Voyager Found

Today’s episode is about finding life that’s like us, but not like us at all.

This episode features Voyager Found, originally published by The Truth on May 14th, 2014. 

Performed by Chet Siegel and Peter McNerney and produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Open World is a partnership between Philo’s Future Media and Flash Forward Presents, hosted by TK Dutes and Rose Eveleth, produced by Brittani Taylor Brown and mixed by C. The intro music is Dorica by BlueDot Sessions. Additional music by T.H. Ponders

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TRANSCRIPT

TK Dutes:

Welcome to Open World. I’m TK.

Rose Eveleth:

And I’m Rose and Open World is a show about hopeful futures and how to scooch them a tiny bit closer to our present.

TK Dutes:

And today’s episode gifts us with a mysterious disk.

Rose Eveleth:

I almost don’t want to say too much more because it’s such a good little unfolding surprise. So let’s just do it.

TK Dutes:

And now Voyager Found by The Truth.

Tad:

Come on.

Dawn:

Just be careful with it, okay?

Tad:

Oh my God. This is crazy.

Dawn:

You call a monitor immediately.

Tad:

You don’t need to call any authorities, all right.

Dawn:

Maybe the neighbors saw.

Tad:

The neighbors didn’t see anything.

Dawn:

Are we sure that it even fell on our land?

Tad:

No. It’s definitely on our property. Their giant fence, that’s the beginning of their property.

Dawn:

Okay. Something just fell from the sky. We just need to take a breath and look at it.

Tad:

Yeah. Just relax.

Dawn:

Be careful with it, okay?

Tad:

Okay, okay.

Dawn:

Don’t put it on the table.

Tad:

Okay, just-

Dawn:

Let’s put something down.

Tad:

… Just take a breath. Look at it. It’s beautiful.

Dawn:

It’s got to be made of some kind of gehlenite. It’s…

Tad:

It’s just so shiny.

Dawn:

What are all these drawings on it, are etching?

Tad:

Is it a language or is it just drawings?

Dawn:

Maybe it’s from some other country?

Tad:

I think this is from a different planet.

Dawn:

Oh, come on.

Tad:

It could be-

Dawn:

This looks like a map. This looks like a city.

Tad:

… This looks like a map of the stars.

Dawn:

Don’t break it.

Tad:

I can’t break it. It survived a fall from space. I’m not going to break it.

Dawn:

We don’t know that it came from space.

Tad:

I think this is aliens. Something inside the sleeve. This is an audio recording.

Dawn:

That looks like something we could play on a disc table.

Tad:

Do we still have our disc table?

Dawn:

Yeah, it’s in the guest room.

Tad:

You mean my office.

Dawn:

It’s an office if you do work in it. It’s a guest room if my mother sleeps in it. Oh, here it is.

Tad:

It’s not plugged in. Here hold this. I don’t even know if it still works.

Dawn:

Well, we’ll find out.

Tad:

All right.

Dawn:

It’s too big. It’s not going to fit.

Tad:

No. I think it’s close enough.

Dawn:

That hole is too big in this center.

Tad:

The thing is a chunk of metal. It’s heavy. It’ll weigh itself down. Hit the power.

Dawn:

Okay.

Tad:

And three, two, one.

Speaker 5:

As the second that agenda then off the United Nations, an organization of 147-

Dawn:

What language is that?

Speaker 5:

… States, who represent almost all of the-

Tad:

I have no idea.

Speaker 5:

… human inhabitants of the planet.

Dawn:

Is it [Louwilly 00:03:05]?

Tad:

No.

Speaker 5:

… I sent greetings on behalf of the people of our planet.

Dawn:

I don’t know what this is.

Speaker 5:

… we stepped out of our solar system-

Tad:

It definitely a person.

Speaker 5:

… into the universe, seeking only peace and friendship-

Dawn:

Maybe it’s [Bastanese 00:03:16].

Tad:

No, no, no. Not even close. This is no language I have even heard before.

