Interview recorded: 11 July 2021

Released: 16 July 2021

Duration: 21 minutes, 33 seconds

Beatriz Villarroel discusses her latest VASCO paper in Nature Scientific Reports, "Exploring nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950."

Villarroel+ , Exploring Nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950.

Burst 19: Our Sky Now and Then (August 2016)

Episode 41: The Vanishing Sources with Beatriz Villarroel (November 2019)

The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations project: I. USNO objects missing in modern sky surveys and follow-up observations of a "missing star

The Palomar Digital Sky Survey

Gran Telescopio Canarias

The United States Nuclear Testing Program

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Ahleuchatistas and Erika Lloyd

Released: 4 February 2021

Duration: 58 minutes 44 seconds

Co-hosts Paul Carr and Daniela DePaulis are joined by author Thomas Moynihan. The subject is the idea of human extinction and how it evolved into our present day understand of Existential Risk.

I am a writer and researcher from the UK. In 2019, I completed a PhD at Oriel College on the history of human extinction. Currently, I am a visiting Research Associate in History at St Benet's College, Oxford University, and I am working for Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute with a grant from the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative. 
 
I am interested in the history of existential risk and of existential hope: that is, how people first came to understand the perils and promises that face us as a species. I see this as the central philosophical drama of the modern world: how we came to appreciate our position—and precarity—as intelligent beings within an otherwise seemingly silent and sterile universe. 
 
My goal is to reveal how contemporary research into global risks can be seen as part of the wider story of our ‘coming of age’ as a civilisation and a species.

Thomas Moynihan - https://thomasmoynihan.xyz

X-Risk at MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/x-risk

Mary Shelley - The Last Man

Churchill - Shall We All Commit Suicide?

The Order of the Dolphin

Frank Drakę: A Speculation on the Influence of Biological Immortality on SETI

Natural Selection of Stellar Civilizations by the Limits of Growth

The Jaws of Darkness

The Ethics of METI

Co-hosts: Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis

Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Solar Arkestra, DJ Spooky

Released: 15 November 2019

Duration: 42 minutes, 24 seconds

Our guest on Burst 19 in 2016, Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, returns to give us an update on the vanishing star, following the release of a new paper detailing a much more ambitious project along the same lines that finds a number of new candidate objects.

For more information, please visit https://wowsignalpodcast.com

Burst 19: Our Sky Now and Then

Villarroel+: The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations project: I. USNO objects missing in modern sky surveys and follow-up observations of a "missing star"

The POSS-I Survey

Pan-STARRS

Chasing Disclosure (work of fiction that mentions the earlier research)

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky and Jason Robinson

Announcer: Erin Carr

This podcast is released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike license.

Released: 16 October 2019

Duration: 54 minutes, 51 seconds

Interstellar Languages is a forthcoming book about the human quest to craft messages that can be understood across interstellar distances. We may want to tell ET about  ourselves, or it may be help ET send message to us that we will know how to interpret.

For more information, please visit wowsignalpodcast.com

Support the podcast at Patreon.com.

MIT Press Page for Interstellar Languages

Daniela DePaulis

The 2017 Sonar message 

There is Here

The Risks of METI and Religious Aliens

The Question: the ontological status of mathematics

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Co-Host: Daniela DiPaulis

Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, George Hrab

Announcer: Erin Carr

The Wow! Signal is released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license

Released: 29 September 2019

Duration: 49 minutes, 52 seconds

Download Sofia's paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.02683

A conversation with SETI researcher Sofia Sheikh about how we should evaluate technosignature search strategies. We cover three examples of technosignature searches and their relative advantages.

Sofia Sheikh is a third-year graduate student at the Pennsylvania State University working with Dr. Jason Wright. She did her undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, where she became involved with the Breakthrough Listen Initiative. Her work incorporates both theoretical approaches to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and observational radio searches for technosignatures. She intends to be the first woman to complete a SETI PhD thesis.

