Joe Rogan Experience #1658 - Neil deGrasse Tyson

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays)

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:16

      Oh, yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      How much time do you spend looking at random leaves on television shows to recognize that it's a fake pattern-

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:23

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:23

      ... not created by the wind?

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:26

      No, I just... You know, you look at scenes from Walking Dead, and they enter this deserted town, as so many towns are when zombies take over, and the, the, the, the leaves, you know, the autumn leaves are evenly spread in the streets and the sidewalks. And I'm thinking, "Some set designer did that thinking that this is what leaves do in the breeze." But that's not what they do. They collect. They circulate. They're the, they're, they're like eddies in the air currents-

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:55

      Mm.

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:55

      ... that'll collect them in one place and not the other. So, so, so we think if something's random, that it's evenly spread, but in fact, there are many more collected elements in something that's random than we typically think. So I'm looking at your new ceiling here in Austin, Texas, and your star... It's beautiful, by the way.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:17

      Thank you.

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:17

       Nice digs you got here.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:18

       Thank you.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:18

       But, uh, the stars are... The lights are kinda evenly spread on the sky.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:24

       Yeah, they don't look real.

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:25

       So that's how... And plus, you know, you could've thrown in at least a constellation up there or something.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:30

       You know what I should do? I should get someone to make me one and make one and just imitate the Milky Way.

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:36

       That'd be, that'd be beautiful.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:37

       Right.

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:37

       That'd be beautiful, and I, I'll be happy to certify it. (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:40

       (laughs) Oh no, I'm scared.

   20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:41

       You give me a call. You give me a call.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:43

       I'm scared.

   22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:43

       I'm all in.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:44

       I don't think... I don't think you will certify it.

   24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:46

       (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:46

       I think it would be a real problem.

   26. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:48

       (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:49

       I think it would be a genuine issue.

   28. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:51

       So how you doing, Joe?

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:51

       I'm doing good. How you doing?

   30. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:53

       You had your new job.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Right. …

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson15:00

      it here, uh, we live in a time where everyone is equipped with a high-resolution color camera and video recorder, basically everyone. And if you run the numbers on it, it's about, I got this from someone from Google, there's about six billion photos and videos uplifted to the internet every day. And in that collection, you find really rare things that you only heard about or maybe you saw the results of, but you didn't actually see it happen. You s- so there are videos of buses tumbling in the winds of a tornado. Now, in the aftermath of a tornado, there's a bus on its side, and so you knew wind took it there, but previously, no one is gonna say, "Oh, that bus is about to lift into the air," Wizard of Oz style, like the house, "Let me go in and get my (laughs) , my, my, my, my movie camera."

   2. JRJoe Rogan16:00

      Right.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:01

      "And then come back out and shoot this." No one did that. If you did, you'd be stupid. That, you'd wanna get the hell out of there. But everybody has a video camera. So we have images of this rare phenomenon, uncommon, n- hardly ever filmed, buses tumbling in the air. We have video footage of animals doing interesting things that y- that, you know, we never had video recordings of. S-

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:24

      Like bears walking on two feet?

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:26

      B- yeah, bears and, and one of them right at a traffic cone, there's a video of that.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:31

      Yeah.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:31

      It was just walking down the street and there's a traffic cone and it looked at it and it, it, uh, was tipped over and it righted it and just kept walking. And I'm thinking, "Wow, this is what bears do when we're not chasing them or when they're (laughs) not chasing us."

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:43

      Mm-hmm.

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:43

      This is just a casual... They're mammals, they have large brains, you know, compared to any other kinds of-

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:48

       They're, they're oddly playful too.

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:50

       Yes.

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:50

       Yeah.

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:50

       And they love, uh, people's backyard swimming pools, apparently. (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:53

       Yeah, and benches. You ever seen them on picnic benches?

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:55

       And they're just chilling on the bench, yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:56

       They lay on benches and roll around on picnic benches.

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:59

       Yeah. So, um, and in another case, I saw, it was a magpie, one of these birds known for how smart it is. There was a full, uh, uh, uh, you know, half liter, um, you know, plastic, uh, thing of water, it was just water, okay? You know, a water bottle, and it was full. So the magpie goes over and sips out the water. Now, you can on- it, the beak is only, what, an inch and a half long, or an inch at most, so it goes in until it can't reach the water anymore. So what does it do? It goes off to the side, gets a rock just the right size, drops it into the water bottle.

