Shhh, It's Mars

Hey true weirdos at the end of this episode stick around if you want for a little bonus content and conversation Tell somebody today that you think Mars is or was inhabited that you believe in Martians who built canals and Pyramids and maybe even colonized earth when their own planet was facing Environmental collapse and you will get the side eye you'll be labeled a kook and a weirdo But what if I told you that believing in all of that is a proud?

American tradition because it is hey Martian cousins come out come out wherever you are Oh Stuff Humans have been fascinated with the planet Mars since well forever the ancient Babylonians called Mars Nurgle the god of war with side hustles that include it being both the blistering noonday sun and the god of pestilence plagues and catastrophes Hindu mythology god of war ancient Greece and ancient Rome god of war the ancient Chinese Associated Mars with you guessed it war but also grief and murder How about the ancient Egyptians as ever our mysterious pyramid builders rise to the top of the class?

Being the first humans to figure out that the stars were stationary in the night sky The Egyptians theorized that it was the Sun that moved not the stars and The ancient Egyptians were also the first to grasp that those five very bright points of light in the night sky Seemed to move in a very similar way those five glowing dots are what we call Mercury Mars Venus Jupiter and Saturn The Egyptians dubbed Mars the red one a nickname that stuck to this very day even with the earliest most primitive telescopes Astronomers were able to see some of the planet Mars most distinctive features The conclusions they arrived at were far off the mark in a few cases But others wild as they sounded a hundred or more years ago have been confirmed by NASA's Mars rovers In 1867 the astronomer Richard Proctor Created one of the first maps of Mars. He relied on the drawings other astronomers had made of their viewings then he attempted to calculate the length of a Martian day using drawings the data back to 1666 The fact that his final estimate was within tenths of seconds of being correct Is a great argument for human ingenuity and old-school mathematics Procter's vision of the Martian landscape might sound laughable But he was right about a whole lot of that, too Procter stated that though Mars was smaller than Earth Martians had about the same amount of land to explore as we do since water covered significantly less of their planet He said that the Martian seas were comparable to our Mediterranean and Baltic seas He described them as straggling inland oceans The largest seas on Mars could be found at the poles with the Martian South Pole having the most extreme cold Procter described snow at the poles snow that melted and returned with the seasons He claimed that Mars received massive amounts of rain and that heavy cloud cover often blocked our view of the Martian continent and he threw in some fun stuff too like how a Red-Planet's lesser gravity would make a graceful athlete out of even Daniel Lambert Who well, that's a whole story in itself Daniel Lambert was famous in his day for being the largest person in recorded history weighing in at over 700 pounds Lambert wasn't trying for that title and wasn't thrilled about it. He was sensitive about his size. He didn't overeat. He never touched alcohol Unable to find work Lambert became a recluse It was poverty that forced him to turn himself into a one-man freak show a career He suffered through until his sudden death at age 39 Probably wishing he was on Mars where he'd at least be left the hell alone about his weight So all this talk of Martian oceans and rainstorms and heavy clouds sounds quaint and crazy, right?

the wishful thinking of people from a simpler time People who didn't know that Mars is arid and barren and lacking an atmosphere where clouds could perform the rain making magic and then came NASA's Mars Rovers these little wonders of science no bigger than an SUV have been slowly putt-putting along the surface of the Red Planet since 1997 six Rovers have called Mars home with the Opportunity Rover clocking just over 14 years Earth years of service from 2004 to 2018 right now There are two Rovers roving the planet the Curiosity Rover chugging away since 2012 and the new kid in town Perseverance which landed in February 2021. And do you know what these little unmanned?

laboratories have discovered evidence of Mars very watery past It's a frigid desert today But it used to be warmer and wetter and far more hospitable to life as we understand it So Richard Proctor or his ghost gets the last laugh Not that he was alone in his views that Mars boasted a thriving ecosystem the Sardinian Astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli named both the continents and the seas on Mars then in 1877 he peered into his telescope and saw lines or maybe linear structures on the Martian surface He thought they might be channels and using the Italian word for channel Schiaparelli called them canali What the English-speaking world heard was?

