David Baron – The Martians - Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice.
I've always been fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science, and
the crossroads at which they meet. Join me now, and
we will explore these topics and so much more with
fascinating guests, authors, and experts who will guide us to

(00:28):
Destination Unlimited. For as long as we've had telescopes, we've
been obsessed with Mars more so than our planetary neighbors.
Mars captures our fascination with its seeming potential to nurture
something we've yet to discover anywhere else, extra terrestrial life.

(00:53):
This possibility, scientifically founded or not, has catapulted a pop
cultural fixation on what the Martians and their world could
look like. My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, David Baron,
examines the events between the late eighteen hundreds and early
nineteen hundreds that started a Martian craze. David Baron is

(01:16):
an award winning journalist, broadcaster, and author of The Beast
in the Garden and American Eclipse. A former science correspondent
for NPR, he has also written for The New York Times,
Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American,
and other publications. David recently served as the bruch S.

(01:41):
Bloomberg NASA Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and
Scientific Innovation. His website is davidbarnauthor dot com, and he
joins me this week to share his new book, The Martians,
The True story of an alien craze that sured Turn
of the Century America. Please join me in welcoming to

(02:05):
Destination Unlimited, David Baron. Welcome, David.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Thank you so much, Victor, David.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
We're going to be talking about your new book, The Martians,
the true story of an alien craze that captured Turn
of the century America. But in the meantime, let's talk
about your background. Let's share with our listeners your path
and how you developed your interest in both astronomy and journalism.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Uh sure. So I was born in the nineteen sixties.
That of course was the era of the Apollo Space program,
so I was very excited about outer space. But it
was also a time when as a kid, I found
myself surrounded by Martians. You know, Martians were on TV,
on bugs, bunny cartoons. There was Marvin the Martian who

(02:49):
was always out to destroy the Earth. It was a
popular sitcom in the nineteen sixties called My Favorite Martian.
There were Martians in old movies and in comic books
and sci fi novels. I went on, because of my
passion about space and science to become a science journalist.
For a long time, I was a science reporter for
National Public Radio. I was a science editor for various

(03:12):
public radio programs, and I've been writing in recent years
about astronomy. And I was reflecting on my own childhood
and thinking about that cultural obsession with Mars and Martians
from back when I was a kid, and where did
all that come from? Because even today, Mars holds a
special place in our culture as a kind of a magical,

(03:32):
mysterious planet. And I wondered where that all started. And
so I decided to go look into history. And when
I started to look at what happened back in the
turn of the last century, the eighteen nineties and the
beginning of the twentieth century, I was just absolutely flabbergasted,
because you could open up newspapers at that time, serious

(03:53):
newspapers like the New York Times and read about the
civilization on Mars and scientists talking about what these beings
might be like and what the civilization was like, and
how we might communicate with them. So, before Martians became
staples of science fiction, they were widely believed to be
scientific fact, and I just found that fascinating and worthy

(04:14):
of a book.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
And long before that, the ancient cultures all had interest
in Mars as a deity.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Right, So you know, Mars is named after the god
of war, But Mars always seemed to be odd among
the planets, particularly because of its color. It can be
red or orange depending on where it is in its
orbit and what our atmosphere is like at the time, but.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
It has a distinct color.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
And also Mars for much of its time in its orbit,
it just gets lost among the stars.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
It's quite dim.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
But every two years and two months it comes around
close to the Earth and it becomes very bright and
it's very noticed, and it's almost like this new object
in the sky. So from ancient times, skywatchers knew that
there was something special about Mars, and that too was
handed down I think to modern times that again, Mars
is different from the other planets.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
We were born in adjacent times. I was born in
the fifties, we were born in the sixties. The space
race was really important to me. How did that inform
your pursuits?

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Well, so, you know, I was excited about the Apollo program.
I remember watching Neil Armstrong step onto the lunar surface.
Later on, as a high schooler, I was very much
influenced by Carl Sagan and his PBS series Cosmos. You know,
outer space is this fascinating, all the mysteries about it,

(05:46):
And I'm not really I wouldn't call myself a religious
person or really terribly spiritual person, but I find astronomy
almost spiritual. Maybe I shouldn't even say almost, because you're
really thinking about things that are so much larger and
more powerful than us that there's no question are out
there and we there's so much we don't know about

(06:08):
outer space. And so I find that both space exploration
and astronomy to be the most exciting parts of science.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
And I found in your bio that you are an
eclipse chaser.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Absolutely no, I am fanatical about that. And if I
have a religion, perhaps it's total solar eclipses. I saw
my first total eclipse in Aruba in nineteen ninety eight.
I went there because there was a science journalist I
wanted to see what happened when the Moon completely blocked
out the Sun, and it was just the most emotional,
awe expiring, inspiring experience.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
I had ever had.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
For those of you who've never seen a total solar eclipse,
and most people haven't, although of course we had one
across the United States in twenty seventeen and another in
twenty twenty four, but they're very rare to come where
you are. A total solar eclipse is just an otherworldly experience.
It goes dark like twilight in the middle of the day,
and it's only during a total solar eclipse, which is

(07:06):
distinct from a partial solar eclipse, that you actually can
look at the Sun with the naked eye because the
bright surface is covered and you can see with your
naked eye just what a magical object the Sun is
because it's surrounded by this aura called the solar corona,
and it's the most magical sight in outer space. So
I've now chased total eclipses across the globe. I've seen

(07:28):
nine of them. Next summer, I will be in Greenland
to see a total solar eclipse.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
That'll be my tenth.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
You're talking about the next state?

