Discovering The Wonders Of Science - Neil deGrasse Tyson

1. 0:00 – 2:35

   Intro

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:00

      Are bacteria conscious? Well, they're really in control of your body and your digestive tract. There are more bacteria that live and work within one centimeter of your lower colon than the total number of humans who have ever been born. So, however high up you want to think of yourself, to the bacteria, you are a darkened vessel of anaerobic fecal matter. (air whooshing)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:23

      Neil deGrasse Tyson, welcome to the show.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:25

      Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:27

      We were discussing your overly baroque column background behind you before we got started. I've got a story about Sir Christopher Wren, famous English architect. During his extremely long career as England's most celebrated architect, Sir Christopher Wren was often told by his patrons to make impractical changes in his designs. Never once did he argue or offend. He had other ways of proving his point. In 1688, Wren designed a magnificent town hall for the city of Westminster. The mayor, however, was not satisfied. In fact, he was nervous. He told Wren that he was afraid the second floor was not secure and it could all come crashing down on his office on the first floor. He demanded that Wren add two stone columns for extra support. Wren, the consummate engineer, knew that these columns would s- d- s- serve no purpose and that the mayor's fears were baseless. But build them he did. The mayor was grateful. It was only years later that workmen on a scaffold saw that the columns stopped just short of the ceiling. They were dummies.

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:23

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson1:23

      Both, (laughs) both of them got what they wanted. The mayor got his columns and Wren actually didn't have to molest his, uh, original design.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:30

      Well, I think, uh, wasn't one of the big reasons he was catapulted to significance was that he was, um, an active and celebrated architect at the time of the London Fire?

   8. CWChris Williamson1:42

      I don't know.

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:43

      Is that-

   10. CWChris Williamson1:43

       But that would have been-

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:44

       Correct?

   12. CWChris Williamson1:44

       ... around about the right time, 1680s, yeah.

   13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:45

       Yeah, and I think s- And, and you gotta rebuild stuff, right, afterwards, and I, I... So I, I had some memory that he, he was around when, when people needed architects (laughs) , so...

   14. CWChris Williamson1:56

       I asked a good friend, a historian, about which British person from history did he wish had more exposure in the modern world, and he said Dick Whittington.

   15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson2:07

       (clicks tongue) Why do I know that name?

   16. CWChris Williamson2:09

       So Dick Whittington, the real character that was Dick Whittington, ended up being this rich guy. It was cats, Dick Whittington and his cat was the story that you might have heard. Um, but he ended up g- giving away almost all of his money. There's still buildings that are alive today and educational grants and all sorts of stuff that are downstream from this one guy and his cats.

   17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson2:29

       Oh, okay. Cool.

   18. CWChris Williamson2:30

       Yeah.

   19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson2:30

       I've heard the name. I don't re- remember why I know the name, but-

   20. CWChris Williamson2:33

       Some British history for you there.

   21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson2:34

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson2:34

       Uh, you've

2. 2:35 – 6:40

   Change the World By Being Effective

   1. CWChris Williamson2:35

      got a quote that says, "It's not good enough to be right, you also have to be effective." What does that mean?

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson2:40

      Yeah. Uh, that comes to me from my father, among a couple of other sort of wise, uh, epithets. Uh, that one, you know, if you, if you wanna change the world in some progressive, positive way, then you can go out and just scream at people. You can tell them they're all wrong or they're idiots, or you could just say whatever. But if you didn't invest any time and energy thinking about how to be effective with your messaging, you might as well just stay home. It, it's not good enough to be right. You have to be effective. And that's where the effort and energy and, and, and navigation of people's ways of thinking, uh, how to unravel habits that are deeply held, if those habits interfere with achieving some goal. So, uh, I've never forgotten that, and (clears throat) at every turn where I think, "You know, the world could be better off if it was a little more scientifically literate, so that we can become better shepherds of this awesome technology and, uh, that we wield." And people who take it for granted, people who reject it, people, um, there's a lot of sort of misunderstanding of it all. And so, again, you can't just declare it and then go home. You've got to sort of fight the good fight. And it's not always a fight. It's just, "Is there another way I can say this where you'll now understand what I'm trying to tell you? Because previously, you didn't. And is it your fault or is it my fault that you didn't understand me? I could just declare it to be your fault, and then, once again, I'm ineffective." (laughs) So, so, uh, I tweeted once, and it turned out to be way more controversial than I think it should have been. The tweet was, uh, "How often have we heard a teacher say, 'These students just don't wanna learn,' when really that teacher should be saying, 'Maybe I suck at my job.'" And that's coming from the same place of if you wanna b- You can't just be right. Yeah, maybe they don't wanna learn. Is it their fault or yours? You're the teacher. Why don't you make it interesting for them? Yeah, that takes extra work. You gotta know what's going on, what makes their brain ticks. What, what, what, what receptors exist within them or not. Figure that out. Navigate that. Yeah, then you'll be... That's, then you become a great teacher. We all have great teachers in our lives. All of us. And it's not every one of the teachers we've had. Most of them are not that. Are not effective and they're not influential and are not memorable. I've had teachers say, "How can I become a better teacher?" Be the teacher that you remembered having. That one in a hundred teacher. Be that teacher. And, yeah, maybe you'll be effective (laughs) .

   3. CWChris Williamson5:55

      Is it particularly ironic that a tweet that you, uh... Or having this particular idea about trying to be not just right but also effective resulted in a tweet-... about not being just right but also effective, which was then interpreted in a way which wasn't effective?

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson6:13

      (laughs) Well, that's why I was saying, it had, it had a little more noise that followed it than I had intended. I thought people would say, "Oh, I never thought about it that way." But no, "It's, have you ever taught... Sometimes you just..." People just get all an- well, it is, it is the cesspool that is social media. I get that. Uh, uh, but I try to always know what the reactions, the range of reactions will be. Otherwise, I'm, I'm miscommunicating at some level.

3. 6:40 – 11:00

   Neil’s Experience with Patrick Bet-David

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson6:40

   2. CWChris Williamson6:40

      Speaking of that, you recently had a conversation with Patrick Bet-David, and there is a clip from that that's done the rounds a little bit on the internet. I don't know how much attention you pay to what's going on. What's your post-mortem on that situation, if you had one?

