Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going (#136)

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

Get Neil’s advice for life when you join my mailing list; just click here 👉 http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 📝 https://podcastnotes.org/?p=28558 Thanks to today’s sponsor, LinkedIn Jobs! Visit linkedin.com/impossible to post your job ad for FREE! 00:00 Introduction 00:05:00 Neil, Galileo Galilei and vino! 00:09:00 What about wine fascinates you? 00:26:29 How do you handle your fame? 00:33:58 What has been the impact of sports (wrestling) on your life? 00:38:44 The superhero Niel Wanted to be! 00:40:20 Influences on your life and some secrets to success. The role of confidence. 00:42:55 Issues of race 00:53:11 Advice on interviewing. Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating And please join my mailing list to get resources and enter giveaways to win a FREE copy of my book (and more) http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 📝 🎥 🎥 Watch my most popular videos🎥 🎥 Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/3z8RqKMQHe0?sub_confirmation=1 Weinstein and Wolfram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI0AZ4Y4Ip4?sub_confirmation=1 Sheldon Glashow: https://youtu.be/a0_iaWgxQtA?sub_confirmation=1 Michael Saylor The Physics of Bitcoin https://youtu.be/CaN_CDKqXOg?sub_confirmation=1 Sir Roger Penrose, Nobel Prize winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMuqyAvX7Wo?sub_confirmation=1 Jill Tarter https://youtu.be/O9K9OBd3vHk?sub_confirmation=1 Sara Seager Venus LIfe: https://youtu.be/QPsEDoOTU6k?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM 🏄‍♂️ Find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔥 Find me on Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating 📖 Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA 🔔 Subscribe for more great content https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 ✍️Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 📧Join my mailing list: http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 👪Join my Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/losingthenobelprize 🎙️Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-impossible/id1169885840?mt=2 🎙️Listen on all other platforms: https://wavve.link/into A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/ Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Really? You think I need to introduce today's guest? Neil deGrasse Tyson. Only the most famous scientist, maybe in human history, by a number of searches and the prominence that he has and the impact he's had on the universe. There's really no one better to host on The Into the Impossible podcast. And Neil truly showed up with all cylinders firing. It's a really wide-ranging interview that discussed his life, his, his, tactics and techniques to get through the day, his thoughts on aging, his thoughts, even on self-confidence and protection, things that I don't think he's talked about so frequently in the past. So I tried to go deep, not cover the same normal things like, how are you get to be such a good writer and blah, blah, blah. He has one simple answer, one prescription, which is do the work. And he did the work. And he continues to do the work. I think he was maybe even writing his 16th book as we were having this conversation, you won't want to miss it. So please, if you want to hear the entirety of our interview, not just the hour-long mega segment of Q&A that we engaged in,

and that was so terribly enjoyable for me. But if you also want to hear his answers to my patented thrilling three final questions, the existential questions that are so unique in Neal's case, you will not want to miss what he comes up with. You will. need to subscribe to my mailing list. If you want to hear them now, at least, while you're watching this video on YouTube, otherwise you can wait about a month. I'll post them up there. If you want to be a supporter of the podcast, it really doesn't cost you anything. You can just subscribe. And you'll get those answers. And even more from today's wonderful guest, Neil deGrasse Tyson. So with that, I'm just going to go straight into the interview. We kick it off over a fine bottle

of A Barolo, and think about the founder of observational astronomy, at least with a telescope, none other than my hero Galileo, Galilei. Enjoy this episode of Into the Impossible with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Today, everybody, I am speaking with a legend, with a influence on me, both personally and professionally. And sad to say, although I'm not terribly sad to say because I made my kids day because Neil deGrasse Tyson is my son's favorite astrophysicist. Do you know how that feels, Neil, when your own son? No, your next question should be, son, how many astrophysicists do you know? See, that's, that, you want to get the background data on that statistic? Well, you know, it's funny with him.

I always make note that astronomers are the least likely people to know the names of constellations. if you're ever at a party with an astronomer and you ask them, what's that constellation over there? They go, how am I supposed to know? I'm an astrophysicist. So I taught my son to say, no matter when Daddy asked you, when he was three, I said, whenever we're at hosting other professors, and Daddy asked you, what phase is the moon in, Isaac?

I said, just say, waxing gibbous moon. And they won't know the difference because they have no idea the phases of the most basic astronomical phenomena. And he would do that. And then I would say, It's true for maybe half of the professional astrophysicist wouldn't know because they come to it from physics and some other, some or even geologists who became planetary scientists. And so they don't have tap roots in the community of amateur astronomers. Right.

That's the one field where when you invoke the word amateur, it's actually a badge of honor. Right. Right. If you're an amateur astronomy, it means you own it. Typically, you own a telescope. You've gone out in the cold, dark of night. and everyone thinks you're crazy. They're similar profiles to birdwatchers, right?

Where are you going? Why? To do what? These are the questions you have to respond to when people ask you what you're doing. And so I have deep amateur astronomy tap roots. So, yes, I can name many of the constellations. And generally, I do know what phase the moon is in and when an eclipse is coming. So I'm in that the third to as many as half who actually do have knowledge of the night sky.

Well, I never miss an opportunity to tease my fellow astro professionals by saying to them, you know, if you were a professor of international relations, it's not like we'd expect you to know where Mexico is or anything like that. You know, it's got diminishing standards here in the app. That's funny. Yeah. By the way, just to riff a little more on the concept of amateur. astronomer. The, you know, if you are a neurosurgeon, you wouldn't boast that you are an amateur neurosurgeon. There's no, I don't know any other profession where if you put amateur in front of it,

that someone's, hey, that's, so it's, I think it may be unique in that regard. I'm just, I'm just saying. That's right. Yeah. There's some amateur rocket scientists, but normally they win the Darwin Award. They don't win the Nobel Prize, but they win the Darwin Award. Well, I want to start today with an amateur avocation that I learned about from a colleague who will remain nameless. And I want to reflect, first of all, on this figure here, who is the first professional astronomer to use a telescope.

Can you recognize this man? Of course. And we want to get a finger puppet of me. Duh. Who do you think of who are you talking? Who? Who? I didn't do any show prep, Neil.

Come on. Give me a way. You're going to hold up a finger puppet of Galileo in his period garb, all right, with his bald-ass head and his, you know, beard. And he's holding a telescope. All right. Big shot. Who's this? He's in his garb, too.

Do you know who that? Oh, wait a minute. I'm giving it away. I'm giving it away. Do you recognize this? And he's been a guest of my podcast. Hmm. Oh, Nome Chomsky.

