October 5, 2023 • 44 mins
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a famed Astrophysicist and his new book, To Infinity and Beyond, is in stores now. He chats with Elvis and special cohost Gandhi about aliens, and our place in the universe.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm so excited for today's interview.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Neil Degrass Tyson, our favorite, a world renowned astrophysicist, joins
us on the podcast to talk about his new book,
To Infinity and Beyond, a journey of cosmic discovery, and
joining me on the podcast my best friend Gandhi, who's
been a huge fan of him for years. So let's
get weird. Let's talk aliens in space and the state
of the world. Coming up on an all new episode
(00:23):
of Thinking out Loud with Neil Degrass Tyson. You know,
usually I do with the podcast all by myself, but
today my best friend Gandhi insisted on being in the
room because we welcome Neil Degrass Tyson to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Hello, my first time on your podcast. I know you
don't call you know, right, I mean I'm around, you know.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Just listening to your voice it takes me back to
Cosmos because I used to listen to your voice all
the time.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
It was so soothing. Oh you know, I hope it's
not too soothing because I want you to still learn
whatever I'm talking about. No matter what you say, we
will learn. Okay, what a fantastic show that was. Well,
thank you yeah. I mean it's got the legacy of
Carl Sagan and co written by his widow Andrewian, and
so she's the secret sauce behind all of that, because
(01:10):
you can attach scientists to that kind of communication. But
then it would just be a documentary. And when you
think of Cosmos, you don't think documentary. It's something else. Right,
It's reaching you, it's fun, it's insightful, it's moving, it's emotional,
it's and so all of that. Andrewian is the secret
(01:32):
sauce that brought that to the science. And so she
was for all three Cosmoses. If that's the plural of cosmos.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
The title scientist? Is this a true story?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Gandhi?
Speaker 4 (01:41):
I believe it's a true story. I read recently that
it was actually coined for a woman because typically it
was a man of science and just one field, and
she was a master at multiples, so they wanted to
come up with a word for her. And William, I'm
going to get the name wrong. Somebody called her a
scientist and it's stuck.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Is this true? I have not heard that. Who is
the woman?
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Mary Howell?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (02:02):
And I probably got that wrong too, So let me
look that up. While you guys continue.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
As you can tell, we did a lot of research
before the you're looking it up now during the show,
I just said, there are other scientific professions that have
the same word format, so biologist, chemist, scientist, astrophysicist.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
So it doesn't sound heavily made up. It's in the
spirit of the otherists.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Mary Somerville coined by the philosopher William weewell Way.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Well, okay, what year was that, eighteen thirty four, So
you're suggesting that the word scientists didn't exist before then.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
That's what this said. Interesting I am suggesting that, But interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Because what they were called natural philosophers in the day.
Isaac Newton wasn't even called a physicist, it was a
natural philosopher. A lot of people thought he was just
out of his mind. Well two thirds of him was
out of his mind.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
But don't you need to be somewhat out of your
mind to be successful to what you do?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
I think? I say, I think the people out of
their mind are the ones that get all the media attention. Okay,
we'll take that. That doesn't mean people not out of
their mind don't also make important contributions.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
One of the reasons that we invited Neil here today
his new book, To Infinity and Beyond, a journey of
cosmic discovery.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
It's to Infinity and Beyond.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Oh my god, you feel that. It's like when Mom
used to sit on the washing machine. I never knew
why she was sitting there.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
What is she doing? This woman? Anyway, I want to
get into the book. I want to take you back
to well.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I want you to come with me back to middle
school in McKinney, Texas, where I grew up, getting on
the big yellow school bus and going to Dallas to
sit in this big round rooms dark and watching his
time in such rooms are never forgotten, and watching the
stars and the planets go by. Yes, And I remember
walking out of that room crying, and I really could
(03:53):
not explain to anyone why it was hitting me emotionally.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Going to a planetarium and is that where you Every
everyone remembers their first time in a planetarium. It was
the first think about it. Today you wouldn't say it
this way, but in the day, it was everyone's first
virtual reality experience. You go in the lights dim, the
stars come out, and you are transported psychologically, emotionally, and
(04:21):
is a journey through and among the stars. So a planetarium,
I don't take that lightly. People's first visit, oh man.
And then now I'm director of the Hayden Planetarium, which
is my first night sky as a kid growing up.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Really oh yeah, how many years ago?
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I was nine years old and my first visit it
was like, oh, that's an interesting shaped room. It's round
and there's this big bug looking thing in the middle.
What does that do? And the lights went out? And
at that point I have to say, the universe called me.
I had no say in the matter.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I can't tell you how many times I've been to
the Hayden Planetarium. I love it. Thanks for everything that
you do over there, because it's my favorite thing.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Have you ever been not on psychedelics?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah yeah. But in the day, see, some people their
first encounter with the planetarium was you know, Pink Floyd,
the late laser Floyd.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
That's how they entice people to commit, try to get there.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
There's a whole demographic that that's too cool for school, right,
Otherwise they would never Yeah, so yeah exactly, so you
bring them in with laser Floyd. But what happened was
I thought about this the moment lasers became impulse items
at the checkout line of Kmart. You would not pay
to see lasers in a in a sky show. You
(05:39):
just in a planetarium dome. Lasers are not the point
of intrigue that they once were. So I think that's
that's part of what made it go out of style.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So after that first visit to Hayden, did you, is
that when you got the bug?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And is that when your your journey began?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yes, my journey of cosm discovery.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
What was the first book you ever bought related to them?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
So I didn't buy books. I didn't know how to
do that, okay, but my mother, my parents, upon seeing
this interest, fed that interest. Okay, this was very different
from other One day I'll write a book on education
and explore all of this. But you have a lot
of wishful parents buying their kid a chemistry set even
if the kids had shown no interest in it, or
(06:24):
buying them a telescope, even though if they had, they
were like wishful. My parents never behaved that way. They didn't,
they were not. They just observed us, my sister, my
brother and me observed us, watched what our interests manifested
as they manifested and then fed that my brother. My
brother liked art, so wait, So on the weekends we
(06:44):
would go to all the various cultural offerings institutions of
the city. So one of them we went to the
Museum of Natural History, which has the Hayden Planetarium. I
was hooked. We went to art museums, Okay, many in
New York City. My brother got hooked. He went to
the High School of Music and Art and now he's
an art professor. And my sister, she became the sellout.
But that's fine. Okay, she's a corporate executive. But that's
(07:09):
what I mean by sellout. But the point is these
early exposures. My parents would then feed them, and so
they saw I was interested. So they would go to
bookstores and buy books from the remainder table. Did they
still have remainder tables? Do they still have bookstores? I
don't know. So and books for twenty five cents. I
(07:32):
would later learn that when a publisher over prints their
books and they and they got to make room in
the warehouse, they shake the tree, books fall out, they
put them on the table. By middle school. I am
certain because I visited friends homes, I had the largest
library at all of anyone, and all those books won
science and math and the universe because my mother just
(07:54):
bought anything they she saw and the whole library. I
had a whole shelves of library and it cost her
fifteen dollars. So I can't identify a first book, but
there was there was one book. It was I remember
it was published in nineteen seventy. It was just called Astronomy.
It was a big coffee table picture book that was
just beautiful. But then I was ready for more. I
(08:15):
went to math and then brain teasers and stuff to
just train the mind to go beyond just whatever other
forces that would have you go outside and play basketball.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So mom and dad were feeding this is this is
parenting one oh one. Yes, yes, my mom and dad
bought me an easy bake oven. O.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
There you gop.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
But in the long term it worked out for you
because you are a very very good cook.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Crime chef.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
You won't take credit for.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
It, but you are. Did you just call him a
borderline chef?
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Well, yeah, he won't claim chef because he says something
about it's going to make other chefs.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Mad, Okay, not me.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So when Gandhi were sitting down earlier to talk about
what we were going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
She said, well, I have things I need to bring up,
including you.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Actually all Neil at an event in Boston.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Yeah, I went to a lecture that you were having
in Boston five years ago.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Oh and that might have been in the wilbur Theater.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
It was, oh my god, it was wonderful. It was
actually in the in the sister theater of the Wilberth Theater. Okay, yeah,
which I cannot remember the name of it, so sad,
but it was amazing And.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Thank you because because I give about forty public talks
a year in cities across the country, typically in the theaters.
So many towns have the grand damn theater that used
to have the movies, but now they usually they get
renovated and now it's just you know, comedians will sometimes
Broadway comes through the traveling troupe, and so I give
(09:42):
a public talk and I will never grow accustomed to
the fact that thousands of people show up just to
hear an astro physicist talk for two hours.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Hell yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
The yeah, yeah, yeah, that was not just that. Yeah,
that was like a hell so thank you for coming.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
No, it was great and it was so informative and
it I had questions, but we weren't allowed to ask
me questions at the end. So I've been saving this
in my brain for five years.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Why it may it may well, it's a it's a butt,
But I saw you.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Everybody's got a big butt, said pee wee Herman. Rest
in peace, too soon, too soon?
