title: Pocahontas

text: One goal of the Virginia Company of London was to convert Native Americans to Christianity, and the company saw an opportunity to promote further investment with the conversion of Pocahontas and her marriage to Rolfe, all of which also helped end the First Anglo-Powhatan War. The company decided to bring Pocahontas to England as a symbol of the tamed New World "savage" and the success of the Virginia colony, and the Rolfes arrived at the port of Plymouth on June 12, 1616. They journeyed to London by coach, accompanied by 11 other Powhatans including a holy man named Tomocomo. John Smith was living in London at the time while Pocahontas was in Plymouth, and she learned that he was still alive. Smith did not meet Pocahontas, but he wrote to Queen Anne of Denmark, the wife of King James, urging that Pocahontas be treated with respect as a royal visitor. He suggested that, if she were treated badly, her "present love to us and Christianity might turn to... scorn and fury", and England might lose the chance to "rightly have a Kingdom by her means."


title: Pocahontas

text: Pocahontas was entertained at various social gatherings. On January 5, 1617, she and Tomocomo were brought before the king at the old Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall at a performance of Ben Jonson's masque "The Vision of Delight". According to Smith, King James was so unprepossessing that neither Pocahontas nor Tomocomo realized whom they had met until it was explained to them afterward.


title: Pocahontas

text: Pocahontas was not a princess in Powhatan culture, but the Virginia Company presented her as one to the English public because she was the daughter of an important chief. The inscription on a 1616 engraving of Pocahontas reads , meaning "Matoaka, alias Rebecca, daughter of the most powerful prince of the Powhatan Empire of Virginia." Many English at this time recognized Powhatan as the ruler of an empire, and presumably accorded to his daughter what they considered appropriate status. Smith's letter to Queen Anne refers to "Powhatan their chief King." Cleric and travel writer Samuel Purchas recalled meeting Pocahontas in London, noting that she impressed those whom she met because she "carried her selfe as the daughter of a king." When he met her again in London, Smith referred to her deferentially as a "King's daughter."


title: Pocahontas

text: Pocahontas was apparently treated well in London. At the masque, her seats were described as "well placed" and, according to Purchas, London's Bishop John King "entertained her with festival state and pomp beyond what I have seen in his greate hospitalitie afforded to other ladies."


title: Pocahontas

text: Not all the English were so impressed, however. Helen C. Rountree claims that there is no contemporaneous evidence to suggest that Pocahontas was regarded in England "as anything like royalty," despite the writings of John Smith. Rather, she was considered to be something of a curiosity, according to Rountree, who suggests that she was merely "the Virginian woman" to most Englishmen.


title: Pocahontas

text: Pocahontas and Rolfe lived in the suburb of Brentford, Middlesex for some time, as well as at Rolfe's family home at Heacham, Norfolk. In early 1617, Smith met the couple at a social gathering and wrote that, when Pocahontas saw him, "without any words, she turned about, obscured her face, as not seeming well contented," and was left alone for two or three hours. Later, they spoke more; Smith's record of what she said to him is fragmentary and enigmatic. She reminded him of the "courtesies she had done," saying, "you did promise Powhatan what was yours would be his, and he the like to you." She then discomfited him by calling him "father," explaining that Smith had called Powhatan "father" when he was a stranger in Virginia, "and by the same reason so must I do you". Smith did not accept this form of address because, he wrote, Pocahontas outranked him as "a King's daughter." Pocahontas then said, "with a well-set countenance":


title: Pocahontas

text: Finally, Pocahontas told Smith that she and her tribe had thought him dead, but her father had told Tomocomo to seek him "because your countrymen will lie much."


title: Pocahontas

text: In March 1617, Rolfe and Pocahontas boarded a ship to return to Virginia, but they had sailed only as far as Gravesend on the river Thames when Pocahontas became gravely ill. She was taken ashore, where she died from unknown causes, aged approximately 21 and "much lamented." According to Rolfe, she declared that "all must die"; for her, it was enough that her child lived. Speculated causes of her death include pneumonia, smallpox, tuberculosis, hemorrhagic dysentery ("the Bloody flux") and poisoning.


title: Pocahontas

text: Pocahontas's funeral took place on March 21, 1617, in the parish of St George's Church, Gravesend. Her grave is thought to be underneath the church's chancel, though that church was destroyed in a fire in 1727 and its exact site is unknown. She is commemorated by a life-sized bronze statue in St. George's Churchyard, by the American sculptor William Ordway Partridge.


title: Pocahontas

text: Thomas Rolfe and his wife, Jane Poythress, had a daughter, Jane Rolfe, who was born in Varina, Henrico County, Virginia, on October 10, 1650. Jane Rolfe married Robert Bolling of Prince George County, Virginia. Their son, John Bolling, was born in 1676. John Bolling married Mary Kennon and had six surviving children, each of whom married and had surviving children.


title: Pocahontas

text: In 1907, Pocahontas was the first Native American to be honored on a US stamp. She was a member of the inaugural class of Virginia Women in History in 2000. In July 2015, the Pamunkey Native tribe became the first federally recognized tribe in the state of Virginia; they are descendants of the Powhatan chiefdom of which Pocahontas was a member.


title: Pocahontas

text: After her death, increasingly fanciful and romanticized representations were produced about Pocahontas, in which she and Smith are frequently portrayed as romantically involved. Contemporaneous sources substantiate claims of their friendship but not romance. The first claim of their romantic involvement was in John Davis' "Travels in the United States of America" (1803).


title: Pocahontas

text: As frequently depicted in advertisements and media, Pocahontas often exemplifies the Pocahontas Perplex. Introduced by historian Rayna Green, "The Pocahontas Perplex" is an exotic unattainable queen image of a Native woman and a self-sacrificial and attainable princess image. Also, Pewewardy supports Green's idea of the Native princess with Pocahontas being presented as more human than her Native peers.


title: Pocahontas

text: "In Pocahontas, Indian [sic] characters such as Grandmother Willow, Meeko, and Flit belong to the Disney tradition of familiar animals. In so doing, they are rendered as cartoons, certainly less realistic than Pocahontas and John Smith; In this way, Indians remain marginal and invisible, thereby ironically being 'strangers in their own lands' - the shadow Indians. They fight desperately on the silver screen in defense of their asserted rights, but die trying to kill the white hero or save the Indian woman.’"


title: Pocahontas

text: Pocahontas is frequently depicted in popular culture in a manner that exemplifies the Pocahontas Perplex. Green discusses the similar fetishization that Native and Asian women experience. Both groups are viewed as "exotic" and "submissive," which aids their dehumanization. Also, Green touches on how Native women had to either "keep their exotic distance or die," which is associated with the widespread image of Pocahontas trying to sacrifice her life for John Smith.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Leslie William Nielsen (11 February 192628 November 2010) was a Canadian actor and comedian. With a career spanning 60 years, he appeared in more than 100 films and 150 television programs, portraying more than 220 characters.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen was born in Regina, Saskatchewan. After high school, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1943 and served until the end of World War II. Upon his discharge, Nielsen worked as a disc jockey before receiving a scholarship to study theatre at the Neighborhood Playhouse. He made his acting debut in 1950, appearing in 46 live television programs a year. Nielsen made his film debut in 1956, with supporting roles in several dramas and western and romance films produced between the 1950s and the 1970s.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Although his notable performances in the films "Forbidden Planet" and "The Poseidon Adventure" gave him standing as a serious actor, Nielsen later gained enduring recognition for his deadpan comedy roles during the 1980s, after being cast for the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker comedy film "Airplane!". In his comedy roles, Nielsen specialized in portraying characters oblivious to and complicit in their absurd surroundings. Nielsen's performance in "Airplane!" marked his turning point, which made him "the Olivier of spoofs" according to film critic Roger Ebert, and leading to further success in the genre with "The Naked Gun" film series, based on the earlier short-lived television series "Police Squad!", in which Nielsen also starred. Nielsen received a variety of awards and was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen was born on 11 February 1926 in Regina, Saskatchewan. His mother, Mabel Elizabeth ("" Davies), was an immigrant from Wales, and his father, Ingvard Eversen Nielsen (1900–1975), was a Danish-born constable in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Nielsen was born the second of two boys to both his parents. His elder brother, Erik Nielsen (1924–2008), was a long-time Canadian Member of Parliament, cabinet minister, and Deputy Prime Minister of Canada from 1984 to 1986. He also has a half-brother, Gilbert Nielsen, from his father's other relationship.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen's half-uncle Jean Hersholt was an actor known for his portrayal of Dr. Christian in a radio series of that title, and the subsequent television series and films. In a 1994 "Boston Globe" article, Nielsen explained, "I did learn very early that when I would mention my uncle, people would look at me as if I were the biggest liar in the world. Then I would take them home and show them 8-by-10 glossies, and things changed quite drastically. So I began to think that maybe this acting business was not a bad idea, much as I was very shy about it and certainly without courage regarding it. My uncle died not too long after I was in a position to know him. I regret that I had not a chance to know him better."


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen lived for several years in Fort Norman (now Tulita) in the Northwest Territories, where his father was with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. His father was an abusive man who beat his wife and sons, and Leslie longed to escape. Following graduation from Victoria High School (later renamed Victoria School of the Arts) in Edmonton, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force at age 17 in 1943, though he was legally deaf (he wore hearing aids most of his life). There he trained as an aerial gunner during World War II. However, he was too young to be fully trained or sent overseas. Upon the war's end, Nielsen was discharged and worked briefly as a disc jockey at a Calgary, Alberta, radio station, before enrolling at the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: While studying in Toronto, Nielsen received a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse. He noted, "I couldn't refuse, but I must say when you come from the land of the snow goose, the moose, and wool to New York, you're bringing every ton of hayseed and country bumpkin that you packed. As long as I didn't open my mouth, I felt a certain security. But I always thought I was going to be unmasked: 'OK, pack your stuff.' 'Well, what's the matter?' 'We've discovered you have no talent; we're shipping you back to Canada.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: He moved to New York City for his scholarship, studying theatre and music at the Neighborhood Playhouse, while performing in summer stock theatre. Afterward, he attended the Actors Studio, until his first television appearance in 1950 on an episode of "Studio One", alongside Charlton Heston, for which he was paid $75 ().