The Nine Axes of Merit

Andrew Siemion on SETI at the SKA 

Breakthrough Listen

The Truth about Alien Megastructures

Sonar Calling GJ273B

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Announcer: Erin Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Erika Lloyd, Jason Robinson

Hardware: Shure, Audio Technica, Pro Art, Behringer, Focusrite, Apple.

Software: Skype, Loopback, Reaper, Auphonic Desktop

Hosting: Libsyn

Released: 18 February 2019

Duration: 6 minutes, 48 seconds

Paul Carr summarizes why we want to know more about this star, and how you can get involved.

Please see wowsignalpodcast.com for the most detailed information.

The Most Mysterious Star in the Universe (Tabby's TED Talk)

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1

The Slow and Fast Dimming of Tabby's Star (Brad Schaefer)

Ben Montet Makes a Star Weirder

The KIC8462852_Analysis subreddit

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky

Released: 10 February 2019

Duration: 16 Minutes, 51 Seconds

Abraham Loeb and Shmuel Bialy kicked up a kerfuffle when they wrote a paper suggesting that one possible explanation for ‘Oumuamua was that it could be an artificial object, in other words, an alien spacecraft—specifically, a lightsail. The two have been praised for their boldness and condemned for their recklessness, but little has been said concerning the possibility of detecting a lightsail as a technosignature in comparison to detecting a “conventional” technosignature such as the radio and laser beacons that SETI searches for. When we look out into the universe for signs of intelligence, if there are technosignatures to be seen, what technologies ought we to expect to be the most common?   

Stagnant Supercivilizations and Interstellar Travel

“Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain ‘Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?” Bialy and Loeb

 Predictably, online media go nuts over ‘Oumuamua and Harvard scientists; “Scientists are perfectly happy to publish an outlandish idea.” by Eric Berger

Breakthrough Starshot 

lightsail (Wikipedia)

The Interstellar Age: The Story of the NASA Men and Women Who Flew the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell

NASA Voyager 2 Could Be Nearing Interstellar Space

The Great Filter—Are We Almost Past It? by Robin Hanson

SETI as a Process of Elimination

Written and Presented by: Nick Nielsen

Postproduction: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky

This podcast episode is released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license

A not quite so short announcement from the producer of the Unseen Podcast and the Wow! Signal. This is for those who have not seen the video.

Unseen Podcast Episode Planning Sheet

Released: 24 April 2018

Duration: 10 minutes, 1 second

Paul Carr talks about today's much more accurate distance estimate to Boyajian's Star from Gaia Data Release 2, and what, if anything, this rules out.

Clemens+ (2018) - Proper Motion of the Faint Star near KIC 8462852 (Boyajian's Star) - Not a Binary System

Boyajian+ (2015) - Where's the Flux?

Interview with Brad Schaefer

Ben Montet Makes a Star Weirder

Castelaz and Barker (2018) - KIC 8462852: Maria Mitchell Observatory Photographic Photometry 1922 to 1991

Gaia DR2

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 23 April 2018

Duration:12 minutes, 21 seconds

Paul Carr reviews what has been happening over the Winter and early Spring with respect to Boyajian's Star. We review the Winter observations, the Castelaz and Barker paper, and the two surprise March dips, Caral-Supe and Evangeline. We also talk about the upcoming Gaia Data Release 2 and what it might mean.

Burst 24 and Burst 25

KIC 8462852: Maria Mitchell Observatory Photographic Photometry 1922 to 1991

Where's The Flux?

Bruce Gary's Boyajian's Star Page

Boyajian's R

Gaia DR2

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 6 February 2018

Duration: 24 minutes, 48 seconds

A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis. Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. In order to resolve our cosmic archipelago problem we will have to attempt to reconstruct a history of our universe as a part of a far larger cosmological system, and to do this we will have to extend cosmology beyond the observable universe -- but what, exactly, is the observable universe?

The Cosmic Archipelago, Part I
The Cosmic Archipelago, Part II

Normal science

Supernova iPTF14hls
Przybylski's Star

Writer and Host: Nick Nielsen

Producer and Announcer: Paul Carr

Music: by kind permission of the artist, Jason Robinson

The Wow! Signal is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.

