Guest BloggersScience

Skepchick Presents: A Conversation with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (Parts 1 & 2)

On October 14 and 15, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and host of the NOVA scienceNOW program on PBS, was in Houston to speak at the Up Experience conference. Well, I pestered him to sit down with me for a video conversation to post here on Skepchick, and despite a very busy schedule, he kindly agreed.

Now, most of you regular readers already know how brilliant Dr. Tyson is, but he is also a great guy. He wasn’t trying to plug a book or anything like that. He simply sat down with me for an informal chat. The conversation was relaxed and unstructured, and before we knew it, we had easily used all the time he could spare us.

Looking back, I wish we had had more time, because we were just gettting warmed up, and before I knew it, the whole thing was over.

But, it was a true pleasure to spend even a little time getting to know Dr. Tyson.

The following segments are the first two in a series of seven videos chronicling our conversation.

Hope you enjoy.

Part 1

Part 2

Once again, Chris Moyer deserves to be sainted or knighted or both for producing this interview with very little compensation. His company is called Dropframe Video. You can contact him at Malachi Constant (even if you’re not a Vonnegut fan), and if you ever need audio or video work done, show him some love and hire him. You will definitely be pleased with the result.

Stay tuned for Parts 3 and more of my conversation with Dr. Tyson to be posted tomorrow.

Sam Ogden

Sam Ogden is a writer, beach bum, and songwriter living in Houston, Texas, but he may be found scratching himself at many points across the globe. Follow him on Twitter @SamOgden

Related Articles

12 Comments

  1. Another excellent interview, Sam!

    One slight nit for Dropframe. Both this and the last video have been underexposed in the two-shots. The one-shots on the Scott interview were correctly exposed which made the transitions jarring. The sound is first rate. I think it’s delightful that they’re doing this work for us. If this is going to be a plug for them, however, we should help them put their best foot forward.

  2. @davew:

    Thanks!

    Yeah, I’m not informed enough about the equipment and the process to comment about the exposure, but Chris is always forthcoming about the limits of the production, given the location, the available equipment, ambient lighting, tape integrity, etc. I have no doubt he’s aware of the issues you raised. And I have no doubt he’s done his best to eliminate as many hiccups as possible. I’d say any problems with the video are my fault for pulling him into the project at the drop of a hat, with very little to no prep time.

  3. Man, I wish I looked that good in a fedora. I’d love an excuse to wear one all the time.

    But anyway, great job, Sam! I look forward to seeing the rest of the interview.

  4. Seriously Sam, that was awesome, and you are very good at interviews. You should have your own talk show!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to top button