Joe Rogan Experience #1904 - Neil deGrasse Tyson

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drum music) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drum music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (energetic music)

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:12

      I don't wanna... Every one of my sentences to sound like Barry White.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      Is that what it sounds like-

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:16

      I- i- in-

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      ... in your ears?

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:17

      ... headphones, they do. It's like, "Oh hey, baby."

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:20

      (laughs)

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:20

      (laughs) I, I just can't. Whereas without the headphones I, I'm just regular.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      All right, ready?

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:25

       I'm ready.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       Good to see you.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:26

       Hey.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:27

       What's happening?

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:27

       Joe.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:28

       I'm excited to talk to you. I'm excited to talk to you about a bunch of things, but, uh, I've been paying attention to all the, uh, web telescope stuff.

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:35

       Oh my gosh.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:36

       Fascinating.

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:36

       It's all that.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       Could you please explain the difference in the ability of... The capabilities of this telescope versus what we've had previously?

   20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:45

       Yeah. So first of all, it's all that, and the excitement was in part because so much could have gone wrong with this thing, and the fact that nothing went wrong, we were ecstatic.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:58

       Could you explain the... How complicated it is-

   22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       ... to get something-

   24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:02

       Here-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:02

       ... like that.

   26. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:02

       ... yeah. Here's... So one of the great challenges that we face is how do you put a telescope in orbit that's bigger than the rocket that's gonna launch it? Is that even possible? And the Hubble Telescope, do you know what set the size of that 94-inch diameter mirror? That's the biggest mirror you could fit in the payload of the space shuttle. (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:25

       Oh.

   28. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:26

       That's what set the size of that telescope. Big as it was, we would've made it bigger if the space shuttle were bigger. Now, I don't know if you've seen the Hubble Telescope. There's a replica of it at the Air and Space Museum in, in-

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:37

       Let's take a... Let's look a photo of it.

   30. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:39

       Uh, and it'll just... Uh, it's there hanging from the ceiling. But if you wanna know how... It's about the size of a Greyhound bus. So the space shuttle deployed a Greyhound bus into orbit, which is the Hubble Space Telescope. And the, the value of the Hubble was that you could update it, w- by s... With servicing missions, and it was serviced many times. And as a result, it lived within our culture for three decades. There are people who came of age only ever knowing the majesty of the universe as delivered to you by the Hubble Telescope. 30 years worth of this. Think about it.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson15:00

      the... a factor of 10 for the things Hubble could see, but it's incalculable when it sees things that Hubble could have never seen-

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:08

      Mm-hmm.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson15:08

      ... 'cause Hubble was not tuned for the infrared. So then you can't even compare it.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:12

      Ah.

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson15:12

      It's a complete other window opened up to the universe for you.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:16

      So what has changed in terms of our understanding? The, the, the, Webb has been in the, in the million-mile orbit or however far a- away it is for how long now?

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson15:29

      Uh, well, it got there and then we did some engineering, so I, I guess a year, year and a half. Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:34

      And, and what has changed in our understanding?

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson15:37

      So that's, that's been people's first question, and what I wanna do is temper that to say something a little different. So yes, we expect James Webb to make great discoveries. We expect that. But the first order of business is hardly ever, "Let's discover something new today." It's, "Here's something that we have limited understanding of. Let's improve on that." And in so doing, we deepen our understanding of how things work in the universe. That's doesn't always involve overturning a previous idea or discovering something that nobody ordered. All right? That will happen. We fully expect that to happen, but we targeted parts of the sky initially because we know other telescopes have gone there before, and we're gonna say, "How can we further advance and deepen our understanding?" One thing it's gonna be able to do and it has already done, we have... do you know how many exoplanets there are? And I don't know how many of your audience was born after 1995. How many 27-year-olds and younger?

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:42

       Probably quite a few.

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:43

       Quite a few. Okay. So I will take this opportunity to knight them Generation Exoplanet. (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:52

       Ah. I see what you did there.