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Ah, yeah, right, could be by then.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
You know, I remember as a kid reading a Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court and then seeing the wonderful
film starring Bing Crosby who had an accident and woke
up and he was in King Arthur's court and he
was about to be executed and remembered from the books
that he was carrying with him that there was going
to be a total solar eclipse that day, and he
basically said, and if you don't let me go, I'm

(08:01):
going to make the sun disappear. And at that time,
the eclips took place, and they let him go and
he used his Connectic Yankee ingenuity to save his life.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Right, And that's actually based on a true story of
Christopher Columbus when he came to the New World and
was having trouble with some of the natives on one
of the Caribbean islands. He had a nautical almanac with
him and he knew that there would be a total
lunar eclipse. So that's when the moon goes and it
gets very dark, turns out of a blood red color.

(08:30):
And he said, if you know, if you don't give
me what I want, I'm going to turn the moon
to blood, and sure enough it.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Happened, absolutely absolutely, which just goes to show how ingenuity
and using the materials that are given to us through
science and through other means can be life changing in
many different ways. I think today, even today, that can
be something that could be life changing in many different ways.
Your writing style in The Martians is wonderfully prosaic. Why

(08:57):
did you choose to use this method of right rather
than in a journalistic style?

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Well, so thank you for saying that. So my book
is written, I would say kind of in the style
of a novel. It's much called narrative nonfiction, and this
is my third book, and that's the style I choose
to write in part because I get bored very easily
as a reader, and I find a typical non fiction

(09:23):
book can be very hard to get through if it's
just a collection of facts. What makes a book readable
and compelling is a story. And so when I, even
though I'm a science writer, I write about people, and
I look for stories that are so compelling that even
if you don't think you care about science, the story

(09:44):
itself will make you want to read. And that's what
I found. I mean, I you know, in picking my subjects.
I look far and wide to find something that is
both a topic that I find interesting and I think
will resonate, but also a story with great characters and
great plot in great setting. And I felt I had
that here. I mean, just wonderful, wonderful, real characters living

(10:09):
out a very very strange story. Everything in my book
is one hundred percent true, but I think I hope
it reads sort of like a novel.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Absolutely, turn of the century astronomers speculated that visible lines
on the surface of Mars were proof of civilization? How
did they come to that idea?

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Right?

Speaker 3 (10:30):
So it's a complex story, and I'll try to make
it relatively quick. So it all began in eighteen seventy
seven with an astronomer in Italy named Giovanni Schiaparelli, who
was a well renowned astronomer. He headed the observatory in Milan,
and he decided in eighteen seventy seven that he was
going to make a map of Mars, which is a

(10:52):
relatively new thing you could do. Maps of Mars had
been made before, but telescopes were now getting good enough
that astronomers could make out the surface of the planet Mars,
and he wanted to see if he could make a
more detailed map than anyone before, And in eighteen seventy seven,
Mars came closer to Earth than it had been I
believe in about fifteen years. About every fifteen years Mars

(11:13):
comes especially close. So he used that as an opportunity
to study the planet in detail, and he mapped out
It looked sort of earth like, I mean, there were
dark areas and light areas that looked sort of like
oceans and continents. But Schiaparelli also saw this network of
fine straight lines crisscrossing the planet, and he didn't know

(11:33):
what they were, but given that they were dark, and
he thought that the other dark areas were probably water,
he figured these were waterways of some sort, and he
called them canale, which in Italian means channels like the
English channel and narrow waterway. That was mistranslated into English
as canals, suggesting artificial waterways. At the time, people knew

(11:56):
it was a mistranslation. It was sort of a joke
that there were canal on Mars. But fifteen years later,
when Mars once again came very close to Earth and
astronomers were studying it quite a bit, there was an
astronomer who came along who came up with a theory
that in fact, those weird straight lines that looked artificial

(12:17):
really were canals, not navigation canals, but irrigation canals. And
the astronomer who suggested this and became the greatest proponent
of the so called canals on Mars was Perceval Lowell,
who was a Bostonian who came from a highly regarded,
very wealthy family, had as all the money he needed

(12:41):
and decided at around age forty to become an astronomer,
and he used his funds to buy one of the
largest telescopes in existence, established an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona,
which is still there. The Lowell Observatory had it put
on a hill outside of town, which he called Mars Hill,
and then dedicated himself to the study of Mars. And

