Welcome back to another deep dive. Today, we're
doing something a little different. Usually,
we take a concept, you know, glide holes or the
history of coffee or the mechanics of inflation,
and we just tear it apart to see how it works.
Right. We look at the machine itself. Exactly.
But today, we're turning our lens on a person.
And really, not just a person. We're looking
at a phenomenon. It's a necessary distinction
to make, I think, right at the top. We're examining
a figure who has, for all intents and purposes,
become the face and definitely the voice of modern
science for a massive chunk of the global population.
Oh, absolutely. You've seen the memes. You've
heard that voice in... I don't know, a dozen
documentaries and probably a few blockbuster
movies. You've seen him debating on cable news.
We are talking, of course, about Neil deGrasse
Tyson. And the stack of sources we've got for
this deep dive is, well, it's honestly massive.
We're looking at biographical records. We have
transcripts of his public appearances, details
on his actual academic research, the full timeline
of his controversies, and we'll get to those,
plus his extensive media portfolio. It's a lot.
It is. So our mission, really, is to decode how
a kid from the... ends up with the title, Sexiest
Astrophysicist Alive. Which is a real title.
We should just state that for the record. That
actually happened. A real title held by a real
person. And at the same time, he's the guy who,
in the public consciousness at least, killed
Pluto. He's this fascinating mix of public, intellectual,
and public villain, depending on who you ask.
And along the way, we have to look at the friction
points. Because, you know, you don't become a
figure of this magnitude without stepping on
a few toes. We have source material covering
his clashes with, say, the entire field of philosophy.
Oh yeah, that was a whole thing. His very complex
and often misunderstood stance on religion, and
of course, the serious allegations of misconduct
that really threatened to derail his entire career
just a few years ago. It's a lot. to unpack.
I want to understand the cool side of the science,
you know, the wrestling, the ballroom dancing,
the fact that he helped find a real world location
for Superman's home planet. Which is just amazing.
But I also want to understand the engine that's
driving this whole machine. What is his actual
philosophy on science communication? Because
he isn't just, you know, reading facts off a
teleprompter. He's performing. It's a specific
brand of pedagogy. It is performance art mixed
with astrophysics. And to understand it, I think
you really, really have to go back to the beginning.
Because the Neil deGrasse Tyson we see on TV
today didn't just appear out of a vacuum. So
let's do it. Let's hit the origin story. We're
starting in 1958, Manhattan born, but as you
said, really a Bronx guy through and through.
Right. Castle Hill, Riverdale. And to understand
his trajectory, you have to look at the household
he grew up in. His father, Cyril deGrasse Tyson,
he wasn't a scientist. He was a sociologist and
a human resource commissioner for the mayor of
New York City, John Lindsay. So a civic -minded
household. Very. And his mother, Sanchita, she
was a gerontologist. So you've got this environment
where education, social science, and public service
are just, they're the baseline. It wasn't a house
where you just sat around. You were expected
to contribute, think about society. But the science
part, that didn't come from them directly. The
source material highlights a very specific moment,
the inciting incident, if you want to use a screenwriting
term. He's nine years old. Nine. And he takes
a trip. He visits the Sky Theater at the Hayden
Planetarium. Which is just so poetic, right?
Considering where he ends up decades later. It's
almost too perfect for a script. But it's true.
He sits there in that big, dark room. The lights
go down and the stars come out on that massive
dome. And Tyson describes this moment not just
as like a cool field trip. He calls it an imprint.
He uses this very specific phrase, the universe
called me. I find that phrasing so interesting.
It's almost passive. It suggests a lack of agency,
doesn't it? Like he didn't choose science. Science
just grabbed him by the collar. He felt he had
no choice in the matter. And frankly, if he hadn't
walked into that specific room at that specific
age, I think you could argue the landscape of
science communication today might look very,
very different. And it wasn't just a one -time
thing. This is where the obsession starts, right?
He starts going back. He does. During his high
school years, he's attending astronomy courses
at the Hayden Planetarium. He's not just a visitor
anymore. He's a student there. And this is where
we find the first real clue. to his future persona.
