Neil deGrasse Tyson: Why astrology unravels civilization

1. 0:00 – 2:43

   Intro

   1. SBSteven Bartlett0:00

      Surveys find that roughly 80% of Gen Z believe in astrology and allow it to influence major life decisions.

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:06

      But what would be sad is if that number got to 100%. Then this civilization just goes back to the cave where everything that happened in the natural world was created by forces beyond our knowledge and understanding. So if you want to think you're not in control of your fate because the sun, moon, and planets are, it's a free country. But I'm creating meaning in my life because I can control that.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett0:26

      But is there anything that the universe does to influence us?

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:30

      Yes.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett0:30

      Really?

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:31

      Yeah. And I'll tell you how. You ready?

   7. NANarrator0:33

      Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the most recognizable voices in modern science. Who turns the mysteries of the universe into simple truths. And simple truths into life lessons.

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:42

      As a scientist, it's disturbing how easily people divide each other based on skin color, religion, what food you eat, what language they speak, and then they find some other philosophy that differs and then they go to war. But when I step back with a cosmic perspective, you realize how ridiculous it is.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett0:56

      Give me the cosmic perspective.

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:57

       Well, there is nothing that we can put on the table that could rival the measurements of the universe. And we are literally composed of stardust. So when people think they're different, they have DNA in common with all other life forms on Earth. Like, you have 20% identical genes to a banana.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett1:11

       Excuse me. (laughs)

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:13

       (laughs) Okay, we all do, not just you. And that's not all. There are molecules that went in and out of your lungs that are in China being breathed by people now. And go further back, Jesus inhaled them. So how's that for oneness with others?

   13. SBSteven Bartlett1:23

       That can't be true.

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:24

       And that's the next problem. People value what they think is true more than what is true. That's a recipe for the unraveling of civilization as we know it. But as a scientist, show me the data.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett1:35

       And as someone that knows so much about the universe and objective truth, I've got a lot of questions. So what do you think is the probability of me getting to another planet in my lifetime? And then could you make the case that the universe is simulated by some sort of advanced life form? And also, did humans evolve at some point to believe? And do you think you would be happier if you believed in God?

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:52

       Oh, so you're gonna spice this up a bit? (laughs) Okay. So...

   17. SBSteven Bartlett1:58

       I see messages all the time in the comments section that some of you didn't realize you didn't subscribe. So if you could do me a favor and double-check if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated. It's the simple, it's the free thing that anybody that watches this show frequently can do to help us here to keep everything going and this show in the trajectory it's on. So, please do double-check if you've subscribed and, uh, thank you so much. Because in a strange way, you are, you're part of our history and you're on this journey with us, and I appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank you. I've been watching a lot of vide- videos of yours, I think, because I've reached the stage in my life where I've become really existentially curious.

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson2:36

       I think we all do at some point. And especially the more you've lived, the more

2. 2:43 – 10:55

   The Big Questions About the Universe and Our Existence

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson2:43

      it all sort of, you ask, "What does it all mean?"

   2. SBSteven Bartlett2:45

      Yeah.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson2:45

      "How does it all come together? What will it mean to me in five years, 10 years?" Uh, I don't know if you're old enough to think about your mortality, uh, but that's a thing. When you have fewer years left than the years you've lived, and, and you can... I think the way they say it is there's, you can have a good expectation to live as long as your parents did. I lost both of them in the last five years, so, so that's my horizon. And the fact that we die has a capacity to bring focus into the remaining time you're alive. Because think about it, if knowing you're gonna die brings focus and purpose and resolve and action, then if you lived forever, what's your hurry? For me, knowing I'm gonna die gives meaning to my remaining life, whereas if I'm never gonna die, then mathematically that would mean I'd lead a life of no meaning at all (laughs) because there, there's no way to focus an infinity amount of time into anything and have it be meaningful. So, I'm taking mortality as a very serious force operating on happiness, productivity, can you do something for the world? And on my tombstone, what I want to say, what I want it to say is a quote from Horace Mann, "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." I want to have made a difference in the world. I want the world to have been better off because I lived in it. Is that too much to ask of any of us, really? We're all capable of good deeds. So, if the world is better off, I'm, I've played my part as a citizen of Planet Earth.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett4:49

      And this all sort of dovetails into this new book that you've written. Um, it's, I call it a new book, but it's really a revision of a very successful book that, uh, I think the first copy was published in 1998 called Just Visiting The Planet: Further Scientific Adventures of Merlin from Amnisia?

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson5:07

      Omniscia, yeah.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett5:09

      When I think about these bigger questions about the universe, meaning, purpose, death, why am I here, religion, all these things, so often I think about them through the context and information that I find in your work. Because when I think of, like, the world being so big, as you talk about in this book, and so infinite, and all these st- stars, I feel meaningless, in a nice way sometimes.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson5:32

      (laughs)

   8. SBSteven Bartlett5:32

      I feel like the shit that I, that I worry about no longer matters. But then when you talk about-

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson5:37

      You feel meaningless in a happy way.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett5:39

       Yeah.

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson5:39

       (laughs) That's right.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett5:40

       I feel like the things that cause me, uh, suffering don't matter as much as I thought they did. And then you talked about ex- shortening time by realizing that you're gonna live for 90 years or, or 80 years, creating great amounts of meaning. And it feels somewhat like a, I don't know...

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson5:56

       Yes, the universe is huge in size, in age, in...... contents. There's nothing we can put on the table that can rival those measurements that we make of the universe. However-

   14. SBSteven Bartlett6:12

       How big?

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson6:13

       How... Well, there's the light from the most distant galaxies has been traveling for nearly 14 billion years, 10 billion years more than Earth has even existed, if you want to get a sense of that. And so, but think about it a whole other way, that if you look at the ingredients of life, not just human life, but life on Earth, you can rank the elements. What's the number one element in life? We mentioned the human body. Number one element is hydrogen. That's contained in the H2O of the water content of your body, which depending on how chubby you are, can ch- anywhere from a half to three-quarters of your body weight is water. And, all right, what's the next most abundant element in your body? It's oxygen.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett7:10

       Okay.

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson7:10

       Attached to the water. Okay? H2O, and both the H and the O appear in many, many other molecules in our body, in the DNA, and in your muscle tissue, all of this, and in the blood. Okay. What's third? Carbon, which you would have thought had to be somewhere on the list 'cause you know we're carbon-based life. Fourth is nitrogen, okay? Fifth, I'll put them all together and just say other. (laughs)

   18. SBSteven Bartlett7:36

       (laughs)

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson7:36

       Okay? So that's the sequence of elements. And now you say, "What are the sequence of elements in the universe?" The number one is hydrogen. The number two is helium, but that's chemically inert. You might remember from high school chemistry. You can't do anything with it anyway. Helium. Next in the universe, oxygen. Next, carbon. Next, nitrogen. Next, other. (laughs) Okay? So we are one-for-one matched to the ingredients of the universe. And one of the gifts of 20th-century astrophysics is t- gifts to civilization, is where those ingredients came from. We trace those ingredients, the hydrogen, to the Big Bang itself, and all these heavier elements to stars that manufactured those elements in their core, in the crucible that is their core. They lived out their lives. They exploded, scattered that enrichment into gas clouds so that the next generation of stars would have planets, and on at least one of them, have life as we know it. Life on Earth. So that we... You, you can think of us not just figuratively, but literally composed of stardust. And so, so that it's not that we are alive in the universe. Yes, that's true, but the universe is alive within us. So we're special because we're the same as the universe. Often when people think they're special, "I want to be different from..." No. We're the same because we have human DNA on an Earth where we have DNA in common with all other animals, all other life forms on Earth. Do you realize we, we and mushrooms have more in common with each other than either we or mushrooms have with green plants? The common ancestor between fungus and animals split later in the tree of life. Then its common ancestor split with green plants. You, you have 20% identical genes to a banana.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett9:56

       Excuse me? (laughs)

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson9:57

       (laughs) We all do, not just you. Not just you.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett9:59

       I was gonna say. (laughs)

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson9:59

       Okay? (laughs) You have it. So when you consider all of this, it's, it, it's not just that we're alive in the universe, the universe is alive within us.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett10:14

       Mm-hmm.

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson10:15

       And that, that discovery borders on the spiritual.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett10:20

       Yeah.

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson10:20

       And it's a scientific result. So when I look up at night, I never feel small. I feel large. I feel as large as the universe itself 'cause that's where we came from. We're a participant in a great unfolding story of cosmic evolution.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett10:41

       The minute you said that, I thought of all these Eastern traditions and religions that say we are one. And from a scientific perspective, as you say, we very much are one.

