June 9, 2016 7:57 pm

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Dr. Natalie Starkey debate the status of Pluto in this Friday’s podcast

The more we find out about Pluto thanks to the New Horizons mission, the more surprised we are by the “King of the Kuiper Belt.”

And while the trickle of information from New Horizons is agonizingly slow across billions of miles, the data on its two, 32GB hard drives continues to amaze and delight us all… especially in this week’s podcast, the conclusion to our show recorded live at NYC’s Beacon Theatre

This show is, according to host Neil deGrasse Tyson, “everything you ever wanted to know, or never thought you could know, about Pluto.”

Even better, the show features something unusual for StarTalk Live!: A debate between Neil deGrasse Tyson and cosmochemist Dr. Natalie Starkey about whether Pluto is a planet or a dwarf planet. The judges of the debate are comic co-host Eugene Mirman and his comedy guests, Ilana Glazer and Scott Adsit.

I will leave it to you to judge who wins.

As good as the show is, the pièce de résistance might be the guest appearance of Christine Lavin, who joined the crew on stage to sing her song about Pluto. She wrote the song, Planet X, in 1997, when the debate about Pluto was beginning to heat up. If you’ve never heard it, you’re going to love it: chock full of science and controversy, and with plenty of inside jokes a StarTalk Radio audience like you will absolutely adore and an updated ending to the song thanks to New Horizons.

Whether you think of Pluto as the puniest of the planets or the King of the Kuiper Belt, please join us for for StarTalk Live! at the Beacon (Part 2): King of the Kuiper Belt this Friday at 7 pm EDT on our website, as well as on iTunes Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, SoundCloud and now, on Google Play Music.

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