Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Are We Smart Enough to Understand the Universe? Could Humans be Alien Pets? Neil deGrasse Tyson on Simulation Theory, Why Your God is too Small and How Science Will Guide Us into the Future

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Why Your God Is Too Small & The Truth About Alien “Pets” What if humanity is just a 1% DNA shift away from being an alien science project? In this earth-shattering episode of Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, world-renowned astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (Director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of StarTalk) joins us to deconstruct the greatest mysteries of existence. From simulation theory and the multiverse to near-death experiences (NDEs) and the Atheist vs. Spiritual debate, Neil goes unfiltered on why our current understanding of reality might be fundamentally limited by our own biology. Are we smart enough to understand the universe? We might be smarter after this conversation. In this episode, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down: - The Big Bang Theory Reunion: Neil shares behind-the-scenes stories from his cameos, his “beef” with Raj Koothrappali, and what it was like seeing “his people” represented on a hit sitcom - Alien “Zoo Hypothesis”: Why advanced civilizations might view humans as “toddlers” or keep us in a galactic aquarium - Simulation Theory: Why it is mathematically difficult to argue against the idea that we live in a computer-generated reality - “Small God” Problem: Why Neil believes modern religion doesn’t account for the true scale of the cosmos - 95% of Reality is Missing: Understanding the dark matter and dark energy mysteries that drive the universe - Can We Explain the Soul? Why physics is actually “easier” to solve than the human mind, body, and spirit - Limits of Intelligence: Neil’s fear that humans may not be “neurologically smart enough” to ever truly figure out the universe - NDEs & Psychedelics: A scientific look at what happens to the brain during mystical encounters - Quantum Physics & The Multiverse: Why parallel universes with different laws of physics are scientifically plausible and where we fit in the “Many-Worlds” theory - Spirituality vs. Science: Why Neil refuses to deny anyone’s spiritual experiences, even while offering a different scientific explanation for them - The Ultimate Mysteries: Specific questions about the cosmos that Neil deGrasse Tyson most wants to solve before he dies Are we alone? Are we simulated? Or are we just too small to see the truth? Watch this masterclass in the cosmic perspective and decide for yourself. Go to https://www.kachava.com and use code BREAKDOWN for 15% off your first order. Get 20% off all IQ Bar products - plus free shipping by texting BREAKDOWN to 64000. JUST VISITING THIS PLANET: Further Scientific Adventures of Merlin from Omniscia: https://neildegrassetyson.com/books/2025-10-just-visiting-this-planet/ COSMOS CONFIDENTIAL: Neil & Bill's Excellent Bromance: https://a.co/d/5gSkRso Merlin's Tour of the Universe, Revised and Updated for the Twenty-First Century: https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/products/book-ea8l?_pos=1&_psq=merlin&_ss=e&_v=1.0 Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At any given moment, it's the next round of science mysteries. What is dark matter? What is dark energy? It is 95% of what is driving the universe. What was around before the Big Bang? Is there a multiverse? I lose sleep wondering, are we smart enough to ever actually figure out the universe? World famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is here to help us understand the universe by figuring out where we came from, why we're here, and what our destiny might be beyond the stars. Are there aliens?

Genetically, we're within one, one and a half percent identical DNA to a chimpanzee. Imagine a life form who has one and a half percent DNA in that vector beyond us. Wow. What would we look like to them? Earth could be a literal aquarium terrarium that they constructed for their own amusement. I'm all in on smart aliens being out there somewhere. And if they find us and they want to make us their pet, that's the best we might be able to hope for. Are we living in a simulation?

It's hard to argue against it. As the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance. But of anything humans have ever invented, science may be uniquely capable of giving us access to our understanding or a place in the universe and secure pathways into our future. Hi, I am Bialik. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. This is an earth-shattering episode.

It's also very, very funny. It's a universe-expanding episode. We cannot wait to tell you who we're having on today. Usually in our intros, we do like a, what happened before the Big Bang? What happens when you die? Are we living in a simulation? Are there aliens?

Can we time travel? Guess what? We've got the man who's going to answer all of these things. Jonathan, who's our guest today? Today, we are speaking to Neil deGrasse Tyson. He is an astrophysicist, as you know, and the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History since 1996. He's the author of 19 books. He's an incredibly, incredibly talented and gifted science communicator.

