Chat Show For Neil deGrasse Tyson

Via the Hollywood Reporter:

Neil deGrasse Tyson is getting his own show. The astrophysicist and TV personality, who fronted Cosmos in 2014, has nabbed a late-night series on National Geographic Channel called Star Talk. “Cosmos allowed us to share the awesome power of the universe with a global audience in ways that we never thought possible,” said Tyson. “To be able to continue to spread wonder and excitement through Star Talk, which is a true passion project for me, is beyond exciting. And National Geographic Channel is the perfect home as we continue to explore the universe.” Star Talk will indeed follow a similar format to Tyson's podcast, which marries science and popular culture and feature interviews with celebrities, comedians and scientists. He's still sorting through all of the elements that he'll add to the television iteration, but he does intend to give Bill Nye a platform for a minute-long rant in each show, much as Andy Rooney had for many years on CBS' 60 Minutes.

The show will debut in April and will tape before a live audience in Manhattan at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium.

Everything Wrong With Gravity

Neil deGrasse Tyson Trolls Creationists

"The Crab Nebula is about 6,500 light years from Earth. According to some beliefs, that’s the age of the whole universe, but if the universe were only 6,500 years old, how could we see light from anything more distant than the Crab Nebula? We couldn’t. To believe in a universe as young as 6,000 or 7,000 years old is to extinguish the light from most of the galaxy, not to mention the light from all the other hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe." - Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, in Sunday's episode of Cosmos, which focused on the speed of light.

Bill Donohue Is Very Upset About Cosmos

Last night Fox debuted its 13-episode series, Cosmos; A Spacetime Odyssey, which is hosted by noted astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and is produced by Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane.  Catholic League blowhard Bill Donohue is very upset about the first episode, which shamefully depicted the Spanish Inquisition as a bad thing. 

The propagandists involved in this show, represented most conspicuously by Seth MacFarlane, told viewers last night that “the Roman Catholic Church maintained a system of courts known as the Inquisition and its sole purpose was to investigate and torment anyone who dared voice views that differed from theirs. And it wasn’t long before [Giordano] Bruno fell into the clutches of the thought police.” The ignorance is appalling. “The Catholic Church as an institution had almost nothing to do with [the Inquisition],” writes Dayton historian Thomas Madden. “One of the most enduring myths of the Inquisition,” he says, “is that it was a tool of oppression imposed on unwilling Europeans by a power-hungry Church. Nothing could be more wrong.” Because the Inquisition brought order and justice where there was none, it actually “saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule.” (His emphasis.)

All that torture and disemboweling? Good thing! Cardinal Fang, fetch the comfy chair for Bill.