A Conversation With Seth Meyers

Seth Meyers is hosting the Emmy® Awards Monday night, but you can listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s interview with the host of “Late Night” this Sunday. Read more and listen to the entire episode: http://www.startalkradio.net/shows/a-conversation-with-seth-meyers

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host. I'm an astrophysicist and director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. Today, we'll be listening to my interview with Seth Meyers, former Weekend Update anchor for Saturday Night Live and host of NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers. He's also hosting this year's Emmy Awards ceremony. In this first interview clip, we start with the basics: where he grew up, his experience in school, and whether he has any interest in science.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  I was an inside child.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know what that means.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  I didn't like going outside as much, so I liked doing things that were inside. I was a reader. I liked reading a lot.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's like people have an inside voice and an outside voice. You were an inside child. Where'd you grow up?

• 1:08Speaker 01

  I grew up in southern New Hampshire.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Live free or die?

• 1:12Speaker 01

  L F O D, as we say, yeah.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  For me, it's like sitting in an air-conditioned room, reading in the summer, seems to be like you're beating the system. Like, it's not hot or sticky. It's just very comfortable. So, yeah, you know, I was a big comic book fan. I loved...

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's the start of some geek credential you might be carrying.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yes, very much so. Just got back from Comic-Con, actually, which was a delight.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you have the rare childhood where you go off to college and your parents did not throw away your comics?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  They kept them.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They kept them?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. My parents are just very loving parents.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, your house was big enough.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  It was big enough, yeah. When you live in New Hampshire, you can have the space. But I also think they want the house to be a museum of their children.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than quickly putting the jacuzzi in your bedroom.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  They had a great moment. This is years ago now. Like, I guess it would be 98 during the McGuire Sosa Home Run Chase. My parents had this moment of thinking, "Wait, Seth has all these baseball cards." So, they went through my baseball card collection and they found all these. And, you know, the idea had always been like, "These will pay for..." And then realizing that, you know, everything was worth a dollar, a dollar twenty-five. And at that point, they asked if they could throw away my baseball cards because they knew that they were worthless. But at least comic books still have stories. You can't throw them.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So at the time, did you want to be the heroes or do you want to write them?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  I wanted to be a cartoonist. That was one of the first things I wanted to be.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Early?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pre-college?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Pre-college, yeah.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have, you have art, you can draw?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  A little bit. I feel like I'm very good at knowing when my skill level has peaked and when other people started passing me by. I was a very good artist.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not many people are aware of this.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  No, self-awareness is the greatest gift.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's everything.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  It is the greatest gift. You know, I eventually later in life had it on SNL when I realized I'm not as good of an actor as the other people I'm surrounded by. I need to find a job where I just get to say, hi, I'm Seth Meyers, as opposed to hello, I'm this character.

• 2:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that explains it.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  That explains it.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I gotta wait till Weekend Update to see Seth Meyers.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  There are certain people, when they put on wigs, it's transformative. Fred Armson is a perfect example. Fred can play hundreds of different kinds of people. I put on a wig, I look like a guy in a wig. I look like a guy who walked into a cheap wig store and put on a wig.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No one loses their awareness.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. I had a cartoonist teacher once a week after school and my mom would drive me to this guy who was a professional.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Loving parents, once again.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Loving parents, once again.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most kids are dragged to piano lessons and you get a cartoonist teacher.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  I got a cartoonist teacher and we would go and draw and it was really fun and I liked it a great deal. But then I just eventually realized, oh, I'm not that good at it. So, but that was a thing I, I wanted to do at a really young age.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the great filtering that should go on in everyone's life.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. You do it, oh, no, I'm not good, but I like it still, but I'm not good at it, let me still keep finding other things.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But don't tell me you didn't want to be one of the superheroes. That's a guy.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I did.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a guy thing, right?

• 3:48Speaker 01

  I did. I don't have a tattoo, but had I gotten one, I thought about this a lot when I was in high school, I would have gotten the Flash logo, the Flash.