You're talking about the director of the planetarium
at the time. Dr. Mark Chartrand III. And Tyson
calls him his first intellectual role model.
But you have to pay attention to why. It wasn't
just because Chartrand was a brilliant astronomer
or published papers. It was his style. It was
his style. He was funny. He was enthusiastic.
He had a flair for the dramatic. Chartrand proved
to a young, impressionable Tyson that you didn't
have to be this dry, boring, monotone, academic.
stereotype. You could mix humor with teaching.
You could be charismatic. You can see that DNA
directly in Tyson's work today, the way he uses
a booming voice, the hand gestures, the punchlines.
That's all there. It's the blueprint. So he's
a teenager. He's completely obsessed. And he's
apparently quite precocious. I mean, the notes
say he was already giving lectures on astronomy
at age 15. To adults. Just stop and picture that
dynamic for a second. You're a 15 -year -old
kid from the Bronx. You're standing in front
of a room of adults, and you are explaining the
cosmos to them. The confidence required. It requires
a level of innate confidence that, you know,
probably borders on arrogance, but in a necessary
way. You cannot hold a room like that if you're
riddled with self -doubt. And that reputation,
that confidence, it started to ripple outward.
It rippled all the way to upstate New York. To
Ithaca, specifically. To Cornell University.
and right to the desk of Carl Sagan. This story
is so famous and for a good reason. Yeah. It
feels almost mythic in the science community.
Tyson applies to Cornell when he's 17, still
in high school. The admissions office sees this
application that is just, I mean, dripping with
passion and experience. They've never seen anything
like it. And they do something unusual. They
actually forward his application. directly to
Carl Sagan. Who was already a superstar. I mean,
this is pre -Cosmos, the TV show, but he was
the guy. He was a regular on The Tonight Show.
He was a massive public figure. And Sagan doesn't
just, you know, glance at it and pass it back.
Yeah. He writes a personal letter to this high
school kid, inviting him up to Ithaca for a visit
to tour the labs. A personal tour. And it isn't
just a handshake and a generic campus brochure.
No, not at all. Tyson goes up there. It's winter
in upstate New York, which, if you've ever been,
you know it's freezing. It's snowing. Sagan spends
the whole day with him, shows him the labs, talks
to him not as a kid, but as a potential colleague.
And then at the end of the visit, Sagan drives
him to the bus station. And here is the key detail,
the detail that Tyson always, always emphasizes
when he tells the story. The scrap of paper.
Sagan writes his home phone number on a scrap
of paper. And he gives it to Tyson and says,
if the bus doesn't get through because of the
snow, you call me. You can spend the night at
our place. That is just... It's such a profound
gesture of kindness. I mean, here is a titan
of science, a celebrity, offering shelter to
a complete stranger, a teenager, just because
of a snowstorm. And that single moment, Tyson
has said repeatedly, shaped him more than any
physics equation he ever learned. He made it
a focal point in the very first episode of his
own Cosmos revival. He said he already knew he
wanted to be a scientist. That was set in stone
since he was nine years old. Right. But that
afternoon, he learned from Carl Sagan what kind
of person he wanted to become. It established
a standard of care, of mentorship, a standard
for how he treats students and the public. It
wasn't just about the data. It was about the
humanity behind the data. Which makes the next
plot point in the story kind of ironic. Hilarious,
really. Because after all that warmth, all that
hospitality, that career -defining moment, he
didn't go to Cornell. He ghosted Carl Sagan's
program. He chose Harvard. That takes some nerve.
Hey, Carl. Thanks so much for the ride and the
life lesson and the offer of a place to stay,
but I'm going to Cambridge. It shows you he follows
his own compass, right? He wasn't starstruck
to the point of blind loyalty. He wanted the
Harvard experience for whatever reason. So he
lands at Harvard, class of 1980, majoring in
physics. And again, if you're picturing this
stereotypical physics nerd from the movies, you
know, pocket protector, allergic to sunlight,
locked in the library. Tyson is just breaking
that mold immediately. Oh, he's shattering it.
He's on the rowing team his freshman year. He's
a varsity athlete. And then he switches to wrestling.