Also, was on two episodes of Big Bang Theory, which we're going to talk about before we get into, can we time travel, are there aliens, are aliens watching us, are we living in a simulation, what happens after we die? how does he explain near-death experiences? Is there a god? We cover everything possible with Neil deGrasse Tyson in this episode. We do want to mention just visiting this planet, further scientific adventures of Merlin from Omniscia? I think that's how you pronounce it. It was first published in 1998, but there is a new edition that just came out in 2025. It's really, really awesome. It's the Dr. Tyson's character, Merlin, is answering more questions. Also, Cosmos Confidential, Neil and Bill's excellent bromance is an incredible audio project with William Shatner that is out now.

So check that out as well. And Merlin's Tour of the Universe, revised and updated for the 21st century, came out in 2024. So check that out. His books are incredible, wonderful gifts also. Like, this is the kind of book, like, I want to give to my kids. Like, these are all the questions tackle them. So we're very excited to have Neil here in person without further ado. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, welcome to the breakdown.

Break it down. Well, thanks for having me. This is my first time on their show. I think so. We've been trying. Oh, my gosh. We have wanted to speak to you for a very long time. Because I've been around, you know, because you never call.

You didn't write, you know. Because you've been on my podcast. Okay, so this is, yes. So that was maybe 10 years ago. Okay. Which is a distant memory. And I was deeply honored, and I wanted to do right by it. Tell us about your.

Big Bang Theory crossover. Was I there? Not the first time, but the second time, but you were not in any of the scenes that I was involved in. Okay. So my memory is used for Blossom scripts, Big Bang Theory scripts, and music, songs that you haven't heard in 40 years. I remember the lyrics, but I literally, I spent a night with my grandmother in a hotel in Florida, and I don't remember that, and I don't remember if we crossed paths on Big Bang Theory, but there you go. It can happen where you don't remember. Don't be upset by that. It's called age.

So my first cameo was, I think it was season three, perhaps. Okay, and I came in at the end of season three. Yeah, yeah, this was, and I had a run in with Sheldon on whether Pluto should be a planet. Because I was just pilloried by eight, you know, eight-year-old, third graders And me. Who had just memorized this educated mother. That's nine pizzas, right.

And so I was, I have these, I have hate mail from elementary school children, like scrawled and crayon. That's the worst kind of hate. It's the worst kind of hate because it's so, it breaks your heart. And, you know, the dear, Dr. Tason, now I don't have a favorite planet because you took away my face. Here's a picture of it. Put it back into the. I have no hopes and dreams anymore. So while I was implicated in the demotion of Pluto, I was really just an accessory.

I mean, the data came in. And in New York City, we were the most visible exponent of the demotion of Pluto because we were opening a brand new exhibit. And we just took Pluto, plucked it from the ranks of planets. So rude. It had it coming. We plucked it from the ranks of planets. and grouped it with the other dirty ice balls in the outer solar system where it belongs.

Dirty ice balls. It's just the language that you use. It's insulting. It's accurate. Insulting. For a man of your academic stature to refer to Pluto as such. So I just want to make it clear I'm not an actor. So even playing myself, I needed tips from, you know, the director.

And so it was very helpful. You know, I would later host Cosmos, which gave me. me a little more face time to a camera and even script time. How to read a script as though it's just coming out of you fresh. You'd take that for granted, but oh my gosh, to do that. And so they wanted, for Cosmos, you didn't ask this, but I'm going there. They wanted to get me a voice coach. And I said, voice coach, I know how to speak.

What do you mean, you know, welcome to the universe? What do you mean voice codes? These are people who teach you accents, you know, on the screen. I don't need a voice coach. What did they want? Well, so they brought on the voice coach, and it was like one of the most amazing moments I've ever had. What did they do?

Did you used to speak with an Irish accent? They made me what I am today. No, no, no. It was how to read a script. And here was the transition moment for me. I walked through a portal, through a proscenium. It was, here is the, a list of planets in order from the sun.

Okay. Here it is on script. Okay. Okay. Give it to me. And so I say, okay, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto at the time. Okay? We're still kind of considering it.

All right. Now, how would you say that if you were not reading it? Okay. Even though it's still there. Yeah. And so here's how I would now do it. I would say, Mercury, Venus, or... Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

Now, that's way more sort of off the top of your head. Yeah, yeah. And that bit completely transformed me in my ability to read scripts against something you would take for granted. Because you do it professionally. This episode is behind the actor's studio with Neil deGrasse-Deges. Exactly. How to turn Neil into a slightly better cameo actor that he was? I mean, you do have a very melodious voice.

Like, you do have a very beautiful voice. I don't hear myself. You know, when I'm out, when I'm out in the world, and I wear a hat, and the COVID mask helps greatly to tamp down the recognition factor. There's no more COVID, or is that what you're here to tell us? No, but I do that, and it tamps down the recognition factor in the street. So then I speak, and then people just turn around. Yeah, yeah.

