Chris Higgins
Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson
by Chris Higgins - November 29, 2011 - 10:55 AM

In this eighty-four-minute video, Stephen Colbert (not doing his Colbert Report character) chats with Neil deGrasse Tyson. It’s an intelligent, fun, and wide-ranging discussion, touching on science, history, and personal experiences of science. The most adorable parts: Colbert consults his phone for notes; and Tyson admits that the night sky reminds him of what he saw at the Hayden Planetarium as an eleven-year-old kid. There’s a good forty minutes of Q&A, and both men are delightfully snappy dressers (check out the shoes boots on Tyson!).

To skip the preamble, zip forward to about six minutes in.

The original (non-YouTube) video is here. It’s roughly the same as the YouTube version, except it buffers constantly. The discussion occurred at Montclair Kimberley Academy on 29 January 2010.

(Via Kottke.org.)

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Comments (8)

  1. Tyson was just on a recent episode of the Nerdist Podcast with Chris Hardwick. Needless to say, he is a highly intelligent man; but what surprised me was that he has a very, very, good sense of humor. They discussed a wide variety of topics and he spoke of each one like he was talking about everyday items (with no problems switching subjects). He is VERY AWESOME.

    posted by Ian from Baltimore on 11-29-2011 at 1:00 pm

  2. Neil deGrasse Tyson for president!

    posted by kat on 11-29-2011 at 3:12 pm

  3. Mr. Tyson is indeed a snappy dresser, but those are no shoes he’s wearing. They are western boots. (still pretty spiffy for a city boy)

    posted by peony on 11-29-2011 at 4:51 pm

  4. @peony – I stand corrected! Good catch. :)

    posted by Chris Higgins on 11-29-2011 at 6:29 pm

  5. NdT is my favorite astrophysicist. Oh sure, some folks like Carl Sagan, others go for Stephen Hawking, but for my money, NdT is the hands-down winner. Is it weird that I have a favorite astrophysicist?!? Probably…but then again I have a favorite architect and a favorite choreographer too (Frank Lloyd Wright and Bob Fosse for the record).

    posted by Jen on 11-29-2011 at 7:24 pm

  6. Colbert out of character… awesome

    posted by Thatoneguy on 11-30-2011 at 12:24 am

  7. If there was a lingering doubt about Tyson’s sense of humor, I would direct you to a recent episode of “The Big Bang Theory” in which he apologizes to Dr. Sheldon Cooper for the “whole Pluto thing.”

    posted by Michael on 11-30-2011 at 8:18 am

  8. I have already shared this video with four people, and I’m only 24 minutes in. I love that they talk about the beautiful parts of science- I find a lot of science to be just…fantastic. It is art.

    posted by Kat on 11-30-2011 at 12:40 pm

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