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:53

       1995, uh, was the first exoplanet discovered, a planet orbiting another star. And, uh, I'll never forget that because it was my first time on national television. Uh, I was freshly minted as director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and NBC sent a... uh, New York City, it's, it's the media news headquarters, right? Of all the networks. So NBC sent an action cam. They interviewed me 'cause of my title, not 'cause they knew or gave a crap who I was. Uh, my title was Director of the Planetarium. And so I gave my best professorial reply. I said, "Well, the Doppler shift, this is how it's discovered and what we do and how we measure it." And, and I was describing the fact that when you discover these planets, you don't actually see the planet. You see the effect of the planet's gravity on the host star. And so if you watch the host star, the host star like jiggles, okay, just a little bit in response to the planet going back and forth around it. So you're measuring the star. So I, I motioned that like with my hips, and that evening on the evening news-That's all they showed, was me jiggling my hips. (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan18:04

       (laughs)

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:04

       And I said, "Oh, my gosh. Okay, that's how you're gonna do this."

   16. JRJoe Rogan18:09

       (laughs)

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:09

       "Okay. You don't want me to be Professor Neil, you want me to be Soundbite Neil."

   18. JRJoe Rogan18:13

       Yeah.

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:14

       All right, so from then on, I practiced my soundbites.

   20. JRJoe Rogan18:17

       Mm.

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:17

       And a soundbite's like, three sentences.

   22. JRJoe Rogan18:20

       Oh, so you recognized this is the format now.

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:22

       Correct.

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:23

       Yeah.

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:24

       And I said, "I, I can't just give them my stump speech as a professor of astrophysics. I, it has to work in their medium." And I, and so I s- went home and stood in front of the mirror and had people just shout out things to me, anything in the universe, any idea, object, person, place, or thing, and I would come up with like three sentences that are-

   26. JRJoe Rogan18:44

       Wow.

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:44

       ... interesting, make you smile, and be tasty enough to wanna tell someone else, the anatomy of a soundbite. So try it.

   28. JRJoe Rogan18:51

       Mm.

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:51

       Say anything in the whole universe.

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:52

       How do we know how-
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   (laughs) Oh. That's hilarious.…

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:00

      smart, I'm its voice. (laughs) It's-

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:01

      (laughs) Oh. That's hilarious.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:03

      It's, it's cute. It's a cute, um-Uh, and so... But what was I talking about before-

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:09

      Big Bang, multiverses-

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:11

      Mm-mm.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:11

      ... different laws of physics.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:12

      Yeah, diff- slightly different laws of physics are a fascinating prospect.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:15

      Mm.

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:15

      How that they might vary and how you might wanna avoid it. Oh, but I was talking about if you wanna save animals, um, I, I never seen, I've never seen anyone say, "Save the leeches." Uh-

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:27

       No, no one cares about bugs.

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:29

       ... or, or s- save the ticks. In particular, parasites. Save the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes, you know, the biggest enemy of humans, as big an enemy as we are to each other through warfare and the history of civilization. The greatest enemy to human life has been the mosquito. Responsible for more than a billion human deaths in the history of civilization. And so, here we have mosquitoes, ticks, uh, tapeworms, uh, you know, go down the list and you can ask if you're really into animals and don't wanna kill them, if you heard that ticks were endangered, would you start a movement to protect ticks? Would, would you do that? And if you would, uh, more power to you, but I'm thinking you're not.

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:20

       Why would you if you know about Lyme disease?

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson31:23

       This is my point.

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:24

       Yeah. Or-

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson31:25

       This, this is my point. I mean, by the way, the Lyme virus wants to live too, right?

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:29

       Right.

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson31:29

       The- these, these are all creatures on God's green Earth, right?

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:32

       Mm-hmm.

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson31:33

       And so, so you end up being a species bigot.

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:36

       Mm.

