News from the John W. Kluge Center: Listen Now to the New Library of Congress Podcast: Space on the Page

Listen Now to the New Library of Congress Podcast: Space on the Page

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is pleased to announce the release of “Space on the Page,” a new podcast that explores the universe not with a rocket but through ideas.

In six episodes, hosts David Baron and Lucas Mix will interview authors and scientists who think and write about space exploration and the search for life beyond Earth. Baron and Mix are holders of the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration and Scientific Innovation, as well as researchers and authors on the connection between science and humanity.

In the first three episodes, available today, the subject is Mars and our society’s fascination with the red planet — past, present and future.

The first episode describes the Mars “craze” that struck Earth at the start of the 20^th century, leading humans to run wild with speculation that the red planet might harbor an advanced civilization. Historian of astronomy and affiliate of the Lowell Observatory William Sheehan explains the science that spawned this imaginative idea, and the optical illusion that caused some astronomers to believe Mars was covered with irrigation canals.

In the second episode, Georgetown University biologist Sarah Stewart Johnson joins Baron to explain how new discoveries about Mars, missions like NASA’s Perseverance Rover, and a better understanding of life on Earth have propelled the quest to find microbial life on Mars, and Johnson ponders what the answers might say about life elsewhere in the universe.

In the third episode, science journalist David Whitehouse discusses the dream of sending human missions to Mars, looking at the concrete steps forward being taken by NASA, other space agencies and private entrepreneurs, as well as the many constraints and risks — biological, technological, and social — that must be overcome before we see the first footprint in red Martian soil.

In the next three episodes, which will be released on April 13, Mix brings science fiction writers Nnedi Okorafor, Becky Chambers and John Scalzi into conversation with scientists Betül Kaçar of the University of Wisconsin, Rika Anderson of Carleton College and Frank Rosenzweig of Georgia Tech. Together they examine how the human imagination depicts everything that we anticipate, hope and fear about what is currently unknown.