Speaker 4 (10:17):
Yeah, okay, So in that lecture, I'm gonna obviously paraphrase,
you said something to the effect of you don't believe
that any of the alien things at that time that
people were talking about were necessarily real and there wasn't
a ton of proof.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah, I wouldn't have said I don't believe. I would
have said I'm not convinced by what they put forth
as evidence.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Okay, Yeah, that's different exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Because belief is you know, people have beliefs and they
don't require evidence, right right, the hard evidence. So it's
not about belief, it's about you want me to think
this is true? Do you have evidence enough to me?
Speaker 4 (10:50):
Which I have another question about belief in a minute.
But okay, so you said there wasn't any evidence, You
didn't inficientence, insufficient evidence. So you said it was based
on the act that maybe if there was another form
of life or some type of intelligent being or beings,
they probably would not crash something into our planet.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
So far, they have all these crashed aliens, right, I
don't want to meet them. They can't navigate plus plus
be wait wait, show me the ones that don't crash.
But but but apart from that, like, really, you're going
to have a flying saucer or whatever the hell your
ship is. You're way smarter than we are. You're going
(11:30):
to cross the galaxy and accidentally crash on Earth.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Really, right, So that's where my question comes.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
You want to you want me to accept that premise? Well,
here where she's going?
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Okay, so pretty much. The next thing that you talked
about was Cassini And we sent this thing out to
Saturn to explore the rings go back and forth, and
then it used all of its energy and we purposely
crashed it into Saturday.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Yes we did.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
So why cant that both work both ways?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Oh? If they had actual aliens on board, I don't
see why they would purposely crash it.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Well, if they're so smart that they can as soon
as it crashes, they extract them. We don't know anything
about it. They take all the technology, just check.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
It was another dimension and then they disappeared and then
reappeared over there. Could that happen? This was going somewhere
for a second. We don't know.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
We have no idea. But at this point, with all
of these congressional hearings and everything that's happening, here's it.
How do you feel?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
You want to be open minded? For sure, but you
don't want to be so open minded that your brains
spill out.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I can't help that, preventing you losing.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
The capacity to evaluate the integrity of your thoughts.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Well, let's go to the recent congressional hearings. Did you
did you watch?
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Did you read that? Did you what?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Were you just just bad? What's my takeaway? Broad stroke
take away? My takeaway is, oh my gosh, Republicans and
Democrats are together.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Let me right back. Look, we had AOC right on
the same a platform as the staunch Republicans, right, and
they're all just sharing the time quizzing someone about aliens.
So I thought, that's the ticket. We need to be
invaded by aliens and then all the Democrats and Republicans
(13:16):
will come together. But that's my takeaway.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Most of them are aliens. I think, But did you walk.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Away with anything in your mind or heart or soul thinking, Okay,
here's something we need to evaluate. Did they give you
any information that you did not already believe.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
To be true. No, we should always be evaluating everything, right, Okay,
that's what curiosity is about. But if you have by
the way, NASA has been looking for aliens, and my field,
people in my field been looking for aliens for decades, okay,
at least sixty years. We've actually sent signals out. They're
still traveling to their destination. But just to show you,
(13:52):
it's not like we are resistant to their being aliens.
So we have someone in particular, a person testifying saying,
I paraphrase, they just aliens in the closet, and he
doesn't want anyone to see it. And even members of
Congress who allocate funds for the branch of the government
that he serves, apparently they haven't seen it either, even
though they had security clearance. So here's my point. If
(14:15):
you have an alien in the closet that no one
can see, you're the young one who knows is there,
and you're not going to show it to anyone. From
the point of view as a scientist. That's the same
thing as having no alien in the closet. I see,
I get that right. It's there's no difference. So when
we came back from the Moon with moon rocks, we
shared the moon rocks with the world, with the scientists
(14:37):
of the world, because that's what you do when you
discover something. But people are afraid of moon rocks.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
People, people, a lot of people are afraid of these things,
creepy crawls.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
How can you be if he's got it in the closet,
I mean, how scary is it? Could it be? It's
not my right. Then he said some people were alien injured.
That I'd never heard that phrase alien injured. But they
didn't call nine one. They didn't take a picture of
the alien, which of course they could have with a
high resolution color photo or video which everyone has attached
(15:10):
to their hips, which can take way better photos than
those images that the Navy took with the fuzzy tic
TAC and the monochromatic screen. So I just need better evidence.
I'm not asking for much, and we have very up
So NASA will likely develop an app where if you
see something weird in the sky, you take it with
(15:30):
your smartphone and then send it to this clearing house
and you send the metadata, so has you know what
angle in the sky, what coordinate on Earth, and it'll
have all this information and we can coordinate it. There
might be some things to discover. There might even be
aliens to discover. Maybe some of these things people are
seeing are aliens, but what they're bringing forth as evidence
(15:54):
will not convince the skeptic.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Going back to something you said earlier, is shooting signals
out into outer space?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Is that a good idea?
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, in retrospect, I want to rethink that because actually
we're giving okay, here it is. It's worse than that.
Ever since the nineteen thirties, where we figured out how
to communicate using radio waves, there are frequencies of radio
waves that don't get trapped in our atmosphere that escape. Okay,
(16:21):
you came from terrestrial radio, didn't you. FM radio goes
in straight lines. Okay, no one cares about this anymore,
but it's a little fact. Straight lines from the broadcast antenna,
which means if you are beyond the horizon of that signal,
you cannot receive that FM channel.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
This is why our ratings are awful in our space.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Whereas AM has a frequency of radio waves that reflects
off of our IONO sphere. This is a charged layer
in our atmosphere that can reflect radio waves. So AM
signals can go up and come back down and go
beyond the curvature of the Earth, which is why you
can get AM stations from hundreds of miles away.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
So we've been sending out waves, whether we like saw.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
FM waves have been escaping Earth for seventy years, and
TV waves escape the Earth as well. That's why you
can't get TV over the horizon in the old days
when you had rabbit or antennas. I'm dating myself here,
so but it matters because that's the origin of our
radio bubble. A radio bubble is right now eighty light
(17:29):
years in radius, expanding at the speed of light, and
it has washed over I forgot the last count. Certainly
dozens of exoplanets that we've discovered, planets orbiting other stars.
So if there's life forms intelligent that know how to
decode our radio signals, they will know everything about us,
(17:53):
starting with the earliest TV broadcast. They'll learn how humans get,
men and women treat each other, and I love Lucy.
They'll see what our jokes are like, and howdy doody.
That was my example. I love Lucy, okay, or the
Honeymooners right bang zoom to the Moon Alice, back when
that was a joke. Okay, it's unthinkable that anyone would
(18:15):
write that today. But that's what the aliens will first see.
That'll be their exposure to our culture, and so they'll
know all about us and they'll triangulate right back on
Earth's let's move away from aliens sort of. I know that.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Of late, we've had more news about scientists discovering several
what they exoplanets that have Earth like characteristics, like the
rocky composition an.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Ocean, right, I mean you were just reading the story
the other day.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Yeah, not long ago they found a planet that they
said was very earth like I think Ti seven three three. Yeah,
b was there a be on there something like that.
But that doesn't necessarily mean it's happitable. But what does
that mean?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah? So, so we're very bias, but understandably so about
how we look for life. What we do when we
look like we look for life as we know it,
and life as we know it on Earth thrives in
liquid water. Even the dead sea has life in it.
But the fact that anybody called it dead meant they
didn't know about microscopes. I hadn't been invented yet, all right,
(19:20):
So there's no macroscopic fishes, but there's microscopic life. There's
life anywhere we see, even in hot vents in the
bottom of the ocean. So we say, and NASA's mantra is,
follow the water. If you find water out there, liquid water.
So we're gonna find liquid water on a planet around
a star. Not too close, the heat will evaporate the water,
and I'll make you know. And then you don't have
(19:41):
liquid if it's not too far away, it'll freeze. Can't
have life using ice. So there's a zone, and it's
called the habitable zone. But early on I said that
has way too many syllables. I just called it the
Goldilock zone, which made way more sense to me. And
that's that's pretty much what everybody calls it, the Goldilocks.
It's just right. And so if you find a planet
(20:03):
earth size just right, then it can sustain liquid water.
Doesn't have to, but it can. But that result that
you found that you were reporting on is another level.
It's all right, So what if it might have liquid order,
how you going to know if there's life? We can't
zoom in the Telescope's not that good, all right, So
(20:23):
you can't even see life from the moon on Earth.
You know, you're not gonna see people walking around waving
to you to go across, you know, to another star system. No,
So here's what we do. It's very clever. We wait
for the planet to move in front of the host
star in its orbit, and then we use the James
web Space telescope to analyze the starlight passing through the
(20:43):
atmosphere to us, and the gas in that atmosphere leaves
a fingerprint on that light. And so we found methane
in the atmosphere. We found carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Methane is an ingredient. Is you can get it by
non biological causes. You can definitely get it by biological causes, right, Okay,
(21:10):
I was going to like work my way up to that.
