Take Me To Your Leader, by Neil deGrasse Tyson

(Simon Six, 226 pages)

Aliens are having a moment.

Of course, it could be argued that they’ve been having a moment since 1961, when Betty and Barney Hill, a Portsmouth couple on their way home after visiting Canada, said they encountered a mysterious disc-shaped aircraft near Franconia. Their story is among the most famous of so-called alien abductions.

The Hills, however, appear only briefly in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Take Me To Your Leader, a semi-serious handbook of alien adventures. Capitalizing on the current interest in all things extraterrestrial, driven in part by the new Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day and the slow drip of formerly classified UAP [formerly known as UFO] videos coming from the government, the book proposes to tell us how to interact with our new alien friends (or overlords) when they come.

Tyson, according to his publisher, is America’s favorite astrophysicist, so you might think he would bring a serious, scholarly bent to the subject. You would be wrong. The book, at times, is more like a BuzzFeed reporter ran a couple of questions about aliens through Claude, and out came this manuscript.

Tyson begins by talking about aliens in popular culture. There have been a lot of aliens in movies and TV shows, probably more than you recall. And as he recounts them, Tyson wonders why they are always so human-looking and predictable, with a few exceptions, like Project Hail Mary.

“Once, just once, I want to see a gray Alien portrayed with a full head of coiffed hair,” he writes.

Humans pride ourselves on our intelligence and imagination, but we probably shouldn’t. Voltaire conceived of aliens 23 miles tall, and astronomer Frank Drake of aliens the size of a pinhead, and Tyson offers 12 archetypes of aliens, but few of us go beyond little green men.

That may be because, as Tyson points out, there is just 2 percent of DNA that separates us from the chimpanzee. He invites us to consider the differences in capabilities between humans and chimps, and then to consider aliens that are 2 percent more advanced than us — or 20 percent. “For all we know, they created Earth as a literal aquarium-terrarium for their own amusement,” as we do with fish, turtles and ants. “Do they know we built their domicile? Do they know we are looking in on them through transparent walls? Do they care?”

And of course, building a world like ours, or the one in The Matrix, is “nothing that a smart Alien couldn’t accomplish in an afternoon.”

Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, brings a wrecking ball to every commonly held notion about extraterrestrials. In a chapter on what alien technology would look like, he concludes that “smooth, rotating flying saucers are not a thing,” because the staid, steady laws of physics are literally universal. He goes on to explore what’s known as Fermi’s Paradox (named for the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi), the conundrum presented by the probability that life exists outside our planet and the lack of actual evidence for it. That lack of evidence should relieve us, given our vast vulnerabilities. As Tyson notes, “The world’s fastest human, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, would be easily caught and eaten by a half dozen different species of mammal predators.” That said, it could also be the case that the evidence for aliens is just not apparent to mere mortals: “We are three-dimensional creatures. Nothing to stop an Alien from living in four or five or more dimensions. If they never deigned to pass through our measly three dimensions, we would never know they were there,” Tyson writes.

So where does America’s favorite astrophysicist stand on all of this? Do aliens exist or not? In his conclusion, Tyson offers his response to an invitation he received to inspect purportedly alien mummies recovered in Peru. In declining, he encouraged the team to publish their research in a peer-reviewed journal and offer samples of the specimens to scientists for analysis. “We do this for findings much less extraordinary than what you have presented. … So it will never be about what I think, it’s about the quality of the data and its verification.” (Reviewer’s note: Scientists later said the “mummies” were dolls made with human bones.)

So until there is a peer-reviewed study of alien remains, he says, “Alien visitations will remain a belief system like any other.”

It’s notable that throughout Take Me To Your Leader Tyson says things like, “Nobody knows how or why that happened.” I’m not sure if it’s reassuring or disturbing that astrophysicists still know so little about the universe, but rest assured, Tyson knows much more than most of us.