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen's career began in dramatic roles on television during "Television's Golden Age", appearing in 46 live programs in 1950 alone. He said there "was very little gold, we only got $75 or $100 per show." He narrated documentaries and commercials and most of his early work as a dramatic actor was uneventful. Hal Erickson of Allmovie noted that "much of Nielsen's early work was undistinguished; he was merely a handsome leading man in an industry overstocked with handsome leading men."


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: In 1956, he made his feature-film debut in the Michael Curtiz-directed musical film "The Vagabond King". In the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer", Nielsen remembered Curtiz as "a sadist, a charming sadist, but a sadist". Nielsen called this film "The Vagabond Turkey". Though the film was not a success, producer Nicholas Nayfack offered him an audition for the science-fiction film "Forbidden Planet", resulting in Nielsen's taking a long contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: "Forbidden Planet" became an instant success, and roles in other MGM films such as "Ransom!" (1956), "The Opposite Sex" (1956) and "Hot Summer Night" (1957) followed. In 1957, he won the lead role opposite Debbie Reynolds in the romantic comedy "Tammy and the Bachelor", which, as a "Chicago Tribune" critic wrote in 1998, made people consider Nielsen a dramatic actor and handsome romantic lead. However, dissatisfied with the films he was offered, calling the studios "a Tiffany, which had forgotten how to make silver", Nielsen left MGM after auditioning for Messala in the 1959 "Ben-Hur". Stephen Boyd got the role.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: After leaving the studios, Nielsen landed the lead role in the Disney miniseries "The Swamp Fox", as American Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion. In a 1988 interview, he reflected on the series, saying, "That was a great experience, because the Disney people didn't do their shows like everyone else, knocking out an episode a week. ... We only had to do an episode a month, and the budgets were extremely high for TV at that time. We had location shooting rather than cheap studio backdrops, and very authentic costumes." Eight episodes were produced and aired between 1959 and 1961.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: His television appearances include "Justice", "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", "Wagon Train", "Gunsmoke", "The Virginian", and "The Wild Wild West". In 1961, he was the lead in a Los Angeles police drama called "The New Breed". He guest-starred in a 1964 episode of "Daniel Boone" with Fess Parker in a minor but credited role. In 1968, he had a major role in the pilot for the police series "Hawaii Five-O", and appeared in one of the seventh-season episodes. In 1969, he had the leading role as a police officer in "".


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: In 1972, Nielsen appeared as the ship's captain in "The Poseidon Adventure". He also starred in the William Girdler's 1977 action film, "Project: Kill". His last dramatic role before mainly comedy roles was the 1979 Canadian disaster film "City on Fire", in which he played a corrupt mayor. In 1980, he guest-starred as Sinclair on the CBS miniseries "The Chisholms".


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: In an early comedic appearance, Nielsen appeared on "M*A*S*H" in 1973 as the title character in "The Ringbanger."


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen's supporting role of Dr. Rumack in Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker's 1980's "Airplane!" was a turning point in his career. The film, a parody of disaster films such as "Zero Hour!" and "Airport", was based on building a comedy around actors known for dramatic roles. Other stars included Robert Stack, Peter Graves, and Lloyd Bridges. Nielsen's deadpan delivery contrasted with the absurdity surrounding him. When asked, "Surely you can't be serious?", he responded with a curt, "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley." In several interviews, he reflected on the line: "I thought it was amusing, but it never occurred to me that it was going to become a trademark. It's such a surprise ... the thing comes out, people say, 'What did he say?!


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen said he was "pleased and honoured that [he] had a chance to deliver that line." As of 2010, the comedic exchange was at number 79 on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes. The American Film Institute included the film in its list of the top-10 comedy films of all time in 2008, and a 2007 survey in the United Kingdom judged it the second-greatest comedy film of all time. In 2012, "Empire" voted it number one in the 50 Funniest Comedies Ever poll. Critics praised the film, which also proved a long-term success with audiences. In 2010, "Airplane!" was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: The directors cast Nielsen for his ability to play like "a fish in water", saying "You could have cast funny people and done it with everybody winking, goofing off, and silly ... we wanted people to be oblivious to the comedy." For Nielsen, "Airplane!" marked a shift from dramatic roles to deadpan comedy. When it was suggested his role in "Airplane!" was against type, Nielsen protested that he had "always been cast against type before", and that comedy was what he always wanted to do. The same directors cast Nielsen in a similar style, in their TV series "Police Squad!". The series introduced Nielsen as Frank Drebin, the stereotypical police officer modelled after serious characters in earlier police series.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: "Police Squad"'s opening sequence was based on the 1950s show "M Squad", which starred Lee Marvin, and opened with footage of a police car roving through a dark urban setting with a big band playing a jazz song in the background. The Hank Simms voice-over and the show's organization into acts with an epilogue was homage to Quinn Martin police dramas including "The Fugitive", "The Streets of San Francisco", "Barnaby Jones", "The F.B.I.", and "Cannon". Nielsen portrayed a serious character whose one-liners appeared accidental next to the pratfalls and sight gags that were happening around him. Although the show lasted only six episodes, Nielsen received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Six years after cancellation of "Police Squad!", the film "" returned Nielsen to his role as Frank Drebin. It involved a ruthless drug king trying hypnosis to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II. Nielsen did many of his own stunts: "You have an idea of how you're going to do something, and it's your vision ... unless you do it, it really doesn't stand a chance." This movie grossed over $78 million and was well received by critics. Ebert's –star review (out of four) noted, "You laugh, and then you laugh at yourself for laughing."


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: "The Naked Gun" spawned two sequels: "" (1991) and "" (1994). "The Naked Gun 2½" grossed more than the original, with $86.9 million, while "" grossed $51.1 million. Nielsen remained open to a fourth "Naked Gun" film, although he doubted that it would be produced — "I don't think so", he said in 2005. "If there hasn't been one by now, I doubt it. I think it would be wonderful."


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen briefly appeared on the World Wrestling Federation program in the summer of 1994 on "WWF Monday Night Raw", capitalizing on Frank Drebin. Nielsen (and George Kennedy) were hired as sleuths to unravel the mystery of the Undertaker, who had disappeared at January's Royal Rumble event. At SummerSlam 1994, in a "Naked Gun" parody, they were hot on the case (in fact, they were standing on a case). Although they did not find the Undertaker, the case had been closed (the literal case had been shut), thus they solved the mystery. In 1990, Nielsen appeared as a Frank Drebin character in advertisements in the United Kingdom for Red Rock Cider.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Noncomedic roles after "Airplane!" included "Prom Night" (1980) and "Creepshow" (1982), both horror films, and as a dramatic and unsympathetic character in the 1986 comedy "Soul Man". His last dramatic role was as Allen Green, a violent client of a prostitute killed in self-defence by Barbra Streisand's character, Claudia Draper, in Martin Ritt's courtroom drama "Nuts" (1987).


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: After "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun", Nielsen portrayed similarly styled roles in a number of other films. These mostly emulated the style of "The Naked Gun" with varying success and often targeted specific films; many were panned by critics and most performed poorly. "Repossessed" (1990) and "" (2001) were parodies of "The Exorcist" and "", respectively. Both attempted absurd comedy, but were poorly received. Even a leading role in a Mel Brooks comic horror, "", failed to generate much box-office excitement, although it did gain a following in a later release to video. Both 1996's "Spy Hard" and 1998's "Wrongfully Accused", a parody of James Bond films and "The Fugitive", were popular on video, but not well received by critics.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: His attempt at children's comedies met additional criticism. "Surf Ninjas" (1993) and "Mr. Magoo" (1997) had scathing reviews. Several critics were disappointed that Nielsen's role in "Surf Ninjas" was only "an extended cameo" and Chris Hicks recommended that viewers "avoid any comedy that features Leslie Nielsen outside of the "Naked Gun" series." Jeff Miller of the "Houston Chronicle" panned "Mr. Magoo", a live-action remake of the 1950s cartoon, by saying, "I'm supposed to suggest how the film might be better, but I can't think of anything to say other than to make the film again."


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen's first major success since "The Naked Gun" came in a supporting role in "Scary Movie 3" (2003). His appearance as President Harris led to a second appearance in its sequel, "Scary Movie 4" (2006). This was the first time Nielsen had reprised a character since Frank Drebin. In one scene, Nielsen appeared almost nude, and one critic referred to the scene as putting "the 'scary' in "Scary Movie 4"."


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen also produced instructional golf videos, which were not presented in a serious style, beginning with 1993's "Bad Golf Made Easier". The videos combined comedy with golf techniques. The series spawned two additional sequels, "Bad Golf My Way" (1994) and "Stupid Little Golf Video" (1997). Nielsen also co-wrote a fictional autobiography titled "The Naked Truth". The book portrayed Nielsen as a popular actor with a long history of prestigious films.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: In his 80s, Nielsen performed serious roles on screen and stage (such as his one-man theatre show "Darrow", in which he played Clarence Darrow), as well as providing voice-overs and appearances for commercials (including spots for a credit union in Arizona, where he owned a secondary residence), cartoons such as "Zeroman", where he had the leading role/voice, children's shows, such as "Pumper Pups", which he narrated, and comedic film roles. The sibling relationship with his elder brother, the Honourable Erik Nielsen, a former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, served as the premise of an HBO mockumentary entitled "The Canadian Conspiracy" in which Leslie Nielsen appeared, along with other prominent Canadian-born media personalities. He was a celebrity contestant on CBS's "Gameshow Marathon", where he played "The Price Is Right", "Let's Make a Deal", "Beat the Clock", and "Press Your Luck" for charity.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Beginning in February 2007, Nielsen began playing a small role as a doctor in the humorous yet educational television show "Doctor*Ology". The show chronicles real-life medical techniques and technology on the Discovery Channel. Nielsen said: "There are any number of things that you think about when you ponder if you hadn't been an actor, what would you be, and I've always said I'd like to be an astronaut or a doctor. I have such admiration for doctors. I just don't know how you go around to thank them enough for coming up with the world's most remarkable new discoveries."