But methane such as what the gases you would find
in the lower intestines of farm animals. So yeah, so
there are anaerobic life forms release methane as a result
of there so deep in your in their intestines. There's
(21:33):
no oxygen, so but there's still life there. So life
in the absence of oxygen gives off methane, which, by
the way, I don't know if you ever tested this
at camp, it actually is flammable, it is. I learned
so much at camp. It's a camp thing, right. I
don't know if the girls did it, but the boys
were definitely testing it.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
I don't remember a lot of that.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Well today is young, right, so so it's a way.
So these are biomarkers that allow us to explore the
possibility of life's influence on the atmosphere without actually seeing
if they're cities or plant life or anything, which we
wouldn't be able to. By the way, the book is
(22:13):
is precisely that journey. Talk about it. Well, when you
think about it, you go back in time, pick how
many centuries. It won't matter. If you're standing here on
Earth and look up and you see the moon and say,
how would I get to the moon? Think about that?
Can you run? Can you jump? Do you climb a
mountain and jump again? Like? What do you do? You
(22:35):
had to understand air first, because you have to ascend
into the air. Then is air go all the way
to the moon. Then you had to figure out well
hot air rises. This was not clearly known. We all
know it today, but people have to like figure that out.
And you could trap the hot air in a balloon
and a vessel, call it a balloon, and then get
in a gondola and then ascend. Why not, that's got
(22:59):
to be better than it. Or with his wax wings
that melted. You know, people gave up after that, and
I'm saying, no, you say, next time I try this,
I'm not going to make wings out of wax. We learned. Okay,
you can learn from other people's mistakes, all right, just
don't say let's give up. So I'm thankful that in
(23:20):
our species there's a subset who remain curious even in
the face of failure. And we call them scientists and engineers,
people who want to solve problems. By the way, I
think the whole population splits into those two. Even in
the workplace, surely you've given a task to someone new
and they say, this was not on my resume. This
(23:40):
is I'm not trained for this. You give it to
someone else. See why I've never seen this before. Great,
let me try to solve it. That's a whole other
kind of person, right, and you know that you've seen
these people and that's you. Oh yeah. If there's something
I don't understand that, you're not going to see me
for two days until I come back with some insight
into it, because that's that's where the excite it is.
When I was the nine year old kid in the planetarium,
(24:02):
the immensity of the universe, it's not how much we
knew that attracted me. It's how much we were yet
to discover. That is the voice of the universe calling
to me.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
See, this isn't This isn't ten year old Neil talking
to us. Now, this is a who's been who's been
learning NonStop, I mean the way the NonStop.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I can't tell you how important that is. Many people
graduate high school, if that's your terminal degree or college,
and what do they do. They run down the steturday
school's out and they throw their books into the air.
There's even a rock anthem on this. Schools out for summer. Yeah,
schools out for summer, Schools out forever. Okay, Now who
(24:45):
was that that was?
Speaker 1 (24:47):
You know then, Casey in the Sunshine.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Totally not Casey in the Sunshine band. But but have
that anthem celebrates not learning? Think about that? Okay? Is
this how you are so.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Excellent at explaining things that most of us don't understand
and putting in a language we do understand it because
you used to be the guy who didn't know everything,
and now you know a lot.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
I do.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
I know why? Sure, But it's not that I know.
It's not it's a magic thing. It's that. How is
it that you can be glad that school is over?
Your only job was to learn, Yet you're looking at
the clock waiting for the school bell. You can't wait
till May or June comes around, So school's over? Can't
(25:38):
wait for summer to come? What is so so? And
then I realized I can't blame the students. I can't.
It's Alex Cooper saying that song, right. I can't blame
I can't blame the students. I blame the school. The
school shouldn't be about how much it can cram into
your empty mind. It should be about stimulating your curiosity
(26:01):
so you have unlimited capacity to learn even beyond your
years in school. You don't want to ossify in place
adults that can't see change around them, they're stuck in
whatever they learned about the world the day they graduated,
and that became their worldview ever more. All I'm saying is,
(26:24):
if you become a lifelong learner, you will learn way
more in your life than you ever were taught in school.
Imagine how different the world would be. And so what
we do in this book. I have a co author,
Lindsay Walker, who's a nine year senior producer of the
Stark Talk. Oh it's a Star Talk collaboration with National
(26:46):
Geographic Book. By the way, the book is just beautiful
because it is because that's because that's how nat Gio roles.
I just want to say, that's how they Have you
ever see an ugly Nagio book? No, no, everything that
Geo does is all glossy. In all, it's a beautiful,
beautiful book. So it's a realizing that there fits and
(27:07):
starts in our attempt to understand how to make a discovery.
This book is a celebration of the human spirit. It's
a journey of the mind, body and soul to ascend
Earth into the air, into space, into the planets, the galaxy,
the universe itself and beyond and so so yeah, when
(27:32):
you're a lifelong learner. Everything that you don't know becomes
the source of your next round of curiosity.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
You know, what I want you to do is parallel
the Book of Course to Infinity and Beyond, a journey
of cosmic discovery to everyday life walking down the street.
I mean to me, it's about learning, it's awareness like that,
Why do in others?
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Why do we need to read that? You don't need
to I will not tell anybody, but I will never
tell people to do anything. I'm not even going to
tell you to read the book. Suggest why. I can
tell you how different you will be if you did
read it, and then you choose whether you're interested in
that bit of enlightenment that it will bring. Okay, So
(28:21):
the book has three strands of DNA in it, the
DNA of my podcast Start Talk. I'm sorry, you're not
the only podcast on the block. Just thought i'd tell
you that. So the Stark Talk is the podcast, and
we blend it's a tapestry really of science, pop culture
(28:44):
and humor. And what we learned is that when we
present science that way, people come back for more. And
that's that Then as an educator, that's a good thing.
Let me do more of that, and then you get
more of that. And part of what makes it work
is everybody has a common pop culture scaffo that you
carry with you. That's the definition of pop culture. I
don't have to tell you who Beyonce is, or what
(29:06):
football is, or who the Pope is, or who Trump is,
or what you know or there's some hit movie. I
don't have to re explain all that. I know. You
walk into the room that way, and I study that
and I say, oh, here's a place when I can
attach some science to that scaffold. And I attach it
and it fits perfectly, and it fits into your world
(29:31):
in such a way that you will never forget it
because I made it relevant to what you already care about.
I'm not starting from scratch, and so that's the value
of this. So let's walk down this. I'll tell you
a couple of things. All right, you're a professional in
this space. All right? You have doors that outside the door,
it says on the air, okay, back when it was broadcast,
you're broadcasting radio waves. I just told you that radio
(29:54):
waves travel through the vacuum of space out to it.
Right now, it's eighty light years out. Radio waves don't
need air, So on the air is a completely meaningless statement. Yeah,
so it should say on space. That's what it should say.
Next time you visit, that will be changed. You know
(30:16):
what needs air is sound waves need something to vibrate.
But your voice was not getting to your listeners by
the vibration of air from your studio to their car
or whatever they brought to the beach. No, it was
first sent electronically, then broadcast broad cast with radio waves.
(30:40):
And so yeah, so that's a little thing. Now. I
bet you will never forget that in your whole life,
because it's attached to your livelihood. And that's what you
do with the chapters in this book. Yes, oh yes,
plus other things we talk about superheroes where they're by
the way, all relates to this arc of discovery right
where there's a it's it's not a total off ramp,
(31:01):
but it's it's scenery. Right. As we go by a topic,
we so just one what's that mantra from top gun?
I feel the need for speed? Okay, they don't really
mean that. It's false.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
What do they mean?
Speaker 3 (31:20):
They don't even know that they don't mean it. That's okay, okay,
So please plain yourself, explain, I can explain. So Earth
is going eighteen miles per second around the Sun. Is
that not fast enough for you? Okay, okay, The Sun
and all the planets are moving around the center of
(31:41):
the galaxy like three hundred. I forgot that. Three hundred
miles one hundred, three hundred cols two hundred doing the
man three? Sorry, carry the two one hundred and fifty
miles per second. I gotta double check that number. But
on that side, miles per second around the center of
(32:03):
the galaxy. We're rotating on Earth here where we're recording
this in New York City, we're moving eight hundred miles
an hour due east. You say you feel the need
for speed, you already have it. We have airplanes that
fly five hundred and fifty miles an hour in the air.
That speed way faster than any automobile in a car race.
(32:28):
So what do they mean? They don't know, they don't
it's not speed they want. They want acceleration. Accelerations, a
change in your speed.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
That doesn't rhyme with anything.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Well, I tried, I tried, Uh, what rhymes with propulsion?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
I have to necessitate to accelerate. I mean, yeah, maybe
maybe that cha yeah maybe yeah, so yeah, it doesn't rhymes,
and eating these connections is what this book is. Yes, yes, yeah.
