Roundtable Discussion #2

Summary

High Strange – Roundtable Discussion #2 (Feb 24, 2024)

Overview

This “High Strange” roundtable brings together Payne Lindsay, Donald Albright, Dylan Harrington, and contributor Brian Bender for an in-depth, candid conversation about the state of UFO (UAP) discourse since Season 1. The episode centers on the seismic shift brought by government whistleblower David Grusch, new eyewitness accounts, and mounting governmental involvement—including historic Congressional hearings. The panel balances fascination, healthy skepticism, and journalistic rigor, featuring firsthand anecdotes, exclusive interviews (notably with Jeremy Corbell), and sharp analysis of culture, credibility, and implications for society.

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Key Points & Discussions

1. The Evolution of Public Perception and Openness

• The hosts reflect on how, since Season 1, the mainstream conversation around UFOs has become far more legitimate—no longer relegated to the fringe.
  • Donald: “We’ve really never stopped talking, thinking about, or researching investigating UFO phenomenon since we...Well, since episode eight of High Strange.” (03:05)
  • Dylan: “I have researched more than I did during the production of high strange, into UFOs, into aliens, into NHI. I am obsessed beyond what I was before.” (03:58)
• They note the cultural shift, referencing real congressional hearings packed with media and enthusiasts (06:22), and the democratization of belief: “People just being open to the concept of, hey, maybe there’s stuff going on that we don’t fully understand and it’s okay to look into it.” (02:52)

2. The Congressional UFO Hearing – A Landmark Moment

• Donald and Dylan recount their spontaneous trip to D.C. to witness the July 2023 UFO Congressional hearing:
  • Donald: “It felt like a disclosure moment...I was witnessing something that was, like, legendary.” (07:04)
  • Dylan: “I think it’s historical. I think Grusch will be in textbooks.” (07:38)

2.1. Who Is David Grusch?

• The group introduces Grusch, the ex-military intelligence official at the center of the government whistleblower storm:
  • Dylan: “He was briefing Obama on counterintelligence measures...Grush is, like, almost bulletproof. Like, this guy’s like, legit.” (09:12)
  • Donald: “Not a dum dum. This guy isn’t some guy. I’m probably saying this wrong, but...he was about to be promoted to...Lieutenant Colonel...” (09:12)

2.2. Grusch's Claims

• They detail Grusch's revelations:
  • Mussolini Incident: Grusch alleges a UFO was recovered in Italy in 1933; “No one’s going to believe this. ... Mussolini, his Italia recovered a UFO in 1933.” (10:02)
  • Crash Retrieval Program: The U.S. government has long maintained secret programs to retrieve, and reverse engineer, alien craft and “biologics” (i.e., non-human remains). (11:04, 12:29)
  • The claims predate the classic “nuke test attracts UFOs” theory, upending conventional ufology timelines. (11:04–11:52)

2.3. Bipartisan Political Interest

• The hearing generated rare cross-aisle unity:
  • Dylan: “He got both sides...AOC...Matt Gaetz...Wait a minute...We need to dig further into this.” (12:47)
  • Focus on “follow the money”: concern for secret black budgets, regardless of the truth of the ‘alien’ part. (13:06)

3. Skepticism, Evidence, and Journalism

• Donald and Dylan praise Brian Bender’s level-headed, fact-centric approach, which contrasts with ufology’s tendency toward speculation (15:05).
• Brian Bender, on separating ‘smoke from fire,’ relays how his journey reporting UFOs started by “following the money,” rather than chasing stories:
  • (22:30) “If UFO research could sort of start now and go forward and throw away all the stuff in the past, I think we could be more effective at actually finding some answers...there’s this whole canon of ufology...I once used...the JFK assassination...I used to think that was...a ball of yarn, but I hadn’t met the world of ufology yet...”
  • “I think you could also go a step further and say there’s decent amount of evidence, certainly circumstantial...that they actually do exist somewhere...” (23:45)

3.1. On Grusch’s Testimony

• Brian Bender clarifies Grusch’s claims (28:52):
  • “He talked to dozens of people on the inside...who assert the government did in fact have...UFO crash material and...an actual secret program. ...he is the first to say that...he’s never seen anything. ... He’s hearing this from people who swear that this is the case.”
  • “I have found in my reporting...that they have fallen victim to a little bit of a game of telephone that has gone on for decades.” (31:29)
  • “If there was this grand conspiracy to hide evidence...why have we not been able to figure it out?” (32:38)

3.2. On Black Programs and Cultural Myth-Making

• Brian highlights the overlap between actual black military projects (e.g., stealth bombers) and UFO lore, and how governmental disinformation sows confusion to shield real secrets (36:00–43:26):
  • “There’s evidence that we actually...spread false UFO reports to drive the Russians crazy...take people off the scent of maybe some truly secret thing...that had nothing to do with ET.” (43:27)

4. The Jeremy Corbell Segment & Best Evidence

• Donald plays a clip from his recent interview with Jeremy Corbell, regarded as today’s top UFO journalist/leaker:

  • Jeremy Corbell on the best evidence: “It is the preposterous preponderance and the weight of the cumulative evidence and my personal experiences...the 2019 UFO swarm events over the 10 Navy warships...multiplatform footage...over 100 UFOs simultaneously coming from the west. ...They were trans medium. ...People...saw them go into the water.” (55:55–57:24)
  • Donald: “And the skeptics would say that it was a bouquet or something in the lens.” (57:57)
  • Corbell pushes back on debunkers and describes the case as “profound” and government-confirmed as unknown. (58:20–59:32)

• Donald and Dylan emphasize Corbell’s seriousness and sincerity; he’s motivated by disclosure, not grifting:

  • “He wants all the same stuff we want. He wants disclosure. He wants this stuff to come out. ...He wants to out every source that’s ever came to him, but he can’t.” (64:57)
  • “He’s in the business of furthering this...” (65:00)
  • “Every time I get lost in it again, and I’m like, God, man, like, if it was real, we would just know by now. I think of the exact opposite for a second. I go, man, if it wasn’t real, man, wouldn’t this just be over by now?” (66:16)

5. Encounters, “Meta-stories,” and the Persistence of the Phenomenon

• The group ponders why the UFO story won’t go away if it’s all bunk:
  • “Think about all the things that we proved to be wrong. There’s a lot. ...How is this one still so persistent? For as much as we know, it’s almost like the ideas only become more likely and more possible.” (67:01)

6. The Future of “High Strange”

• Season 2 is confirmed to be in development, focusing even more on international cases and the ever-evolving conversation:
  • Donald: “We most certainly have plans to make a second season of High Strange. ...the conversation is evolving. ...if you were riding with me the whole time in season one...there’s something going on. Right?” (69:31)
  • “It’s happening in every single fucking country you can think of. ...a legitimate worldwide thing.” (70:23)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Grusch’s credentials and impact:

  • “He was briefing Obama on counterintelligence measures.” (09:32, Dylan Harrington)
  • “If this guy is completely...lost his mind, but somehow still sounds completely sane when he’s talking...what if he’s telling the damn truth?” (12:41, Donald Albright)

• On societal implications:

  • “If we stop this kind of weird infighting and just try to look at the truth together, it will be abundantly clear that there’s a true mystery here and we could benefit from looking at it together.” (62:22, Jeremy Corbell)
  • “It would also be proof of a government within a government, because you have the House of Representatives saying, tell us what you know. ...But meanwhile, you would have some sort of netherworld, of government officials or contractors that sort of have all these goods, and even the leadership that we’ve elected to sort of oversee them are in the dark.” (36:45, Brian Bender)

• On the “game of telephone” in UFO circles:

  • “They have fallen victim to a little bit of a game of telephone that has gone on for decades.” (31:29, Brian Bender)

• On staying skeptical and open:

  • “You gotta check yourself always. And have other people do it for you too. Help you.” (64:00, Jeremy Corbell)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• ~02:52 – Podcast team reflects on non-stop UFO research and changes since Season 1.
• 06:22–07:38 – Recounting attending the Congressional hearing.
• 09:12–12:29 – David Grusch’s biography and his extraordinary claims, including “Mussolini’s UFO.”
• 13:06–14:00 – Bipartisan concern and “follow the money.”
• 15:05–20:43 – Discussion with Brian Bender on journalistic approaches and UFO history.
• 28:52–33:56 – Bender explains Grusch’s allegations and the “game of telephone.”
• 36:00–43:26 – Bender on black programs, military secrecy, and the deliberate generation of UFO confusion.
• 55:29–59:37 – Clip of Jeremy Corbell discussing the 2019 Navy UFO “swarm” case as best current evidence.
• 64:57–67:01 – On Corbell’s motives, persistence of the UFO story, and why the debate endures.
• 69:31–71:55 – Confirmation of High Strange Season 2; focus on broader, global stories.
• 71:55–72:13 – Lighthearted banter about “the peanut butter incident”—ending on a humorous, human note.

