Joe Rogan Experience #1159 - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Joe Rogan 0:07 So, why aren't there flying cars?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:10 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:10 You're just jumping right in. You don't say hi. You don't say-

Joe Rogan 0:13 I said hi already.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:15 ... how's the wife and k- how's the wife and kids? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:16 How is everybody, man? How's life? How's your book? It's been on the Times bestseller list for how many weeks?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:22 Oh, the, the Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. That's been on the, on the New York Times bestseller list for 67 weeks.

Joe Rogan 0:29 That's pretty intense.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:30 It's cra- that's, that's a lot for any book, much less for a science book. And so, that tells me, while all these Trump books are wafting in and out, this is bobbing like a cork, like a cork on the ocean waves as the book of the moment th- that either praises Trump or criticizes, or criticizes him come in and off of that list.

Joe Rogan 0:49 Mm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 0:49 So this tells me that there is this unserved hunger that people have. There's a curiosity that this is serving. And it's (laughs) to, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, that's kind of a, that's very purposefully juxtaposed. It's like, Neurosurgery in Four Easy Steps. You know, if you saw a book with that title, you'd have to pick it up.

Joe Rogan 1:11 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11 (laughs) 'Cause you'd wonder what's going on.

Joe Rogan 1:14 Well, not to kiss your ass again, but I always say this about you and I think it's important. You make learning stuff about astrophysics fun. And that's what's missing, you know. It's not that people don't like to be educated, that they don't like to learn. They just don't wanna be bored.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:30 That's a perceptive point because, you know, think of the image we have of, let's say you're in a school where most people don't go to college, uh, you're in high school. And then last day of school comes. What do people do? They toss their papers in the air as they run down the steps, "School's out. No." What, what's the Rock song?

Joe Rogan 1:48 (sings) School's out for summer.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:52 (sings) School's out for...

Joe Rogan 1:52 Summer.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:52 ... at summer. Was it forever?

Joe Rogan 1:53 And then ever. Ever, yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:54 Then forever.

Joe Rogan 1:54 Ever, yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:55 Right? So that attitude must mean the school didn't train you to embrace curiosity.

Joe Rogan 2:02 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 2:03 That learning was a chore, and now the chores are over.

Joe Rogan 2:07 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 2:07 So I think the educational system needs an adjustment. Forget whether or not you go to college, 'cause you're gonna spend more years not in school than in school even if you do go to college. What you want, I think, are lifelong learners, lifelong curiosity.

Joe Rogan 2:21 Yes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 2:21 Where once you are trained and, and, and, and, and your curiosity is stimulated, the curiosity we all had as children. You're ... Children don't need to be taught to be curious. They are curious to the point of destruction of whatever it is they touch. "Oh, what is this egg on the counter? What is this glass? What is this plate? What's under a rock? What happens if I pull a leg off a daddy longleg?" You know, they are-

Joe Rogan 2:44 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 2:44 ... experimenting with the world. We don't think of it that way, but that's what it is. They're all born scientists. And I say this often. You spend the first years of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk, then you spend the rest of its life telling it to shut up and sit down. (laughs) You know. It's this, this is the wrong combination. So speaking as an educator, I think a missing component of school is, uh, is it the teachers? Is it the curriculum? I don't know. But when you get outta school, you should say to yourself, "Damn, I wanna learn more."

Joe Rogan 3:14 It's almost universally accepted too that that's when your learning ends, when you get outta college, it's over. You're not gonna-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 3:19 Yeah, you say you're done.

Joe Rogan 3:20 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 3:20 And if it does, then you're ossified in life.

Joe Rogan 3:21 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 3:22 And that's how when the job market shifts, you're not ready for it, 'cause you don't know how to think. You don't know how to learn.

Joe Rogan 3:28 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 3:28 You don't ... And it's the difference in the j- in the workplace between the person who gets an assignment and say, "I, I, I, I ... Joey, Janet, I need you to do this." "That's not in my job description."

Joe Rogan 3:39 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 3:39 "I'm not trained for this." That's one k- kind of person in a workplace. Another kind of person is, uh, "Here's a new task I need you to do." "Wow, I've never seen that before. Great, let me figure it out."

Joe Rogan 3:50 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 3:50 These are two completely different species of human being. And what the world needs more of is like the, the second case where you take a new task and you say, "Wow, I get to learn. I'm gonna learn on my own. I'll ask people who know more." You just, you just embrace the act of learning to satisfy your curiosity. And I think this book is capturing that in the public.

Joe Rogan 4:12 Well, it must be doing something.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:14 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:14 60 How many weeks?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:16 67 weeks.

Joe Rogan 4:16 God dang.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:18 That's a lot of weeks.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:19 Yeah. Every morning I wake up, I'm, I'm calm, but I'm really not calm. I'm saying, "Holy shit." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:25 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:25 (laughs) Sorry, you're live? I can't... Can I say that? Oh.

Joe Rogan 4:27 Yeah, you can say holy shit.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:28 I can say it? Okay.

Joe Rogan 4:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson swears, ladies and gentlemen.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:30 He's human. People think you're a robot. Now they know.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:34 Th- th- this is ... It's a great sign, I think, and I think your podcast is a great sign as well. The success of your podcast and the success of a, a lot of science podcasts, uh, uh, I love-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:43 That's an excellent n-

Joe Rogan 4:44 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:44 ... that you notice that. There's a rise of science curious podcasts out there.

Joe Rogan 4:49 Mm-hmm. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is one that I really enjoy.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:52 Um, I really love Radiolab. They've always got like-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:54 Radiolab is the-

Joe Rogan 4:54 ... really interesting science.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:55 ... the annual ... perennial favorite-

Joe Rogan 4:56 Fantastic.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:57 ... to so many people.

Joe Rogan 4:57 Probably the best.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 4:58 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 4:58 Yeah. And, and yours as well. And I love Chuck Nice. Shout out to Chuck Nice.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:02 Oh, Chuck. We l-

Joe Rogan 5:03 He's, um...

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:03 We all love Chuck.

Joe Rogan 5:03 He's great.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:04 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 5:04 But what you're doing is you're making learning interesting and that's why it's so fun. It's, it's, it's, it's ... There's excitement to it. Y- you bring a comedian like Chuck on with you, things get silly, but they're also curious and you're getting these experts and everyone's talking about these various subjects and-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:22 And as you know, not only yourself as an exemplar of this, uh, standup comedians are some of the smartest people in the world. They have a, they have, they have an awareness-

Joe Rogan 5:31 I don't wanna go that far.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:32 Oh. (laughs) Okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:33 Listen, come to The Comedy Store with me today. I'll change your mind. (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:37 (laughs) All right, let me buffer that a little. Uh, uh, uh, okay.

Joe Rogan 5:40 They're curious.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:41 Okay. No. So, so standup comedians are perceptive people.

Joe Rogan 5:44 Yes, for sure.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:45 And he- and they're aware and they notice things that you don't notice. They see the same things you do and get to shape it in a way you never thought possible and then you end up laughing at other things, at yourself.

Joe Rogan 5:57 Was it your idea to do your show with standups?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 5:59 So, so what we have, there, there, there are several of us who-

Joe Rogan 6:02 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 6:02 ... created this concept and we, um, there's, uh, Helen Matsos is one of the partners and there's w- uh, another one who's now left but, um-... uh, what's his na- ... uh, I'll get his name in a minute. But there were three of us who, um ... Oh, David Gamble was his name. The three of us got together and applied for a National Science Foundation grant. What we said was, there are programs out there that serve people who already know they like science, but who serves the people who don't know they like science? Or better yet, the people who know they don't like science? There's nothing for them because they've already rejected it. They're not gonna tune in to Science Friday 'cause they don't like science-

Joe Rogan 6:42 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 6:42 ... on NPR, right? So what we thought was, "Suppose we bring in a celebrity." We've all ... That's the pop culture draw. This is the pop culture scaffold. We bring in this scaffold and clad the scaffold with science, because whatever the celebrity does, it doesn't matter, there's gonna be science in that person's life.

Joe Rogan 7:02 Mm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 7:02 We had the guy who portrayed Gollum in, uh, Lord of the Rings.

Joe Rogan 7:06 A lot of science in that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 7:07 Okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:09 But there is. Like the chara-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 7:09 Well, no. There's a d-

Joe Rogan 7:10 Like that suit that he had to wear and all that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 7:12 Exactly. So what we did was we, um, uh ... So w- we interview him and we, we talked about the technology necessary to portray Gollum, as a li- ... He portrayed that live. That was not some la- later animation. He is live and he's got his whole body wired up for this, and he is that voice and he is portraying it. So, so whatever it is that you have done, that you do, there is sci- ... 'Cause it's evidence that science is everywhere. You're not gonna ... You can't say, "I'm done with science. Let me sell my textbook and move on to other things." 'Cause practically anything else you do has been touched by science.

Joe Rogan 7:48 Mm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 7:48 And so StarTalk is a celebration of that. And then it jumps species, and so now we're on TV now, all right? It's, it's a TV show on National Geographic Channel, StarTalk. And i- since you, you started this by the way. I d- I didn't come here to talk about ... You, you started this. Um, we're, we're ... It's our fourth year in a row where we're nominated for an Emmy for outstanding informational programming.

Joe Rogan 8:09 Are you gonna keep doing Cosmos too, though?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:11 Oh, Cosmos. So, so, so I have one week remaining out of like 70 shoot days to finish shooting Cosmos: Possible Worlds, premiering spring 2019.

Joe Rogan 8:26 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:26 That's the third installment of Cosmos if you trace the first one to Carl Sagan back in 1980.

Joe Rogan 8:31 'Cause your ... I used your segment on wolves, on how wolves became dogs.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:36 Oh.

Joe Rogan 8:36 To show it to my kids.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:38 A- a- and this-

Joe Rogan 8:39 And you can see the little wheels spinning like, "Whoa."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:41 Yeah. Yeah. Those-

Joe Rogan 8:42 Like, "That's how a dog became a dog?"

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:44 But what you didn't see is I'm sitting at the f- at the campfire in this, in this snowy environment and they got wolves walking around me. They're on these fishing wires (laughs) 'cause they, they are not dogs.

Joe Rogan 8:56 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:56 Okay?

Joe Rogan 8:57 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:57 They, they-

Joe Rogan 8:58 Do whatever the fuck they want.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 8:59 Th- wo- correct.

Joe Rogan 9:00 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 9:00 And when they're looking at you it's, it's like, "Should I rip his neck out now or later-"

Joe Rogan 9:04 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 9:05 "... when I'm more hungry?"

Joe Rogan 9:06 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 9:06 They're not ... Y- y- there's no eye contact with them because they ... You don't ... Th- They don't see you as anything other than something they could possibly eat and so y- you can't interact with them the way you would with ordinary dogs.