And he letters in wrestling his senior year at
Harvard. It speaks to a certain physicality,
a presence. He occupies space. You see it today
when he walks onto a stage. He commands it physically,
not just intellectually. But the detail that
always surprises people, the one that really...
adds this incredible layer of color to his character
is the dance the ballroom dancing it's just wild
to picture it wasn't just ballroom the sources
list jazz ballet afro -caribbean and latin ballroom
he was part of a dance team that won a gold medal
in a national tournament I suppose there's a
connection there, right, between physics and
dance. I mean, it's all about momentum, vectors,
balance, rotational velocity. It is, and it's
about performance. Don't forget the performance
aspect. Being a competitive dancer prepares you
for being on a stage, under the lights, in a
way that a lab bench just doesn't. He learned
how to move, how to present himself, how to connect
with an audience physically. So he graduates
from Harvard, is a decorated athlete, a dancer,
a physicist. It seems like his path is just a
straight lineup. You'd think so. But despite
all this success at Harvard, the next phase of
his academic life was, well, it was not smooth
sailing. This is what we're calling the Texas
stumble in our notes. This is the part of the
deep dive that I think gives the most hope to
anyone who has ever failed a class or hit a major
wall in their career. He goes to the University
of Texas at Austin for his graduate studies.
This is the early 80s. And he just hits a wall.
A hard wall. He gets his Master of Arts in Astronomy
in 1983, but he is struggling with the PhD program.
And he's admitted this openly in his memoirs
and interviews. He wasn't spending enough time
in the research lab. What was he doing instead?
Well... By his own account, he was maybe a little
too social, a little too interested in the broader
picture and not focused enough on the grueling,
lonely, meticulous hours that observational astronomy
requires. He was teaching other students how
to use the telescopes. He was working on his
car. He was still dancing. He was living a life,
but maybe not the life. of a single -minded PhD
candidate. Exactly. And the faculty noticed this
wasn't something he could hide. His professors
actually sat him down and encouraged him to look
for alternative careers. Just think about that
for a second. Someone looked at Neil deGrasse
Tyson and said, Hey, maybe this whole astronomy
thing isn't for you. It's incredible. And it
culminated in his doctoral dissertation committee
being dissolved. In the world of academia, that's
the polite way of saying you're fired. Get out.
It effectively ended his pursuit of a doctorate
at Texas. That had to be a massive gut check.
I mean, this is the kid who lectured at 15, the
guy Carl Sagan personally recruited. And now
he's being show the door. It's a rare moment
of genuine, unambiguous failure in his public
narrative. And I think it's important because.
It proves he isn't infallible. But what defines
him isn't the failure. It's the pivot. He didn't
quit science. No, he regrouped. He did. He lectured
at the University of Maryland for a bit. He took
some time. And then in 1988, he got into the
astronomy graduate program at Columbia University.
Back to New York. The home court advantage. Exactly.
And this time he was different. He was focused.
He earns his MPhil in 89 and then his Ph .D.
in 91. And this time he locked in. He was supervised
by a professor named R. Michael Rich. He got
funding from NASA and he was doing real heavy
lifting frontline research. The notes mentioned
the Calantilolo Supernova Survey. This sounds
serious. He was down in Chile observing on telescopes.
Yes, and this research was incredibly significant.
It wasn't just, you know, busy work to get a
degree. He was part of a team that helped establish
Type Ia supernovae as standard candles. Okay,
we need to clarify standard candle for this.
It sounds like something you buy at a scented
candle shop, but I know it is absolutely crucial
for cosmology. It's one of the most important
tools in our entire cosmic toolkit. Imagine you're
standing on a long, dark highway at night. You
see a single light in the distance. Okay. Now,
is that a dim little flashlight that's only 10
feet away from you, or is it a massive blazing
searchlight that's 10 miles away? You can't tell,
can you? Because you don't know the intrinsic
brightness of the light source. Right. You need
a reference point, a known wattage. Exactly.
