StarTalk Radio - A Conversation with Dan Aykroyd (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 26, 2013

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s interview with Dan Aykroyd concludes with a scientific discussion about ghosts, aliens, and cars on “a mission from God” with a little help from astrophysicist Chuck Liu. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist, and in my day job, I direct the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. And for today's show, we're featuring an interview with Dan Aykroyd, the one, the only. He came by the museum one day and visited me in my office.

I pulled out the microphone and got him, nabbed him for StarTalk. And to get to help me hear these clips, I've got Chuck Liu, Charles Liu. Hi. StarTalk fans know him as my friend and colleague, and he's professor of astrophysics at College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Pleasure to be here. Yeah, thanks.

So Dan Aykroyd was in Trading Places, Driving Miss Daisy, Blues Brothers, one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live. He also might be best known for Ghostbusters. And, you know, he wrote the script for Ghostbusters. Wow. What a wonderful role. And it's not just an accident. He goes deep with ghosts.

Did you know this? Oh, I did not know this. You didn't know this. Let's find out with my first clip with Dan Aykroyd. At the turn of the century, in the late 1800s... You'd have to specify what century now. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, late 1800s and early 1900s, a lot of religions had gone through America. And they had recruited many people, but some people... Mormonism is among them. Yes, Mormonism and Methodism and the Shakers. You can look at a lot of sects and cults and religion.

In fact, they used to call Upper New York State and Pennsylvania the burnt-over district, because the Bible salesman had been through there, and the whole area was burnt over with conventional religion. So, there was an embrace of spiritualism that took place there and also in Britain, and you had the founding of the British Society for Psychical Research, and then the subsequent founding of the American Society for Psychical Research. William James, of course, was the Harvard psychiatrist

who embraced spiritualism. The building at Harvard that William James bought. That's right. Now, he was very much a believer in the paranormal and the supernormal, if we might say. And the ASPR still operates here on 72nd Street in Manhattan. They have the largest library on

paranormal circumstances and events there. And Carlos Osis was its director for many years. And of course, they were tied in with Maimonides Dream Lab and Esther Rolle and all of these psychic researchers. So basically, at the turn of the century, you've got this interest in spiritualism. Well, you had a couple of sisters called the Fox sisters. They were in Rochester, New York, and they were two adolescent sisters. They were in Rochester, New York, and they were two adolescent sisters, and they started to hear rappings and knockings happening in their house, and then a voice began to speak to them, and they didn't know what it was. They were being disturbed, and they did a little digging, literal digging, in the basement of their house in Rochester, and they found a corpse, a body, and they did a little tracing, and they

found out that this was a traveling salesman who was brought into this house and was murdered by one of the occupants of the house prior to when they had purchased it. This was an entity that they called Mr. Splitfoot. And he traveled with them, purportedly, and they did psychic readings all around the world

with him. So the spirit, presumably, of this skeleton is what they called Mr. Splitfoot. Who's traveled with them. Now, at the time, you this skeleton is what they call Mr. Splitsford, who's traveled with them. Now, at the time, you had them traveling. You had other mediums traveling. So in the news. Right there at the turn of the century, all there in newspapers and disseminated in the media at the time. You had the Campbell brothers and the Bang sisters. They were precipitated painters. What they did was they would sit in front of a hall of four or five hundred people. They would put a canvas in front of them six feet away from their fingers. They would wiggle their fingers and all

of a sudden there would be a beautiful photorealistic image that would appear without paint. Not airbrushing, not anything like that. So my great-grandfather, Sam Aykroyd, was the psychic reviewer in his hometown of Kingston, Ontario, Canada. If one of these acts would come through town, and they were acts, it was a presentation. It was an hour and a half show of a medium. Before TV. Before TV and they were acts, it was a presentation, it was an hour and a half show of a medium. Before TV. Before TV and before radio and before any kind of entertainment other than show of vaudeville, you would have these psychic acts come through town. So my great-grandfather was the reviewer.

