Tola and Tim are joined by our wonderful editor, Paul, to discuss the 1984 cult classic, "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension." Featuring an all-star cast including Jeff Goldblum as one of the least-weird characters, Robocop's Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd as John Bigbooté, Yakov Smirnoff, Ellen Barkin, Clancy Brown, and many more, this film was either a labor of love or made of cocaine...or all of the above! Tola and Tim address important questions like, can you drive a jet-powered car at 400 mph through a mountain, while Paul brings his musical expertise to questions like, what does a piccolo trombone sound like, and can you really play two saxophones at the same time? Final Score: Science 28%, Fiction 63%, Film 63%. Next up: Dune, Part 2!

Special Guest: Paul Zastrow.

The boys talk “Call Your Boyfriend,” ABBA, The Swedish Chef, tasty pastries, the best dates to visit Minnesota, “The Rapture,” bleak (and unwatchable?) movies from Scandinavian directors, "Funny Games" (grrrrrr...), misunderstood "happy" endings, Avenue 5, Silent Spring, the cold calculus of actual human colonization, "A City on Mars" by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, the genetically perfect progeny of the oligarchy, yet more orbital mechanics (Tola rants about the plane of the ecliptic), getting straight to the existential horror, spaceships and colonies likely being more cramped than we realize, space being really big, but Mars not being really all that far away, the brilliant future of AI as a copyright and/or classroom cheating enabler, ignorance of the constellation of Lyra, Tola's requisite sailing reference, Chekhov's algae, the entropic nature of complex systems, "Aurora" by Kim Stanley Robinson, differing access to crayons, the profundity of William Shatner, an epic AI mike drop, Jayne Cobb's workout regimen, cults, giant space orgies that are not as much fun as they sound, the relative ease of interplanetary communication, the death of hope, random sci-fi puzzle boxes, confusion versus wonder, paying horribly for carrying even a small measure of optimism, failure cascades, the false dichotomy of saving Earth vs reaching for the stars, "Children of Men," being careful about what we watch and read in the middle of the night, space trying to kill you, the Lars von Trier oeuvre (h/t Brian Kamman!) and much more – all while taking in a movie based on an epic, book-length poem from Swedish Nobel laureate Harry Martinson.

In this episode the guys join the future Captain America, the former archangel Gabriel, the future Kim Ki-taek, the former Caligula, and the former Gene Kranz as they circumnavigate a frozen Earth in Bong Joon-Ho's 2013 Snowpiercer. They explore the mysteries of apex predators vs. reindeer, the merits of late- or post-capitalistic societies and meritocracies on a moving platform, the dangers of engineering's ability to (inadvertently) cause bigger problems than it solves, the late, lamented P.J. O'Rourke on El Salvador, cannibalism, the dangers of poor railway maintenance, the expectations of Anne McCaffrey's Pern series (if it ever came to the screen), science fiction poetry (Swedish and otherwise) and the late author Harry Martinson.

In this episode the guys welcome a very special guest: their long time friend, Naval Aviator and retired NASA astronaut Jeff Ashby and talk about a FMECA gone wrong, the ISS, radios, ground communications, TDRS, schedule, crews, procedure vs cowboyism, creative plumbing solutions, clean vs clutter, the miracle of velcro, Jeff's Sleeping Pod Project, fire in space, oxygen candles, using standard atmosphere, Aliens Gone Bad, depicting zero gee, the Vomit Comet, doing biology in a glovebox, protocols, contaminents, fluffy space dust bunnies, computers, realism vs entertainment, hydrazine, moving the station, control moment gyros, technical advisors, Jim Lovell and Ron Howard, adding drama, inspiring future astronauts, remembering Neil Armstrong, predicting orbital debris problems twenty years ago, New York's scenic and welcoming Southern Tier, vast quantities of horribly cheap and terrible science fiction films, mediocre directors make mediocre movies, Tola's obsession with sailboats, underappreciated Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada, using the ISS, NASA's Office of Planetary Protection (do we or any of our listeners know anyone who ever worked there?!?), six expendable meatbags, astronaut crosstraining, lots of parallels to Alien, Chris Hadfield's biography, we talk again about how velocities work in space, twinkling stars, catching fast things without breaking them, Reanimator, who's the boss?, designing for perfection, the fallacy of the perfect glove, designing around hazards, Chekhov's Mouse, going from monocellular to highly evolved intelligence in hours not years, films winking at their auidiences, flamethrowers in space, venting, whack-a-mole fire extinguishers, ISS not being the Nostromo, keeping people away from poisons, we talk again about how organic stuff works in a vacuum, the buddy system in space, space suit pressure, nitrogen purges, being perilous and terrifying without being toxic, Tim mentions Hadfield's biography again talking about the risking of drowning in microgravity, navigating through the hydrazine thruster system(!), understanding sensors in terms of orders of magnitude, more whack a mole, losing your grasp on reality, sacrificial canibalism, solutions that no longer make a single bit of sense, blocking a scene so you can't figure out what's happening at all, how it's hard to nudge things into the sun, yet another exciting discussion of orbital mechanics in case you haven't had your fill from earlier episodes, getting the clock ticking to amp up the suspense, Tim's totally awesome Student Nitric Oxide Explorer, NORAD, sullying the good name of Goodnight Moon, lying movie trailers and the lying liars who make them, how nobody makes lifeboats that only hold one person, real world ISS lifeboat problems, the least bad answer, Man Out Of Space Easiest (MOOSE!), The Twist!(tm), and the omniscient and emotional intelligent alien.