Released: 25 January 2018

Duration: 21 minutes, 51 seconds

A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis. Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. As we confront these great questions of cosmology, whether a hundred years ago or today, we find ourselves faced with as many philosophical questions as scientific questions when we challenge the boundaries of our understanding. In Part II we focus on cosmological scales of time and what this means for human observation of a very old universe.

Writer and Host: Nick Nielsen

Voiceover and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 28 November 2020

Duration: 70 minutes, 39 seconds

Co-hosts Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis engage philosopher Chelsea Haramia on the ethics of sending signals into space that might be received by intelligent beings in the cosmos.

For more information about this episode, include a rich set of links, please see the blog entry for Episode 48 at:

https://wowsignalpodcast.com

Chelsea Haramia received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she specialized in ethics. She is now an assistant professor in the philosophy department at Spring Hill College. She is also co-editor of the online journal 1000-Word Philosophy, which houses a growing set of original 1000-word essays on philosophical questions, figures, and arguments aimed at an audience of philosophers and non-philosophers alike. She has published in the areas of normative ethics, bioethics, animal ethics, aesthetics, feminist philosophy, and astrobiology ethics. Her current work involves ethical and metaethical analyses of space exploration and of the search for intelligent life in particular.  

Co-hosts: Paul Carr and Daniel De Paulis

Producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Nest, Erika Lloyd.

The Wow! Signal is published under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.

Released: 21 January 2018

Duration: 19 minutes

A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis.

Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. As we confront these great questions of cosmology, whether a hundred years ago or today, we find ourselves faced with as many philosophical questions as scientific questions when we challenge the boundaries of our understanding. In Part I we focus on the original problems of constructing the cosmological distance ladder.

Writer and Host: Nick Nielsen

Producer and Voiceover: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 3 January 2018

Duration: 15 minutes, 37 seconds

Host Paul Carr goes over the new paper by Tabetha Boyajian and 206 coauthors: The First Post-Kepler Brightness Dips of KIC 8462852. 

Burst 13 - Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, part 1

Burst 23 - Tabby Boyajian's on Elsie

Burst 24 - The Summer of Tabby's Star

Where's The Flux

The KIC 8462852 subreddit

The KIC 8462852 subreddit wiki

The Dream of the Open Channel

AAVSO

Boyajians_R

Host, producer, writer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 31 December 2017

Duration: 65 minutes, 20 seconds

Daniela DePaulis and Nick Nielsen in conversation with Frank White on the Overview Effect.

Detailed show notes To Be Supplied. Please see wowsignalpodcast.com for more information.

Released: 3 December 2017

Duration: 11 minutes 43 seconds

Host Paul Carr covers some recent developments with respect to Boyajian's Star, especially the 4 dips of the Summer of 2017.

wherestheflux.com

Burst 23 - Tabby Boyajian discusses Elsie

Where Is the Flux Going? The Long-Term Photometric Variability of Boyajian's Star

Extinction and the Dimming of KIC 8462852

Optical Polarimetry of KIC 8462852 in May-August 2017

Modelling the KIC8462852 light curves: compatibility of the dips and secular dimming with an exocomet interpretation

NEOWISE

The script for the episode

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 16 November 2017

Duration: 48 minutes, 5 seconds

Host Paul Carr talks to Douglas Vakoch of METI.org about a recent transmission using a powerful radar transmitter to the star GJ 273, which has a super-Earth planet circling it in the habitable zone.

GJ 273 on SIMBAD

The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets XLI. A dozen planets around the M dwarfs GJ 3138, GJ 3323, GJ 273, GJ 628, and GJ 3293

GJ 273 in the Open Exoplanet Catalog

Sonar Barcelona

EISCAT Tromso Site

The Story of Lincos

The Unseen Podcast

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson

Announcer: Erin Carr

Released: 14 November 2017

A short note from Paul Carr to please stay tuned for more content. Sorry for the lull, but we are not fading - we wouldn't do that to you.

Meanwhile, if you haven't already, check out the Unseen Podcast.

