Destination Unlimited

Air Date - 10 September 2025For as long as we’ve had telescopes, we’ve been obsessed with Mars. More so than our other planetary neighbors, Mars captures our fascination with its seeming potential to nurture something we’ve yet to discover anywhere else: extraterrestrial life. 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 1800s and early 1900s that started a Martian craze! David Baron is 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, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, and other publications. David recently served as the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation.His websi