StarTalk TV Show With Neil DeGrasse Tyson Starts Monday 76
An anonymous reader writes: Neil DeGrasse Tyson of StarTalk Radio and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey has a TV show starting on Monday, April 20, at 11 p.m. ET/10 p.m. CT on NatGeo. Based on Dr. Tyson's prominent podcast of the same name, the hour-long, weekly series infuses pop culture with science, while bringing together comedians and celebrities to delve into a wide range of topics. Each week, in a private interview, Dr. Tyson explores all the ways science and technology have influenced the lives and livelihoods of his guests, whatever their background.
But what if the moon blows up without warning (Score:1)
and for no apparent reason?
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More likely about 4 hours afterwards, and after you could have read about it on every other site...
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...and you'll see the story duplicated at least three times over the next 6 months...
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Sounds interesting (Score:1, Funny)
Sounds interesting, but I'm sure the show would be less condescending and obnoxious if they'd just get rid of Tyson.
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...and would very likely work references to "climate change" into the monolog a whole lot less.
Either way, they should've brought Dr. Michio Kaku into it. He may be a physicist, but he's a hell of a lot more able to inspire wonder, and brings a certain level of awesome into the conversation.
IMHO, Tyson-DeGrasse only seems able to rabble-rouse nowadays. :/
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Michio Kaku is one of the only people who is more annoying than Tyson.
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Every time I see Michio Kaku he's talking about some most likely impossible science-fiction fantasy technology. It may inspire wonder, but not in actual science.
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I was a bit turned off by Kaku watching him during some astro show. He gave an single example of something then presented a solution of "what else can it be?". Von Däniken used that kind of thing a lot.
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Re: an atheist show would be nice (Score:2)
I'm not sure Tyson is an atheist.
solution (Score:3)
Solution there, it seems to me, is to create a watchable program.
So this means..... (Score:2)
That sounds like "Cosmos" is cancelled then.
Too bad, as it was the best thing on TV.
Re:So this means..... (Score:4, Informative)
Cosmos wasn't a series. It was like a mini-series, it ran its course and was done.
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Other than devoting 2/3 of the first episode to anti-Catholic propaganda. (And it's not like there aren't plenty of true bad things one could say about the renaissance age Church. He just didn't use any of that, and focused instead on outright fabrications.)
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The catholic church, by itself, probably delayed the scientific progress of humanity by at least a couple hundred years. I think it deserves a little bashing now and then.
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What was specifically said that you believe to be a fabrication?
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I'd be interested in knowing what might be fabricated, too. Any particular part?
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That sounds like "Cosmos" is cancelled then.
Too bad, as it was the best thing on TV.
It *was* the best thing on TV... when Carl Sagan did it. In the time and place that the original series ran, it was a refreshing and needed mixture of education, propaganda, and philosophy. Yes, propaganda, and that's not a bad thing, considering that most folks at the time had no awareness of the impacts mankind was wreaking on their environment, or the dangers that the then-escalating Cold War posed to humanity.
Nowadays, people are on forced-empathy overload of a sort... everywhere they turn for entertain
I'm kind of sick of this guy (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a big interest in physics and cosmology, etc, and generally fall asleep listening to some lecture or talk of some sort, be it Feynman or Susskind or what have you.
All NGT (and guys like Lawrence Kraus or Bill Nye) talk about are themselves, or how stupid everybody else is who isn't balls deep in Al Gore's ass with the climate change deal. It's the most asinine and shallow of political discussions.
It's annoying, because I'd love to hear about astrophysics (that's his job, right?) or string theory in
You aren't the audience (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a big interest in physics and cosmology, etc, and generally fall asleep listening to some lecture or talk of some sort, be it Feynman or Susskind or what have you.
.....
Quit mixing pop culture and science, it dumbs it down and makes people I respected once look like
These kinds of shows aren't for people who fall asleep every night listening to lectures. These kinds of shows are for the people who think Taylor Swift is the greatest singer/songwriter of all time, or can name everyone in the newest season of Dancing with the Stars but can't name the top people in government. The idea is to get people who aren't normally interested in science to at least think about it, to develop a rudimentary understanding of how science works (scientific theory, how scientists think, etc) and why the world around them is the way it is. Even a simplistic understadning is better than no understanding at all.
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Replace "science" with "football" in your assertion of what people should do, and explain why your rendering of what's important is objectively better, beyond being better for massaging your own ego.
Sure. I played football from elementary school all the way through college. My wife knows nothing about the sport but I want her to watch it with me. I don't start talking about different offensive formations like pistol, shotgun, spread, or when to use a 4-3 instead of a 3-4 defense. I start with basics, give her a rough idea of who everyone is and what they do so she can follow along while I can pay more attention to the "tactics" of the game. I fail to see how this is a bad thing (or "massaging my e
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Good analogy. That's the way it works.
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I have a big interest in physics and cosmology, etc, and generally fall asleep listening to some lecture or talk of some sort, be it Feynman or Susskind or what have you.
