This is the first in a series of interviews I am conducting with the speakers appearing at CSICon 2022, the conference run by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which will take place in Las Vegas from October 20–23. 

Over the next several months, I plan to interview many of the scheduled speakers, and I am beginning with perhaps the most well-known person in this year’s fantastic line-up, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Dr. Tyson, or Neil as he prefers to be called, is an astrophysicist, a science communicator, a former advisor to NASA, the director of NYC’s Hayden Planetarium, a research associate of the Department of Astrophysics at NYC’s American Museum of Natural History, the author of fifteen books, and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is probably best known as the host and narrator of the two most recent seasons of the Emmy-winning TV series Cosmos and as the host of the StarTalk podcast and TV series.

Neil graciously made himself available for an interview over Zoom, and in the time available we covered a diverse set of topics, including the just released (yesterday!) first images from the James Web Space Telescope, his thoughts on the still-elusive dark matter and dark energy (which he maintains should have been called “Fred & Ethel”), the importance and interplay of science and skepticism, the likelihood of near-term crewed missions to Mars, his taste in movies plus his Tweets about their science goofs, his comment about the sci-fi film Future ’38 (“finally a movie that gets time travel right”), and of course, what he will be speaking about at CSICon.

All that and more is awaiting you in the video interview. Enjoy!