Joe Rogan 9:18 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 9:19 So they're on these fishing, you know, high-tension fishing wire that you can't see against the snow and they're like hooting and hollering around me as I describe. And the name of that show is, And The Wolf Shall Become The Shepherd.

Joe Rogan 9:29 Mm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 9:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:30 My friend did a commercial with a wolf and, uh, i- there's this commercial where he's running up this mountain and the wolf is there. And at the end of the commercial they had to get the wolf to snarl, so what the trainer does is he shows the wolf some meat and then he pulls the meat away from the wolf. And the wolf snarls and they're like ... And then the commercial's over.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 9:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 9:51 He's like, "No. No. There's no working after that."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 9:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:54 Like th- there's no ... You're not gonna be near the wolf.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 9:56 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 9:57 Like that switch is turned on.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 9:59 You're done.

Joe Rogan 9:59 Yeah. And it's, it's cra- He's like, "Once that thing snarled, everybody just backed off." And the trainer let everybody know like, "Once I get to this point, we're done." Like, "There's-"

Neil deGrasse Tyson 10:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:08 "... there's no more."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 10:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:09 And that thing's like ... (growls)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 10:11 Right, right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:11 You're like, "Okay."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 10:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:13 "Everybody, we're done."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 10:15 It's good.

Joe Rogan 10:15 "Get the fuck out of here."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 10:16 Uh, all three of these Cosmoses, uh, the original one with Carl Sagan, the one that ... The privilege of hosting in 2014 and 2019, are co-written by Ann Druyan. And she's the, the widow of Carl Sagan.

Joe Rogan 10:29 Oh, wow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 10:30 And ... But she ... Kinda in his shadow back then, but she's hugely creative and highly enlightened. And so most of the, sort of the, the, the, the soul energy, if you will, the, the ... What makes Cosmos distinct from other, from other documentaries where you're sort of sitting there learning, you put your thinking cap on, your learning cap on, in Cosmos it's your feeling cap. You're not only learning, you're also feeling the science and its relationship to you, to civilization, to the world, to the universe. And her infusion of this, uh, she's a highly scientifically literate writer, producer, and so I just give a shout-out to her 'cause working with her has been a delight.

Joe Rogan 11:15 Is Cosmos on Apple TV or, uh-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:17 So Cosmos was-

Joe Rogan 11:18 ... Amazon or anything?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:18 S- so Cosmos was, uh, after it first, uh, after it premiered on Fox and then went internationally on NatGeo, uh, it then went to Netflix. So, uh, but I think this n- run of Netflix is gonna drop until the next one comes in.

Joe Rogan 11:32 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:32 I think they want to clear the, clear the landing zone for the next Cosmos. But it went to Netflix.

Joe Rogan 11:38 But is it available for anyone to get right now?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:40 Oh, right now? Uh, uh, it should be. I haven't checked, but that's a great question.

Joe Rogan 11:44 'Cause I have it all on my DVR and I'm scared to delete it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:46 Oh. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:47 I only have like s- 6%-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:48 (laughs) Left s-

Joe Rogan 11:49 ... hard drive space left.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:50 Yeah, we all ... That's what everyone's DVR looks like. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:52 I got all your Cosmoses in there.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 11:54 (laughs) Yeah. So thanks. Thanks for having, having them all in there.

Joe Rogan 11:58 Who's that Morgan Freeman show b- uh, The Through The, Through The Wormhole?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:01 Through The Wormhole. Yeah. We got that-

Joe Rogan 12:01 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:02 ... on there too.

Joe Rogan 12:02 That was a great show too.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:02 Well, th- that's, that's, that's a Joe Rogan thing.

Joe Rogan 12:05 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:05 If you didn't have that I'd be disappointed in it.

Joe Rogan 12:07 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:08 I'd say, "You're an imposter."

Joe Rogan 12:09 Well-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:09 "You're a fake."

Joe Rogan 12:10 It's, it's an opportunity to be entertained and learn-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:13 ... which I think is what everybody misses.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 12:15 And I think it ... That's, that's what's missing in most public education.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:20 It's people are bored.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:22 And you take these kids with so much energy and then you make them sit still and watch something that's not even remotely stimulating by a person who doesn't really care to be there.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:29 Right, right. And they know, they know this, i- in- ... They know this intuitively if not explicitly.

Joe Rogan 12:35 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:35 That the enthusiasm is absent.

Joe Rogan 12:37 Yeah. They could feel it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:39 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:39 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:39 And just-... it's the worst way to learn. It's the, the worst way, and it's so hard to escape. Once you get out of that system, it takes forever for a lot of these people to just get their, uh, e- excitement about education back.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 12:52 You know what I say when I address teachers? We all ... By the way, I'll do this right now in this room. That we have, there's only three of us, but let's, let's take a show of hands. In your life, with all the teachers you've ever had in every class you've ever taken, how many had like a singular influence on who and what you became?

Joe Rogan 13:11 I can't-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:11 Give, give me a number. Uh, it's gonna be, I'm betting it's five or fewer, probably more like three.

Joe Rogan 13:18 Yeah. For teachers? Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:19 What's your number?

Joe Rogan 13:22 (exhales) Well, there's the one that I talked about on your show the last time I saw you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:25 Thanks for coming on to Start Talking. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:27 My, my pleasure. Um, who was a science teacher that I had when-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 13:30 ... I believe I was in seventh grade.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:32 Right.

Joe Rogan 13:32 Who told me that if you really want to hurt your brain, look up and recognize the fact that that goes on forever, that this is infinite.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:40 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 13:40 And then just think about what that means, infinite, that there really is no end to it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:46 So, but how many teachers such as that were so influential on you?

Joe Rogan 13:49 Th- that one guy saying that one thing-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:51 So for you, it's one.

Joe Rogan 13:51 ... in that one class.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:52 It's one.

Joe Rogan 13:52 He might be the one.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:53 And ... What do you got?

Joe Rogan 13:55 Maybe like, uh, two at most.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:57 Two.

Joe Rogan 13:57 Maybe, yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 13:57 For me, it's like two and a half. And I've had scores of teachers.

Joe Rogan 14:01 (laughs) Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 14:02 Okay. 100 teachers at least. So what I tell teachers is, "Be that teacher-"

Joe Rogan 14:07 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 14:08 ... "to your students." We've all had those teachers, be that teacher. And in every case, it wasn't because the topic was something you knew in advance you would like. It's because their energy for sharing their passion and love for the subject was palpable.

Joe Rogan 14:21 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 14:22 And it just spilled out of them and went into course through your veins and your arteries, and you walk out of there thinking, "Wow, that was the most interesting thing I've ever done in my life." You don't even care what you get on a test after that, because you got touched and you became an enlightened participant in that exercise, in that exploration.

Joe Rogan 14:41 Yeah, it's just so hard for them to even get kids' attentions though.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 14:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:45 I mean, it's just-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 14:46 U- unfortunately-

Joe Rogan 14:46 ... so many wrestling matches going on.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 14:47 Unfortunately that could be, in some places, half the energy of the teacher is, is maintaining order.

Joe Rogan 14:53 I think the success of your book, the success of your show, your podcast, and many of these other really intelligent podcasts are showing though there's an appetite for this stuff out there.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 15:01 Yeah. And I'm delighted to be a servant of that curiosity. And, um, uh, this, I, I brought this just 'cause ... It's not even out yet. This ... You're airing like now live? This is it? You're live?

Joe Rogan 15:16 We're live.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 15:17 You are live. Okay, so this-

Joe Rogan 15:18 There's like a five-second delay or something.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 15:20 (laughs) Five second ... Is that to bleep all my expletives? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:23 'Cause the ... Just internet ... No, no, no, no, no, no. What is this Accessory to War?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 15:27 Oh, this, this is like another book. I just... This is coming out in three weeks.

Joe Rogan 15:31 Is this about space war?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 15:32 Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military.

Joe Rogan 15:39 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 15:40 Yeah, so, so this other book was Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. If you're in a hurry, do not buy this book. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:48 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 15:48 This is not for people in a hurry. This is not, this is not what... This is not an impulse item at the checkout line. This is y- you got ... This is, this is all about ... By the way, we know what role the physicist plays in war. The physicist makes the bomb.

Joe Rogan 16:04 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 16:04 Invents the bomb. The chemist perfects napalm. The biologist weaponizes anthrax. And the astrophysicist, well, we sit at the end of a telescope and wait for photons to cross the universe and enter our detector, and we go into conferences and argue about them. So there is no obvious connection between what we do and military strength, hegemony, uh, dominance, empire building. It's just not obvious. That's why the subtitle, The Unspoken Alliance. It's not a secret, it's just, it's not there. It's there, but it's not ... Nobody's talking about it. Do you realize ... I- I'll just give an example, okay? If you needed more reasons to think that Columbus was a dick (laughs) , okay?

Joe Rogan 16:57 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 16:57 Let me add one to it, okay?

Joe Rogan 16:59 There's a difference between when we were kids and today.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 17:01 (laughs) Yeah, I know, I know, but actually I- I do have something s- mildly redeeming to offer about Columbus if you have the time.

Joe Rogan 17:09 Oh, yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 17:09 I just wanna ...

Joe Rogan 17:10 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 17:10 Okay.

Joe Rogan 17:11 We'll start off with that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 17:12 You want me to start off with that?

Joe Rogan 17:13 What do ... How do you want to do it? You want to go-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 17:14 No, no, I'll do the dick part and then-

Joe Rogan 17:15 Do, let's do a dick part first.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 17:16 Okay. So on his third voyage, he's in... B- by the time of his third voyage, he had already planted enough Spanish flags that Spain had already begun to set up governments and infrastructures in these places that he had d- uh, um ...

Joe Rogan 17:31 Found.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 17:32 Yeah, basically conquered. And so, so ... (laughs) In one of the places, I- it was, it's in the book accurately, but I think it's Hispanola, one of the... The island today. He has to get back ... This is his third voyage, 1503 or 1504. He's got to get back to Spain. He doesn't have enough resources, not enough food for his crew. So he asks the natives, "Would you please give us some of your stock that you have collected from your farming?" Now, this particular group of natives only makes exactly the amount of food they need to tie to the next crop. They don't have surplus. So they said, "No, we don't have surplus. Sorry." Columbus knew that one week hence, coincidentally, there was gonna be a total lunar eclipse, where the moon in its orbit around Earth enters Earth's shadow, the full moon enters Earth's shadow and disappears. And that ... The geometry of that event, it's just a simple lunar eclipse, but the geometry is such that sunlight passes around Earth through Earth's atmosphere and takes on sunset colors that leach into Earth's shadow, giving the moon, if you can see it at all, a deep red amber hue.... almost the color of blood. Columbus said, and he knew about this 'cause he had read the tables, the eclipse tables, all right? We- we'd known enough about the solar system at the time to w- we- we got that, okay? Actually, back then it was just the known world with Earth in the middle of the known universe. But that didn't matter. The rhythms of the universe were known. He says to the natives, "If you do not give us food, my God, which is more powerful than your God, will make the moon disappear, and it will turn blood red. That will happen in one week. You have one week to comply." Some of them were skeptical. "What? Y- you can't... What?" Others said, "Shit, (laughs) we gotta do what this guy says."

