StarTalk Radio - Going Deeper with Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

What do you dream of while working on Inception? Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt to explore time travel, dreams, and the science and philosophy behind his projects. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/going-deeper-with-joseph-gordon-levitt/Thanks to our Patrons Victor Ray Rutledge, David, Benjamin Behlke, Jay Naranjo, and Judy the Extrovert for supporting us this week.Photo Credit: Cloud atlas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

you have an encounter with your future self. And this seems to break some time travel rules, I'm thinking to myself. Are there time travel rules? No, it's not. You got me? 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, we're featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Oh my gosh. If you would make a list of actors that did really cool, mind-bending movie roles, he is at the top of that list. Joe, welcome to StarTalk, dude. I don't know if the listeners can see the smile on my face, but hearing that come out of you

is very flattering, sir. Thank you. So, I mean, generally people are best known as actors, but you're also a director, producer, writer, and you enter a bunch of other stuff we're going to get to in a few minutes. Great. But just recently, in recent years, you were in the trial of the Chicago 7. I remember that.

Well, my gosh, that was an intense film that was. Yeah, I'm getting that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you were a Gotham police detective in Dark Knight. Yes, sir. Many people think that was the best Batman movie of them all. I mean, it's among mine, definitely. Chris Nolan is hard to beat, it's true.

Yeah, it is. It totally is. And most recently, you are in the Pinocchio animated feature as Tell Me Who You Are. I'm Jiminy Cricket, man. Jiminy Cricket. That's got to be the coolest role if you had to pick one. Nobody wants to be Pinocchio. Totally.

I'm the conscience of Pinocchio. I know I couldn't. That was one of those moments when the director, Robert Zemeckis, who you know, he directed like Back to the Future. Yes, of course. I did another movie with him a few years ago called The Walk. And when he called me and told me about thinking of me to play Jiminy Cricket, that was one of those life moments.

You jump at it. You jump at it. It must have been, you know, whatever mistakes I've made, it's all good if I'm here and he's offering me this. Thank the Lord. Now, I'm also tickled because I didn't even know this would ever be something we could declare. But you have portrayed two famous people in movies, each of whom we have had as guests on StarTalk. Okay, so it's probably not Robert Tad Lincoln because he's dead.

That would be Philippe Petit and Edward Snowden, I would guess. Totally. We had Philippe Petit and talked all about his famous walk between the Twin Towers and also Ed Snowden. We had an interview with him in his moving bot. The snow bot. Oh, it's not snow bot. There it is. Yeah. He was totally in my office.

I get to say he was in my office. His spirit energy was there. So it's a little freaky to have you here who played both of those characters. One other point is you, especially for our listeners who are strong on the geek spectrum. Sure, sure.

Me too. To have been in two movies that just kind of leave your brain a little scrambled or a lot scrambled. Inception, Christopher Nolan again. Oh, by the way, we've had Christopher Nolan as a guest. Oh, you have? Oh, yeah. That was fun. That was totally fun.

And, of course, Looper as a time travel assassin. And so I just want to lay out that landscape before we sort of take this one by one. And I just want to thank you for coming on to the program. Oh, thank you. I'm feeling great about myself right now. I needed that, Neil. Thanks. Okay.

Let's start out with Looper. It seems to me, by the way, tell me who directed and wrote that. That's Rian Johnson, who for those on the geek spectrum that you're talking about, made the most controversial and in my opinion, best, yeah, I'm going to say it, the best Star Wars film, The Last Jedi. Rian Johnson, who also made Knives Out and Glass Onion that just came out. I was in his first movie called Brick and then his third movie called Looper. I got you. So you're in his, you're on his list is what that sounds like. I'm actually technically in all of his movies.

In the ones that I'm not in with a bigger part, I have like tiny cameos. So, in Looper, it doesn't seem to so much concern itself with... How do I characterize it? So, let me just give the plot line. You are an assassin who kills bad guys who were sent into the past, thereby disappearing from the future. And then you kill them and dispose of their bodies. So, they're basically wiped off the face of the earth. Yeah. As anyone in the future would know or concern.

And then you confront yourself as someone you're supposed to kill. Brilliantly played by Bruce Willis. And then there's an issue there about whether you kill your future self or not. And that's all I'll say about it in case anyone hasn't seen it. But my point is you have an encounter with your future self. And this seems to break some time travel rules, I'm thinking to myself. Are there time travel rules? No, it's not. You got me? Joe, I thought I could pass that through you, but I couldn't. Joe, I thought I could pass that through you, but I couldn't.

