Talking 'Space Chronicles' with Neil DeGrasse Tyson

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson chats with Robert and Julie about his new book "Space Chronicles" as well as mad science, philosophy, dark matter and humanity's future amid the stars.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Douglas,
and we have a guest for today's episode. As you
probably gathered from the title, we are talking once again
with Neil deGrasse Tyson, that's right, via the phone. Um.

(00:28):
We have a bunch of questions that that we locked
at him, Uh, mainly having to do with his wonderful
book which is called Space Chronicles, and it really is
a retrospective of NASA and space exploration, and it is
so fascinating and has every single aspect of space that
you would ever want to cram into your brain, including

(00:50):
killer asteroids and whether or not aliens might exist. Um,
So we had a chance to read that and then
to ask some questions, and we also had a chance
to give Dr Tyson some of your questions that you
provided on Facebook. Yeah, you might remember about a month back,
well maybe a little a little longer, when we first
learned that we were going to do this interview. I

(01:12):
put the call out on Facebook or Facebook addressed by
the way, it's uh, stuff to blow your mind. Just
type that in do Facebook and you'll find us put
the call out for questions that you guys had for
Dr Tyson, and we received a whole list of them,
and so we went in, we picked like the five
best and then asked as many of those as we
could during the time that we had him. And really,

(01:34):
I think some of the answers to your questions were
the best, uh as you'll as you'll discover in this
this episode. Yeah, I think you guys excited his imaginations.
So but first of all, I do need to mention
again this is a great book, um Neiodle grass Tyson.
For those of you who are not familiar with him,
there's and really you have no excuse not to be
familiar with Neiodo grass Tyson because he's everywhere. He is

(01:55):
a mass communicator. He is out there as a spokesman
for science uh or our understanding of the cosmos, for
our continued exploration of the cosmos, and for just science
literacy in our culture and UH in this book is
just another great example that it's very readable. It is
not a you know, and it's not a heavy, heavy,
hard to read science book. It is a very readable

(02:16):
uh text that that is I mean It even has
his tweets in there, which I thought was and I
touched because he's a he's a big, big time tweeter.
Become Twitter user if you if you would rather, and
you can find him on Twitter at Neil Tyson. That's
in E I L T Y s O N. Follow
him there. He's always throwing out some some neat little
tidbits about the scientific world, or he's questioning the science

(02:39):
of a major motion picture. He's always a lot of fun,
that's right, And uh, I think I had mentioned it,
but he really does lay out, um some some of
the mysteries of the universe in a very elegant way,
and of course with his signature humor, which is pretty awesome.
All right, Well that being said, let's let's break into
the interview itself. Well, first of all, welcome to Stuff

(03:03):
to Blow your Mind. Well, thank you. On our podcast
we when we're all about trying to communicate science and
mind blowing topics with our listeners and so you you were,
of course one of our heroes, so it's always a
pleasure to have you on the show. Well, thank you.
Now I have to live up to that. Uh well,
we thought we'd just go ahead and start talking a
little bit about space chronicles, Facing the Ultimate Frontier UM,

(03:27):
the collection of essays that you have and really addressing
I think, from soup to nuts space exploration. UM. I
wanted to to talk about the political party partisanship that
that you talked about in the book, and I wanted
to sort of ask you if you thought that showing

(03:47):
the sausage making part of that would kind of help
the public to better understand some of the challenges that
face NASA in terms of budget constraints. Well, almost everything
is partisan today except for maybe veterans benefits, you know,
some things that are so sacred in the budget. And
I think the more people see the sausage making, the

(04:10):
more they might become disgusted with the fact that there's
sausage making at all for things that are fundamentally bipartisan
or or better yet, fundamentally nonpartisan. So to expose it,
I think is a good thing. Not that I had
any secret access to what's going on in Washington, but
I offered an analysis of how progress on NASA's budget

(04:32):
and progress in space had been had fallen victim to
partisan grandstanding. And you know, space historically has never been
partisan at all. In other words, if you liked space,
so you didn't like space, it was uncorrelated with whether

(04:53):
you were left or right, or Democrat or Republican or anything.
It was just simply because you had an opinion. And
that's a good thing about topics, I think, and it
means you don't sort of ascribe to how other people
want you to think about something. You can come up
with your own views. And that's in a way has
transcended that and that's I think it's been one of

(05:14):
its strong points. And in fact, most people, particularly in
the past forty years or so, most people who think
of America and listed things about America that they liked,
most people that is, around the world, NASA would be
like number one on that list, Number one. Right, It's
not the President's and it's not the FBI or the

(05:34):
CIA or the military or anything. It's NASA. So what
a you know, what a what a point of diplomacy
that represents when you think about it in a geopolitical way.
So I think it's it's it's high time that people
just sat down and recognize the value of projects that

(05:57):
allow you to dream, empower you to dream about tomorrow.
The value that those projects have on our ambitions, on
our culture, on our educational pipeline, and and the urge
to get people interested in the STEM field of the science, technology, engineering,
and man. Excellent well, Dr Tyson. In your book, you
point out that half a penny on the tax dollar
is the total cost of all space born telescopes, planetary probes,

(06:20):
the rover on Mars, the International Space Stations, space Shuttle,
and telescopes in orbit. You also point out that space
exploration has yielded myriad indirect benefits, everything from cordless tools
and vitable braces and long distance telecommunications to two water filters.
So if you had your druthers, how much more would
you allocate to NASA on the tax dollar and what
might that yield in terms of the direct and indirect returns. Yeah,

