StarTalk

Science, pop culture, and comedy collide on StarTalk! Astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, celebrity guests, and scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up! Click here for more information.

Jul 15, 2025 – Season 16 Episode 43

Things You Thought You Knew – Faster Than Light

What’s up with the fourth dimension? Can anything travel faster than light? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice explore things you thought you knew about dimensions, tachyons, and isotopes.

Where do elements come from? How does the strong force bind subatomic particles into nuclei? What can scientists understand from nuclei with unusual proton–neutron ratios? Nuclear physicists at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are seeking answers to questions like these.

Jul 8, 2025 – Season 16 Episode 41

Cosmic Queries – Black Hole Escape

How much do we actually know about the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice answer fan questions from plasma propulsion to quantum gravity to black hole escape plans.

X-ray/optical composite image of NGC 6543, the Cat's Eye Nebula (X-ray: NASA/UIUC/Y.Chu et al., Optical: NASA/HST).

Jul 1, 2025 – Season 16 Episode 40

Super-Duper Novas with Michael Shara

When will the last supernova be? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice explore types of novas, freaky binary star systems, core collapse, standard candles, and the explosive future of Betelgeuse with astrophysicist Michael Shara.

X-ray & Optical Images of SNR E0519-69.0 - When a massive star exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, it left behind an expanding shell of debris called SNR 0519-69.0. Here, multimillion degree gas is seen in X-rays from Chandra (blue). The outer edge of the explosion (red) and stars in the field of view are seen in visible light from Hubble.

Jun 24, 2025 – Season 16 Episode 37

The Philosophy of Physics with Elise Crull

What happens when physics meets the big questions of philosophy? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice sit down with Elise Crull, philosopher of physics at CUNY and author of The Einstein Paradox, to explore physics, philosophy, and how thought experiments shape real science.

The "Thinker" by Rodin outside Philadelphia's Rodin Museum

Jun 17, 2025 – Season 16 Episode 36

Consider a Spherical Cow with Lara Anderson

What is string theory, really? Why does it need extra dimensions? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice welcome theoretical physicist and mathematician Lara Anderson to guide us through string theory, higher dimensions, and finding a unifying theory of everything.

This image is a computer generated simulation that represents the gradient magnitude of cosmic strings induced anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Jun 10, 2025 – Season 16 Episode 34

Cosmic Queries – Renaming Time

Can you measure time without something moving? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice tackle your cosmic questions, from the Silurian Hypothesis to singularities to the edge of the known universe.

This image shows the full survey of the inner Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster made using the NIRCam instrument on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This is the short-wavelength colour composite, which reveals the nebula, its stars, and many other objects in unprecedented detail in the infrared.

Jun 3, 2025 – Season 16 Episode 33

Quantum Quandary: StarTalk Live! With Brian Greene & Janna Levin

Why three dimensions? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedians Chuck Nice and Hasan Minhaj celebrate 100 years of quantum physics and everywhere it’s taken us, joined by theoretical astrophysicists Brian Greene and Janna Levin.

Thousands of glimmering galaxies are bound together by their own gravity, making up a massive cluster formally classified as MACS J1423.

May 27, 2025 – Season 16 Episode 31

Things You Thought You Knew – Zombie Apocalypse

How empty is space? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice break down things you thought you knew about asteroid belts, the sun’s highest point in the sky, and what the real danger is in a zombie apocalypse.

Here's an image I captured this last week of the Orion Nebula M42. Everyone who has done any astronomy is probably quite familiar with this star-forming region that sits in the middle of Orion's sword. The colors will not be familiar to most people, since the colors are falsely introduced by using narrowband filters. Red represents Sii emission, green/orange represents H-alpha emission, and blue represents Oiii emissions. The most interesting photographic thing about the Orion nebula is the immense brightness dynamic range in the area. The inner core, the trapezium, can be seen well in just small fifteen second exposures in most amateur telescopes, but the outer wispy clouds took me over 16hrs of exposure to properly show. This also presents a problem in how one can show both the dim and faint at the same time, which is actually quite easily solved in post-processing using HDR composition and adaptive histogram transformations.

May 20, 2025 – Season 16 Episode 30

The Language of the Universe with Grant Sanderson (3blue1brown)

Why can’t you divide by zero? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice discuss higher dimensions, dividing by zero, and math’s unsolved questions with math YouTuber Grant Sanderson (3blue1brown).

CMAP - Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées de l'Ecole polytechnique - "généalogie de Galton-Watson" ou "modèle de Galton-Watson"

May 13, 2025 – Season 16 Episode 28

Cosmic Queries – Negative Gravity

What happens to gravity when matter converts to energy? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Paul Mecurio dive into fan questions about the speed of light, time machine mistakes, and what Neil would do if he were an alien.