Special Guest: Jeff Ashby.

In a very special The Monte Hall Effect, Tim and Tola's friend and colleague Shane Malone joins them as guest judge/panelist to help them unravel the vast mysteries of Roland Emmerich's 2022 box office bomb "Moonfall" and to discuss a new TMHE feature called 'Splainin' Science, the University of Minnesota vs University of Colorado, the brilliant XKCD description of the Saturn V using only the thousand most common words in the English language, the Roche Limit, rigging Twitter polls for fun and profit, bad Dungeon Masters in Dungeons and Dragons, the descent and fall of Roland Emmerich, COVID screwing up Hollywood, turning three well thought out movies into one dumpster fire, "2012" being available right now somewhere on basic cable, feeling bad for the actors in "Cats", the genius of Emmerich's 2019 WWII film "Midway", Stanley Tucci dodging a bullet, wasting Donald Sutherland, realizing the moment when you know a film is going to be a garbage fire, how NASA Mission Operations work, we once again question the effectivity of Hollywood's science consultants, how airlocks don't work, how inertia doesn't work, how Shuttle thrusters don't work, turning a hero into a villain, the amazing Captain Al Haynes from the 1989 United Airlines Flight 232 that made that famous emergency landing in Sioux City, Iowa, this new thing called solar weather, showing things rather than just telling the audience that they happened, Tim trying to describe the film, blaming some of this film's stink of sad on COVID filming constraints, Emmerich's cannibalizing his film "2012", the genius of Michael Peña, NASA not being one monolithic tightly structured organization but rather 19,000 people stretched out over more than a dozen independent centers, speculating on lunar orbital mechanics, John Bradley committing as an actor and turning in a compelling performance in the middle of this silly nonsense, missing the opportunity to put your science fiction actors in red shirts, dated nerd love for Elon Musk, Federal contigency planning, Strategic Air Command, using a neuralyzer on the POTUS, Chekhov's muscle car, someone inexplicably slipping a "Shining" reference into the movie, the world's most benign tsunami, attempting to fly museum relics, Concorde G-BOAG's certificate of airworthiness at the Seattle Museum of Flight, ground support equipment and its role in getting a vehicle ready for flight, the spectularly stupid theory that the Moon was manufactured by ancient aliens that some stupid people actually believe, Dyson Spheres vs Ringworlds, the role of tides in the rise of terrestrial life, numerology, the Theia Impact theory of lunar formation, thermal implications of the Chicxulub impact, Shane gets to use a Legends of Zelda reference, first watching and then outrunning a collosal tidal wave, surfing a tidal wave in your vehicle filled with cryogens, the fragility of airplanes and spacecraft, how privacy laws prevent Americans from understanding the real world impacts of violence, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Fuzz Aldrin as a great name for a cat, how Millenials don't read paper newspapers, side quests, the impossibility of having the token Chinese character in a Chinese-government-financed film be LGBTQ, things getting magically fixed when the DM realizes they screwed up, glaring inconsistencies on the behavior of the Big Bad in the crater tunnel, an entire scene lifted from Cameron's "The Abyss", The Aliens Are Us!, all these characters (except John Bradley) being just plot devices not recognizable characters, simplistic moral tests, Fred Saberhagen's "Berserker" series, Star Trek's Cornucopia of Doom, taxonomy of solutions to Fermi's Paradox, hiding out from the xenophobes, Steven Universe, a short discussion of Earth's possible AI future, the Kaspersky Labs product placement moment, Shane recommends "Crier's War" by Nina Verela, an entire scene lifted from Peter Hyams' underrated "2010", the missed opportunity to incorporate the always awesome Buzz Aldrin, denouement-free films, Chinese piety, Saturday Afternoon Basic Cable Immortality, and blaming Marvel and DC when your latest blockbuster fizzles out at the box office. Final score: Science 19%, Fiction 36%, and Film 45%.

