Neil DeGrasse Tyson Dishes on Star Talk Guests

People recently sat down with Neil DeGrasse Tyson and got him to dish on some of his Star Talk guests for the National Geographic Channel, which returns Sunday night. Here's what he had to say:

On Bill Clinton:

"Not that we're beer-drinking buddies, but he knows me and my work. And I was delighted to learn how much he reads about science. If he had another kind of life to lead, he might be a scientist. He's an avid science enthusiast. We took it back into his administration, and he shared with me some of the struggles he had with getting funding for things. It under his watch we lost the super conducting super collider that went to CERN, which discovered the Higgs Boson. 

What he said was that they had a bill that was ready to pass and the only sticking point was that super collider. All the other elements of it had bipartisan support. What I wanted to get a little more deeply – and I never got there – was, 'At what point do you continue to invest political capital to get something to happen, knowing you might lose it down the line for something else that you might value?' These are the hard decisions that any good politician's going to have to make."

On Larry Wilmore:

What a character! He's the biggest geek in the West. And, he's also magician. The man is literally a magician. He pulled out a deck of cards, when he was here. I don't know if it made it into the final edit, but he made something disappear. Then we talked about Star Wars. 

On Susan Sarandon:

She's quite the political activist. We talked about … Let me remember …. Yes! We talked about drugs! Now how much of that – it still has to get through Nat Geo, but, we are on pretty late, so you'd think they'd let some of that slip in there. She wanted to know whether altered states of consciousness enhance or detract from our appreciation and understanding of the physical universe. Because … Susan Sarandon thinks deeply about what roles drugs plays in your consciousness. 

On David Crosby:

Crosby is a huge science fiction fan, so we talked about that. He read every bit of science fiction he could get his hands on as a kid before he ever wrote a musical note. He also loves Star Trek and the fact that many of these science fiction authors wrote for the show. 

Read the full interview at People.