Friday, December 8, 2017

Episode 84 - Will Religious Aliens Serve Man?



Recorded: 8 December 2017
Released: 9 December 2017
Duration: 97 minutes, 32 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file

GJ 273B in Aladin
Host Paul Carr welcomes panelists Nick Nielsen, Sam Lichtenstein, and Patrick Festa to talk about
the possible consequences of Active SETI, or METI. Of course, the discussion veers off into religion and just how tasty man flesh is.

Links:

Interview with METI.org president Douglas Vakoch
James Benford: Whispering at the Stars
SETI, METI, and Existential Risk
Daniela DePaulis talks about Project Cognos.

Pascal Boyer
John Romer: Testament
Evolutionary Psychology of Religion

The Twilight Zone: To Serve Man (video)
Fred Saberhagen's Beserker
Ferengi
Andy Weir talks economics
The Star Trek Ferengi
Douglas Adams' Planet Krikkit

The Wow! Signal's Towel Day episode on Douglas Adams.

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky

The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license




Saturday, November 18, 2017

Unseen Pub #7

We had Unseen Pub #7 on the 17th of November 2017. Participants were Marsha Barnhart, Patrick Festa, Nick Nielsen, and Paul Carr. As usual, the topics ranged widely. Or wildly.


Saturday, November 11, 2017

Episode 83 - Mind Legos: the Burger King James Version



Recorded: 10 November 2017
Released: 11 November 2017
Duration: 92 minutes, 12 seconds

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One of Caleb Carr's many lego creations

Host Paul Carr welcomes panelists (King) James Garrison, Nick Nielsen (Benevolent Dictator of the Planet Entire), and (King of the Universe) Patrick Festa for a wide ranging conversation about education. Some of those Lego jokes fall a bit flat..
What would you do about education if you were Benevolent Dictator? Or Andrew Carnegie?

Links

Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
What's Your Problem with Higher Education?
Primitive Technology YouTube Channel
LEGO Women of NASA Kit
James Burke BBC Connections
Juvenile violent crime arrest rates
Chad Davies' Scientific Odyssey Podcast
Nick Nielsen: Was anyone 1000 years ago as smart as someone with average intelligence today?

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky
Platform: Google Hangouts on Air
Hardware: Shure, Pro Art, TASCAM, Focusrite, Apple, Plugable, & 1 crappy USB cable
Software: Chrome, Reaper, Loopback, Scarlett Mix Control, Auphonic Leveller, OS X Sierra

The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.




Sunday, October 29, 2017

Episode 82 - Legends in Our Own Minds



Recorded: 27 October 2017
Released: 29 October 2017
Duration: 77 minutes 16 seconds

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Host Paul Carr is joined by James Garrison, Nick Nielsen, and Mike Bohler to talk about local urban
The Spencer Oklahoma Purple Church
legends and the forces driving them. Stories like Chicago's Resurrection Mary have been told all around the world for centuries. Also, portals keep popping up in modern narratives, and perhaps have also been with us for a long time.

Our conversation ranges from the Purple Church, to Crop Circles, to the Nazca Lines, to the Anasazi to Scotland's Ring of Brodgar, to Skinwalker Ranch, and much more.

Links:

Spooky Oklahoma Legends
Vanishing Hitchhiker
Ring of Brodgar
Nazca Lines
Circle Makers

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky

The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license




Saturday, October 21, 2017

Episode 81 - Another year of WTF with Eva Bodman



Recorded: 20 October 2017
Released: 21 October 2017
Duration: 85 minutes, 36 seconds

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Paul Carr and Adam Smith are joined by NASA Postdoctoral Fellow Eva Bodman (who was recommended to us by Tabby), to talk about developments on Boyajian's Star over the last year. A lot has happened, and we covered as much as we could. We also took a couple of live questions from the YouTube chat, which is much appreciated.


Links

Last years's Episode - 1 Year of WTF
Eva Bodman's Research
Where's The Flux? blog
Tabby's Ted Talk
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed
The KIC8462852 Subreddit and its Wiki
A list of papers on Boyajian's Star and related topics
Bodman and Quillen: Cometary Source for the Strange Behavior of KIC 8462852
Tabby on the Gaia Data Release 1

Forgan and Elvis:  Extrasolar Asteroid Mining as Forensic Evidence for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Duncan Forgan answered questions on ET Asteroid Mining
First interview With Brad Schaefer on the Century Long Dimming and the Second Interview
Interview with Josh Grindlay on DASCH Photometry

Aliens, Perhaps, but Not the Aliens of the Gaps
The Absolute, Definitive Truth About Alien Megastructures

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky

The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.