• 3:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  The lightning bolt.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  That was the one I always wanted.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Did you know that Flash has atmospheric separators in front of him so he doesn't burn up going through the atmosphere?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  That's great. I will say, I love the Flash so much because I remember at a very young age, my dad told me the thing about how he keeps his costume in his ring, which I just thought was the greatest thing, that you could pop out.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That I didn't know.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he pops it out there and just gets into it really fast.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's because he carries it with him.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yes. So he's got like sort of a, a, and that was another thing I wanted when I was young, it's a Flash ring.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  But the problem with Flash comics is he constantly, more than any other hero, has to be having thought bubbles explaining what he's doing because he's moving so fast, he can never be in conversation.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With anybody.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Right. You know, there's a new Flash show, I think on CW, coming out this year, and it looks good. I saw the trailer, but I, that is the problem they have to figure out. There's never any banter with the Flash.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe they don't know that yet.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like when they did Waterworld.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you realize you're on water the whole movie?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do people really think this through?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you did comics and that the birth of geek credentials.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were there any teachers that had singular influence on you?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  The teachers that influenced me the most were always sort of English teachers. I had a lot of great teachers who embraced the idea of reading and reading books that weren't the assigned books, but just the idea of how important that was.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have awesome sentence composition. I want to.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Add to this.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  That's great. I think that I've learned just from having a talk show. You really have to learn sentence composition.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the sentences that can be interestingly embedded in themselves.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yes, well.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With humor and insight and entertainment value.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  The biggest problem I had in high school was I always tested really well.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  But I wasn't a great student and science was something where I was very frustrated by it at a very young age.

• 5:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To the point where you didn't like it as a field or you just said, no, I'm just not good at it in school.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Well, I like.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do people have that experience and then they hate science the whole rest of their life?

• 5:54Speaker 01

  I still really love math because math was, I felt like I could hear the clicking of right answers, where in science I always felt like it was a puzzle I couldn't quite finish.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, very insightful.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know why in science on the frontier, you don't know where you're walking, what you might step in. You have no idea.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you're groping in the dark until maybe there's a light that appears. Whereas math, you're right, you can still grow up in the dark on the frontier of math, but math as an enterprise, yeah, they're clicking gears there. Oh, for sure.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  And I like answers. I want answers. If I'm gonna do homework, I want answers.

• 6:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want answers? The truth. So you went to Northwestern?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I did.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool. But there's no comedy major there, right?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  So you know, I had a radio, TV, film major. I had worked in a video store in high school. That was all my sort of film education. Um, yeah, that's a thing back in the day. You used to take, you used to take your wagon there. And then if you got past. The Indians you'd rent if something was out. I it's so amazing back in the day. Well, I remember just new releases at the video store. They just you would go for weeks and it would just be out.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  The movie you want to be, you'd have to drive to a video store. It'd be out and then you'd just drive home without a movie. But I went to film school and the thing that pushed me away from the production side of film is just how scientific filmmaking is. You know, writing, you can sort of always do it your own pace. You can always do in your own space. There's sort of no rules when you're writing. I mean, ultimately, as you get more professional, you find rules and whatnot.

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, all the parks are in front of you. There's a dictionary, there's your mind, there's the paper.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  There's a blank page.

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Whereas lighting is lighting. You can't decide, oh, I'll light it later. You have to light it now.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And light it in a particular way.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  And so I just discovered how much patience and knowledge you needed to be a filmmaker. Whereas I sort of thought, oh, maybe I'll try to focus on writing more and then let smarter people than myself.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was allowed in that major?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, there was a sort of sub-major for writing and I found my way to that.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. In this show, we're featuring my interview with Seth Meyers. In this next clip, Seth and I talk about what first brought him to comedy and how that led to his 12-year run on Saturday Night Live.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  We actually had superlatives in our high school yearbook. There was a class clown. There was another one called best sense of humor. I got best sense of humor. Someone else got class clown. And I realized the difference is the class clown. Will stand up in the front of the class and just clown around for everyone to laugh at.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And disrupt everything.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  The best sense of humor sits in the back of the class and sort of says something snidely about the class clown.

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they split the category.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  They split it up, yeah.

