Neil deGrasse Tyson: Do THIS Every Morning To Find Happiness & Meaning In Your Life!

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:00 We just spent a half hour talking about this, and I hardly ever talk about it.

Steven Bartlett 0:03 Why is that wrong?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:03 I didn't say it was wrong.

Steven Bartlett 0:04 Okay. I'm in.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Steven Bartlett 0:07 World-renowned astrophysicist turned TV host. He's the man with the answers to the toughest questions on the planet.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:13 And of course, bestselling author. In the last 50 years, we've increased life expectancy 20 years. There will be a time where homo sapiens have achieved escape velocity from death. That generation will never die unless you're hit by a bus. That brings to you the question, if you could live forever, would you? How different the world would be.

Steven Bartlett 0:35 What are the things that you are most concerned about with the direction of travel of the human race?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:39 A lot of things. (laughs) So there's some delusional force operating on people's understanding of the world in which they live. If you post an opinion on anything, it gets attacked. Did you see what happened with Neil deGrasse Tyson? He tweeted something that many people took great offense to. Part of what it is to be a scientist is figure out all the ways you could bias yourself and remove them as far as possible. Don't let it interfere with objective truths.

Steven Bartlett 1:07 But what's the personal toll on you?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09 I don't know why he tweeted that. Stupid and awful. He's just a weird Twitter lunatic. Is it... How long can I keep talking about...

Steven Bartlett 1:29 Before this episode starts, I have a small favor to ask from you. Two months ago, 74% of people that watched this channel didn't subscribe. We're now down to 69%. My goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know, and the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. Neil,

Steven Bartlett 2:03 I have always believed that to fully understand a person, you have to understand their origin story. Maybe that's a, a similar sort of analogy for the universe. So, the place I wanted to start with you is by understanding the most important context from your earliest years that are responsible for the person that is sat in front of me today.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 2:22 Wow, this is very Marvel Comics of you, like, what's the origin story of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man? Uh, your, your question is very well placed because everyone has been touched by some series of events. Unfortunately, some, for some people, traumatic events, but for all people, some series of events that shaped who they are. And I'd like to say that there was a series of events that planted the seeds of who I would become, but I, I wouldn't say that they were responsible. I mean, it requires a lot of continual investment of time, energy, and focus to shape a career rather than say, "Oh, it happened then, and I've just been coasting ever since." No, that's not how that works. So I, I grew up in the Bronx, and in New York City, surely as is true in London, you don't have a relationship with the night sky. In a busy city, you, at least in, certainly in New York City, there are tall buildings. If you look up to see the sky, there's a building in the way. There's light pollution. There's... And back then, there was air pollution. So since no one has a relationship with, with the night sky, then one can ask, what is your access to it? Of course it's our local planetarium, the Hayden Planetarium. And I w-... My family, my parents, my brother and sister, there was a tactical, strategic thing my parents did. I, I didn't know it at the time, but every weekend or every other weekend, we went places. We were exposed to all manner of things that talented adults do beyond just the doctor, lawyer, you know, engineer, beyond those standard professions. So first it was entertaining, but it also meant we had exposure to other ways of thinking about what you might do with your life. One of those trips, when I was nine years old, was to the Hayden Planetarium. And I was starstruck.

Steven Bartlett 4:38 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:39 You sit in a big chair and the lights dim and the stars come out, more stars than you can count, and I thought it was a hoax. I said, "There aren't that many stars. I've seen the night sky from the Bronx." (laughs) "You're lying to me." Uh, and only later would I learn upon going deep into the rural areas of the country, we have relatives in the Caribbean, we visited there, I'd see the night sky as nature intended. And to this day, when I've accessed to great telescopes on mountaintops and I look up at the s- crystalline, clear night skies, I still say to myself, "Oh, that is so beautiful. It reminds me of the Hayden Planetarium." (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 5:25 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:26 So it's a, uh, I know that's kind of a sad commentary on what it is to grow up in a city, but it's... I feel like the universe chose me, and since I was nine years old onward, I have committed my life to learning more and more about the universe, and that, that's the, the most important seed that was planted.

Steven Bartlett 5:47 Cyril and Sanchita? Is that your parents' names?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:49 Cyril is my father and Sanchita is my mother. Correct.

Steven Bartlett 5:52 What was the influence that they individually had on you? From the, from almost vicariously learning from them, but also the direct influence they had on you?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 6:00 They were a moral influence, a cultural influence.And I will add, not that you explicitly asked this, but I think it fits right in this moment. Um, consider the period, the 1960s. You could go one of two ways if you're an angry Black man. It's like you can raise your fist and threaten violence as a retaliation of the violence against you, or you can find some other way that doesn't involve violence, that involves some kind of peace, some kind of understanding. And my father, and while he grew up in the 30s and 40s, he served in a segregated army. Okay? So the stuff he lived through, and while I have my own stories, none of them compare to his average story. Yet, at the end of the day, he was never bitter. I remembered him saying, when you look at the images of angry white people screaming at Black children entering a school who are protected by the National Guard because an edict had to be delivered to grant them access to education, h- he would say, "They simply don't know any better. They were raised that way." You want to hate them and my father never hated. Never. So I go through life and at least several times a week, every week of my life growing up, I have stories. Today they would call them microaggressions, but then it was just same shit different day. But I never got bitter, because you asked, what influence did they have on me? It was the non-bitter influence. You say, "That's, th- they don't know any better. They think they're doing the right thing. Maybe we can make a difference going forward."

Steven Bartlett 8:19 I saw the emotion in your face when you-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:21 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 8:21 ... talked about your father.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:22 Yeah. It's, I think we need that today. The world, I, I reached a point where, okay, how long can I keep talking about the universe and not bring it down to Earth? Not bring some science principles to people's thinkings? They wanna tribalize, they wanna hate. They wanna choose, they wanna create laws to restrict your freedoms just because of who you worship or don't worship, or who you sleep with, or what you look like, or what, you know, how reflective to light your skin color is, right? What side of a line in the sand you were born on. I like invoking an alien trope. Aliens, they don't know anything about us, they just see this beautiful planet with water on it and continents and clouds, and they visit and they say, "Oh, this is cool. Oh, there's this one species that's everywhere. Oh, they're very successful. They are humans and Homo sapiens." And then, heck, that's cool, and then they get a little closer, "Look." And they say, "Oh my gosh, what are they, there's a war over here? Why? Oh, 'cause there's some resource on this side that's not over there and they want it. There's a coastline, there's oil, there's this, there's a, uh, elements in a mine. They, they, they, they worship a different god." They'll look at the violence and hatred that we commit upon each other and they'll run back home and tell their fellow alien brethren, "There's no sign of intelligent life on Earth." (laughs) So anyhow, so I've, I've, yeah, my head has been in the stars, but my feet have been on Earth my entire life.

Steven Bartlett 10:33 Why, why, why does that connect so deeply? 'Cause it's so obvious it connects so deeply with you. Is that linked to what you, the r- resilience to bitterness that your father demonstrated when he was abused and w- was attacked with racial abuse? Is that, is that the, the reason why it's so linked so closely to your heart?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 10:52 I, I, I don't know. Um, he didn't, he didn't burden us with his stories unless we asked or unless it came up in a moment. It, it was, it wasn't that way. It was I saw his integrity in the face of what was going on in the world, and it's, you can, a person can be a mentor even if they don't say anything, because you can observe them, observe their conduct, their, their behavior, their, how they respond to adversity. Do they fight back? Do they wanna commit violence? Do they wanna have a conversation to explore the differences?

Steven Bartlett 11:43 You know, I- I am, I'm, uh, my mother's from Nigeria, my dad's from England, so I'm of, I guess, dual ethnicity or whatever the politically correct term is now.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:51 It's called human.

Steven Bartlett 11:52 Okay, I'm human. Um-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:53 It's called, just say it, repeat it after me.

Steven Bartlett 11:55 I'm human.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:55 What race are you? You're the human race.

Steven Bartlett 11:57 I'm the human race.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:58 You, you just spent-

Steven Bartlett 12:00 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:00 ... 10 seconds telling me how anthropologists liked to divide up the world and force us to then agree with their categories.

Steven Bartlett 12:10 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:11 Line everybody up from ghost white to coal black, and you'll have a human being of every single skin color in between. Okay? Oh, did you happen to be born over there? So? You're a human.

Steven Bartlett 12:24 I'm a human-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:24 Tell me which mixture you are? I don't give a rat's ass.

