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- [00:00]
John Randle
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- [01:56]
Tommy Mischke
I have a science writer here with me and author named David Barron who has written an extraordinary book called the Martians the True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn of the Century America. This is a story I was unfamiliar with. I'm always intrigued when I read about something in the relatively recent past here in my own country that has escaped my attention entirely. Something that went on for years and had quite a bit of drama associated with it. I was unaware. So I was delighted to read David's work the Martians, the True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn of the century America. There's a lot there and there's a lot in this book. Welcome to the show.
- [02:49]
David Barron
David Barron thank you, Tommy. I appreciate your inviting me on.
- [02:53]
Tommy Mischke
I've probably interviewed a thousand authors over the last 30 years and I think I can count on one hand how many put in as many years as you put in writing this book. I think about you and seven years of this being your full time job. To commit to something like that must have meant that this story was something that you truly felt deserved your dedicated time. When did it first cross your desk that there was such a world to investigate?
- [03:34]
David Barron
First of all, you're right. I mean, seven years is a long time to spend on one project. I had no idea when I started that it was gonna take that long, but it turned out to be such A rich and compelling story that I just kept digging and digging and finding more gems. And, you know, I didn't wanna stop till I really felt I had the full story. But getting to how I came across it, well, it really stems from my childhood. You know, I grew up in the 19 6, and back then I sometimes felt like I was surrounded by Martians. There was Marvin the Martian on the Bugs Bunny cartoons on Saturday morning TV. There was a popular sitcom in the 60s called My Favorite Martian, about a Martian who came to Earth, had crash landed his flying saucer in California. There were Martians in comics and Martians in science fiction. And I grew up to become a science writer. And I wondered where that all came from. And what's astonishing is not that long before I was born, so 60 years before I was born and I'm now 61, Martians were not just in science fiction. They were widely believed to be scientific fact. You could open the New York Times in 1906 and read headlines about the Martian civilization. There were pastors sermonizing about the Martians in church. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone and an elder statesman of science, by that point, was totally convinced that there was a civilization on Mars. And the more I looked into it, just the more fascinating it became.
- [05:04]
Tommy Mischke
I never heard a thing about this. What most people will remember and what they'll maybe think we're talking about Here is the H.G. wells War of the World's Orson Welles radio program, right?
- [05:20]
David Barron
Which was 1938.
- [05:22]
Tommy Mischke
This is very different. This is something else. Pre World War I, the late 1800s to just before World War I.
- [05:31]
David Barron
Today we think of that era as the Gilded Age. And it's been brought back to life. In the HBO series, we have this sense, because it's called the Gilded Age, that it was this sort of glittering time, but it was the glittering time for just the very few at the very top of the economic hierarchy. There was a great divide, of course, between the rich and the poor. There was labor unrest, sometimes violent labor unrest. There was anarchism in Europe. Anarchists were dynamiting cafes in Paris. They were assassinating heads of state. President William McKinley here in the US was assassinated in 1901 by an anarchist. So there was a lot going on that we don't really know that much about today. But it all figures in, in very interesting ways into this story of the Martians and what was going on on Earth and in America in particular, that made people so want to believe in the existence of this advanced civilization on our neighboring planet.
- [06:28]
Tommy Mischke
Prior to learning about the cosmos, really learning about it, what's up there, people assumed the planets up there were populated.
- [06:36]
David Barron
That was true. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin believed that the planets were inhabited. There was talk about not only beings on the other planets, but there might be on the Sun. The sun might be inhabited, the rings of Saturn might be inhabited.
- [06:51]
Tommy Mischke
We need to pause there. We need to pause there because you just said they thought, they thought that they thought the sun might be inhabited.
- [07:02]
David Barron
Well, there was a thought that maybe beneath the bright surface, that inside the sun, there might be beings no one really knew. But in the 19th century, astronomy took a great leap and was the beginnings of what now is called astrophysics. So in ancient times, astronomy was just all about tracking these strange objects that moved across the sky. And so the planets were these wandering essentially stars among the. The fixed stars, but no one really knew what they were. By the 19th century, with the rise of astrophysics, scientists could start to answer questions about the physical makeup of the planets. How heavy were they? What were. What was the density of them? They knew then that Jupiter was a gas giant. It probably didn't have any kind of solid surface. They also were able to figure out which ones had atmospheres, which ones were too hot or too cold for life as we know it. So by the 19th century, now the things shifted to where most scientists thought that life probably was not elsewhere in the solar system, with maybe the exception of Mars and Venus, because they were close enough to where we are in the solar system that they might not be too hot or too cold. And Mars in particular, when astronomers were starting to get a good look at the surface through their telescopes, and by the 19th century, they were large and very good telescopes, they could see that the surface of Mars looked a lot like Earth. There were dark areas that were assumed to be oceans, light areas that were assumed to be continents. Mars is tilted at about the same angle as the Earth, so it has seasons just like the Earth. The day length on Mars is only a little bit longer than the day on Earth. So there was a lot about Mars that made it very Earth like. And so if any planet in the solar system was. Was going to have life, it was thought it was probably Mars.