Okay. He's got a doll. And then, of course, we're going to talk about this man who you will recognize. Wait, how many finger puppets do you have? Well, I was going to ask you if you'd like to be a finger puppet. But that's impolite until the end of the interview, Neil. I don't want to go too blue in the interview yet. But do you recognize this gentleman?

Carl Sagan. The turtleneck gives it away. You know, when I hosted Cosmos, I wanted at least one episode where I got to wear a turtleneck. And I did wear a turtleneck, but it wasn't like full up the neck. It was like one of these half turtlenecks. And I said, all right, that's as much as an homage Carl is going to get since styles have changed four times over since then. We'll give him a half turtleneck. So I thought I looked pretty sharp in a jacket and a half turtleneck in a few of those scenes.

And I shared those feelings with none of than Andurion, your partner in crime, who was a guest on the podcast. And along with her daughter, Sasha Sagan, who was a period in one of the episodes, I think playing her grandmother. in this episode. Sasha was a guest on the podcast, too. So I've had mother and daughter. It was Carl Sagan. She played Carl Sagan's mother. That's right, her grandmother, right, yes.

For her own grandmother. Yes, sorry, yes. And then I have coming up, so I've had a mother-daughter pair. And then soon I'm going to have your friend Sylvester James Gates, who's one of my best friends as well. I had him on three times so far. And I'm having his daughter, Delilah, who's graduating from your alma mother. Totally into black holes. Oh, my gosh.

Exactly. So she's going to be out. So it's going to be father-daughter. And I'm trying to make up all the pairs, and I'll let you know how that goes. You have access to all these people. You don't need me on your show. Yeah. What am I doing?

Why am I here? You get all the science you want. Well, you know, I said, I'm just saying, I'm usually when I'm a podcast guest, the podcaster has no access to any scientist in the world. Because they either don't know them when they may contact this, the scientist looks at the rest of their, podcast and say, no way am I appearing on that episode. So I become the token scientist. And so I don't know what you're going to do with me for this hour. But I'm here. I'm here for you. You're the hardest one to get. You know, I had on Jessica Mayer, Dr. Jessica Mayer, while she was on the freaking space station, she was easier to get than you. So this is about five years in the making. I even wrote a book with

Norton so that I could get close to, uh, to you via one of your books and with, uh, Aaron Lovett, who is my publicist, as well as your publicist. And I wrote a book. And I wrote a book. just so I could get close to you, never materialized when that book came out. Now we got some time thanks to a global pandemic. And I want to thank you again for coming on. I'll read your bio later. I don't want to waste your time with your own bio. Unless you want me to present the rebuttal to your, no, no, I'm not going to present the rebuttal. First, I want to start with a rumor that you are an anapophile, which sounds dirty, but it's not. It's like scissigy, things in science that sound dirty, but they're not. So I've been told that you are a wine aficionado, and I want to read a quote by this man, Galileo Galilei, he said the sun with all those nine planets, including Pluto, no, he didn't say that. He said the sun with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it can still ripen a bunch of grapes, as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. What is it about wine or grapes or what have you? What about wine fascinates you that you have become an amateur wine officiast

shenado and in a file. So Galileo is not alone in having spoken of wine, and that's not even his only wine quote. Another wine quote, I'll mangle it, but it goes something like wine is water made in sunlight or something. Again, he's got that cosmic reference, but still very terrestrial. Let's remind ourselves that Galileo is still a. yes, he's a brilliant scientist, but he's still Italian. Don't let that fact escape you, okay? The boy lived in Italy, all right?

And so did some good eating and good drinking in Italy. Where is it a wonderful? I don't know if it was fully called Italy back in 1609, but I guess there were city states back then. Right. But the, so also the monk, Dom Perion, when he sort of stumbled on the double fermentation of yeast, where the first fermentation, first round you get alcohol, having converted the sugars, but if it double ferments, then it becomes carbon dioxide.

And he sees it and he says, oh my gosh, I've made a mistake. And then he tastes it. And then he says, I believe I'm tasting the stars. Wow. And thus was born the legacy of Don Perri on Champagne. So I think when I think of wine, other than attending wine tastings where the wine is the object of what's going on, I generally only have wine with meals. And if having wine with meal, then it becomes a culinary experience, not just a drinking experience, right? So that, and if you're having a meal, and I'm not a heavy drinker.

So if I have a bottle of wine, I need more than me to consume that bottle of wine. So generally, if I'm having the meal and I'm having wine, there are other people at the table. So the wine not only serves you, serves your appetite, your stomach, it also serves a social role. And so I value the juxtaposition of these. forces on what it is to be human. And as you noted, I study wines almost academically, not that I publish papers in it, but I like knowing about it. And I like knowing that different parts of the world grow different grapes depending on the climate and the soils and the sunlight. And they develop food that rises up and somehow works really well with the wine grown in the region.

the best Barolo, the Italian wine, that I've ever had, was in Italy. And I'm sitting on a porch and there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, a weather and the breeze and the language. And I don't know if that was actually the best Barolo I'd ever had, but somehow everything worked in that moment. So, so I try to be culturally respectful. of wines because if you collect wine, you have wine from all around the world. Sometimes you can get overfocused and you only drink one kind of wine. I don't think that's good. I think you're missing out.

And so any meal that we prepared, my wife and I prepare, if it even smacks in the slightest bit of being Italian, I'm opening an Italian wine. Wow. And a French meal, it's a Frenchman. If I'm getting like a steak, you know, Omaha steak, I'm opening a California wine. An American American. We got some of that. I'll open me in a Merk and wine.

So, so it, it, it, it stimulates cultural awareness and sensitivity. It's, it's, it's a social force. And, you know, when you imagine a bar fight, okay? It's typically, of course, between two men. Does that bar fight happen while the two of them are sipping a glass of Merlo? Zinfandel leads to bar brawl tonight at 11. It's kind of, you know, so I've never seen people break out into a bar fight over their glass of Zinfandel. All right.

So, so there's something peaceful about it, something congenial about it that is not mirrored in a shot of whiskey, just in practice. And even beer, right? And so, anyhow, so that's why I embrace the culture, the efforts of the winemakers. And by the way, you didn't ask this, but it's a good place to volunteer it. There is data. There are data going back centuries in vineyards of when there was the harvest and when they had rains. And this is some of the best data around on the... agricultural consequences of climate change.