Joe Rogan 19:31 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 19:31 Look at the ships they came in, their guns, their power, their- their culture. Look what they've got. Sure enough, right on cue, the moon begins to disappear. According to... That- that is a famous woodcut. Um, that... Oh, you got this? Oh, t- those viewing the video of this-

Joe Rogan 19:50 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 19:51 ... um, that is a famous woodcut, and notice the natives bowing to him, and he stands proudly 'cause he knows the science. He knows the astronomy. He knew this.

Joe Rogan 20:00 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 20:00 And so he invokes this to dominate people who are not yet scientifically literate. And within seconds of this beginning, they bring him all the resources he wants and he gets... And I don't, we don't know what happened, you know, back at the island, whether the people survived the winter, but he got back to the island.

Joe Rogan 20:19 Well, yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 20:19 That- that is one microcosm-

Joe Rogan 20:21 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 20:21 ... of s- of ways that the universe has been invoked in this. I'll give you another example, Los Alamos, one of the national labs. They, today, as... basically since their inception, are charged with tracking the nuclear arsenal of the United States, our nuclear power, n- the- the- the nukes that would go into nuclear weapons, they think about this. Do you realize they hire astrophysicists? I had colleagues working there. You know why? Because there's a room, there are two rooms. I mean, I'm- I'm- I'm simplifying this, but basically there are two rooms adjacent to one another and a computer between the two of them. The most powerful computers in the world. And there is code running on those computers that calculates the energy yields of hydrogen fusion. That's exactly what an astrophysicist cares about when stars blow up, okay? The sun is undergoing nuclear fusion right now, and that's how it's making energy. And when the, when high mass stars dies, they explode as supernova. This is a natural thing going on in the univ- in the universe. On the other side, that's a classified room, they're calculating yields of hydrogen bombs. And they have lunch together, they compare notes. The government doesn't always have the best people, but if you hire some of the best people to do whatever it is they want, and their calculations happen to relate to a military project, there you have a two-way street in progress. Why do you think the Hubble Telescope, the- the b- the- the mirror issues notwithstanding, which were ultimately fixed when it was first launched, why was that so successful? There were versions of the Hubble Telescope previously launched by the military looking down. That- that... The model for that telescope had already been conceived and built, and was operating. Then we say, "Oh, we want one of those," okay? But we don't... that's not public that this is going on. We design... The telescope gets designed, has the benefit of previous versions of it having been used successfully, but looking down, and we look up. This is the perennial two-way street of astronomy in the old days, and in modern times, astrophysics. And the invention of the telescope... You haven't said anything yet. Oh, you just... You're a good listener. I'll... Should I keep, just keep talking?

Joe Rogan 22:43 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 22:44 Or- or am I preventing you from interrupting?

Joe Rogan 22:46 Don't worry about it. Keep going.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 22:46 Okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:47 Don't worry about me.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 22:48 Okay, fine. Galileo perfects the telescope. He learned that it had just been invented in the Netherlands. The- the Dutch were- were op- opticians, all right? So they invented the telescope and the microscope within a couple of years of one another. This transformed science.

Joe Rogan 23:04 When did they invent the eyeglass, the reading glass?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 23:07 The reading gl- I... S- earlier than that, but I don't, I don't know when. The- the real advance was putting two lenses in line with one another. Sounds trivial in modern times, but that was a huge leap, conceptual leap, in what you would accomplish. And in so doing, depending on how you curve them and how you grind them, grind the- the shape of those lenses, you would get a microscope or a telescope. And- and we're off to the races. That's basically the birth of modern science as we now think of it, and- and- and- and conduct it. Because you say to yourself, "My sense is I don't trust them to be the full record of what's going on in front of me." You pull out a microscope, oh my gosh, Leeuwenhoek, he got a- a... The microscope guy, he found... He got a- a drop of pond water, puts it under his microscope. Just to think, to do this, it's just water. Why do you think that's something interesting to do? He said, "I wonder." He was curious. He puts it under and sees little, what he described as animalcules, happily a-swimming.

Joe Rogan 24:07 Animalcules?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 24:08 Animalcules. These are like the m- amoebas and paramecia.

Joe Rogan 24:12 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 24:12 And, oh, oh, it is... And so he writes, he reports on this to- to the, you know, to scientific authorities, and they don't believe him. They say (laughs) , uh, uh, you know, "Van Leeuwenhoek, uh, we think you might have had too much gin before you wrote this letter." (laughs) Why would anyone believe this, that there's entire creatures, an entire universe of creatures thriving in a drop of pond water? And so the way science works is one report does not make it true, you need verification. They sent people to the Netherlands to verify his results, and there it was, the birth of microscopy.And then they looked at everything, cells, you know, the, the, you need vocabulary to describe what you're now seeing. Well, that was the, the, the journey down small, then the journey went up big. And Galileo perfects the telescope. He looks up, he says, "Whoa, I see craters, mountains, valleys on the moon. The sun has spots. Venus goes through phases." This became the corpus of evidence for earth going around the sun in support of Copernicus's idea that earth went around the sun. My point is, what was the second thing he did with his telescope? He telephoned, no, (laughs) he didn't telephone. He contacted the Doge of Venice, invited him to the clock tower, and said, "Look at what this instrument can do for you as we look out into the lagoon. You can identify a ship's intentions, friend or foe, by its flag, ten times farther away than you can with the unaided eye." Venice bought a boatload of these telescopes in the service of their military defense.

Joe Rogan 25:57 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 25:58 And this was a source of money to Galileo, and now he could go look at the universe. This has been a two-way street ever since people have looked up.

Joe Rogan 26:07 The-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 26:07 So, so this is, this is a, an accounting of that. This is, it's, and, and it, it, it goes on and on. The first X-ray machines for airports. You're old enough to remember. W- why were they put in? Because of hijackings to Cuba, basically. The, they were armed hijackings of airplanes, of American carriers to Cuba. And Congress said, "We gotta do something about that." Oh, by the way, there's a company in Boston called American Science and Engineering that was building an X-ray detector small enough to put on a satellite to observe the universe in X-rays. And because no one had observed, we've used visible light, but not X-ray, that's a branch of the electromagnetic spectrum. We think if there are black holes out there, their region surrounding them will give us X-rays. It's a new window on the universe. And then they said, "Oh, my gosh, there's a call for X-ray machines at airports. We've got the technology that we've perfected to put in a fricking satellite."

Joe Rogan 27:04 So the technology for those ones you walk through at the airport initially came out-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 27:07 Initially, yes.

Joe Rogan 27:09 Wow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 27:09 Yes, yes. There was a two-way street. There was, "Oh my gosh, we need this for security. Oh my God, we would, we, we're using ... Let's, let's, let's apply that technology to these detectors."

Joe Rogan 27:18 Well, that's been a lot of the stuff with the space program, right? A lot of the stuff that they devised for use on the Space Station and some, many other technologies have trickled their way down into regular society.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 27:27 Well, that, that always happens, and even some simple things, 'cause people say, "Why spend money up there and we should be spending it down here?" But there's interesting fact here that is almost never discussed. The people who st- who think about the universe and study the universe are hugely creative. And their creative energies cannot be pre-prescribed. You can't go to a create... Uh, you might, but I don't know that you'll get their maximum creativity. Say, "I need you to invent a cure for cancer right now. Use that brilliance." "I'll try." But the greatest discoveries, the greatest cures, the greatest of these comes from a cross-pollination of interest that people have that, where they were engaged because they were interest, interested just for the sake of being interested. So watch what ha- here's an example. The space shuttle, it, it's, it's a glider when it lands, okay? It's got no engines. It's got flaps. There's a little bit of brakes in the tires. But that's about it. When it comes in, okay, how do you make sure the thing d- stays on track? Because they kept drifting in crosswinds and this sort of thing, and so they said, "Why don't we groove the road so that the rubber on the road, the, the, the runway, so that the rubber can align with the grooves and stay in a straight line?" 'Cause rubber doesn't slide well when you have g- doesn't slide sideways very easily on grooves. When they realized how effective that was, it's now put on off-ramps to freeways. If there's a freeway off-ramp that's a little tight, not quite banked well enough, it's gonna be grooved. Check it out next time. And you could say, "Well, okay, that's pretty simple, low-tech solution. Why didn't, why, why couldn't we just discover that on our own without the $20 billion a year space agency called NASA?" But you didn't.

Joe Rogan 29:16 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 29:17 You didn't. Power tools, cordless, high-torque power tools were invented to service satellites in orbit by NASA, because you can't just plug it into a 120-volt socket when you're floating in space. So the engineers said, "How are we gonna solve this problem? Let's make a high-torque power tool." So now, NASA invents the high-t- Now, that is the only way you're buying a power tool today, is the, is the cordless variety. All construction sites, they're not looking for a power outlet for these things. So why didn't we invent this without the $20 billion space program? You didn't. You weren't, you didn't think about it. You said, "Oh, I can plug it in. This is great." You're not even thinking what you need. So yes, there are all of these applications, but, but I don't th- That's a good reason to do it, but I don't think it's the best re- The best reasons are, my gosh, don't you wanna keep dreaming? Don't you wanna keep looking into the future?

Joe Rogan 30:17 That would be ideal, but that's not attractive to people that are spending tax dollars. When it comes to tax dollars, people get super pragmatic and they go, "Why do we need to go to Mars? No, what we need to do is take care of this and pay for that, and w- with the deficit and the budget, and..."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 30:33 You know, so, you know, NASA's budget today is 4/10 of 1% of the federal budget. So if you take a dollar-

Joe Rogan 30:43 4/10 of 1%?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 30:44 I, I, I will quantify it for you. Take, take a, a, a dollar bill and imagine that's your tax dollar, and you can like cut it to whatever percent you want. So let's cut 4/10 of 1% off of the edge.That doesn't get you into the ink. You're still in the-

Joe Rogan 31:00 The white area.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 31:00 ... the white border around it.

Joe Rogan 31:02 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 31:02 Right?

Joe Rogan 31:02 No one would even notice-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 31:03 You wouldn't e-

Joe Rogan 31:03 ... they took that dollar.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 31:03 (laughs) You wouldn't, you could trim that off the dollar-

Joe Rogan 31:06 And pay for anything.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 31:06 ... and pay for... So my point is, most of the people who say, "Don't spend it here, spend it there," they think NASA has more budget than it actually does.