Released: 3 September 2017

Duration: 62 minutes, 37 seconds

Host Daniela De Paulis along with Paul Carr in conversation with artist Jon Lomborg, designer of Carl Sagan's Voyager Golden Record, on his new crowdfunded project, the One Earth Message.

The One Earth Message Kickstarter

The New Horizons Mission

The Voyager Golden Record

Lincos

Host and co-producer: Daniela De Paulis

Co-producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Erika Lloyd

Announcer: Erin Carr

Released: 5 June 2017

Duration: 18 minutes 33 seconds

Paul Carr talks with Tabetha Boyajian about the flurry of observations of KIC 8462852 conducted when the star dipped in brightness last month, and what might happen in the near future.

/r/KIC8462852

The Subreddit FAQ

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 19 May 2017

Duration: 12 minutes 57 seconds

Host Paul Carr provides some brief remarks and one or two speculations about the dimming of Tabby's Star that began today.

The Reddit Discussion Forum

Jason Wright's Video

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed Part 1

The Wow! Signal podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons/Attribution Share-Alike license.

Released: 13 February 2017

Duration:90 minutes, 38 seconds

In this episode we explore Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or METI, with METI.org President Douglas Vakoch and interdisciplinary artist Daniela de Paulis. Nick Nielsen joins us for a discussion of Daniela's new project Cogito - how do we send our thoughts into the cosmos?

The Pioneer Plaques

The Drake Arecibo Message

The Voyager Golden Record

METI.org Strategic Plan

The Zoo Hypothesis

Daniela de Paulis on the Unseen Podcast

Project Cognos

Dwingeloo Radio Observatory

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Co-hosts: Daniela de Paulis and Nick Nielsen

Music: DJ Spooky, George Hrab, Erika Llloyd

Voiceover: Erin Carr

The Wow! Signal podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license.

Released: 7 November 2020

Duration: 57 minutes, 36 seconds

Co hosts Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis welcome space historian David Skogerboe to talk about the pro-space activism of Arthur C. Clarke.

David Skogerboe is a space historian and science communicator. He recently earned his MSc in the History and Philosophy of Science from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where he focused his research on the intersection of space science, science fiction, and science communication. During his masters, he interned at the NASA History Division in Washington DC, where he spent countless hours perusing the most interesting historical reference collections on the planet. He is presently a freelance writer and editor while he awaits the emergence of his first child, and he hopes to soon begin a PhD and a fruitful career as a professional nerd.

The Godfather of Satellites: Arthur C. Clarke and the Battle for Narrative Space in the Popular Culture of Spaceflight, 1945-1995, David Skogerboe, full master's thesis

Apollo 12: Why Don't You Know Me? You Should., David Skogerboe, NASA News & Notes

Wireless World Feb. & Oct. 1945, Scans of Clarke's articles proposing the geostationary satellite

How the World Was One: Beyond the Global Village, Arthur C. Clarke (1992), Clarke's overview of the impact of communication technology on society

The Making of a Moon: The Story of the Earth Satellite Program, Arthur C. Clarke (1957), Clarke's pre-history of satellite technology, first published before Sputnik

The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke (1979), Clarke's sci-fi that features the space elevator and "project clean-up"

Arthur C. Clarke's official website

An expansive bibliography of Clarke's work. An impressive reminder of just how hard he pushed to propel humans into space, and keep them there.

Co-hosts: Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis

Music: DJ Spooky and Lloyd Rogers

Released: 2 January 2017

Duration: 15 minutes, 37 seconds

Based upon a Dream of the Open Channel blog entry, we discuss why there may not be any galaxy-scale megastructures, but what sort of stellar class megastructures could we possibly observe out there.

Please visit wowsignalpodcast.com for more information about this podcast.

Why Search?

The Jaws of Darkness

Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies

GHAT III: The Reddest Extended Sources from WISE

The Tully-Fisher relation as a probe of Dysonian astroengineering in disk galaxies

Earth in Human Hands

Searching for Cost Optimized Interstellar Beacons

Wow! Signal Bursts

Host, Writer and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

The Wow! Signal Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.