So you talk to any fighter pilot, they don't talk
about how fast they go. They talk about the barrel
rolls they do. That These are acceleration exceleracies also a
(33:04):
change in the direction you're going. They do, the bank turn,
the five G turn. Those are all accelerations, every bit
of it. If they're just cruising at six hundred miles
an hour, that's not the speed, but nothing at all,
I promise.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
You before you leave, I know Gandhi wanted to talk
to you about beliefs.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yes, so please please.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
So Obviously, with a very scientific mind, you need proof
of things to consider them. Fact makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Well, to consider them objectively true. Objective would means we
can all agree that that's what's happening, and that's what
the tools of methods and tools of science are exquisitely
designed to establish. Right.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
Do you have blind faith or just faith in anything
that you can't see, can't prove, can't quantify with any
type of evidence.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
I'm so not really So what I mean by that
is there are things that we know exist even if
science isn't there yet. You know, we feel love, okay,
can science prove that you're in love? Well, not now,
but I can imagine experiments in the future where we
could where where you look at the neurosynapses of the
(34:21):
brain and you see a loved one, and then some
part of your brain gets fired for that happening. And
then we say, there's anything you hate, Yeah, I hate
this thing, and you see another part of the brain.
So then watch. So then I show you something that
you said you loved. Okay, so that you said you hated,
but then I actively stimulate the part of your brain
that brings love. You said, wait a minute, I change
(34:41):
my mind. I really do love this. That's a scientific experiment.
I can imagine that would happen in the future, so
we would then understand love. I don't. I'm not convinced
that there's things that happen or that are going on
there will forever be out of the reach of science.
Given the history of this ex consider epilepsy, there was
(35:05):
a day people would be afflicted by this, a terrible
you know, random firings of your brain and they'd be
writhing on the ground. If you're in a Catholic town,
and it's two hundred years ago or more people were
certain the devil inhabited your body. So what would you do.
(35:28):
You would go to the church. You're in a small town.
All towns are small. How far away is your church?
It's not far. You get there in five minutes, ten minutes.
Tell the priest the devil's in my child or in
my husband, or all right, the priest gets the robe,
the holy water, they go to the place, they bless, okay,
and the symptoms go away in just the amount of
(35:49):
time it takes an epileptic seizure to go away. So
they might see this as evidence that there was a
devil and that they cured it. But we know better today.
Nobody is saying that. Who has any kind of scientific
medical knowledge at all? If you look at the history
of those examples throughout civilization when people thought it was
(36:13):
either magic or god. Or here's one. Benjamin Franklin invents
the lightning rod. You know what a lightning ron does.
It actually attracts lightning. Actually, sorry, it does both. It
resists lightning, but if it can't resist it, then it
attracts it, and in attracting it, it sends it around
(36:34):
your structure rather than through it. Okay, before the lightning rod.
What lightning strikes the tallest structures in any town? Back then?
Seventeen hundred, eighteen hundred, what's the tallest building in any town?
The church? Church. Churches will getting hit by lightning like that.
And if you were in a church that didn't get
hit and you pointed to one that did, he say, eh,
(36:56):
you're worshiping the wrong God in that church. You got
the wrong. Ain't you got the wrong? Come to our church?
That was cited as evidence for the wrath of God.
And then then we figured out a way to control
lightning such that this does not happen. There were some
people who who criticized Franklin for thwarting the will of God,
(37:20):
and that deeply intrigued me because they're admitting that a
chubby hot dog eating beer I don't did eat it's
around today? He definitely would.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
He would be one of those French French women.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Yeah, yeah, womenize anything that this guy out smarted your God?
You got are you? Is that really what you're saying?
Or you're saying, maybe God had nothing to do with
the lightning and it was just our ignorance that So
there's enough of this in the history of civilization that
going forward. Just because I don't understand something yet, I'm
(37:54):
not going to say therefore it must be God, because
the history that exercise tells me that that's that should
not be your first guess.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
But let's take God out of it, right. I totally
get that if we don't understand it, we always attributed
to God because science can't. Necessarily.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
It's called the God of the gaps arguments. Philosophers call
it that.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
It's a good one, it's a great one. But what
about something like ghosts or do we have souls? You
can't prove really any of that stuff. Do you believe
in either of those?
Speaker 3 (38:20):
I don't see evidence for it. So ghosts, this is
an interesting one. So if everyone when you die, I
presume you only become a ghost after you die. I
presume right in.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Ghost War, that's what they said, that's what they say.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Thank you. Yeah, so obviously, so that would mean that
there's a hundred billion ghosts running around, because that's how
many dead people there are in the world. That's how
many humans they have ever lived. It might be a
little less than that, but that's about that order at magnitude,
So it seems to me it would be a very
(39:04):
busy place. And I don't see evidence of that. You know,
we all saw the movie ghost right where the ghosts
are moving objects and things, and and if there a
one hundred billion of them, I think we there'd be
more evidence for them. So that's one argument against it.
Another one is do you have better evidence than what
(39:26):
people have put forth? And it's always in some house.
I was finally happy when we had the first haunted apartment.
Do you know what that was? No, it was in
Rosemary's Baby. Okay, well, the Dakota Yeah, the first haunted apartment,
and then we had haunted apartments with Ghostbusters. It might
have been the same damn building it No, but it
(39:48):
was on Central Park West in New York City. So
I don't see evidence for ghosts now with the soul,
by the way, consider science tries to measure stuff. Yeah,
they measured the eight of the soul. No they didn't, Okay,
they said they did. Okay, they said they did. Okay,
all right, so no, watch there's a movie called one
(40:08):
grand twenty one grams exactly. Do you know how much
that is? Do you have any sense of what twenty one.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Grams is drug dealers do.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
That's why drug dealers should have been hired by Jimmy
Carter to convert us to the metric system. We would
have all been in metric from the beginning. Is so quick?
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, because we were we were all completely fluent in
the US that we were all going metric when I
was in school.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
I know what I'm saying in the day. In the day,
So what was I talking about? The Yeah, so twenty
one grams is about two thirds of one ounce. Do
you know how much p is in you when you die?
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I'm gonna make sure they measure poop much more than
twenty one grands.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Okay? Do you realize the weight of water you exhale
in a day can fill a glass? I mean just
just you know, when you fog a mirror, why does
it fog up because you're exhaling what you will dehydrate
just by breathing.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
So they're saying when we die, we lose twenty one grams.
They and they assume they they.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Soul anything else coming out of any part of your body.
And are there scales precise enough to measure two thirds
of an ounce? Really? Like really, okay, okay, yeah, but
the fact but you die on it. Okay, but when
you die, your sphincter is open. Okay, just amen, which one?
(41:44):
We have many spings from all of them, Okay, because
they're held tight by muscle, you know. Okay, With sphincters open,
fluids and solids flow out of your body. But I'm
trying to say is that I was gonna give you
the example that scientists are trying to best. When with
Hell run Chin, German physicist discovered X rays, he said, wow,
(42:07):
this can see into the body. One of the first
things people thought to do was X ray a dying
body to see if you can see the soul rise
up out of it. Perfectly legitimate experiment. So they did
it and saw nothing. So, yeah, we don't have evidence
for souls.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
So we're soulless, godless, and ghostly.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
I just say we were. I just say there was
no soul.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
You just haven't seen evidence.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
I said, well, there's no evidence for it. I don't
deny things that I don't know. I just say there's
no evidence for it.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
This book for Everyone To Infinity and Beyond, a Journey
of Cosmic.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
To Infinity and beyond and beyond.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
A journey of cosmic discovery. This time we've spent with
you is a time we'll never ever forget. No way,
Please understand, you really leave quite the footprint here on
our sandy beach and it.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Hep, it's a nice foot I have flat feet, so
it's a it's it's a it's like bigfoot.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Why are you fucking up my nice thing?
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Okay, if you're gonna look for my footprints in the sand,
don't look for an arch. Okay, thank Kep. As simple
as that. Having you here is such an honor, and
thank you so much for coming in excellent, thanks thanks
for having me and a. Gandhi pleased to meet you.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
Very nice to meet you too. This is awesome, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Wow, what a podcast. We chatted for almost an hour.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
It's our longest one yet and to be honest, we
could have had him on for more, but we had
to kick him out. That's the beauty of this podcast.
We can go on and on and on about so
many things. And I'm glad you're here to join us.