(06:44):
so so that I think that's important and excellent question.
But I want to unpack it into sort of multiple
variables that are contained within it. So, for example, we
could list spinoffs from NASA direct spinoffs, and I give
a list in the book. Although I don't do well
on that list, I just offer the list and then
I keep going. Because if you went to the list

(07:07):
of direct spinoffs which would include temper foam and and
cordless power tools, high torque battery operated tools that all
came from UH pioneering efforts to enable space walking astronauts
to repair things while they're in space. You can't just
look for the nearest hunter in ten volt plug to
plug in your tools, and UH you know, things like

(07:31):
the inexpensive and accurate lasic surgery. The list is long
and it's impressive, right on back to the original urge
to miniaturized electronics in the first place. That was not
an interest of industry or the public. It was an
interest of NASA to reduce the weight of anything you'd

(07:51):
be launching from Earth surface to orbit or anywhere else.
And if you've ask your grandparents, you know what the
radio look like, they'll say it was a piece of
nature in their living room. And at that time, no
one is thinking, Gee, I want to carry that on
my hip pocket. It's just not a fault that they
don't want. It. Don't occur to anybody that that's what
you might do with a radio one day. So, yes,

(08:13):
there's all these spinoffs, there's no doubt about it. But
if you look at the value of those spinoffs, compared
with that. In other words, the net sales let's say
all those spinoffs and compared to NASA's annual budget, it
doesn't compare. It's smaller than NASA's annual budget. So you
can't justify NASA's budget based on the economic value of spinoffs.

(08:38):
It just doesn't work. So I only tell I ever
talked about it is when someone else brings it up.
And it's only in the book because I have some
obligations just to show all the force that NASA represents.
The real impact of NASA has to do with its
influence on a culture and the urge to embrace innovations

(09:00):
science and technology, because the benefits the discoveries or science
and technology are large daily in the papers. When that's
the activity you're engaged in, and you ask anyone who
has wanted to become a scientist or an engineer, just
ask them. Occasionally it's the great science or engineering teacher
in school. It's the case who twelve would because you

(09:23):
had a great science teacher. That's not the majority. The
majority of the cases is a kids saw something in life,
they were exposed to some grand vision statement that that
something bigger than themselves was undertaking right. It wasn't just
some science class, wasn't just some science kit that whose
experiments they performed at home or in school. It was

(09:45):
bigger than that. Essentially of my generation who entered science
entered science because they saw that we were going to
the moon. That's how old I am, right, So they
would not sign a science teacher. Those science teachers for
hel up in them get along or making them appreciate
it all the more. But you can't undervalue how much

(10:08):
of a force of nature NASA is on on the
hearts and minds and the dreams of it culture. And
to excel at NASA, you have to innovate. And when
you do that in a big way, the country becomes
an innovation nation. And that's that's the real return. So
the return is you want to assure your economic survival
in the future because you are stimulating people to innovate

(10:32):
and innovations and science and technology century the engines of
tomorrow's economy. Well, there you have it. There it is,
And you don't have to beat people over the head
to try to make them interested in this stuff. You
get that for free. You don't have to worry about
keeping your factories here because we'll be making things that
no one knows how to make yet. Because we'll be innovating.
You don't have to worry about keeping kids interested in

(10:54):
science because the headlines will do that. And everybody looks
at these challenges of America of falling behind is a
series of band aids that they need to apply, and
then everything is somehow fixed without looking at the root
cause of all the lost vision statements that the citizen
m um is uh has been has been that that

(11:18):
has evaporated from our culture over the past ten and
twenty years. Um. In your book, you speak about the
three factors capable of stirring human cultures to engage in megaprojects.
UH talk about war, economics, and less common these days,
obedience to a god or some some royal figure. So

(11:39):
does it really boil down to two negative motivations for
culture as a whole? Is it is? It doesn't have
to be fear or agreed? Do you think to really
get the megaprojects such as space exploration out there? Depends
of how you use the word negative, how you judge it.
And I try not to value judge the thing that
I just put it put it out there, and I
lead the value judging to others. I would say that

(11:59):
the greatest driver of human expenditure of capital, be it
financial capital or human capital, is war. Now you can
interpret that as defense, all right, And that's the Great
Wall of China for example. That clearly was not a
military project for offense. It was a defensive military project,

(12:20):
and that was constructed in the interests of the safety
and security of its citizens. So I wouldn't You can
think of it as negative because it's in response to
a threat, all right. And then you have economic return
definitely negative if it's sort of badly exploiting people. But
in its purest form, economic growth is a good thing

(12:41):
for the world. Uh. Those nice nations that are wealthier,
they live longer and happier lives and with less disease.
So economic wealth, though while not as powerful a driver
as war is, comes in a very close second. And
you just look at you know, there's Queen as Abella.
He didn't stay to Columbus, go to the New World

(13:04):
and come back and tell us about the botanical uh
explorations you did, and and and show us the maps
and we can put it up in our library. No,
it was here's some flags wherever you go, put the
flag put to the Spanish flag down, and you know,
to clear these lands for the Spanish Empire. And by

(13:25):
the way, try to explore as much as you can
the natural resources so that we can have trade partners
or we can become wealthier. And so yes, there's a
sort of a hit geministic motive there at the end
of the day. So you know Spain, Spain got wealthy
because they valued exploration as an economic activity. Columbus, I've