Monday, October 9, 2017

Episode 80 - We, Martians?

Recorded: 6 October 2017
Released: 10 October 2017
Duration: 80 minutes 12 seconds



download the .mp3 audio file
NASA budget as percentage of Federal Budget

Host Paul Carr welcomes Jake Robins of the WeMartians podcast, along with panelists Sam
Lichtenstein, Adam Smith and Nick Nielsen to talk about the current and future state of the human advance upon the fourth stone from the sun.


Links:

WeMartians
WeMartians on Twitter
Pit Crater in Elysium Mons
The Descent Propulsion System

Making Life Multi-Planetary


Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky

The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license



Saturday, September 16, 2017

Episode 79 - Przybylski's Star Stuff



Recorded: 15 September 2017
Released: 16 September 2017
Duration: 81 minutes, 31 seconds

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Przybylski's Star in the DSS vis Aladin
Host Paul Carr welcomes Adam Smith and Sam Lichtenstein to talk about Przybylski’s Star, or HD 101065, possibly the weirdest star in astrophysics - even weirder than Boyajian's Star, maybe.


Links

Przybylski's Star in Simbad
Jason Wright's blog series on Przybylski's Star
Antoni Przybylski (1961) - HD 101065-a G0 Star with High Metal Content
Antoni Przybylski (1977) - Is iron present in the atmosphere of HD 101065 ?
D.W. Kurtz (1982) - Rapidly oscillating Ap stars
Martinez and Kurtz (1990) - New observations and a frequency analysis of the extremely peculiar rapidly oscillating Ap star HD 101065
Cowley, et. al. (2000) - Abundances in Przybylski's star
Gopka, et. al. (2007) - On the possible nature of Bp-Ap Stars: an application to HD101065 and HR465
Renson and Manfroid (2009) - Catalogue of Ap, HgMn and Am stars
Joshi, et. al. (2016) - The Nainital-Cape Survey. IV. A search for pulsational variability in 108 chemically peculiar stars.
Chen et. al. (2017) -  A new photometric study of Ap and Am stars in the infrared.
Dzuba, et. al. (2017) - Isotope shift and search for metastable superheavy elements in astrophysical data

Jerry Pournelle

War is a Racket
RIP Jerry Pournelle
Episode 80 discussion thread


Recommendations

Paul - Alban Berg String Quartet - late Mozart quartets
Sam - Salvation
Adam - Witcher 3


Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky




Monday, September 4, 2017

Episode 78 - Alien Signal Stephen Hawking Clickbait Mystery


Recorded: 4 September 2017
Released: 4 September 2017
Duration: 70 minutes, 11 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file

Credit: exoplanets.eu
Host Paul Carr welcomes long-time panelist Nick Nielsen to talk about some of the latest news in radio astronomy - both the serious science and the lurid headlines. Radio Bursts (FRBs) have been know for some years now, but a the only known repeating FRB, 121102, has been acting up lately.

Links

FRB 121102: Detection at 4 - 8 GHz band with Breakthrough Listen backend at Green Bank
BREAKTHROUGH LISTEN DETECTS REPEATING FAST RADIO BURSTS FROM THE DISTANT UNIVERSE
Jason Siegel: Five Reasons Why The Signals From Stephen Hawking's Breakthrough Initiative Aren't Aliens
Scholz, et. al., Simultaneous X-ray, gamma-ray, and Radio Observations of the repeating Fast Radio Burst FRB 121102
C.J. Law, et. al. -
A Multi-telescope Campaign on FRB 121102: Implications for the FRB Population
Astronomer Jason Hessels on the repeating FRB
Astronomers have found the source of a deep space radio wave burst for the first time: We finally know the galactic culprit

The Most Mysterious Star in the Galaxy
Almost certainly wrong: an alien megastructure speculation about KIC 8462852
exoplanets.eu

 

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky


The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike license.

Saturday, August 26, 2017

Episode 77 -The Question



Recorded: 25 August 2017
Released: 26 August 2017
Duration: 93 minutes 16 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file
Mandelbrot Set Crop Circle


Host Paul Carr welomes panelists Nick Nielsen and Sam Lichtenstein, who soldier on when Paul's Thunderbolt 3 hub crashes. They engage in a discussion of whether mathematics is discovered or invented. How does this apply to efforts to communicate with distant technological civilizations? Could math be used to establish a common language?