- [08:49]
Tommy Mischke
Okay. And then someone makes a discovery. Was this the Italian fella?
- [08:55]
David Barron
Yeah. So it all started, the story begins in Italy, In Milan in 1877, a prominent astronomer named Giovanni Schiaparelli decided to make a map of Mars. Mars was going to come especially close to Earth in the fall of 1877, which meant that it would be a good chance to really take a close look at this, at the surface features. And so night after night, he started create a map of Mars. And some had been made before, but his was particularly carefully constructed. And he saw the dark areas that were thought to be oceans and the light areas that were thought to be continents. But he also saw what looked like thin, straight lines crisscrossing the surface. And Schiaparelli assumed that they were probably waterways of some sort, because again, if the dark big areas were oceans and these were connecting those dark areas, they were some sort of water channels. And he called them canali, which in Italian means channels. Well, that was promptly mistranslated into English as canals, which is very different, which suggests somebody actually constructed them. And for a while, it was kind of a joke that there were these canals on Mars. And that was the name that was given to these lines, even by people who didn't think they were really canals. But it really took off then in 1894, when the main character in my book came along. His name was Percival Lowell. He was a wealthy Bostonian who decided as he was approaching the age of 40, that he wanted to become an astronomer. And he had enough money to found his own private observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. It's still there today, the Lowell Observatory, and to dedicate it to the study of Mars. And Percival Lowell saw the canals that Schiaparelli had seen. In fact, he saw even more of them. And it was Lowell who came up with this, what sounds like a crazy theory, but for a while was taken very seriously, that these straight lines on Mars really were canals not for shipping, but for irrigation. And as he saw it, Mars was essentially a dying planet that was running out of water. And the only way that a civilization could survive was by tapping the meltwater from ice in the polar regions and bringing the water down to their farms and their cities in the more temperate zones. And that was Lowell's theory that these canals were a worldwide irrigation network. And over time, he convinced the world that this was true.
- [11:21]
Tommy Mischke
I don't think it was crazy in its time, again, it hadn't been determined that there wasn't any life on Mars. And there was talk of there possibly being life on Mars. It's obviously a big story worthy of a front page nationally, but it's not, in that time, shocking.
- [11:44]
David Barron
I don't think it was a crazy idea. I mean, there were these mysterious lines on Mars that no one had a good explanation for. And, I mean, I could go on about them. There was a lot about them that was confusing. Again, these lines seem so straight and they would go for hundreds or thousands of miles that it seemed hard to come up with a natural explanation for them. What's more, they weren't always seen. They seemed to come and go with the seasons. So in the spring and summer in a given hemisphere on Mars, they would appear, and then in the fall and winter, they would vanish. Well, so taking the theory a little bit further, what Lowell said was, what you're seeing on Mars is not the water in these canals. The canals would have to be tremendously wide for us to actually see them from the Earth. Instead, what he said was, we're seeing the plant life greening up along the banks of the canals in the spring and summer as the water is brought down into those zones. And then in the fall and winter, as the plants die off, they fade. So it actually helped. It really did explain what was being seen. So, no, I don't think it was crazy at the time, but Lowell had supporters and he had quite fierce opponents within the astronomical community. And for a while, there was a fierce divide between what were called the Canalists and the anti canalists. And you know, we see this in science today too. You get when there's some controversial issue, you get people lining up on two sides until they can eventually figure it out. And for a while, the Canalists, led by Lowell, seem to be winning the argument.
- [13:23]
Tommy Mischke
So Lowell in your book is not a true superstar in America. He's not a household name?
- [13:32]
David Barron
Well, he was at the time.
- [13:33]
Tommy Mischke
He was.
