Geek demigod Neil deGrasse Tyson is coming to the University of Central Arkansas Feb. 27, 2014. It’s a measure of how hot the stubs for Tyson will be that they’ll begin selling tickets for the sure-to-sell-out-in-nanoseconds appearance starting at 10 a.m. Monday, August 12 in the UCA Reynolds Performance Hall Box Office.
Heir to the big-brain throne of the late Carl Sagan, Tyson is the Director of the Hayden Planetarium and a research associate in astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. If you’ve never heard of him, it probably says more about you than it does about him. He’s one of the few genuinely brilliant people in modern history to make the jump from academic nobody to genuine pop-culture icon, frequently guesting on The Colbert Report, Real Time with Bill Maher, the Daily Show, the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” and others. A large part of why is because he talks about science and the natural world like nobody else, as seen in the video above, with Tyson talking about the benefits of the space program and the race to the Moon.
BONUS: He’s not shy about his thoughts on the collision between science and religion.