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: In 2007, Nielsen starred in the drama "Music Within". In 2008, he portrayed a version of Uncle Ben for "Superhero Movie", a spoof of superhero films. He then appeared in the 2008 parody "An American Carol", which David Zucker directed, produced, and co-wrote. He appeared in the 2009 parody "Stan Helsing". Nielsen portrayed the doctor in the Spanish horror comedy "Spanish Movie", a spoof comedy like "Scary Movie", but making fun of popular Spanish films.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen appeared in more than 100 films and 1,500 television episodes, portraying more than 220 characters.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen married four times: to nightclub singer Monica Boyar (1950–1956), Alisande Ullman (1958–1973), Brooks Oliver (1981–1983), and Barbaree Earl (2001 – his death in 2010). He had two daughters from his second marriage, Maura and Thea Nielsen.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen often played golf. He joked, "I have no goals or ambition. I do, however, wish to work enough to maintain whatever celebrity status I have so that they will continue to invite me to golf tournaments." His interest in the sport led him to comedic instructional films.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen was a practical joker, and known for pranking people with a portable hand-controlled fart machine. His epitaph reads "Let 'er rip", a final reference to his favourite practical joke.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: In his later years, Nielsen and his wife Barbaree resided between homes in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Paradise Valley, Arizona.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Nielsen was legally deaf and wore hearing aids for most of his life. Because of this, he supported the Better Hearing Institute. Later in life, Nielsen had knee osteoarthritis. He participated in an educational video from The Arthritis Research Centre of Canada (ARC), demonstrating the physical examination of a patient with knee osteoarthritis.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: In November 2010, Nielsen was admitted to Holy Cross Hospital, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with pneumonia. On November 28, Doug Nielsen, Nielsen's nephew, told the CJOB radio station that 84-year-old Nielsen had died in his sleep from pneumonia around 5:30 pm EST surrounded by family and friends. His body was interred in Fort Lauderdale's Evergreen Cemetery. As a final bit of humour, Nielsen chose "Let 'er rip" as his epitaph.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: Among his awards, in 1995 Nielsen received UCLA's Jack Benny Award. In 1988, he became the 1,884th personality to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6541 Hollywood Blvd. In 2001 he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. The following year he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, although he was also a naturalized US citizen.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: With his American citizenship, he maintained his Canadian heritage: "There's no way you can be a Canadian and think you can lose it ... Canadians are a goodly group. They are very aware of caring and helping." On 19 May 2005, during the centennial gala of his birth province, Saskatchewan, Leslie Nielsen was introduced to Queen Elizabeth II.


title: Leslie Nielsen

text: On 20 February 2002, Nielsen was named an honorary citizen of West Virginia and an Ambassador of Mountain State Goodwill. Nielsen visited the state many times to speak and visit friends. In 2003, in honour of Nielsen, Grant MacEwan College named its school of communications after him. Also in 2003, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists awarded him the ACTRA Award of Excellence.


title: Nick Cave

text: Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Cave's music is generally characterised by emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences and lyrical obsessions with death, religion, love and violence.


title: Nick Cave

text: Born and raised in rural Victoria, Cave studied art in Melbourne before fronting the Birthday Party, one of the city's leading post-punk bands, in the late 1970s. They relocated to London in 1980. Disillusioned by life there, they evolved towards a darker and more challenging sound that helped inspire gothic rock and acquired a reputation as "the most violent live band in the world". Cave became recognised for his confrontational performances, his shock of black hair and pale, emaciated look. The band broke up soon after moving to Berlin in 1982, and Cave formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds the year after, later described as one of rock's "most redoubtable, enduring" bands. Much of their early material is set in a mythic American Deep South, drawing on spirituals and Delta blues, while Cave's preoccupation with Old Testament notions of good versus evil culminated in what has been called his signature song, "The Mercy Seat" (1988), and in his debut novel, "And the Ass Saw the Angel" (1989). Also in 1988, he appeared in "Ghosts... of the Civil Dead", an Australian prison film which he co-wrote and scored.


title: Nick Cave

text: The 1990s saw Cave move between São Paulo and England, and find inspiration in the New Testament. He went on to achieve mainstream success with quieter, piano-driven ballads, notably the Kylie Minogue duet "Where the Wild Roses Grow" (1996), and "Into My Arms" (1997). Turning increasingly to film in the 2000s, Cave wrote the Australian Western "The Proposition" (2005), also composing its soundtrack with frequent collaborator Warren Ellis. The pair's film score credits include "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (2007), "The Road" (2009) and "Lawless" (2012). Their garage rock side project Grinderman has released two albums since 2006. In 2009, he released his second novel, "The Death of Bunny Munro", and starred in the semi-fictional "day in the life" film "20,000 Days on Earth" (2014). His more recent musical work features ambient and electronic elements, as well as increasingly abstract lyrics, informed in part by grief over his son Arthur's 2015 death, which is explored in the documentary "One More Time with Feeling" (2016) and the Bad Seeds' 17th and latest album, "Ghosteen" (2019).


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave maintains "The Red Hand Files", a newsletter he uses to respond to questions from fans. His work is the subject of academic study, and his songs have been covered by a wide range of artists, including Johnny Cash ("The Mercy Seat"), Metallica ("Loverman") and Snoop Dogg ("Red Right Hand"). He was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2007, and named an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2017.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave was born on 22 September 1957 in Warracknabeal, a country town in the Australian state of Victoria, to Dawn Cave (née Treadwell) and Colin Frank Cave. As a child, he lived in Warracknabeal and then Wangaratta in rural Victoria. His father taught English and mathematics at the local technical school; his mother was a librarian at the high school that Cave attended. Cave's father introduced him to literary classics from an early age, such as "Crime and Punishment" and "Lolita", and also organised the first symposium on the Australian bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly, with whom Cave was enamoured as a child. Through his older brother, Cave became a fan of progressive rock bands such as King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull, while a childhood girlfriend introduced him to Leonard Cohen, who he later described as "the greatest songwriter of them all".


title: Nick Cave

text: When Cave was 9 he joined the choir of Wangaratta's Holy Trinity Cathedral. At 13 he was expelled from Wangaratta High School. In 1970, after he moved with his family to the Melbourne suburb of Murrumbeena, he became a boarder and later day student at Caulfield Grammar School. He was 19 when his father was killed in a car collision; his mother told him of his father's death while she was bailing him out of a St Kilda police station where he was being held on a charge of burglary. He would later recall that his father "died at a point in my life when I was most confused" and that "the loss of my father created in my life a vacuum, a space in which my words began to float and collect and find their purpose".


title: Nick Cave

text: After his secondary schooling, Cave studied painting at the Caulfield Institute of Technology in 1976, but dropped out the following year to pursue music. He also began using heroin around the time that he left art school.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave attended his first music concert at Melbourne's Festival Hall. The bill consisted of Manfred Mann, Deep Purple and Free. Cave recalled: "I remember sitting there and feeling physically the sound going through me." In early 1977, he saw Australian punk rock groups Radio Birdman and the Saints live for the first time. Cave was particularly inspired by the latter band's show, saying that he left the venue "a different person"; a photograph by Rennie Ellis shows Cave in the front row, appearing awestruck by the Saints' frontman Chris Bailey.


title: Nick Cave

text: In 1973, Cave met Mick Harvey (guitar), Phill Calvert (drums), John Cochivera (guitar), Brett Purcell (bass), and Chris Coyne (saxophone); fellow students at Caulfield Grammar. They founded a band with Cave as singer. Their repertoire consisted of rudimentary cover versions of songs by Lou Reed, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Roxy Music and Alex Harvey, among others. Later, the line-up slimmed down to four members including Cave's friend Tracy Pew on bass. In 1977, after leaving school, they adopted the name The Boys Next Door and began playing predominantly original material. Guitarist and songwriter Rowland S. Howard joined the band in 1978.


title: Nick Cave

text: They were a leader of Melbourne's post-punk scene in the late 1970s, playing hundreds of live shows in Australia before changing their name to the Birthday Party in 1980 and moving to London, then West Berlin. Cave's Australian girlfriend and muse Anita Lane accompanied them to London. The band were notorious for their provocative live performances which featured Cave shrieking, bellowing and throwing himself about the stage, backed up by harsh pounding rock music laced with guitar feedback. Cave used Old Testament imagery with lyrics about sin, debauchery and damnation. Cave's droll sense of humour and penchant for parody is evident in many of the band's songs, including "Nick the Stripper" and "King Ink". "Release the Bats", one of the band's most famous songs, was intended as an over-the-top "piss-take" on gothic rock, and a "direct attack" on the "stock gothic associations that less informed critics were wont to make". Ironically, it became highly influential on the genre, giving rise to a new generation of bands.


title: Nick Cave

text: The band with Cave as their leader and frontman has released seventeen studio albums. Pitchfork Media calls the group one of rock's "most enduring, redoubtable" bands, with an accomplished discography. Though their sound tends to change considerably from one album to another, the one constant of the band is an unpolished blending of disparate genres, and song structures which provide a vehicle for Cave's virtuosic, frequently histrionic theatrics. Critics Stephen Thomas Erlewine and Steve Huey wrote: "With the Bad Seeds, Cave continued to explore his obsessions with religion, death, love, America, and violence with a bizarre, sometimes self-consciously eclectic hybrid of blues, gospel, rock, and arty post-punk."


title: Nick Cave

text: Reviewing 2008's "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" album, "NME" used the phrase "gothic psycho-sexual apocalypse" to describe the "menace" present in the lyrics of the title track. Their most recent work, "Ghosteen", was released in October 2019.


title: Nick Cave

text: In mid-August 2013, Cave was a 'First Longlist' finalist for the 9th Coopers AMP, alongside artists such as Kevin Mitchell and the Drones. The Australian music prize is worth A$30,000. The prize ultimately went to Big Scary. In a September 2013 interview, Cave explained that he returned to using a typewriter for songwriting after his experience with the "Nocturama" album, as he "could walk in on a bad day and hit 'delete' and that was the end of it". Cave believes that he lost valuable work due to a "bad day".