No, but I'm actually, I'm curious to ask you, because I'm a fan of time travel movies, like I mentioned, Back to the Future, or whatever you want to talk about, Quantum Leap. I was in an episode of Quantum Leap when I was 10 years old. The old Scott Beckman. And wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. And weren't you, forgive me, weren't you in Third Rock?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God, I guess. That's right. Speaking of a cosmic perspective, right? Third Rock from the sun. That's right. Oh, just remember that. It's not in my notes here.

So I just remembered that. So you've been at this for a while. Oh, I've been doing this a long time. I'm feeling good about this. Okay. So I don't know if there's a rule. We'll have to ask some of our time travel. Would that kind of thing be possible?

I mean, is there any indication in any serious science to say that a human could travel from one place in the time continuum and end up in a different place intact with their same human body and brain and yeah i think there's not that itself is not the problem the problem comes about with as they say the grandfather paradox right where you go back and you prevent your grandfather from meeting your grandmother or in a terminator version of that, you kill your grandfather so that you're never born to be sent back in time to meet your grandfather. So there's a paradoxical loop problem that Stephen Hawking thinks there is no solution to it at all, that we will discover a new time travel conjecture that will prevent backwards time travel in that way.

And there are a couple of scenarios. There's another one. Wait, when you say a conjecture, you mean that there'll be some kind of evidence or kind of mathematically backed statement that says this is actually impossible, it'll never happen? Stephen Hawking believed that we would one day

derive either mathematically or experimentally that conjecture. Just so as to prevent the grandfather paradox from unfolding. Right. And so, but what was, what intrigues me is in Looper, you met your future self 30 years hence.

Yes. And had conversations with that person. And that's just, I don't know if that's allowed. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. And I don't know what to say. Yeah. I mean, I think it's definitely not allowed.

Look at that. We did it anyway. We got it. No, but I mean, there was actually, there was a scene. There's a great scene, one of my favorite scenes in the movie, where my character and Bruce Willis' character, who, like you're saying, are supposed to be the same man, just younger and older version of the same man.

They sit down at a diner together and talk. And there was a version of the script together and talk. And there was a version of the script where the older man explains some of the mechanics of the time travel. Probably in terms that Stephen Hawking would deem serious. But at least in terms that felt necessary

to the story in that draft of the script. But later, Ryan, in what I think is a wise move, decided to cut all of that out. And there's just a line now where Bruce Willis kind of gets prickly and angry and says, we're not going to talk about time travel. Oh, okay. So, all right.

So you leave it more to us to try to think about it. I mean, it's interesting. You know, this gets into sort of the theory of what is science fiction and what's the purpose of science fiction. And is Looper even a science fiction story? Certainly, it gets categorized as sci-fi. And I think in Hollywood entertainment, anything that involves a kind of quote-unquote future gets categorized as sci-fi. And I think in Hollywood entertainment, anything that involves a kind of quote-unquote future gets categorized as sci-fi. I mean, Star Wars gets categorized as sci-fi.

There's no science to any of the kind of magical, fantastical things that happen in Star Wars. It just gets categorized as sci-fi. When I say that, when I say that, I get crucified when I say there's no science in Star Wars. So I'm glad someone,

a full-up actor, gets to declare that as well. Yeah I say there's no science in Star Wars. So I'm glad someone, a full-up actor, gets to declare that as well. Yeah, but it's an aesthetic. It should be called, like, you know, futuristic fantasy. Yeah, yeah. Some other genre. I mean, some people call it

science fantasy. Even, like, they call, you know, the Lord of the Rings or the Sword of Shannara or, you know, these kinds of fantasy, these D&D magic gathering books that I used to read when I was a teenager.

They call them science fantasy. But there's certainly no science to Gandalf. It's just words. Entertainment, this is the world of entertainment. This is why I'm so thrilled to talk to you

because I live in this world of entertainment where words don't mean a damn thing. They're just like words. Yeah. Strung together. Strung together in lines. They're just like words. Yeah. Strung together. Yeah.

Strung together in lines. Right, right. Okay. And so, I mean, look, I think Looper is a brilliant story and it has a lot of very true things to say about age, about what it means to get older,

about what it means to reckon with your past, the moral decisions that you've made, and whether you think you've been a good person or a bad person, whether you think you've done the right thing or done the wrong thing, and what can be done to try to rectify that. I think there's a lot of very true things to say about that. Time travel is a fun and really cinematic device to tell that story. But I don't think it has anything to do with how time physically works.