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Tone and Style

The discussion is open, irreverent, and engaging—balancing deep-dive analysis with self-aware humor, enthusiastic curiosity, and moments of playful banter. The team remains committed to skeptical inquiry alongside an obvious passion for the mystery.

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Conclusion

This roundtable episode of “High Strange” serves as both a synthesis of the past year in UFO discourse and a springboard for even deeper exploration. By weaving together firsthand experiences, exclusive interviews, expert journalism, and big-picture cultural questions, the panel makes the subject accessible, pertinent, and perpetually unresolved. The persistent, worldwide nature of the phenomenon—and its place at the center of political, scientific, and cultural battlegrounds—only deepens the intrigue as “High Strange” looks to its next season.

Transcript

[Payne Lindsay]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Donald Albright]

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[Brian Bender]

But that's weird.

[Donald Albright]

Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent

[Brian Bender]

to 15 dol month required intro rate

[Donald Albright]

first 3 months only, then full price

[Brian Bender]

plan options available, taxes and fees extra.

[Dylan Harrington]

See full [e-mail] hey Tenderfoot listeners, we

[Brian Bender]

want to hear from you. We just launched a survey and want

[Donald Albright]

to know about your favorite shows, your merch requests and what you'd like to Listen to in 2026. Give us the gift of your feedback

[Brian Bender]

and you might be one of our winners. To get free merch and a $100Amazon gift card, head over to Tenderfoot TV Survey for more.

[Donald Albright]

Thanks again. Now here's the show. High Strange is an eight part series. If you'd like to binge the whole series right now ad free, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey it's Payne here. We have some really exciting updates for you. The UFO story has not gotten any smaller or quieter. It's gotten a little bit louder. We think we have some special guests, some news stories you probably haven't heard yet, and a very special announcement about the future of High Strange. But what you can do right now, and I highly suggest you do, is go listen to a new interview that we did with a man named Jeremy Corbell. It's available on my weekly podcast, Talking to Death. It's out right now. Just go search Talking to Death on your podcast app and look for the most recent episode with Jeremy Corbell and I promise you it's worth it. Thanks y'.

[Brian Bender]

All.

[Donald Albright]

God, it's a good song and he's out of jail now, is he? He is, yeah.

[Dylan Harrington]

Oh, gonna. Yeah, yeah. It's like, when did Metro go to jail?

[Donald Albright]

Okay, we're back. We're back, we're back. It's been a minute. Yeah, we're out of jail.

[Dylan Harrington]

Out of jail, straight to space. Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

That's why it took so long. We've been in jail this whole time. No, we've been in podcast jail, making other podcasts. But trust me when I say we have never stopped thinking about High Strange because it's one of the most fun shows I think I've ever worked on. Now we're back here because, one, we've missed you. Two, we've really never stopped talking, thinking about, or researching or researching investigating UFO phenomenon since we. Since episode eight of High Strange. And we've done a couple of different things since then, and we wanted to give you another roundtable episode because it's been so long. A lot's happened since we left off. I feel like a year ago, which is about a year ago now, almost when the podcast first came out. I feel like the conversations evolved even more further past that in a good way, in terms of people just being open to the concept of, hey, maybe there's stuff going on that we don't fully understand and it's okay to look into it.

[Dylan Harrington]

I mean, I can honestly say that since High Strange ended, I have looked, I have researched more than I did during the production of high strange, into UFOs, into aliens, into NHI. I am obsessed beyond what I was before.

[Donald Albright]

Dylan was already obsessed.

[Dylan Harrington]

I think I'll always be obsessed.

[Brian Bender]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

If any of you could see our

[Dylan Harrington]

text chain for the last eight months since we last made this, none of you would ever listen to us. Nothing gets right. It's just all conspiracy theory of all

[Donald Albright]

credibility of the show.

[Dylan Harrington]

No, no. But nothing gets through the cracks. Nothing slips through the cracks. We see it all. We've seen everything. You think that you need to email to us, we have seen it.

[Donald Albright]

Right? Or if you're just a casual listener, you're like, what the hell are you talking about, man? Tell me something. Right? Okay. That's fair, too, because I'm also. I'm kind of more in that camp sometimes as well, where you guys send me this stuff. And there's been some big news stories. I think the biggest thing that's happened since the release of High Strange was this kind of legendary Congressional hearing. And last minute, Dylan and I decided to take a flight to D.C. and go to this thing. Wanted to set up what was Actually, going on that day, just like, for those who didn't know this happened, there was a big congressional hearing about UFOs, and we went to go see these people speak in front of Congress.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah. So, you know, I got the call from Payne late one. It was probably 8pm One night.

[Donald Albright]

We had, like, an hour to get there.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah. And he just. He calls me. He's like, we're going to go. I don't own a suit because I'm a child. But apparently you need a. You need a suit. You are a child. You should own a suit. I should own a suit. I'm 32 years old.

[Donald Albright]

Well, I have, like. I have one suit, you know, and

[Dylan Harrington]

you looked good in it, let me say.

[Donald Albright]

Oh, well, thank you. You looked real suave, but that's all I got. I can't repeat it.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah, but we. We get there. You and your suit. Me and just my everyday clothes. Luckily, they still let me in, which is nice. But we get there, you know, not really knowing what to expect, and we get sent into this. This room next to the Congressional hall where the meeting's actually taking place, and it's just full of other nerds. Call them nerds. I was gonna say alien enthusiasts, but let's call them for what they are. They're nerds. Nerds.

[Donald Albright]

We were there, too. We're like, oh, my God, we dressed up nice for this.

[Dylan Harrington]

Oh, I wanted to go so bad. I was so jealous.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah.

[Dylan Harrington]

It was an experience. It was a once in a lifetime experience.

[Donald Albright]

Well, there was so many people at this random hearing on like a Tuesday or something that there was a spillover room for press because the actual congressional room was too full for anyone else to attend in there. And so we were in. At first, I was kind of bummed. Oh, man, I wanted to be in the actual room where they're doing this. But it actually turned out to be a. A cooler experience, I think, because we had a live feed from the room right next door so we could hear it and see it, but there was way less. There was. There was less rules in this room, I'd like to say. It was.

[Dylan Harrington]

It was the back of the class.

[Donald Albright]

It was the back of the class. People were clapping. It was this surreal thing. Like, people talk about the idea of disclosure, right? Where eventually one day the government comes out and says, hey, here's what's really going on. And there's all these species of aliens or we have these craft, you know, I don't think it's ever gonna happen that way. It'd Be cool if it did. But it felt like a disclosure moment where you were. Maybe I was just too excited, but it felt like in the moment, I was witnessing something that was, like, legendary.

[Dylan Harrington]

I think it's historical. I think Grush will be in textbooks.

[Donald Albright]

Okay, let's talk about Grusch. Because if you don't know who David Grusch is, who's really the main person who was testifying before Congress? Let's talk about who David Grusch is and what he was even saying.

[Dylan Harrington]

What was your favorite thing he said in the Congressional.

[Donald Albright]

Well, okay, I remember you showing me that this guy was about to come out. There was a whistleblower from the government who was coming out with some big bombshell information. And then they dropped this interview with Ross Kohlhart, this journalist from News Nation, and we watched it at the same time. I think we were in Denver or something, and you got me hyped on it. And he was saying stuff that was absolutely bonkers, crazy sounding, because you've never heard really many people of that level of clearance say something like that.

[Dylan Harrington]

That's the thing. It's. You've. You've heard crazier claims than this. Everyone has. Everyone's heard some crazy shit from some UFO guy who's like, yo, the aliens. I'm talking to him in my head from my bedroom, I can call UFOs to my house, my backyard. We've all heard that.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah.

[Dylan Harrington]

If you've looked into this at all, you've heard the crazy stuff. But this guy, the crazy thing about this is he was saying some of the crazy shit, but his credentials check out. He's like legit top clearance. Like, big deal counterintelligence guy came from, like, working on big missions.

[Donald Albright]

Not a dum dum.

