Whitman College Magazine Winter 2021

“I was just sitting there clenching
the steering wheel and thinking to
myself, ‘Am I really doing this?’”
best podcasts of 2018. The first season
had over 2.5 million downloads. After
the momentum and popularity of the
first season, Krantz decided to “look
skyward” and explore another one of
America’s obsessions: aliens. She recalled
how, in 2017, an interstellar object that
passed through our solar system gave
rise to a debate about whether it was an
extraterrestrial spacecraft. With that
as her starting point, Krantz traveled
to Roswell, New Mexico, for the annual
UFO Festival. In addition to interviewing
scientists, researchers, politicians and
other sources, she visited movie special
effects labs and Area 51, the classified U.S.
Air Force facility in Nevada believed by
many to house proof of unidentified flying
objects and extraterrestrial life.
When asked if there were any
unexpected turns during the research
process for season two, she laughs and
recalls her 2019 visit to Area 51. Prior to
her trip, a Facebook event called “Storm
Area 51” called for a raid on the facility.
More than two million Facebook users
responded that they would attend, and the
event garnered worldwide media coverage.
By the time Krantz arrived—two weeks
before the event—residents of the area
were so weary of the media attention that
she couldn’t find anyone willing to be
interviewed for the podcast. Still, the trip
wasn’t without its stranger moments.
“I drove up to the back gate of Area 51
and was immediately freaked out because
I was there by myself. As I was driving
in, there was a white government-issued
pickup truck coming from the other
direction. There is only one road to the
back gate and one place it could have been
coming from. It came toward me in a cloud
of dust, saw me, stopped and then turned
around, right back on up to the gate at top
speed. I was just sitting there clenching the
steering wheel and thinking to myself, ‘Am
I really doing this?’”
Krantz has had her fair share of quirky
adventures during her podcast reporting
trips. But “Wild Thing” is more than a
podcast about kitschy obsessions and
weird fascinations. “The second season
pulls on similar threads to the first: this
desire to believe, this insatiable curiosity,
searching for something that we may not
ever get answers to,” Krantz explains.
LEANING ON HER
LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION
What do a liberal arts education and a
podcast about Bigfoot and aliens have
in common? More than you would
think, Krantz says. The way a podcast
can combine philosophy, economics,
culture, art and religion is similar to the
multidimensional approach of a liberal
arts education.
“Whitman gave me the ability to
think about a topic from a lot of different
angles and to see how all of those things
pull together. The podcast pulls all these
threads from different fields and if that’s
not a liberal arts education, I don’t know
what is.”
Krantz’s podcasts can be found on Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and many
other platforms, as well as on her website
wildthingpodcast.com. Find her on Instagram
and Facebook @wildthingpod.
16 / WHITMAN MAGAZINE