• 8:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like splitting best director, best picture.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Exactly, very much. It was a very progressive high school to think that we needed to reward the two different kinds of humor. And then my freshman year in Northwestern, I saw the improv troupe performed at new student week. The improv troupe at Northwestern is called Meow, it's very famous, and I instantly knew that's what I want to do more than everything. But I auditioned for it three times without getting in.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need that story, otherwise. You have people who said, you're not gonna make it.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely. The Jordan. You need the Michael Jordan, you didn't make the high school basketball team, yeah.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  But I got in my senior year and I started going up to Chicago to study improv, like take classes there.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  And so embraced that my senior year.

• 9:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quite the legacy of the city.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I was lucky that my mother was a theater major. My father was an engineering major at Northwestern, they both went to Northwestern.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude, you were academic brat.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have free tuition?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  No, I definitely did not have free tuition, as I was often reminded by my father. But, I mean, I had free enough and then my parents paid for it.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. So SNL, I read, holy cow, you debuted the first live show after September 11th.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was crazy.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I remember, that was opened by Giuliani?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Giuliani and Paul Simon.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, and that was important, you know, you need the genetic to the city and to the show.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Of the many things that Lorne is great at.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lorne Michaels.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Lorne Michaels, one of the things he's best at is whenever the show has to be important. Which Lorne is loathe for the show to be important. He always wants to remind you, we're an entertainment show. Our job is to make people laugh. When people try to get too self-important in their writing, he always tells you to back off. But he does know there are moments where the show has to play this role of importance. By the way, like, I moved to New York August 20th. It's crazy enough that I'm moving here just to be on SNL and living my dream. 9/11 happens, you know, we don't even know if we're gonna do the show, there's all this talk about it. And your first time you're on SNL, it's crazy enough, just if it's your first time with all this other stuff on top of it. Um, I will say, no one remembers it as my first show. That is not.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The history.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  It was like, oh, you know what I remember about that night? That kid who had one line, yeah. But. Yeah Giuliani was on stage with Lorne. They threw to Paul Simon who played the boxer and then they came back and it was filled with first responders on stage and uh.

• 11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, fireman and everything, yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  And this seems, if it was in a movie, you would think it was a little too on the nose, but I was getting ready for my last SNL. We're twelve and a half years on the show, which is a very long time. And it was this Saturday morning and I was getting ready to leave my apartment and my wife had the radio on. And Paul Simon's The Boxer played.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  And uh, I like started shaking. I was like, I can't believe this is a perfect bookend of my run there.

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Also a title of.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bookends.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're. I'm tying it together.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got the Paul Simon thing.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'm glad you got it. Yeah.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a bit of trivia for them, for you.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is a lyric in one of their songs, uh, April, she will.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you might not remember this, so if you heard it, it you'll get it, but starting with April, he analogizes the name of the month. Of each month with his sequence of girlfriends.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 12:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, April, she will, she, you start out happy, but then makes you sad when it rains or something, right? And May, she'll, okay, April, May, June, just go through. There is a lyric in that song. That is a pre-global warming lyric.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Really?

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you ready?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. The autumn winds blow chilly and cold. September, I'll remember.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, no.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No one is thinking September is autumn winds blowing chilly and cold.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is a long gone concept. And that lyric could not have been written today.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how just a little bit of.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pre-global warming.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  That's the, you know, that's really one of the worst things about global warming is how it's dating songs. I think people are really upset.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, not to get sentimental, but were you sad to leave SNL to get your next job?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  I was really sad, and that was one of the reasons why I came back and did the first half of this last season was I wasn't emotionally ready to leave. With that said, couldn't have had a better situation moving all of, you know, nine floors as far as offices go and working on the same floor.

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, right, yeah, yeah, it's just 30 Rock.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm still at 30 Rock. And the great thing was the part of SNL that I was so worried I was gonna miss.

