Stephen Colbert has been keeping himself sharp in the interim between The Colbert Report and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert with his funny, topical run of videos recently. For his latest, he expressed his excitement about NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reaching Pluto and debated with astrophysicist and Pluto detractor Neil deGrasse Tyson about how “awesome” the dwarf planet actually is.
The pair playfully debated Pluto’s merit, with Tyson staunchly refusing to consider it anything more than a dwarf planet. Colbert also used the conversation as a way of parsing more facts about what the latest planetary discoveries mean, even quoting “noted astrophysicist” Elton John’s “Rocket Man” before an inquiry about the possibility of life existing on Pluto.