Canals and while a channel can be a naturally occurring formation a Canal is something man-made and this is where the idea of a Martian civilization really caught fire It didn't exactly help that Schiaparelli wrote in his own book life on Mars that these canali were actually more like shallow Depressions in the Martian soil that extended in straight lines for more than a thousand miles Because that just sounded like exactly the kind of engineering project any intelligent civilization might pull off and It really didn't help when his fellow astronomers like the American Percival Lowell Enthusiastically jumped aboard the Martians are real train In fact Lowell spent most of his life engaged trying to prove that Schiaparelli's canali were an artifact of intelligent life on Mars and Then there was French astronomer Nicolas Camille Flammarion We'll call him NCF so that I never have to butcher the poor man's name again NCF published his book the planet Mars in 1892 even today it's considered a Masterpiece the paperback English translation goes for a whopping 170 bucks on Amazon NCF drew from three centuries worth of research literature and observations of Mars and Much of what he had to say was the kind of thing that really sold newspapers stuff like Mars is inhabited and The canals are the work of Martian citizens and these Martian people are entirely Dependent on the seasonal melting of polar ice to flood those canals and sustain life This last detail was the critical one because NCF firmly disagreed with any finding that Mars had no Atmosphere pointing to the polar ice caps on Mars as proof these ice caps. He argued Received it during the Martian spring and summer and the resulting meltwater was carefully collected and distributed via the system of Martian canals NCF also had little doubt that we would eventually make contact with our Martian neighbors to skeptics he pointed out that new discoveries always awaited humanity and Usually seemed like impossible magic before becoming reality Look at photography. He said who could have dreamed of capturing an image and holding it He said that with the progress of optics surely someday we'd know the appearance and behavior of these strange Martians Surely someday we would invent a means of communicating with what he called our heavenly neighbors The late 1880s saw the red planet living its first big headlines era in 1877 an astronomer named Asaph Hall had a look through the telescope at the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC and discovered not one but two moons orbiting Mars then in 1890 an astronomer named Edward Emerson Barnard used the telescope at the Lick Observatory Atop Mount Hamilton in California to make detailed studies of the Martian surface The Lick telescope was about to become famous for a discovery even more thrilling See in August 1892 the planet Mars was in opposition Here's what that means all the planets in our solar system orbit the Sun, right?

Well at certain points in those orbits Earth is parked directly between another planet and the Sun which is jackpot for astronomers and stargazers because a planet in Opposition not only appears at its brightest and biggest it stays above the horizon line for most of the night The only planets that are excluded from this party are Venus and Mercury Since they are closer to the Sun than the earth, which of course means they can never be in opposition so it's August 1892 and astronomers have a Fantastic opportunity to study Mars and the telescope at the Lick Observatory Offered seriously advanced optics. It was the largest refracting telescope in the world and as astronomer Barnard focused that Magnificent 36-inch lens on the red planet. He saw the most astounding thing Lights and even more shocking those mysterious lights took the shape of a triangle uproar Now the first rule of science fight club is to not contradict your own Bad-self, which is exactly what some of Barnard's colleagues did They insisted that what Barnard had seen wasn't a signal of any kind But evidence of a forest fire raging on Mars, which was silly Since these were the very same people who argued that Mars had no atmosphere How can there be a forest fire with no atmosphere retort at Barnard nananana boo-boo?

Others argued that the triangle shape was meaningless and proof of nothing and the press was like, yeah, right Why set up lights in a triangular pattern bright enough to be seen millions of miles away If you aren't trying to get someone's attention And there were reports that Barnard had also observed odd shadows and shapes moving about at the southern pole of Mars Since the lit telescope could not detect anything smaller than the Martian canals these were either very large and very strange life-forms or What what what else might it be?

What were those odd shapes and peculiar lights? Signals it was thought a kind of exotic Semaphore staged on the stark white of the Martian polar ice in an apparent attempt to draw attention and speaking of attracting attention This talk of signaling was very casually included in a discussion of an enormous pyramid spotted on Mars Newspapers around the country reported it like this There was a big pyramid apparently of human origin and possibly made for signal purposes a sort of tower from which lights could be thrown and where astronomical instruments could be mounted for the inspection of Earth and Observation of our daily lives and movements. We all have that one You know crazy relative right the one addicted to ancient aliens The one who thinks NASA is engaged in a massive cover-up about the truth of what's really on Mars that one relative who insists that there is documented credible evidence of a massive thermonuclear event in the red planets past in My family that crazy relative is kind of me. So no judgment friends It's just super interesting to trace some of what we now call Conspiracy theories or pure looniness back to the sources and in this case the sources were renowned Astronomers who granted we're making assumptions based on limited data And it's the job of science to forever test and challenge assumptions. That's how we expand our understanding and our knowledge But isn't it fun to rewind and see how far we've come and how much we've circled back Now there were plenty of astronomers who stopped just short of declaring that Mars was populated by an intelligent civilization But the much-esteemed Flammarion our friend NCF he flipped the problem on its head Declaring that the burden of proof now rested on science finding that Mars was not inhabited so compelling was the evidence to the contrary and CF said that all the observations and discoveries about Mars made between 1892 and 1894 Plainly showed that Mars was inhabited end of story What a time to be alive and then it got even more fun Inventor electrician and that all-around mystical and mysterious genius Nikola Tesla entered the chat Tesla the inventor of the wireless telegraph of the alternating electrical current that powers your home Hydroelectric power station and so many other things He doesn't get credit for even though he held at least 300 patents in a couple dozen countries around the world Brilliant as Tesla was he lacked the knack for turning his dreams into dollars a talent that his rival Thomas Edison had in abundance So a little bit of background on the legend Tesla's fascination with our Niagara Falls began when as a child in Croatia He saw a photograph of the natural wonder being a born visionary and genius His first thought was how might all that power be harnessed?