[Dylan Harrington]

Not a dum dum. This guy isn't some guy. I'm probably saying this wrong, but I think he was about to be promoted to, like, Lieutenant Colonel, which is, like, super high up in the military. Like, this guy is not a joke. He's not some crazy person. But Grush is, like, almost bulletproof. Like, this guy's like, legit.

[Donald Albright]

Like, he's a good guy for it.

[Dylan Harrington]

He was briefing Obama on counterintelligence measures. Like that. They don't. That responsibility doesn't go to.

[Donald Albright]

It's an egg on their face. If this guy is completely. Has completely lost his mind, but somehow still sounds completely sane when he's talking, like, let's just run down bullet point. Some of the biggest claims that David Grusch made to Congress Can I start

[Dylan Harrington]

with my favorite one?

[Donald Albright]

Yes,

[Dylan Harrington]

Mussolini. And this is. No one's going to believe this. The casual listeners.

[Donald Albright]

Great start.

[Dylan Harrington]

I'm sorry. Mussolini, his Italia recovered a UFO in 1933. And he's like saying this, like, this is fact. Like the US Government, or whatever, this special access program, whatever this black project is, knows about this recovery in 1933 under Mussolini.

[Donald Albright]

This is part of some bigger idea here where he's basically saying that for decades now, the government has had this secret program, a crash retreat, like a crash, a UFO crash retrieval program where UAP have allegedly crashed on Earth, and the US has scooped them up and tinkered with them and tried to figure out how they work and kept all this stuff a secret. It even goes beyond that.

[Dylan Harrington]

And this predates Roswell, which is the craziest.

[Donald Albright]

Roswell is 47.

[Dylan Harrington]

You know, the biggest theory that I've always followed and always believed in is that we set off nuclear bomb tests in, like, 1946. 47. I don't. I don't remember the exact date. You can look it up. It's on Wikipedia. It's Trinity test. We set off the bomb, the nuclear bomb test. And they came. Right. No, this predates this. This is 1933. This is before. So all that, like, they're attracted to nuclear bombs, which they probably are, and nuclear energy and whatever. But this predates this. This is. This is something before that. And what I think he's implied is that it's even older than that, which I think I've thought for a while now, but I mean, there are huge

[Donald Albright]

claims that go for generations. Basically, he's alleging that there is this black program, this hidden secret program that Congress and even the president, most of the time, if not damn near all the time, is not privy to where they are keeping the secret that we know extraterrestrial life not only exists, but has been here and maybe even is here. And we have crafts. And the way he phrases it is

[Dylan Harrington]

biologics, non human intelligence.

[Donald Albright]

Biologics of non human intelligence, meaning cadavers, insanity.

[Dylan Harrington]

You can look past that, though, like that. You can sure dismiss that. Go ahead.

[Donald Albright]

And on the surface, this sounds, you know, nuts, Right?

[Dylan Harrington]

But what did he do? He got in a congressional hearing. He got both sides of the spectrum, both sides of the parties, both parties to agree. You got aoc. You got. What's his name? Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz and AOC Both, like, wait a minute.

[Donald Albright]

Working together, both giving a shit. Yeah.

[Dylan Harrington]

And this goes into Brian Bender's whole first article that he wrote about this in 2017, where he's like, okay, where is all this money going? Right. That's the real issue. This is taxpayer money going somewhere else that it's hidden. AOC is like, whoa, whoa. Okay, I. I don't care about the alien stuff, but, like, what I gathered from her Congressional Oversight Committee testimony and questioning is, where is this money that the taxpayers are putting in? Why is this going to some secret private entity?

[Donald Albright]

Like, no matter what it is, Right? Yeah, yeah.

[Dylan Harrington]

Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what it's for. This is a problem.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah.

[Dylan Harrington]

And then you got Matt Gaetz kind of saying the same thing. You got both sides of the red or blue kind of coming together on this, being like, yo, we need to dig further into this. Senate's freaking out about this a little bit, at least some of them.

[Donald Albright]

If you remember Back to High Strange Season 1, we featured two journalists pretty prominently, Leslie Kane and Brian Bender. And they would chime in kind of throughout the whole series with great insight on different details and aspects and just little historical factoids about the UFO story in American culture. They were also two of the journalists who broke a really big story years ago that kind of blew the lid off of this conversation in the mainstream with the New York Times and Politico.

[Dylan Harrington]

And Politico. Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

And we met with Leslie Kane a couple of times, and she always sort of, kind of hinted at there being some other big thing coming, which is what every UFO person does ever, I feel like. But I believed it this time.

[Dylan Harrington]

You talk to the right person, I think you do know.

[Donald Albright]

And sure enough, though, she's the first person to technically break this David Grush story. The guy who came out with these big claims about this secret government project going on.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

And. Yeah. And so we. We. We actually talked to Brian Bender again recently, and gracious for his time, just to kind of catch up on what's all happened since then. And I always enjoyed the way that he pragmatically broke things down. And it wasn't always a. He didn't always make it about aliens. Right. And maybe it is aliens, and it's the way that we think that they are. Maybe it is. And it's all these other dozens of things or thousands of things, too. Maybe it's none of that, and we don't understand it either way. If there's something that we don't understand, I think that it's worth looking into. And he always had that sort of pragmatic, practical approach to it, which I really found refreshing. And so Catching up with him was fun. And we're playing some clips of that for you guys in a little bit.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah, no, I really appreciate Brian and I think. I really love that he's mostly skeptical, even though he's heard some stuff. He's heard some stuff that I haven't even heard.

[Donald Albright]

Well, hearing is not seeing.

[Dylan Harrington]

Right, Right.

[Donald Albright]

It's what you want David Grush to come forward with is physical video. Evidence.

[Dylan Harrington]

Evidence. Physical.

[Donald Albright]

Something you can touch, analyze. Now, you couldn't really ask for a more credible guy. Right. More credible person. But again, it's just you're going on somebody's word, and so that's a big leap. And with claims this big, this new to us as a society, I think that it's only fair to be met with a little bit of scrutiny. But what if he's telling the damn truth?

[Dylan Harrington]

Oh, if he could.

[Donald Albright]

I don't know if he is or not, but I will say this. He's pretty fucking believable. I mean, he's not. He's good at it.

[Dylan Harrington]

I guarantee you, if he could walk out on stage on the News Nation interview and be like, hey, Ross, I brought a sample of a craft and it's metal that we've never seen before, he would do that. He just can't. You know, he's gotta. He's gotta go through the doctor process. He's gotta get things cleared. Anything he talks about in public or on media, it has to be approved first.

[Donald Albright]

So what, this process you're talking about, this is where he could get in trouble for divulging, I guess, top secret information.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

How does that work exactly? From how you know it? Like, so what was he afraid of?

[Dylan Harrington]

So it's the. It's weird, but it's. I've only learned this semi recently, since High Strange ended episode eight ended. I've learned this afterwards because all. Honestly, after our season ended, so much stuff happened and I really had to dive deep into this topic and be like, okay, wait, this is actually moving forward in a weird way I didn't expect.

[Donald Albright]

Right.

[Dylan Harrington]

Almost in a synchronistic way. So with the dotser thing, basically he has to get approval from his higher ups. He's no longer working with them. He's no longer part of the military in any way, I don't believe. But he has to go to the icig, which is the.

[Donald Albright]

You're already losing me.

[Brian Bender]

What's that?

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's his higher up. It's basically just think an intelligence leader. Right.

[Donald Albright]

The leader of the Intelligence to get permission.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

Or something.

[Dylan Harrington]

And the dopser stands for Defense Office of Pre Publication and Security Review. Because he has the highest clearance level. And that's the thing. There's all these myths about how many clearance levels there are. So he has the highest level of security clearance. So he's trusted with the biggest secrets in our nation. Right. Amongst our nation. It has to be cleared because he was a former employee. Right.

[Donald Albright]

These guys are trying to not go to jail basically.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah. Because if they release some classified information to the general public, that is like treason.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah. Whether the UFO part of it is true or not, if you divulge that, then you're going to jail.

[Dylan Harrington]

If you accidentally give away a missile system that we don't want our enemies to know about, some sensor development that we've figured out that China or Russia or Iran doesn't know or doesn't have access to. If you.

[Payne Lindsay]

It's.

[Dylan Harrington]

It's for national security. I get it. It's classified information. You have to get stuff approved before you can talk about it. But he, before his congressional hearing, he. He did adopt her. Got it cleared. Everything he talked about to News Nation in front of congressional hearings was cleared.

