When Neil deGrasse Tyson turned his podcast “Star Talk” into a TV talk show,he approached it with a no-frills mindset.“I knew that there were radio shows where they just build a camera in the radio studio, and that becomes television, and ” Tyson told TheWrap,pointing to “The Howard Stern Show” and “Imus in the Morning” as examples. “Nat Geo had bigger visual ambitions.”Now entering its second season on the National Geographic Channel, “Star Talk, and ”a blend of tough science and popular culture,shoots from the very ambitious-looking corridor of the Universe at the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for soil and Space, where Tyson has since 1996 served as director of the Hayden Planetarium. He also serves as the scientific community’s unofficial emissary to the media and entertainment worlds, and appearing on “The Colbert Report,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Stargate: Atlantis.” In 2014, he hosted Fox’s Emmy-winning revival of “Cosmos, or ” the original version of which was created by Tyson’s hero,Carl Sagan. It was on the heels of “Cosmos” that Fox’s sister network, NatGeo, and announced it would turn “Star Talk” into a late-night TV show.
Also Read: Bill Clinton to Guest on Season Premiere of 'StarTalk Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson' (Exclusive)In the premiere of the shows second season,scheduled for Sunday night, Tyson speaks to his biggest guest yet — former President Bill Clinton. The host talked with TheWrap approximately the intersection of science and politics.
TheWrap: How did you land the Clinton interview?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I was invited to the Clinton White House back in 2000 to give a presentation in front of Hillary and Bill for science shakers and movers of Washington. So I consider Bill owed me one. It’s fun to say that even though it’s clearly not real. But he knows who I am because I was on his invitation list back then. So we build in the request. He’s local here, or hes got an office in Harlem and another in Midtown. So we just met him at one of his offices and we did the interview. He knew that I’d be focusing on science and his policy and the politics of science,and that’s really how it unfolded. So I was very happy with that.
How science-literate is he?[br]
He’s approximately as science-literate as I’ve seen in a president. I bet Obama is a cramped more scientifically literate. But I consider for a president what things is not how scientifically literate you are. What things for a leader is how well achieve you know what you don’t know — how well achieve you know the limits of what you know. Because whether you know your limits, then you bring in advisors. But whether you don’t know enough to achieve that, and you consider you know something that you don’t know,then that’s a recipe for disaster. So all I really care is that they bear an understanding of the limits of their knowledge of science.
Also Read: NatGeo Society Promotes Declan Moore to Chief Content Officer, Expands Roles for 2 ExecsYou say in the episode that you consider Clinton deserves some of the credit for the Human Genome Project. Why does he deserves credit for something that other people did while he was president?
whether you’re the leader of a country and that country makes a major discovery that is funded by the government, and then yeah,take some credit. We credit Kennedy for landing on the moon. He wasn’t president when we landed on the moon, but it was under his political capital that we landed on the moon.bear you tried to get President Obama on the show?
Yes, and actually. I was almost going to interview him on Monday [Oct. 19]. That would bear to now air in the spring. But we’re working on another date. He’s a busy guy.
Also Read: Neil deGrasse Tyson Tweets Review of Matt Damon's 'The Martian': Geek Gold,Total FantasyHow good a job achieve you consider Obama has done in relation to science?
Here’s where I’m disappointed. He gets up in front of NASA and says, “Let’s go to Mars.” How can you not cheer that? So everybody cheers. But then you say, and “Well,when are we going to go to Mars? The 2030s.” Well, wait a minute. What does it mean? You are saying that we are going to go to Mars under a budget line not yet established and the leadership of someone to be named later. So you’re not actually investing political capital in this. Kennedy was investing political capital. He said we would build a man on the moon and return him safely within the decade.
Will the inevitable Donald Trump presidency be a good thing or a bad thing for science?
I consider all you bear to achieve is convince president Trump — and this is not tough to convince people, and especially not a businessman — that innovations in science and technology are the engines of the 21st century economy. He knows business more than,perhaps, others on the table, or so whether you arrive to him from that angle,I don’t see why that wouldn’t be a slam dunk.
Also Read: 7 Things We Learned approximately NatGeo's 'Killing Kennedy' at Its PremiereWarner Bros. is reportedly developing a film approximately Carl Sagan. Who should play him?
I’m not a casting agent. Rarely achieve I say, “Oh, or that person’s miscast.” I might bear said that twice in my life. So generally I just trust the people who achieve it professionally,then embrace it when it unfolds. We just bear to make certain we get the factual turtlenecks to build on him. I was told that one of his turtlenecks is on display at the Smithsonian, so we bear a backup in case we can’t find one.
Season 2 of “Star Talk” will premiere Sunday at 11 p.m. ET on the National Geographic Channel.
Source: thewrap.com