Compare that to his peers who saw Niagara Falls and thought wonder what it would be like to climb inside a barrel and go over the edge Tesla never let go of that childhood enthusiasm in 1884 he emigrated to the US He was 28 years old with four cents to his name and a letter of recommendation from one of Thomas Edison's engineers in Europe Edison agreed to hire Tesla but on the condition that he devote his attention to direct current which Edison championed Tesla agreed But this arrangement only lasted a year the way Tesla sought the future of electricity was hamstrung by the limitations of direct current Electricity transmitted that way could travel no more than a hundred yards sufficient to power a light bulb but completely inadequate to power Tesla's vision of all electricity could be So Tesla traded working for Thomas Edison for a partnership with George Westinghouse. It was a smart move Westinghouse won the contract in 1893 for a hydroelectric power station that would transform the raw energy of Niagara Falls into usable energy to power local industry Backed by big money from big-name investors like WK Vanderbilt JP Morgan The plant was built and operational in just three years and when the switch was flipped in 1896 Power surged from Niagara Falls to the city of Buffalo, New York It was the first and the biggest use of alternating current electricity in the world Now fast forward to January 1901 from an article published in the Richmond Times There are thousands of people living in the world today who do not believe that the planet of Mars is inhabited there are many others who do and some of the leaders in science and foremost men in thought and Invention are members of this last name class Nikola Tesla the inventor of the wireless telegraphy is one of these The story in the Richmond Times Continued as he sat beside his instrument on the hillside in Colorado in the deep silence of that austere Inspiring region where you plant your feet in gold and your head brushes the constellations as he sat there One evening alone his attention Exquisitely alive at that juncture. He was arrested by a faint sound from the receiver three fairy taps One after the other at a fixed interval What man who has ever lived on this earth would not in the Tesla at that moment?

The San Francisco examiner got downright poetic Nikola Tesla has had the first call of the century from a neighboring planet He has communicated with Mars while on Pikes Peak delving into the mysteries of the wireless transmissions of electrical energy The summons was faint But according to Tesla not to be mistaken a new voice from a planet millions of miles removed was spoken over one of the myriad of unwired telephones of the universe and There near the lonely mountain peak in the fathomless Calm of night the voice at last found a listener and world Spoke to world in language strange at first, but sure to be clearer Says Tesla the press and the public ate it up Even if Tesla's fellow engineers and scientists didn't so much Tesla explained it all himself in a February 1901 article. He wrote for the magazine call yours weekly I can never forget the first sensations I Experienced when it dawned upon me that I had observed something possibly of incalculable consequences to mankind I thought as though I were present at the birth of a new knowledge or the revelation of a great truth The feeling is constantly growing on me that I have been the first to hear the greeting of one Planet to another at the present stage of progress That would be no insurmountable obstacle in constructing a machine capable of conveying a message to Mars Nor would there be any great difficulty in recording signals?

Transmitted to us by inhabitants of that planet if they be skilled electricians Heck we're facing a shortage of skilled electricians on earth right now according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Nevermind Mars, but Tesla had a plan He acknowledged the difficulties involved in sending and receiving messages from other planets But declared I have already found a way of doing it What a tremendous start this would make in the world So Tesla's experimental laboratory in Colorado Springs gave him two critical things more space for his high voltage high frequency experiments and Altitude Tesla wanted to see if lower pressure air at high altitude was more conductive than air at sea level and Tesla also understood that it would take an extraordinary Insane amount of power to drive a signal all the way to Mars It would take an unheard of amount of power the kind of power as it happened It could only be generated by the hydro electric plant at Niagara Falls Perfect, right? It's all coming together The poverty was always stalking Tesla. He was unable to pay his bills in Colorado Genius or not. I caught up to him. The lab was torn down in 1904 and the surviving contents were auctioned off on the courthouse steps to satisfy Tesla's debt We'll never know what Tesla might have achieved in his Colorado lab but its destruction did not end the world's fascination with hearing from Mars and He was not the only genius who claimed to be intercepting signals from Mars Guglielmo Marconi aka the father of radio Became the poster boy for communicating with the red planet Marconi was well aware of Tesla's interest in the subject and told a reporter in 1901 that once Tesla had successfully sent a wireless message a thousand miles right here on earth He'd be a little more inclined to consider sending one to Mars So what happened to change Marconi's thinking what turned him into mr. Mars?

