StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Science Is Cool

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on the educational system, conspiracy theories, the cosmic perspective, and more, in collaboration with PocketLab. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-science-is-cool/ Thanks to our Patrons Sonya Loeffler, Christopher Lee Knapmiller, Jerald M Johnson Jr, Jessica Bingham, Marcus Jildermark, Ben Barenz, Jerry Saunders II, and Darrin Chambers for supporting us this week. Photo Credit: StarTalk. 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, your personal astrophysicist. And for this episode, it's a special Cosmic Queries edition done in partnership with the Pocket Lab. These are people who have deep interest and access to the world's science teachers. And they conducted a seminar, a virtual seminar over Zoom, where 11,000 teachers showed up. where 11,000 teachers showed up. 11,000.

The theme of the conference is science is cool. Well, we already know that, okay? But we're just reaffirming that fact and perhaps telling some people it for the first time. So now I bring you StarTalk Cosmic Queries with the Pocket Lab. So for those unfamiliar with this forum, StarTalk is a podcast. And a very popular incarnation of that podcast is called Cosmic Queries, where we solicit questions from the public.

And if it's on a topic outside of my expertise, then we bring in an expert. And then I can be silent for a whole show, and they answer the questions. In this particular case, it's just Chuck and me. So what questions were saluted, Chuck, that you didn't even tell me? You're going to have to be the expert for everything here now. Okay. So guess what? If I don't know an answer.

The pressure is on you, my brother. If I don't know an answer. The pressure is on you, my brother. If I don't know an answer, I'll just say I don't know. Next question. See, that's the difference between the two of us. When I don't know an answer, I give an answer anyway.

All right. So Pocket Lab actually solicited cues from all across their social channels. And I have just a couple pages of them here. We got over 1,000 and I think I only have like maybe 20 because of time.

And then I think we might do... Yeah, I'll do something very quickly and then we'll actually get some from the chat room as well. So why don't we just jump into this and let's just say Clint Holderby says this. What would you say to encourage a kid that doesn't believe science slash school is important and useful to them? What a great way to start this off.

No pressure. How do you save a kid, an at-risk kid, who doesn't believe that science or school is good for them? What I would say is you can think of this topically, right? What might the kid be interested in and bring it to them? That's what any good teacher would do. But I want to go, I want to peel that back a little and go one level deeper because you don't know necessarily what interests a kid and the interest of the kid might change.

And if you have a lot of kids, it's going to be really hard to keep up with the nuances of what excites them from one day or one week to the next. So what I try to do is instead stimulate a baseline of curiosity. Instead, stimulate a baseline of curiosity. If the kid doesn't see or understand why school matters for later in life, okay, I get that. But there's something that all kids have, and we know this, and it's called curiosity. And I've never met a kid who was not curious. And so depending on what level kid you're talking about, I mean age kid you're talking about, I'm talking about basic K through six, they're all curious, every single one of them. Later on, if they're not curious, it's because somebody beat it out of them some way, saying, no, you must study this and not be curious about the world.

The Exploratorium in San Francisco, a museum conceived, designed, and built on the concept of curiosity. And you know what curiosity is? You put something in front of a kid, don't even tell them anything about it. Just make something happen in it, and then it triggers their curiosity. So I think the challenge is to put things into the range of their senses, sight, sound, touch, that are inherently cool, unusual, and interesting. And then they'll start playing with it. And by the way, in my day, you get a satchel of magnets and just start playing with magnets. You get a satchel of gyroscopes, of anything that does cool things. Then you say, well, that curiosity can then be applied to other things.

So it doesn't get them to get A's in all classes. I don't know, that's not a realistic objective, but to get them back in the game, that's what you need, a baseline of curiosity. And then all the rest of that comes after it. Without the curiosity, they're not learning anything. That's excellent. I love it.