Links:

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Science
The Mandelbrot Set Crop Circle Formation  by Joseph E. Mason
A Conversation with Edward Snowden (Part 1) (SETI at 33:00 and following)
Press Release: Carnegie Mellon Awarded $7.5 Million Department of Defense Grant To Reshape Mathematics


Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky



Friday, August 11, 2017

Episode 76 - 2017 Summer hiatus non Episode



Recorded: 11 August 2017
Released: 12 August 2017
Duration: 100 minutes, 41 seconds

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Host Paul Carr welcomes Sam Lichtenstein, Patrick Festa, Nick Nielsen and Mike Bohler to mark the end of the Summer hiatus. Since this is a non-episode, we have no find agenda, so it ranges from the Kennedy assassination to astronomical anomalies.
We also play the short promo for Oh No Ross and Carrie

Links

The Skeptics Guide to Conspiracy


Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Dj Spooky




Friday, July 28, 2017

Unseen Pub #6

Our YouTube series, the Unseen Pubs, got its 6th addition just now. It's all about the tangents. Participating were Nick Nielsen, Patrick Festa, Mike Bohler, Dean Calahan, and Paul Carr.




Saturday, June 17, 2017

Episode 75 - Fraser Cain



Recorded: 16 June 2017
Released: 17 june 2017
Duration: 80 minutes 44 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file

Host Adam Smith welcomes the publisher of Universe Today Fraser Cain to talk about (nearly)
twenty years of online space journalism.

Fraser chats with interdisciplinary artist Daniela De Paulis, Astronomy's Finest blogger Mateusz Macias, Paul Carr, and Astronaut Teacher Mike Mongo.

Links:

Fraser Cain and Pamela Gay of the Astronomy Cast
Universe Today 
The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox

We mentioned a lot of good YouTube channels:


Credits:

Host: Adam Smith
Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky

The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License.




Saturday, June 3, 2017

Episode 74 - Exoplanet Atmospheres



Recorded: 2 June 2017
Released: 3 June 2017
Duration: 68 minutes 35 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file

Host Adam Smith welcomes Cambridge PhD student and Mars One astronaut candidate Ryan MacDonald, along with panelists Ciro Villa and Paul Carr. The main topic is exoplanet atmosphere science, but we also discuss Mars colonization.
Figure 11 from MacDonald and Madhusudhan

Links:

MacDonald and Madhusudhan: HD 209458b in New Light: Evidence of Nitrogen Chemistry, Patchy Clouds and Sub-Solar Water
Venus Express Searching for Life on Earth
Transmission Spectroscopy
HD 209458 b
Episode 69 on TRAPPIST-1

Blue Origin Technology

J. Serrano Graphics Design

Credits:

Host: Adam Smith
Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky

The Unseen Podcast is distributed by Dream of the Open Channel under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.



Saturday, May 20, 2017

Questions for Kimberley Cartier?

Dr. Kimberley Cartier will be our guest on Episode 74. Any questions for her?

Update: This episode has been postponed. We hope to Have Kimberley Cartier on in the fall.

Ep. 73 - Viruses in Space with Madison Campbell


Recorded: 19 May 2017
Released: 20 May 2017
Duration: 74 minutes, 18 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file
Madison Campbell

Host David Grigg welcomes Madison Campbell, a graduate student at the University Massachusetts,
and panelist Paul Carr for a conversation about epidemiology in various space colonization scenarios.

What are the risks for the first space colonists from diseases activated by mutations? What models can we look to for help in finding the answers? What are thefts mitigations?

Links:

Madison Campbell
The Cold Equations

Credits:

Host: David Grigg
Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky

The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike license.


Monday, May 8, 2017

Unseen Pub #5

Unseen Pub #5: no agenda, no show notes, no host, no specific panelists, and so on. We just talk about whatever interests us, from punching sharks to Mars to marriage. If you want to watch live, follow the link below.  Also, the pub is as open participation as we can make it.

#upub5 was probably our most political and contentious Pub yet. Participants were Buck Field, Ciro Villa, Nick Nielsen, Paul Carr, Sam Lichtenstein, and some guy who wouldn't identify himself except as an ex Jehovah's Witness. Do JWs really believe that Christ returned in 1914?




Monday, May 1, 2017

Unseen Listeners subreddit, RIP

We're abandoning the listener's subreddit we have long promoted as a place for listeners to post and comment. It' s been open for two years, we rarely get more than 2 uniques in a day, and most days, just zero. There have been almost no comments or listener posts. we do't even get spam. So, it's simply not worth the effort to keep it up to date.

