Listening For Life: Seth Shostak on The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Alien Theorists Theorizing

Big Theory Podcasts

True Crime, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2023

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Seth claims to have developed an interest in extraterrestrial life at the tender age of ten, when he first picked up a book about the Solar System. This innocent beginning eventually led to a degree in radio astronomy, and now, as Senior Astronomer, Seth is an enthusiastic participant in the Institute’s SETI observing programs.

In addition, Seth is keen on outreach activities: interesting the public – and especially young people – in science in general, and astrobiology in particular. He’s co-authored a college textbook on astrobiology, and has written three trade books on SETI. In addition, he’s published more than 400 popular articles on science including regular contributions to NBC News MACH, gives many dozens of talks annually, and is the host of the SETI Institute’s weekly science radio show, “Big Picture Science."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Alien Theorist Theorizing. We got a special interview episode. Again, this
0:29.8	week I'm Braden. I'm Zell. I'm Dan. And I'm Andrew. And this time we've got senior
0:38.0	steady astronomer superstar Seth Shostak, author astronomer extraordinaire. And we're
0:44.9	super excited to have him here this case file I suppose. I'm gushing like I'm freaking
0:51.2	out because I'm super excited to have you down talks about you all the time.
0:55.4	Yes, that's it. Dan needs help. Yeah. That's been brought up. He's got a green screen behind
1:01.9	to cover up all your pictures behind it. It's all it's all Shostak memorabilia back there. Yeah.
1:10.0	Yeah. I remember reading your book a couple of years ago, the confessions of Alien Hunter
1:17.6	book. And just a great, great read all around just kind of get in. I think it's a wonderful
1:23.1	looking into radio astronomy and these things. And it's kind of just right up our alley looking
1:27.5	up these things. And we're just like, I'm super excited. I'm pumped. Yeah. Now Seth, for people
1:33.9	who are not familiar with you, I mean, this is not your, this has not been your lifelong
1:39.6	job. Like you've had many jobs in the past. So how did you get into steady and searching for
1:44.6	signs of other intelligent extraterrestrial life? Well, you're right about my checkered past.
1:52.2	I've had many different jobs in many different fields, actually. That's because I can't
1:57.2	quite decide on what it is that I find interesting. But as far as setty goes,
2:03.2	you know, I, yeah, I was interested in aliens. I mean, even as a grad student, I was using antennas
2:09.8	that could be used to pick up alien broadcast. So that, you know, that was already that already
2:15.2	led to an interest. But as far as more, yeah, as far as more recent events go, I guess I got
2:25.6	interested in this when I moved to California. That was in 1988 after living in Europe for a while.
2:31.9	That's a good year. And that's a good year in 1988. Was it, are you referring to, you know,
2:38.0	Vino or just being a good year because you were born that year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
	...

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