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson10:52

       Yeah, it's, what's interesting is (laughs)

3. 10:55 – 15:48

   Why We're Not Good at Feeling Oneness With Others

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson10:55

      one of my deep concerns about the world is many philosophies or religions that say we are one, they find some other philosophy that differs, and then they go to war. (laughs)

   2. SBSteven Bartlett11:06

      Yeah.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson11:06

      I don't mean to laugh at that, but it's w- we're not good at feeling oneness with everyone. It's easy to feel oneness with our tribe. Our tribe could be skin color, religion, who you sleep with, who you don't sleep with, what food you eat, what rituals you perform. And so those people choose sides based on so many factors that I, I... It's actually, to me dis- as a scientist, it's disturbing how easily and quickly we will divide each other without... And make that the reason for how you interact rather than see what we have in common and make that the reason for why we would come together.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett11:51

      This has been really front of mind for me for the last 24 hours. There's been a lot of things that have happened in the news that have thrown the conversation around division to the very front of my mind. And that, you know, in the UK, we've got all these people that are marching next week, I believe, um, through London because of, you know, various political things. And I was saying to my friends last night, I said, "I think actually the, the root cause isn't this or that, it's the division itself."And it's-

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson12:15

      Yeah, you can overanalyze. I, I mean, if you look deeper than whatever people are saying is the reason they are marching or arguing, if you just, um, you know part the curtains and unpack it all, at the bottom of that is, there's a tribe here and a tribe here, and they think this way and they think that way, and never the twain meet unless we rethink how we interact with one another. It's, it's... I mean, think about it, you know, with the race, the race friction that existed around the world, but especially in, in colonial Europe and the slave trade and all of this, and, and, okay, that's not good. It's bad.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett13:06

      Mm-hmm.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson13:06

      Uh, and, all right, but then you look at World War I and World War II, that's white people fighting white people-

   8. SBSteven Bartlett13:13

      Mm-hmm.

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson13:14

      ... slaughtering them in great numbers. So, you can divide by skin color, but apparently people find plenty of reasons to divide and conquer, to divide and kill, to divide and oppress.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett13:25

       Mm-hmm.

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson13:26

       And, and skin color's one in a long list of all the reasons people have given to religious wars, to y- you worshiping the different god or worshiping the god differently. These are human beings. And, you know, I wrote a whole book, one of, I think one of those books in your stash there, that one, yeah, Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, the one in your left hand there. That one is, is what conflict in the world looks like when you are scientifically literate and you have a dose of cosmic perspective on top of it.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett14:01

       Give me the cosmic perspective, please.

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson14:04

       It's, uh, uh, you're fighting over that line in the sand, when I'm out here at the moon looking at Earth, this fragile ecosystem. Do you realize Earth's atmosphere is to Earth what the skin of an apple is to an apple in terms of thickness? So, uh, I see people trashing the planet, fighting one another, again, just based on who's on what side of the line in the sand, or who they worship, or who they don't worship, or what their skin color is, or where they were born, what language they speak, what accent they have. And I step back, and from orbit, it's ocean, land, clouds.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett14:47

       Mm-hmm.

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson14:47

       From the moon, there's Earth suspended there in space. I almost don't wanna zoom in on it because people value what they think is true more than what is true. There are objective truths out there, but it's almost as though people fight and argue more vehemently, the less evidence there is to support what it is they think is true.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett15:20

       Yeah.

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson15:21

       There's an old saying, "If an argument lasts more than five minutes, then both sides are wrong." (laughs)

   18. SBSteven Bartlett15:27

       (laughs)

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson15:28

       This, and, and it's true probably 80%, 90% of the time, but it's something, definitely something to think about.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett15:34

       How have, have your spiritual and religious beliefs evolved throughout the course of your career based on all that you've come to know about the objective nature of the universe? Has there been an evolution?

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson15:45

       It depends on what you mean by evolution. I was raised Catholic.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett15:47

       Yeah.

4. 15:48 – 20:15

   Has Science Shaped Your Beliefs About Religion?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett15:48

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson15:48

      But we were raised basically in a secular household, even though we would go to church every weekend. What I mean by that is, we'd come home, at no time do either of my parents say, "Don't do that. Jesus is watching. You keep that up, you'll go to hell. Do this 'cause it'll please God." Never was there such a conversation as that in the household. So, the household was driven by objective truths or, or life experience as would be brought from elders to a next generation, something that was more common in that generation than in the current generation because now elders don't know anything about anything. (laughs)

   3. SBSteven Bartlett16:27

      (laughs) Yeah.

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:27

      You know, your kid comes up to you and say, "Mommy, Daddy, I wanna be a, a YouTube influencer." And you're saying, "What? Go back to school." (laughs)

   5. SBSteven Bartlett16:34

      (laughs)

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:34

      No, and then they become a YouTube influencer and they outearn you.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett16:37

      Yeah. (laughs)

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:37

      So, there's th- the, the divide is greater than ever before between one generation and the next for sure. But, by the time I turned eight, I found the religious teachings less and less convincing. And so, by the time I, I was nine when I discovered the universe, or really the universe discovered me, a first visit to my local planetarium. So yeah, I, I wouldn't call it an evolution, but I will say this. You didn't ask this, but it relates. Before I was more recognized, you know, I'd be in an airplane, "What do you do? What do you do?" Okay. They'd find out I do astrophysics, then out come the questions. Okay? "Oh, tell me about black holes, relativity, the Big Bang, gra..." Uh, aliens, okay? And it would always land on God.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett17:25

      (laughs)

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:25

       And I used to give pretty straight unforgiving answers to that question, to that inquiry. But then I thought, "That's not fair. There are people whose lives pivot around their religious beliefs and their spirituality. And just 'cause I've been discounting it since I was eight, I shouldn't use that as a force against them. I should at least understand where they're coming from." So I systematically acquired religious books of all kinds. So I have the Torah, I have multiple copies of the Quran, Joseph Smith's account that led to the Mormons. I have, uh, multiple, uh, bits of literature from Jehovah's Witnesses 'cause they'll come to your door and they wanna hand you... So, I acquired all these books, and I mostly read them.... I've skimmed all of them and read some of them with a little more intensity than others. All right. On doing so, that enabled me, empowered me to have more meaningful conversations with people who are religious, much more meaningful and more informed. That's the key. I don't wanna speak about a religion unless I know as much as I can about it. As an academic, that should be what would be true of any subject. You're an academic, you care what's true, not what you think is true, what is true, or what people think.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett18:56

       Mm-hmm.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:56

       All right? And there's no doubt that religion has been one of the greatest forces operating on civilization ever since civilization, when you look at, as a source of people's behavior, what they eat, like I said, who they sleep with, where they sleep, where they worship, who they worship, all around the world. From animistic native peoples, where there's a spirit energy imbued in the, in the mountain, in the brook, in the wind, to, uh, the monotheistic religions to the polytheistic religions. The... We don't call them that, to put distance between us, but the Greek gods were... It was their religion. We call it mythology. It was their religion, the Greek gods, the Roman gods. So I'm, I'm conversational in all of this, so that when someone says, "How do I feel? What do I think?" I can do that without just being obnoxious. (laughs)

   13. SBSteven Bartlett19:57

       Yeah. (laughs)

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson19:59

       And so, and, and it's a... I would have a meaningful conversation.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett20:02

       I haven't done that.

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson20:03

       You haven't?

   17. SBSteven Bartlett20:04

       No, I haven't. I haven't, uh, but it, uh, such a good idea to do that, especially as someone in my position that does a lot of talking with people and asking questions. But in my... the first thing that's sprung to mind was... There was actually two questions that sprung to mind. The first was,

5. 20:15 – 25:00

   Did Humans Evolve to Believe in Something?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett20:16

      how did that change you, reading all those books, o- outside of you being able to relate, um, with those, well, being able to talk to them-

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson20:23

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett20:23

      ... in a different way? And the second question, 'cause I've watched Cosmos. I've watched it several times. Uh, it's one of my, me and my partner's favorite things to watch is you, you going from the very beginnings of time t- through the universe and to where we are-

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson20:35

      You gotta love that calendar too-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett20:36

      Oh, my gosh.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson20:37

      ... the, the cosmic calendar.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett20:37

      It's just my favorite thing.

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson20:38

      Yeah, yeah.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett20:38

      And I try and persuade everybody to watch that. My question was about, because I watched that and I watched, um, how the universes evolved over time, or at least our understanding of it and, and how it came to be, is did humans evolve at some point to believe? Are we meant to believe?

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson20:54

       Well, s- so the best way to ask that is, let's go back to the earliest humans we have fossil records of, and we can go back to Neanderthal, for example. Uh, Neanderthals is a branch of hominids that went extinct, basically. There's some cross-breeding, and there's Neanderthal DNA in many humans today. But as a, as a branch of, of the hominids, they, they went extinct. So th- Neanderthal, then there's Cro-Magnon. Uh, we're, you know, Homo sapiens, uh, coming after Cro-Magnon. And so when you look at burial grounds, the Neanderthal bury their dead with things, with parts of their life, of the person who died. Now, why would you do that unless you had some belief that there was something more to come for that person?

   11. SBSteven Bartlett21:54

       Mm-hmm.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:54

       I mean, the, probably the people who took it to the limit were the Egyptians, all right? For the Egyptian royalty, I mean, they bury you with all kinds of stuff. (laughs)

   13. SBSteven Bartlett22:04

       Yeah.

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson22:04

       And in fact, in Greece, uh, uh, I read this, uh, uh, it's not that I researched it and I'm, I'm not a scholar in this, but that when they buried you, they put a coin in your mouth or in your hand, somewhere on your body, so that when you got into Hades, you can tip the ferry boat driver to cross the River Styx to get into Hades. You might even say that's the beginning of what it was to be human, when people started thinking that way about dying.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett22:34

       Hmm.

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson22:35

       You might even rev- invert the question and say, it's not when did we start? It's we existed in all the ways we know oursel- know what, ourselves to be when that ritual came upon our ancestors.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett22:54

       And the survival benefit in believing?

