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Neil deGrasse Tyson: Pluto Files

February 25, 2009
Neil deGrasse Tyson director, Hayden Planetarium
Paula Apsell senior executive producer, NOVA

Paula Apsell interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson about his new book, The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet, and about his work in astrophysics.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist, is director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York and host of NOVA scienceNow. He is the author of nine books about astrophysics, including Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution and Death By Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, and is the recipient of nine honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. His latest book, The Pluto Files, chronicles his experience at the center of the controversy over Pluto's planetary status.

Paula Apsell is the senior executive producer for NOVA, and the director of the WGBH Science Unit. She got her start in broadcasting at WGBH Boston, where she developed the award-winning children's drama radio series The Spider's Web, and later became a radio news producer. In 1975, she joined NOVA, a fledgling WGBH-produced national series that would set the standard for science programming on television. Today, NOVA is the most popular science series on American television and on the Web. NOVA has won every major broadcasting award, including the Emmy, the Peabody, the AAAS Westinghouse Science Journalism Award, and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Gold Baton.

WGBH
Image of The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet
Author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (2009)
Binding: Hardcover, 224 pages
Image of Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
Author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (2007)
Binding: Paperback, 384 pages
Image of Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
Author: Donald Goldsmith, Neil Degrasse Tyson
Publisher: W. W. Norton (2005)
Binding: Paperback, 352 pages
Image of The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist
Author: Neil De Grasse Tyson, Tyson Neil De Grasse, Neil de Grasse Tyson
Publisher: Prometheus Books (2004)
Binding: Paperback, 203 pages