[Donald Albright]

He was being very careful about it. You could tell that he was, you know, he had just prepped himself on the scope of what he knew he could legally talk about. Or that's how it came across at least.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah. They're saying it doesn't go against national defense to say anything that's in this brief doesn't necessarily mean it's true. But you're just allowed to talk about it. It doesn't interfere with what we're doing. Right.

[Donald Albright]

I got a chance to talk to Brian Bender about David Grusch and this congressional hearing that Dylan and I got to attend in person. And because he's smarter than I am, he more eloquently breaks down some of the big key points of what David Grush was actually claiming. And when you analyze it, it's some pretty big stuff. Let's kick to it real quick. Brian, how you been, man?

[Brian Bender]

I'm good, I'm good.

[Donald Albright]

What's the latest in your world of journalism?

[Brian Bender]

So. Well, I sometimes joke that I'm now a recovering journalist. So about a year ago I left journalism as a sort of daily full time reporter and editor. After. I hate to admit it, but 24, almost 25 years and I'm still writing, I'm still reporting, but I have a different day job where I'm now basically a beltway bandit. As they Call it. So I'm a communications consultant, mostly helping tech startups and research universities navigate the federal government, so helping them tell their stories. But I'm still writing, I'm still reporting. I'm a contributor to Politico magazine, so working on a couple of sort of bigger projects for them, so, you know, keeping busy, but a little bit of a different audience, but a lot of the same topics. National security, global affairs, politics. Once In a while, UFOs. If I trip and fall into the rabbit hole.

[Donald Albright]

I just realized before we hopped on this call that the first time we talked was in Roswell, New Mexico, at that UFO event. And I never really asked you, I don't think, or at least it wasn't in the podcast, what your thoughts on that was. I mean, because it was. For me, it was like, this is totally bizarre. Also, Roswell, New Mexico, does not have enough restaurants, but Applebee's was really good.

[Brian Bender]

And that giant alien outside the Dunkin Donuts, to make it clear it was a statue of an alien, not a real alien. You know, it's interesting, you know, when I kind of stumbled into the UFO story in 2017, when I was part of that group of reporters that initially got some inside information about some Pentagon research programs that had been going on that had been kind of secretly funded by Congress in recent years, I kind of pretty quickly made this determination that I'm going to follow the money. So if the government's spending money on UFO research, who's it going to? What's it for? Who are the key decision makers in Washington that are, you know, behind it? Because I was a political reporter, I mean, to me, that was the story for us. It's like, okay, this is. This is a political story. It's a policy story. People are really concerned about things that are out there and unidentified. Some of which seem to defy what we know about physics. And I decided that I was not gonna sort of go too far down the rabbit hole of, like, sightings and reports and testimonies because obviously, there's this whole canon of ufology that, you know, I once used. I once said on a panel that, you know, I covered a little bit of the JFK assassination in terms of, like, the fight over the government files that were still being withheld. And I used to think that was like a ball of yarn, but I hadn't met the world of ufology yet. Oh, man, it makes this assassination crowd look, you know, small fries. Exactly. But you know what? You know, my takeaway from Roswell and others is sort of like, if UFO research could sort of start now and go forward and throw away all the stuff in the past, I think we could be more effective at actually finding some answers to some of these mysteries. Because just the level of scar tissue that exists and the different viewpoints on, you know, was Roswell an alien crash? Was it, you know, some military test? Was it a cover up what happened there? I mean, it's just, it's like it's almost impossible for a journalist in modern day to untangle that mythology versus fact. And you know, you saw that on display in Roswell. I mean, I went to one of the panels what was like, you know, it was a lot of people on the panel. It was like 40 white guys lined up all over the age of 70. And like they had like each of them had two different theories about what happened there. Right. They were adamant about it. You know, I mean, obviously I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you know, the journalist to me was like, I wouldn't even know how to write this story, right? Is there a story? Write the story of Roswell, Bender. I mean, I'd be like, I don't even know where to start. But it's not unlike religion. I mean, some people have their own sort of little lane in the world of ufology that they believe. And many of them have read millions of books and done all kinds of independent research, and they believe it as if it's gospel. And it's like nothing is going to change your mind. There's pretty widespread belief or kind of gut feeling that we are not alone in the universe as an intelligent species. Whatever species might mean elsewhere in the universe could mean something very different than what we think of. And I think you could also go a step further and say there's decent amount of evidence, certainly circumstantial, if not even more than that, that they actually do exist somewhere in some way. Because, I mean, it's hard to look back over history and even in ancient religions, I mean, so many references to some sort of heavenly beings coming here, you know, having some sort of role certainly in our sense of ourselves as a human race. And I tend to be among those who believe that, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire, there probably is something that fits that description somewhere in the universe far away or maybe not so far away. But then the second bucket I sort of think about is. And this gets into some of the reporting that I was involved in, you know, the question of whether our government or governments of the world have some really solid answers to that question or evidence of that that they've been hiding from us. I consider those sort of two different lanes, if you will, because I think you can believe that there are aliens or there are extraterrestrials or some sort of form of intelligent life that for whatever reason we can't kind of put our finger on in a sort of convincing way where everybody's like, oh, yeah, of course they're here, or they've been here. And I, you know, I'm in that camp, but I'm not yet convinced, like many people in the world of ufology are, that the evidence of that, the proof of that, is somehow resident in some secret government agency or buried under Area 51. And in the grandest conspiracy of all time, the US government, presumably in cahoots with other governments in the world, has kept that hidden from the global public. I don't think that there's evidence of that.

[Donald Albright]

I would imagine that even though it's been on ufo, Twitter and on a bunch of front page everything all over the news circuit, some people have probably been living under a rock or just haven't heard about this yet, so to speak to them. Just give me a little, like, short recap log line on, yeah, David Grush. Who are we talking about?

[Brian Bender]

So David Grush is a now former intelligence official. He worked for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency nga, which is sort of one of the Alphabet soup intelligence agencies really responsible for using space to map the earth. But he was part of this Pentagon task force that was set up by Congress a couple of years ago to basically answer some of these questions, like, were there secret government programs that might know about, you know, extraterrestrial crashes? Were there programs that could have been reverse engineered where we learned some new technology from something that we recovered that we couldn't explain? So David Grush was part of that effort. Last year he came forward publicly and also filed a request for an investigation through the inspector general for the intelligence community, which is sort of like the internal watchdog over all the spy agencies. And his claims are that he talked to dozens of people on the inside with clearances like himself, who assert that the government did in fact have in its custody at some point UFO crash material and that there was an actual secret program to figure out how does that stuff work. He's made those claims publicly, he's testified before Congress, but he is the first to say that none of the some 40 people that he says he talked to on the inside, or, or, you know, people that had real knowledge? Does he have first hand knowledge himself? In other words, he's never seen anything, he's never worked on such a program. He's hearing this from people who swear that this is the case. And when I say I don't think there's evidence of these claims, you know, we don't know what these secret programs were, we don't know where they were run, we don't know how they were hidden. Now granted they could all be secret, deeply classified, and so that's why we don't know. But I also think we have to consider that one of the most common things humans do, you and I do it probably all the time in our daily lives is play the game of telephone, which is I talked to somebody who knows my brother in law who works in the secret agency, who saw the alien bodies at Area 51. I have found in my reporting, in getting to know some of the leading people, particularly former government officials who really believe this, who again will say I never saw it myself, that they have fallen victim to a little bit of a game of telephone that has gone on for decades. Sort of the water cooler talk. Even at the CIA or at the Pentagon where people hear these stories and they hear them from people that are quite credible. I mean, they have security clearances, they're entrusted with our nation's secrets. But I do think there is an element of this, of sort of this echo chamber, if you will, that this is true and it's always been true and it's always been hidden. And I talk to the people who know about it, but yet we still haven't seen the goods. And people say, well, if it's secret, why would we see the goods? How would the government bring itself to ever let us know? And my rejoinder to that is we get a lot of secrets that get leaked out of the government, tons of them, to the point where they put people in jail for the rest of their lives leaking stuff. So if there was this grand conspiracy to hide evidence, real evidence of alien life, why have we not been able to figure it out? And you know, why haven't we been able to see the evidence? I'm not ruling out that it's possible that that has happened. Those programs did exist. There was a UFO crash. I'm just saying, I'm not, I'm just not convinced yet that that's the case. Even though there's this whole sort of cultural phenomenon surrounding this that almost takes it as gospel, you know, you know, we watch a lot of Hollywood movies that, you know, underscore that. And I think, you know, it's a cultural issue as much as it is a sort of, you know, national security issue. Right. We just, we, we believe what we believe and doesn't matter really what the facts are or the truth is. And I think we can't rule out that some government people have been, have fallen victim to that too.