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson22:56

       I, I don't know.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett22:57

       Really?

   20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson22:58

       Yeah. I, I don't know. We, we're pretty sure there's a survival benefit of group think, and religion is group think, if there ever was. It was, "We all believe this-

   21. SBSteven Bartlett23:14

       Mm-hmm.

   22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson23:14

       ... in this way, and we will behave in that way on those occasions, and you will not deviate from it."

   23. SBSteven Bartlett23:21

       Yeah.

   24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson23:22

       And part of that package of beliefs includes statements about the afterlife and how you should behave in this life. Otherwise, you don't go to heaven, you go to hell. Uh, I don't think Judaism has a hell, but you, you're, you're not as rewarded as you'd otherwise be. Now, that forms a, a corpus of beliefs that can be highly binding of a peoples. And especially if some other peoples come up and they do other things and you don't understand it, you don't know what it is, and they're, they're a threat.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett23:56

       Mm-hmm.

   26. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson23:56

       And so you keep them out. You, you do whatever you can to preserve your traditions relative to theirs. Ultimately, the worst... That in its worst manifestation is all out war, where you just kill people who don't believe the way you do. So, so maybe religion is kind of what defined humans in the fossil record. I mean, I, I, like I said, that's an interesting inversion of that question. Not when did humans begin being religious.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett24:26

       Mm-hmm.

   28. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson24:26

       You define...... who we are as humans as when religion showed up in the, in the burial grounds of, of cavemen.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett24:36

       You just talked about us being bound there by certain shared beliefs and ideas.

   30. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson24:40

       Yes.
6. 25:00 – 30:32

   Changing the Way We See the Universe

   1. SBSteven Bartlett25:00

      So, it feels like, in a weird way, we're becoming more independent and there's a s- somewhat of a cost to that. And actually, my friends that are struggling the most in their lives are those that have the least dependence on a village. It's, it's... So I always wonder if p- we need to ladder up to the universe, i.e. me, my family, maybe my village, maybe my country, the planet, the universe, g- and, and God.

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson25:25

      The metaverse? (laughs)

   3. SBSteven Bartlett25:26

      Yeah, and like, God.

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson25:27

      The multiverse?

   5. SBSteven Bartlett25:28

      Yeah.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson25:28

      Yeah, so let me just react to that.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett25:30

      Mm-hmm.

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson25:31

      There have been studies about the psychological effects of this kind of life, basically the, the social media too early in one's life-

   9. SBSteven Bartlett25:40

      Hmm.

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson25:41

       ... uh, force that operates. But I... So I don't know. I don't wanna be the person who says, "In my day, we did it right and you, you youngins don't know what you're doing and you're all go..." I mean, I've seen the films of people, of officials smashing pinball machines with sledgehammers saying, "It will be the death of the next generation," because it's, they're not studying, they're d- they're... It's gambling, they... I've seen, you've seen t- see people burning rock and roll records.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett26:11

       Mm-hmm.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson26:11

       You know, you've seen... We've seen this. And I, I'm, I don't wanna be that guy. Uh, I'd rather be the person that says, "They're gonna create a whole other reality that was not my reality growing up, and I don't know that I can or should value-judge that."

   13. SBSteven Bartlett26:31

       Mm-hmm.

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson26:31

       When they come up in the ranks, they'll be mature adults. They'll figure out what the rhythms are of that world. And I will say, however, that if you go far enough back, no one ever traveled anywhere. You, y- you, you'd spend your whole life not going more than 30 miles from your hometown, like, two, a couple of hundred years back. So now people do actually communicate with countless thousands of people around the world. So that's... It's different. I'm, again, I'm not value-judging it, but it's different. And you're exposed to different ideas. It, maybe it tribalizes you more or maybe it softens you. It, it has the power to do both. What concerns me is, 'cause when I post to social media, I've learned the art of not expressing an opinion-

   15. SBSteven Bartlett27:19

       (laughs)

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson27:19

       ... because I don't care what your opinion is. I don't care that you have my opinion. What I care about as an educator and as, especially as a scientist, is that your opinion is based on objective reality, objective truths. If you have an opinion where the foundation of it is, "What are you... What? Wha..." Then you're just floating. There's no... And then if you rise to power of laws and legislation, and then you shape a society based on what you think is true or want to be true, rather than what is objectively true, that's a recipe for the unraveling of civilization as we know it. So, uh, this loneliness bit, I, I don't know how to comment on that. I, I don't have the expertise. But I do know that I don't wanna be the person on the rocking chair, "Get off my lawn." (laughs) You know? (laughs)

   17. SBSteven Bartlett28:12

       Hmm. And I, I, I guess I've, I've been trying to figure out if we, if I need to make, try and make sure my life ladders upwards.

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson28:19

       Oh, oh, let me get back to that.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett28:20

       Yeah.

   20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson28:20

       So, it may be that the most important role of church wasn't to give a specific recipe for how you pray or again who you pray to or when you pr- Maybe that's, maybe that wasn't its greatest value. Maybe its greatest value was the community that it created.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett28:40

       Mm-hmm.

   22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson28:42

       Everyone comes together, and they're all in one room-

   23. SBSteven Bartlett28:45

       Yeah.

   24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson28:45

       ... at the same time. That's not happening today, like you said. Uh, there's a... Uh, people are less religious today than ever before. Uh, there're p- Many people who were once religious would today, statistically, would today say they're spiritual-

   25. SBSteven Bartlett28:59

       Mm-hmm.

   26. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson29:00

       ... which means they're separated from the rules and regulations that, that typically, um, dictate how you behave within a religion. But the fact is, you're talking about going upwards. So you have your, your city, your community, your neighbors, and your church, your synagogue, your mosque, your, your, your temple, whatever is the, the, the place where you gather with some frequency. Uh, that surely has value because we need each other. I'm jealous when I, you know, you drive down the country road and there's a deer just walking around and I'm thinking, you know, "If society collapsed, that deer is just fine." (laughs) The deer was born in the woods. It's finding food. It has grown up. Whereas I need other people to survive in this world. I don't know how to hunt. I don't know how to skin game. I don't know how... Uh, you know, I like knowing that there's a quart of milk waiting for me on the grocery store and, and, you know, ready-to-eat cereals. That's... We have an interdependence as never before.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett30:12

       Mm-hmm.

   28. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:13

       And how do we maintain that without scattering to the winds?

   29. SBSteven Bartlett30:19

       You said you lost both your parents in the last five years.

   30. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:21

       Yeah.
7. 30:32 – 35:05

   Did the Loss of Your Parents Change Your Views?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett30:32

      way?

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:33

      It did a little bit. Not as much as I thought it might have.... uh, my father was 89 when he died. That was five years ago. My mother was two days shy of her 95th birthday, so that's what, so I'm putting myself, like, right between them in my life expectancy. I think I would get to 92. (laughs)

   3. SBSteven Bartlett30:50

      Good.

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:50

      It's the average of those two, you know. So, when you die at that age, it's sad but it's not tragic.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett31:00

      Mm-hmm.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson31:00

      So, I, that's an important distinction for me. A tragic life is a life that could have been lived, but through act of war or negligence or, or, uh, negligence of the person or of others, their life is cut short. Then that's tragic. It's a life not fully lived. But if you lived a full life, they were married 50-something years, uh, it's sad but it's not tragic. In fact, it's not even sad. It's something to celebrate. And so I miss them, I, I miss them more than I thought I would because they carried quite a bit of wisdom with them. My father was active in the civil rights movement. My mother, uh, was a gerontologist, so they both cared very deeply about the plight of others, and I'm their son, the astrophysicist, but so I go off with my head in the sky, but I was anchored into the human condition, and anchored to think about it, to care about it, and when I encounter things in modern life, it's, "I wonder what my mother would say about that? I wonder what insights my father..." And th- they're not there. I don't have them for that. So, the way it's changed me is, it has put a greater expectation of me on myself to make sure I have wisdom that I can share with my kids, my two kids, the kind of wisdom that I gleaned from my parents, so that... Again, this is not wisdom of what car to buy or what job to have 'cause they have other values. Uh, they have other expectations of society, but in terms of human-to-human interaction, in terms of love, in terms of challenges in life and overcoming them, some of those are timeless. Some of those are, you know, how to, how to navigate difficult people. How to appreciate nature so you don't take it for granted. Uh, one of the things I liked about Joyce Kilmer's poem, On a Tree, uh, it's about a tree and we've all seen trees, so why does this matter? Because it takes an artist, a poet, a writer, a sculptor, a painter. For me, the artist's job is to encourage us, stimulate us to pay attention to things we might otherwise take for granted, because so much of life is what you might just walk by and not even give it any thought. And so I don't walk by trees without thinking something about that poem.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett34:04

      Wh- what is the poem?

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson34:06

      I think that I shall never see. A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest. Against the earth's sweet flowering breast. A tree that looks at God all day. And lifts her leafy arms to pray. A tree that may in summer wear. A nest of robins in her hair. Upon whose bosom snow has lain. Who ultimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me. But only God can make a tree.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett34:44

      (laughs)

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson34:45

       (laughs)

   11. SBSteven Bartlett34:49

       "But only God can make a tree." I spend so long these days thinking and talking to people about what all of this means and, uh, I've got more and more... I saw you talking about the simulation theory once or twice.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson35:01

       Mm-hmm.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett35:02

       And I, I started to fall into that, (laughs) the whole

8. 35:05 – 40:05

   Do We Live in a Simulation?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett35:05

      of thinking.