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can say it, you didn't have to move to LA, say it.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I did not have to move to LA. That was a real prerequisite to this job. I did not, I can't, you know, my brother loves LA so much, my wife loves LA, and it's just not for me.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm convinced that there'd be no such thing as stand-up comics if there weren't LA and New York to compare with one another.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Absolutely, it's like the starter kit. Airplanes and two cities on the coast. If you can't pass that.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Airports, airports.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Airports, yes.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, security at airports.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's your, that's the starter kit?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  That's the starter kit. If you can't make somebody laugh talking about the differences between LA and New York, get out of the business. Get out. But, yeah, so it's been great, but it's nice. You know, the thing I was worried about missing was working with the writing staff, and of course, the upside of my new shows, I have a writing staff there, and so you just find a new family.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you became head writer at SNL. How much of a show does a head writer write?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Some weeks you write a lot of it just because you have a hot week, but you're just competing with all the other writers. Where the head writer job sort of starts.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Competing in a happy way, you just want the best stuff to come out.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You're writing, and, you know, some weeks you'll write two or three things, and if you have a hot week, maybe all of them go to dress rehearsal. But head writer is definitely, does not mean best writer. Head writer sort of means on Wednesday, after you read everything that everybody's written, there's sort of holes in the show. Oftentimes, a hole will be a monologue, or the hole will be, we don't have anything political to open the show. And the job as head writer is to facilitate and to just make sure those things get done. And the other thing is, after we do that.

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it's a leadership role?

• 14:54Speaker 01

  It's just a leadership role. Yeah, you're bridging the gap between Lorne Michaels and the writing staff.

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And is it true, you wrote most of the Sarah Palin bit?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  I did.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is hilarious.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  I did, I was really lucky. I mean, when you write anything for someone like Tina Fey, the amount she adds to it, like, on the floor, she comes up with better jokes than the ones you have. The 2008 elections was such an exciting time to work on the show, the entire writing staff was chipping in, but those were fun to write.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we we heard rumored that the Sarah Palin bits

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were just pulled out of whole cloth, that you can actually go to her speeches and and comments she's made. Is that pure comedy unto itself?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Well, there were, I think we did six sketches with her and the second one was right after she did that famous Katie Couric interview. And we had sort of written a script with jokes and whatnot. And I remember Tina on that week, that one specifically said, I think we should just transcribe it and just do it exactly what she said. So there was a huge chunk of that sketch that was just transcription. And I think in the best way of when you're sort of writing of any sort of political writing, and I feel like this is something that Colbert and The Daily Show and John Oliver now do really well, is they sort of use the subject's momentum against them. It's like judo as opposed to karate. And I think when you do that,

• 16:15Speaker 01

  it seems very fair, and I think it makes the point better than when you do something that could be perceived as sort of an an homonym attack on someone.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I I'd never thought about it, but that's exactly what's going on there. And it's like you said, especially The Daily Show will get clips and you'll just play the clip.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there it is. And then you think the clip is out of context, and then they play more of that same clip.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you had it right, what that mean meaning was.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  You know, if you go back 10, 15 years, you are watching someone say like, this person's an idiot. And without sort of that proof, I think people then think it's just the political position of the person who's saying that. So Sarah Palin was really fun, although it went the other way as well, because I remember one of the things we wrote in one of the last ones was her turning to another camera and saying, I'm going rogue. And then that was the title of her book. So we borrowed from each other.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you have a moral, cultural responsibility?

• 17:05Speaker 01

  I really think your first responsibility when you're doing this is remembering that you're entertainers. On Saturday, we're talking about, you know, 11:30 at night, even more now when you're doing weeknight shows at 12:30. You have to remember, like, what are people tuning in for? What is your responsibility? And we want to have a show that's both smart and silly and

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But number one, I want to laugh, I guess.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want to make people laugh. Like, that's what I'm there for. But as far as any time, I feel like you Can call out people in power, the those elected officials who have this responsibility to us. Anytime you can sort of call them out for not fulfilling that responsibility, there's that's a fun thing to do.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fun and good and could have a purpose.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Achieve a goal.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Yes, but in a really good way, Lorne Michaels constantly reminds us, you know, this is you were entertainers. Achieve your goals in your own time.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't let it get too much to your head.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take yourself to.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. You can't do comedy.