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2006, Cave formed Grinderman with himself on vocals, guitar, organ and piano, Warren Ellis (tenor guitar, electric mandolin, violin, viola, guitar, backing vocals), Martyn P. Casey (bass, guitar, backing vocals) and Jim Sclavunos (drums, percussion, backing vocals). The alternative rock outfit was formed as "a way to escape the weight of The Bad Seeds". The band's name was inspired by a Memphis Slim song, "Grinder Man Blues", which Cave is noted to have started singing during one of the band's early rehearsal sessions. The band's eponymous debut studio album, "Grinderman", was released in 2007 to positive reviews and the band's second and final studio album, "Grinderman 2", was released in 2010 to a similar reception.


title: Nick Cave

text: Grinderman's first public performance was at All Tomorrow's Parties in April 2007 where Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream accompanied Grinderman on backing vocals and percussion.


title: Nick Cave

text: In December 2011, after performing at the Meredith Music Festival, Cave announced that Grinderman was over. Two years later, Grinderman performed both weekends at the 2013 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, as did Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave's work was featured in a scene in the 1986 film, "Dogs in Space" by Richard Lowenstein. Cave performed parts of the Boys Next Door song "Shivers" twice during the film, once on video and once live.


title: Nick Cave

text: Another early fan of Cave's was German director Wim Wenders, who lists Cave, along with Lou Reed and Portishead, as among his favourites. Cave and the Bad Seeds appear in the film 1987 film "Wings of Desire" performing "The Carny" and "From Her to Eternity". Two original songs were included in Wenders' 1993 sequel "Faraway, So Close!", including the title track. The soundtrack for Wenders' 1991 film "Until the End of the World" features, another Cave original, "(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World". Cave and the Bad Seeds later recorded a live in-studio cover track for Wenders' 2003 documentary "The Soul of a Man", and his 2008 film "Palermo Shooting" features two original songs from Cave's side project Grinderman.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave's songs have also appeared in a number of Hollywood blockbusters – "There is a Light" appears on the 1995 soundtrack for "Batman Forever", and "Red Right Hand" appeared in a number of films including "The X-Files", "Dumb & Dumber"; "Scream", its sequels "Scream 2" and "3", and "Hellboy" (performed by Pete Yorn). In "Scream 3", the song was given a reworking with Cave writing new lyrics and adding an orchestra to the arrangement of the track. "People Ain't No Good" was featured in the animated movie "Shrek 2" and the song "O Children" was featured in the 2010 movie "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1."


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2000 Andrew Dominik used "Release the Bats" in his film "Chopper". Numerous other movies use Cave's songs including "Box of Moonlight" (1996), "Mr In-Between" (2001), "Romance & Cigarettes" (2005), "" (2009), "The Freshman", "Gas Food Lodging", "Kevin & Perry Go Large", "About Time"


title: Nick Cave

text: His works also appear in a number of major TV programmes among them "Trauma", "The L Word", "Traveler", "The Unit", "I Love the '70s", "Outpatient", "The Others", "Nip/Tuck", and "Californication". Most recently his work has appeared in the Netflix series "After Life", BBC series "Peaky Blinders" and the Australian series "Jack Irish". "Red Right Hand" is the theme song for "Peaky Blinders" and renditions of the track can be heard throughout the series, including covers by artists such as Arctic Monkeys, PJ Harvey, Laura Marling, Jarvis Cocker and Iggy Pop, Patti Smith and Anna Calvi. In a Vice interview, Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy mentioned that Cave personally approved the use of the song for the series after watching a pre-screening of the show.


title: Nick Cave

text: During the 1982 recording sessions for the Birthday Party's "Junkyard" LP, Cave, together with band-mates Harvey and Howard, joined members of the Go-Betweens to form Tuff Monks. The short-lived band released one single, "After the Fireworks", and played live only once. Later that year, Cave contributed to the "Honeymoon in Red" concept album. Intended as a collaboration between the Birthday Party and Lydia Lunch, the album was not released until 1987, by which time Lunch had fallen out with Cave, who she credits on the release as "Anonymous", "Her Dead Twin" and "A Drunk Cowboy Junkie". During the Birthday Party's Berlin period, Cave collaborated with local post-punk group Die Haut on their album "Burnin' the Ice", released in 1983. In the immediate aftermath of the Birthday Party's breakup, Cave performed several shows in the United States as part of The Immaculate Consumptive, a short-lived "super-group" with Lunch, Marc Almond and Clint Ruin. Cave sang on a Annie Hogan song called "Vixo" which was recorded in October 1983: the track was released in 1985 on the 12" inch vinyl "Annie Hogan – Plays Kickabye".


title: Nick Cave

text: A lifelong fan of Johnny Cash, Cave covered his song "The Singer" (originally "The Folk Singer") for the 1986 album "Kicking Against the Pricks", which Cash seemingly repaid by covering "The Mercy Seat" on "" (2000). Cave was then invited to contribute to the liner notes of the retrospective "The Essential Johnny Cash" CD, released to coincide with Cash's 70th birthday. Subsequently, Cave recorded a duet with Cash, a version of Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", for what would be Cash's final album, "" (2002). Another duet between the two artists, the American folk song "Cindy", was released posthumously on "Unearthed", a boxset of outtakes. Cave's song "Let the Bells Ring", released on the 2004 album "Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus", is a posthumous tribute to Cash.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave played with Shane MacGowan on cover versions of Bob Dylan's "Death is Not the End" and Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World". Cave also performed "What a Wonderful World" live with the Flaming Lips. Cave recorded a cover version of the Pogues song "Rainy Night in Soho", written by MacGowan. MacGowan also sings a version of "Lucy", released on "B-Sides and Rarities". On 3 May 2008, during the "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" tour, MacGowan joined Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on stage to perform "Lucy" at Dublin Castle in Ireland. Pulp's single "Bad Cover Version" includes on its B-side a cover version by Cave of that band's song "Disco 2000". On the Deluxe Edition of Pulp's "Different Class" another take of this cover can be found.


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2004, Cave gave a hand to Marianne Faithfull on the album, "Before the Poison". He co-wrote and produced three songs ("Crazy Love", "There is a Ghost" and "Desperanto"), and the Bad Seeds are featured on all of them. He is also featured on "The Crane Wife" (originally by the Decemberists), on Faithfull's 2008 album, "Easy Come, Easy Go".


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave provided guest vocals on the title track of Current 93's 1996 album "All the Pretty Little Horses", as well as the closer "Patripassian". For his 1996 album "Murder Ballads", Cave recorded "Where the Wild Roses Grow" with Kylie Minogue, and "Henry Lee" with PJ Harvey.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave also took part in the "X-Files" compilation CD with some other artists, where he reads parts from the Bible combined with own texts, like "Time Jesum ...", he outed himself as a fan of the series some years ago, but since he does not watch much TV, it was one of the only things he watched. He collaborated on the 2003 single "Bring It On", with Chris Bailey, formerly of the Australian punk group, The Saints. Cave contributed vocals to the song "Sweet Rosyanne", on the 2006 album "Catch That Train!" from Dan Zanes & Friends, a children's music group.


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2010 Nick Cave began a series of duets with Debbie Harry for The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project.


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2011, Cave recorded a cover of the Zombies' "She's Not There" with Neko Case, which was used at the end of the first episode of the fourth season of "True Blood".


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2014, Cave wrote the libretto for the opera Shell Shock (opera) by Nicholas Lens. The opera premiered at the Royal Opera House La Monnaie in Brussels on 24 October 2014


title: Nick Cave

text: and was also set up at the international Weekend of War and Peace, Paris on 10 and 11 November 2018 performed by L' Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France at Cité de la Musique (Philharmonie de Paris) with live television broadcasting on Arte and France Musique.


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2020, Cave wrote the libretto for L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S, a trance-minimal chamber opera by Nicholas Lens. A recording produced by both writers was released by Deutsche Grammophon.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave creates original film scores with fellow Bad Seeds band member Warren Ellis—they first teamed up in 2005 to work on Hillcoat's bushranger film "The Proposition", for which Cave also wrote the screenplay.


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2006, Cave and Ellis composed the music for Andrew Dominik's adaptation of Ron Hansen's "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". By the time Dominik's film was released, Hillcoat was preparing his next project, "The Road", an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel about a father and son struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Cave and Ellis wrote and recorded the score for the film, which was released in 2009. In 2011, Cave and Ellis reunited with Hillcoat to score his latest picture, "Lawless". Cave also authored this screenplay based on Matt Bondurant's novel "The Wettest County in the World". Set in Depression-era Franklin County, Virginia, the film was released in 2012.


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2016, Cave and Ellis scored the neo-Western film "Hell or High Water", directed by David Mackenzie. The following year, they scored Taylor Sheridan's neo-Western "Wind River", as well as Australian director David Michôd's "War Machine".


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave and Ellis have also scored a number of documentary films, including "The English Surgeon" (2007), "West of Memphis" (2012) and "Prophet's Prey" (2015). Cave and Ellis created music for the Vesturport productions "Woyzeck", "The Metamorphosis" and "Faust".


