July 2, 2014 9:01 pm

You Can Watch StarTalk Live! at SF Sketchfest on YouTube…Right Now!

If you weren’t in the audience for StarTalk Live! at SF Sketchfest earlier this year – and after all, how many of us were able to get out to San Francisco? – you might have been bummed out that you missed the show.

Well, prepare to get un-bummed-out, because now you can watch guest host Bill Nye the Science Guy, comic co-host Eugene Mirman and their special guests comedian Dave Foley and SETI Institute Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak as they attempt to answer the big questions that we all wonder about:

Where did we come from?

Are we alone?

The stage at the Marine Memorial Theater in San Francisco isn’t that large, but the questions our stalwart StarTalk Live! crew grapples with are enormous. They ponder what form alien life might take, and what might happen if we ever found proof of that life, from government actions to the public response. If there is intelligent life out there, why haven’t we heard anything yet – and on what bandwidth should we be searching for it?

You’ll learn about Frank Drake, the pioneering astronomer whose work has helped define SETI, and even earlier astronomers like Sir William Herschel, who discovered Uranus. (And yes, given that this was recorded in front of a live, adult audience in San Francisco, be prepared for some suggestive language and humor. And not just from Eugene and Dave.)

Bill and Seth address Fermi’s Paradox and explore the concepts of “Second Genesis” and transpermia. They discuss Martian meteorites, bacteria, contamination and NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection. And they answer audience questions about amino-acid carrying asteroids, the jelly donut rock the Opportunity Rover just discovered a few days before the show, and what impact new exoplanet discoveries have had on the Drake Equation.

The complete show is 1 hour and 20 minutes long, so we’ve preserved the set breaks and posted the show in 4 segments. You can watch the first one right here on our YouTube channel. At the end of each segment, there’s a link to the next segment, so if you’ve got the time, you can just keep on watching.

By the way, if you want more of Bill and Eugene, here are three upcoming StarTalk Live! shows where you can catch them in person. (Click the show date for links to buy tickets.)

StarTalk Live! at Provincetown Town Hall, Provincetown MA 7/23

StarTalk Live! at the Capitol Theatre, Port Chester NY 8/16

StarTalk Live! at the Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle 8/30 & 8/31

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!

–Jeffrey Simons