Not long ago in Seattle, an astronomical event of sorts happened: Two superstars collided. William Shatner, of “Star Trek” fame, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, America’s favorite astrophysicist, took to the stage to explore the nature of exploration. Think of it as sort of Martin & Lewis, but with more quantum mechanics.

“It’s a bromance,” said Tyson. “I think what Bill Shatner and I have together should be the textbook definition of the bromance.”

“If we have a bromance,” said Shatner, “I’d be very privileged.”

The two grew close last year on an upscale cruise to Antarctica, where they ended up being the after-dinner entertainment. “The organizer said, ‘Why don’t we put the two of you on this mini-stage that they have on the ship, and we just chew the fat?'” said Tyson. “And then the organizer said, ‘Why don’t you guys take this on the road?'”

Their first port of call? Seattle, where they debuted a wide-ranging, sometimes meandering, but always intriguing stage show they’re calling “The Universe Is Absurd!”

When Shatner asked his partner for a sound bite, deGrasse Tyson solicited a suggestion from the audience: “Pick anything out of the universe. Go. Anything. Doesn’t matter.”

“Pluto!” yelled one enthusiastic audience member.

DeGrasse Tyson obliged: “More than half of Pluto is made of ice, so that, if it were where Earth is right now, heat from the Sun would evaporate that ice and it would grow a tail. And that is no kind of behavior for a planet!” Mic drop. “That’s a sound bite!”

For deGrasse Tyson, director of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, and an authority on just about everything we know about the universe, it’s a chance to get inside the insatiably curious mind of the 94-year-old Shatner. “What kind of magic potion is he drinking?” deGrasse Tyson laughed. “By the way, you can do the math, he’s been alive for three billion seconds, okay? I did the math, you don’t have to. So when Bill Shatner speaks, it’s coming from a place way deeper than any of the rest of us can possibly match.”

And for Shatner, who never formally studied astrophysics, it’s a chance to make up for what he sees as lost time. “I feel bad about it, because that knowledge of what constitutes the construction of nature, we know so little, but the little we know is so awesome, it’s so spellbinding,” he said. “The fact that I wasn’t conscious of how spellbinding it is as a youth, I could have been much more educated about it.”

Four years ago, Shatner became the oldest person ever to go into space, and he’s been globetrotting ever since.

Shatner asked deGrasse Tyson, “Do you still scratch your head in awe?”

“Every night I look up,” he replied.

So, is this the dynamic between the two – Shatner with questions, deGrasse Tyson with answers? “Unfortunately, that’s the way it is,” Shatner replied.

“No, but he’s got wisdom and life experience that I value, and I respect,” deGrasse Tyson added. “So, I’m here to grab some of that.”

As for Shatner’s take on deGrasse Tyson, “He has access, both because of his mentality, and the books and the studies, so he’s into modern-day mysticism, which is the study of the stars and how it works and what goes on.”

“You call that modern-day mysticism?” deGrasse Tyson asked.

“Because you don’t know for sure that what you’re saying is absolutely truth until more experimentation.”

“That’s the frontier. We’re scratching our heads.”

“Exactly,” said Shatner. “So, he is an explorer. He is an explorer. He is on that verge. He teaches that. And it is mystical in every sense of the word.”

I asked, “This is where I think you are politely and respectfully in disagreement, because Dr. deGrasse Tyson will say something like, ‘We know what the speed of light is and what the fastest things can move is.’ And you say, ‘Well, we’ll see about that!'”

“Yeah, we’ve had that argument,” said Shatner. 

DeGrasse Tyson seems just fine not knowing everything – for example, what was going on before the Big Bang, and the profound idea of somethingness coming from nothingness. “We don’t know. Next question!” he said. “No, as a scientist, you need to be comfortable in the presence of a question that does not yet have an answer.”

