Two new books ask: What would you do if you encountered alien life?

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Arts, Books

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2026

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today on the show: Fictional and nonfictional takes on extraterrestrial life. Steven Rowley’s new novel Take Me With You is about a man whose husband is abducted by aliens. The author says the premise stemmed from one he often discusses with his own husband: If you had the chance to be taken by aliens, would you go? In today’s episode, Rowley speaks with NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe about the novel’s “willing hitchhiker.” Then, Neil deGrasse Tyson talks with NPR’s Scott Simon about his new book,Take Me to Your Leader, which is a practical guide to – and exploration of – alien encounters.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Melissa Adwarnie, and this is NPR's Book of the Day. Today on the show, two books about aliens.
0:09.5	One is very much fiction, and the other by Neil deGrasse Tyson is based a bit more on science. We'll get to that later.
0:18.0	First, in Stephen Rowley's new novel, Take Me With You,
0:21.3	a man's husband walks into the backyard and is abducted by aliens. The husband left behind
0:27.2	begins to search and ultimately discovers far more about his own life than his missing husband.
0:34.0	Raleigh talks with NPR's Aisha Roscoe about how we all must decide if our life is good enough not to join the aliens.
0:42.0	Jesse Dale Ruth has been abandoned.
0:45.2	His husband, Norman, who six years older, has left him in the middle of the night, alone in their home out in the desert.
0:53.6	No, Norman didn't quietly step out with another man or
0:58.4	angrily pack a bag after a stinging argument. It was actually more dramatic. Norman vanished before
1:08.1	Jesse's very eyes in a beam of otherworldly light.
1:12.9	They stood there, eyes locked, 30 years of highs and lows, laughter and grievances, passion and apathy, three decades of life in between them.
1:24.7	I'm sorry, Norman mouthed as he walked backward until he was bathed in it, spreading his
1:30.7	arms like Christ. By the time Jesse reached him, Norman was rising, floating above him, just out of reach.
1:38.6	Norman has been pulled up to the sky by aliens. The next year finds Jesse in search of his husband and himself.
1:49.1	That's the plot of Stephen Raleigh's new novel, Take Me With You.
1:53.4	He joins me now to talk about it.
1:55.9	Thank you for being here.
1:57.0	It's a pleasure to be with you.
1:59.0	So let's start with the obvious.
2:01.3	Like, why aliens?
2:04.8	It's not obvious?
	...

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