Joe Rogan 31:17 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 31:18 They just, they, they're... If you ask them, "How much do you think you're getting?" "Oh, 10%, 5%." You know, "Several percent." No, it's one half of 1%. So if you're gonna tell me that if you can take that four tenths of 1% and spend it in these other problems and solve them, I would say, "Yeah, go right ahead." But is this, is this where you really wanna pull the money from? When it's the only thing that has us thinking about tomorrow, that has us thinking about a future.

Joe Rogan 31:45 Well, for a guy like you, that's super important. But for a guy who lives in Cleveland, who doesn't give a shit about science-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 31:51 Oh, oh, excuse me, that's like the person who says, "Okay, I don't need the space program. Uh, why do I need the space program? I have my cell phone-"

Joe Rogan 31:59 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 31:59 "... and I have The Weather Channel and I'd know anything I need." (laughs) You know, this is... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:04 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:06 You're using GPS satellites to understand where you are on this earth, to, to understand where grandma's house is-

Joe Rogan 32:12 Do you know who created it?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:12 ... when you pull up the... Who created what?

Joe Rogan 32:14 Who created spread spectrum technology that led to GPS and wifi?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:18 Uh, who is that?

Joe Rogan 32:19 Hedy Lamarr.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:19 Oh, I did know that! Yes.

Joe Rogan 32:21 Beautiful actress.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:22 Yes, she did.

Joe Rogan 32:22 1941.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:22 Yes, she did. Under under-

Joe Rogan 32:24 How about that?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:24 under- recognized. Thanks for reminding me of that.

Joe Rogan 32:25 Super hot though, that was the problem.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:27 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:27 Nobody cared. Nobody c- Like, yeah, yeah, you're smart too.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:31 Yeah, yeah, but yeah, it took, it would take decades to really realize that.

Joe Rogan 32:34 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:34 And of course, GPS is launched by the military.

Joe Rogan 32:36 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:37 And it's now hundreds of billions of dollars worth of the American economy thriving on this space application.

Joe Rogan 32:44 Mmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:44 But it was a military intent, and it was to navigate the surface of the earth.

Joe Rogan 32:50 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 32:50 To navigate. And the first Gulf War was the first big use of space assets in the conduct of military operations.

Joe Rogan 32:58 I believe in, even when Hedy Lamarr created it with another scientist, the idea behind it was for encoded, encoded transcriptions or encoded information during the war.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 33:10 Well, so that, uh, that's a big challenge. How do you encode information?

Joe Rogan 33:14 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 33:15 That's... By the way, the future of this might, might come from... It's not, it's still not clear. The jury's still out and there's sort of opposing views on this, but you know, you've heard about quantum entangled particles.

Joe Rogan 33:26 Yes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 33:26 Where I can create a pair of particles that know about one another, and now they're separated in space and in time. And if you observe that other particle, it instantly changes the state of the particle back, the other particle that's back where I am. And by the way, that, they communicate instantaneously, faster than the speed of light.

Joe Rogan 33:47 When you say if you observe, d- do you mean that if you observe it with a-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 33:52 Anything, doesn't matter.

Joe Rogan 33:53 But you have to do something to observe it with.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 33:54 Yeah, you have to do, you have to d- Yes.

Joe Rogan 33:56 So something has to interact with it, it's not woo.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 33:58 Inter- No, it's not... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:59 But people think-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 33:59 It is so not woo.

Joe Rogan 34:00 But people, but you say that, people go, "Yeah, I f- I saw that in The Secret."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 34:04 Yeah, so the problem is the word observe-

Joe Rogan 34:06 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 34:06 ... people thinks is a, is a psychological thing, but in physics, it's got nothing to do with-

Joe Rogan 34:10 It's a measurement thing.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 34:11 It's a measurement thing.

Joe Rogan 34:12 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 34:13 And so in other words if all the l-

Joe Rogan 34:14 The act of measuring.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 34:14 If there's a, if there is an electron sitting in the middle of this table and all the lights are out, I can say, "I think there's an electron here. Let me find out." And the moment I turn on the lights, the light interacts, a photon interacts with the electron and kicks it somewhere else. So the more I try to measure its position, the less I know its position.

Joe Rogan 34:33 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 34:34 So because you need to... The measurement requires an interaction with it. And on, on, in the quantum scale, interactions change the state of the experiment that you're conducting. We know this, we've quantified it, we, we don't like it, but we deal with it. And in the act of dealing with it, you can exploit that fact for other purposes. We exploit quantum craziness to birth the induc- the, the information technology revolution. There is no creation, storage, or retrieval of information without an exploitation of the quantum. So, and by the way, the quantum was discovered in, quantum physics as a branch of physics, was discovered in the 1920s. If you were around back then and your tax buddies who don't like paying taxes, you, what would you have said? "Why are you spending government money pro-

Joe Rogan 35:23 On voodoo.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 35:23 ... on, on, on, on the atom and on molecules, like you can't even see them? What good is it? Oh, I, I'm a woodworker, I just care about my wood atoms, right? Here I am..." Yeah, yeah, shove that where your, where your tax dollar is. And so it would look like you're wasting your own time and everybody else's money. It would take decades, five decades, four or five decades before we'd realize what role that would play in computing, this creation, storage, and retrieval of information. And by some measures, it's a third of the world's GDP is traceable to what quantum physics does for us on a computing scale.

Joe Rogan 36:01 Oh, sorry.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 36:02 So, so anyone... Yes. Yes, well, I mean, you, there, there are ways to do it. There's certain industries that would still be there without computing, but they're made more efficient with it. Okay, so UPS tracks all of their trucks with GPS and with computing devices that invokes qu- the quantum. But UPS predates the use of this, these tools. But you can look at profits relative to their efficiencies that are enabled by these technologies, as well as entire fields that didn't exist before computing. You add all that up, it's a stunning fact. And, uh, so my only point is that you, if you want today to say, "Why study this when we have these other problems?" Well, all I do, a- all I do is take you back to the cave and let's say, all right, we're in a cave. And there's a mountain over there and a valley and I tell you, I tell the tr- the, the ca- uh, the, the, I, I tell the tribe, um, leaders, "I wanna explore that mountain in that valley.""No, we can't afford to send you out there now. We have to solve the cave problems first before anyone leaves the cave." We laugh at that. That's an absurd claim to make in caveman days. I don't know if anyone did it, but that's a crazy thought because there are solutions to your problems that might exist and time has demonstrated, likely exist by leaving the cave that you can then discover. So for me, exploration is not just space. All the frontiers of the unknown. Biology, chemistry, AI, ex- you know those frontiers and then you can cross-pollinate them and transform civilization. And then, the last example I give and then I'll shut up 'cause I wanna hear you talk too. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:45 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 37:45 It's not for me. It's, I don't, I got, I don't... Yeah, s- I wanna hear you interact with what I'm telling. Here, here's one. You ready?

Joe Rogan 37:52 Okay. (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 37:53 My physics professor in college studied the universe, loved the universe, studied gas clouds between stars and studied how would you detect a gas cloud if it's not radiating light? Well, they give off radio waves, all right? And he figured out what kind of radio waves they give off and why. And in this, he gained expertise in the nucleus of the atom and he discovered that the nucleus can resonate. Depending on the mass of the nucleus, it will... Which means depending on what atom it is on the periodic table, it will resonate slightly differently when exposed to the same electromagnetic field. He discovered a new phenomenon in physics called nuclear magnetic resonance. It would then take a clever medical technologist to say, "Wait a minute. If you can distinguish one heavy atom from another, let me make a machine out of that, put your body in it, and I can then distinguish one kind of tissue from another." And thus was born the magnetic resonance imager.

Joe Rogan 38:58 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 38:59 The MRI. Arguably the most potent, uh, tool in the arsenal of modern medicine where I can diagnose a condition in your body without cutting you open first. That is based on a principle of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine. By the way, the, the real title should be nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, but that's the other N-word you're not s- (laughs) people are-

Joe Rogan 39:23 Nuclear you're not... They, they don't-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 39:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:24 ... like that one?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 39:24 Yeah, yeah, people don't like nuclear.

Joe Rogan 39:26 What about-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 39:26 They, they're, they're less likely to go inside the machine if the word nuclear was on it. But my, my point is that was a cross-pollination of ideas with clever people on their frontiers looking over the fence at discoveries that are being made. It's how we got the microwave oven. That wasn't invented by a thermodynamicist. Microwaves. This is a World War II attempt to communicate using microwaves. And they found out some guy's chocolate bar melted in the microwave field and they said, "What happened there?" And they did some more tests and of course, the water molecule and other molecules common in food respond to microwaves. It vibrates them ferociously. And so you put food in a microwave cavity, the water content of the food vibrates, friction cooks the food. There's still people who, today who say, "Oh, nuke this."

Joe Rogan 40:19 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:19 'Cause they, they, they... it's so fast and they quite-

Joe Rogan 40:21 Me.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:21 Oh, you still say that? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:23 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:24 They still... (laughs) Have no fear, it's just friction. Okay? Friction it. Um-

Joe Rogan 40:29 Yeah, but everybody's scared that it fucks up the food.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:32 Well-

Joe Rogan 40:32 Does it?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:33 No. It's just, it just heats the water and-

Joe Rogan 40:35 People get scared. The woo-woo people do.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:37 Okay, so here's the thing. There are certain foods that don't respond well-

Joe Rogan 40:40 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:40 ... to the flipping of the water molecule and one of them is like bread products.

Joe Rogan 40:44 Gets hard.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:45 Yeah, i- it gets chewy and leathery.

Joe Rogan 40:47 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:47 And-

Joe Rogan 40:47 But only if you like overdo it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:49 Yeah, if you overdo, you gotta do it just right and you're still good. If you overdo it, it can get le- that's kind of it. I'm trying to think. You wouldn't grill a steak in a microwave. You would heat up the meat uniformly.

Joe Rogan 40:58 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 40:58 And that's, that's all it would do. Uh, it cooks bacon pretty fast.

Joe Rogan 41:02 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 41:02 Um, but it's a mess and it splatters all over. So you pick the foods that are best for that situation as you would pick the foods best... You wouldn't, you wouldn't put toast in an oven at 350 degrees t- bread to make toast. We have toasters for that.

Joe Rogan 41:17 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 41:17 And so different things in your kitchen do things best. You wouldn't make ice cream in your, you know, in your s- in your toaster oven.

Joe Rogan 41:25 But people are afraid of microwaves, the one thing that they're afraid of is-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 41:28 It's not, it's not that they're afraid of microwaves.

Joe Rogan 41:30 ... is, is ignorance.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 41:30 That they're afraid that, of things they don't understand.