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:39

       And raises the level of the water.

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:40

       Thereby displacing water. Here it is.

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:43

       That, that is heavy.

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:44

       You've got the video. There it is. And so it's, now it comes and it goes back, and gets another stone, drops it in, and every time it drops it in, the water level rises and it can drink more water. And it just, it keeps doing this.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:57

       That's pretty amazing.

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:58

       Okay? And so, so every time we study animals...They're smarter than we ever thought they were. So maybe for our own ego, we kept building ourselves up, saying how separate and distinct we are as humans in the animal kingdom, when maybe we're not as separate and distinct as we think we are. So now what, what's my broader point there about, that I was making? I, I just distracted myself.

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:27

       Something about UFOs.

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:28

       Yeah, no-

   26. JRJoe Rogan18:28

       (laughs)

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:28

       ... I was trying to get back to UFOs on that.

   28. JRJoe Rogan18:30

       The theing, the fact that we have high-resolution cameras in our pocket and we take videos of things that are very unusual.

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:34

       There are ver-, oh, so exactly. So here's video of a magpie doing Bernoulli experiments on a, on a, on a water, in a water bottle. Who woulda known that even happened, right?

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:44

       Right.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Hmm. …

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:00

      'cause you just don't know. Okay? Was there a glitch in the current? Was there a bird fly over? You make notes of everything. One of the observatories whose data was being grafted together with the other observatories had this sort of gearbox. Well, I think ... I don't remember if it was a gearbox. It was some mechanical adjustment that was made-He said, "I wonder if that had a- an effect on the positioning of this telescope." He removed those data from his analysis and fitted data to all the other telescopes that he had for the positions of Uranus... o- of, of Neptune. When he did that, (snaps fingers) Planet X evaporated in that instant.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:46

      Hmm.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:47

      In that instant. There was no Planet X. All the other data, when he connects across, removing the data fr- from the one where the observing log said they did something different, uh, uh, Neptune fell right onto Newton's laws. And so, so since 1993, there is no Planet X. And Pluto... and, and were it not for that, we probably w- would've been a long time before we discovered Pluto 'cause no one would have looked for it.

   4. JRJoe Rogan31:14

      They found another, like, Pluto-like-

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson31:15

      Let me just finish the... but the, the lesson there-

   6. JRJoe Rogan31:17

      Okay.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson31:18

      The lesson there is you have information that you think is correct from your sensors. This was an observatory, a fi- a fine observatory, and you're gonna say, "This observatory says Neptune is misbehaving." But then you learn there was something wrong with the data. You throw it out. So, uh, so I'm just d- I'm trying to say this happens all the time in, in science. You have to be careful what you're analyzing before you declare that what the thing measured is true and then realign all your resources to address what you think is true-

   8. JRJoe Rogan31:56

      Hmm.

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson31:56

      ... when it might've just simply been a glitch or multiple glitches, or, or anything. And, and we do this all the time in science. So you were saying?

   10. JRJoe Rogan32:04

       Well, several things. One, when we're talking about planetoids and planets, the idea about Pluto is that Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt, right?

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:14

       Y- it's, it's the first and currently known largest member of the Kuiper Belt, and it makes sense. You know, we didn't even know the Kuiper Belt existed in 1930-

   12. JRJoe Rogan32:23

       Yeah.

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:24

       ... so for us, it's just the ninth planet b- uh, and it's the tiniest and the littlest, and it's got a weird orbit that crosses the orbit of other planets, and, and that's a little weird, but we'll, we'll grandfather it in. Okay, Pluto. And then wait a minute, you have brethren. In the 1990s, we discovered other objects out there with similar orbits to Pluto. So maybe Pluto is not the ninth planet, it's the first object in a new swath of real estate-

   14. JRJoe Rogan32:49

       Hmm.

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:49

       ... discovered in the outer solar system called the Kuiper Belt. That's where it stands right now.