Thank you, and thanks to my co host Gandhi for
joining us. And what an incredible time we spent with
Neil deGrasse Tyson. You can pick up his new book,
To Infinity and Beyond, a Journey of Cosmic Discovery. It's
(43:45):
in store US now. And thank you Neil for joining
us on the show, and thank you for listening. Remember
rate and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, We always
recommend the totally free iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Thinking out Loud is hosted by me Elvis in. The
podcast is produced and edited by Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers
are Andrew Paglsi and Katrina Norvel. Special thanks to David Katz,
Michael Kindheart, and Caitlin Madore. Thinking Out Loud as part
of the Elvis Durant podcast Network on iHeartRadio. For more, rate,
review and subscribe to our show and if you liked
(44:18):
this episode, tell your friends.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Until next time, I'm Elvis duran
I'm so excited for today's interview.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Neil Degrass Tyson, our favorite, a world renowned astrophysicist, joins
us on the podcast to talk about his new book,
To Infinity and Beyond, a journey of cosmic discovery, and
joining me on the podcast my best friend Gandhi, who's
been a huge fan of him for years. So let's
get weird. Let's talk aliens in space and the state
of the world. Coming up on an all new episode
(00:23):
of Thinking out Loud with Neil Degrass Tyson. You know,
usually I do with the podcast all by myself, but
today my best friend Gandhi insisted on being in the
room because we welcome Neil Degrass Tyson to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Hello, my first time on your podcast. I know you
don't call you know, right, I mean I'm around, you know.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Just listening to your voice it takes me back to
Cosmos because I used to listen to your voice all
the time.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
It was so soothing. Oh you know, I hope it's
not too soothing because I want you to still learn
whatever I'm talking about. No matter what you say, we
will learn. Okay, what a fantastic show that was. Well,
thank you yeah. I mean it's got the legacy of
Carl Sagan and co written by his widow Andrewian, and
so she's the secret sauce behind all of that, because
(01:10):
you can attach scientists to that kind of communication. But
then it would just be a documentary. And when you
think of Cosmos, you don't think documentary. It's something else. Right,
It's reaching you, it's fun, it's insightful, it's moving, it's emotional,
it's and so all of that. Andrewian is the secret
(01:32):
sauce that brought that to the science. And so she
was for all three Cosmoses. If that's the plural of cosmos.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
The title scientist? Is this a true story?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Gandhi?
Speaker 4 (01:41):
I believe it's a true story. I read recently that
it was actually coined for a woman because typically it
was a man of science and just one field, and
she was a master at multiples, so they wanted to
come up with a word for her. And William, I'm
going to get the name wrong. Somebody called her a
scientist and it's stuck.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Is this true? I have not heard that. Who is
the woman?
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Mary Howell?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (02:02):
And I probably got that wrong too, So let me
look that up. While you guys continue.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
As you can tell, we did a lot of research
before the you're looking it up now during the show,
I just said, there are other scientific professions that have
the same word format, so biologist, chemist, scientist, astrophysicist.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
So it doesn't sound heavily made up. It's in the
spirit of the otherists.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Mary Somerville coined by the philosopher William weewell Way.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Well, okay, what year was that, eighteen thirty four, So
you're suggesting that the word scientists didn't exist before then.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
That's what this said. Interesting I am suggesting that, But interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Because what they were called natural philosophers in the day.
Isaac Newton wasn't even called a physicist, it was a
natural philosopher. A lot of people thought he was just
out of his mind. Well two thirds of him was
out of his mind.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
But don't you need to be somewhat out of your
mind to be successful to what you do?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
I think? I say, I think the people out of
their mind are the ones that get all the media attention. Okay,
we'll take that. That doesn't mean people not out of
their mind don't also make important contributions.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
One of the reasons that we invited Neil here today
his new book, To Infinity and Beyond, a journey of
cosmic discovery.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
It's to Infinity and Beyond.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Oh my god, you feel that. It's like when Mom
used to sit on the washing machine. I never knew
why she was sitting there.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
What is she doing? This woman? Anyway, I want to
get into the book. I want to take you back
to well.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I want you to come with me back to middle
school in McKinney, Texas, where I grew up, getting on
the big yellow school bus and going to Dallas to
sit in this big round rooms dark and watching his
time in such rooms are never forgotten, and watching the
stars and the planets go by. Yes, And I remember
walking out of that room crying, and I really could
(03:53):
not explain to anyone why it was hitting me emotionally.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Going to a planetarium and is that where you Every
everyone remembers their first time in a planetarium. It was
the first think about it. Today you wouldn't say it
this way, but in the day, it was everyone's first
virtual reality experience. You go in the lights dim, the
stars come out, and you are transported psychologically, emotionally, and
(04:21):
is a journey through and among the stars. So a planetarium,
I don't take that lightly. People's first visit, oh man.
And then now I'm director of the Hayden Planetarium, which
is my first night sky as a kid growing up.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Really oh yeah, how many years ago?
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I was nine years old and my first visit it
was like, oh, that's an interesting shaped room. It's round
and there's this big bug looking thing in the middle.
What does that do? And the lights went out? And
at that point I have to say, the universe called me.
I had no say in the matter.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I can't tell you how many times I've been to
the Hayden Planetarium. I love it. Thanks for everything that
you do over there, because it's my favorite thing.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Have you ever been not on psychedelics?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah yeah. But in the day, see, some people their
first encounter with the planetarium was you know, Pink Floyd,
the late laser Floyd.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
That's how they entice people to commit, try to get there.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
There's a whole demographic that that's too cool for school, right,
Otherwise they would never Yeah, so yeah exactly, so you
bring them in with laser Floyd. But what happened was
I thought about this the moment lasers became impulse items
at the checkout line of Kmart. You would not pay
to see lasers in a in a sky show. You
(05:39):
just in a planetarium dome. Lasers are not the point
of intrigue that they once were. So I think that's
that's part of what made it go out of style.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So after that first visit to Hayden, did you, is
that when you got the bug?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And is that when your your journey began?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yes, my journey of cosm discovery.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
What was the first book you ever bought related to them?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
So I didn't buy books. I didn't know how to
do that, okay, but my mother, my parents, upon seeing
this interest, fed that interest. Okay, this was very different
from other One day I'll write a book on education
and explore all of this. But you have a lot
of wishful parents buying their kid a chemistry set even
if the kids had shown no interest in it, or
(06:24):
buying them a telescope, even though if they had, they
were like wishful. My parents never behaved that way. They didn't,
they were not. They just observed us, my sister, my
brother and me observed us, watched what our interests manifested
as they manifested and then fed that my brother. My
brother liked art, so wait, So on the weekends we
(06:44):
would go to all the various cultural offerings institutions of
the city. So one of them we went to the
Museum of Natural History, which has the Hayden Planetarium. I
was hooked. We went to art museums, Okay, many in
New York City. My brother got hooked. He went to
the High School of Music and Art and now he's
an art professor. And my sister, she became the sellout.
But that's fine. Okay, she's a corporate executive. But that's
(07:09):
what I mean by sellout. But the point is these
early exposures. My parents would then feed them, and so
they saw I was interested. So they would go to
bookstores and buy books from the remainder table. Did they
still have remainder tables? Do they still have bookstores? I
don't know. So and books for twenty five cents. I
(07:32):
would later learn that when a publisher over prints their
books and they and they got to make room in
the warehouse, they shake the tree, books fall out, they
put them on the table. By middle school. I am
certain because I visited friends homes, I had the largest
library at all of anyone, and all those books won
science and math and the universe because my mother just
(07:54):
bought anything they she saw and the whole library. I
had a whole shelves of library and it cost her
fifteen dollars. So I can't identify a first book, but
there was there was one book. It was I remember
it was published in nineteen seventy. It was just called Astronomy.
It was a big coffee table picture book that was
just beautiful. But then I was ready for more. I
(08:15):
went to math and then brain teasers and stuff to
just train the mind to go beyond just whatever other
forces that would have you go outside and play basketball.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So mom and dad were feeding this is this is
parenting one oh one. Yes, yes, my mom and dad
bought me an easy bake oven. O.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
There you gop.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
But in the long term it worked out for you
because you are a very very good cook.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Crime chef.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
You won't take credit for.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
It, but you are. Did you just call him a
borderline chef?
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Well, yeah, he won't claim chef because he says something
about it's going to make other chefs.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Mad, Okay, not me.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So when Gandhi were sitting down earlier to talk about
what we were going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
She said, well, I have things I need to bring up,
including you.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Actually all Neil at an event in Boston.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Yeah, I went to a lecture that you were having
in Boston five years ago.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Oh and that might have been in the wilbur Theater.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
It was, oh my god, it was wonderful. It was
actually in the in the sister theater of the Wilberth Theater. Okay, yeah,
which I cannot remember the name of it, so sad,
but it was amazing And.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Thank you because because I give about forty public talks
a year in cities across the country, typically in the theaters.
So many towns have the grand damn theater that used
to have the movies, but now they usually they get
renovated and now it's just you know, comedians will sometimes
Broadway comes through the traveling troupe, and so I give
(09:42):
a public talk and I will never grow accustomed to
the fact that thousands of people show up just to
hear an astro physicist talk for two hours.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Hell yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
The yeah, yeah, yeah, that was not just that. Yeah,
that was like a hell so thank you for coming.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
No, it was great and it was so informative and
it I had questions, but we weren't allowed to ask
me questions at the end. So I've been saving this
in my brain for five years.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Why it may it may well, it's a it's a butt,
But I saw you.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Everybody's got a big butt, said pee wee Herman. Rest
in peace, too soon, too soon?