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson6:56

      Um, well, when I'm asked to be on a, on, you know, on a podcast, I, I, it, it usually means people are interested in what I have to say about the world, and so I'm flattered. Uh, and I try to be effective. I try to be, um, um, potent for an audience. And not all audiences are, are the same. The mixtures are very different. And so I try to be aware of that to the extent that I can in the time available. Uh, I was on a four-city tour of Florida at the time, uh, this, I give a public talk in, in theaters. I was in Orlando and Jacksonville and, and Fort Lauderdale. And, uh, between two of those cities, 'cause w- I was driving between, among those cities, between two of them is his studio. And they, they mapped this out. They knew this. (laughs) There's no way I could say no. Say, "Well, you know, you were driving by here at this time, uh, between these two cities." I, I said, "Well, sure, sure." And, um, he's a big, fun, you know, socially, uh, aggressive, but not, not in a, an angry way, but just in a sort of curious way, so I, I was, I was just fine. But then he, he pivoted and th- made the whole big part of the conversation about vaccines, and I was intrigued by that because I'm an astrophysicist. And, but to the extent that I can shed light on people's confusions by alerting them of what science is and how and why it works, that I can do, um, and speak of the denial that many people are in on many frontiers of science that are moving along, and it's curious. I'm intrigued by why that happens, how people might cherry-pick certain information, but you know what's behind it mostly, I think? Is that, uh, I wrote about this in, in, in, recently, uh, in a whole chapter called Risk and Reward, where we are woe- we as a species, and there's plenty of evidence for this, are woefully, uh, ill-equipped to think statistically or probabilistically about the world. We're just awful at it at every turn. And I don't know in the UK, but in the United States, the subject of probability and statistics is not a fundamental feature of the math curriculum, and in, when you get to high school, you're aged 16, 17, 18, it might be an elective in some high schools, but it's otherwise not there. And so, and I joked, (laughs) my one conspiracy theory that I c- that... Are we all allowed one conspiracy theory? I have one, okay? Uh, the state lottery thrives on people betting (laughs) they're gonna win with odds that are, dare I say, astronomical against them winning. And you know who doesn't play the lottery typically are people who deeply understand probability and statistics (laughs) . They just don't, all right? And the... Well, if they don't, then the state doesn't raise money, and for most, many states, if not most, the tax revenue from the lottery goes to fund education. (laughs) So, it's in their interest to not put probability and statistics in the schools.

   4. CWChris Williamson10:34

      Okay, you think that the part of the US justification behind the scenes, this sweaty cabal of-

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson10:41

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson10:42

      ... hood- hooded figures, um, are purposefully keeping young kids statistically illiterate so that they can continue to make money from the state lottery?

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson10:52

      That, if you grant me that one conspiracy theory, yeah. (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson10:55

      Okay.

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson10:55

      That's all I'm saying. (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson10:56

       I will permit you to have that one. It's relatively harmless. So

4. 11:00 – 22:05

   Should Kids Study Maths Until They’re 18?

   1. CWChris Williamson11:00

      the, you may have missed this, Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister of the UK, said that children are going to have to learn maths until the age of 18 now-

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson11:09

      Nice.

   3. CWChris Williamson11:10

      ... as opposed to the age of 16.

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson11:13

      N- n- nice, and throw in, make those extra years count, and they'll be way more valuable to learn probability and statistics than calculus, I would say, or even advanced trigonometry in terms of just what's relevant to your brain wiring and decision-making that, that you have to go through. Uh, by the way, the, uh, in another story that I tell, the American Physical Society, which is the, the United States, uh, organization of, of professional physicists, uh, and academic and, and industrial physicists, the American Physical Society, they were scheduled to have their annual meeting in San Diego, and there was a snafu with the hotels, and they had to quickly readjust and re-, reorganize, and Las Vegas, the MGM Marina, wh- now the MGM, MGM Grand rose up and said, "We'll take you. We can house 4,000 physicists, however many, multiple thousands of physicists, like, on a dime." So they did.So, all the physicists went to Las Vegas and a week later, there was a news headline that said, "Physicists in town, lowest casino take ever." (laughs) And they've been invited to never come back, ever, like un- uninvited for any future, uh, visits. Uh, the point is, it's not that they somehow knew the odds and, and exploited them, it's that they knew that betting is not really what you should be doing with your money, statistically and probabilistically. As a physicist, uh, I'm an astrophysicist, but the same line of training, I've had some form of probability and statistics every year of my life since tenth grade through graduate school, some form. And, and so, it's just, it's not natural to think. So, point is, the reason why I'm going here to tell you that is we embrace passionate testimony above data in almost everything. It's why advertisers will show you, "This product worked for me," right? Rather than just show a bar chart. Like they could just show a bar chart and say how many it worked for, how many it didn't, and how well. Just show that. That would be all the data you need to decide. But no, that doesn't work. You have to see another human being passionately tell you that they use the product and it works for them, and that's a feature of the fact that we don't think statistically. And, and advertisers know this, and as I've implied, an entire industry exists because of that weakness, and it's casinos.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:56

      Well, in your books as well, you don't just write a list of compelling stats, right? You hang those stats around narratives. There's protagonists, there's stories, there's people, stuff happens, you get bought in. Like, we're just not that compelled... Some people are. For the most part, humans aren't that compelled just by stats.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson14:16

      Yeah. Yes, and, and I accept that. However, the, the narratives that I weave them into, they may be examples of the statistics that are a little more real, a little more emotional, uh, but I'm not requi- I'm not ex- I'm not trying to have you believe something that it is n- that is not statistically true because I went to the exception to that statistic and had that person testify in front of you. So, you heard that somebody died after they took a vaccine, okay? Uh, do you know how many people die every second who, w- with or without vaccine? (laughs) Just there's a death rate of people in the world, and if everyone is getting vaccinated, somebody's gonna die shortly after they get vaccinated, just the statistics of that, but that's not what rises up. What rises up is, "My uncle, cousin, whoever died, and I heard about some... There's a website that..." And then all of a sudden, the- these cases become much more real to people than the statistics of what it is they're trying to evaluate. And so, and I, I get it, we're human, and, uh, and but all I can do is, is offer the truth, the objectively established truth. That is, truths established by the methods and tools of science, uh, repeated as best as possible at any given moment where we know something. That's, science is exquisitely tuned to establish what is objectively true, uh, better than any other thing I've ever seen, any other system of inquiry when you think about it. It's why planes don't fall out of the sky. It's why, you know, we can send a space probe to collide with a moonlet of an asteroid and time its difference in its orbit. It's how we can put a tele- park a telescope a million miles from Earth and observe the early universe with it. It's how and why that works. What do you think we do? It's why your smartphone works, how you can find the shortest route to Grandma's house in this afternoon's traffic. Not a human being is involved in that decision. It's all technology and science and math. So, uh, maybe just science needs better PR, th- that's all.