And you're absolutely right. And Jennifer Davis popped in on the chat and said, the Velcro spot, every kid has a place where you can get science to stick. So, the Velcro spot. Very nice. And that kind of backs up

everything you just said. Cool. I love it. I love it. All right. Let's move on. Neil, this is from Ryan Westbury in Naples. He says... Wait, wait. Naples, Italy or Naples, Florida? You know, I'm going to tell you, Ryan didn't tell us, but with a name like Ryan Westbury,

I'm going to say Naples, Florida. It's going out on a limb. You know what I mean? If it was Ryan Giacomo, then I'd be like, maybe that was Italy. Okay. All right. Hey, Neil, how can we rein

in our students in this country into supporting science over conspiracies? The only reason I read this question is not just students. I think science teachers have a responsibility to be the rational mind of the country. And the world. And the world. It's not just students. How do we talk to anybody to get them to understand, you know, what is empirical over

conspiracy nonsense? Yeah, that's an excellent question. And not only that, any good science teacher knows, I'm repeating what you just said, but in a different way, knows that they got their students during the day and then the rest of the world when they're not in class. Because where's the rest of the world going to get their science if not from the body of people who are scientifically literate, walking among us. So that's my first point. Second.

Ooh, science daywalkers. We're science daywalkers. Yes. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. You don't want to be scary. You want to be friendly. So here's the thing. And I thought about this recently. If you look at any conspiracy theory, any, I don't care what it is. Again, you want to get to the bottom level here.

Otherwise, you're chasing. It's like whack-a-mole, right? You're chasing one versus another. And you debunk one, and then another one shows up. Let's get deeper into what's going on in a conspiracy theory. What they all have in common, which conspiracy theorists are not even typically actively aware of, is that they will pose an argument and in order to get from one part of their argument to another, because there's a gap in the actual data, they invoke a conspiracy.

So the conspiracy is to enable them to believe something that they want to believe, even in the absence of evidence. So they'll cite all this other stuff as evidence, but then to arrive at their conclusion, they have to cross a gap. They all have gaps. Okay. And so just find the gap and say, I'm not going there with you. Why do you care so much about evidence over here and evidence over here? Now where there's no evidence, you invoke a conspiracy for which you have no evidence at all. And I don't find little kids into conspiracy theories as much as

more grown-up people, beginning perhaps late middle school, high school, definitely college and grown-ups. So can I give a quick example? I had a friend. Well, sorry, the husband of a friend who met me, and I'd never met him. He was a fan. He said, Neil, I love your work. I love your work, but I don't believe we landed on the moon. And so I said, oh. So rather than try to argue him out of it,

I just want to find out what's going on in his own head. And I said, what would count as evidence for you that we did? Okay. And he said, oh, okay. Yeah. So photos of the landing site on the moon. It turns out you can't get those from earth because the resolution of the telescopes and the turbulence in the atmosphere, earth's atmosphere, prevent you from seeing that level of detail? So he said, that would convince me. That's what he said. So I said, okay, here's a website where there was a satellite that went to the moon, orbited the moon, and took a picture of the landing site.

So really great. So he goes home, looks at those pictures, looks at the pictures, comes back and said, you know, I saw the pictures, but I noticed that NASA was part of the organization that hosts the website. And that all could be faked. Okay, so I gave him the evidence he wanted, and then he rejected it, citing a grand conspiracy. And so, here's my favorite one.

See, you know what? I would have just punched the guy the moment he said, I don't believe you want to tell me. But go ahead. So I just saw this two days ago. You ready? Go ahead. OK.

NASA wanted to fake the moon landing. And so Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin said, okay, we don't mind doing that, but we want it to be as authentically looking as possible. So we want to do it on location. So NASA ended up filming the moon landing on location. That's great. I love that. Yes. The whole conspiracy is we went to the moon to filming the moon landing. That's great. I love that. Yes. The whole conspiracy is we went to the moon to fake the moon landing.

Ah, there you go. All right. Cool, man. All right. Let's go ahead. Consider one other thing. What else it would take to sustain the conspiracy that they're expecting? what else it would take to sustain the conspiracy that they're expecting,

the people who are thinking that we're stockpiling aliens in Area 51, just think of what that involves. It means everybody in Area 51 is on lockdown. Okay? Right. And no one is sneaking a photo from a... We got photos of all kinds. A billion photos are uplifted to the internet every day. You don't think somebody would sneak a photo

of aliens walking at a coffee, on their coffee break from Area 51? So just... The point is, some conspiracy theorists, I have found to be unchangeable because they want to believe what they want to believe. And in a free country, you got to allow that.