Regardless, when it comes to aliens and alien culture, this is a thin and often frothy take on the subject. You can do better with Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s The Ghost Lab, published last year. C —Jennifer Graham

Featured Photo: Take Me To Your Leader, by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Album Reviews 26/06/25

Pussy Riot, CYKA (self-released)

It was quite a surprise for me to find that this was the Russian protest-punk group’s debut album, given that they’ve been playing well-publicized shows, pulling all sorts of anarchic stunts and getting arrested for 14 years now, but yes, that’s what it is, the first proper full-length from Moscow’s answer to the Dead Kennedys, after a fashion (most of the band members are in exile nowadays at the behest of Vladimir Putin for all the rabble they’ve roused). In a way, it qualifies as world music, of a certain bent: While many Americans are accustomed to protesting our own government’s actions in the Middle East and such (at least online) this is a, well, almost refreshing view from another world entirely, where citizens — especially mindful, news-junkie types like these girls — are in a permanent, rabid state of outrage over events in Ukraine. It’s a striking juxtaposition if you’re an American who’s spent a lot of time on Twitter/Bluesky et al. over the last few years. Lots of angry Poppy-like caterwauling goes on here, of course, but the band had a lot of help from different corners of the industry, which led to some unexpected results, such as the sexy TLC-like cooing in the “Putin-guested” title track. In the no-surprise department, Avenged Sevenfold volunteers their nu-metal weaponry to “Candy Dopamine.” A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Tesla, Homage (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

In the moment I’m writing this, I couldn’t name one song from this Sacramento, California, ’80s-hair-metal band if I had to save a million kittens, so luckily I don’t. I threw it on this week’s list because it seemed timely, given that Tesla Inc. owner Elon Musk just became America’s first trillionaire-on-very-flimsy-paper, and wisely enough the band leads off their home page with an announcement that they are indeed the band, not the automaker. Anyhow, they’ve actually been more of a bland-tasting mainstream rock band than anything else, which is the chart where they’ve historically made some dents, but for everything they do that sounds like Black Crowes there’s some room-temperature hard rock that’s in the vein of Europe and that sort of thing. They’re big into the Stones and Beatles, not that you can tell much from the cover songs they recite on this record; Supertramp’s absolutely awful “Give A Little Bit” gets a reading that replaces the original’s falsetto with the nasal bleating of an annoying nitwit like the dude from Buckcherry. Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” gets a particularly revolting turn, which was where I tapped out on this nonsense. They’ll be in Gilford at the BankNH Pavilion on July 24. C —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Moving right along with this totally forgettable year — or at least we’d like to forget it for five minutes, but the amount of alcohol required for that level of psychic anesthesia would bankrupt most countries – the next jumble of albums will come out on June 26, so we must talk about them, I’ll take an adequately barrel-aged tequila straight up please, with a nice lime wedge! Oh, but first, it’s time once again to remind musicians who are in local bands and want to get reviewed by me in this multiple award-winning newspaper section that the only sure-fire way to contact me is by messaging me at my Facebook and/or Twitter/Bluesky thingamajigs, at the addresses mentioned elsewhere on this page. The only thing I ask is that you include a graphic of your album/EP/mixtape cover and a brief “biography,” that is to say a description of your act, any interesting factoids, the official release date of your record, and, most importantly, who you are and where your band/act is based, meaning what specific town. I know I’m repeating myself, but in the old days, that used to be a no-brainer, like, bands automatically sent “press kits” with their albums, but nowadays, with the rise of things like Banksy and Burial and all sorts of other popular figures pretending not to want any recognition (any way we can stop that yet, pretty please with sugar on top?), it’s like pulling teeth for us art-scene journos to get straight answers to our basic questions, and it’s massively, massively annoying. For example, if you’re from Nashua, New Hampshire, don’t jump in my messages saying “my band is from the Boston area,” because it gives me a skin rash. Be concise, tell me why your act is awesome, and for extra points tell me whom you think your band/act sounds like. The easier you make my job, the more nice I will be to your album-or-whatever on this page, that’s how this works. I mean, not to brag, but I get about 300 emails a week from bands and publicists seeking press for new records, and given that I like to sit around eating Fig Newtons and watching Netflix documentaries as much as you do, you should keep in mind that there are always 300 other bands — some of them famous! — that want the publicity if you don’t. I am here to help you, same as how I am here to let people know that British folktronica lady Beth Orton has a new album coming out this Friday, titled The Ground Above. You may know Orton from the Aughts era, when she was something of a techno “It Girl,” collaborating with Chemical Brothers and such. The album’s title track features Orton singing rather badly over a sublime trip-hop beat in the vein of Portishead. She’ll be at the Crystal Ballroom in Somerville, Mass., on Sept. 19.