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave released his first book, "King Ink", in 1988. It is a collection of lyrics and plays, including collaborations with Lydia Lunch. In 1997, he followed up with "King Ink II", containing lyrics, poems, and the transcript of a radio essay he did for the BBC in July 1996, "The Flesh Made Word," discussing in biographical format his relationship with Christianity.


title: Nick Cave

text: While he was based in West Berlin, Cave started working on what was to become his debut novel, "And the Ass Saw the Angel" (1989). Significant crossover is evident between the themes in the book and the lyrics Cave wrote in the late stages of the Birthday Party and the early stage of his solo career. "Swampland", from "Mutiny", in particular, uses the same linguistic stylings ('mah' for 'my', for instance) and some of the same themes (the narrator being haunted by the memory of a girl called Lucy, being hunted like an animal, approaching death and execution). On 21 January 2008, a special edition of Cave's novel "And the Ass Saw the Angel" was released. Cave's second novel "The Death of Bunny Munro" was published on 8 September 2009 by Harper Collins books. Telling the story of a sex-addicted salesman, it was also released as a binaural audio-book produced by British Artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard and an iPhone app. The book originally started as a screenplay Cave was going to write for John Hillcoat.


title: Nick Cave

text: Aside from movie soundtracks, Cave also wrote the screenplays for John Hillcoat's "The Proposition" (2005) and "Lawless" (2012).


title: Nick Cave

text: As proof of his interest in scripture, so evident in his lyrics and his prose writing, Cave wrote the foreword to a Canongate publication of the "Gospel according to Mark", published in the UK in 1998. The American edition of the same book (published by Grove Press) contains a foreword by the noted American writer Barry Hannah.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave is a contributor to a 2009 rock biography of the Triffids, "Vagabond Holes: David McComb and the Triffids", edited by Australian academics Niall Lucy and Chris Coughran.


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2022, "Faith, Hope, and Carnage" was published, collected from a series of phone conversations conducted between Cave and Sean O'Hagan during the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave's first film appearance was in Wim Wenders' 1987 film "Wings of Desire", in which he and the Bad Seeds are shown performing at a concert in Berlin.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave has made occasional appearances as an actor. He appears alongside Blixa Bargeld in the 1988 Peter Sempel film "Dandy", playing dice, singing and speaking from his Berlin apartment. He is most prominently featured in the 1989 film "Ghosts... of the Civil Dead", written and directed by John Hillcoat, and in the 1991 film "Johnny Suede" with Brad Pitt.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave appeared in the 2005 homage to Leonard Cohen, "", in which he performed "I'm Your Man" solo, and "Suzanne" with Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla. He also appeared in the 2007 film adaptation of Ron Hansen's novel "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", where he sings "The Ballad of Jesse James". Cave and Warren Ellis are credited for the film's soundtrack. Nick Cave and his son Luke performed one of the songs on the soundtrack together. Luke played the triangle.


title: Nick Cave

text: His interest in the work of Edward Gorey led to his participation in the BBC Radio 3 programme "Guest + Host = Ghost", featuring Peter Blegvad and the radiophonic sound of the Langham Research Centre.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave has also lent his voice in narrating the animated film "The Cat Piano". It was directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson (of the People's Republic of Animation), produced by Jessica Brentnall and features music by Benjamin Speed.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave wrote the screenplay for "The Proposition", a film about bushrangers in the Australian outback during the late 19th century. Directed by John Hillcoat and filmed in Queensland in 2004, it premiered in October 2005 and was later released worldwide to critical acclaim. Cave explained his personal background in relation to writing the film's screenplay in a 2013 interview:


title: Nick Cave

text: I had written long-form before but it is pure story-telling in script writing and that goes back as far as I can remember for me, not just with my father but with myself. I slept in the same bedroom as my sister for many years, until it became indecent to do so and I would tell her stories every night—that is how she would get to sleep. She would say "tell me a story" so I would tell her a story. So that ability, I very much had that from the start and I used to enjoy that at school so actually to write a script—it suddenly felt like I was just making up a big story.


title: Nick Cave

text: The film critic for British newspaper "The Independent" called "The Proposition" "peerless," "a star-studded and uncompromisingly violent outlaw film." The generally ambient soundtrack was recorded by Cave and Warren Ellis.


title: Nick Cave

text: At the request of his friend Russell Crowe, Cave wrote a script for a proposed sequel to "Gladiator" which was rejected by the studio.


title: Nick Cave

text: An announcement in February 2010 stated that Andy Serkis and Cave would collaborate on a motion-capture movie of the Brecht and Weill musical "The Threepenny Opera". As of September 2019, the project has not been realised.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave wrote a screenplay titled "The Wettest County in the World", which was used for the 2012 film "Lawless", directed again by John Hillcoat, starring Tom Hardy and Shia LaBeouf.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave currently maintains a personal blog and an online correspondence page with his fans called "The Red Hand Files" which is seen as a continuation of "In Conversation," a series of live personal talks Cave had held in which the audience were free to ask questions. On the page, Cave discusses various issues ranging from art, religion, current affairs and music, as well as using it as a free platform in which fans are encouraged to ask personal questions on any topic of their choosing. Cave's intimate approach to the Question & Answer format on "The Red Hand Files" was praised by "The Guardian" as "a shelter from the online storm free of discord and conspiracies, and in harmony with the internet vision of Tim Berners-Lee."


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2010, Cave was ranked the 19th greatest living lyricist in "NME". Flea called him the greatest living songwriter in 2011. Rob O'Connor of Yahoo! Music listed him as the 23rd best lyricist in rock history. "The Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays" was edited by academic John H. Baker and published in 2013. In an essay on the album "The Boatman's Call", Peter Billingham praised Cave's love songs as characterised by a "deep, poetic, melancholic introspection." Carl Lavery, another academic featured in the collection, argued that there was a "burgeoning field of Cave studies". Dan Rose argued that Cave "is a master of the disturbing narrative and chronicler of the extreme, though he is also certainly capable of a subtle romantic vision. He does much to the listener who enters his world."


title: Nick Cave

text: Songs written about Cave include "Just a King in Mirrors" (1983) by The Go-Betweens, "Sick Man" (1984) by Foetus, and "Bill Bailey" (1987) by The Gun Club.


title: Nick Cave

text: A number of prominent noise rock vocalists have cited Cave's Birthday Party-era work as their primary influence, including The U-Men's John Bigley, and David Yow, frontman of Scratch Acid and The Jesus Lizard. Yow stated: "For a long time, particularly with Scratch Acid, I was so taken with the Birthday Party that I would deny it", and that "it sounded like I was trying to be Birthday Party Nick Cave—which I was." Often compared to Cave in his vocal delivery, Alexis Marshall of Daughters said that he admires the personality and energy within Cave's voice, and that his early albums "exposed [him] to lyrical content as literature".


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave left Australia in 1980. After stints living in London, Berlin, and São Paulo, he moved to Brighton, England in the early 2000s.


title: Nick Cave

text: The 2014 film "20,000 Days on Earth", about Cave's life, is set around Brighton. In 2017, Cave reportedly told "GQ" magazine that he and his family were considering moving from Brighton to Los Angeles as, after the death of his 15-year-old son, Arthur, they "just find it too difficult to live here."


title: Nick Cave

text: In November 2021, whilst answering a question on "The Red Hand Files" which was referencing the song "Heart That Kills" (from the album "B-Sides & Rarities Part II") Cave stated, "The words of the song go someway toward articulating why Susie and I moved from Brighton to L.A. Brighton had just become too sad. We did, however, return once we realised that, regardless of where we lived, we just took our sadness with us. These days, though, we spend much of our time in London, in a tiny, secret, pink house, where we are mostly happy."


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave dated Anita Lane from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Cave and Lane recorded together on a few occasions. Their most notable collaborations include Lane's "cameo" verse on Cave's Bob Dylan cover "Death Is Not The End" from the album "Murder Ballads", and a cover of the Serge Gainsbourg/Jane Birkin song "Je t'aime... moi non plus/ I love you ... me neither". Lane co-wrote the lyrics to the title track for Cave's 1984 LP, "From Her to Eternity", as well as the lyrics of the song "Stranger Than Kindness" from "Your Funeral, My Trial". Cave, Lydia Lunch and Lane wrote a comic book together, titled "AS-FIX-E-8", in the style of the old "Pussy Galore"/Russ Meyer movies.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave then moved to São Paulo, Brazil, in 1990, where he met and married his first wife, Brazilian journalist Viviane Carneiro. She gave birth to their son Luke in 1991. Cave and Carneiro were married for six years and divorced in 1996.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave's son Jethro was also born in 1991, just ten days before Luke, and grew up with his mother, Beau Lazenby, in Melbourne, Australia. Cave and Jethro did not meet one another until Jethro was about seven or eight. Jethro Lazenby, also known as Jethro Cave, died in May 2022, aged 31.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave briefly dated PJ Harvey during the mid-1990s, with whom he recorded the duet "Henry Lee". Their breakup influenced his 1997 album "The Boatman's Call".


title: Nick Cave

text: In 1997, Cave met British model Susie Bick; they married in 1999. Their twin sons, Arthur and Earl, were born in London in 2000 and raised in Brighton. Bick is the model on the cover of Cave's album "Push the Sky Away".


title: Nick Cave

text: When he was 15 years old, Cave's son Arthur fell from a cliff at Ovingdean, near Brighton, and died from his injuries on 14 July 2015. An inquest found that Arthur had taken LSD before the fall and the coroner ruled his death was an accident. The effect of Arthur's death on Cave and his family was explored in the 2016 documentary film "One More Time with Feeling", the 2016 album "Skeleton Tree", and the 2019 album "Ghosteen".


