#1159 - Neil deGrasse Tyson
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August 22, 2018
TLDR: Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator.
In the #1159 episode of the podcast, renowned astrophysicist, author, and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson shares his insights on a variety of topics, from the educational system to the mysteries of the universe. Here's a summary of the conversation:
Why Aren't There Flying Cars?
- Tyson tackles the enduring question of flying cars by highlighting the limitations of our transportation systems, noting that the existing roadways and infrastructure only allow for two-dimensional travel.
- He suggests that
- Traffic congestion cannot be solved simply by flying—it's a matter of efficiency in moving from point A to point B.
- Existing aviation technologies, like helicopters, already serve that purpose but come with noise and regulatory challenges.
Making Learning Fun
- Tyson emphasizes the importance of fostering lifelong curiosity and making learning enjoyable.
- He critiques the education system for stifling curiosity, contrasting how children naturally explore their environment with how schools often dampen that impulse.
- He calls for educational reform to inspire continuous learning beyond school years.
The Role of Science in Culture
- The conversation highlights the resurgence of interest in science through popular media and podcasts:
- Podcasts are attracting curious audiences, creating a bridge between complex scientific concepts and the general public.
- Tyson attributes his book, "Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry," to the public’s hunger for knowledge, evidenced by its sustained success on bestseller lists.
Episode Highlights
- Astrophysics and Everyday Life: Tyson notes how the principles of astrophysics intersect with various fields, even within the military, emphasizing the broader implications and applications beyond just empirical science.
- Lifelong Curiosity: Arguing that lifelong learning is essential, Tyson stresses that curiosity should be cultivated throughout one's life, not just within the confines of a classroom.
- Cross-Pollination of Ideas: He explains that advancements in technology and science result from interdisciplinary collaboration, emphasizing the importance of diverse voices in scientific inquiry.
Scientific Literacy in the Face of Misinformation
- Tyson discusses the alarming trends in scientific literacy and the influence of social media on public understanding of scientific facts:
- He warns against the dangers of misinformation and the steps necessary to promote critical thinking among audiences.
- Addressing skepticism, Tyson calls for scientists to engage more with the public to demystify complex ideas and counteract false narratives.
The Future of Our Planet and Its Defenses
- Protecting the Earth: The conversation covers how society must proactively address potential asteroid threats:
- Tyson suggests monitoring and possibly diverting asteroids as necessary to safeguard the planet long-term.
- He highlights that preparations must go beyond awareness, urging actionable plans to deal with cosmic threats.
Final Thoughts
- Tyson concludes with a message about the importance of curiosity and science in our lives. He argues for:
- Continued public engagement with science, increasing scientific literacy.
- Leveraging modern technology to improve our understanding of the universe, all while keeping a strong ethical foundation in scientific practices.
Key Takeaways
- Education should inspire curiosity and enthusiasm for lifelong learning.
- The public is hungry for science in engaging formats, like podcasts and television.
- Understanding and addressing scientific misinformation is crucial.
- Proactive steps should be taken to protect Earth from extraterrestrial threats, emphasizing the need for international collaboration on scientific ventures.
In this profound discussion, Neil deGrasse Tyson not only champions the importance of curious exploration but also paints a vivid picture of a future where science and education play interconnected roles in shaping society.
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So, why aren't there flying cars?
You just jumping right in. You don't say hi. You don't say how the wife and kids. How's the wife and kids? How's life? How's your book? It's been on the Times Best Seller list for how many weeks? Oh, the astrophysics for people in a hurry. That's been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 67 weeks. That's pretty intense. That's a lot for any book, much less for a science book. And so that tells me, while all these Trump books are wafting in and out, this is bobbing like a cork, like a cork.
on the ocean waves as the book of the moment, either praises Trump or criticizes him, come in and off of that list. So this tells me that there is this unserved hunger that people have. There's a curiosity that this is serving. And it's to astrophysics for people in a hurry. That's kind of
That's very purposefully juxtaposed. It's like neurosurgery in four easy steps. If you saw a book with that title, you'd have to pick it up because you'd wonder what's going on. Well, not to kiss your ass again, but I always say this about you, and I think it's important. You make
learning stuff about astrophysics fun and that's what's missing you know it's not that people don't like to be educated that they don't like to learn they just don't want to be bored that's a perceptive point because
You know, think of the image we have of, let's say you're in a school where most people don't go to college. You're in high school. And then last day a school comes. What do people do? They toss their papers in the air as they run down the steps. Schools out? No. What's the rock song?
those out for summer. Was it forever? No, ever. Ever, then forever. Right? So that attitude must mean the school didn't train you to embrace curiosity. Right. That learning was a chore, and now the chores are over. Yeah. So I think the educational system needs an adjustment. Forget whether or not you go to college, because you're going to spend more years not in school than in school, even if you do go to college.
What you want, I think, are lifelong learners, lifelong curiosity. Yes. Where once you are trained and your curiosity is stimulated, curiosity we all had is children. Children don't need to be taught to be curious. They are curious to the point of destruction of whatever it is they touch. Oh, what is this egg on the counter? What is this glass? What is this plate? What's under a rock? What happens if I pull a leg off a daddy long? You know, they're experimenting with the world.
Think of it that way, but that's what it is. They're all born scientists. And I say this often. You spend the first years of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk. Then you spend the rest of its life telling it to shut up and sit down. This is the wrong combination. So speaking as an educator, I think a missing component of school,
Is it the teachers? Is it the curriculum? I don't know. But when you get out of school, you should say to yourself, damn, I want to learn more. It's almost universally accepted, too, that that's when your learning ends. When you get out of college, it's over. Then you say you're done. And if it doesn't, you're ossified and learn. And that's how when the job market shifts, you're not ready for it, because you don't know how to think. You don't know how to learn. And it's the difference in the workplace between the person who gets an assignment. Joey, Janet, I need you to do this.
That's not in my job description. I'm not trained for this. That's one kind of person in a workplace. Another kind of person is, here's a new task I need you to do. Wow, I've never seen that before.
Great, let me figure it out. These are two completely different species of human being. And what the world needs more of is like the second case, where you take a new task and you say, wow, I get to learn. I'm gonna learn on my own. I'll ask people who know more. You just embrace the act of learning to satisfy your curiosity. And I think this book is capturing that in the public. Well, it must be doing something. Yeah, yeah. 60, how many weeks? 67 weeks. God.
Yeah, that's a lot of weeks. Yeah every morning I wake up. I'm calm, but I'm really not calm. I'm saying holy shit
Sorry, you're alive. I can't, can I say? You can say really shit. I can say it. Okay. You'll grasp Tyson swears. Ladies and gentlemen, human people think you're a robot. Now they know this is, it's a great sign, I think. And I think your podcast is a great sign as well. The success of your podcast and the success of a lot of science podcasts. I love it. Excellent. Now that you notice that there's a rise of science curious podcast out there.
Stuff to blow your mind is one that I really enjoy. I really love radio lab. They've always got a really interesting science. The annual perennial favorite. Fantastic. For so many people. Probably the best. Right, right. Yeah, and yours as well. And I love Chuck Nice. Shout out to Chuck Nice. We all love Chuck. He's great.
But what you're doing is you're making learning interesting and that's why it's so fun. There's excitement to it. You bring a comedian like Chuck on with you, things get silly, but they're also curious and you're getting these experts and everyone's talking about these various subjects. And as you know, not only yourself as an exemplar of this, stand-up comedians are some of the smartest people in the world.
They have an awareness. I don't know that far. Listen, come to the Comedy Store with me today. I'll change your mind. All right, let me buffer that a little. They're curious. OK, no. So standard comedians are perceptive people. Yes, for sure. And they're aware. And they notice things that you don't notice. They see the same things you do and get to shape it in a way you never thought possible. And then you end up laughing.
at other things at yourself.
I'll get his name in a minute. But through three of us who, David Gamble is his name, the three of us got together and applied for a National Science Foundation grant. What we said was, there are programs out there that serve people who already know they like science.
But who serves the people who don't know they like science? Or better yet, the people who know they don't like science? There's nothing for them because they've already rejected it. They're not going to tune in to Science Friday because they don't like science on NPR, right? So what we thought was suppose we bring in a celebrity.
That's the pop culture draw. This is the pop culture scaffold. We bring in the scaffold and clad the scaffold with science. Because whatever the celebrity does, it doesn't matter. There's going to be science in that person's life. We have the guy who portrayed golem in Lord of the Rings. A lot of science in that.
But there is, like that suit that he had to wear and all that. Exactly. So what we did was, so we interviewed him and we talked about the technology necessary to portray golem. He portrayed that live. That was not some later animation. He is live.
and he's got his whole body wired up for this, and he is that voice, and he is portraying it. So whatever it is that you have done, that you do, it's evidence that science is everywhere.
You can't say, I'm done with science. Let me sell my textbook and move on to other things. Because practically anything else you do has been touched by science. And so StarTalk is a celebration of that. And then it jumps species. And so now we're on TV now. All right. There's a TV show on National Geographic channel, StarTalk. And since you started this, by the way, I didn't come here to talk about it. You started this. It's our fourth year in a row where we're nominated for an Emmy for outstanding informational programming.
Are you going to keep doing Cosmos too though? Cosmos! So I have one week remaining out of like 70 shoot days to finish shooting Cosmos possible worlds.
premiering spring 2019. That's the third installment of Cosmos. If he traced the first one to Carl Sagan back in 1980. I used your segment on wolves on how wolves became dogs. It showed it to my kids. And you can see the little wheel spin and like, whoa. Yeah.
That's how a dog became a dog. What you didn't see is I'm sitting at the campfire in this snowy environment and they got wolves walking around me. They're on these fishing wires.
Because they are not dogs, okay? They... Whatever the fuck they want. Correct. And when they look at you, it's like, should I rip his neck out now or later when I'm more hungry? There's no eye contact with them because they don't see you as anything other than something they could possibly eat.
And so you can't interact with them the way you would with ordinary dogs. So they're on these fishing, high tension fishing wire that you can't see against the snow. And they're like hooting and hollering around me as I describe. And the name of that show is, and the wolf shall become the shepherd. Yeah. My friend did a commercial with a wolf.
And there's this commercial where he's running up this mountain and the wolf is there. And at the end of the commercial, they had to get the wolf to snarl. So what the trainer does is he shows the wolf some meat and then he pulls the meat away from the wolf.
and the wolf snarls, and then the commercial's over. There's no working after that. You're not gonna be near the wolf. That switch is turned on. He's like, once that thing's snarled, everybody just backed off, and the trainer let everybody know. Once I get to this point, we're done. There's no more, and that thing's like, okay!
Everybody we're done. Let's get the fuck out of here. All three of these cosmosis, the original one with Carl Sagan, the one that the privilege of hosting in 2014 and 2019, are co-written by Andrew Ian, and she's the widow of Carl Sagan. Oh, wow. But kind of in his shadow back then, but she's hugely creative.
and highly enlightened. And so most of the soul energy, if you will, what makes cosmos distinct from other documentaries where you're sitting there learning, you put your thinking cap on, your learning cap on. In cosmos, it's your feeling cap. You're not only learning, you're also feeling
the science and its relationship to you, to civilization, to the world, to the universe. And her infusion of this, she's a highly scientifically literate writer, producer. And so I just give a shout out to her, just working with her has been at the light.
Is Cosmos on Apple TV or Amazon or anything? So Cosmos was after it premiered on Fox and then went internationally on NetGeo. It then went to Netflix. But I think this run of Netflix is going to drop until the next one comes in. I think they want to clear the landing zone for the next Cosmos. But it went to Netflix.
