Look up at the sky next time you're outside in a dark place and try to find the

constellation in Dramada. No shame if you don't know where it is, I used an app

called Starwalk to find it. At the far northern reaches of the constellation is a

star called Lambda and Dramada. Any aliens cruising near it today, aliens who

happen to have their radio transmitter tuned to just the right spot would

perhaps pick up an unusual sound. Adolf Hitler announcing the opening of the

1936 Olympic Games.

It's been 84 years since that happened so the transmission of that broadcast one

of the very first on this planet would have traveled 84 light years well

outside our own solar system. That 1936 broadcast was one of a trickle that

quickly grew into a waterfall of radio and television signals rippling out

from Earth into the universe over the next few decades. So an extraterrestrial

civilization in the right place at the right time with the right technology might

perhaps know that we're here. But those are incidental our direct messages to

potential alien contacts at least the official ones have been few and far

between. Because what would we say to them? Who speaks for us as a planet and

are we sure we want to be yelling into the void?

I'm Laura Krants and this is Wild Thing Space Invaders a series about the search

for extraterrestrial life where we're looking what we're looking for and why we

hope we're not alone.

So to repeat that question are we sure we want to be yelling into the void?

That's been a point of debate for some time now. People within the

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