You need a 100 -watt bulb. In space, a type I,
a supernova, is our 100 -watt bulb. It's a specific
type of stellar explosion, a white dwarf star
in a binary system that eats too much matter
from its companion and goes kaboom. And the key
is they almost always explode with the same amount
of energy, the same intrinsic brightness. So
they're a standard brightness. A standard candle.
So if we see one in a distant galaxy and it looks
really dim to us here on Earth, we know it must
be incredibly far away. If it looks relatively
bright, it's closer. It acts as a cosmic ruler,
a yardstick. Tyson's work helps solidify our
ability to use these explosions to measure the
size and, crucially, the expansion of the universe.
So he went from being effectively kicked out
of a program in Texas... to helping build the
very ruler we use to measure the cosmos. That
is a substantial redemption arc. It's huge. And
it set him up perfectly for his return to the
scene of the crime, so to speak. The place where
it all started. The Hayden Planetarium. Full
circle. He joins as a staff scientist in 1994.
Just two years later, in 1996, he becomes the
director. And he walks right into basically a
construction site. A massive one. They were in
the process of tearing the old planetarium down
and completely rebuilding it as the Rose Center
for Earth and Space. It was a $210 million overhaul,
finally completed in 2000. And Tyson has spoken
a lot about his motivation here. He felt this
deep sense of duty. Since the scientists and
educators at Hayden had invested in him when
he was just a kid from the Bronx, he felt he
needed to do the same for the next generation.
He wanted to build the cathedral of science that
he had worshipped in as a boy. But that sense
of duty, that desire to get the science right,
led him to make a decision that upset a whole
lot of that next generation. We have to talk
about the P word. Pluto. The planetary homicide.
He was the lead suspect. When they were designing
the new exhibits for the Rose Center, Tyson made
a very specific, very deliberate curatorial choice.
In the display of the solar system, he decided
not to refer to Pluto as the ninth planet. And
this was years before the official change by
the astronomical community. Way ahead of the
curve. But this was the late 90s, early 2000.
But his logic was purely scientific, purely pedagogical.
He didn't want the exhibit to just be a rote
list of planets, one through nine. He wanted
to group objects by what they are. So the taxonomy
mattered more than the traditional list. Precisely.
You have the terrestrial planets, these rocky
little worlds like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and
Mars. Then you have the gas giants, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. And then you have this
other family of objects way out in the Kuiper
Belt, these icy debris chunks. Dirty snowballs.
Basically, yeah. And Pluto is the king of the
dirty snowballs. It fits perfectly with those
other icy bodies. It doesn't fit with the gas
giants, and it doesn't really fit with the...
terrestrial planets. So he grouped it with its
family. Logically, scientifically, it makes perfect
sense. Emotionally, though, it was a PR disaster.
Oh, people were furious. He received hate mail.
He talks about getting huge amounts of it, mostly
from elementary school children. They felt like
he had personally bullied their favorite underdog
planet. Dear Dr. Tyson, stop being mean to Pluto.
It's my favorite. Essentially, yes. He talked
about this on The Daily Show on the Colbert Report.
He leaned into it. He effectively became the
villain of the solar system for a few years.
Is he stuck to his guns? He did. He said the
science was clear. And eventually, the rest of
the world caught up. In 2006, the International
Astronomical Union, the IAU, the official governing
body, held a vote. They created a new definition
for planet, and Pluto didn't make the cut. They
officially reclassified it as dwarf planet. So
Tyson was vindicated. He took all the heat early
so the taxonomy could finally make sense later.
He did. It shows a willingness to be unpopular
in the service of what he believes is scientific
accuracy. Speaking of making sense of things
in a new way, let's talk about Manhattan, Hench.
This is another term that he coined that has
just become part of the New York City vocabulary.
This is such a great example of his mind at work.
It's 1996. He's the new director of the planetarium.
He's living in the city and he's looking at the
street grid of Manhattan. Which is famously rigid.
It's all 90 degree angles. Right. But... And
this is the key. The grid isn't perfectly aligned
with the geographic north -south and east -west
lines. It's tilted slightly about 29 degrees
off. Okay. And Tyson does the math. He realizes
that because of that specific tilt, there are
two days a year where the setting sun aligns
perfectly with the east -west streets. So if
you stand in the middle of, say... 42nd Street
or 14th Street and look west, you see the entire
orb of the sun setting, framed perfectly by the
skyscrapers on either side, all the way to the
horizon in New Jersey. It's an urban solar alignment.