He saw the precipitated painters, he saw mediums, he saw trance mediums, and in fact had a great interest in this and was known in the town for this. A gentleman walked up to him in the 1930s and said, My name is Walter Ashurst. I believe I have a gift, Dr. Aykroyd. And Walter Ashurst became the Aykroyd family trance medium for about 10 years, meaning that he would come over to the house and sit, and it was a very presentational thing. People would come in black cars and black suits. They would come on Sunday.

My great-grandfather Sam was the impresario. They would sit down at a seance table. They would form the home circle, hold hands, and Walter Asherish would go into a trance and would channel spiritual entities. Now, you can believe this or not, at one point he got up on a chair and he was kneeling over and he was all crumpled over and he was talking

in this strange Viennese dialect, they figured. During the trance. During the trance, and they didn't know what he was doing until one of the family began to research physicists who were from Austria and Dr. Steinmetz. You've heard of Steinmetz? Charles Proteus Steinmetz? Yeah. Yeah, he's like an engineering physicist. That's right. Yeah, well, he was a hunchback. Yes, I knew that. And he used to work on the back of a chair. I have a book from him. In fact, it's probably on my shelf right behind us.

He used to work kneeling on the back of a chair. Now, Walter Asher said a grade 12 education, was a locomotive mechanic, probably knew nothing of Steinmetz. And so we believe that that may have been a genuine channeling. Anyway, this was passed on to my grandfather who had seances. My father, as a young boy, witnessed seances. My uncle said he walked into the room once and there there was a trumpet flying around the room, speaking in voices, and when he came into the room, the trumpet hit the ground. Okay, now, you've got to look at the background of why my

great-grandfather was researching all this. At the time, you had Crookes, and you had Arthur Conan Doyle. The author of Sherlock Holmes series. Yeah, Crookes was a physicist at the time. These were people who were seriously interested in spiritualism, and my great-grandfather was a part of this movement. So, to get to Ghostbusters, when I was a kid, instead of at the summer cottage reading National Geographic and old life magazines, I was reading the journals of the American Society for Psychical Research. And I picked up a journal one day, and it talked about quantum physics and parapsychology,

and I thought, wow, wouldn't it be great to use the science of parapsychological interest, real scientific inquiry, and marry it with the concept of the gold ghost comedies of the 30s, the Bowery Boys, Bob Hope. And that's where Ghostbusters came from, from my family's interest and just the entertainment industry always having an interest in ghosts. But Howard Carrington, Oliver Crooks, Arthur Conan Doyle, William James, these were scientific inquirists at the time, but a serious interest in, you know, what is the particulate matter that makes up a ghost? I mean, what was that stewardess seeing the ghost of Flight 401? When they had a crash of a Lockheed 1011 in a swamp in Florida,

the crash killed 400 people, they took the wreck, they put it into a warehouse. And then they had an L-1011 that had an elevator fail. So they took the elevator from the wreck and they put it in this new plane. About a week after that, stewardesses, pilots were starting to see the apparition of the flight engineer from the wreck who died. His name was Don Repo. He had red hair. They saw the stripes. They saw the uniform. They saw him. Eastern Airlines had to put out a blanket directive, don't talk about this. We don't want people to think there are ghosts flying on our airlines. I want to know physically, and I want scientists to begin to inquire, what is the particulate matter? What's going on molecularly? What's acting here? Is it oxygen, nitrogen? What's in the air

that can produce an apparition where people can actually manifest in their vision the apparition of someone who's dead? That's where I think spiritualism should go, right into the scientific. And so we've got to entice serious scientific inquirists to look into this. And so far, no one's interested, except me. When StarTalk Radio returns, we'll have more of my interview with Dan Aykroyd. We're back.

StarTalk Radio. I'm here with my friend and colleague, Charles Lewis. Hey, Neil. Thanks for being on StarTalk. Oh, it is my honor and my pleasure. You have only the slightest inkling how much I enjoy coming here. Well, thank Lewis. Hey, Neil. Thanks for being on Storybook. Oh, it is my honor and my pleasure. You have owned the slightest inkling how much I enjoy coming here. Well, thank you.

