Podcast: Play in new window | Download
It’s the best in weird news, anomalistics, and all things unusual… dished up and served hot-and-ready for your approval! Welcome to another week among the weird, here on the Gralien Report Podcast:
The Gralien Report Podcast for February 7, 2012 (Click here to launch player)
The various ongoing SETI projects, inter-species communication, and a host of strange studies and scientific anomalies are examined on this week’s edition of the program, all seeking to better understand not just our place in the universe, but also what role communication plays in all of it. Additionally, we examine the careful separation between science fiction and the future of science fact, with special relevance to the collected works of American sci-fi author H.P. Lovecraft during hour two. And of course, what edition of the program would be complete without show notes to follow along to as well?
Could brain activity one day be transformed into speech?
Information about the EchoStar 11 Satellite
Did the EchoStar 11 Satellite film a UFO?
Popular Mechanics takes on the Millennium Falcon
Russian drill hole into sub-arctic lake At the Mountains of Madness
How plants warn each other of danger
SETI Disclosure: Have We Received a Message at Aricebo?
Merlin was no wizard… HE WAS AN ALIEN!
A Modern Classic: The Hanks Brothers spoof trailer for “The Happening”
by 
Great episode, gentlemen! I’ve been a fan of H P Lovecraft since I was a boy of 14, and he’s been a considerable influence on my own writing ever since. Even though his philosophy of “cosmicism” (the idea that we live in a universe which is, at best, indifferent to our presence, and at worst actively hostile to it) is bleak to say the least, I can’t help thinking that that’s the way it really is.
Also, given that all signs of our civilisation would vanish in a million years or so, were we to be wiped out by some sudden catastrophe, I find it quite plausible that the Earth might have been home to other intelligent beings in the distant geological past (I’m waiting for someone to discover Pnakotus (or something similar) in the Australian desert!)
And when we eventually crack the secret of rapid interstellar travel and start exploring the galaxy, I think we’re going to find some pretty terrifying things out there. Much as I love Star Trek, I think it’s going to be much more Lovecraft and Ridley Scott than Gene Roddenberry! In fact, I sometimes wonder whether our first starship crews will return insane, much as they do in Caitlin Kiernan’s fine novella “The Dry Salvages”, which I heartily recommend, if you haven’t read it already.