Steven Bartlett 12:26 Okay, I'm-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:27 You're a human being sitting across the table from me. Now, continue.

Steven Bartlett 12:31 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:32 Sorry. (laughs) Sorry. This is your podcast.

Steven Bartlett 12:33 No, it's fine. I don't mind.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:34 Sorry. I don't mean to jump all in your face.

Steven Bartlett 12:35 No, it's fine. It's fine. I'm g- I'm fine with it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:37 Okay.

Steven Bartlett 12:37 Um, and

Steven Bartlett 12:39 I've, I've come to learn about what it was to be Black in the 1960s, '70s from my guests, and it's helped me to understand my mother better. Because I have to, I have... My mother didn't react like your father did. And you talked about-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:55 Your mother was Nige- Nigerian.

Steven Bartlett 12:57 Nigerian.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:57 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 12:57 She came to the UK. We lived in an all-white area. She didn't react like your father did and so it skewed my perspective on, on race relations. But then from doing this podcast and meeting people like you, hearing some of those very specific stories of abuse, I almost can't believe it, and now I have this huge amount of empathy for my mother because I've sat here with the guests. And one of the stories I heard you tell was about your father competing in athletics and how people would scream the N-word at him while he was running, y-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:23 Oh, yeah. So that's, th- this was, for me, one of the most insightful lessons that I got from all the stories from him. Yeah, so he, uh, he was a, an athlete, actually world class at track. Uh, that's its own story because he, he was, uh, kinda muscular.

Steven Bartlett 13:46 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:46 All right? Certainly in his day. Not Charles Atlas muscular, but, uh, relative to other kids in his class, in high school, he was muscular, and they were in their gym class and you line up in getting ready for the next unit.

Steven Bartlett 13:59 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:59 All right? There was gymnastics and then there was, like, track and field. So they had a track unit, and the gym teacher pointed to my father on the line and said, "Uh, we're about to do the running unit, and just so you know, um, do you see Cyril Tyson over there?" Then he turns, he says, "He has the kind of body that would not make a good runner." And he said to himself, "No one is gonna tell me what I can't do in this world." And he started running, and he became world class. And at one point, he had the fifth fastest time in the world in his special event. So that was an, that's an important lesson, career lesson. Why are there people running around telling you what you can't accomplish? In a, in a free society? I can get it if we're not a free society, but why should anyone tell you what you can't or shouldn't do? So, that was lesson number one for me. But then, his best friend, also a runner, Johnny Johnson was his name, uh, there's a race. Johnny Johnson is running around on the last turn of the track, and there's a runner from the New York Athletic Club several paces behind him. The coach of that runner goes up the side of the track and screams to his runner, as he points to Johnny Johnson ahead of him, "Catch that n-!" Johnny Johnson overheard this, okay? (laughs) And all Johnny Johnson said to himself was, "This is one n- he ain't gonna catch," and just... (laughs) and increased the distance, okay? Uh, so, so that comment from the coach could've done one of two things. It could've demotivated you because then you wallow in the racism of the world, or it could motivate you to succeed. Ever since I heard that story, every racist encounter I have ever had simply motivates me to succeed all the more, period.

Steven Bartlett 16:27 And I see that throughout your story as you go through col- you know, college, university, um, and you go into your postgrad. There's moments over and over again where people or circumstance encourage you away from what's clearly your passion, the thing you're clearly pursuing.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 16:41 Yeah, people didn't... Yeah, and again, this is not the kind of racism that the 1950s or '40s... You know, I wasn't lynched.

Steven Bartlett 16:48 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 16:48 You know? So, so again, I don't want to claim equal-

Steven Bartlett 16:53 I'm talking-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 16:54 ... trauma to what earlier generations had experienced, but you can get, let's call it, institutional racism, where you don't even-

Steven Bartlett 17:00 Not even racism, I'm talking about people trying to put you off your passion, telling you it's not something-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 17:03 No, that's... I call that racism.

Steven Bartlett 17:04 You know? Really.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 17:04 What I'm saying is they see that I am athletic, I've been athletic most of my life, and they can't wrap their head around me being something other than an athlete that they watch on television. When I say, "Well, I actually like astrophysics." "But you're so good at this other sport." "No, I wanna be in the physics club." "No, we, we need you on the, the basketball team." And they think they're doing me a favor. They think they're saying nice things to me. But every one of those is a force operating against my ambitions. And so, in a way, just that my skin color and my life's arc was a path of most resistance compared to where I wanted to land. And by the way, I don't... You're, we're, we're, we just spent a half hour talking about this and I hardly ever talk about it. I don't talk about it 'cause I don't, you know, I don't need to. Maybe if, if it's a counseling session, but I'm perfectly fine. I'm a happy guy, happily married, got two kids, and, uh, I hardly ever talk about skin color because...... I, I want to make it irrelevant as quickly as I possibly can, in every context I'm possibly in. So, if you're going to invite me to give a public talk in February, Black History Month, I will decline that invitation. If you only think of me as a Black scientist, then I have failed as a scientist. Period. Period. Uh, you want me to, uh, "Well, what do..." (laughs) . And you know how I realized this? Okay. So, I will tell you the moment after which I was a different person interacting with the public. Okay? I'm in graduate school. There's an explosion on the sun and the press, it's over the wires, press hears about this. So they want to get a comment on it, an explosion on the sun. So they called Columbia, the Department of Astronomy. And they're looking for some... It was lunchtime, they were all out to lunch. I'm a, I'm a grad, I'm a doctoral candidate, I'm there for my PhD. And so the department, uh, admin is going through the, the roster and they get to me and say, "Neil, no one is here, can you take this call?" So I said, "Sure." And they said, "Oh, hello, uh, who are you?" "I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, doctoral candidate in astrophysics." They say, "You know, there's this, an explosion on the sun. Wh- what, should we be worried?" I said, "Oh, it's a solar flare. They happen with some frequency. It's a wave of particles coming towards Earth." And they said, "You mean the Earth is fine?" I said, "The Earth is fine." And they said, "Can you tell us that on camera?" I s- uh, "Sure." "Okay, we'll send up a limo to pick you up in a half hour." And so the whole conversation there was, and it was pre-taped. I get home, I put on the TV, and I watch this interview. And I had an out-of-body experience. I just witnessed something I've never seen before in my life. And you know what that was? It was the news interviewing a Black person, me, who is not an entertainer or athlete, okay? Interviewing a Black person for expertise that had nothing to do with being Black. The interview didn't say at the end, "Well, how do Black people feel about solar flares? Oh, does this afflect- affect dark skin differently from..." None of that. It was, "Will Earth be safe?" And he's getting that expertise from a b- a Black person. I had never seen that im- Then I thought, "Well, is it just 'cause I'm on TV and I'm a little more aware?" So, I watched for the next two years, every time there was a Black person brought onto the news for expertise. It was someone who's a, a member of Congress representing a community and they want enterprise zones for the economics, there was someone who was worried about the poverty in the inner city, the... Never had an audience seen a Black person as an expert. Oh, they, they would have attorneys, but it's talking about a court case about a Black person. Would there ever be a Black attorney to talk about a court case about a white person? No.

Steven Bartlett 21:38 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 21:38 And I said to myself, "That is the answer." That's how I, we turn an entire world of people who think Black people are just dumb and stupid, lazy, shiftless, have, and all they can do is shine my shoes and entertain me and sing, and be the athlete on the field. If there was an ever a force to change that, it's not people telling them they should think differently, it's me being visible in a way where they have no other choice but to say, "Oh my gosh, this person knows more about this subject than I do, and he has dark skin." So that the next time they see a homeless Black person, they're not saying, "Oh, Black people are just like..." They have to confront the fact that they just saw a Black person tell them that Earth was safe. So it's just quite simple, the next time you're driving your car and somebody comes up with a squeegee to wash your window at the red light and begs for money, and if that person is Black, maybe you'll think twice about the causes and effects of poverty. Of the, the forces that operate, that discriminate against one community of people versus another. So, ever since that moment, I have declined interviews that want me because I'm Black. And even in this interview, I'm not entirely comfortable spending a half hour talking about it, because it, it turns this interview into something about me being Black, which then is someone hears or hears me for the first time, "Oh, let's get him. He has all these stories about being Black. Let's get him to talk to this group about, in this racial, uh, in this race conference." No. I will decline that invitation.