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:54

       And this Kuiper Belt, there, there was some speculation. Now, I read this, uh, quite a while ago, so forgive me. But wasn't... there was some speculation that we are, we might be in some sort of a binary star system, and there might be a, like, a, a burnt-out star that's way, way, way outside of our solar system?

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson33:15

       Yeah, I mean, th-

   18. JRJoe Rogan33:15

       And that's causing the, the galactic shelf to drop off like this, this Kuiper Belt is responding to some other gravity that's way out there. Is that correct?

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson33:25

       So... (laughs) Okay. So, I-

   20. JRJoe Rogan33:26

       Did I garble all that up?

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson33:27

       Y- you, you mixed, like, three or four different scenarios.

   22. JRJoe Rogan33:29

       That's common for me. (laughs)

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson33:31

       (laughs) Um, uh, there was a while there where we looked at the extinction records of l- of, uh, species on Earth and found some periodicity to it. I forgot, was it every 20 million years or something? There was some period that repeated where the f- fossil record showed a dramatic drop or- or mild drop in the, in the species count from one layer to the next in the, in the geological sediment. And so if this is has, is, has a rhythm to it, there is nothing in the solar system that has a 20-year million rhythm. So someone suggested maybe the sun has a really eccentric... as in its orbit... uh, uh, uh, it's in a binary star system where there's another star that plunges in through the solar system, coming through the Kuiper Belt, and then goes back out-

   24. JRJoe Rogan34:25

       Hmm.

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson34:26

       ... in this dance with the sun. So we wouldn't have seen it in our, th- in our civilization 'cause this is... all right? But when it does that, it disrupts the Kuiper Belt gravitationally, and if you do that, you will send a rain of comets down, a higher-than-average rate of comets down into the inner solar system, and then you could render many life forms extinct on Earth-

   26. JRJoe Rogan34:47

       Hmm.

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson34:47

       ... just the way we lost the dinosaurs from an asteroid. So... and they, they even gave a name for it, they called it Nemesis. (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan34:54

       Wow.

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson34:55

       That was the Nemesis, um, double star system of the sun. But so we took a closer look at the data, turned out it had been filtered in a way that revealed rhythms that were not really there, and if it's orbital, the rhythms should be perfect 'cause Newton's law doesn't mess around, and th- they weren't exactly right. So that concept has evaporated, but it got people going for a while. It got a lot of press attention.

   30. JRJoe Rogan35:20

       And the part about the Kuiper Belt, about the galactic shelf, that there seems to be some sort of a drop-off?
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Mm. …

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:00

      photosynthesizes. Okay? So all living creatures on that planet consume sunlight from their home s- star. Okay. And so they say, "I wanna explore the galaxy." And so they build a spaceship, and they come to Earth, and what do they see? Humans and other animals killing to survive, inventing means of mass murder of fellow other life forms on their planet just to survive.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:37

      Mm.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:39

      They would consider us astonishingly, inexcusably, bewilderingly barbaric for having done so. And I don't think they would be interested in us.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:53

      I think if they really are using photosynthesis, they're plant-based creatures, they're probably gonna be so tired all the time, they're not gonna have the will to travel through the universe.

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:05

      (laughs) You are confusing the vegetarian with the plant life.

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:10

      Oh, it's different?

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:11

      Yeah. (laughs) That's right. You're confusing... (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:14

      Oh, well, the plants themselves, they don't-

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:15

      An o-

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:15

       ... go anywhere.

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:15

       Old man who wrestles elk and-

   12. JRJoe Rogan46:17

       But plants themselves-

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:18

       ... rips out its heart and bites from it. Is that what you did-

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:21

       Plants don't go anywhere.

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:21

       ... on that hunting trip?

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:22

       Plants don't go anywhere. They just sit. They just stay put.

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:25

       Oh, yeah. They would also say-

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:26

       Nothing that uses photosynthesis moves.

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:29

       But I'm talking about another planet.

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:31

       Oh, me too.

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:31

       Just imagine a planet that that's the case.

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:33

       I know. In, in my planet, they're all lazy.

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:35

       Okay. But except-

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:36

       (laughs)

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:36

       ... consider an encounter between you, your car, and an oak tree. You lose.

   26. JRJoe Rogan46:41

       Uh, yes.

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:42

       Okay?