And he brands it. He gives it a brilliant name,
Manhattan Eng. A clear, clever nod to Stonehenge
in England and its famous solstice alignment.
It's a perfect bit of marketing for science.
He took a traffic jam and turned it into an astronomical
observatory. He popularized it in a 2002 article
for Natural History magazine. And now it's a
huge biannual event in New York. People crowd
the streets. They block traffic to take photos.
He connected the urban environment to the celestial.
And that really seems to be his superpower. He
finds the cosmic in the mundane. Which brings
us to the media empire. Section four in our source
stack, the pop culture scientist. He is omnipresent.
You really can't overstate his reach in the 21st
century. He started hosting Novia Science Now
on PBS, which ran for five seasons. A big mainstream
platform. But then he took on the Holy Grail.
Cosmos. In 2014, he becomes the host of Cosmos,
a space -time odyssey, reviving Carl Sagan's
legendary show. And that is a high -wire act.
Oh, the pressure must have been immense. If you
mess that up, the scientific community will never
forgive you. And the general public might just
tune out. But he pulled it off. He brought a
different energy to it, which I think was smart.
Sagan was more poetic and ethereal, almost a
whisper. Tyson is energetic, commanding, with
a big, boring voice. He made it his own. And
then there's StarTalk. This is where I think
he really innovated the format. I agree. It started
as a radio show, then a podcast, then it became
a TV show on National Geographic. The format
is the key to its success. He doesn't just sit
there and lecture. He brings in comedians as
co -hosts. People like Chuck Nice or Eugene Merman
from Bob's Burgers. Exactly. He realized that
if you want to keep people listening to an hour
of talk about physics, which can be dry and intimidating
for a lot of people, you need a release mouth.
You need to laugh. It breaks the tension. It
makes the medicine go down. He understood that
comedy opens the mind to learning. And he's willing
to be the punchline or at least play along with
the joke, which is probably why he gets invited
to do so many cameos. He's been on The Big Bang
Theory, Stargate Atlantis, Brooklyn Nine -Nine.
He was even in Zoolander 2. He voiced a pig in
the animated show Gravity Falls. Waddles the
pig. Yeah. In an episode where the pig becomes
super intelligent. And he was Neil the Buckweasel
in Ice Age. Collision course. He's not afraid
to be silly, which makes him more approachable.
But my absolute favorite entry in this entire
pop culture log is the Superman story. This is
just pure nerd gold. It is. This happened in
2012. DC Comics was writing a story where Superman
is trying to find the remnants of his home planet,
Krypton, using Earth's telescopes. And they wanted
to ground it in some kind of reality. They did.
So they called Tyson. They asked him as an astrophysicist
to help them find a real star system that could
plausibly be where Krypton was. And he didn't
just like point at a random dot on a star chart.
No, no, no. He took it seriously. He did the
research. He found a real red dwarf star. called
LHS 2520. It's about 27 light years away in the
constellation Corvus. And there's a hidden layer
to that specific choice, right? A little Easter
egg. There is. Corbus is the Latin word for crow.
And in the Superman lore, especially from the
Smallville TV show and some of the comics, Superman's
high school mascot in Kansas was the Smallville
Crows. That is deep. That shows he's actually
respecting the source material of the comic book,
not just dropping in with the science and leaving.
It shows he engages. He didn't just phone it
in. And to top it all off, he actually appeared
in the comic book itself. Action Comics number
14. He's drawn into the panels, helping Superman
with the calculations. That is a level of cultural
crossover that most scientists never even dream
of. He's even shown up on music albums. Right.
