In the summer of 1969 I was 7 years old. The only thing I remember doing from July 16th to July 24th was following the flight of Apollo 11 in the papers, on the radio and on the television with Walter Cronkite. Other than a few conversations with my grandparents about what I was doing… View Article
NASA launched the Mars Science Laboratory on Nov. 26, 2011… and now, just days away, it’s about to reach its destination. These have been exciting times for anybody who has even the slightest interest in astronomy and our universe. From the new discoveries by Cassini, Keppler and Hubble to the transit of Venus across the… View Article
If you thought the transit of Venus across the Sun was a big deal, then strap yourself in because the August 5th landing of the NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, AKA the Curiosity rover, will be the main event. On Friday I’ll post a listing of the coverage of the event, from Bill Nye and the… View Article
Contentious debates about science funding. Ideological political posturing. Partisan bickering. It may sound like Sunday morning news shows, or any time on Fox News or MSNBC, but in fact, it’s an episode of StarTalk Radio about how science gets made in Congress. In all honesty, I didn’t know what to expect when I listened to… View Article
How dangerous are video games? Do they provide value beyond entertainment? Neil finds out from video game expert Jeffrey Ryan and Sims designer Will Wright.
Behind every website, every company’s computer network, every server farm, in fact, behind every “cloud” on the Internet, is a system administrator. They are the unsung heroes of today’s wired world, at least, unsung every other day of the year. Today, the final Friday in July, is System Administrator Appreciation Day. Today we sing their… View Article
Have you ever seen the “Mac vs PC” commercials? Then you know John Hodgman, who plays PC. But he has a dirty little secret, and Neil deGrasse Tyson gets him to spill the beans in this episode, “A Conversation with John Hodgman.” You see, Neil has been a “Mac guy” since 1985, and he couldn’t… View Article
Did you know that the first video game was Space War, a crowd-sourced game created at MIT in 1961? Video games have come a long way since then, and this 2-part episode of StarTalk Radio takes us on a journey through the history and science of video games, from Pong to Skyrim and beyond. In… View Article
When I found out that StarTalk was going to be one of the shows on Chris Hardwick’s new Nerdist Channel on YouTube, I was pretty stoked. You see, I’m a fan of The Walking Dead on AMC. After every episode, Chris Hardwick hosts a show called Talking Dead, where he and his celebrity guests discuss… View Article
I was a fan of the Robin Williams movie, “Awakenings,” so when I found out that Neil deGrasse Tyson had interviewed Oliver Sacks, the neurologist Williams played, I had to give it a listen. In typical StarTalk Radio fashion, I learned some facts I wasn’t expecting to learn from the show, in which Neil and… View Article