The old posts remain up, and moderation has been cranked all the way to prevent link dumping and spam.

If anyone wants to take it over, just let us know.

Friday, April 21, 2017

Episode 72 - Morgan Irons of Deep Space Ecology


Recorded: 21 April 2017
Released: 22 April 2017
Duration: 78 minutes, 20 seconds

Down the .mp3 audio file

Host Sam Lichtenstein welcomes Deep Space Ecology chief scientist Morgan irons and panelists Adam Smith, Paul Carr, and Nick Nielsen. This isn't our best audio quality yet, but hey, Blame Google.


Links:

Episode 71 - A Conversation with Lee Irons
Morgan irons is running Her Own Martian Farming Experiment
Deep Space Ecology
Deep Space Ecology's YouTube Channel
Vertical Farming

NASA: Space Agriculture Planted in History


Credits: 

Host: Sam Lichtenstein
Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky
Postproduction: Auphonic.com
Hosting: Libsyn.com


 The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license




Saturday, April 15, 2017

Unseen Pub #4

Unseen Pub #4 was recorded on 15 April 2017 and included Paul Carr, Daniela DePaulis, Ciro Villa, and Adam Smith. topics ranged from dogs to wikipedia to philosophy of science to Adam's house and dog.



Friday, April 7, 2017

Episode 71 - A Newspace Startup



Recorded: 7 March 2017
Released: 8 March 2017
Duration: 92 minute, 20 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file

Host Sam Lichtenstein welcomes Lee Irons of Deep Space Ecology to talk about his newspace startup working with his daughter Morgan. He is joined by panelists Nick Nielsen and Paul Carr

Links:

Deep Space Ecology
Biosphere 2
BIOS 3
TEDx Duke Talk - Morgan Irons
ISDC 2017
The Humans to Mars Summit
The Mars Ice House
New Worlds 2017


Credits:

Host: Sam Lichtenstein
Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky


Saturday, March 25, 2017

Episode 70 - Did You See The One Where..



Recorded: 24 March 2017
Released: 25 March 2017
Duration: 102 minutes, 52 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file
The Day the Earth Stood Still


Host David Grigg welcomes panelists Nick Nielsen, Buck Field, Patrick Festa and Paul Carr to talk about science fiction movies.


Links:

Mary Sue characters
Pandorum
The Great 1980s Dungeons and Dragons Panic
The Ten Cent Plague
I Come in Peace
Whitley Strieber's Communion
The Hidden Fortress

Recommendations:

David: Bound to Please by Michael Dirda
Nick: The Origin and Evolution of Earth
Buck: Creating Scientific Concepts
Patrick: The Electric Ant, By Phillip K. Dick
Paul: So to Speak podcast

Credits:

Host: David Grigg
Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky



Saturday, March 18, 2017

Unseen Pub #3.

Quite a healthy sized crew showed up eventually. At first it was just Paul Carr and Patrick Festa, but shortly thereafter we added Buck Field, Dean Calahan, Mike Bohler, Ciro Villa, and Nick Nielsen. the conversation ranged widely, as usual, but Brown Dragon was a favorite. We need to get Dean connected with Elon Musk.


Saturday, March 11, 2017

Episode 69 - A Taste of TRAPPIST-1



Recorded: 10 March 2017
Released: 11 March 2017
Duration:101 minutes, 7 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file

Figure 1d from Gillon, et. al.
Host Paul Carr is joined by panelists Buck Field, David Grigg, Nick Nielsen and Patrick Festa to marvel about the recent TRAPPIST-1 exoplanet discovery.

Links:

M. Gillon, Seven temperate terrestrial planets around nearby ultra cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1.
Sky and Telescope: Seven Planet Star hides Age, May be Deadly
NASA Telescope Reveals Largest Batch of Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planets Around Single Star
Lingam and Loeb: Enhanced interplanetary panspermia in the TRAPPIST-1 system

6 Animals that can see or glow in ultraviolet
Pit viper infrared vision
Oliver Sacks: The island of the Colorblind
Horseshoe Crab vision

Recommendations:

Buck: The ESO Messenger
David: The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel
Nick: https://planetplanet.net/
Patrick: Proxima by Steven Baxter
Paul: DJ Spooky's Optometry

 

Credits: 

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Panelists: David Grigg, Patrick Festa, Buck Field, Nick Nielsen
Music: DJ Spooky
Postprocessing: auphonic.com
Hosting: libsyn.com


Saturday, February 25, 2017

Episode 68 - Warbirds


Recorded: 24 February 2017
Released: 25 February 2017
Duration: 96 minutes, 44 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file

C-130
Host Adam Smith welcomes panelists Ken Wisian, Antonio Paris, and Sam Lichtenstein to talk about recent advances in military aviation, Ken's experience flying for the Air Force and Air National Guard, and Antonio's days as an Army Ranger. We had some technical issues in the first half of the show, but it's well worth the few seconds of frustration to hear about the experiences of Ken and Antonio.