- [13:34]
David Barron
Oh, absolutely. I mean, he was probably the most famous astronomer in America at the time, because he was not only a scientist, although an amateur scientist, he was an incredibly articulate, persuasive man. I said that he was a wealthy Bostonian, but that undersells it. I mean, he came from one of the most influential families in New England. The Lowells of Massachusetts were responsible for the founding of the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, and all of the factories there. You know that back in the 19th century, that was where the Industrial Revolution began in America. And so the wealth from those factories allowed the Lowell family to then become tremendous philanthropists. They were involved in helping to fund Harvard University and the establishment of mit. James Russell Lowell, who was the first editor of the Atlantic Monthly, he was a member of the family. And so Percival Lowell, who graduated from Harvard, like all of the Lowell men, could have done anything he wanted with his life. And for the first approximately 20 years out of college, he became a writer. And he was a well known writer who Traveled particularly in the Far east, in Japan and in Korea at a time when those were mysterious parts of the world. And he was kind of a roving anthropologist. And he became very well known for his books and his articles about the Far East. And when he then fixated on Mars, it was almost as if it was another anthropological destination. He was now writing about this even more exotic place than Japan. And that was the planet next door to us in the solar system. He gave talks that were to sell out crowds. His talks were then published in magazines and excerpted in newspapers. So, yeah, he was extraordinarily well known.
- [15:18]
Tommy Mischke
We don't have that today. We don't have amateur scientists who are celebrities.
- [15:24]
David Barron
Do we amateurs have to think about it. Probably not. But of course you've got professionals. Professionals, of course, Carl SAGAN, you know, 20, 30 years ago.
- [15:34]
Tommy Mischke
But were there.
- [15:34]
David Barron
And that was Percival Lowell back then.
- [15:36]
Tommy Mischke
Were there professional astronomers? Were there professionals who looked at him and said, hey pal, why don't we take over here? We actually have degrees. I mean, there must have been some sense that who is this interloper?
- [15:50]
David Barron
There was that sense. Although again, back in the late 19th century, there was definitely a place for amateurs. There were sort of these gentlemen astronomers. They were almost always men who, you know, were quite prominent. They were lawyers or doctors or merchants who in later life, when they had leisure time, would, would construct their own observatories and would observe the night skies. And until that time, you know, I mean, it really wasn't that sophisticated. I mean, if you had, if you were a patient and you were a good observer, you could make discoveries. But things were professionalizing by the 1890s.
- [16:31]
Tommy Mischke
The reason I brought up his standing is because his view was going to be bolstered by some serious big time household names. Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla. These guys were going to soon find themselves on his side saying, you're damn right there's life on Mars.
- [16:53]
David Barron
Right?
- [16:59]
Tommy Mischke
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- [18:12]
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- [19:32]
Tommy Mischke
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- [20:53]
David Barron
So Nikola Tesla, the inventor, he was a genius who in the 1890s, created our modern system of electrical power generation and distribution. He In 1899, when he was now interested in what today we would call radio, back then it was called wireless. He was studying how signals could be sent through the atmosphere without wires. He thought he picked up radio signals from Mars. He set up an experimental laboratory in Colorado springs, Colorado in 1899. And one night, alone in the laboratory, he heard this strange signal. It repeated in triplets. It was like this click, click, click, click, click, click, over and over again. He couldn't come up with any natural explanation. And he then convinced himself that what he picked up was Percival Lowell's Martians sending a signal to Earth. And when Nikola Tesla announced this at the very dawn of the 20th century, it just propelled this idea of the Martians to a whole new level of hype. And so by the early 1900s, Martians were everywhere. You could see them depicted in Broadway plays and vaudeville skits. There was popular music about the Martians. There was a Martian in the comics, in the newspapers, named Mr. Skygak from Mars. So getting back to me in the 1960s, when I grew up with Marvin the Martian and with my favorite Martian on TV, where did that start? It all started 60 years before I was born, in that period of Mars craze when, again, people thought the Martians were real.
- [22:26]
Tommy Mischke
When Tesla announces that there is indeed life on Mars and it's been trying to communicate, or something's been going on up there, that he's picking up clearly activity on the planet when he announces that I believe it's 1901, is that right?
- [22:43]
David Barron
Correct. Which actually, technically was the beginning of the 20th century. So January 1, 1901, is when the 20th century began and the newspapers were the Red Cross was holding these New Year's Eve parties as fundraisers across the country. And the Red Cross asked celebrities across the globe, Queen Victoria, Mark Twain and others, to comment on the big events of the 19th century and look forward to what was going to happen in the 20th century. And they asked Nikola Tesla. Tesla took that Opportunity to say that he had picked up a signal from another world. And so, as Americans Woke up on January 1, 1901, the first day of the 20th century, they woke up to headlines that Tesla received a signal from Mars.