You just don't put people like that in charge of things because they're not open to evidence counter to what they want to be true. I can say that that mail is too late. Too late. Okay, here we go. I love this question from,

this is Lisa DeWispeler. Oh, damn it. Lisa D. Hey, Lisa D. Right? She says, we all need motivation right now. Can you put today's situation into the cosmic perspective? So, you know, we're facing a crap load of challenges right now.

Where does the cosmic perspective fit into all of this? By the way, cosmic perspective is not always uplifting. What it always is, is, oh my gosh, I never thought about it that way. That's kind of cool. All right, Neil, don't Pluto the cosmic perspective right now. Is that a verb now, to Pluto? Yes. To demote?

When it comes to you, don't Pluto. So go ahead. Just to be clear, since we have school teachers on the line, back when Pluto got demoted, and I was like public enemy number one for my role in that, I can't begin to tell you how much hate mail I got from elementary school children, but organized by their science teachers. And you know who you are out there. The science teacher put in a cover letter. All right. Right.

Exactly. It's a first grader. Dear Dr. Tyson, I am absolutely crestfallen by your recent proclamation. Signed, Timmy, first grade. Okay. Timmy. So here's the thing. So here's the thing.

We're here on Earth finding ways in any given year, at any given time, we on Earth, human beings, are finding ways to tribalize and have conflict. Be it skin color, what line in the sand divides one country or region from another. It could be who you worship, what your cultural habits are. We find reasons to choose sides and fight. Okay. The cosmic perspective here is the virus doesn't give a rat's ass about any of the other things we fight about. All right? The virus is indiscriminate. And that's exactly what an alien invader would be. An alien invader would see humans and then say, we're going to attack all humans, just as has been retold in

many a science fiction story. So for me, the cosmic perspective here is that the virus, though it be of this earth, is invading us in the way aliens would. And so this is a practice run. Do we have our act together? Can we drop our swords and guns? Can we drop our political differences around the world and get together and coordinate a plan of attack to save us all here on earth? It's a practice run. And whatever mistakes we're making, let's make a note of that so that the next time this happens, either by another virus, more likely, or aliens, less likely, the fact is we will know how to work together.

And so for me, it's a shot across our bow. Wow. That's my cosmic perspective. Wow. Oh, by the way. Go ahead. By the way, it's also a lesson for climate change. Yes. That's my cosmic perspective. Wow. Oh, by the way. Go ahead. By the way, it's also a lesson for climate change. Yes.

Why? Because if you pollute the water here, the water molecules keep going around the world. If you pollute the air here, the air molecules go around the world. As Carl Sagan famously said, water and air molecules don't carry passports. They don't have to go through passport control. They will spread around the globe. We are on this one ecosystem called Earth. And biology teachers know that

and they need to say it even louder and get other science teachers to say it in their science class. And this one ecosystem requires a coherent plan to stop what could ultimately destroy civilization as we know it and as we have come to build it. So that's that. I'm sorry. I'm just spilling all out here.

But that's how I feel about it. That's good. And what I take away from that is we are doomed. Okay. Fantastic. Have a nice day. And have a nice day. And have a nice day. Welcome back to StarTalk.

We're in the middle of a live Cosmic Queries with Pocket Lab. So let's jump right back in. I love this from Jack Dostal. Jack says, what role can planetariums have, if any, for the education and outreach if people can't visit them in person? Is there still a role for your thing, your voice in a darkened theater as people are... Your thing, it's called a planetarium. It's your thing, man.

But no, is there still something that can happen there? Is there some use that can be made of planetariums? there? Is there some use that can be made of planetariums? Or I'll go broader, astrophysics in the larger scale scheme. Yeah. So because planetariums exist, it means you can be exposed to the frontier of our field from a very early age. And in some ways they've called astronomy the gateway science. Because you can look up when you're very young and say, gee, I wonder what that is. Look through binoculars, through a simple telescope.