Links:


Credits: 

Host: Adam "Synergy" Smith
Panelists: Ken Wisian, Antonio Paris, Sam Lichtenstein
Music: DJ Spooky
Postproduction: Paul Carr, Auphonic.com

Friday, February 10, 2017

Ep. 67 - Science Resistance



Recorded: 10 February 2017
Released: 11 February 2017
Duration: 93 minutes 48 seconds


download the .mp3 audio file

Host Paul Carr welcomes panelist Nick Nielsen, Patrick Festa, and Buck Field to talk about recent
collisions between pro-science and anti-science forces in the US. This leads us to a number of other related topics, including what it means to "accept" that Trump is president.

erratum from Nick Nielsen:

The news story I mentioned about a protester being killed in the 90s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Carlo_Giuliani
It wasn't the 90s, it was 2001. I thought it was a WEF meeting but it was the G8. Also, I said Turin, but it was Genoa. So I got all the details wrong, but the general drift was close enough.

Links

The Sturm-Abteilung (Brownshirts)
Badlands National Park Goes Rogue
Science March On Washington
Is Trump a Facsist, Loofah-face Shit-Gibbon?

Recommendations

Buck: Bil Nye Saves the World
Nick: if the Sun Dies by Oriana Fallaci
Patrick: Warped Passages by Lisa Randall
Paul: Hidden Figures

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Panelists: Patrick Festa, Buck Field, Nick Nielsen
Music: DJ Spooky

The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.




Friday, January 27, 2017

Episode 66 - Assault on Mount Bootstrap



Recorded: 27 January 2017
Released: 28 January 2017
Duration: 99 minutes, 56 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file

Host Paul Carr is joined by panelists Chris Prophet and Sam Lichtenstein to talk about the challenges of bootstrapping a solar-system wide economy. From there we end up talking about all sorts of related topics, like nuclear fusion and cleaning up Low Earth Orbit.

Links:  

Recommendations:

Chris:: Biography of Elon Musk
Sam: Lecture by Dennis White
Paul: WeMartians podcast

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Panel: Chris Prophet, Sam Lichtenstein
Music: DJ Spooky

The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.





Friday, January 13, 2017

Episode 65 - Who Does Megastructures Anymore? Aliens?




Recorded: 13 January 2017
Released: 14 January 2017
Duration: 100 minutes, 44 seconds

Representation of a Niven Ring by David Grigg

Host Paul Carr welcomes panelists Marsha Barnhart, Nick Nielsen, David Grigg and Sam
Lichtenstein to talk about megastructures - not so much how to build them. but why? Why haven't we seen them yet?


Links

The Absolute, Definitive Truth about Alien Megastructures
The pre-show discussion thread
Episode 59 on Deep Time

The Ĝ Infrared Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. I. Background and Justification

The Ĝ Infrared Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. II. Framework, Strategy, and First Result

The Ring of Brodgar -   59.001649°   -3.229042°
The Worlds's Oldest Megaliths

Mircea Eliade - Cosmos and History
Chemosynthesis
Ring of Brodgar on Google Earth

Subsurface Ocean Worlds
Solar Energy Harvesting in the Epicuticle of the Oriental Hornet


Ring World by Larry Niven
Orbitsville by Bob Shaw

Recommendations

David: Black Hole Blues
Nick: Raven Age
Sam: History of the Third Millenium
Paul: The 6 Haydn Quartets of Mozart

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Panelists: Marsha Barnhart, Sam Lichtenstein, David Grigg, Nick Nielsen
Music: DJ Spooky

The Unseen Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license




Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Unseen Pub #2

The second in our YouTube series of completely unstructured and open conversations was held 6 January 2017.

This one turned out to be quite a lot about sharks. Participants were Mike Mongo, Mike Bohler, Ciro Villa, Paul Carr, Sam Lichtenstein, and Patrick Festa.