The Universe – At the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, William Shatner and Neil deGrasse Tyson blended quantum physics, weightlessness, and a 2021 Blue Origin trip with Shatner’s age and a heavy metal album due in October—while tying exploration to human emotion and offering
William Shatner walked into the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills on Wednesday night ready to rib his close friend, Neil deGrasse Tyson—then somehow made quantum physics and a heavy metal album feel like they belonged in the same room.
The conversation, dubbed “The Universe Is Absurd!,” was the second night of a two-night run. Close friends traded stories, laughed at each other, and took turns returning to the details that still stick—like their 2024 trip to Antarctica, where they first met.
The crowd didn’t just hear about space and stars. They heard about the smallest things, too. Tyson shared a thought about electrons—“The electron is so small. we do not know how small it is. ” he said—adding that “Every measurement of the electron is smaller than our attempts to measure it.” For Tyson. the takeaway landed with a sharp simplicity: “As far as we’re concerned. it’s infinitesimally small.”.
But the tone wasn’t purely academic. The talk kept circling back to Shatner’s age—he is 95 years old—and it came up often enough that he started steering it. When he brought up his forthcoming heavy metal album, out in October, he met the moment head-on. “Why does everyone approach me with a smile when they hear ‘heavy metal album’?” Shatner deadpanned.
Tyson then shifted back to physics and the math behind the wonder, pointing out that Shatner was born in 1931—an observation that earned applause. Shatner didn’t want that kind of attention. “I don’t like being applauded for my age. Applaud me for my heavy metal album,” he said.
Tyson followed with another historical anchor: the neutron was discovered by James Chadwick the year after Shatner was born. Then the astrophysicist explained quantum physics for the room—starting in the 1920s. when “we learned that the universe is not continually divisible.” Tyson described how. in that picture. you keep getting smaller units of energy until you reach “a certain amount of energy. ” then “you have less energy and less and less and less and less. ” until there’s a point where a unit of energy can’t be undercut anymore. “That is a quantum of energy.”.
Shatner pushed back—not on the idea of quanta, but on what people thought came before. He argued that scientists had previously said the same thing about the atom and had been wrong. “They said it about every new discovery of the entrails of a molecule, of an atom,” Shatner said.
When Tyson challenged Shatner’s choice of word—“entrails”—Shatner snapped the conversation back to how he thinks about language. “I’m trying to use the language that I understand. It’s not your language because you are a Ph.D.” Tyson answered with a line that cut the tension cleanly: “Yeah. that word [entrails] didn’t appear in my thesis at all.”.
Then the night turned from classroom to cockpit.
Shatner described his 2021 trip to space in a Blue Origin rocket. Before launch, he said he had to climb 11 stories in the gantry to reach the opening of the ship. During the wait, he noticed gas coming off one of the vents and asked what it was. When he was told it was hydrogen, Shatner immediately connected it to the Hindenburg disaster.
He recalled the fear building as he moved through the final steps: “So now. with trepidation. I enter the ship and I’m in the chair. a five-point buckle. and the countdown begins. ” he said. In the sequence that followed. someone in ground control noted there was an “anomaly.” Shatner remembered thinking. “What the fuck is an anomaly?” The countdown continued.
He heard: “All right, everybody, we’re removing the gantry. Anybody who wants to get off, get off now. And I go, OK. And I think, ‘I can’t, I’m Captain Kirk. I can’t.’”
He described the g-force the way a stage actor would describe a scene crushing the senses: “elephant sitting on your chest … and then suddenly it’s off and suddenly you’re floating.”
After unbuckling, Shatner said he went straight to the window. He’d seen videos of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos floating through the cabin while getting Skittles “thrown at his asshole” by a teenager passenger on a previous space flight. Shatner joked that he thought, “That’s not gonna be me.”
When he landed, emotion overtook him. “Jeff Bezos was there with a microphone and international cameras, and I’m weeping,” he said. “I’m crying uncontrollably, and I don’t know why.” After reflecting, he realized “that I’m in grief.”
Shatner tied that grief to travel and the places he’s visited for a show called Voice of the Planet—worlds that felt “in trouble.” He described visiting the Himalayas and being “aghast at the amount of garbage left behind by hikers and climbers.” He said. “Shit is all over the place in this pristine mountains and it echoes the shit that we’ve left all over the planet with. ” before he linked it to what he called a grim new reality: “Now we’ve learned that microplastics are floating in our blood.”.
He ended that thought with a stark line: “As I speak to you, I could drop dead from microplastics.” For Shatner, the grief wasn’t just personal. “It’s a tragic thing that we’re doing to our planet, and I was in grief for the Earth and the beauty that we see all around us.”
Tyson returned the conversation to the sensation of space. after Shatner said English doesn’t have the right word for weightlessness—given how few people have experienced it. Tyson likened it to cutting the cables in an elevator: “a person inside it would be falling at the same rate as the elevator. ” so if someone stood on a scale. it would read zero pounds. He then explained it with orbital mechanics near the Kármán line. described as the official boundary of space. saying that someone above it is “simply falling toward Earth at the same rate that Earth is curving away from them.”.
“So anybody in orbit is weightless because they are continually free-falling toward Earth,” Tyson said. “Not because they’re in space.”
Shatner also said he’s been thinking more recently about why humans—not robots—should be sent into space. He referenced how, on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, he had asked why “vulnerable” humans are being sent out to explore, but he said he’s changed his mind.
“The voyage of exploration, which going to Mars will be … needs to be experienced by a human being,” Shatner said. He argued that exploration carries more than data. “It takes the human being’s experience. it takes the soul. the brain. the conscious and the unconscious being that we are to experience this magical thing called exploration. ” he said.
He acknowledged the appeal of machinery but drew a hard distinction. “A cold robot can send back the facts probably better … [but] only a human being can experience that. It’s not the same experience to send mechanical entities.” He added. “What a marvelous thing for a human being to discover whatever there is to discover on Mars as opposed to a cold robot running along there and running out of power.”.
Tyson answered with a quick summary that landed like a joke and a verdict at once: “Let’s summarize what you just said. No one has ever given a ticker-tape parade for a robot. No one has ever named a middle school after a robot.”
Near the end, Shatner spoke at length about his sense of place. “I know I feel an affinity toward this mysterious thing we call the universe and I’m beginning to understand my place in the great unknown,” he said.
Tyson responded with a personal twist on the “great unknown.” “Do you know what your place in this great unknown is? You lip-kissed a Black woman on television for the first time.” Tyson referenced the 1968 Star Trek moment when Captain Kirk (Shatner) kissed Lt. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols).
The event closed with a blend of science and art. Tyson read three meaningful quotes along with the last few paragraphs of his 2007 book, Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries, accompanied by a pianist. Shatner performed “Rage” from his new heavy metal album, backed by a trumpeter.
“So I was asked to do a heavy metal album,” Shatner said. “That’s generally greeted by some laughter; I’m not sure it’s derisive or not.”
Afterward, VIP ticket holders stayed for a meet and greet. Tyson remained behind for quite some time to chat with fans about everything from aliens to AI. The event was organized by Future of Space, which produces experiences and events around science and space themes.
William Shatner Neil deGrasse Tyson quantum physics Blue Origin space exploration weightlessness Kármán line heavy metal album “The Universe Is Absurd!” Beverly Hills Future of Space