Speaker 5:

… dark planets and reward its inhabitants about a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope that we take this step.

Tad:

That, this…

Dawn:

You’re close.

Speaker 5:

[foreign language 00:03:32].

Tad:

It’s a different person.

Speaker 5:

[foreign language 00:03:37].

Speaker 6:

[foreign language 00:03:40].

Dawn:

That’s another different-

Tad:

That’s definitely…

Dawn:

… Are they speaking the same language? I don’t know.

Tad:

I don’t know.

Speaker 6:

[foreign language 00:03:45].

Speaker 5:

[foreign language 00:03:47].

Dawn:

I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t understand what’s happening.

Tad:

It’s all different languages.

Speaker 6:

[foreign language 00:03:51].

Dawn:

Who do you think made this? Is this some kind of hoax?

Tad:

We’re getting a message from a large group of people.

Dawn:

What would they have to say to us?

Tad:

I don’t… Hello?

Dawn:

Who says hello by dropping something connected to a big engine on somebody’s lawn.

Tad:

Someone from a different planet.

Speaker 5:

[foreign language 00:04:11].

Tad:

I mean, who else? Who else would make this?

Speaker 6:

[foreign language 00:04:15].

Tad:

You think the neighbors made this and threw it over the fence?

Dawn:

I don’t.

Speaker 5:

[foreign language 00:04:20].

Tad:

[foreign language 00:04:27].

Dawn:

See you can make those sounds.

Tad:

Right. I mean, it’s people.

Dawn:

But wait somethings…

Tad:

Doesn’t sound like words. It just sounds like crying.

Dawn:

It sounds like a beast. It doesn’t sound like a person. That sounds ominous.

Tad:

It’s terrifying.

Dawn:

It’s just growing at night.

Tad:

Oh my God. Is it like a warning or…

Dawn:

I wonder what they are going to warn us about. That’s an explosion.

Tad:

This is…

Dawn:

It’s a war. There’s a war coming.

Tad:

Maybe their planet was destroyed.

Dawn:

And they’re looking for somewhere else to go. What’s going on? Are they trying to attack us?

Tad:

Turn it off.

Dawn:

I’m scared. What was that?

Tad:

I don’t know.

Dawn:

Maybe there’s more on it. Maybe it has some sort of instructions or something.

Tad:

Are we supposed to understand this?

Dawn:

Maybe they need help.

Tad:

Let’s keep playing. Are those bubbles?

Dawn:

Yeah. It’s bubbles. How could they put that after an explosion?

Tad:

Are they threatening to turn us into bubbles?

Dawn:

No. It sounds so much like rain, doesn’t it?

Tad:

Oh, listen to that.

Dawn:

What are they trying to tell us?

Tad:

This is a recording of another place.

Dawn:

I mean, it started with those big explosions and then it sounded like a bunch of different outside noises, but this sounds like-

Tad:

This is the beginning of life. Explosions. Creation. Weather. Nature now life.

Dawn:

Oh, that’s pretty.

Tad:

There’s animals that I’ve never heard.

Dawn:

Oh, I like that one.

Tad:

Wow.

Dawn:

I just want to know why they’re contacting us. There’s got to be a reason. Maybe something’s wrong or they’re trying to warn us.

Tad:

They just want us to know that they’re there. They’re just trying to tell us the story of them as best they can with their language and with sounds. If I were them, I’d send millions of these in every direction throughout the universal in the hope-

Dawn:

Bu then why haven’t we ever heard of this before.

Tad:

… Because what are the chances… This could be from millions, billions of light years away. And the chances of them hitting, not only our planet, but any planet are minuscule. They could be gone. This could be millions of years old. They could have been destroyed.

Dawn:

That’s so sad. That sounds like us.

Tad:

Wait. Let’s stop that. Stop the recording.

Dawn:

What are we going to do about this?

Tad:

It’s going to change everything.

Dawn:

It’s like, we’re not alone.

Tad:

It’s not like that. That’s what it is.

