Escape Pod

[rock music] Escape Pod, Episode 1062: Extrasolar Ghost Tours: Safety Questionable, Lizards Guaranteed, by Hans Ege Wenger.

[rock music] Hello, and welcome to Escape Pod, your weekly science fiction podcast.

I'm your host this week, Tina Connolly, and I'm here to bring you Extrasolar Ghost Tours: Safety Questionable, Lizards Guaranteed by Hans Ege Wenger.

Hans Ege Wenger, he/him, is an aid worker, activist, and amateur mixologist living in San Francisco, California, USA.

His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Escape Pod, Analog, The Drabblecast, and Abyss & Apex.

You can find him on Bluesky at hansew.bluesky.social.

Your narrator this week is Eric Valdez.

The crew is getting freaked out, to say the least.

So there are people in this industry that don't like us or don't trust us to involve us with certain things.

You are the king of the internet right now with The Escape Pod.

We're very blessed that our next 100 episodes could just be the two of us, and our audience would be very happy.

We filmed our first episode of the podcast January 15th of '23.

That is an idea I got from you.

I got you, Big Dog.

So listen, you are the king of the internet right now with The Escape Pod.

[laughs] No, I'm not.

We'll be back next Tuesday with another fantastic tale.

In the meantime, you might care to check our sister podcasts, Escape Pod for science fiction, Sidopod for horror, Cast of Wonders for wire speculative fiction and Catscast for speculative cat stories.

If your heart belongs to us, though, we'll see you next week.

Be safe and be kind.

I, I feel bad 'cause I think a lot of our audience went...

And, like, I saw a comment that was like, "I'm here for the Escape Pod.

I left 'cause of Cal." [laughs]

[laughs] I, I think a lot of people do that.

...

so we're a little late to this.

[laughs] You can tell me if you wanna cut this, but hey, I would like to formally announce the Escape Pod support and, uh, joining of the fight of all fandoms coming together.

[laughs] You don't know about this?

Is the Milky Way sentient? What if the Milky Way were sentient? Moya is the folklorist to the stars and astrophysicist to the folks.

She is the host of the popular science podcast, Pale Blue Pod, and the author of the new book, Mothers of Invention, published by Grand Central.

Welcome, Moya.

Thank you.

I fell in love with both fields when I was in college, and they were two of the smallest departments at Harvard, so I got to pretty much convince both of them to let me study it.

And ever since then, I've been combining them through fictional world building.

I hosted a whole podcast about that for many years.

I like to use folklore as a vehicle to get people to develop a more personal connection to the astronomy that I share with them because a lot of them have been hearing these stories or they have like a cultural connection to a god or something that I might bring up and that will make the science stick in their brains even more.

Music

Escape Pod.

Episode 1061.

Pigeons and Robots in Pensive Worlds.

By Trey Hawkins.

Hi there, welcome to Escape Pod.

I'm Mer Lafferty, your host and co-editor.

Today's story is Pigeons and Robots and Pensive Worlds by Trey Hawkins.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's next for the fellows in the escape pod? When are we seeing you next?

Well, obviously, I've got to come to the Halloween party.

Of course.

Thank you guys very much for watching.

Go ahead.

Check out the escape pod if you enjoyed this.

To be fair, if you've made it all the way to here.