• For some reason, whenever I hear the name Chanel Beads I always think of taking a bubble bath, do you think that’s dumb, my sense of self-worth hinges on your answer. It’s the stage name of New York indie dude Shane Lavers, whose new album Your Day Will Come includes the cool, sparse, percussive dance(ish) track “Police Scanner.” He’ll perform at The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., on Sept. 13.

• I’ll just assume you know Aughts-indie favorites The Strokes; they release their newest LP Reality Awaits this Friday. What I heard of it was all fine, of course, starting with album opener “Psycho Sh-t,” made of their usual edgy, angular Romantics-meets-Interpol ingredients.

• Lastly we have The Pretty Reckless with an album called Dear God, whose title track sounds like Ani DiFranco trying to be Nine Inch Nails-ish, please make it stop. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Sublime, Until The Sun Explodes and Tori Kelly, God Must Really Love Me

Rose & Rhubarb

Last Thursday was one of those days. You know the ones — you don’t really have anything to complain about, but you get on a mental hamster wheel and before you know it you find yourself scowling at the world, drenched in self-pity.

Fortunately, there is a solution for self-pity: rhubarb.

Even more fortunately, we are right in the middle of rhubarb season. As it turns out, aside from pie, rhubarb is a rockstar ingredient in cocktails. It is sweet and sour (well, OK, mostly sour, but it will be sweet by the time we’re done with it) and princess pink.

A rhubarb margarita, you ask? Yes, please.

Oh, you meant a rhubarb sidecar? Even better.

We’ll do something with gin this time (see below), but first we need to make some rhubarb syrup.

Rhubarb Syrup

  • 1 pound or so of cleaned rhubarb stalks, chopped to half-inch dice. (The actual amount doesn’t matter too much, so long as you use an equal amount of sugar.)
  • 1 pound or so of granulated sugar – the same amount as the rhubarb, by weight.
  • Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Freeze the chopped rhubarb for several hours or overnight. This will form ice crystals that will poke holes in the rhubarb’s cell walls, releasing rhubarb juice more freely once we start cooking.

Later, combine the frozen rhubarb, lemon zest, and the sugar in a saucepan, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until you get a sort of rhubarb compote swimming in juice, and the juice comes to a boil. Stir in the lemon juice, then take it off the heat and set it aside for an hour or so to sort of collapse in on itself.

Strain through a fine-mesh strainer. Eat the rhubarb compote over ice cream or on a buttered crumpet, and use the pink syrup for cocktails.

Just such a cocktail – Rose & Rhubarb

  • 2 ounces botanical gin – At the moment, I’m enjoying Hendrick’s Oasium very much
  • 1 ounce fresh-squeezed lemon juice
  • 3/4 ounce rhubarb syrup (see above)
  • 5 drops rose water – You might want to work your way up to five drops. Rose water can be tricky stuff. One drop too little, and you can’t really taste it, and one drop too much, whatever you’re making ends up tasting like grandmother soap. I had to throw away a perfectly good pear crumble once because I wasn’t paying attention and added a little too much rose water, and it ended up tasting like a rear-view mirror air freshener.
  • 2 to 3 ounces plain seltzer

Combine the gin, lemon juice, rhubarb syrup and rose water with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly, and strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Top with club soda and stir gently.

Sit somewhere with a gentle breeze and listen to a mostly forgotten song from your youth as you sip this — anything from Meat Loaf’s 1977 album Bat Out of Hell will serve this purpose very well. (Though, admittedly, that’s from my youth). As promised, this pretty, pink drink is sweet and sour and a little floral.