(13:46):
never met the guy, but surely he did this because
he and his heart was an explorer. And so the
explorer explores, but somebody's got to write to check. And
the history of this activity has demonstrated that the check
writers or governments when you're exploring where no one has
gone before, and private enterprise comes in later and exploit

(14:07):
those activities in the financial interest of the nations. Yeah,
so in America's financial incentive to go into space, not
because you're going to read the benefits of spinoffs, but
because an innovation nation competes economically. In the twenty one century,
if exploration is not a good note of reason for
you to do it, then do it because you don't
want to die poor. Well, you don't want to see

(14:30):
a future of America where we are economically weak or
powerless on the world's stage. I am reminded that in Economists,
Paul Krugman speculated that the discovery of an impending alien
attack would fix all of America's economic woes in about
eighteen months. So if if Paul Krugman were to approach

(14:50):
you about faking such a threat, what would you say. No,
I would say that there's no doubt of America's resolve
when we feel threatened. I think that's there's just no
question about it. And because a threat transcends politics, if
everyone feels threatened, then you're not gonna have one person

(15:11):
say well, we're not threatened. If everybody feels threatened, and
you have all pistons running aligned in Congress and moneys
get the budgets get past, and military investments on flow
legged rivers. This is a major thesis of the book,
based on my read of the history of human conduct.
What all I would say is the value of these

(15:32):
investments not only would return in your security because you
want to deflect the asteroid rather than go extinct, but
also you become the kind of economy that thrives on
innovation and those If that's my only point, it becomes
an investment at that point, and the very question, oh
can we really afford of course you can afford it

(15:54):
because you invest it. You're investing, and you're expecting a
return on that investment in the form of a wealthier
nation in the decades to come. And by the way,
that transcends time scales of quarterly reports and annual reports
and congressional re election times. So somebody needs the foresight
necessary to put this into motion to assure a future
stability of our nation's economy. You know, you're talking about

(16:18):
taking the long view, and um, I can't help but
think about the long U and asteroids near Earth objects.
Um oh you can, huh, you can't. Decades this has
been you know, we have any astrophysicists in arms reach.
You could have told you all about the asteroid threat.

(16:39):
And apparently we are as a culture, as a world,
we are feeble minded such that we don't believe it
until it happens, and then it's kind of too late.
You know, it's a little you know, excuse me, somehow,
as threat asn't real unless it's staring you in the face.
The good thing about science is that you can dicked

(17:00):
the coming of a threat. Yet that's apparently not enough
to trigger people's actions. The good thing, the silver lining
of the euros meteor in Russia, is that nobody died.
Many people injured, but nobody died. And so therefore, if
we had to be slammed by something and learn a
lesson from it, it was an ideal sort of lesson

(17:23):
because everybody just needed to get a little patched up
and going about their way to fix a few walls
and windows. What a lesson that is. What a shot
across the bow that was. But again, if we were
already into space, this would be a trivial extension of
activities we were already engaged in. If all you're gonna
say now was listening to space so that we can
stop an asteroid, are you're missing the point? You're missing

(17:46):
the point. That's like saying I tried to analogize to
the building of the interstate system in the country. If
someone said, let's build an interstate to connect New York
and Los Angeles, well, that's useful, for sure, but I
will how about all the rest of the country. How
about that? How about the other cities? What are you
only going to do it to bring people one place

(18:06):
to another, because that's all you can think of doing
when there's all the rest of the country that's that
is waiting to be explored. So I viewed the entire
solar system as our backyard. And when you do, you know,
maybe there's asteroid miners. One day and we show them
our latest telescope data and they say that an asteroid
headed our way. Could you guys snare it be where
it puts us at risk? And they'll go ahead and

(18:28):
stare it because there they know how to manipulate a
maneuver and mine asteroids. The government wouldn't even people ever
would pay for that, but they wouldn't have to like
launch it themselves. All right, we're just gonna take one
quick break and when we come back, more questions with
neutograph types and including your question. All right, we're back.

(18:52):
Let's jump right back into the interview with the ductor
and new of the draft type. Yeah. I just a
very elegant explanation of asteroids and long period comments in
your book and space chronicles, and I thought it just
really laid out the reasons why we can detect some
and the reasons why I can why we can't detect others.

(19:13):
In particular, you talk about apopis, which I know you've
talked about before in the media, and how this is
actually something that's very serious that we need to focus
on UM and I thought that maybe you could talk
a little bit about that, um in practical terms, how
we confront a problem like this and asteroid that's in

(19:35):
our view. And then a second part to that, I
thought maybe we could talk a little bit about the
role of privatization of asteroid mining and how that may
or may not affect asteroids. Yeah, you know, if your mato,
you might say that, lets blow the sucker out of
the sky. You know, you got nukes in the silos
left over from the Cold War put into good use.