He's on a track by the heavy metal band Avenged
Sevenfold called Exist and on a track by the
rapper Logic called Africarian. Doing what? Delivering
these spoken word monologues about the universe,
about consciousness. Musicians use his voice
to add this instant layer of gravitas and cosmic
scale. He has become a cultural shorthand for
the universe. But it's not all comic books and
cameos. Tyson has some very specific and at times
very controversial worldviews that have gotten
him into hot water over the years. We need to
look at the worldviews and advocacy section of
our sources. And let's start with religion. This
is a nuance that the internet often... often
misses. Tyson is widely claims of the atheist
community. They really want him on their team
because he's this prominent man of science. But
he actively and consistently rejects that label.
He identifies as agnostic. And he's really serious
about that distinction. There's a funny story
from an interview where he talked about his own
Wikipedia page. For years, it listed him as an
atheist. So he actually went in and edited the
page himself to change it to agnostic. And the
Internet immediately corrected him on his own
beliefs. Within a week, someone had changed it
back to atheist. It was this little edit war.
He eventually had to reword it to something like
Tyson states he is an agnostic, though he is
widely claimed by atheists. His point is that
atheist has become more than a description. It's
a movement, a form of activism. And he doesn't
want to be part of that debate. He doesn't want
to spend his energy arguing about non -belief.
He just wants to do the science. He sees the
atheist -theist debate as a distraction from
studying the cosmos. But he doesn't shy away
from stating his views on the nature of the universe
itself. No, not at all. He defines spirituality
as an emotional connection to the universe, a
sense of awe. But he draws a very hard line at
the idea of a benevolent designer, a loving God.
He has a famous quote about this. Yes. When I
look at the universe and all the ways the universe
wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile
that with statements of beneficence. Asteroids,
black holes, gamma ray bursts, super volcanoes,
pandemics. It is a violent place. It's an actively
hostile environment for human life. And he points
that out. He views the universe as a grand, beautiful,
but ultimately indifferent mechanism, not a nurturing
nursery built for us. Now, where he really stepped
in it, though, was with philosophy. The 2014
Nerdist podcast incident. This was a big deal
at the time. A huge deal. He was on the podcast
and he basically called philosophy useless. He
said something like a philosophy major can really
mess you up. And it implied that philosophers.
just sit around asking unanswerable questions
like, what is the sound of one hand clapping
while scientists are out there actually solving
real problems? That seems incredibly dismissive
for a guy who presents himself as a deep thinker.
It was. And the backlash from the philosophical
community was swift and sharp. Philosophers,
most notably Massimo Pigrucci, came after him
hard. And they argued, correctly in my opinion,
that science is a philosophy. What do you mean
by that? Well, the scientific method itself is
a philosophical framework. Empiricism, logic,
falsifiability, ethics, and research, these are
all branches of philosophy. You cannot do science
without them. It was a moment where Tyson's hard
science bias showed a real blind spot. He seemed
to value the collection of data over the intellectual
framework we use to interpret that data. He's
also had to navigate the very complex issue of
race in the world of science. He is without question
one of the of the most visible black scientists
in history. But he handles that role in a very
specific and for some a controversial way. He
does. The sources show that since 1993, he has
had a policy of refusing interviews that use
his race as the primary premise. He won't give
talks specifically for Black History Month. That
might surprise a lot of people. What's his reasoning?
He wants to be known for his astrophysics. Full
stop. He doesn't want to be pigeonholed as the
black scientist. He wants to be a scientist who
happens to be black. He feels that if he allows
the conversation to always be framed around his
race it distracts from the universal message
of the cosmos. He wants his contribution to be
the data the discovery the inspiration. But he's
not pretending that racism doesn't exist or that
it didn't affect him. No absolutely not. There's
a very powerful moment from a panel at the National
Academy of Sciences in 2005. It was a tense time.
The president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, had
just made some controversial comments about innate
differences between men and women in science.
The panel was discussing it. And Tyson took the
mic. He did. And he pivoted the conversation
to his own experience. He talked about what he
called the path of most resistance. He said that
from the moment he, as a young black kid in the
Bronx, showed an interest in the universe, society
threw obstacles in his way, teachers, neighbors,
counselors, they all tried to skewer him towards
sports. The expectation was that he should be
an athlete, not an astrophysicist, simply because
of how he looked. So his argument was essentially,
don't you dare talk to me about innate genetic
differences until you've fixed the broken social
system that filters people out before you even
get a chance. Exactly. He famously said, I have
never been female, but I have been black my whole
life. He used his own life as a case study for
how much talent is wasted by societal prejudice.