Amazing. Yeah. And I wanted to, I don't know if you know this, but I'm a practicing Jew. I'm not as Orthodox as our friend Ben Shapiro, whose show you went on just a few weeks after I went on his show a couple of years ago. And Ben is, of course, full Jew. I'm only, you know, kind of semi-Jew. But nevertheless, I mean you're Jew-ish. That's right. Yeah, kind of leanish. But every Friday night, the Jews do what is called Kedush or sanctification. It's meant to separate the holy day of Shabbat, the Sabbath, from the rest of the week, where we must work, we're commanded to work. And you celebrate that event with wine. You must celebrate it with wine or, you know, it could be grape juice if you're a teetotaler.

But when you do that, you invoke the fact that God, according to the Hebrew tradition, not only let us out of Egypt, but also created it. the universe. In other words, we are celebrating with wine. None in that order. That's right. Yeah. I want to be clear. Just the way you said it, you said that as though letting you out of Egypt was the big task. Oh, and by the way, he created the universe. You know, this, can we prioritize this, please? That's very good. Yeah. So I want to turn next to another great, great scientifically inclined individual who is a hero of yours and also of one of my heroes who lives downtown from you or maybe uptown. I don't know

where you are right now, but Jim Simons. So Jim Simons is the patron of the Simons Observatory, which I am privileged to co-lead with 300 of the brightest human beings on the planet. We're seeking cosmic origins through the cosmic microwave background radiation. I interviewed Jim Simons last year on Father's Day, and I asked him, who is the person in history that you'd most like to have a dinner with, a glass of wine with, so to speak? And he said Abraham Lincoln. without batting an eye or without batting an eyelash. I don't know what you bat first. But Lincoln means a lot to you.

And I wonder if we could speak a little bit about the aspects of leadership. I don't think you've talked so much about this. You are a leader in the field. First of all, you are the most famous. I did a Google search. And I said, who's the most famous scientist in history by amount of searches? So, you know, Einstein gets searched and Hawking get searched. But by sheer number of people who know you, Neil, you're the most well-known scientist,

probably in human history, because of the internet, of course, and because of all the amazing work that you do to broaden awareness of science. I'm not expecting you to reply to that without another bottle of Borolo. But I want to talk about leadership, because I think that's a role that people don't really appreciate. You are the leader, essentially, of the Hayden Planetarium.

You've been in this role in science leadership for years. You've written books. What is leadership to you? Can you be taught to be a good leader? Did you study to be a good leader? How does that instantiate itself in your life? Thanks for that question. So first of all, I would hesitate to declare that metrics offered by the Internet mean anything at all. I would reevaluate your, how you're going about that that search. So my first comment. Second, you mentioned Lincoln. I got associated with Abraham Lincoln, not from my own natural causes.

I was approached by the, there's a foundation, the Lincoln Library Foundation, I think it's called. If that's not exactly what it's called, it smells like that, right? And they wanted me to reflect on the Gettysburg Address. and they were going to collect people's reflections and put it in a book. But they wanted people from all different walks of life to do so. So politicians, economists, and so they had to throw a scientist in there. So I guess they pulled the short straw for me to do this. And the task was the Gettysburg Address is 242 words, something like that,

one of the shortest, most significant addresses ever given by anyone. And we were to write 242 words on how and why the Gettysburg Address and or Lincoln means what they mean to you. And it's supposed to take personally. So I said, you know, I'm a scientist. And I don't, so even though my skin color is dark, I'm not going to be the one who's going to say, oh, Lincoln freed the slat. I'm not going to be that person because that's not what I carved in my life.

All right. I didn't lead a life chanting how segregation is bad. That's a different kind of profession than an astrophysicist. So I said, how can I make this relevant? I thought, I thought a long time about it. I said, I got it. Oh, yeah. Okay.

You know what Lincoln did in 1863, when clearly he had other issues in front of him, like the Civil War, like Gettysburg, like, okay? Anyone else he did in 1863? He founded the National Academy of Sciences. And I was so struck by that. Among other things that he did, he established the land grant university system. He, the things that he's not remembered for because there's so many other really important things for why you would remember him, okay, reasons for remember. So, so I composed 242 words celebrating the National Academy of Sciences. That's what I did. And then that got, uh, it got, um, uh, illustrated and it's on YouTube. And so for me, I wasn't so much commenting or reflecting on his urge to keep the country together and the

politics that that necessitated. And, you know, if you saw the movie, Lincoln, you, it shows you what's going on under the hood. I think Doris Kearns Goodwin was based on her story or she was advisor to it, based on her books. But you see the actual politics that is unfolding under the hood that is not otherwise apparent

when he just read a surface account of the history. So, so I wasn't so much reflecting on his leadership as on his foresight. The foresight to create such a thing as a National Academy of Sciences. at a time when we're transitioning from a backwards country into one of the leaders of an industrial revolution. We didn't start it, but we certainly ratcheted it up in the second half of the last quarter of the 19th century,

going into the 20th century and beyond. So that's that connection. Now you want to ask about leadership. I never think about it. Here's what I think about. As an educator, especially, I say to myself, am I offering something that people want and that they value? So if I do, then they follow.

All right. And I guess you can measure sort of internet value that way by how many followers you have. And I have like a crazy number of Twitter followers. And I wake up every morning and say, you know, do you realize you're following an astrophysicist? You can still back out. There's still time. You know, this is not, I didn't, this is not a requirement. All right.

And so for me, leadership is not telling people to follow you. That's not it. Leadership is not, well, let me do something great. And then everyone follows me because I did something great. I would say most leaders in history satisfy that criterion. You know, how else does Grant become president, except that he commanded the Union armies? All right. How else does Eisenhower become president, except that he was a five-star general?

So these are people who did great things. And if in that context, you think of war and winning a war as a great thing, he did great things. and then he's on George Washington. You know, how many presidents did something great, and then everyone follows them. So that's not how I think about leadership. I think a leader is someone who has followers because the followers derive something from it.

And, you know, was Steve Jobs a leader? Sure. Is he a leader because I said, I want to be Steve? No, because he created products that people liked. All right? So people just came to, accreted to him because he kept serving them. Okay? So all I can say is, if I have as many followers as I do, it's because I am feeding people.

Okay? I'm feeding them. And the moment someone comes up to me in the street and says, oh, are you, you need to ask you? I said, yes. Oh, can I have your autograph? What's your favorite? color, can we take a selfie? If those are the only three questions you ask me, then I have failed as

an educator because then you're, what you're there, you're building personality and that's cult, that's cult building. If you are the object of their destination, rather than the messages you have and the themes and the ideas that they then attach to. So that's how I think about leadership. So another connection with Jim Simons, the leader of the Simons Foundation, the creator of the Churn Simons metric invariant, topological form, is, it comes together with his notion of the value or somehow the perils of being famous. And he's famous for saying, because he's rumored to be the world's smartest billionaire. And I've done charitable events with him where, you know, people come up to him and won't leave him alone. And he said to me once he said, Brian, you know, I'm one of the richest people in the world. but if I gave a dollar to everyone who told me they're a genius, even I'd be broke.