Well, I think the out that the movie gives itself is the whole concept of the loop is there's a point where they send back you for you to kill your future self. And at that point, you have 30 years until you're going to die. And then you're released from this assassin's crowd. And that closes it off. Right? So that's a tiny... Close the loop.

It's a tidy knot placed apart. It's very tidy. That's the thing. It's like if you leave aside the science part of the science fiction, it's an impeccable work of fiction. Yes, it is. And you're tied off from the timeline. And you get to live 30 years with a bunch of money

for having killed the people you did. Right. Of course, that's not exactly how it turns out. No, no. Spoiler alert. I won't tell you what does happen. Yeah. It's a great No, no. Spoiler alert. I won't tell you what does happen. Yeah. It's a great ending, actually.

Yeah, so we're all, I want to say, my people are proud of you for participating in films like that and just at least rocking the concepts of it. And understanding

that it's nonsense. Well, in terms of the science, that there's absolutely none there. So the idea that they cut out the pedantic explanation for how the science, that there's absolutely none there. So the idea that they cut out the pedantic explanation for how the time works, I actually applaud that. I would have enjoyed it if I'd seen it,

but without it, I don't miss it, and I'll tell you why. Yeah. I was watching the Blues Brothers director's cut. And there's a scene that did not make the original release. It's where they

park their car. Okay, this is the car that just is, the car does weird, magical things until the very end when it completely collapses outside of the tax assessor's office. So, this is like,

only for Blues Brothers fans you're going to care about what i'm about to say i know the car you're talking about yeah oh so yeah it's a car and they park it near a nuclear power plant that's just where they park it all right and then they go into their apartment and so they they thought that that would allow you to give it some cause, some mechanism for having the powers that it did. But in the end, when they took it out, all he had to say was, we're on a mission from God. Boom. You don't need any more. You don't need physics.

You're on a mission from God. So, no, I just thought that. That feels more honest. It feels more honest, actually. It feels more honest, exactly. And, you know, just let it be, let the story be what it is. And if you try to over-explain it, you can end up derailing the magic of what is trying to be conveyed. So, I embrace the fact that they removed that scene for what that's worth. I appreciate it.

As an authoritative scientist, that's a good seal of approval for Looper to have. We've got to take a quick break. But when we come back, more of my conversation with Joseph Gordon-Levitt on StarTalk. Hi, I'm Chris Cohen from Hallward, New Jersey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Please enjoy this episode of StarTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist,

Neil deGrasse Tyson. We now return to my one-on-one conversation with actor, producer, director, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. So now on to, on to Inception. Oh my gosh. We, I was, I was with it until you went into the head of the dream of the person in the head. Did you go too deep? How many deep did you go at one point? Oh man, it's been a while since I've reviewed this. It was like two or three deep. Yeah, I think there are three layers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And each layer, they just made something up each layer time passes at one-tenth the speed of the previous layer yeah if you two layers in it's one one hundredth yeah okay that was a fun invented thing that will become part of canon now yeah you do it why not let that be the case sure so there's something to it right right? Like, I mean, I've definitely found this is far from scientific, but when I'm having a dream, I could be asleep on the couch and in real life only a few minutes goes by, but in my dream, it seemed like I just had a whole adventure.

Oh, right, right, right, right. So, because your brain just goes whatever pace it wants to go, right? My hunch is that it's very plastic. And obviously, this is anecdotal. So I'd be curious to hear what an expert has to say. And I'd imagine that the expert will say, well, we don't know exactly yet. Because I know that there's still a lot to learn about the human brain. But my experience, whether with dreams, I also had an experience, not to get too tangential, but I once did a psychedelic drug called DMT.

Oh, yeah. And my experience was in objective life. I know something like five minutes. five minutes. But my subjective experience was completely outside of time and space and felt like I was experiencing something like infinite time or eons. And so my hunch is that the brain's My hunch is that the brain's subjective experience of time can be pretty wonky, can be pretty plastic. So I guess an interesting question was, does anyone ever go to sleep in their dreams and then have a dream? Has that ever, because that's exactly kind of what your story is of inception. Yeah, I feel like I have had a dream like that.

I don't ever remember going to sleep in my dreams. I don't remember doing that. Wait, I'm trying to remember. Because I have... When I was in the middle of doing Inception, I was obviously focused a lot more on this. But I remember two different times in my life where I've had a lucid dream. And my understanding of the definition of a lucid dream is...