Dawn:

We thought we were the center of the universe and we’re not. There are whole other worlds out there. Every single religion is wrong.

Tad:

Wow. I think they’ll find a way to justify.

Dawn:

Everyone’s got to hear this.

Tad:

Just call the authorities-

Dawn:

The authorities are going to hide this. They’re going to bury it.

Tad:

… You don’t know that.

Dawn:

Of course, they do.

Tad:

You don’t know that.

Dawn:

Who knows if this was even the first time we’ve been contacted. We’ve got to tell people about this.

Tad:

Yeah. Just see what else we got.

Dawn:

Okay. What is that?

Tad:

That’s music.

Dawn:

It’s definitely music but I’ve never heard that before. This is like a birthday song.

Tad:

A celebration.

Dawn:

Yeah.

Tad:

I was going to say a celebration.

Dawn:

Let’s skip ahead, see if there’s another one.

Tad:

Yeah. This is something else.

Dawn:

It sounds like they’re praying.

Tad:

This feels more…

Dawn:

Spiritual?

Tad:

Yeah. This sounds like a cry to the heavens. I mean that’s what this disc is.

Dawn:

It is a cry to the heavens.

Tad:

It’s a cry to the heavens. Right?

Dawn:

Yeah.

Tad:

They sent this out into their heavens and it landed on us. Oh God. Is that depressing?

Dawn:

Cry is so different. Like he’s in love.

Tad:

It is a passionate love song?

Dawn:

Maybe.

Tad:

The male mating dance.

Dawn:

Yeah. Hello there.

Tad:

I can’t even wrap my brain around this one.

Dawn:

How did they get all these different things in one place?

Tad:

They could’ve recorded it in different places.

Dawn:

We’d probably have a war over what to put on one of these things. Right?

Tad:

They debated for a year and-

Dawn:

Right. And they’d end up putting something on there that nobody likes.

Tad:

… And it would be full of disclaimers.

Dawn:

They must’ve really figured something out. Maybe they’re all happy.

Tad:

This is mesmerizing.

Dawn:

Nobody fights. There’s no war. Maybe they’re trying to tell us they figured it out.

Tad:

What did they figure out?

Dawn:

How to be happy together. Maybe they’re trying to tell us that we can be like them. Maybe they’re missionaries.

Tad:

Just telling us to relax.

Dawn:

Yeah. I mean, I feel relaxed. Maybe they really share everything. Wouldn’t that be nice? Maybe you don’t have like walls.

Tad:

Yeah.

Dawn:

I bet they know their neighbors.

Tad:

I do picture them all outside.

Dawn:

Right? Don’t you picture them all outside in robes?

Tad:

Yeah.

Dawn:

Playing with each other’s hair.

Tad:

Or do they have hair? We should make one.

Dawn:

A recording?

Tad:

Yeah, let’s make a recording.

Dawn:

For who? For the aliens.

Tad:

I don’t know, just for us. What would we say, if we had to send this to aliens, what would we say about ourselves?

Dawn:

I’d record your snoring. If they haven’t already heard it.

Tad:

I’d record your tsk.

Dawn:

Yeah.

Tad:

Let’s make one.

Dawn:

How are we going to get it to the aliens?

Tad:

We’ll send it to the neighbors.

Dawn:

Oh, they’re going to think we’re so weird.

Tad:

We’ll throw it over the fence.

Dawn:

They’ll call the monitors.

Tad:

Are we doing anything illegal?

Dawn:

No. Technically it’s a gift.

Tad:

How could it make our relationship with them any worse than it is now?

Dawn:

All right.

Tad:

Get the recorder.

Dawn:

Okay.

Tad:

All right.

Dawn:

Do you know what you’re going to say?

Tad:

No.

Dawn:

Okay, me neither.

Tad:

Say hello.

Dawn:

Okay, ready? One, two.

Tad:

Go.

Dawn:

Hello.

Tad:

Greetings.

