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I took my son to see him give a 2 hour lecture last night. The lecture topic was 'The search for extraterrestrial life'.
It was relatively entertaining, but we were a little disappointed on a couple of fronts. First of all, he spent a good amount of time (especially at the outset) shilling for his books and museum. Nothing inherently wrong with that, it just felt like a little bit much in terms of self-promotion.
Probably our biggest complaint after the show was that he went 'science light' in the presentation, opting for silly laughs a lot of the time vs. hard science. We got that he was trying to 'entertain' but I think he should've recognized that folks who are coming out on a Friday night to see him are probably at an intellectual level where they want to hear as much scientific detail regarding SETI and where we are in that journey as possible, vs. listening to schtick and lame jokes. When he did stick to data and science it was really great. We got to see some great footage from, for example, the Cassini mission to one of Saturn's moons Enceladus, and what has been determined so far from soil analysis from the probe we landed there.
There was, unfortunately, quite a bit of political/social commentary in his presentation. It's his show, and obviously he has every right to talk about whatever he likes, but I don't think the audience came to hear about his political and social beliefs. He took shots at white males, the current White House, conservatives, you name it ...
He also spent a lot of time mocking the 'UFO community' which I understand from the viewpoint of legitimate scientific research is probably warranted. But I felt like the audience didn't need him to point the idiocy of some of the cultural obsession with 'UFOs' over and over again.
I had not heard him speak previously. I was and am a huge fan of Carl Sagan, and grew up watching his TV series 'Cosmos' (which NDT resurrected much less effectively a few years back). But Sagan always seemed to have a genuine humility about him. Neil Degrasse Tyson, in stark contrast, came across as smug, pompous, and as a self-promoter.
His lecture certainly had it's moments and I don't regret going at all. I was just a bit disappointed that he didn't spend more time on a serious discussion.
Would I recommend you attend if he tours in your locale? Yeah, probably. The tickets were very reasonable. He's overall a very good 'lecturer' and if you were taking one of his courses in college, you would likely look forward to attending them. I just thought it could've been so much more enjoyable with a little less self-promotion and ego-driven pompousness. It made me wonder how he is viewed by his less famous astrophysicist colleagues around the world?
It was relatively entertaining, but we were a little disappointed on a couple of fronts. First of all, he spent a good amount of time (especially at the outset) shilling for his books and museum. Nothing inherently wrong with that, it just felt like a little bit much in terms of self-promotion.
Probably our biggest complaint after the show was that he went 'science light' in the presentation, opting for silly laughs a lot of the time vs. hard science. We got that he was trying to 'entertain' but I think he should've recognized that folks who are coming out on a Friday night to see him are probably at an intellectual level where they want to hear as much scientific detail regarding SETI and where we are in that journey as possible, vs. listening to schtick and lame jokes. When he did stick to data and science it was really great. We got to see some great footage from, for example, the Cassini mission to one of Saturn's moons Enceladus, and what has been determined so far from soil analysis from the probe we landed there.
There was, unfortunately, quite a bit of political/social commentary in his presentation. It's his show, and obviously he has every right to talk about whatever he likes, but I don't think the audience came to hear about his political and social beliefs. He took shots at white males, the current White House, conservatives, you name it ...
He also spent a lot of time mocking the 'UFO community' which I understand from the viewpoint of legitimate scientific research is probably warranted. But I felt like the audience didn't need him to point the idiocy of some of the cultural obsession with 'UFOs' over and over again.
I had not heard him speak previously. I was and am a huge fan of Carl Sagan, and grew up watching his TV series 'Cosmos' (which NDT resurrected much less effectively a few years back). But Sagan always seemed to have a genuine humility about him. Neil Degrasse Tyson, in stark contrast, came across as smug, pompous, and as a self-promoter.
His lecture certainly had it's moments and I don't regret going at all. I was just a bit disappointed that he didn't spend more time on a serious discussion.
Would I recommend you attend if he tours in your locale? Yeah, probably. The tickets were very reasonable. He's overall a very good 'lecturer' and if you were taking one of his courses in college, you would likely look forward to attending them. I just thought it could've been so much more enjoyable with a little less self-promotion and ego-driven pompousness. It made me wonder how he is viewed by his less famous astrophysicist colleagues around the world?
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