   7. CWChris Williamson16:49

      Why do you think it is that that conversation generates such, uh, virulent response, so, uh, so passionate? And this is from both sides of the fence. This is from people that are both pro and anti whatever the strategy is that's being deployed in your country. Have you considered what it is that's caused people to have that level of, uh, vehementness?

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:15

      Um, yeah, I don't see it as pro and con. I see it as people who are objectively sharing truths about the world and those who reject it. So, it's not just, "Are you pro or are you con? Are you with me or against me?" That would be true in politics, right? There's always political divisiveness. If it's purely political, sure, I expect that. And in a good, healthy democracy, that gets debated daily. Uh, if not, then it should be. So, for example, you don't debate whether or not humans are warming the Earth. This is an established objective truth. What you do is you s- so that, if you, if you spend time debating that, you're, you're wasting taxpayers', uh, trust. What you should do is say, "Well, I'm conservative and you, you're liberal, and, uh, my solution is, no, you don't, uh, you don't tax, uh-"... the solar panels, or you do where you, you, you, you invest in the, in the industry. Do you, uh, put tariffs for, on overseas solar panel to build Iron... Thou- those have fascinating, um, s- political solutions that can land anywhere on the spectrum depending on how passionately people argue them, how well they defend them, a- and the like. And so I welcome political conversations to solve problems in a free democracy. But I will not equate those equations, um, those, sorry. I will not equate those conversations with conversations where you're sharing with someone the statistics of, uh, public health and you have people just choosing to reject them for whatever reasons they have.

   9. CWChris Williamson19:06

      I think a lot of those people who are, um, hesitant around the vaccine would be saying, "I have seen other statistics," and your contention would be those statistics are wrong, they're not framed in the right way. I don't think that, for the most part, it's right to characterize the people who are reticent around that stuff as rejecting stats. They've just been convinced by a different set of statistics.

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson19:31

       Okay, that's the charitable way to put it. I would say that, um, there, we have agencies whose sole purpose is to establish public health, um, uh, guidance. And if you look carefully, if you unpack what it is they do, it's hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of health professionals who are weighing in on what should be the next steps in the interest of the health and safety and security of society. If you now choose a different source, uh, I'm intrigued by that because you don't choose a different source when people if... How about the people who say, "Uh, Earth is flat." Are you just gonna say, "Yeah, I think Earth is flat 'cause they've convinced me"? Are you gonna say, "No, a plane can't fly so I'm not gonna fly. Planes are dangerous because I saw one crash 10 years ago t- so I'm gonna walk or I'm gonna take a car." By the way, in the United States, 40,000 people died in car accidents, pedestrians and drivers and passengers, in this past year. That's a, that's a higher than in recent decades. So, uh, the way we choose our risks that we would absorb or not is itself fascinating to me, but it shows that people first ar- Yeah, so yes, if you wanna... You're choosing statistics that are not mainstream, but I'll just put it that way. If it's not mainstream, we, we have this curious urge to embrace the claims of someone who says, "You've always thought this was true, but it's not. This is true."

   11. CWChris Williamson21:16

       There's something-

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:17

       They want you to believe this, but this is what's actually true.

   13. CWChris Williamson21:22

       There's definitely something alluring-

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:23

       I don't fully understand-

   15. CWChris Williamson21:24

       ... about, like, gated information.

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:25

       ... why that's so compelling to people.

   17. CWChris Williamson21:28

       I, I think I do.

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:29

       "Everyone's always done it this way and they're wrong." And you, and then you listen in and say, "Wow, tell me. Tell me the right way. Oh my gosh, they've all been wrong." Uh, at no time, uh, for those who are attracted by that kind of scenario are they saying to themself, "Is there a reason why everyone else has done it this way that is not being shared with me?" That, that question doesn't typically get asked. So, you know, I can't run around and keep... Uh, I mean, there's a limit to this that I can do and so, you know.

5. 22:05 – 28:12

   Society’s Need to Separate Opinion from Expertise

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson22:05

   2. CWChris Williamson22:05

      Is there a, a concern there as well, you mentioned before, "I'm an astrophysicist and I'm being asked questions to do with stuff that is outside of my domain of competence." Is that something that we should be more concerned about, about people kind of getting out over their skis in other domains? You know, we have experts, people that happen to be an expert in one domain getting asked about the Ukraine conflict or getting asked about what we should do about global warming and you think you, you, you don't have an expertise in this. You just happen to be good in one area of life and now people seem to think because you're good in one area that we should everything that you say and everything else sh- uh, would it be a better world if people said, "Actually, I don't know," or, "Actually, I don't have a take on that."

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson22:50

      Uh, it's not realistic, but, uh, and I think your question con- conflates two different points. So, one of them is people have opinions on things, sure. People have opinions on Ukraine and on Russia and on, on global policy. Yes, we elect officials to represent how we think our country should be run. That's not a matter of you can only comment unless you are an expert in international policy. If you're, if you are an expert, your comments might be more convincing because you've thought about it more deeply, but the whole point of a democracy is on issues where opinions matter the majority rules within some framework of a constitution and morality and the like. So, that's different. That's different from someone claiming they're an expert in something that does not have to do with opinions and they're not. So, in, from, in my case, I do not accept invitations to be on shows where the main point is for me to comment on a subject outside of my expertise. If they say, "We need you on a global warming show," get a climate scientist. "We need you on a vax show," get a, get a medical professional. I decline those interviews. You would never know it because in larger interviews that I'm on when the interviewer pivots to other topics such as we have kind of done here, um, that typically gets excerpted for YouTube.And it looks like I'm commenting on all of these things all the time. Um, so it really just reflects people's, uh, interest, a- and I respect that. The difference is, I'm sharing with you mainstream, uh, content. It's mainstream, a- in all t- cases. All right? So, it is the emergent consensus of professionals that I have read and I've understand- I might be able to explain it in another way than others couldn't because I'd spent a lot of time in that space. Um, but that's what I'm doing. So, for people to say, "Uh, you're wrong about the vaccines," or "I'm going to debate you." It's not about me. It's about what medical professionals are sharing that I am sharing with you. Okay? It's got nothing to do with me. Now, if... Uh, the difference would be if you said, "Um, which vaccine do you advise?" Or, "How do you de-" No, I would never do such a thing. Okay? Um, uh, uh, "Do you, do you advise against taking a vaccine?" All I can tell you are these numbers that I get from the CDC and other medical professionals and other public health professionals. That's what I get and that's what I'm sharing with you. But the fact that people come to me to want to attack me for saying that, I'm intrigued by this because they think I'm somehow have some, some separately researched agenda about the topic. That is not the case. And so... But it's true for all of it. All of it. Now, I have stronger opinions where it involves people who are sure they were abducted by UFOs. I, I can have that conversation because that's closer to my expertise and I can offer opinions about that that may be of interest to you, and they are deeply informed opinions.

