Denver International Airport Is the Unsettling Setting for New Podcast, Escaping Denver

Denver is a city full of mysteries: The unmoved dead under Cheesman Park; whether or not we really had the first cheeseburger when a local restaurateur accidentally spilled some cheddar on his grill; how in the hell a house someone bought ten years ago for $200K is now worth four times that. What’s with all the NATIVE bumper stickers? And, of course, there are the many legends around Denver International Airport.

If you live in Denver, you’ve heard at least one. There’s the Illuminati one, the Blucifer curse one, the lizard people in underground tunnels one, and lots more. Why a relatively new structure has so many myths already surrounding it is anyone’s guess. But Brady Roberts and Mike Howorun are taking that spooky ball and running with it in their podcast Escaping Denver, which launches its second season today, Monday, March 28.

Escaping Denver centers on two characters, Noah and Sara (played by Roberts and Supergirl’s Greta Carew-Johns), who awake in total darkness, somehow finding themselves trapped miles below DIA. What they encounter in working to escape — even to understand what’s happening to them — is  labyrinthine in both scope and in sci-fi horror.

One of the weirdest things about the thrillingly strange show is that its creators aren’t locals — they’re from Vancouver. “I first heard about all the conspiracy theories around DIA watching stuff on YouTube,” says Roberts. “It seemed like a fun location that hadn’t really been explored — someplace that could open up a whole world and a lot of story potential.”
So Roberts and Howorun, who narrates the series, sat down and fleshed out the world of Escaping Denver. “We knew early on that we wanted to utilize the found-footage genre,” Howorun says. “It’s a fun and accessible way of bringing the audience into the story and making them a part of it.”

Being a part of the story is something that the significant fan base has embraced. Not only was Escaping Denver a top performing pod on Apple for its first season, it was number one in sci-fi series and a top-five fiction series overall. Fans even gather on Reddit to talk about the mysteries presented as the episodes unfold — and ask new questions every time one is answered.

It’s also a love letter to a lot of properties that Roberts and Howorun are fans of themselves. There’s a distinct Mulder-and-Scully vibe to Noah and Sara — one the believer, the other the skeptic. There’s a Stranger Things influence, too, in which the world characters thought they knew has another side that’s not only alien, but possibly unknowable. There are even some hints of the ’90s video game MYST. “I played that game as a kid,” Howorun says. “I found it so difficult, being dropped into this story and this world and not knowing what you were supposed to do, what anything meant. It’s one of the concepts and conspiracies we wanted to deal with — the idea that life is actually a simulation. That what these characters are going through could just be a video game.”

That’s not to say that Escaping Denver risks going the way of LOST, which tried to perform a similar trick, but made up too much as it went along and ended up for many viewers painting itself into a narrative corner. “We had this discussion from the get-go,” Howorun says. “LOST was brilliant, but they didn’t know where they were ending. We absolutely do.” They say they have five seasons planned, and that every breadcrumb of detail they drop is completely purposeful.

Roberts and Howorun had planned to visit Denver and explore DIA to the degree they’d be allowed to (presumably by the lizard people and their Freemason allies), but the pandemic got in the way. “We’re still planning on coming out,” Roberts says. “We’re working on some plans that we can’t yet talk about, but stay tuned.”

Might that plan include a certain pop-culture convention making its full-scale debut downtown this July 4th weekend? Already practiced at revealing the secrets of Denver in strategic fashion, Roberts would only answer cryptically: “Maybe,” he laughs. Whether or not he and Howorun ride in on Blucifer is still an open question.

Escaping Denver drops the first episode of its second season Monday, March 28. To stay updated on the latest news, check out its Instagram or Twitter.