I'm an avid listener of podcasts. Here are two that deserve more attention.
Humanist Trek (https://humanisttrek.com/)
Hosts Sarah Ray and Allie Ashmead offer a humanist and hilarious perspective on Star Trek. They've worked their way through The Original Series and are about to wrap up The Animated Series as well.
Logo of the Humanist Trek podcast
It's Probably (Not) Aliens (https://solo.to/probsnotaliens)
Logo of the It's Probably (Not) Aliens! podcast
Host Tristan Johnson educates co-host Scott Niswander about the often surprisingly racist truth behind "ancient aliens" conspiracy theories.
How they collide
These two podcasts crossed paths, in a way, in the latest Humanist Trek episode, "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth." Sarah and Allie review the ST:TAS episode of the same name. The Enterprise crew encounters an alien winged serpent with god-like superpowers. A conveniently available native American crew member, Walking Bear, tells us that this is Kukulkan, a Mayan deity. As the hosts note, this is straight-up "ancient aliens" lore, modeled after Erich von Däniken's batshit and offensive theories that ancient cultures must have had help from extraterrestrials because they were obviously not smart enough to build pyramids themselves. This is what It's Probably (Not) Aliens is all about.
And as it turns out, Russell Bates, one of the writers, has this to say about that aspect of the show:
I always had been outraged that Europeans said the vast cities in Central and South America could not have been built by the 'savages,'" Bates commented. "They had to have had help: the Egyptians, or the Chinese, or the Phoenicians, or even the Atlanteans came, taught the poor Indians how to build their civilization, and that's how it all happened. Horse breath! So, the story about Kukulkan became that Kukulkan visited ALL races of mankind, taught them his knowledge, and then departed. Now the story said that NOBODY on Earth invented a damned thing! They all got their knowledge from somebody else!
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