12:15pm Hunting for ET: So Where are the Aliens? Are you a believer in extra terrestrial life?! According to a recent study of 26,000 people in 24 different countries, around half of us think there's some other form of intelligent life out there in the universe. And another 25 percent of us are undecided voters, waiting to be convinced! Who knows what ET might look like if and when we find he, she, or it? But with hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy alone, there's no shortage of places to look.
'So Where Are The Aliens?' is presented by
Seth Shostak and produced by Richard Hollingham (a Boffin Media Production for the BBC World Service) and summarises what we do and don't know about extra-terrestrial life, and what we're doing to change things.
12:25pm Finding Drago: the search for a mysterious writer Ivan Drago's the villain of that epic boxing film, Rocky IV. He's a huge, scary, Russian guy, a mountainous man-machine played by Dolph Lundgren who sports a very distinctive peroxide blond flat top, and who kills Rocky Balboa's friend Apollo Creed in the ring. Aussie film geeks and comedians Alexei Toliopoulos and Cameron James are big Rocky fans, and they got seriously obsessed with some fan fiction that follows the film franchise. It's a book about Ivan Drago's life after Rocky IV called 'Drago: On Mountains We Stand' and it's written by a
mysterious author called Todd Noy. Noy seems to be a former sports journalist, he might have won a Pulitzer prize, he's reported to have disappeared in the early Nineties, and he also appears to have a son called Quince. In
'Finding Drago' they go on the hunt for Todd Noy and explore some of the motivations of the people writing this kind of fan fiction. We play some of Episode 2
'The Search Begins' from Finding Drago from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, presented by Alexei Toliopoulos and Cameron James.
12:37pm Conviction: righting wrongs with a colourful private eye Conviction's a new release from the recently acquired Gimlet Media: it's a series that will feature a new piece of investigative reporting each season. At the centre of this particular story's a colourful private detective called Manuel- or Manny- Gomez (who also really likes Phil Collins!). Saki Knafo tags along as Gomez tries to prove a New York teenager's innocence in a shooting, to get him out of jail. And like the latest season of Serial, it presents the US criminal justice system- and the actions of the police- in a less than flattering light. We play some of Part 2 of Conviction from Gimlet Media called
The Porsche presented by Saki Knafo where he and Gomez head out to investigate claims of police harassment and false arrests in a local neighbourhood.
12:50pm NEON: the history behind popular culture NEON uses our favourite films, TV shows and computer games as the vehicle to find out more about the history behind them. I've enjoyed recent stories devoted to the Japanese animated film classic Akira, the TV series Vikings, and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (who had to be called 'hero' turtles in some parts of the world because 'ninja' sounded too violent!). In each episode, host and historian Jem Duducu delivers an informative, chatty-sounding monologue exploring the historical facts that underpin these films and shows and games- so maybe it's what Viking life was really like, why anime is so popular in Japan, and whether ninjas did actually wear black! We play some of an episode about
the 1987 film Predator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which can be viewed as a metaphor for The Vietnam War. And the NEON podcast is presented by Jem Duducu and produced by Dan Morelle.