You don't know the difference you know you're dreaming while you're dreaming oh that's oh okay and that almost never happens to me but i there's two different times where i believe it has happened one of the times was um while i was shooting inception they say that it's more prone to happen if you have it on your mind a lot if you're spending a lot of your waking time thinking about dreams, it makes sense that it'll be more likely to occur to you while you're dreaming. Like, oh, hey, maybe I'm dreaming. And I do, I remember something.

My memory is patchy of the dream, but it had to do with waking up and a bed. Like the most vivid visual memory I have of the dream was like the bed that I was just sleeping in. And so I had some kind of notion that I was dreaming and it had to do with sleeping. And so there was that. And then the other lucid dream I had, I didn't go to sleep in it,

but it also was very inception related. Again, when it's on your mind, you're more prone to sleep in it, but it also was very Inception related. Again, when it's on your mind, you're more prone to think of it. It was when Inception was just coming out. So everyone was talking about it. I was talking about it a lot, et cetera. And it was during a nap. I was working on something else. I was napping in between shots.

I was napping in between shots. And I had a dream that literally started very similarly to a scene that is in Inception. I was like running down a hallway. And I realized, oh, wait, I'm dreaming. I can control this. And I had that realization. And the first thing I thought was like, okay, if I'm dreaming, I can do anything. Let's have incredible sex right now. And that just didn't work. And I started to wake up.

And I was like, okay, no, wait, no, don't wake up. Don't wake up. Don't wake up. Okay. I give up the sex. It's fine. And then I remember, I was like, maybe I can't control it, but I still just want to see what happens in this dream. And I got to the end of the hallway, and then I was in like a bit. It turned really mundane. I was in some kind of big mattress store and like shopping for mattresses. Oh, what a waste. I know, I know. But there was one weird thing about it. It was like there was some kind of where we could like float

and like do the kind of like flips and somersaults you do when you're in a pool. We were just doing that in the air at the mattress store. Oh, that's cool. and do the kind of flips and somersaults you do when you're in a pool. We were just doing that in the air at the mattress store. Oh, that's cool. But I was like, yeah, see, we're dreaming. Here I am dreaming. This is happening. Wow, crazy.

Okay, so I think the lesson here is, Joe, you're not supposed to get that much into the character. What's my motivation? That dream I just had mattresses so um you have to explain something to me because i just didn't understand it and i didn't see the movie twice but i probably should have okay i'll try what was the what was the point of the little dreidel top thing what was that the meaning of this yeah it's a i like you called it a dreidel you're talking to a nice Jewish boy here. Okay.

Yeah, the top, the spinning top. Well, so they call it a totem in the movie, and everyone kind of has their own, and it's a device that you have that you try to use to tell whether or not you're dreaming. And why would the top know this? I don't think it's so much that the top knows. It's that if the top just spins and spins and spins and spins

and never falls, that's sort of you doing that. You must be dreaming. You know, they're like, there are other more normal or I guess traditional ways that people try to determine that they're dreaming. Like one is try to pick up a book or read something. If you're in a dream and you're wondering, am I dreaming? If you can manage to pick up a book and look at the pages,

it'll indicate whether you're dreaming or not because it's very difficult for a dreaming brain to actually produce the text in a book. So the book will be just kind of gibberish and that's a sign that you're dreaming. Another one is like just to look at a clock or a watch. It usually, it's mumbo jumbo if you're dreaming. Interesting.

So you're trying to create tangible realities that reality does trivially and your brain would have to work hard at it. Yeah. And so in Inception, everybody has a certain personal device that they use to try to trust. If you're losing track of, wait, am I dreaming or is this reality? You have your totem that you've kind of trained yourself to know i spin this top and if it falls i know i'm in reality and if it doesn't fall i know i'm dreaming okay that's why there's the spinning top they were testing the laws of physics that okay yeah that's basically dream physics would be different from real physics that's what it comes

down to that's right yes because in dream physics your mind is the one that's making it happen not the actual laws of right exactly exactly all right so one one other movie just i want to bring to the front here you are the voice of jiminy cricket oh my god yes sir that's got to be the dream role of them all so now i got a level with you. I read the original Pinocchio. The original Pinocchio. The original by Collodi. From like a hundred years ago or something. Yes, correct.

Correct. In Italian, right? Well, I read an English translation. Okay, all right. I was going to be impressed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I don't know how many people know that Jiminy Cricket, like, dies in the second chapter of the book.