- [23:30]
Tommy Mischke
What a great time to be alive to believe all over the country that there is life on Mars, that planet. You see so clearly that there's life up there. And of course, then people began to speculate, and they didn't just speculate, they made some pretty radical assumptions, almost decisions on what that life amounted to, what kind of folks could be found up there. There were decisions made by the American public and others that, by golly, these are some good natured people who probably run their lives a whole lot better than we do. And we could all learn some things from them that just became the order of the day. Don't ask me how.
- [24:12]
David Barron
And that was a big surprise to me because now you mentioned before the Orson Welles radio broadcast in 1938, which was an adaptation of the H.G. wells book the War of the Worlds. And the War of the Worlds, the book, it was first published in magazines in 1897, came out as a book in 1898. And of course, that's a story about the Martians as these evil creatures coming to Earth to conquer the Earth and in fact to prey on human beings. And I assumed that must have been the widespread belief about the Martians that we had to worry about them. And yet what really surprised me is there was almost no concern about the Martians. Quite the opposite. People thought the Martians were better than us. They were not only more advanced than us, more technologically savvy, but they were more moral and more peaceful. And that Mars was a world that we should emulate to the point that you had pastors sermonizing in church that we should emulate the Martians. And the reason they, people believe that was going back to Lowell's theory. So Percival Lowell said Mars was a dying planet, and the only way that the Martian civilization could survive was by the entire globe coming together as one to build this network of irrigation canals. And it meant that, you know, you had those living in the arctic regions of Mars working cooperatively with those in the equatorial regions, those in the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere. So Mars must not have warring nations. Everyone was working together as one. And that's what, particularly in this time, as I said, when there was labor unrest, anarchist attacks in Europe and in the US the idea that here was a planet of peace was a really inspiring idea. And that was one of the reasons people wanted to believe in the Martians and because they wanted to believe that a better world was possible.
- [26:04]
Tommy Mischke
Was it a newspaper article that came out where they were suggesting questions we could pass along to the good people of Mars, things they might help us with, answers they could provide? And the questions were rather surprising. They did not turn out to be practical questions. They turned out to be existential questions.
- [26:26]
David Barron
So 1909 was kind of the height of, of the belief in the Martians. And every 26 months, Earth and Mars come relatively close to each other. And sometimes about once every 15 years, they come especially close. And 1909 was going to be a time when Mars and Earth would come especially close. And it was thought that, well, if there was ever a time when the Martians would try to signal us, it would be then, and maybe we should try to reach out to the Martians. And so there were all sorts of crazy ideas about how we might communicate with Mars. And there was this article that ran in quite a number of newspapers across the United States that was headlined Questions Mars May Answer? And it was a list of these existential questions. What is the meaning of life? Where does the soul go when you die? How can we prevent human suffering? These were the questions for the Martians. And as I argue in my book, the Martians in essence had become these kinds of guardian angels looking down on the Earth that people hoped would be our saviors. Quite the opposite of what H.G. wells had portrayed. People wanted to talk to the Martians, hoping that the Martians could help us. And there are these wonderful depictions of the Martians from that time. I mean, often they're depicted with wings. It's as if they're angels. And there's this one image that was in a Newt magazine at the time of the Martians with wings looking down on Earth through their high tech telescopes and watching people in the streets of a city. And that was the sense that the Martians were up there keeping an eye on us. And if we could just get in contact with them, they could solve our problems.
- [28:04]
Tommy Mischke
It's important to stress here how many people are on board. I mentioned Alexander Graham Bell. Positive, there's life on Mars. Teddy Roosevelt, J.P. morgan, 1907. Wall Street Journal puts out an issue where the headline says, proof, Proof of intelligent life on Mars. New York Times gets on board. There is in fact life on Mars. This wasn't a question.
