ET Walks Into a Bar

ET Walks Into a Bar

From Sound, Light & Frequency by iHeartPodcasts

August 27, 2026 · 1h 6m · Season 1 · Episode 28

About this episode

Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman explore the intersection of alien comedy and serious UFO ideas in television and movies.

What happens when  ET walks into a bar—and everybody laughs?  Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman set out to explore the history of aliens as comedy, only to make an unexpected discovery: some of the funniest extraterrestrials in television and movies have been carrying surprisingly serious UFO ideas with them for more than sixty years. It begins with the 1963 sitcom  My Favorite Martian , whose pilot contains an Air Force aerospace test, an anomalous radar encounter, official suppression, a crashed spacecraft, a living non-human occupant, telepathy and an alien hiding in plain sight. Even stranger, Bryce discovers that the fictional X-15 encounter followed only months after a real X-15 pilot reported seeing something unexplained at nearly 60 miles altitude. From there, Bryce and Brent follow the alien comedy trail through  Mork & Mindy ,  ALF , the  Coneheads ,  3rd Rock from the Sun ,  Men in Black ,  Paul ,  People of Earth ,  Resident Alien  and SNL’s hilarious alien-abduction sketches. Along the way, a pattern emerges. Early alien comedy made extraterrestrials safe by turning them into eccentric…

People in this episode

Guests: Bryce Zabel, Brent Friedman

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: My Favorite Martian, Mork & Mindy, ALF, Coneheads, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Men in Black, Paul, People of Earth, Resident Alien, SNL

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