Wild Thing
Episodes
Arik Kershenbaum on the Evolution of Aliens—S2 Bonus Interview
09 Jun 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interview! When we imagine life on other planets, it's often the stuff of science fiction. But in his book, zoolo...
Seth Shostak and SETI—S2 Bonus Interview
26 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! Seth Shostak is the chief astronomer at the SETI Institute and we’ll hear from him about SETI's mis...
Making Sense of MUFON—S2 Bonus Interview
12 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! Rob Swiatek introduces us to MUFON—the Mutual UFO Network—whose mission is to collect reports of ...
Silvano Colombano Wonders If We're Doing It Wrong—S2 Bonus Interview
28 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! Silvano Colombano, a long-time NASA scientist, argues that the search for extraterrestrial life makes...
Aliens and Art with Frank Buffalo Hyde—S2 Bonus Interview
14 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! UFOs, aliens, other-worldly beings—all have appeared in art over the centuries (including, possibly...
Sara Seager Explains Exoplanets—S2 Bonus Interview
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! While we hypothesized about exoplanets for years, it wasn't until recently that we could confirm thei...
Abel Méndez Talks About the Arecibo Telescope—S2 Bonus Interview
17 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! 2020 - already not a great year - was made worse for astronomers when the Arecibo Telescope collapsed...
"Ancient Aliens" with David Anderson—S2 Bonus Interview
03 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! David Anderson likes the idea of aliens but he’s not a big fan of the TV show Ancient Aliens. The a...
Sarah Stewart Johnson Marvels at Mars—S2 Bonus Interview
17 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! Sarah Stewart Johnson is a planetary scientist who has worked on several Mars missions and is also th...
Talking About Aliens with Neil deGrasse Tyson—S2 Bonus Interview
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gives his perspective on the rare earth hypothesis, the difficulty...
A Conversation with Joe Scott—S2 Bonus Interview
21 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! In a wide-ranging conversation, Joe Scott, (host of the popular YouTube series Answers With Joe) and ...
Life on Venus?—S2 Bonus Interview
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! In September 2020, just days before this podcast launched, scientists announced that they might have ...
Letters From Listeners—S1 Bonus
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is rereleasing its bonus episodes! In Ep. 2 of Wild Thing, I mentioned that people went crazy about the gorilla. They even wrote songs abou...
The Saucy Side of Sasquatch—S1 Bonus Interview
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
**THIS EPISODE CONTAINS EXPLICIT MATERIAL**Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! We talk to Virginia Wade, author of a series of Bigfoot er...
Revisiting Harry & the Hendersons—S1 Bonus Interview
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! We hear from William Dear—director of "Harry & the Hendersons"—about how he tried to capture ...
Remembering Jeff Meldrum—S1 Bonus Interview
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Talking with Bob Gimlin—S1 Bonus Interview
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing is re-releasing its bonus interviews! Hear an extended conversation with Bob Gimlin, half of the famous duo that shot the Patterson-Gimlin ...
In Memory of Peter Byrne—S1 Bonus Interview
15 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 tr...
S3 E9: An Atomic Future
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 tarnis...
S3 E8: Risky Business
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima are often what comes to mind when we think about nuclear energy. Thankfully, events like these actually very ra...
S3 E7: Half-Life
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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. Ou...
S3 E6: You Look Radiant
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As firefighters and medical personnel staged operations at SL-1, a plume of radioactive gas silently made its way over the Idaho desert, creeping towa...
S3 E5: Trust Issues
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ti...
S3 E4: Chain Reaction
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Two of the men working the reactor that night had personal problems. They hated each other. They fought with their bosses. And those problems could ea...
S3 E3: A New(clear) Hope
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The horrifying devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved the destructive capabilities of nuclear power. But, in the aftermath of World War II, we s...
S3 E2: Out Of Little Things
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How did we figure out that such a tiny particle—an atom—held all that power? For that matter, what is an atom? A primer on the basics of atomic en...
