October 28, 2015 7:48 pm

This Halloween, Bill Nye shines the light of science on things that go bump in the night

This Friday’s pre-Halloween podcast features guest host Bill Nye and co-host Chuck Nice having a blast answering fan-submitted questions about ghosts, zombies, vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein’s Monster, Godzilla, dragons, alien life and even GMO-resistant monster bugs.

We’ve got to hand it to you: when we asked you for your science-based questions about our fictional nightmares, you really came through. We’ve got questions about whether gene splicing could be used to create a real-life wolfman, or whether there’s enough nutrition in blood to sustain oneself, should one happen to become a blood-sucking ghoul.

There are even two different questions about utilizing zombies for space exploration: one from the angle of enduring the long trips required to reach distant star systems, and the other whether zombies could survive and thrive in the freezing cold, airless depths of space.

Taking the episode as a whole, a single theme emerges, and it’s one which Bill addresses passionately: why human beings throughout history and across different cultures invent strangely similar monsters, and what these boogeymen say about us, their creators.

Join us for Cosmic Queries: Monsters this Friday at 7pm EDT, right here on the website, or via iTunesPodcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn.

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