But is it available for anyone to get right now? Oh, right now? I should be. I haven't checked. That's a great question. So I have it all on my DVR, and I'm scared to delete it. Oh, yeah. I have like 6%. Left. Yeah, we all have space left. That's what everyone's DVR looks like. I got all your cosmoses in there. Yeah, so thanks. Thanks for having them all in there. Was that Morgan Freeman show? Through the wormhole? Yeah, I got that on there, too. Yeah. Well, that's a Joe Rogan thing. Yeah. If you didn't have that, I'd be disappointed.
I say, you're an imposter. You're fake. It's an opportunity to be entertained and learned, which I think is what everybody misses. And I think that's what's missing in most public education. People are bored. And you take these kids with so much energy and then you make them sit still and watch something that's not even remotely stimulating by a person who doesn't really care to be there. Right. And they know this intuitively, if not explicitly, that the enthusiasm is absent.
yeah they could feel it yeah and just it's the worst way to learn it's the the worst way and it's so hard to skate once you get out of that system it takes forever for a lot of these people to just get their
excitement about education back you know what i say when i address teachers we all and by the way i'll do this right now in this room that we have this only three of us but let's let's take a show of hands in your life with all the teachers you've ever had in every class you've ever taken how many had like a singular influence on who and what you became give me a number it's gonna be i'm betting it's
five or fewer, probably more like three. Yeah, for teachers, yeah. What's your number? Well, there's the one that I talked about on your show the last time I saw you. Thanks for coming on to start talking. My pleasure. It was a science teacher that I had when I believe I was in seventh grade. He told me that if you really want to hurt your brain, look up and recognize the fact that that goes on forever, that this is infinite. And then just think about what that means, infinite, that there really is no end to it.
so but how many teachers such as that were so influential in you that one guy saying that one to one class one he might be the one and
What do you got? For me, it's like two and a half. And I've had scores of teachers. A hundred teachers at least. So what I tell teachers is, be that teacher to your students. We've all had those teachers, be that teacher. And in every case, it wasn't because the topic was something you knew in advance you would like. It's because they're
energy for sharing their passion and love for the subject was palpable and it just spilled out of them and went into course through your veins and your arteries and you walk out of there thinking, wow, that was the most interesting thing I've ever done in my life. You don't even care what you get on a test after that because you got touched and you became an enlightened participant in that exercise, in that exploration.
Yeah, it's just so hard for them to even get kids' attentions, though. Unfortunately, that could be in some places. Half the energy of the teachers is maintaining order. I think the success of your book, the success of your show, your podcast, and many of these other really intelligent podcasts are showing that there's an appetite for this stuff out there. Yeah, and I'm delighted to be a servant of that curiosity.
I brought this just because it's not even out yet. You're airing now live. You were live. You were live. You were live. There's like a five-second delay or something. Is that to believe all my ex tweeters?
What is this accessory to war? Oh, this is like another book. This is coming out in three weeks. Is this about space war? Accessory to war. The unspoken alliance between astrophysics and the military. Yeah, so this other book was astrophysics for people in a hurry.
If you're in a hurry, do not buy this book. This is not for people in a hurry. This is not an impulse item at the checkout line. This is all about. By the way, we know what role the physicist plays in war. The physicist makes the bomb, invents the bomb. The chemist perfects napalm. The biologist weaponizes anthrax.
An astrophysicist, well, we sit at the end of a telescope and wait for photons to cross the universe and enter our detector, and we go into conferences and argue about them. So there is no obvious connection between what we do and military strength hegemony, dominance, empire building. It's just not obvious. That's why the subtitle,
The Unspoken Alliance. It's not a secret, it's just, it's not there. It's there, but it's not, nobody's talking about it.
Do you realize, I'll just give an example, okay? If you needed more reasons to think that Columbus was a dick, okay? Let me add one to it, okay? There's a difference between when we were kids and today. Yeah, I know, I know. But actually, I do have something mildly redeeming to offer about Columbus if you have the time. Oh yeah. I just wanted, okay. Okay, start off with that. You want me to start out with that? Well, how do you want to do it? No, no, I'll do the dick part. It's a dick part for me. Okay, so on his third voyage,
He's in, by the time he held his third voyage, he had already planted enough Spanish flags that Spain had already begun to set up governments and infrastructures in these places that he had... Found. Yeah, basically conquered.
In one of the places, it's in the book accurately. I think it's Hispaniola, one of the island today. He has to get back, it's his third voice, 1503, 1504. He's got to get back to Spain. He doesn't have enough resources, not enough food for his crew. So he asks the natives,
Would you please give us some of your stock that you have collected from your farming? Now, this particular group of natives only makes exactly the amount of food they need to tie to the next crop. They don't have surplus. So they said, no, we don't have surplus, sorry.
Columbus knew that one week hence, coincidentally, there was going to be a total lunar eclipse with a moon in its orbit around Earth enters Earth's shadow, the full moon enters Earth's shadow and disappears.
That, the geometry of that event, it's just a simple lunar eclipse, but the geometry says that sunlight passes around Earth through Earth's atmosphere and takes on sunset colors that leach into Earth's shadow, giving the moon, if you can see it at all, a deep red amber hue. Almost the color of blood.
Columbus said, and he knew about this because he had read the tables, the eclipse tables, all right? We'd known enough about the solar system at the time to, we got that, okay? Actually, by then it was just the known world with Earth in the middle of the known universe. But that didn't matter. The rhythms of the universe were known. He says to the natives, if you do not give us food,
My God, which is more powerful than your God, will make the moon disappear and it will turn blood red. That will happen in one week. You have one week to comply. Some of them were skeptical. What? You can't what? Others said shit, we got to do what this guy said. Look at the ships they came in. Their guns, their power, their culture. Look what they've got. Sure enough, right on cue, the moon begins to disappear.
according to that. That is a famous woodcut. Oh, you got this? Oh, those viewing the video of this. That is a famous woodcut. And notice the natives bowing to him and he stands proudly because he knows the science. He knows the astronomy. He knew this. And so he invokes this
to dominate people who are not yet scientifically literate. And within seconds of this beginning, they bring them all the resources he wants, and we don't know what happened back at the island, whether the people survived the winter. But he got back to the island. That is one microcosm of ways that the universe has been invoked in this. I'll give you another example. Los Alamos, one of the national labs. They, today, as basically since their inception, are charged with
tracking the nuclear arsenal of the United States, our nuclear power, the nukes that would go into nuclear weapons, they think about this. Do you realize they hire astrophysicists? I had colleagues working there. You know why?
Because there's a room. There are two rooms. I mean, I'm simplifying this, but basically there are two rooms adjacent to one another and a computer between the two of them. The most powerful computers in the world. And there is code running on those computers that calculates the energy yields of hydrogen fusion.
That's exactly what an astrophysicist cares about when stars blow up, okay? The sun is undergoing nuclear fusion right now, and that's how it's making energy. And when high-mass stars die, they explode in supernova. This is a natural thing going on in the universe. On the other side, that's a classified room. They're calculating yields of hydrogen bombs.
and they have lunch together, they compare notes. The government doesn't always have the best people, but if you hire some of the best people to do whatever it is they want, and their calculations happen to relate to a military project, there you have a two-way street in progress. Why do you think the Hubble Telescope, the
the mirror issues notwithstanding which were ultimately fixed when it was first launched. Why was that so successful? There were versions of the Hubble telescope previously launched by the military looking down. That the model for that telescope had already been conceived and built and was operating.
Then we say, oh, we want one of those, okay? But that's not public that this is going on. The telescope gets designed as the benefit of previous versions of it having been used successfully, but looking down and we look up. This is the perennial two-way street of astronomy in the old days and in modern times astrophysics.
And the invention of the telescope. You haven't said anything yet. You're a good listener. Should I keep just keep talking? Am I preventing you from interrupting? Don't worry about me. Okay, fine. Galileo perfects the telescope. He learned that it had just been invented in the Netherlands.
The Dutch were opticians. So they invented the telescope and the microscope within a couple of years of one another. This transformed science. When did they invent the eyeglass, the reading glass? The reading glass earlier than that, but I don't know when. The real advance was putting two lenses in line with one another.
sounds trivial in modern times, but that was a huge leap, conceptual leap in what you would accomplish. And in so doing, depending on how you curve them and how you grind them, grind the shape of those lenses, you would get a microscope or a telescope. And we're off to the races. That's basically the birth of modern science as we now think of it and conduct it. Because you say to yourself, my sense is I don't trust them.
to be the full record of what's going on in front of me. You pull out a microscope, oh my gosh, Lee one hoke. He got the microscope guy. He got a drop of pond water, puts it under his microscope, just to think to do this. It's just water. Why do you think that's something interesting to do? He said, I wonder.
was curious. He puts it under and sees little what he described as animacules. Happily of swimming. Animacules. These are like the amoebas in Paramesia. And oh, oh it is. And so he writes, he reports on this to
to the, you know, scientific authorities and they don't believe him, they say. You know, Von Lee one hook, we think you might have had too much gin before you wrote this letter.
Why would anyone believe this? That there's entire creatures, an entire universe of creatures, thriving in a drop of pond water. And so the way science works is one report does not make it true. You need verification. They send people to the Netherlands to verify his results. And there it was, the birth of microscopy.
And then they looked at everything, cells, you know, they need vocabulary to describe what you're now seeing. Well, that was the journey down small. Then the journey went up big and Galileo perfects the telescope. He looks up and says, whoa, I see craters, mountains, valleys on the moon. The sun has spots. Venus goes through phases.
This became the corpus of evidence for Earth going around the sun in support of Copernicus' idea that Earth went around the sun. My point is, what was the second thing he did with his telescope? He telephoned? No, he didn't.
He contacted the doge of Venice, invited him to the clock tower, and said, look at what this instrument can do for you as we look out into the lagoon. You can identify a ship's intentions, friend or foe, by its flag ten times farther away than you can with the unaided eye. Venice bought a boatload of these telescopes in the service of their military defense.
And this was a source of money to Galileo. Now he could go look at the universe. This has been a two-way street ever since people have looked up. So this is an accounting of that. It goes on and on. The first x-ray machines for airports
You're old enough to remember, why would they put in because of hijackings to Cuba, basically? They were armed hijackings of airplanes, of American carriers to Cuba. And Congress said we got to do something about that. Oh, by the way, there's a company in Boston called American Science and Engineering that was building an X-ray detector small enough to put on a satellite to observe the universe in X-rays.
Because no one has used visible light, but not X-rays. That's a branch of the electromagnetic spectrum. We think if there are black holes out there, their region surrounding them will give us X-rays. It's a new window on the universe. And then they said, oh my gosh, there's a call for X-ray machines at airports. We've got the technology that we've perfected to put in a fricking satellite.
So the technology for those ones you walked through at the airport initially came out? Initially. Yes. Yes. Yes. There was a two-way street. There was, oh, my gosh, we need this for security. Oh, my God. We were using it. Let's apply that technology to these detectors. Well, that's been a lot of the stuff with the space program, right? A lot of the stuff that they devised for use on the space station and some many other technologies have trickled their way down into regular society. Well, that always happens. And even some simple things.
Because people say, why spend money up there? And we should be spending it down here. But there's interesting fact here that is almost never discussed. The people who think about the universe and study the universe are hugely creative. And the creative energies cannot be pre-prescribed. You can't go to a create, you might, but I don't know that you'll get their maximum creativity. Say, I need you to invent a cure for cancer right now. Use that brilliance. I'll try.
But the greatest discoveries, the greatest cures, the greatest of these comes from a cross-pollination of interest that people have, that they were engaged because they were interested just for the sake of being interested. So watch what I have, here's an example. The space shuttle, it's a glider when it lands. Okay, it's got no engines. It's got flaps. There's a little bit of brakes in the tires, but that's about it. When it comes in,
OK, how do you make sure the thing stays on track? Because they kept drifting and crosswinds and this sort of thing. And so they said, why don't we groove the road so that the rubber on the runway? So the rubber can align with the grooves and stay in a straight line. Because rubber doesn't slide well when you have doesn't slide sideways very easily on grooves. When they realized how effective that was, it's now put on off ramps to freeways.