   4. CWChris Williamson26:17

      Why do you think some people-

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson26:18

      But so, otherwise...

   6. CWChris Williamson26:20

      I wanna know why you think-

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson26:21

      What's that?

   8. CWChris Williamson26:21

      ... some people believe that they've been abducted by UFOs. What do you think is going on there?

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson26:26

      I, I, I, I... My point is not whether or not they've been abducted, but their eyewitness testimony in the court of science is insufficient to, uh, convince an authentic skeptic on it. We just need better data than your eyewitness testimony. I know in the court of law, "I need a witness!" You know? In the court of science, that is the last thing anyone will say, is, "I need a witness." (laughs) No, I need a chart recorder. I need the, the, the, the, the... You know? Uh, I need some other evidence that wasn't processed by your brain, and we know this. So, that's why. I just need better evidence, and what has been put forth doesn't satisfy that. So, if you've been abducted, here's what... Next time you're abducted, just snatch something off the shelf, an ashtray or whatever. I don't know. Do alien smoke? I don't know. (laughs) Snatch, sit, you know, some device and bring... And, and you have something, and take that to the... That'd be cool. Oh, yeah. Then we can have that conversation. But until then, I, I don't have an... It's, it's, it doesn't convince me enough to, to pursue it. So, I don't stop people from doing it. You wanna bag yourself an alien with a net? Go right ahead. I will not stop you. And you'll be the most famous person ever in the world if you capture one. And by the way, the, the janitor that works at Area 51, all the janitor has to do is take a snapshot (laughs) of the aliens stockpiled there. That janitor will lose his, the job overnight, and they'll be the most famous, richest janitor there ever was. You could livestream it. Okay? We have methods for that today. So...

6. 28:12 – 30:30

   Dealing with the Harsh Truths of the Universe

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson28:12

   2. CWChris Williamson28:12

      You spoke about, uh, risk and reward as two of the things. In your new book, you also talk about life and death. And given that the universe is at least part of your domain of competence, is it more terrifying or liberating to realize that the universe is pretty much indifferent to us as individuals, life on planet Earth, what we do, our motivations, and the way that our lives continue forward?

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson28:40

      Yeah, it depends on the individual because that's an emotional reaction to an objective fact. So, it is true. The universe could care less what's happening to you. In spite of all of our urges to the contrary, going far back, even pre-religion, okay? Religion kind of codifies that you mean something to the universe and the gods that matter to it. But even before then, there was... Or, or, there was... Or the sky knows about y- about you. Right? This is the, the seeds of astrology. It's, right? "I'm born at this time, and, and Mars and Venus and the Sun, they know about me, and they, and they, and they have n- information about my life." This urge that the universe, as vast as it is, somehow knows who you are and how you're living, who you're gonna sleep with, and what your chances of earning money will be. Uh, these are early signs of that need. It's a need. And it takes a lot of sort of brain... Uh, I don't know. What do you call it? Uh, adjustments to recognize that it is we alone who can or will save us from ourselves here on Earth and all the challenges and problems that we face. That is enlightening. Uh, to some, it's terrifying, but I'm saying, no, it's... It restores control over our fate to ourselves. So, now we have to become better shepherds of who and what we are and of the world that we sus- that sustains us in order to have any hope of the future that we...... uh, wished for, for civilization on Earth.

   4. CWChris Williamson30:29

      Do you think that

7. 30:30 – 37:03

   Is There Consciousness Elsewhere in the Universe?

   1. CWChris Williamson30:30

      we are the only corner of the universe that's got consciousness in it?

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson30:36

      So, as best as I have, as best as I can judge, um, consciousness remains poorly understood as a thing. And how do I know that? Because every year, somebody writes a book on it. The more books that are actively written on a subject, the more evidence that is that we don't understand it (laughs) . Because otherwise, you wouldn't have to keep writing books on it. I- it would be done. All right? Ask yourself, how many books are there on Newtonian gravity? There's like two books, and they're on the shelf, and they've been there for 200 years. All right? And so then people aren't still writing about this subject, so that tells me we have way farther to go before we have any deep understanding of consciousness. We don't, we're not in a good place to judge what other animals also have consciousness. All right?The, the religious arguments would say we're the only one, and then other arguments would say, well, quote, "The higher animals," which is itself a bias towards who and what we are relative to other animals. You know, are bacteria conscious? Well, they're really in control of your body, in your digestive track. There are more bacteria that live and work within one centimeter of your lower colon than the total number of humans who have ever been born. So however high up you want to think of yourself, to the bacteria, you are a darkened vessel of fecal matter, of an- of anaerobic fecal matter. And if you upset them, they're in charge of your life 'cause you tell you, they'll, you will know exactly where the toilet is and how many paces away if you upset them. So, they'll be sort of the higher animal. I'm not even... I'm not engaging that level of ranking. I will say, it would be hard to not imagine that other animals or other mammals are also, have a consciousness. Certainly, your cat, your dog. No one will deny them this. Horses with hor- people who ride horses. Um, all the animals for which we have somebody who claims to be a whisperer to them (laughs) . The horse whisperer, the cat whisperer, the dog whisperer, the rabbit whisperer, whatever. I would think those animals would have what we think of as consciousness. And so, consciousness is not rare on Earth. Earth is not rare. Earth as a, the fact that we're on a planet around a star, um, in a Goldilocks zone where the temperature is just right. The planet catalogs are growing exponentially. Uh, 27 years ago, we knew of no exoplanets, um, planets orbiting other stars. Now, the catalog is rising through 5,000. And so, these are places we might look for life, and we've only just begun that search. So, no, I'm not saying we're the only corner of the galaxy with consciousness. Th- there's no reason to think that, and there's every reason to think the opposite, especially given that we're made of the most common ingredients in the universe: hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen. The most abundant ingredi- ingredients in the universe and life happened to be opportunistic, taking what it was given and turning it into life when it had a source of heat, uh, heat energy, such as what we got from the sun. So, no. Man, we're looking.