And so I have to, like, do that and not speak if I want to go totally incognito. People often recognize me from my voice. I think if you have any unusual voice that's not, you know, kind of. the timber of most people. Now do the planet's method style like they're all about to go in different directions and the universe is ending. Oh, wow.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn! I need my motivation, thank you. That coach really did work. So the second time. I was just going to say the second time. It was in the final season. Yeah, everyone remembers that. Yeah, yeah.

That's when you got your Nobel Prize. Oh, right. What do you mean? Oh, just an afterthought? I don't remember. I was not on drugs. Okay. I just don't hold memories like this.

I remember whether or not you do. Okay. So I, so that explains why I'll come up to actors where they had some really impactful line that they uttered in a movie and I'll just recite it back to them. And they look at me and like, what? What are you going to say? And so I had to come to realize that when you perform, it's a lot of words. It's a performance in the moment, and you keep moving on.

Correct. It doesn't sit with you the way it might sit with the people who you touched with your handiwork. Right. So, in that one, it was a fun storyline where Raj was asked by the local news to comment on a comet that was coming through. There was some astronomical event. And he thought he'd be cute and say, oh, was Neil deGrasse Tyson not available? Right. And the host of the news anchor just ignored that and then continued with the question.

So that freaks him out and said, maybe I was not the first choice. And then he starts making fun of me professionally and socially. And then you have who among you were watching this on television saying, Raj, pull up. Pull up, Raj. Pull up, Raj. And so then I catch wind of this. And then they script me in a conversation with him from my office.

They rebuilt my office. They took some pictures on my office and remade everything. And so I'm there and I call him up and he's in a car. And I say, Raj, this is Neil deGrasse Tyson. Oh, oh, oh. What about this Twitter dust up that we're in? Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's right.

over social media and I say, I'm going to be at the, what's the bookstore in Pasadena? There's a bookstore there. Oh, John. No. Froman. Frommon. I'm going to be at Frommons.

Come there and I'll tell me that to my face. And he says, oh, no, I'm busy. I can't make it. I'm sorry. So it was a very tense kind of thing. But the funnest script line, which was invented in the moment, not by me. I can't take credit for this. was I'm going through a list of people who I'm calling out for their conduct on social media.

And then I, so we hang up and I said, that was satisfying. Now, who else needs a degrass whoopin? A degrass whoopin. And then I call Bill Nye. Right? And so I said, Bill, this is Neil. We got to talk. And then quickly hangs up.

And that's my only, that was my only presence. So. MyNBialx breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine. Drink more water. There's no real data.

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Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to Superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention My Ambionics Breakdown to help support the show. What was it like to kind of see the evolution of a TV show that was essentially about the kind of people who dig Neil deGrasse Tyson? I was delighted that my people have representation in the acting world. And it was, you know, how many cop dramas can you show?

How many, you know, emergency room shows? How many of these is worth one geek show? Okay. And I think Chuck and Bill. Bill, Chuck Glory, Bill. Prady. They saw that there was low-hanging fruit that probably would have been rejected in a dozen of other idea proposals to the gatekeepers of what gets aired and what doesn't. And say, here it is.

There'll be scientists and no one will know what they're talking about. And there'll be jokes and everyone will laugh. It's like, right. Okay. And I'm so glad that it wasn't just a mildly successful show. It was one of the most successful shows ever. And, you know, Gilgans Island went three seasons. Shall I remind us of this?

Okay. The original Star Trek went three seasons. Wow. And if you look at some of the episodes in that third season, you were reminded why it only went three seasons. And you guys went eight, nine seasons. No, we went 12. 12 was it?

We would say we were like, we got graduation rings at the end. Oh, yeah. We were like 12th graders. 12th graders. So just congratulations. I haven't, you know, seen you since then. Well, I mean, I was just happy to be along for the ride, but, you know, having you on and Stephen Hawking, I mean, we had some incredible people on. William Shatner as well.

William Shatner and, you know. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, my God. That's right. I mean, we also, we had kind of like most of the Star Trek world, which was like a Bill Prady, you know, kind of thing. One last thing, if I may, just because as I'm, as I'm, you know, fanboying on this show. that show took turns that for any other show might have been jumping the shark. Okay?

You know, there is your main character interested in a woman who's out of his league and there's a tension there. You don't have to talk about you like that. I'm right here. Oh, you're talking about Penny. I get it. And so there's sexual tension there,

there's awkwardness, and that propels scripting. Sure. You're going to consummate that and have them get married? You don't do that in a sitcom? Right. But they did.

