A short message of farewell

This is the last recording I will make for this podcast. It is time to finally move on.

I began this podcast with Episode 1 near the end of 2012 when I was in my mid 50s. Although we have been on a very long hiatus since Episode 50, I had the intention that when I retired I would either bring the podcast out of hiatus or permanently end it. As I got closer to that time, I understood that I only wanted to restart the podcast if I could put a fair bit of time and energy into it and put out frequent, quality content. Like the previous episodes, the new ones would be commercial free, audio only, go as deep as we could on our core topics, and would sometimes refer to Douglas Adams. 

Now that I am retired, and things are much more real, I have decided that I am not going to do this. I won’t revisit all my thinking about this, but part of it is that similar content is now widely available on multiple platforms, often accompanied by skillfully produced video. David Kipping’s Cool Worlds is a good example.

So, while I am not necessarily exiting podcasting forever, I am going to meet the commitment that I made to myself not to fade the Wow! Signal without notice, but to unambiguously announce the end of the podcast while expressing my deep gratitude to everyone who participated and who made the content much, much better than I could have made it by myself. I’m proud of our 50 Episodes and 34 Bursts - shorter, more focused episodes - and even the pubs I hosted and enjoyed immensely. 

The podcast rss feed and the wowsignalpodcast.com domain will remain up for some time to come, but if you want to listen to any past episodes, I suggest you go to wowsignalpodcast.com and download the .mp3 files that interest you to listen to them at your convenience. I will have many of the episodes available on YouTube as well. If there is an episode you would really like a transcript of, I can probably supply one - just get in touch and I’ll see what I can do.

I’m going to thank everyone I can think of, and I apologize in advance if I left anyone out. I’ll start with the folks who actually helped me create the podcast, and often had the idea for an episode or burst: Daniela DePaulis, Nick Nielsen, James Garrison, and Mike Mongo. I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch and hope we can meet up someday.

Now, my many great guests. I’ll list their names now. Some of them appeared more than once. There were people I never had on that I regret missing, and if you think I should have emailed you with an appearance request, you may well be right.

Our first guest was Antonio Paris, founder of Aerial Phenomena Investigations. This was followed by:

 

Geoffrey Landis (twice)

Nikola Danaylov

David Grinspoon (3 times)

Seth Shostak

Bing Garthright

Duncan Forgan (twice), Isaac Stott, Ben Wright McGee

Fraser Cain

Paul Shuch

Geoff Marcy + Ana Heras

Daniel Cartin

Nicholas Joll

Heath Rezabek, Robin Hanson

Steven Dick, Betul Kacar

Duncan Lunan , Alan Penny

Abel Mendez (twice)

Bob Dixon

JL Galache + Duncan Lunan

Tom Barbalet

Andrew Siemion

Martin Elvis

Bradley Schaefer

Tabetha Boyajian

Stella Kafka

Bradley Schaefer

Douglas Vakoch (twice)

Nathaniel Comfort

Ben Montet

Doug Vakoch

Jon Lomborg

Frank White

Sofia Sheikh

Daniel Oberhaus

Beatriz Villarroel

Julia Demarines

Adam Dipert

Stella Kafka

Paolo Costaño

Wade Roush

David Skogerboe

Chelsea Haramia

Thomas Moynihan

In addition, the following people were guests on Bursts:

 

Mike Mongo

Nora Noffke

Daniel Cartin

Jeff Nosanov

Josh Grindlay

Jason Hessels

Beatriz Villarroel (twice)

Tabetha Boyajian (twice)

David Blank

 

Also, thanks to our Patreon donors and our Wow! Signal Pub participants, and Erin Carr and Joyce Abma for voiceover help. 

Finally, thanks to all the musicians who let me use their music: Ahleuchatistas, Mike Griffin, DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, Erika Lloyd, Sleep Research Facility, House Band of the Universe, George Hrab,  Eben Brooks, and many others.

Well, everything ends sooner or later, and this podcast is ending now. It ran for 12 years, we had a good run, and I am happy I did it. 

I hope I’ll run into you in real life, or on other platforms or in other projects. I have largely curtailed my social media presence in recent years, but you can still find me on Bluesky. Hey, we may even do another pub someday. See you there?