The film Arrival, based on the novella “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang has already achieved legendary status. Both the film and story explore ideas of time, language, communication, and alien life. Since these are themes dear to this show, we convened a panel of fans/ authors to discuss the film in depth. By a strange coincidence, all of my guests are featured in the upcoming essay collection entitled UFOs: Reframing the Debate, and this is the first time that they have all appeared together.

MJ Banias, Joshua Cutchin, Red Pill Junkie, and first time RM guest Ryan Sprague joined me to kick around themes and ideas presented by Denis Villeneuve’s film, and how they inform and comment on pop culture, its predecessors in film and TV, and even the UFO issue, or at least how we study it.

The conversation veered from the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (which posits that your language determines your reality,) to the tricksterish aspects of the aliens in the film, and even to the varieties of how we experience inspiration. We also responded to listener comments during the program.

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