Episode 19 - Actually, Wow!

Release Date: 18 November 2014

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Bob Dixon

This podcast is named after an event that took place on 15 August 1977 at the Ohio State Big Ear radio astronomy observatory. Astronomer Jerry Ehman noticed a signal that looked exactly like what they were looking for - an ET radio beacon. Was it?

We talk to Dr. Robert S. "Bob" Dixon, who was instrumental in bringing the Big Ear instrument to bear on the SETI problem, in his very first podcast interview. Among other things, he tells us about the experimental Argus array, which if built full scale, could help us catch a reoccurrence of the Wow! Signal.

Music by DJ Spooky, George Hrab, Erika Lloyd and Chanticleer.

Detailed Show Notes with links

The Big Ear Radio Telescope near Delaware, Ohio.

Actually,Wow! by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://traffic.libsyn.com/wowsignal/S2_E7_WowActually.mp3.

Episode 15 - Oblique Strategies

Release Date: 24 June 2014

Heath Rezabek

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Host Mike Mongo talks to futurist librarian Heath Rezabek about preserving humanity's knowledge into the far future.


Paul Carr talks to economist and former AI researcher Robin Hanson about a possible future in which humans exist, but aren't very important. Will AI put us all out of a job, and what will that mean to us if so?


Music by Erika Lloyd and DJ Spooky



Detailed Show Notes

Oblique Strategies by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://traffic.libsyn.com/wowsignal/WSP_S2_Ep3_ObliqueStrategies.mp3.

Episode 13 - The Great Voids

Release Date: 18 May 2014

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This is our third episode to directly address the Fermi Paradox. Given some reasonable assumptions, the

Earth should have been colonized by a superior technological civilization. We see no evidence of this. Why is that?

No one knows, but the Fermi Paradox serves as a wonderful mental lens to probe our assumptions and ask deeper questions about how well we really understand our universe and its tendency to give rise to long-lived, technologically sophisticated societies with both the ability and drive to colonize their galactic neighborhood.

We talk to Dr. Daniel Cartin about his recent follow up to Geoffrey Landis' percolation framework for understanding the Fermi Paradox, using the well known census of stars in the local solar neighborhood:

Quantifying the Fermi Paradox in the Local Solar Neighborhood

We also talk about the life span of technological civilizations, and I speculate how accidental contact could be important to understanding how this life span could increase over time.

See the Detailed Show Notes

Season 2, Episode 2 of the Wow! Signal by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.