S3 E1: Close To Home
17 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Two dead men. One man missing. A hole blown in the side of the reactor. A cloud of radioactive gas so hot, it was off the charts. What happened with t...
S3 Wild Thing: Going Nuclear Trailer
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Back for its third season, Wild Thing uses science, history and culture to probe the realities of nuclear energy today, while analyzing our own fascin...
S2 E10: The Truth Is Out There
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
'Oumuamua is long gone—out of sight and almost impossible to reach. The excitement over it generated endless fascination about what (and who) might ...
S2 E9: You Gotta Have Faith
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our views on aliens can often be uplifting, offering a glimpse of a better, technologically-bright future, or a glimmer of hope about our ability to s...
S2 E8: Popular Science (Fiction)
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
American culture is saturated with extraterrestrial and UFO references—and we still can’t get enough. Hollywood has raked in billions on alien-the...
S2 E7: E.T. Phone Home
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been broadcasting our presence for about 85 years now, with radio, television, and radar, essentially spamming space with all kinds of message...
S2 E6: Hear No Aliens, See No Aliens
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
To really look for intelligent extraterrestrial life, say scientists, we have to look way far out into space. A new set of initiatives—the Breakthro...
S2 E5: Independence Day
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2017, the nation’s prominent newspapers published outlandish-sounding stories about a secret UFO program run by the Pentagon. We talk to retired ...
S2 E4: Roswell
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For all the people who think there’s life somewhere out there in space, there are also those who think the best place to look for it is closer to ho...
S2 E3: Doing The Math
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What’s the actual likelihood of extraterrestrial life? Especially intelligent life? 60 years ago, astronomer Frank Drake took a crack at calculating...
S2 E2: What Is Life?
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We’re surrounded by life here on Earth—and given how huge the galaxy is, it’s got to be out there on other planets, too, right? But where to loo...
S2 E1: Out Of This World
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
'Oumuamua almost slipped past Earth before an astronomer caught sight of this weird object. What was it? Some scientists thought it was just a comet; ...
S2: Wild Thing: Space Invaders Trailer
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Back for its second season, Wild Thing: Space Invaders turns our eyes skyward in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Coming September 17, 20...
S1 E9: Why We Want To Believe
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Bigfoot researchers remain optimistic that Sasquatch is out there; that the creature will one day be found. Why? Why do people continue to believe? We...
S1 E8: $a$quatch
27 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Chances are, you’ve already seen Bigfoot. On pizza boxes, advertising jerky, drinking beer, driving monster trucks. There are a lot of people who re...
S1 E7: Taboo
20 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Bigfoot can be tongue-in-cheek fun - but what happens if you take it seriously? There are the people who’ve risked their professional careers and pe...
S1 E6: Bump In The Night
13 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Tired of waiting around for other people to find Bigfoot, Laura goes into the woods (with some experts). This particular outing is led by Cindy Caddel...
S1 E5: A-C-G-T Spells B-G-F-T
06 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Everywhere you go, you leave bits of yourself behind - and Bigfoot would no different. But now, those DNA droppings are easier than ever to analyze, m...
S1 E4: Eyewitness
30 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A Bigfoot sighting can apparently change your life and even lead to obsession. Thousands of people claim to have laid eyes on Sasquatch over the past ...
S1 E3: The Evidence
16 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Let’s look at the evidence. There are footprints and sounds, grainy pictures, and the notorious Patterson-Gimlin film—that shaky 1967 video of a b...
S1 E2: Distant Relatives or Kissing Cousins?
09 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Just what is Bigfoot? Descendant of ancient apes? Close human ancestor? Evolution might hold the answer to this question. Homo sapiens may rule the pl...
S1 E1: Grover
02 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Krantz is a veteran public radio editor and producer. So how did she end up in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, eyeballing some giant ground ...
Wild Thing Trailer
30 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Thing, a new podcast about our collective fascination with Bigfoot - even if we're not sure it exists. Coming October 2.