Joe Rogan 41:32 Yes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 41:32 That's your point.

Joe Rogan 41:33 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 41:33 Precisely.

Joe Rogan 41:34 They're, they're afraid that something's gonna happen to their food that makes it less good.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 41:38 Correct. And it's just, it's, it's not, the not knowing that people fear.

Joe Rogan 41:43 My wife's friend's mom will not eat something that comes out of a microwave.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 41:49 Really?

Joe Rogan 41:49 And she, she quotes that as part of what makes her healthy.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 41:52 You know-

Joe Rogan 41:52 She drinks a lot of water. She refuses to eat microwave food.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 41:56 The whole life is around not using microwave food?

Joe Rogan 41:59 She won't eat anything that comes out of a microwave.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:01 Okay, I'm glad that she doesn't...

Joe Rogan 42:02 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:02 You know, she'll, she can live a long happy life as such, but her-

Joe Rogan 42:06 She has to reheat food old school.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:07 Okay. One of the hardest things is reheating lasagna if you don't have a microwave oven.

Joe Rogan 42:11 It's true.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:12 That's like impossible.

Joe Rogan 42:12 'Cause you gotta cook it again.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:13 You gotta cook it again.

Joe Rogan 42:14 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:15 So-

Joe Rogan 42:15 That's a really good point.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:16 So I think microwave ovens were invented for leftover lasagna. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 42:19 Hmm. And yeah, just e- a bowl of pasta, just in general.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:22 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:23 Soup.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:23 Yeah, soup.

Joe Rogan 42:24 Great for soup.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:24 Soup is good. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:26 Yeah. So you don't have to worry about it. It's not doing anything to it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 42:28 It's not, not sucking any nutrients out or adding any nuclear radiation.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:32 Correct.

Joe Rogan 42:33 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:33 It has nothing to do with radiation in the normal sense other than electromagnetic radiation. It's already light from the bulbs. We tend to use radiation in the context of stuff that would hurt you. So that would be radiation of high enough energy to hurt you and microwaves are not in that category.

Joe Rogan 42:51 I never even thought about what microwaves do until this conversation.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:54 Really?

Joe Rogan 42:55 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 42:55 Yeah, so it's a certain frequency of microwaves that beautifully pairs with the water molecule-

Joe Rogan 43:01 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:01 ... and it vibrates it, uh, brilliantly. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:04 So it doesn't work for completely dried things?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:07 Yeah, that's why if you put something that has no water in it, it's not really very useful.

Joe Rogan 43:10 What happens if you-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:10 It's, it's why-

Joe Rogan 43:11 ... put beef jerky?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:12 It's... (laughs) There's still-

Joe Rogan 43:13 It must have a little moisture in it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:13 There's still some moisture in it, correct.

Joe Rogan 43:15 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:15 Um, it's why it heats the food and not the plate.

Joe Rogan 43:19 Hmm.Hmm. Aha.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:21 If the plate gets hot, it's not because the microwave oven heated the plate, it's because the-

Joe Rogan 43:25 Because the food's hot.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:25 ... food, and the food, and that's why you can usually pick it up with the handles.

Joe Rogan 43:28 Ah. Aha.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:29 You can cook food on a paper plate.

Joe Rogan 43:31 That's right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:32 Don't you think?

Joe Rogan 43:32 It doesn't burst into flames.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:33 It doesn't burst into flames.

Joe Rogan 43:34 This is crazy.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:35 What? You didn't, Joe! Joe!

Joe Rogan 43:37 What is the difference between MRI and fMRI?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 43:41 Oh, so an fMRI, and I, I don't claim total expertise here, but I'll tell you the, the little I know. An MRI, they put you in there and you're stationary, and then they make this map of whatever part of the body they're studying. It's typically your head. All right? Uh, but you can do it on your joints and other parts of your body that might require this level of three-dimensional analysis. And it's, it's a 3D map of what's going on in the part that they surveyed. And so you look at it through slices through that section. So you might see in MRIs of your brain, of your skull, and they take slices, you, as the slices go through, you see like the eye socket come in and then go out again, or the, the nose cavity. And, and you can look at it, uh, uh, in all three dimensions, front to back, side to side, uh, up to down. So, so depending on the sophistication of the machine. fMRI is, they are looking at your brain while you are thinking. So time is now an active coordinate of what's going on.

Joe Rogan 44:39 And they're measuring it as they're talking to you about certain things?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 44:41 Correct. So they say, "Oh, think of a ice cream sundae with a cherry on top." Or, "Think of a naked person who you'd want to have sex with." Okay?

Joe Rogan 44:50 And the F stands for functional?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 44:52 Functional, right. And so it's basically a real-time observation of what's going on in your brain.

Joe Rogan 44:58 They used it to convict a person. Uh, there was a woman in India, and it's really a highly criticized case, but she was convicted of a crime, I believe it was murder, because she had functional knowledge of the crime scene. And the arguments against it were like-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 45:14 Oh.

Joe Rogan 45:14 ... if you're gonna be accused of a crime, clearly you're gonna study the evidence, you're gonna talk to a lawyer, you're gonna go over some things, you're gonna be-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 45:21 I don't know if fMRI is that precise.

Joe Rogan 45:24 Yeah, they don't think it is.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 45:25 That's, yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:25 That's why it was very disturbing that this was used in court. It's like, do you remember when these Italian, um, uh, geologists were, I think they were tried because they should have known about an earthquake before it happened. And then scientists had to say, "Hey guys, this is not how it works."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 45:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:44 Like, this shit can just happen.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 45:46 Yeah. That's so, I think-

Joe Rogan 45:48 Do you remember that?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 45:48 No, I don't, but that's, uh, what I do know, let, let me share a couple of things with you that I've thought deeply about recently. There are three kinds of truths in the world.

Joe Rogan 45:59 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 45:59 Okay? Because we're in like a-

Joe Rogan 46:01 Three?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 46:01 Let me give, I'll give you three. Okay?

Joe Rogan 46:03 The Rudy Giuliani kind?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 46:05 Yeah, well... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:07 Because-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 46:08 Okay, so you ready?

Joe Rogan 46:09 ... apparently true isn't always true.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 46:10 I know. So let me try to-

Joe Rogan 46:11 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 46:11 ... unpack that.

Joe Rogan 46:12 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 46:12 All right, you ready? Okay.

Joe Rogan 46:14 Alternative facts?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 46:14 I, there's something called an objective truth. An objective truth is something that is true whether or not you believe in it, and the methods and tools of science are uniquely conceived to seek out and establish objective truths. And this, I'm in, referring to the invocation of the scientific method. No one scientific result, result, research result is true until it is verified by other peoples' research results using a different experimental method, with different wall current from another country. W- when your competitor says, "I think you're wrong, let me show how you're wrong." And they re- reproduce your experiment and get the same result. When you have generally the same results emerging, that is a newly discovered objective truth about the natural world. And when you have objective truths, they're not later shown to be false.

Joe Rogan 47:08 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 47:08 That's an objective truth. Then you have personal truths. These are truths that you hold dearly. Jesus is your savior, Mohammed is the final prophet on Earth. You, you know, uh, Abraham is your, th- these are your personal truths. There's a heaven you're going to. No one is gonna take that from you, not in a free country where freedom of expression and speech and religion is protected.

Joe Rogan 47:32 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 47:33 That's a personal truth. The problem here is, you can't convince someone else of your personal truth without some act of persuasion, and in the limit, an act of violence.

Joe Rogan 47:46 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 47:47 Okay?

Joe Rogan 47:47 In the limit.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 47:48 In the limit. This is how you get holy wars. So I have this personal truth and I require that you share my personal truth.

Joe Rogan 47:56 But why is that a personal truth-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 47:57 That's a recipe for disaster.

Joe Rogan 47:58 ... and not a belief?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 47:59 Because the people who hold the belief will tell you that it's a truth, so I don't want to take that usage of the word away from them.

Joe Rogan 48:06 Okay, so you're giving them the definition.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 48:08 I'm giving, I'm giving them the word truth, but modifying it to say personal truth. That's correct.

Joe Rogan 48:14 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 48:14 I'm not gonna, they've, they've used it that way for millennia. I'm not gonna...

Joe Rogan 48:17 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 48:18 Okay? They, they feel that it is true, and it's true in their bones. I'm simply saying that because it's your personal truth, you cannot require that someone else share it. And in this country, because, in the United States, because God is not mentioned in the Constitution, itself a controversial thing in its day, by the way. Actually, God is mentioned, but in, in a very insignificant way. The, the Constitution is a God-free document and because it's a God-free document, it protects your expression of religious faiths. Because it means the government has no say in who and what you believe or why. If the Constitution said, "Mention God and Jesus," well, there it is. There's Christianity built into the fabric of the country. And if you want to be some other religion, you're gonna have a hard time because we can set laws against it. This is why so many religiously persecuted people came to the United States, to escape their country where they could not practice their religion a little differently or a lot differently from what was going on in their home, in their homeland. So that-

Joe Rogan 49:25 Is, is it a problem though, to t- to call it truth?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 49:29 I would rather not call a truth, but I, I'm, I'm a big word guy.

Joe Rogan 49:33 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 49:34 And I respect what happens to words. I don't always like it, but I respect it. And so I'm gonna say there's an objective truth, which is true whether or not you believe it. There's your personal truth, which is true to you. Third truth is a political truth. A political truth is something that is true because it has been incessantly repeated.

Joe Rogan 49:54 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 49:55 (laughs) And s- and then you just believe it at that point.

Joe Rogan 49:58 Like what? Give me one of those.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 50:00 Uh, okay, what's Hillary Clinton's first name? It's Crooked. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:04 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 50:04 Crooked Hillary. Oh, is, uh, oh, her first name is actually Hillary? Okay, I thought it was Crooked Hillary. This is, was incessantly repeated in the Trump campaign.

Joe Rogan 50:15 Uh-huh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 50:15 And that, that's an absurd example of it.

Joe Rogan 50:17 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 50:17 But, but, but the point is if you keep saying, if you keep saying that the New York Times is fake news, you just keep saying that, eventually people believe it. And it becomes a, a political truth because the politicians repeated it.

Joe Rogan 50:32 So it's a political truth that people believe it or it's a political truth because people believe it? Which one is it?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 50:38 Uh, so again, you're, you're, you're trying to re- you're trying to preserve the-

Joe Rogan 50:44 Truth.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 50:44 ... fundamental meaning of the word truth here.

Joe Rogan 50:45 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 50:46 And I've, I've just given up on that.

Joe Rogan 50:47 Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris had an infuriatingly frustrating podcast-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 50:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 50:52 ... where they went over the meaning of the word truth for more than an hour.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 50:57 And I, and like I said, you can do that, and philosophers like arguing and debating-

Joe Rogan 51:00 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 51:00 ... meaning of things. For me, it's however people are using the word, that's the meaning. Uh, I'm-

Joe Rogan 51:05 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 51:06 I, I concede that.