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave is the godfather to Michael Hutchence's daughter Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily. Cave performed "Into My Arms" at the televised funeral of Hutchence, but insisted that the cameras cease rolling during his performance.


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave is an avid reader of the Christian Bible. In his recorded lectures on music and songwriting, Cave said that any true love song is a song for God, and ascribed the mellowing of his music to a shift in focus from the Old Testament to the New. When asked if he had interest in religions outside of Christianity, Cave quipped that he had a passing, sceptical interest but was a "hammer-and-nails kind of guy". Despite this, Cave has also said he is critical of organised religion. When interviewed by Jarvis Cocker on 12September 2010, for his BBC Radio6 show "Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service", Cave said that "I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it." Moreover, Cave has always been open about his doubts. When asked in 2009 about whether he believed in a personal God, Cave's reply was "No". The following year, he stated that "I'm not religious, and I'm not a Christian, but I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a god. It's kind of defending the indefensible, though; I'm critical of what religions are becoming, the more destructive they're becoming. But I think as an artist, particularly, it's a necessary part of what I do, that there is some divine element going on within my songs."


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2019, Cave expressed his personal disagreement with both organised religion and atheism (in particular New Atheism) when questioned about his beliefs by a fan during a question and answer session on his "Red Hand Files" blog. On the same blog, Cave confirmed he believed in God in June 2021.


title: Nick Cave

text: In November 2017, Cave resisted demands from musicians Brian Eno and Roger Waters to cancel two concerts in Tel Aviv after Eno and Waters published a letter asking Cave to avoid performing in Israel while "apartheid remains". Cave went on to describe the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement as "cowardly and shameful", and that calls to boycott the country are "partly the reason I am playing Israel – not as support for any particular political entity but as a principled stand against those who wish to bully, shame and silence musicians." He furthermore responded with an open letter to Eno to defend his position.


title: Nick Cave

text: In 2019, Cave wrote in defence of singer Morrissey after the latter expressed a series of controversial political statements during the release of his "California Son" album which led to some record stores refusing to stock it. Cave argued that Morrissey should have that right to freedom of speech to state his opinions while everyone should be able to "challenge them when and wherever possible, but allow his music to live on, bearing in mind we are all conflicted individuals." He also added it would be "dangerous" to censor Morrissey from expressing his beliefs.


title: Nick Cave

text: In response to a fan asking about his political beliefs, Cave expressed a disdain for "atheism, organised religion, radical bi-partisan politics and woke culture" on his "Red Hand Files" blog. He in particular singled out woke politics and culture for criticism, describing it as "finding energy in self-righteous belief and the suppression of contrary systems of thought" and "regardless of the virtuous intentions of many woke issues, it is its lack of humility and the paternalistic and doctrinal sureness of its claims that repel me." In 2020, Cave also expressed opposition to cancel culture and misguided political correctness, describing both as "bad religion run amuck" and their "refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas has an asphyxiating effect on the creative soul of a society."


title: Nick Cave

text: Cave has previously described himself as a supporter of freedom of speech in both his live "In Conversation" events and on his blog.


title: Nick Cave

text: The APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), "honouring composers and songwriters". They commenced in 1982.


title: Nick Cave

text: The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of Australian music. They commenced in 1987.


title: Nick Cave

text: The Australian Music Prize (the AMP) is an annual award of $30,000 given to an Australian band or solo artist in recognition of the merit of an album released during the year of award. It commenced in 2005.


title: Nick Cave

text: The EG Awards (known as "Music Victoria Awards" since 2013) are an annual awards night celebrating Victorian music. They commenced in 2006.


title: Nick Cave

text: The J Awards are an annual series of Australian music awards that were established by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's youth-focused radio station Triple J. They commenced in 2005.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Neil deGrasse Tyson ( or ; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. In 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210 million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000. Since 1996, he has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: From 1995 to 2005, Tyson wrote monthly essays in the "Universe" column for "Natural History" magazine, some of which were later published in his books "Death by Black Hole" (2007) and "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" (2017). During the same period, he wrote a monthly column in "StarDate" magazine, answering questions about the universe under the pen name "Merlin". Material from the column appeared in his books "Merlin's Tour of the Universe" (1998) and "Just Visiting This Planet" (1998). Tyson served on a 2001 government commission on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry and on the 2004 Moon, Mars and Beyond commission. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in the same year. From 2006 to 2011, he hosted the television show "NOVA ScienceNow" on PBS. Since 2009, Tyson has hosted the weekly podcast "StarTalk". A spin-off, also called "StarTalk", began airing on National Geographic in 2015. In 2014, he hosted the television series "", a successor to Carl Sagan's 1980 series "". The U.S. National Academy of Sciences awarded Tyson the Public Welfare Medal in 2015 for his "extraordinary role in exciting the public about the wonders of science".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson was born in Manhattan as the second of three children, into a family living in the Bronx. His African-American father, Cyril deGrasse Tyson (1927–2016), was a sociologist, human resource commissioner for New York City mayor John Lindsay, and the first Director of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited. His mother, Sunchita Maria Tyson (née Feliciano; born 1928), was a gerontologist for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and is of Puerto Rican descent. Tyson has two siblings: Stephen Joseph Tyson and Lynn Antipas Tyson. Tyson's middle name, deGrasse, is from the maiden name of his paternal grandmother, who was born as Altima de Grasse in the British West Indies island of Nevis.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson grew up in the Castle Hill neighborhood of the Bronx, and later in Riverdale. From kindergarten throughout high school, Tyson attended public schools in the Bronx: PS 36 Unionport, PS 81 Robert J. Christen, the Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy (MS 141), and The Bronx High School of Science (Class of 1976) where he was captain of the wrestling team, editor-in-chief of the "Physical Science Journal", and graduated in 1976. His interest in astronomy began at the age of nine after visiting the sky theater of the Hayden Planetarium. He recalled that "so strong was that imprint [of the night sky] that I'm certain that I had no choice in the matter, that in fact, the universe called me." During high school, Tyson attended astronomy courses offered by the Hayden Planetarium, which he called "the most formative period" of his life. He credited Mark Chartrand III, director of the planetarium at the time, as his "first intellectual role model" and his enthusiastic teaching style mixed with humor inspired Tyson to communicate the universe to others the way he did.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson obsessively studied astronomy in his teen years, and eventually even gained some fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the age of fifteen. Astronomer Carl Sagan, who was a faculty member at Cornell University, tried to recruit Tyson to Cornell for undergraduate studies. In his book, "The Sky Is Not the Limit", Tyson wrote:


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson revisited this moment on his first episode of "". Pulling out a 1975 calendar belonging to the famous astronomer, he found the day Sagan invited the 17-year-old to spend a day in Ithaca. Sagan had offered to put him up for the night if his bus back to the Bronx did not come. Tyson said, "I already knew I wanted to become a scientist. But that afternoon, I learned from Carl the kind of "person" I wanted to become."