Thank you. And we're featuring my interview with Dan Aykroyd from a visit that he gave at my office. And we hit on all the stuff that interested him. Tremendous amount to chew on. And in this show, we're talking about his, you know, he dabbled in the paranormal. And that's kind of intriguing.

As an artist, I don't care where they get their inspiration from. I mean, as a scientist, I can say, don't do that. But if that prompted him to write Ghostbusters, which was a fun romp, who am I to stop whatever he wants to do at home? Now, remember, as he wrote Ghostbusters, he wrote himself in as the nerdy scientist, Dr. Raymond Stantz. Right. But also, the paranormal elements of that movie were almost caricatures. Yes. They were comical.

They were not, they are so serious, and here's the funny movie. The whole thing was a romp. That's right. So it's a fascinating take on it. And he has a whole family history in there. How could he not write a movie about ghosts? That's exactly what he explained.

Right, right. We've got a whole clip here. Just have him talk more about ghosts. Sure. Find out. Because he wants science to investigate ghosts. That's exactly what he explained. Right, right. We've got a whole clip here. Just have him talk more about ghosts. Sure. Find out. Because he wants science to investigate ghosts. He's not saying they're real no matter what you say. He's saying, look, science has tools and methods, so go for it.

Yeah. Good for him for doing that. Yeah. And science ought to be able to investigate anything, right? So let's see what else he tells us about ghosts. Another movie that dealt with ghosts was Ghost. Yeah. Right?

And that one... Survival of the Conscious is after that. It certainly had comedic moments with Whoopi Goldberg getting, I think, a well-deserved Academy Award. But after that movie, the percentage of people who believed in ghosts went up. Because it was so compelling to people. And one wouldn't necessarily expect that after ghostbusters or the state puffed no no no no no be a belief yes that's right but what that tells me is that in spite of your strong feelings about this you're not on some crusade

to get everyone to think this way right by no means i think that's going to happen anyway anybody who has had a personal experience with the survival of consciousness after death or have seen an apparition or felt a cold spell in a room or seen something at the, you know, get on their bed. You know, I have a friend,

he's a very well-known comedian. He dated a girl. Her father died. He went to the funeral and the father came back and basically said don't date my daughter and his brother was in bed next to him and they both about to go to sleep and both of them saw this apparition now you cannot take away that from this guy he knows that happened so

it's as real as anything it's as real as anything to him whatever it was was some electrochemical here's the thing you know here's the thing i'm of two minds here. So the one mind is, you can start off by asserting that ghosts are real, and then say, what scientific experiment would you bring to bear on this? I don't have a problem with that. However, there are cases where people could have done extraordinary experiments,

and they didn't. For example, a second cousin of mine, her father died okay open casket in the room she goes into the room she's alone with him sitting as close as I am to you right now she then tells me and she's otherwise of complete rational mind she's a real estate agent she's majored in accounting she tells me she had a conversation with him while he was in the casket. And I said, were the words coming out of nothing? No, he sat up and spoke to her. I'm now curious. I said,

well, what did he say? What'd you talk about? I asked, how are you? Are you fine? And he said, don't worry, I'm fine. I'm in a better place. And that was kind of the extent of the conversation. And I grabbed her and I said, if you're talking to a dead person, ask some good questions like, where are you? Are you wearing clothes? Is it hot?

Is it cold? Who else is there? What are the sights like? Are there clouds? Get some information. I don't see anybody doing that. So if I were to put suggestions out there, it would be, if you have an encounter with a ghost, get some real data, please.

Well, Henry Durant Watson in an ancient text called The Ninth Plane directly approaches that. And through mediums, he asked those questions. Where are you? Do you see us? Can you come back to us? I'm not sure whether the body sat up or not. I'm not sure whether the body sat up or not. I'm more interested in experiences where there are these ethereal, sort of residual apparitions that kind of repeat on a loop, where you can come on a Wednesday afternoon at 3 p.m. and see the same spirit again and again, as I've heard from some real estate contact with properties in L.A., for instance. Properties they probably can't sell.