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson35:05

      Oh, it's, it's, no, you gotta, you know-

   3. SBSteven Bartlett35:08

      Stay... (laughs)

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson35:09

      (laughs) ... step outside every now and then and, you know, smell the roses.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett35:14

      But you said you wouldn't be surprised if people found out the universe is simulated by some sort of ad- advanced life form?

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson35:20

      Yeah. Given what we can now compute, throw in content computing on top of that, uh, we, we don't have this power yet, but to make a world in our computer where the characters that, in that world believe they have free will, and then they conduct themselves, and then they invent computers, and then they make a world inside of their computer, and where their characters think they have free will, and then they... So then, then it's, it's simulated universes all the way down, and close your eyes and throw a dart, which of these u- are you gonna be, get the first universe that invented the simulated universe or the zillion ones that followed? The dart's likely to hit one of the others. But my, my escape hatch from that is since we do not yet know or have the power to make a perfectly simulated world, it means we are either the first universe that's real that hasn't created one yet-

   7. SBSteven Bartlett36:20

      Mm-hmm.

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson36:21

      ... or we're the last universe that hasn't evolved yet to have created one of its own, 'cause all the middles have the power to create one. So that takes it, you know, a zillion to one against us to maybe 50/50. (laughs)

   9. SBSteven Bartlett36:36

      Oh, interesting.

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson36:37

       Yeah.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett36:37

       I've never heard that before.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson36:38

       So, so I'm a little, I'm a little more comfortable that way.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett36:40

       (laughs)

   14. NANarrator36:42

       ... comfortable.

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson36:43

       Yeah. I sleep a little better at night. (laughs)

   16. NANarrator36:46

       But it, I guess it wouldn't matter anyway if we were-

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson36:47

       It would, uh, actually, it wouldn't matter if we're completely simulated, what do you care? You're living your life. You... and, uh, we don't wanna believe that there are puppet strings on us. Um, part of me thinks that, though. You know, just when Earth is kinda... everything on Earth is kinda stable, oh, COVID shows up. Oh. So, this i- this is the programmer saying, "You know, the Earth is too boring now. We gotta spice it up a bit." They throw in a pandemic. Okay? A once-in-a-century pandemic. Now, then now, we're entertaining for them. What do we do? Who gets vaccinated? Who doesn't? Who's gonna fight? Who dies? Who lives? Okay. So then we kinda get through that. We get the vaccine, you know? Okay. We're just calming down off of that and they said, "Oh, let's make a billionaire real estate developer from New York City the most powerful person in the world. Let's stir the pot again." And so now, there's a whole other set of stir- pot-stirring that's going on. So that's kinda consistent with a-

   18. NANarrator37:51

       (laughs)

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson37:51

       ... snot-nosed alien kid in their parents' basement programming our existence.

   20. NANarrator37:59

       (laughs)

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson38:00

       That's what I would do. I would throw in interest... Dude, there's a game, Sim- SimCity.

   22. NANarrator38:05

       Yeah.

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson38:05

       I played that. Uh, that's how old I am. SimCity. So you are mayor of this city. And people can vote you out of office. Uh, so you have to do things that make them happy, and there's an opinion poll that's there. And if you spend too much money here, you're not spending money on the schools, that's bad, but then as crime goes up... And you're realizing, "Oh, my gosh. In even this simple simulation, so many interdependent phenomenon are taking place." Then, then y- t- things that happen, then Godzilla steps through and plows through the city. Okay, now, Godzilla's not real, but it kinda is because that would be a disaster that... Is it a flood? Uh, is it fires? It's, it's a thing that n- nobody saw coming. Okay? We are recording this interview on September 11th. I live four blocks from Ground Zero. That's Godzilla walking through the city. W- how do you respond to that? What's... You know, you didn't know that was gonna happen the day before. So, realizing that in this game, it's only interesting to play when disastrous things happen, not too many in a row 'cause you have to be able to recover. So when I look at our world, I'm thinking the best argument I have for being in a simulation is how often some big disaster takes place. W- it was the first, uh, World War, and then after that, peace. Oh, pandemic, okay? The f- the 1918 flu pandemic. Okay, now we get out of that. Oh, uh, d- now, uh, Second World War. Okay, we get out of that. S- b- se- the Cold War. Nuclear holocaust. Okay? So, that's my f- (laughs) that's me looking over the shoulder of the programmer.

   24. NANarrator39:52

       (laughs)

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson39:52

       (laughs)

   26. NANarrator39:54

       Oh, god. I think I prefer the world where I feel like I have free will and there's not.

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson40:00

       Does it make a difference if you believe you have free will even if you don't?

   28. NANarrator40:04

       No, 'cause I'll never

9. 40:05 – 43:44

   Do We Have Free Will in Our Society?

   1. NANarrator40:05

      know.

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson40:05

      And, you know, the fun, the fun answer to that, uh... Uh, ask me. Say, "Uh, do you have free will?" Ask me that.

   3. NANarrator40:13

      Do you ha- d- do we have free will? Do you have free will?

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson40:17

      What choice do I have? (laughs)

   5. NANarrator40:21

      (laughs)

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson40:22

      No, if you don't have free will, then you don't even have an option to say you don't. So, aight so you just live life. Just live your life so that the world is better off for you having lived in it.

   7. NANarrator40:35

      And what does that mean for you? Like, irrespective-

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson40:36

      It means people are better off. The, uh, the institutions are better off. People are happier, healthier, wealthier, safer, better fed, that rationality matters in politics, in lawmaking, and that helps to, will help to ensure stability of anything you build going forward. But, yeah, that's all. I mean, it's not, it's not complicated. And you were talking about meaning before, I stopped looking for meaning decades ago because I realized I, we, any of us has the power to make meaning in life. If you're gonna look for meaning, are you looking under a rock, behind a tree? W- what i- it's as though meaning is sitting there waiting for you to find it. "Oh, I found meaning. There it is, now my life is complete." That feels so, so powerless on your own destiny. Whereas, r- I, I make meaning, I wanna learn something today that I didn't know yesterday. I wanna lessen the suffering of someone today compared with however that person was living yesterday. I want to, I want to use what I learn to well up within me and manifest as wisdom. Because information is not really useful until it becomes knowledge. And that knowledge is good, you can show off if you have a lot of knowledge, that's what these game shows do, but in the end, the best use of knowledge is when it becomes wisdom. And wisdom... People say, "I don't like getting older, I wanna be young again." I don't wanna be young again. When I was 30 I was an idiot, even though when I was 30 I thought I was brilliant, right? So, don't get older unless you have wisdom to show for it.It's when you don't have something to show for your age, you wanna be younger. You're just getting old with nothing to show for it. But I continue to learn things every day, passively and actively. Passively is you just notice, you know? Open your eyes sometimes and see what's happening, where things are headed, what they're doing. You learn. Not all things you learn are good, and if they're bad or need adjustment or need help, do something about it if you can. So, that's how I derive meaning, hence my tombstone: Be ashamed to die unless you've scored some victory for humanity. There's the meaning for you.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett43:30

      There's a whole class of billionaires that are trying to live forever now, and I think we are-

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson43:34

       Yeah.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett43:34

       ... on the verge of being able to extend life potentially indefinitely.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson43:38

       Yeah, we're looking for the date. It's called the escape velocity. Do you know about that phrase? It exists

10. 43:44 – 45:57

    Will We Be Able to Extend Our Lives Soon?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson43:44

       in astrophysics, of course, but, uh, escape velocity for Earth, for example, is seven miles per second. So, escape velocity in astrophysics is the speed w- that you launch something so that it never comes back, no matter how hard the gravity tries, okay? So, every object has an escape velocity. The escape velocity in aging is... The idea is there's a generation yet to be born, but in the very near future, who will not e- not only live longer than the previous generation... So, so, here, uh, here's a s- a cleaner way to say this. Every year, y- you can expect to live one month longer, because knowledge about human physiology has gotten better.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett44:36

       Okay.

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson44:36

       Okay? Just think about it that way.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett44:38

       Yeah.

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson44:39

       And so, we know what to eat, what not to eat, how to exercise, how to not over-exercise, how to m- how to maintain your health, well, your health and physiology. All right. There will come a day where every year that you're alive, medicine has figured out a way for you to live an extra year. That's the escape velocity.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett45:02

       Mm-hmm.

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:03

       So, every year, you live another year, and after that, it could be every year you live two years. So, that's the escape velocity. So, it's not just everybody lives forever today. It sort of works its way into the population, and, yeah, I don't... I don't want to live forever. I don't. Take me off this Earth, provided... I mean, I want... I still have more to give, more books to write that, in my judgment, would make the world better than it currently is. So, I don't wanna die before I get as much of that done as I can.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett45:44

       But are you scared of death?

