Hi everyone and welcome back to that UFO podcast. My guest today is a science reporter interested in space, dinosaurs, ancient cultures, cool rocks and lying motionless on couches. She is a contributor to the New York Times, Wired and Nat Geo. Among others, she writes the abstract column for 404 media and she lives with humans and felines in Ithaca, New York. I'd like to welcome to the podcast, Becky Ferreira. Becky, welcome.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. Good to have you on. And any slander within that bio is all from Becky's book that we're here to discuss. So I've not just said she's lazy and likes lying about on couches, but who doesn't? So yeah, Becky, your book, first contact the story of our obsession with aliens. You've got your copy there. I've got my copy here.

There you go, nice. All right. And if you're on the audio, that was a total waste of time holding

those up. But everyone on YouTube got to see it. But yeah, we've got a good hour here to chat about the

book. You're a science writer. As a total layman, as I am with most things in life, what's a

science writer, obvious as that may

sound? Oh yeah, just it's trying to just communicate the kind of findings that are coming out

of the scientific sphere in research or in experimentation and just trying to break them down. And,

you know, oftentimes they're like very, you know, filled with this scientific vernacular that can be hard to parse.

So I see my role as trying to help the public understand some of these findings, what their

implications are, and also just kind of bring them into the debates that go on in science.

I think that's really important to always be, most scientific studies or topics are not monolithic in that there's a lot of

argument on a lot of things so I like to be able to remind people that you know it's a very

bombastic kind of sphere a lot of the time so bring them into the arguments that are happening in

that sphere so that's sort of what I see my role in and you know science know, science writers, science reporters, they have their own beats. I've been doing the search for life beat for about 10 or 15 years now and just astronomy in general for a long time. So I'm really excited to get into that with you. What's your background in speciality? Do you have one? Is astronomy you've just mentioned there? I I did I well I tried to be an astronomer but I was very bad at data entry and calculus which is a kind of like a big you know that's a bottomback for people try to go in there yeah but actually you know I always I always actually kind of my main passion was wanting to be a science fiction writer one day I was always interested in topic. So I ended up doing an English degree in a creative writing MFA to get into more of that track.

And I think it worked out really well because that's much more my skill set. And it also means that I can kind of

parachute down into everybody's unique little world and just kind of take their topics and write about them and you don't have to

ever choose, right? It's a way to kind of see all of these cool stories from like stories about

dinosaurs to stories about space. So, yeah, I started that way and been reporting for about 15

years in those different beats and just it's a wonderful job and a great, you know,

gives you a rosy view of humanity a lot of the time

because there's so much clever and ingenuity going on all over the place.

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