From Forgotten Galactic-Bulge Paperboy to Full-Time Cosmos Hustler Who Hasn’t Done Any Real Science Since the Clinton Administration
Neil deGrasse Tyson is not an astrophysicist in any meaningful, practicing sense. He hasn’t done original research worth mentioning in over twenty-five years. His last first-author paper in a serious journal came out in the 1990s, and even then it was competent but forgettable galactic-bulge work—nothing that moved the field, nothing anyone cites unless they’re padding a bibliography. Since then: zero. No telescope time, no data sets, no grants, no peer-reviewed output that matters. He is a man who walked away from the craft the moment he realized he could make far more money talking about it on television than actually doing it.
That’s the core of it. Real astrophysicists – people like Katie Bouman, Andrea Ghez, or the thousands of postdocs grinding out JWST proposals – spend their lives in the dark, fighting for photons and arguing over error bars. Tyson spends his life in makeup chairs and green rooms. Only Carl Sagan beats him in the cringe-cosmophere.
He traded the observatory for the studio because the studio pays better and strokes his ego louder. The moment the cameras showed up, the science stopped. That’s not a side hustle; that’s abandonment.
He keeps the title “astrophysicist” the way a retired athlete keeps the word “quarterback” on his LinkedIn long after he’s selling fake vitamins during a Fox News broadcast. It’s branding, not identity.
When he pontificates about climate change, pandemics, GMOs, or philosophy, he’s doing it with exactly the same authority as any other charming guy with a good voice and a planetarium named after him – none. Here is the thing. Neil is not an expert in anything but his narrow field. Apart from his field of endeavor, astrophysics, he knows just as much as the average person because everything he talks about is just his opinion. Stop thinking that smart people are universally smart.
EXAMPLE: Alex Trebek was really smart at being a game show host, but he was not smart about answering Jeopardy questions. He wasn’t a trivia whiz. He was just a game show master of ceremonies. Would you believe that some Americans believed that Trebek was one of the smartest men in the world? They did, and years before, Americans thought that Walter Cronkite was the smartest man in America when in fact he was actually kind of a dullard who rarely gave interviews.
As far as Neil deGrasse Tyson goes, he is not a polymath; he’s a monologue artist who read a couple of Wikipedia pages and trusts his cadence to carry him.
And the grift works because the public can’t tell the difference between someone who understands the field and someone who can narrate it with gravitas. He’s the guy who learned that if you wear a cosmos vest, drop a few jargon words, and nod solemnly, millions will decide you’re a genius. It’s a hell of a business model: take a middling academic career, bolt on charisma, and monetize the hell out of the credential before anyone notices the credential is expired.
Call him what he is: an astro-grifter. He’s very good at being famous for astrophysics. He’s not good at astrophysics. The distinction matters, even if the audience that claps for him on late-night shows doesn’t care. They’re not buying insight; they’re buying the comforting baritone of a man who sounds like he knows things. He’s happy to keep selling it, and he’ll keep cashing the checks long after the last person who actually remembers his research has forgotten his name.
In the end, Neil deGrasse Tyson is proof that in America you don’t have to be exceptional at a hard thing. You just have to be exceptional at convincing people you’re still doing the hard thing while you’re actually on a couch telling Seth Meyers how big the universe is. That’s not respect earned. That’s a hustle perfected.