[Donald Albright]

Back to the claims that he's made. Do you mind kind of unpacking a few of those? You know, and he mentioned some sort of biologics, crafts, and I mean, alleging that aliens are real. We've seen the bodies, have the bodies and we have crafts. And it's just all the things that Steven Spielberg wanted it to be, right?

[Brian Bender]

Yeah, I mean, he's basically, his claims are that the government has hidden for decades secret programs that have known about. When he says biologics, like literally like biological material, so alien bodies or parts of alien bodies, also alien technology, and that there were programs, you know, up to secretly try and understand how, how does this stuff work. So that's the reverse engineering program that he claims or programs. And he claims that these were hidden from even the highest levels of the government, that they were sort of buried in kind of the military industrial complex. And I say that because these claims also assert a role for defense companies, aerospace companies, the Lockheed Martins or the, you know, north of Grumman's. Not them necessarily specifically, but the companies that have made the stealth bombers and all of those secret programs that, you know, were being developed for decades and in some cases were actually mistook for UFOs, right. I mean, they were testing these things out in the desert, Stealth bombers and drones and all those things. I mean, those things were being developed in secret for years. And I think it's important to sort of remember that because when you talk about secret alien technology and if you're one who believes that the government does have it or has been working with something like that, you can't really divorce it from the other netherworld of black programs. So billions of taxpayer dollars that have gone in to develop next generation technology like the stealth fighter, the stealth bomber, hypersonic missiles, I mean, that budget has gone up and up and up and up. We don't know kind of what's in it, but we know the overall numbers. And so there's a lot of secret technology development going on as we speak. Doesn't necessarily mean it has any relationship or connection to ET or alien technology. But if there were to be alien technology that we recovered or studied or something and somehow learned Something that got bled into some of those black programs. It's all the more reason for the government not to want to talk about it, to want to cover it up. But you mentioned the House, the recent House hearing, and the former pilots. I think their testimony for me, also fits into that first bucket I mentioned earlier. In other words, David Grush, the whistleblower, says the government is hiding all this stuff. But it's hard to dismiss those sightings of those Navy pilots in their testimony and what they say they saw as real evidence of something really woo woo and really out there, really advanced. And, you know, if they're not ours, and the government has said that, that some of those things, those orbs, those spheres, they call them tic tacs. They were like oblong shaped craft that, you know, would go to from 100,000ft to the surface of the ocean in like a few seconds. Nothing that we could do. The government has said they're not ours. And so the government is on the record saying that we're seeing stuff out there that we can't explain, and we're trying to explain it. But again, that's different from the government already knows what these things are and it's just lying to us and, you know, has figured out all the answers. I think a lot of their reluctance to talk about the UFO issue is not because they have knowledge they don't want to share, it's because of the lack of knowledge. In other words, they know there's something out there and they can't really figure out what it is. And if you're in the intelligence business, you don't share secrets, but you also don't share information that you have that you haven't really put together yet either, because you wouldn't want your potential enemies to know that. So I do think that the pilots coming forward, it's really changed the conversation and it made it a sort of more serious topic, like if we don't know what these things are, we damn well better find out. But it's still intriguing to me the possibility that there is or has been secret programs within our government that do know more and are not sharing more. And that to me, obviously would be a huge story in and of itself, but it's also a huge story for our democracy because it would also be proof of a government within a government, because you have the House of Representatives saying, tell us what you know. We have the head of the Pentagon saying, we don't know, but we're trying to find out. But meanwhile, you would have some sort of netherworld, of government officials or contractors that sort of have all these goods, and even the leadership that we've elected to sort of oversee them are in the dark. So, like, you know, it's a good story that we have to keep tracking because of the implications of it if it were to be true, you know, not just what it would mean for, you know, our presence in the universe if we really did have evidence and knew of another intelligent life form, but, you know, what it would mean for our politics that we sat on this for years and they were able to hide it even from the people that are supposed to know all the secrets.

[Donald Albright]

One more thing before I let you go. There is a video circulating on the Internet that came out a few days ago. It's a UFO video, alleged UFO video from the military, and it's being referred to as the jellyfish. Have you seen this video?

[Payne Lindsay]

What.

[Donald Albright]

What are your thoughts on that? That was Corbell.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah.

[Brian Bender]

Jeremy Corbell is sort of kind of been a leader in, you know, sort of plopping into the public discussion some really intriguing footage of things that. That, you know, come out of the military or some government agency. He obviously had some sources that leaked that stuff to him. But the thing that's always puzzling to me is, like, it's always. Or usually it's a very small, teeny little clip.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah.

[Brian Bender]

And I'm always like, where's the rest of it? They just looked at it for three seconds or three hours, and I was familiar. I had heard about the jellyfish a couple years ago. Like this sort of. It was going around like, oh, the Pentagon got, you know, custody of some radar footage or done camera footage. I forget, was of this jellyfish, of this very large tentacled. There was another one. I think it was a different one. People called the chandelier that looked like a big chandelier hanging over the Persian Gulf in the Middle East. You know, pilots were seeing it and reporting it. They're intriguing, but taken in isolation, they don't really get us very far. It's like. It's exciting. It's clickbait, people. Obviously, I understand why Jeremy Corbell wants to put these out there. It's great for his website, it's great for his brand, but in the grand scheme of things, is it really moving the ball? It's just like another shiny object, literally. Let's look at that for five minutes and, you know, I think the next chapter in this, if we want to go back to that or the sort of the breaking Point is, and I think we're starting to see it, I don't think it'll be a breaking point in the sense it'll be abrupt, but it will evolve, continue to evolve. The topic of UFOs is now, I think, in. In a way much more mainstream and acceptable, in sort of acceptable society. I mean, this is a little more imminent maybe than the next season. But, you know, the Pentagon office is supposed to release kind of volume one of its findings from the last few years, I think, any day now, which is supposed to be sort of, what are we learning from some of these military pilots, for example, what are we learning about the possible existence of secret compartmentalized programs that were hiding UFO material? It's also supposed to report back on, like, they were required by Congress to do a historical study, like, go back 75 years and try to figure out what might have been hidden. Interestingly, that study is also supposed to focus on any disinformation campaigns that our own government undertook on the topic of UFOs. And I think that's interesting too, because if you really did want to hide something, you don't just lock it in a box in a room somewhere and give three people with security clearance, you know, authority over it. You might do that. But I think if you really had a deep, dark secret, you also create around it so much in. So much conspiracy theories.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah.

[Brian Bender]

So much noise, that no one is ever going to find the room because they are going to be distracted by 50,000 other things and other stories and other tales. And there's already evidence in terms of government documents that have been released that our government had a UFO disinformation campaign. Often it was to shield those black programs. I talked about the stealth bomber, the stealth fighter. I mean, the, the Soviet Union, the Russians were crawling all over America during the Cold War trying to figure out what are we up to? What's our next big weapon? And, you know, there's evidence that we actually, our government spread false UFO reports to drive the Russians crazy. And, and also, you know, take people off the scent of maybe some truly secret thing that had nothing to do with ET that we were working on. And so I'm interested to see what we're willing to cop to on that, what our government is willing to admit on that, because I think that's also muddled this issue in a way that makes it very, very hard to unwind this ball of yarn. People who care about this, the public needs to marshal itself to figure out ways. How do we gather more information, how do we on our own. Study these reports and see if we can figure something out.

[Donald Albright]

It makes me question why someone like David Grusch would make something up like this. That's so complex. I mean, people do weird shit for weird reasons that you don't understand. That's a fact. But this person is a decorated individual in government, in intelligence, in the intelligence community. And I don't see what he really has to gain. He kind of only has stuff to lose. This is all for a book deal. That's pretty shitty.

[Dylan Harrington]

Can we go into that? Let's go into. Why would he lie about this?

[Donald Albright]

Also, we met him only if he believes it.

[Dylan Harrington]

Do you want to go into how we met him?

[Donald Albright]

Oh, yeah.

[Dylan Harrington]

And how he didn't bring any of this up to us?

[Donald Albright]

Yeah, okay.

[Dylan Harrington]

Actually, that's a big thing.

[Donald Albright]

We'll play a clip of this, actually. So Brian Bender mentioned a man named Jeremy Corbell, who, if you're not aware of who this individual is, in my eyes, he's kind of like. He is like the new UFO guy.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah, he's the UFO guy.