Shane can be found at shaney_plays on Twitch and shaneyplays2839 on Youtube.

Next up for Tim and Tola: Daniel Espinoza's 2017 Science Fiction Horror film "Life"!

Special Guest: Shane Malone.

Tola and Tim take on Tola's favorite film of all time- not just his favorite SF film, but literally the film he says "changed his life"- Steven Soderbergh's 2002 adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's classic science fiction novel "Solaris." They discuss the challenges of talking about your favorite film, bad film marketing, Tim uses the word "titular", Smoldering Clooney, the genius of Cliff Martinez, the You're the Only One Who Can Help Us movie trope, a world full of Unreliable Narrators, ye olde thyme Plasma screen saver, things that are fundamentally unknowable, Jeremy Davies at his most Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis before she became the acting juggernaut that she is today, smoldering on the train, Dylan Thomas, speculating on the tidal forces of an orbiting centrifuge, technobabble, a mis-explanation of the Higgs Field (physicists, please do not write in to correct us), all we know about people is what we see about them and maybe not even all of that, mental snapshots, after eight episodes Tola finally gets to break out a Winston Churchill reference and talks about Clementine Churchill's ALLEGED affair, confirmation bias, the fundamental unknowability of an alien intelligence (vs the Roddenberry model), everything wrong with the depiction of liquid oxygen including why drinking it is a classically bad idea, another bad idea: bringing an unknown alien intelligence to Earth, smoldering versus drugged out, Chekhov's Blood, the fundamental unknowability of artificial intelligence, conservation of mass or the lack thereof, Tim provides more evidence that Clooney's character is a creep, Tola says his favorite quote from his favorite movie, Tim quotes Samuel R. Delany's "Dhalgren", moments that are simultaneously touching and creepy, Frank Bowman, planet sized fundamentally unknowable mood rings, how this movie changed Tola's life, a mangling of the Brad Meltzer quote "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about," Stanislaw Lem hating the movie, how one piece of art relates to another, Tola's Mom's great definition of "what is art?", a brief "Accidental Tourist" digression, Potterverse film/book synergy, and Tola speculating on why he suspects he'll be thinking of Miyazaki on his deathbed (many decades from now!)

Final score: Science (75%), Fiction (98%), Film (91%).

Next podcast: shooting fish in a barrel with Roland Emmerich's "Moonfall."

Tola and Tim got together with our families this summer to watch Forbidden Planet. Join us as we discuss Leslie Nielsen vs George Pappard, the archetypes of Star Trek, robot gender, philology, Born Sexy Yesterday, creepy creepers being creepy, Powers of Ten, bourbon-generating robots, murderous tree sloths, the Wizard of Id, Dark Phoenix, The Lady and the Tiger, and how thrilled we are to be working together again on the future of human spaceflight.