You guys did it. And everybody ended up married. And it was, so that I think was heroic to get that to work in a sitcom and not have it pull you back. Yeah, I mean, I remember when I joined, you know, people were very, very protective over the Sheldon character in particular.

And a lot of people felt like he shouldn't have a girlfriend, like it's going to draw away. But I think the writers found a really nice way to tie it in, I hope. The chance of jumping the shark by doing that. Yeah. And you told me, you probably won't remember this, okay? You told me your instructions how to act your role was to be a girl Sheldon instead of a boy Sheldon. Yeah. Yeah.

Then you become, then you're not interfering with him. Right. You are supporting him in that way. And that worked brilliantly. Now I have to be a female Neil deGrasse Hecson today. Well, give me some of your voice. Mars. No, no, no.

Mars. I would pronounce it Uranus also, because I am a third grade. No, Uranus, if you're third grade, yes, that's their. One question to wrap this segment, which is, out of the scientists and colleagues that you have now, who do you want to call and give the business to? Who needs it to grass weapon? No, I would now. I don't run around thinking that way.

I'll do it for a scripted sitcom. You don't have to publicly share it. I'll tell you secretly now, but don't tell anybody. Well, maybe we'll get to it in all of the questions that we have. So in the time that we have with you, you know, obviously you do this. You speak. You educate. I try to bring the universe down to Earth.

Correct. You try to bring the universe down to Earth. And what we wanted to do is, you know, we've talked a lot, especially in the last year or so, about sort of this intersection between science and spirituality. What are some of the things that are fantastical? What's the science behind them? So we're just kind of going to go through some topics and see what strikes your fancy. Bring it on. Sound good?

Beautiful. Bring it on. And there's obviously. And I'm going to preface that by saying, not 10, 15 years ago, I would enter a conversation. about spirituality or religion in a kind of a distance, discounted way. And then I had to mature out of that. And what I mean by that is I'm an educator. And people come to me with sincere, honest thoughts, questions, concerns about their lives,

how they were raised, what they care about, what they value. And I realized I owed them a more nuanced, more, more, more, thoughtful reply than just, is there evidence for it? Just chuck it. Sure. So I then spent quite a bit of time reading, is literature the right word? No, reading tracts, religious tracks all around the world. Sure.

You know, Hindu, you know, I have a copy of the Torah at home, for example. It's very popular. I have every pamphlet that was left at my door by Jehovah's Whis' They also do something slightly different, you know, and so I have a shelf of that. And so I just, I have Joseph Smith's account for the Mormons. And so that way, when someone comes to me, I have some sensitivity to their wiring. We weren't going to start here. But since you kind of opened the door to that, I'd love this as a sort of framework.

Because one of the things that I'm interested in is how much different traditions, and I include academic traditions in that. How much our function as humans on this planet is to try and figure out where we came from, why we're here, and where we're going. And to me, science is another religion of sorts, right? It's a set of beliefs. It's a set of theories. It's a set of ways to think and approach things. So many of the religious traditions are trying to figure out the answers to these things. Some have some scientific merit. What is your general perspective, right, on trying to frame those three questions? Where did we come from? Why are we here and where are we going? Before the methods and tools of science were available to us, the whole world was a mystery.

You know, why is there a storm? Oh, Poseidon has risen up. There's a lightning bolt that struck, you know, even go back to the early 19th century even. when Ben Franklin is learning about lightning and how it operates and what attracts it, and he events the lightning rod. And now you put that on your building, and it protects you from getting destroyed. But before then, churches would get hit by lightning bolts. Okay? And if it was your church and not my church, there was.

You're preaching the wrong gospel there that God let you know. And so divinity of all stripes, be it monotheistic or polytheistic, was the account that people conjured to explain that which they had no control over. Science rises up and one by one these are put in the record books. Okay. No one is blaming Poseidon or who's the Roman version of that? Neptune. No one is blamed with the Trident. So that has been the trend, and that trend continues to this day.

And so I have been quoted occasionally accurately with the following statement. If to you, God is where science has yet to tread. Okay, because I would say, you know, we have all evidence points to the Big Bang. Someone would ask, well, what was around before the Big Bang? I said, I don't know. We've got top people working. Something had to be there. Was it God?

Okay? The urge to put God or some divine power in a place where science has yet to tread is huge. And it's been at, people have been doing that for thousands of years. Literally. Yeah. Okay. Newton did it. Ptolemy did it.

Let's go back to AD 150, Ptolemy. He pioneered the geocentric understanding of the world. Earth in the middle, everybody's going around Earth. You had to put planets on epicycles because planets occasionally go to the left and then they slow down, stop, and then they go to the right again. They invented a word for that. They called it retrograde. All right. So how do you explain all of that?

