10 Regular Things We Should All Stop Mistaking For Aliens
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David Christopher Bell
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Alex Schmidt
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- February 24, 2020
We may find evidence of alien life someday. That would be amazing right? It'd be great and exciting and maybe terrifying. But here's the thing about that: you won't properly appreciate that evidence if your head is full of Area 51 junk and Roswell nonsense and a ludicrous belief that octopuses come from outer space. So on this week's episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians & alien comedy experts David Christopher Bell (Gamefully Unemployed, "Fox Mulder Is A Maniac") and Moujan Zolfaghari (Mission To Zyxx, 'At Home With Amy Sedaris'). They're digging into the most common lazy media tropes, frustrating hoaxes, and generally confusing myths about aliens. So throw on some headphones, increase your media literacy, and be ready to spot the REAL signs of extraterrestrials, if and when we ever get them.
Footnotes:
Gamefully Unemployed on Patreon
"Fox Mulder Is A Maniac" -- Episode 1
At Home With Amy Sedaris (TruTV) featuring Moujan Zolfaghari this coming season
10 people you probably didn't know were in The X-Files (Den Of Geek)
The secret history of Area 51, explained by an expert (Vox)
Science Behind the Fiction: Can we believe the Area 51 witness or was he a liar? (SyFy)
Fresh evidence emerges for superheavy element 115 (New Scientist)
Google Books version of UFOs, Chemtrails, and Aliens: What Science Says by Donald R. Prothero & Timothy D. Callahan -- page 58 covers discrediting of Bob Lazar
H.G. Wells's "Man Of The Year Million" (Boing Boing)
Guide to the Betty and Barney Hill Papers, 1961-2006 (University of New Hampshire)
In 1947, A High-Altitude Balloon Crash Landed in Roswell. The Aliens Never Left (Smithsonian)
Gary Powers: The U-2 spy pilot the US did not love (BBC)
6 Idiotic Stories About Aliens The News Keeps Regurgitating (Cracked)
Apollo astronauts left their poop on the moon. We gotta go back for that shit. (Vox)
Fish-shaped rock swims into NASA photo from Mars (Cnet)
'Thigh bone' on Mars? NASA explains an unusual find (Cnet)
Mars rover spies mysterious 'jelly doughnut' rock (Cnet)
Why the Curiosity Rover Stopped Singing 'Happy Birthday' to Itself (The Atlantic)
It's Still Not Aliens: 'Mars Bug' Claim Could Damage the Search for Life (Space.com)
NASA cover-up? Curiosity rover images appear to show metal object on Mars (The Houston Chronicle) -- and then here's the Metabunk.org debunking of that story
Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell Dies at Age 85 (NASA)
We're 'Well On Our Way' to Discovering Alien Life, NASA Chief Says (Space.com) -- but the body of the story says this: "None of these observations guarantee that life exists, or ever existed, on Mars, but they do increase the probability, Bridenstine stressed."
Trump got a briefing on UFOs, but said he doesn't 'particularly' believe in them (USA Today)
Amy Klobuchar Might Tell Us About UFOs (Gizmodo)
2015 article in the Conway Daily Sun: "Clinton promises to investigate UFOs"
Octopus Arms Are Capable of Making Decisions Without Input From Their Brains (ScienceAlert)
Outlandish theories that aliens built the pyramids are rooted in racism (Quartz Africa)
The Mummy Speaks! Hear Sounds From the Voice of an Ancient Egyptian Priest (The New York Times)
The World's Oldest Papyrus and What It Can Tell Us About the Great Pyramids (Smithsonian)
Crop Circles: The Art of the Hoax (Smithsonian)
How an Alien Autopsy Hoax Captured the World's Imagination for a Decade (TIME)