(19:57):
And you know what I say often and as all
that I know of the American Armed Forces tells me
this is true, that we're really good at blowing stuff
up and less good at knowing where the pieces will fall.
And that seems to have applied literally and metaphorically to
our military policy, where if you're objective to be to

(20:18):
blow up an asteroid, i'd be concerned that the one
spot that was originally targeted by this asteroid is now
headed to two places instead of one. So what have
you done? Um, now you have to evacuate both coasts,
and you know, so there's some emerging consensus among those
who have studied the problem. Myself included that the soundest

(20:39):
way to approach this problem is through an asteroid deflection scenario.
The asteroid will continue to live another day and possibly
harm you in another day, but the advantage of it
is you get to nudge it slowly, and you get
to watch how effective you've been, and you keep doing
it until you are as effective as you needed to be.
And so with a paphos, the idea of this is

(21:02):
that when it comes very close to the Earth, that
you alter its course with it so that in its
return orbit it doesn't slam into the Earth precisely because
the later you hit you get to the problem, and
the more the all your capacity to solve that problem dropped. Gotcha,

(21:23):
and a lot of us is looking into the crystal ball.
But you know, there's been to talk about asteroid mining
and private companies taking that on because you know, at
at some point it might yield some some profits, certainly
not right away. Uh. The question I think for us is,
if you have so much space junk, if you have
near Earth objects in orbit, and you have private companies

(21:47):
up there now with their equipment, do they then have
an obligation to help clean up space junk to help
deflect near Earth objects. Yeah. I wouldn't call it an obligation.
I would just call it no. How you know, who
do you get? I mean, forgive me for referencing the
movie Farm again, But they had a task set out

(22:07):
in front of them in the film to bury a
nuke in an asteroid, because otherwise it won't blow it apart.
So in the ranks of NASA there was no one
who had any experience drilling into solid rock or something
hard to penetrate, and so they got Bruce Willis and

(22:27):
his craft team of guess their oil rig drillers or something,
and so they had a very specific talent set unique
to the task. So, if we are busy turning the
Solar System into our backyard, then there will be a
mining company of exploiting asteroid. So we would presume that

(22:48):
if if asteroid mining was an activity and economic activity,
then they would know how to get to asteroids, how
to mind them, how to turn them around, how to
tow them from one location to another to be better
suited for their access. And if you have that capability,
then why wouldn't they be the ones you would task

(23:09):
to uh deflect an asteroid and it becomes an asteroid? Right?
Is one coming out way? I want you to take
it and mind it for all it's worth, and and
and we're done with it. Would that'd be kind of
cool if every asteroid that would end life on Earth
simply became a source of natural resources to help life

(23:30):
on Earth. That's the kind of thinking that goes on
when you're in an innovation nation. A storm is ready
to hit the coast, you know, do you run away
from it and buy up all the water from the
shelves or what do you say? How can I mitigate
that storm? How can I deflect that storm? How can
I tap the psychlonic energy contained within it and drive

(23:51):
the energy needs of the city that it's about to destroy?
So I wouldn't call it an obligation. I'll just call it. Yeah.
Of course they'll do it, and of course and they'll
know how to. Other people will have money, but not
to know now, so you pay them. I mean it's
a company and they use their resources. You're paying to
use their resources. You know, the Post Office doesn't fly

(24:12):
their own airplanes. They pay commercial carriers to fly mail
US mail in their belly. The government has had this
kind of relationship with a business forever. You know, how
do we make the cheap? In World War Two government
gave money the Christler said the Christler had a good design,
They built the cheap and they still make cheaps and
they make money off of it. That's how we're in

(24:33):
a capitalist society. That's how you know, that's how that's
supposed to work. Obviously, the wave of public and political
support for a space explanation has that been flowed over
the years. Um, but what if we had somehow maintained
it at its level? How far would we be today? Oh?
So at it? So at the level you're talking about
would be the Mateen sixties six level. That's where NASA's

(24:55):
funding had peaked as a percentage of the federal budget.
It peaked at about four. In fact, there's a huge
set of appendices in Space Chronicles where I plot the
NASA's budget over fifty years, and in there is the
original founding document of NASA. NASA has sounded like the
same week I was born, So I feel NASA pains

(25:20):
and joys and challenges. So in there you can see
the plot of it's of the budget and it's it's
a stunning difference between the commitment that we made as
a nation over that period and the commitment we're making now. Now.
You don't have to always keep the commitment at high
if the nation gets wealthier. If the nation gets wealthier,

(25:40):
which it has done over the decades, then your percentage
could go down, yet your net money could go up.
I mean, that's how that works if you're always referencing
your budget as a percent of the federal budget. But
to give to put some numbers on this, it was
four in ninety six going into nineteen. That was so
the peep build up of the Apollo program. And if

(26:03):
we have that money now, NASA's budget would be eight
times a factor of eight larger than its current value.
If NASA we're we're appreciated at the same percent of
the federal budget that it was back then, and I
would claim that at a much lower price tag than that,
you can turn the entire solar system into your backyard.

(26:25):
You can reach a space rentier. And these are stories
that the press would write about. I want to desk
if you thought that an earthlike plant might be discovered,
I don't know in fifty years, a hundred years. And
do you think that it's something like citizen science that
will be a part of it in the absence of
a sput Nick moment or an alien attack. The sput

(26:49):
Nick moments and the alien attacks are the kind of
forces that galvanize an entire society. But in any society,
there are always people. In any wealthy society, there are
always people who will spend their mental and emotional energies
thinking about discovery. It's been going on. The people are
doing that ever since at the beginning. You know who's

(27:09):
the first one to leave the cave. That's somebody who
wants to discover. It's an urge within us that I
don't think we should stand and denial of. Although many
people have forgotten what it is or what it felt
like to explore, every child knows what it's like to explore.
They turn over rocks and climb trees, and pluck your suburban,