That'd be an ancient spiritual deity by the name of Artaxas and an honest-to-god Italian princess named Princess d'Antuni del Drago. Come on. You had to know a weird plot twist was coming in 1906 Princess d'Antuni del Drago was in communication with Artaxas who asked her if she wouldn't mind passing a message along to Guglielmo Marconi The message was basically that Mars was trying to call earth, but no one was picking up Now before you scoff my little skeptic the princess had quite the reputation as a spiritual medium Fame found her when she led a rather sensational Christmas midnight seance at the graveside of her dead husband so impressive for her gifts that she managed to convert Marconi to Spiritualism and you can guess what that meant He was extremely receptive to this supernatural message on behalf of the Martians as for the princess She declared that she herself would travel to Marconi's side for the transmission of this glorious message So now senior Marconi is telling the press about the odd sentences picking up in his transmissions Sounds that seemed to his educated ear to be not random noise, but distinct intelligible messages Sounds that struck him as being like Morse code Sounds Marconi was convinced originated from somewhere in the vast reaches of space in May 1909 a hot-air balloon pilot named Leo Stevens announced that he and a professor from Amherst College named David Todd Intended to take the balloon and sail to the very edge of Earth's atmosphere To better receive the signal that Marconi alleged was coming from Mars The date was set for September 15th Since Mars would be closer to Earth at that time the pair intended to go aloft with oxygen tanks for breathing The most powerful wireless machine available and 10 miles of wire trailing beneath the balloon that 10 miles would be a greater height than any balloon had ever achieved and They just might hear from the Martians a double dip of potential historic greatness Oh, yeah, and Stevens assured the world that he planned to take the professor on a few balloon rides beforehand You know just to get him used to that whole experience You won't be surprised to hear that the Mars balloon voyage hit a snag or two Launch got pushed late October 1909 By this point newspapers all around the world had published the story and poor professor Todd was mortified To find himself linked inextricably to Martians No worries, though Because ultimately the Mars balloon mission didn't get off the ground which probably saved both men's lives and freed Aeronaut Stevens to continue his thrilling career in the skies and professor Todd his dignified career in academics and Listen, even if they could have gotten ten miles high the chances of surviving the trip back Then we're not great and that is being generous Late 1909 saw Harvard astronomer William Henry Pickering proposing the construction of a $100,000 apparatus Consisting of multiple mirrors mounted on a central shaft and lying parallel to the Earth's axis Each mirror would be a quarter of a mile long and the shaft would perform a full rotation every 24 hours Strategic tilting of each mirror would direct a flash of sunlight in the direction of Mars and presumably the Martians would interpret these flashes of lights as the signals they were intended to be and voila or you know something along those lines as To whom might pay for all of this the idea of talking to Mars had so captured the public's imagination that Money poured in one wealthy elderly French woman left an enormous bequest for the task

That's how convinced she was that the noise Guglielmo Marconi detected wasn't mere static but the tappity-tap-tap of a Martian telegraph operator So here's an interesting angle At the very same time that the world press was covering all these esteemed astronomers Along with genius inventors Tesla and Marconi psychics were also getting plenty of attention and not just Princess d'Antuni del Drago's old spirit guide Artaxis an American medium named. Mr. Leyson made three much publicized journeys to the red planet journeys that happened on the astral plane Despite the difficulties in breathing the experience not to mention the extremes of temperature Leyson eventually found himself standing at the very peak of a mountain on Mars There are two kinds of Martians the medium said One type was a hairy giant four times the size of a human with a voice Leyson described as terrifying Second type was even scarier chimpanzee-like with eyes on the sides of their heads and The unsettling ability to walk up the walls like a spider. Oh And instead of a nose these Martians had breathing holes in their cheeks Q our good friend that legendary astronomer flamerio in his book Urania a collection of essays on astronomy and CF rights of Mars and the interview he had with a Martian in a dream The Martian had this to say here. No one eats No one has ever eaten and no one will ever eat The organisms are nourished by simply breathing as do your earthly trees You have arms full of blood your stomachs engorged with food How can you expect with organisms as coarse as these to be able to have?

Lifted thoughts or even clean ideas Okay, Martian out But you're not entirely wrong about us, I guess The weirdness rolled right on into 1928 when a London doctor named Mansfield Robinson Announced that he had a dictaphone recording of the Martian national anthem that he'd given to a psychical research Institution in Kensington, how'd he get it a medium named mrs St. James here on earth and a Martian woman named Kona Ruru Guided his ethereal body on a trip to the Red Planet It was a journey of roughly 35 million miles But worth it to hear that other worldly ballad And if you're thinking what in the National Enquirer craziness is this?

Think again these stories were printed in the Washington Post the Detroit Free Press the Pittsburgh Press to New York Times and Countless other publications big and small all over the world People back then were unafraid of ridicule when talking about Mars and Martians and alien life Were there skeptics? Of course there were and skeptics have a role to play with so many unknowns and maybe even Unknowables we need skeptics to push and challenge us It's part of how we move the knowledge ball down the field But the Mars enthusiasts of the past were spared the wholesale mockery that awaited future generations I mean look at this in 1937 the staff at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City partnered with engineers at now legendary radio station WOR to try and detect radio signals coming from Mars and that entire Experiment was carried by other radio stations all around the country Compare that to today when Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is lucky to get 90 seconds on ABC World News Tonight to talk about finding what he believes are metallic spheres of alien origin in the ocean But let's end with this most excellent and awesome Mars experiment went down at August 1924 Mars was moving into opposition and instead of being a remote 250 million miles from Earth the distance between us and our red neighbor was a much cozier 36 million miles The Secretary of the United States Navy a gentleman named Curtis D Wilbur had a thought If Mars was inhabited by advanced intelligent beings Then surely those beings would be aware that opposition presented the best opportunity for communication and Signal however transmitted would have far less distance to travel So here's what Navy Secretary Wilbur did he sent a telegram with orders to every naval monitoring station in the country Naval radio operators were instructed to keep the lines clear especially during the planetary opposition occurring August 21st through the 24th and to pay particular attention to all Incoming traffic the telegram read Navy desires to cooperate with astronomers who believe it possible that Mars may attempt communication by radio waves with this planet while they are near together Allshore radio stations will especially note in report in the electrical phenomenon of unusual character it was such a big deal that the United States declared a national radio silence day More than a day actually the National Association of Broadcasters agreed that all radio stations were to go Silent for five minutes every hour on the hour from August 21st to August 23rd Radio stations around the world were encouraged to participate as well in the United Kingdom Scientists at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich England also had a group of experts stationed and listening And while the US Navy didn't fess up to hearing anything noteworthy It was a different story in London the New York Times reported that between 1250 and 1 a.m. On August 23rd Sounds were heard that could not be identified Sounds that appeared to originate from a source other than Earth the sounds were described as harsh dots repeating in clusters of four and five intermittently for a total of three minutes Despite their best efforts the British team was unable to interpret any meaning as the signaling

