You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey everybody, today we have another installment of the Shortwave Movie Club, where we watch

a movie and break down the science in the film.

This time we asked you, our listeners, what movie we should do next, and you overwhelmingly

voted for the sci-fi drama Contact from 1997.

Your nerdiness is only outdone by your nostalgia.

So before we hear from our very special guest, Quick Refisher, adapted from a Carl Sagan

novel, it stars one of my very favorite dreamboats, Jody Foster.

She plays Ellie Aeroway, a radio astronomer who discovers this message from space.

The movie unfolds as she and a team of scientists who don't always play well together, attempt

to make first contact with extraterrestrial life.

Summer I just rewatched contact last night, and I feel like it held up.

You know I feel like I was still really happy with it.

What are your thoughts?

I was very pleased.

Yeah, and I feel like I need to watch it more regularly.

Summer Ash knows a thing or two about making contact, if you will, with space.

She's a real-life radio astronomer who works at the VLA, a telescope facility in New Mexico.

VLA stands for Very Large Array, basically a group of radio antennas working together

to observe space.

And it just so happens to be where lots of the movie takes place.

So it is very large.

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