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Overrate your own power.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  I you absolutely will overrate it because I do feel like sometimes the chemistry of when you're influencing people and when by trying to influence them, you're pushing them the other way like that will never really know.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to Startalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. We've been featuring my interview with Seth Meyers. And in this next clip, we talk about his new job, hosting Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC. So I've been a guest on your show.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Been a guest. You were great. You played along. You talked to Pluto.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I talked. You brought Pluto in. Oh, my gosh. That was a great bit. And I got to tell you my three favorite, your Venn diagrams.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh. And every time I see a Venn diagram of any kind, I say, that is so brilliant and so simple.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet somebody had to invent it, some dude named Venn, you know.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want in my life to invent something that simple.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I don't know what that takes.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  That is the definition, we were talking about math earlier, of the sound of a click. Also, I've always found, and I don't know if you've found this as well, but a lot of my best ideas happen immediately. This is the way I've always felt about sketch writing. Yeah, a thing I've always said to writers too is good comedy ideas should write easy. They should write downhill. Whereas if you have an idea and you've been working on it for eight, 10 hours, it might not be a good idea because there's something about comedy that if the audience can tell if it's tortured writing, if it's overconstructed.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the word, overconstructed.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Overbuilt.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  And Venn diagrams is a perfect example of, I bet one day he thought of it so fast.

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And any scientist is a math person, you have the the weekend numbers.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That that is that going strong?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  That's going strong too, still in the rotation? Yeah, well, you.

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hasn't been subbed out.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  No, well, you have to generate so many of these desk pieces. Uh, the top 10 list on David Letterman is the Venn diagrams of late night desk pieces. The fact that they've been doing it every night for all these years.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the people who tune in just for that.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Just for that. So you try to come up with something that eventually we want to say, and now it's time for Venn diagrams and have everybody applaud with excitement, knowing, oh, I like Venn diagrams.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. And I said, like, the weekend numbers, I don't think there's enough quantization of life.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We shouldn't have too much of it, but we need more than what we do have. People think that life is just something that, oh, that feels good, or is this, or is that? But you can measure that.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can count that. You can know how big that is.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Well, I am a sports fan, and I think one of the things I liked most about sports, even as a kid, is all the statistics of sports. And now there's been this explosion in recent years of even deeper statistics, specifically in baseball.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because baseball, you have the time to talk about it between pitches.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Exactly, it's so much time. The reality is, I watch less baseball than I read about it later, and I agree. I think there's something very nice and very comforting about being able to quantify.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a whole category of sports tweets.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That I put out, and some of them are baseball. And so here's one, let me share it. I think if you get hit by a pitch on ball four, you should go to second base.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  That's a great.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How's that?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely, because there has to be a punishment.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you hit by pitch, you get first base. Ball four, you get first base. You get hit by pitch on ball four, you go to second base.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Great. I sign off.

• 21:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now in basketball.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you have a three-point line, because you're rewarded for being far away, I think a slam dunk should be one point.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Okay, I like that, too, that I'm not going to sign off on it.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Because we have to remember this is entertainment.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  So you don't want to do anything that makes less dunks. You don't want to make dunks less rewarding.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Less rewarding, or have fewer of them.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we'll give you that.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  But I'm fully on the ball for it then.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm a big fan of Back in My Day. I think about that all the time when I give talks. I try to fold in something that pokes fun at recent past.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I have kids. You have kids?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Uh, no, just married. Yeah, yeah.

• 22:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Yeah, kids know just my wife. I don't know what that means. Is that a joke or is it all?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  I'm just saying that like, she wants them so much that it's only because we're just married that I don't have them yet.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, gotcha. So the kids, you get to be in the mind of someone who takes everything for granted that you saw discovered.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. There's a whole other realm of material waiting for you to tap.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That happens. I just want to tell you. So can you imagine anything such as a science of comedy? Or mathematics of comedy? Is there?