Didn't conform to any known code That's for the rest of the world Apparently only one station complied the Montegrande station in Argentina but unfortunately the Argentinian broadcasters Did not detect the same harsh dots as their British counterparts It was a bust the red planet Serenely continued its orbit swinging farther and farther away from Earth and taking with it the faithful's best hope of making contact and of course the planet Mars had no way of knowing that it would find a new and far less cheerful kind of radio fame in October 1938 When the Orson Welles broadcast the War of the Worlds would trigger a nationwide We now return you to Carl Phillips at Grover's Mill Ladies and gentlemen, my honor ladies and gentlemen, ladies gentlemen here. I am back of a stone wall that joins. Mr Wilmer's garden from here. I get a sweep of the whole scene I'll give you every detail as long as I can talk as long as I can see More state police have arrived. They're throwing up a cordon in front of the pit out 30 of them Wait a minute something's happening I'm shape is rising out of the pit and then they got a small beam of light against a mirror What's that there's a jet of flame springing from the mirror and it leaps right at the imagined men strike some head-on Lord, they're turning in a plane by the woods of Spreading everywhere coming this way now about 20 yards to my right Ladies and gentlemen due to circumstances beyond our control. We are unable to continue the broadcast from Grover's Mill We have a late bulletin from San Diego, California Professor Endel coffer speaking at a dinner of the California Astronomical Society Expressed the opinion that the explosions on Mars are undoubtedly nothing more than severe volcanic disturbances on the surface of the planet We continue now with our piano interlude. Bye-bye friendly Martian cousins and hello Malevolent Martian monsters bent on destroying humanity And here we are today 99 years after the National Radio Day of Silence talking of sending humans to Mars colonizing the Red Planet Mars isn't such a big deal to us. It isn't so mysterious nor so unknown now Even if what we do know about Mars isn't really all that much yet But you don't have to climb into a hot-air balloon or go to an observatory or build your own tower to listen to Mars Thanks to the Mars rovers You can hear the wind blowing over what is or maybe isn't the barren Martian landscape You could loop it and fall asleep each night in your earthly bed to the sounds of what your ancestors used to call our heavenly Music Next time on true weird stuff She always had a smile on her face She was always ready with a giggle or a laugh. She was the sweetest and the nicest she loved movies magazines romance novels But if you got on her nerves You were gone that's on the next true weird stuff So max you and I of course are fascinated by the Mars rovers we talk about it all the time We've listened to all the sound that NASA has released Isn't it really interesting to think that it took that radio broadcast the war of the worlds?

To transform the popular cultural idea of Mars from you know, our friendly intelligent canal building neighbors to monsters here to destroy us Yeah, I mean that but I think that history has proven that the monsters here to destroy us for probably more the reality of the situation if You know True weird stuff from the the SETI Institute. He said if they're here, he said they're awfully polite Yeah, I had no idea about the rich history about discoveries of Mars and thoughts of things coming from Mars and the ideas of You know what? We're on Mars throughout my lifetime. I've always been fascinated with all things space exploration and You know, there will be times that you would see pictures I guess I'm trying to remember which of the probes it went I think it was one of the Viking probes that went past Mars and it looked like it was that it looked like it Was the helmet of one of the one of the Star Wars characters?

You know But it just it just looked that way from space there were certain things that they thought they were seeing that maybe they they really weren't but You and I are the only people I know who on the regular go to the NASA website and see what is going on with These rovers listen to the sounds and see all the exploration. In fact At the time we're recording this the latest one to go there the helicopter Finally has gone out of service. They had a helicopter now. This is the most amazing thing We have a we have a rover there and then they were able to get a helicopter in that thin atmosphere To go up and look around and say well, where do we want the rover to go?

That is amazing It's um, it's actually kind of incredible and and this is going to blow your mind But the telescope at the Big Lick Observatory that we talked about in this episode Is still a major telescope in the world of modern astronomy like that. It's a great big deal now we do we have the Hubble and the Kepler and have we advanced our Our abilities and do we have more advanced optics you bet we do but that telescope atop Mount Hamilton is still an important player our knowledge of The planetary bodies in our solar system is very new but the fascinating thing about Mars To me is the human obsession with it that goes all the way back into I mean my my god like the most ancient human Artifacts we have the most ancient civilizations expressed a fascination with Mars and I love that the Astronomer from hundreds of years ago was able to calculate the length of a Martian day Just using math, right?