Joe Rogan 51:08 Well, we concede those things.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 51:08 By the way, it's why I don't call myself an atheist.

Joe Rogan 51:13 Ah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 51:14 It's why. You can look up the dictionary definition of atheist, and it kind of applies to me, but what is the definition of atheist in practice? It is what leading atheists do and it's their conduct and it's their behavior and it's what they say and it's, uh, it's, it's their attitudes.

Joe Rogan 51:31 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 51:31 That is what an atheist is today, because they are the most visible exemplars of that word. And most of their conduct I either don't agree with or simply don't engage in.

Joe Rogan 51:42 What don't you agree with?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 51:44 I don't debate religious people and tell them they're idiots.

Joe Rogan 51:47 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 51:48 I don't-

Joe Rogan 51:48 Yeah, that doesn't work.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 51:49 Uh, it's, and this, whether or not it works, uh, it's just not, it's not in me to do that. I, I don't s- purge myself of words that have religious foundations in them. I once, in my Facebook, I, I had a friend going up in orbit to repair the Hubble Telescope, one of the astronauts. And I said, uh, uh, "Godspeed."

Joe Rogan 52:09 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 52:09 And then I gave the astronaut's name. People w- wrote in in the thread, said, "I thought you were an atheist. How could you say godspeed?" And atheists got angry with me. And I said, "Okay, first of all, this phrase is deeply historical in the space program." When John Glenn was launched, the headline was Godspeed John Glenn.

Joe Rogan 52:28 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 52:28 And every mission where we send human beings into space, somewhere there is that reference in the NASA family.

Joe Rogan 52:34 What does that word mean?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 52:36 I'll tell you. I'll tell you what it means.

Joe Rogan 52:37 Please do. (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 52:37 Okay? So, oh, by the way, let, I'll get to that in just-

Joe Rogan 52:41 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 52:42 ... one minute.

Joe Rogan 52:42 Take your time. (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 52:43 (laughs) The atheists who were arguing that I was using godspeed as a phrase, they all have used the phrase goodbye, haven't they? See you later, goodbye.

Joe Rogan 52:53 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 52:53 Where does that word come from? It's from God be with you. It's a contraction of those three words.

Joe Rogan 52:59 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 53:00 And why would you say this? You would say this to someone leaving the city wall-

Joe Rogan 53:05 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 53:05 ... where it's dangerous. Okay? Back when you had city states. You're going to, you're, you're ga-

Joe Rogan 53:10 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 53:11 God be with you, to bring protection for you-

Joe Rogan 53:15 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 53:15 ... between one city wall-

Joe Rogan 53:17 To have the, the gods-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 53:18 ... and another. Correct.

Joe Rogan 53:18 The gods look out for you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 53:19 So now, what is the source of danger if you're going to space? It's not alien space muggers.

Joe Rogan 53:25 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 53:25 It is the fact that you ha- (laughs) space marauders. It's the fact that you have high speed, and high speed is the source of essentially any death of anything that's in motion-

Joe Rogan 53:37 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 53:37 ... if you were a part of that, um, uh, uh, disaster. So godspeed is like a space equivalent to God be with you.

Joe Rogan 53:47 Is that really the origin of it?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 53:49 It's, I, well, I'm just saying it's-

Joe Rogan 53:50 But did they say that before there was space travel? Did they say godspeed?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 53:53 I don't know the actual origin of space travel, uh, of the term. Uh, I don't know how far back it goes, but I do know it became common-

Joe Rogan 54:00 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:01 ... after John Glenn, 'cause they're not gonna say it to Yuri Gagarin 'cause they were, they were all atheists in, in the Soviet Union.

Joe Rogan 54:06 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:07 But here in America (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:09 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:09 ... in America, uh, godspeed John Glenn. And I respect that tradition.

Joe Rogan 54:14 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:14 And so I said that, and then they jump... So if atheists are jumping on me for having said that, clearly I'm not an atheist.

Joe Rogan 54:21 Hey.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:21 A- and ask me my favorite Broadway musical of all time.

Joe Rogan 54:25 What's your favorite Broadway-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:25 Jesus Christ Superstar. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:27 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:28 Okay? All right. So, and I, and I still use BC and AD in my writings. Okay? I still do it.

Joe Rogan 54:36 You don't use BCE?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:37 I don't use BCE.

Joe Rogan 54:38 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:39 All right? Well, see, even you c- copping a 'tude right there, right? Hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:42 Interesting.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:43 Hmm. I saw your face. You got the camera?

Joe Rogan 54:45 No, I just said interesting.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:46 Do you see a face? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:46 I just said interesting. It's interesting.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:48 No, I'll tell you why.

Joe Rogan 54:49 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:49 Okay, first of all-

Joe Rogan 54:50 Doesn't make any sense.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:51 ... BCE was-

Joe Rogan 54:52 This is not current era 2,000 years ago.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:54 I'm gonna tell you. So BCE, as you know, stands for before common era.

Joe Rogan 54:57 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 54:58 And CE stands for common era. So this is de-religiousifying AD and B- and BC.

Joe Rogan 55:05 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 55:05 Okay? Yet, of course, they reference the same calendar.

Joe Rogan 55:08 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 55:09 Okay? Well, who invented the calendar we all currently use in modern society? It's called the Gregorian calendar. It was invented by the Catholic Church, by Jesuit priests in the 1580s, assigned by Pope Gregory to fix the problems in the calendar because... I'm sorry I'm screaming at you here. You got me started.

Joe Rogan 55:25 Okay, scream. Get crazy.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 55:26 I gotta calm down.

Joe Rogan 55:27 I'll bring you coffee.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 55:30 (sighs) (laughs) The Julian calendar, put forth in ancient Rome-... had one modification to previous calendars. It had a leap day, okay? It had a leap day. And okay, a leap day is how often? Every four years. This was good 'cause what are we trying to track? We're trying to, t- the Earth goes around the sun and so we say, "All right, how long does that take?" Well, it takes a year. But it turns out, we're not actually tracking how long it takes Earth to go around the sun, we're h- tracking how long it takes Earth to repeat its seasons. And the repeat, the year that corresponds to our seasons is slightly different from the year that corresponds to how long it takes to go around the sun. Slightly different. And that difference was not recognized in the early calendars, and that difference accumulated so that by the year 1584, the vernal equinox, the first day of spring did not occur on March 21st, it occurred on March 10th. It shifted from the calendar date. That's what happens if you don't match the cycles of things and the Pope said, "We're not having any of this, especially since Easter might land on Passover and we're trying to distinguish ourselves mightily from the Jews, so let's fix this." The Jesuit priests got to study this. They looked at the cycles of the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and they came up with a new calendar, the Gregorian calendar, a modification to the Julian calendar. You know what they had to do? To invoke it, they had to take ten days out of the calendar to r- to jumpstart, to put, uh, the first day of spring back on March 21st. And this happened in October 1584.

Joe Rogan 57:15 Why has there been-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 57:15 It took ten days out of the calendar.

Joe Rogan 57:17 ... does this-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 57:17 So now how much rent do you pay? They had to, like, invent amortized rent. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:22 Really?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 57:22 Yeah, 'cause you're gonna pay for three weeks instead, you know, 20 days instead of 30. Th- they had to figure that out, okay? Point is, this was hard earned and the whole world uses this calendar. It is the most accurate calendar ever devised.

Joe Rogan 57:35 Is it?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 57:36 Okay? Yes, I'll tell you what... Okay, you asked. So watch what happens. The leap day over-corrected the calendar. It over-corrected it.

Joe Rogan 57:46 Over-corrected?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 57:47 Yes. Yes.

Joe Rogan 57:48 So you need a leap year.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 57:49 So... No, no. Sorry, the leap day is every four years.

Joe Rogan 57:52 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 57:52 That one day every four years was slowly putting too many days into the, moments into the year, okay? The Gregorian calendar figured this out and it had put ten extra days since the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. Ten extra days. First, (snaps fingers) jump start, get rid of the ten days. Now everything's lined up again.

Joe Rogan 58:10 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 58:10 Now, how do you prevent this from happening again? Because it over-corrects, how long do you have to wait to remove a leap day that you would otherwise put in? Okay?

Joe Rogan 58:23 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 58:24 That's every 100 years.

Joe Rogan 58:26 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 58:27 So every 100 years, that would be a leap day, you'd remove the leap day.

Joe Rogan 58:33 Oh...

Neil deGrasse Tyson 58:34 Now it turns out that under-corrects it-

Joe Rogan 58:37 Oh... (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 58:37 ... by an even smaller amount, okay? So...

Joe Rogan 58:41 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 58:41 How long do you have to wait before you have to put a leap day back in? Every 400 years.

Joe Rogan 58:48 Oh, God.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 58:51 So the year 2000 was a century year, which normally would not have a leap day, except it's a century year evenly divisible by 400, so they put the leap day back in. And everybody on February... Almost everybody. Everybody except the astronomers on February 29th in the year 2000 said, "It's just a leap year 'cause it's divisible by four." No, it is a rare leap year. It is a century year divisible by 400. That corrects it back and so now you have a stable calendar for tens of thousands of years. I gotta give props to the Jesuit priests. I'm not gonna say, "No, I'm taking the Christianity out of this reference," 'cause they figured out the calendar that we all use and it's a fucking awesome count. Sorry to drop an F-bomb there-

Joe Rogan 59:41 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 59:41 ... but I had... so I'm not... Just because some atheists are telling me to rid God out of everything in the universe that- to- to... I'm not, I'm not doing that. I'm going to say they came up with this calendar e- for the reasons were 'cause they didn't wanna confuse it with Passover. The motivation is whatever it is, but the science is, is good, and so there it is. So in A Seseri to War where we go back many centuries, the editor said, "Well, we should use BCE 'cause that's a liberal forward thing." I said, "I am not using BCE-"

Joe Rogan 1:00:09 Wow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:00:09 "... and CE." Get... And by the way, there, there was no year zero. You know why-

Joe Rogan 1:00:14 Hm?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:00:14 ... there's no year zero? 'Cause the Romans came up with the calendar and they counted using Roman numerals and Roman numerals don't have a zero.

Joe Rogan 1:00:21 Ooh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:00:22 It was not yet invented.

Joe Rogan 1:00:23 They didn't have a zero?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:00:24 No! No! So it went from 1 BC to AD 1.

Joe Rogan 1:00:30 Jesus Christ.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:00:31 BC is Before Christ, AD is Anno Domini in Latin, the year of our Lord.