And it connects to other subjects. What makes that? It was the chemistry of the clouds, and there's the physics of this, and the engineering of the spacecraft. And we want to keep people alive. So there's the biology, the gateway science. And so it holds a special place on the landscape of educational trajectories. Now, that being said, no, if you can't get together

and sit together in any closed room, no, you can't do it. But actually, what are we all doing now? There's 10,000 of us kind of in a closed virtual room. I feel you. We see the run of chats coming by. So what my institution at the American Museum of Natural History, which has the Hayden Planetarium, and most museums I've checked out over the Corona-verse, in the Corona-verse,

are doing live sessions such as this, where they have educational content. So yeah, that's the only way you can do it. And no, we can't show you the night sky, but there's stuff to learn even without looking up. Okay? There's stuff to know. All right? I show you a picture of the moon and tell you stuff about the moon. I can tell you a picture of the moon and tell you stuff about the moon. I can tell you a picture of Mars. What does that tell you about that? I can show you Betelgeuse, which is the name of an actual star, which had dimmed mysteriously

in the last six months. I can show you a picture of that. Look at it dim. We don't know. Maybe it's going to blow up. I don't know. So you don't have to always be in the setting. Just get inventive. And so, yes, we're still bringing it out there. Just one correction. His real name isn't Beetlejuice.

It's Michael Keaton, just to let you know. Okay. For those who saw the movie. Yeah, exactly. And by the way, astronomy was my gateway science. And now I'm kind of on to, you know, all kinds of things, artificial intelligence. And every once in a while, I like to dabble in a little, you know, astrophysics. And, you know, just when I want to relax and just get really high, you know, just astrobiology.

Yeah. I'll start it with that gateway. By the way, evidence that it's gateway is there's so many other terms now that have astro in front of it, right? Okay. It used to be just astronomy. Then it's astrophysics, astrobiology. There's astrochemistry. So that's evidence of this.

Okay. All right. Very cool. Yeah. All right. Go for it. What is education? Okay, wait a minute.

Sorry, Josh. Josh, your name is Josh Spradlin. And Josh wants to know this. What has education got right and wrong in the last 30 years, and where do you think it should go? So, I mean, we're talking to educators. That's a really, that's a this call knows, the rest of society wants to blame the educational system and the school systems for all the woes that everyone else is experiencing. And that is a very heavy burden to carry. critical point in the intellectual growth and enlightenment of they who will inherit what the rest of us are destroying out there. So all I can say is that my cursory review of all of this tells me that science too often is taught as a pile of information.

Too often. Okay. You got to get through the syllabus, and the syllabus says, you got to learn this, and what is, you know, mitosis, and what is this, and what is that, you know, and the vocabulary, and you got that, and then you get tested on it, and then you get the exam back, and okay.

I get that. You need to know a body of knowledge. But for a person to finish the science class thinking that that's what science is, we have failed. Somewhere in there, some fraction of every science syllabus, in my opinion, needs to contain content

that communicates what science is and how and why it works. And that is not about vocabulary. That is not about memorizing or reading the five chapters and testing on the glossary at the end of those chapters. It's about here is why we conduct experiments. Here is how you can be biased if you don't conduct experiments. Here's the cost of bias. Here's some experiments that went the wrong way because people were biased. Here's where we thought the data were good enough, but it wasn't. The statistics didn't justify it, but we wanted an answer to be this way instead of the other way. This is why science was invented, to replace your senses,

because our senses are biologically limited and neurologically flawed. So we bring an apparatus to make the measurement. So science as we now know it and think about it as it's conducted is basically traceable to the invention of the microscope and telescope, basically around the year 1600, and the formulation that you have an hypothesis that you have to test. Otherwise, you don't have any good reason for believing that hypothesis other than to display what bias you might have in this world. Where is that taught? I haven't seen that on anybody's syllabus

because somewhere, somehow, somebody said, if you're going to teach chemistry, you're going to teach biology, you got to learn this. Well, spend some of that time teaching what science is. And I think when you come out of that, and people are no longer there saying, I choose to believe this and not that. And how do I know if the science is right anyway? I'd rather believe this. How do we have people like this in the world? How do we have legions of people who think Earth is flat? They don't understand what evidence is or what data are. Okay?

