Authors: Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
Narrators: Brittany Pressley, Kelly Weinersmith, and Zach Weinersmith
Release Date: November 7, 2023
Length: 11 hours and 20 minutes
Genre: Nonfiction, Science, Space Exploration, Popular Science

A City on Mars explores whether humanity can and should settle space, starting from the authors' initial optimism but evolving into a skeptical analysis after years of research. The Weinersmiths, known for their bestselling book Soonish, cover interdisciplinary topics including space biology (e.g., making babies in low gravity), economics (e.g., building sustainable farms), law (e.g., corporate governance of settlements), and geopolitics (e.g., avoiding space wars), while injecting humor through cartoons and witty scenarios like the legal status of space cannibalism. They argue that while technology is advancing, fundamental knowledge gaps—such as long-term human health in space and equitable resource allocation—mean large-scale settlement is not imminent and could lead to nightmares for settlers and Earth alike.