The Comedy Cellar, The Astrophysicist, & The Tin Foil Hat: An Extraterrestrial Night with Neil Degrasse Tyson & Nayeema Raza
What happens when you put an astrophysicist, a podcaster, and a room full of New Yorkers in a subterranean comedy club on 4/20?...
When my friend Nayeema texted to ask me to MC her upcoming live episode for her podcast, “Smart Girl, Dumb Questions”, I was sitting in a Michigan diner scarfing down a slice of cherry pie.
I’d just finished a gig at the Traverse City opera house and had 20 minutes until my next show at a brewery at the end of the street. I’d forgotten to eat, so I was cramming my piehole with literal pie because it was the only thing left in the glass case that I could grab and eat with my hands. I texted her back, “Sure! Who’s the guest?”
When she told me, I did an honest-to-God spit-take. I shot chunks of cherry into my coffee. It looked like my brain had exploded out of my nose. (To be honest, it kind of had.)
To fully grasp the absurdity of this situation, you have to understand exactly who Neil deGrasse Tyson is.
If you’ve ever wondered what he’s like in person, I can confirm that the man does not merely enter a room; he establishes a gravitational orbit.
He isn’t just a scientist; he is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the cosmos. He is a Harvard and Columbia-educated astrophysicist, the long-standing Director of the Hayden Planetarium, the host of Cosmos and StarTalk, the man who unapologetically executed the planetary demotion of Pluto, and arguably the most famous science communicator walking the Earth today.
His brain operates on a galactically terrifying level of physics and mathematics. So, the fact that I -a guy whose primary professional skill involves drawing big noses and writing jokes about the New York subway- was sitting backstage with him, casually shooting the breeze about Australian wildlife and the structural failings of Abraham Lincoln’s stationery choices like we were two old mates at a dive bar, is profoundly fucking insane.
It is a glitch in the simulation, but it’s exactly why I love this job.
So, friend.
The following will be a recollection of the night broken into 3 parts, and will be followed by a second post covering my verbal jousting with the world’s most famous Astrophysicist backstage. You can listen to the full episode, which is out today. Subscribe to Smart Girl, Dumb Questions wherever you listen to or watch podcasts. I’d recommend watching it on YouTube, where you can see the tinfoil absurdity unfold in its full glory.
But first… if you enjoy my work and would like to support, it would mean a lot if you would upgrade to become a paid subscriber (only $1 per week). It helps me share this work with you and keeps my dog fed. (He’s a hungry boy.)
Part I: The Alien of Extraordinary Ability
There are very few rooms in New York City that possess genuine magic, but the World Famous Comedy Cellar is one of them. There are now three (almost four) different Comedy Cellar Venues in New York, but they’re all haunted by the same flavour of divinely absurd enchantment.
If you’ve never been, it’s exactly what you picture when you think of a legendary stand-up club: It’s subterranean. It’s cramped. The ceiling’s so low you have to duck if you’re over five-nine, and the air always smells faintly of stale beer and old wood. It is my spiritual home in Manhattan, and has been since the first time I set foot in here 20 years ago. Every night of the week, it hosts the best comedians alive, with comedy lineups the envy of every other club on earth.
However. The other night, we weren’t there for a standard comedy lineup… We were there for a very special live taping of the Smart Girl Dumb Questions podcast, with special guest Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Neil is currently launching his new book, “Take Me To Your Leader: Perspectives on First Alien Encounter”, which is a scientifically infused etiquette guide and user’s manual for what to do when we finally make contact with extraterrestrial life. So, naturally, the backstage conversation bypassed the usual polite New York small talk and immediately accelerated into the stratosphere.
Now, I have no knowledge whatsoever of extraterrestrial intelligence. The only reason I was selected to introduce the show and warm up the crowd was probably because my United States Green Card literally classifies me as an “Alien of Extraordinary Ability.” That is the official government designation for a cartoonist, and apparently, it was the only qualification required to open for the world’s most famous astrophysicist.
In the publishing world, the moment an author holds the physical copy of their book for the first time is practically a sacred ritual. Neil’s book had just come off the presses on Friday, and this was his first time seeing the finished Advance Review Copy.
He ran his hands over the cover. “The texture’s great,” he said, entirely ignoring the text. Nayeema, who had brought this heavily dog-eared copy, immediately started grilling him on the premise, pointing out that government accounts constantly seem to be denying their existence.
Neil, waving off the conspiracy theories, explained his stance with the kind of bulletproof logic that only a scientist can casually drop in a green room. He doesn’t need blurry photos or secret files. He just needs biological evidence.
“If anyone has ever in the history of alien sightings brought forth an alien, no one would ever have to ask, ‘Do you believe in aliens?’” he said.
I agreed. He turned to me and asked, “Do you believe in elephants?”
“Oh, I’ve seen elephants in person,” I replied, thinking I was saying something clever.
“Then we don’t have to ask, ‘Do you believe in elephants?’” Neil concluded. He noted that he is perfectly happy to accept the internet’s favourite theory that all the aliens are stockpiled or hidden by the government. “I’m just waiting for them to bring one out. That’s all.”
After a lively interaction featuring a debate over the word marginalia, a discussion about his Montblanc Meisterstück, and an in-person experiment using human skin (seriously, I’m writing up an entirely different post about the backstage malarkey— it’s too much to include in one post.), we got the knock on the door from the producer telling us the audience was loaded in and it was showtime.
We proceeded down the stairs and walked into the showroom. This would be my first ever time ‘performing’ at this Comedy Cellar location. I took the stage to a backing of Star Wars music and looked out across the packed room…
“I don’t know if you guys have been listening every single time an episode drops,” I told the crowd, “But I’ve been so baffled by the insane variety! I mean, Nayeema’s had everyone from Mark Cuban to Esther Perel, Diplo, the Mayor of New York, also the doorman from my old building- and now this Neil fella!?” (Yes, Joe the doorman got an episode. That is the beauty of this show.)
“She’s a year in,” I continued over the cheers. “and she’s already on Spotify’s Top 10 Best New Shows of 2025, an iHeart Award-winner for Best Emerging Pod (over a Kardashian!) Can you imagine what we’re gonna be doing one year from now? This thing is going to be in Madison Square Garden.”
I warbled on for a bit longer before getting the signal that we were ready to go. With the crowd thoroughly razzed, the phones switched to silent, and the stern instructions delivered to tag the podcast in any photos, it was time to bring out the main event.
Nayeema took the stage to roaring applause, looking entirely in her element, and immediately introduced her guest: “The world-renowned astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and our alien daddy... Neil deGrasse Tyson.”
If the backstage banter was any indication, the live show was going to be a high-speed collision of cosmic intellect and absolute absurdity. Nayeema handled the interview masterfully. Interviewing Neil is like trying to put a saddle on a hurricane- you have to let him spin, let him explore the tangents, and then gently guide him back to the thesis. She navigated his cosmic enthusiasm perfectly, keeping the crowd entirely in the palm of her hand.
She didn’t waste any time. “Neil, you know it’s 4/20 tonight,” she said. “Is that right?” Neil replied, his booming voice echoing off the Cellar’s brick walls.
“Are you familiar with the occasion?”