(27:30):
Your climb trees, They plucked petals off roses jump two
feet in puddles. They you know, this is what kids do.
They catch snowflakes in their mouths, and adults somehow lose
this playful curiosity about the world around them. And all
you need to do is keep it. You don't have
to create it from scratch. It was already there. Just

(27:51):
find find ways to foster it and nurture it, and
then you're you're coming along nicely. So now that the
thrust of your question was, I just wondered if you
thought that an earth like planet might be discovered in
the next fifty years, and do you think that citizen
science will be a part of that, since we're somewhat

(28:11):
handstrong in terms of budgets to to to really look
very hard for an earth like planet. Sure, well, we
already have earth like planets in the catalog. So the
challenge is an earthlike planet in the habitable zone, the
Goldilocks zone of its host star, not too close otherwise
if it had liquid water, it would evaporate, and not

(28:33):
too far because if it had liquid water would freeze
and that's not useful to life as we know it,
which requires liquid water. So we have planets that have
been discovered that just not many of them. This might
handful fewer than five out of the we're rising through
a thousand exoplanets that are in the catalogs today. Citizen
science is a is a wonderful exploitation of the Internet,

(28:56):
and we should have more of it, especially since in
the astrophysics community we are overrun with data, the scales
of data that we simply can't analyze ourselves, and I
think that's a good thing. I think there should be
more of it, especially for the data heavy fields such
as my own. But that's itself is not going to

(29:17):
transform a culture. That's gonna that's a side activity for
people who already know they like science. Okay, how are
you doing on time? Do you have time for a
few of the listeners submitted questions or do you know
at fifteen more minutes? Okay, well, I'm gonna go through these.
If you don't like the question, are you I'll take
any question to give me. Okay, all right, Well, this
is the first question comes from a listener named Mike.

(29:40):
Mike asked, can you expound in a simple way on
how dark matter and energy seem to bind and expand
the matter we see as the visible universe. Uh yeah,
So if you think of mass, all right, mass can
be manifested in two ways. In one form it is energy.

(30:00):
In another form it's matter. Okay, they think of that,
think of it that way, and each of those contain
mass were mass equivalent. And our understanding of the universe
is beginning, it's evolution. Its end sort of flows through
that understanding, and you can look at how much mass
there is in the universe and what it's doing to

(30:21):
the universe. Over the years, beginning in ninety six, we
learned that there's more going on in the universe than
just what our mass is doing. So in seven we
discovered us there's gravity out there that has no known
point of origin. And then in to two decades ago,

(30:43):
in late nineties, that is, we found that there's a
pressure in the vacuum of space that's forcing the universe
to expand. So and those are huge fractions of all
that is driving the universe. If you add up the
extra gravity, which we call dark matter, with the extra

(31:05):
pressure on the in the vacuum of space, which we
call dark energy, it's of everything we know. So you know,
you can say we're just completely stupid about how the
universe works, although the part we do know works really
really well, so that's a good thing. But the rest,

(31:25):
if you can if you combine them. So there's our
sort of mass, which is matter and energy, and then
the the the the the dark matter, and the dark energy.
All of this is what's driving the universe. And the
total sort of energy content in the universe is contained
in the sum of those three. And we don't know
what's causing the dark matter, and we don't know what's

(31:47):
causing the dark energy. Okay um. Our next question comes
to us from listener Jerry. Jerry asked, how do we
communicate science effectively? And what other science communicators do you
admire other than the great Sagans or at for us?
Uh So, in America we do we do a few
things very well, or at least we do a few

(32:08):
things famously. One of them is that we make jets,
all right. Another one is it's our entertainment industry. You know,
America entertains the world with our movies, our TV shows,
our podcasts, our our broadcast content. Is an extraordinary gift
to the world. Any of us remember when you visit
other countries when you were a kid, you put on

(32:30):
the TV and there's your favorite TV show dubbed in
the local language, whereas we don't have any of their
TV shows dubbed in English. Right, So there's clearly a
one way street going on here where we're entertaining the world.
It would be irresponsible of anyone who is trying to
teach an electorate if it could be irresponsible if they

(32:51):
didn't exploit the power of media, entertainment, media and delivering
the messages. So that's just an important fact. Okay, we
have another question that comes to us from listener Cody.
Cody asked, what's your view on the connection between science
and philosophy. There's a very long tradition of a marriage

(33:13):
between science and philosophy that goes back forever. And if
you look at what the philosopher does, the philosopher assesses
the landscape and then sits in a chair and thinks
about it, deep thoughts, and then comes up with some
new understanding, with some new outlook on that landscape. Philosophers

(33:35):
at their best, that's what they do. The scientists, as
scientists at their best, will assess the landscape, propose an
idea for how or why that landscape should be something else.
Or something different or something more nuanced, and then they'll
divide an experiment to test the idea. If the idea

(33:56):
is not supported by experiment, they discard the idea and
then move on to the next one. So the difference
between the philosopher and the scientist is that the philosopher
has no laboratory, pilosopher has no telescope. Plosopher has no
particle accelerator. And when physics, which I'm using sort of
as elite science in my answer to your question, when

(34:17):
physics left the tabletop, which is basically the hundred and
twenty years ago, it left the tabletop and entered the
realm of the quantum, which which lives wholly outside of
human experience and human common sense, and it looked at
the large scale structure of the universe. These two extremes

(34:40):
fall so far away from your life experience that you
can't sit on a couch and deduce the nature of
the world from your own life experience, because your life
experience doesn't contain that which the experiments are demonstrating that
the how the actual world behaves. Now, of course Einstein