Final score: Science: 70%, Fiction: 80%, Film: 88%

Next up - Soderbergh's Solaris (2002, Tola's favorite film of all time)

Tim and Tola return to the Denis Villeneuve ouevre to discuss his 2021 film "Dune" as well as the days when you could make a TV miniseries for $28, getting past the things that the 12 year old you thought were perfect, concubines vs spouses, swordfighting, spaceships rolling coal, reactionless propulsion, how Stellan Skarsgård will make your movie better, Harkonnens as Hashemites, Villeneuve and Cameron as worldbuilders, Syd Meade and Weta, Cinematic maximalism, waterjets, heat sinks, ambiguously magical saviors, Magical Pixie Fremen Elves, charismatic macrofauna, one fault op systems, Zendaya as Chekhov's gun, Spaniards not being equivalent to Arabs, agents of carnage, being almost saved but not quite, famous made up Fremen double entendres, sandworm breath, the only good Imperial person is a dead Imperial person, canon vs non-canon, more Grinspoon xenobiology, surprise two-parters, embracing genocide, cheap shots at Elon, Dead Can Dance and Hans Zimmer, and the intersection of gender and futurism.

Final score: Science (75%), Fiction (85%), Film (94%).

Next podcast: Forbidden Planet!

005 - Interstellar

After a long sabbatical, Tim and Tola discuss the 2014 Christopher Nolan film "Interstellar" as well as historical dramas, cocaine and hookers, the dreaded 2021 heat wave (we actually recorded this conversation quite some time ago), the awesomeness of LEGO Batman, building your movie around your cinematography, Dylan Thomas, watching dystopia movies in 2021, small-c conservatism, retconning your own characters, fleeing your problems instead of solving them, giant awesome bookshelves, Dr. Mann The Best Of Us, Christopher Nolan not understanding how science works, speculative vs observed science, how to leave a planet, looking over the wing of the spacecraft again and again and again, little kids and rollercoasters, kilocals, Dylan Thomas, lithium-thorazine cocktails, film scientific consultants, Larry Niven, cinematic debt to "2001", Dreamchaser, Surface Tension, primordial New Orleans, wonderful images vs scientific nonsense, chivalry getting you killed, The Great Man of Science, why design reviews are important, a lie told by an Englishman, the Deep Space Network, Dr. Mann The Best Of Us, more weird tracking shots, James Cameron's worldbuilding, Jim Emerson's analysis of a Dark Knight fight scene, speculative xenobiology, David Grinspoon's analysis of the film, Dr. Mann The No Longer Best Of Us, saying stuff to stay stuff, expensive and delicate NASA hardware which is to say all NASA hardware, space vehicle structural design, orbital decay time as a function of altitude, Tim's space piloting, artificial urgency, anemic accretion disks, the loving caress of relativistic impacts, Christopher Nolan not understanding how rockets work, event horizons (not Event Horizon), letting the fifth dimensional beings be your copilot, communicating the grand unifying theory connecting general relativity to quantum mechanics using morse code, Ann Hathaway's Boyfriend's Planet, the passage of time changing how you view a scene, and sending information vs sending matter.

Final score: Science (60%), Fiction (73%), Film (83%).

Next podcast: Dune!

Links:

• Jim Emerson's video essay on The Dark Knight
• David Grinspoon interviewed on the science of Interstellar

Tim and Tola discuss the 2016 Denis Villeneuve film "Arrival", as well as SETI, car insurance, THE IMPORTANCE OF WATCHING THIS PARTICULAR FILM BEFORE LISTENING TO THIS PARTICULAR PODCAST, J.R.R. Tolkien, Icelandic composers, Broadchurch, remembering 9/11, professorial salaries, security clearances, Speak'n'Spells, training and executive decision making, Close Encounter's Dark Side of the Moon, dumb politicians, scissor lifts, basing things on 12 because the bible, great Hong Kong actor Tzi Ma, conspiracy theories, UFO reports and your government, linguistic relativity a.k.a. the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Pioneer/Voyager golden records, alien abduction pulsar map tattoos, infinite depth of field imaging, rotoscoping and Ralph Bakshi, Primer's mad crescendo, how predeterminism might work, kids in peril in film, a Childhood's End type scenario, non-zero sum games, Leto's golden path, and parenthood and risk.

Final score: Science (93%), Fiction (93%), Film (95%)

Seriously, we know some of you like to listen to the podcast before watching the film. We really, really, realy recommend you don't do this with "Arrival," and watch the film before listing to the podcast. For reals.

Next podcast: "Interstellar"!

Note: We're asking our fans to help us pick a 1950's science fiction film to review in an upcoming show. The choices are: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), When Worlds Collide (1951), War of the Worlds (1953), This Island Earth (1955), and Forbidden Planet (1956). Email us at [email protected] and let us know which movie we should review!