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:46

       No, although that's easy to say 'cause I'm not at death's door.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett45:50

        (laughs)

    11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:52

        And I had someone rationalize with me, which is, uh,

11. 45:57 – 48:57

    What Happens When We Extend Everyone's Lives?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:57

       they made a potent argument. It's, I can say now, with another 20 years life expectancy, 15, 20 years, that I don't fear death. But if I'm on my deathbed, and someone says, "If I can wave my hand, and you can live another year, would you?" The answer's probably gonna be yes, and at the end of that year, if they... so, I... I don't know if my sentiments about life and death will change on my deathbed. I know my mother, uh, there was a point where she couldn't swallow, and she didn't want a feed tube, and she said, "My time has come." They, uh, put me in, in palliative care and then hospice, and she was dead 10 days later. So, she was, was in charge of her... sh- they could've fed her with a tube, and she would've been completely healthy for another, you know, five years perhaps. But, you know, she raised two kids, three kids, you know, 50-year marriage, happy life, stable life, and, yeah, I'm good with that. So, the billionaires, you know, that, that's ego for sure. If you live forever, there are other people who you're taking resources from who would come behind you. That's one, but two, uh, are you still contributing to the world? Should you give another person a chance who's in school now who might be the next genius that'll figure out the energy problem, the poverty problem, the, uh, the pollution problem, the, the... are you figuring that out? No. You're in the last... y- you're, you're 90 years old, and you're just living on your yacht. So, there's the pro- there's the problem that the last years of your life are not the most creative, the most ambitious, the most irreverent. It's irreverence that... where new ideas come. You know, you've, you've p- perhaps seen s- episodes of Shark, Shark Tank. You know, half or more of those people are 30 and under. They got ideas, fresh ideas. Everyone else is entrenched. So, if people start living forever, they're living forever in the part of their life that is least useful to the progress and advance of culture and civilization, and so all of civilization will stagnate.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett48:26

       D- do you think, um, it... bef- in your lifetime, you said you've got a 20-year life expectancy?

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:30

       Well, fif- 15 to 20, yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett48:32

       15 to 20-year life expectancy.

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:33

       Based on my age now and the age when m- my parents died. Yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett48:37

       But, I mean, you've done a lot of neurological work and laid down a lot of good foundations with all these books you've written-

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:42

       Yeah. (laughs)

    8. SBSteven Bartlett48:42

       ... so maybe it'll be the upper end of that.

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:43

       It's food for AI. It's food-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett48:46

        Very true. Very true.

    11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:46

        ... for ChatGPT. (laughs)

    12. SBSteven Bartlett48:48

        What d'you make of AI? What's your... what are your thoughts on that?

    13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:50

        I love it.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett48:50

        Yeah?

    15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:51

        I love it, but I- I'm...It's, it's, by the way, it's been here for a while.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett48:56

        Mm-hmm.

    17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:56

        It really

12. 48:57 – 53:28

    Neil deGrasse Tyson on AI

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:57

       spooked people when it started writing your term paper and composing your, your painting and your set design. All right? That, the whole other category of people got spooked by that. Meanwhile, AI has been harnessed and being fully used in my field and in most of the physical sciences. Uh, it's doing work, if you can do the work a- and I can go to the Bahamas (laughs) , let it do the work. We have telescopes coming online that could not exist without the intervention of AI to access the data, reduce the data, analyze the data, make a decision about whether it should go back to the thing that it just observed, 'cause that was weird, compare the last, compared to the last time it was observed. This is the Vera Rubin Telescope that I'm literally describing now. And so, we're, we're, we're living with it. What it means is, it ups, it'll have to up the game of people who say they are creative. And what I mean by that is, I can say, "ChatGPT, take this picture of us," and say, "Chappy, GPT, uh, paint this scene in the style of van Gogh." It'll come back, the colors will be just right, it'll have the swirly lines. It'll be perfect. If van Gogh were standing here, that's what van Gogh would've painted. If I say, "ChatGPT, paint us in the style of no artist who has ever lived," I don't know what it's gonna give us, but it'll probably suck, okay?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett50:15

       (laughs)

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson50:16

       And so true creativity is not aping what has happened before and making adjustments. True ca- creativity, yes, you always build on others, I'm not in denial of that, but true ca- creativity takes leaps that most people don't even know can be taken.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett50:36

       Mm-hmm.

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson50:38

       And so the artist... So that gap, I think, is what Chat, what, what AI in the arts world is gonna force creative people to reach for. Otherwise, you're replaced by, you're replaced by a, a simple request in the, in the input line of, of a large language model or of, or of an art.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett51:02

       I was just wondering then, if I watch Cosmos in 30, 40 years time, let's say 100 years time, I was wondering if this is the moment where humans and computers, in the h- story of humanity, become one and intertwine. If you think about things like Neuralink, which Elon's working on, to me, when he first made that company, all of the narrative that he put out there was about us being able to interface with AI, so we'd need, like, a brain chip computer interface. More recently, it's been about people that are paraplegic and disabled and helping blind people see, but I think that's a socially acceptable way-

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson51:33

       Mm-hmm.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett51:34

       ... to advance the technology.

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson51:35

       Mm-hmm.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett51:35

        But in his early work, he said superintelligence is gonna arrive and we're gonna need a way to basically keep up, wh- where we have better sort of latency with, um, with the technology. And I'm wondering if that's, like, what we're seeing now.

    11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson51:49

        Yeah. Superintelligence, you know, if that happens, then it becomes our overlord and we become its pet, okay? (laughs)

    12. SBSteven Bartlett52:00

        (laughs)

    13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:00

        Now, that sounds pretty scary, but don't we treat our pets better than we treat other humans in the world? Think about it. The pet is kept warm and fed and happy and you... And would you do that for a homeless person in the street? A person of your own species? Probably not. So if we're the pet for the superintelligence-

    14. SBSteven Bartlett52:25

        What about the chicken?

    15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:25

        ... how bad could it be?

    16. SBSteven Bartlett52:26

        We used to have chickens when we were younger, and I watched my Nigerian mother chase that chicken around the garden, grab it, pull its head off, and cook it. (laughs)

    17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:32

        Wow, okay. Yeah. Oh, oh, you're worried that it's gonna do that for us? (laughs)

    18. SBSteven Bartlett52:36

        Yeah. (laughs)

    19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:36

        We're gonna run around-

    20. SBSteven Bartlett52:37

        Not all my pets made it. (laughs)

    21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:38

        ... and snap, not all the pets survive. Uh, yeah, it depends on whether it needs us to be alive or dead. We have to be relevant to it in some way. Maybe we'll be court jesters-

    22. SBSteven Bartlett52:50

        (laughs)

    23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:50

        ... with the entertainment. Until then, I, I don't know that this is some special moment. Uh, I do a lot of reading of history, and throughout history, most occasions, especially in the era of the Industrial Revolution, people think they're living in a special moment.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett53:08

        Hmm.

    25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:08

        And so I'm not gonna be that guy who says, "Today is special." Because ev- everyone has thought they were in a special moment.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett53:14

        And what do you think is the probability of me getting to another planet in my lifetime? Just-

    27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:20

        Zero. Zero.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett53:21

        Really?

    29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:22

        Yeah. You wanna know why? (laughs)

    30. SBSteven Bartlett53:27

        Yes.

13. 53:28 – 1:00:01

    Will We Travel to Mars in Our Lifetime?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett53:28

       (laughs) Please.

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:28

       Yeah, it's just zero.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett53:29

       I thought SpaceX, n going to go to Mars.

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:33

       I have an unorthodox view on this, so you don't have to, you don't have to believe me, y- you know. But my read of history tells me that we only do big, expensive things if there's a geopolitical reason for it, either an economic reason or a defense reason. Uh, not just 'cause it's the next thing to do. And when we went to the moon, realize in 1961, May 25th, President Kennedy, this is six weeks after Yuri Gagarin flew around the earth in orbit, and we didn't have a, a ship that wouldn't blow up on the launchpad that could carry humans yet, he calls a joint session of Congress and says, "If the events of recent weeks..." Couldn't even utter the man's name. "The events of recent weeks," and I paraphrase, "are any indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, then we need to show the world the path of freedom over the path of tyranny." It's a battle cry against communism, the godless Russians, the, everyone in the whole Soviet Union. We were losing a technological race, and that was the battle cry that prompted Congress to write the check. Oh, later on he says, "Oh, it'll be, uh, uh, put a man on the moon and b- return him to safely earth, and, uh, oh, that's so beautiful. Let's hold hands. That's so beautiful."No one ever spent scads of money just because it was a cool thing to do. That has never happened, ever. So, we go to the moon. People forgetting why we went to the moon say, while we're on the moon, "At this rate, we'll be on Mars by 1985. That'll be the next ambitious goal we'll take on." No. Because we didn't just go to the moon because that was the next thing to do. We went to the moon to beat the Russians and when we got to the moon and we looked over our shoulder and the Russians weren't there, we canceled the Apollo program. 1970, we haven't been back to the moon in 53 years. We canceled it. Apollo 18 was ready to fly. It's now in captivity in Huntsville, Alabama in a museum on its side, it's fascinating to walk the full length of it, all rocket red, flight-ready parts. It never flew. We ended at Apollo 17. No, we didn't go to Mars, because we didn't have geopolitical reasons to do so, neither economic nor for defense reasons. Historically, people explored, did expensive things for the glory of God and royalty, very expensive. The pyramids, the honor of royalty, okay? The church building, cathedral building, all of these activities were in the glory of power, deity, and royalty. There's, none of that happens today. We're past that. The power of kings and gods, that doesn't happen. Nobody dislodges major resources, capital resources of a nation in the interest of a god or a king anymore, okay? It's secular. And s- secular means it's money or it's war 'cause you feel threatened. Okay, so, you know we're going back to the moon now.