After two of them, you probably won’t take yourself quite so seriously.

Featured photo: Rose & Rhubarb. Photo by John Fladd.

Berry nice

An afternoon of strawberries and sousaphones

“In 1943, a boys’ band from Nashua came out to Hollis and gave a concert, and a lot of the parents and the kids were very enthusiastic and wanted to do a band of their own because at that time there was not music in the public school,” said David Bailey, conductor of the Hollis Town Band. “1946 was the first mention of the Strawberry Festival, and it was put on to help raise money for what was at that time called the Hollis Church School Band.”

Since then, Bailey said, the Band, eventually in partnership with Hollis Woman’s Club and the Hollis Congregational Church, has raised money every year by inviting the public to listen to the Band perform and eat strawberries. This year’s Festival will take place Sunday, June 28, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Hollis Town Commons.

“There will be strawberries and shortcake,” Bailey said. “There will be hand-whipped cream. There will be ice cream and people can have strawberry shortcake with whipped cream or strawberry shortcake with ice cream or even just strawberries in a bowl.” The point, he said, is to support the Hollis Town Band, while eating the strawberries.

Bailey said this event has its roots in Hollis’s history as a farming community.

“It’s a great throwback to old-fashioned small-town agricultural New England,” he said, “when people would get together and pause because being farmers would be from sunup to sundown and even later, seven-days-a-week kind of job. And so they would take like one afternoon out of a busy season. At this point in the year, the crops are in the ground. They’ve been planted. Strawberries are an early crop, so that’s one of the reasons why we can have the festival now. But they could take an afternoon off and not put themselves back time-wise because of not working for the day. This is a lot like that, and when the weather’s nice — my fingers are crossed — we get between 1,000 and 2,000 people coming to listen and enjoy the desserts.”

The Festival is also a reminder of what an important institution the Band is to the local community.

“We have about 65 members,” Bailey said. “And while the band is called the Hollis Town Band, the members come from around 20 different towns in this surrounding area and we rehearse once a week in Hollis. I’m in my 41st year as the conductor of the band. It’s really close to my heart.”

The Hollis Strawberry Festival and Band Concert
Where: Hollis Town Common (3 Monument Square, Hollis) or at Middle School in case of bad weather.
When: Sunday, June 28, from 2 to 4 p.m.
Admission: The concert, which will feature patriotic and popular instrumental music, is free. The money raised will come from the purchase of strawberry desserts.farm-a-q.

Featured photo: Photo from cultivatenewengland.com/farm-a-q.

Farm-A-Q

Coming together for a celebration of local food

Evan Mallett is the chef and owner of Black Trumpet in Portsmouth. He is passionate about food and where it comes from. Twenty-five years ago, he struggled with a dilemma.

“We were doing these dinners called the Barn Dinner once a year in a very old barn in Stratham, New Hampshire,” Mallett said, “and each chef contributed a different course. And each of the ingredients that we used were heirloom varieties that were commercially extinct and had a story to tell. We had done the Barn Dinner for a few years, and it became clear that that was a very exclusive event that only a certain privileged population could attend. And we wanted farmers at the table. We wanted everyone in our community at the table.”

Which is how the first Farm-A-Q happened.

“It was a group of chefs, farmers, gardeners, and people interested in galvanizing our local food community,” Mallett said. “We did this outdoor festival and added music. And each of the chefs who had done a course at the Barn Dinner now had a table outside and were cooking outdoors. There was a big fire pit, and everyone sort of gathered around that and cooked overnight. So that tradition has stayed alive now for I think it’s been 15 years.”

This year’s Farm-A-Q will take place Sunday, June 28, at Tuckaway Farm in Lee. Sarah Cox is an owner of Tuckaway Farm. She said the event is a way to look at area food through several different lenses.

“The Farm-A-Q is an event that has really grown into a way for the community to come together and celebrate and learn about local farms, local chefs, and also more education on agriculture. It’s an inclusive kind of family-friendly event and features local chefs using local food as a way to bring the community together.”

Cox said anyone attending Farm-A-Q will have a chance to explore any number of food interests.