   3. CWChris Williamson34:07

      I learned only a couple of weeks ago that Proxima Centauri and the exoplanet that seems to be in that system is similar sort of size to Earth, similar sort of distance from a star which is putting out similar sorts of amounts of energy, and it seems to be rocky as well. Like how ridiculously unlikely is it that within the, the closest other system to us happens to have a planet that looks good in terms of, uh, options for habitability?

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson34:43

      Well, there's a, there's a branch of probability called Bayesian statistics where you, you take a prior and you say... So you don't calculate the statistics from scratch. You say, "I already have some information. Does... Shouldn't that allow me to do the statistics standing in a different place than assuming nothing?" And so, the Bayesian statistics is of the hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy, if the nearest star system has a planet just like Earth, probably Earth-like planets are common if the nearest one has it. Right? That's kind of a Bayesian...

   5. CWChris Williamson35:25

      Uh, yes. So you're folding in the likelihood of us now being two for two in terms of us going out.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson35:32

      Yeah. Th- Yes. Or if we find life on Mars, not on the surface, unlikely, but beneath the surface where there's... we still think there's water present that was once on the surface and became a kind of permafrost. Mars is very cold and inhospitable in many places on its surface, but there might be forms of life where it's actually rather hospitable, right? I mean, we... You would die pretty quickly on the North Pole, um, but polar bears just hang out there, right? So (laughs) that, they doing the backstroke, okay? And they're mammals, by the way. So, so what we think of as hospitable could be different among life forms on Earth, especially from different life forms from planet to planet. Point is, if in the nearest star system we find a planet that looks like Earth, is rocky like Earth, is in the Goldilocks zone like Earth, then...It allows you to think that Earth-like planets may be much more common than we had ever imagined. And if we find life in our backyard, then w- w- we're again saying, starting there, we say, "Oh my god, it's our backyard." The nearest plan- planets to us, the moons of Jupiter, it's right there. Oh my gosh. That allows you to think maybe life is even more common than the most generous estimates we've ever given.

8. 37:03 – 46:00

   Should We Fear Living Microbes on Mars?

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson37:03

   2. CWChris Williamson37:03

      That would be terrifying. Are you familiar, I'm gonna guess that you will be, with the great filter hypothesis?

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson37:09

      Wait, what would be terrifying?

   4. CWChris Williamson37:10

      If we found microbe organisms on the surface of Mars, or underneath the surface of Mars.

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson37:18

      Why is that terrifying? It's just nature.

   6. CWChris Williamson37:20

      Because of the great filter, which is my sort of most recent obsession from Robin Hanson. So he says why is it that we can't see all of the aliens? One of the potentials that gets put forward is there is a particular line in the sand that civilizations tend to not get past. If you take that that might be one of the reasons that we haven't seen any other what seem to be intelligent life forms out there in the universe, if we find life that is near to us that is behind our level of development, what that suggests is that this great filter still lies ahead, which means that we are yet to get past it.

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson37:52

      Sure. Uh, I don't have a problem with that. That started, uh, a few decades ago when it was sugges- there are variants on this, this great filter. Uh, but it's ve- it invokes, um, fundamental but still very human philosophies on the existence of such a filter. So it would be, well, this is a variant on it, but I think it's, it's, it's a little more, uh, present. So it's, uh, you wanna go colonize planets, okay? So you go out and do that. Well, I wanna do that too. Well, I can't colonize your planet 'cause you, you... So I gotta find a different planet. So if you breed a civilization that is into colonizing planets and taking ownership of them, then everyone goes out to colonize planets. There will be a point where there aren't enough planets to be colonized, and now people wanna colonize each other's planets, creating a level of conflict, a kind of implosion of this exploration paradigm. And that, that implosion basically dismantles the entire exercise of what it is to colonize planets. And that is a planetary, a direct planetary analog to European colonization of the world up to and including the Second World War. All right? Uh, there is England. Uh, British Empire, the sun never sets on the British Empire. By the way, that sentence is identically equivalent to the sun never rises on the British Empire. (laughs) If it never sets, it also never rises, okay? Just let's be logically consistent about that. But, um, there's England, there's Portugal, there's Spain, there's France, and, and the Netherlands, and, and everybody's... And then at some point you all ended up fighting each other. Yes, you're fighting each other for control of New York, the, the Dutch and the, and the British and the Fre- and everybody's fighting and, and it's all gone practically now. Okay? And because there's nothing left to fight over. There's no major colonization efforts such as what occurred in the, in, in the 1600s, 17 and 1800s. So it's that, it's that analog extended to space. And that's an interesting analog. What it says is the urge to explore in this way is incompatible with being successful expressing your urge to explore. And, and another line that could be drawn, you can think of many of these, that the technologies are so awesome and so powerful that the civilization i- implodes within it. They destroy their environment, they blow themselves up, they... This was a big concern, of course, during the Cold War and persists as a concern in the modern landscape of geopolitics. So it could be that a t- a civilization becomes so advanced it has the power to render itself extinct. And that could be another great divide. Okay? So, uh, yeah, we can come up with all kinds of reasons there. Uh, I don't know if it's obvious to people that this question was first posed by, um, Enrico Fermi. It's called the Fermi Paradox. It's not just where are they, all right? There's more thought that went into it than just where are they. It's because we know how old the universe is and we know how long it would take to colonize a galaxy. So let's assume you don't have warp drives but you do manage to go, let's say, 10% the speed of light. All right? Is that too much to ask? (laughs) 10%. Like, give us 10% the speed of light. All right? So if you can do that, uh, uh, the Alpha Centauri system is four light years away. So 10% of that, that would take you 40 years to get there. All right. Now, it's a one-way trip as the European, um, explorers and colonists came to the New World. Those were one-way trips for them. All right. So then we understand a one-way trip. So they go there and then they pitch tent and then they develop space exploration and they move on to another planet, but they move on to two planets instead of just one.... and they colonize and they go to four, and then they go to eight, and then 16, and it's 50 years in between each one. If you add up the time and at the rate at which this spreads, and this is what Enrico Fermi did, it- it's what we call a back of the envelope calculation. Just something you do while you're sitting there, doesn't involve a computer. You realize that you can completely populate all planets in the galaxy in just a few million years. A few million years. 10 million years, tops. Earth has been around for four and a half billion, billion years. 10 million is a small fraction of four and a half billion. So, if there are other planets that were formed before Earth was, a billion years before Earth, two billion years, three billion years, we form seven, eight billion years after the universe formed. All kinds of stuff could've been happening in the universe before we got here. So, the question, "Where are they?" is legitimate in the sense that anyone who was gonna colonize would have colonized it all. That leads to the interesting question, maybe, maybe we are a colonial outpost and don't know it. (laughs) Okay? (laughs) I mean, so, it's fun, it's great food for science fiction storytelling, but I don't- I don't see anything terrifying about it. I don't think, you can't invest emotion in cosmic discovery. You can invest emotion in, "Wow, I'm learning something new today." Not, "Oh my gosh, what does this mean? Am I..." no. Just, just celebrate it.