You have these epicycles. So there you are. You know what he said? In the margin of his greatest work where he lays all this out, he hand wrote, I know that we are mortal by nature and ephemeral. but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia. He's feeling it, okay?

Now that was obviously not the Judeo-Christian god. That was the Greek god. He was a Greek polymath. But that's him appealing to divine influence. on something he doesn't really yet understand. And even Isaac Newton would do this. So this doesn't escape the most brilliant minds there ever was. And it continues basically to this day.

But it manifests slightly differently today. Now people go around. So the philosophers call this the God of the Gaps. Okay? And so my reply to that was, if to you, God is where science has yet to tread. then, God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance. And because that's an if statement, it's just sort of fundamentally true because it's an if statement.

What people have done, especially the atheist community, which is trying hard to fully claim me, but I keep some distance. They're very, like, religious fanatic sometimes. They'll try to grab anything I say. What they did was they left off the first part of that quote. And they have their T-shirts. They have, it's a say, God isn't ever-receding pocket of science. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Yes, those words came out of my mouth, but it followed an if statement. That matters. I'm not just declaring what God is, no. I'm saying, if God to you is this, then this has to follow. So I don't see science as equivalent to other attempts to understand the world because it does not appeal to a divinity. to any divine forces, whereas basically every other religion does. So that distinguishes it, I think, from the rest.

Now, fast forward to modern times. You know, what happens? People go see the pyramids and then, how did they do it? I don't know. Aliens must have helped, okay? So you just watch how often aliens show up in people's account. So I said maybe we're entering an era of aliens of the gas. But that doesn't have the alliteration.

So I invented a new phrase, aliens of our ignorance. So you have people today who there's something, lights in the sky, moving, I don't know what it is, must be aliens. So aliens are supplanting the role that God had played in our ignorance in modern times. But science pushes on. And yes, there are theories. The word theory has been misused. I don't want to blame people because, but let me officially. say what a theory is. Okay? You can't run around and say, I have a theory that, whatever,

no, you have an hypothesis. Einstein had a theory. You have an hypothesis. If you have an idea that's not tested, it's a hypothesis. Once it's tested and verified and re-verified and re-verified, and it organizes things that happen in the world in a coherent way, makes predictions that you can verify, that's a theory. There was a day when we call them laws, but we're a little more humble going forward. Darwin's theory of evolution is one that people often point to. It's fine. We still call it that.

People want to think just because, and for understandable reasons that when you use the word theory, well, we're still just making stuff up and we don't know. I'm saying quantum theory has never been shown to be experimentally wrong, but we still call it quantum theory. We call it Einstein's theory of relativity. We don't call it Einstein's law of relativity. It's just a 20th century recognition that an idea that may be really, we call it. right in every way tested, there might be tests on the edge of it that show where it fails.

And that there might be a deeper understanding awaiting us. That's what's going on now. That's what happened between Isaac Newton and Einstein. Isaac Newton has the laws of motion, laws of gravity, and it's working. We went to the moon on Newton's laws. Right. And then we find out, wait a minute, if the gravity is really strong. Or if you're moving really fast, Newton's laws don't work anymore.

We're getting the wrong answer. What's going on? Einstein says, I got the answer. It's relativity. And relativity gets you in those extreme places and it gets the right answer. What happens if you put low speeds and low gravity into Einstein's equations? They become Newton's equations. So it's not like where Newton's out, Einstein's in.

Newton is embedded within a deeper understanding. understanding. So that's where theory carries us into the future. I wonder, is there a place where science has gone too far in pushing out some of the mystical, some of the inexplicable? Have we gone too far? Am I biased when I say science can never go too far? It is conceived and constructed to give we feeble humans a deeper understanding of the world in which we, we live so that we're not running away from mysterious, one of the titles of Carl Sagan's book was a demon-haunted world, subtitled, importantly, science as a candle in the dark. Without the science, we're wandering in the dark, running away from ghosts.

And can I tell you what I did with my kids? Should I admit this? I don't know, when they were really little. Okay, so my wife has a PhD in mathematical physics. So we have two kids who are being raised with science literate parents. Nerds. Okay, nerds. Sorry.