If there's a freeway off ramp that's a little tight, not quite banked well enough, it's gonna be grooved. Check it out next time. And you could say, well, okay, that's pretty simple, low tech solution. Why couldn't we just discover that on our own without the $20 billion a year space agency called NASA? But you didn't. You didn't. Power tools, cordless, high torque power tools.
We're invented to service satellites in orbit by NASA. Because you can't just plug it into 120 volt socket when you're floating in space. So the engineer said, how are we going to solve this problem? Let's make a high torque power tool. So now, NASA invents the high... Now, that is the only way you're buying a power tool today. Is the cordless variety? All construction sites. They're not looking for a power outlet for these things.
So why didn't we invent this without the $20 billion space rate? You didn't. You didn't think about it. You said, oh, I can plug it in. This is great. You're not even thinking what you need. So yes, there are all of these applications.
But I don't think that's a good reason to do it, but I don't think it's the best reason. The best reasons are, my gosh, don't you want to keep dreaming? Don't you want to keep looking into the future? That would be ideal, but that's not attractive to people that are spending tax dollars. When it comes to tax dollars, people get super pragmatic and they go, why do we need to go to Mars? Now, what we need to do is take care of this and pay for that and we're the deficit and the budget.
You know, so you know, NASA's budget today is four tenths of one percent of the federal budget. So if you take a dollar... Four tenths, one percent. I will quantify it. Take a dollar bill and imagine that's your tax dollar and you can like cut it.
to whatever percent you want. So let's cut four tenths of one percent off of the edge. That doesn't get you into the ink. You're still in the white border around it. You would even notice that you put that dollar. You could trim that off the dollar and pay for anything. So my point is most of the people who say don't spend it here, spend it there.
They think NASA has more budget than it actually does. If you ask them, how much do you think of getting? 10%, 5%, several percent? No, it's one half of 1%. So if you're going to tell me that if you can take that four tenths of 1% and spend it in these other problems and solve them, I would say, yeah, go right ahead. But is this where you really want to pull the money from?
When it's the only thing that has us thinking about tomorrow, there's us thinking about a future. Well, I forgot like you that's super important. But for a guy who lives in Cleveland who doesn't give a shit about science. Oh, oh, excuse me. That's like the person who says, OK, I don't need the space program. Why do I need the space program? I have my cell phone and I have the weather channel and I know anything I need. This is. Yeah.
You're using GPS satellites to understand where you are on this earth. You don't understand where grandma's house is. When you put it. Who created what? Who created spread spectrum technology that let the GPS and Wi-Fi. Who is that? Hedy Lamar. Oh, I didn't know that. Yes. Yes, she did. Yes, she did. 1941. Yes, she did. Under that. Under recommending, thanks for reminding me of that. Super hot, though. That was a problem. No, we cared.
Yeah, but yeah, it took it would take decades to really realize that of course GPS is launched by the military and it's now hundreds of billions of dollars worth of the American economy thriving on this space application, but it was a military intent and it was to navigate
the surface of the earth to navigate and the first gulf war was the first big use of space assets in the conduct of military operations i believe in even when heddy lamar created it with another scientist the idea behind it was for encoded encoded transcriptions or encoded information during the war well so that uh... that's a big challenge how do you encode information that's by the way the future of this might
might come from. It's still not clear. The jury's still out and there's sort of opposing views on this. But you've heard about quantum entangled particles where I can create a pair of particles that know about one another and now they're separated in space and in time. And if you
observe that other particle it instantly changes the state of the particle back the other particle that's back where i am and by the way that they communicate instantaneously faster than the speed of life when you say if you observe do you mean that if you observe it with uh... anything but you have to do something you have to do yes so something has to interact with it's not who enter and also
But it's so not woo. But you say that, people go, yeah, I saw that in the secret. Yeah, so the problem is the word observe. People think is a psychological thing. But in physics, it's got nothing to do with it. It's a measurement thing. Right. And so in other words, if there's an electron sitting in the middle of this table and all the lights are out, I can say, I think there's an electron here. Let me find out.
And the moment I turn on the lights, the light interacts, a photon interacts with the electron and kicks it somewhere else. So the more I try to measure its position, the less I know its position.
So, because the measurement requires an interaction with it. And in the quantum scale, interactions change the state of the experiment that you're conducting. We know this, we've quantified it, we don't like it, but we deal with it. And in the act of dealing with it, you can exploit that fact for other purposes. We exploit quantum craziness to birth
the information technology revolution. There is no creation, storage, or retrieval of information without an exploitation of the quantum. And by the way, the quantum was discovered in quantum physics as a branch of physics, was discovered in the 1920s.
If you weren't around back then and your tax buddies that don't like paying taxes, what would you have said? Why are you spending government money on the atom and on molecules? You can't even see them. What good is it? I'm a woodworker. I just care about my wood atoms, right? Here I am. Yeah, shove that where your tax dollar is. And so it would look like you're wasting your own time and everybody else's money.
It would take decades, five decades, four or five decades before you'd realize what role that would play.
in computing this creation storage and retrieval of information. And by some measures, it's a third of the world's GDP is traceable to what quantum physics does for us on a computing scale. So anyone, yes. Yes. Well, I mean, there are ways to do it. There are certain industries that would still be there without computing, but they're made more efficient with it. So UPS tracks all of their
trucks with GPS and with computing devices that invokes the quantum. But UPS predates the use of these tools. But you can look at profits relative to their efficiencies that are enabled by these technologies, as well as entire fields that didn't exist before computing. You add all that up. It's a stunning fact. And so my only point is
that you, if you want today to say, why study this when we have these other problems? All I do is take you back to the cave and let's say, all right, we're in a cave. And there's a mountain over there in a valley. And I tell you, I tell the cave, I tell the tribe leaders, I want to explore that mountain and that valley. No, we can't afford to send you out there now. We have to solve the cave problems first before anyone leaves the cave.
We laugh at that. That's an absurd claim to make in caveman days. I don't know if anyone did it, but that's a crazy thought because there are solutions to your problems that might exist and time has demonstrated likely exist by leaving the cave that you can then discover.
So for me, exploration is not just space, all the frontiers of the unknown. Biology, chemistry, AI. You know those frontiers, and then you can cross-pollinate them and transform civilization. And then the last example I give, and then I'll shut up, because I want to hear you talk too. It's not for me. I want to hear you interact with what I'm telling. Here's one. You ready? OK. My physics professor in college
studied the universe, loved the universe, studied gas clouds between stars, and studied, how would you detect a gas cloud if it's not radiating light? Well, they give off radio waves, all right? And he figured out what kind of radio waves they give off and why. And in this, he gained expertise in the nucleus of the atom. And he discovered that the nucleus can resonate.
Depending on the mass of the nucleus, which means depending on what atom it is on the periodic table, it will resonate slightly differently when exposed to the same electromagnetic field. He discovered a new phenomenon in physics called nuclear magnetic resonance. It would then take a clever medical technologist to say, wait a minute. If you can distinguish one heavy atom from another,
Let me make a machine out of that, put your body in it, and I can then distinguish one kind of tissue from another. And thus was born the magnetic resonance imager, the MRI, arguably the most potent tool in the arsenal of modern medicine where I can diagnose a condition in your body without cutting you open first. That is based on a principle of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine.
By the way, the real title should be nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, but that's the other N-word. Nuclear, you don't like that one? Yeah, people don't like nuclear. What about- The less likely to go inside the machine, if the word nuclear was on it. My point is that was a cross-pollination of ideas with clever people on their frontiers looking over the fence at discoveries that are being made. It's how we got the microwave oven.
That wasn't invented by a thermodynamicist. Microwaves. This is a World War II attempt to communicate using microwaves. And they found out some guy's chocolate bar melted in the microwave field, and they said, what happened there? And they did some more tests. And of course, the water molecule and other molecules common in food respond to microwaves. It vibrates them. Ferociously.
And so you put food in a microwave cavity, the water content of the food vibrates, friction cooks the food.
There's still people today who say, oh, nucleus, because they think it's so fast. Oh, you still say it. Still have no fear. It's just friction. Friction it. Yeah, but everybody's scared that it fucks up the food. Well, does it? No, it's just it just heats the water gets scared. The woo people do. OK, so here's the thing. There's certain foods that don't respond well to the flipping of the water molecule. And one of them is like bread products.
It gets hard. Yeah, it gets chewy and leathery. Yeah. But only if you like overdo it. If you overdo it, you got to do it just right and you're still good. If you overdo it, it can get leather. That's kind of it. I'm trying to think. You wouldn't grill a steak in a microwave. You would heat up the meat uniformly and that's all it would do. It cooks bacon pretty fast, but it's a mess and it splatters all over. So you pick the foods that are best for that situation. As you would pick the foods best, you wouldn't put
toast in an oven at 350 degrees, bread to make toast. We have toasters for that. So different things in your kitchen do things best. You wouldn't make ice cream in your toaster oven. But people were afraid of microwaves, the one thing that they're afraid of. It's not that they're afraid of microwaves, that they're afraid of things they don't understand, that's your point, precisely. They're afraid that something's gonna happen to their food that makes it less good.
Correct. And it's not knowing that people fear. My wife's friend's mom will not eat something that comes out of a microwave. Really? She quotes that as part of what makes her healthy. She drinks a lot of water, she refuses to eat microwave food.
The whole life is around not using microwave food. She won't eat anything that comes out of a microwave. Okay, I'm glad that she doesn't, you know, she can live a long, happy life as such. But her reheat food, old school. Okay, one of the hardest thing is reheating lasagna, if you don't have a microwave up. It's true. That's like impossible. You're gonna cook it again. You're gonna cook it again.
Yeah, that's a really good point. So I think microwave ovens were invented for leftover lasagna. Yeah, just a bowl of pasta, just in general. Yeah. Soup. Yeah, great for soup. Soup is good. Yeah. So you don't have to worry about it. It's not doing anything to it. It's not sucking any nutrients out or adding any nuclear radiation. Correct. Okay. And there's nothing with radiation in the normal sense other than electromagnetic
radiation, it's already light from the bulb, which tend to use radiation in the context of stuff that would hurt you. So that would be radiation of high enough energy to hurt you and microwaves are not in that category. I never even thought about what microwaves do until this conversation.
Really? Yeah, so it's a certain frequency of microwaves that beautifully pairs with the water molecule and it vibrates it brilliantly. So it doesn't work for completely dried things? Yeah, that's why if you put something that has no water in it, it's not really very useful. It's white. It's beef jerky. There's still some moisture in it, correct. It's why it heats the food and not the plate.
If the plate gets hot, it's not because the microwave oven heated the plate. It's because the food in the food. That's why I can usually pick it up with the handles. You can cook food on a paper plate. That's right. It doesn't burst into flames. Doesn't burst into flames. This is crazy. What? You didn't show? What is the difference between MRI and FMRI?
Oh, so an FM, I don't claim total expertise here, but I'll tell you the little I know. And MRI, they put you in there and you're stationary, and then they make this map of whatever part of the body they're studying is typically your head, all right? But you can do it for your joints and other parts of your body that might require this level of three-dimensional analysis. And it's a 3D map.
of what's going on in the part that they surveyed. And so you look at it slices through that section. So you might see in MRIs of your brain, of your skull, and they take slices. As the slices go through, you see like the eye socket come in and then go out again, or the nose cavity. And you can look at it in all three dimensions, front to back, side to side, up to down.
