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What It’s Like Being Married to Neil deGrasse Tyson
SKETCH-O-VISION
A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.
The setup
Watch on YouTube
Watch onYouTube
The premise
Here’s the bit.
When his wife comes home to find that their dog has peed on her drapes because Neil deGrasse Tyson never took him for a walk, the astrophysicist turns her complaint into a glowing, effects-laden lecture on uncertainty and the expanding universe until she gives up. Later she catches him lounging in his boxers with a science magazine when they should be leaving for her aunt’s funeral, and he argues from the size of the galaxy and the cosmic calendar that being late cannot matter. In the kitchen she finally confronts him over a lipstick stain on his collar and announces she is leaving, but when he conjures a crowd of multiverse Tysons to argue his way out of the affair, she answers with a confession of her own involving Bill Nye the Science Guy.
The funny people
Meet the cast. 2
Say it with us
Highly quotable.
It’s the little details that cannot be kept track of, by definition.
Cosmically speaking, the distinction is meaningless.
We are always parting ways and not parting ways in every conceivable combination.
Behind the scenes
The people who made it.
A little extra
Notes from the archive.
This sketch aired in “The 420 Special,” the ninth episode of Key & Peele’s fifth and final season.
Script
Automatically generated script; wording may contain errors. Speaker labels are inferred.
- 00:00
Mrs. Tyson
Neil? Neil?
- 00:02
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes, honey?
- 00:03
Mrs. Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson, I asked you to take the dog out for a walk when I left the house four hours ago. Now I come back and this little mother Sputnik has done pissed on my drapes. Now I've got to get rid of those things and get new ones. Neil, it doesn't make any sense. You're an astrophysicist. How can you not keep track of little details like this?
- 00:25
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Well, actually it's the little details that cannot be kept track of, by definition. In 1927, a German university lecturer named Werner Heisenberg came to a seemingly paradoxical conclusion, that the more we know about the position of a particle in physical space, the less we know about its momentum, and vice versa.
- 00:51
Mrs. Tyson
Okay, but what is that?
- 00:53
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Taken in conjunction with what we know about the expansion of the universe, this brings us to a fascinating possibility that maybe what we experience as one point in time-space could actually be a lesion of points, which would mean that your curtains and little Sputnik's pee-pee could be as distant from one another as we are from the furthest galaxy.
- 01:20
Mrs. Tyson
Okay. Well, Just next time.
- 01:28
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Of Of course, dear.
- 01:33
Mrs. Tyson
Neil! There you are. What are you doing? We have to go to my Aunt Nellie's funeral. How were you not ready? I've been talking to you about this all week. How am I gonna find you in your boxers looking in a science magazine? I swear, Neil, sometimes I think you don't have any idea of what's important.
- 01:58
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Well, Well, actually, an idea of what's important is as close as we can ever come to any definition of importance. Our galaxy is one of over 100 billion in the observable universe, and it's 100,000 light-years across, which means it would take light 100,000 years to traverse.
- 02:23
Mrs. Tyson
Okay, but...
- 02:25
Neil deGrasse Tyson
But that's just space. If we were to chart the history of the universe on one calendar year, The history of mankind as we know it would just take place in the final second of that year. So, whether I'm ready now or in 500 years, well, cosmically speaking, the distinction is meaningless.
- 02:49
Mrs. Tyson
Well, okay. I'm I'm going now.
- 03:00
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Goodbye, honey.
- 03:01
Mrs. Tyson
Who is she? Who is the white bitch that left this goddamn lipstick stain on your collar? Hmm? Oh, I got you. You're caught, because this is apricot colored. And you know who wears that? White bitches. And you can't talk your way out of this one, because I'm not getting confused today, because I got my in order, and I've done my research. OK, Neil? You see, we are here at this point in space time on a human scale. But at this point, you a trifling ass mother . So expect the papers from the lawyer, because we're parting ways.
- 03:45
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Well, Well...actually...
- 03:47
Mrs. Tyson
No. Nope.
- 03:48
Neil deGrasse Tyson
We are always parting ways and not parting ways in every conceivable combination. Many physicists, including Stephen Hawking, now believe that there is an infinite number of universes. It's called multiverse theory, and it suggests that there are an infinite number of universes in which I didn't have sex with that white woman.
- 04:13
Mrs. Tyson
I Bill Nye the Science Guy.
- 04:15
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You bitch.
The rabbit hole continues
One more couldn’t hurt.
More from Key & Peele.
