Neil deGrasse Tyson - StarTalk: Everything You Ever Need to Know About Space Travel, Sci-Fi, the Human Race, the Universe, and Beyond

With those words, and the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the first broadcast of StarTalk Radio beamed out in 2007 across all of space and time. What has followedon the radio, on the Internet, and on the National Geographic Channelis now a movement that has thrown science and pop culture together into a whirling singularity and hurled the result out into our universe for all to enjoy.

Our universe is filled with secrets and mysteries, leaving us with many questions to be answered. We find ourselves searching for those answers as the very fabric of space, science, and society are converging. Here, for the first time, these worlds collide!

STARTALK RADIO INTRODUCTION

Conversations on StarTalk can delve into viruses, like HIV, and medical advances.

If youre new to StarTalk, you may be wondering: What am I getting into? The millions of fans out there have, no doubt, millions of answers to this very good question. Maybe you can get a sense from real data. In a survey of three arbitrarily chosen StarTalk audience members, weve obtained these three assessments:

1. StarTalk is a fun show with an intellectual science bent.

2. StarTalk is a discussion of pop culture within the context of science.

3. StarTalk is a way where you can learn science-y stuff through non-science-y stuffand its funny!

What is StarTalk? The name says it all: Stars talk. Movie stars. TV stars. Comedy stars. Stars of all other kinds, as wellartists, activists, authors, opinion shapers, policymakers, and, of course, scientists. Sometimes, the talk is about stars, like the kind that have nuclear fusion in their cores and whose light twinkles as it passes through our atmosphere. Mostly, though, its about anything and everything under those stars; and its not an interview or a publicity pieceits a conversation. StarTalk has celebrity, and comedy, and crazy egg-headed science. In a world where compartmentalization is increasingly the norm, such seemingly disparate elements, at first glance, would seem hard to combine. StarTalk reminds us all that theyre not in the least disparate; not only do they play nice together, theyve always been peas in a podwe all just forget that sometimes. On StarTalk, science and society link arms and do-si-do in a spirited square dance of laughter and shared discovery. On StarTalk, everyone can love art, music, poetry, politics, engineering, science, and math all at the same time. Every pursuit and pursuerbe they scientifically thinking comedians or comedically thinking scientists, or anyone elsecome together, inspired by the feeling of awe that comes from pondering the mysterious. Albert Einstein called that feeling the source of all true art and science, and StarTalk is its embodimenta joyous mind meld of all ways of thinking and being!

On StarTalk, Neil and guest stars discuss all matters of the universe.

Find out what makes an aurora borealis light up the sky, on

Spacecraft, like Soyuz, are always a hot topicand StarTalk gets real insight into them from astronauts.

Now you hold in your hands the result of another mind meld: an evolution that happens when digital and print media collide. The skilled team at National Geographic Books has helped StarTalk jump from photons to paper, to bottle the lightning of the shows spirit and character into a package you can enjoy even if youve run out of battery power or arent getting a wireless signal. On these pagesjust like on the radio, podcasts, and televisionstars talk. Theyre not reported on, interviewed, or exposed, like they might be by a news show, magazine, or tabloid. We can see what they said and hear in our heads how they said it. Want to know why Stephen Colbert loves having scientists on his show? How Mayim Bialik feels about the world of