- [28:31]
David Barron
It was decided pretty much by 1908. 1909 it was. Yeah, we can look back on it as a case of mass delusion but as you follow how it. How it came to be, bit by bit by bit, it all makes sense. You know, it started with this theory that to help explain this mystery of Mars, you had a very persuasive man, Percival Lowell, educated, articulate, who was spreading the idea. And then he came up with the idea that, well, one of the problems with proving that his theory was right is that at the time, most of the depictions of Mars were just drawings of Mars. And so when an astronomer would draw this network of fine, straight lines, you could question, well, did you see it properly? Did you draw it properly? So Lowell used some of his extensive financial means to develop the technology to actually take photographs of the surface of Mars. Now, photography at the time was, of course, hardly what it is today. And the photographs of Mars were tiny. They were a quarter inch across. But he claimed that they proved that the lines were there. And it was when he had these thousands of photographs of Mars that he produced that then the idea was, well, it seems undeniable that the lines are there and no one's come up with a better explanation. And it became accepted wisdom.
- [29:50]
Tommy Mischke
Often I think about going back in time and what a thrill it would be in different eras. And I almost always. I almost always find myself in a bar and I'm just talking to average people, maybe at a table, maybe at the bar itself. But the idea that in 1908, the big topic sitting around with a beer in my hand, that I could talk about Mars and the folks living up there with people, and they'd be weighing in talking about it. We could muse on how intelligent they are, how wise, how kind, and all the questions we want answered. There's something wonderful and there's sort of a pathos there. There's something sad about it. We were hoping for someone to teach us. We weren't feeling that great about ourselves, apparently.
- [30:40]
David Barron
You could have sat down at a bar and had a conversation with. I mean, everyone knew about the Martians at that point. And even if some were skeptical, everyone knew that this was a topic of conversation. It just so seeped into our society. Everyone knew about the Martians.
- [31:00]
Tommy Mischke
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- [32:00]
John Randle
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- [32:12]
Tommy Mischke
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- [33:38]
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- [33:54]
David Barron
Again, 1909 was a period when Earth and Mars came especially close to each other. And so astronomers across the globe were keeping it an eye on Mars. And there was one astronomer in particular in Paris who had access to the largest telescope in Europe. He had studied Mars for years. In fact, 10 years earlier, he had been drawing the canals on Mars. He'd been making maps showing these lines on Mars. But the idea then was discussed for a while that we're looking at a planet 35 million miles away or even farther away through a telescope that's looking through the Earth's atmosphere and the Earth's atmosphere. It's like looking up from the bottom of a swimming pool. Looking through that air, the air distorts what you see. And there was this discussion about maybe the lines aren't there at all. Maybe they're just an optical illusion. But in 1909, this astronomer in Paris, his name was Eugene Michel Antonio, looking at Mars through the largest telescope in Europe. On a night when Mars was about as close as it can get. The air over Paris was just dead. Still. It was a perfect night for observing the planet. And Antonio, who earlier in his life had seen the canals, had drawn the canals, had believed in the canals. On this night, there were no straight lines on Mars. The theory that these were optical illusions was true. And when antonioti saw that the canals weren't there, he took it upon himself to bring Lowell down. And at the same time, a new telescope, an even bigger telescope, was constructed on Mount Wilson and outside Los Angeles. And it was taking photographs of Mars that showed canals. And suddenly the tide turned. And the thought was, you know, not only do we not need to explain what those lines are, there never were lines there in the first place. But Percival Lowell never gave up. To his dying day in 1916, he still was adamant that the lines were there, that they were irrigation canals, that the Martian civilization existed, and that someday he would be remembered as a genius. But instead, he's kind of remembered as a fool who got it all wrong.
- [36:03]
Tommy Mischke
You mentioned earlier that there were times even in the late 19th century and real early 20th century, that people didn't see lines. But this Frenchman not seeing lines was not seeing them even in the spring summer versions of Mars when they should have been there.
- [36:21]
David Barron
Right, That's a good point. But that one particular night when there were no canals, there were other nights that he was also observing when the lines would come back. Because when the atmosphere over Paris was not so perfect and Mars was sort of blurred, then the eye could sometimes think it saw lines. Okay, but on the night of perfect viewing, there were no lines.
- [36:45]
Tommy Mischke
It's a pretty steep comedown from headlines saying proof, not conjecture, proof to never mind.
- [36:55]
David Barron
It did happen quite suddenly, but again, it was sudden in terms of the astronomical community. But still, you had the tabloid press still loved to write about the possibility of life on Mars, and they would still give Lowell attention, even if they would depict him a little bit more as a kook instead of a genius. By then, the idea of the Martians really had taken off in science fiction. In fact, science fiction as we know it today was kind of born in that era. So you had H.G. wells write the War of the Worlds in the 1890s, and then in the early nineteen teens, Edgar Rice Burroughs started to write a series of tremendously best selling books about Mars, about John Carter, this American, and his adventures on Mars, a planet that the people there called Barsoom. And those books were just hugely popular. And so in essence, we never stopped caring about Mars. But it shifted from science to science fiction. And through much of the 20th century you have these stories about life on Mars. Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke. That idea still held on in the public's imagination.
