Neil deGrasse Tyson: Photo: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Photo: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Go ahead and insert your 4/20 jokes here: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s new late-night series StarTalk debuts on the National Geographic channel on April 20.

According to Variety, the new series has a slew of guests signed on including “Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, biologist Richard Dawkins, retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, producer Norman Lear, film director Christopher Nolan and ‘Star Trek’ actor George Takei…[and] Bill Nye the Science Guy is slated to make weekly appearances.” According to the release, local sex advice hero Dan Savage and media mogul Arianna Huffington are also set to appear.

In addition to a few regular guests, it looks like StarTalk is also cribbing a few show format notes from HBO’s political show Real Time with Bill Mayer. The new hour-long series, based on Tyson’s podcast of the same name, will continue to explore the intersection of science and tech in the lives of his guests. He’ll conduct interviews, then go to a panel format of “influencers” to discuss topics. It will be filmed before a live studio audience at the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York. Nye’s segment will be pre-taped.

It airs at 11 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT.

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