But one thing he said once to me, he said, or he's a rumor to say, is from the book Animal Farm, where there's a donkey character named Benjamin and there's a pig. So this is the George Orwell novel, not the movie. That's right, man. So, no, it's right, Animal House. Sorry, Animal House. George Orwell, you know. Yeah, yeah, sorry. I don't want to confuse the two.

Yes, these are not the same things. Animal house, animal farm. Go on. The pig says, I'm jealous of you, Benjamin the donkey, because you have this long, luxurious tail. And I have this short little curly thing that doesn't do anything. And Benjamin the donkey says, yeah, that's true. The Lord gave me a long tail to swat away the flies,

but I'd rather not have the flies and not need the tail. And, you know, I wonder sometimes, because you are besiege. And I did talk with our mutual friend, David Spurgel, who has the utmost admiration for you, but he's like, I don't know how Neil does. I mean, you can't walk down the street. My friend Cindy Lawrence, who's the CEO of the Museum of Mathematics, downtown New York, just so gracious, you're always so gracious. How do you handle that?

Would you trade the tail, you know, to not have the flies, so to speak? And I'm not calling your followers flies, please. Yes, you did. Let the record show. Let the record show. Okay. name just, no,

let me take it another step. Let the record show that he really wants me to be a pig. Pig proclivities. Plus, I think flies also hang around pigs. They can't use her too. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they also hang around pigs.

But the, but what do I know? I'm a city kid. So, my visibility, Bame, if you want to call it that, happened

adiabatically, if I want to sort of stoke the physics vocabulary of your legacy on the show. And so there wasn't, nothing happened overnight. There can be actors who slave away and regional

theater and then they get spotted by a casting agent and then they star in a movie and then everyone knows their name the day after. That would require abrupt adjustments that people don't always survive, all right, especially if it's your child actor, you know, how does that work? Or even athletes who come out of college and then they have a $10 million contract and they're

famous and rich overnight. All right, a now $50 million contract. So it happens slowly, which allowed me to make adjustments slowly without it being catastrophic in my life. and they're very explicit metrics of this. So pre-internet, all right, it's, it's, how many total strangers recognize me in the street. And it would be like one a month, and then it was like one a week, then it was five a week, then it was five a day, then it was 10 a day, then it was 100 a day, There was a thousand a day. Okay.

And then there's a point where the measurement is not meaningful. And so I have tactics and methods and the things I do that can open the doors and then close the doors effectively and efficiently when I have the time, energy, and interest to serve this audience that I have cultivated over all this time. So the thing is, Simons could have been rich with no one recognizing him at all, except that he's done very visible things by creating a very visible foundation and agencies and organizations. And he's got a very visible yacht called the Archimedes, right? So he does very visible things. So now he's recognized and everyone wants a piece of him. He could have just stayed in the back. There are plenty of billionaires.

you cannot recite their name, and you would walk past them in the street and never know. So I'm not accepting his declaration that, oh, I wish I was this, but without the that, because he could have controlled it, whereas my very visibility is the product of very deliberate actions I have taken in serving the public. So, and by the way, there are people who are famous who never wanted to be famous, all right? People who, like, stumbled on fame. It's kind of unfair at that point that they get crowded and chased down because they didn't bargain for it. They didn't want it.

They didn't. You know, if you're a kid of someone famous and you're about to inherit it, you know, the descendants of the Getty fortune or the fortune, you know, you're rich. And the tabloids want to write about you and you really just want to live life. Now, it's different if you're Paris Hilton, right? Part of her identity is being this sort of wealthy heiress, right? So speaking sort of capitalistically about this, no, no, speaking, let me say that differently. I, it's hard for fame in the United States to not be associated with wealth because opportunities arise and people. people pay you to make this happen.

Okay. I would love nothing more to write some bestselling books and they just go to the Bahamas. On your mega yacht. On your mega yacht. Okay. Oh, not my yacht. No. The Pluto.

It's got to be called a Pluto. That would be a nice sort of round that out. The Pluto. Oh my gosh. And I have to call it the Hades, you know, get really deep in there on it. No, no, no. So what's the name of the boat that crossed the river sticks? That would be the better name for it.

I think that boat had a name. It was, yeah, the Cicillia and Carybdis. My grief. Yeah. See, you're showing off now. That's right. You're showing off. I wanted to geek out with you.

My point is, so let me just say that I have learned to deal with the fame. and it's thousands a day. So I wear a hat, I can wear glasses, but there's another sort of access point to me that I can't control, and that's, there are people who are like five feet away behind me,

and then they hear my voice. I recognize that voice, and then they come up, and meanwhile, I got the dark glasses on and the hat. So, stealth mode, visual stealth, but auditory stealth, I don't know how to change my voice.

So what it has done is, it means I can't, can't really tour museums. I can't go shopping easily. So I do a lot of ordering or my wife does a lot of shopping. Or I'll go very early in the morning when hardly anyone else is there and wear the hat and the and the glasses. During COVID, there's a whole mask in front of my whole face, right? So that's been pretty good. But then some people like look a little extra long at my eyes. And then sometimes they'll do a thumbs up or something. So I said, say, damn. But if you can see me through my COVID mask and my hat, I got to give it to you. I got

to give it to you. If you get that deep into who I am, you know, nothing I can say. So, no, I'm okay with the tail. I'm okay with the tail. Let me ask you a related question that just came to me, but it's courtesy of our mutual friend, Stefan Alexander. Can you repeat what you said he should change his name to? Because I wasn't recording in the beginning for Stefan Alexander, president of the National Black Society of Black Physicist and full professor at Brown University. What should Stefan change High Solomon too? Exema is unpredictable.

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Oh, jazz. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were a very talented wrestler and as a younger person. I would say that differently. Though I was captain of my high school team and undefeated, let me remind you that was a wrestling team in New York City. It was not a wrestling team in Iowa or Oklahoma or you go there. Them boys are corn fed and they're haul and steer on their back as teenagers.

And then they put them on the mat. So when I got to college, I had a losing record until my senior year even. But I enjoy the sports so deeply that that did. I was better at other sports, actually. And I was better at rowing, for example. But the sheer purity of what it was to wrestle is what attracted me. Does that give you a confidence?