In fact, you know that when we sold our house in Los Angeles, there was a disclosure form that said we had to disclose any unusual activity in the house. We had to actually say that early on when we moved in, there was activity that could not be explained rationally or physically. That's LA. Yeah, that's true. But, you know, again, it comes down to the individual, what they're going to see, what they're going to experience, what they take away from the experience. And we can explain it away rationally that she was dreaming. So have you ever seen an apparition? No. Okay.

All right. So we both know that the human mind can do extraordinary things in itself. Why isn't it easier for you to just explain it all the way as stuff that's going on in somebody's head? Well, because I go back to the Ghost of Flight 401, which has had several books written on it, and you had multiple witnesses there. By the way, when they took the elevator out of the new plane and put it back in the rack. Why would they do that? But that's a separate question.

Well, they were looking for spare parts. The apparitions stopped. You had empirical, you had pilots, and you had stewardesses, you had people of the real world seeing an apparition of someone that they knew, and you had a corporate reaction to it that was quite extreme. Frank Borman was really upset about this.

Frank Borman, Apollo astronaut. Yeah, he was really upset about ghosts being on his plane. Who became head of Eastern. That's right, and it was under his administration that the psychologists were telling people, maybe you saw something, but don't talk about it. That to me is one of the greatest stories ever. Whether it's true or not, again, there were multiple witnesses. And I like

it because it's associated with the world of aviation, which has an empirical base because you've got to know what you're doing when you're up there. Yeah, the plane has to fly. Yeah, that's right. The laws of physics matter. Yeah, that's right, exactly. Yeah. So I want you to promise me here and now on StarTalk Radio that wherever you are in the world, if you see a ghost, you're going to call me, and I'm going to come and try to find it with you. I would love to find out how one could see a ghost.

What's happening there? You call me. You guys say it. I want you to commit that right now on the air. Well, they don't hang out. That's the problem. But there are loop ghosts, and there are residual ghosts that we hear about all the time.

The loop ghost. A loop ghost. That's just there. You call me for a loop ghost. Yeah. I'd love to freeze it. I think high freon might do it. Loop ghost.

So he really wants to be the ghost buster on the thing. You know, he was raised in the Catholic church and actually intended to become a priest until the age of 17. That's on a record show. And he now considers himself a priest until the age of 17. That's on a record show. And he now considers himself a spiritualist. By the way, there are many people. That's one of the largest growing communities in the country are people who don't assign with a religion.

Sorry, sorry, spiritual, right? Don't align with a religion but still feel like something's out there. But they don't want anybody telling them what's out there. Yes, I know. Like something's out there, but they don't want anybody telling them what's out there. Yes, I know. And this concept of spiritualism, I think it's very interesting that he brought up the ghost of Flight 401, which is indeed a famous story. But you know as well as I do, Neil, that current psychological research shows the reality of group hallucinations. They don't even have to happen at the same time. All you need is a little bit of suggestion here or there.

Unusual circumstances or usual, they can happen all the time. So I think you brought up a very good point that the simplest explanation is much easier than what he's trying to find. But he's going about it the right way. He admitted that he had never seen one himself, which is a great thing and very, very important for people to be honest about that. So more power to him for trying to find out some scientific aspect of this stuff. And I think we might be biased by courtroom dramas where the lawyer stands up and says, I need a witness. Yes.

And then if you have two witnesses, that seals the case. Right. Whereas the psychologists know that groupthink can mess up two witnesses just as well as the brain can mess up one witness. That's right. It is very easy for all of a sudden people who supposedly don't have the same mind to see the same thing that's actually not there. It's actually very possible. Right, right.

It's a well-studied phenomenon is what you're saying. Yes. And so it takes that person to have written Ghostbusters. It's one of the most popular comedies ever written. I loved it. I thought it was great. So I got to read a quote from it. Don't cross the streams.

It would be bad. Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. Yes, the speed of light. Well, as you know, Neil. That was a character played by Howard Ramis, of course. It was awesome. Egon Spengler. And as you know, there is a way where every molecule can reach the speed of light. Why did you know, Neil. That was a character played by Howard Ramis, of course. It was awesome. Egon Spengler.

