UFOs and aliens remains compelling, even when the story is stranger than ever.

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Transcript

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[Payne Lindsay]

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[Cooper Skinner]

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[Payne Lindsay]

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[Cooper Skinner]

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[Payne Lindsay]

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[iHeart Radio Announcer]

Presented by Geico, the exclusive launch partner of iHeart TikTok Radio. Geico is proud to support a new way for fans to discover music creators and what's trending now.

[Payne Lindsay]

It feels good to have the best playlists.

[Cooper Skinner]

It feels good to Geico High Strange is released every Friday and brought to you absolutely free. But for ad free listening, exclusive bonuses and early access to episodes, subscribe to tenderfoot [e-mail] or on Apple Podcasts. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast and do not represent those of iHeartRadio, 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 honestly 2023, but now that we've explored some new stories and we have a lot of cool new stories that we're exploring still and have yet to share, this is the time we should just actually break down one, our genuine thoughts on everything we've covered and two some of the personal experiences we've had that kind of paint the picture a little bit better. And to me that matters. The things that kind of go unnoticed. There's a lot of nuance when it comes to when you're conducting an interview with somebody and you're talking about something that's kind of, kind of weird.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah, I think something that people don't realize is so much gets left on the cutting room floor during these interviews and like we use the best pieces, but there's still so much more that like you guys never see but we know about and we desperately want to talk to anybody about it. And what better conduit to do that through than this roundtable? So I just listened to all five episodes just before we recorded this. So this is my first time hearing all five episodes and they were fucking awesome. I mean, I think what's really unique about this season compared to last is that the investigation really took us all around the world this time and we got to see that this is a global phenomenon that's happening everywhere and so many of the stories are so similar anywhere you are in the world and that's it was. 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 so we try to cover as much as we can.

[Cooper Skinner]

Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah.

[Payne Lindsay]

So, you know, kick us off. Like, where did episode one start? It started with the Congressional UAP hearings.

[Cooper Skinner]

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, tipping us off. There's going to be a UFO conference, Congressional hearing tomorrow in dc. Are you going? And I was like, well, we are now. I think we can get a flight. And we literally just. We booked the earliest flight the next morning, and we arrived there and we were absolutely out of place. I mean, it was like a huge, weird college that wasn't really nice. And you're like, where's the. Not only where is the bathroom, but also where is the room that we should be in? And what are all these other rooms for? You know?

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Dylan Harrington]

Can I just say that I can't remember the reason why, but I couldn't make it. And I'm so jealous.

[Payne Lindsay]

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, with a bunch of other people.

[Cooper Skinner]

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

[Payne Lindsay]

But this was probably a very filled time for that time. You know, like, this was the event people wanted to go to. And there was a line out the door when we got there. People wanted to sit in and listen.

[Cooper Skinner]

Yeah, it seemed like, you know, to compare it to tsa, like, it seemed like, oh, my gosh, there's a lot of people flying out this morning.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah, it's Christmas break.

[Cooper Skinner]

Yeah. It's like, okay, it must be a Thanksgiving thing. And so when we got there, the security line itself took kind of a long time. And then when we got into the building, just kind of. Everyone was just doing their own thing. We had no clue where to actually go. And I jokingly said I played it in the tape in episode one. For a second, I was like, do we just ask where the UFOs are? And I'm pretty sure we actually just did that. We just asked somebody who said, hey, you. You UFOs?

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah.

[Cooper Skinner]

And they go and they just yeah, Literally.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Cooper Skinner]

And some person was like, this way, and we just followed another person who was either there for the same reason or they knew what the fuck we were. Right. Or knew what the hell we were there.

[Dylan Harrington]

He's like, third floor. I mean, just kidding.

[Cooper Skinner]

Yeah.

[Dylan Harrington]

I don't know.

[Cooper Skinner]

Yeah. Not in this building. Yeah. But, yeah, we got pushed into the. Over.

[Payne Lindsay]

The auxiliary room.

[Cooper Skinner]

Yeah. The back of the bus. Yeah. We're like, okay. Yep.

[Payne Lindsay]

But it was cool because it was a much more like, laid back environment. I mean, there were a hundred people plus in this room and it wasn't like. Yeah, no cameras, just like the audio feed and the TV's coming in from.

[Cooper Skinner]

Actually, no, 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.

[Dylan Harrington]

In the auxiliary room.

[Cooper Skinner]

Yes.

[Dylan Harrington]

Weird.

