Surely You're Joking

Dr. Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society returns to discuss Mars Direct, carbon credits, plans for the moon, and his shout out from Micheal Collins on the 50th Anniversary of the moon landing.

Meeting up at the April Meeting of the American Physical Society, Dr. Avery Broderick tells Kevin about the Breakthrough Prize winning first photo of a super massive black hole in Virgo, Kevin's birth sign.

Robert Picardo, best known as the holographic doctor on Star Trek Voyager and host of the Planetary Post, meets up with Kevin and returning Surely You're Joking guest star and Planet Nine hypotheses and hunter, Konstantin Batygin, to revel brand new secrets about Planet Nine! From the headquarters of the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Konstantin announces fresh of the presses details about the size, shape, and location of the still as-of-yet photographed Planet Nine!

Mark Mamonne is a actor, comedian, and production assistant on Seth McFarland's "The Orville." Mark comes on Surly You're Joking to talk about leaving stand up for acting and to tell us about his upcoming first appearance on the show!

Dr. Sumner Norman can do a lot of things, but one of the most amazing is that he can read your thoughts, sometimes even before you realized you thought it. Sumner explains how his work will help disabled people regain control their lives, almost straight out of the movie Upgrade.

Dr. James Tuttle Keane brings some of his sketches of the most distant (and possibly the oldest) probed object in our solar system named Ultima Thule. In addition to studying planet, James makes brilliant drawings to help explain what we are learning about this strange, city-sized snowman-like object that was visited on New Year's Eve 2019 by the New Horizons space probe. James works along side Brian May from Queen and together they help both discover our distant celestial past and share those exciting discoveries with the public.

First Surely You're Joking episode of 2019! Planetary research and Dr. Kevin Hardegree Ullman and comedian Aubree Sweeney get an update of the Kepler telescope replacement : the TESS satellite, the Rose Parade, and three letter acronyms. Ullman explains the viral video of the music made tuning solar system K2-128. Happy New Year!

Julie Jester is the queen of the prank court. When she's not inventing widgets and working on spaceships, she helping Caltech prank arch-nemesis MIT or building an homage to Hollywood sign pranks of old.

How does Ant-Man shrink? Quantum Mechanics of course! Professor Spyridon Michalakis, scientific consultant of Marvel's most recent super hero block buster, starring Paul Rudd. It turns out the Hollywood star loves physics, so Spiro explains that while working directly with him, he came up with the Quantum Realm. Kevin and Spiro talk about some the tech details, how exotic atoms like muonium and pionium, can actually change size in real life labs.

Joking's favorite Professor Konstantin Batygin is back to explain how he discovered that equation that governs the quantum world of Schrödinger's cat fame, also describes planetary disks and the formation of solar systems. He also breaks down the progress on the dark hunt for Planet Nine.

Paul Zaloom, star of the hit science show for kids, Beakman's World, drops in to tell Kevin about the popularity of his show all over the world, has him trekking across the globe. Paul give the low down on his latest project: puppet astronauts.

Author of The Case for Mars explains his plans to take people to mars, Mars Direct. Kevin and Robert discus SpaceX, making fuel on Mars, space nuclear, the intellectual dark web, and the uselessness of tollbooths in space.

"The Martian" Andy Weir returns to Surely You're Joking after meeting up with Kevin and Matthew in the Bay Area to tell us about his new book, "Artemis." Andy also gives his take on why the Moon will be the home of the first Space city, not Mars, squarely breaking with Elon Musk. Andy welcomes his friend joining the sci-fi author turned movie club with the release of "Ready Player One." and shares his outlook on BFR.

Kevin drives up to Berkley to meet up with environmentalist turned Gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger. Michael is the founder of Environmental Progress, a non-profit devoted to well, environmental progress. Much like Kevin, Michael see nuclear energy as a critical part of growing the economy and standard of living of California and beyond. Is this episode hilarious? Meh, not really, but covers pretty serious stuff and Shellenberger is definitely a serious contender for the biggest state in The Union.

Richard Rieber tells of his work on the Martian rover Curiosity and the up and coming rover Mars 2020, the dangers of driving the world's most expensive vehicle at 0.01 mph and what happens when you use wheels to leave your mark.

Physicist Liz Friedman joins Kevin and Jimmy O Yang (right after wrapping Silicon Valley Season 4)meet up at Jimmy's old apartment to talk about detecting high energy neutrinos, in the coldest place on earth. Liz brings Jimmy polar schwag and tells us about her famous picture from New Years. Jimmy pitches his new book How To American.

Comedian Sarah Keller and Mitch tell Kevin how unimpressed they were with the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch, and discuss the secret of living forever, the science of bullfrog mating calls, emotional truck commercials, and three parent babies.

Rocket scientist Manan Arya uses the ancient art of origami to fold complex space structures, like solar collectors, radio dish antennae, and even mirrors for the next generation of powerful telescopes. Along the way they brain storm on new origami space fashion.

Comedian Irina Skaya has strong opinions about politics (and the comedy of politics) and she doesn't care if you're offended by them. Kevin and Irina talk about life of immigrant families. Irina talks about how embracing her Russian/Ukrainian background has liberated her comedic voice. They manage to fit some science in there too and Irina pleads in Russian to get Surely You're Joking unbanned in Russia.

Viral video blogger, gamer, and comedian Vito Gesualdi joins Mitch and Kevin talks about his adventures trolling politically charged rallies, as the extreme left and right collide, sometimes with frightening results. But what would a SYJ episode be with out discussing alien asteroids, robots and demonetization.