Steven Bartlett 23:35 So let's talk

Steven Bartlett 23:36 about, um, a separate point. What advice would you give me on how you pursue the thing that sets your heart on fire, your passion or whatever you want to call it, without falling into the, or conforming to the, like, external pressure to become a doctor or lawyer? Like, I'm thinking about the people that are watching this that have a passion, but they don't consider it to be a job, as many people didn't consider what you do now to be a job back then. And they're being forced by the external world's parents, expectations, social media, to go and do something else they don't want to do. What would you say to those people?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 24:09 I can tell you this, that if you don't have a pa- I didn't realize when I was nine how unusual it was to be that passionate that young. Not until I got to college. Half the people my freshman year didn't yet know what they wanted to major in.And I said, "I'm majoring in astrophysics." And say, was that 'cause it was early in the catalog, alphabetically, of things you might major? No. I've, um, felt this and known this half my life. And so I, I, in college, I was sensitized to people who were still looking, still searching. Well, we have the benefit of longer life expectancy today than 50 years ago. Though I mention this only because if you don't know what wanna be, if you don't know what you wanna be when you grow up and you're 30, that's just fine. But I don't want to have to blame you for not exposing yourself to what you can be when you grow up. If you're sitting home watching football and say, "I don't know what I wanna do with my life," why don't you do what my parents did? Visit a new thing every weekend. Go on a trip. Talk to experts in all manner of tasks and, uh, you know, visit a chef school, visit a, uh, a geology, uh, expedition. Do, just do things a- and if you like it, you'll probably be better at that than anything else you choose to do, because you, you will invest even your downtime doing it. And as the saying goes, pick something you would do for free and make that your career, and you'll never live a sad day in your life. So that's one variant on, uh, pick something that you love, and all the time when other people say, "You know, I need a vacation from this job." You, you're gonna say, "Vacation, what's that?" And people say that to me, "Do you want a vacation from, from what?" "From the astrophysics you're doing." "But I like what I'm doing." If I'm on vacation on, by, but I love being on the beach, but if I'm on the beach, I'm thinking about (laughs) the universe. It's not to get away from the universe, all right? Not that that could literally happen. Anyway, uh, so, uh, that's what I would say. You wanna be independent-minded. Listen to people's comments. People have life experience. Don't ignore it, but what you wanna do is fold it into your own sensibilities, provided you have sensibilities to begin with. Otherwise, you become this ping-pong ball, uh, batted back and forth between one person's suggestion and another.

Steven Bartlett 26:52 In the cover of your book, um, it talks about the polarization that we're, we're seeing in the world at the moment. What is, you know, as you, what is the, what are the things that you are most concerned about when you think about the direction of travel of the human race and life here on Earth and what's going on? What are the things that trouble you at a very deep level in terms of our direction of travel?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 27:12 A lot of things. (laughs) Uh, so let me put this in context. In science, if I put a conclusion forward, it's not, you're not gonna ask me, "Did you look at both sides of that?" No, that's not the question. It's, "Did you look at all sides of it?" We have this binarity mind where we think, oh, you're for me, or are you for us or against us? Is it black or white? Are you a boy or are you a girl? Is it up or is it down? This is intellectually lazy because practically everything that exists in this universe manifests on a spectrum. So here's a, here's a thought, and you can say, "Well, did you look at both side..." "No, I looked at all sides." "Well, did you realize that if this changes, that could change this, and did you, did you figure out how sensitive it is to that?" If I didn't, I'm not doing my job as a scientist, okay? So we live in a time especially fractured by the forces of social media. I say this only because if you post an opinion on anything in social media, it gets attacked. You know, there'll be people who agree with it, fine, but the noise and the fireworks are when you get attacked. I don't think it used to be that way. I think there was a time when I would express an opinion and you'd say, "Oh, that's interesting. Here's my opinion. Oh, so why do you think that way?" "Well, here's why I think that." "Well, that's interesting. I never thought about it that way. Cool." You, you'd spend 15 minutes talk, sh- com- comparing and con- contrasting opinions, then you go out for a beer at the pub. This is how I remembered it. Uh, am I misremembering? I, I, I don't think so. To be attacked? Now, what are the consequences? What are you actually after by attacking someone with a different opinion? Oh, I know what it is. You want everyone to have exactly the same opinion you do. Well, that's not this country either. No. You know what's on our currency? On our currency, e pluribus unum, okay? Out of the many, we have one. Not out of the one, we have one. It is the many. It is the plurality, pluribus. Plura- pl- it's Latin, okay? A plurality means people coexist who think differently about the world, and we celebrate that, or at least we ought to. Otherwise, we're all the same, and we can make a country where everybody's the same, and that's called a dictatorship. Is that really what it really... Think through fully the consequences of that.

Steven Bartlett 30:01 Are you thinking-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 30:02 Now, let me get back to the violence part.

Steven Bartlett 30:04 I wanted you, on the, on the point

Steven Bartlett 30:05 of social media, you had a, you had a tweet that you did that went viral that got attacked, right? I mean, there, there was one in particular that I think was, was attacked more than the others. I can't even remember it off the top of my head.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 30:15 It's never my intent-

Steven Bartlett 30:17 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 30:17 ... to post a tweet that gets attacked.

Steven Bartlett 30:20 Of course not.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 30:20 If, if it gets attacked, it's like, I didn't see that coming. I, I'm, I count myself as an educator among the ranks of educators, and-My goal is to enlighten and educate, not to anger people. So I still maintain a forbidden Twitter file- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 30:35 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 30:35 ... on my computer. These are tweets that, no, I'm not gonna post it, even though it's true-

Steven Bartlett 30:41 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 30:41 ... objectively true, it would be too upsetting to people. Is there another way? So any time that happens, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, okay. Let me see if I can tune that differently next time."

Steven Bartlett 30:51 But if you know it's true and you believe it's important, you still might not post it because it might upset people.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 30:58 In ways that are not productive.

Steven Bartlett 31:00 Give me an example.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 31:01 No, no, I, I will quote my father.

Steven Bartlett 31:03 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 31:04 "It's not good enough to be right. You also have to be effective. If you're not effective, go home. Doesn't matter if you are in the right." So if I post something that just creates more divisiveness, I need to find another way to achieve the same goal without the conflict. So no, I'm not just about put the truth out there and if it, if it, if it triggers landmines, so what? It's the tru- no. That's not being an educator.

Steven Bartlett 31:39 I'm really, there's a point here I really wanna answer for my, for my own, kinda something I've been thinking a lot about. As we see this polarization in every facet of conversation and public discourse, I've started to think that maybe the antidote is the very few amongst us that have the guts to stand by the truth regardless of the arrows they take. And, uh, I'm seeing that a little bit with, with some big commentators. I shan't name names 'cause that would be a headline, but, um, I'm thinking actually they're like, their, their bravery I guess and their courage to say the truth regardless of the fact they're gonna get piled on because it doesn't fit the narrative is actually helping us. It's helping us almost, um, yeah, it's ha- it's helping-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:17 It moves the needle a little.

Steven Bartlett 32:18 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:19 Okay? So, uh, I see that. I'm just saying I believe, however delusionally, that you can achieve the same goal without angering people. And part of the goal of that book is to offer ways to think about points of conflict in fresh ways that do not trigger people to dig their heels in and fight more ferociously to defend their opinions. Now, I wanna put this in context 'cause I started out by describing an idea, and you can say, "Well, did you consider both sides?" No, I considered all sides. Um, people wanna think we're in the most violent times. Can we look at the violence against trans, the trans community? First, there was always violence against trans people, but nobody was talking about it, because there was violence against other people. There were violence against Black people, there was violence against women. There's, there's a whole list of people who were more represented statistically in the world than trans people where we went through periods of our social justice arc to try to rectify those problems. And so the fact that trans rights are on the table now is itself a measure of progress, because we're not talking about gay marriage anymore. We're not talking, under President Clinton, one of our more, more progressive liberal presidents, do you know what the, the, the, the thing was? It was gays in the military, don't ask, don't tell. That was considered a progressive stance in the 1990s under a liberal president. Don't ask, don't tell. Now, in Qatar with the, with the, they say, "We will welcome, uh, gay people, but don't exhibit the gayness in the stands." And everyone is jumping all over them for that regressive posture. It's exactly what we were 30 years ago. Don't ask, don't tell. I don't mind if you're gay, just don't kiss another man in front of me, if you're a man. I'm o- otherwise okay with it, all right? So what I'm saying is look at the other things that preceded it and you can declare progress having led up to it. That's my point. Not that it's still, you don't still have to worry about it and it still needs solutions, and you still have to somehow change people's sense of what equality is and equal access and opportunity and equity and inclusion. That all still needs to happen, but that is not happening now or less so with Black people. So there are measures of progress that are kind of perverse, but real. And you know what my father used to say? He said, "I'll know we've achieved equality when a Black person can be indicted for embezzlement (laughs) of funds."