   8. CWChris Williamson44:13

      Do you think that we're gonna have problems when it comes to astro politics from Earth?

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson44:18

      Yes, yes, yes. Let- let's start with the- the- the- the Outer Space Treaty, okay?

   10. CWChris Williamson44:26

       What's that?

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson44:26

       It's a much longer title and I always forget the full title. The Treaty on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space among ... (laughs) It's a big title, all right? It came out of the UN back in 1967, something like that. If you re- and there was a very turbulent time. We were in a hot war, the United States was in a hot war in Vietnam and a cold war with the Soviet Union and NATO and- and we had a civil rights movement, campus unrest. There was a turbulent time. And so if you read it, it's- it's very kumbaya. It's like, "In space, if, it'll only be peace in space, and if you're in trouble and you're in another country, I will help you in space." And it w- you read it, it's like, "Oh, it's so beautiful." It's so UN, okay? (laughs) United Nations, it's everything you'd want the United Nations to be and represent, and- and I- I was taken by it initially until I just got older and I got, I don't know, it's not so much cynical, I just became a realist. And I said, "Really? Really, what you're saying is if everybody goes into space, then we'll stop killing one another? But on Earth, you can't stop them from killing one another, but somehow space is gonna be different?" So my- my interpretation is, show me you can stop killing each other on Earth, then I'll believe you can make this work in space, and you haven't shown that to me yet. So I'm skeptical.

   12. CWChris Williamson45:59

       One of the things

9. 46:00 – 50:56

   The Value of Metals & Rock from Other Planets

   1. CWChris Williamson46:00

      that I realized when there was a- a passing asteroid that there was a potential project to go and maybe try and chip a little bit off, bring it back to Earth. It was gonna have, I don't know what it was, lithium or gold or something, it was gonna have some valuable repository. If you did that, it would completely wreck the market for that on Earth, because the entire economic system, the way that the Earth works, it's a closed system, right? We know how much difficulty there is and associated with doing this particular thing and it's within a- a set amount that the Earth has. It's a restricted supply, kind of like Bitcoin, I suppose.

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:34

      Yeah, but it- it's, uh, it wouldn't wreck it, it would change it.

   3. CWChris Williamson46:38

      Yes. Okay.

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:38

      I mean, you- you value judging and saying that would be bad.

   5. CWChris Williamson46:41

      No, cause havoc is what I meant.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson46:42

      I- I would say, no, let's just, let's talk about the consequences of it. Uh, nature has a way of pre-sifting ingredients on a periodic table of elements so that when it makes new planets, uh, it's hot and molten and the heavy things fall to the middle and the light things float to the top. When we think of rocks, we think of them as heavy, but Earth's crust is made of rock. The rock is the lightest thing on Earth and that's why it floated to the top. What's our core made out of? It's made out of iron and nickel and, you know, cadmium and, uh, all these heavy metals went to the center of the Earth. There's some veins that got trapped while, uh, that we now call them ores, that got trapped while the Earth was cooling, and so there are gold ores and, you know, yes. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't, we would have no access to any of those. Well, in a proto planet that started doing this, slam it with another proto planet, and these pieces break off. You have entire asteroids made of rock. Those are from the outer shells of these proto planets, and entire asteroids made of heavy ingredients such as metals, and those are asteroids made from the middle. There are fewer of those, but they're out there and we know where they are, and they have the greatest concentration of metals and rare earth elements and all these things that are otherwise rare or hard to get to on Earth. There they are, right there. Yes, if you lassoed one of these asteroids and brought it back to Earth, the marketplace in every one of the metals in that would be completely transformed. And yeah, gold would be, you know, it- it's at $10 an ounce or something, it would be really cheap or less. There are asteroids with more gold on it than has ever been mined in the his- mined or extracted in the history of the world.... on a single asteroid. So gold, by the way, is highly technologically useful. Highly. It's the most malleable substance, so you can take a little bit and flatten it out and make sheets. You can do... And so people's inventiveness, which previously was constrained because of how expensive it was, if gold is $10 an ounce instead of $800 an ounce, you could think of other things to do with it, opening up whole new marketplaces. Just think about that. Look how cheap computers are. Yeah, you got to drop $1000, but for what that thing does, oh my gosh, you would have needed a city block's worth of computers 40 years, 50 years ago to do that, and now it's sitting on your hip. When the price of computing dropped, we found more and more things to do with it. Did people worry about the collapse of the computer industry? No. They found other things to do undreamt of by that earlier generation. Among them is, let's build a computer that fits in your shirt pocket that talks to orbiting satellites put up there by the US military to find coordinates on Earth so that you can get the quickest distance to grandma's house in this afternoon's traffic. Oh my gosh. Did anyone imagine that? No. It's another application for something that is cheap. Cheap. It's so cheap you can't even charge for it, practically. I- I'm- I'm old enough, just to sound like Father Time here, um, when there's one computer on the campus, on the university campus, and you had an account and you would- you would write your software and you'd run it through the computer and you get the results, they would charge you. You'd get a bill for it running and it would be like, "Oh my gosh, I need a grant to pay for the bill to run my computer on this one mainframe in the center of campus." Uh, so, yeah, don't... Try to keep your emotion out of the consequences of things. They are just what they are. I don't- I don't want to tell you what to do with your emotions, but keep in mind that often the emotions are because things will change from what you're accustomed to, but that's not always bad.

10. 50:56 – 54:13

    Consequences of our Moon Disappearing

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson50:56

    2. CWChris Williamson50:57

       Speaking of things that might be bad, I read a book called Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, and the first line of that book, the moon explodes. How much havoc would be caused on Earth if the moon went away, if I could just (snaps fingers) snap my fingers and the moon left?