(13:04):
he and he came up with this I can tell
you more, but quite an elaborate theory about how it
was that the Martians were using the irrigation canals. Okay,
so uh it's again. I go into a lot more
detail in the book. But Mars at the time was
believed to be an older planet than Earth, and so

(13:27):
that meant a couple of things. First, it was thought
that planets had a sort of a cycle of birth,
you know, then their kind of adolescents and adulthood, and
then their death. And Mars seemed to be veering toward
its death. It was losing its water. Lowell set it
was mostly desert, which in fact is true, but he

(13:50):
knew that there was, or there appeared to be, anyway
water on the planet in the form of ice, because
through a telescope you can see the polar ice caps
on Mars. The North poles have white caps. Actually they're
mostly carbon dioxide ice, but they're partially water ice, and
he assumed they were water.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
They'll grow and shrink with the season.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
So Lowell thought, well, there is clearly some.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Water on the planet.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
In order for the Martians to survive, the only way
they could survive was by tapping the melt water from
the poles, and so they had established this global irrigation
network that would bring the water from the poles down
to their desert farms and their oasis cities. And these lines, again,
they were so straight, he said, they couldn't be natural.

(14:36):
And when they tended to all intersect at places where
many of these canals came together, and he would see
these dots, these kind of circles there that he said
were the Martian cities. And the lines tended to fit,
to grow and fade with the seasons. And so what
Lowell said was that they weren't You weren't actually seeing
the water. After all, the canal would have to be

(14:56):
many miles wide to be seen from Earth, and that
just seemed ridiculous. He said, what we were seeing, these
so called canals, actually represented the plant life, the vegetation
that grew on the banks of the canals when the
water flowed during the spring and summer, and then in
the fall and winter, the plant life would die off,

(15:18):
the leaves would fall, and sure enough the canals would vanish.
And that's what he at least thought he saw, was
this seasonal appearance and disappearance of these lines. And so
it was a coherent theory. And I should also add,
since Mars was thought to be older than Earth, if
life originated on Mars, as it clearly did on Earth,

(15:41):
it probably originated on Mars before Earth. It probably evolved
into intelligence before on Earth. And therefore the Martians, according
to this theory, were more evolved more intelligent than humans.
In fact, they were also more moral, more peaceful. The
marsh that Lowell talked about were these kind of super

(16:04):
beings that humans should emulate, and in fact, over the
course of time that I write about in my book,
when his theory went from an interesting idea to a
widely accepted fact, it got to the point where there
were religious leaders sermonizing about the Martians and how humans
should emulate them.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Did Lowell think that the Martians were human?

Speaker 2 (16:29):
He did not think they were human.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
In fact, he would often point out he never said
they were human, but he wouldn't go beyond that. He
said he would not speculate on what they might be,
but others did so. There were I have a lot
of illustrations in my book that are taken directly from
newspapers and magazines and so forth of the time, and

(16:52):
there were a number of different artists renditions of the Martians.
They you know, they tended to be not humanoid, really,
but they tended to be to have backbones and two
arms and two legs. So generally people weren't too creative.
But the Martians were said to be tall and skinny

(17:13):
for the most part because Mars has a lower force
of gravity than Earth, so therefore an animal could grow
especially tall without all that weight crushing the bones and
the muscle below. Mars is farther from the Sun than
the Earth is, therefore daylight is dim on Mars, so
Martians were depicted with especially large eyes. This idea of

(17:36):
the Martians being smarter than us, more evolved than us.
If we evolved from apes and used to be hairy,
and now we have a lot less hair and we
have bigger heads, well, the Martians should be bald and
have giant heads. So the way the Martians were depicted
back then tended to match kind of what the stereotypical
alien depiction is today. Tall and skinny, bald head, big

(17:59):
e sometimes a large chest because Mars was known to
have a thin atmosphere, so the Martians must have large lungs,
but Lowell himself declined to speculate.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
You share some wonderful stories about Lowell, including his service
as a US Foreign secretary to Korea, which I had
no idea about until I read your book. How did
his three month journey to Korea change his life?

Speaker 3 (18:25):
So Percival Lowell was a fascinating person.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
You know.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
As I said, he came from this very respected, very
wealthy New England family. He like pretty much all the
men in his family, went to Harvard. In fact, my
book opens in eighteen seventy six at his graduation exercises
when he gave a delivered a speech that actually was
about science, was about the formation of the solar system.