    5. NANarrator57:05

       Yeah.

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson57:05

       Project Artemis. Did you ever think to stop and ask why? Why didn't we stay on the moon in 1972? Why didn't we go back in 1980 or 1990, 2000, 2010? Oh, all of a sudden, let's go back to the moon, wouldn't that be cool? Do you know when Artemis began? In the late teens. Right about when China says, "We're gonna put taikonauts on the moon."

    7. NANarrator57:31

       Taikonauts?

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson57:32

       Ah, yeah, Chinese astronaut. It's taikonaut.

    9. NANarrator57:35

       Ah, ah.

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson57:35

        All right? That's when we say, "Oh, let's go back to the moon. What a good idea. Let's do that." Really? 'Cause we, we, 'cause it's just a good idea? Because we're a little bit spooked by a friendly foe, across the, around the world, might get the glory of that exercise and once again, it's a godless country, okay? Communism-

    11. NANarrator58:02

        Mm-hmm.

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson58:02

        ... is godless, by design, by construct. So, here we are going back to the moon. All right. What motivation do we have to go to Mars? Are there oil wells there? Is there, you know, diamond mines? We're not going to Mars. We're just not. Unless China says they wanna put military bases on Mars. We're gonna be on Mars in 10 months. (laughs)

    13. NANarrator58:32

        (laughs)

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson58:32

        One month to design, build, and fund the thing-

    15. NANarrator58:35

        (laughs)

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson58:35

        ... and nine months to get to Mars. A geopolitical force operating. Oh, and by the way, NASA doesn't have a rocket that'll get us to Mars. They think they do, but they don't really have one yet. Time to do that and say, "Well, does anybody have a rocket?" Elon says, "I have a rocket." So if Elon rocket goes to Mars, it's not 'cause he sends it there, it's 'cause taxpayers sent it there. By the way, he could go there on a vanity project, but there's no business case. He, he could fly to Mars, team up with Jeff Bezos. They can send people to Mars. It's not a business case. And if you are an investor in his company, you would not agree to do that. You wouldn't. But he doesn't need investors 'cause he's very wealthy. He could do it on his own. Are you going to Mars as a tourist? Is that, is that a business case? It'll, it's a trillion dollars to get to Mars, first. Second will be a little less. I don't see that happening.

    17. NANarrator59:34

        A trillion dollars?

    18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson59:35

        About that, yeah. Y- y- if Earth were a schoolroom globe, with your fist show me where you think the moon is. This is Earth.

    19. NANarrator59:47

        (laughs)

    20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson59:47

        Put, take your fist and put it at the distance the moon is. Your fist is about the right size compared. Okay, put it-

    21. NANarrator59:54

        I mean ...

    22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson59:56

        Right there?

    23. NANarrator59:56

        Yeah.

    24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson59:57

        Okay, not too bad. It's 30 feet away. It's in the next room.

14. 1:00:01 – 1:02:43

    How Long and How Far Is It to Mars?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:01

    2. NANarrator1:00:01

       Okay, thank you.

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:02

       Okay? 30 feet away.

    4. NANarrator1:00:04

       Okay.

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:04

       That's the moon. Let's keep going. How far away from Earth did the Bezos-Branson, uh, rockets go?

    6. NANarrator1:00:13

       Oh, not far. Pfft.

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:14

       The thickness of two dimes above the surface of the Earth. How far away is Mars? It's a mile away.

    8. NANarrator1:00:23

       From here?

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:24

       Yes. From this Earth. It's a mile away.

    10. NANarrator1:00:28

        It's in Central Park.

    11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:28

        The moon, 30 feet away, Mars a mile away. Yeah, it's a trillion dollars to Mars. Yes.

    12. NANarrator1:00:34

        How long?

    13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:35

        Nine months. If, and you have to wait 'til the planets are configured so that when you travel, you arrive where Mars will be when you get there, and that's a minimum energy orbit. If you have filling stations along the way, you can just fill up with fuel and get there as fast as you want, but minimum energy orbit takes about nine months. And then to come back, you have to wait 'til it gets reconfigured again a few years later. So a round trip to Mars is three to five years easily. So-There's not an economic case. Uh, I'm not saying we don't know how to get to Mars. We have a SUV-sized rover there now, all right, discovering potential life from a billion years ago. It's not like we don't know how to get to Mars. This is not a technological statement I'm making. I'm talking about a practical statement. So, no, my read of history tells me no.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:24

        I, I thought you were gonna also add to that, that even if Elon wanted to do it as a vanity project because he makes all this money and manages to use Starlink as a way to fund it, whatever, that the problem is Elon's gonna die. He's gonna die in the, you know, the next couple of decades, which means the vanity element that comes from his childhood situation where he wanted to get out there and explore the stars because he read that book has got 30 years, 40, 50 years left on it.

    15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:48

        Well, that would make him wanna hurry, wouldn't it? (laughs)

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:51

        Yeah.

    17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:52

        Yeah, and plus he said, "I don't wanna die on Earth, I wanna die on Mars."

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:56

        Mm-hmm.

    19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:57

        I'm paraphrasing, but that's the idea. So that's a goal, sure. But don't tell me it's a b- it's, it's a, it's a business case. I can see a tourist case going into orbit and even possibly visiting the moon.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:09

        Mm-hmm.

    21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:02:09

        It's three days there, three days back. That's a week's vacation that, that you would take. And I would save up five years, 10 years of vacation money if that was the amount that it would take to go to the moon in, for one week. That would be a really fun bucket list item for me. (paper rustles)

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:27

        If you're starting a business, that means you're one person doing the workload of probably about 50 people. When I first founded this podcast, I had no idea that I was about to step into 100 different roles that I'd never trained for. Things like researching and production and scheduling and branding, all of it, all at once.

15. 1:02:43 – 1:04:13

    Ads

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:43

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    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:03:33

       Oh, yeah, Just Visiting This Planet. Yeah, I wrote a, a column, a question and an answer column for, like, 10 years, 15 years, where people just asked me questions from the public. And I had a pen name called Merlin. And Merlin was friends with, with Newton and Galileo and Marie Curie and all these people. So if you asked Merlin, "Dear Merlin, I don't quite understand gravity." And Merlin would say, "Oh, Merlin had a conversation with Isaac Newton in his backyard and here's how he answers that."

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:00

       I think in the book you talk about a golf ball-sized black hole would weigh more than Earth and swallow it whole, leaving behind something the size of a lime.

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:04:08

       Yeah. Oh, slightly bigger, right.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:11

       What is... Uh, you've been asked this so many

16. 1:04:13 – 1:07:51

    What Would Happen If the Earth Got Swallowed by a Black Hole?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:13

       times, but I still don't know the answer. What is a black hole and how do we even know if they're real if no one's ever been to one?

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:04:19

       Well, you can know things without visiting them. I mean, that's... The methods and tools and machines of science are remarkable in their ability to learn something without actually having to see it with your eyes or hear it with your ears, or to touch it with your fingers. We have... In fact, science didn't take off until these machines became a fundamental part of how we investigated the world, replacing our five senses.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:47

       Mm-hmm.

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:04:48

       Because there's nothing more feeble in this world than you thinking you understand reality through your five senses. That, that, I don't want to call it feeble, I would call it error-prone. Error-prone. Remember I told you about the escape velocity of Earth?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:02

       Yeah.

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:03

       You remember what I, the value I said it was?

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:06

       Seven miles-

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:06

       Paid attention.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:07

       ... per minute.

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:08

        S- per second.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:09

        Per second. (laughs)

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:09

        That's very fast. Seven miles per... So the adage what goes up must come down?

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:13

        Mm-hmm.

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:15

        That's not true. It's true for almost anything you would experience, but you can s- launch something at seven miles per second, it'll never, ever come back. That's the escape velocity for Earth. Okay. If Earth had more mass and the gravity were stronger-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:32

        Mm-hmm.

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:32

        ... the escape velocity is higher. That would make sense-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:36

        Yeah.

    18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:36

        ... because there's more gravity that you have to escape.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:38

        Mm-hmm.

    20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:40

        Let's keep up that exercise. Cram in more and more mass. Just keep doing that. Escape velocity keeps going up. Eventually, the escape velocity hits the speed of light. At that point, light can't even escape. Light is the fastest thing in the universe. If light can't escape, if you fall in, you don't escape either. There's no better description of a hole than that. And worse yet, it's a hole in any direction you approach it, not just a hole in the street or in the floor. It's a three-dimensional hole. And how do we know it's there? Because it distorts the fabric of space and time around it. We see galaxies behind concentrations of matter, uh, black holes, and the shape of the galaxy is distorted 'cause Einstein tells us, tells us that gravity distorts the fabric of space and time. So that's one way we discover black holes. Another way is most stars in the night sky are binary and multiple star systems. Most of them. You can't see it 'cause you just have human vision. You whip out a telescope, you see, oh my gosh, there are two stars, not just one.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:53

        Mm-hmm.

    22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:06:54

        If there's a pair of stars and one of them becomes a black hole, and this one ages, it expands and some of its material spills onto and orbits around the event horizon of the black hole. This swirling material gets hotter and hotter and hotter-... and it radiates x-rays and ultraviolet. We have x-ray and ultraviolet telescopes that see every one of these in the night sky. They're all black holes.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:23

        And it's created from an explosion?