So, depending on the sophistication of the machine, fMRI is they are looking at your brain while you were thinking.
So time is now an active coordinate of what's going on. And they're measuring it as they're talking to you about. Correct. So they say, oh, think of ice cream sundae with a cherry on top, but think of a naked person who you'd want to have sex with. And F stands for functional. Right. And so it's basically a real time observation of what's going on in your brain and evict a person.
There was a woman in India and it's really a highly criticized case, but she was convicted of a crime I believe it was murder because she had functional knowledge of the crime scene.
And the arguments against it were like, if you're gonna be accused of a crime, clearly you're gonna study the evidence, you're gonna talk to a lawyer, you're gonna go over some things, you're gonna be- I don't know if FMRI is that precise. Yeah, they don't think it is. That's why it was very disturbing that this was used in court. It's like, do you remember when these Italian geologists were, I think they were tried because they should have known about an earthquake?
before it happened, and then scientists had to say, hey, guys, this is not how it works. Like, this shit can just happen. Yeah, that's so... Do you remember that? No, I don't, but that's what I do know. Let me share a couple of things with you that I've thought deeply about recently.
There are three kinds of truths in the world, okay? Because we're not like a three. Let me give you three, okay? The Rudy Giuliani kind. Yeah, well, that's okay. Okay, so you're really true isn't always true. I know, so let me try to unpack that. Okay. All right, you ready? Okay. Alternative facts. There's something called an objective truth. An objective truth is something that is true, whether or not you believe in it, and the methods and tools of science are uniquely conceived
to seek out and establish objective truths. And this I'm referring to the invocation of the scientific method. No one scientific result, result, research result is true.
until it is verified by other people's research results using a different experimental method with different wall current from another country. When your competitor says, I think you're wrong, let me show how you're wrong, and they reproduce your experiment and get the same result. When you have generally the same results emerging, that is a newly discovered objective truth about the natural world. And when you have objective truth, they're not later shown to be false.
That's an objective truth. Then you have personal truths. These are truths that you hold dearly. Jesus is your savior. Muhammad is the final prophet on earth. Abraham is your, these are your personal truths. There's a heaven you're going to. No one is gonna take that from you, not in a free country where freedom of expression and speech and religion is protected. It's a personal truth. The problem here is,
You can't convince someone else of your personal truth without some act of persuasion and in the limit an act of violence. Okay. In the limit. In the limit. This is how you get holy wars. So I have this personal truth and I require that you share my personal truth. But why is that personal truth? That's a recipe for disaster. And not a belief. Because the people who hold the belief will tell you that it's a truth. So I don't want to take that usage of the word away from them.
Okay, so you're giving them the definition. I'm giving them the word truth, but modifying it to say personal truth. That's correct. They've used it that way for millennia. They feel that it's true and it's true in their bones. I'm simply saying that because it's your personal truth, you cannot require that someone else share it.
And in this country, because in the United States, because God is not mentioned in the Constitution, it's self a controversial thing in its day, by the way. Actually, God has mentioned, but in a very insignificant way, that the Constitution is a God-free document. And because it's a God-free document, it protects your expression of religious faith, because it means the government has no say in who and what you believe or why.
If the Constitution said, mention God and Jesus, well, there it is. There's Christianity built into the fabric of the country. And if you want to be some other religion, you're going to have a hard time because we can set laws against it. This is why so many religiously persecuted people came to the United States to escape their country where they could not practice their religion a little differently or a lot differently from what was going on in their homeland. Is it a problem though to call it truth?
I would rather not call a truth, but I'm a big word guy. And I respect what happens to words. I don't always like it, but I respect it. And so I'm going to say there's an objective truth, which is true whether or not you believe it. There's your personal truth, which is true to you. Third truth is a political truth. Political truth is something that is true because it has been incessantly repeated. And then you just believe it at that point.
Okay, what's Hillary Clinton's first name? It's crooked. Or first name is actually Hillary? Okay, I thought it was crooked Hillary. This was incessantly repeated in the Trump campaign. And that's an absurd example of it. But the point is, if you keep saying, if you keep saying that the New York Times has fake news,
It just keeps saying that. Eventually people believe it. And it becomes a political truth because the politicians repeated it. So it's a political truth that people believe it or it's a political truth because people believe it. Which one is it? So again, you're trying to preserve the fundamental meaning of the word truth. Yeah. And I've just given up on that.
Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris had an infuriatingly frustrating podcast where they went over the meaning of the word truth for more than an hour. And like I said, you can do that and philosophers like arguing and debating meaning of things. For me, it's however people are using the word, that's the meaning. I concede that. By the way, it's why
I don't call myself an atheist. It's why. You can look up the dictionary definition of atheist, and it kind of applies to me, but what is the definition of atheist in practice? It is what leading atheists do, and it's their conduct, and it's their behavior, and it's what they say, and it's their attitude. That is what an atheist is today, because they're the most visible exemplars of that word, and most of their conduct
I either don't agree with or simply don't engage in. What don't you agree with? I don't debate religious people and tell them they're idiots. Yeah, that doesn't work. Whether or not it works, it's just not in me to do that. I don't purge myself of words that have religious foundations in them. Once in my Facebook, I had a friend going up in orbit to repair the Hubble telescope, one of the astronauts, and I said, Godspeed.
And then I gave the astronauts name people wrote in in the thread said I thought you were an atheist How could you say Godspeed? And atheist got angry with me and I said Okay, first of all this phrase is deeply historical in the space program
When John Glenn was launched, the headline was Godspeed John Glenn. And every mission, where we send human beings into space, somewhere there is that reference in the NASA family. What does that word mean? I'll tell you what it means. Please do. Okay. So, oh, by the way, I'll get to that in just one minute. Okay, take your time.
The atheists who are arguing that I was using God's speed as a phrase, they all have used the phrase goodbye, haven't they? See you later, goodbye. Where does that word come from? It's from God be with you. It's a contraction of those three words. And why would you say this? You would say this to someone leaving the city wall.
where it's dangerous, okay? Back when you had city-states, you're going to, you're a good, God be with you to bring protection for you between one city wall and then. The crowds look out for you. So now, what is the source of danger if you're going to space? It's not alien space muggers. It is the fact that you have space marauders. It's the fact that you have high speed
And high speed is the source of essentially any death of anything that's in motion, if you were part of that disaster. So God's speed is like a space equivalent to God be with you.
Is that really the origin? I'm just saying it. But did they say that before there was space travel? Did they say Godspeed? I don't know the actual origin of space travel of the term. I don't know how far back it goes, but I do know it became common after John Glenn because they're not going to say it to Yuri Gagarin because they were they're all atheists in the Soviet Union. Right. But here in America,
In America, Godspeed, John Glenn. And I respect that tradition. And so I said that. And then they jumped. So if atheists are jumping on me for having said that, clearly I'm not an atheist. And ask me my favorite Broadway musical of all time. What's your favorite part? Jesus Christ, superstar. All right. And I still use BC and AD in my writings.
Okay, I still do it. You don't use BCE. I don't use BCE. All right. Oh, see, even you cut coppin' a tube right there, right? Interesting. I saw your face, you got the camera. Do you see a face? Interesting, interesting, interesting, interesting. No, I'll tell you why. Okay, first of all. Doesn't make any sense. BCE is not current era 2000 years ago. I'm gonna tell you. So BCE, as you know, stands for before common era. Right. And CE stands for common era. So this is de-religious-ifying
A, D, and B, and B, C. Right. Okay. Yet, of course, they reference the same calendar. Right. Okay. Well, who invented the calendar we all currently use in modern society? It's called the Gregorian calendar. It was invented by the Catholic Church, by Jesuit priests in the 1580s, assigned by Pope Gregory to fix the problems in the calendar because... I'm sorry, I'm screaming at you here. You got me started. Scream. Get crazy. I got a calendar. I'll bring you coffee.
The Julian calendar, put forth in ancient Rome, had one modification to previous calendars. It had a leap day. Okay? It had a leap day. And okay, the leap day is how often, every four years.
This was good. Because what are we trying to track? Earth goes around the sun. And so we say, all right, how long does that take? Well, it takes a year. But it turns out we're not actually tracking how long it takes Earth to go around the sun. Tracking how long it takes Earth to repeat its seasons. And the year that corresponds to our seasons is slightly different from the year that corresponds to how long it takes to go around the sun.
slightly different. And that difference was not recognized in the early calendars. And that difference accumulated so that by the year 1584,
The vernal equinox, the first day of spring, did not occur on March 21st. It occurred on March 10th. It shifted from the calendar date. That's what happens if you don't match the cycles of things. And the Pope said, we're not having any of this, especially since Easter might land on Passover, and we're trying to distinguish ourselves mightily from the Jews. So let's fix this.
The Jesuit priests got to study this. They looked at the cycles of the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars. And they came up with a new calendar, the Gregorian calendar, a modification to the Julian calendar. You know what they had to do? To invoke it, they had to take 10 days out of the calendar. To jumpstart, to put the first day of spring back on March 21st. And this happened in October 1584. Why is there been? They took 10 days out of the calendar.
So now how much rent do you pay? They have to like invent amortized rent. Really? Yeah, because you're going to pay for three weeks instead, you know, 20 days instead of 30. Did they have to figure that out? Okay. Point is this was hard earned and the whole world uses this calendar. It is the most accurate calendar ever devised. Is it? Yes. I'll tell you what. Okay. You asked. So watch what happens. The leap day over corrected the calendar.
It over corrected it. Over corrected. Yes. Yes. So you need to leap here. So, no, sorry, the leap day is every four years. That one day, every four years was slowly putting too many days into the moments into the year, okay? The Gregorian calendar figured this out and it had put 10 extra days since the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, 10 extra days. First, jump start, get rid of the 10 days. Now everything's lined up again. Okay. Now, how do you prevent this from happening again?
Because it overcorrects, how long do you have to wait to remove a leap day that you would otherwise put in? Okay. Okay. That's every hundred years. Oh. So every hundred years that would be a leap day, you remove the leap day. Now it turns out that undercorrects it.
By an even smaller amount. Okay, so how long do you have to wait before you have to put a leap day back in? Every 400 years. Oh God So the year 2000 was a century year which normally would not have a leap day
Except it's a century year evenly divisible by 400, so they put the leap day back in. And everybody on February, almost everybody, everybody except the astronomers on February 29th in the year 2000 said it's just a leap year because it's divisible by four. No, it is a rare leap year. It is a century year divisible by 400.
That corrects it back. And so now you have a stable calendar for tens of thousands of years. I got to give props to the Jesuit priests. I'm not going to say, no, I'm taking the Christianity out of this reference because they figured out the calendar that we all use. And it's a fucking awesome count. Sorry to drop an F-bomb there. So I'm not just because some atheists are telling me to rid God out of everything in the universe that I'm not. I'm not doing that. I'm going to say they came up with this calendar.
The reasons were because they didn't want to confuse it with Passover. The motivation is whatever it is, but the science is good. And so there it is. So in accessory to war, where we go back many centuries, the editors said, well, we should use BCE because it's a liberal forward thing. I said, I'm not using BCE and CE. And by the way, there was no year zero.
You know why? There's no year zero? Because the Romans came up with the calendar and they counted using Roman numerals and Roman numerals don't have a zero. It was not yet invented. Didn't have a zero? No! No! So it went from one B.C. to A.D. one. B.C.'s before Christ A.D.'s anodominy in Latin, the year of our Lord. Wow.
Now, of course, in Islam and in China and in Hebrew cultures, Israel in particular, they have access to the Chinese calendar, the Muslim calendar. Muslim, of course, dates to Muhammad, Chinese calendar dates to
actually a planetary alignment in 4,700 BC. They use a different system. They use a different system. That's why. And the Hebrew calendar dates to like the beginning of the universe as interpreted in the Torah. So they have access to those. But when they're conducting international business, we just simply use the Gregorian calendar. Just get over it.