(18:52):
But when he graduated from Harvard, he could have done
anything with his life, and what he did for the
first twenty years of his adulthood was came kind of
a roving anthropologist. He was particularly fascinated by Asian cultures.
He spent quite a bit of time in Japan, and
early on in his early twenties or mid twenties, he
was in Japan when Korea, which was called the Hermit

(19:16):
Kingdom it had cut itself off from much of the world,
was starting to reach out diplomatically to other parts of
the world, and Korea sent its first diplomatic mission to
the United States, and on the way they needed someone
to act as kind of a guide to the United States,
and they found Lowell in Tokyo and hired him, and

(19:37):
so he was brought to the United States as part
of the official Korean mission and then went back to Korea.
He was one of the first Americans to actually have
a look around what had been really a kind of
a reclusive kingdom. And he wrote about He wrote a
whole book about Korea. He wrote a book about Japan
and other parts of Asia. And I think that's really

(20:00):
really closely connected to his fascination with Mars. Because you know,
we're talking the late nineteenth century, other cultures were called
alien cultures, and he would often and others would talk
about other countries, non Western countries, being almost other planets
when you visited them. They were so unlike what people

(20:22):
expected life was like in Europe or the United States.
And so he when he was approaching the age of
forty and suddenly latched onto Mars. It was a natural
progression from being fascinated by the supposed alien cultures on
Earth to the alien culture of Mars.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Fascinating story, and thank you for sharing about in your book,
my guest David Barron. His book is entitled The Martians,
The True Story of an Alien Craze that captured Turn
of the century America. David, please share with our listeners
where they can get your books and find out more
about you and your work.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Sure so well. My books are availed anywhere. Books are
sold on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local independent bookstore.
I have my own website which is davidbarnauthor dot com.
And my last name is spelled with one r ba
r N, so David barronauthor dot com.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
And this is my third book.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
My last book actually had to do with my fascination
about total solar eclipses. That book's called American Eclipse and
it's the true story of a total solar eclipse that
crossed America's wild West in eighteen seventy eight and was
a formative event in getting the United States to become
a global powerhouse in science. But it's just a great

(21:38):
story of these scientists, including Thomas Edison who was in
Wyoming in eighteen seventy eight for the total solar eclipse,
and an all female expedition of scientists from Vassar College
that went to Denver in eighteen seventy eight. So, as
I say, I mean, my books are all stories that
I hope are well told that have happened to do
with science.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
And we'll be back with more of David Barron and
the Martians after these words on the ome Times.

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Speaker 1 (24:08):
Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week is David Barron,
his book The Martians, the true story of an alien
craze that captured turn of the century America. David, in
those days, did people think that Martians posed a threat
to Earth?

Speaker 3 (24:26):
Very interesting question because probably the best known piece of
fiction that came out of that era I write about
was HG. Wells's eighteen ninety eight novel The War of
the World, which in nineteen thirty eight was then adapted
for radio by Orson Wells very famously, and that, of
course is the story of the Martians invading the Earth.

(24:47):
And the Martians in that fiction were these hideous monsters
that were set on dominating the Earth. They were preying
on humans. But really, the interesting thing is, so when
I started my research, I assumed that that's what people
thought the Martians were like. But no, that was such

(25:08):
an outlier, you know, that was widely believed that the
so called real Martians were these moral, peaceful beings that
we should respect and emulate. And part of that had
to do with Percival Lowell's theory. So getting back to
his theory of the canals on Mars, So if Mars

(25:30):
is a dying planet, and if the Martians the only
way they can survive is by pulling together globally to
build this enormous irrigation network that connects the polar regions
down to the equatorial regions, well that meant that the
whole planet was acting as a whole that you know,

(25:50):
the planet had evolved beyond.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Nation states, beyond war.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
Everyone was pulling together, and so it was thought that
the Martians again had evolved it. Ironically, this planet named
after the god of war had actually evolved into a
planet of peace.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Absolutely, another fascinating character that you bring to us, And
pardon me if I mispronounce his name. French astronomer Camille.
I believe it's Flammorion.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Flammarion, correct, Marion.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Okay, tell us about his understanding of Mars and his
relationship with Percival Lowell.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah, I really enjoyed getting to know Camille Flammarion. He
was He was an incredibly well known person in his day.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Particularly in Europe, but also in the United States.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
He was, and I might be dating myself here, kind
of the Carl Sagan of his era.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
He was a.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Well respected scientist. He was an astronomer, and he was
a best selling author, and he wrote serious science books.
He also wrote science fiction, and he really imbued astronomy
with a sense of spirituality. He believed in reincarnation. He
believed that, in fact, that the Martians, and he believed

(27:06):
that there were beings on Mars, that they could be
the reincarnated souls of humans, that maybe when we died,
we then woke up on Mars, and what he wrote
really resonated with the public. He was he did serious science,
but because of his more spiritual side he was I

(27:27):
think other astronomers would sometimes look askance at him. But
he getting back to what I said before. So when
Schiaparelli in Italy first announced that there were these straight
lines on Mars that came to be called canals, Flammarian
then started to study Mars as well. He also saw
these straight lines, and his observatory, he had a private observatory.