Steven Bartlett 35:50 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 35:51 When a Black person can be sent to jail for embezzling $500 million, I know we've made it. (laughs) Okay?

Steven Bartlett 35:59 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 35:59 Okay? Like I said, it's a perverse measure, but it's, it's another way to think about the progress that has actually happened in this world. All I'm saying is we may be living in some of the safest times there ever was in the history of civilization. I don't think we should lose sight of that. People are afraid to say it, I think, because the worry, and it's an authen- a, a, a legitimate worry that you might just get complacent and sit back and say, "See, everything is fine. It requires no more work and no more effort."I'm saying m- maybe we should pay c- in addition to worrying about the violence that persists to this day, we should look at the successes and say, "Well, what did we do right? Let's do more of that." And there's not much of people saying, "Look how far we've come. Let's list how we achieved this."

Steven Bartlett 37:05 Why don't people do that? Why don't... Why aren't they... 'Cause I saw a poll on Twitter two days ago, and the question was, "Do you..." It was essentially, "Do you feel optimistic about the future?" I clicked yes, and I was in the tiny minority, and 78, roughly 70% of people, or s- m- I think it was slightly more, felt pessimistic about the future. Either were worried and fearful about the future.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 37:22 Right. And there's, here's another statistic which is in the spirit of that, but it's a little more, more thorough. It was a Gallup poll, one of the... I, I forgot which one.

Steven Bartlett 37:32 Hm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 37:32 It might have been a different one, but one of the official polling agencies, uh, for the past 30 years have asked people each year in the United States, um, "Are things more dangerous for you just in your community, in, in your, uh, this year than last year?" 27 of those years, people said, "It's more dangerous this year than last year. I don't feel as safe as I did last year." Okay? Now, let's plot the crime rate over the past 30 years. It has been a precipitous drop. Just dropped. There's some bumps in there, but basically it has dropped for 30 years, since the basically the 1980s, '90s, up until today. So there's some delusional force operating on people's understanding of the world in which they live.

Steven Bartlett 38:30 Hm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 38:30 And then people wanted to blame it, I think, in part correctly, on local news. What's the first thing you see? You put on not the national, the local news. Um, there's a crime committed, and now we have video. So, you know, we didn't used to have surveillance video. Now you see the person beating up on the old person or the person breaking into the jewelry store. Now you see it. You say, "Oh my gosh."

Steven Bartlett 38:53 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 38:53 Um, you know, uh, "Clutch your lud- your loved ones and your valuables." Our ability to show you violence is greater than ever before, and it affects us emotionally. Part of what it is to be a scientist is to figure out all the ways you could bias yourself and remove them as far as possible, as much as you can. What is the scientific method? If not, I give my own wording of the scientific method. It's simply do whatever it takes to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not, or that something is not true that is. So, I... So that poll would've told me, I'm gonna look at the actual data, and I'm gonna look at the... And, and I'm gonna react to the actual data, not to my feelings about an objective truth. Nothing wrong with feelings. It's the source of the greatest art in the world, and it's, uh, our emotions, how we feel for people. But if you're gonna make legislation, uh, if you're going to act on your feelings and there's an objective truth that informs those, uh, feelings, that's the path you should take. Otherwise, we're a house of cards that could collapse at any moment 'cause somebody feels like you're gonna harm them, or they feel like it's dangerous, or they feel like y- y- uh, excuse me? I love human feelings, but don't let it interfere with objective truths. Don't let it interfere with legislation, laws that would have to affect us all. (page flips)

Steven Bartlett 40:31 Quick one from our longest standing sponsor, Huel. I, I can't tell you over the last, let's say over the last... Really it's been about two and a half years, it was really, um, post-pandemic, how much my health has become such a huge priority in my life. Huel has been probably the most impo- important partner in my health journey, because I've been in the boardrooms, I've been to their offices tens and tens and tens and tens of times. I've seen how they make their decisions on nutrition, and that's why it's su- such a wonderful thing to be able to talk to this audience about a brand and a product that is so unbelievably linked to my values and the, and the, the place I am in my life of valuing the gym, exercise, movement, my mind, my breathing, and all of those things, and most importantly, my nutrition. That is the role Huel, Huel plays. And so every time I get to read these ads out, I do it with such passion because I really, really believe every word I'm saying, and I absolutely love the brand. So if you haven't already tried Huel and you've been resistant to my, my pestering, then give it a go and let me know how you get on. (page flips) We're lucky enough to have Intel sponsoring this podcast, and Intel EVO is essentially their badge of excellence that determines whether a laptop is high spec or not. So it's going to save you a load of time researching and comparing models, because if you see the Intel EVO badge, you know it's passed Intel's own strict requirements for laptops that prioritize on-the-go productivity. One of those requirements for Intel EVO is the real world battery life and fast charging when you're in a rush. Intel EVO laptops have long-lasting, fast-charging batteries, which ticks a lot of boxes for me. You'll get at least four hours worth of charge in under 30 minutes of being plugged in, and a battery life designed to last at least nine or more hours, even if you're like me and have multiple tabs open. The laptop is also really responsive. With the Intel EVO platform, it wakes up in less than a second and comes with 12th generation Intel Core processors built into the laptop, so it's ready to go instantly. As someone who spends a lot of my time out and about between podcast recordings, talks, meetings, business meetings, events, et cetera, et cetera, being able to rely on a laptop to keep going at the pace I do is critical. And with the Intel EVO platform, you get the performance and battery life you need to do just that. Head to intel.co.uk/evo to find out more about the Intel EVO platform. (page flips) Your documentary,

Steven Bartlett 42:40 Cosmos. I don't know if I'm saying that right. Cosmos, Cosmos? I think it's a, might be an English thing.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:45 You're a Brit, I don't know or care-

Steven Bartlett 42:46 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:46 ... how you pronounce anything.

Steven Bartlett 42:47 Oh, brit- It's our English, so-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:48 (laughs) You could say.

Steven Bartlett 42:48 Cosmos. Cosmos. Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:51 You will never find an American correcting British pronunciation.

Steven Bartlett 42:53 Well, it happens sometimes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:54 'Cause we just don't know.

Steven Bartlett 42:55 Yeah. (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:55 Okay?

Steven Bartlett 42:56 Um, so objective truth and, and reality and feelings. One of the things I learned from that documentary, which was ho- honestly, I, I remember the day I found it. I shouldn't say this, but I didn't have a lot of money, so I found it on some, like, dodgy, like, pirated website, and I just, I watched, I think it was eight episodes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:12 Security.

Steven Bartlett 43:13 Yeah. (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:13 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 43:14 I watched them all that night, and I ch- and then I went back and watched the previous one with Carl Sagan. Um, it just captivated me and it has ever since. I actually would cite that as my, as the start of my fascination with the universe. And one of the really profound things I took from it, when we're talking about objective truth and feelings, is there's a scene in, in the documentary where you kind of, like, zoom out and it keeps going and going and going and going and going and going. And it made me, talking about objective truth and feelings, it made me feel so insignificant. I realized that I am objectively irrelevant, and that was a wonderful feeling, because with that, it strips away the, the burden-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:53 Ego.

Steven Bartlett 43:53 ... of your own self-importance. And ego. Um, do we matter?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:58 So, the cosmic perspective is incompatible with your ego.

Steven Bartlett 44:02 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 44:03 Or I should say, your ego is incompatible with the cosmic perspective. That's the proper way to order that sentence. The cosmic perspective shows you how small we are in size, in time, in space. And if you go in with a high ego, you might resist that. You might say, "No, I'm important. I..." But I think of it differently. The, we know one of the greatest gifts of modern astrophysics to civilization, dare I call it a gift, is the knowledge that the atoms of your body are traceable. Not only to the big bang origin of the universe itself, but especially to stars that manufactured those elements and later in their lives, on death, exploded, scattering that enrichment across gas clouds so that their next generation of stars would have planets, and on at least one of those planets, life. So, we are not just figuratively, we are literally stardust. So, when you go out and look up at the night sky, yeah, your urge is, "I'm small and that's large." And yes, you're alive in this universe, but there's another way to look at it. The universe is alive within you. You have kinship with the cosmos. That feeling, to me, is greater than any ego you could've possibly walked into the room with, first. That feeling borders on spiritual, second. Third, we have trained ourselves to equate being special with being different. You're special. You do something, think some way that no one else does. So, I'm special. Well, let me turn that on its head and say, maybe we're special not because we're different, but because we're the same. All humans are stardust. All humans share a chemistry with all, a biology, with all other life on Earth. There's one genesis on this Earth. We have DNA in, you have DNA in common with a banana.

