The Second World War had barely ended by the time reports of "flying saucers" began to make headlines in 1947. What were these mysterious objects, and were they friends, or foes? Soon, speculation about what world superpower might possess such technology shifted to a novel proposition: what if they could be evidence of extraterrestrial visitation to Earth?

Although the flying saucers were a new development, ideas about life from other worlds was hardly anything new. This week, we go in search of the history behind the concept of extraterrestrial life, and how our ideas about it have evolved over time to include speculations about life on Mars, and whether the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis is indeed the best solution to the UFO mystery.

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Show Notes

Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode:

• NEWS: Lost Photo Of Lincoln Of His Deathbed Surfaces — But Some Historians Are Skeptical
• Fake Asteroid? NASA Expert IDs Mystery Object as Old Rocket
• UFO sighting is Mint; 1978 story of sighting over Clarenville and Random Island NL featured on new collector coin
• Retired RCMP officer remembers  Clarenville UFO experience
• UFO sightings across Canada have spiked during the pandemic
• THE ET HYPOTHESIS: "Nikola Tesla Promises Communication With Mars" (1901)
• "A Signal From Mars"
• "Marconi Believes He is Receiving Signals From the Planets" (1920)
• The 1st UFO book? Forgotten Mysteries by R. DeWitt Miller
• FURTHER READING: Mars and its Canals by Percival Lowell
• Life on Other Worlds: The 20Th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate (Amazon)
• The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900 (Amazon)

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Music featured on The Micah Hanks Program includes songs composed by Caleb Hanks (The Clerk Chronicles), Decepticons (Dreamland, Start the Machine) and Micah Hanks. All songs are either in the public domain, Royalty Free, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, or are used with permission of the creators. Please note that some links to books and other items on this page may feature Amazon Associate links.