(27:50):
He was quite wealthy with all the books that he
sold at his private observatory. He made maps of Mars
covered with these lines. And it was a book that
Flammarion wrote that came out, I believe in eighteen ninety two,
that talked about all this that Percival Lowell, then in Boston,
ended up reading. He was given to him as a

(28:12):
Christmas gift. It was in French, but Lowell, you know,
being an upperclass Bostonian, he was fluent in French. And
when he read Flammarion's book about the canals and about
the supposed life on Mars, that's really what turned Lowell
toward Mars. For the rest of his career, but I

(28:33):
might say a few more.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
I mean, I got to visit.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Camille Flammarian's observatory outside Paris. It's still there. It's kind
of a crumbling building at this point. It's owned by
the Astronomical Society of France, which is trying to raise
the funds to renovate the building. But right now it's
off limits to the general public. But I was given
access to it, and you just get a sense of

(28:58):
what a special man this was. People would send him
gifts of artwork or statues or all sorts of things.
And one story I have in my book which is
quite gruesome. He and it's a true story. He was
at home one evening and someone came to the door
to deliver a package, and it was this strange package,

(29:22):
wrapped in paper that was kind of soft and smelled
a little odd, and he opened it up to find
a note from a doctor explaining that a young woman
who was dying of tuberculosis who was his patient, was
a great passionate admirer of Camille Flammarion and his stories

(29:44):
of immortality and life in outer space. And she asked
that when she died that the skin from her shoulders
be sent to Flammarion with a request that he bind
his next book with leather mail from her skin. And
I know this sounds absolutely gruesome. It was not an
unheard of practice in Victorian times to bind special books

(30:09):
in human skin. And when I was at Flammarian's library
outside Paris, I saw one of several books he had
that was stamped on the front in fringe bound in
human skin.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
Wow, yeah, creepy.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Nineteen seventy six's Viking mission brought us photos of the
Sedonia region and the so called face on Mars. Please
tell us about the Turn of the century triangle on Mars.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Right, So, eighteen ninety two was one of those years
when Mars came especially close to Earth, and so there
were a lot of astronomers watching the planet closely, seeing
if they could spot the canals on Mars, trying to
figure out what they might be, those strange lines. And
there also were these strange lights that would appear right
on the very edge of Mars as it would rotate

(31:05):
in or out of view. So, I mean, you know,
Mars turns on its axis like the Earth does, so
you can actually see regions on the surface that'll come
into view and then go out of view, and these
lights would appear on the rim, and there was a
report of this triangle of lights. Well, Camille Flammarion had
previously written about the possibility of life on Mars and

(31:29):
how we might establish communications with a Martian civilization, so
he had written previously to this, Well, one way to
do it would be for Mars to start flashing at
us various geometrical shapes. They might start by, you know,
we're using an enormous array of electrical lights miles and

(31:51):
miles wide. They would sketch a triangle, and then we,
seeing that, would would do the same and show them
a triangle, and then they would show us the square,
and we'd show them a square, and then they'd show
us a circle, and so forth. It wouldn't convey anything
except hello, you know, we are an intelligent civilization and
we're responding to you. Well, in eighteen ninety two, the

(32:15):
astronomers reported seeing a triangle of lights on Mars, and
that just took off in the press, and people were wondering,
was this in fact the Martians shouting hello to us
with a triangle. Even Flammarion didn't believe that that was
the case, he said, this was probably either snow capped

(32:36):
mountains or high clouds on Mars reflecting sunlight. But that
was really kind of the beginning of the craze I
write about. That then took off even more and more
by the beginning of the twentieth century, where newspapers and
the general public were getting all excited about the supposed
civilization on Mars.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
So, discounting astronomers and scientists, what was it about that
time that made the public receptive to the idea of
Martian life?

Speaker 3 (33:05):
Excellent question. So although my book is called The Martians,
it's really as much, if not more, about humans. What
it was about people at that time that made them
so receptive to believing that there was an intelligent civilization
on Mars, And it was a couple of things. First
of all, the late eighteen hundreds, while we talk about

(33:26):
it as the Gilded Age in the United States, was
actually a very unsettled time, in part in the United
States and maybe more so in Europe. It was a
time of labor unrest, It was a time of terrorism.
Anarchists were bombing cafes in Paris. A number of heads
of state were assassinated by anarchists, including William McKinley in

(33:49):
the United States in nineteen oh one. So there was
a feeling that society was falling apart and people were
again looking elsewhere for for answers and perhaps the belief
in a more peaceful, better world. So that was part
of it. Another part was by the eighteen nineties, traditional

(34:11):
Christian belief was being undermined, had been now for several
centuries by scientists, you know, from Copernicus to Galileo to
Newton to Darwin. It was harder and harder to see
where God lay, at least a God who was involved
in day to day human affairs. I mean, if the

(34:33):
forces of you know, of motion that Newton talked about,
or the way planets orbit the Sun like Galileo and
Copernicus said it would all could be explained with math.
Where is there even room for God to intervene? And
then so again the idea of these superhuman martians, almost

(34:54):
like supernatural beings, was something very appealing. It got to
the point where and this isn't just my speculation about
what people believed, because by nineteen oh age nineteen oh nine,
when Lowell's theory was now being talked about as almost
proven that the Martians really were there. There was a

(35:17):
fascinating newspaper article that was published in quite a few
newspapers across the country at a time when there was
serious discussion of trying to figure out a way to
communicate with Mars, and the newspaper article was headlined questions
Mars might answer. So it was a list of questions
we might ask the Martians when we finally get in

(35:38):
touch with them. Well, you might think they would be
practical questions about how to build a canal, or maybe
you know, airplanes were just being developed, maybe we would
ask the Martians how to build a better airplane. But no,
this list of questions, they were all philosophical, existential questions.
What is the purpose of life? How can we prevent
human suffering? Where does the soul go when you die?