But you have to shout out humans, you know, we may be aggressive smelly warlike little monkeys But we do have our moments and that was pretty impressive. Was it not? You know, I just read this morning It's so funny that we're doing this episode I just read this morning about that they believe that by the end of this decade the 2020s that we actually are going to have people on Mars and I've heard NASA people say because they work very closely with the movie The Martian with Matt Damon That if you want an idea of what life is like on Mars, that is probably the best Representation so far that's ever been in the movies of what what the atmosphere and what it's like to survive on that planet It Here's the thing about Mars that we that we are beginning to discover and I do think you know My husband just rolls his eyes at me all the time I do think that more is known about Mars than has been released to the public I think that there is some pretty Significant evidence to suggest that Mars once was a vibrant Watery green planet whether or not it supported intelligent life I don't know but the evidence is there to back up the idea that Mars was once a very different world and There's also some very compelling And it has to do with Decaying the half-life and the decaying radioactive isotopes that have been detected on Mars There's some compelling evidence for a strange anomalous thermonuclear event on the planet of Mars in the past so that there I thought about including that in the episode, but the this it was such a headache inducing eye-crossing mind-bending mouthful of Chemistry that I just thought it would be too hard It was too it was so hard for me to understand much less explain And I thought it might really like, you know, send you driving off the road to hear it But but there is evidence to suggest that something happened on that planet in the past Now a conspiracy alien loving nutcase like I don't know me might argue that Yeah, they had um, they had a they they were an intelligent thriving advanced civilization and they destroyed themselves With a nuclear event and I will refresh your memory that the true weird stuff episode we did called the boy from Mars, right?

the Russian child Boriska Kipriyanovich at age 7 told his family that he was Reincarnated from Mars and that a nuclear a war between two factions Resulted in a nuclear event that basically wiped out most of the population. Do you remember? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah so isn't it interesting when I tell you that there is some compelling evidence and and and this is kind of what that would sound like the concentration of this unpronounceable Epitope isotope in the Martian atmosphere and this abundance and the flux and based on pattern of thorium and radioactive potassium gamma radiation The explosions were centered in the northern plains of Mars near the Cydonian Mensa How much of that did you want in the episode?

The evidence is there so interesting like here's an example what I mean by the that poor man rolls his eyes at me my husband So We're watching the news the other day and he goes, you know what? I don't get they land at that craft on Mars and yeah, it's tipped over on its side, but it's still functional Why haven't they released the one that's tipped on its side is on the moon. I'm sorry on the moon. I'm sorry max Thank you. So we're watching the news and he goes they landed it on the moon. It's tipped over on its side It's still functional. How come we haven't seen any pictures and I said without even looking up from what I was doing I said because maybe they don't want you to see what's on the moon and he goes. Oh, here we go again I'm not saying that there are golf, you know 55 plus golf club communities for retired aliens on the moon I'm just saying that and and if you want to hear some fun moon Conspiracies go back to the moonstruck episode of true weird stuff where we talk about like Wow For 50 years We weren't allowed to go to the moon and all of a sudden we're all going to the moon as fast and as hard as we Can and now we've got this advanced craft and we don't have any pictures and Kev goes. Well, maybe the cameras broken I was like, yeah, babe, right?

Okay, like we're gonna spend a gazillion dollars building an unmanned autonomous robotic craft that we're gonna send to the moon But we're only gonna have one camera on it Yeah I've not believe in that So this is how this is how you end up like being like called names and made fun of but but you know You can't help but ask the court. Oh really? So we we sent this vehicle to the moon, but with only just the one What's amazing to me is of all these people that have been doing all these expeditions to the moon many have been unsuccessful and when you think that we have sent Successfully all of these rovers up to Mars now We've had our hiccups along the way But we've sent all these rovers on Mars that have landed and I don't know if you've ever seen how they go about landing But it's like it's like it's like a big beach ball And it comes down and that's how it ends up on there and the fact that these rovers have not only worked But they have worked far longer than they ever expected most of them You know, it's another shout out for humanity for all of our smelly aggressive nastiness The Voyager probes far outlived their proposed Expiration date the Rovers have been an astonishing success If you listen to the moonstruck episode, one of the theories we talked about is this idea that?

after Apollo The the governments of Earth were told by some alien race. Okay, just go it's a theory just go with it for a second That we were banned humanity was banned from the moon for 50 years and I guess it's just like the wackiest coincidence That and this this theory was floated like in the 1970s. Okay, so this has been around for a long long time. I Guess it's just the wildest coincidence that countries around the world began Sending missions and building missions in anticipation of returning to the moon exactly, you know say it with me max 50 years later Meanwhile, we've got we've got a little like robotic Jeeps Trundling across the surface of Mars. It's kind of amazing Like it's a shame that humanity is so awful because we have done round of applause. We have done some pretty cool stuff Yes, you know despite our awfulness for me what's fascinating about our our human history with Mars is Is You can tell like it's a giant game of remember the game telephone, right?