[Cooper Skinner]

There's a picture of me and Dylan and, like, it's the most, like. I mean, I think it was the angle. And we look so unserious in our. In our suits. We just look like clowns.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Cooper Skinner]

But all that to say the experience and these. The spillover 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 Grush was saying things like crash retrieval programs and biologics recovered bodies, non human biologics.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yep.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah. What was the reaction in the room you guys were in? Because I know in like the main room, the, like, room on cameras, where everybody was. Where Grush was at, where everybody was at, there they were. There was a little bit of ruckus.

[Cooper Skinner]

They literally started clapping.

[Payne Lindsay]

In the main congressional room where the hearing is going on, it was just dead silence. People were very stoic. Nobody had any expression on their face at all. It was just give the facts, get it on the record. But in this room next door, people are clapping and gasping whenever something crazy would happen. And people were laughing and just like, it was such a different, unique experience. Such a cool way to experience it.

[Cooper Skinner]

I remember I looked at you in the face when people started clapping. It was like, what is happening? Because it felt just bizarre. I'm like one. We flew here on a whim to go to this random, suspenseful UAP congressional hearing where some 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 happen live, and it's like everyone in at least the room that we're in is basically. It felt like we were in a room full of fans.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah, fanboy stuff.

[Cooper Skinner]

And a part of me was like, okay, is this like UFO fan people? But then I kind of backtracked a little bit and was like, 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 this same sort of energy, the same topic for a long time, and felt maybe vindicated or something.

[Dylan Harrington]

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.

[Cooper Skinner]

I guess that's why I felt weird because I was at Congress literally in a suit, out of place. I felt like I was at a church on a Sunday where I didn't know if I had all the right things in order. And I was, you know, I was out of place. I was like, okay, are we doing this right? And then when people were clapping and awing and oohing, 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 Grusch is telling the truth or not, he testified under oath under penalty of law, and made some very bold claims and is someone who seems to say it in a very believable way.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah. I mean, being there, it felt like a very historic event. I remember when we were sitting in that room, I was texting all my family and friends, just being like, wake up. Go watch this right now. This is disclosure happening.

[Cooper Skinner]

Wake up. They're like, you're awake.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah, wake up.

[Dylan Harrington]

At 10am I thought it was like, get woke.

[Cooper Skinner]

Wake up.

[Payne Lindsay]

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

[Cooper Skinner]

I mean, that is what happened.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah, it was a small step towards disclosure, but I think in hindsight, I mean, that was what, two or three years ago now.

[Cooper Skinner]

Yeah.

[Payne Lindsay]

And I argue we're 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 we're this far into it and nothing's really changed. We're really no closer to disclosure than we were at the very beginning, a few years ago or at any point in history, I would argue. And that was kind of a bummer. But I'm curious what you guys think about that.

[Cooper Skinner]

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

[Dylan Harrington]

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 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.

[Payne Lindsay]

Right.

[Dylan Harrington]

It was nothing more than what we've heard since the 80s.

[Cooper Skinner]

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

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah, I've heard you both say in the past, Even if with 100% certainty disclosure happened, UFOs landed on the White House salon and said, hey, we're here. Check us out. Even then, 50% of people would say that's bullshit, that's AI, that isn't really happening. They'd come up with some excuse to not believe it, and the other half might believe it. But I think what fascinated me the most about David Grush's testimony and more recent testimonies is that people say people in really high positions of power in the military and the government are coming out and saying these crazy things, and then there's just no real response from people. It doesn't seem like maybe people are desensitized to it in a way, but it doesn't seem like people.

[Dylan Harrington]

By design, maybe, yeah.

[Payne Lindsay]

And it could be by design, but it doesn't seem like people really were chaotic and afraid in the way that I think a lot of people were afraid that they would be. I think we almost went too far and now people don't even care about it. And maybe that's what I'm seeing more than anything is that people seem so desensitized in our news cycle and everything going on with media that when these claims are happening, it didn't even make the top news cycle of the day. You know, and that was a little disheartening. But also maybe it's promising for disclosure in the future. At some point, maybe we are ready to learn something more about what's out there in the world, if that information does exist.

[Cooper Skinner]

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 where, yeah, I, me personally, I want to believe tiresome because it felt like it was so fringe all of a sudden there was credible stories from whistleblowers and people from the government and things connecting in ways where, hey, this is actually just real reporting, not just fun, semi fictional documentary kind of stuff you see on some TV network, right? And that sort of mentality is gone. What's here now is I feel like everyone in the world because they have a phone, and I don't blame them, I'm you too. We want proof of everything. But what is proof exactly? And I don't mean that in some like total weirdo, abstract way. I really don't. I mean it in a way that's like, what is proof to you? Like actually. And what does that mean? This whole topic has converged at a point in technology of us where it just so happens that AI can basically make everything that could be a drone. That's AI. That's fake. It's like everything's just kind of muddied with technology today.