But did they use it in China? Do they use it constantly and consistently? Or do they alternate between the Gregorian calendar and something else? I'm not a Chinese expert, but for what I know of China and my friends and colleagues, for conducting business, the world's business is conducted on the Gregorian calendar, with the 12-month calendar, with the
With the year as referenced by everybody else and does it have to be done that way in terms of like is there is anyone ever done a study on? Possibly creating a more effective more accurate calendar doesn't invoke leap years and the problem is the length of the day
does not cut evenly to the time it takes Earth to go around the sun. So there will always be fractions of days that you're accumulating. And what do you do with them? You wait till you accumulate a day and put it in or take it out. What did the Mayans have? They had a lunar cycle calendar, right? They had a calendar based on Venus. And so, yeah, that a really good calendar. Yeah, it was overstated that it was like really accurate calendar. Overstated. It was overstated. It was good, better than anything that came before it. Not as good as the Gregorian. No, no, Gregorian calendar.
People love old shit though. They do, and they want to believe that. Especially people who, you know, they want to believe that people 5,000 years ago somehow knew more about the universe than we do today. Yeah. Just know. Why is that? Why do they want to believe that? I think...
I don't know. For me, that's one of the great puzzles of life. Why do people want to believe that the Egyptians somehow had some access to the universe? Well, they knew some. They definitely knew how to build some incredible shit. Of course. But that debt alone. I don't want to take that away from them. Doesn't the physical, just the presence of these incredible buildings leave the possibility that maybe they had some knowledge that we lost?
Lost Knowledge is a real thing. I don't want to be little or diminish the significance of real knowledge. We forgot how to draw in perspective from ancient times. Had to be rediscovered as I understand from the artists. Had to be rediscovered in the Renaissance. The Archway.
of the Roman arch had to sort of be rediscovered, okay? So yes, yes, you can lose knowledge. But if you look at the knowledge we have gleaned using the modern methods and tools of science that go far beyond our five senses, in our access to the world, to say that somehow they knew something that we don't using our tools, that's just false.
Sorry, that's not possible. We know the physiological limits of your ability to know what's going on around you. And then people say, I have a sixth sense. Fine. But as a scientist, I have dozens of senses. I can measure things that your five senses can't. I can measure the magnetic field around you, the electromagnetic field. How much microwaves are coursing through your body now? We have no sensors for this. I can see auras.
Fine, I can see other things that are affecting your body now. I can tell you if ionizing radiation is passing through you, I have Geiger counters that can do that. You can't. You'll eventually learn whether you're exposed to ionizing radiation because you'll get cancer of your organs and your limbs fall off. I can see that we know far more today than perhaps, not even perhaps, than at any other time in conceivable history.
But it is possible that they knew some things like how to build a pyramid. Yes. That we really just don't understand today. I don't know what it means to not understand how to build a pyramid today. We have 150 story buildings. So we do. We're not thinking about a pyramid stuff. I can tell you this. Do you know what the first thing that was built by humans ever? No, no, that's only part of the sentence. Sorry.
I love your enthusiasm. My sentence only barely came out of my mouth. The tallest thing humans built after the pyramids. I think it's a building in Dubai. No. So in other words, what's the next tallest thing after the pyramids? Oh, right after. Yeah. What is the next tallest thing we built? Stable structure after the pyramids. What?
The Eiffel Tower. Really? Yes. Eighteen, whatever. The 89, the late 1800s in Paris, the Eiffel Tower. That was the first stable structure we built as a civilization that was taller than the pyramids. So the Egyptians knew architecture. They knew. No one's taken that away from them. But to claim they have some secret knowledge of the functionings of the universe, no.
No. Well, people love saying that kind of stuff. Yeah, it makes for a great TV. But the fact that they didn't have steel and the fact that you're dealing with the very most recent 2,500 BC, and they built... You just have to be more ingenious, more innovative than we otherwise would have to be. Yeah.
How do you move the blocks? How do you make stone hands? Those rocks are nowhere in the region. They were carted from, they found a place where those rocks would have been mined, removed. And yeah, those are some big-ass rocks.
Yeah, as are the ones, but it's not less impressive because they're just big. Like what the thing about the pyramids, it's so impressive is the precision and the sheer numbers, 2 million, 600,000 stones. Our best understanding of Stonehenge is that it's a functioning observatory that can actually predict eclipses. So I just got a bitch lap here there.
Oh, Stonehead's not impressive. It's just big stone. That's really impressive. They're lined with the solstice. They have, there are holes that are not stones, but they're 56 holes, which is three times the, the Saros, which is the cycle of eclipses of the matching of the orbits of the sun and the moon in the sky, the paths of the sun and the moon in the sky. And when they match up, you get an eclipse. It's an eclipse observatory, a guy named... That's absolutely what it is.
There's a book published in the 1970s by a guy named David Dawkins. It's not Richard Dawkins, but it's another one of these hawkins. Richard Hawkins. Richard Hawkins. Hawking. Hawking. Hawking. Hawking.
Damn what I'm doing. Damn what we got our top crack researchers here. James on a ball. Just look up the title of his book was Stonehenge Decoded. Just look up the title of that book. Anyhow, it's highly convincing and we're all we're all there with it. So it's essentially just a study of the position of the stones in relationship to the where the okay. Gerald Hawkins. Thank you. Yeah. Stonehenge decoded. So he I visited Stonehenge as a kid at age 15 on an expedition and he was the expedition head.
Oh, wow. How lucky for you. Yeah, it was good. And that stuck with me, which is why I named this phenomenon in Manhattan, where the sun sets along the street grid. I saw that in your Instagram. Yeah, yeah. So I named it Manhattanhenge, sort of harkening back to my early days, thinking about the alignment of the sun and structures that we might build. So twice a year, for those viewers or listeners who don't know, twice a year, the Manhattan Street Grid,
which is not perfectly aligned north-south. The Manhattan Street grid will, the sun will set exactly on the grid. And what's up there now, that image, what's not obvious is that picture is taken
along a street that is itself three miles long, and then you're crossing the Hudson River, and then there's New Jersey on the other side. So people try to zoom in on it, but really what you really should do is zoom out from it, and then you get the vanishing point on it. So all those are zoomed in. Let's go to, yeah, that one looks more like my photo. Go back to that other one.
Yeah, see? So that's on 34th Street, the one you see now. And then you get this sparkling effect. That happens twice a year. Twice a year. That sort of crazy wildlife effect that looks photoshopped on us.
Yeah. There's an image on his Instagram that is linked on my Instagram. The most recent photo. Okay. There he goes. Oh, there's you with the selfie. That's the selfie. Okay, so come on down. Awful Afro. Oh, yeah. That's strong. That was my first selfie. How old were you? I was 14. Let me see. It was probably 1974. Wow. So I would have been 15. I think I've been 14 or 15. So your path of curiosity was set. Oh, go back. It goes back. Very early. Right.
But that's not what we're looking for here. It's good that one. Thank you. It is so that is another one Wait, but go back to all the rivers. Wow zoom back out of T. See all the pictures there
Go to the bottom left. There you go. Okay. That might be the first ever Manhattan hands photo. Where is that from? I took that in 2001. Right. And it got published in 2002. This is before September 11th. This is July 11th. I took it before September 11th. Right. Right. And then I had a means to publish it. And right then,
The notice that it's a green light and traffic is ready to knock me over. So no one is in the streets doing this, but now there are tens of thousands of people that pour into the streets on these days. We post what day you're getting Manhattan hinge from the American Museum of Natural History, my day job. And then that goes out to press gets it and tens of thousands of people spill into the street blocking traffic. And if you think of all the ways traffic gets blocked in your day, yeah.
All of us, too many of them. See by yourself, it's interesting. It's great. Yeah. So that's what it has become. Holding up phones. And it's all because I went to Stonehenge. Yeah. So it's a, it's also a, an observatory. So was it you that named this? Yeah. Yeah. Damn. Check you out. Coin to coins. I'd rather say coin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Manhattan hinge.
Because the buildings are like hinges. The hinge is a stone. There's a vertical stone. There's a vertical structure. And if you made a stone, it's a stone hinge. Why isn't it possible to construct a calendar that doesn't have leap years? What you would have to do, you could do it. But what would happen is, it means you care more about the year than you do about the day. So what would happen is, you would celebrate the new year at like three in the afternoon. And then the next year, you'd celebrate it at like,
12 minutes after three in the afternoon, and then 20 minutes, it would sort of move through your calendar. And then that means you cared more about the year, sorry, you cared more about the, did I say that right, you, we always wanna celebrate New Year's on midnight, and by the way, New Year's is celebrated in 24 time zones, not all at the same time. So it's interesting, everyone thinks of that as a moment.
Yet, it's really a calendar event. Sorry, it's a talk event. It's celebrated over 24 hours. Yeah, if you're in Thailand, it's 14 hours different. So therefore, if you were to do it astrophysically, you would know the exact moment where we returned in our orbit and everybody would celebrate that instant. So then the whole world would celebrate the new year at the same time. It means you value it differently. It's not a midnight celebration.
You could do that. It's a celestial celebration. It's celestial, yeah. So that would be the only way? Yeah, that's the only way, because a day doesn't cut evenly into the year. Those two have nothing to do with one another. There's no reason why that would have... So in other words, let me say it another way, just because you're looking like you're looking off in space here. So, there's new years. Okay, let's count 365 days.
When we do that, we are not at the same place we were when we last celebrated New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, okay? We're not at the same place in our rotation. In our orbit, our revolution. Around the sun. You rotate on an axis, you revolve around something else. Those two words, how you use those two words. So we're not in the same place, but we celebrate New Year's anyway. Well, when will we be in the same place? A quarter of a day later, six hours.
So we would celebrate the next new year at 6 a.m. Nobody's willing to do that. And the next new year at noon, then the next new year at 6 p.m. And then the next new year kind of aligns back again. Well, that's the leap day. That's the fourth year we have put in a leap day. See? So it's our love of the day. Yes. That keeps us fucked up with the world when it comes to the year. Yeah.
Wow. You pick one, and then that's how you do it. And the mine's based on the moon, right? I didn't study their calendar as deeply as I should have and wanted to, especially back in 2012 when everyone said, oh, the mine calendar runs out, so therefore it's the end of the world. I was thinking.
I was thinking it was the end of the world, baby. Because the Mayan said so. The Maya said so. We also felt like that was back when, you know, before that had happened, it was, you know, George Bush was president in like 2007, and everybody was thinking, Jesus, this is going to be the end. So every decade, there's somebody predicting the end of the world. Sure. I'm actually quite entertained by this exercise.
Do you remember when they had billboards all around LA? Just a few years ago? No, that's a different end of the world. That's a guy with a radio podcast church. And then the underworld didn't come. And so you pushed it forward. So it's entertaining. We live in a free country. It's evidence that we live in a free country.
where freedom of speech is protected and you can practice any religion you want. And they didn't learn much science in school. That's a part of it. That's part of the fact that you have this in our world. I don't mind it, actually. I find it entertaining. But it becomes an issue if people, such as that, gain power over legislation.
over the rest of us. Because this counts this as a personal belief. It's your personal belief. The world is going to end on October 19th. That's your personal belief. You're fine. But if you now create laws that require I go with that, you just impose your personal belief on me. And your personal belief is not true for everyone. It's only true for you.
yeah that's a problem and an objective truth is true for everyone so if you're going to have if you can have governance you're going to want to base governance on what is objectively true because it would apply to everyone independent of your belief system yeah i agree with that and by the way there there there there
There are things that we're not sure are true yet, that we're still researching. That's not what I'm talking about as an objective truth. Objective truth have been verified by multiple scientific studies, not just one study. This was the problem with the cholesterol study.