I mean, you're a physically imposing personality. Does that aid you, that fact that you have trained in, it is a martial art. Do you do find that it does broaden, you know, I know you talked about this on, you know, StarTalk and the sports segment thereof, but does it aid you? I mean, does it give you the confidence that? say a normal pencil and lack astrophysicist such as yours truly might not have no i i try to do some marshals but does it make you more confident especially in public when you're dealing with people you don't know who the hell this person is coming up i'm running he's coming up with the pen or i don't know

what the hell he's doing i mean how do you does it give you confidence or you know can you never let down your guard well so you're using confidence in one way where i think most people when they heard your question might have thought of it the other way so there is what kind of confidence you just have in yourself and your own presence when you're giving a public talk or when you're among colleagues, there are things that can boost just your sense of yourself. That's one kind of confidence. But the way you're asking about the confidence is, does it give me the confidence to kick someone's ass if I have to? That's really what you are asking there. So since my eyes are in my own head and I just look out and see the rest of the world, I don't look at myself. So I don't

think of myself as imposing. I'm not crazy tall. I'm six feet two and I probably shrunk a half inch in the last 30 years. Six two. You wouldn't say that's a tall, go talk to that tall person over there. No, that's not how that comes out. I have body mass. All right. I got a nice middle age man belly, but I think I wear it. I don't say well. I don't think I'm sloppy about that's what I would say, right? And so, but would you say, go to that big guy over in the corner? I don't think I'm that person who gets that description. So as a result, when you say I'm imposing, I don't think of myself as imposing for that reason. I think of people 250, 300 pounds, 6 foot 5, they're imposing in any room they walk into. So, now, that being said, I actively train my reflexes.

actively. And I do strength training, stretching. Not as strong as I used to be, but when someone comes near me, at all times I'm doing a calculation. If they lunge towards me with a weapon or knife or a letter opener, as someone at once stabbed Martin Luther King,

I judge whether I can back up block, grab, respond in the time the person would even think to do so. That's an active thought I have. And it's not just from wrestling. I did read a lot about the Asian martial arts, you know, taekwondo, karate, kung fu especially, was a big fan of Bruce Lee, who wasn't, of course. So I tested to see if my body could move the way martial arts experts could move. And for a while, I could do a full split. I can kick above my head. I could do things. And that gave me certain physical confidence walking down the street. Now, here's the rub here, is that at my size, I'm probably the last person who needed to be able to defend myself in the street against some thug. Because thugs don't

pick on people that are bigger than they are. It doesn't work that way. So, and here's something that you might appreciate when I was in high school, because I was a geek from way back, I wanted the super hero I wanted to be was the I wanted to be the protector of geeks and there'd be some bat symbol that would go up like digits of pie or something reflect on the clouds and then I would come running because I was physically able from very early on and bigger than most other kids in my class and and I started wrestling in high school and so it was I thought to myself, if I'm athletic, but I'm also geeky, then I appreciate the geek space, the geek universe, the geek averse, but I also have the strength and agility of all these athletes who would

otherwise be giving wedgies to the geeks. So I imagine myself as their protector. This is my one little fantasy that I had. You provoke the geeks when they, when they double check your calculations on how much a football deflex on Super Bowl Sunday away or towards the goal post based on the choreo. Let him do it. I'm bringing on. But I have to ask you, because you brought up leadership in the context of teaching. And my Russian friends, I was mentored by the mentee.

Is that a word, Mento? I don't know. Anyway, the protege, Mentee. Mentee. Yacobel Dovich, who was a famous astrophysic from the former Soviet Union. And his student, Alexander Palmerov, taught me that the word scientist in the Russian language means someone who is taught, probably a dude who was taught, a man who. was taught, but it means a person who was taught. And to me, that means that we as scientists sort of have an

obligation to teach because the supposition is we're going to pay it forward. We're not just going to, oh, here's all this knowledge. Thank you so much. So I want to talk about the influence of belief in you from an early age. Obviously, Carl Sagan is a huge influence in your life. And those sort of lessons, do you think that because you were kind of maybe singled out in a good way from a young age, that too gave you confidence? And again, I'm not using confidence. as a substitute for arrogance or anything like that. I'm just saying you have a preternatural gift and it might be God given if you, I know you don't fully believe in God. But anyway, it might be nature given, evolution given, whatever you want to say, Thor, Zeus, what have you. But the point is,

you have certain gifts. And is one of those the fact that it was kind of the metagenomics or what are they called epigenomics of having confidence being, you know, talented naturally, but also having people have confidence in you that's not, that made you, you know, kind of succeed in the way that that you flourished. No. No, it was completely tap-rooted within me. And I think that's not common. I think many people benefit from encouragement.

But my interests were sort of homegrown. It's not fulfilling some success or failures of my parents, as is occasionally the pressure that's put on a next generation. I want you to be the doctor that I couldn't be. Well, I'm a doctor, so you're going to be. None of that was there. So the Carl Sagan encounter was when I was in high school. I was 15.

No, no, no. I was 17. I was 17 transitioning to go into college. But I'd known since I was nine that I wanted to study the universe. So I was not dependent on whether other people were going to have confidence in me. especially considering that most people didn't. Most people I'm referring to teachers. There is no teacher at any time in my academic trajectory who at the time would have said,

hey, see that guy Tyson over there? He'll go far. Watch him. He's the one. Meanwhile, I know what my ambitions are, but it doesn't manifest in their classroom. And teachers are kind of limited in their assessment of you by how you perform in their classroom. I was highly social, disruptive in class, not in an angry way. Or it's just there was an energy that bubbled out of me.

So I was never considered a great student by teachers. That's first point. Second point. I'm going to call you out on something. You ready? Are you seated? I'm ready. I got my, hold on.

Let me get my scotch. Four to fun. Okay, go for it. I'm going to pull the race card on you. Are you ready? this has never happened before on the end of the Impossible podcast. Go for it. There is a tendency

for a white person upon seeing a highly talented black person to say, oh, it's a gift. It's just genetic. It's just rather than say, boy, you must have

worked really hard to achieve that. And that disconnect manifested in your very question to me. Because it was not even in you to imagine that I wasn't good at communicating at some early point. I said, well, how can I get better at this?

Let me think about this. Here's an example of how it got manifested. Okay? When I got my first invitation to appear on the Daily Show with John Stewart, I said, oh my gosh, that's dangerous. This guy is all in your face. Let me watch a few of these shows. So I watched it.