And, you know, there's, do we live in a time which someone will accuse you of being a nerd? Say, nerd! And you know what my reply is? Thanks for the compliment. Yeah. That's all I'd say. So I wanted them, I didn't want them to be afraid of ghosts. Okay, because I'm not yet convinced.

that ghosts are real or have ever been real. So they were really young, and so I said, I'm going to put you in this closet, this dark closet, and close the door, okay? And then I'm going to get a monster to try to break into the closet. So, of course, it's me. Parenting by Neil deGrasse Tyson. So I close the closet, and I go,

and they start laughing. and laughing and laughing. And so they've never been afraid of turning a corner of the dark or of a haunted house. It takes some of the fun out of haunted houses because you're just not buying it, you know? I'm scared of everything because my parents got into the closet with me and were like, what our monster got up? And the monster was still there. So let me give the other half of that.

Yes, there are mysteries today that people enjoy or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, It gives them a sense of, what do we say, a sense of not knowing everything. And that's kind of important to some people. They don't want science to know everything. What they don't know is at any given moment, there is no end of science mysteries that are still there. Not still there. It's the next round of science mysteries. It's not, are the ghosts in the closet?

No. Is it, what is dark matter? What is dark energy? How did we go from organic, molecules to self-replicating life. Earth seemed to have no trouble doing that. We still don't know how to do that in the lab. We have top people working on it. What was around before the Big Bang? Is there a multiverse? Will we ever make a wormhole? These are mysteries. And they're less grand mysteries that still exist in all the sciences. So my issue here is, yeah, I'm getting

rid of some of the, some of the magisterial mysteries that you grew up with, but I'm replacing them with others because science has tread there and has come up with answers where we're moved on to the next question. We are all fascinated with the edges that science is exploring and are along for that right. And the edges are always there, and here's my favorite comment on that. As the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance. Say it again. As the area of our knowledge grows,

so too does the perimeter of our ignorance. Because that's the boundary between what we know and don't know. So for me, science is like a forever thing. I love this. And if I give voice to some of the people who have said, wait a second, science is sometimes so dogmatic and so assured of what they know that they have missed the mark

For example, when medical doctors said the mind and body are totally separate and the mind never impacts the body. And now we're showing more and more that those two things are far from the truth and actually have led medicine quite astray. Then they're trying to plead to the scientist to sort of stay open and curious and, you know, challenge continually what we know and push those edges. For example, you know, people, People like Gabormate have introduced this notion that we used to think we know why autoimmunity happens. We know why cancer happens, right? We know why diabetes happens. And we know a good chunk of the story. But the interplay between, let's say, stress, the environment, right, and our physiology

reveals that there is a much more elaborate combination of things that make up what, as scientists, we try and understand, but there are many elements that are harder to put our finger on, correct? So, a couple of things. First, and I've said this on social media just to put it out there. Physics and astrophysics and understanding the universe is way easier than understanding the human mind, body, and soul. Okay? So let me just make that clear. the human mind and its interplay with itself and your body.

Oh, my gosh. It's part of the reason why neuroscience as a field is so young relative to physics and astronomy. You know, they say astronomy is the second oldest profession. So we've had the benefit of millennia of brilliant thinkers contributing to to physics, astronomy, engineering. You know, the pyramids were built, you know, five thousand years ago. So our advances in human, part of what resisted that

was the sanctity of the human body. You don't just cut open the body just to explore, especially not the human mind. And correct me if I'm wrong, because this is your business, a lot of what we learned about the functioning of the brain came from brain injuries to people. And what was left over after this part of the brain got damaged.

So this is not the brain in a petri dish. This is waiting around for a brain injury to see what you'll learn on the next emergency room visit. So I just want to make that point clear. Second, there is no end of examples you can give, such as the one just presented, where there's a prevailing truth, let's call it, that would later be shown to be false.

I will say, without hesitation, that if you go back to that time and look at the research going on, I guarantee you whatever was the thing that was ultimately shown to be wrong was not experimentally verified. It was, I think this is true. I did a few things on my own.

What do you think? Yeah, it makes sense. Let's declare it. And so it's the experimental verification that makes it true. And it's very hard to experiment on the human body for the reasons I state it. And the human mind. So that's why all, and especially the human mind, that's why your best examples of this are going to come from the field of medicine.

Okay? Where doctors are in denial that, let me operate on this cadaver. Let me deliver your baby. And did you wash your hands? No, why don't I have to wash my hands? The doctor's hands, okay? There's no research supporting that. And so it's kind of a caricature of science to say, oh, and by the way, there's, well, Earth was flat, and then it's not flat.