“They will come up onto one of our big farm fields,” she said, “and with one ticket, they’re going to have access to different chefs set up around the field. They can come and sample food and talk to those chefs. And there are tables where they could meet some of the farmers. There are tables with kids’ activities around food and farming. Kids can get their passes to go check things off all around the event as they’re tasting things. We have agricultural organizations like the Conservation District who come and they show some of the ways that they help support area agriculture. But for the most part, a family coming or a person coming just comes informally with a lawn chair or a blanket, and they can set up for the afternoon, walk around, get some food, and just enjoy themselves. It’s meant to be informal, but a way to really connect with [New Hampshire] food and get to know what’s around us, get to know maybe the chefs of places you’ve wanted to go or have been or introduce people to them; to connect how they work with farms and meet some of the farmers who are growing that food.”

Evan Mallett described the dish that he and his restaurant will serve at Farm-A-Q: “Black Trumpet is teaming up with a woman named Dina Wilford, and she is the owner of Vita Tortilla, which makes its tortillas from a masa that is in turn made from the corn grown on the farm where we are. So we are going to be cooking grass-fed beef shanks in a smoker and then braising them and then serving them barbacoa style with her tortillas.”

The Hollis Strawberry Festival and Band Concert
Where: Hollis Town Common (3 Monument Square, Hollis) or at Middle School in case of bad weather.
When: Sunday, June 28, from 2 to 4 p.m.
Admission: The concert, which will feature patriotic and popular instrumental music, is free. The money raised will come from the purchase of strawberry desserts.farm-a-q.

Featured photo: Photo from cultivatenewengland.com/farm-a-q.

The Weekly Dish 26/6/25

• Wine on wheels: LaBelle Winery Derry (14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com/labelle-winery-derry) recently announced on its website that it has launched “its newest culinary experience — a food truck offering a seasonal selection of sweet and savory [foods] with more than 30 wines plus beer, cocktails, and non-alcoholic options.” Visit labellewinery.com/labelle-winery-derry/food-truck.

• A seriously important food award: As reported by NHPR in a June 16 online article, New Hampshire chef Evan Hennessey of Stages and Topolino restaurants in Dover has been awarded the 2026 James Beard Award for Best Chef Northeast, which covers the New England region. The James Beard Award is considered to be the top award in the American restaurant industry. Visit jamesbeard.org/stories/james-beard-award-winners-2026.

• Cookies and beer: Spyglass Brewing Co. (306 Innovative Way, Nashua, 546-2965, spyglassbrewing.com) will host an evening of cookie decorating with Kate Soleau of Posy Cottage Cookies, Friday, June 26, from 6 to 8 p.m. Learn five cookie designs with four colors of royal icing. All materials will be provided to create beautiful and delicious cookies. Tickets are $64.80 through posycottagecookies.com/cookie-decorating-classes.

• Mystery, murder and merlot: LaBelle Winery Derry (14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com/labelle-winery-derry) will host a murder mystery dinner Friday, June 26, at 6:30 p.m. Step into the glitz and glamour of Old Hollywood at “The Last Curtain Call Murder Mystery Dinner Party.” Enjoy a three-course dinner inspired by the golden age of the silver screen as professional actors perform a dramatic murder mystery plot filled with scandal and betrayal. Gather clues, listen for whispered gossip among the stars, and use your detective instincts to uncover which Old Hollywood insider is hiding a deadly secret. Tickets are $84 through the LaBelle website.

• Grill and Gather at the Co-Op: Join the Concord Food Co-op (24 S. Main St., 225-6840, concordfoodcoop.com) for Grill and Gather during InTown’s Market Days, Thursday, June 25, and Friday, June 26, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.. There will be burgers, hot dogs and fries, with vegan options, according to the Co-op’s website.

• Cake Fest ’26: Deerfield’s first Cake Fest will take place Saturday, June 27, at the Town Gazebo on Church Street in Deerfield, beginning at 12:30 p.m., rain or shine. Tickets are $25 each and will not be available on the day of the event. Visit susieqscakery.com/cake-fest-2026.

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