WILD THING: SPACE INVADERS
Season 2 Alien Podcast: Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Think there’s aliens out there? You’re not alone. Reports of strange lights, UFO sightings and alien encounters abound—and some (like the recent accounts from U.S. Navy pilots) are even believable. In recent years, armed with state-of-the-art technology and better information, the search for extraterrestrials overflows with exciting possibilities. Within our own solar system, astrobiologists search for the biochemical building blocks that might sustain microbes. Astronomers discover far-flung stars, orbited by planets that could be teeming with life. Astrophysicists point sophisticated telescopes toward the deep reaches of the universe, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
In Wild Thing: Space Invaders, host Laura Krantz turns our collective gaze skyward. What’s the likelihood of life on other planets? Or that aliens have already made the trip to visit us? How would they get here? Why do we want to find them? And what does it mean if we do (or don’t)? In this podcast about aliens, we’ll examine the science, culture and philosophy of a universe where we’re not alone—and why the idea of alien life has abducted our imaginations.
“What’s the likelihood that, as we’re
looking out into space, something else might be looking back at us?”
The 50 Best Podcasts of 2020 — The Atlantic
Fall entertainment preview: The podcast season features Matthew McConaughey, Kirsten Dunst, UFOs and Sesame Street — Wall Street Journal
Early Maps of Geologic Strata, an Oliver Sacks Documentary and a New Science Podcast — Scientific American
7 Podcasts to Stream This November — Rolling Stone
What We Really Know About Life in Outer Space — Outside
The 107 Best Podcasts You Can Listen To In 2020 — Esquire
Imaginary Advice, Flash Forward, and 5 More Podcasts Worth Trying — Vulture
Celebrating Independent Podcasts — CBC Radio
Wild Thing, Space Invaders — KPCC
‘Wild Thing: Space Invaders’ explores humans’ fascination with aliens — KCRW
Praise for Wild Thing’s Alien Podcast
Episodes
Episode 1: Out Of This World
'Oumuamua almost slipped past Earth before an astronomer caught sight of this weird object. What was it? Some scientists thought it was just a comet; others theorized it could be an alien spacecraft. And why not? While tabloid aliens elicit giggles, loads of serious scientists, statesmen, and even members of the military, consider extraterrestrial life a real possibility.
Episode 2: What Is Life?
We’re surrounded by life here on Earth—and given how huge the galaxy is, it’s got to be out there on other planets, too, right? But where to look? What to look for? And would life on other planets be anything like life here? It turns out that while we know a lot about life on this planet—like what it needs to survive—we’ve still got a lot to learn.
Episode 3: Doing The Math
What’s the likelihood of extraterrestrial life? Especially intelligent life? 60 years ago, astronomer Frank Drake took a crack at calculating those odds and his famous Drake Equation still resonates with scientists and UFO enthusiasts alike. He breaks down the equation for us and talks about the chance of finding something, especially give the size of the universe.
Episode 4: Roswell
For all the people who think there’s life somewhere out there in space, there are also those who think that the best place to look for it is closer to home. Thousands of people claim to have seen UFOs or to have had alien encounters and one of those most famous of these happened in 1947 in the desert outside the remote town of Roswell, New Mexico.
Episode 5
Independence Day
Recently, the nation’s prominent newspapers published outlandish-sounding stories about a secret Pentagon UFO program. We talk to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who found funding for the program, as well as retired military personnel and the man who supposedly ran it. What was the military looking for? And what did they find?
Episode 6:
Hear No Aliens, See No Aliens
The scientists looking for intelligent extraterrestrial life say we need to look way far out into space. A new set of initiatives—the Breakthrough Initiatives—are experimenting with cutting-edge technology to do just that. These new ideas are the future of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence—and we hear from the scientists who are leading the charge.
Episode 7
E.T. Phone Home
We’ve been broadcasting Earth’s presence for about 85 years now, with radio, television, and radar. But what would we do if someone answers back? What if our message reaches someone, or something, hostile? There are good arguments for why we should be trying to communicate with whoever might be out there. But who should do the talking? And what would we say?
Episode 8:
Popular Science (Fiction)
American culture is saturated with extraterrestrial and UFO references—and we still can’t get enough. Hollywood has raked in billions on alien-themed programming and it comes in every flavor you can imagine—from horror to camp to science fiction to documentary. What’s the cultural appeal? And how have these imagined aliens evolved as we have?
Episode 9:
You Gotta Have Faith
Our views on aliens can often be uplifting, offering a glimpse of a better, technologically-bright future, or a glimmer of hope about our ability to survive. In some cases, our thoughts about them are almost spiritual, as though aliens are divine beings. To understand why, we make a trip to Colorado’s UFO Watchtower, something of a shrine for the alien faithful.
Episode 10:
The Truth Is Out There
There’s endless fascination about what (and who) might be out there. But this search for extraterrestrial life seems to be a series of questions that don’t yet have good answers and may never have them, not now, not in another millennia. So why search? What does it matter? What are we hoping to find? And what does it mean if we don’t find anything at all?
Special thanks to the University of Colorado Boulder’s NEST Studio for the Arts for their support of this season.