[Donald Albright]

He's just on the force of this stuff, right? No, yeah, but like there's been another UFO guy. There's also George Knapp.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah, but that's.

[Donald Albright]

No, but like right now, like this is the. He is on the pulse of all things ufo, UAP and tends to get all of the government leaks and clearly has some great relationships with secret sources and has broken a lot of big stories in. In the UFO genre here. I recently sat down and interviewed Jeremy Corbell, which I've been trying to do for a long time. Actually we were trying to interview Jeremy well over a year ago while we were making High Strange Season 1, Mike and I actually flew to Vegas, if you remember, in the first season when we went to Area 51, it was the same time that we were there and we simultaneously stayed at this hotel in Vegas and attended this Star Trek conference.

[Dylan Harrington]

Amazing.

[Donald Albright]

We're not Trekkies. I don't really even know much about Star Trek.

[Dylan Harrington]

Speak for yourself. I kind of.

[Donald Albright]

No, it's fine. I'm not saying anything. It's not bad. I didn't feel like I was a Die hard fan enough. William Shatner was there. It was the whole thing, it was cool to see. But Jeremy Corbell was there with another journalist, George Knapp, who we've used some clips from some of his journalism and season one and they spoke on a panel and my plan was to hopefully grab him afterwards and have a sit down with him. But he was super busy, like most people are in the world. And we had to postpone it, But I realized, I'll play this clip from the interview in a second. But I realized that in my interview with him, he was describing that scene where we met after the panel in Vegas. And we were at the elevator. He goes, you know who I was with that day, right? I was like, george Knapp. And he goes, no, the other guy, David. I was like, oh, yeah, David, the tall guy, right? Yeah. He's like, that was David Grusch. And I was like, and David Grusch, meaning the guy at the Congressional hearing, the guy who's started a whole brand new conversation about this. And in that moment, I go, holy shit, you're right. I see his face now and he is tall as shit. And I hear his voice and I go, I'm. I'm in the Uber back to the airport, and I text both you guys. I go, go dig up that tape. Because I was also, like, secretly recording all that, which I told him at the end that I was doing that.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

I said, go play that tape back and go to this moment. And I was doing on Dropbox, and I was like, holy shit, that's his voice. That's him.

[Payne Lindsay]

We'll figure it all out.

[Donald Albright]

Pain. Oh, you Payne?

[Payne Lindsay]

I'm Payne.

[Donald Albright]

How you doing, man? This is my producer, Mike.

[Payne Lindsay]

Nice to meet you, Mike. As soon as he tells me the layout for it, I'm going to suggest some guests that I can get him in contact with. It's like an audioscape thing.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah, it'll be the. The documentary version, Right?

[Dylan Harrington]

Beautiful.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

I want to help you. Yeah, it's going to be. I wouldn't waste your time if I didn't think.

[Payne Lindsay]

This is my bodyguard, Dave.

[Donald Albright]

Hey, don't be my ass.

[Brian Bender]

The special friend here.

[Payne Lindsay]

This is Dennis Hugs.

[Donald Albright]

You don't need a bodyguard.

[Dylan Harrington]

I know.

[Donald Albright]

He. He probably could beat my ass.

[Brian Bender]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

The thing that we're working on is going to be just targeted towards breaking the stigma and kind of just self acknowledging. Just like. Yeah, we're self aware. Like, yeah, it's kind of. It's aliens and it's silly. But is it, though, like, you know, what's really up is the entire tone of the whole thing. Yeah, I think that will resonate with just everyone, and I think that it could be a way to just push the narrative forward and I'm sure we'll

[Payne Lindsay]

find time for a beer or.

[Brian Bender]

Yeah,

[Donald Albright]

Exactly. What are y' all doing later, later tonight?

[Payne Lindsay]

Don't know yet.

[Donald Albright]

Okay, hit me up because we. We. Yeah, we might be going to, you know, Zed.

[Brian Bender]

Zed.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah, the.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah, like I. I'm like friends with his manager. Really? Well, like, so I could probably get us all backstage.

[Dylan Harrington]

I used to.

[Brian Bender]

In a different life.

[Donald Albright]

I used to be laser lighting designer.

[Brian Bender]

I used to.

[Donald Albright]

Very cool. You know. Yeah. If that's. That's the vibe, this is for like an hour. Like, it might be a fun little thing. If that's cool. We run out of stuff to do.

[Brian Bender]

I don't know.

[Dylan Harrington]

Be

[Donald Albright]

came on my scene. He's super cool.

[Brian Bender]

After I kind of left.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah, I did.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah, I did lasers. The previous life before I, you know,

[Brian Bender]

did some other things.

[Donald Albright]

All right.

[Payne Lindsay]

We're going to run the nation.

[Brian Bender]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

Hey, great talk too. That was awesome. It's a weird thing that this guy who comes out with this, what could potentially be a life altering story in the UFO narrative was right there next to us. And we've also been trying to reach him for like months. But now, hey, now we. We know that we're only one degree away.

[Dylan Harrington]

Also, David Grass is standing right. Fucking talking to. Just gouge my eyeballs talking to me about Zed. And you're inviting him to the Zed show. Yeah. Which is just another.

[Donald Albright]

I'm like, dude, you want to go to the Zed concert?

[Dylan Harrington]

Dude, like, I don't know you, but you should come.

[Donald Albright]

Like, sounds like I was being lame, but no, like, we, you know, we. We were on Smith actually, you know, Tim. Speaking of Tim Smith, if you're hearing this, this guy's amazing. He's Zed's manager.

[Dylan Harrington]

And Skrillex.

[Donald Albright]

And Skrillex. And among other people. He is. He does a.

[Dylan Harrington]

He's big shit.

[Donald Albright]

He does cool, big time cooler shit than I do. He was in Vegas the same, the same time we were and we met up with him and he's like, yeah, you guys want to go to backstage, Zed? And I was like, I mean, what, is that a question? And so I was clearly like, hey, guys, like, you want to go backstage, Zed? Turns out it was actually even cooler than I was even talking about. It was. I mean, it was in his DJ. It wasn't backstage. We were. I was DJing by character.

[Dylan Harrington]

You could touch his button.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah, I could touch his butt. I mean, I could have. Actually. No, I did give him my hat and he threw it into the.

[Dylan Harrington]

You told him to.

[Donald Albright]

Little known story, actually about Tim Smith is that this man, who is amazing. Love this guy. Zed's manager, he is actually the Sole reason that I was ever able to talk to Travis Walton. I told him I was doing this show a long time ago, kind of when I first met him, I think, and he's into the topic and I was keeping him up to speed and somehow Travis Walton came up. He's like, you know, actually, I know that guy. I've met him before. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, yeah, I met him at a conference or something and he's a. Tim is a big UFO guy and I guess made the connection with him. And remember that day when we were waiting on Travis Walton to come and we thought he was never coming? And I really, I mean, I was texting Tim and I to this day think that Tim sent a text to Travis and like, help change his mind.

[Dylan Harrington]

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Donald Albright]

He was very late and that's all good, but I think that he was having doubts about wanting to do it. And I talked about that in the podcast. I just left that little detail out. Jeremy Corbell has insight unlike most people do in this space, unless you are part of the government, because he has relationships with these people who have leaked videos, the stuff that's spawned some of the biggest articles you've heard and seen and read online. I sat down and talked to him and it is an amazing, eye opening conversation. And I want you to go check it out on my weekly show called Talking to Death. And I know it's annoying, you have to go click another app and all that stuff. But in the meantime, while we're working on High Strange Season 2, every week on my weekly show, we talk about stuff like this sometimes. Talk about true crime, talk about UFOs, talk about aliens. And if you want to just follow along as we're building these shows and actually working on High Strange, that's how you could do it. So if you want to check out the full interview of Jeremy Corbell, which I think you really should, it's worth checking out. To me, it's one of the better ones that he's done most, mostly because I feel like he was just open with stuff. And I even asked him what I felt like were some real rational, harder questions and he had good answers for them. I asked Jeremy Corbell what he thinks in his opinion is the most interesting, compelling footage of UFOs out there, which is a big question because there's a bunch of shit out there and a bunch of nonsense and a bunch of stuff that might be real that we, we don't know. So I asked him this and this is what he said. What do you think personally is the most compelling evidence of extraterrestrial life?

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah,

[Donald Albright]

personally.