(36:01):
These were the questions the Martians were going to answer.
So the Martians almost became stand ins for God. They
were our guardian angels on the planet next door that
as soon as we could communicate with them, we would have,
you know, life's mysteries would finally be solved. So it
says a lot about human longing that people really wanted
the Martians to exist absolutely.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Was this a phenomenon relegated to the social elites or
did the average person also find this attractive?

Speaker 3 (36:30):
Well, I would say it was pretty much across the board.
Although you know, no one ever that I know of,
conducted a poll of do you believe in Martians? But
I found plenty of examples of of, you know, in newspapers,
of people speaking almost as if, well, of course, we
believe that the Martians are there.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Most people believe that.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
But I couldn't give a figure whether it was fifty
five percent or eighty percent, you know, and it waxed
and waned over time. I think, you know, in the
eighteen nineties there was a lot of skepticism. By nineteen
oh eight there was a lot of belief, but certainly
the well educated and upper class people. I mean that

(37:11):
describes Perceval Lowell. But Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the
telephone and by the early twentieth century was kind of
an elder statesman of American science, highly highly respected. He wrote,
you know, there's no question that there's this intelligence civilization
on Mars. There were Ivy League academics who wrote fan

(37:32):
letters to Percival Lowell about his work. So it really
did run the gamut.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
In the Martians. You write that many people had hoped
to communicate with the Martians, including some famous scientists, most
notably Nicola Tesla. Tell us about that, please right.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
So, Nikola Tesla was by the eighteen nineties one of
the most respected inventors in the world. He famously had
this so called Battle of the Currents with Thomas Edison
over the best way to generate and distribute electrical power.
Thomas Edison was in favor of direct current and Nikola

(38:12):
Tesla was in favor of alternating current, and Tesla was
right and Tesla's Tesla's ideas won the day. He was
you know, he was a celebrity in fact, and he
hung out with celebrities like Mark Twain was a friend
of his. He lived at the High Life at the
Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. He was a fascinating character,

(38:33):
so people kept an eye on him. They wanted to
know what he was up to. After his work with
alternating current and the distribution of electricity by wires, he
got interested in the possibility of distributing electricity and sending
electrical signals without wires. At the time, it was called
wireless wireless telegraphy uh sending Morse code through the air.

(38:56):
Today we call it radio, But back then the idea
wasn't too to say and the human voice through the air,
but rather dots and dashes and so. Back in the
late eighteen nineties, Nikola Tesla was doing a lot of
experiments on wireless telegraphy, and he even talked about, well
if we in the same way Camille Flammarian had said, well,

(39:19):
you could communicate with the Martians by light, drawing a
triangle on the Earth or a square, and seeing if
the Martians do the same. Tesla had a similar idea
for the use of telegraphy, wireless telegraphy. If we could
send an electrical signal to Mars, and instead of a
triangle of lights, maybe we would send three dots and

(39:41):
then a pause, and then another three dots, like dot
dot dot dot dot dot over and over, and then
we'll see if the Martians would do the same. That
was his suggestion. Well, in eighteen ninety nine he came
out to Colorado.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
Which is where I live.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
He went to Colorado Springs and established an experimental laboratory
to study how electrical signals can be sent through the atmosphere.
And again this is Marconi, who also was a pioneer
of radio, was just starting his work in Europe. But
there wasn't There were no radio stations, no one was
sending out signals. But Tesla was listening for natural radio signals,

(40:21):
like lightning. When a lightning pulse happens, it'll send out
a click that you can hear on a radio receiver.
So he was listening to natural sounds that would come
over the wirelessly, and one night, alone in his laboratory,
hears the strangest signal and it's this click click click

(40:42):
click click click, just like that, just like the dot
dot dot he had said would be the way to
communicate with the Martians. And he wondered what it was,
and he thought about it for a while, and he
didn't tell anyone about it until the very dawn of
the twentieth century New Year's Eve, just as nineteen oh

(41:02):
one was about to start, when he had been asked
by the Red Cross as one of many celebrities for
part of these these This Red Cross was holding these
parties across the United States as fundraisers New Year's eve
where they would read these letters from celebrities talking about
what was accomplished in the nineteenth century and looking forward

(41:23):
to the twentieth. And Tesla took this as an opportunity
to announce that he had received a signal from another world,
which by then he had been he convinced himself was Mars.
And so as the twentieth century dawned, the Mars craze
just completely took off, and newspapers were filled with the
news that Tesla had received a signal from Mars. And

(41:45):
Martians then ended up in Broadway plays and vaudeville skits
and tin pan alley songs, and there were Martians. Martians
showed up in newspaper comic strips. His name was mister
Skygak from Mars. So Mars just infiltrated American culture, and
so between Lowell and Tesla, they just completely got the.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Public excited, fascinating. My guest David Barron his book The Martians,
the true story of an alien craze that captured Turn
of the century America. We'll be back with more after
these words on the Open Times Radio Network.