[Payne Lindsay]

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 mediascape? 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 Strieber, when their children are very young, telling exactly the same story decades ago that they're telling now. For me, I think, especially in today's landscape, that brings so much credibility to their stories, and it gives you sort of like a baseline of something to believe that is true. And I love that we focused on those cases in this season because you just. I think you guys did a really great job of, like, putting those stories together and telling them in a way that's like, really manageable and understandable and give some real element of, like, truth and investigation to this field.

[Dylan Harrington]

I would even counterpoint a little bit what you were saying. Johnny Mac, who wrote, you know, the book on abductions and doing all of the research into people who are experiencers, Jacques Valet. They've been doing this for so long without anyone believing them.

[Cooper Skinner]

There's been some legit people who aren't all fringe, conspiracy, right, who were just, hey, like, look. No, they're on the mountain talking about this stuff and been researching this stuff their fucking whole life.

[Dylan Harrington]

So, like, David Rush is like, finally that, like, told you so almost, right? It could be, could be. But you can also say, yeah, you know, all these people have been maybe making all this up. But there's just. If you really, really dig in and you really, really research the topic, there is so much that points more towards that. There is something versus, in my opinion, pointing towards it's all made up.

[Cooper Skinner]

That makes me think about the physical things that we've seen this season. I'm talking about literally in Oregon.

[Payne Lindsay]

Oregon.

[Cooper Skinner]

We went to Oregon for the McMinnville UFO Festival. And we kind of all split off into different camps and we're recording different things. And then, Dylan, you ended up in the middle of nowhere, Eastern Oregon, literally. We thought you were missing for like, 24 hours. We were like, okay, we'll give it. We'll give it about 12 more hours before we call the police.

[Dylan Harrington]

The amount of times your phone just straight up did not work.

[Cooper Skinner]

Should we be concerned, like, nah, it's Dylan. But like, okay, in 12 hours, if he has not responded, we're. We're definitely sending out an alert.

[Payne Lindsay]

I'm glad to know you guys have my back because I was fucking.

[Cooper Skinner]

No, I was like, okay. I was like. I was like, when's the last time he texted you? We're all checking each other. I was like, he texted you then? And then. Okay, he lost service then. Okay, yeah, it makes sense.

[Dylan Harrington]

I did pull the mom move of being like, yo, you got to check in. Call me when you get service. Call me, make sure.

[Cooper Skinner]

And like, we knew you were lying, so we would be on a call with you, and you're like, yeah, I'm actually about to. I'm like, dylan, Dylan.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah, man. There was. I mean, there was no cell signal anywhere in, like, the part of Oregon, this like, hundred square mile area that I was in, in Oregon. But yeah, I just, you know, we went out there for the UFO fest and I just decided I'd break away, take a rental car and just, with nothing but a dream, just go to a bunch of random little towns and just hope I'd run into something. In the 80s, there was a string of cattle mutilations that happened all throughout eastern Oregon. And as the story goes, all of these ranchers all over the area would find these mutilated cows. And it's not necessarily weird to find dead cows on a property as big and as expansive as eastern Oregon is. And these ranches, which are hundreds of square miles each. But what was weird about this subsect of cattle mutilations was that they all had the same type of mutilation. They would have the genitals cut off, they would have the tongue taken out. Sometimes like the cheek and the eye taken out. But what was weird about it is that happened in the 80s. It was written off as a satanic cult at the time. And that became the narrative, the global narrative and the zeitgeist. And there were two camps of people, some who thought it was a satanic cult and some who thought it was aliens. And that's why in today's pop culture, you'll see things like cows being zipped up into UFOs being tractor beamed up. It comes from these stories in eastern Oregon of these mutilated cows that were very unexplained and nobody ever really found an answer. There were a lot of theories, but it was never Solved. But I was curious, you know, was that still going on? Is that still a thing? Or were these people around? Were the people who were there in the 80s still around? Would they want to talk about? And luckily, all three of our brains combined, we figured it out. I went out there and I struck out a few times and then luckily you guys found a name online. That led to one thing, it led to another. And then before we knew it, we had four or five interviews of just all these people telling the same story across hundreds of square miles, which was, we own cattle, we're multi generation cattle ranchers, and we're all seeing these weird mutilated deaths of our cattle. And they're completely unexplained. Nobody's helping us. The police can't help. We have no answer and we need help. And that was the through line of all these stories. And it was creepy to be out there on the ground seeing that and documenting it. And we didn't talk about it in 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. Tongue's gone, genitals gone, no blood on the scene. It's been flattened as if it were dropped from a great height and it just landed on the ground. And there was a bunch of other weird stuff about like the time it took to deteriorate and, you know, animals and predators not wanting to scavenge the bones and just a bunch of weird stuff generally.