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could it be so formulaic that it's no longer funny?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Well, there's this really good book called, I want to say I'm dying up here. And it was about the Comedy Store in LA in the.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a great title.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Yes. And it's a sort of, I want to say the late seventies, but it's Leno and Letterman and one of the comedians in the books. He believed he'd figured out the science of comedy. And of course he had. Like, anyone who thinks they've gotten it down to ones and zeros has lost what makes comedy great. With that said, the other head writer job is, you know, when you rewrite sketches, just by trial and error, you can sort of say, hey, as somebody who's seen 500 sketches, I will just tell you that they will.

• 23:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're invoking a life experience force rather than a mathematical force?

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Yes, but I do think there's a little bit of, you know, as with experimentation and finding results and sort of tracking them, you know, but they're not absolute rules.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your life experience gives you insight as to whether somebody's idea, somebody's skit, somebody's joke might fail. And let's assume you're right most of the time. Is there anything that's fixable about it? You just pour it out and start a new glass?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  No, you can fix it. You know, an example of something I've sort of learned at SNL, which I think is different, because this can work in other comedy shows and people pull it off with great aplomb. But at SNL, I always found like, when people are playing characters, if the character knows they're a loser, it's less fun. Whereas if the character is just loving their life, a good example for me is Kristen Wiig's Target Lady. Had no idea she was a weirdo. She was so happy with who she was. The audience knew she was a weirdo. Whereas I think if you have the character be sad about who they are, the audience will also feel sad.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Especially with live television and that live studio audience, the audience has empathy for the characters. So you try very hard to make sure that they are sort of upbeat.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Seth Meyers was the keynote speaker at the always entertaining White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in 2011. Let's hear what he had to say about that experience.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  When I stood at the podium, you realized that the podium is sized for the president, and the president is taller than I am, and I felt like a little kid.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  And there's a thing you can pull out, like sort of a three-inch step. So if you watch it, I actually look a little taller than the president.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Because he spoke, and then he came, and somebody pulled my thing out, and I stood.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is the speaker's version of a phone book?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely, full phone book, yes. At least I didn't have to walk up with a phone book, and then everybody saw me stand.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For younger listeners, a phone book is how you used to get it. Back in the day.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Back in the day, back in the day. And let me say, it used to be the president went second at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Obama flipped it, so Obama gets to open. He's the President of the United States.

• 25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's the opening act.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  He murders. He murders because he's the president, and you have to follow the president.

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He had great timing in there.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  He has a stand-up's timing.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  A stand-up's timing.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Making matters worse, he doesn't end with a joke. He ends with a spare thought for the troops. Like, he brings the room all the way down. He ices the room, and then, ladies and gentlemen, Seth Meyers.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  He's just killer. Killer. But he's great. He has been...

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was it your year when he said, "There's always talk about my birth certificate, but we did some research, and we produced something better than that? We have my birth video."

• 26:25Speaker 01

  The Lion King.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Lion King.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was outstanding. It was great. And again, I'm sitting there thinking, "Why do I have to follow?" Because, again, he's also the president. You know, like, if you're good and he's good, the tiebreaker is who's the president. And the crazy thing about the year I did it was the next day, he announced SEAL Team Six

• 26:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  had killed Bin Laden. I spent three weeks leading up to that. All I did was think about that performance. I really used 100% of my brain. I went full Lucy. Full Lucy. I used all 100%. And I couldn't make dinner plans. And here he is, outstanding, working on the Bin Laden thing. Yeah, and perfect timing.

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, some comedy is just fun and entertaining.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But other comedy is politically barbed.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? You've led that parade here.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I don't know if I've led it, but I think it's been a good era of people who've been doing it.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it influence politics?

• 27:20Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or does it reflect it and is it just the scenery along the way to where it's going inevitably?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Well, I think to some degree. You know, everyone sort of said after the 2008 election that a lot of the comedy shows had a big influence on it.

• 27:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was claimed, huh?

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was claimed. But then, of course, in 2004, I think those comedy shows were sort of making the same points and didn't have the same influence. So, you know, we'll see as time goes forward. I think to some degree, when you look at 2008, I think a lot of comedians, Asadell included, were pointing out the shortcomings of a candidate like Sarah Palin. But the reality is, I do think most Americans would have come to that conclusion on their own time.