Dawn:

This is Dawn.

Tad:

And this is Tad, and we are your neighbors.

Dawn:

And we know nothing about you.

Tad:

But we’d like to tell you about us. My favorite time of day is the morning before anyone else is woken up.

Dawn:

And my favorite time is at night after Tad falls asleep.

Tad:

We like to be by ourselves.

Dawn:

We do, but near the other one.

Tad:

[crosstalk 00:12:47].

Dawn:

When I open my mouth first thing in the morning [crosstalk 00:12:54].

Rose Eveleth:

I love this one.

TK Dutes:

Yeah.

Rose Eveleth:

I don’t know there’s something so funny and lovely about just these two people or not people, aliens talking to each other.

TK Dutes:

Right.

Rose Eveleth:

The moment when you realize that they’re aliens.

TK Dutes:

Yeah.

Rose Eveleth:

It’s just like, I don’t know. I feel like every time I hear it, I have that moment where I’m like, “Oh right. These aren’t humans.” It’s just such a lovely reversal and a lovely way to think about the ways in which people or creatures or aliens might be so similar to us and have that universal galactic fights with neighbors and these little clips in their relationship. I just love it.

TK Dutes:

It’s also the moment where we realize that we’re the aliens in this, right? It’s the flip and it’s so funny to hear them go through… I mean, I don’t know. People’s terror is not funny, but the beginning where they were terrified. And then eventually they came to the realization that, “Whoa, this is like a thing that other beings decided to send us and maybe we should make our own and how much fun would that be.” And then they like Frisbee it over the fence.

Rose Eveleth:

Yeah. I love that, too. And I love thinking about when the golden record was created, how did you figure out what to put on it? And the realization that some of the things we might try to broadcast might actually be terrifying to whoever gets them because they have no context. I’m excited for you all to hear the interview, because one of the things that I wanted to know from Jonathan, the creator of this piece is if he were making a golden record, what he would put on it. Having listened to and thought about the reactions that people might have to the actual golden record. So, let’s just go to Jonathan’s interview, and after this quick break, you’re going to hear him talk about that. Hi, Jonathan. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Jonathan Mitchell:

Hi. Sure, it’s my pleasure.

Rose Eveleth:

So let’s start with the origin story maybe of this piece, how did this piece come together?

Jonathan Mitchell:

Okay. Well, I had a couple ideas for a while. I’d heard about this gold record that was sent out into space. There’s two of them. And I’d heard about it and I thought it would be interesting to do a story about the aliens who find it. I’m really interested in the idea that… So earth is completely not unique at all, and that there’s a virtually infinite number of planets just like earth in the vast, vast universe. And I think that earth is kind of like a particular kind of flower that grows in the universe. It’s like a rose or something like that.

Rose Eveleth:

Why, thank you.

Jonathan Mitchell:

And it develops a certain kind of way. And there’re enough instances of it that the same kind of life evolution patterns would replicate on other planets, a virtually infinite number of times. Even if it’s only 10% of the time, that’s still virtually infinite. And so, I guess I’m really fascinated by the idea that, biologically there’re creatures exactly like us on other planets that have kind of evolved technologically in very, very similar ways. They probably have a different culture, just like different cultures on earth. The range of possibilities maybe is something similar to what the range of possibilities we might find on earth. Maybe it’s broader, but it’s kind of an analogous kind of thing.

Jonathan Mitchell:

And so I thought it would be interesting to do a story about aliens on another planet that were a lot like us, who find the gold record. And the way I decided to go about doing it was to have two of my favorite improvisers listen to the gold record as though they were aliens and respond to it the way that they feel they would if they were an alien. And we recorded a lot of stuff, a lot of material. And I mean, they came over, I played it for them. They hadn’t heard it before, or if they had, it had been decades ago. It wasn’t something fresh in their minds. And one of the big decisions we had to make was who were the aliens? Like were they scientists?