And as you know, there is a way where every molecule can reach the speed of light. Why did you know his name was Egon? Who knows that? Ghostbusters was a very important part of my youth, trust me. But as you know, you can reach the speed of light with every molecule in your body if you land on the event horizon of a black hole. I didn't know that. But why not just fall through the event horizon of a black hole. I didn't know that. But why don't I just fall through the event horizon of a black hole? Gets complicated from that point.

Oh, no, that's no answer. All right. Sorry. When we come back to StarTalk Radio, Charles Liu is going to tell me why you explode at the speed of light at the edge of a black hole. It's that the escape velocity at the black hole's event horizon is the speed of light.

So if you fall naturally down onto it, when you reach the event horizon, you are traveling at the speed of light. All of your molecules, if you are still a body, are moving at the speed of light. And so you're not exploding or anything, you just are. Oh, I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. We'll be're back.

Neil deGrasse Tyson. I tweet at Neil Tyson, and StarTalk, the staff here, tweets at StarTalk Radio. And Charles Liu, you tweet? Yes, at Chuck LIU. Nice, nice. And we're talking where we've got clips from my interview with Dan Aykroyd, who visited me at the Hayden Planetarium. Very cool. Excellent.

And he's a science buff. He's a blues buff. He's a ghost buff. He's a soul man. And he's a soul man. And he can't help but be a ghost buff because his whole family lineage is about ghosts. That was really interesting. Yeah.

Earlier we heard that. And it's not only that. Oh, there's some trivia during the filming of Ghostbusters. Isaac Asimov, who was a friend of the museum at the time. And we have a whole series, a whole lecture series in his honor called the Isaac Asimov Panel Debate. And my youngest son is named Isaac. In honor of Isaac Asimov? Yeah.

Not Isaac Newton? No, not Newton. Okay. Are you kidding me? Isaac Asimov, I think one of his claims to fame was, I was told this, and it was completely believable, it was incredible and believable at the same time. That even though those are technically opposite words. That he wrote so many books that he had enough books to have at least one in every category of the Dewey Decimal System. Wow.

Remarkable. Yeah, yeah. Just quite the polymath. Well, anyhow, he lived on the block, near the block where they filmed the final scenes of Ghostbusters. Oh, wow. And he kept complaining that they interrupted his pathway back home oh so that was uh we disrupted how did dan feel about that there's probably a book that was not written because of these delays well let's find out what what just uh dan he just he's he's a deep thinker about everything

and he likes being on the fringe because i think that's excites him uh let's see what he talks about uh aliens remember he's uh they had some movies on this topic let's let's see what he where he takes us so when i paired up ghostbusters and the movie ghost right one was a serious attempt at this topic and the other was completely comedic yeah another pairing that i found in my search through the movies is Coneheads, of course, are visiting aliens and he had close encounters of the third kind. And that was portrayed as a real

governmental reaction to... Jacques Vallée and Alan Hynek were both... He was an astrophysicist, J. Alan Hynek. He was and he was hired by the Air Force. Why was he hired by the Air Force? He was hired by the Air Force because there was a lot of stuff going on in the skies that people could not explain, and a lot of stuff that the Air Force was very, very interested in from a defensive point of view

on this planet. You know, the alternative view of that is that it was better to tell everyone they were flying saucers so that they wouldn't get involved in our spying on Russian technologies during the Cold War. Right, right. Well, perhaps that may have been part of the agenda. Ultimately, I think Hynek concluded that 80% of the sightings or so were explainable, and then 20% were really unknowns, a little mysterious. So you might be the spiritual medium counterpart to J. Allen Hynek because he died having never seen a UFO, something he could not explain. Yet he was intensely interested in investigating it.

Yeah. I don't expect that I'll see a ghost in my time, but I know people who sat down with me and told me stories that I believe are true. And they go beyond just galvanic or electrochemical thing that's happening in the brain. They really have seen something that cannot be explained in the physical rational world. Well, that means you have really good confidence in the eyewitness testimony of your friends. I do. I do because of who they are. That makes you an awesome friend. I got friends, they tell me stuff. I say, you know, go get a good night's sleep and come back tomorrow.

