Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

StarTalk begins right now.

Now in our second hour, welcome back to StarTalk Radio.

I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist.

In New York City, with the American Museum of Natural History, in studio, Jack Nies,

comic.

Always good to have you.

Always good to be here, Neil.

In this hour, we're talking about sending humans to the red planet, the red planet Mars.

And I got to do that with an actual live astronaut, a New Yorker at that, active astronaut

Mike Messimino.

Great to be here.

Great to have you here.

And I have clips from an interview I conducted with Mary Roach.

She's a journalist and has written interesting books about unusual topics, one of which was

just how to get to Mars and all the weird and odd experiments and research papers that

were done to try to make that happen.

And all the consideration that you have to go through with the food, the radiation shielding

and we tick off your other astronauts because they tie to your jokes.

Right.

That would be me.

That's where I come in.

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