[Payne Lindsay]

First question that I've asked every single person I've ever tried to like, interview. I was so naive. I'd say, what's the best. Tell me personally what it is.

[Donald Albright]

And it's never going to give me a.

[Payne Lindsay]

It's never. I know that' what I want when I talk to people, but it's never as satisfying because the real like to

[Donald Albright]

you, though, I know you're going to

[Payne Lindsay]

hit your answer, bro.

[Donald Albright]

I know. Okay, what is it?

[Brian Bender]

Are you ready?

[Payne Lindsay]

It sucks. Okay.

[Donald Albright]

What is it?

[Payne Lindsay]

It is the preposterous preponderance and the weight of the cumulative evidence and my personal experiences that gives me the most powerful feeling of. That is the evidentiary culmination of it. It's the culmination over decades of. And the preposterous preponderance of evidence. And we could break that down for your viewers. What does that mean? Everything from multi sensor platforms to like,

[Donald Albright]

I get where you're going industries.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah. I mean, I could like point to one thing that I think is pretty good.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah, just like one case. Yeah, yeah, give me one case. Yeah, sure.

[Payne Lindsay]

I think the least valued and the highest return on a case is looking at the 2019 UFO swarm events over the 10 Navy warships. The story that George and I broke with unparalleled multi sensor, multi platform footage that we were able to obtain and release. That 2019 case is a pinnacle of what we should be doing with getting different types of data, getting a wide spectrum of people that all experienced the same series of events. It is a powerful case and I have done all the damn legwork. And other people now can jump in and do some of that. I provided it on a silver platter. I've got other cases I'm working on. If people dug into that, they would have an unparalleled case. That case is so important.

[Donald Albright]

This is the night vision one, right?

[Payne Lindsay]

Night vision. It was thermal, it was radar and it was deck footage. And it was 10 Navy warships in 2019 swarmed by over 100 UFOs simultaneously coming from the west. And there's nothing out there about Hawaii. They don't know where they came from. They don't know where they went. They were trans medium. They have helicopter pilots that saw them go into the water. You got people that fought the ships that literally came on and gave me their audio on my podcast telling what they experienced. That case is profound. And our government says we still don't know who operated those devices, those units as they call them. Uap.

[Donald Albright]

That's a big one.

[Payne Lindsay]

It's a big one.

[Donald Albright]

And the skeptics would say that it was a bouquet or something in the lens.

[Payne Lindsay]

Well, again, I love skeptics. You're talking about debunkers.

[Donald Albright]

I. Okay, I guess you would say a debunker in that. In that case, debunkers. Yeah.

[Payne Lindsay]

But I don't listen to what say. Cuz they're.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah, I've just seen both sides of the story and I've kind of. But to me, having looked at it, I've seen that video one visually it also is just to me instantaneously compelling.

[Payne Lindsay]

So that's the green triangle looking footage by angle observation. It was green. So triangle by angle of observation. So what is a four dimensional triangle? Well, that would be probably a pyramid. Now when I said oh yeah, they were reported as pyramid in shape, I didn't pull that out of thin air. Right. Now I can't put out everything that comes my way, but I will tell you on record that is in classified documents that there's other sensor systems that they had and they were pyramid and shaped and there you go. But people can take a piece of this cup and tear it off and put it to the side and then hide the rest of the cup and be like, see, it's not a cup. Yeah, but that's a piece of a cup. That's what they're doing intentionally. I'm telling people. If you look at the totality of the 2019 Swarm events, which is an example of these swarms that are occurring all around the world to this day. And I have other cases of it, and I've said one before and it was off the coast of Japan. I did that on one of my podcasts. People should dig into that. There have been so many and I have so many firsthand witnesses, some of whom are leaving military now and will come forward with telling exactly what they know about it. But everything happens on its own time with that. I can't control that.

[Donald Albright]

Absolutely. That's a huge decision that they're making too. If they're leaving and they're coming out.

[Payne Lindsay]

Because we see what happens to people that raise their hair pit. David Grush, you just try to King

[Donald Albright]

Kong crucified out there.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah, but he's a tough motherfucker.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah. I will say David Grush is also really well spoken, I think, and just articulate. So you know, regardless of, you know, if what he's saying is True or not. Damn, they got a good person saying it. Yeah, real right.

[Payne Lindsay]

Seriously, we're lucky to have somebody like David Grush. He's articulate. David Grush is fastidious. He is also has an incredible memory. He is well oriented to be in the roles that he was in which was, you know, national security, intelligence. You know, he was a high ranking intelligence officer, career guy. He's the kind of guy you want protecting America. He's the kind of guy that was in a position to know and see these black programs. He's the guy that uncovered with, you know, dozens of witnesses, these UFO or non human intelligence craft being reverse engineered, that kind of thing. And then he pushed over those sources like he says, up to 40 and, and he put them over to another investigation into the ICIG intelligence community Inspector General, like the police of the intelligence community, they then did their own investigation, found it to be both credible and urgent and obviously found what he said to be not only credible and urgent, but relevant and not a lie. So really we're lucky to have David Grush haven't come forward to the degree he has. There's more he could do, but he has to abide by the law, does not want to hurt the United States of America. So how do you do it? And he's trying to do it the right way. You know, famously if you're in intelligence, you have to assume you're being lied to by people in intelligence. Our government has completely tried to keep this on the DL and I get that for some time for good reason. But we're past that now. So I'm really hoping that the new director of Arrow makes a point to be honest with the American public. Because the truth will be told eventually. And I know that because people have gone to the icig, this, this cops of the intelligence agencies and they have presented what they, what they know and it is undeniable. So now it's just a matter of following up on it. So the truth will come out. And if you're going to be remembered in history because you got the hubris and the little, you know, coat pins and you want to be remembered in history, don't fucking lie. Yeah, how about that? Start there. Be honest with the American public. I just know that certain truths will come out easy way or hard way. And I am all down for the hard way and so are other people. It ain't pretty though. It would be nice if it came out in a controlled way where this disclosure processes when we can get to a point where we stop pointing the finger at each other and being like, we could have difference of opinion, but when we're all in it together, we have some consensus that this is worthy of us looking at. You're going to see that completely unravel. You're going to see. I mean, I'm not a predictive person. I don't know when my coffee pot's going off. But I imagine that if we stop this kind of weird infighting and just try to look at the truth together, it will be abundantly clear that there's a true mystery here and we could benefit from looking at it together. We've been ignoring it for quite some time. We've been that guy, you know, on

[Donald Albright]

the corner of the table, denying it.

[Brian Bender]

Really.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah. Going along with everybody, you know.

[Donald Albright]

Well, it's easier to feel like we do know everything. But that's always never been true.

[Payne Lindsay]

That's never.

[Donald Albright]

Why is it true now all of a sudden? It isn't.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

Right.

[Payne Lindsay]

I don't. I think that's a weird burden. Like, I am wrong more than I'm right. Right. But the thing is, see, that's how you.

[Donald Albright]

That's how you know that you're right. Is if you were ever been wrong.

[Payne Lindsay]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

Or unless you're always right, then. Yeah.

[Payne Lindsay]

Have you ever had that moment where you're like, you're a kid, right.

[Dylan Harrington]

And you,

[Payne Lindsay]

you like, fight for somebody. Like, I know for sure they said left and not right. And then you just get a complete. Like, you were totally wrong. Have you ever had that experience?

[Donald Albright]

Yes. Yes.

[Payne Lindsay]

Did you learn from that?

[Donald Albright]

Yeah. I don't ever want to feel that way again.

[Payne Lindsay]

Okay. Yeah, I learned that. Holy shit. I got to triple check things. Quadruple check them. Because we are all flawed. We have a chance to be wrong and.

[Donald Albright]

Absolutely.

[Payne Lindsay]

So you always put that in front of the mind. Yeah. You know, you gotta check yourself always. And have other people do it for you too. Help you.

[Dylan Harrington]

Jeremy gets so much hate on Reddit and on Twitter that he's a grifter, that he's just saying stuff and he's believing stuff that people tell him, Bro, this is one of the most sincere dudes I've ever talked to. And he's not tricking anyone. He believes this stuff. People come to him with information that they trust him with and he keeps them anonymous. And he doesn't put it out right away. And he might sit on stuff that he's known about forever. The UFO people are turning ransom and like, oh, he's just a dude saying, like, next time. But like, no, this guy wants all the same stuff we want. He wants disclosure. He wants this stuff to come out. He wants to out every source that's ever came to him, but he can't.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah. He's in the business of furthering this.