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or it would not have mattered to them and they'd still vote for her.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, that's, yeah, I don't know who the fence people were that in the end were thanked for.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why are there more liberal comedians than conservative comedians? Is it just an illusion that I have? I think it's real.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  No, I think you're right. I think the best comedy comes from going after the favorite as opposed to going after the underdog.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  I feel like a lot of conservative politics, they seem to be piling on the underdog. I don't know. It's less fun for me for people that aren't going after sort of the head of the dragon.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got you.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  And I can think a lot of conservatives right now would say that comedians don't go after Obama enough. But I think there is a lot of examples of that, of comedians who do. But also, you know, liberal comedians aren't going to go after Obama for not being conservative enough. They're going to go after him for not being liberal enough. You know, my disappointment with President Obama has been that he's more conservative than I thought he would be.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not because he wears high-waisted jeans.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Look, that's great. When he does something like that, when he gives us a little nibble, a little something we can make a joke about.

• 28:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're doing the Emmys this year.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not gonna see you this year.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  No, you're not going?

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because Cosmos

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  was nominated for 12 Emmys.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  12, are they all?

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in the documentary category.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your night, you don't announce the documentary.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  I don't. Writers at SNL, I've heard, refer to the Creative Arts Emmys as the ponytail Emmys. Because there are so many sound engineers and there's a lot of guys with ponytails at the Creative Arts Emmys. The Creative Arts Emmys, though, have a very special place in my heart because the only time I won an Emmy was for writing song lyrics. And that was at the Creative Arts Emmys.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  It feels a little bit less than the Emmys, I'm not gonna lie.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than the

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Than the regular Emmys, unless you win. Because the Emmy's the same. And when you're holding that Emmy, you don't care which Emmys it is. If you're holding an Emmy, everything is outstanding. Boarding an airplane with an Emmy? Everybody's really excited to see it. If you've been waiting your whole life to see a TSA person smile, win an Emmy. Take it in an airplane.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, my one encounter with a TSA person was a completely odd thing. I brought a meteorite. A very heavy, dense meteorite through security. And this is an opaque

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  object in the X-ray.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they say, "What is in there?" And I kept thinking, "How am I gonna play this?" "Oh, it's just a meteorite."

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just had to be really just cool, you know? Don't you get these all the time? And so I showed it to them and they all gathered around and touched it and so it was good.

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. In this final part of my interview with Seth Meyers, we talk about his animated series, The Awesomes, which is streamed on Hulu.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  My producer at late night, Mike Schumaker and I, who used to be a producer at SNL, we had this idea for a superhero show back in like 2006, and it kicked around forever. It was in development at SyFy, MTV. Wrong guy.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a quantifier.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Wrong guy he used to pipe verbally with. But.

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, forever. I got forever.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. But Hulu's been a great place for it and you know, the animation world is such a different world because you do have to sort of lock your idea in months before you see the finished product. Whereas everything else I've ever done.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could change it an hour earlier.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You can change it on the fly.

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  And we work with a great, Bento Box is this great animation company and they're very patient with us. But every now and then, somebody has to call us and say, this cannot happen.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bento Box, I guess they're in Japan.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  They're not actually, they're in L.A.

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Japan.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have a superpower.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can stop time.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For 10 seconds.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Yes, but it kills me. It slowly, it kills me. So they, I have to be very limited.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kills you.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  No, stopping the time puts so much pressure on my brain, the power.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much does it kill you?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Uh, it starts to have nosebleeds and I've been told by my doctor on the show to be very careful about using it. Cause they don't quite know, they haven't been able to scientifically test it.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's too much stress on you.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Too much stress.

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  And using the stopping time on the show, which is based on me personally, I'm an over thinker. So I need to live in a world where I can't procrastinate, which I live in now with Late Night, which I lived in with SNL. If given extra time, I just spin out and overthink. So every time this character, Prox, stops time, that you think.

