Episode 49 - Existential Risk

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.

Guest Bio:

Thomas Moynihan

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.

Links:

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

Credits:

Co-hosts: Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis

Producer: Paul Carr

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

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

Episode 46 - Extraterrestrials

Released: 6 April 2020
Duration: 53 minutes, 55 seconds

Download the .mp3 audio file

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.

Guest Bio

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.

Links:

1950 New Yorker Cartoon by Alan Dunn

The Extraterrestrials page at MIT Press
The Extraterrestrials page at Amazon
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
Nathalie 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

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Lloyd Rogers and Jason Robinson

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

Burst 1 - The Astronaut Instruction Manual for Preteens

Download the .mp3 audio file

Mike Mongo

In this short Wow! Signal Burst, Mike Mongo, Astronaut Teacher, tells us about his forthcoming book, which has just completed successful crowdfunding. The Astronaut Instruction Manual for Preteens. The book is available for preorder now.

KidAstronaut.com

Theme music by Jason Robinson.

The Wow! Signal is produced by Dream of the Open Channel and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.





Wow! Signal Burst 1 by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.wowsignalpodcast.com/2014/11/burst-1-astronaut-instruction-manual.html.