Released: 28 November 2016

Duration: 59 minutes, 2 seconds

Astrobiologist and Author David Grinspoon joins us to talk about his new book, Earth in Human Hands - Shaping Our Planet's Future. Following all the great demotions, humanity is about to get a great promotion - and we're not ready for it, but we have no choice.

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Announcer: Erin Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Erika Lloyd, George Hrab

Recorded: 14 September 2016

Released: 14 September 2016

Duration:22 minutes, 22 seconds

Astronomer Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian joined Paul Carr, Roger Wehbe, and Rusty Schweikart in a Google Hangout to talk about the implications of the Gaia Data Release 1 for a better understanding of KIC 8462852.

Gaia Parallax for KIC 8462852 is 2.554887 mas

Jason Wright: What Could be Going on with Boyajian's Star? Part X: Wrap-up and Gaia's Promise

Producer and Host: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 8 August 2016

Duration:47 minutes 44 seconds

Host Paul Carr talks to CalTech astronomer Ben Montet,who has, with his colleague Joshua Simon, just published the result that Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) dimmed considerably over the four year course of the Kepler Space Telescope prime mission.

Montet and Simon, KIC 8462852 Faded Throughout the Kepler Mission

Interview with Bradley Schaefer on Dimming of Tabby's Star

Boyajian, et. al., KIC 8462852 - Where's The Flux?

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Announcer:Erin Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, Erika Lloyd

Released: 31 July 2016

Duration: 24 minutes, 11 seconds

Host Paul Carr discusses the recent paper "Our Sky Now and Then" with lead author and astronomer Beatriz Villarroel,a PhD student at the University of Upsalla in Sweden, Ms. Villarroel's team was undertaking an alternative approach to SETI, looking for evidence of effects in astronomical data that could not be due to natural effects.

Our Sky Now and Then

The USNO B1.0 Catalog

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey

The Lost Star (Vizier)

The Nearby Infrared WISE object

Jason Wright: A WISE Search for Large Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 28 July 2016

Duration: 43 minutes, 45 seconds

James Garrison speaks with latest holder of the Library of Congress Baruch Blumberg chair of astrobiology, Nathaniel Comfort. His current book project is the biography of DNA.

Mike Russell

New Study Outlines "Water World" Theory of the Origin of Life

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Dr. Barbara McClintock

Steven Benner

Host: James Garrison

Producer: Paul Carr

Announcer: Erin Carr

Music: DJ Spooky and Frank Dorritke

Released: 4 July 2016

Duration: 20 minutes, 41 seconds

SETI research is much like the traditional task of a tracker, who seeks the spoor of elusive quarry through a wilderness. In the search for life, intelligence, and exocivilizations we find ourselves in the position of seeking the spoor of these higher emergent complexities in the cosmological wilderness.

The Halos of Vanished Civilizations (Wow! Signal Burst) 
Another Astrobiological Thought Experiment (Tumblr post)

Writer and Presenter: Nick Nielsen

Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 22 June 2016

Duration: 41 minutes, 19 seconds

Daniela De Paulis hosts a conversation with the team producing the crowdfunded feature-length SETI documentary Earthlings Quest, and one of the scientists profiled in the film, Douglas Vakoch. We urge you to consider contributing to the Kickstarter for this film.

• opening
• Paulina's intro
• introduction to the Earthling's Quest team: Alexander Ryneus and Per Bifrost (film co-directors), and Malla Grapengiesser (producer).
• Introduction of Douglas Vakoch
• Introduction on SETI and METI
• What is the focus of the documentary?
• Why is SETI so timely
• Possibilities of finding extraterrestrial intelligent life
• Why should we contact other life forms?
• Should we be afraid?
• closing remarks
• Brief announcements
• outro

METI Interinational

The SETI Institute

The Earthling's Quest Kickstarter

Host: Daniela De Paulis

Producer: Paul Carr

Announcer: Erin Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Erika Lloyd, George Hrab

Released: 27 May 2016

Duration: 67 minutes, 16 seconds

We interview LSU astronomer Bradley Schaefer about why is sticking to his guns about the century-long dimming of Tabby's Star (KIC 8462952), why some popular explanations fail, and what can be done to further explore the reason that this star's behavior is so behavior. In particular, Brad wants to encourage us to contribute to Tabetha Boyajian's kickstarter to buy telescope time to monitor the star.