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson31:37

       That, that's, uh, in the chapter Meatarians and Vegetarians, uh, there's the, the philosophies that are, that each of those camps will embrace. And the question is, how thoroughly thought through are those philosophies? Like, i- in one example, let's say you don't wanna kill animals and, but you... Uh, so you, you have a humane mouse trap in your basement, okay? Why not? You don't wanna snap the neck of the mouse. That's, that's cruel. You, and you, and you like animals, right? So you save the mouse. You gotta check on it every few days 'cause they dry out quickly if you trap it. So, and so what do you do when you catch it? What, what do they do?

   22. JRJoe Rogan32:19

       Release them.

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:19

       Release it back into the wild, guaranteeing the mouse gets eaten whole by an owl or pecked apart by all manner of woodland predators between nine and 18 months of its life. So the safest thing to do with your mouse is to leave it in your basement. (laughs) If that's, i- if you really care about animal life and the mouse managed to get into your basement, leave it there. It'll live up to six years-

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:48

       I-

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:48

       ... in your basement.

   26. JRJoe Rogan32:48

       I lived in Colorado for a while next to an ashram, and I was visiting the ashram and talking to the woman who runs it, and she sprayed Raid all over these ants. And I go, "What are you doing?" And she's like, "Well, it's unfortunate, but, you know, we, we have to address the fact that we have an infestation of insects." I'm like, "You just mass killed-

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson33:10

       (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan33:11

       ... all these living beings-

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson33:13

       Right. And by-

   30. JRJoe Rogan33:14

       ... with poison from the sky."
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Carl Sagan actually believed…

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:00

      so the question is, does it give you some insight with which, when you are not under the influence, gets you closer to an objective reality? That's an interesting question.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:08

      Carl Sagan actually believed that there was, uh... The way he described it, what was his description, the way he described it? But he said he believed that there are thoughts that were only available the way you're, when you were under the influence of marijuana.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:21

      That is certainly the case for any drug.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:23

      Yeah.

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:23

      Right? It's a, a-

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:24

      But he felt like those thoughts were beneficial.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:25

      Well, I can ask, are those thoughts more connected to reality than if you were not so influenced?

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:31

      But if you-

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:31

      So here's, I did an experiment with myself.

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:33

       Okay.

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:34

       Okay? When I first started writing, uh, in graduate school, I had a m- monthly column. Uh, I, I, uh, you know, there's that stereotype of Hemingway with a drink, you know, and you j- they're writing and that's their creative moment.

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:47

       Mm-hmm.

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson45:47

       I said... I, I don't really like hard liquor, but I like wine, so I said, "Let me get a bottle of wine and drink wine while I write." And I said, "Yeah, this is good, this is good." And I'm doing it, and then I did it without wine. This is an experiment I conducted on myself, and it was not as fun composing (laughs) without the influence of just some, you know, a smooth, sort of low-level-

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:13

       Mm-hmm.

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:13

       ... sort of wine buzz. Um, but I looked at the two, there was no contest. My completely sober writing was vastly better than what I was writing under the influence of s- several glasses of wine.

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:26

       But what kind of-

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:27

       Even though I believed it was really good.

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:29

       But hold on a second.

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:30

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:30

       What kind of writing are you talking about? If you're talking about fiction-

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:33

       No, no, prose.

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:34

       Okay.

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:34

       Prose. But I'd like-

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:35

       One of the greatest examples of fiction enhancing, b- being enhanced rather, by, under the influence of drugs and chemicals, is Stephen King. If you go and l- read Stephen King's early work versus the stuff after he got sober... And I'm a gigantic Stephen King fan. There's a-

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:52

       Was it just alcohol in his case, or were there other drugs?

   26. JRJoe Rogan46:54

       Cocaine.

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:54

       Oh, other drugs too.

   28. JRJoe Rogan46:55

       A lot of cocaine, a lot of alcohol.

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:56

       Uh-huh.