Well, anecdotal evidence, of course, is not really evidence, but it does have some weight. If you can accept the conviction of witnesses and see for a moment what they saw and empathize with them, you come out of it certainly not concluding that they saw something for sure, but you'd come out of it also not concluding that they didn't. The jury's still out. Of course the jury's still out

until we have a mass apparition of some kind. I'm still waiting for them to drag an alien out of the spacecraft and bring it into Times Square. You may not have to wait long. So, Charles, you've never seen an alien, I guess, or a ghost, have you? No, I have not. Well, have you seen something that you thought someone an alien i guess or a ghost have you i mean no i have not well have you seen something that you thought someone else might have interpreted as a ghost oh sure uh every once in a while something sneaks around the corner of your consciousness or it's in the

dark and you suddenly see maybe something going by your eye and you're wondering whoa what was that now i of course being a skeptic and a scientist, know that there are probably 10,000 much more easily justifiable explanations for what I just experienced than a ghost. So I do not ascribe it as ghostiness. So you don't rule it out entirely. You just put it really low down on the list. That's the nature of science, right? What I like doing, people talk about windows opening or doors closing. And anytime I'm in a house and I see that, by the way that happens much less in an apartment i just don't

get this it just doesn't the apartment doesn't have as many sides open to drafts right just doesn't really work that way as you as it would in a house we have an attic a basement and windows on every side and doors and a and a and a shutter door and shutters. That bangs once in a while. Yeah, everything. And squeaky. Everything squeaks. So apartment people just have less experience with house ghosts, I think. But in any event, when I'm in a house and I see a shutter move,

I just look at sort of the air pressure that's going on. Oh, there was a gust of wind out this side. And the moving air is lower pressure than static air. So that'll open the shutter. And if you know a little air pressure, you might be gust of wind out this side, and the moving air is lower pressure than static air, so that'll open the shutter. And if you know a little air pressure, you might be able to get through this. I'm totally with you on that one, Neil. Okay. When we come back, more of my interview with Dan Aykroyd on StarTalk Radio. We're back.

StarTalk Radio featuring my interview with Dan Aykroyd. The guy's interested in so much stuff. And I've got Charles Liu here to help me just interpret and understand. Really neat stuff he's talking about. And comment, yeah. And I like Charles because he's like a man

about everything. And if I'm incomplete, he completes me. Thanks for being on, Charles. Oh, my pleasure. So my next clip with Dan Aykroyd recorded in my office

at the Hayden Planetarium here in New York City. He talks about his sort of alien interests. Oh. Now, whatever are his actual interests, they manifest in his comedic writings and movies. My stepmother is an alien. Yeah, for example, Coneheads.

Coneheads. Not the Lisa Close. Beldar. What a dude. Right, right. And so let's find out where he goes with this. Check it out. So, of course, the Coneheads were aliens.

And I'll let you know, to this day, my sister and I refer to our parents as our parental unit. Ah, yes. Ah, good. You will be spared when my species overtakes your miserable planet. You will be placed on the

protected rolls. We still refer to them, and we even abbreviate it. So what are the units doing this weekend? Oh, they're on vacation. Well, that was Tom Davis and I. We loved Day the Earth Stood Still and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and all of the great science fiction movies of the time.

So we took that and developed that into the cone heads. And why they had tall heads, I don't know. We just wanted to fill that three or four inches on the little TV screen that wasn't filled with heads. And it made for good ring toss. So you were in My Stepmother's an Alien. Is that related or you just won the acting job for that? That was just Richard Benjamin and Kim Basinger.

That was a package that was put together in Hollywood. It was a nice little movie. They didn't sell it correctly. Of course, anytime there's a flop in an actor's career, he always says they didn't sell it correctly. It's at the end of the book world, too, we say that. The publisher didn't market it. Otherwise, of course, it would have been best seller. That's right. It was a masterpiece. But that was really about the search for extraterrestrial life that's going on. It was about searching the skies for radio signals from other planets.

And now SETI is an ongoing program. I guess it's kind of mothballed now, but I suppose it's the scientific community's most legitimate recognition of alien life out there, and if that's the way we get to an acceptance of it, that's fine with me. Yeah, and the premise was awesome that, you know, the experiments got, removed the gravity on their planet, and then they come here to find out what's going on.