Steven Bartlett 46:58 Hmm. I beg your pardon? (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 47:00 (laughs) You could ask, "Well, we're the arms and legs." No, DNA goes deeper than that. DNA controls chemistry, it controls metabolism, it controls all kinds of things that are prescribed in the DNA, and that's where we have commonality with other life forms on Earth. So, why not look around and say, "I'm not special because I'm a different. I'm special because I'm the same as you, as others, as the tree, as the brook, as the animals, th- you know, the woodland creatures." And we can all sit here and look up at the night sky and say, "Yes, we have kinship with the cosmos. I feel large because of that, not small."

Steven Bartlett 47:47 You mentioned the pursuit

Steven Bartlett 47:48 of happiness earlier when you were talking about one of the central sort of, like, doctrine, doctrines of the American dream, that pursuit of, of happiness. And, um, in a, and in what you just said about the universe, I was, I was pondering where meaning is derived from, so I'll kinda ask the question at the same time. This happiness and meaning, where does, where does that come from in, in your perspective?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 48:09 What I have found is there's an urge people have to search for meaning. Is it under this rock? Behi- metaphorically, right? Is it under a rock? I'm gonna search on be- do I, is there meaning? Is it behind a tree? Is, if, if I join this group, will that, will the, will I find meaning with them? If I... And I think to my... Okay, go ahead. But what you're doing is relegating meaning in your life to a search.Suppose you don't find meaning, that'd be a force of disappointment in your life. You're setting yourself up to be disappointed if you don't find meaning. So how, I- I have another idea (clears throat) . I, I use this for myself. I, it may or may not work for others. I recognized long ago that in a free society, where I'm not enslaved and I'm not, you know, an indentured servant, and I have some freedom of choice, that I have the power to manufacture meaning in my life. I can make decisions about my own life that create the meaning. For me, a meaningful life is learning something new tomorrow that I didn't know yesterday. Otherwise, it's a wasted day. You know the prisoner who, who puts X's in the boxes on the wall for the day they get out? I have that in my head, and the day that I get out is the day I die. All right? And what these boxes remind you of is every day you're alive, you're one day closer to death. So there's one fewer days in there to accomplish something that you might have wanted to accomplish. So, I wanna keep learning about our world, about each other, about things I don't otherwise know about, and there are people who only read things that they agree with or that they already know about or they, it's they're, they're feeding some urge to be, uh, what's the word? To be validated. Uh, I have books on my shelf at, at my bedside. Every book is a subject that I either know nothing about or I completely disagree with going into the book. I said, "Well, maybe it'll change my mind. Learn new ideas." Okay? I once presented that list to the New York Times when they said, 'cause I, my book was doing well at one point, and they try to get authors to talk about other books to keep the, the book wheel turning 'cause fewer people are reading today. "So what books are you reading?" said, "On your shelves." I listed the books. One of them was, uh, a book in its, in its 30th printing or something. It was originally written back in the early '60s, I think, maybe even the '50s, a book by Barry Goldwater. It's called The Conscience of a Conservative, and so I'm reading this and people wrote to me after they saw this list. They said, "I didn't know you're a closet conservative. I didn't know you were really a Republican. Did you vote for Trump?" And all of a sudden people were presuming that if I'm reading a book on something, that book must be what my whole life is about, rather than it's a portal to another place of how people think and what people do. So that shocked me, actually. That, because that tells me that most people must have just books that continue to feed their own interests, and that is the best way to not grow in this world. So one of my measures of meaning is how much more do I know about the world tomorrow than I did yesterday? Because almost any path you take, take will make you wiser as a person. So, I value wisdom that gives meaning to my life. A new perspec- it's not just knowledge. No. What is the arc? It's, it's there's, there's data. Data can become information. Information w- on further study becomes knowledge. And after enough time, when you see how the knowledge plugs in and applies, it can become wisdom. Wisdom is the distilled essence of all of the details. The wisest statements ever spoken to you generally have no detail in them at all, do they? It's e- I've heard it said this way. Wisdom is what's left over after you've forgotten all the details (laughs) . It's the distilled essence of it all. So I wanna be wiser on the porch, uh, on my rocking chair. I don't wanna be the old curmudgeon. "In my day, we did it best." No, I don't wanna be that guy. No. So that's one source of meaning. Another, and this is directly traceable to my parents, but I'd like to also think it's traceable to common sense, is spend a little bit of your life lessening the suffering of others. I don't mean d- redirect your life. Some people do. They work in soup kitchens and start not-for-profits to ser- Yes. I, I, I'm not that person. No, 'cause my, the universe is what calls me. But in my day, in, in a week, do something that lessens the suffering of someone else, however trifling that gesture is, and that's an infusion of good. Yeah, I'm value judging it. I'm saying, yes, it is a good thing to lessen the suffering of others. I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm declaring that. I try not to ever put opinions out there, but it's my opinion that if you l- lessen the suffering of others, you make a better world, and don't we all wanna live in a better world?

Steven Bartlett 54:45 If your happiness

Steven Bartlett 54:46 were a recipe, right? Consisting of various ingredients that needed to be present in certain quantities for you to be a happy person, and under the assumption that, you know, no one is perfectly happy under any kind of vague sense of the word, what, what is missing from your list of ingredients at the moment? Or what could you have more of that would make you happy?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 55:07 I, I don't think-

Steven Bartlett 55:08 You happy.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 55:08 ... of life that way.

Steven Bartlett 55:09 Okay, how do you think of life? How, why is that wrong, that question?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 55:11 I didn't say it was wrong. I don't value judge, okay? It's not what's right or wrong here. It's, it's, um, I don't live life that way because it means you carry with you the emotions, "I could be happier if I were doing this and how come I'm not?" And all of a sudden, "Well, then I must be miserable if I'm not as happy as I could be." No, I don't measure day to day am I happy or not. I, I, it's not the measure. Yes, it's, it's in there, but that's not the metric. The metric is am I successful at wha- at what I'm doing? Am I... No, no, it's not even that. It's am I as good at this as I can be? If you're not gonna try to improve, go home. Find something else. So, I remembered my first interview on national television. A new planet had just been discovered around another star, an exoplanet. It was banner headlines. We now have 5,000 in the catalog, but back then, 1995, it was banner headline, another planet. And we kinda always knew they'd be out there, we just didn't have the tools to figure it out. Uh, NBC News sent an action cam up to the planetarium. I was freshly appointed as director. They didn't know me as a person, but I carry title. And so the chyron on the TV image gets to say, "Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director, Hayden Planetarium." Okay. They came up and interviewed me. "Tell us about this new planet. How was it discovered?" Right? So I gave my best professorial reply. Best. Oh my gosh, it was, "It was a Doppler shift that the orbiting planet sh- um, influences the position of the star in space. It's not just the star sits there fixed in the universe and planets orbit it, they both orbit their common center of gravity. And so the star... You can't see the planet, it's too dim, but you look at the star and the star is jiggling back and forth." And I motion that with my body, and I said, "And you measure this movement back and forth with the Doppler shift. You calculate it, and you can infer the existence of this planet." (claps) And bada bing, it's a planet. And I went on, I went on for, like, probably four times that length with my pro- prof- And then I go home, it's national news, I get to call everybody. "Hey, everybody, my friends in California, I'm gonna be on TV! Check it out." And so when the segment aired, all they showed was me jiggling my hips like this (laughs) and saying, "It's a planet." And I said, "Oh, they don't want my professor reply, they want a reply that fits in their medium, a sound bite medium. So let me practice that." So I went home and stared in the mirror and had people just shout out objects, names, places, people, things, and I assembled sound bites for each one of them. It's like three sentences. It's gotta be informative, makes you smile a little bit, and the information has to be tasty so that you wanna tell someone else. That's a sound bite, okay? We, we could do that now. Mention anything in the universe. Just, just, not a question, just a word, just anything.

