January 5, 2013 11:37 am

Episode Preview: Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Baba Booey at San Diego Comic-Con

When I heard that this Sunday’s episode was going to be Neil deGrasse Tyson hanging out with Baba Booey, The Nerdist and The Bad Astronomer at San Diego Comic-Con, I expected a non-stop fan boy geek-out. After all, Chris Hardwick loves him some comics, and with Neil’s recent appearance in Superman helping the Man of Steel locate his home planet of Krypton, what else could be on the agenda?

Well, I got a geek-out, all right, but not about comic books. Or movies. Or sci-fi and fantasy. Or any of the millions of things SDCC has grown to be about. (I went to my first Comic-Con nearly 20 years ago, when it was only about comic books. Yes, kids, once upon a time, Comic-Con was by, for, and about comic books.)

No, what I got was a total gadget-fest. You see, if you only know Gary Dell’Abate as Baba Booey, the executive producer of The Howard Stern Show, then you’ve missed out on his secret identity: Gadget Gary, the mild mannered reporter for Sound +Vision magazine. And as Gadget Gary, he gets access to the latest tech, from a pre-release 160GB Bluetooth memory drive the size of a credit card to an always-on ear-mounted camera that can livestream video to your cell phone and then the web and can capture and replay the last two minutes of your life at the touch of a button.

And if you know anything at all about Chris Hardwick, you know that he is the ultimate Doctor Who fan. So what gadget does he get all gushy over? Nothing less than a working Sonic Screwdriver. (Well, sort of. Listen and you’ll learn.)

Now Neil is no slouch in tech territory, and neither is Phil Plait. The first part of the show (yes, it’s a 2-parter, so if you think the StarTalk video on The Nerdist Channel tells the whole story, you’ll be missing out) ends with a conversation about computers, data storage and the merits and perils of “the cloud.”

Of course, if you haven’t watched the episode on the Nerdist Channel, here it is:

The podcast will be on our website and on iTunes this Sunday night, January 6 at 7:00 PM ET.

That’s if for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Jeffrey Simons