Like I whisper a word in your ear and by the time that goes around the circle, it's completely separate from what it was, right? So Giovanni Schiaparelli who is a major figure in astronomy and science His that one error in translation canali canals That right there and for an alien loving girl like myself That's like one of those like oh, I love that. I don't love that because that's the game of telephone that's where you can see where the idea that Those structures that were visible on the surface of Mars were made by an intelligent race and not natural forces Agree or disagree that that's where the idea of the Martian canals really. Oh Yeah, because you know there was a there was a period of time that we would hear about that all the time There were the there were the giant canals And so the idea was yes, and those canals prove that there is water on Mars. And so You know, that was something that we heard over and over through the course of time until that was Dispelled but it is interesting that now after we have landed on Mars that we've been able to see that there was Evidence that there was water there at one time And an atmosphere and all you know all of the things that we Understand to be necessary to sustain life. Of course, we only We we can't maybe fathom life that isn't carbon-based, you know life that doesn't Depend on oxygen and water, but again, I'll remind you that in the episode the boy from Mars Boriska Kipriyanovich said that we were confused that Martians did not breathe oxygen and in fact Had a difficult time with Earth's atmosphere because the heavy concentration of oxygen caused their bodies to age Um, can I do a little sidebar that you're able to say his name with such ease and no problems whatsoever Just off the top of your head. I just wanted to I just wanted to bring that up I've been saying it so much, but I love what I love about that what I love about the Mars all the like science and pop culture around Mars is That it you get like these weird kind of Independent little confirmations here and there from other Spooky corners, right? So here we have this Russian kid who claims he's reincarnated and that he lived as a pilot on the planet Mars when it had an atmosphere and was populated and He is telling you some very interesting things about Martian geography Martian biology and It it dovetails with what these astronomers were also theorizing Back in the day and some of what we're learning now from the Mars rover program And if you want to dispel him, of course, you can listen to the episode if you want to dispel him He was saying some very complicated scientific things. What at the age of eight Seven seven, so I mean You know, I mean for a child to be able to you could say, okay a child's lion But to be able to also back it up with all of this very specific correct scientific information. I mean, that's pretty crazy You don't have to like you don't have to believe anything You can be a person who is like I'm from the show me state and you only believe like the material reality That's right in front of you. That's cool. You can do that. You do you boo?

but for me, what's interesting is Pulling all of these threads together and then holding it up and looking at it Like I sort of I'm a I'm a thwarted Anthropologist, that's what I thought I was gonna be when I grew up, right? So I'm really fascinated by the ways that we accumulate knowledge and the ways that we build our beliefs and Mars is such a great example of that because we can go all The way back in time I mean ancient Babylonia go far as far back as when humans were scratching symbols on to damp clay Go all the way back. There's Mars and come all the way forward Mars and on that journey You'll see the way that this discovery led to that Fantastical set of beliefs or conspiracy theories and then this discovery was confirmed by that scientific finding and This look at the planet Mars was altered ever so slightly as the optics became better But there's a through line in all of it That that we can trace all the way back to our most distant ancestors And that is this very human impulse to tilt our heads back and look up into the sky and ask the question What is that what am I who are we does this mean something am I alone?

Like people have been looking up in the night sky and wondering if there were others looking back For millennia, that's pretty cool What's also cool is people took the risks of being ridiculed in order to try to find that out You know, I mean, I mean anybody who's done anything that was Scientific that was revolutionary was ridiculed when they did it You know that the first people that said the earth was round. They were ridiculed. I think they're still being ridiculed. I'm not 100% sure on that, but it's the idea that people that have the combination of You know the intellect that goes with it and then the willingness to go ahead and take a chance and say if we take this Chance and we go out here and try to see if this theory is true We may learn something and that's that's the only way anything gets done Well, and one of the cool things about the scientists of the olden days, right? So let's look at Flamingo, I feel like I'm cosplaying Pepe Le Pew But um, so this is one of the leading astronomers in human history and He was a science he was a scientist and he was a poet and he was an artist He was all of those things because once upon a time We didn't have such Impermeable boundaries between science and art science and mysticism science and literature science and the imagination and flammable on In his book your urania, that's a book of essays where he's Using his knowledge and his enormous body of research and work to Write in very beautiful moving poetic terms about what it means to be human in the grand sweep of the cosmos okay, and in that book, so he had a dream that a Martian came to him in his dream and Communicate with him and he wrote about it in the essay and we played a sample of it here And we want to shout out our very own producer. Kary Bowser for stepping up to be a Martian And and people received that book and It was considered, you know, this is a great book by a great scientific mind. I Want you to imagine today?

Poor Avi Loeb at Harvard gets roasted, you know by skeptics and debunkers and Gets the side-eye for normal regular people that are like what the what? Why how about you stop spending money looking for outer space balls in the ocean and spend the money? Oh, you know that kind of thing. I want you to imagine a leading top scientist today Writing a book where they share an interview they have with an alien in a dream and not being laughed right out of the box Right off the Jimmy Kimmel show. All right So it's not just that um It's not just that we know things now that we didn't know then it's that we you know, we're just so rigid Our hierarchies are so rigid our scientists have to be scientists and nothing else and our artists have to be artists and nothing else Which is why you get it. It's an interesting when you look at like Tom DeLonge from blink-182 He formed something called to the Stars Academy and he's really mobbed up in in ufology and the whole UAP Phenomenon and a lot of people Think that Tom DeLonge is like a CIA plant that he's part of Seriously, like Tom DeLonge is part of this massive government Psyop disinfo campaign because he's Tom DeLonge and he brought a lot of people to the UFO UAP Conversation who were otherwise just sort of kind of on the fringes of it He's a huge. He's a rock star. Literally a rock star a literal rock star and he is very Wired into all the big names in the current UFO UAP Conversation Lou Elizondo David Grush Okay, and right and so the the weaponized podcast guys Jeremy Corbell and the journalist George Knapp who we've quoted a time or two on true weird stuff. So You know Except for a guy like Tom DeLonge who's a rock star coming into the science part of it We don't really allow that Cross-pollination and even DeLonge is Ripped for any time, you know, he gets a little close to something to science. He's ripped for what is DeLonge?