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Speaker 1 (44:39):
Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week David barn
his book The Martians, the true story of an alien
craze that captured turn of the century America. We sort
of alluded to this in the last segment, but that
at scientific inquiry that we're talking about supercharge science fiction
as a genre.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Absolutely, so the story.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
One of the reasons I liked writing this book is
it's such a rich story, this Mars craze that occurred
at the turn of the last century. You can read
it several ways, and you know they're all accurate. You
can read into it a it's a cautionary tale. Percival
Lowell sent the world down this rabbit hole of believing
in a Martian civilization that did not exist. So it's

(45:27):
a cautionary tale about being skeptical of our you know,
if we believe something, making sure we really test ourselves.
You know, are we believing it because we want to
believe it, or are we believing it because it's true.
But at the same Timewell's Lowell did a lot of good.
He really got the public excited about outer space and

(45:49):
the possibility of alien life and the possibility of exploring
our solar system, and so he had some very positive
real effects, and one.

Speaker 6 (45:59):
Was on.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
You may have heard of the Hugo Awards. It's the
big award in science fiction that's named after a man
named Hugo Gernsback, who is considered the father of science fiction.
He was an early writer and editor of science fiction.
He had a number of science fiction magazines back in
the early part of the twentieth century. Well Hugo Gernsback

(46:22):
famously would tell the story that the reason he went
into science fiction was because, as a teen he read
one of Percival Lowell's books about Mars and just got
so excited thinking about these canal building martians and this
higher civilization on the planet next door. It changed his
life and changed the course of literature.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
William Rice Burrows.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
Who wrote the best known for the Tarzan Books, wrote
a series of books about Mars that were hugely, hugely
successful starting in the nineteen teens. Was all based on
Lowell's idea of Mars. Science fiction then inspired scientists as well,

(47:04):
so a whole bunch of these wonderful stories. Carl Sagan,
whom I've mentioned a number of times, said the reason
he became a scientist was because he read those Edgar
Rice Burroughs books when he was a kid, which told
the story of a human named John Carter who would
travel to Mars and have these adventures there, and Carl

(47:25):
Sagan so wanted to emulate John Carter's adventures on Mars
that when he grew up he realized, well, the way
to do it is to become a scientist. And even
even if he couldn't go there, he could help send
spacecraft there, which he did. But going back even further,
the man who invented the first liquid fuel rocket, Robert H. Goddard,

(47:50):
decided to become a rocket scientist because he read H. G.
Wells as The War of the World when he was
a kid in the eighteen nineties and thought, I wonder
if it's really possible to go from planet to planet,
and he figured out a way to do it. So
there were a lot of positive things that came out
of that excitement about Mars.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
More than one hundred years ago.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
We seem to be talking a lot about Mars again.
Why is this topic so relevant today?

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Well, so you know now, of course we have sent
our robots to Mars. We've got several rovers that have
been and are still going across the surface there's still
a question about whether Mars had life, or may even
has life.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
I mean, I see no evidence.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
That there was actually a civilization ever on Mars, despite
that supposed face on Mars. Who knows, But clearly there
may well have been life of some sort on Mars.
And by that I mean microbes maybe. Mars we now know,
early in its history was quite lush. It had a
thicker atmosphere than it does today, It had flowing water.

(48:57):
Mars seemed very earthlke early on. It's quite possible life
emerged on Mars. And if life did emerge on Mars,
it could still be there. There might be microbes hidden underground,
and it would be very exciting to find that out.
But also, of course, there are those who see Mars
as humanity's future. Elon Musk is the most famous proponent

(49:18):
of the idea, but he's not alone. There's a group
called the Mars Society that's been around for going on
thirty years that it is pushing the idea of humankind
setting up shop on Mars, and I have no doubt
we will eventually. I don't know how soon. But in
the same way that Mars a century ago was a

(49:42):
place that we projected our hopes and dreams on do
and we imagined a better world there. In terms of
the Martian civilization, I think we're doing the same thing today.
A lot of the discussion of Mars is that we
can start over, we can build a better civilization, we
can start from scratch and have a more egalitarian, more
peaceful world. It's a wonderful dream. I'd love to see

(50:06):
it happen, but I think we also have to be
skeptical in the same way people should have been skeptical
about the Martian civilization one.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Hundred years ago.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
If we move to Mars, I have a feeling we're
going to bring our problems with us. That's not to
say we shouldn't do it, but let's not be all
starry eyed.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
We have to be realistic.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
When I was in junior high school in the nineteen sixties,
I had the opportunity to interview Mort Weisinger, who was
the editor of DC Superman Comics. I asked him his
opinion as to why these characters were so popular, especially
among young people. His answer to me was that there
was a quote hero vacuum in real life, and that
superheroes gave you something to aspire to. In the last

(50:46):
twenty five years, there's been an explosion of interest in UFOs,
UAPs and non human intelligence. Do you think this is
also filling some kind of vacuum?

