Neil deGrasse Tyson Presents a Brief History of Everything in an 8.5 Minute Animation

Patre­on, a crowd fund­ing site where fans can auto­mat­i­cal­ly tithe a set amount to their fave artist every time that per­son uploads con­tent, is a great way for pas­sion­ate, under-rec­og­nized indi­vid­u­als to gain vis­i­bil­i­ty and a bit of dough.

So what’s astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson doing there? He’s already famous, and one would think his gig as direc­tor of New York City’s Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um, cou­pled with the pro­ceeds from his books and dvds, would prove suf­fi­cient to any finan­cial needs.

(Is it some sort of Aman­da Palmer thing?)

Nope. Turns out Dr. Tyson is there on some­one else’s behalf, nar­rat­ing an episode of Har­ry Reich’s Minute Physics. The video series often employs white­board ani­ma­tions to explain such sci­en­tif­ic phe­nom­e­na as dark mat­ter, wave/particle dual­i­ty, and bicy­cles.

The lat­est Tyson-nar­rat­ed episode, above, shoots the moon by cram­ming the entire His­to­ry of the Uni­verse (and some com­pli­men­ta­ry Stravin­sky) into an 8.5‑minute frame­work (a neg­li­gi­ble amount when you con­sid­er phe­nom­e­na like light years, but still many times the series’ stan­dard minute).

Thus far, 1075 fans of Minute Physics have anted up, result­ing in a take of $2,992.66 per video. (Click here to see how that amount com­pares to the var­i­ous wages and salaries of Dr. Tyson’s cowork­ers at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry…it’s clear Reich devotes a lot of labor to every episode.)

If you’re feel­ing flush (or ner­vous about the upcom­ing school year), you can join these 1075 fans, earn­ing admis­sion to a sup­port­ers-only activ­i­ty feed where you can ask ques­tions, watch out­takes, pre­view upcom­ing attrac­tions, and pos­si­bly even get your name in the cred­its.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert & Neil deGrasse Break Down Our Awe­some 3 Bil­lion-Mile Jour­ney to Plu­to

Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks Aster­oid Physics & “Non New­ton­ian Solids” with Inspir­ing 9‑Year-Old Stu­dent

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio Show Pod­cast Tack­les the His­to­ry of Video Games

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday