Comedian and pundit Bill Maher drew peals of laughter from star astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson by zeroing in on the “butthole” aspect of alien abduction for two solid minutes.

On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the interview guest was Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and author of the new book “Take Me to Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter.”

The panel guests were Katy Tur, bestselling author and host of MS NOW’s “Katy Tur Reports”; and Fmr. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, former Republican congressman who represented California’s 20th district and served as the 55th Speaker of the House.

Things took a turn in the interview segment when Maher asked Tyson about his disappointment at not being taken by aliens as a child, and the conversation became more probing:

BILL MAHER: Because I’ve read all your books, and this one, I feel like you hit your stride. I think they’re all good, but this one I think is your best, and I think you don’t get the shine you deserve as a writer because you became a TV star, you did.

And people forget that only happens because the books come first, because the real work is there. I feel this is your first one–.

First of all, it’s the most personal, to me it was. I mean, the fact that you, example, say when you were a kid, you wanted to be abducted by aliens.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, not to leave Earth, I mean, I like Earth, but…

BILL MAHER: The Bronx.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It was the Bronx, New York, but it was, I just thought the immensity of the universe called to me, and the only way I can get there, given the state of any science or technology on Earth, is I would need help from aliens, so I wanted a beam of light to come down from the sky and take me away.

BILL MAHER: So you’re disappointed that didn’t happen.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, kind of a little bit a little Yeah,.

BILL MAHER: Even after reading what they do to people — Yeah, I’m just–

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: (LAUGHS) I, maybe that was before I read about the body orifice, curiosity. But you’ve got to admit, it’s odd that aliens would cross the galaxy to go look in your butthole. That would just be, that, that.

BILL MAHER: No, it’s not.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Oh, it’s not!

BILL MAHER: That’s where you would look. Wait, up through there. Medically, that’s what we do anyway. We look in there, and it’s… Yes.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay, so dogs do it. Dogs go up the butthole, right?

BILL MAHER: No, they just sniff there. We have instruments. They have instruments, they’re looking. It’s not about the butthole. It’s about getting inside the body through the buttole.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: What would be interesting is if the aliens had some of these dog elements to them and you greet them and the first thing they Want to do is go around and sniff your butt.

They might have habits that would be strange to us.

BILL MAHER: Okay

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Don’t blow a gasket!

BILL MAHER: I knew he would be waylaid with this.

Watch above via HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

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