There's a cholesterol study that set everybody on the course to drop their cholesterol levels. Saying it would be good for your heart and all the rest of this. Because a series of countries were studied where they had longevity and low heart disease and low cholesterol intake. That study happened to leave out France. It just wasn't in the study. And a couple of other places that have high cholesterol intake but don't have higher heart disease. So that study was flawed.
but it was hard to replicate it because it went over many years and it was thousands of people and so everyone just jumped on it.
You don't have a scientific truth, and this is a general problem with medical results, because the press is waiting at the journal editor's office. Oh, here's a new study that shows that this gives you cancer. Oh, that must be true, and out comes the headline, because you want to be the first to report it. And then that gets emblazoned in people's heads, and not everyone reads the follow up. No one could duplicate that study. So there's a flaw.
We don't even know what the flaw is. We know that no one else could get those results. So it goes in the dustbin of scientific research. Most research in any journal of the moment will ultimately show them to be wrong. That's the bleeding edge of science. It's a great place to be because you're in the trenches and you don't know what is true. You can't look up in the back of the book what the answer is to double check. You don't even know what the question is to ask half the time.
But it's very frustrating for people that don't get it. But it's exciting. It's exciting for the scientists. It's exciting for knowledge period. It's constantly expanding and growing. But it's very frustrating for people that really don't have the time and maybe did get some outdated nutrition knowledge. Or they need an answer right now. They need an answer right now. And religion in many ways gives you answers right now without the need to sort of
to research it or to go on the frontier. The lack of education and the lack of curiosity about it is one of the scariest things about new generations of kids, right? Like when the new generations are coming up, if they know less than the generation before, that's when we really start to freak out. That would be a problem. Although I have good confidence in the
I think millennials have only ever known the internet and devices. So what would that be? My son is a millennial and he's like...
My kids are millennials, so they're 20-ish. So 30 is a little old. So 25 and under, I think, are the millennials. Yeah, but 30 when they were 10, the internet was around. I know, but they need a different marketing term, so you can market to them differently. So to me, I would put them in the same bin just as you were thinking there. But they have a different relationship to science and technology. Of course. They don't fear the science or the technology. They embrace it because it has shaped the civilization that has enabled their social life.
It has, but through this, like one of the things that I tweeted, I think it was from Scientific American yesterday, maybe it was yesterday, that it's a little bit misleading, but one of the things they said is only 64% of millennials have a strong belief. These things, these coasters are terrible. They look great, but then things stick to the bottom of them. How was it made of? I don't know, metal? Yeah, okay.
A metal coaster. Yeah, see what the hell is that sticks. Yeah, that's the issue Sticks when it gets moisture You know about this we flip this over and you tip it over and then it what happens? You never did that what yeah, it'll stay. Yeah. Oh because the pressure. Yeah, the air pressure Okay, but don't do it
I don't trust your science. Okay, subjective truth. 64% of what? Millennials are not, or only 64% are convinced that the world is a ball.
the world is a circle that lowers us. What is it, a spheroid? Is that what it's called? Oblate. I mean, I'd like to see how that question was asked. Exactly. Because if they know that we are oblate and the thing is asking is Earth a ball, they'll say, no, we're an oblate ball. We're slightly wider below the equator than at the equator. So we're a pear-shaped oblate spheroid.
but it's not a pair that you would find normally. If you found that pair, you'd be like this, fucking pair the shape like a ball. So these distinctions, these differences in measurements are so small that if you found it on the ground, you would say this is a perfect sphere. Let me tell you how good a sphere it is. You ever see the schoolroom globes, the geographic globes, and you rub your finger over Nepal, and you get the Himalayas, yeah, yeah, and you get the Rockies,
That is a gross exaggeration of reality. Yes. Do you realize if you took Earth with all of its mountains, valleys, and hills and red and shrunk it down to the size of a cue ball, it would be smoother than any cue ball ever machined? Really? Yes. Yes. Think about it. What? Think. Think about this. Joe. Really? Joe. Joe. Joe. Joe. Listen to me. You ready? Okay. Do you know the deepest part of Earth's crust?
No. The Marianas Trench off the coast of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean. That's the deepest part. Deepest part. It goes six miles down. OK. Oh, OK. So OK, I was thinking of the depth of the crust itself. Sorry. Exactly. No, no. Just access to the deepest part of Earth's crust, the lowest point on Earth's surface. The Marianas Trench right off the coast of the Philippines. The highest point on Earth's surface, the tip of K1. K2.
Is it K-1 or K-2? Is it Japan? I think it's K-1. Why would you name the tallest peak K-2? It's good point. I'm just... I'm not a mountain climber, but I'm just thinking... Where is K-1? It's the Himalayan Mountains. In Nepal. Isn't it in Nepal? I think it is. So now, how high up is that? It was 28,000 feet. So it's like five miles up. The distance.
between the lowest point on Earth's surface and the highest point on Earth's surface is 11 miles. That's here to the comedy store. That is less than the length of Manhattan. Whoa. Yet we are 8,000 miles in diameter. And those two points are very far separated from one another. If you were a cosmic giant and you came up to Earth and you rubbed your finger over Earth's surface,
it would feel as smooth as a cue ball to you. Wow. In fact, in this book, I have a whole chapter called On Being Round, which is all about this.
All about our perception of what is round and what is not I had asked you to debate one of them flat earth guys No, I don't know I know we talked about it and we're gonna have a month Skype No, what we do is and I think this is a diabolical plot so that the next time we can ship people en masse into orbit They all want to be the first in line because they know we're gonna send them So they can see the round earth. They're gonna be the first ones in space
Just so they can stop annoying the rest. I don't think you're correct. I don't think you're correct. I don't think you're correct. I do have people that have met that don't believe because the problem with YouTube videos is it's a problem with a lot of things.
But one of the things about being unchecked while you're discussing things is you can say things, you can use big words, you can sound articulate and smooth, and you can do it in a very professional looking manner. Or do it passionately. Yes, passionately, convincingly, charismaticly, and you're unchecked. But if you did that in front of an expert,
And you showed him that along the way they go, stop. That's not true. Stop. That's not what works. Let me show you why this isn't correct. Let me show you how you could prove that this isn't correct. I'll show you objective truths. But this is not happening. That render your argument enveloped. So people don't have any education and then they watch one of these YouTube clips. They start actually believing that this stuff makes sense because it's unchecked. And I would say it's not about whether they've had education. It's about whether the education they had
teaches them skepticism of information and teaches them how to inquire. You realize it's just as intellectually lazy to believe everything you see as it is to deny everything you see. Yes. Why should someone know automatically that earth isn't flat? Yet I tell them in the next breath that the entire universe was once as small as a marble.
Both of those sound equally preposterous, except one has evidence to back it and the other does not, and very strong scientific, theoretical, and experimental underpinnings. So when you are trained to inquire, you don't either believe everything outright or reject everything outright. You're trained to ask questions. You're trained to probe deeper than the layer of information that comes to you. That's what should be taught in school, and it's not.
They give you a book and say, learn this. And you'll get tested on it. And then when you're done, learn this. Well, isn't also there's a problem with being inexorably connected to your first belief. When you have an idea and it's in your head, it's very difficult for people to shake that idea. And they start arguing that idea becomes a part of their identity. And they dig their heels in deeper when an opposing view is presented to them. Because they connect themselves to these ideas.
It is who they are. Right, right. And so I try not to base my character profile on something that is not yet verified as objective truth. That's a very good thing to do. It's one of the reasons why I don't have tattoos on my body. Uh oh.
Holding aside. God, stretch in my face. Go on. One of the reasons is there's nothing I am so sure about that I want to put it indelibly on my skin. No, no, let me say it differently. There's nothing I value in my mind, body, and soul so much in this moment that I want to indelibly etch it on my skin. Because I want to leave room
for me to have a possibly more enlightening thought later. That would override whatever was my decision in that moment. And since I count myself among the lifelong learners, I'm learning stuff all the time. They say, wow, that's good. I didn't know that. Oh, that's even better. What's something you learned recently? That you went, oh. OK, let me think.
Okay, here's something I learned recently. I think I knew this when I was a kid, but if you're playing basketball and you're shooting, okay? And you say, oh, that didn't go in. Oh my gosh, well, you know, the rim, they should maybe make the rim a little bigger. I could score more often. Do you realize? Two basketballs can fit exactly side by side through the opening of a basketball hoop. Hmm. Really? Yes. I guess that makes sense. Two basketballs.
Tough squeeze. No, it's not a cosmically mind-blowing moment, but that gives you perspective next time you watch a basketball game. It's how these guys can fly from the foul line in an airborne slam dunk and not miss.
Because the area of this opening is four times you do the math. It's four times as large as the ball itself. Right, because of the different positions it could be. So there are multiple positions and they can still do it.
So it's not that that's easy to accomplish, but knowing this, you realize how much easier it is to score than you might have otherwise thought. I wonder if basketball players- So that was a recent revelation. That's a good revelation. I wonder if basketball players occasionally practice with a smaller hole. I think about this all the time. I say, if I was a basketball player, you don't want to practice with a heavier ball? Jamie saying yes. Because that would throw you off. That would throw you off. You practice with this. What, and a bigger ball?
They use a bigger ball as well? Yeah. We use a ball. Sometimes it's almost as big as the wrist. But wait a minute, is it heavier? No. No, you don't want to use a bigger ball. It's a thing they did a long time ago. I bet they still don't. They no longer do it because then your grip is different. The grip matters. Right. Where your two hands go and what they feel. Yeah. So you want to do it, you use a smaller rim. And in baseball, you throw a faster pitch to give you less reaction time. That pool table that you see out there. You use a skinnier bat.
that pool table is a very small pocket opening. It's a four inch pocket opening as opposed to a five and a half inch. That's quite a bit different. You're doing it. You're doing it. And so I would also, growing up, I played stick ball in the street in New York. And so you're using basically a broom handle. And so when the first time you play baseball officially, it's like, whoa, I've got this huge bat.
And so stick ball players tend to transfer very well to baseball when you're a kid. Yeah. Because your instrument is bigger. You read the talent code? No. Daniel Coyle? No. One of the interesting parts about it is Brazilian soccer players, how good they are. And he attributed it to a different game that they play with a heavier ball that they do indoors.
It's a small, heavy ball. And because they do it in tight quarters, it involves incredibly fast footwork and movement. And then these guys take that footwork and movement and it translates amazingly well to an open soccer field. I wonder if they calculated that because what you would do is, let's say the ball weighs twice as much, then it would only go half as far when you kicked it. So then you make a field half as large.
I don't think they did. And then you can reproduce almost all of the dynamics of the soccer game. I think it was based on just trying to play a game. Like how far are you going to throw it in? If it's balls twice as heavy, you throw it half as far, the field is half the size. Right. And then you have a mini game, basically, if you do it right. That makes sense. By the way, there's a whole fun exercise you can do playing sports on other planets with different groundings. It's a very, very fun thing to do.
If you're a dork. Sorry. You know, it's funny occasionally I'll tweet something and people say dork. And I say, yeah, thanks for the compliment. Yeah. Nerd is OK. Nerd is except. I'm taking dork. It used to be a bad thing. It used to be. Take dork as well. You give wedges to the nerds. Yeah. Well, the nerds would also be the people that were like, but now a nerd is like you can be a science nerd and people like it. That's like, oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm an old movie nerd.
you can say that or movie geek yeah yeah yeah so i'm taking dork okay taking dork in nerd yeah take it i tell you i must i must have told you this last time i was on your show uh when i was a kid i was bigger than other kids i was always one of the tallest two kids in the class
out of 30, so I was bigger than others in the day. And I was also physically fit and physically active, athletic. But I was squarely in the geek camp. I had my slide rule back in the day, walking down the car door,
You were also wrestling. I was captain of my high school wrestling team. So I was a geek person who could actually kick your ass, okay? And I saw how my fellow geeks, because that's the community that I associated with, card carrying, were treated by the football quarterback and the popular kids and the kids who are all beautiful and the ones who, and I imagine my future as a superhero.
