That rings a Bell
Where Did The Road Go review
Rating – 
I still remember the first time I ever heard of Art Bell. The final track on Tool’s masterpiece album Lateralus was a mixture of howling feedback, waves of white noise and a very creepy phonecall from a man who was apparently calling from just outside area 51. He was terrified, and had just enough time to impart some “facts” before the call suddenly cut out.
For someone with a new house all to myself, and a decent broadband connection, I spent the next month or so downloading all the Art Bell shows I could find on the many peer to peer piracy sites. I became obsessed with all the weird and wonderful stories people were ringing in to tell. Art himself, was always willing to give these people airtime, no matter how outlandish their claims. That was both a good thing and a bad thing.
So what’s it about?
I first heard about this podcast on the previously reviewed show Strange Familiars. The host of that show, Tim Renner has been a guest on here many times, and I thought that given the title this would be more of the same. I was wrong on that though.
Much like Art Bell’s show on Coast To Coast AM, Where Did The Road Go explores all manner of weird subject matter. UFOs (or UAPs as they are now known) share space with ancient aliens, ley lines and ghosts.
The host, Seriah, covers such a vast range of weirdness that you can really pick and choose what to dig into. There are so many episodes on each subject that you can follow the way research changes over time. You don’t feel like you’ll miss out if you skip through episodes that don’t necessarily appeal to you.
The first few episodes are 13 years old, but they seem to stop for over a decade, and then restart just over a year ago. Not sure what happened, maybe it’s my podcatcher. Thankfully, the show has a prolific release schedule, so there are still loads of episodes to cater to whichever phenomena tickles your fancy.
Is it any good?
As I pressed play on the first episode, I had to keep reminding myself that these early interviews are very old indeed. As such, I can’t really mark down the show for the super compressed MP3 quality. If anything it really evoked the excitement of downloading old Art Bell episodes and praying there’s nothing else unsavoury in the file.
Skipping through the episodes, I chanced across a round table episode that has some of the best Terence McKenna impressions I’ve heard. I went back and listened to those a few times, because I’m weird like that.
Aside from this, your judgement of whether this podcast is good, lies on whether you believe in this stuff or not. 20 years ago, I was a lot more tolerant of the more “woo” ideas. As I’ve got older though, I tend to demand more evidence, and I’ve become more aware of a lack of critical thinking. I mean, as exciting as the prospect of Devil’s Tower being the stump of a giant tree is, it isn’t actually a giant tree stump. And the vapour trails behind planes are just water vapour. But anyway…
Final thoughts
Don’t listen to this podcast if you are die hard fans of people like Professor Dave, Neil DeGrasse Tyson or James Randi. You will be clenching your fists at the lack of “proper” investigation here. There is a lot that gets taken at face value.
If however, you can suspend your disbelief and just accept that the world is a lot weirder than most people think, then you’ll love it. Which one am I? Well, I sit firmly on the fence. I love the high strange that makes the world wonderful, yet I am a firm advocate of “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence”.
And I miss Art Bell dearly.
You can get Where Did The Road Go here:
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