Paranormal Women pt 1: From Saucers to Starseeds
UFOs aren't such a boys' club anymore. From Pentagon disclosures to TikTok starseeds and alien romance novels, belief in extraterrestrials is getting spiritual, feminine-coded, and algorithmically viral. Science journalist Sarah Scoles traces the gendered evolution of UFO culture—from Cold War-era military men to the cosmic girlies raising our consciousness to the fifth dimension.
But why are we so obsessed with searching the skies? And what happens when women start doing their own research?
guest:
Sarah Scoles is a science journalist, contributing editor at Scientific American, and senior contributor at Undark. Sarah’s articles have also appeared in places like the New York Times, Wired, Popular Science, the Washington Post, Outside, and is the author of Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers, and Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons.
sources:
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Crockford, Susannah. “Starseeds”. Handbook of UFO Religions. Brill. 2021.
Kennedy, Courtney and Lau, Arnold. Most Americans believe in intelligent life beyond Earth; few see UFOs as a major national security threat. Pew Research Center. June 2021.
Laycock, Joseph P. Why are people starting to believe in UFOs again? The Conversation. July 2016.
Lipinska, Maria; Kotula, Nina; and Jemielniak, Dariusz. Exploring expert figures in alien-related UFO conspiracy theories. Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences Communications. 2025.
Scoles, Sarah. UFO Conspiracies can be more dangerous than you think. Popular Science. 2021.
Shusko, Christa. A Martian God: Eleanor Kirk’s Extraterrestrial Epiphany in The Christ of the Red Planet. Handbook of UFO Religions. 2021.
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