Hi, I'm Rowan Williams, author of The Lions World, and you're listening to Pints with Jack.

If there's life on other planets, then I'm sure that he must know, and he's been there once

already and has died to save their souls. This is Pints with Jack, season 6, episode 49.

Astrophysics and Cosmic Salvation.

After Hours with Jimmy Aiken.

Welcome, everyone.

Here on Pines with Jack, we are reading our way

through the works of C.S. Lewis.

And this season, we've read through the first of Lewis's science fiction trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet.

And in this work, as we've discussed, Lewis imagines life on Mars, and he asks,

what would a species untouched by sin, or at least relatively untouched by sin? What would that look like?

How would they relate to God? And most importantly, would Jesus need to go to that planet as well?

And the opening quotation for this episode was a lyric from the song UFO by Larry Norman, and he offers one possible answer.

But in today's show, we're going to be digging into these in greater depth,

looking at these theological questions regarding alien life,

and we're doing that with the perfect guest for this subject matter.

Apologist and science fiction nerd Jimmy Aiken.

Jimmy Akin is a senior apologist at Catholic Answers and the author of many books,

such as The Father's Know Best and the Drama of Salvation. He's a weekly guest on the radio show

Catholic Answers Live and he's the host of podcasts, too numerous to mention, but I'll mention

a few, a daily defense, The Secrets of Star Wars, The Secrets of Star Trek, and of course Jimmy

Akin's mysterious world. And he's recently returned to his home state of Arkansas, where Dick Devine assures me

...