   28. JRJoe Rogan46:42

       Well, the oak tree, again-

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:43

       And the oak tree produc- uh, uh, uh, uh, out-

   30. JRJoe Rogan46:44

       ... is still not moving.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Oh, that was a…

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:00

      think, I don't think I saw... Uh, no, I didn't see that. What I do know what came, w- what, uh, The Blob I thought was a-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:06

      Oh, that was a good one too.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:07

      ... was a very creative alien.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:09

      Oh.

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:10

      That one didn't have a mouth or-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:11

      Right.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:11

      ... legs or arms l- or teeth or eyes or, or a stomach or that... Can you... And it could go through the, the air conditioning ducts. (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:20

      Mm-hmm.

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:20

      It could ooze under the door. You couldn't avoid it. And what people forget about The Blob is that when it first landed, it was completely transparent.... after it ate its first victim, only then was it red-

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:33

       Oh.

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:33

       ... and was red for the whole rest of the movie.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:35

       Really?

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:35

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:36

       I, I don't even remember that movie much.

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:38

       Yeah, it had Steve McQueen, one of his first films.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:00:40

       Was it really?

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:40

       Yeah, Steve McQueen is in it.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:00:41

       Steve McQueen was in The Blob?

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:43

       Yes.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:00:43

       Wow.

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:45

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:00:46

       I, when I look at what we're doing with human beings, and, you know, th- the replacing people's knees, and replacing people's hips, and artificial this and artificial that, and then with CRISPR and genetic engineering, I think it's a matter of time before we are some sort of symbiotic thing. We're partially created by, you know, wha- whatever technology's available at the time, whether it's 100 years from now or 500 years from now.

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:15

       It's-

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:15

       Something that's gonna be superior, that's not gonna provide us with all the problems.

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:18

       It's, it's already happened-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:20

       Yeah.

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:20

       ... you just don't think about it that way.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:21

       With your phone and your glasses.

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:22

       No. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Y- no, even before that. We are symbiotic with chemistry.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:01:28

       Mm.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:18:32

   Your boy, Steven Spielberg,…

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:00

      literacy is a-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      Your boy, Steven Spielberg, got busted in a Ponzi scheme. Even intelligence people.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:04

      ... is the power to know when someone else is full of shit.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:08

      But you, you would, you'd-

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:08

      That is the power.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:09

      ... be dealing with something like Bernie Madoff.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:11

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:15:11

      Right?

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:12

      You'd look at his returns and say, "These don't match anyone else's returns. How is this fricking possible?"

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:15:16

       'Cause he's a G.

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:17

       Because you want to believe what he's doing.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:15:22

       Right. So-

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:22

       And that's not his... Is it his problem or is it your problem that you, you want that outcome so badly, that you are allowing yourself to be conned?

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:15:34

       Hmm.

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:35

       That's how conning works. So as a scientist, you can never be too invested in an outcome, because it warps your capacity to judge what is true and what is not.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:15:49

       Was Bernie Madoff's return substantially more impressive than anyone else who was doing it legitimately?

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:54

       From what I read, that wasn't the point. The point was... It's not that his returns were much higher than everybody else.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:15:59

       They were consistent.

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:00

       They were consistent.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:16:02

       Hmm.

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:02

       10%, 15% every year, whatever it was. And everyone else was fluctuating, sometimes getting negative, he was always in the positive.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:16:09

       Mm.

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:10

       Or it, when everyone else was negative, he had low positive.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:16:12

       Mm.

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:13

       So, of course, you'd bring your money to him. So he has some magic insight into the marketplace that no one else has? Well, do you know how s- the statistics of trading works? Do you know... You know, it's possible you can be lucky a few, uh, you know, a few years in a row, but to do it for 10, 20, whatever long he was at it?

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:16:30

       Right. But wouldn't it be easier if you just could clearly see deception? Like the idea behind any of these technologies is they're gonna improve the way human beings communicate with each other.

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:40

       Maybe he believed he was doing the right thing.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:16:43

       I don't think he did.

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:16:43

       You don't think he did?

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:16:44

       No, I don't think he did. I've heard interviews with him. He sounded like a pure sociopath.

Episode duration: 3:02:43