And I timed how many seconds he gives his guests to speak before he interrupts comedically. And if you're a politician, you've got your stump speech and you've got to get it out and he interrupts it. Oh my gosh. You're flustered and you're deer in the freaking headlights. So I said, that is not going to happen to me. So I timed. So I said, I'm going to parcel my information that I'm going to share in that show in six to nine second increments so that when he does. jump in, the thought has been completed. Then we can both laugh, and then I go on to the next

thought, and there's no deer in the headlights. Not only that, not only that, not only that, I monitored how far back he reaches for a current event that he will then throw into the mix. And he doesn't go back more than about three days. There's a news cycling, because if he makes a current event reference and it's not current, then it doesn't hit as a joke. You have to say, oh, well, that happened last week. Is that relevant now? So I would study current events for the previous three days, deeply. I'd bring that to bear on those conversations, and I'm invited back 14 times, and what do people say? Neil, you're such a natural on his show. Oh, Neil, the chemistry between you is so natural. You have a gift. This is what I lived through. Another one, I give a public,

I have to interrupt because I have to tell you something because part of what my essence is is expressing gratitude. Not only did I know that story about you, I learned it from David Spurgel two years ago before I myself went on Ben Shapiro's show when I felt the terror that you must have felt the first. Who am I? I'm some astrophysicist from California. I was going on this show that could be seen by millions of people. By the way, he's very controversial, as you know. And I said, David, what does Neil do? And David explained to me exactly the vignette that you just told me. So I know better than anybody. And not only did I know that, Neil, I followed the Tyson approach to being an high-stress interview situation. So I just want you to know, I would never underestimate the amount of hard work you put in.

And I want to thank you because you enabled me to perform marginally okay, not as well as you did on Ben Show. But nevertheless, I use the Tyson technique. And that was very key to my success. Well, thank you. And I would add to that. Thanks for adding for throwing that in the mix there. So on another occasion, I'd give a public talk, right?

And then the people enjoy it and they clap at the end. And then so I get two responses typically, all right? I'm binning them into two bins, but there are other, there's nuances there as well. One kind of response is, you are having such a good time up there on stage. Okay. And another response is, you were working hard up there. And to a person, though. Those who say I was working hard are school teachers because they saw what I was doing and how I was doing it and why I was doing it.

And they appreciated the invested effort for what that was. So I'm just saying, no, I don't think any of it is a gift and no teacher in the history of my life would have said so. Not only that, I got another one for you. You're ready? Yeah, you're writing a book right now as we speak. Show me your hand. Show me your hand. it'll be published this afternoon.

So my verbal SATs were okay, but again, they weren't the kind of score where you'd, hey, watch that person, they'll go far. Wasn't any of that. Well, 15 years after I'd taken the SATs and got my PhD and I have a column that I write for Natural History Magazine, one of the more honorific things I've done because that's the magazine that Stephen J. Gould wrote for and we were bookending the middle section of that with he wrote on nature and I wrote on the universe. But anyhow, I got a letter in the mail

from the educational testing service. These are the purveyors of the SAT. And just to show you what of a grip they have on us, it was like, what happened to my scores? They're still affecting you, like emotional. I said, well, they must know something because it was addressed to Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. So I said, okay, somebody updated their file.

And I open it up. And it says, Dear Dr. Tyson, we've read a recent essay of yours. And we liked how it worked and what it did. We want to excerpt these three paragraphs for our verbal SAT that we were writing for the reading comprehension. And it was like, I wanted to say, fuck you. Okay.

That was my first thought. Then I said, no, that wouldn't be productive. and I said, okay, yes, I grant you permission for this. So this is an organization where I take an exam where my score is not high enough for anyone to say he'll go far and now they're coming to me from my writing sample to put on a test that they're going to administer to other people. That's messed up, okay?

Okay, that's just messed up. And in there later on, okay, a lot of that content would be called and I would write astrophysics for people in a hurry, which was like a best seller. Oh, you have it. Yes. Thank you for picking up a copy. And that was on the New York Times bestseller list for 82 weeks. There was on so long that my next book came out and they both showed up briefly together on the list. So when I hear people saying, oh, you have a gift. You must have known.

This is not, I don't go through life relying on what other people say about my potential. Right. I had to generate it from within. Otherwise, I would be. diluted, either thinking I'm greater than I am because family members love you or less than I am because there are people who have no clue what they're talking about. And that's my long reply to your very simple and direct question about what I'm doing with my life. And you know, now eviscerates my next question, which also came courtesy of a fellow African American physicist from the Bronx who went to your rival school, Dewitt Clinton. And that's Stefan Alexander. And he said, and often in his life, he was pushed towards athletics and not towards science. And he said that of you, too,

your teachers were pushing you towards that. So I did do this research to make sure that, you know, that this is a common theme. And it's just the question of when I talk to people like Jim Gates or, you know, when I talk to Moia McTeer or whatever, there are two types. I'm going to not play the race card because I can't play the race card. I can't play the Jewish card sometimes, but I don't usually do that. But what is, how is that pressure? Because you're layered on top of that as well.

Like, not only do you have to do this, Jim Gates or Stefan Alexander, but you also have to speak for, you know, I mean, that to me, I've said it to them. I've said it to my friend Gentry Patrick, who's actually engaged to my cousin now in here in UCSD, so he's now the only relative that's been on the show. I said, you guys pay a tax, you African American colleagues of mine, you pay an extra tax. I don't have to pay it. But I wonder, you know, in our age right now, are things getting better? Are things improving? When I'm told that my department is systemically racist, for example. I push back. I hate racist, Neil. I punch him in the freaking face. But I know that the system has a lot of lacunae in it. And so what do I do as someone who wants

to do well and doesn't want to say that, you know, I'm an anti-racist and I have to do anti-racism in order to prove them anti-racist. It seems like Michael Shermer, our mutual friend, says that's a tautology, basically. Do you have any advice for academia or scientific research for how to make it better? Or maybe by reducing the burden that Africa. American colleagues have to pay. Just at all times ask yourself, would you say this to someone who had lighter color skin? Would you say this to someone who is female?

Would you say this to someone who is, just ask if you would say exactly that same thing? Okay. When I give a talk and I have a white person come up to me and say, oh, that was articulate. Would you say that to a white person? No, you wouldn't. So why are you saying it to a black person? And I think that's the litmus test. just sort of, you know, when I'm waiting in line to get on the plane

and I have a first class ticket and the flight attendant, this before I was recognizable, the flight attendant would say, oh, oh, this is the first class line like I didn't know, I couldn't figure it out on my own and I belonged on another line. Would you say that to a white person standing in front of you such as that? And this is even if I'm in a suit and tie. So that's really, I think it works. It works really well. And I do that all the time. it's how I see it in others and I might even see it in myself.