And I think that has to happen in the science classroom. Wow. There it is. Dude, that was very impassioned and well thought out and conveyed. I really appreciate that answer from you, Neil. Let me just say this to Deegan Wedmore, who says, well, that's our next question, but in the chat room,

Mr. Martin came in and said, stop pushing syllabus and pacing guide. And I don't think that Neil was doing that. That's actually Neil's experience with, right? Am I right? When you're talking about a syllabus, you're not saying that we should have pacing guide and syllabuses. I don't know what he meant by that, but I'm sure you weren't pushing any agenda with that, right? No, I thought I was saying, in fact, the opposite. Yes, there are syllabuses out there that go through check by checkpoint

of what a lesson plan should be to learn a subject within science. And I'm saying some part of the syllabus needs to be just about science as an enterprise. There you go. That's all I'm saying. Right. I'd be surprised if that were controversial. I don't think'm saying. Right. I'd be surprised if that were controversial. I don't think it is. Yeah, I'd be surprised too.

Exactly. Okay. And by the way, every science class devote time to that. That's all. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. All right, let's go to Deacon Wedmore. Do you believe the moon was created by an impact? And then he gets a little controversial

here because I didn't know this was a case even though this has been disproven many times. Okay. So it's never really about what I believe. You know, belief is something you have when there's no evidence for it. Okay.

That's how I got married. It's just belief. So evidence shows that the origin of the moon is consistent with Earth having been sideswiped by a Mars-sized protoplanet. Sideswiped, okay? Not a head-on collision, sideswiped. Now, Earth had already formed. So if you're sideswiped. Okay, not a head-on collision, sideswiped. Now, Earth had already formed. So,

if you're sideswiped, you are scooping up mostly Earth's crust and mantle, right? If you're doing that, most of the heavy elements that would not natively be contained within a body forming in the solar system would not then be part of the moon, because the moon is being formed by pre-sifted elements. When Earth was molten, heavy stuff goes to the middle, light stuff floats. So what kind of core do we have? It's made of mostly what, Chuck? We all know this.

It's molten rock. It's iron. It's metals. Iron. You knew it. Iron. I was a tester. Iron.

I know, exactly. So my point is the iron is heavy. Iron fell You knew it. I said iron. I said iron. I know, exactly. So, my point is, iron is heavy, iron fell to the middle. Rock is actually light compared to iron. It floated to the top, okay? So, the point is, yes, there's some iron that's there, nowhere in the crust, nowhere near the amount of iron you find in the core.

So, what happens? You now make a new object out of what's in the crust. When you look at the crust composition of the Earth and you look at the composition of the moon, they match one for one. So this is why this idea has good tap roots in our thinking about the origin of the moon. I've yet to see anything, quote, disprove it.

So I'm going with the plausible scenario that's consistent with the evidence. And I'm going that way not because I believe it, because I'm following the evidence. And that's all the reason I asked the question is because I wanted to get to the data-driven process that you had just referred to previously.

So there you have it. Mm-hmm. Hey, we'd like to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons. Sonia Luffler and Christopher Lee Knapp Miller. Guys, thank you so much for your support of StarTalk and helping us make our way across the cosmos. Without you, we couldn't do this show. And for anyone else listening who would like their very own Patreon shout out, go to patreon.com slash StarTalk Radio and support us. We're back on StarTalk and we're in the middle of a live Cosmic Queries with

Pocket Lab. And for this next and final segment, we're bringing on Dave Baker, one of the founders of Pocket Lab, to bring questions directly from that live audience. So Chuck, we're going to transition over to Q&A with the audience. Oh, really? Okay, great. I think that's time. I think we should do that. So should we bring in maybe Dave? Yeah, Dave. Where's Dave? Hey, Dave. There he goes. Dave Baker. I am here.

Yeah, so Dave, who do you have live asking questions? We have a ton of questions. But hey, first question for you, Chuck. Yeah. Do you ever find a question that just stumps Neil? I just gotta know. I gotta be honest. We've been doing this for, it'll be 11 years soon.

And if it's so far out of his purview, where he just goes, hey man, I don't know anything about that. That's happened just maybe twice. But for the most part, and I don't say this because Neil is just sitting right here. He gets enough praise and accolades without me having to say anything about him. But in the almost 11 years that we have worked together, I have found him to be the most intellectually curious person I have ever encountered in my life. And he wants to know everything. His secret wish, which he's never told me, but I know this is his secret wish.