Steven Bartlett 58:39 Mars.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 58:40 Mars. Ooh. Do you know Mars is red because it's rust? It's a rusted planet, and rust has the color of red. The whole planet, 'cause there's a lot of iron on Mars, and red is the color of blood. Hence Mars, the god of war. It might have life there. We're still looking. Boom! Sound bite.

Steven Bartlett 59:05 Venus.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 59:06 Okay. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 59:07 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 59:07 Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, and Venus as an object in the night sky is stupefyingly brilliant, until you learn it's, has a runaway greenhouse effect and it's 900 degrees Fahrenheit, 500 degrees Celsius on its surface. It would vaporize you. So much for the love and beauty, you know, of Venus. So it's the, it's the least ex- explored planet because of how hostile it is to our space probes. Boom! We got this. I'm not giving you a 10-minute lecture on the thermodynamics of Venus. So my point is when I saw that what I did did not serve the needs, I invested a lot of energy so that I could be exactly what they needed, so that their task is simplified and I'd be- get better at something that could serve a greater good. I'm not, I don't wanna say that's happiness, I'm gonna say that's fulfillment of an objective where I improved in what it is I was doing.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:16 I have to

Steven Bartlett 1:00:17 say, when I knew I was gonna meet you, this question which was so front of mind for me is, there are so many people that talk about the stars and the universe, but there's only one you. And what I mean by that is somet-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:00:27 Yeah, I don't know what you mean by that. So no. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:00:28 So I'll tell you. (laughs) What, what, uh, eh, so would I have had anyone else on this podcast that talks about the stars and the universe? No. The reason why you are, uh, a dream guest is because you create a bridge through exactly what you've described, making it engaging and interesting and, uh-... fun and exciting because of the way that you communicate. And, like, people don't often think about this, whether they're computer programmers or they are archeologists or whatever, that it's great to know stuff, but like, I think Ricky Gervais makes the joke with the daddy long legs where he says, "You can have all the venom in the world, but if you don't have the, the teeth to inject the venom, if you don't have the skill of, like, communication and storytelling and engagement, the venom is pointless."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:01:13 So what I will say is, uh, I will give one other example, and I'll-

Steven Bartlett 1:01:18 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:01:18 ... tie a bow on it. Uh, the first time I was invited to appear on The Daily Show, it's a very popular-

Steven Bartlett 1:01:25 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:01:25 ... comedic news program in the United States, uh, hosted by, um, Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart's a comedian. He's brilliant. He's very into current events.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:38 We all know him.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:01:39 He's sharp. And I've seen politicians get interviewed by him, and they want to deliver their stump speech, and they're deer in the headlights because he's just dancing circles around them. And on my first interview, I said, "I am not going to be the deer in the headlights." Okay? So I studied his show with a stopwatch, and I said, "How many seconds does he, on average, does he give his guests to speak before he comedically interrupts them?" Okay? Write that down. It was anywhere between nine and 12 seconds, which doesn't sound like much, but it's, it, it works comedically, all right? Then I said, "How far back in time does he reference a current event to put in a joke that he might give?" Because you can't go too far back because no one remembers it. The joke has to work without you reminding people what they're supposed to know. So, very intensely the, the previous day, a little less the second day. By the time it's the third day in the past, there's hardly any reference to it. Okay. So, I studied the last two or three days of current events. I practiced my sound bites even more to fit them into this timeframe. And I get on the show, and I deliver the lines, I mean, the sound bites. Oh, but I come preloaded with anything he could possibly ask me. So I'm like, I'm, I'm (laughs) I, I waddle into the studio with a utility belt's worth of thoughts and ideas that he could be asking me, okay? So I'm there, and if you see me on these shows, I'm a little manic because the, it's coursing through me, all this knowledge and information that I need a response to just in case he asks me. So, we do this, and I get the point out, and he makes the comedic point, and now my thought is not dangling in the middle of a joke because I completed the thought. The joke tightens that up, and then we move on. Right? So we go through this whole interview, and he mentions the current event, and I have a little sound bitey thing about that. After the interview, people come up to me, you know what they said? They said, "Neil, you're such a natural, and you have such good chemistry with Jon Stewart." My... They have no fucking idea how much time I invested to look natural. Pardon my expletive there. But-

Steven Bartlett 1:04:05 We swear all the time, yeah. (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:07 (laughs) What I'm saying is, I wanted to be as good as I possibly could have been in that interview. Knowing his audience, because each host has their own audience. You want to serve their audience. I don't want to just give the stump speech. So everything that I imagined for myself was for him and his audience. I would speak, communicate differently on a different talk, daytime talk shows are different than the evening comedic news. On a documentary, it's different. So, my only point of this, with these examples, are... I pay attention to whether people are paying attention to me. If I'm giving you an explanation and you're drifting, all right, that's not working. Let me pull that out of the utility belt. Let me try something else. Um, if I talk about black holes in a particular, oh, you're leaning in in the conversation, your eyebrows are raised. That, that worked. So, I have a database of people's expressions while I'm talking to them. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:05:12 That's funny.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:12 And, and I sift that.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:14 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:15 So that I pick and choose what is most impactful in the few minutes we have together. Otherwise, I'm dragging you through a syllabus that, who the hell cares?

Steven Bartlett 1:05:25 What are the devices that you, you probably don't do it, even do it intent- well, maybe, see from...

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:29 But you're saying it's natural.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:31 Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:32 Watch yourself.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:33 I didn't say, I can edit it out.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:34 Yeah, you know, don't edit that out.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:36 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:36 Don't, don't edit that out. Okay?

Steven Bartlett 1:05:38 But, okay, so what are the, what are the devices that you intentionally work very, very hard on to implore, that, that I might take from you and become a gr- as good a speaker as you are? As engaging and as, like, captivating, despite the fact that you're delivering such complex subject matter at times, but it still seems accessible to someone like me that is just simply a, a chimp?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:57 Not everything that excites me as a professional in the field will excite you. You need to know, you need to sort them into those categories. And maybe there's something that will excite me and you'll see me get all excited and you'll get giddy because you like watching me get excited. That's a different dynamic in that moment.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:20 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:20 All right? It is kind of fun. I like watching, uh, you know, I have a colleague who's like all into leeches, right? He specializes in invertebrates and leeches among them. Just to hear him talk about... I don't care about leeches, but he does. It's like, wow, I didn't know anyone could care that much about a blood-sucking invertebrate. But it was just, I'm delighted to watch that. All right?

Steven Bartlett 1:06:42 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:43 But, so you sort things that excite you from things that could excite someone else. Well, how do you know? You have to practice that.... okay? Uh, strike up conversations. Watch if people care about what you say. Is there some other conversation that distracts them from your conversation with them? Well, go back to the drawing board on that one. (laughs) Okay? And I... Also be a good listener. Watch what excites other people when they're in conversations with other people and that's what I've done. So in that way, I'm, I'm fully socialized. My parents were social creatures and we held dinner parties often, uh, hosting conversations and I'd watch that. Uh, I'm a kid, so I'm not... For their dinner parties, I didn't have a seat at the table, but, um, the idea of being able to communicate. And my father's a sociologist, that's all he ever did, uh, that, I think mattered within me and you have to be able to read people's facial... You know what we did with my kids, uh, it was first evidence that they were not autistic, but also I think it's good practice. Get a... When they're old enough to start thinking about human emotion, maybe eight, nine, you know, to early... The tween years, between eight and 12, where they can actively think about what someone else thinks and feels, okay? Uh, is the person angry, is the person happy, are they sad, are they jealous, are they... Whatever. Okay. So what I did was, or what you can do is find a romantic comedy that is well-acted, all right? Where, where, uh, so you have stars that really do it right and sit down and watch the movie with the sound off. And have your kids... Ask them, "What do you think they're thinking now? What do you think she's feeling? What do you think she's saying? What do you think she's gonna do next?" And you just watch it and the actors are not only delivering lines, they're feeling their roles. And you might have to wait if your kid is a little s- slower that way, maybe they have to be 13 or 14, middle school, where your social standing begins matters more than an elementary school where you're not e- you don't even care. Right? So maybe it's a middle school thing more than an elementary school thing and that way you can say, "You thought she ..." "... said, well, let's check." And you go back and it turns out, yes, she was jealous in that moment and so it trains you to read a facial expression and a good actor will do this. That's what makes them good actors and you, but you... And you don't rely on the sound, just the visual and it's an exercise in reading faces, reading people, reading emotions and so you wanna do this. And in the limit, you b- you become a full up empath, right? I think that's a noun.