- [38:04]
Tommy Mischke
What happened to Mr. Tesla? He was another guy on board. He didn't have the canals in his sight, but what he had was transmissions from the planet.
- [38:14]
David Barron
It's a sad story about Tesla in the 1890s. He really was a man who transformed the world and did a lot of good. But he, he never backed down about the signals from Mars. Up to his dying day, it was the 1940s, he still was talking about having received a signal from Mars.
- [38:32]
Tommy Mischke
No wonder the people were still scared. In the late 30s with the H.G. wells War of the Worlds, Tesla was still on board.
- [38:38]
David Barron
It was interesting, you know, writing this book about an idea that was of course wrong. But the interesting thing is that whole era had some very positive impact on the world as we know it now. So as I already said, it was the excitement about Mars that led to the rise of science fiction as its own genre in the 20th century. You've probably heard of the Hugo Awards, these big awards in science fiction given, they're named after Hugo Gernsback, editor of science fiction magazines in the early 20th century. He's been called the father of science fiction. Well, Hugo Gernsback would talk about the reason he devoted his life to imagining life in outer space and traveling through outer space is because he as a child read one of Percival Lowell's books about life on Mars and was so transfixed by it. Moreover, the very space age can trace its roots to that era. Robert H. Goddard, who built the first liquid fueled rocket, he's the father of American rocketry, decided to devote his life to that cause because he read the War of the Worlds when he was a teenager and thought, I wonder if it is possible to go between the planets and how would we do it? And so he developed the first rocket, Carl Sagan. Now he wasn't born until after that era, but he grew up with, on those Edgar Rice Burroughs books about Barsoom and the travels of John Carter. And Carl Sagan as an adult would say he became a planetary scientist because he was so infatuated with the Mars fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs. So it was that excitement about Mars that changed literature and actually got us into outer space. So if and when? I should say when, because I'm convinced we will have people on Mars probably In the next 10 or 20 years, it'll be thanks to Percival Lowell and his crazy ideas about Mars over 100 years ago.
- [40:32]
Tommy Mischke
It's interesting to look at human nature and the way we are, and we're not that dissimilar from one another. Both Tesla and Lowell refused to give up. I understand that this is what's involved in giving up and throwing in the towel. Admitting you were dead wrong. That's what you're going to be known for. There's not a statue in any square I'm familiar with to the guy who admitted he was wrong. We don't celebrate those people. So in both cases, I imagine they're saying to themselves, where's the gain in me agreeing with these people? Even if I believe they're right, how does it serve me? I staked my good name on this. I'm going to ride it to the grave and hope one day maybe they're proven wrong. You consider them stubborn? I consider them very human.
- [41:32]
David Barron
Well, stubbornness is a very human trait. So is egotism when it comes to science. Now, there are plenty of scientists who have big egos and who are stubborn. But most ideas in science turn out to be wrong. And science advances when the wrong ideas are finally discarded and we can move on to try to figure out what's right. And I think the true scientist has to be ready to back down when the evidence is just overwhelming that they're wrong.
- [41:58]
Tommy Mischke
Here's a science paper for you to write someday. You're a science writer. I'd be curious what the history is of scientists who learn something that they devoted themselves to that they pitched as true, turned out to be not true. How many of them showed humility versus hung on beyond what was reasonable? I think it's extraordinarily difficult to hand it over to the other guy who got it right and admit you got it wrong. I'd love to know how common it is for scientists to step forward. Yep, you nailed it. I was wrong. I couldn't have been more off. I'll have to go back and see where the hell I screwed up.
- [42:37]
David Barron
I agree. That would be a very interesting analysis to see. I totally agree with you that it is very difficult to admit that you're wrong, Especially when you've spent years dedicating your life to something being Right. On the other hand, I think within the scientific community, when someone does back down elegantly, it's applauded. But you're right, they're probably not going to be in the history books.
- [43:03]
Tommy Mischke
In the case of Tesla, he was considered in his time a visionary. But visionary was not a compliment back then. Today it would be back then. It was a pejorative, right?