So, excuse me, Earth being flat, that knowledge and expectation predated the existence of telephlets. scopes. Okay? And it predated the tradition of science to test your idea. It kind of looked flat. It's probably flat. Oh, it looks like, plus the Bible doesn't deny this. We're in the center of the universe. Everything goes around us. Our vocabulary still preserves a geocentric universe. I don't say to you, Maiam, I don't ask you, what time tomorrow does Earth rotate such that our sight line to the sun appears over the horizon. No, we say, what time is the sunrise? That's a geocentric vocabulary word. So it's what the world looks like. What science tells us is the world isn't always what it looks like, and it isn't always what it seems. And so that's

my reply to you. But just to give a shout out to the medical community, you know what our life expectancy was in cavemen, okay, half of everyone born. Wasn't suffering from menopause. That's another way to say it. Everyone was fertile, their whole lot. We did our best work before 20. So half of everyone born was dead by the age of 30. Half.

Okay. Caveman, so that's 10,000, 20,000 years ago. Fast forward to 1850, 1840. Half of every, in the world, was dead before they turned 35. And everyone in that time was eating organic. And the water ran pure. That's not fair. That's not fair.

All of that is true does not have to be fair. Okay? They all ate organic. And so what happens in the late 1800s? I also didn't know to wash their hands before a doctor put his hands inside your body. The second half of the 19th century, germ theory is matured. We have Pasteur who develops this. We bring the microscope to our biological needs.

And between 1840 and today, we have doubled your life expectancy. So with all of your comments, well, the mind actually is affecting the body and the doctors were clueless. They had the head up their ass. Whatever else was happening, that increase in life expectancy is not because of, how people are eating. It's because of medicine. It is because of science. And my path into this description came from a New Yorker comic, okay, by the artist Gregory. I don't know this first or last name, but it says Gregory, he signs it. There's two, there are two cavemen sitting across from the fire, and one says to another, you know, they say this. They say,

Our water runs pure. Our game is free game and everyone is eating healthy, eating organic. But no one lives past 30. And so science matters here. And it is so fundamentally infused in our lives, it is so easy to take it for granted. That's my reply. Oh, one other thing? Yeah.

I know it's kind of related. You didn't say it, but I'm going to bring it up. There are people who say, science will never understand love. for example. That's, if not love, then something else. Put in your favorite thing there. Then I say to such a person, is that because you don't want science

to ever understand love? And I realize they want science to have boundaries. And as a scientist, I don't see that as a real thing. And I can imagine an experiment where science then fully understands love. I can make one up. For example, we find out that you look at a painting and you feel great affection for it,

not sexual love, but really you love the painting. It's none of your business what I feel when I look at a painting. In English, we don't distinguish between just loving something because you like it a lot and sensual romantic love. So you look at a painting, and then you look at the same painting and you feel the same way. And we do some brain scans and the same part of the brain

is being activated in both of you. And we do this experience, 100 people, or if it's not the same pain, it's just something that they have affection for. Okay? We found the love center of the brain. Okay, so now let's go into your brain and there's something that you don't care

or you don't have any feelings about, then I tickle it while you're looking at it. And then you talk about it, say, I love this, I never realized it before. And you do this, automatically after I tickle the brain. Once we know the brain center and how we can control it,

that's science understanding love. Now we move on to the next question. That's an example. Whether that'll ever happen, I don't know. But it's a completely plausible experience. And I think also, I mean, love, it's a good example. I think that there's, there are absolutely certain components that we can understand.

The sort of symphony that creates attraction and connection, right, is a combination of a variety of systems. then it's more than one part of the brain perhaps. Thank you. We appreciate it. It's very generous of you as an astrophism. No, no, I simplified the case, like consider a spherical cow. Correct.

I simplified it to a plausible experiment, correct. Perhaps not yet conducted. Correct. That would answer for me what science would have to say about love. Correct. By the way, I'm just delighted to be in your company. Well, we are delighted to have you here.

Really, really. Really. Because you just, thank you for having a great time. Because you just thank you for having me. Thank you. I'm delighted to be in your company. but a little less so then. I get that all the time.

Okay. Let's talk about simulation theory. Oh, sure. I knew of the phrase, but it was not until we had Rizwan Verk on, to talk about simulation theory that I really understood what

we're talking about, meaning I had heard people say, like, we're living in a simulation, and I was kind of like, I don't want to talk to you. But once I read the book, I understood the strong. of what this conversation is. So I know you're asked a lot of things that don't matter, and I don't know where simulation theory falls.

No, as an educator, I care about what makes people curious. Okay. And simulation theories at the top ten in the list. Okay, great. God, aliens, simulation theory in that order. Those are literally our bedtime stories. Black Poles in the multiverse. They come later than God, aliens, and simulation theory.

Let's dive into simulation theory. Bring it on. I'm curious when you first kind of became aware of this notion of simulation theory. And I'm curious what your take on it is. Does it seem to fit? What doesn't fit? What works for you about it? It's hard to argue against it.