[Dylan Harrington]

You have to gain trust in the ball forward. Yeah. And to keep trust and to keep other sources coming to you anonymously, you have to respect the current ones you have right now. And he does that. And he's very sincere.

[Donald Albright]

Yeah. And, you know, and I asked him hard questions, normal hard questions. You know, if I were to say, hey, xyz, and you're like, holy shit, that sounds unbelievable. You know, you'd be like, tell me more, or what do you mean? Or how do you know? And I was asking those kind of questions, and I feel like, you know, those are questions that are probably annoying, but he also knows the value of those questions. And I had never at all was trying to, you know, catch him in something. I wanted him to take the time to explain one more detail that might be like. And I was looking for myself. I was like, if I'm a little bit skeptical, help me get there. I believe you. But I'm also, you know, if it's. I deal with true crime, you know, and that comes down to the court of law sometimes.

[Brian Bender]

Right.

[Donald Albright]

Facts, evidence, you know, statements, witness testimony, shit that you can present to a jury to make your argument. And I really enjoyed that we were able to have that kind of conversation. Of course, he had only great answers because that's who he is. He's not bullshitting. It's a weird topic because, you know, we don't know where this is gonna go, but every time I get lost in it again, and I'm like, God, man, like, if it was real, we would just know by now. I think of the exact opposite for a second. I go, man, if it wasn't real, man, wouldn't this just be over by now?

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

Think about all the things that we proved to be wrong. There's a lot.

[Dylan Harrington]

Yeah.

[Donald Albright]

You know what I mean? Like, how is this one still so persistent? For as much as we know, it's almost like the ideas only become more likely and more possible. And that's maddening to think about, especially if it weren't true. What does it even say about us as humans if we were just imagining all this shit at this point? Or what is it that we're experiencing that we're filling in all these gaps for? I think that becomes a crazier concept than there being something beyond this Earth, whatever that means in existence, that is more intelligent and has been here for longer. We love making this show and we love making these roundtable episodes. And I swear to God, every. Every week, we have been reminding ourselves we need to go make a roundtable right now. Just like, just. Just to do it and have faith in us. Because we have been hard at work on investigating new stories for the second season, and it's actually finally shaping up, and it's becoming a thing.

[Dylan Harrington]

I'm not going to lie. What? This might be my favorite thing to do.

[Donald Albright]

Talk about UFOs.

[Dylan Harrington]

You're so good at it. High Strange.

[Donald Albright]

It's good. Hey, look, he said it. Keep this part in. We most certainly have plans to make a second season of High Strange. So I'll just go ahead and officially say that I don't have a timeline for you yet, but I can tell you that we've already been working on it. We never really put it down since we stopped. It almost seemed like High Strange Season 1 broke the seal for us and kind of kicked down the door for some of the people we've wanted to talk to since day one anyway. And the conversation is evolving. And I always looked at High Strange season one as a sort of a baby step to this concept, even for myself, just to sort of put it all wrapped up in a bow and let's just talk about what the hell's going on. And I feel like if you were riding with me the whole time in season one, that we're probably in a similar spot, no matter where you land, that there's something going on. Right?

[Dylan Harrington]

You can't deny it.

[Donald Albright]

And so the conversation's not dead. It's only more alive than ever. And I had a thought that conceptually, for High Strange Season 2, a lot of people have emailed me and they've said stuff like, is this just like an American thing? Right. All the stories we covered were mostly American stories besides the Rendlesham incident, which was the American military, but happened in the uk. But I can totally see how just the folklore around UFOs, Area 51, you know, the US government, flying saucers, a lot of that stems from American pop culture. Right? But the crazy thing is, and I've learned this even more since the season ended, is that it's a legitimate worldwide thing.

[Dylan Harrington]

Absolutely.

[Donald Albright]

It's happening in every single fucking country you can think of. And I think a lot of those stories, to me, almost hold more weight because it just goes against the pop culture hoax sort of concept that we lean into when it seems too good to be true here. And please, please go check out Talking to Death, my weekly show. We all three work on this show. Every interview that you hear on that show, we've all been in the fucking room. And it's a fun array of people. And we do talk about UFOs with people you would never expect us to. Yeah, yeah. So go check out Talking to Death right now. My true crime show, which is how this all started up and Vanished, is out. And so we're doing these intros in the beginning of the Talking to Death episode. We're breaking down that. So if you haven't heard up and Vanished, go check that out. But yeah, we're coming back. We never left you. We always loved you. And please talk to us, send us an email, follow us on social media hystrange. Tell us what you think and we may or may not respond. We'll post this jellyfish UFO video on the Instagram, the High Strange Instagram. It is weird looking. It's like I don't know what it looks like. It doesn't look like a traditional UFO in the way that you are probably imagining it. It looks like some. Looks like a jellyfish.

[Dylan Harrington]

Well, have you seen the peanut butter one?

[Donald Albright]

The what? The peanut butter. Is this a bad joke?

[Dylan Harrington]

It's a bad joke.

[Donald Albright]

Okay, what's the punchline? Yeah, yeah, can't wait. When does it get funny?

[Dylan Harrington]

Well, it's the peanut butter incident and the jellyfish incident.

[Donald Albright]

Oh my.

[Dylan Harrington]

The peanut butter jelly pudding. God. Wow. That's hilarious.

[Donald Albright]

This is how this is. We went too long, you know, we talked for too long. We have fried our brains, everybody. But no, in all seriousness, thank you for being patient with us. We love you guys and we will see you very soon. Go check out Talking to Death. The Jeremy Corbell interview is all about UFOs and I know you'll love it. Thanks.

[Dylan Harrington]

Thank you for being a friend. Thanks.

[Donald Albright]

Big white mansion in my habitat aim

[Dylan Harrington]

a lot of stitch like a latex

[Donald Albright]

smoke A lot of trees need a

[Dylan Harrington]

weed plant I did tickle anywhere to

[Donald Albright]

lean at Sleeping on these jeans is a beanbag got me going Jeans cause a cool rack no shoes overseas they were pan leather shopping Tokyo, Japan they

[Dylan Harrington]

the best of blueberry T shirt sleeve

[Donald Albright]

vanilla hard top turn the vert riding anywhere Ain't got a band down to

[Dylan Harrington]

say the pear pellet man we spend a die to.

[Donald Albright]

High Strange is an eight part series released weekly for free every Thursday. But if you'd like to binge the whole series right now, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot plus on Apple Podcasts to get all the episodes right now, follow the show on TikTok and Instagram iStrange. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Pain Lindsay if you have your own UFO story, email us at tips highstrange.com High Strange is a production by Tenderfoot TV in association with Cadence 13. 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, Meredith Stedman and Sydney Evans. Our cover art is by Polygon. This episode features the song Space Cadet by Metro Boomin featuring Gunna Written by Wesley Tyre Glass, Sergio Kitchens, Leland Tyler Wayne, Alan Ritter and Jacques Webster. Performed by Metro Boomin featuring Gunna Courtesy of Republic Records under license from Universal Music Enterprises for Metro Boomin and 300 Entertainment for Gunna. Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the whole team at UTA, the Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing, as well as Chris Corcoran and the team at Cadence 13. Check out the show's [e-mail] and if you're enjoying the show, please help us out by rating our reviewing the podcast and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening. High Strange is an eight part series. If you'd like to binge the whole series right now ad free, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It's Stock up Savings time now through March 31st. Spring in for storewide deals and earn four times the points. Look for in store tags to earn on eligible items from Oreo, Haagen, Dazs, Charmin, Tide, Sparkling Ice, Reese's and Special K. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online for easy drive up and go, pick up or delivery restrictions apply. See website for terms and conditions. Shake it up with Vital Proteins, Collagen and Protein Shake. It's a high quality, ready to drink shake with 30 grams of protein and 10 grams of collagen to support healthy hair, skin, nails, bones and joints. With 0 grams of added sugar, no artificial sweeteners and absolutely no carrageenan. It's a clean, delicious way to fuel your day so you don't just age gracefully, you age powerfully. Vital proteins stay vital. Learn [e-mail] hey Tenderfoot listeners, we want

[Brian Bender]

to hear from you. We just launched a survey and want to know about your favorite shows, your

[Donald Albright]

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.

[Brian Bender]

To get free merch and a $100Amazon gift card, head over to Tenderfoot TV Survey for more.

[Donald Albright]

Thanks again. Now here's the show.

[Payne Lindsay]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Dylan Harrington]

Guaranteed Human.