- [43:18]
David Barron
Yeah, exactly. A visionary back then was someone who had visions, who could. Had trouble separating reality from fantasy. There were people who would criticize Tesla as a visionary, not a practical man. Dreamer. Today, of course, visionaries, a great compliment, but it's interesting. You know, among the people who sometimes will be called visionary is Elon Musk, who is obsessed with Mars and has this idea of colonizing Mars. And I think the word visionary has both meanings for him as well. Musk is, of course, a highly controversial figure these days for a lot of reasons, but he really has transformed space travel. And while I think a lot of his talk about Mars is just unrealistic, I'm excited by the fact that he has helped move our civilization forward in our ability to actually get to Mars. And I'm hoping that before I leave this Earth, I'll see the first human footsteps on Mars. What I knew about Percival Lowell and the canals of Mars was that it was this story of a great blunder in science. What really surprised me was the other aspect, the inspirational side. The fact that Lowell's imagination, while it got a little ahead of the science, really did change the world in some positive ways. You know, sending a spacecraft off to another planet takes a lot more than rocket fuel and carbon fiber and steel. It takes imagination. Why do we want to go to Mars? Why do we want to go to the Moon? You have to instill this excitement in the public. That's what Lowell did back then. I think Musk has done some of that today. Even back in the Apollo program days, the goal was always Mars. It was thought that once we got to the moon, we'd be to Mars in another 10, 20 years. But we really lost our way and lost our vision.
- [45:13]
Tommy Mischke
I think the last time I got really excited when you could turn on the television and have the experience of being on Mars because they. They put something on the planet that allowed you to look in color at this extraordinary world. That was as close as any of us got to the Moon. If you weren't one of the lucky few who got to walk on the Moon, the closest we got was turning on our television and seeing people on the Moon. So when those Probes landed on Mars and we could feel what it was like to be standing there. That was wonderful. That was as good to me as putting a guy there. Because for me, I was never going to stand there, but I could feel what it was like to just be looking around. It's suddenly real to me. It's no longer just that dot UP in the sky. But since then I haven't felt that swelling of fascination and imagination with space. Except for, and this is something that I want to bring up with you now as our replacement for Mars. Except for 2017, when suddenly you could read stories of government officials blowing the whistle on some sort of ufo, uap, alien visitations, the extraordinary stories that would start to unfold in the years 2017, 2018, 2019 and so on, where all of a sudden there were these serious professional government officials, former government officials, talking about pretty extraordinary things. Once again, the imagination of the public, I think was fueled by the possibility of life out there in the universe.
- [46:59]
David Barron
Right? And I think, you know, so when it comes to UFOs or UAPs or whatever we want to call them these days, I don't claim to know what they are. Clearly intelligent, trustworthy people have seen weird things in the skies they can't explain. I'm skeptical that they are alien spacecraft, but who knows? But what I will say is, I think in terms of the public's excitement and the public's desire to believe in the existence of aliens who have visited the Earth. I think it really, there's a lot of resonance with what I write about in my book from 100 years ago, with the excitement over Mars. Who wouldn't want to believe that there are greater beings out there who might be coming here to teach us what they know to make our planet better? That's not to say I know what the UFOs are. I'm very much a believer that there must be life out there, including intelligent life. But I'm not personally convinced that intelligent life has come to the Earth could be proved wrong. But that's where I stand.
- [48:04]
Tommy Mischke
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- [50:27]
David Barron
I think that's absolutely right. And again, I don't mean to dismiss the excitement about it. I too am excited about the possibility of alien life and getting in contact with it. And if it turns out that the aliens have visited us, I'd love to find some proof of it. Humans haven't changed in 120 years. We're exactly the same as we were back then. And a big part of what I write about in my book is the changes in the news media, the rise of the tabloid press which seized on these ideas of Martians and helped spread the idea before it ended up in the mainstream press, in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Well, now, of course, ideas can spread so much faster and so much more widely. And it's the kinds of things we wish were true that tend to spread fastest. So again, I'm not dismissing the idea that something weird is happening in the skies. I don't know what UFOs are, but I think that the reason these ideas make for such popular podcasts, for instance, is because there really is a deep human desire to tap into the mystery of the universe and to find some saviors out there who could perhaps lead us to a better world.
- [51:33]
Tommy Mischke
The Martians. The true story of an alien craze that captured turn of the century America David Barron is the author and a science writer who has written other books. I want to let people know that this isn't the only book you've written. You're an award winning author of the Beast, Beast in the Garden and American Eclipse. Briefly, what were those two books about?
