Not long ago in Seattle, an astronomical event of sorts happened: Two superstars collided. William Shatner, of “Star Trek” fame, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, America’s favorite astrophysicist, took to the stage to explore the nature of exploration. Think of it as sort of Martin & Lewis, but with more quantum mechanics.
“It’s a bromance,” said Tyson. “I think what Bill Shatner and I have together should be the textbook definition of the bromance.”
“If we have a bromance,” said Shatner, “I’d be very privileged.”
The two grew close last year on an upscale cruise to Antarctica, where they ended up being the after-dinner entertainment. “The organizer said, ‘Why don’t we put the two of you on this mini-stage that they have on the ship, and we just chew the fat?'” said Tyson. “And then the organizer said, ‘Why don’t you guys take this on the road?'”
Their first port of call? Seattle, where they debuted a wide-ranging, sometimes meandering, but always intriguing stage show they’re calling “The Universe Is Absurd!”
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When Shatner asked his partner for a sound bite, deGrasse Tyson solicited a suggestion from the audience: “Pick anything out of the universe. Go. Anything. Doesn’t matter.”
“Pluto!” yelled one enthusiastic audience member.
DeGrasse Tyson obliged: “More than half of Pluto is made of ice, so that, if it were where Earth is right now, heat from the Sun would evaporate that ice and it would grow a tail. And that is no kind of behavior for a planet!” Mic drop. “That’s a sound bite!”
For deGrasse Tyson, director of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, and an authority on just about everything we know about the universe, it’s a chance to get inside the insatiably curious mind of the 94-year-old Shatner. “What kind of magic potion is he drinking?” deGrasse Tyson laughed. “By the way, you can do the math, he’s been alive for three billion seconds, okay? I did the math, you don’t have to. So when Bill Shatner speaks, it’s coming from a place way deeper than any of the rest of us can possibly match.”
And for Shatner, who never formally studied astrophysics, it’s a chance to make up for what he sees as lost time. “I feel bad about it, because that knowledge of what constitutes the construction of nature, we know so little, but the little we know is so awesome, it’s so spellbinding,” he said. “The fact that I wasn’t conscious of how spellbinding it is as a youth, I could have been much more educated about it.”
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Four years ago, Shatner became the oldest person ever to go into space, and he’s been globetrotting ever since.
Shatner asked deGrasse Tyson, “Do you still scratch your head in awe?”
“Every night I look up,” he replied.
So, is this the dynamic between the two – Shatner with questions, deGrasse Tyson with answers? “Unfortunately, that’s the way it is,” Shatner replied.
“No, but he’s got wisdom and life experience that I value, and I respect,” deGrasse Tyson added. “So, I’m here to grab some of that.”
As for Shatner’s take on deGrasse Tyson, “He has access, both because of his mentality, and the books and the studies, so he’s into modern-day mysticism, which is the study of the stars and how it works and what goes on.”
“You call that modern-day mysticism?” deGrasse Tyson asked.
“Because you don’t know for sure that what you’re saying is absolutely truth until more experimentation.”
“That’s the frontier. We’re scratching our heads.”
“Exactly,” said Shatner. “So, he is an explorer. He is an explorer. He is on that verge. He teaches that. And it is mystical in every sense of the word.”
I asked, “This is where I think you are politely and respectfully in disagreement, because Dr. deGrasse Tyson will say something like, ‘We know what the speed of light is and what the fastest things can move is.’ And you say, ‘Well, we’ll see about that!'”
“Yeah, we’ve had that argument,” said Shatner.
DeGrasse Tyson seems just fine not knowing everything – for example, what was going on before the Big Bang, and the profound idea of somethingness coming from nothingness. “We don’t know. Next question!” he said. “No, as a scientist, you need to be comfortable in the presence of a question that does not yet have an answer.”
Of course, the ultimate question, the one we really don’t know definitively, is where we go when we die, something that Shatner, as he loses friends and colleagues, finds himself considering more often. “You know, I vary between the fear of death, my fear,” he said. But, “I have so much love around me. I have a wife, and children, and grandchildren. I even have two great-grandchildren. And I have two great dogs. I’ve had dogs all my life, all my adult life. And so, all my life is fertile, is vibrant. And I don’t want to leave it. And that’s the sadness. I don’t want to go.”
“Are you curious, though, about what you will find out?” I asked.
“Not enough to die!” he laughed.
“Even your curiosity has a limit?”
“Right. It stops right there!”
So, William Shatner’s famous curiosity bumps up against the edge of his universe. And as the show wrapped up in Seattle, Shatner closed things out with one of his unique spoken-word songs, accompanied by trumpeter Keyon Harrold.
Do not grow old
no matter how long you live.
Do not forget pain
but somehow learn to forgive.
The universe, it turns out, might be a bit absurd, but what an interesting ride!
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Story produced by Anthony Laudato. Editor: Karen Brenner.
