October 31, 2016 4:52 pm

Trick or Treat Tuesday: The True Story of Roswell and other UFO/Alien Conspiracies

Every once in a while, or more frequently this time of year, we have a show about zombies, or aliens, or ghosts, or monsters, and somebody who hasn’t yet listened to the episode accuses us of “jumping the shark.”

But really, this is StarTalk after all. If those people who complain would just listen to the episode first, they would know that as an organization, we know zombies can’t exist, we know that contrary to what Men in Black says, Dennis Rodman is not an alien, and we know that ghosts are likely the result of low-frequency sounds that match the resonant frequency of your eyeball. (Listen to Vic Tandy’s explanation at about 8 minutes and 30 seconds into our Spooky Science episode.)

Tomorrow night’s StarTalk All-Stars episode is all about “UFOs and Possible Aliens.”

First, the TREAT:

It’s SETI Institute Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak’s first time hosting StarTalk All-Stars. He’s been a guest on numerous episodes of StarTalk, including StarTalk Live! It’s also new comic co-host Ray Ellin’s first time in the second banana seat. They both welcome guest Ben Radford, who is an author and the Deputy Editor of Skeptical Inquirer.

Which brings us to the TRICK:

When we say the “true story of the Roswell Incident” we don’t mean the secret government conspiracy to hide alien visitors that landed in Roswell in July 1947 and hide them in the same joint human/alien underground facility in Dulce, New Mexico that also harbors Bigfoot and the chupacabra.

Because that never happened! (But you’ll learn all about Project Mogul, which did!)

Seth, who likely gets more people calling him to report alien encounters than most other people on the planet, and Ben, who’s in that same boat, take a long hard look at the “Roswell Incident”, the “Alien Autopsy” conspiracy, cattle mutilations, and so on. Along the way, they answer Cosmic Queries submitted by our fans about why the government would hide the truth about aliens in the first place and what kind of people claim to have been abducted by aliens. And yes, you’ll hear more than you want to about cow anuses and anal probes, but less than you might hope for about Star Trek Voyager’s spacefaring dinosaurs.

In short, it’s a fun, fact-filled evening debunking government conspiracy theories, alien abductions, and other figments of over-active imaginations.

Join us for UFOs and Possible Aliens, with Seth Shostak – StarTalk All-Stars, 7pm EDT November 1, right here on our website, or on iTunesPodcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher and TuneIn. Subscribers can watch or listen ad-free on All-Access.

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