Surely You're Joking

Konstantin Batygin discovered the ninth planet in our solar system all before turning 30! His advisor, having "killed" Pluto’s planet status, was also part of the discovery, which was by indirect means. Also joined by Comedian Amir K, catch him in the film The Pyramid, this month on HBO. Konstantin explains to Amir and the SYJ crew how certain he is that the new unnamed planet will found directly in the next few years.

New planet in our solar system found? Somehow, the whole Surely You're Joking team was lucky enough to get the head of the Planetary Society himself, Bill Nye, The Science Guy to tell us all about it! He gives the low-down on the new gas giant, Pluto replacement, evolution, GMO and the politics of funding and the Flint water crisis.

SYJ's first returning guest, Adam Stelzner from JPL, drops by to give an update on Mars, talk about his new book, "The Right Kind of Crazy" and relays an anecdote about the most nerve wracking software update in history.

Comedian Drew Lynch pays a visit to Griff and Kevin when co-host Owen is off with Howie Mandel. Weirdly enough, Howie was Drew's biggest fan on the 10th season of America's Got Talent, giving him the Golden Buzzer and a standing ovation, launching him just short of the final victory. A few times Drew reminds the SYJ gang that he's not really a science guy. He's still hilarious.

Rick Loverd just finished his new comic book "Venus". When he's not penning, Rick helps make movies scientifically accurate, by connecting movie makes like Marvel, with scientists, (including Kevin!) As head of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, Rick, Kevin and Griff talk about some of the previous projects he's worked on, like the 2011 Movie "Thor".

Over the holidays, Caltech Prof. Maria Spiropulu drops in from her very busy schedule split between CERN, Fermilab, and Washington DC, to meet the whole SYJ gang, to discuss the new tantalizing hints coming out of the LHC as it runs at the highest energy ever. Spiropulu describes how the world’s biggest machine may have just made the biggest scientific discovery of the last 50 years.

Ditched by the scheduled guest, Jimmy comes up with a brilliant plan to save the podcast session. Instead of a famous person, who writes a comics stip about grad school, why not just go straight to the source? Someone actually in grad school. So Jimmy brings back 2nd year grad student, Shyam Saladi, who is working on his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics. The experiment works perfectly and Jimmy, Kevin and Griff bust out yet another hilarious episode Surely You’re Joking.

Josh Brener from HBO's Silicon Valley and The Big Bang Theory drops into which he had been on an episode with another science guest. The episode quickly spirals into a level of maturity far too low for a self-respecting scientist as bacteria names, probes on Uranus, Halloween costumes and phallified proton accelerators. Oh... and more space fish.

Senior editor for Carl Sagan's Planetary Society, Emily Lakdawalla, schools Kevin, Jimmy, Owen and Griff on ice volcanoes on Pluto and salty oceans on Europa and Enceladus. Aliens? Maybe on this worm ocean worlds. Emily explains what zircons are way better than any ol' diamond.

Comedian Kate Quigley stops in to help Jimmy, Kevin and Griff so Mechanical Engineer Dr. Tony Roy show off his amazing new invention that mimics the sticky fingers of geckos. This passionately led him to make a new super-bra that turns science strapless.

Kevin Jimmy and Griff meet up with Zachary Abbott, who plays Prof. Smith in the cult films The PHD Movie II: Still in Grad School that Premiered in select locations this week! Surprisingly, Zachary is not really a professor at all.

With Owen on the road and Griff in Romania, Kevin and Jimmy meet up with guest comedian, Matthew Broussard (MTV2) and astrophysicist and science advisor consultant for the movie Interstellar, Dr. Elena Murchikova. In between long bouts of mansplaining from the hosts, Elena talks about her work on set to help create a convincing Murph character, endorse the science of the film, contemplate interplanetary Uber and n-dimensional iPads.

Owen, Jimmy, and Kevin talk about Interstellar with Prof. Kip Thorne. Kip was not only Executive Producer and science advisor for blockbuster film, but he wrote the first draft treatments of the plot. While pondering time travel effect on free will it is discovered that Andy and Kip haven't read each other's work. And EXCLUSIVE to SYJ, Kip reveals the status of his bet with Stephen Hawking!

Water on Mars! By sheer serendipity the whole SYJ crew meet up with Adam Steltzner from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories, just hours after NASA makes one of the most important announcements of all time - that Mars still has flowing water (and so possibly, life) right now! At JPL, Adam is lead EDL engineers (a.k.a. landing guy) for the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers on Mars do he had a lot to say about this. But the comedians spend half the time talking about The Martian and Adam's epic hair.

Kevin, Jimmy, and Griff are joined by frequently touring, auditioning, and otherwise distracted co-host, Owen Benjamin, to help welcome the first guest of the show, 2004 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Professor David Politzer. David explains the downside to winning a Nobel Prize, who in the science media circuit is legit, planting pineapple(s), and of course, his favorite topic: banjos! Owen and David are both musicians, so they bond over hashing out what to do when someone says your music has mistakes.

In the inaugural (and zero indexed) episode of Surely You're Joking, Dr. Kevin Peter Hickerson, Griff Pippin, and Jimmy O Yang discuss the latest asteroid hoax, why we should still be worried anyway (even though it is just a hoax), GMO mouse brains controlled by light, comedy cultivation, and what on Earth could be outside of Oklahoma.