Yeah, the Cricket. Yeah, in the original. He's not, and he's not Jiminy Cricket, I don't think. He's just a Cricket. He's a Cricket, and he is, he is Pinocchio's conscience because Pinocchio is this bad boy

and he doesn't do anything right, doesn't listen to any adult advice. And Jiminy Cricket is trying to guide him along. And what I read there was, in the story, Pinocchio gets so angry with him, he throws his shoe, because Cricket's on the wall, throws his shoe at it and smears the cricket on the wall. End of Jiminy Cricket. And the whole rest of the story continues.

So Disney is so lying to us with that original movie. Now, forgive me, I've yet to see your current project with Pinocchio. So how close to the original story is it? There are no boots thrown. No, it's an adaptation of the Disney version of Pinocchio, not the original. I mean, but it's true. This is something I like to think about a lot is

what's really original? Because Cinderella, that's also not originated with Disney or Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast. These all go back. And Shakespeare didn't write the first version of Romeo and Juliet. Oh, I didn't know that. And Judy Garland wasn't in the original version of The Wizard of Oz. Okay.

There were earlier versions. And so, I don't know. To me, originality is almost a myth. Like, everything that any artist creates is drawing so heavily on so many influences that, and to me, there's nothing wrong with that. That doesn't make it any less valuable. To me, what I look for more is, is the artist saying something honest? Are they doing it in a heartfelt way? Are they saying something,

you know, clever or funny or whatever? These things. Original is just, it's really hard to say what exactly is original. If I may echo that in the world of science, there are many,

in technology, there are many things, oh, this is the first this done by this person burning the midnight oil overnight, and it's eureka. And it's like never that.

It's like hardly ever that. And I think we want that to be true. And so we force narratives to match it. But yeah, there's always something that came before the something else. And I don't think we give enough credit for that. Yeah, I agree with you entirely. Well, it makes a better story

if there's a singular hero at the center of the story that you can valorize, right? Okay. In fact, any given great invention or any given movie that's, you know, we talk about, like, we were talking about Christopher Nolan in Inception. Obviously, he was amazing,

but he'll be the first to say he had a whole great, enormous team of people that all helped to make that movie and those collaborators get you know and by the way when we interviewed him he spent 10 minutes talking about 2001 a space odyssey yeah and how influential that was on him when he was a kid exactly so so yeah that's very i'd like you say it's honest and our urge to valorize makes maybe a better story, but it's not the better truth. Right. So this is a fascinating reality.

I really, I admire the scientific community for, at least in principle, and I'm sure this doesn't always happen in practice, being less about the ego of look at me, look at me. And more about, hey, we're trying to drive the truth. It might take lots of us. Someone's going to conduct a study and their findings are going to not necessarily be the bullseye. But the fact that they covered that ground then helps the next person find the bullseye maybe a generation later or whatever. I just think that's really admirable, that kind of team playership. And not enough people even know to think that way. So I'm glad to encounter you among those who appreciate that moving frontier of science. We've got to take our second and final break.

But when we return, more of my conversation with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. We're back. StarTalk. Continuing my conversation with Joseph Gordon-Leavitt. So dude, you've done other things. Tell me about what is HitRecord Media? What is that? So HitRecord is an online community that I started with my brother many, many years ago. It started as just because I, well, I've been acting ever since I was six years old. When I was 19, I quit acting and go to college. And when I wanted to get back into it,

I couldn't get a part. No one would cast me in any roles. And that was painful. If I had any power, I couldn't get a part. No one would cast me in any roles. And that was painful as hell. If I had any power, I would have cast you just knowing you were in Third Rock from the Sun. That would have been sufficient. Well, that's part of it. So, I mean, I loved being on Third Rock from the Sun.

But I also, like, what I wanted to do was, you know, a movie that would play at Sundance. I wanted to do something different than what I've been doing. And the thing is, Hollywood isn't great. I mean, look, the human race isn't great. And thinking outside the box and thinking people can do something different than what they've done before. And so it was very difficult to convince anybody to cast me in a movie

that would play at Sundance. Rian Johnson, who we've talked about, was one of the first ones to do it. And his movie Brick went to Sundance. But the pain and kind of humiliation of wanting so badly to make my art, to express myself, to do my thing, and not getting to do it sent me into this sort of introspective journey. And I came out thinking, okay, I can't wait around for someone else to cast me. I've got to take responsibility for my own creativity. And that's when I came up with this little turn of phrase, which at the time was just my own kind of self-motivational mantra to hit record.