.....
Quit mixing pop culture and science, it dumbs it down and makes people I respected once look like
These kinds of shows aren't for people who fall asleep every night listening to lectures. These kinds of shows are for the people who think Taylor Swift is the greatest singer/songwriter of all time, or can name everyone in the newest season of Dancing with the Stars but can't name the top people in government. The idea is to get people who aren't normally interested in science to at least think about it, to develop a rudimentary understanding of how science works (scientific theory, how scientists think, etc) and why the world around them is the way it is. Even a simplistic understadning is better than no understanding at all.
Exactly. This is for those people who can name the members of the band One Direction and who are upset over one of the band members leaving (I only know this much because it preempted real news for a solid week). My thought is that it will end up falling into the same category as CSI: Cyber. Something for the general audience and not for the technically minded.
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Yeah, but that has its own set of problems, vis-à-vis “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.”
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for making difficult subjects easier to approach, but when you have to dress it up with celebrity and T&A, it seem to be missing the point that these things are interesting and worth knowing about in their own right, and not because it has some celebrity endorsement.
There already has been enough problems with dumbing down in regards to science reportin
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but when you have to dress it up with celebrity and T&A, it seem to be missing the point that these things are interesting and worth knowing about in their own right, and not because it has some celebrity endorsement.
It was the possibility of creating computer games that got me interested in programming initially. If you would have started telling me in 4th grade about how programming can be used to integrate CRM and ERP systems I probably would have just kept playing Nintendo instead of learning QBASIC.
Sometimes you need to get people hooked on how a topic can be cool before you start showing them how it can be practical.
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If you would have started telling me in 4th grade about how programming can be used to integrate CRM and ERP systems I probably would have just kept playing Nintendo instead of learning QBASIC.
Sometimes you need to get people hooked on how a topic can be cool before you start showing them how it can be practical.
Yep. I got into computers because I had fun programming an artillery game in my school's first computer.
Great news, everyone! (Score:1)
I've watch all dr. Tyson's videos on Youtube, one podcast per week (not always featuring Neil himself) isn't nearly enough to satisfy me now.
deflate gate (Score:2)
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I think you missed a lot of deflategate. While Tyson and to a lesser extent Nye claimed what you say was required, it was shown the simple process of handling the ball in a regular fashion was more than enough to explain the discrepancies in psi. They were no extremes required, just simple normal NFL practices.
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Each team can inflate their footballs as they want. The officials just ensure that at the time of testing they fall within the accepted psi range.
The Patriots have already said they like their footballs on the low side of the range while the Colts preferred their footballs inflated to the maximum allowable.
Since the NFL doesn't track the pressures of the balls they inspect, just make sure that they pass, their is no indication that the Colts balls also didn't lose similar pressure during the game.
There are
Re:deflate gate (Score:4, Insightful)
Judging from the way he not only prematurely used what turned out to be incorrect data but also botched the basic physics of "deflategate" maybe infusing pop culture with science isn't his strong suit.
OMG. A scientist came up with a conclusion, published his conclusion along with the methodology he used to arrive at that conclusion, someone read what he published and found an error in his methodology, and he came back and said "oops, I made a mistake, here's the correct answer". Oh, the horror.
No, I think that's absolutely the way to infuse pop culture with science. He inadvertently demonstrated how publication + peer review yields better results than simply saying "here's the answer"
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If stating his conclusion was all he did than that would be fine but in his tweet he was essentially attacking the Patriots organization and accusing them of cheating.
When you are making accusations against a particular group or person you better double check your math and you shouldn't be surprised that there's blowback when it's shown that you were in fact wrong.
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Real world tests duplicated the deflation of the footballs exactly; no extreme heating was required, just normal handling. Even the calculations back up the pressure changes when correctly applied.
Oddly enough, according to the NFL investigation the only ball that was under inflated by a full 2lbs was the ball that was at one point in the possession of the Colts, all other balls were under inflated by factions of that. It's also been noted that a lot of the initial reporting on the 'scandal' came from Ind
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There is no record indicating how much the colts balls deflated as the NFL doesn't actually record initial inflation numbers, merely a pass/fail, so balls inflated to the max, losing a similar level of pressure would now be near the min but still pass. That and the colts balls were stored in violation of NFL rules, in front of the sideline heater means they weren't actually stored in the same conditions as the Pats balls.
For the record of all the deflategate balls, 1 lost 2lbs (mysteriously the only one ev
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I like Tyson. (Score:2)
Even though I disagree with him on a lot of things.
I just wish they'd drop the comedians, though. Unless it's Chuck Nice. Leighann Lord is OK too, but dang, that Eugene Merman dood he has on his radio program far to often, he drops the IQ of the show about 20 points every time he's on. The others make jokes that show they're listening to Tyson and understanding him, but Merman just pops off inane non sequiturs that have nothing to do with the topic.
And don't bring in Bill Nye for guest hosting... Now tha