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StarTalk TV Show With Neil DeGrasse Tyson Starts Monday
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.
Solution there, it seems to me, is to create a watchable program.
Cosmos wasn't a series. It was like a mini-series, it ran its course and was done.
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 Kraus' case.
Quit mixing pop culture and science, it dumbs it down and makes people I respected once look like
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.)
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.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I love how someone modded it "Informative."
Dark Reflection
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.
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
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"
Michio Kaku is one of the only people who is more annoying than Tyson.
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 entertainment, they're bombarded with preaching. Eventually, it turns one off to the idea, then makes one hostile to it - especially when it's being pushed from every orifice of the media, you know?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?