The Fast and Slow Dimming of Tabby's Star

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1

The Most Mysterious Star in the Universe

Brad Schaefer: KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165+-0.013 Magnitudes Per Century From 1890 To 1989

Brad Schaefer on Centauri Dreams: Further Thoughts on the Dimming of KIC 8462852

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Announcer: Erin Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, George Hrab

The Wow! Signal is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Released: 18 May 2016

Durations: 3 minutes, 33 seconds

A short Burst to briefly explain today's development and to ask listeners to seriously consider donating to the new Kickstarter to monitor KIC 8462852 with a network of telescopes using standardized photometry. The hope is that we will reliably catch the star in the act of dimming. Please share this and the link to the kickstarter widely. Together, we can catch Tabby's Star in the act.

The Most Mysterious Star in the Universe

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1 (Burst 13)

Interview With Tabetha Boyajian (Season 3, Episode 4)

Interview with Stella Kafka of the AAVSO (Season 3, Episode 5)

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Postprocessing: Auphonic.com

Hosting: Libsyn.com

The Wow! Signal is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license

Released: 6 April 2020

Duration: 53 minutes, 55 seconds

Author and podcaster Wade Roush talks about his forthcoming book from MIT Press, Extraterrestrials. The book covers astrobiology, SETI, the Fermi paradox and more for a literate but non-specialist audience.

WADE ROUSH, a Boston-based science and technology journalist, is a columnist at Scientific American and the producer and host of Soonish, an independent podcast about the future. He has served as Boston bureau reporter for Science, senior editor and San Francisco bureau chief at MIT Technology Review, chief correspondent and San Francisco editor for Xconomy, and acting director of MIT’s Knight Science Journalism program. He holds a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT.

For more information, please visit us at https://wowsignalpodcast.com

The Extraterrestrial page at MIT Press

Six Strange Facts about Oumuamua

Sofia Sheikh and the Nine Axes

The Vanishing Sources

Where is Everybody?

Stephen Webb's Book on the Fermi Paradox

Natalie Cabrol

Seth Shostak on the Zoo Hypothesis

The MIT Technology Review

The Hub and Spoke Podcast Network

The Soonish podcast

The podcast contact page

Wow! Signal Live

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Lloyd Rogers and Jason Robinson

The Wow! Signal is released under the Creative Commons Attribution License

Released: 3 May 2016

Duration: 35 minutes, 43 seconds

Stella Kafka, director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) tells us about how her organization observes variable stars and how they hope to catch Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) in the act of dimming. Also, a brief update on Bradley Schaefer's work.

• Intro music: Dark Skies by DJ Spooky
• Intro announcement
• Welcome and quick summary
• Brief update on Bradley Schaefer's updated preprint
• Stella Kafka bio
• Interview with Stella Kafka
• Wrap up interview
• Nagging, begging, pleading
• Thanking Patrons
• Outro music: Ockham's Shaving Kit by George Hrab

please see wowsignalpodcast.com for a full set of links

AAAVSO.org

Donate to the AAVSO

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, part 1

 The Fast and Slow Dimming of Tabby's Star

Interview with Tabetha Boyajian

Script for this episode

Support us on Patreon

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, Erika Lloyd, George Hrab

Announcer: Erin Carr

Hardware: Shure, Pro Art, Focusrite, Apple

Software: Skype, Reaper, Loopback, OS X Yosemite

Postprocessing: Auphonic.com

Hosting: Libsyn.com

Released: 6 April 2016

Duration: 43 minutes, 45 seconds

Thread: Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Tabbys' Star for the Perplexed Part 1, we explained why this is puzzling star. In Part 2, we talked about some of the explanations put forth and their weaknesses. In the third and last (for now) part of the series, we talk to Tabby herself, and she answers several reasonably informed questions about her team's work, past, present and future.