(35:01):
conjured up relativity, you know, not quite out of the blue,
but there were some puzzling things that could not be understood,
and he wrote a mathematical formalism for his theory, and
then that came up with predictions, so that we tested
the predictions and if theories turned out to be true.
So that's a good thing. Philosophers don't tend to bring

(35:22):
math to the problem in the way actual scientists do.
The more sort of idea driven than calculation driven. Historically,
that's how that's been the case. So I could a
philosopher have come up with relativity, I suppose, but they didn't.
A philosopher surely could have come up with evolution because
the data were available, although Gdarin had some extra data

(35:45):
to really drive it home, but that one didn't require
from financy equipment to have resolved biology. Philosopher in principle
could have come up with evolution by natural selection, but
they didn't. It was a scientist. And so you look
at progress in our understanding of the natural world in
the last hundred years, the last hundred and fifty years,

(36:05):
that progress has primarily been by the thinking of scientists,
not of philosophers. Now you can say some scientists are
thinking philosophically. I don't have a problem with that, But
to say, let us train people in philosophy so that
they can become better scientists, I don't. I don't improve
of that at all. That my read of how that
has gone in the past century tells me that you

(36:27):
are removing yourself from the frontier cosmic discovery. Now there's
some branches of science that are brand new, like spanking
brand new, like neuroscience. All right, that's only been on
the map, you know, ten years tops before then. There
are people, you know, poking around the brain, but it
hadn't really taken off as its own, as its own

(36:48):
field where you can get degrees in it. And that's
early enough that and plus, the mind is so fascinating
and so complex, and there's so many ways that can
think about how it works and how it doesn't work.
It might benefit from the efforts of philosophers. And I
know there are a bunch of sort of neuro philosophers

(37:09):
who are orbiting the field in an effort to contribute.
And my hope is that they can and set things
in directions that they need to be in the way
early philosophers with regard to physics did for physicists. There
are other branches of You know, this philosophy of ethics
is religious philosophy. There are other kinds of philosophy out there.
You were, specifically, I presume, referring to philosophers in ways

(37:32):
that they might contribute to the advancing frontier of science
and your questions the philosophers asked that are just simply
not useful to a scientist, like how do you really
know the moon is there? To say, well, I have
light and the well, that's just the light of the moon.
You know, how about the moon itself, Well, I can measure, well,

(37:53):
that's just a measurement of the light of them. And
and you could down many kinds of beer discussing the
there's another there's a whole there's a chunk of philosophers
who are asking the question, is it the molecule H
two oh water? If you isolate a single H to
a molecule, is that water? Whereas Warter the macroscopic properties

(38:16):
we give when you have countless numbers of these, and
then you then it flows and its liquid e And
you know it's not a liquid, it's not a solid,
it's it's not anything. So it's a molecule. The philosophers
arguing this publishing papers on this, and the scientist just
doesn't have time. The luxury of time. I call them
beer conversations, conversations where you just sort of question the

(38:40):
existential conversations about knowledge and life and mind matter. You know, okay,
but it's not useful in the laboratory. UM let me
just follow up on that too. I was thinking about
ethics in terms of philosophy, and many times it comes up.
So you're talking about out, for instance, bringing back the

(39:01):
woolly mammoth, or if you're talking about artificial intelligence, you're
talking about ethics. They're um making certain that some sort
of piece of technology isn't gonna show up on the
black market. How much of that should science be concerned
with before after the creation the possibility. So I'm curious

(39:23):
whether there is a negative argument to cloning a mammoth
other than no, it's extinct, will leave it extinct? You know,
I mean, I don't someone's going to clone a mammoth.
You know, you get the tissue out of the glacier
as the glacier melt, because all our glaciers are melting,
so all kinds of fun I say, creatures are going
to be spilling out of that glacier glacier probably a

(39:44):
few caveman while we're at it, and so, yeah, we
have the power to clone it. Somebody's going to clone it.
Now to ask what the ethics of that is, I
think there's there are more interesting ethical questions that are
in front of us. And whether we clone in mammoth like,
you know, cloning people who are cloning or creating deadly viruses.

(40:08):
You know, that could be used genocidally. I mean, so
if you had to rank the topics top to bottom,
you know what we do with the mammoths. I don't
think people are going to protest. I agree. I think
that what I'm thinking about is how much of the
scientists concern him or herself when they are going through
the motions of what is possible, what can be created?
Is this out of the realm of scientists? Should they

(40:31):
concentrate on what is possible? And you know, does the
just society create the ethics? Does should there be any
sort of overlapping there is that? Is that a job
that the scientists would think about ethics? Yeah, that's an
excellent point. I think it's the job of the scientists
as a citizen to think about it. You know, all

(40:52):
citizens should be thinking about the ethical conduct of the species.
And fortunately, at leave there's been some good investment in this,
in this along these lines over the decades and over
the centuries, so that there's half actually been ethical shifts
in our conduct over the years. Right. You know, their

(41:15):
books written on how to treat your slave ethically, and
they don't address the question of why you would have
a slave in the first place. Right, So, so fortunately
there's a collective sense of what is good and what
is right that is not anchored in some time past

(41:36):
where the needs and the conduct of what was considered
reprehensible behavior, reprehensible behavior of the past defended by whatever
documents people had or whatever their upbringing was. That the
stuffing that does not carry into the future. I'm glad
for that, right, I am free because of that. So

