watch it: Stephen Colbert interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson

This is totally awesome because Neil deGrasse Tyson is almost a real-life Buckaroo Banzai: he’s an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Plantarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and basically a rock star of science, if only in the metaphoric sense.

But what’s more: Stephen Colbert does this interview out of character, which is so unusual that I can’t remember the last time I saw him not doing his right-wing conservative blowhard. And he’s just as erudite and as funny as you think he is.

YouTube says this dates from early last year, but apparently it’s become a thing just this week. Dunno why. I found it on Boing Boing.

Yes, it’s long, but it’s totally worth the time. (They talk about movies a bit, too!)