And so I try to, and it's a constant editing, but I don't want to say it as though it's something that is a chore. It's something that is a duty. It is this way of progressive thinking, I think, is what all of us should be invoking at all times. I want to ask you about another craft that you've worked a lot on as far as I can tell because no one is born with disability. And that's as a communicator, as a podcaster specifically.

So I get a lot of people tomorrow. My colleague, Michio Kaku, is coming on the end of the Impossible podcast. And he's here to talk about his new book, The God Equation. And if you have a few more minutes, I do want to get into some of the hype and so forth. But I really want to talk about the physics behind some of this, if you'll indulge me in just a bit. But first of all, I want to get your advice as a master podcast. When you're talking to somebody and they're talking BS, what do you do? What do you do when someone's talking about the mind?

of God and the God equation and the this and then that and and you know it's for book sales. I mean, at some level. How do you handle that? Because you want to be, you don't want to be rude to your guests, right? You want to have guests to say good things about you. I don't think it's, it's not about whether you're rude. It's about whether you're truthful. It's about whether you're honest.

It's about whether you are, you are, it's possible to be truthful and rude and truthful and just pleasant, right? And these are social, dare I call. them tactics, methods, tools. This is why some people attract friends and others, you know, repel friends, right? So, so, so I don't, I recognize the human condition. And what is the human condition? It's just people think differently from each other and one another. People have different values. They have different life experiences. And that's what creates the beautiful diversity of the world.

And I have come to embrace that. So I'll give an example. We're about to film for Cosmos on a ledge of the Grand Canyon, but the spot where we wanted to do it happened to be a native land. And so we get permission to film, and they grant permission. And one of the regional elders knew that I saw that I was coming, wanted to meet me. They came up. We shook hands. And he said, I'd like to say a prayer, a native prayer, as we look over the edge of the Grand Canyon. And so we held hands. He showed me how to do that.

And then out comes this prayer. I'm not going to say, why are you doing this? This is stupid. No, I'm not going to do that. This is, we are all human beings. We all have our cultural rituals. I don't bust into your satyr and say, really, you have an empty seat. there for Elijah, really? You know, and you unlock the door? Really? You really think that's going to happen? No, you're going to say, no, this is ritual. And that's what binds us, okay, as a community, whether or not you believe it is literal. And so I will never disrupt a ritual, provided the ritual doesn't harm other people, right? This is the whole point about what it is to be free. You're free as long as you don't take away someone else's freedom. If someone wants to call the Higgs boson,

the guard, the god particle, if someone wants to believe, that the God created the universe, I'm not going to hit them on the head. If this is consistent with their outlook on the world, I'll teach them what we know about a Big Bang and let them decide what they want to do. I just don't do that. I don't see the point. Now, if you want to say, you know, the universe was created in six days, I say, we have strong evidence that it wasn't. Are you interested? If they say, no, the one I'm going to chase after them? What do you want me to do. The whole point of living in the United States of fucking America is that people have free expression of religion. That's kind of what it's all about. It's in the, it's in the one of the

the first amendment, okay, the second, whichever it been met, a high amendment, okay, free expression of religion, all right? So, so, so, so that's kind of an interesting fact. So, you can't have free expression of religion and then complain that people are expressing their religion. You can't do that. Now, what I can do is say, stay out of my science classroom because it's not science. I didn't knock down the door of your Sunday school, did I? Or in your synagogue, I didn't jump into your Hebrew school and say that might not necessarily have been true. I didn't go in there to do that. So why do you feel you had the right to change my science curriculum? That's where it gets sort of politically strategic and ugly sometimes and you have

court cases and things. But overall, you have a Buddhist over here. and Muslim over there. Yeah. You know, it's like you'll have somebody like Sir Roger Penrose, who you've interviewed, you've been with, you know, and he might have a theory that's not in the orthodoxy of standard cosmology, and he's pushing it very hard. Now he's got a Nobel Prize. He left it in my office when he was visiting me, so I got it for you, Sir Roger.

Don't worry. I'm keeping it nice and safe. But in reality, you know, sometimes I'm thinking like, you know, do you believe that this particular, you know, the model of the universe is sure, and obviously I'm going to be respectful. But I do push back. And I guess my question to you is, you know, when do you lay off? When you're satisfied, you know, Carl had this famous baloney detection kit.

Do you have anything like that operative, a subroutine that's cycling in the background that like, all right, I got to move off of this guy. He's kind of being a quack. It was a baloney sandwich detection kit. Okay. You need to be, the full BS has to be in just to be clear. So when you have people who have, it's not whether they go against Canon. That's not the point. All great ideas go against canon. That's not, we love it when that happens. I would love nothing more to have everything we know about physics be completely rethought in some way that gives us a deeper understanding of the world.

We would all embrace that and we all want to be that person. But just because no one agrees with your new hypothesis doesn't mean your new hypothesis is correct. Okay. So if Roger Penrose has a new idea of the universe and he's he's a storied guy, I mean, the guy is, okay, accomplished and his story, that doesn't mean his next idea is going to be correct. So now he comes up with an unorthodox idea. If he can't convince anyone of it, I don't know what else to tell you. If he's heavily invested intellectually and emotionally, he'll go to his grave thinking it. as Fred Hoyle did, thinking that the universe was a steady state model. Fred Hoyle was in the office.

I'm in Jeffrey Burbage's office at UC San Diego, and you must know of the Burbage, Burbage, Burbage, Hoyle, and Fowler, nuclear nuclear. Yep. And so this is Jeffrey's old office, and he'd be rolling in his grave if he knew a cosmologist, a practicing cosmologist was in it. Oh, wait, wait, I don't know if I fully answered your question. So if a colleague has a cockamamie idea, I say, have you convinced anyone? I'm not convinced.

If they haven't, then if you can't convince anybody, don't start crying. Well, no one believed Galileo. The moment you analogize yourself to Galileo, you've crossed over. You've, you've, you've, you're trying to say is I am right because all of you don't agree with me. And that's not reason. That's not evidence. That doesn't count as evidence. Yeah, I'd love to talk to you more about that in the context of like, Omuamua and stuff like that.

But I know you got to run. I have to ask these questions. I ask all my guests from billionaires to Nobel Prize. winners to the most popular scientists for a very good reason on planet Earth, and that's you, Neil, who's influenced me. I do want to thank you sincerely. You have been a great influence on me, not just because you kept my kids busy for 12 hours at a time when they watch Cosmos, which is, you know, every parent's dream to have a free babysitter in the form of Neil deGrasse Tyson. The first question I asked, actually, is not too dissimilar to what Alfred Nobel did.