Right, well, yeah, with the things we've been doing on this planet in the last several hundred years, they'd be interested to what we're doing to the planet, the atmosphere, and the neighborhood. The whole thing. Well, actually, they'll say these people are not intelligent. They're stupid. Let's pass them by. Yeah.

We can't be that interesting to anyone who has the power to fly through space to reach us. That's my outlook on it. Well, on the other hand, is not this planet one of the most beautiful, beautiful orbs in the multisphere, in the multiverse? Well, I think it's beautiful because it kind of has to be beautiful because we evolved in this environment. It has to be beautiful. If it wasn't, we would hate it, right? Or we would have devolved down to where we were just, yeah.

Right. Or we would have devolved down to where we were just, yeah. Right. But I think this planet would be of great interest to an alien species just because, you know, they don't have the Rockies. They don't have it. They don't have New York City. They don't have the great trenches of the oceans. They don't have John Lennon.

They don't have Keith Richards and Satisfaction right there. You know, just if they came and just monitored, you know, the sound waves and heard that song, they'd want to hang around just to hear Satisfaction by Keith Richards. That's a little humanistically hubristic because maybe there is something yet to be invented by an alien species that is beyond our capacity now to judge its beauty. For example, 100 million years ago, flowers were not yet invented in the tree of life. A world without flowers, a world without fruit. If you were alive back then, could you have imagined a flower? I don't think so. No, no. No, you could not have. Could you imagine fruit? No. So today, we can look at a bouquet of flowers and admire them and say, what a beautiful world this is. But what other thing has yet to evolve that would make

flowers look like something that you would just dispose of in the street? Well, maybe some, you know, crystalline magma-like structure that you can hold in your hands and mold and that will levitate and close. Good, let's work on that. Let's work on that, yeah. and mold that will levitate and... And it glows. And glows. Good.

Let's work on that. Let's work on that, yeah. Oh, my goodness. That was a fun little romp there that I had with him. Well, he did have a good point that maybe art made by humans are unique in the universe because we humans are only here. And art is highly subjective and highly temporal. And as far as we know, no other species on Earth creates art.

As far as we know. Yeah, I think so. Nothing we would call art. Right. And I've seen some human art that no other species would call art either, I'm pretty sure. Or what passes for art. Right.

I'm happy to say that the SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is not completely mothballed. Yeah, do you have a quick update on that? Yeah, individual projects are mothballed temporarily, but the SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is not completely mothballed. Yeah, do you have a quick update on that? Yeah, individual projects are mothballed temporarily, but the SETI Institute itself, a scientific research institute, is still alive and well. In California. In California. Yeah, in Northern California. So good stuff is still happening.

Okay. We still have people among us thinking about the problem. Yes, indeed. When we come back to StarTalk Radio, more of my interview with Dan Aykroyd. We're back to StarTalk Radio. Charles. Yes. Thanks for being with me. My pleasure. Thank you, Neil, forTalk Radio. Charles. Yes. Thanks for being with me.

My pleasure. Thank you, Neil, for having me. Yeah. And so what's interesting, we both have common expertise in astrophysics. Yes. And complementary expertise because we don't always follow the same pop culture things. True. So when we come together, we make a huge Venn diagram of what we can talk about. That's why I bring you on the show.

Why we ingest consumables. So in this, we've been featuring my interview with dan akroyd and one of my i love me some blues brothers movie and i got him to talk about a particular part of the blues brothers movie that you wouldn't otherwise know about if you just saw the the cinematic release let's find out what that is now in the blues brothers why was it that i believed the car could do all of that i mean it's at risk of saying this movie is over the top i can't go there but somehow yeah you had me because it was what was about that car well it had divine power once we undertook the mission from God we had the power of the Godhead behind us. We had divine power behind us. We had the power of belief. We had the power of a universal sense of the world and a shared purpose. Yeah, good doing. Yes that's right. So I think the car took on

you know divine attributes. It became a holy relic at that point. Now I saw on the DVD extras there's a scene where you park the car at a power plant. Yeah. What is going on there? Well, I felt that in order to imbue the car with these special powers that we needed some kind of scientific or physical basis for it. So they weren't all spiritual powers, right? In my mind. In the end, they were spiritual.