Defender of the geeks. Wow. So that you put up a little, you know, bat signal, whatever, geek signal, put a few digits of pie, and I come flying in, and there's a wedgie in progress, right? I would just land, and I'd grab the bully and rip them off the encounter, and I would just save the day. This is my super hero. It's always the football players, right? No, always. It's always, because I think they're rewarded for
For violence. For violence. They also have brain damage. As we've come to discover. How fucked up is that? You find out how high school kids. Right. That literally across the board, the majority of people who play football have CTE. Right. And as far down as seventh grade. Yeah. What? Yeah, CTE reminded me that since we're chronic, traumatic, encephalopathy, encephalopathy. Yeah, encephalopathy.
Say it like Maitaizan Thappangathabi. So let me tell you that story about Christopher Columbus. Please. So the dick story. No, no, I already told you the dick story. Yeah. No, let me tell you it just something else. Okay. Okay. I think him coming to America was the most significant thing to ever happen in our species. Whoa. Silence. Not an internet porn.
No, that's just porn in another medium. Right. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, internet porn is just a matter of degree, not a matter of does it exist or does it not? Right. Okay. I think it was the most significant event to happen in our species. Kind of amazing when you stop and think about the fact that at that point in time, other than the Native Americans who lived here who were living a nomadic tribal existence,
very few people that had the wheel, that had firearms, that had all these things that had already been achieved in the rest of the world, had made their way to this place. So then watch. Okay. Here's how it worked. Right. So you're going to hear. So I presume that you have some skepticism of this claim as
most people would, especially the Columbus haters who are out there. All right. I don't really have any skepticism about it, to be honest with you. Okay, so let me describe to you why I think this is true. Okay. And then you can tell me whether you agree or not. All right. We are hunter-gatherers. We haven't settled down yet. Early humans. And we're basically wandering. We're following the herds. All right. And then the ice age hits.
Well, what is an ice age? An ice age means it is so cold that when the moisture evaporates from the oceans goes to the clouds, the clouds go over the land, it doesn't rain, it snows. And the snow falls and then it stays. So the water that had lifted up from the ocean does not return to the ocean. It accumulates on the land.
And this accumulation, when it's significant and sustained, we call glaciers. Glaciers is not itself a snowfall. It is compressed snow that's basically changed state into this ice river that flows very slowly back to the ocean. But the oceans are getting drained faster than they're getting replenished. So during the ice age, the ocean levels dropped.
exposing the Bering Strait land bridge between Asia and what is now Alaska, basically North America. Our ancestors who come out of Africa, go into Europe, some stayed, others kept wandering, some stayed low above the Mediterranean, others went high, they populate Asia. They keep walking because there's a land bridge there. They don't even know it's a bridge, it's just more land.
So they walk and they enter North America. And from there, that's kind of the only way you can go is south at that point. The weather gets a little better. The ice age ends. The glaciers melt back into the oceans. The oceans level, ocean levels rise, closing the land bridge, stranding a branch of the human species.
for 10,000 years. Those humans who made it across that land bridge and spread out into North America, Central America, South America, have only a few families as their parent genetic, as their genetic origin, okay? Only, it's like, some research says it's like eight family lineages populated the entire North and South American continents. Then the land bridge breaks.
Now you have Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America, and they know nothing of one another. Two separate branches of the human species. The Vikings notwithstanding, maybe they found came over, they didn't. Even if they did, their influence was near zero relative to the Europeans. So we're talking about influence here. This is a branch. Had this continued? This is how you speciate.
This is why the species on Australia, that's why you have mammals there where they have pouches, all right? No other mammals do that. They split off and they evolve their own way. Okay. So 10,000 years is not enough to grow three heads or, you know, 12 fingers, but our species is separate. Now, Columbus crosses the Atlantic.
makes contact with humans. This is the first time that has happened in 10,000 years. We have rejoined two branches of the human species. We are now one common genetic group. And that genetic crossbreeding now continues to this day. We fly to any corner of the world and mates, okay?
And the mating already began immediately. Yes, there were diseases that Columbus brought to North America. Much written about that. Less written is that he brought syphilis back to Europe. First case is a syphilis of 1492. Whoa.
And then it skyrocketed. Maybe syphilis from the Native Americans? Yes. Did they have no problem with it? Well, I don't know the details of how the physiology of the natives dealt with that, or whether it mutated. Right. And there may people who know that, I'm not among them. That's fascinating. But just look at the graph of reported syphilis cases in Europe. It all began 1492 when he came back. Whoa. So what I'm saying is,
This was a hugely significant event, the rejoining of the branches of the human species. But yeah, no, I would imagine that that makes sense. That is the most important event then. And by the way, Native Americans, you know this famous infamous problem with metabolizing alcohol, okay, with Native Americans. You know what else has their problems? The Chinese. They do? Yes. Really? Yes. So it's an Asian issue? Well, so...
who stayed and so you look at who populated north and south america after the you know before the land bridges whoever was right at the edge of asia right then the land bridges so so asians and and north american and and uh... the natives of north and south america have more in common with each other
Because of this, then most other pairs of groups you might grab around the world. But my point is, obviously, there's a lot to blame Columbus for, but he just happened to be the guy who did it first. Europe was coming to the new world no matter what. Everybody was trying to find a faster trade route to the Indies. And so if it wasn't Columbus, it would have been Arnold Schmednick, whatever. It doesn't matter. Somebody did that. And the rest is, as they say, history.
So personally, I think it is the most significant thing to happen in our species. Otherwise, we'd still be two stranded branches of humans.
It would be fascinating, though, like Australia's trend to see what would happen if this has gone on for hundreds of thousands of years. If hundreds of thousands, that would have been a different story, right? Yeah. And your immunities would be different. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the big concern about aliens, right? One of the big concerns is that there's some sort of a virus that you pick up from somewhere. I think that's harder to accept. So for example, what are the chances
that an oak tree would catch whooping cough. Not so good. Not so good. We're two different species. So viruses tend to be very species targeted. Yeah, but what about what human beings can't jump species? Sure. They can jump species, but so does it jump mammal to mammal? Does it jump vertebrate to vertebrate? So yes, that can happen, but the more different the life form is,
It is sensible to suppose that the less likely you're going to share the same diseases. That's all. But NASA, regardless, has safeguards in place.
in the event that that happens. So it's called the Planetary Protection Program in NASA. It's got a whole division of NASA. It's protecting Earth from bugs that could be coming from space on our own spaceship that we bring back. And it protects destinations from us. There's a certain sterilization levels that we invoke. The Cassini spacecraft.
We plunged that back into Saturn in its death when we were done with it and ran out of money, we're done with it. Plunged into Saturn to vaporize. We didn't leave it in orbit around Saturn. Why? Because it might have crashed into one of Saturn's moons that might have life. And if someone had sneezed on the spacecraft before it got launched, we don't want to contaminate the life that we are later going to one day want to study.
so that's what we plunged it into saturday that's why that is why because they were worried about let me be a hitting europe or once it's dead and you can't track it or guided anymore then it's a it's a wild it's a wild card and might hit your it you wrote a is a move to jupiter but uh... and sell this there are other moons that have sort of ocean water the water worlds basically
And so the concern is that we would introduce life. Suppose we did. It crashed and then we go back later and find life and it has DNA just like here. But was it our life that we contaminated with? That you don't want to confuse the future science of it. So that's a that's the plan. Can you even watch a science movie like science fiction movies? I know you had a real problem with gravity. But yeah, all right. So let me set the record straight here. Oh, okay. Let me let me just go on record. Okay. Okay.
I've been deeply misunderstood with my comments on movies. Deeply misunderstood. Deeply. Deeply. And so I've just stopped. Most of the time you saw a movie comment in my Twitter stream. They haven't. You haven't.
I've kind of just stopped. Wasn't the Matthew McConaughey movie? Did you comment on that one? The Winter Stuller. Yeah. That's the last one I commented on in any big way. Right. You're done. Yeah, I'm done. Because people then thought I was just being nitpicky. Oh, it's not fun going to movies with you. Why would you do it? Let's entice it, we'll just say that can never happen. And so my intent was
My intent did not match how people received my intent. My intent is, here's an observation.
that i think if you understood this it would enhance your appreciation of the movie let me give an example please do star wars the force awakens they've got what was that that's what would that introduced uh... uh... uh... the bb eight okay that the most recent no no no it's like four movies ago now plus i've lost track is there's another one so many of them and so they want to introduce bb a cutest cutest ever cutel fella cute little fella and in there they have the like
the updated Death Star. Remember the old Death Star? It has enough power to destroy a planet, and that's devastating. This one, it can suck energy out of a star so that the star no longer exists. Then, it can take these energy beams and kill six planets at once. It's no longer just a one planet killer. Six or eight, whatever the number was. It was like high single digits, okay?
Well, I did the math on this. And I tweeted. And I said, first, OK, if you take all the energy from a star, you become a star. But maybe they've got a containment mechanism. I'll give it to them. It is the future, after all.
I don't think it's the future. A long time ago in a galaxy far away. It's another universe of civilizations. But they have light speed and we don't. So it's the future of our technology, even if it's the past of our time. Let me pause on that one. So you do the calculation. And I forgot the number, but I calculated how much energy is stored in a star.
That's enough energy to explode a thousand planets. Oh my gosh, they underrepresented the energy that it sucked out of the host star out of the star. And I thought this could have been more badass than even they came up with in this movie.
that is the nature of my comments mmm not what could this happen could it not happen let me give you a perspective okay so so twenty percent of people just get pissed off eighty percent really like it and they want more but that twenty percent
they cut me no slack. And I'm only doing this for people to enjoy. And if I have that level of hate mail, I don't need to continue it. So I just basically stop. I just, I'll have these thoughts to myself, but I don't have the urge to share them. I still have the thoughts. I gotta teach you the art of post and drop. Okay, this is what you do. You post something, you know people gonna get mad, you drop your phone and you walk away.
No, you got to learn how to do that, man. You can't be reading those fucking comments. It's dealing with too many human beings. No, I got that. I get that. But you don't because you're still changing your behavior. Here's my rebuttal. Here's my rebuttal. Your rebuttal. My rebuttal is, if you're watching a movie that takes place in 1958, it's a period piece.
And there's a car from 1960. Oh, yeah. And someone who's a car expert points that out. He says, hey, he's an expert. That's pretty good. Do you complain that the person noticed that? No, you praise their expertise. I get mad at the movie. If you get mad at the movie, if you're watching a Jane Austen period piece and 1870, whenever they took place and someone gets out of the carriage,
with tie dyed bell bottoms, you would cry foul. That would take you, I'm exaggerating there obviously, could be a top hat instead of a derby. You would cry foul if you were a costume designer and we would all be impressed by that level of knowledge that you exhibited. I am bringing a level of science to bear on a movie that is no different from anybody else's expertise who is out there that we have praised for that invocation.
Yet, people are not granting me that latitude to make those comments. I don't like these generalizations. I don't like this one. It is true. No, but I don't like what you're saying. People are not doing this. No, a small vocal minority that are assholes. And those are the people that you're altering your behavior for. That's what I think is ridiculous about this. No, because most people enjoy it. The point is you're talking about gravity and the fact that hair wouldn't do that and the space stations weren't that close together. Right, right. You can see it in the sky, my gosh. Yeah, it sure doesn't work. Right, right.