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson chose to attend Harvard where he majored in physics and lived in Currier House. He was a member of the crew team during his freshman year, but returned to wrestling, lettering in his senior year. He was also active in dance, in styles including jazz, ballet, Afro-Caribbean, and Latin Ballroom.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson earned a BA degree in physics at Harvard College in 1980 and then began his graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin, from which he received an MA degree in astronomy in 1983. By his own account, he did not spend as much time in the research lab as he should have. His professors encouraged him to consider alternative careers and the committee for his doctoral dissertation was dissolved, ending his pursuit of a doctorate from the University of Texas.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson was a lecturer in astronomy at the University of Maryland from 1986 to 1987 and in 1988, he was accepted into the astronomy graduate program at Columbia University, where he earned an MPhil degree in astrophysics in 1989, and a PhD degree in astrophysics in 1991 under the supervision of Professor R. Michael Rich. Rich obtained funding to support Tyson's doctoral research from NASA and the ARCS Foundation, enabling Tyson to attend international meetings in Italy, Switzerland, Chile, and South Africa and to hire students to help him with data reduction. In the course of his thesis work, he observed using the 0.91 m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, where he obtained images for the Calán/Tololo Supernova Survey helping to further their work in establishing Type Ia supernovae as standard candles.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: During his thesis research at Columbia University, Tyson became acquainted with Professor David Spergel at Princeton University, who visited Columbia University in the course of collaborating with his thesis advisor on the Galactic bulge typically found in spiral galaxies.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson's research has focused on observations in cosmology, stellar evolution, galactic astronomy, bulges, and stellar formation. He has held numerous positions at institutions including the University of Maryland, Princeton University, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Hayden Planetarium.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In 1994, Tyson joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist while he was a research affiliate in Princeton University. He became acting director of the planetarium in June 1995 and was appointed director in 1996. As director, he oversaw the planetarium's $210 million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000. Upon being asked for his thoughts on becoming director, Tyson said "when I was a kid... there were scientists and educators on the staff at the Hayden Planetarium... who invested their time and energy in my enlightenment... and I've never forgotten that. And to end up back there as its director, I feel this deep sense of duty, that I serve in the same capacity for people who come through the facility today, that others served for me".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson has written a number of popular books on astrophysics. In 1995, he began to write the "Universe" column for "Natural History" magazine. In a column he authored for a special edition of the magazine, called "City of Stars", in 2002, Tyson popularized the term "Manhattanhenge" to describe the two days annually on which the evening sun aligns with the street grid in Manhattan, making the sunset visible along unobstructed side streets. He had coined the term in 1996, inspired by how the phenomenon recalls the sun's solstice alignment with the Stonehenge monument in England. Tyson's column also influenced his work as a professor with The Great Courses.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush appointed Tyson to serve on the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry and in 2004 to serve on the President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy, the latter better known as the "Moon, Mars, and Beyond" commission. Soon afterward, he was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by NASA.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In 2004, Tyson hosted the four-part "Origins" miniseries of the PBS "Nova" series, and, with Donald Goldsmith, co-authored the companion volume for this series, "Origins: Fourteen Billion Years Of Cosmic Evolution". He again collaborated with Goldsmith as the narrator on the documentary "400 Years of the Telescope", which premiered on PBS in April 2009.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: As director of the Hayden Planetarium, Tyson bucked traditional thinking in order to keep Pluto from being referred to as the ninth planet in exhibits at the center. Tyson has explained that he wanted to look at commonalities between objects, grouping the terrestrial planets together, the gas giants together, and Pluto with like objects, and to get away from simply counting the planets. He has stated on "The Colbert Report", "The Daily Show", and "BBC Horizon" that this decision has resulted in large amounts of hate mail, much of it from children. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) confirmed this assessment by changing Pluto to the dwarf planet classification.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson recounted the heated online debate on the Cambridge Conference Network (CCNet), a "widely read, UK-based Internet chat group", following Benny Peiser's renewed call for reclassification of Pluto's status. Peiser's entry, in which he posted articles from the AP and "The Boston Globe", spawned from "The New York Times"s article entitled "Pluto's Not a Planet? Only in New York".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson has been vice-president, president, and chairman of the board of the Planetary Society. He was also the host of the PBS program "Nova ScienceNow" until 2011. He attended and was a speaker at the symposium in November 2006. In 2007, Tyson was chosen to be a regular on The History Channel's popular series "The Universe".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In May 2009, Tyson launched a one-hour radio talk show called "StarTalk", which he co-hosted with comedian Lynne Koplitz. The show was syndicated on Sunday afternoons on KTLK AM in Los Angeles and WHFS in Washington DC. The show lasted for thirteen weeks, but was resurrected in December 2010 and then, co-hosted with comedians Chuck Nice and Leighann Lord instead of Koplitz. Guests range from colleagues in science to celebrities such as GZA, Wil Wheaton, Sarah Silverman, and Bill Maher. The show is available via the Internet through a live stream or in the form of a podcast.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In April 2011, Tyson was the keynote speaker at the 93rd International Convention of the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society of the Two-year School. He and James Randi delivered a lecture entitled "Skepticism", which related directly with the convention's theme of "The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril, and Promise".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In 2012, Tyson announced that he would appear in a YouTube series based on his radio show "StarTalk". A premiere date for the show has not been announced, but it will be distributed on the Nerdist YouTube Channel. On February 28, 2014, Tyson was a celebrity guest at the White House Student Film Festival.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In 2014, Tyson helped revive Carl Sagan's "" television series, presenting "" on both FOX and the National Geographic Channel. Thirteen episodes were aired in the first season, and Tyson has stated that if a second season were produced, he would pass the role of host to someone else in the science world. In early January 2018, it was announced that a second season of "Cosmos" was in production, and that Tyson would once again act as host.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: On April 20, 2015, Tyson began hosting a late-night talk show entitled "StarTalk" on the National Geographic Channel, where Tyson interviews pop culture celebrities and asks them about their life experiences with science.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson is co-developing a sandbox video game with Whatnot Entertainment, "", which aims to help provide players with a realistic simulation of developing a space-faring culture, incorporating educational materials about space and technology. The project got no new development updates since April 2020.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson has written and broadcast extensively about his views of science, spirituality, and the spirituality of science, including the essays "The Perimeter of Ignorance" and "Holy Wars", both appearing in "Natural History" magazine and the 2006 "Beyond Belief" workshop. In an interview with comedian Paul Mecurio, Tyson offered his definition of spirituality: "For me, when I say spiritual, I’m referring to a feeling you would have that connects you to the universe in a way that it may defy simple vocabulary. We think about the universe as an intellectual playground, which it surely is, but the moment you learn something that touches an emotion rather than just something intellectual, I would call that a spiritual encounter with the universe." Tyson has argued that many great historical scientists' belief in intelligent design limited their scientific inquiries, to the detriment of the advance of scientific knowledge.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: When asked during a question session at the University at Buffalo if he believed in a higher power, Tyson responded: "Every account of a higher power that I've seen described, of all religions that I've seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence." In an interview with "Big Think", Tyson said, "So, what people are really after is what is my stance on religion or spirituality or God, and I would say if I find a word that came closest, it would be 'agnostic' ... at the end of the day I'd rather not be any category at all." Additionally, in the same interview with "Big Think", Tyson mentioned that he edited Wikipedia's entry on him to include the fact that he is an agnostic:


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: I'm constantly "claimed" by atheists. I find this intriguing. In fact, on my Wiki page – I didn't create the Wiki page. Others did, and I'm flattered that people cared enough about my life to assemble it – and it said, "Neil deGrasse Tyson is an atheist." I said, “Well, that's not really true." I said, "Neil deGrasse Tyson is an agnostic." I went back a week later. It said, "Neil deGrasse Tyson is an atheist" again – within a week! – and I said, "What's up with that?" and I said, “All right, I have to word it a little differently." So I said, “Okay, Neil deGrasse Tyson, widely claimed by atheists, is actually an agnostic."


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: During the interview "Called by the Universe: A Conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson" in 2009, Tyson said: "I can't agree to the claims by atheists that I'm one of that community. I don't have the time, energy, interest of conducting myself that way... I'm not trying to convert people. I don't care."


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In March 2014, philosopher and secularism proponent Massimo Pigliucci asked Tyson: "What is it you think about God?" Tyson replied: "I remain unconvinced by any claims anyone has ever made about the existence or the power of a divine force operating in the universe." Pigliucci then asked him why he expressed discomfort with the label "atheist" in his Big Think video. Tyson replied by reiterating his dislike for one-word labels, saying: "That's what adjectives are for. What kind of atheist are you? Are you an ardent atheist? Are you a passive atheist? An apathetic atheist? Do you rally, or do you just not even care? So I'd be on the 'I really don't care' side of that, if you had to find adjectives to put in front of the word 'atheist'." Pigliucci contrasted Tyson with scientist Richard Dawkins: "[Dawkins] really does consider, at this point, himself to be an atheist activist. You very clearly made the point that you are not." Tyson replied: "I completely respect that activity. He's fulfilling a really important role out there."


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson has spoken about philosophy on numerous occasions. In March 2014, during an episode of "The Nerdist Podcast", he stated that philosophy is "useless" and that a philosophy major "can really mess you up", which was met with disapproval. The philosopher Massimo Pigliucci later criticized him for "dismiss[ing] philosophy as a useless enterprise".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In an undated interview at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Tyson talked about being black and one of the most visible and well-known scientists in the world. He told a story about being interviewed about a plasma burst from the sun on a local Fox affiliate in 1989. "I'd never before in my life seen an interview with a black person on television for expertise that had nothing to do with being black. And at that point, I realized that one of the last stereotypes that prevailed among people who carry stereotypes is that, sort of, black people are somehow dumb. I wondered, maybe ... that's a way to undermine this sort of, this stereotype that prevailed about who's smart and who's dumb. I said to myself, 'I just have to be visible, or others like me, in that situation.' That would have a greater force on society than anything else I could imagine."


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In 2005, at a conference at the National Academy of Sciences, Tyson responded to a question about whether genetic differences might keep women from working as scientists. He said that his goal to become an astrophysicist was "...hands down the path of most resistance through the forces ... of society". He continued: "My life experience tells me, when you don’t find blacks in the sciences, when you don’t find women in the sciences, I know these forces are real and I had to survive them in order to get where I am today. So before we start talking about genetic differences, you gotta come up with a system where there’s equal opportunity. Then we can start having that conversation."


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In a 2014 interview with "Grantland", Tyson said that he related his experience on that 2005 panel in an effort to make the point that the scientific question about genetic differences can't be answered until the social barriers are dismantled. "I'm saying before you even have that conversation, you have to be really sure that access to opportunity has been level." In that same interview, Tyson said that race is not a part of the point he is trying to make in his career or with his life. According to Tyson, "[T]hat then becomes the point of people's understanding of me, rather than the astrophysics. So it's a failed educational step for that to be the case. If you end up being distracted by that and not [getting] the message." He purposefully no longer speaks publicly about race. "I don't give talks on it. I don't even give Black History Month talks. I decline every single one of them. In fact, since 1993, I've declined every interview that has my being black as a premise of the interview."


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson is an advocate for expanding the operations of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Arguing that "the most powerful agency on the dreams of a nation is currently underfunded to do what it needs to be doing". Tyson has suggested that the general public has a tendency to overestimate how much revenue is allocated to the space agency. At a March 2010 address, referencing the proportion of tax revenue spent on NASA, he stated, "By the way, how much does NASA cost? It's a half a penny on the dollar. Did you know that? The people are saying, 'Why are we spending money up there...' I ask them, 'How much do you think we're spending?' They say 'five cents, ten cents on a dollar.' It's a half a penny."


