July 23, 2014 2:10 pm

Exclusive Apollo 11 Bonus Material Added to StarTalk Radio Season 1 for #Apollo45

One of the fun parts of working at StarTalk Radio is getting to search through our old material to find things that ended up on the cutting room floor. (Does that phrase even mean anything anymore in this age of digital files?)

For the 45^th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing (#Apollo45), we went back to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s original interviews that he did at the 40th Anniversary Gala at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, of which he was the host.

We found over 15 minutes of unused, never-heard-before interviews with some of the astronauts, NASA personnel, and guests at the event. We’ve got more of Neil’s interview with Gene Kranz, who is best known for uttering the immortal phrase, “Failure is not an option” as the Lead Flight Director at Houston during the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. We’ve also got new interview material with astronauts Rusty Schweickart and Mike Massimino, Jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall, then NASA Chief of Staff George T. Whitesides, NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz and former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe.

I loved hearing Mike Massimino’s story about dressing up as an elephant, sorry, I mean, astronaut, as a kid. Obviously we’ve all gotten to know Astro Mike better as a frequent guest on StarTalk Radio (and The Big Bang Theory), but at the time of the 40^th Anniversary, he’d just finished his second mission aboard the space shuttle to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

We’ve put all of this extra material onto our “StarTalk Radio, Season 1, Complete Set – Deluxe Edition.” It contains the entire first season of StarTalk Radio, all 10 episodes including our original Anniversary of Apollo 11 show, along with the Bonus Apollo 11 interviews and a booklet with a digital autographed photo of Neil.

Even better, when you buy this anniversary Deluxe Edition (Exclusively available on Better Listen), it’s the same price as the Season 1 Complete Set: $17.95.

You can buy it here now.

If you’ve already got Season 1, you can buy just the new bonus content for only $0.99 right here.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!

–Jeffrey Simons