MARCH 2015
THEHEMIQ&A
NeildeGrasseTyson
Inhis ongoingquest tobring science to themasses, America’s
“rock star astrophysicist” is about to launcha late-night talk show
BY CHRISWRIGHT
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
JOE CIARDIELLO
O
ther than the playground puns
revolving around the seventh
planetfromthesun,astrophysics
doesn’t usually lend itself to
comedy. All the same, Neil
deGrasse Tyson, director of
New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, has
establishedhimself asanaudience favoriteon
such televisionprograms as “TheDailyShow,”
“The Colbert Report” and “Real Time with
Bill Maher.”
More remarkable still is the fact that Tyson
isabout to launcha late-night chat showofhis
own, “Star Talk” (debuting next month on the
National Geographic Channel), which aims to
tap into the lighter sideofdarkmatterand take
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a sideways look at Doppler shifts by talking
sciencewith comedians and entertainers.
The new show follows Tyson’s success on
last year’s “Cosmos,” the splashy update of
the Carl Sagan original. While Tyson and his
predecessor shared a goal—to endow the
fieldof astronomywithpopular appeal—their
approaches couldn’t bemoredifferent. Sagan
was the dreamy, contemplative scientist-
poet; Tyson’s defining characteristic is a kind
of runaway enthusiasm. He fizzes and spins
around his subject, as if there are just too
many things to think and say. His style is
discursive, brash, endlessly interesting.
Perhaps most important, Tyson is amaster
of the well-crafted analogy—his universe is