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Right now, NASA's annual budget is half a penny on your tax dollar. For twice that—a penny on a dollar—we can transform the country from a sullen, dispirited nation, weary of economic struggle, to one where it has reclaimed its 20th century birthright to dream of tomorrow.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Inspired by Tyson's advocacy and remarks, Penny4NASA, a campaign of the Space Advocates nonprofit, was founded in 2012 by John Zeller and advocates the doubling of NASA's budget to one percent of the federal budget.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In his book "Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier" Tyson argues that large and ambitious space exploration projects, like getting humans to Mars, will probably require some sort of military or economic driver in order to get the appropriate funding from the United States federal government.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: As a science communicator, Tyson regularly appears on television, radio, and various other media outlets. He has been a regular guest on "The Colbert Report", and host Stephen Colbert refers to him in his comedic book "I Am America (And So Can You!)", noting in his chapter on scientists that most scientists are "decent, well-intentioned people", but, presumably tongue-in-cheek, that "Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an absolute monster." He has appeared numerous times on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". He has made appearances on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon", and "The Rachel Maddow Show". He served as one of the central interviewees on the various episodes of the History Channel science program, "The Universe". Tyson participated on the NPR radio quiz program "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" in 2007 and 2015. He has appeared several times on "Real Time with Bill Maher", and he was also featured on an episode of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" as the ask-the-expert lifeline. He has spoken numerous times on the Philadelphia morning show, "Preston and Steve", on 93.3 WMMR, as well as on SiriusXM's "Ron and Fez" and "The Opie and Anthony Show".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson has been featured as a guest interviewee on "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe", "Radiolab", "Skepticality", and "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcasts and has been in several of the Symphony of Science videos.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson lived near the World Trade Center and was an eyewitness to the September 11, 2001, attacks. He wrote a widely circulated letter on what he saw. Footage he filmed on the day was included in the 2008 documentary film "102 Minutes That Changed America".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In 2007, Tyson was the keynote speaker during the dedication ceremony of Deerfield Academy's new science center, the Koch Center in Massachusetts, named for David H. Koch '59. He emphasized the impact science will have on the twenty-first century, as well as explaining that investments into science may be costly, but their returns in the form of knowledge gained and piquing interest is invaluable. Tyson has also appeared as the keynote speaker at The Amazing Meeting, a science and skepticism conference hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundation.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson made a guest appearance as a version of himself in the episode "Brain Storm" of "Stargate Atlantis" alongside Bill Nye and in the episode "The Apology Insufficiency" of "The Big Bang Theory". Archive footage of him is used in the film "Europa Report". Tyson also made an appearance in an episode of "Martha Speaks" as himself.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In a May 2011 "StarTalk Radio" show, "The Political Science of the Daily Show", Tyson said he donates all income earned as a guest speaker.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson is a frequent participant in the website Reddit's AMAs (Ask Me Anythings) where he is responsible for three of the top ten most popular AMAs of all time.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In "Action Comics" #14 (January 2013), which was published November 7, 2012, Tyson appears in the story, in which he determines that Superman's home planet, Krypton, orbited the red dwarf LHS 2520 in the constellation Corvus 27.1 lightyears from Earth. Tyson assisted DC Comics in selecting a real-life star that would be an appropriate parent star to Krypton, and picked Corvus, which is Latin for "Crow", and which is the mascot of Superman's high school, the Smallville Crows. Tyson also had a minor appearance as himself in the 2016 film "".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In May 2013, the Science Laureates of the United States Act of 2013 (H.R. 1891; 113th Congress) was introduced into Congress. Neil deGrasse Tyson was listed by at least two commentators as a possible nominee for the position of Science Laureate, if the act were to pass. On March 8, 2014, Tyson made a SXSW Interactive keynote presentation at the Austin Convention Center.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: On June 3, 2014, Tyson co-reviewed "Gravity" in a CinemaSins episode. He made two more appearances with CinemaSins, co-reviewing "Interstellar" on September 29, 2015, and "The Martian" on March 31, 2016.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In 2016, Tyson narrated and was a script supervisor for the science documentary, Food Evolution, directed by Academy Award nominated director Scott Hamilton Kennedy. In the same year, Tyson made a guest appearance on the Avenged Sevenfold album "The Stage", where he delivered a monolog on the track "Exist". In 2017, Tyson appeared on Logic's album "Everybody" as God, uncredited on various tracks, and credited on the song "AfricAryaN" as well as on "The Moon" on Musiq Soulchild's album "Feel the Real".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: In 2018, Tyson made a second guest appearance on "The Big Bang Theory" as himself, together with fellow television personality Bill Nye, in the first episode of the show's final season ("The Conjugal Configuration").


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: He also had guest appearances in "Gravity Falls, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Zoolander 2, , Family Guy, BoJack Horseman, The Simpsons, Salvation" and "Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Tyson lives in the Tribeca neighborhood of Lower Manhattan with his wife, Alice Young. They have two children: Miranda and Travis. Tyson met his wife in a physics class at the University of Texas at Austin. They married in 1988 and named their first child Miranda, after the smallest of Uranus' five major moons. Tyson is a wine enthusiast whose collection was featured in the May 2000 issue of the "Wine Spectator" and the Spring 2005 issue of "The World of Fine Wine".


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: During November and December 2018, accusations of sexual misconduct were made against Tyson by four women. Thchiya Amet El Maat accused Tyson of drugging and raping her while both were graduate students at UT Austin in 1984. Katelyn Allers, a professor at Bucknell University, alleged Tyson touched her inappropriately at a 2009 American Astronomical Society gathering. Ashley Watson, Tyson's assistant on "Cosmos", alleged Tyson made inappropriate sexual advances to her in 2018 which led her to resign from the position days later. In what Tyson described as a Native American handshake, he held her hand and looked her in the eye for ten seconds. When she left, he told her he wanted to hug her but would rather not in case he wanted more. A fourth anonymous woman alleged Tyson made inappropriate comments to her during a 2010 holiday party at the American Museum of Natural History. Tyson denied El Maat's rape accusation, while corroborating the basic facts around the situation of Allers and Watson's assertions, but claimed his actions were misinterpreted and apologized for any misunderstanding or offense.


title: Neil deGrasse Tyson

text: Fox, National Geographic, the Museum of Natural History, and the producers of "Cosmos" announced investigations, which Tyson stated that he welcomed. The National Geographic Channel announced on January 3, 2019, that they were putting further episodes of "StarTalk" on hiatus so as "to allow the investigation to occur unimpeded". The premiere of "Cosmos: Possible Worlds", initially scheduled for March 3, 2019, was also delayed while the investigation continued. On March 15, 2019, both National Geographic and Fox announced that: "The investigation is complete, and we are moving forward with both "StarTalk" and "Cosmos"," and that: "There will be no further comment." The networks affirmed that both "StarTalk" and "Cosmos" would resume, but that no date had been set. In July, the American Museum of Natural History stated Neil deGrasse Tyson would keep his job as director of the Hayden Planetarium.


title: Kenny Rogers

text: Kenneth Ray Rogers (August 21, 1938 – March 20, 2020) was an American singer, songwriter, and actor. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013. Rogers was particularly popular with country audiences but also charted more than 120 hit singles across various genres, topping the country and pop album charts for more than 200 individual weeks in the United States alone. He sold more than 100 million records worldwide during his lifetime, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. His fame and career spanned multiple genres: jazz, folk, pop, rock, and country. He remade his career and was one of the most successful cross-over artists of all time.


title: Kenny Rogers

text: In the late 1950s, Rogers began his recording career with the Houston-based group the Scholars, who first released "The Poor Little Doggie". After some solo releases, including 1958's "That Crazy Feeling", Rogers then joined a group with the jazz singer Bobby Doyle. In 1966, he became a member of the folk ensemble the New Christy Minstrels, playing double bass and bass guitar as well as singing. In 1967, he and several members of the New Christy Minstrels left to found the group the First Edition, with whom he scored his first major hit, "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)", a psychedelic rock song which peaked at number five on the "Billboard" charts. As Rogers took an increased leadership role in the First Edition following the success of 1969's "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town", the band gradually changed styles to a more country feel. The band broke up in 1975–76, and Rogers embarked on a long and successful solo career, which included several successful collaborations, including duets with singers Dottie West, Dolly Parton, and Sheena Easton, and a songwriting partnership with Lionel Richie. His signature song, 1978's "The Gambler", was a crossover hit that won him a Grammy Award in 1980 and was selected in 2018 for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. He developed the Gambler persona into a character for a successful series of television films starting with 1980's Emmy-nominated "Kenny Rogers as The Gambler".


title: Kenny Rogers

text: Rogers's albums "The Gambler" and "Kenny" were featured in the About.com poll of "The 200 Most Influential Country Albums Ever". He was voted the "Favorite Singer of All Time" in a 1986 joint poll by readers of both "USA Today" and "People". He received numerous awards, such as the AMAs, Grammys, ACMs, and CMAs, as well as a lifetime achievement award for a career spanning six decades in 2003. Later success included the 2006 album release "Water & Bridges", an across-the-board hit that entered the top 5 in the "Billboard" Country Albums sales charts, also charting in the top 15 of the "Billboard" 200. The first single from the album, "I Can't Unlove You", was also a sizable chart hit. Remaining a popular entertainer around the world, he continued to tour regularly until his retirement in 2017.


title: Kenny Rogers

text: Rogers had acting roles in movies and television shows, including the title roles in "Kenny Rogers as The Gambler", the MacShayne series for "The NBC Mystery Movie", and the 1982 feature film "Six Pack". He was a co-founder of the restaurant chain Kenny Rogers Roasters in collaboration with former Kentucky Fried Chicken CEO John Y. Brown Jr. Although the stores closed in the United States, they are still a fixture in Asia.


title: Kenny Rogers

text: Rogers was born the fourth of eight children on August 21, 1938, at St Joseph's Infirmary in Houston, Texas. His parents were Lucille Lois Rogers, a nurse's assistant, and Edward Floyd Rogers (1904–1975), a carpenter. Rogers was said to be of Irish and Native American ancestry. Rogers attended Wharton Elementary School, George Washington Junior High School, and graduated from Jefferson Davis High School (now Northside High School) in 1956.


title: Kenny Rogers

text: In 1949, Rogers won a talent show at the Texan Theatre. He served as a busboy at the Rice Hotel and swept floors at a hat store for $9 a week. He later attended the University of Houston.


title: Kenny Rogers

text: In 1986, on "The Phil Donahue Show", Rogers told the audience that he was the first person in his family "as far back as we know" to graduate from high school. "We were broke. We lived in a federal housing project. I think the most money my father ever made was $75 a week. There were times as a child that, I don't think I was ever really hungry – I always had food to eat – but there's no question that our family were nutritionally-deprived at times. We'd eat peanut butter sandwiches, cause that's all there was. Quite honestly, when you're a kid, you don't know any better, you think that's how everyone eats."