Narrator 1:09:48 Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09:48 Uh, an empath, uh, that has shaped some people's careers. Uh, this is real. We're human, we're social creatures. So yeah, I fold that in because I wanna reach you. Oh, and what things do you care about? In my podcast, it's called Star Talk, I have a co-host who's a comedian, a professional standup comedian and the anatomy of the podcast is there's sort of the trinity. There's the science content, there's the humor, and there's pop culture. Why do I care about pop culture? Because you walk into the room already framed in a scaffold of pop culture. If I know that in advance, I don't have to start from scratch when I'm teaching you something. I'm gonna say, "Oh, I have a bit of science that I can clad onto this part of your scaffold, your pop culture scaffold." And you know something? It fits, it sticks, and you say, "Whoa, I never knew that about this." There was an American football game that ended in a tie and... But we don't end in ties, right? So there's an overtime and you reach a point where it's sudden death overtime, sudden death where the next person that scores wins the game. So this person was, was ready to kick for a... It's called a field goal and it's 50 yards out.

Narrator 1:11:21 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:21 50 yards. Oh my gosh. Okay? That's hard. So they kick it and no one breathes for the three or four seconds the ball is wh- So the ball tumbles in the air and there it goes and everybody just follows it and looking up and the ball hit the left upright and careened in for the win. And I said, "Whoa, wait a minute." What's the orientation of this stadium? It was north-south. This is a round ball hitting a round post and going in. Do you realize round things hitting other round things fractions of an inch make a difference? So I did a fast calculation and then I tweeted, "The Cincinnati Bengals for the, for the sudden death field goal was... That careened off the upright was aided by a one centimeter shift to the right given to it by the rotation of the Earth." People lost their minds. Okay, people... (laughs) Uh, okay, the, the Cincinnati Bengals were... The local newspaper said, "God helped them win the game."

Narrator 1:12:46 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:12:46 (laughs) It was... And so everybody... So I didn't have to say what football is, who the Cincinnati Bengals are, what a sudden death goal is, what a field goal is, or explain that the goalposts have a left and a right goalpost. I didn't have to introduce any of that. That's an example of the pop culture...... that someone walks into the room with, and I found a bit of science that I know they're gonna care about because it touches something that's pop culture that they already care about. And I would follow that up with, "It's a Coriolis force and it's why storms rotate clockwise, uh,-

Steven Bartlett 1:13:21 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:21 ... counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere." I'd follow it up with the lesson plan, but I got your interest.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:25 (laughs) Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:25 Okay?

Steven Bartlett 1:13:26 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:27 I didn't start out that way. There's such a thing as a Coriolis force. No! No! Go where they care.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:33 Go where they care.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:34 That's, and that's what I do, professionally.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:38 If I spoke to

Steven Bartlett 1:13:39 Alice, and I said... Your wife, and I said, "Alice, what does Neil struggle with?" What would she say to me?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:45 Struggle with? Oh, um-

Steven Bartlett 1:13:48 Personally.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:49 Well, uh, I, I, I don't know entirely, um, but I know I like to eat more than I like to exercise.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:57 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:59 (laughs) And I used to be very high, high, highly tuned athlete, so I remember what it was like to be in complete shape. I, I reme- I also used to dance, so I could, could do a full split. I was doing, you know, I could, uh, I was like totally in shape, so I have that memory, which in a way is worse-

Steven Bartlett 1:14:16 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:16 ... than never having been in shape. So she'll say, uh, I wouldn't call it struggling, but I would say, she would say that, um, I need to carve out more time to exercise just to stay healthy, I think is... So that, that's one of them. Uh, another thing, we, we talk a lot. Uh, we've been married 34 years, and people say, "Well, what's the secret?" You know, any time someone asks you what the secret is, they're being lazy, because it assumes, "Just know this one thing and everything will be better." How much of life actually works that way? When someone says, "What's your secret to knowing astrophysics?" It's like, you know, working at it 60 hours a week. That's the secret. Somebody asks a chef, "What's your secret in this recipe?" It's 'cause I went to chef school for six years. That's the secret. So I've never asked someone, "What's your secret?" Because I, that's disrespect for the actual work that could go in to what it is to gain the expertise or the state of existence that someone has achieved. Um, I think in a marriage it's, uh, you know, most, or half end in divorce within some number of years, so, uh, what's, what's going on with the institution? And I think we're not trained how to communicate. You're living with, with a person every day of your life. It's really easy to take that person for granted. It's really easy to, to, uh, to enter states of boredom because you've already talked about it. So what do you do? You do new things with each other as often as you can. You go on a trip, explore new hobbies. You go, y- y- y- you know, you, you take up a, a new sport. You play tennis or whatever. Just do something new as you would with any other new person. All right? Why does the other new person look really great? Uh, b- because they're new. Okay? Uh, so you could, you can always be new in your marriage if you do new things. Why not travel? Travel together. Then every day is a new experience you both share, so when you get back home you have something new to talk about, new to share, new to, places to grow. And this thing where I wanna go on a dating app where I can find someone who's just like me, I don't want anyone just like me. I already have me. I want someone different. I want someone I can learn from, someone with different interests that I could grow into. So not that I've ever used a dating app, but if I had a dating app, uh, that's, I would look for someone who is just really different, and it's odd because so many of the apps are finding someone just like you. All right? There's now, like, a Christian app and a Jewish app and a this app and a, and a find someone who has this category. It's like, wow. Why not just have some fun with somebody who's just different?