    24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:07:25

        Uh, there's a, a star that wants to explode but has so much mass the explosion doesn't overcome the gravity-

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:33

        (laughs)

    26. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:07:33

        ... and the star collapses down on itself to make a black hole. That's one way to make a black hole.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:38

        So our sun, when that runs-

    28. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:07:39

        No, it's not gonna become a black hole. It's pretty wimpy in that department. It'll still kill us (laughs) , but for different reasons.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:48

        So the mass of the object is so big that it can't actually explode

17. 1:07:51 – 1:09:06

    Could the Sun Become a Black Hole?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:51

       because the gravitational pull-

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:07:51

       Correct.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:52

       ... inwards is so strong.

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:07:53

       Correct. That's above a certain threshold. Within there, there's the stars that the explosion is greater than what the gravity can contain and it makes a supernova, and those are the stars that spread heavy elements across the galaxy, enabling us to even exist.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:10

       So let me read this again. "A golf s- ball-sized black hole would weigh more than Earth and swallow it whole, leaving behind something the size of a lime."

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:08:18

       Yeah, so when black holes eat, they get bigger. So a lime is bigger than a golf ball, but not by very much. We can calculate what the size is.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:28

       Where would everything go? (laughs)

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:08:30

       It's in there, it's compressed down inside the hole.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:33

       And if I was... and everything near it's gonna get pulled in there as well?

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:08:37

        Uh, if it comes too close, right.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:38

        If it comes too close?

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:08:39

        Yeah. You can stay, you can keep your distance. Black holes are, they're not giant sucking devices. I mean, if you keep your distance you're... If the sun became a black hole right now, we would still orbit it. The gravity we feel at our distance is no different.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:52

        Y- you say that if the sun suddenly shut off, we'd freeze at minus 462 Fahrenheit, which is the background temperature of the universe-

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:00

        Yes.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:01

        ... once the stored energy ran out.

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:02

        Yeah.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:03

        Once the stored energy where ran out?

    18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:05

        Well, in the s- in the... Well,

18. 1:09:06 – 1:10:37

    What Happens If the Sun Freezes?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:06

       so there's the sun's energy-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:08

       Mm-hmm.

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:08

       ... if the sun blotted out, but Earth has energy inside of itself as well. This what gives us volcanoes and continental drift and all the rest of this. So if you don't have a sun, you wanna live near a volcano, (laughs) or something that is a source of energy for you. And then you'll live on Earth until the Earth's energy died out. Ideally by then you just go to another planet. I mean, why not?

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:33

       How long has hus- our sun got left?

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:35

       About another five billion years.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:36

       How would we know?

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:37

       It's a good question. That's a, the product of 20th century modern astrophysics, ev- then it was modern, I think of it as modern, where you say, "What kind of star is this?" You look around the universe for other stars that are just like it, and then you see those stars in their stages of evolution, stars being born, living out their lives, and dying, and the star changes its properties from birth to death, and so you can line up what, where the sun is in that chart and then... Plus, we know how old Earth is, so we directly measure the age of the Earth.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:15

       Mm-hmm.

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:10:15

       And so there's no reason to think that Earth did not form at the same time the sun did.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:23

        Another really, um, fascinating one was, "Every breath you take contains molecules once inhaled by every human in history."

    11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:10:31

        Yep.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:33

        That can't be true.

    13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:10:34

        (laughs) ChatGPT it (laughs)

19. 1:10:37 – 1:15:25

    Every Breath You Take Contains the History of the Universe

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:10:38

       .

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:38

       (laughs)

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:10:38

       No, so here it is. You ready?

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:39

       Yeah.

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:10:42

       There are more molecules of air in a single breath of air than there are breaths of air in Earth's entire atmosphere. So, if you breathe in and then breathe out, there's enough molecules that you breathed out to populate every breath that anyone will ever again take on this Earth. And air mixes rather quickly, okay?

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:16

       Mm-hmm.

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:11:16

       So you... So it has to mix. It's not immediately, give it some time, but you give it some time, there are molecules that went in and out of your lungs that are in China being breathed by people there, uh, when enough time has elapsed. You can calculate that, right? It's years, 10 years, something like that. There's tremendous mixing of air. So, how's that for feeling kinship with others? Same with water. You drink a... water, there are more molecules of water in a glass of water, let's say a mug of water, than there are mugs of water in all the world's oceans. So you drink a mug of water and then it comes out of you in any one of a half dozen different ways, there's enough molecules to scatter into every other mug of water in the world. So someone gets a mug of water, your molecules are gonna be plenty more, plenty of molecules to go.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:11

       So if I do a brig- big inhale, I'm also, I'm inhaling air that contains molecules that all of my living relatives once inhaled?

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:12:20

       Yes. And go further back, Jesus inhaled 'em.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:23

        (inhales)

    11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:12:24

        Mohammed. (exhales)

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:25

        Uh, with every breath?

    13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:12:26

        Yes, every breath. This is the, the, the, the, the oneness of it all. That's why it's a beautiful thing. Astrophysics, I wouldn't live without it. (laughs)

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:38

        Do you think it's... makes us kinder, learning about the universe, or do you think it makes us more nihilistic and narcissistic and s-

    15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:12:44

        No, if you learn about it, as you should, you shouldn't be nihilistic. There's no force of nihilism in the knowledge, wisdom, and insight you get by studying the universe. Uh, you, you will never find marching armies led by astrophysicists to go slaughter one another. We... The cosmic perspective prevents that.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:08

        The cosmic perspective.

    17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:13:10

        Yeah. By the way, if you look at the chapter titles in there, they're each pairs of words that we've all used and, but we've argued over many of them-... over our Thanksgiving dinner. I don't know if there's a version of Thanksgiving in the UK, wh- everyb- it's maybe it's just Christmas, everybody gathers and the crazy uncles and aunts come in and you gotta argue with them about, you know, and you, then you, you're reminded why you only see them once a year (laughs) because ... No, the topics in there, color and race is in there, law and order, body and mind, meatarians and vegetarians, life and death, lot of reflective moments in there. So this book, though it's all these topics that people fight about, its goal is to say, "You think that and you think that, you gotta look at it this way."

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:57

        Mm-hmm.

    19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:13:58

        It's not, o- meet in the middle. No. It's meet on a plane of existence above what you're arguing and you'll look down on what you're arguing and realize how ridiculous it is. That's the goal of that book.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:12

        Chapter 10 in the book, it says, "Human physiology may be overrated."

    21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:14:16

        (laughs)

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:18

        What do you mean by that?

    23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:14:19

        Well, you know, we like to think of ourselves at the top of evolutionary, uh, properties, but it's really y- your mind s- surely, but not much else. You know, we ... it's odd because we always imagine aliens having humanoid bodies.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:41

        Yeah.

    25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:14:41

        And there's no reason for that if they come from another planet. Most life on Earth doesn't have a humanoid body. The banana doesn't have a humanoid body and you have DNA in common with it. You don't have any DNA in common with an alien from another planet, yet it's walking around with a neck, eyes, nose, mouth, head, ears, shoulders, arms, fingers, kneecaps, feet. Really? That, is that, is that your best imagination that you can come up with? Alien from another planet?

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:12

        Is th- is the universe infinite? I've often wondered that. Does it just go on forever or is there a ceiliing-

    27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:17

        We're not given reason to think it doesn't, but our horizon has a edge.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:22

        What we can see?

    29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:23

        Yeah. But there's no

20. 1:15:25 – 1:16:34

    Is the Universe Infinite?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:25

       reason to think ... uh, so you're at, you're a ship at sea?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:28

       Mm-hmm.

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:29

       And you have a horizon. Are you saying, "Well, that's the extent of the ocean"? No. 'Cause if you sail towards the horizon, more horizon shows up and you keep that up until you hit land.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:41

       Mm-hmm.

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:42

       So in the universe we have our horizon and if we went to that horizon, we'd have a whole other horizon beyond that.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:52

       Mm-hmm.

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:52

       If we traveled to that horizon, be a whole other horizon there. The question is how m- how far does that go? We don't know. We have no idea. It's simpler mathematically to think it goes forever. It's curious how there's some equations where infinities work just fine in the equation. Uh, so we don't know. We can talk about to our own horizon. That's it.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:20

       There's so many people saying that they've seen aliens. We had someone on this podcast actually that said they'd seen a- aliens. Not they'd seen aliens, but they had evidence that aliens existed and they worked in the military and said that they'd, uh, you know, some of these spacecraft footage

21. 1:16:34 – 1:19:37

    Do Aliens Exist?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:34

       that you see from the-

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:34

       Did they show you the alien?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:38

       No, but you see the videos of the things bouncing around in the sky.

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:41

       Oh, fuzzy videos.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:42

       Fuzzy videos.

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:43

       So those are UFOs, they're not aliens.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:45

       UFOs, yeah. Use-

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:46

       There's a difference.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:16:46

       Oh, yeah.

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:47

        Many people equate the two, but if you see something in the sky and you don't know what it is, it, it's a UFO and what does the U stand for? Unidentified. Until you can identify it, it's a UFO, and because it does things that you don't understand, you cannot equate that with it being an alien. You just said you don't know what it is. Wow, that's amazing, I don't know what it is, therefore it must be a u- a alien? I- once you just said you don't know what it is, that's the end of the sentence. You can't go on and say, "Therefore it must be" anything. You can be impressed with videos that have no explanation. I don't have a problem with that. But you wanna turn around and say it's aliens, you wanna say it's a government coverup, do you really think the government is that competent? (laughs) Often the same people who say there's a mastermind government cover, they're the same people who complain that the government is a bloated bureaucracy, inefficient bureaucracy that should be replaced by private enterprise. Those are the same people making those same states- sta- statements. So I, I, I love the aliens. I want to meet them too. My, my people, the astrophysics community has been searching for aliens for decades.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:01

        And you've never found evidence of any?

