Moyers & Company

Episode 1

Neil DeGrasse Tyson on the New Cosmos

Sun, Jan 12, 2014 30 mins

When Bill Moyers announced his intention to retire just weeks ago, he received - and read - thousands of messages on his website and Facebook urging him to stay on the air. "I felt as if I were going AWOL in the heat of battle," he said. So he revoked his decision, opting instead to continue with a half-hour version of his program that "will still give us flexibility to offer a forum to strong and provocative voices." With the motto "Occupy Democracy," Bill Moyers continues his popular weekly broadcast "Moyers & Company" and begins a new half-hour format with nothing short of the universe itself. The revised telecast kicks off with the first of a series of conversations with famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Frederic P. Rose director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Their wide-ranging interview touches on a variety of topics, including the nature of an expanding, accelerating universe (and how it will end), the difference between "dark energy" and "dark matter," the concept of God in cosmology and why science matters. "Science is an enterprise that should be cherished as an activity of the free human mind," Tyson tells Moyers. "Because it transforms who we are, how we live, and it gives us an understanding of our place in the universe."