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson51:15

       Well, astrophysicists would delight in this because the moon wreaks havoc on the trans- on the, on the visibility of dim objects in the night sky, especially the phase of the moon as it's closest to full moon. Um, you know, the full moon is like six times brighter than the half moon. The- the- the laws of optics make the full moon m- much brighter than just the simple geometry of two halves. So it's a fascinating fact. So that completely... So we have what's called dark time and, and light time, and, and, and if you want to see something really deep in the universe, you have to apply for the coveted dark time when the moon is not up. So, we would be happy, first of all. Second, uh, the tides would drop in intensity to about a third of what they are, and we would just have solar tides instead of lunar tides, and, uh, what else would we have?Um, (clicks tongue) the, uh, you wouldn't have as- the- evenings wouldn't be as romantic. (laughs) The moon, okay? Uh, Islam would not have this symbol, the crescent moon and a star in the sky. Uh, the lunar calendar would have never have been invented, would be orphaned in place once you snap the moon out of existence. So people would have to switch over, probably, to the Gregorian calendar, wh- which is not moon-based. It's based on Earth seasons, and-

    4. CWChris Williamson52:39

       Does the moon, does the moon not do something, stabilize the rotation of the Earth as well?

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:44

       So, yes. So... Oh, you're talking about historically. So the moon, um, has... So Earth's, uh, the tip of Earth... Thanks for mentioning that. I almost forgot. The tip of Earth's, we're tipped on our axis about-

    6. CWChris Williamson52:56

       23 degrees?

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:58

       ... a little more, 23 and a half, somewhere around there.

    8. CWChris Williamson52:59

       Close enough.

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:00

       And, um, that, and we precess on our axis, like a top, whoever spins tops anymore, I don't know. You spin it and, and the top starts to wobble. While it's spinning, it's wobbling. We're wobbling in space. So that's, that's precession, okay? That period is 26,000 years. All right? So we've seen this in, in recorded history, uh, and we've measured it. Another thing it does, it bobs up and down, so while it's precessing, while we are spinning, and the bobbing up and down is a change in the angle of our tip relative to the sun, and the gravity of the moon has a way of stabilizing that because that would tip much more, um, wildly than it currently does. I forgot the numbers right now, just several degrees each way, but without the moon it would be much larger than that, and that would make for much more severe seasonal, um, temperature changes. And yeah, so civilization would have developed differently from how it has in, under that influence.

11. 54:13 – 57:19

    Why Seasons are so Different in Game of Thrones

    1. CWChris Williamson54:13

       I remember I read an article from someone who was trying to do an astrophysics analysis of why the seasons in Game of Thrones could be so difficult to predict.

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson54:24

       Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, the "Winter's coming, winter's coming," they say that for three years. "Winter's coming." (laughs) So you can ask... In fact, o- on one of my podcasts, uh, I, I think we addressed this. I, I interviewed, uh, George R.R. Martin for one of, on my Star Talk podcast, but I don't think that was the podcast where we talked about...... what planet this could be. So, what you do is you, you back, you, you, you, you back into the story, right? So, you say, "All right, how long does, uh, how long does it take to get to winter? How long, how many months or years is there not winter?" And then you, you configure a, a planet, moon, star system w- that is on an orbit ... There are other consequences because if the orbit i- gets close and far, then the size of the star and the sky has to get bigger and smaller. I don't remember them referencing the size of their sun. So yeah, it's, it's fun, uh, what we call not so much revisionist, but, um, it's the, the whole f- field of apologetics where you have something that is taken to be true and you do whatever you can to justify how and why that's the case. It's apologetics from the original ... Is it Latin? Meaning defender of ... They're, they're religious apologetics, for example, who defend their version of the Bible against people who say it's not true. So, it's, it's a fun exercise in the sci-fi world. They do that for, for Star Wars, um, uh, Han Solo said he, he did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, uh, boasting about the speed of his ship, and that's just wrong, okay?

    3. CWChris Williamson56:06

       What does he mean?

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson56:06

       You can't g- y- you can't give a time measure with a d- with a measure of length. A parsec is a measure of length. All right, 12 parsecs is about 40 light years and ... No. That's like saying, "Oh, uh, how tall, how tall are you?" "Um, (laughs) uh, uh, how tall are you?" "I am, uh, I'm ..." Uh, what's an example? "Uh, uh, how tall are you?" "I am 55 miles per hour." Okay? The, the, this is ... (laughs) okay? "How long did it take you to go?" "12 parsecs." This is not how this works. The units ha- matter, okay? "Um, what's y- what's your body temperature?" "Oh, it's, it's 43 cents," you know? No, it's not, all right? It's not any sense.

    5. CWChris Williamson56:55

       So, whoever was in the writing room at Lucasfilms that day ...

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson56:58

       So, there were people, there were people who took a sentence and worked hard to find a way to make that ... Rather than say, yeah, he, he fucked up. Rather than say that, uh, not he, but the writers, all right? They, they came up with some backdoor way to account for it, and it's like, okay, if that's how you wanna do it, I'll walk away now. (laughs)

    7. CWChris Williamson57:18

       Have you- (laughs) have you

12. 57:19 – 1:01:44

    The Habitable Worlds Observatory

    1. CWChris Williamson57:19

       read about this habitable, Habitable Worlds Observatory which has been proposed?

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson57:27

       Uh, there's something called the WASP Collaboration, which is a wide-area, uh, S, Wide-Area Search for Planets, which is ground-based. It's got dozens of countries participating, sharing their data, and they're finding planets. Um, I think they're targeting Earth-like planets. Uh, I don't know if that's the same thing, but it has the same-

    3. CWChris Williamson57:49

       I don't know. So, I, I read an article about it. "In sessions of the recent 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, NASA officials outlined their approach to developing what the agency now calls the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a 6.5-meter space telescope operating at ultraviolet visibility."

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson58:03

       Oh, no, it's a whole other thing. Oh, oh, my gosh. Yes. Oh, that would've just happened, because-

    5. CWChris Williamson58:07

       Literally this, this week, yes.

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson58:08

       ... American Astronomical Society, those are my people and we ... I wasn't there for that meeting, otherwise I could give you firsthand, uh, uh, retelling of this rather than the, the journalist's account. But, well, we just m- we meet, um, our biggest meeting is once a year in January. Uh, oh, that's great. I'm glad to hear that. Sure.