• Introduction
• Interview with Yale's Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian concerning KIC 8462852
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Some of the better speculative solutions
• Wrap up
• Thanking Patreon Subscribers
• Nagging, Begging
• We want to hear from you
• Outro

Boyajian, et. al., Planet Hunters IX: KIC 8462852 - Where's the Flux?

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed (blog post)

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 2

Schaefer, KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165 +/- 0.014 Magnitudes Per Century from 1890 to 1989.

LCOGT

The Swift Mission

The AAVSO

Planet Hunters

KIC8462852 Subreddit

Centauri Dreams

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

VO: Erin Carr

Music: DJ Spooky and Sleep Research Facility

The spoken content of the Wow! Signal is distributed under the 

Released: 31 March 2016

Duration: 13 minutes, 21 seconds

Paul Carr continues with our series explaining just what is so puzzling about Tabby's Star, aka KIC 8462852. In this part we talk about some of the candidate explanations, including alien megastructures, including a Dyson Swarm.

Please see wowsignalpodcast.com

The Slow and Fast Dimming of Tabby's Star

AstroWright

Written, Produced, and Voiced by Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 16 March 2016

Duration: 13 minutes, 25 seconds

Science does not occur in a vacuum, and this is doubly true in the case of SETI, which is said to suffer from a "giggle factor." How does social context shape the scientific research program of SETI? The public at times shows great interest in SETI, but this attention can cut two ways, both benefiting and harming the discipline. Nowhere is this more true than in funding for SETI research.

Credits:

Written and Read by: Nick Nielsen

Producer and VO: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 14 March 2016

Duration:22 minutes, 55 seconds

We talk to Netherlands astronomer Jason Hessels, corresponding author on a recent paper in Nature describing a repeating fast radio burst. For more information please visit wowsignalpodcast.com

A Repeating Fast Radio Burst

The Unseen Podcast Discussion of FRBs

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 10 March 2016

Duration: 18 minutes, 1 second

In Part 1, Paul Carr provides a non-technical explanation of why the star informally known as Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) is so perplexing after all. What was observed, and why doesn't it fit a conventional explanation?

Please see our companion blog post at Dream of the Open Channel.

Written, Produced and Read by Paul Carr

Music by Jason Robinson

Released: 13 February 2016

Duration:20 minutes, 35 seconds

Nick Nielsens's show notes:

Written and Read by: Nick Nielsen

Producer and VO: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 6 February 2016

Duration: 22 minutes, 18 seconds

An edited interview with Dr. Josh Grindlay concerning the use of measurements of star brightness from the Digital Access to a Sky Century @HArvard to measure the dimming (or not) of Tabby's Star over a Century. Grandly critiques Hippke's paper that found dimming in several stars in the DASCH data, and also Schaefer's claim that Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) is slowly dimming.

Boyajian, et. al. Planet Hunters X. KIC 8462852 - Where's the Flux?

Schaefer: KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165+-0.013 Magnitudes Per Century From 1890 To 1989

Hippke and Angerhausen: KIC 8462852 did likely not fade during the last 100 years

Digital Access to a Sky Century at Harvard

Landolt Standard Stars

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson and Erika Lloyd

Released: 14 January 2016

Duration: 62 minutes 4 seconds

Host Paul Carr talks to Dr. Bradley Schaefer about his research showing a dramatic dimming of Tabby's Star over a century. This all but rules out any explanation anyone has put forth so far for the short term dimming of the star found in the Kepler data by Boyajian, et. al.

Links

KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165+-0.013 Magnitudes Per Century From 1890 To 1989

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Dj Spooky, Jason Robinson, Mike Griffin, George Hrab

Released: 3 December 2015

Duration: 13 minutes, 43 seconds

Is the cosmos a trackless wilderness in which apex predators, in the form of advanced extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs), roam at will, and vulnerable civilizations (like ours) learn to maintain a low profile? Nick Nielsen considers some variations on the theme of the 'zoo hypothesis' of John Ball, each being a response to the Fermi paradox, and how we might prefer to 'play dead' as a civilization given the potential dangers of the cosmos primeval.