Jonathan Mitchell:

And we finally decided that they were just regular people who were living on a farm out in the country and this landed on their property. We tried improvising it around with other ideas, but that was the idea that kind of worked and gave us the most to play with. And so, I just went through and I played different tracks in order, the way they are on the record for the improvisers. They were Peter McNerney and Chet Siegel, and they would improvise sort of in continuity like that. And I took all that tape, edited it together from that, but it was like we were still trying to figure it out. So, there were a lot of things we needed to redo, but we discovered a lot by doing that about what the shape of the story would be. They came back like a week later and we filled in the gaps and that was the story.

Rose Eveleth:

That’s so interesting that it was improvised. I didn’t know that. I thought it was, many things are scripted and I sort of assumed it was scripted, but that a lot of it was actually just their reaction to hearing the actual record.

Jonathan Mitchell:

Yeah. Yeah, they’re really good improvisers.

Rose Eveleth:

They are really good.

Jonathan Mitchell:

It’s also that in combination with editing. There’s a lot you can do to make things feel written, that were improvised.

Rose Eveleth:

Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about the humanness, as you say, like these are basically us, but just not us, right? That somewhere else. And that’s such an interesting choice because so much of science fiction does the opposite, where they try to make the aliens as weird and different and completely impenetrable as possible. I think about like a rival where you get these like, they speak in these loopy pictures and that’s like a classic sci-fi thing is to posit these aliens as, I mean, in the definition of alien suggest difference, and you sort of flipped it. You’ve talked about this a little bit, but what do you think that opens up to make them like us? I know you said you were interested in that idea, but why is that interesting from a storytelling perspective?

Jonathan Mitchell:

Well, we can look at ourselves as though we are aliens looking at ourselves. It’s very similar to how we present ourselves as individuals to other people. We tend to accentuate the positive things and try to make ourselves look as though we really have it together and on the inside, we sort of know the truth. But when you look at other people, you’re like, “Why does that person have it so together and I don’t?” We always think that, and that person’s thinking the same thing.

Jonathan Mitchell:

And so, it’s interesting to look at that from a sort of a much broader cultural perspective or planetary perspective like that. We were really putting our best foot forward with this record album. We wanted these other planets to like us. And to think that we had a lot to offer and we had this really rich culture and we wanted to show that off a little bit. And when you’re there on the receiving end of that, it’s interesting how much that hides.

Rose Eveleth:

Right.

Jonathan Mitchell:

And there were certain tracks I knew I wanted to hit. Like I wanted to hit Chuck Berry and there were certain music tracks that I just thought were so beautiful that I really wanted to play. I thought that track that we ended on was a really nice calming. It’s not actually what the record ends on, it’s somewhere in the middle of it, but I really wanted to end on it. It left you feeling positive but melancholy.

Rose Eveleth:

On the website, somebody commented being like, “Why can’t they understand Chuck Berry?” And you responded being like, “They’re aliens.”

Jonathan Mitchell:

Right. Yeah, exactly. My impression is that the more we hear something over and over again, the more comfortable we feel with it. And more familiar as a sound is to us, the more it makes sense and music is like that. A lot of times it takes you a few times over hearing something to really appreciate a piece of music or to really like it. And likewise, when I’m editing audio, I hear things over and over and over again. And I can fool myself into thinking something works because I’m used to hearing it that way, because I’ve heard it so many times. But when I come back and I forget what I did, like a couple days later and I listened to a fresh like, “Oh no, that’s totally wrong.” So, objectivity makes you hear things completely different.

Rose Eveleth:

You’ve sort of already answered this question, but I do want to ask you whether you believe we are alone in this galaxy?

Jonathan Mitchell:

Oh, no. I don’t believe we’re alone at all. I think that there has to be… I mean, it’s so obvious that there’s other people, other creatures. It’s just they’re so far away. It’s just hard to reach them. But no, I mean, if you look at the size of the universe, I mean, just watch some kind of science special on the universe and when they pull back from… I mean, it’s overwhelming. It’s crazy how big it is. I can’t even fit it in my mind. I can’t comprehend how big the universe is.