Of course, the ultimate question, the one we really don’t know definitively, is where we go when we die, something that Shatner, as he loses friends and colleagues, finds himself considering more often. “You know, I vary between the fear of death, my fear,” he said. But, “I have so much love around me. I have a wife, and children, and grandchildren. I even have two great-grandchildren. And I have two great dogs. I’ve had dogs all my life, all my adult life. And so, all my life is fertile, is vibrant. And I don’t want to leave it. And that’s the sadness. I don’t want to go.”

“Are you curious, though, about what you will find out?” I asked.

“Not enough to die!” he laughed.

“Even your curiosity has a limit?”

“Right. It stops right there!”

So, William Shatner’s famous curiosity bumps up against the edge of his universe. And as the show wrapped up in Seattle, Shatner closed things out with one of his unique spoken-word songs, accompanied by trumpeter Keyon Harrold. 

Do not grow old
no matter how long you live.
Do not forget pain
but somehow learn to forgive.

The universe, it turns out, might be a bit absurd, but what an interesting ride!

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with William Shatner and Neil deGrasse Tyson (Video)

    
For more info:

      
Story produced by Anthony Laudato. Editor: Karen Brenner. 

When songwriter Stephen Schwartz sits at the piano, he feels the music. “When I was a kid and playing my Beethoven … I would play that bar over and over again, and cry. It’s very embarrassing! Beethoven, living in a world that has nothing to do with ours, but he writes, and it speaks to us across the centuries.”

Schwartz knows a little something about speaking to audiences. He’s the composer and lyricist of “Wicked,” the blockbuster stage musical-turned-two-part movie musical. Part two, “Wicked: For Good,” opens Nov. 21.

The prequel to the classic “Wizard of Oz,” “Wicked” tells the story of Elphaba (played by Cynthia Erivo), who grows up to be the Wicked Witch of the West. The bubbly Glinda (played by Ariana Grande) becomes the Good Witch of the North.

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo perform “Popular,” from “Wicked”:

Schwartz has been telling stories through song for over five decades. “My sort of glib joke where people say, like, how do you write a song? I just say, tell the truth and make it rhyme,” he said. “And if I can be honest enough, then that’ll speak to other people.”

“Wicked” opened 22 years ago, making it the fourth-longest-running Broadway show in history.

And where was Schwartz on the night of Oct. 30, 2003? “Well, that was the opening night of ‘Wicked’ on Broadway, and therefore, I was not at the Gershwin Theatre, because I don’t go to my own openings,” he said. “It’s too nerve-wracking for me. I don’t like the opening night parties where everybody is just waiting to hear what reviews come in.”

Kristin Chenoweth originated the role of Glinda on Broadway. She and Schwartz have reunited for the recently-opened new musical, “The Queen of Versailles.” “I’m working with my Rodgers and Hammerstein; it’s just packed into one person,” she said of Schwartz. “There’s not five of him. There’s one. He’s original. He’s singular. And there’s nobody else like him.”

Schwartz grew up on New York’s Long Island. A prodigy, he attended the prestigious Juilliard School as a high schooler. Just after college, he collaborated on the musical that became his first big hit, “Godspell.” The musical features a ragtag group who help Jesus tell various parables.

I asked, “It’s a musical with Jesus as a central character. You’re a Jewish guy. Did you think, well, alright, I’ll give it a go?”

Schwartz replied, “I think one of the things that made ‘Godspell’ work was the fact that I didn’t know a lot of those stories. So, I think I came to it with a kind of fresh eye about not preaching to the converted, so to speak.”

In 1972, Schwartz brought that fresh eye to the story of “Pippin,” a young man searching for the meaning of life in the Middle Ages. Hit #3, 1974’s “The Magic Show,” starred magician Doug Henning. Schwartz was 3-for-3, with all three playing simultaneously on Broadway when he was just 27 – a theatrical trifecta that Schwartz described as “very dizzying.”

