GET A LIVE STREAM OF deGrasse Tyson's show: Neil deGrasse Tyson's NOVA ScienceNOW

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an African-American, Bronx-born, Harvard-trained astrophysicist who for the last decade has been at the director of New York's Hayden Planetarium. He has also written 10 books (the latest is 'Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries' (2007)) and has appeared on television shows such as 'The Colbert Report,' 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart' and 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien' to discuss science.

Last year, deGrasse Tyson snagged the hosting duties of 'NOVA ScienceNOW,' a PBS series, which brings science of all stripes to the masses. The booming-voiced deGrasse Tyson also serves as executive editor and frequently appears not only as a correspondent, but most recently as a subject (including a fascinating experiment on why we need sleep).

The next premiering episode debuts tonight (check local listings), and will stream in its entirety tomorrow, along with past episodes, at http://pbs.org/nova/sciencenow

What exactly is an astrophysicist?

We study how the universe works applying the laws of physics that we discovered here on earth. So it's the universe. It's the stars, planets, moon, galaxies, the big bang. That's what we do.

Would you say with the popularity of Malcolm Gladwell's 'Blink' and 'The Tipping Point' that science is becoming more mainstream?

Yes. I worry however, that I think it's only becoming mainstream to the people who are sensitized to the value of science, they just never had the means to get there. I'm targeting not only them -- because that's always a good and fun audience -- but the people who never even thought to think about it. Who never imagined science would be a fundamental part of their lives. People who always saw science as their medicine that they're forced to take. It's science class rather than life. And I think of NOVA ScienceNOW as presenting science as life.

How did it feel to be selected as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People this year?

You know what, I don't get big-headed about it. I think what's always concerned me about those lists, and that list in particular, is that you end up becoming more famous, sorry, more influential, from being on that list than from anything you did to be on the list. So I don't strongly value awards or recognition for ...I'm trying to say, if I am to be recognized, I would prefer that I be recognized for the work that I've actually done, not for the fact of being on a list. OK? So the list is not the primary source of my achievements. The primary source is what got me on the list in the first place. For me to get complimented for being on that list, rather than to be complimented for whatever I did to get on the list, I think that's a cart before the horse.

How do you think we can get more young adults, and African Americans specifically, interested in science and physics?

I don't claim expertise in this, there are psychologists who think about this all the time and professional educators who worry about this, and so my sentiments here and just what I gleaned through my walk through life, and through my life experience --

How'd you become interested?

I was nine-years-old. And my first visit to the Hayden Planetarium when I was a kid. This is all detailed in my memoir,'The Sky is not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist.' And so, in there, what's clear to me is that kids are born scientists. Kids are always asking questions. They ask far more questions than adults do. And so what happens when they ask an adult and the adult doesn't know the answer, they might be a little embarrassed and the adult says, 'shut up don't bother me.' And so the nurturing htat needs to go on of the curiosity of childhood is in desperate need of revamping in our culture. So not only that, what is the saying? you teach a year teaching a kid to walk and talk and the rest of their life telling them to shut up and sit down.

So much of what the child does is exploration of their universe, but as adults you simply view it as them making a mess. And they should stop it or clean it up. I think most adults would say 'cut out that racket, you're getting the pots dirty, get them off the floor.' And all of a sudden you have completely squashed an entire childhood experiment in acoustics. Not enough people think of it that way, but that's exactly what it is. Why do different pots sound differently when you hit them with different spoons? What's going on there? And I'm not expecting a lesson plan to come out of it, but just the stimulation of a level of curiosity that allows somebody to make a difference as a scientist or a technologist later in life.