Wild Thing

A faulty reactor overheats, melting through its containment unit and poisoning a nearby town with radioactive gas. A spacecraft pushes further into deep space, exploring new galaxies, powered by a small nuclear reactor. An ordinary scientist is struck by cosmic rays—and finds he has new powers. Fiction? Or fact? Or a little of both? Stories of nuclear peril and promise permeate American media, and...

Earthlings are fascinated by our nearest neighbor. In recent years, we've sent probes and talked seriously about sending people. But even a century ago, we were crazy about the Red Planet and the Martians we thought lived there. In this interview with author David Baron—recorded live at the Mountain Words Literary Festival—we'll learn all about the history of Mars madness. *Season 2 of Wild Thing...

When we imagine life on other planets, it's often the stuff of science fiction. But in his book, zoologist Arik Kershenbaum makes the case for why what we already know about animals on Earth could reveal what aliens might be like, too. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lipinski. Music and mixing by Louis Weeks.

Seth Shostak is the chief astronomer at the SETI Institute and we’ll hear from him about SETI's mission: how they’re looking, what they're looking for, and how they think about the search. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lipinski. Music and mixing by Louis Weeks.

Rob Swiatek introduces us to MUFON—the Mutual UFO Network—whose mission is to collect reports of and investigate UFO sightings all over the US and the world. Swiatek has been with MUFON for decades and explains how the organization works and what they're looking for. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lipinski. Music and mixing by Louis Weeks.

Silvano Colombano, a long-time NASA scientist, argues that the search for extraterrestrial life makes some erroneous assumptions. We talk to him about what those assumptions are, why they might be wrong, and how we might think differently about the search. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lipinski. Music and mixing by Louis Weeks.

UFOs, aliens, other-worldly beings—all have appeared in art over the centuries (including, possibly, in Renaissance-era paintings). But some of the most recent depictions appear in the works of Frank Buffalo Hyde, an Onondaga artist who uses UFOs to talk about tribal histories and lore. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lipinski. Music and mixi...

While we hypothesized about exoplanets for years, it wasn't until recently that we could confirm their existence. Astrophysicist and MIT professor Sara Seager has been at the leading edge of the search for exoplanets. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lipinski. Music and mixing by Louis Weeks.

2020 - already not a great year - was made worse for astronomers when the Arecibo Telescope collapsed in Puerto Rico. Abel Mendez, an astronomer who grew up in the telescope's shadow, talks about the importance of Arecibo and what future plans may bring. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lipinski. Music and mixing by Louis Weeks.

David Anderson likes the idea of aliens but he’s not a big fan of the TV show Ancient Aliens. The archeologist has real problems with how the show portrays his chosen field and diminishes human achievements. But, he says, while the show is misguided, he also understands why these ideas about “pseudoarchaeology” are so appealing. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney....

Sarah Stewart Johnson is a planetary scientist who has worked on several Mars missions and is also the author of Sirens of Mars . She talks to us about the latest mission to the Red Planet—the Perseverance rover—and why our closest neighbor holds such fascination for Earthlings. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lipinski. Music and mixing by Lo...

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gives his perspective on the rare earth hypothesis, the difficulty of wrapping one's head around the universe, and the problem with movie aliens. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lipinski. Music and mixing by Louis Weeks.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Joe Scott, (host of the popular YouTube series Answers With Joe) and I discuss panspermia, whether octopuses are aliens, and the rare earth hypothesis. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing by Alicia Lipinski. Music and mixing by Louis Weeks.

In September 2020, just days before this podcast launched, scientists announced that they might have found evidence for life on Venus... or at least in Venus's atmosphere. We talk to Clara Sousa-Silva—one of the scientists involved—about their findings, what life on Venus might be like, and what the next steps might be. *Season 2 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Editing...

In Ep. 2 of Wild Thing , I mentioned that people went crazy about the gorilla. They even wrote songs about it. But I couldn’t find the music, so I couldn’t play the tune… until now. In a special bonus letters segment, a musical performance from a Wild Thing fan, as well as some of your stories and letters. *Season 1 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz, Scott Carney, and Kelsey Ray. Editing b...

**THIS EPISODE CONTAINS EXPLICIT MATERIAL** We talk to Virginia Wade, author of a series of Bigfoot erotica books, about the saucier side of Sasquatch. *Season 1 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz, Scott Carney, and Kelsey Ray. Editing by Alisa Barba. Music and mixing by Ramtin Arablouei.

We hear from William Dear—director of "Harry & the Hendersons"—about how he tried to capture the magic of Bigfoot on the big screen. *Season 1 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz, Scott Carney, and Kelsey Ray. Editing by Alisa Barba. Music and mixing by Ramtin Arablouei.

On September 10, 2025, Jeff Meldrum passed away after a battle with brain cancer. I interviewed him multiple times for the first season of Wild Thing and he was incredibly generous with his time and extremely patient in answering my questions about Bigfoot. In memory of him, I’ve excerpted a section from one of our interviews, at a 2017 conference held in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Patte...

Hear an extended conversation with Bob Gimlin, half of the famous duo that shot the Patterson-Gimlin film back in 1967. *Season 1 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura Krantz, Scott Carney, and Kelsey Ray. Editing by Alisa Barba. Music and mixing by Ramtin Arablouei.

In memory of Peter Byrne, the longest-surviving member of the Four Horsemen of Sasquatchery. After looking for Bigfoot for decades, the 97-year-old tracker passed away in August 2023. Host Laura Krantz had the opportunity to interview him in 2017, and learned that his search for Sasquatch was only one adventure in a life that was jam-packed with them. *Season 1 of Wild Thing is produced by Laura K...

What were the long-term effects of the SL-1 explosion? Nuclear power is a shrinking part of America’s energy picture; accidents and fear have tarnished it, and the old reactor fleet is reaching its end. Yet nuclear energy could provide a bulwark against the looming threat of climate change. Is it something we can make work for us, in spite of ourselves? Are the costs worth it in the long run? Sixt...

Incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima are often what comes to mind when we think about nuclear energy. Thankfully, events like these actually very rare. So does that mean the risks we associate with atomic power are as bad as we think? How good are we at actually assessing those risks? And can we make things even less risky by removing humans from the equation? That’s how some next generation pro...

The aftermath of SL-1 highlighted a problem that we still haven’t solved, despite decades of searching for a solution: what to do with the waste. Our plans to store nuclear waste inside Yucca Mountain in Nevada fell through. So now what? Can we safely contain these materials? Should the waste be in one location, or many? How do we warn future generations about the dangers these materials pose? *Se...

As firefighters and medical personnel staged operations at SL-1, a plume of radioactive gas silently made its way over the Idaho desert, creeping towards the nearby towns. How much of a risk did the explosion at SL-1 actually pose? And what does radiation actually do to the human body? We are constantly bathing in what’s called background radiation—so where is the line? How much is safe and how mu...

The only three people who really knew what had transpired at SL-1 were dead, and it would take months to determine what likely happened—plenty of time for rumors and gossip to take hold. Was there a love triangle? A fight gone wrong? A murder suicide? A government cover-up? Or was all of this rumor and innuendo simply a distraction from the real problems? And, ultimately, what information could pe...