Like, I'm going to be the one to push the button. And, you know, like pushing that record button on a camcorder or on a, you know, on any kind of recording device. And it was, of course, a bit of wordplay too with hit record and hit record. Because I also, you know, felt like, you know, the media was and continues to change.

And a hit record is sort of something from the old media, back when media was an object that people would buy. And I saw then, and some of this has come to pass and some of it hasn't. I saw then like the media is going to change instead of being objects that people buy it's going to be more of an activity that people do and so changing hit record to hit record like you be the one you be the one to push a button and uh and so that's that's how it started this is brilliant i i can tell you, and I'm not even in your world, except for some very brief cameos.

I don't want to brag, but I have a cameo in Sharknado 6. I think the Academy overlooked my performance that year. That was quite a flex. You know people in the, can you tell that? So I think about this all the time, Joe, that you can be a talented actor, but you're passively waiting around for some opportunity that could be the opportunity of a lifetime

or it could go to somebody else. That's right. You're not in control of the access the public has to your talent. And so, that explained to me why so many actors are also becoming producers and directors and more power to them. It shouldn't just be a one guild universe. Yeah, that's usually whenever anybody asks me,

hey, I want to be an actor. I love it. I want to do it. What's your advice? Sort of my first piece of advice is don't just act. Don't wait around for someone to cast you and say like, oh, I'm only an actor. Like learn how to write. Learn how to shoot.

Learn how to edit. Make friends. Make things. Make stuff yourself. Don't just wait around. There it is. That's it. That's entirely it.

And that's what HitRecord was. I just started making a bunch of my own little things, videos and songs and stories and stuff. And I put them on a website that my brother helped me set up called HitRecord. And your brother is your brother? My brother, Dan. Dan, okay.

Yeah, who sadly died 12 years ago. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, so HitRecord continues for me to be a way that I get to feel connected with him too. Okay. Very good. And there's still

a lot of his, dare I say, spirit in the HitRecord community because what happened was this community... By the way, you could also say

there's some of his DNA in the... Yeah. Well, there's definitely there's some of his code. There's like the spiritual side and the scientific side, right? Yeah.

So you can say his spirit energy or his DNA. Both of them mean exactly the same thing to the listener. Oh, that's interesting. Do you think spirit and DNA mean exactly the same thing? In the way you were using it, I think it does. But is there really his DNA in HitRecord? Well, no. I can say it's me.

I share some of his DNA. Literally, then. Yes, we're totally correct. Yeah. But you have this interest we're totally correct. Yeah. But you have this interest in education as well. Yeah. We have met in this way because you got involved with Masterclass. That's exactly right.

I did a Masterclass. I know. That's some high-profile teaching I was doing there. Yeah. some high profile teaching I was doing there because with the budget they put at the production values and the talent that they acquire for it and how they package it, it's a real professional outfit. And then I learned that you're engaged with them. Tell me how that happened. What's your role? Yeah. So the mission of HitRecord was, and I'll kind of connect the dots here, was always, you know, it started as a way

for me to find my own creativity. It evolved into this community where lots of people were helping each other find their creativity. And that's what we were always sort of trying to stimulate. And we would do these various collaborative projects and be like, hey, we're going to make a show, or we're going to make a book, or we're going to make a record, and we can all do it together. And we made all kinds of things that way. And then a couple of years ago, we realized, hey, if our goal is to try to help people find their creative selves, maybe the most direct way to accomplish the goal is to just teach. Let's teach the creative skills that people need. And so we started working on that and using our platform to teach. And we launched a learning thing called Class Projects last year. And

meanwhile, I was friends with David Roget, who's the CEO of Masterclass. And he saw what we were doing and he was like, wow, this is really great what you're doing. Maybe we could join forces. And so that's what we've done. And so now a bunch of us, the HitRecord team, we work under Masterclass.

And we're sort of bringing our experience in community and online interactivity and creativity and content creation to Masterclass and doing some fun stuff. By magnifying the entire enterprise, which is a brilliant concept. And it goes back to my brother because the thing that he always talked about on HitRecord was you don't have to consider yourself the type of person who makes art in order to make art. He was a shy guy growing up. He was a software engineer. He never considered himself the type of guy to make art. And he made a conscious decision at some point in his life. He said, I don't want to be like that. I could make art. And he got into photography and he got into fire spinning and he became this like really extroverted, swashbuckling, adventurous guy. And so on Hit Record, what he would always do before he died,

and this is the early days of the community, was he was always looking for people, not like the accomplished artists, but the people who weren't yet accomplished artists, the people who wanted to do it, but didn't feel like they could, who he identified with because he had that moment of being like, I, you know. This is the life goal of any good teacher.