The Zoo Hypothesis by John Ball (PDF)

The Wilderness Hypothesis post at the Grand Strategy Annex

Another Astrobiological Thought Experiment and a Comment Response

If the Universe is Teeming with Aliens, Where is Everybody?

Observational Signatures of Self Destructive Civilizations

The Cosmos Primeval

Writer and Presenter: Nick Nielsen

Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 31 March 2020

Duration: 54 minutes, 8 seconds

Co-hosts Paul Carr and Daniela DePaulis welcome Dr. Paola Castaño to talk about her research among the science teams working on the International Space Station.

For more information, please visit our blog at https://wowsignalpodcast.com

Paola Castaño is a sociologist of science. She recently completed a Newton International Fellow funded by The British Academy at Cardiff University and is working on a book about the meanings and valuations of scientific research on the International Space Station. On the basis of ethnographic work following the life course of experiments sent to the station, the book examines the fields of particle physics, plant biology and biomedical research. She has a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago, and has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, the Free University of Berlin, and Waseda University in Tokyo.

The International Space Station goes under the microscope

Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop 2020: Day 1

Cosmic-ray positron fraction measurement from 1 to 30 GeV with AMS-01

Scott Kelly’s genes and NASA’s twin study on him, explained

Keyworkers

Daniela De Paulis on the Unseen Podcast

Daniela De Paulis discusses Cogito in Episode 35.

Cogito in Space

Castaño's article on Cogito

The Wow! Signal podcast on Reddit

Our YouTube Channel

Co-hosts: Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis

Producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Blue Dot Sessions, Lee Maddeford, and Lloyd Rogers

Released: 21 November 2015

Duration: 15 minutes, 30 seconds

Nick Nielsen talks about what we might observe from long dead ET civilizations.

Nick Nielsen's Blog Post

How Old is ET?

The Relative Rate of LGRB Formation as a Function of Metallicity

Observational Signatures of Self Destructive Civilizations

Written and Read by: Nick Nielsen

Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

Released: 17 November 2015

Duration 6 minutes, 18 seconds

Paul Carr briefly discusses a few issues that asteroid mining raises, at least in part responding to an Unseen Podcast blog post comment by "Khani":

• Mining operations around PHAs
• Conflicts over claims
• Conflicts over the same asteroid
• What exactly is necessary to establish a claim?
• An interplanetary court

Music by Jason Robinson

The Science of Asteroid Mining with Martin Elvis

Unseen Podcast Episode 33 - Extract the Resource

Released: 2 November 2015

Duration: 53 minutes, 33 seconds

Host Paul Carr interviews Dr. Martin Elvis of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Martin Elvis has a substantial background in high energy astronomy and astrophysics, studying quasars and other huge, highly energetic phenomena deep in the universe. He tells us why he has turned his attention to asteroid mining, and explains his model for determining how many asteroids we should be going after, and how we can find them. There is a case for much better surveillance of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) using space based infrared cameras. Today's sophisticated solid-state Gamma Ray and X-ray spectrometers can give us quick spectra that determine elemental composition. Also, the Earth often has temporary moons, but catching then in the act is tricky.

Martin Elvis - How Many Ore Bearing Asteroids?

Martin Elvis and Thomas Esty - How Many Assay Probes to Find One Ore Bearing Asteroid?

The NEOCAM sensor

NEOCAM (.pdf file)

NASA - General Information on Asteroids

The NEAR mission

Planetary Resources: Asteroid Composition

The Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Season 2 - Episode 8: Incoming Asteroid!

Season 1 - Episode 8: Cosmik Debris

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Guest: Martin Elvis

Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, Erika Lloyd

Postproduction: Auphonic.com

Hosting: Libsyn.com

The spoken content of this podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. All music is performed with the permission of the artists.

Paul Carr very briefly pleads with you to listen to the Unseen Podcast if you are not already doing so. That is all.