January 12, 2020 7:57 pm

Monday, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Jake Roper Explore the Best Aliens in the Movies

If you had to pick, what’s your favorite alien from the movies? Are you fond of the Heptapods from Arrival? Are you a sucker for E.T.? What about the original alien from Alien? Whatever your answer is, this week’s episode of StarTalk Radio is for you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice are joined by Jake Roper – Vsauce3 Youtuber and host of “Could You Survive the Movies?” – to explore anything and everything about your favorite aliens. To start, we discuss which alien movie might be the easiest to survive. If you’re thinking E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, don’t jump to conclusions too quickly. Neil gives us insider information about E.T. straight from Steven Spielberg himself.

Learn more about the weaponry used in War of the Worlds. Neil shares his grievances about Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We debate if the real government could set up a secret organization for monitoring alien activity à la Men in Black. (I’m leaning towards no.) Jake tells us why the deep ocean should be considered an alien world. We discuss The Blob, The Thing, and Chuck’s love for the original Alien.

It wouldn’t be a show about aliens in film if we didn’t dive into Contact. We investigate Contact’s portrayal of how humanity would react to discovering alien life. We also investigate the communication methods used in Arrival. All that, plus, Jake explains why Paul Rudd should be Earth’s representative to meet with intelligent life.

Now. if you ask me who my favorite alien is…how could it not be Paul from the movie Paul? What’s better than Simon Pegg and Nick Frost playing two geeks who stumble upon a soulful, brash, funny alien, voiced by Seth Rogen, running away from the U.S. government? If you’ve never seen it you can watch the trailer right here.

Please join us tomorrow for Cosmic Queries – ALIENS! with Jake Roper and Neil deGrasse Tyson at 3pm ET right here on our website, as well as on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn. If you’re a StarTalk+ Patron or an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 3pm, too.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
– Ian Mullen