   30. JRJoe Rogan46:56

       Cigarettes, a lot of cigarettes.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Right, but- …

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:01

      um, because a tsunami... there's, there's no way to know that. A tsunami typically is, occurs from an earthquake way offshore.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:09

      Right, but-

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:09

      Okay? And it's a very low amplitude wave in deep water that continues to gain amplitude as the water gets shallower and shallower. So, that's why waves get bigger when they-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:22

      Yes.

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:22

      ... crash on the shores. So as it comes to the shore... So if you're just a, you're just an animal in the woods, um, if you're not on the shoreline, uh, there's no way to know that.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:32

      I think they were talking about animals on islands and animals that do live closer to the shore, and maybe there's an indication because the water pulls back before a tsunami.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:41

      Sure, I can, I can recognize that. But if you're just an animal somewhere in o- o- you know, uh-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:45

      Right.

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:46

      ... on shore...... away from the coast. I don't really see that. I need to see very good evidence for that, and not just someone's account.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:54

       Yeah, I don't know if they're talking about-

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:55

       This is my whole point.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:55

       ... Yeah.

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:56

       That people have accounts of all kinds of things.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:58

       Right.

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:58

       You know, um, in, in the... uh, there's a whole other chapter called Risk and Reward, all right? Here's something. Surely in your life, you have taken an average of numbers before.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:10

       Okay. Yeah, sure.

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:11

       Tell me yes. Lie to me even if it's not true. (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:01:13

       I have, yeah, definitely.

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:14

       Yeah, yeah. So, okay. Do you realize that the first time anyone ever did that, to realize that "Maybe there's some interesting result here," was after the invention of algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and calculus.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:01:34

       Really?

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:35

       Statistics is just something that the human brain... it, it's just not natural.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:01:42

       Mm.

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:42

       It is completely foreign to us. We, we don't know how to interpret simple random events because we wanna give meaning to them. You know the thing where you're, you're in a some other country in some other city and you meet someone like a childhood friend.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:58

       Yeah.

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:59

       And you say, "Small world!"

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:00

       Yeah.

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:02:01

       That's your first thought, right?

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:02:02

       Mm-hmm.

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:02:02

       Small world. Okay. Here's, here's how to cure that. Okay? Next time you're in a foreign city, go up to every single person you walk by and say, "Do I know you?" And they'll probably say no. I mean, know you personally. They'll know you 'cause you're a dude, but (laughs) they know you personally? No. Just keep doing this. And if they say, "No, I don't know you," then say, "Big world!" Just do that. You'll do that millions of times-

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:02:31

       Okay.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:20:50

   Yes. …

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:00

      off-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      Yes.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:00

      ... so it wouldn't roll over the cow and derail the thing.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:03

      Right, right.

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:03

      So, um, so what do you do? Do you accept the 100 deaths a year in your county, whatever... Human deaths.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:12

      Uh-huh.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:12

      No one's counting deer deaths here, right? Or, or do you find something that-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:15:16

      Get yourself a big-ass bumper.

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:16

      Oh, there you go. Big-ass bumper.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:15:18

       Deer killer bumpers, look at those suckers.

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:20

       I like the Ford F-250 right there.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:15:22

       That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm saying. Look at that one, uh, the Ford F-250, that red one, that's what I'm talking about.

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:26

       The problem is, if the-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:15:27

       Get yourself one of those.

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:27

       ... if the center of mass of the deer is above the level of that bumper-

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:15:32

       But it's not.

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:33

       Th- th- well, for elk it would be.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:15:34

       Deers don't-

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:34

       For moose it would be.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:15:36

       Uh...

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:36

       My wife grew up in Alaska.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:15:38

       No.

   23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:38

       Yes. Oh.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:15:39

       Yeah. No, not a 250. F-250?

   25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:41

       Uh-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:15:41

       Center of mass of an elk?

   27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:43

       Uh, uh, okay-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:15:44

       A moose.

   29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:44

       S- so moose. I'm sorry, moose.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:15:45

       A moose, yes.

Episode duration: 2:52:39