It's assholes. No, my tweets are offerings. But I'm not, I don't want. The problem is you don't need any responses. That's the problem. The only problem is you're reading responses. No. What are you doing is wonderful. No, you're educating people. 20%.
Freak out is high for that. Fuck is 20%? Listen, hear me out. I even believe that's numbers here. Hear me out. When it's 5% then I take notice. But you say 20%. Like, what are you doing? Calculations? You're actually doing a... I scan a hundred of them. I see 20 of them. They just run into 20 assholes. So 20 assholes out of the millions and millions of people that follow you have decided to reach out and you're altering your behavior for assholes.
I like those quotes. I like when you break things down because I didn't know those things. I like thinking about the hair and gravity. I was like, oh yeah, a fucking shit, be standing straight up in the air. And the only reason why I mention it about here, because every photo of anybody with long hair, wouldn't happen to you, but anyone with long hair and space, it's standing up on edge. Like this show. It's a completely obvious thing that was omitted from the filming of Gravity.
Yeah, but you have to have hair and makeup. They have to have a reason to exist. So what I might do, I might take a poll. I might put a poll. Stop!
I'm a servant of care. I don't want to force feed carry on. You don't have to listen to your feed. I don't want to force feed anybody force feeding anything you're pretty offerings out there like you said This is not force feeding. You're not knocking on someone's home. Wake up, bitch. Read my shit. That is true. I'm not forcing myself on your property. You're not doing it at all. Put the shotgun down. You're going to hear me talk about your movie. Listen, man. I said about BB eight. I said first I said
BB8's way cuter than R2 D2 and I use like five A's in the way just to just to start a fight because that's a fun fight right then I said by the way R2 BB8 a smooth metal rolling spherical ball would have skidded uncontrollably on sand and the whole movie isn't moving around on sand
Right. Yeah, it would. That's why you deflate your tires. That's why you deflate your tires to drive on sand. That's correct. If you have tried riding a bicycle on sand, it's impossible. It's a good point. And imagine, and that's with rubber tires, imagine steel tires. You're not running on a sand dune. Holy shit. Oh my gosh. Oh yeah.
Well, the hardest things you could do for ever starts. Talk about getting in a shape, right? Yeah. So it will work if you have a hard surface just below a dusting of sand. Right. Then you can dig into it and sand off of some resistance. The sand then connects to the hard surface. So I posted this and
People say, you're ruining the movie for me. And then people started. Assholes, again, when you say people, you're just listening to assholes. Smart people are going to read that and go, oh, yeah. Yeah, this is stupid. It would roll around.
Yeah, I'm getting that fucking things from track, but you know, it's actually happened as a result. I think I'm getting phone calls from producers. Oh, well, that's good. There's a little bit of science. We want to make sure that you don't tweet about it. Oh, man, that's good. So good. You keeping them on point as you know, I might be most famous among in movie commenting for the final scene in Titanic. Okay. I don't know if you knew about this.
What would you say about the final scene? We know where the Titanic sank, the longitude, the latitude. We know what time of day, what time of night. Oh, so the stars. So at the P of OV, the point of view of Rose, as she's looking up deliriously to the sky, there's only one sky she should have seen, and it was the wrong sky.
But not only that, the left side of the sky, it was worse than that. The left side of the sky was a mirror reflection on the right side of the sky. Did you call Jamie? I call him in 1996. I saw it when it first came out. I noticed instantly. And because I know the sky, this is what I, okay? So no reply. Five years later, I bump into him at a meeting. NASA hosted a meeting with some explorers and some scientists. I brought it up to him and he says, well,
At the time, I was not overseeing post-production, and that's when we added that. I immaturally wanted him to grovel at my feet for forgiveness. Did you believe? Yeah, I wanted him to, but that's not what happened. So then five years after that, I brought it up again when I bumped into him. And then he said, you know, last I checked, Titanic has earned more than a billion dollars worldwide. Imagine how much more it would have earned if I'd gotten the sky correct.
That's a stupid answer from an asshole. It was, it should be tweeting you. No, no, so, so. That is an asshole answer. Listen, listen. That's an ego answer. But it's not the end of the story. So, so that was, okay, I have nothing more I can say here because he's right, okay? No, he's not. He's right.
No, it made it a lot of money, and it would have made the same amount of money if you did that. That's true, but that's not the point. But he's right. He's fucked up, bitch. You fucked up, so you fucked up. Don't say how much money you made. A week later, I got a phone call. So hi, I forgot his name, Jonathan. Hi, John, how can I help you? Is this the type? I said, yes. He said, I work post-production for James Cameron. He's producing a director's cut where he's adding new footage, and he tells me you have a sky he could use.
Yes! Oh! So, the centennial release of Titanic released in April 2012. What, not? I mean, the... Oh, yeah. That's right. Yes. So... How'd you dig up that? There was April 2012. I feel like you and I had this conversation before. We might have. We might have. I just put this in context now. It's got... So he actually put in. So he did come through. So here's what happened.
Seth MacFarlane calls me up and said, I'm making a movie about a talking teddy bear. And I need to know the sky over a town outside of Boston in 1985 on Christmas Eve, looking northeast. You got a sky? I say, I'll get back to you. Half hour later, I send him the sky. That was the sky that the kid wished on.
to where Ted came to life. So Ted had the correct sky. And Titanic did not. So it's good. You're correcting these people. The Ted won Titanic Zero on that. So the point is people started thinking about it. And the highest compliment I ever got was Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian.
He said to himself, while he was writing the novel, he said, because he's an engineer, so he has the fluency, and he also knows how to write. He's write creatively. He said, if Tyson were looking over my shoulder, would he tweet about this or not? And so that put him on notice to make sure that his calculations were accurate.
And the Martian is one of the most entertainingly accurate explorations of how to invoke science to not die that there ever was. So for me, that was a very high compliment. And it was kind of worth it all of the naysayers that to know that Andy Weir came through on that. Yeah, so why stop? Maybe I'll change. I think you need to learn how to post and drop. Just think about it like this. Post and drop. Boom.
Boom. Walk away. Just go do something else, man. You don't need to look at that shit. You don't need to look at what people are gonna say. Make sure that there's no typos. That's always so strong. But I like, no, yeah, it is. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, I got fat thumbs. Me too. I care, though. I'm sure you do care. About how people can think about what I wrote, if it's a way that I had not considered.
Okay, I like knowing it makes me a better communicator when I'm in front of an audience I'll know what percent will think one way versus another and I can modify what I'm saying to be more precise and to as we say in physics to reduce the impedance between the signal and the receiver so that there's a better match between the communicator and the audience.
I understand that, but if you see- You surely have told jokes that people just took the wrong way. Oh, yeah. Without your intent. Without your intent. The right way. They just didn't like what I was saying. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it's surely like you see the word cuck in a response. You know that person's an asshole, right? There's certain things you just see. Like you're a cuck. Like, okay, I don't have to listen to you anymore.
Now I know what you are. You're a fool, right? You see that. Like, yeah, you're still all the time staring at the fucking sky instead of filling the blank. Those are just assholes. Well, I have pretty thick skin, so it's not if it upsets me. It's that I'm here to serve you, not to piss you off. But you're not there to serve you. I'm an educator. There's some people. I'm an educator. They're looking to get angry. I get that, but maybe I can bring them around. But you can't.
The arrogance of thinking that you could fix 30 plus years of worthless shitbag living with a couple of tweets.
And you know something, I don't even want to take you up on that challenge because you're probably right. I'm telling you, you got a lot, you got to walk away. But for most people, myself included in those most people, I enjoy those tweets. So I got one something. Here's one. So I tweeted something and somebody responding to somebody else's tweet said, you know, I don't really like.
Tyson, he's such, he's so pompous. Okay? So, so I tweeted back to that person and I said, um, thanks for your note. Could you please share with me the single most pompous thing you've ever seen me do? And he wrote back, he says,
Damn, you would have to be reading my tweets, would you? Now you put me on the spot. I can't think of anything right now, but overall, I really like your work. He put nothing forward. Yeah, that happens all the time, because people would just shock that you respond. But plus, there's people can get into a stereotype mode where there's, that person is that and therefore everything. Yes, they just decide. That's the laid aside. Yeah. They decide, right.
right you can listen those people do you too smart for this and other people said look the dude wrote a book called astrophysicist people in a hurry yeah you think that how pompous is that that's not right pompous at all right your size educator i interviewed on star talk i i guess you were one of my guests but so too was katie parry
There you go. There are people who got pissed off, because she's got nothing to add. She just popped close. I said, she wrote a song about Bonie and Alien. And I wanted to find out what she was thinking. Did she write it? Yeah, it's her song. And it's a line about it, which you're making love to it. So there's always ways you can... Oh, I have to fuck Russell Crow a few times. Or what's his name? Peter's. Sorry, Russell. I don't... Yeah. Brand. What does it say, Peter's? Russell, Peter's... Russell, what's up?
Russell Pete is a good friend of mine. It's like Joe. What the fuck? Sorry Russell. Yeah, I don't keep up. It's been a long day. I just come back from Italy. Oh, yeah, I'm very confused. Yeah, I'm my my brains. You're zoning a little. Yeah, I'm just out of it. Just completely out of it. I'm trying to keep you awake for your audience. Russell Brand. Russell Brand. Sorry. She fucked Russell Brand. Say it. I didn't know I didn't think I didn't know any of this. You're married.
I didn't know this. So he's like an alien. It's my point. He's a very odd duck. Oh, I see. Yeah. He's a brilliant guy, but he's out there. He'd be like one of those guys that would be in men in black aliens that they're tracking. Do you remember that scene in the headquarters? There's a big board. Right. Undercover aliens. Yeah. They're like Michael Jackson was there. People who just, there's something a little different about them, you know?
So there's people that really do believe that, that believe that there's aliens amongst us. Again, we learn a free country. I'm fine. Well, you know what happens? Evidence at some point should matter. But you find out about like Russian agents that have been living in like New Jersey for like 30 years. That's the whole premise of the show. The Americans. Yeah. Well, it's a real story too. I mean, it really has happened on multiple occasions. And so they wonder, well, if the Russians won't do that, what do the aliens want to do?
Yeah, so just find me one. Yeah. Maybe there are doing. Are you open-minded to that? Of course. Oh, my gosh. No, who doesn't want to meet the aliens? Do you wish? I would love to meet the aliens. They're going to have technology that we don't have to compare notes. I want to. Oh, my gosh. Oh, by the way, in the movie. Arrival.
with the... Which one? The arthropod alien. Okay. Isn't there two arrivals? Well, there's an earlier arrival with Charlie Sheen. Yeah, that was a good one too. He played an astrophysicist by the way. That's a good one too. So this one is, you know, it's like a septopus lens. Yes. It's got seven freaky things that speak in ink. Okay, speak in ink, right? So they sent a physicist and an anthropologist.
not anthropologist, a linguist. And I tweeted, I said, you know, if aliens come, I would not send a physicist and a linguist. I would send an astrobiologist and a cryptographer.
And, but then the linguist got all upset and they started piling on. The linguist pile on. Yeah, she's not a linguist. She was a, if it's anthropological linguist, they all are, but could you just look up what her profession was? But anyhow, so they all piled up. But that's fine. It's accepted. Well, it's accepted. Because how many linguists have ever shown in a film? So this was their time in the sun. This moment. It's a big moment. So I get it, that's fine.
But there are a couple of things. So for example, there it is making these circles and they're interpreting them, but it's making them on glass. So how do they know we weren't seeing them? The mirror image of what it was trying to communicate that that was not addressed in the film, but yeah, I'd want to meet the aliens as they did there. They bought the military, of course, that will be a likely fact, but because your protection is of extreme importance, but