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Prox, this is that you're.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yes, that's the character on the show.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doctor.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Prox is a shortening of professor doctor. So you, feel free to use that.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah. Oh, well, no, I don't, I don't add it to titles.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If title implies that you should believe me because of my title, rather than for how good of an argument I offered you.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Oh, it's very good. Yeah. I mean, I don't really use a title too. One of my favorite things is when I meet somebody every now and then, they ask if I have a business card. It's like, I'm a late night. It's why would I have a business card?

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it hasn't, it was the first.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Season one was last year.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I missed it, I'm sorry.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Oh, no worries, no worries. And then, um, August 4th was the premiere of season two.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, it's right there, so.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Yes, it's right in Hulu and hopefully, we're hoping that people go back and watch. It's also, you know, because we came from comic books, we tried to do an animated show where it does tell one story and you do have to watch the previous episode to be able to follow the plot.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is your excuse for showing up at Comic Con?

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Yes, that was why I went. I got to do.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They've been cutting down on the rules. There've been some shows, it's, oh, look, there's a great audience, let's just go. They know you don't have any comics and you don't have any super anything and you, so you don't belong.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  There's so many shows that don't belong.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, completely. Oh, my gosh.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  I mean, the good news is it doesn't seem like the populace is that upset about it. But when you have a real show, the Shme and Comic Con, you do get a little upset. With your hall placement.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we, Cosmos was featured at Comic Con because we had animation.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Within each episode.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Cosmos fits into Comic Con, whether you had animation or not, that fits.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, they had my peeps. I mean, there's a whole, the whole geekosphere is.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you were in a couple of movies.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  No, just, I think, literally a couple.

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A couple, two movies, a couple equals two.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forgive me, I've seen these movies you were in, but I don't remember you.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Okay, great.

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a good thing or bad thing?

• 34:03Speaker 01

  I think it's a good thing.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you blend in?

• 34:04Speaker 01

  It's a good thing.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were you such a good actor?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  No. I think I have a few lines. It's a very good thing that I have my own talk show and don't have to be in movies anymore.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  My most sciency movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Jules Verne story, Journey to the Center of the Earth.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  And I had two scenes. I was a scientist.

• 34:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were scientist?

• 34:21Speaker 01

  I was Dean Allen Kitson's was my name, and I have a, a trading card, which is hilarious because they did 3D trading cards, but I'm in no action scenes, so my trading card is just a headshot.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So wait a minute. So in your animated life, you were a professor?

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in Journey to the Center of the Earth, you were academic professor, so.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  There is something there.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is something there, yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  But I had two scenes. The first scene was right in the beginning of the movie, and I basically said to, I'm paraphrasing here, but I said to Brendan Fraser, you can't go to the center of the Earth. And then I had a scene at the end of the movie where I basically said, whoa huh? So that was, those are my two scenes.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, do that again, let me hear that again.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Whoa huh? You were what? You were where? Fully the center?

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, actually, I'm disappointed that that's the best they scripted for you in response to someone going to the center.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a gut, a guttural utterance.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was about it. But I will say it was 3D, and it was using a new 3D technology at the time, and. The first scene, the director said, if there's anything you can think of to do, you know, just because it's 3D. And so the first thing I did, because basically I was measuring Brendan Fraser's office because he was about to lose his job. In the end, he didn't because of the center of the earth thing.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay. That's the kind of thing that gives you tenure, you know, a job, yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  The first 3D moment in the film is me turning the tape measure to camera and then snapping it back.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright. There's gotta be something.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, something that people don't do in real life.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then we read up on this that in Korea, the movie was in 4D.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Was it really?

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, so they put in other effects.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sound, smells, water spray. And so your other senses are now, we're engaging it. So they-

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Wow, and then-

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so you know.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  They did a sequel a few months, like, like five years later with The Rock.

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean Dwayne Johnson?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Dwayne, Dwayne The Rock Johnson. And I, um, I instantly texted the director, who I hadn't spoken to for five years, and I just wrote, "I am so excited we're doing another one. This is so great. I can't, I can't wait to see you." He did not pick up my sarcasm. Because he texts back, "Oh, I don't know if your character is gonna be back in the second one."

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. We're brought to you in part by a grant from the Sloan Foundation. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, compelling you to keep looking up.