But yes, that was a scene where we parked near the generator for the electric train in Chicago. And that was supposed to give the car an extra power. Because they show the lights sort of going... Yeah, yeah. So this car had a special quality. But also, of course, Elwood is a great mechanic,

and I don't know if you've ever seen some Hell Driver shows, but the things that they put those cars through, really, in the physical world are quite fantastic. They make them do flips, they make them do turns and full corkscrews and all that. So it's just a little extra. If you beef up the suspension, a little extra in the power and of course that motor was punched out elwood's a great mechanic you can see where it might have been able to do some of those cop

shock cop engine cop everything yeah i love me some blues brothers so an interesting charles over the break you were talking about the distinction between something that is for all the world magic to you and something to a higher civilization is just some bit of technology they've got going for it. That's right. Arthur C. Clarke had one of his laws. One of his laws, yeah. What was it called? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That's right.

If you think about the olden days, even in Benjamin Franklin's time, lightning was still considered divine intervention. And it wasn't until he did those experiments with kites and other kinds of bell jars and things like that, that we realized that it was just a very common manifestation of static electricity. But what's interesting is that Ben Franklin,

as you know, he invented the lightning rod. That's right. And then offered it to anybody who, especially, what are the biggest structures in every town? What are they? The steeples. The church steeples, right? And so now churches were not being destroyed by lightning that might have otherwise been. That's right.

And he was accused of blasphemy by interfering with the will of God. I was not aware of that. Yes, yes. And what's odd is that some parishioners of whatever was the denomination would turn to Ben and say, you are preventing our God from doing what he wants. Who are they worshiping, if that's how they feel about it? Maybe Zeus, right? But it is true. And I think that extra scene described here would have been really interesting.

The deleted scene. Yeah. Yeah. Would have been really interesting to put in the movie and then people could do that same kind of transfer for themselves. We all, as you know, Neil, fill our sense of the unknown with either the desire to find out or the desire to just be satisfied with what somebody else has told us or what we believe in some sort of faith idea.

And I guess under these circumstances, when you bridge the two, you create some really interesting results. And actually, you make a point. If you bridge them, it makes for good storytelling. Right. Actually, Stephen King has rich storytelling where he blends real live phenomena

with spiritual forces. That's right. I mean, look at what happened in Carrie. No one went to Carrie and said, oh, that would have never happened. It's like, yeah, this is happening. Well, yeah. And it is as real as all get out. And as far as real and fake are concerned, right now there's a viral video company that's actually using science fiction movie technology to create scenes like telekinetic work that Carrie is doing and like blasting people against walls and throwing books off shelves

and freaking out the audiences. What do you mean they're really doing it? What are you saying? Oh, we ran out of time. What do you mean? We're doing it for movies? Yes. Okay, fine.

In order to promote. Fine, I thought you said they're doing it in real life. In order to promote the next iteration of Carrie. Oh, right, because the movie's coming out again. That's right.

The viral video company is creating in coffee shops fake movie magic versions of Carrie, like where a lady suddenly develops telekinetic powers and starts blowing people away. And then people who aren't in on the joke are just freaked out in the audience inside these coffee shops. So this is still true.

Oh, so he's creating real life things that to an uninitiated person look like actual magic is happening. Spiritual magic. Right. And so how do we distinguish that between magic? You can't if you don't know. That's right.

That's Arthur C. Clarke's point exactly. You got it. I think we're out of time. Charles. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio featuring my interview with Dan Aykroyd and with Charles Liu helping me out here, my friend and colleague. This is StarTalk Radio. Well, you can find us on the web, startalkradio.net.

And we tweet, Startalk Radio. Of course, it would be that. And where else are we? Find us on – we have a new YouTube channel. You can get clips of our Q&As. And so we're all over the place. Don't miss us. I'll be looking around.

As always, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson signing off, bidding you to keep looking up.