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:18:04

        Not ... uh ... So the community of amateur astronomers in the world, okay, amateur astronomy is, that's a badge of honor 'cause it means you know the night sky and you own a telescope and it's not like amateur neurosurgeon, okay? (laughs) You don't wanna go to an amateur neurosurgeon, but you wanna know the night sky, go to an amateur astronomer. Amateur astronomers know the night sky. They know what the sun, moon, and stars are doing every night. They know, they're very good at climate and weather because that affects whether things are visible. So they know when weather systems come in and go out and what things look like. You would think if aliens were about, up and about, that amateur astronomers would've seen more of them than anyone else, but they've seen less because we know what we're looking at. It's kind of that simple. The moment you know what you're looking at, it's an IFO, isn't it? (laughs)

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:03

        Yeah.

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:19:03

        It's not a UFO. And so, yeah, I, I want to meet the aliens, but you're gonna show me fuzzy video or you're gonna say you have an alien, but it's in a locked box and you're not gonna show it. If you have an alien in a locked box and you're not gonna show it, that's the same thing to a scientist...... as not having an alien at all.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:23

        Could you make the case for why aliens probably do exist and also the case-

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:19:27

        Of course.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:28

        ... for why they probably don't exist?

    18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:19:29

        No. No, they surely exist in this universe. The universe is 14 billion years old and the ingredients

22. 1:19:37 – 1:25:38

    Why Do You Think Aliens Exist?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:19:37

       of life on Earth are the most common ingredients in the universe. And life began on Earth almost as quickly as it possibly could have. When Earth finally cooled down after it being formed, it was about 200 million years, first signs of single-celled life. So even though we can't duplicate that yet, we don't know how, that's a frontier of biology, Earth didn't seem to have problems getting the job done within 200 million years. That's Earth. Now you have exoplanets everywhere across the galaxy to suggest that life on Earth is alone in the universe. You'd have to have some point of philosophy that requires you believe that, because it's not derived from actual, uh, evidence or observations of the universe itself. So, uh, aliens, usually people mean intelligent aliens, but we're happy to find any kind of life at all. Bacterial life, uh, that would be, that would transform biology.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:35

       What about in our galaxy, in the Milky Way galaxy?

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:20:37

       Yeah, the galaxy is the most sensible place to... So we've looking, we've looked for exoplanets. So-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:41

       What's that?

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:20:42

       A planet orbiting another star. 'Cause if you're gonna look for life, you wanna, we presume it's gonna be on a planet. So if this table is the galaxy-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:51

       Mm-hmm.

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:20:51

       ... and the solar system would be about right there, we've searched a circle about this big for exoplanets.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:58

       And what's the solar system versus the galaxy?

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:21:00

       It's just the sun and its planets.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:02

        Oh, okay.

    11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:21:02

        Yeah. Solar system.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:04

        Mm-hmm.

    13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:21:04

        And then that's our solar system there, and we are part of several hundred billion stars in the galaxy.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:11

        Mm-hmm.

    15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:21:13

        And this galaxy is one of perhaps as many as a trillion galaxies in the observable universe. So to say we're alone, that's just, you're being, you're being philosophically irresponsible.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:26

        So this table is the, the, the galaxy?

    17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:21:29

        Yeah. If it were the galaxy-

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:30

        And we've searched a coin?

    19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:21:32

        Coin si- yes, that's a good word to use. A coin-sized volume of this galaxy. We've searched for exoplanets, and by association, life. So folks at the SETI Institute, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, uh, they've come up with an analogy, that there are people who have said, "Well, we haven't found life yet, so maybe there's no life anywhere." And we say, "No, take a cup and scoop it into the ocean." That's like saying, "Hmm, the ocean has no whales in it."

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:04

        (laughs) Is that the equivalent?

    21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:22:06

        Yeah, it's equivalent, in terms of the space of o- of searching, 'cause it's not only in, in physical space, but it's in time. Suppose aliens sent radio signals to us and they arrived 2,000 years ago. Did the Romans have radio telescopes? No. But we would all count them as intelligent, so communication requires intelligence and technology. How long have we had technology to do that? 80 years.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:37

        On the chance of p- probability, do you think there are aliens in the Milky Way galaxy?

    23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:22:40

        Yeah. Oh, sure.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:42

        You think there are?

    25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:22:43

        I don't see why not. There's a calculation you can do, I did it with two colleagues of mine. We have about 100 civilizations in the galaxy alive now. That's not many out of the total number of stars, but again, a civilization e- has to evolve out of whatever it was, and that's a tiny little slice of time relative to how long the planet has been there.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:05

        100 different c- living-

    27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:23:07

        Yeah, civilizations. Yeah.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:08

        I pause on the word living because living can mean many things.

    29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:23:11

        Well, I mean, Mars might have had life, but it would be dead today on the surface, so we're looking for living civilizations.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:20

        And does that excite you?
23. 1:25:38 – 1:28:22

    The Physics Error in *The Matrix*

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:25:38

       without it, they don't have a movie, so you gotta give it to ... I give ... write 'em a hall pass, which I feel that I have the power to do. (laughs)

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:46

       What was the error? Everyone's gonna be wondering what the error was in The Matrix.

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:25:49

       Oh, it's not an error. It's just they got the ... It's bad physics in it. Okay. So, if you m- if you remember, the AI computer that's running everything needs an energy source.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:04

       Mm-hmm.

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:26:05

       And so they're growing humans in these pods knowing that each human radiates at about 80 watts. They didn't give that number, but it- it's a true fact. Uh, 80 watts, like an 80-watt bulb, that's how much energy you are consuming and using. It's a energy rate, okay? So, they ... And s- th- s- ... One of the writers must have known that and said, "That's kind of cool. Let's use humans as a energy source for the machines." All right, so there are these pods of humans, and they grow the humans from childhood to adulthood, and they put in their head a world that they're living in which is just in their head, and they think it's real, but it's not. That's The Matrix, okay? But wait a minute, how do the humans get their energy? They feed the humans food. Well, why are you feeding food to humans and then using the energy from the humans for the machine? Bypass the middleman and just feed the machine. Something called the second law of thermody- ... for- first or second law of thermodynamics, any time energy changes from one form to another, it's not 100% efficient. You drive a car ... If you drive a combustion engine car, you drive it 50 miles, get out, the engine's hot. Where'd the heat come from? That's wasted energy converting chemical energy of the gasoline to kinetic energy of your car. It is never 100% perfect. So, they are losing energy in ... with this middleman, and they should just feed themselves whatever the food they're feeding the humans. And if they're smart, they wouldn't not have humans at all, but then there's no movie. (laughs) So that's my point. Wrote 'em a hall pass. You're okay with that.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:55

       Are you an easy person to watch movies like this with? (laughs)

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:27:57

       Yeah, I'm not. I'm not the, I'm not the guy you think I am. I will watch it and silently, yes, I'll, I'll gather a list of-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:04

       (laughs)

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:28:04

       But I'm silent about it, and if you're interested, I will tell you later. (page turns)

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:09

        Have you ever heard about this before, this thing I'm holding in my hands now? This is called Ketone IQ. Their website is ketone.com. You've heard me on this podcast talking about the fact that I stay much of the year in a ketogenic state, which is a highly restricted

24. 1:28:22 – 1:30:26

    Ads

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:22

       diet. And the reason I do that is plentyfold. One of them is I spend hours and hours talking to people for a living, so I wanna make sure my brain is firing in an optimal way. And the other reason that I do the ketogenic diet is because I just feel better. So when I discovered this, which is what they call an exogenous ketone product, where you can drink it and it increases your blood's ketone levels, I was blown away. I contacted them. I met them. I invested extremely heavily into their company, and I've become a co-owner of the company accordingly, and they sponsor this show now. So if you want to try this out for yourself, I recommend you try it. Just visit ketone.com/stephen, and you'll get 30% off your first subscription order. You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment. That's ketone.com/stephen. (page turns) I did something at 24 years old that has had a profound impact on my life. I set myself the challenge of posting every single day on my social media channels, and at the time, I was doing it to grow my following. But it had this profound impact on my life, and two remarkable things happened when I did that. I managed to learn faster because every single day I'm capturing what is happening to me and trying to distill it down into something that I can share with the world. But more remarkably, it led me to building a following of many millions of people, and that's the basis that I used to launch The Diary of a CEO. And that's why I want to tell you about our sponsor today, Adobe Express. They are the platform that I use to make all the posts across my LinkedIn and across my Instagram. It's a couple of clicks, and you don't need to be an expert, and that is why I love using it because I'm not an expert in graphic design. It's accessible to use for all of us even if we don't have the technical prowess to design great things. So if you want to start compounding both your reach and your knowledge like I did at 24 years old, then head to adobe.ly/stephen and get started with Adobe Express. That's adobe.ly/stephen. (page turns) What's the one outstanding question, if there is one, that you're desperate to know the answer to?

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:30:17

       That I don't live life that way.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:30:20

       Really?

Episode duration: 2:05:55