But his strategy for fighting that prejudice
is to normalize his presence by simply being
excellent and focusing on the science. Though
he has been more vocal on other social issues.
Yes. He's a vocal supporter of LGBTQ plus rights.
He's publicly debated conservative commentators
like Ben Shapiro on transgender issues. He usually
approaches it from a biological or scientific
lens, arguing that nature is filled with diversity
and spectrum. Why should we expect human society
to be any different? There is one area of advocacy
where I think he has been consistently brilliant
and effective. Money. Specifically, NASA's budget.
The penny for NASA idea. This is a brilliant
piece of science communication. He points out
this massive public misconception. If you ask
the average American how much of their tax dollar
goes to NASA, what do you think they say? Oh,
I've seen these polls. They guess like five cents,
10 cents, sometimes even 25 cents on the dollar.
Which would be a colossal hundreds of billions
of dollars budget. But the reality is it's about
one half of one penny on the dollar. It's a rounding
error in the federal budget. It's basically nothing.
And Tyson has hammered this point home. He testified
to the Senate in 2012. He made this incredibly
passionate argument that if we just doubled that
investment to one single penny on the dollar,
we could transform the country. He said it would
take us from a sullen, dispirited nation weary
of economic struggle to one that dreams of tomorrow.
He links space exploration directly to economic
innovation, to national mood, to inspiration.
He argues that stopping exploration or underfunding
it doesn't just cost us discoveries. It kills
the spirit of a nation. It's a very compelling
pitch. Give me a penny and I will give you the
future. It's powerful. Now we have to pivot.
We have to go to a much darker and more difficult
chapter in the source material. We can't do a
full deep dive without looking at the whole picture.
Section six in our sources, this sexual misconduct
allegations. Right. And we have to cover this
impartially, just laying out the facts as they
were reported, because it's a significant part
of his recent history. In late 2018, these allegations
surfaced against Tyson. It happened pretty quickly.
Yes. It was mainly in November and December of
2018. A number of women came forward with different
accounts spanning several decades. Let's break
down who they were and what the specific allegations
were. The most serious allegation came from a
woman named Chia Amet Elmont. She was a fellow
graduate student with Tyson at the University
of Texas at Austin back in 1984. She accused
Tyson of drugging and raping her. That is a devastating
and extremely serious criminal accusation. It
is. Then there was Caitlin Allers, a professor
of physics and astronomy at Bucknell University.
She alleged that at a conference afterparty in
2009, Tyson touched her inappropriately following
a tattoo of the solar system she had on her arm
up to her shoulder and into her dress. Okay.
And there were others related to his professional
life more recently. Yes. Ashley Watson, who worked
as Tyson's assistant on the show Cosmos, alleged
a pattern of inappropriate advances. She said
that one evening he invited her to his apartment
for wine. He held her hand and stared into her
eyes for a long 10 seconds and made a comment
about wanting to give her a Native American handshake,
which she said involved feeling for a pulse.
She resigned shortly after this. And there's
one more, right? An anonymous woman who alleged
that at a holiday party for the American Museum
of Natural History in 2010, he made inappropriate
sexual comments to her. So a range of allegations
from different periods of his life. How did Tyson
respond when these became public? He addressed
them directly in a lengthy public post. Regarding
the rape accusation from Chia Ahmet dating back
to 1984, he denied it entirely and unequivocally.
He said they had a brief, consensual relationship.
And for the other incidents. Regarding the incidents
with Professor Allers and his assistant Ashley
Watson, his response was more nuanced. He corroborated
the basic facts of the interactions, that they
did happen, but he claimed his actions were misinterpreted.
He framed them as attempts at being friendly
or jovial that were clumsy and misread rather
than predatory. He apologized for any offense
or discomfort he caused. So a denial of intent,
essentially. Yes. He basically said, I'm a friendly,
tactile guy. I touch people on the arm. I stare
intently when I talk. I didn't mean anything
by it, but I'm sorry it made them feel uncomfortable.