(41:57):
so that's fine. So I think the ethics can be
an evolving conversation. I'm old enough to remember all this
conversation about um in vitro fertilization, the first test tube baby.
Should we isn't you know? Now? It's it doesn't even
it doesn't even make a news story if someone is
born from a test tube it's a non story and

(42:19):
so but at the time people know it's the ethics
of this, and it's like, you know, chill out, you know,
just try to think it through and you know, look
at the benefits and is there a downside that isn't religion?
You know, religion is always telling you what you shouldn't do.
And so if your only revival is religion and you

(42:41):
haven't really thought it through rationally, then you're missing some
further conversations that should be had about what goes on.
There's something else that's true that that needs to be
on the table. That science fiction writers are awesome at
depicting futures where science goes bad, and they create terrifying

(43:04):
images of nuclear energy gone bad. You know, uh, just
cloning gone bad. Um uh, virus has gone bad. And
and I'm happy to report that there has never been
science gone bad by the efforts of mad scientists who

(43:26):
wants to take over the world. But we really have
to watch out for our mad politicians, right even the
Adam bomb as ass Yes, that was the whole set
of complicit physicist who made that bomb, there's no doubt
about it. But somebody paid their way. Somebody wrote their paycheck.
Somebody funded that entire enterprise, and those are governments. Those

(43:50):
the congress, that is the electorate, that is a president,
that is a president's cabinet, somebody else by geopolitical forces
are deciding what they want to do with the science,
and you will you will never find scientists leading armies
to invade other countries. It's just not what we do.

(44:13):
So the the the ethical conduct is not so much
of what a science just does, but how does the
society react to the discoveries of science, And that needs
to be a in the Some over lap there, of course,
between the two. But ethics is a cultural problem, not
simply that of what a scientist does. Almost every scientific

(44:36):
discovery that we've ever found has extraordinary benefit to humankind.
Extraordinary the early days of of of nuclear physics, where
we found radioactive materials, and Marie carry died of some
kind of cancer. I think it was leukemia, surely as
a result of her playing around with radium named because

(44:57):
of his radioactive properties. There's an entire branch of medicine
called radiology, which is the benefits of the investments of
physicists who are trying to understand nature at its most
most basic level, so extraordinary benefits to society await us
by every scientific discovery. Uh that is to come, history

(45:21):
tells us. Okay, well, that concludes the interview. I hope
that you guys have enjoyed that. Again, thank you guys
for giving us some great questions for him to answer.
And uh, I think we have time for a bit
of mail here. Let's see. Let's call the robot over.
Oh okay, we heard from listener Adam, and Adam writes

(45:42):
then with an email title discovering Nutmeg in India, of course,
responding to our episode that we did on the science
and history of nutmeg. He says, Hey, guys, I went
on a tour of Kerala's backwaters basically huge waterways that
people live alongside, and we went to a spice farm.
Guess what was there? Meg? My first thought was your
podcast about nutmeg last year. As the guide explained it,

(46:05):
he went part by part. The red part inside is
called mace in the local language and is extremely expensive.
It's used in Indian dishes like very Yanni. The best part, however,
it was when he described how you could get a
quote unquote kick from eating too much nutmeg. I don't
think the others understood, but thanks to your podcast, I
knew exactly what he meant. Thanks again and keep up
the great work. Some pictures from the two were attached

(46:27):
with the nutmeg at the bottom. And Adam, of course
is the chief Happiness Officer who has been traveling around
the world and and regularly writes into our podcast and
a few other house tofforks podcasts as well, and you
can find out more about what he's up to at
happiness plunge dot com. But yeah, he sent us a
number of these pictures and as always, just fascinating glimpse
into his travels. Yeah, I love that to the the

(46:48):
tour guide had a little wink wink nudge nutge because
they're referring to the hallucinogenic properties of nutmeg, which we've
probably said us a million times by now not worth it. Uh.
If anybody is like, wow, that has hallucinatory properties, that
is not the stuff that anybody really wants to play with,
I should say. We also heard from a couple of

(47:09):
listeners out there who were really taken by our our
episodes that dealt with the shadow self as it relates
to well. In one episode of Pro Wrestling in the
other episode, we talked about undercover cops who have a
false identity that they're using, and also actors and method
or otherwise that are that have to put cloak themselves
in some level of fiction in order to do their thing.

(47:30):
So we heard from Josephine Josephine Wrightson and says, Hi,
Robert and Julie, I really enjoyed your last episode on
the self and the roles we play. I really enjoy
your podcast your other podcast as well, of course, and
had a couple of things to contribute to the discussion. First,
I went and listened to Bandy Newton's Ted Talk, and
at one point she mentions feeling that she didn't have
a self since she was able to play other people
so well. That reminded me of another actor who supposedly

(47:53):
felt the same way, Peter Sellers on the subject of
playing characters as an actor, myself, I find it best
to take some method step to get to the right
place emotionally. But I find the strangest thing in my
case is that though I always have my home self,
whatever character I'm playing at the time usually rubs off
on me a bit. It's sort of like who I
normally am is being shown through the lens of another personality.

(48:15):
I remember one character I played, Charles, the second of
England's Minister nel Gwen, who was very happy and positive,
had a particular effect on me. And my mom's always
said that she can come back anytime she likes. Can't
wait to hear your next podcast, Sincerely, Josephine in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Very interesting, UM, And I can't help but think of personality.