So he gave the prize to those who stimulated the best discovery in all of physics or chemistry, etc. But he said it had to be for the benefit of mankind. And in that way, he constructed his will in what we in Judaism call a Zava-a or an ethical will. I want to ask you, what bit of wisdom, not your monetary kind of wealth, that's for you to decide and whatever, but what gifts do you want to bestow upon your ideological errors of which I count myself as one? Well, what you're asking for, I think, is what bits of wisdom have I gleaned in my life that could be shared with others that could benefit them? And I think that's what you just said. And I would say that any day that goes by where I don't learn something is a wasted day.

As I get older and I get a little more frail and I, you know, you get achy and you don't pop up in the morning. what's your return on that investment? Well, it better be because you keep learning. Okay. If your body starts becoming something else, your brain doesn't have to. There's only you stay brain healthy, right? So learn something new so that the accrued years mean something. So I try to every day come to some new point of knowledge, enlightenment, wisdom. And so that's my first advice. Second advice is you want on your deathbed, I think. I want on my deathbed to be assured that the world is slightly better off for you having lived in it. And that's it. That's what guides me. I don't need to be remembered. I don't care. I don't know. It just doesn't matter.

What matters is I have helped others lead scientifically enlightened lives. And I don't know anyone who would give that back once they achieve that. That's wonderful. Okay, the next one takes us farther into the future, and it's related to Sir Arthur C. Clark. So I am the co-director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego. And Arthur C. Clark, in 2001, a space odyssey, had these monoliths that were floating around. Nobody knew what they were, but they essentially are some sort of interstellar, intertemporal time capsule. And I want to know if you had access to a billion-year time capsule, and this is a question I asked Andrewian, and she said, I already did this on the Voyager golden disc, but if you had a billionaire guarantee that your time capsule is going to be found

by some civilization, what would you put on it or in it? What would it be that maybe encapsulates everything that humanity has to kind of pat itself on the collective back for? I think our way that we now record history and keep records of what we do and what we say makes time capsules obsolete. But there's nothing more boring than opening up a time capsule. In fact, most time capsules, their locations are forgotten. Go look this up. It's fascinating. I was in Flushing Park where the, you know, the unisphere is, where the world's fair was.

There was a time capsule buried there back at the time with great celebration. People were proud of all the new technologies they were able to put in this time capsule. And it's long forgotten. I'm sitting on a park bench and I look over my shoulder and there's this steak in the ground and it says time capsule. It's like overgrown. There's dog poop near it. do you really care what they put in something long ago, given how we're now living? Do you really want to know how they dealt with tuberculosis?

Do you really want to know how good the slave owners were? Are these things that are you really curious about? I hope there is nothing going on today that would have any relevance to anybody a billion years from now. Would you rather have one reader 100 years from now or 100 readers tomorrow? Basically, would you trade longevity of ideas for popular sales? Oh, I see what you're saying. I think we should live in the moment.

So get the 100 readers now. And let someone else 100 years from now get 100 readers for what they did in 100 years. Again, I don't care if what I do lasts. It doesn't matter to me. When we live in the moment, you should celebrate the moment because we are prisoners of the present forever transitioning from our inaccessible past to our, unknowable future. Wow. If Judaism allowed tattoos, I'm going to put that on my body somewhere, Neil. Okay. Last question, Neil, for you is also Arthur C. Clark's second law, which says his first law

is any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic. Second law, any expert is refuted by an equal and opposite expert. His third law is the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. And that's the origin of the name of this podcast. Neil, what piece of advice would you tell 20-year-old Neil Tyson? What would you tell him to give him the courage to go into the impossible as you have? No, I don't think about speaking to my younger self because everything I learned as a younger self was through either hard knocks or one-on-one personal experience and that's what shapes who you are. If you could just go back and give advice to everybody, well, where did that advice come from that you gleaned? It'd be

you lived through it. That's how it even became advice in the first place. Now you're going to go back and now you're going to prevent your younger self from living through it. Does that still count as life experience? I don't think so. And in fact, if you go back and tell yourself, don't go through that door because you'll stub your toe and then you never go through the door and then you don't stub your toe, you will not have had the advice to go back and tell yourself to not go through the door. Because you would have not lived through the trauma to even make an advice in the first place. So this thing, let me go back and now, by the way, you don't want to make the same mistake twice. So maybe the advice is whatever you do that was bad, don't do it twice. Okay? That's good

advice for anything. But otherwise, all else is life experience. It's like the immigrant who comes with $20 in their pocket and then they work hard and they try to get bread on their plate and then they're starving half the time and then they finally do and then they go up and they own a business and then they buy the business and a series of business and then they get well and then they get married and then they have kids and then they say

you know I want to make sure my kids do not struggle the way I did so the kids grow up and then they're 20 and then they're deadbeats and then you're saying where did I go wrong I gave my kids everything I didn't have that's where you went wrong

you gave your kid everything you didn't have So I'm not into this. Let's get future advice to a younger person. I don't think that works. I think it's an overrated dimension of what it is to be alive. I actually quantified that once. I typed into Google trends. I said, what are the most common words preceding the sentence that says it was the best thing that ever happened to me? And it's always I failed or I got fired or something that seemed awful in the moment and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Well, Neil, one of the best things that's ever happened to me is having this conversation. It's been such a

pleasure to me. I'm a Bronx boy from my second generation Bronx boy. I want to send you love from the West Coast and I hope we meet in person someday. Excellent. We're in the Bronx. Did you hang out? My mom and father from the Mashaloo Parkway and my wife's parents are also from Gun Hill Road, that kind of area. Okay, cool, cool. Bronx in the house. Okay. Thanks for having me. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Hello. I'm Stuart Volko, producer of Into the Impossible. If you enjoyed this episode with Professor Brian Keating, please let us know by subscribing, commenting, sharing, and most importantly, rating and leaving reviews.

It really helps keep our universe expanding. We appreciate hearing from you and read every review and comment. We're always open to your suggestions for future episodes. Watch our YouTube channel at Dr. Brian Keating, DR. Brian Keating, and join our premieres every Tuesday at 8 a.m. Pacific time for live chats. Follow Brian on Twitter, Medium, and support us on Patreon at Dr. Brian Keating. That's DR. Brian Keating. For free access to exclusive content, please visit Professor Keating's website and sign up for his informative newsletter at Brian Keating.com.

Into the Impossible is produced with the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Eric Viri, Director, Brian Keating, co-director, Patrick Coleman, Associate Director, produced by Stuart Volko and Brian Keating. For more information on the Arthur C. Clarke Center, go to imagination.ucsd.edu.