Speaker 4 (10:17):
Yeah, okay, So in that lecture, I'm gonna obviously paraphrase,
you said something to the effect of you don't believe
that any of the alien things at that time that
people were talking about were necessarily real and there wasn't
a ton of proof.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah, I wouldn't have said I don't believe. I would
have said I'm not convinced by what they put forth
as evidence.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Okay, Yeah, that's different exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Because belief is you know, people have beliefs and they
don't require evidence, right right, the hard evidence. So it's
not about belief, it's about you want me to think
this is true? Do you have evidence enough to me?
Speaker 4 (10:50):
Which I have another question about belief in a minute.
But okay, so you said there wasn't any evidence, You
didn't inficientence, insufficient evidence. So you said it was based
on the act that maybe if there was another form
of life or some type of intelligent being or beings,
they probably would not crash something into our planet.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
So far, they have all these crashed aliens, right, I
don't want to meet them. They can't navigate plus plus
be wait wait, show me the ones that don't crash.
But but but apart from that, like, really, you're going
to have a flying saucer or whatever the hell your
ship is. You're way smarter than we are. You're going
(11:30):
to cross the galaxy and accidentally crash on Earth.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Really, right, So that's where my question comes.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
You want to you want me to accept that premise? Well,
here where she's going?
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Okay, so pretty much. The next thing that you talked
about was Cassini And we sent this thing out to
Saturn to explore the rings go back and forth, and
then it used all of its energy and we purposely
crashed it into Saturday.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Yes we did.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
So why cant that both work both ways?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Oh? If they had actual aliens on board, I don't
see why they would purposely crash it.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Well, if they're so smart that they can as soon
as it crashes, they extract them. We don't know anything
about it. They take all the technology, just check.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
It was another dimension and then they disappeared and then
reappeared over there. Could that happen? This was going somewhere
for a second. We don't know.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
We have no idea. But at this point, with all
of these congressional hearings and everything that's happening, here's it.
How do you feel?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
You want to be open minded? For sure, but you
don't want to be so open minded that your brains
spill out.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I can't help that, preventing you losing.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
The capacity to evaluate the integrity of your thoughts.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Well, let's go to the recent congressional hearings. Did you
did you watch?
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Did you read that? Did you what?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Were you just just bad? What's my takeaway? Broad stroke
take away? My takeaway is, oh my gosh, Republicans and
Democrats are together.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Let me right back. Look, we had AOC right on
the same a platform as the staunch Republicans, right, and
they're all just sharing the time quizzing someone about aliens.
So I thought, that's the ticket. We need to be
invaded by aliens and then all the Democrats and Republicans
(13:16):
will come together. But that's my takeaway.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Most of them are aliens. I think, But did you walk.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Away with anything in your mind or heart or soul thinking, Okay,
here's something we need to evaluate. Did they give you
any information that you did not already believe.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
To be true. No, we should always be evaluating everything, right, Okay,
that's what curiosity is about. But if you have by
the way, NASA has been looking for aliens, and my field,
people in my field been looking for aliens for decades, okay,
at least sixty years. We've actually sent signals out. They're
still traveling to their destination. But just to show you,
(13:52):
it's not like we are resistant to their being aliens.
So we have someone in particular, a person testifying saying,
I paraphrase, they just aliens in the closet, and he
doesn't want anyone to see it. And even members of
Congress who allocate funds for the branch of the government
that he serves, apparently they haven't seen it either, even
though they had security clearance. So here's my point. If
(14:15):
you have an alien in the closet that no one
can see, you're the young one who knows is there,
and you're not going to show it to anyone. From
the point of view as a scientist. That's the same
thing as having no alien in the closet. I see,
I get that right. It's there's no difference. So when
we came back from the Moon with moon rocks, we
shared the moon rocks with the world, with the scientists
(14:37):
of the world, because that's what you do when you
discover something. But people are afraid of moon rocks.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
People, people, a lot of people are afraid of these things,
creepy crawls.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
How can you be if he's got it in the closet,
I mean, how scary is it? Could it be? It's
not my right. Then he said some people were alien injured.
That I'd never heard that phrase alien injured. But they
didn't call nine one. They didn't take a picture of
the alien, which of course they could have with a
high resolution color photo or video which everyone has attached
(15:10):
to their hips, which can take way better photos than
those images that the Navy took with the fuzzy tic
TAC and the monochromatic screen. So I just need better evidence.
I'm not asking for much, and we have very up
So NASA will likely develop an app where if you
see something weird in the sky, you take it with
(15:30):
your smartphone and then send it to this clearing house
and you send the metadata, so has you know what
angle in the sky, what coordinate on Earth, and it'll
have all this information and we can coordinate it. There
might be some things to discover. There might even be
aliens to discover. Maybe some of these things people are
seeing are aliens, but what they're bringing forth as evidence
(15:54):
will not convince the skeptic.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Going back to something you said earlier, is shooting signals
out into outer space?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Is that a good idea?
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, in retrospect, I want to rethink that because actually
we're giving okay, here it is. It's worse than that.
Ever since the nineteen thirties, where we figured out how
to communicate using radio waves, there are frequencies of radio
waves that don't get trapped in our atmosphere that escape. Okay,
(16:21):
you came from terrestrial radio, didn't you. FM radio goes
in straight lines. Okay, no one cares about this anymore,
but it's a little fact. Straight lines from the broadcast antenna,
which means if you are beyond the horizon of that signal,
you cannot receive that FM channel.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
This is why our ratings are awful in our space.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Whereas AM has a frequency of radio waves that reflects
off of our IONO sphere. This is a charged layer
in our atmosphere that can reflect radio waves. So AM
signals can go up and come back down and go
beyond the curvature of the Earth, which is why you
can get AM stations from hundreds of miles away.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
So we've been sending out waves, whether we like saw.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
FM waves have been escaping Earth for seventy years, and
TV waves escape the Earth as well. That's why you
can't get TV over the horizon in the old days
when you had rabbit or antennas. I'm dating myself here,
so but it matters because that's the origin of our
radio bubble. A radio bubble is right now eighty light
(17:29):
years in radius, expanding at the speed of light, and
it has washed over I forgot the last count. Certainly
dozens of exoplanets that we've discovered, planets orbiting other stars.
So if there's life forms intelligent that know how to
decode our radio signals, they will know everything about us,
(17:53):
starting with the earliest TV broadcast. They'll learn how humans get,
men and women treat each other, and I love Lucy.
They'll see what our jokes are like, and howdy doody.
That was my example. I love Lucy, okay, or the
Honeymooners right bang zoom to the Moon Alice, back when
that was a joke. Okay, it's unthinkable that anyone would
(18:15):
write that today. But that's what the aliens will first see.
That'll be their exposure to our culture, and so they'll
know all about us and they'll triangulate right back on
Earth's let's move away from aliens sort of. I know that.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Of late, we've had more news about scientists discovering several
what they exoplanets that have Earth like characteristics, like the
rocky composition an.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Ocean, right, I mean you were just reading the story
the other day.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Yeah, not long ago they found a planet that they
said was very earth like I think Ti seven three three. Yeah,
b was there a be on there something like that.
But that doesn't necessarily mean it's happitable. But what does
that mean?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah? So, so we're very bias, but understandably so about
how we look for life. What we do when we
look like we look for life as we know it,
and life as we know it on Earth thrives in
liquid water. Even the dead sea has life in it.
But the fact that anybody called it dead meant they
didn't know about microscopes. I hadn't been invented yet, all right,
(19:20):
So there's no macroscopic fishes, but there's microscopic life. There's
life anywhere we see, even in hot vents in the
bottom of the ocean. So we say, and NASA's mantra is,
follow the water. If you find water out there, liquid water.
So we're gonna find liquid water on a planet around
a star. Not too close, the heat will evaporate the water,
and I'll make you know. And then you don't have
(19:41):
liquid if it's not too far away, it'll freeze. Can't
have life using ice. So there's a zone, and it's
called the habitable zone. But early on I said that
has way too many syllables. I just called it the
Goldilock zone, which made way more sense to me. And
that's that's pretty much what everybody calls it, the Goldilocks.
It's just right. And so if you find a planet
(20:03):
earth size just right, then it can sustain liquid water.
Doesn't have to, but it can. But that result that
you found that you were reporting on is another level.
It's all right, So what if it might have liquid order,
how you going to know if there's life? We can't
zoom in the Telescope's not that good, all right, So
(20:23):
you can't even see life from the moon on Earth.
You know, you're not gonna see people walking around waving
to you to go across, you know, to another star system. No,
So here's what we do. It's very clever. We wait
for the planet to move in front of the host
star in its orbit, and then we use the James
web Space telescope to analyze the starlight passing through the
(20:43):
atmosphere to us, and the gas in that atmosphere leaves
a fingerprint on that light. And so we found methane
in the atmosphere. We found carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Methane is an ingredient. Is you can get it by
non biological causes. You can definitely get it by biological causes, right, Okay,
(21:10):
I was going to like work my way up to that.
