Via Five Thirty Eight:

Go down the list of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s titles — author, TV host, meme-spawner — and you eventually get to Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. In other words, he’s still a working astrophysicist.

Tyson recently visited FiveThirtyEight’s studios to talk about his work and how big data is changing the field of astronomy. Advances in telescope and computing technology mean that the amount of information we can collect about our universe grows enormously every year.

Press play to stream the full episode of What’s The Point with Tyson, where he also discussed why he hates work-life “balance” and why his being black often leads people to confuse him for a sportscaster. Below, some highlights and a partial transcript of the interview.

On Race

(at 23 minutes)

AVIRGAN: Are people surprised when they hear that you were so into sports?

TYSON: I’m not a small person. We’re so trained in our society, if you see sort of a black person with some of body size — oh, must’ve been an athlete. There are people who don’t remember that I do science but they recognize me in some way. “Haven’t I seen you on TV?” I say, maybe, I don’t know. “Aren’t you a sportscaster?”

The stereotype kicks in. So people — no, they’re not surprised