Neil deGrasse Tyson is arguably our nation’s best-known astrophysicist. He’s the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, host of the terrific PBS series “Nova Science Now,” frequent guest with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and a best-selling author. Three summers ago, he was keynote speaker at James Randi’s Amazing Meeting 6, where he […]
Thirteen months ago, I brought you my interview with James Randi about a military fraud that was costing human lives. It had to do with bogus bomb-detecting equipment sold to security forces in Iraq, to the tune of $85 million despite the fact that the devices were useless. They were in essence nothing more than […]
I spent the last few days visiting my mother on Long Island and going into Manhattan to see a couple of one-man shows — Todd Robbins in “Play Dead” and Colin Quinn in “Long Story Short.” I’ve written about Robbins before. At Players Theater in Greenwich Village, he combines his abilities as a magician, sideshow […]
Richard Wiseman is back, and this time he’s making his skull disappear…
My friend Phil Plait returns to the Discovery Channel next Wednesday (right after the season premiere of “Mythbusters“) with episode 2 of his “Bad Universe,” this time investigating whether aliens could actually make it to Earth. We talked about it today on KTRS/St. Louis, and I also asked him about the new Earth-like planet that […]
When I had breakfast with my friend Phil Plait (“The Bad Astronomer“) at James Randi’s Amazing Meeting 8 a couple of weeks ago, he was all excited about a new TV project he’s been working on, but couldn’t tell me anything about it because of confidentiality clauses. Now it can be revealed — it’s a […]