December 29, 2016 8:00 pm

Friday, Neil Tyson and Bill Nye Are Drinking Wine and Pondering Time in the Cosmic Crib

How much fun would it be to hang out in the Cosmic Crib (aka, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s office at the Hayden Planetarium) with Neil and Bill Nye, drinking wine and pondering the mysteries of time? Neil cracks open a bottle of 2005 Merlot from Sonoma County, and he and Bill talk about cosmic time, geologic time, biological time, and “deep time.”

Tomorrow night, you can be a fly on the wall of the Cosmic Crib, thanks to the new 12-minute-long segment we’ve added to the end of our classic episode, Cosmic Queries: Art and Science.

And, if you’ve never heard that episode, from Season 5, you’re in for a discussion of a subject about which Neil has given a great deal of thought: the intersection of art and science. Neil tells co-host Chuck Nice that his appreciation of art enhances his capacity to appreciate the splendor and beauty of the art of the cosmos. In the process of answering fan submitted questions chosen by Chuck, Neil shares his ideas about computer-generated art and whether you can have art without emotion, as well as the influence of math upon art, the Golden Ratio, sculptures inspired by physics and celestial movements, and so much more.

Neil and Chuck discuss the difference between scientific accuracy and the emotions that great art inspires, using Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night. You may already know that a “copy” of The Starry Night graces the wall of Neil’s office at The Hayden Planetarium, but even if you didn’t, after listening to Neil’s description of its emotional power, you can understand why he’d risk life in prison for… well, you’ll just have to listen to the episode to find out what I mean.

It’s a great episode, bouncing from discussions of The Big Bang Theory and the alien flora and fauna created by James Cameron in Avatar, to the depiction of comets in Giotto’s Adoration of the Magi and The Bayeux Tapestry, to da Vinci and M.C. Escher and the Hubble Space Telescope. There’s even a bit about the Music of the Spheres and sacred geometry.

Please join us Friday night at 7pm EDT for Extended Classic: Cosmic Queries – Art and Science, right here on our website, or on iTunes Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher and TuneIn. And if you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can listen to this episode ad-free (no video for this one).

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Jeffrey Simons