So we don't like it. Nobody likes realizing you're in a simulation. But when I go through the arguments, it's hard to argue. I can give you my best argument against it. Well, I want your best support for it. Oh, sure, sure, sure. And then I want your best of your answer. Yeah, yeah.

I'm not claiming that I'm in a camp that is cheering on. I'm just, as someone who thinks about this, I would share with you those thoughts. We have ever-growing computing power available to us. And we create worlds on our computer for our own amusement. And let's take something simply like Mario, okay? Look at some primitive version of the Mario. game and there's Mario walking around and he picks up coins, I think, and he jumps. And you can ask the question, does Mario have free will?

Sure. Is Mario self-aware? Right. When you look at the code that makes Mario, it's pretty clear that Mario doesn't. Mario is just following lines of instructions. All right. Well, that's limited by our computing power. We can put more and more nuance into that character as computing power continues.

to grow. And imagine a future of quantum computing where it's thousands, millions, even billions of times more computing, call it phenomena, computing features. Yeah, sophistications. That can be put into the simulation. And... Like, can you insert free will into that? So you can put so many options that the question about whether your choice is free will doesn't even matter. matter anymore because the number of options you had available to you essentially mimic having free will. This is the Matrix.

Okay. Except in the Matrix, you're living in your own mind and your body still exists. But does he knock something over, right? Because... Oh, you mean at the beginning when he's with the Oracle. Yeah, with the Oracle. Yeah. How would he have known if it was the case?

So that depends on whether your timeline is already understood. Sure. and you just access your timeline. Can you go back in time before it? Right. All right. So now imagine a future where we create a world where Mario believes Mario has free will

because the options available to Mario at any node. Do I go through the door up, down? Do I just stay here? Do I bake a cake? Do I order pizza? Sure. Do I take an Uber? It's large enough to be indistinguishable

from the... It's approaching infinity. Approach on the limit as the end goes to infinity, your choices mimic free will. Now let's make 8 billion people and create a world. I'm old enough to remember the video game SimCity. I'm a city kid. So you're mayor of the city and they can vote you out of office if you don't make them happy in their opinion polls. And you've got to move money.

There's only limited. Do you raise taxes? That way you can improve the schools. but their people won't vote for you if you raise taxes. This is an entire dynamic. And you get into it and you say, oh, my gosh, I am mayor and I am doing this. I do matter. And one feature that I thought was a little contrived, but later on I said, no, it was real.

Every now and then Godzilla walks through your city. And I said, this is stupid. And then I said, no, this is real. It's Donald Trump. And so ask me, why is that real, Neil? Why is it real? Because there was September 11th. No, it's not literally Godzilla,

but it's something nobody ordered. It's a black squint event. Okay, it's something happens that wreaks havoc on your city, and now you have to solve what just happened. And so I take that, that was now 20 years ago when I was playing this game. Today, imagine there are 8 billion people in a world that they think is a real world,

and they're all just having it. And then they evolved because they programmed in evolution, not only biological evolution, but cultural evolution and scientific. And they invent computers. They invent computers in that world. And they get bored and they want to create a game. And so they advance to quantum computing. And now you have a fractal.

And so there it goes. And it's then simulations all the way down. And now close your eyes, throw a dart. which universe are you in? The first one that programmed the next one, which is real, or the countless others, and you're going to land in the countless others. So I don't have a good argument against that. I have an argument that softens it, but I don't have a good argument that will remove that

from the table. Can I give you my softening argument? Sure. Okay. We do not yet have the computing power to, create that world. Sure. So we can't be any of the ones that have already created another world that takes out the entire middle of this cascade, meaning we are either the first real universe that hasn't gotten there yet, or we're the last universe that's simulated that has yet to

evolve to that state. If you have to pick one, which are you? Well, now that's 50-50. I want to be real, you know, like Pinocchio? I would have been... We're going to hit pause on our conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson. There is so much more coming in part two of our conversation with him. We're going to talk about non-human intelligence. We're going to talk about near-death experiences, psychedelics, meditation, also the multiverse and the nonlinear nature of time.

We also touch on the Akashic records and mysteries that he wants more information about dark matter, dark energy, what happened before the Big Bang, and are humans smart enough to figure out more about the universe? Make sure to check us out on Substack. We've got awesome content there that is not available anywhere else. Please come and join the breaker community. It's a growing community of people interested in the intersection of science and spirituality. Join us over at Biolicbreakdown.substack.com, and we will see you next time with part two of our conversation of Neil DeGrasse Tyson from our breakdown. to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.