    7. CWChris Williamson58:26

       Uh, what is it? The budget projection, uh, for it, the ... It's 2035 to 2040 and '45 and you would need to increase NASA's astrophysics budget currently about 1.5 billion a year to 2.5 billion annually later in the 2020. You don't have enough money and if you don't get enough money, it's gonna take ages, and people were mad that it was gonna take ages, basically.

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson58:51

       Well, it's, um ... First, we are forward-thinkers in my field. The James Webb Space Telescope was on paper in proposals decades ago for what it would be and what it would do, and you spec it as best you can at the time, but technology changes and, and sci- we learn things in science. Certain things may be impossible, some things are easier than we thought. So, the ... you can make adjustments along the way, but, uh, the James Webb was on paper decades ago as was the Hubble Telescope, on paper decades before it was launched. And so, um ... So yeah, we are f- very forward-thinkers and the way you do it is you increment the budget and that money goes too. You don't spend it all at once 'cause you don't have it and you, you couldn't spend it because often, it involves technology developments. So, yeah, I mean, search for planets is a big industry now as you'd expect because we're looking for life.

    9. CWChris Williamson59:48

       That must be infuriating to do a project which is going to take so long that you know that the technology that you are going to design it with-

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson59:55

        Ah- (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson59:55

        ... will be way obsolete by the time that it comes to launch it.

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson59:59

        Yeah, so you do your best to forward project that based on how quickly things went obsolete before. So, with Hubble, because it was a serviceable telescope, they were able to swap out the ... was it Microsoft, uh ... (laughs)

    13. CWChris Williamson1:00:17

        XP or something.

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:18

        One of the early operating systems and the chip was a 286 chip. You know, it was, uh, o- once, you know ... Plus, Hubble was delayed in its launch because of the Challenger disaster, and that delay meant it was sitting there in mothballs. Not literally mothballs, but just sitting there getting old as technology and computing advanced and bandwidths and communication protocols and the like. So, when it launched, it was already old.In the first servicing mission which had to fix the optical problem, they were able to swap out a whole bunch of things and bring it up to date. So, yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:01:00

        So, you know-

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:00

        Yeah, it's a, it's a challenge. The, the one rule in astronomical research, or any scientific research is, you want the experiment to be done before you die.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:01:12

        (laughs) Okay. Right, so the person that's designing it might put a mortal limit on what's gonna go on.

    18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:20

        And the budget appropriately, correct. That's right. I like that, mortal limit. I like that. That's what we will call it. (laughs)

    19. CWChris Williamson1:01:28

        I suppose-

    20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:28

        One of the mortality factors of this project, right? Well, Louie's gonna die, the- and Suzy's gonna die, and yeah. So you give them other projects that can happen within their lifetime.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:01:38

        Quicker, right. Okay, you can go and get us a coffee or something.

    22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:41

        (laughs)

    23. CWChris Williamson1:01:41

        That would be capable. What are you working on

13. 1:01:44 – 1:05:34

    What Neil is Working On

    1. CWChris Williamson1:01:44

       next? What can people expect from you this year?

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:46

       Oh my gosh, yeah. I'm, uh, I have, (laughs) I have a book, the third book of my, uh, in the spirit of my podcast coming out, StarTalk, uh, it's the third book and it's called To Infinity and Beyond. Well, it's, it's not coming out until like December, so no, I don't need to distract people with it. But it's, it's a celebration of cosmic discovery but through the, through the, the StarTokian lens, which is pop culture and humor and... But you learn the fits and starts of science and how we went from A to B to C to beyond the alphabet where there are no letters to ascribe, uh, off to infinity. So, it's, it's a, it's a close up look at how we make discoveries and how we celebrate them, and how we lament the ones that fail. So, it's a candid look at how science works.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:02:37

       That's cool. That's-

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:02:38

       That's, that's, that's in the fall. So but, we're still editing that and that's, that's still happening. Otherwise, I just wanna go to the Bahamas 'cause I had a very, uh, very full year, uh, with the publication of, of, of the book. And... Oh, by the way, we were talking about, uh, the moon, if the moon weren't there. There's a whole chapter on, just called Earth and Moon, uh, just if you wanted to sit down and bask in what the moon is to us. And I'm glad we have a moon 'cause I will, I will repeat the oft-quoted, um, uh, what do you call it? It's not an epithet, the oft-quoted, um, saying in the spa- in the spacefaring industry that if God wanted us to explore space, he would have given us a moon. It sounds a little backwards but, yeah, we have a moon and we've explored space. If... Think about it. If we didn't have a moon to draw us as a pl- as a destination, would we have had a space program? I mean, I, I, I wonder this.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:03:42

       That's a really interesting question because the barrier to entry for space travel would be so high if the closest thing that we were going to was Mars.

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:03:51

       Correct, correct.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:03:52

       We still haven't done it.

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:03:52

       Venus is closer but we'd learned before then, I'd hope, that we would vaporize upon landing. So yes, Mars for sure. Yeah.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:00

       Wow. Yeah, that is very interesting. Uh, and Starry Messenger also relatively new, out now. People can go and get that.

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:04:06

        Yeah, yeah. In fact it's, uh, in the United States it's, at least for this last I checked, it's still on the bestseller list but it will surely get bumped 'cause it was hanging on at the bottom. It'll get bumped by your, your boy, um, Prince-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:04:21

        Prince Harry, spare.

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:04:22

        Prince. Prince.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:04:22

        Well, I mean if you, if, if you want to compete with Prince Harry, you're going to have to spend half a chapter talking about your penis, Neil. Um-

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:04:28

        (laughs) Oh, is that right? Okay.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:04:29

        It's a, a step that I don't know whether you've descended into that realm yet with your writing, but-

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:04:34

        Oh, I thought... I, I, I, you know, people were joking where he says he wants to go into private life and not be disturbed, um, but to make sure that happens, he goes on Oprah and then goes on (laughs) 60 Minutes and then publishes a book and then this, and now he can have his peace and quiet, right? So anyway, I'll make room... I have no hesitation making room for ex-royalty. Uh, that's how the, the book lists work. But I, I was delighted to be on the bestsellers at all with a science book. I mean, it's, it's not often that that happens. So...

    17. CWChris Williamson1:05:06

        Congratulations, mate. I'm happy for you.

    18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:07

        I broke through but United States had had some following, yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:05:09

        Well, look, Neil, I appreciate you, I appreciate your time and, uh, I'll see you next time. Thank you.

    20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:14

        Excellent, thanks for having me.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:05:15

        What's happening people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:05:34