And what was the institutional fallout from all
this? Because he was at the height of his fame
hosting major TV shows. The fallout was immediate.
Fox and National Geographic, the networks behind
Cosmos and StarTalk, launched investigations.
The American Museum of Natural History, where
he's the director of the Hayden Planetarium,
also launched its own investigation. And the
shows were pulled off the air. Yes. StarTalk
was put on hiatus. The premiere of the new season
of Cosmos, which was supposed to be in early
2019, was delayed indefinitely. It was a complete
career freeze while these institutions looked
into the claims. But eventually the shows came
back. He came back. They did. In March of 2019,
the networks announced that their investigation
was complete and that both StarTalk and Cosmos
would resume. They didn't release any details
of the investigation. They just issued a statement
saying the matter was concluded and they were
moving forward. And the museum. In July of 2019,
the American Museum of Natural History announced
that their investigation was also complete and
that Tyson would be retained as director of the
Hayden Planetarium. So he weathered the storm,
professionally speaking, even though the allegations
remain part of his public record. He did, though
it certainly left a mark on his public image
for some. And it sparked a lot of conversation
about power dynamics and appropriate behavior
in academia and media. Moving to our final section,
let's look at the recognition he's received,
because despite the controversies, the list of
accolades is stacked pretty high. It is. And
it's a mix of very serious honors and very unique
ones. On the serious academic and public service
side, he has the NASA Distinguished Public Service
Medal from 2004, which is the highest honor NASA
awards to a non -government employee, and the
Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy
of Sciences in 2015. These are major high -level
honors from his peers. The highest level. And
then you have the pop culture side of things.
Which brings us back to People Magazine's sexiest
astroph - physicist alive in the year 2000. I
still can't get over that. It's just such a perfect
turn of the millennium thing to happen. A sign
that science was becoming cool. He was also one
of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people
in the world in 2007. And then there are the
scientific honors, which I think are probably
the ones that mean the most to him. He has an
asteroid named after him. Which one is that?
Asteroid 13123 Tyson. It's out there in the asteroid
belt, but my personal favorite is the frog. The
frog. Yes. In 2016, a new species of leaping
frog discovered in the western ghats of India
was named Indirana Tisoni in his honor. You know,
you've really made it when you have an amphibian
named after you. Yeah. And of course, we have
to mention his books. He's written many, but
some have been massive hits. Death by Black Hole,
The Plutophiles. And the huge one. Astrophysics
for People in a Hurry. That book was a phenomenon.
It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list
for over a year. It really cemented his status
and showed that people are hungry to understand
this stuff. They just need it broken down in
a way that respects their time and their intelligence.
So bringing this all together, let's try to find
the final synthesis here. We have a wrestler,
a dancer, a scientist, a media mogul, a pop culture
icon, a controversial figure. What does Neil
deGrasse Tyson represent at the end of the day?
He has that line. Science literacy is a vaccine
against charlatans. That's a powerful line, a
vaccine against charlatans. He argues that if
you know how to think critically, how to demand
evidence, how to think like a scientist, you
are harder to fool, whether it's by a politician,
a snake oil salesman, or a conspiracy theorist.
And he challenges us to question our own deepest
held beliefs. He does. He has this provocative
argument that even great historical scientists
like Isaac Newton were ultimately limited when
they stopped asking questions and just accepted
intelligent design or God did it as the final
answer for things they couldn't explain. He believed
that answer stopped their inquiry. So he pushes
us to always ask the next hard question. Exactly.
And that's the provocation he leaves us with.
If we apply that to our modern lives, where else
are our unquestioned beliefs, our personal versions
of God did it, stopping us from discovery? What
are we not seeing because we've already decided
we have the answer? On that note, I think we
have plenty to think about. Whether you're looking
down at a frog named Tyson or looking up at the
constellation Corvus trying to find Krypton,
there's a lot of universe out there. Indeed there
is. We encourage you, as Tyson would, to look
up and think about your own place in the cosmos.
Thanks for joining us on this deep dive. See
you next time.