Oh my gosh. There you go. You're describing, you know, I can't tell you how, I don't want to say I'm annoyed by it, but I'm not enchanted. And I get a phone call from a parent said, oh, could you meet my kid? They're straight A's in school. I would say, I don't need

bring the person who's about to fail or the person who's struggling, who needs some encouragement. That's who I want to see, not the person who's already floating through everything. So the people who are not yet discovered, that's who I value as my contribution to what I can put out there. Sounds like exactly what you're doing. But you also write, produce, and star in a movie where you play a schoolteacher. That's right. Yes, yes. In the show, Mr. Corman. Who is Mr. Corman? Well, Mr. Corman was a show that I made where I was sort of imagining my life if certain things had gone differently. Just it came from honestly, arriving at kind of a place of adulthood

where I'm a dad now and I've found my life partner and I love her so much. And I'm so grateful for so many things of getting to have my family and my work and things like that and thinking, man, so much of getting to have my family and my work and things like that and thinking, man, so much of that could have gone differently. And it wouldn't even been my fault, like just the luck could have gone differently. And Mr. Corman was sort of an expansion of that thought experiment of what if I hadn't been lucky to the point of finding my life partner?

Or what if I hadn't, you know, what if I was, my work as an artist hadn't yielded a professional career? It could just easily have not. I mean, I really think making money as an artist, earning a living that way, a lot of it comes down to luck. And, you know, have I worked hard?

Sure, but a lot of people work hard and they don't end And, you know, have I worked hard? Sure. But a lot of people work hard and they don't end up, you know, earning their living as an artist. It's a crapshoot. And so I just came up with, started coming up with this character of like, okay, what would I do then? If luck hadn't gone towards me making a living as an actor and an entertainer, what would I have done? One of the things I admire the most in the world is teaching and teachers. I've had a lot of teachers in my life

who've made such an impact on me. And I feel like teachers are just super undervalued. If I could wave a magic wand and try to make the world a better place, one of the things I would do would be like, cool, teachers all make quarter million dollars basement yearly. And it goes up from there. And what if that was what we rewarded in our society instead of rewarding investment banking and speculative blah, blah, blah. Why couldn't we do that? And so I wanted to do something about that,

and I ended up writing a show about a teacher. Okay, where can we find that? Because I'd not heard of it until I dug it up. Oh, yeah, it's on Apple TV+. Apple TV+, okay, excellent. Well, thanks for that tip. Yeah. Yeah.

So any particular school influences you had? If you were an actor as early as age six, were you in a special school for actors or were you like a regular kid who just stepped out to do your thing? I was some of both. And this is a big credit to my parents because it is more convenient

and it's easier for a working kid this is a big credit to my parents because it, it is more convenient and, and it's, it's easier for a working kid to just work and do kind of homeschool. But you can go to a normal school and then work, but it just takes the, the logistical coordination of making sure that your, your teacher at work is in communication with your teacher at school and you get all your homework and all your tests and all of that. And so my mom,

God bless her, did all that for me. And I'm so grateful that she did. I did get to go to a normal school throughout. So was your art teacher and was your art teacher and acting teacher better than your science teacher? That's funny. Are you one that got away from us? I just wonder. I can put it out there. No obligation. It's a good question. I remember one good science teacher. I remember her name was Ms. Antossian. She taught biology in like 10th grade. But even, I mean, I felt like her hands are a little tied because you have to learn in this way where you're just looking at a textbook and you're memorizing the bold terms. The bold-faced terms, yeah. It doesn't feel like, I think it wasn't until later in life, kind of through my own curiosity,

I think it wasn't till later in life, kind of through my own curiosity, that I came to understand what science really is. And by the way, largely through efforts of you and other communicators like you who take it upon themselves to try to step outside of the scientific community and not just speak insularly, but share the process and the knowledge

with the wider world. If not for communicators like you, I think I would understand science a lot less. So I'm grateful to you for that. What I would infuse in what you just said is whether or not I actually taught you anything, a bigger goal than that for me is reigniting flames of curiosity that we've all had as young children. And somehow it gets sort of worn out of us or beaten out of us through middle

school. And so for you to say, when you were older, only then did you, you know, this curiosity was still with you, and you would then explore the science, that when curiosity is a part of who and what you are, you become a self-learner, right? You can't go to class anymore, right? You're an adult, you're married, you have kids, whatever. And so I'm delighted to hear

that you retained a level of curiosity. Whatever role I played in that, I'm delighted to know that. Well, thank you. Thank you. And that circles back to Masterclass. That's what Masterclass is all about. It's like trying to help people be lifelong learners. Your Masterclass is awesome. Anybody who listens

to StarTalk, I would really recommend check out the Neil deGrasse Tyson Masterclass is awesome. Anybody who listens to StarTalk, I would really recommend, you know, check out the Neil deGrasse Tyson Masterclass. This is a man who's VP of their artistic... Well, you know, I'm not saying it's an unbiased perspective, but, you know. So, Joe,