But methane such as what the gases you would find
in the lower intestines of farm animals. So yeah, so
there are anaerobic life forms release methane as a result
of there so deep in your in their intestines. There's
(21:33):
no oxygen, so but there's still life there. So life
in the absence of oxygen gives off methane, which, by
the way, I don't know if you ever tested this
at camp, it actually is flammable, it is. I learned
so much at camp. It's a camp thing, right. I
don't know if the girls did it, but the boys
were definitely testing it.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
I don't remember a lot of that.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Well today is young, right, so so it's a way.
So these are biomarkers that allow us to explore the
possibility of life's influence on the atmosphere without actually seeing
if they're cities or plant life or anything, which we
wouldn't be able to. By the way, the book is
(22:13):
is precisely that journey. Talk about it. Well, when you
think about it, you go back in time, pick how
many centuries. It won't matter. If you're standing here on
Earth and look up and you see the moon and say,
how would I get to the moon? Think about that?
Can you run? Can you jump? Do you climb a
mountain and jump again? Like? What do you do? You
(22:35):
had to understand air first, because you have to ascend
into the air. Then is air go all the way
to the moon. Then you had to figure out well
hot air rises. This was not clearly known. We all
know it today, but people have to like figure that out.
And you could trap the hot air in a balloon
and a vessel, call it a balloon, and then get
in a gondola and then ascend. Why not, that's got
(22:59):
to be better than it. Or with his wax wings
that melted. You know, people gave up after that, and
I'm saying, no, you say, next time I try this,
I'm not going to make wings out of wax. We learned. Okay,
you can learn from other people's mistakes, all right, just
don't say let's give up. So I'm thankful that in
(23:20):
our species there's a subset who remain curious even in
the face of failure. And we call them scientists and engineers,
people who want to solve problems. By the way, I
think the whole population splits into those two. Even in
the workplace, surely you've given a task to someone new
and they say, this was not on my resume. This
(23:40):
is I'm not trained for this. You give it to
someone else. See why I've never seen this before. Great,
let me try to solve it. That's a whole other
kind of person, right, and you know that you've seen
these people and that's you. Oh yeah. If there's something
I don't understand that, you're not going to see me
for two days until I come back with some insight
into it, because that's that's where the excite it is.
When I was the nine year old kid in the planetarium,
(24:02):
the immensity of the universe, it's not how much we
knew that attracted me. It's how much we were yet
to discover. That is the voice of the universe calling
to me.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
See, this isn't This isn't ten year old Neil talking
to us. Now, this is a who's been who's been
learning NonStop, I mean the way the NonStop.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I can't tell you how important that is. Many people
graduate high school, if that's your terminal degree or college,
and what do they do. They run down the steturday
school's out and they throw their books into the air.
There's even a rock anthem on this. Schools out for summer. Yeah,
schools out for summer, Schools out forever. Okay, Now who
(24:45):
was that that was?
Speaker 1 (24:47):
You know then, Casey in the Sunshine.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Totally not Casey in the Sunshine band. But but have
that anthem celebrates not learning? Think about that? Okay? Is
this how you are so.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Excellent at explaining things that most of us don't understand
and putting in a language we do understand it because
you used to be the guy who didn't know everything,
and now you know a lot.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
I do.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
I know why? Sure, But it's not that I know.
It's not it's a magic thing. It's that. How is
it that you can be glad that school is over?
Your only job was to learn, Yet you're looking at
the clock waiting for the school bell. You can't wait
till May or June comes around, So school's over? Can't
(25:38):
wait for summer to come? What is so so? And
then I realized I can't blame the students. I can't.
It's Alex Cooper saying that song, right. I can't blame
I can't blame the students. I blame the school. The
school shouldn't be about how much it can cram into
your empty mind. It should be about stimulating your curiosity
(26:01):
so you have unlimited capacity to learn even beyond your
years in school. You don't want to ossify in place
adults that can't see change around them, they're stuck in
whatever they learned about the world the day they graduated,
and that became their worldview ever more. All I'm saying is,
(26:24):
if you become a lifelong learner, you will learn way
more in your life than you ever were taught in school.
Imagine how different the world would be. And so what
we do in this book. I have a co author,
Lindsay Walker, who's a nine year senior producer of the
Stark Talk. Oh it's a Star Talk collaboration with National
(26:46):
Geographic Book. By the way, the book is just beautiful
because it is because that's because that's how nat Gio roles.
I just want to say, that's how they Have you
ever see an ugly Nagio book? No, no, everything that
Geo does is all glossy. In all, it's a beautiful,
beautiful book. So it's a realizing that there fits and
(27:07):
starts in our attempt to understand how to make a discovery.
This book is a celebration of the human spirit. It's
a journey of the mind, body and soul to ascend
Earth into the air, into space, into the planets, the galaxy,
the universe itself and beyond and so so yeah, when
(27:32):
you're a lifelong learner. Everything that you don't know becomes
the source of your next round of curiosity.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
You know, what I want you to do is parallel
the Book of Course to Infinity and Beyond, a journey
of cosmic discovery to everyday life walking down the street.
I mean to me, it's about learning, it's awareness like that,
Why do in others?
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Why do we need to read that? You don't need
to I will not tell anybody, but I will never
tell people to do anything. I'm not even going to
tell you to read the book. Suggest why. I can
tell you how different you will be if you did
read it, and then you choose whether you're interested in
that bit of enlightenment that it will bring. Okay, So
(28:21):
the book has three strands of DNA in it, the
DNA of my podcast Start Talk. I'm sorry, you're not
the only podcast on the block. Just thought i'd tell
you that. So the Stark Talk is the podcast, and
we blend it's a tapestry really of science, pop culture
(28:44):
and humor. And what we learned is that when we
present science that way, people come back for more. And
that's that Then as an educator, that's a good thing.
Let me do more of that, and then you get
more of that. And part of what makes it work
is everybody has a common pop culture scaffo that you
carry with you. That's the definition of pop culture. I
don't have to tell you who Beyonce is, or what
(29:06):
football is, or who the Pope is, or who Trump is,
or what you know or there's some hit movie. I
don't have to re explain all that. I know. You
walk into the room that way, and I study that
and I say, oh, here's a place when I can
attach some science to that scaffold. And I attach it
and it fits perfectly, and it fits into your world
(29:31):
in such a way that you will never forget it
because I made it relevant to what you already care about.
I'm not starting from scratch, and so that's the value
of this. So let's walk down this. I'll tell you
a couple of things. All right, you're a professional in
this space. All right? You have doors that outside the door,
it says on the air, okay, back when it was broadcast,
you're broadcasting radio waves. I just told you that radio
(29:54):
waves travel through the vacuum of space out to it.
Right now, it's eighty light years out. Radio waves don't
need air, So on the air is a completely meaningless statement. Yeah,
so it should say on space. That's what it should say.
Next time you visit, that will be changed. You know
(30:16):
what needs air is sound waves need something to vibrate.
But your voice was not getting to your listeners by
the vibration of air from your studio to their car
or whatever they brought to the beach. No, it was
first sent electronically, then broadcast broad cast with radio waves.
(30:40):
And so yeah, so that's a little thing. Now. I
bet you will never forget that in your whole life,
because it's attached to your livelihood. And that's what you
do with the chapters in this book. Yes, oh yes,
plus other things we talk about superheroes where they're by
the way, all relates to this arc of discovery right
where there's a it's it's not a total off ramp,
(31:01):
but it's it's scenery. Right. As we go by a topic,
we so just one what's that mantra from top gun?
I feel the need for speed? Okay, they don't really
mean that. It's false.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
What do they mean?
Speaker 3 (31:20):
They don't even know that they don't mean it. That's okay, okay,
So please plain yourself, explain, I can explain. So Earth
is going eighteen miles per second around the Sun. Is
that not fast enough for you? Okay, okay, The Sun
and all the planets are moving around the center of
(31:41):
the galaxy like three hundred. I forgot that. Three hundred
miles one hundred, three hundred cols two hundred doing the
man three? Sorry, carry the two one hundred and fifty
miles per second. I gotta double check that number. But
on that side, miles per second around the center of
(32:03):
the galaxy. We're rotating on Earth here where we're recording
this in New York City, we're moving eight hundred miles
an hour due east. You say you feel the need
for speed, you already have it. We have airplanes that
fly five hundred and fifty miles an hour in the air.
That speed way faster than any automobile in a car race.
(32:28):
So what do they mean? They don't know, they don't
it's not speed they want. They want acceleration. Accelerations, a
change in your speed.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
That doesn't rhyme with anything.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Well, I tried, I tried, Uh, what rhymes with propulsion?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
I have to necessitate to accelerate. I mean, yeah, maybe
maybe that cha yeah maybe yeah, so yeah, it doesn't rhymes,
and eating these connections is what this book is. Yes, yes, yeah.
