You know him for his velveteen voice, his magnificent moon vest, his reboot of Carl Sagan’s classic show Cosmos, and his general unwillingness to put up with bad science in popular culture. But hot dang, have you noticed Neil deGrasse Tyson in cartoons?
Well. He has been in them—a few, in fact! And he has some words about that. Which shouldn’t surprise you about Tyson at this point because, I mean, let’s be real: If it’s something he can analyze, he probably has some words about it. Here are some of them, on voicing Waddles in Gravity Falls for an episode, how he ended up in Ice Age 5 (yes, there ARE five Ice Age movies), and why he calls bullshit on The Force Awakens.
The Dot and Line: You’ve been in a bunch of animated shows over the past few years, it seems like. How has that been? How did that kind of happen? Did you enjoy the process?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I have a very soft spot for artists, especially my brother is an artists. Went to art museums as a kid often, still do. That’s an oil replica over my desk. If an artist reaches out and says, “I want to put some science into what I’m creating, will you help me?” I’m there for you.
D&L: It’s a no-brainer.
Tyson: It’s a no-brainer. I’m there. As long as it’s not too gratuitous, it’s got to be meaningful to the project. Otherwise, what are you doing? Generally, it is meaningful. Let’s take for example Ice Age. I get the call, “We have interest in you being a character in Ice Age 5.”
D&L: I can’t believe they’re up to five.
Tyson: I said, “Have there been four of these?” Then they chuckled. Ice Age 5, subtitle “Collision Course.”
D&L: Are they direct-to-video yet? They’ve got to be.
Tyson: Collision course. There’s an asteroid headed towards Earth and our nomadic ice age mammals want to do something about it and so they needed me, wanted me to infuse this character with intelligent science that could help the clan not go extinct. And I said, “Sure, I’m there for you.”
D&L: So, you got to contribute in some ways to what was written too because they—
Tyson: Oh yeah, I don’t agree to stuff unless I … They have to trust … Sorry, I didn’t say that right. I invite them to trust me that once I know where they’re coming from, I’m not gonna try … I’m good here. I can get in the mode and allow me to participate in the creativity of the role that I’m playing. It may be, for example that there’s a little bit of humor or insight that is of no cost to the script in terms of word length that you could put in and then people in the know will be in the know, and you just upped it a notch in the geekosphere, for example. I’ll give you a good example. Not that I was in Star Wars but in Star Wars 7, what was that one called? “The Something Something.”
D&L: It’s always “The Something Something.” It’s not The Last Jedi, it’s the one before that.
Tyson: The one before that.
D&L: The Force Awakens.
Tyson: In The Force Awakens, they upped the ante on the Death Star. Do you remember what the Death Star does?
D&L: Mostly blows things up.
Tyson: No, no. But do you remember, okay so in this—
D&L: Generates energy.
Tyson: Not in this case because they up the ante. Now, instead of generating energy, it gets its energy from a star.
D&L: That’s right.
Tyson: It goes and sucks the energy out of a star until the star doesn’t exist anymore and now the energy is contained inside this vessel. Now, it can destroy six planets at once, like an entire solar system. Okay, like what? Let’s hold aside the fact that if you suck in all the energy from that glowing star, then you will become that star. Let’s hold that aside. There’s some special cavity, let’s assume. No one did the math on this. If you could suck the energy out of a star and then destroy planets with it, you could destroy a thousand planets with the star, a thousand. It’s a way more deadly device than they had presumed. They’re thinking well, six is more than one.
D&L: Let’s up the ante without really knowing how much it would.
Tyson: If I were in the room at that time, I could have enhanced the killing power with this suggestion.
D&L: Right, which may have been too much for the film’s narrative to sustain.
Tyson: Maybe they would have recast it.
D&L: Right, right, right. That actually makes me think of another, wouldn’t you have to have an enormous amount of energy to take that energy from the star in the first place?
Tyson: No, you can conduct it out. For example, you don’t need energy for your fireplace poker to get hot when one end is in the fire and the other end is touching your hand. The energy just works its way up the fireplace iron.
D&L: Right, interesting. This makes me think of the episode of Gravity Falls that you were in.
Tyson: That’s one, so the pig gets smart. How could I say no to that?
“I felt unloved because everybody else has been on ‘The Simpsons.’”
D&L: But the pig gets smart not through science, but through some mystical mumbo jumbo.
Tyson: Sure.
D&L: But it’s okay as long as you have the science afterward to work through that.
Tyson: As long as what the pig says is legitimate, and it was. The pig made an atom smasher. If the pig just uttered mumbo jumbo, what’s the point of eating the goop? The goop made the pig smart, so let’s make that accurate. Yeah, I was fine. I didn’t care how he got there. You can’t tell me that a pig became smart by any legitimate means, there is no legitimate means, so let it be the green goop.
D&L: The pigs are as smart as they’re going to be, they’re not getting any smarter.
Tyson: Also, I was in Family Guy a couple of times.
D&L: That’s right.
Tyson: And…
D&L: Have you been on The Simpsons? You must have been.
Tyson: Only recently.
D&L: Ah, well. They have had a long…
Tyson: I felt unloved because everybody else has been on The Simpsons.
D&L: Even Thomas Pynchon was on The Simpsons, and he’s not on anything. They didn’t have him there.
Tyson: Okay, the horse.
D&L: They found somebody else to pretend to be him and put a paper bag over his head because no one has seen him since, like, 1957, so no one knows what he looks like.
Tyson: Oh wow, that’s funny.
D&L: Even the famous recluses have been on it.
Tyson: This is what they gave me, The Simpson stuff, out on the shelf. [Motions toward shelf.] On the right hand, you probably can’t see it, it’s just to the right.
D&L: Oh, the dog.
Tyson: Yeah, they dog and the thing. That was The Simpsons gift bag.
D&L: Oh, God. Swag, these businesses they really know how to flood your office.
Tyson: There’s The Simpsons. Also, I was on …
D&L: There was a new Disney show you were on, right?
Tyson: Oh yeah, I was on Future Worm.
D&L: Yup, that’s it. It’s a great name.
Tyson: Yeah, Future Worm.
D&L: Regular Show too, right?
Tyson: No, I was invited to go on, wait what’s the Regular Show?
D&L: It’s the one, it’s not Adventure Time, but it is a Cartoon Network thing that looks like it.
Tyson: I was on the Regular Show eating a bowl of pasta.
D&L: Doesn’t sound like a too unpleasant thing to do.
Tyson: Yeah, but they wanted me to just play and have fun with the food the way a scientifically literate kid would play with his food in that way. I’m there.
D&L: Especially getting kids interested in scientific facts.
Tyson: Actually, I do it because it’s the right thing to do, but my real focus is on adults because they run stuff.
D&L: Yeah, they do.
Tyson: And they’re in charge and they wield resources, and they levy taxes, and they vote. The absence of science literacy has its greatest cost not in scientifically illiterate children but in scientifically illiterate adults. Then if you have science literate adults, then science literate children immediately follows because they will make sure that the curriculum in school systems, and school boards are all there.
D&L: Right. There’s no chicken and egg question here. The adults can effect the change. The kids may grow up into adult and effect the change.
Tyson: But I’m too impatient to wait 30 years for that.
Thanks for reading The Dot and Line, where we talk about animation of all kinds. Don’t forget to for this article and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