Jonathan Mitchell:

We’re in a big galaxy. The galaxy seems big, right? But that’s like billions of those galaxies, if not more. And I mean, just in our own galaxy there’s likely a planet like ours. But when you consider how many galaxies there are, it’s just crazy to me. And the fact that it’s possible that we exist means that there’s like… I think there’s a property to the universe that is conducive to life. And there’s probably more to it than that, that we don’t even realize. But at the very least, I think we’re some form of the universe knowing itself. That’s the only thing I can come up with for why we exist. But it seems like it’s common.

Rose Eveleth:

One thing I find really interesting about this piece and the Voyager Record is that the record itself is sort of its own attempt at storytelling, right?

Jonathan Mitchell:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rose Eveleth:

For beings that we don’t yet know. And the history of it is really interesting around how it was made and who decided what got to go on it, and all of that is super fascinating. And so, we have sort of a story within a story here a little bit. You’ve got this story, then people interpreting the story and then we’re hearing it. I’m curious, and this is sort of an oddball question, but I’d love to know what you think. If you actually had to kind of design a story for aliens, if you were going to make the next golden record, how do you think you would approach that?

Jonathan Mitchell:

Well, I think they did a really good job. I mean they included all kinds of sounds and all kinds of music. If it’s just sound, I don’t know that I would do very much different from what they did. I mean, it’s old now. It’s a few decades old, so maybe there’s more up-to-date things we could put on it, but I think the beginning of it is quite scary. I don’t know if I’d start with those sounds exactly. I think I’d be a little bit more… I think it’d be warmer at the beginning and welcoming and try to make friends with them a little bit more at first. But I think playing all the different languages is a nice idea. I think playing all these different kinds of music is really important and sounds of our environments. And there’s so many cool sounds in our world. Yeah. I would probably stick pretty close to what they did, to be honest.

Rose Eveleth:

You mentioned that for you at the end of the piece, you have a hopeful feeling. Do you feel hopeful about the future in general?

Jonathan Mitchell:

Yes, I do. I mean, I don’t know about humans, but I know life will find a way. And even if it doesn’t there’re billions and billions of other earths out there that are probably evolving. They probably have the same environmental… Getting really dark now but I do, I think that there’s this nature to humans that they kind of go down this path and they make these discoveries in about the same way and no matter how we evolve, we’re sort of going to go there anyway.

Rose Eveleth:

Well, one thing I’m curious about is, when I first reached out to you about this project and asked is there anything in the Truth archive that comes to mind for you. You mentioned that it’s kind of sometimes hard to make hopeful, short fiction pieces for the Truth. Can you talk a little bit about why that is? Why is it hard to make positive fiction in the format that the Truth sort of has?

Jonathan Mitchell:

I mean, I think when it comes to stories about utopias, it’s hard. I don’t think it’s necessarily hard to make a hopeful story in general, but I think it is hard to make a utopia story that’s not actually a dystopia. And I think that’s because usually if you choose to set a story in a utopia, the fact that it’s a utopia is thematically connected to the story.

Jonathan Mitchell:

And so, in order for you to have any kind of narrative momentum, you need there to be tension. And so, usually the tension is in whether or not this is actually utopia or not. Again, I think that’s like something that we can all relate to, is this idea that everything that looks perfect underneath is something really dark and there’s got to be something dark for something that perfect. I mean, if you were going to make a positive story set in a utopia, it would probably have to… The fact that it’s a utopia would probably have nothing to do with what’s driving the story. It just happens. It’s sort of a neutralizing factor that makes it possible to deal with other things without the sort of the baggage of this broader cultural landscape.

Rose Eveleth:

Yeah. Do you have a favorite hopeful story? Whether it’s a book, short story, movie, podcasts, whatever comes to mind?

Jonathan Mitchell:

Well, it’s not a science fiction story, is that okay?

Rose Eveleth:

That’s fine. Yeah.