Joe Rogan 1:00:35 Wow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:00:36 Yeah. Now of course in, in, in Islam and in China and in, uh, um, in Hebrew cultures, uh, Israel in particular, they have access to the Chinese calendar, the Muslim calendar. Muslim, of course, dates to Mohammed. Chinese calendar dates to actually a planetary alignment i- in 4700 BC.

Joe Rogan 1:00:57 Yeah, they don't... They use a different system, right?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:00:59 They use a different system, that's right. And the, uh, Hebrew calendar dates to, like, the beginning of the universe as interpreted in the, in the Torah. So they have access to those, but when they're conducting international business, we just simply use the Gregorian calendar. Just get over it. Move on.

Joe Rogan 1:01:16 But did they use it, in China, did they use it constantly and consistently or do they alternate between the Gregorian calendar and something else?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:01:22 I- I- I'm not a Chinese expert, but from what I know of China and my friends and colleagues, ev- for c- conducting business, the world's business is conducted in, on the Gregorian calendar, with a 12-month calendar, with a, uh, with the year as referenced by everybody else.

Joe Rogan 1:01:37 And does it have to be done that way in terms of, like, is there... Has anyone ever done a study on-... possibly creating a more effective-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:01:44 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:44 ... more accurate calendar that doesn't invoke leap years and-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:01:47 Uh, the problem is the length of the day does not cut evenly to the time it takes Earth to go around the sun. So there will always be fractions of days that you're accumulating.

Joe Rogan 1:02:00 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:00 And now what do you do with them? You wait til you accumulate a day and you put it in or take it out.

Joe Rogan 1:02:04 What did the Mayans have?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:05 The, theirs, theirs, theirs-

Joe Rogan 1:02:05 They had a lunar cycle calendar, right?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:07 The, the, it was, they had a, a calendar based on Venus.

Joe Rogan 1:02:09 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:10 And so, yeah, they had a really good calendar.

Joe Rogan 1:02:12 Yeah, it was a 13 lunar cycle-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:13 It was overstated that it was, like, really accurate calendar.

Joe Rogan 1:02:16 Overstated, yeah?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:16 Yeah, it was overstated. It was good. Better than anything that came before it.

Joe Rogan 1:02:19 Not as good as the Gregorian.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:20 No. No, no. The Gregorian calendar.

Joe Rogan 1:02:22 People love old shit though.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:23 They do and they wanna believe that-

Joe Rogan 1:02:24 Especially-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:25 ... people who, you know, uh, they wanna believe that people 5,000 years ago somehow knew more about the universe than we do today.

Joe Rogan 1:02:31 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:32 Just, no.

Joe Rogan 1:02:33 Why is that? Why do they wanna believe that?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:35 I think... Uh, uh, I don't know. For me, uh, that's one of the great puzzles of li- of life. Why do people want to believe that the Egyptians somehow had some access to the universe?

Joe Rogan 1:02:47 Well, they knew something.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:48 The, they did. Of course.

Joe Rogan 1:02:49 They definitely knew how-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:50 Of-

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 ... to build some incredible shit.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:51 Of course.

Joe Rogan 1:02:52 Right? But that, that alone-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:02:54 Of course. I don't wanna take that away from them.

Joe Rogan 1:02:56 Doesn't the physical, just the presence of these incredible buildings leave the possibility that maybe they had some knowledge that we lost?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:03:06 Lost knowledge is a real thing.

Joe Rogan 1:03:07 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:03:08 And, uh, uh, I don't wanna belittle or diminish the significance of real knowledge. We forgot how to draw in perspective, you know, from ancient times. Had to be rediscovered in the, a- as I understand from the artists, had to be rediscovered in the Renaissance. Uh, the archway, the, the Roman arch had to sort of be rediscovered, okay? So yes, yes, you can lose knowledge. But if you look at the knowledge we have gleaned using the methods and t- modern methods and tools of science that go far beyond our five senses and our access to the world, to say that somehow they knew something that we don't using our tools, that's just false. Sorry.

Joe Rogan 1:03:47 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:03:48 That's just, it's just, th- there's, that's not possible.

Joe Rogan 1:03:51 But-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:03:52 We know the physiological limits of your ability to know what's going on around you.

Joe Rogan 1:03:56 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:03:56 And the people that say, "Oh, I have a sixth sense." Fine.

Joe Rogan 1:04:00 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:00 But as a scientist, I have dozens of senses.

Joe Rogan 1:04:02 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:03 Okay? I can measure things that your five senses can't. I can measure the magnetic field around you, the electromagnetic field, how much microwaves are coursing through your body now. We have no sensors for this.

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 I can see auras. (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:14 (laughs) Fine. I can see other things that are affecting your body now. I can tell you if ionizing radiation is passing through you. I have Geiger counters that can do that. You can't. Oh, you'll final- you will eventually learn whether you're exposed to ionizing radiation because you're, you'll get cancer of your organs and your limbs fall off.

Joe Rogan 1:04:32 All right. I can see that we know far more today-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:35 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:04:35 ... than perhaps a- a- any- no, not even perhaps, than at any other time-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:39 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:04:39 ... in conceivable history.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:40 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:04:41 But it is possible that they knew some things, like how to build a pyramid-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:46 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 ... that we really just don't understand today.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:51 I don't know what it means to not understand how to build a pyramid today. We have hu-

Joe Rogan 1:04:54 Well, we, we have-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:54 We have 150 story buildings.

Joe Rogan 1:04:56 But we do-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:57 We're not thinking about pyramids.

Joe Rogan 1:04:58 ... we have different stuff.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:04:58 I can tell you this. Do you know what are the first thing that was built by humans?

Joe Rogan 1:05:03 Ever?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:04 No, no. The, uh, that's only part of the sentence. Sorry. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:08 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:08 I love your enthusiasm. My sentence barely, barely came out of my mouth.

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:13 The tallest thing humans built after the pyramids.

Joe Rogan 1:05:18 Uh, I think it's a building in Dubai.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:20 No.

Joe Rogan 1:05:21 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:22 So in other words, what's the next tallest-

Joe Rogan 1:05:23 From there to now?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:24 ... thing after the pyramids?

Joe Rogan 1:05:25 Oh, right after.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:26 Yeah. What, what is the next tallest thing we built, stable structure, after the pyramids?

Joe Rogan 1:05:31 What?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:32 The Eiffel Tower.

Joe Rogan 1:05:33 Really?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:33 Yes. 18 whatever, '89, 18... Late 1800s.

Joe Rogan 1:05:38 Huh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:38 In Paris, the Eiffel Tower.

Joe Rogan 1:05:40 Huh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:05:41 That was the first stable structure we built as a civilization that was taller than the pyramids. So the Egyptians knew how to, they knew architecture. They knew. No one's taking that away from them. But to claim they have some secret knowledge of the functionings of the universe? No.

Joe Rogan 1:06:01 Well, people love saying that kinda stuff.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:03 Yeah, and it makes for a great TV.

Joe Rogan 1:06:04 But the fact that they didn't have steel and the fact that we're, you're dealing with, uh, the very, very most recent 2500 BC-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:12 ... and they built-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:13 You just have to be more, uh, in- ingenious, more innovative-

Joe Rogan 1:06:17 Yes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:17 ... than we otherwise would have to be. Yeah. And how do you move the blocks? How do, how do they make Stonehenge?

Joe Rogan 1:06:22 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:22 Those, those rocks are nowhere in the region.

Joe Rogan 1:06:25 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:25 They were carted from some- they found a place where those rocks were, uh, would, would've been mined-

Joe Rogan 1:06:31 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:32 ... removed and, yeah. And those are some big ass rocks.

Joe Rogan 1:06:36 Yeah. As are the one... But it's, it's not less impressive because they're just big. Like, what the, the thing about the pyramids that's so impressive is the precision and the sheer numbers. Two million-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:47 Our best under-

Joe Rogan 1:06:48 ... 600,000 stones.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:06:49 Our best understanding of Stonehenge is that it's a functioning observatory that can actually predict eclipses. So I gotta, I, I ju- I just gotta-

Joe Rogan 1:06:59 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:07:00 ... bitch slap you there.

Joe Rogan 1:07:02 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:07:02 (laughs) "Oh, Stonehenge is not impressive. It's just big stones."

Joe Rogan 1:07:05 No, it's certain, certainly impressive.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:07:06 They're aligned, they're aligned with the summer solstice.

Joe Rogan 1:07:09 Right, right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:07:09 They have... There are holes that are not stones, but they're 56 holes which is three times the, the saros, which is the cycle of eclipses of the matching of the orbits of the sun and the moon in the sky, the paths of the sun and the moon in the sky. And when they match up, you get an eclipse.

Joe Rogan 1:07:25 Is there, is it possible-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:07:25 It's an eclipse observatory. A guy named-

Joe Rogan 1:07:27 ... that's absolutely what it is?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:07:29 There's a book published in the s- in the 1970s by a guy named, uh, uh, uh, David Dawkins. It's not Richard Dawkins, but it's another one of these... Hawkings. Uh, uh, Rich- Richard Hawkings. Richard Hawkings? Hawking. Hawking. Hawkings.Damn.

Joe Rogan 1:07:46 One M dudes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:07:47 Damn. What hit ... Oh, we got our top crack researchers here.

Joe Rogan 1:07:50 Jamie's on the ball.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:07:50 Um, just look up ... The title of his book was Stonehenge Decoded. Just look up the title of that book. Anyhow, uh, it's highly convincing and we all, we're all there with it. There's no-

Joe Rogan 1:07:58 So it's essentially just a study of the position of the stones in relationship to th- the, where the ... Okay, Gerald Hawkins.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:05 Gerald Hawkins, thank you. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:06 There we go.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:07 Yeah. Yeah. Stonehenge Decoded. Uh, so he ... I visited Stonehenge as a kid, uh, at age 15 on an expedition.

Joe Rogan 1:08:14 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:14 And he was the expedition head.

Joe Rogan 1:08:16 Oh, wow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:16 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 1:08:17 How lucky for you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:18 Yeah. It was, uh, it was good. And that stuck with me, which is why I named this phenomenon in Manhattan, where the sun sets along the street grid-

Joe Rogan 1:08:26 I saw that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:27 Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:08:27 I saw that on your Instagram.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:28 Yeah. Yeah. So, so I named that Manhattanhenge.

Joe Rogan 1:08:31 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:31 Sort of hearkening back to my early days, thinking about the alignment of the sun-

Joe Rogan 1:08:37 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:37 ... and structures that we might build. 'Cause so twice a year, for those viewers or listeners who don't know, twice a year the Manhattan street grid, which is not perfectly aligned north-south, the Manhattan street grid, uh, will ... The sun will set exactly on the grid. And-

Joe Rogan 1:08:54 Ah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:54 And, and, and-

Joe Rogan 1:08:54 Oh, what a great picture.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:08:54 And what's up there now, that image, what's not obvious is that picture is taken along a street that is itself three miles long, and then you're crossing a, uh, the Hudson River, and then there's New Jersey on the other side. So people try to zoom in on it, but really, what you really should do is zoom out from it, and then you get the vanishing point, uh, on it. So yeah, all those are zoomed, zoomed in. Um, let's go to ... Yeah. That one looks more like, like my photo. Wait, go back to that other one. Yeah. See? So, so that's on 34th Street, the one you see now. And then you get this sparkling effect. That happens twice a year. Twice a year.