[Cooper Skinner]

You saw this one though?

[Payne Lindsay]

But I saw it. Yeah, I got to go. There it was.

[Cooper Skinner]

You have pictures, right?

[Payne Lindsay]

I've got pictures and videos and we'll put those on social.

[Cooper Skinner]

Can we post them? Yeah, let's post them.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah, we'll get them on social. Part of this is probably a little illegal, so I'm not gonna say all the details.

[Cooper Skinner]

Oh, God.

[Payne Lindsay]

But when I saw this cow, my first thought was like, I gotta 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,

[Cooper Skinner]

nowhere, no one's looking.

[Payne Lindsay]

I had a knife and I had a cup. So I, you know, I cut off some samples of the dirt, I cut off some samples of the cow, and then I shipped it to through an Undisclosed mail carrier called United States.

[Cooper Skinner]

I don't think he moved to Portland to the. The FedEx store maybe.

[Payne Lindsay]

Though that's actually surprisingly close to what I actually did.

[Cooper Skinner]

Okay.

[Dylan Harrington]

All right.

[Payne Lindsay]

I mailed some pieces of this cow back to our office, and they still sit in this office somewhere. I'm not gonna tell you where, but it's still sealed up in here.

[Cooper Skinner]

I'm with him. We've sent this in for testing. We're waiting for results, and we'll see.

[Payne Lindsay]

But anyway, more or less, that's the story. I traveled all over Oregon. I talked to, I think, in total, four ranchers and a sheriff. And all of them told me the same story, that this is a very real phenomenon. None of them have an answer for it, and they're all a little bit terrified of what the answer might be. And all of them, for the most part, I'd say four out of five truly deeply believed aliens were involved and that it must be UFOs involved.

[Cooper Skinner]

So one thing I want to clear up really fast, because when I made High Strange Season 1, 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?

[Payne Lindsay]

It's a trope.

[Cooper Skinner]

But when you look at this for real, you have real farmers, real ranchers. This is their business. They're real cowboys. They're out there. These animals themselves, they're not just pets. They're a business for them. And so when you start kind of breaking it down, when you have these ranchers saying, something weird happened to my animal, which is like their livelihood, almost kind of the equivalent of someone who has horses or something. And they're like, one of my horses is maimed or is hurt, and I raise horses. I wouldn't do this to my horse. It's kind of the same idea. And so you're 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, Oregon, will 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, I would totally understand why your first thought would be that this is entirely bullshit, but it's not made up at all. You have real ranchers who are literally only saying, I don't know how My animals died, and I want to know why. To the extent where I will call the sheriff's office, I'll put up a reward, and 10 years later, I'll talk to you about it, because I still lose sleep about this. And they're hesitant about some extraterrestrial explanation, but they're also strangely like. But maybe because everything else becomes equally as weird.

[Payne Lindsay]

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.

[Cooper Skinner]

You mean, like, High Strange?

[Payne Lindsay]

Like something like a podcast called High Strange? But you hear it through that lens and you think, oh, it's just like a story. It's just like a movie.

[Cooper Skinner]

That's what I mean. It's like.

[Payne Lindsay]

It's like.

[Cooper Skinner]

It's kind of fantastical.

[Payne Lindsay]

It's very fantastical. But under that lens, like, under the surface of that, when you're really sitting in the room with these people, you realize, like, they fully believe. It's not even a belief. Like, they are living this every day.

[Cooper Skinner]

They. They're. They're thanking us for covering this.

[Payne Lindsay]

Like, they were very thankful because, like,

[Cooper Skinner]

yeah, we have no clue what the hell is going on, and we hope that we find out one day. So thanks for keeping this in the zeitgeist.