If he could know all there is to know, he would so gladly have that over anything. If he could just know all there is to know, he would have that over anything. And we've never had that conversation. And if he tells you that's not how he feels, then he needs to see a psychologist because he's lying to himself. then he needs to see a psychologist because he's lying to himself. Because in the years that I've known him, that's what I know him to be. So he knows more about anything and most things than most people will ever know because he wants to know everything. Okay, and I'd like to put some nuance on that, but it occurred to me, we only introduced him as Dave, Dave Baker, who's co-founder.

Dave Baker, your proper intro, co-founder of Pocket Lab? That's right. Who's co-founder. Dave Baker, you know, your proper intro. Co-founder of Pocket Lab? That's right. Pocket Lab. Very cool. Very cool. I've been to your website. I just want to hang out there.

Hey, we'll send you one. Actually, you should check it out. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, definitely. So just to put some nuance on that answer, if I don't know an answer to something, I'd like studying a lot of things and learning. I might know an aspect of what the question is,

even if I don't have the direct answer. Then I'll say, I don't know the answer to that, but here's what I do know about that. And then I share that. So that can happen, you know, maybe as many as a third of the times, Chuck. So it sounds like I'm just knowing the answer, but I'm answering something else that I happen to know more about. That's all. That's all that's going on there. So you've been tricking

me all this time is what you're saying. You've been tricking me all this time. So anyway, Dave, what do you have? Yeah, I do. I have some other questions for you. I have one from the Pocket Lab team. This is kind of a special question for you. So we have thousands of teachers online right now listening to this, which is fantastic. And I'm sure we can all agree they deserve to be reminded how important they are. So Neil, in your education, was there a teacher who just stood out, who just comes right to mind as somebody who inspired you and ignited your passion for learning? No.

Sorry. The answer is just no. But I think I know why. Can I explain why? Yeah, yeah. I think I know why. Okay? So wait, let me back up. There is a sixth grade school teacher who noticed that I

was disruptive in class from excess social energy. She also noticed that the book reports that we were handing in, mine were all based on astronomy subjects. And so she put two and two together, let's call it three and three together, and got six and said, maybe we should send this child to take advanced classes at the Hayden Planetarium in New York, where I live. And that would eat up my social energy in the evening and satisfy my curiosity. And that's exactly what came to pass. And so I took classes there. It sucked that energy out of me. I became more enlightened. And from age 9, 10, and 11 onward, I was hooked on the universe. Now, that's in a way an exception to my life experience. My life experience is I'm getting average grades throughout my entire time in college. I mean,

in school, from kindergarten through college, I'm getting average grades. Who do teachers like to recognize? The high grade people, the kids who get A's, and they're the ones who get the attention. They're the ones who get the award. They're the ones who get praised graduation day. And the rest of the students get academically ignored by the system because that's not where all the praise energy gets directed. any time my entire life, who during class or later would have said, that guy Tyson, he'll go far. Because their metrics were limited to how well I did on their exam. Meanwhile, I had a telescope and I was head of my astronomy club, which was in my neighborhood. And I walked dogs and earned money because I lived in an apartment with a lot of dogs there. I walked dogs and earned money because I lived in an apartment with a lot of dogs there. Walked dogs, earned money,

bought my next telescope and a camera. And I had an astrophotography lab. And I did all these things and none of them showed up as a grade on an exam. And so the answer is no. There's not some long string of teachers that say, oh, he's great.

Let's keep pushing him around. Because I don't see them pushing the students who they think are not worthy of their investment. Maybe teachers have changed since then. But often the ones I've seen, that is not the case. I've had teachers call me up and say, oh, Dr. Tyson, I have this straight A student I wanted to bring him to. I say, no, I'm not interested in your straight A students. You're already getting straight A's. And by the way, they're getting A's not because of you, but regardless of you. That's what straight A's mean. It doesn't matter how good a teacher you are, that student is still

getting A's. Therefore, you don't matter to them. They'll get A's whether you're a good teacher or a bad teacher. All right? Show me you're a good teacher. Bring me the B student who, because of your intervention, is getting A's. Bring me the student who is going to flunk out of school, is now getting low B's. That's progress. That's an improvement. That's evidence that you're making a difference in that student's life. Those are the students I want to see. I'll see you at your office. I'll see you at your office, Neil. I'll be at your office tomorrow, Neil. By the way, you're right. Let me tell you something. You are absolutely right. I was, of course, being a stand-up comedian who knew this, I was disruptive.