Speaker 3 (50:57):
A fascinating story and great question, I do think. So
that's not to say what's true and what isn't true,
but why are people so fascinated by these phenomena and
why do people want to believe in them, whether they
are true or not.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
And I'm not an.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
Expert and can't say. I think it does come down
to this human longing which I feel in myself.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
You know, being human is tough, you know.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
Contemplating mortality is difficult, and I think we all want
to believe we're part of something larger than ourselves. I
believe we are. That's what total solar eclipses do for me.
When when I stand in the Moon's shadow, when I
see the Sun and the Solar system in all their glory,
I realize that I am connected to something much larger

(51:52):
than myself that goes beyond my individual life, and it's
a wonderful feeling. But I think that is partly why,
you know, people want to believe not only in aliens,
but the aliens have visited US. I have no question
that there are aliens out there, that they're intelligent aliens
out there.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (52:09):
Whether they've visited the Earth yet, but I think that
explains the fascination.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Any thoughts on the recent visits by interstellar bodies such
as a Muamua or three I Atlas.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
Well there too. I think I would say the same thing.
You know.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
There is an astrophysicist at Harvard, Avi Loeb, who has
has this theory that these interstellar objects may be in
fact alien spacecraft. Interesting idea, I would say, most astronomers
just don't.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
See it that way.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
I don't see anything wrong with a theory like that
being investigated. It's certainly I'm not an expert. I can't
say if it's true or not. But why again, but
he gets a lot of attention. Why is that? Because
it's something I think many of us would like to believe.
I would like to believe it. I would love it
if in my lifetime we had proof of intelligent aliens,

(53:04):
hopefully friendly ones that we're in contact with. But is
that the most logical explanation?

Speaker 2 (53:14):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
If we ultimately do build a colony on Mars. Would
you like to be part of that mission?

Speaker 3 (53:22):
Not at this age. It would take a good six
to eight months to get there. Boy, would it be
hard on the body to be in up there without
much gravity and then on a planet without much gravity.
Mars is a tough, tough place. I mean, it'd be very,
very hard to live there. Again, I think our future

(53:45):
is that we will go there at some point. But
you're talking about a place that wants to kill you,
that you know so little atmosphere that not only do
you need to breathe a tanked oxygen, but you need
a pressurized suit if you're going to be out in
the atmosphere. There is radiation bathing the surface that's very dangerous.

(54:06):
There are global dust storms that blow through.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
You know.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
It's not a very friendly environment. But we as humans
have done amazing things before in terms of exploration. We've
explored the deep sea, We've gone to the Moon, which
has no atmosphere. I have no doubt we'll go there,
but I'll leave it to younger people to go.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
What would you like readers to take away from the Martians?

Speaker 3 (54:29):
Well, again, I think it's a piece of history that
unfortunately largely been forgotten that I hope I've resurrected, and
I think we'll speak to people today in a lot
of ways. It says a lot about why we as
a culture are so fascinated with Mars. I think a
lot of the dynamics of the way belief interacted with

(54:51):
the tabloid media of the time speaks a lot to
the way social media works now in terms of spreading
ideas that may or may not be true, but that
catch on with the public and take off the way
the Mars craze did then. But again, my goal as
a writer, and the reason I write books that are
novelistic and not like dry history books, is I want

(55:13):
to tell a fun, compelling tale, and I hope people
will be will find interesting facts in there, but be
moved as well emotionally. I found myself moved emotionally telling
the story. Again, it's really about human longing ultimately and
what it means to be human on this earth.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
Absolutely. My guest David Barron has wonderful new book, The Martians,
the true story of an alien craze that captured turn
of the century America. David, one more time, please share
with our listeners with it and get all of your
books and find out more about you.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
So, my books are available wherever books are sold. But
if you want to go directly to my website, which
has links to where you can buy the books, it's
Davidbarnauthor dot com. And my last name has one R,
so it's B A R O N davidbarnauthor dot com.
But if you just google David Baron Martians, you'll you'll

(56:09):
find it.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
David, thank you so much for joining us ensuring this
wonderful and amazing story.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
Victor, it was a great conversation.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
I appreciate your questions and thank you for joining us
on Destination Unlimited. I'm Victor la Voice Furman. Have a
wonderful week.

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David Baron – The Martians

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