Steven Bartlett 1:17:31 One of the themes we talk

Steven Bartlett 1:17:32 about a lot in this podcast is mental health, and that the conversation around mental health is, is really developed over the last 10 years from a time when we didn't-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:17:39 Completely.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:40 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:17:40 Oh my gosh.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:41 Yeah. It's a, it's comp- The, the perception of it has completely changed in terms of being destigmatized, but then our awareness and our understanding of concept of physical health and mental health is now more present than ever. Was there an event that put your mental health in focus for your- for you? Like, really made you cognizant of the fact that you have mental health and it's something that you have to... I was gonna say protect, but just, yeah, pr- keep healthy, I guess. Uh, it often seems-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:18:07 That's, you know... Okay. I don't have a simple an- I have an answer, but it's not simple. How much time you got left here? What? (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:18:13 A couple of minutes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:18:14 (laughs) Um, there's a friend... I told you this is a long story, but you asked it. There was someone my age, maybe one year older, when I was in high school, who died, who was the son of a very close family friend of my parents. We might have played together as s- very small children, but I didn't know him as a teenager. Okay? He died of brain cancer. Okay? Very tragic. You're 17 years old and you die of brain cancer. Ready to go off to college and all the rest. They bust in school kids from the school. Okay? And they unloaded and they filled this chapel. And there's a closed casket 'cause it was, it was brain cancer, so the, you know. And there's a picture of him on the casket.And I'm watching this and the, you know, the, his classmates are, like, holding each other as they walk up the aisle, and there's the organ playing. No, it's not a New Orleans song where you sort of celebrate the life of the person who just died. It was the kind of organ music where you want to be sad that the person died. And I'm watching this, then I start getting emotional and, like, a tear shows up in my eye. And I said, "Wait a minute, I don't know this kid. I don't even remember him." I'd be crying because the organ is making me cry. I'd be crying because I'm seeing other people who did know him cry. And I did a fast calculation. How many people are dying in this hour in the city, or in the country, or in the world? Am I crying for them who I equally don't know? I rationalized an emotional state out of this, this pain and misery, and I said, "If I'm not tearing for everybody else who dies who I don't know, I should not be tearing for this person." And so I sucked the tears back up and just observed it anthropologically that there's a funeral going on right in front of me. That was an expression of control over my emotions. That is basically how I lived for the first 19 years of my life. What was the cost? The cost? No cost. Why would there be a cost? Why should there be a cost to not having forced emotions by other... To, to, to... No, there's... Wha- wha- cost? I'm, I'm a geek kid, okay? And emotions are something that interfere with rational thought. But this changed? So what I could say to you is, you're emotional. What's the cost for not being rational, okay? I could totally put the question back on you. What's the cost? You slammed the door. You hung up the phone, back when we had phones to hung up. You slammed it down. You cried when you didn't even know the person, okay? That's your cost. So, we, we... Maybe we're simply different people. I'm not saying they shouldn't have cried. They knew him, of course they're gonna cry. I didn't. Organist, stop making me cry. And so I didn't, okay? So, how did that change? Uh, my freshman year of college, it all changed. It all changed. First semester, I take a class in art and design. They play music and they say, "Draw the music." And it's like, "Uh, I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean?" "Feel the music and draw how it makes you feel." I say, "It's just music I'm listening to." I, I'm like... Uh, it's like two ships passing in the night. I don't know what the hell this person's talking about, I don't know what he means. I don't know, you know, should I still stay in this class? What... Is it a waste of time? What's going on here? And he says, "Oh, here's what you do. Draw the energy in the music." And, excuse me, I've... Like, I'm a physicist, right? Energy is... Equals MC squared, there's kinetic energy, there's mechanical energy, there's chemical energy. Energy is not what you draw out of music. Okay? Okay. So I said, "All right, I don't know what he's saying, but I'll try something." And then he criticizes it. Okay (laughs) . So I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Why am I in this class? Should I drop the class? Okay, then they roll in the pumpkins. They say, "Draw the pumpkins." Okay, now I can, I can do this. It's a, it's a, it's a task. There's a pumpkin in front of me, I'm gonna draw it. So I draw pumpkins. And takes me a few tries to get the hang of it, but I'm, I'm one of the world's best pumpkin drawers to this day because of that. We spent weeks drawing pumpkins, and they're all sort of leaning on each other, and they have these sort of seams in them, and, uh, not all of them have the same size handle, the neck that comes out. And there... Some have bruises, and there's, like, 30 of 'em up in the front of the room. So I'm drawing them. I said, "Okay. Uh, is this, is this all we're gonna do with this?" Okay. After pumpkins became the entire meaning of my life for two or three weeks, we returned to the studio, the pumpkins are still there, and then they said, "Now draw the space between the pumpkins." And I just snapped. It was like, wait a minute, you're telling me that I give object and meaning, objective meaning, to these things that we call pumpkins. And now these pumpkins are just the boundaries to something else that I'm giving meaning to, and that's the space between the pumpkins. It was like, "Whoa!" So, I started drawing this space between the pumpkins, and the pumpkins were now the edges of things, not the object of what I'm drawing.And my brain turned inside out, and I started looking around. I say, "Are these lights or is it a shadow that makes the shape? Am I in a space? Is the space what's real or is it the boundary of the space? If the boundary weren't there, would I still be in this space? I'd still be breathing this air, but we wouldn't call it a space 'cause that boundary isn't there." So the bound- so my eye w- everything looked different after then. Everything. And from that moment onward, I could talk to artists with abstract vocabulary. How does this painting feel? What does it do for you? What do, what are your, what are your emotions? It's, it, it, it opened up a box, an emotional state that was previously non-communicative with the rest of my mind. It, it was kept there. I could ac- it's not that I didn't know how to cry, it's just that the crying had nothing to do with anything else that was objectively real. So what that did, it, it, it found the place where it pried it open, and there was spillage, there was cross-spillage. So I can tell you this now, there's no way this sentence could've come out of my head. On my iPhone, I have skin, it's not a casing, it's just, uh, what's called a skin, and it is a section of van Gogh's Starry Night. The actual name of the painting is The Starry Night, okay? And it's got these swirly, beautiful colors and, all right, it's my favorite painting. Why? Because it's certainly not what he saw. The sky has never looked this way, but it's definitely what he felt. And for me, an artist's task, their duty in this world, not to prescribe about this, but for me, their duty is to show me the world as I do not see it. Take me someplace, give me a perspective that will broaden my interpretation of reality. That is a thought, an idea, a sentence that could've never come out of my mouth until that moment where I drew the space between the pumpkins, and that access to abstract thinking to... Now, i- in the early days, I'd watch a Broadway musical and two people walk up to each other speaking, "Uh-oh, a song is about to happen." And then they'd sing about their love for each other. I say, "Why don't you just cut the song, just say you love each other, move on to the next scene." That's how I felt as a child. After college, after that course, I see the two people walk up to each other and they're speaking their emotions and I'm saying, "You know, when you sing your emotions, it reaches a deeper part, not only within yourself, but within the listeners, because there's more of your emotion expressed when you sing." And so now, I long for the song in a Broadway musical, the simplicity of expressed emotion. So I don't wanna quite say I'm the opposite of what I was when I sucked back the tears in that funeral, but I'm gonna say that, dare I suggest a well-developed access to both your emotions and your rational self, with some control over the two. You don't want rampant contamination, but just be able to close the door every now and then between the two and then open it, uh, I think can serve us greatly as a civilization, if I were to offer perspective and advice. There are times where y- you need your rational self, otherwise you will not make a decision that's in the best interest of your health, your wealth, or your security. But don't let that hide what emotions you might have, because w- the world's greatest art, as far as I can tell, issues forth from rampant emotion that we're capable of as human beings.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:03 Neil, thank you. We

Steven Bartlett 1:30:04 have, um, a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest without knowing who they're gonna ask it for, and they write it in this book and I don't get to see it till I open it, which is fun for me.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:30:14 But you get to see it now?

Steven Bartlett 1:30:15 I get to see it now.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:30:15 Okay.

Steven Bartlett 1:30:16 Jack, Jack always looks, but I never look. When was the last time you cried and why?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:30:26 Uh, I cry often now that the door to my emotions has been found and pried open. So I cry often. I cry at very simple things, I cry at, at, uh, simple emotional moments in, in, in a play. Uh, uh, I'm a, um, resident of New York City, so we consume, as many Londoners, surely you consume the theater scene. Um, I'll cry even in a moment in a musical when music is supposed to make you happy, but there might be a, a tender moment. I tear up if I see acts of, of, um, sensitivity and kindness in a situation where you would not expect it.... okay? If you see a war-torn scene and a soldier picks up a doll and hands it to a child, there's a, a soldier who's brandishing a weapon for killing people, and they take a moment to do that, I'll tear up. I'm tearing up now just thinking of such a scene when that happens. So, I tear up in unexpected acts of kindness, 'cause it's hope for the world. I'll tear up in a movie, uh, usually in a theater 'cause it's a big, immersive experience. Less so at home on, on a TV, even the same movie. I, I might feel it a little more in the theater. Immersiveness matters 'cause it's, uh, it's coming at you for more, in more ways, with, with greater strength. The sound is greater. The visual effects are greater. Uh, you're there p- as a participant in the film. So, um, so I, I probably will tear up once or twice a week, uh, for those reasons and more, but those are the more common sort of reasons that arise.

Steven Bartlett 1:32:45 Neil, thank you. Thank you for the inspiration over the last decade. Thank you for, um, being the Starry Messenger in My Life, which is the name of your new book because you, uh ... Uh, it's funny, I was, I was thinking about it as, as we started this conversation, that that was actually the moment that I became obsessed with the universe when I first watched you present Cosmos all those years ago. Um, and this book is just a continuation of that, but it's a very c- current book in the sense that it speaks to some of the profound issues that are happening in the world. The inside cover, I think, presents a really great explanation of that. "In a time when our political and cultural views feel more polarized than ever, Tyson provides a much needed antidote to so much of what divides us while making a passionate case for the twin chariots of enlightenment, a cosmic perspective o- and the rationality of science." And that's exactly what this book is. It's a necessary antidote to the modern times we're living in. 5-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:33:33 Well, thank you for your support of that. I will say that Starry Messenger comes from Galileo-

Steven Bartlett 1:33:38 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:33:39 ... where he first perfects the telescope after only just having heard that a telescope was invented i- in the Netherlands. He said, "Oh, my gosh. That's brilliant. Let me make my own version of it," and he makes the best version that exists in the world, observes the night sky, notices that Venus goes through phases, which can only happen if Venus is going around the sun and not around Earth. Uh, it could... He, he notices that the sun has spots. The moon has craters. That Jupiter has moons that orbit it. He didn't call them moons. They're called Jupiter's stars 'cause why would you think they were moons? Who knows? And he reports this-

Steven Bartlett 1:34:13 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:34:13 ... with the first evidence that Earth is not the center of all motion, and he called it Sidereus Nuncius, Starry Messenger. The Starry Messenger wasn't him. The Starry Messenger was these messages themselves from the sky that are conflicting with prevailing belief systems about humans and about Earth, and he got in big trouble with the Church.

Steven Bartlett 1:34:40 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:34:40 So, what I... As an astrophysicist, I found all the starry messages I could and applied them to our plight here on Earth, and that's the summary of what's going on in that book.

Steven Bartlett 1:34:53 Death is a topic you mention in this book.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:34:56 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 1:34:56 We-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:34:56 Life and death-

Steven Bartlett 1:34:57 Life