I had talked a lot. I had a lot of energy. I just didn't respect authority. And it was several teachers in my career who, as I was getting Ds and about to flunk out, who came to me and were like, yo, man, you are really smart. You're a smart kid. And I'm like, why would you say I'm smart? It's like anybody who goes into the office and says they have to use the phone to call their parents and can they have some privacy and then orders 100 pizzas to the school instead. That kid's smart, right?

So, no, I'm just serious. And they started working with me and turned me from a D student almost flunking into a B plus student. And so you're absolutely right. That's the power of teaching. That's the power of teaching. So I think the system

overvalues high grades. That's just my opinion teaching. So I think the system overvalues high grades. That's just my opinion there. And there's too much else going on in the rest of who's in school. And of course there's more effort to, because then now you got to know what the Velcro, I love that analogy, but there's the Velcro spot for curiosity, The Velcro spot is. The Velcro spot for curiosity, the Velcro spot for energy to be focused

towards a goal that will accrue to your later life as an adult. And so, yeah, I'm sorry. I don't have a long list of teachers. They're not out there. Sorry. You know, you guys are making me feel a lot better. I was in trouble all the time too. So I used to be ashamed of that, but now I'm going to say that, You guys are making me feel a lot better. I was in trouble all the time too.

I used to be ashamed of that, but now I'm going to say that, geez, good company. That's amazing. That's amazing. It's interesting though, because you both said the same thing, that there's a teacher who noticed that there is untapped potential. I don't know if that's the way to say it. Unfocused.

Unfocused. Yeah. Unfocused. So it did take a teacher who stood out and for both of you guys, sounds like would help you and point you somewhere to burn off that energy that otherwise would probably be a real nuisance, right? Yeah, I think the difference between me and Chuck

is Chuck might've continued to have been a truant in his life. I don't know. Get him to answer that. I was not headed off the cliff in what I was doing. I just, I was being disruptive to her class. So part of the motivation was to get me to be less disruptive to her class, not for me to get higher grades in her class. So the motivation was a little different.

And so that's how I see that. I was disruptive in every class. But I will say that that teacher who pulled me aside, I was in junior high, that teacher who pulled me aside, I was in junior high, and I ended up going to a college prep school in high school, an academic prep school for high school, that the only purpose of going to this school was for you to then go to college. And everyone there was selected. You had to apply like a college. It was treated like college.

And once I got there, what I discovered in myself was competition. And so being competitive with these other, who were clearly smart, all these other kids, that kept me from going off the rails. So I think competition helps too. You know, pitting kids against one another. My whole high school was kids being pitted against one another.

That was my whole, it was a thunderdome of learning. Age match. Can I give you just one last example? Yeah, yeah, please. If we got to wrap it up. Take your time. Go for it. If we can. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. You ready for this? Okay. So I said I get average grades in everything. Okay. I mean, there was some higher, some lower. They're all averaged to the middle in a way that no one would take note.

Okay. No, no one would take note. Okay? No, no one. All right. So what happens? I take the SATs. You know, my verbal is just kind of average. Okay?

It was maybe a little higher than average, but nowhere where somebody's, hey. Okay. So now watch. I'm still nonetheless a lifelong learner. Okay? As Chuck, I think, accurately captured. I am curious about whatever it is I don't lifelong learner. Okay. As Chuck, I think accurately captured, I am curious about whatever it is I don't know about. Okay.

I don't care what it is. I don't care. If you collect garbage from the streets, okay, I will have questions for you because when I pass garbage trucks, I wonder things. Okay. In fact, when I was a kid, it was like, where does all the garbage go? Because I've never seen a garbage truck emptying. So I just, is there a black hole in there?

