SOUNDS PECULIAR

BRIAN J ROBB PRESENTS THE FORTEAN TIMES PODCAST COLUMN

As a medium, podcasts have been enjoying something of a boom over the past few years. The democratisation of quality media production through high-specification computer equipment has allowed a plethora of previously marginalised voices their own access to what were once quaintly called ‘the airwaves’.

In the past, broadcasting (reaching a wide audience from a single source) was heavily regulated and controlled, mainly through frequency scarcity: only those authorised or licensed to have access to the airwaves were allowed to broadcast. In UK terms that, initially, meant the BBC, with commercial stations coming along in the 1960s.

In terms of radio, there have been amateurs since the invention of the medium, reaching a crescendo with the offshore ‘pirate’ pop stations of the 1960s that ultimately led to the BBC launching Radio 1. For the longest time, Radio 4 (or NPR in the US) has been the default home of quality ‘spoken word’ content, whether that was drama, current affairs, or documentary radio.

Now, anyone with a microphone and an iPad, laptop, or computer and the right software can produce a decent podcast and launch their work onto a waiting world. Not all of them are good, while many are far better than you might expect, sometimes surpassing the productions of ‘legitimate’ broadcasters like the BBC or NPR. When it comes to fortean topics, there are a host of podcasts out there, ranging from the polished and compelling to the amateurish and downright weird. SOUNDS PECULIAR is your insider guide to the best of the current podcasts dealing with fortean topics: all you have to do is sit back and listen...

The Unexplained is a UK fortean podcast that has been running for over a decade, presented by writer and broadcaster Howard Hughes.

Hughes comes from what might be termed a ‘hard news’ background, reporting and presenting news for the BBC, Talk Radio, and Capital Radio among others; events he has covered in person include 9/11 (reporting from ‘ground zero’), the death of Princess Diana, and the 7/7 terrorist bombings in London. He’s not the average credulous podcaster who believes every weird thing he covers without question. With a lifelong interest in the paranormal, he’s combined his journalistic training, experience, and instincts with the strange and the unknown, hoping to assess the evidence, interview those involved, and present the findings to listeners.

Each episode is around an hour in length, and can vary from a programme focusing on a single subject or an interview with a single guest to a round-table discussion between several people or a ‘magazine’ format made up of three or four individual segments concerning a variety of topics. Holding it all together is Hughes’s approachable presentational style – doubtless the product of his experience in BBC and commercial radio – anchoring each programme in a ‘real world’ background in which these unexplained issues are put on a par with regular news.

Hughes is a friendly but sharp interviewer: he’s interested and knowledgeable about the subjects, knows the questions to ask and sometimes even asks the sort of questions that others have perhaps been reluctant to broach. He gives his guests enough space to make their points, but is also willing to interrogate them about things that don’t add up.

Given the 12 years or so that the show has been running and the very broad range of subjects it has covered, Hughes occasionally finds himself encountering a subject where he doesn’t necessarily know all the background – but he’s perfectly willing to find himself being educated alongside his listeners.

Of his approach to the subject matter of The

Unexplained, Hughes (speaking in a 2007 podcast) explained: “It is good to be able to question, and to not just accept. We cease to be journalists if we just accept what we’re told. I still have the ability and the drive to press people on these subjects and say, ‘Well, actually, that may not be so…’” He says that he sees his job as being to report what he finds, and not to censor it in any way, no matter how weird, oddball or downright crazy it might sound. “We’re not going to learn anything unless we let these people talk,” he notes. “You can dismiss it as the biggest load of old rubbish ever. I might do that too, at the end of it all. [But] we’ve got to hear it.”

This approach undoubtedly has much to commend it, but you may occasionally find yourself questioning Hughes’s ‘hard’ journalistic approach when the likes of David Icke and Uri Geller turn up repeatedly as interviewees and are given plenty of time to speak without ever encountering much in the way of the serious questioning that Hughes likes to think he engages in. While it can be argued that sometimes the best approach is to give people enough rope to hang themselves, the result is that Hughes can at times simply appears credulous, and The

Unexpected can come across as a vehicle for the views of certified whack jobs who are not interrogated with enough vigour.

It’s a professionally put together package, and Hughes is an engaging personality, but some of the ideas presented and interviewees offered up for our entertainment get off rather lightly. If that doesn’t bother you, there is much in The Unexplained’s many episodes that might be worth your time and attention.

Recommended Episodes:

Episode 266: Conspiracy Theories (researcher James K Lambert explains how they just don’t stack up); Episode 233: Philip Mantle (featuring one of the UK’s top ufologists); Episode 238: Remote Viewing Adolf Hitler (a whacky journey through time into the mind of a dictator); Episode 244: Shadow People (with Canadian researcher Adam Tomlinson).

Verdict: A mixed bag: there are so many episodes of The

Unexplained that you are bound to find something to like among them, but the journalistic rigour Hughes claims is sometimes AWOL.

Strengths: Hughes’s radio quality voice is a boon (although he does sometimes sail close to ‘Smashie & Nicey’ cliché).

Weaknesses: Although coming from a ‘hard news’ background, Hughes sometimes lets his interviewees off lightly.