I’ve been tearing through Cosmos on Netflix.  Cosmos are not pink, fruity cocktails served in a martini glass that Sarah Jessica Parker holds so stylishly on her girls night out.

Quite the opposite.

Cosmos is a TV show starring Neil deGrasse Tyson about the universe and our place in it, focusing on the expanse of time and the beginning of life.  #Awesome

I’m a little more than obsessed with this show.  I’ve said it many times – if I had a Mathematics degree like my Uncle John, I’d be a scientist, specifically an astrophysicist.  But, those stars just didn’t align and, instead, I have a whimsical blog called Ademoiselle where I can exercise my penmanship to a small audience of friends.

The show goes back 13.8 billion years to the start of the universe and helps explain our place in it.  The concept is dizzying, the idea that we are just a microscopic element in a ginormous universe, with no real purpose as to why or how we got here.  There’s something comforting about that to me.  And it’s also terrifying.  The show plays on this, using real-life examples of famous astronomers and scientists who were often the first in their fields to make groundbreaking discoveries about the universe and the earth twirling around in it.  This is the comforting part.

Neil deGrassi Junior High Tyson is one helluva host. He explains the concepts so clearly so that normal folk like me can understand.  He’s constantly using vivid and determined facial expressions to accompany the mind-blowing concepts he discusses and this makes him all the more likable.  He’s not just a host.  He’s the expert.  One cannot discuss the Cosmos without the visual of Tyson in his space-age space ship gliding down to the surfaces of other planets and, his face stoic but his body bracing for impact – makes us feel like we’re on the journey as well.

What’s even better is that he challenges the skeptics.  He asks their questions.  When it comes to the episode on climate change and what we’re doing to the planet, he’s not afraid to see both sides and generate a debate, but with one key outcome: silence to the skeptics.  There’s no denying what we’re seeing, and it’s eye-opening.

Not to mention the great art direction and music by… Alan Silvestri!

If you haven’t started watching this show, go home and do it now.  No excuses.  We all need to better understand our tiny place in the world and listen from the best to hear why it’s so unfathomable that we’re even here.

Voyager 1, over and out.