- [51:57]
David Barron
The Beast in the Garden is the story of the first fatal mountain lion attack in Colorado history. Back in 1991, a high schooler was jogging behind his high school on an afternoon west of Denver when he vanished and it was discovered. His body was discovered a couple days later. He'd been essentially eaten by a mountain lion. And mountain lions, which are large cats, until that time, were thought to be essentially harmless, that they would avoid humans, they would avoid cities. But this came at a time when mountain lion human interaction was becoming more worrisome. It was sort of like the story of Jaws. In the years leading up to that fatal attack, mountain lions were starting to behave in new and worrisome ways in this part of Colorado. And there were some scientists who were warning that these supposedly harmless creatures might actually be dangerous. And in fact, on New Year's Day, January 1, 2026, a woman was jogging on a trail not far from where I live here in Colorado, and she was killed by a mountain lion. The story is really about the way humans are changing wildlife behavior in unexpected and sometimes worrisome ways. My second book, which was American Eclipse, came out in 2017. It's the true story of a total solar eclipse that crossed the wild west in 1878. Back then, total eclipses were very important for science. Astronomers would travel to the far ends of the Earth to sit in the path of where an eclipse would happen. Because during those two or three minutes when the moon totally blocks the sun, you can actually study the sun's atmosphere. And so dozens of the era's great scientists came out to Wyoming, Colorado, Texas for that eclipse. Thomas Edison was in Wyoming for it, and all female expedition came from Vassar out to Colorado for the eclipse. But it's a story about their adventures. It's a story about how America started to become a real power in science, because back then, Europe looked down their noses at us. And it's just a wonderful human tale that in fact, remarkably has been turned into a musical that's headed to Broadway. So if you want to see Thomas Edison singing on the Broadway stage, producers hope to have it on Broadway by 2028.
- [54:12]
Tommy Mischke
I want to leave you with this because it ties into Mars. One of the more extraordinary things that happened just a few years ago involved Mars Are you familiar with the quote of the former head of Israel's Defense Ministry, a guy named Hareem Eshed? He made headlines. He claimed there is a joint underground base on Mars where American astronauts and alien representatives collaborate. Now, before you say this is an absolute one off, that this guy might have temporarily lost his mind, former Canadian Defense Secretary. The head of the Defense Department in Canada can be seen. You can go find the clip talking about multiple species of aliens currently visiting Earth and governments being well aware of them. I only bring this up for this reason. The average snook on the street, he can't study any of this. He doesn't know anything. He's going to work. He's punching holes in sheet metal. All we have is just average schmoes living our lives, having dinner, watching a movie. Now again with our spouses. All we have is what the big shots say. A Tesla, an Alexander Graham Bell, a Percival Lowell, former Canadian Defense Minister. We're all stuck having to hear what these guys say. And then it becomes a game of, well, which guy do you listen to? It's such a strange time you talk about the way information travels today. I don't think people sit around determining on their own what's going on up there. They look for some authority figure to say something. And even today we have people in authority saying things that they're either as crazy as what Lowell said or like Lowell hoped one day they'll be proven right.
- [56:06]
David Barron
Absolutely. And in fact, you know, there's a Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, who's been getting a lot of press for saying that this interstellar comet that's been passing through our solar system over the last few months might be an alien spacecraft. And he said this about the two previous interstellar comets that came through our solar system in the last few years. A lot of astronomers are very frustrated by him because he's planting these ideas in the public's mind.
- [56:35]
Tommy Mischke
Yeah.
- [56:35]
David Barron
And on the one hand, thinking back to Percival Lowell, getting the public excited about the possibility that, you know, we don't know what this object is. Maybe it's an alien spacecraft. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Thing. But I do think he pushes it too far. And his ideas tend to spread because they're sensational. So it is the same thing happening today. And I don't know who's right and who's wrong. I'm skeptical that about Avi Loeb and his ideas about an alien spacecraft. But, yeah, it's very hard to know who you should trust.
- [57:05]
Tommy Mischke
There's so much more in this book than we've been able to get to. I will let you go. I've delighted in the conversation. I want to remind people the book is called the Martians the true story of an alien craze that captured turn of the century America. And the author, David Barron. I find it absolutely fascinating, intriguing and delightful. I just really enjoyed your book.
- [57:26]
David Barron
Terrific. Well, this was a lot of fun. Thank you, Tommy. It was a fun conversation.