[Payne Lindsay]

And the thing is, like, none of them have answers. But when I think when your brain doesn't have an answer, it tends to fill the void with something. You said this in, you know, one of the episodes, and it's a very real phenomenon, and I saw that happen with all these people where they didn't have answers. So they did what any rational human being would do, is go and Google the answers, Google their questions and see what answers appear. And every time they all, I think, diverged onto the same. The same place in the Internet, which was cattle mutilations in relation to UFOs. And it was all of the pictures and all the videos seeing cattles that had been mutilated all over the world in exactly the way that their cows were. And that gave them this understanding that, oh, shit, this isn't just happening to me. It's happening everywhere. And it's called cattle mutilations, and 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 happen. But didn't want to talk about it publicly with me. It's happening all over the place out there. But I think they only could come to that final answer, which is the only thing that we have today, which is cattle mutilations in aliens. And who knows if that's real or if it's not real. I don't know. But the facts are it's definitely really happening. Those cows really died. I saw them myself. And these people seem to believe that it is aliens. So make of that what you will.

[Cooper Skinner]

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 anyone a story. They're basically saying, hands up, my animal got killed. Can anyone help me figure out how this is happening?

[Payne Lindsay]

Yep.

[Dylan Harrington]

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.

[Cooper Skinner]

Wait, was he actually. Episode one?

[Dylan Harrington]

It was the.

[Cooper Skinner]

This is when they did the probe joke.

[Dylan Harrington]

Probe joke. This is one of the biggest, turns out, one of the biggest cartoons in

[Cooper Skinner]

the history of, I mean, humans. If you don't know what south park is, then you don't know what anything is.

[Dylan Harrington]

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

[Cooper Skinner]

I will say this. Whitley Strieber's story is polarizing. When I look at Whitley's story one, I take into account that he's made several best selling novels based on his stories. He's also made movies. And that's all good. I mean, to be honest, if this ever genuinely happened to me, I would hope to have done the same thing. So I'm not going to use that as some sort of discounting factor here. But at the same time, as a storyteller myself and as a kind of journalistic mind, the first place my mind wanders is and I kind of asked him this sort of off the cuff, where does this sort of fictionalized version maybe blend with the real version? Not in some way where it's that I'm trying to Disprove anything. That's where I think that this becomes a stupid debate. Whitley Strieber 100% believes that that happened to him. Now, he also made blockbuster movies and novels about this.

[Payne Lindsay]

I do want to ask two things. I want to ask about the implant in his ear. You felt it?

[Cooper Skinner]

I did.

[Payne Lindsay]

What did it feel like? Describe the shape of it. Did it feel like anything? Or did it just seem like it was like a cyst? Or what was your take on it?

[Cooper Skinner]

I mean, I'm not a doctor, so, I mean, to me, it felt like a bb, like from a BB gun. Imagine, like a slightly smaller bb. Maybe it wasn't like a skin tag kind of thing where I was like. I had to like, oh, that he's like, right here.

[Payne Lindsay]

And I'm like, oh, under his skin.

[Cooper Skinner]

Under his skin, like in his earlobe.

[Payne Lindsay]

I do wonder the. So he says in his interview that it activated 30 minutes ago. Did he give you any more information about, like, what the hell he was talking about?

[Cooper Skinner]

He did.

[Payne Lindsay]

What was his theory on what that was? It sounded like he was saying it was recording or it was listening. Right. What was going on with that?

[Cooper Skinner]

He basically told me that he believes this implant of his in his ear makes him smarter, more creative, and that it's not always on, and that when it does turn on, that he's more active and more in tune and can access more of his own brain. And I kind of challenged it. And then his response was actually kind of neutral. He was basically saying to me that he wishes other people had the same thing and not like, in a I'm better than you kind of way. In a way where he's like, it's a shame that this is like some technology that would benefit other people. There are parts of Whitley Strieber's story that from a human standpoint, maybe I have trouble seeing between the lines of where his incredible fiction narration blends to his real life. And I don't know what those lines are. I don't know what that gray area is. But without a doubt, I do think something did happen to him. We have so many stories we researched and people we've talked to, insane UFO encounters that we have not even included in this first installment, to the point where we just said, okay, screw it. We're doing an entire season 3 as well. Dropping in June. High Strange is a Production by Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeart Podcasts, created, hosted and edited by myself, Payne Lindsay. Executive producers are myself and Donald Albright. Editing by Mike Rooney, Cooper Skinner and myself. Original score by Makeup and Vanity set sound design, mixing and mastering by Cooper Skinner. Additional production by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington, Eric Quintana, Sean Nurney and Meredith Stedman. Our cover art is by Polygon. Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the whole team at UTA, the Nord Group, Station 16 and Beck Media and Marketing. Check out the show's [e-mail] 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.

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