Joe Rogan 1:09:35 Tha- that sort of crazy wild light effect-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09:37 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:09:37 ... that looks-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09:38 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:09:38 ... like Photoshop almost?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:40 G- there's an image on, uh, his Instagram that is linked on my Instagram, the most recent photo.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09:46 Oh, okay.

Joe Rogan 1:09:47 There he goes. Oh, there's you with the selfie.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09:49 That's the selfie.

Joe Rogan 1:09:49 Look at you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09:49 Right. Okay. So come on down.

Joe Rogan 1:09:51 Powerful afro. Damn.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09:52 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:52 Strong.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09:53 That was my first selfie.

Joe Rogan 1:09:54 How old were you?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:09:55 I was, uh, 14. Four ... Uh, let me see. It was 19- ... Probably 1974.

Joe Rogan 1:09:59 Wow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:10:00 So I would have been 15. I think I'da been 15, 14 or 15.

Joe Rogan 1:10:04 So your path of curiosity was set very-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:10:07 Oh, it goes back. It goes back.

Joe Rogan 1:10:08 ... very early.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:10:09 Right. Uh, but that's not what we're looking for here. Let's go, uh, that one. Thank you.

Joe Rogan 1:10:12 There it is.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:10:13 So that ... No, uh, there's another one. Wait, the, go, go back to all of the images.

Joe Rogan 1:10:18 Across the rivers. Wild.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:10:19 Just, just zoom back out until you see all the pictures there. Uh, go to the bottom left. There you go. Okay. That might be the first ever Manhattanhenge photo. Okay?

Joe Rogan 1:10:29 What year is that from?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:10:30 Uh, I took that in-

Joe Rogan 1:10:31 Oh, 2001. Wow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:10:32 Right. And it got published in 2002.

Joe Rogan 1:10:34 So this is before September 11th. This is July 11th.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:10:36 I took it before September 11th. Right.

Joe Rogan 1:10:38 Wow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:10:38 Right. And then I had a means to publish it. And right then, uh, the ... Notice that it's a green light and traffic is ready to knock me over.

Joe Rogan 1:10:47 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:10:49 So, so no one is in the streets doing this, but now there are tens of thousands of people that pour into the streets on these days. We post what day you get Manhattanhenge from the American Museum of Natural History, my day job, and then that goes out, the press gets it, and tens of thousands of people spill into the street, blocking traffic. And if you think of all the ways traffic gets blocked in your day.

Joe Rogan 1:11:08 Look at this.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:10 Look at these dorks.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:10 Like ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:11:13 All of us. Too many of them. It's you-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:14 That's, that's-

Joe Rogan 1:11:14 ... by yourself, it's interesting.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:15 That's great. Yeah. So that's what-

Joe Rogan 1:11:16 Thousands of people-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:16 ... it has become.

Joe Rogan 1:11:17 ... holding up phones.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:19 And it's all because I went to Stonehenge. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:20 Wow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:20 So it's a, it's also a, an observatory.

Joe Rogan 1:11:23 So is ... Was it you that named this?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:25 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:26 Damn. Check you out.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:28 Coined, coined. I- I think they say coined.

Joe Rogan 1:11:29 Coined it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:29 Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:30 Manhattanhenge. Because the buildings are like henges.

Joe Rogan 1:11:33 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:33 The henge is a stone, is a vertical stone, is a vertical structure. If you made a stone, it's a stonehenge.

Joe Rogan 1:11:38 Why isn't it possible to construct a calendar that doesn't have leap years?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:44 What you would have to do ... You could do it, but what would happen is it means you care more about the year than you do about the day. So what would happen is you would celebrate the new year at, like, 3:00 in the afternoon.

Joe Rogan 1:11:57 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:58 Right?

Joe Rogan 1:11:59 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:11:59 And then the next year you'd celebrate it at, like, thr- 12 minutes after 3:00 in the afternoon. And then 20 minutes. You would, you would do ... It would sort of move through-

Joe Rogan 1:12:09 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:12:09 ... your calendar. And then that means you cared more about the year ... Uh, sorry. You care more about the, uh ... Did I say that right? You ... We always want to celebrate New Year's on midnight of the ... And by the way, New Year's is celebrated in 24 time zones, not all at the same time.

Joe Rogan 1:12:26 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:12:27 So it's interesting. Everyone thinks of that as a moment.

Joe Rogan 1:12:29 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:12:31 Yet it's really a calendar event. Oh, sorry. It's a-

Joe Rogan 1:12:33 Over hours.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:12:33 It's a clock event. It's celebrated over 24 hours.

Joe Rogan 1:12:36 Yeah. If you're in Thailand, it's 14 hours difference.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:12:39 So therefore, if you were to do it astrophysically, you would know the exact moment where we returned in our orbit, and everybody would celebrate that instant.

Joe Rogan 1:12:48 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:12:49 And that would be ... So then the whole world would celebrate the new year at the same time.

Joe Rogan 1:12:53 Ah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:12:54 That ... It means you value it differently. It's not a midnight celebration. It's a, uh, you could do that. You can-

Joe Rogan 1:12:58 Celestial celebration.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:12:59 It's, it's celestial. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:01 Huh. So that would be the only way?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:04 Yeah. That's the only way, 'cause a day doesn't cut evenly into the year. Th- those two have nothing to do with one another. There's no reason why that would ha- ... So we, we, we, um ... So in other words, let me say it another way, just 'cause you're looking like you're m-

Joe Rogan 1:13:18 (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:18 ... like you're, you're looking off in space here. So here's New Year's. Okay? Let's count 365 days. When we do that, we are not at the same place we were when we last celebrated New Year's Day, New Year's Eve. Okay?

Joe Rogan 1:13:37 We're not at the same place in our rotation?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:39 In our, or in our orbit, our revolution.

Joe Rogan 1:13:41 In our orbit. Around the sun.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:42 Okay? You rotate on an axis, you revolve-

Joe Rogan 1:13:43 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:43 ... around something else.

Joe Rogan 1:13:44 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:44 That's those two words.

Joe Rogan 1:13:45 Okay.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:45 How you use those two words. So we're not in the same place.But we celebrate New Years anyway.

Joe Rogan 1:13:50 Hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:50 Well, when will we be in a same place? A quarter of a day later.

Joe Rogan 1:13:54 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:13:55 Six hours. So we would celebrate the next New Year at 6:00 AM.

Joe Rogan 1:14:00 Nobody's willing to do that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:01 No one's willing to do that. And the next New Year at noon, then the next New Year at 6:00 PM.

Joe Rogan 1:14:06 Whoa.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:06 And then the next new year kind of aligns back again. Well, that's the leap day. That's the fourth year we put in a leap day.

Joe Rogan 1:14:12 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:13 See?

Joe Rogan 1:14:14 So it's our love of the day-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:16 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:14:17 ... that keeps us-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:19 ... fucked up with the world-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:21 ... when it comes to the year.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:22 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:24 Wow.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:24 You pick one and then that's how, that's how you do it.

Joe Rogan 1:14:27 Hmm. And what... The Mayans based it on the moon, right? The, it is the lunar cycle?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:31 I didn't, you know, I didn't, I didn't study their calendar as deeply as I should have and wanted to, especially back in 2012 when everyone-

Joe Rogan 1:14:38 Mm-hmm.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:38 ... said, "Oh, the Mayan calendar runs out, so therefore it's the end of the world."

Joe Rogan 1:14:41 That's what I was thinking. (laughs)

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:44 I was thinking it was the end of the world, maybe.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:14:46 Uh, because the Mayans said so, the Mayans said so.

Joe Rogan 1:14:48 It also felt like that was back when, you know, before that had happened, it was, you know, George Bush was president in, like, 2007 and everybody was thinking, "Jesus, this is, this is gonna be the end."

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:15:01 Oh, there... So what, so every decade, there's somebody predicting the end of the world.

Joe Rogan 1:15:04 Sure.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:15:04 And I, I'm actually quite entertained by this exercise.

Joe Rogan 1:15:07 Do you remember when they, they had billboards all around LA-

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:15:08 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:15:09 ... just a few years ago?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:15:10 Well, no, that, that's a different end of the world.

Joe Rogan 1:15:12 Oh, it's a different one.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:15:12 That's, that's a guy with a radio podcast church that he-

Joe Rogan 1:15:17 Oh.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:15:17 Yeah. And then the other world didn't come and so he pushed it forward. So that's, it's entertaining. We live in a free country. It's evidence that we live in a, a, a free country where freedom of speech is protected and you can practice any religion you want.

Joe Rogan 1:15:31 Right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:15:31 That's... And, uh, they didn't learn much science in school.

Joe Rogan 1:15:35 That's a part of it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:15:35 That's part of the fact that you have this in our world. I don't mind it, actually. It's f- I, I find it entertaining. But it becomes an issue if people such as that gain power over legislation, over the rest of us 'cause this would b- c- count this as a personal belief. It's your personal belief the world is gonna end on October 19th, uh, in the, uh, that's your personal... You, you're... Fine.

Joe Rogan 1:15:58 Right. You believe that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:15:58 But if you now create laws that require I go with that, you just imposed your personal belief on me. And your personal belief is not true for everyone, it's only true for you.

Joe Rogan 1:16:11 Yeah, that's a problem, right?

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:16:12 And an objective truth is true for everyone. So if you're gonna have, if you're gonna have governance, you're gonna wanna base governance on what is objectively true 'cause it would apply to everyone, independent of your belief system.

Joe Rogan 1:16:26 Hmm. Yeah. I agree with that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson 1:16:29 And by the way, there're, there're, there're, there're, there are things that we're not sure are true yet, that we're still researching. That's not what I'm talking about as an, as an objective truth. Objective truth have been verified by multiple scientific studies, not just one study. This was the problem with the, the cholesterol study. There's a cholesterol study that set everybody on the course to drop their cholesterol levels. Okay? Saying it would be good for your heart and all the rest of this, because a series of countries were studied where they have longevity and low heart, low heart disease and low cholesterol intake. That study happened to leave out France. It happened... It just wasn't in the study and a couple of other places that have high cholesterol intake, but don't have higher heart disease. So that study was flawed, but it was hard to replicate it because it went over many years and it was thousands of people and so everyone just jumped on it. You don't have a scientific truth... And this, this is a general problem