No, it's just rock star. So we've changed as a people but Mars As much as we know about it now We don't know very much at all And if you think about it, we don't really know that much more than they did back in 1924 99 years ago When the entire country went silent every radio station every naval monitoring station went silent For five minutes at the top of every hour to listen for Martians Do we well we do I mean because of the Rovers?

We have a little bit of a sense of what's going on on some parts of the planet You know, I mean we we haven't even scratched the surface of scratch in the surface of what all is going on on that planet I mean even with the the information that we're getting back from some of the Rovers that we've had there We were only just getting some of that information So there is so much that's still unknown about it and it's exciting to think that we're you know Still making plans to want to explore some of that stuff It is and it's exciting What's really exciting is it probably will happen in our lifetime where we're sending people there despite the fact that it's Is it 35 million miles something and it's furthest? Yeah. Yeah, so it's it's it's far away And it takes a lot of time to get there. But if you if you have any interest in Mars really Rent the Martian or you know stream it, you know because it's it's fascinating I like taking I have an app on my phone called Skyview And what's got you does is it figures out where on the planet you are?

Based I have it too. I love it. And so I will put that up in the sky and I am like there's Mars and there's Saturn and there's such-and-such and I just feel like I look up there and the thing That's really interesting is you look at it and you realize we have Rovers Rolling around on that planet that we're guiding around from here on earth It's astonishing to think about and the thing that it does is it makes you feel small But at the same time it's exciting because you realize you're alive and you're here and you're a part of it And so that gets me excited about it. And you know, I'm just interested in it as an aside I'm not a scientist, but I can still get all the feels from from that, you know It's thrilling to be like a tiny human floating around on this watery blue dot and other tiny humans are Capable of driving little remote-control cars across Mars and in our lifetime Some of them will walk on that planet. Yeah. Yes, that's exciting and it's also Fascinating when you pinpoint the exact moment Where something that was wonderful becomes a monster and we can shout out. Mr. Orson Welles for that Because prior to War of the Worlds, there was no idea that the Martians would be hostile It was believed that they couldn't wait to meet us Form a friendship and an alliance and The War of the Worlds and did all that so Max and I our day job, you know, we're radio professionals We're broadcast radio professionals And what was extra fun about this episode for us was all of the ways that broadcast radio intercepted with this story the NAB Calling for a national radio day of silence Can you even imagine that happening today and never would and by the way that guy Marconi that we're talking about here He's the one that award his name for that. We've been nominated for ten times, but never one that that's the guy We will never will never get it I'll tell you why we'll never win it and and this is not sour grapes. We are we've been independent since 2017 There's no one to nominate us. Yeah, you have to be nominated by like your company and We are not our company is so small that we are not like official members of the National Association of Broadcasters It's expensive. We can't afford it and it doesn't we like there's no we can't do it It doesn't make any sense for us to be NAB members. We're such a little company. So We were nominated ten times and lost ten times. It's a pretty big deal to be nominated I mean, I've lost all the biggest names in radio But we'll never be nominated again and we'll never win it and I just want to say mr. Marconi I know how to say your first name It's Guglielmo and I have been in the radio business which you know You invent it you invent it my man senior and I've spent my entire radio career listening to chuckleheads calling you Guglielmo Guglielmo Guglielmo and I'm like, you know, you mofos can't even say the man's name. We'll never get the award It's Guglielmo Marconi. And hey, did you love the fact that he got persuaded by an ancient?

Spiritual deity named Artaxis to talk to Mars. Did you not love all of the like the psychic who do? Oh, yeah, that was in this story Yeah, so Let me just say because y'all can't I can't see you roll your eyes at me We don't know everything that they know about Mars. There's a lot that is not being released Do you doubt that? Do you really think that NASA is releasing everything? I don't know everything. No, I'm Convinced we don't know everything And do you really think that they sent that unmanned craft to the moon with one camera?

And that that one and that it tipped over on its side it exactly the place where that one camera was located You really believe that because if you do I got some real estate to sell you Now be with us next week for true weird stuff. We're gonna tell you the story of a woman who Gosh, she was just the sweetest thing. She would just smile for everybody never had a bad day Part of the reason she never had a bad day was if you got on her nerves she killed you and got and Mostly got away with it for a really long time We're gonna call on our old school back in the day radio drama roots and bring you a very special Episode of true weird stuff. We'll see you next time And if you listen to us on Apple podcast hit the plus button in the top right corner And now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered and we really appreciate it If you subscribe rate and review true weird stuff hit our website true weird stuff Calm for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content Everything true weird is waiting for you at true weird stuff And follow true weird stuff on Instagram and Twitter true weird stuff is a Now! Media production Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia The show is written and hosted by me Sheri Lynch along with my deeply weird director Max Sweden our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr Original graphics by Kevin Nash original artworks by Olivia Axland true weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and 2024 Now! Media all rights reserved all wrongs remembered