January 27, 2016 8:33 pm

This Friday, Neil Tyson and Brian Cox Chat about Lightsabers and Wormholes

Take two of the leading science podcasters on the planet and put them in a room.

What do you think they’ll talk about?

The physics of lightsabers, of course.

Oh, and wormholes. And time travel. And so much more.

In this Friday’s podcast, Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Professor Brian Cox, OBE, one of the UK’s leading physicists and an Advanced Fellow of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester.

Since 2009, Brian has been the host of The Infinite Monkey Cage, a BBC program and podcast that pairs the physicist with a comic co-host, Robin Ince, much the way StarTalk Radio does. Both shows started the same year, and both shows attempt to do the same thing: improve science literacy for everyone by making science accessible to people without the kinds of advanced degrees their hosts have earned.

In addition to lightsabers and wormholes, you’ll get to hear how a fight in a bar led Prof. Cox to give up his career in music (his band had a #1 hit in the UK) to become a physicist who now gets to name-drop Stephen Hawking when so inclined.

As if these two larger-than-life sized science educators aren’t enough for one show, we’ve got futurist Jason Silva in studio. Jason’s the host of Brain Games on the National Geographic Channel, and he’s also been our guest at a StarTalk Live. And that’s not all – cosmologist Dr. Janna Levin calls in to add to the brainstorm, and even Bill Nye gets in on the game.

Finally, if all that wasn’t awesome enough, we’ve imported our own comic co-host from across the pond: comedian Maeve Higgins is back again.

The episode is as far-ranging as the interests of Neil and Brian can go, which is to say, from the furthest edges of our universe to the most infinitesimal particles in quantum theory, and plenty in between.

Join us this Friday, January 29th at 7pm ET on our website, iTunes Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn and SoundCloud.

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