So you talk to any fighter pilot, they don't talk
about how fast they go. They talk about the barrel
rolls they do. That These are acceleration exceleracies also a
(33:04):
change in the direction you're going. They do, the bank turn,
the five G turn. Those are all accelerations, every bit
of it. If they're just cruising at six hundred miles
an hour, that's not the speed, but nothing at all,
I promise.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
You before you leave, I know Gandhi wanted to talk
to you about beliefs.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yes, so please please.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
So Obviously, with a very scientific mind, you need proof
of things to consider them. Fact makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Well, to consider them objectively true. Objective would means we
can all agree that that's what's happening, and that's what
the tools of methods and tools of science are exquisitely
designed to establish. Right.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
Do you have blind faith or just faith in anything
that you can't see, can't prove, can't quantify with any
type of evidence.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
I'm so not really So what I mean by that
is there are things that we know exist even if
science isn't there yet. You know, we feel love, okay,
can science prove that you're in love? Well, not now,
but I can imagine experiments in the future where we
could where where you look at the neurosynapses of the
(34:21):
brain and you see a loved one, and then some
part of your brain gets fired for that happening. And
then we say, there's anything you hate, Yeah, I hate
this thing, and you see another part of the brain.
So then watch. So then I show you something that
you said you loved. Okay, so that you said you hated,
but then I actively stimulate the part of your brain
that brings love. You said, wait a minute, I change
(34:41):
my mind. I really do love this. That's a scientific experiment.
I can imagine that would happen in the future, so
we would then understand love. I don't. I'm not convinced
that there's things that happen or that are going on
there will forever be out of the reach of science.
Given the history of this ex consider epilepsy, there was
(35:05):
a day people would be afflicted by this, a terrible
you know, random firings of your brain and they'd be
writhing on the ground. If you're in a Catholic town,
and it's two hundred years ago or more people were
certain the devil inhabited your body. So what would you do.
(35:28):
You would go to the church. You're in a small town.
All towns are small. How far away is your church?
It's not far. You get there in five minutes, ten minutes.
Tell the priest the devil's in my child or in
my husband, or all right, the priest gets the robe,
the holy water, they go to the place, they bless, okay,
and the symptoms go away in just the amount of
(35:49):
time it takes an epileptic seizure to go away. So
they might see this as evidence that there was a
devil and that they cured it. But we know better today.
Nobody is saying that. Who has any kind of scientific
medical knowledge at all? If you look at the history
of those examples throughout civilization when people thought it was
(36:13):
either magic or god. Or here's one. Benjamin Franklin invents
the lightning rod. You know what a lightning ron does.
It actually attracts lightning. Actually, sorry, it does both. It
resists lightning, but if it can't resist it, then it
attracts it, and in attracting it, it sends it around
(36:34):
your structure rather than through it. Okay, before the lightning rod.
What lightning strikes the tallest structures in any town? Back then?
Seventeen hundred, eighteen hundred, what's the tallest building in any town?
The church? Church. Churches will getting hit by lightning like that.
And if you were in a church that didn't get
hit and you pointed to one that did, he say, eh,
(36:56):
you're worshiping the wrong God in that church. You got
the wrong. Ain't you got the wrong? Come to our church?
That was cited as evidence for the wrath of God.
And then then we figured out a way to control
lightning such that this does not happen. There were some
people who who criticized Franklin for thwarting the will of God,
(37:20):
and that deeply intrigued me because they're admitting that a
chubby hot dog eating beer I don't did eat it's
around today? He definitely would.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
He would be one of those French French women.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Yeah, yeah, womenize anything that this guy out smarted your God?
You got are you? Is that really what you're saying?
Or you're saying, maybe God had nothing to do with
the lightning and it was just our ignorance that So
there's enough of this in the history of civilization that
going forward. Just because I don't understand something yet, I'm
(37:54):
not going to say therefore it must be God, because
the history that exercise tells me that that's that should
not be your first guess.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
But let's take God out of it, right. I totally
get that if we don't understand it, we always attributed
to God because science can't. Necessarily.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
It's called the God of the gaps arguments. Philosophers call
it that.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
It's a good one, it's a great one. But what
about something like ghosts or do we have souls? You
can't prove really any of that stuff. Do you believe
in either of those?
Speaker 3 (38:20):
I don't see evidence for it. So ghosts, this is
an interesting one. So if everyone when you die, I
presume you only become a ghost after you die. I
presume right in.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Ghost War, that's what they said, that's what they say.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Thank you. Yeah, so obviously, so that would mean that
there's a hundred billion ghosts running around, because that's how
many dead people there are in the world. That's how
many humans they have ever lived. It might be a
little less than that, but that's about that order at magnitude,
So it seems to me it would be a very
(39:04):
busy place. And I don't see evidence of that. You know,
we all saw the movie ghost right where the ghosts
are moving objects and things, and and if there a
one hundred billion of them, I think we there'd be
more evidence for them. So that's one argument against it.
Another one is do you have better evidence than what
(39:26):
people have put forth? And it's always in some house.
I was finally happy when we had the first haunted apartment.
Do you know what that was? No, it was in
Rosemary's Baby. Okay, well, the Dakota Yeah, the first haunted apartment,
and then we had haunted apartments with Ghostbusters. It might
have been the same damn building it No, but it
(39:48):
was on Central Park West in New York City. So
I don't see evidence for ghosts now with the soul,
by the way, consider science tries to measure stuff. Yeah,
they measured the eight of the soul. No they didn't, Okay,
they said they did. Okay, they said they did. Okay,
all right, so no, watch there's a movie called one
(40:08):
grand twenty one grams exactly. Do you know how much
that is? Do you have any sense of what twenty one.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Grams is drug dealers do.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
That's why drug dealers should have been hired by Jimmy
Carter to convert us to the metric system. We would
have all been in metric from the beginning. Is so quick?
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, because we were we were all completely fluent in
the US that we were all going metric when I
was in school.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
I know what I'm saying in the day. In the day,
So what was I talking about? The Yeah, so twenty
one grams is about two thirds of one ounce. Do
you know how much p is in you when you die?
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I'm gonna make sure they measure poop much more than
twenty one grands.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Okay? Do you realize the weight of water you exhale
in a day can fill a glass? I mean just
just you know, when you fog a mirror, why does
it fog up because you're exhaling what you will dehydrate
just by breathing.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
So they're saying when we die, we lose twenty one grams.
They and they assume they they.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Soul anything else coming out of any part of your body.
And are there scales precise enough to measure two thirds
of an ounce? Really? Like really, okay, okay, yeah, but
the fact but you die on it. Okay, but when
you die, your sphincter is open. Okay, just amen, which one?
(41:44):
We have many spings from all of them, Okay, because
they're held tight by muscle, you know. Okay, With sphincters open,
fluids and solids flow out of your body. But I'm
trying to say is that I was gonna give you
the example that scientists are trying to best. When with
Hell run Chin, German physicist discovered X rays, he said, wow,
(42:07):
this can see into the body. One of the first
things people thought to do was X ray a dying
body to see if you can see the soul rise
up out of it. Perfectly legitimate experiment. So they did
it and saw nothing. So, yeah, we don't have evidence
for souls.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
So we're soulless, godless, and ghostly.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
I just say we were. I just say there was
no soul.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
You just haven't seen evidence.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
I said, well, there's no evidence for it. I don't
deny things that I don't know. I just say there's
no evidence for it.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
This book for Everyone To Infinity and Beyond, a Journey
of Cosmic.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
To Infinity and beyond and beyond.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
A journey of cosmic discovery. This time we've spent with
you is a time we'll never ever forget. No way,
Please understand, you really leave quite the footprint here on
our sandy beach and it.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Hep, it's a nice foot I have flat feet, so
it's a it's it's a it's like bigfoot.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Why are you fucking up my nice thing?
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Okay, if you're gonna look for my footprints in the sand,
don't look for an arch. Okay, thank Kep. As simple
as that. Having you here is such an honor, and
thank you so much for coming in excellent, thanks thanks
for having me and a. Gandhi pleased to meet you.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
Very nice to meet you too. This is awesome, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Wow, what a podcast. We chatted for almost an hour.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
It's our longest one yet and to be honest, we
could have had him on for more, but we had
to kick him out. That's the beauty of this podcast.
We can go on and on and on about so
many things. And I'm glad you're here to join us.
Thank you, and thanks to my co host Gandhi for
joining us. And what an incredible time we spent with
Neil deGrasse Tyson. You can pick up his new book,
To Infinity and Beyond, a Journey of Cosmic Discovery. It's
(43:45):
in store US now. And thank you Neil for joining
us on the show, and thank you for listening. Remember
rate and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, We always
recommend the totally free iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Thinking out Loud is hosted by me Elvis in. The
podcast is produced and edited by Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers
are Andrew Paglsi and Katrina Norvel. Special thanks to David Katz,
Michael Kindheart, and Caitlin Madore. Thinking Out Loud as part
of the Elvis Durant podcast Network on iHeartRadio. For more, rate,
review and subscribe to our show and if you liked
(44:18):
this episode, tell your friends.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Until next time, I'm Elvis duran
Thinking Out Loud With Elvis Duran News
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Elvis Duran
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