I have sort of basic sort of kid questions about the garbage truck. Okay. So, so only you would come up with an interdimensional garbage truck. That would be the best garbage truck. That would be the best garbage truck. We just need a door. Only Neil deGrasse Tyson comes up with an interdimensional garbage truck where you just dump garbage in. It's just a door. You open the door, put garbage through, close the door, and you look on the other side.

There's nothing there. It went into the fourth dimension. And there's nothing there. Okay. So. Neil, I totally agree with you with the lifelong learning, but you know what? You have a gift to keep this stuff in your head. And the more I put in, it comes out the other end.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's you're putting the wrong stuff in your head. I'm selective about what I remember because I remember the coolest stuff that I learned. And that's much easier to remember cool stuff than just the full syllabus. Okay. All right. So now here, let me finish the story. So I get out of college. I go into graduate school and I start writing for a magazine. It had a question and answer column called Merlin. And so I wrote a question and answer column called Merlin. And I like reading good writing, and I like trying to emulate that. And so I worked on it.

I worked on it. And then eventually, enough of these Q&As came together and became my very first book. It was called Merlin's Tour of the Universe. Okay? And then I said, well, this writing is kind of interesting. It's hard to do it well. You can just write a Wikipedia article if you wanted to, an encyclopedia. But if you want to write in an interesting way, that takes effort. So I kept looking. I read better and better writing so I could get better and better. And this just kept going long after

school. Then I wrote an essay for Natural History Magazine. I wrote that for 10 years. Okay. And so collected a hundred of these and then I put it together as a book and that became another book. And so, so what happens? I get a letter in the mail from the Educational Testing Service. Oh, who are they? The purveyors of the SAT.

Okay. And in it, just how much of a grip they have on it. It's just like, they're going to revoke my SAT scores. I'm a grown man opening this envelope and I'm feeling like, oh my gosh, you know, what happened? Did I mark it wrong 20 years ago? And in that letter, it says, dear Dr. Tyson, we were reading one of your essays recently, and we want to use it as an exemplar essay in the next essay, verbal SAT that we are composing right now.

Will you give permission for this? Now, I didn't know whether to kiss him or to burn the letter. But what I do know is for me to come out of the system with a score on their exam that no one will notice and no one will promote no one will say hey you'll go far i keep learning then i write something that they now want to put in their exam something's wrong here in the assessments i'm sorry i'm screaming i you got me all riled up something something is missing in the portfolio of what we invoke to assess the promise and performance of students period and what would happen later i'd write a book that would become an international bestseller that's

the one called called um astrophysics for people in a Hurry. Internationally. Okay? Now, if you got perfect scores on your verbal SAT, maybe you also can write books. I don't know. All I know is that I didn't get the perfect scores, and I landed on the New York Times bestseller list at number one. So something is wrong there. okay? Something is wrong. And I don't know how many students got lost in the system because they didn't have enough teachers paying attention to what they could do in ways not measured by what score they got

on the exam they just gave where they had to memorize glossary terms. Well, I have the title for your next book. It's called When 960 Equals Number One. So Dave, you got me all riled up here. I tell you what, I'm watching the chat and you're getting, there's about 500 amens that went past and yeses and heck yes and all kinds of expletive yes yeah

my favorite just comes by and somebody's just going preach! yeah that's actually I think what they're reacting to you know I think you struck an error it is really there is a lot of truth to that.

And there's clearly a lot of people who agree when a limited standardized test is pretty good. Hey guys, you know, we could do this all day. This is fantastic. Let's do this again is all I can say. This was a lot of fun. I bet the teachers here would love to hear you again. So thank you very much, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson

and Mr. Chuck Nice. You are fantastic. And StarTalk. And we'll see you again now. And goodbye, world of science teachers. Yes. And thank you, science teachers. I mean, you are the intellectual lifeblood of the globe.

So thank you. Of civilization itself. Absolutely. Well, that about does it. Thanks for tuning in to this special edition of StarTalk Cosmic Queries in collaboration with Pocket Lab. I want to thank all the Pocket Lab folks for organizing this and bringing 11,000 science teachers together from 120 countries for this special event. As always, until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.