I do this with all my guests, excuse me, all my celebrity guests, and I want to ask you, is there any question you have harbored about the universe that you just never got answered? And now you are face-to-face with an astrophysicist. Here's your chance.

I'm just saying. Oh, yeah. About anything. It could be like God or aliens or the Big Bang or Pluto, whatever is your fancy. Yeah, okay. I want to ask about, I mean, I think astrophysics plays into this in a way, but it's one of those big questions.

I like to get everyone's perspective on this one. And it's an old question, the whole free will question. Do we really have any actual agency or is it already all determined? And I don't know, my understanding when I talk to many folks who lean into science is, hey, it's all a chain reaction, you know, equal and opposite reaction, et cetera. It's all physics. One thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. And so all the way back to the Big Bang, it's all predetermined. And any sort of feeling you have that you're controlling your life or making decisions is just an illusion.

And of course, that's a sort of confusing or frustrating prospect. Is that what you believe, knowing what you know about how the universe works? I'm not authorized to comment further. So I can tell you this. All the neuroscientists I speak with will tell you that you have no free will in the sense that your brain has already decided what you will do next before you have any conscious awareness of it. So it's your conscious awareness that makes you think you are deciding. But in fact, the neurochemistry of your brain is taking in all the information and making the next decision for you. So I have no reason to doubt what they're saying. But what I would say is if we feel like

we have free will, why even care about whether we don't? If the sensation is the same as having free will. Now, something that might get us out of that dilemma is quantum physics. Because quantum physics is not deterministic. This whole thing where there's a chain of events with cause and effect that goes back to the Big Bang, that goes out the window with quantum physics. The double slit.

For example, the construct of reality is altered by interaction with the reality as well as the fact that the world unfolds at that level probabilistically, not deterministically. So, there's only a chance you're going to appear over here instead of over there. And it's been suggested that our very origin of consciousness, the very concept of a new thought, is this probabilistic triggering of your neurochemistry that is a wonderland of thoughts that have no precursors at all.

And so that's what I think is true, and I'm sticking with it. I like that. I read once Richard Feynman said um if you think you understand quantum physics then you don't understand it or something yeah correct that's exactly right it's not there to understand it's just there to be and by the way this decade is the centennial anniversary of the discovery of many of the tenets of quantum physics oh really so i'm going to try to try to get that out um into the public a little more just so they can appreciate it.

Because there is no creation, storage, or retrieval of information in the modern IT world without exploiting the quantum. So the quantum is with us to stay. And it took decades to commercialize it, to turn it into something that civilization knows about and

cares about. But nonetheless, that could be our out and that could be our escape clause for what we think of as free will. Free will is what goes on when quantum physics is deciding what next to happen through no cause at all. But it's not me deciding still. I want it to be me. I want to do it.

Okay, you keep thinking that. Keep thinking that. I won't stop you. Well, Joe, it's been a delight having you on. Likewise. Likewise. Thank you for having me. I'm going to show up on a podcast you're doing

with the Masterclass folk. I look forward to that. Yes, yeah. And what a repository of folks you're going to draw from there. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, and you're going to be the first one. I'm the first one. All right, all right.

I'm really, really excited. I'll try to set the bar in the right place. Good, good. And any other new projects that have some fun science in it, just give us a holler. Okay. We'd be delighted to put you on and talk about it. And like I said, we live in the Geekiverse, and that's a holler. Okay. Delighted to put you on and talk about it. And like I said,

we have, we live in the geekiverse and that's a whole, as we've come to learn with Comic-Con and other sort of places of organized geekdom, that this is an important force

operating within our culture. The fact that, you know, hundreds of thousands of people care about this sort of thing in the same way. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing.

Yeah. And great to have you part of that. Thank you so much. I'm glad to be a part of it. I'm really glad to meet you. All right. You've been listening to my exclusive conversation with actor, writer, producer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Hope you enjoyed it. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, keep looking up.