May 29, 2017 10:41 pm

Tuesday: UFOs and Possible Aliens, with Seth Shostak, Now Extended with Neil Tyson and Bill Nye

This week, we’re extending a great episode from the StarTalk All-Stars canon. If you haven’t listened to the original episode, it features an in-depth conversation with Seth, noted skeptic Ben Radford, and comic co-host Ray Ellin on a variety of topics under the umbrella of UFOs including crop circles, Project Mogul, the Roswell incident, and much, much more.

The episode is now extended with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye chiming in about UFOs as they share a nice glass of wine in the Cosmic Crib. However, they get a little sidetracked, as Neil and Bill tend to do in some of our Cosmic Crib segments, and the conversation jumps around to many different talking points, all for the better.

You’ll hear them discuss UFOs, including ones Bill has seen. You’ll also hear them discuss the Northern Lights and the green flash phenomena.

I especially enjoyed the conversation about their favorite alien in a movie. Bill talks about his love for The Thing (the original) and Neil shares his affections for The Blob. This got me wondering which alien would be my favorite. There are so many to choose from, and I don’t watch a lot of horror films, because I am easily frightened, so my range of choice is embarrassingly low. I recently enjoyed the mystery behind the aliens in Arrival. I came across Roger Ebert’s review of The Thing remake in 2011, which I thought was relevant in thinking about what makes a great movie alien:

“…This version of “The Thing,” directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., provides such graphic and detailed views of the creature that we are essentially reduced to looking at special effects, and being aware that we are. Think how little you ever really saw in the first “Alien” movie, and how frightening it was.”

The special effects were never the focus in Arrival, which provided a lot of mystery about the aliens. The more mystery there is, the more frightening, interesting, and thought-provoking the response. In the film, you see the aliens on multiple occasions, but you always get the sense that there is more to them then what you’re seeing. I think keeping a sense of mystery is a key factor in creating a great alien on screen.

What’s your favorite movie alien? Let us know in the comments to this blog post.

Please join us tomorrow night for Extended Classic: UFOs and Possible Aliens, with Seth Shostak at 7pm EDT right here on our website, as well as on our All-Stars channels on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play Music, and TuneIn. And if you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too.

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