Jonathan Mitchell:

My favorite movie is the Muppet Movie.

Rose Eveleth:

Okay.

Jonathan Mitchell:

And that’s a very, very hopeful story.

Rose Eveleth:

Say more.

Jonathan Mitchell:

It’s the sort of the origin story of the Muppets and Kermit decides to go to Hollywood. And it’s interesting because when they were writing the screenplay, the motivation for going to Hollywood was to become rich and famous, but they changed it at a certain point to making millions of people happy, which is a much more-

Rose Eveleth:

Yeah. I like that.

Jonathan Mitchell:

… friendly and outward thinking motivation. And so, he meets all his friends along the way. It’s a road movie. He goes from the swamp to Hollywood and he ends up and they get to Hollywood and he says, “Life’s like a movie, write your own ending, keep believing, keep pretending. We did just what we set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers and you.”

Rose Eveleth:

Bravo, bravo. Applause.

Jonathan Mitchell:

I love it. It gives me chills. I just got chills when I sang that. I just love it. And then you see this rainbow shining through the roof of the studio, and it’s just so beautiful and everyone’s happy. I think it holds up. It’s my favorite Muppet movie by far.

Rose Eveleth:

So the last question that we’re asking everybody for the series is, what are you most hopeful for right now?

Jonathan Mitchell:

I’m hopeful for the 2020 election.

Rose Eveleth:

Really?

Jonathan Mitchell:

Yeah.

Rose Eveleth:

Sorry.

Jonathan Mitchell:

I’m hoping that everything will be fixed and we can all go back to not having to watch the news every day. Well, I hope that we get serious about addressing climate change. I hope that right wins out over greed. That people start caring about each other more and valuing the needs of society as a whole over the needs of the individual a little bit more. There’s like a balance that we can strike that I think we’re a little bit out of balance right now. And I hope that we can all have universal health care at some point.

Rose Eveleth:

Amen. Well, thank you so much for coming on and for making this piece, which I love. Was such a delight to listen to. I think my favorite part in the piece is the moment when you kind of realize that they’re aliens. And I know it’s in the description, but I think it’s easy to forget because they sound so people-like when you first start listening. And that moment of like, “Oh. Oh.” And then it’s just so fun and delightful and the performers did such an amazing job. They’re so likable and relatable.

Jonathan Mitchell:

Well thank you.

Rose Eveleth:

It was such a joy to listen to. So, thank you so much for making the piece and for coming on to talk about it.

Jonathan Mitchell:

Well, thank you so much. I’m glad you enjoyed it. That’s really nice to hear.

TK Dutes:

Voyager Found produced by Jonathan Mitchell, performed by Chet Siegel and Peter McNerney. Visit thetruthpodcast.com for more. Open World is a partnership between Philo’s Future Media and Flash Forward Presents.

Rose Eveleth:

Hosted by TK Dutes and Rose Eveleth.

TK Dutes:

And produced by Brittani Brown.

Rose Eveleth:

The intro music is by T.H. Ponders.

TK Dutes:

With engineering by C. You can contact us via social media. We are on the Twitters at OpenWorldPod.

Rose Eveleth:

Yes, definitely contact us. Get in touch. You can email us @helloatopenworldradio.com. You can visit OpenWorldRadio.com for more about any of what you heard on this show. More links to the amazing creators who we featured here, how to find their work. Also, there are transcripts of each episode up on the website. If you want to read those or revisit them. And we really love taking this journey with you. So, thanks for coming along for the ride.

1 thought on “Voyager Found

  1. Patti Short says:

    Dear Rose and TK: I have loved *every* episode of Open World so far, but this?!? This one *moved* me! The realization that (1) these bits were actually from Voyager (in the title, so… duh? lol), and (2) that the couple speaking weren’t from Earth… just… WOW!

    Thank you SO much for Open World. I’ve never been into audiobooks, because they don’t fit my lifestyle. Audiodramas are apparently a completely different category.

    Reply

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