“The truth is, when you are very young and unprepared for a success, it can be difficult to handle,” he said. “It was difficult for me to handle. I think I got very, quite full of myself. I got kind of difficult to deal with. I kept thinking, well, why isn’t everybody just doing exactly what I say? I lost somewhat the ability to collaborate. You know, it took some failures to kind of learn how to deal with both success and failure.”

The failures came in short order, a “four-fecta” of flops”: “Working” (which closed after a month), and ‘Rags” (which closed after four performances), while “The Baker’s Wife” and “Children of Eden” never made it to Broadway.

I noted, “You haven’t always been critic’s choice.”

“I’m almost never a critic’s choice,” Schwartz said.

Why? “I have no idea,” he said. “I’ll be frank about it, you know, I wish I got Steve Sondheim’s reviews.”

“But listen, as great as he was, his shows didn’t run the way yours have.”

“Yeah, the grass is always greener,” Schwartz replied.

In the early 1990s Schwartz stepped away from the piano. Had he quit Broadway? “Absolutely, a hundred percent,” he said.

“Did you worry that you were out of juice?” I asked.

“Totally, yeah. And in the ’90s, I actually went back to school. I was pursuing a degree in psychology. I was gonna become a therapist.”

Studying to become a therapist turned out to be quite therapeutic. “I think that time away reminded me of how to behave myself and how to collaborate and how to deal with other people, and not just come in like a bull in a china shop,” he said.

When he returned to songwriting, it was not for Broadway, though, but for Hollywood, writing songs for “Pocahontas,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Enchanted,” and music and lyrics for “The Prince of Egypt.” He picked up three Academy Awards along the way.

“The Colors of the Wind,” from “Pocahontas”:

But Stephen Schwartz’s home will always be the stage. “I feel so blessed and so fortunate that work I’ve done has this ongoing life that I know is gonna keep going when I’m not here on this planet anymore,” he said. “Listen, I’m 77 years old, and they still let me do this!”

To watch a trailer for “Wicked: For Good” click on the video player below:

READ AN EXCERPT: “Defying Gravity,” a biography of “Wicked” composer Stephen Schwartz
Biographer Carol de Giere explores the creative career of the Grammy- and Oscar-winning composer of such treasured Broadway and movie hits as “Godspell,” “Pippin” and “Wicked.”

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Stephen Schwartz (Video)

For more info:

• “Wicked: For Good” opens in theater Nov. 21
• “Wicked,” at the Gershwin Theatre, New York City | Ticket info
• “The Queen of Versailles,” at the St. James Theatre, New York | Ticket info
• “The Baker’s Wife,” at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater, New York (through Dec. 21) | Ticket info
• stephenschwartz.com
• “Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked (2nd Ed.)” by Carol de Giere (Applause Books), in Trade Paperback and eBook formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org

     
Story produced by Jay Kernis. Editor: Jason Schmidt. 

     
See also: 

Irina Shayk opened up about parenting 8-year-old daughter Leo De Seine, whom she shares with ex Bradley Cooper.

Speaking with People Magazine, the model shared how she’s protecting daughter Lea from “so many beauty standards out there.”

Irina said, “I just feel like there are so many beauty standards out there that of course I try to protect my daughter from.”

Adding, “It’s very important and I really hope that it’s not a trend.”

Moreover, Irina hopes that her daughter Lea follows to “stand up for who you are.”

Admitting that she herself learned loving herself with time, Irina said, “in this industry, there is so many things that now you can perfect and adjust, and I always say, you just have to love who you are.”

“I’m literally in the right time in my life. I’m a mother and I feel very comfortable in my own skin,” Irina added. “Imperfections could be perfect. I mean, you can look at one of the most beautiful women in the world and maybe they don’t have a perfect nose or lips or ears, but that’s the beauty of them. So, I’m standing up for natural beauty, celebrating who you are.”

Bradley Cooper and Irina Shayk welcomed daughter Lea in 2017 and broke up two years later.