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Wild Thing is a long-form, narrative podcast about the obsessions that capture our imaginations. This sound-rich and deeply reported show examines the relationship between science and society—that point where scientific inquiry collides with our very human desire to find answers, even when there are none. Whether it's seeking out Sasquatch, looking skyward for extraterrestrial life, or probing the power of the atom, exploring the unknown helps us better understand ourselves. Every season, ho ...
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Buried cash. DEA moles. Sibling rivalries. Skydiving planes. Fast cars. And an exploding hash lab. A group of college friends took advantage of Colorado’s medical marijuana laws to create one of the longest, most lucrative smuggling runs in U.S. history. But when a drug mule flipped, the whole enterprise came crashing down— and revealed how the marijuana black market is not just evolving in the era of legal weed, but thriving.New episodes publish Tuesday mornings.
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S1 Bonus Interview: In Memory of Peter Byrne
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In memory of Peter Byrne, the longest-surviving member of the Four Horsemen of Sasquatchery. After looking for Bigfoot for decades, the 97-year-old tracker passed away in August 2023. Host Laura Krantz had the opportunity to interview him in 2017, and learned that his search for Sasquatch was only one adventure in a life that was jam-packed with th…
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Cover Up is a series of investigative stories that take us on a journey into a world of subterfuge and secrecy - a world where the truth is concealed under a blanket of lies. From corrupt individuals to clandestine institutions, Cover Up exposes deceit, deception and the abuse of power. Season one uncovers the story of The Ministry of Secrets, one …
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Hosted by Ash Kelley and Alaina Urquhart from the hit show Morbid. When 90-year-old Laurence Pilgeram drops dead on the sidewalk outside his condo, you might think that’s the end of his story. But, really, it’s just the beginning. Because Laurence and others like him have signed up to be frozen and brought back to life in the future. And that belie…
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Special Preview Episode: Elizabeth the First. The Early Years
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Here’s your special preview episode of the new series Elizabeth the First – about the remarkable life of Elizabeth Taylor. In this preview, we learn how Elizabeth’s ambitious spirit was unmistakable early in life. The relationship with her parents and the push into the glamour and prestige of Hollywood collided with the reality of a male-dominated …
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Announcing "The Search For Sasquatch", a middle-grade, non-fiction book based on the first season of Wild Thing! Both the hardcover book and the audiobook (narrated by Laura Krantz), will be out on October 11, 2022. Here's a sneak listen to the first chapter. The audiobook is available for preorder here and there's also a beautifully illustrated ha…
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A faulty reactor overheats, melting through its containment unit and poisoning a nearby town with radioactive gas. A spacecraft pushes further into deep space, exploring new galaxies, powered by a small nuclear reactor. An ordinary scientist is struck by cosmic rays—and finds he has new powers. Fiction? Or fact? Or a little of both? Stories of nucl…
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What were the long-term effects of the SL-1 explosion? Nuclear power is a shrinking part of America’s energy picture; accidents and fear have tarnished it, and the old reactor fleet is reaching its end. Yet nuclear energy could provide a bulwark against the looming threat of climate change. Is it something we can make work for us, in spite of ourse…
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Incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima are often what comes to mind when we think about nuclear energy. Thankfully, events like these actually very rare. So does that mean the risks we associate with atomic power are as bad as we think? How good are we at actually assessing those risks? And can we make things even less risky by removing humans from…
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The aftermath of SL-1 highlighted a problem that we still haven’t solved, despite decades of searching for a solution: what to do with the waste. Our plans to store nuclear waste inside Yucca Mountain in Nevada fell through. So now what? Can we safely contain these materials? Should the waste be in one location, or many? How do we warn future gener…
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As firefighters and medical personnel staged operations at SL-1, a plume of radioactive gas silently made its way over the Idaho desert, creeping towards the nearby towns. How much of a risk did the explosion at SL-1 actually pose? And what does radiation actually do to the human body? We are constantly bathing in what’s called background radiation…
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The only three people who really knew what had transpired at SL-1 were dead, and it would take months to determine what likely happened—plenty of time for rumors and gossip to take hold. Was there a love triangle? A fight gone wrong? A murder suicide? A government cover-up? Or was all of this rumor and innuendo simply a distraction from the real pr…
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Two of the men working the reactor that night had personal problems. They hated each other. They fought with their bosses. And those problems could easily distract a man from his work—but what does that mean when you’re working with nuclear materials? At a reactor that, although managed by the military, seemed to be falling apart due to infrastruct…
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The horrifying devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved the destructive capabilities of nuclear power. But, in the aftermath of World War II, we started to experiment with how we could use atomic energy for good. It was the dawn of a new era in science, and, in that spirit, thousands of men arrived in Idaho, including the men whose deaths would…
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How did we figure out that such a tiny particle—an atom—held all that power? For that matter, what is an atom? A primer on the basics of atomic energy—including its destructive capabilities—to help us better understand the events that unfolded roughly 20 years later at SL-1. We’ll get a (basic!) lesson in nuclear physics from scientists, and explor…
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Two dead men. One man missing. A hole blown in the side of the reactor. A cloud of radioactive gas so hot, it was off the charts. What happened with the SL-1 reactor feeds into our deep fear about the dangers of nuclear energy. But we remain intrigued by the possibilities of an atomic future, especially at a time when we need clean energy more than…
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Back for its third season, Wild Thing uses science, history and culture to probe the realities of nuclear energy today, while analyzing our own fascination— and ambivalence—with all things atomic. What are the true risks? And what is the actual potential? Are we better at this than we were sixty years ago? And given our nature, are we humans even r…
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'Oumuamua is long gone—out of sight and almost impossible to reach. The excitement over it generated endless fascination about what (and who) might be out there. Ultimately, that’s what this search for extraterrestrial life represents—a series of questions that don’t have good answers and may never have them, not now, not in another millennia. So w…
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Our views on aliens can often be uplifting, offering a glimpse of a better, technologically-bright future, or a glimmer of hope about our ability to survive. In some cases, our thoughts about them are almost spiritual, as though aliens are divine beings. To understand why, we make a trip to Colorado’s UFO Watchtower, which has become something of a…
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American culture is saturated with extraterrestrial and UFO references—and we still can’t get enough. Hollywood has raked in billions on alien-themed programming and it comes in every flavor you can imagine—from horror to camp to science fiction to documentary. What’s the cultural appeal? Why aliens as opposed to any other topic? How have these ima…
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