(48:36):
It's sort of like a prism and it kind of
depends on which direction the light is hitting it and
which you exhibit whatever feelings or personality at that time. Um.
And we've talked about this before, about how it's related
to consciousness and the unconscious, so again it's it's very
interesting to me to know that personality isn't something that
is always a stable thing. You really have to work

(48:58):
out it because it's part of that instruction of our reality.
We also heard from a listener by the name of Stephanie.
Stephanie writes in and says hello, Robert and Julie, greetings
from Toronto. Another one and she's responding to the same episode,
So there you go. I wonder if they know each other. Um,
she says, I recently enjoyed listening to your episode on
undercover Actors in the Shadow sell. You invited undercover agents

(49:19):
and actors to write in and share their experiences of
identity and role playing. While I don't fit either of
those descriptions, I thought you'd be interested in my perspective
on the issue, since I suffer from what they might
be diagnosed as a particularly acute form of imposter syndrome
as a result of the way people respond to my
outer self. Yes, it's much different from my inner self.
I'm thirty with a PhD and a tenure track appointment

(49:40):
at a major Canadian research university, but I look like
I'm about seventeen, with wide blue eyes and a small
stature at five two and about a hundred pounds. While
the situation is well situated for winning the biggest stuffed
animal prize of the AID, guesting carnival booth, and convincing
a class of undergraduates that you're a child genius, a
real life dugie howser, it often just makes me feel
clause trophobic in my own body. The way I'm treated

(50:02):
by others never seems to match my sense of self.
Since starting his faculty at the University. Of this past summer,
the situation has become its most intense. Each new person
I meet, students, staff, or fellow faculty member treats me
like a first year student unless I correct them, which
for the most part, I've given up doing. After encountering
this response multiple times a day from a range of
people for the past several months, I'm beginning to feel

(50:23):
like a young actor playing a grown up role. I'm
not sure if this is just a serious case of
imposter syndrome or whether a more fundamental shift in my
sense of self is happening. Your discussion made me wonder
what I'd be like, who I'd be if the way
others respond to me had always aligned with my age
and general intelligence level. I've attached a picture of me
on my honeymoon that illustrates this issue. More evidence available here.

(50:45):
And then she said a Flickr page, so it love
the podcast, Stephanie, and I did see that picture, and yes,
she she does come across as very young, and I
have to say that I understand what she's saying because
to a certain age I had the same problem. And
it is a little bit odd because people don't expect
you to sort of come out as is the person
that you are. They think that, and not that I'm
petite and I look like I'm eighteen, because certainly there's

(51:07):
neither one of these. It's true. Uh, but people don't
always expect, you know, a certain personality to come out. Yeah,
it is. It was a really fascinating email to read,
you know, to think about. You know, you know what
what happens when who we feel we are inside is
out of step with her outer self, be it because
of our physical appearance, or because the way we end
up carrying ourselves in the world, or even just how

(51:29):
we are in first impressions versus how how we really are,
and you do get into this complex question of who
are we really you know, well, and especially if you
look at the studies that say that an infticular, are
men who are taller tend to have more responsibilities put
upon them and tend to get promoted more, and so
on and so forth, and that that's a huge generalization.
But actually I should dig up that study so I

(51:50):
can talk about it a little bit more in detail.
But things like that that, you know, color people's perception,
and then the way that you get to operate in
the world. Uh so if you are that person, or
if you're not that person, or if you're blonde or
so on and so forth. You know, how, how does
that affect the way that you accept certain responsibility in
the world or don't accept them. Yeah, I mean, I, um,

(52:12):
I'm six two or six three, depending on you know,
how I want to measure myself. I guess I guess
I'm sixth three, but sometimes I hold it at six
two because it feels like a good cutting off point.
But you were just promoted to like president of the universe, No,
I think now I grow my sideburns long and so that, like,
you know, people might see me and they're like, who's
that tall guy. We should promote him to a level
of incompetence, and then they do my sideburns and they're

(52:32):
like maybe not, maybe not. You just cited the Peter principle,
did I know? Yeah? Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well,
I mean I have been there to varying degrees in
the past. Before I want up here and groom my
side burns out. So yeah, you've been to the Peter principle. Well,
I have found myself being when I was in newspapers.
I found myself gaining more and more responsibilities that I

(52:54):
didn't really want or enjoy and or or even was
necessarily that good at them. But yeah, no, I think
every buddy has stepped into Peter's suit at one time
or another. So my advice is grow your cideburns out
everyone ladies too. Yeah, I say, I'm with my mind
all right. Well, if you have anything you would like
to share with us, be it about this whole you
can undrew we were just talking about related itself, about

(53:14):
the shadow self, and if you have any feedback or
anything to add regarding the neotographed Tyson interview, we'd love
to hear from you again. It was a tremendous treat
to speak with Dr Tyson, and I really enjoy getting
to share your questions with him. So I really think
from now on, whenever it's it's possible, I will reach
out to people on Facebook and let you guys contribute

(53:35):
at least some of the questions for our our interviews.
So if you want to do that, if you want
to find us on Facebook and follow us so that
you can be on top of that. Um again, Facebook,
we are stuff to blow your mind. We're also stuff
to blow your Mind on Tumbler and on Twitter. We
go by the handle below the Mind, and you can
always drop us a line at blow the Mind at
Discovery dot com For more on this and thousands of

(53:57):
other topics. Does it how stuff works out? Up? Could
e