The Day the Earth Stood Still

We gathered in At Bristol's wonderful planetarium to watch and discuss The Day the Earth Stood Still (Klaatu, not Keanu). We were raising money for Age UK for this, our third live Cosmic Shed recording.

Andrew, Maddy, Ti and Steve were delighted to be joined by Professors Francesca Stavrakopoulou and Bruce Hood.

As we've discussed SETI and life in the universe quite a bit recently, we thought we'd look at Supernatural Belief this time...following on from our Ghostbusters episode. A revelation about R2D2, Moses and a fair bit about Jesus followed.

show notes

Francesca mentions animals appearing to have rituals attached to an "afterlife" belief. As it happens, the BBC's Emma Napper was in the audience (and in the shed the next day) and has filmed an elephant funeral which you can see here.

 

 

Andrew didn't mention this in the episode but had this song in his head for most of the evening...particularly when Professor Francesca was speaking.

Steve mentions Stop Killer Robots, Deep Mind and Tay, the racist, sexist, misogynist AI who only has humanity to blame.

Francesca mentions Ex Machina which we also loved