In the depths of winter last year, I was running through a cold and unlit field near my house when I saw a trail of lights moving through the sky. I stopped. The air caught in my throat. “Bloody hell,” I thought, “were the UFO people right all along?”
In the last five years, the number of podcasts investigating aliens, UFOs, the esoteric and the inexplicable has exploded on to the internet like a meteor shower. High Strange, That UFO Podcast, Johnny Vaughan’s Alien Kidnap Club, Chinwag With Paul Giamatti, the BBC’s Uncanny; the list goes on. There are certain themes and similarities, of course. A lot of men. A lot of men talking about military hardware, philosophical theories, government conspiracy and maligned intelligence. A lot of people selling DVDs, hosting conferences and self-publishing. But there is also a richness to these podcasts that mirrors, in their own way, previous podcast trends in true crime podcasts, songwriting podcasts, two comedians chatting podcasts and wellness podcasts. They have an audience, they have experts and, boy, do they have stories.
