StarTalk Radio - Reporting on Science (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 18, 2014

In the conclusion of Neil’s interview with veteran science journalist Miles O’Brien, the two discuss the inherent conflict between the goals of true journalism and corporate America. 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. Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Or at least that's what I think I am. Maybe you have other main squeeze astrophysicists. I don't know. I got Chuck Nice in studio with me, Chuck.

Hey, Neil. Always great to have you back. This is part two of the interview we started earlier with science journalism. That's right. And you now know one science journalist. Yes, I do science journalist his name is miles o'brien there you go who i like to call ballsy o'brien ballsy o'brien because he majored in history majored in history busted into the cnn offices many years ago said i want to be your

science journalist and didn't know anything about science pulled it off that's right pulled it off really that is chutzpah baby really well well I caught up with him with my roving micro. I mean, I couldn't. I saw him in Washington. I mean, we're friends from way back. I saw him in Washington. So I want to get him on StarTalk. And we didn't have time or schedule to fly him back here to New York.

I got him on the spot. And so we ducked for cover in this flood conduit. We'll call this conduit acoustics. And underpass. And underpass. We're at a highway underpass. Where's the quietest place in this intersection? So in this interview, I asked him about many things, of course, but just accuracy in journalism.

Do you people care that you're accurate? I'm ready to slap the man. Let's find out what he says. Tell me about accuracy in journalism. Such a quaint notion. Ha, ha, ha, me lad. How old-fashioned. I remember the times when we actually heard facts and checked them.

So I've spoken with journalists who, because of some journalistic ethos, they would not show me the text they were writing that came out of the interview that we conducted out of some premise that they were that I might influence it. Then I said, well, do you care about being right? Right. And they said, oh, yes, above all else. And I said, well, if I don't see it, how do I know you interpreted it right? And now there's a chance you'll be wrong. So what's your bigger ethos? Being right or having the person you just interviewed take a look at what you just created? I always err on the side of being right, but I'm not the average journalist. There is an old fashioned notion that if you show

people your copy in advance, somehow, some way, they will either try to get it blocked or will try to manage you in such a way that they change it. Well, if they're managing you in such a way that they change it to make it more accurate, that is actually a good thing. Reporters have got to get over this stubborn sense of, that's what I heard. God darn it, I know that's what I heard. We're all human beings and we all misinterpret. And especially in the line of work I do where it's very complicated at times and I'm the history major, I will surrender every time to concerns about that. I generally don't send an email with my script, but I'll go through it. If I said this, is that right? Or I'll send a little passage that I'm stuck on. I've written it this way. Does this make any sense? And it almost always works out to the better. But there is a whole journalistic

convention that this flies in the face of, and I suspect I'll hear from people who say you're a Satan of a journalist for doing that. But you know what? Think about how scientists go through peer review. Oh, that's all it is. I really started thinking about this journalistic notion of these sacred words, which must be published and everybody sees at the same time, including your sources. When I started really fully understanding what peer review was all about and how that does a lot to keep integrity in science, I think journalists would be wise to embrace this. Peer review journalism. That sounds good. Interesting concept.

I like it. Because they can be so tight about it. I wrote it. This is the truth. This is what it will be. And sometimes they can define a truth that isn't true, but everyone reads it and it's in print or it's journalistic, and so therefore it must be true.

Right. But nowadays, you know what I have? I got my Twitter stream. If somebody says something that's not true, I just say, nope, they messed that up. And then I can come back at it, right? But there was a day you couldn't even do that. No, absolutely.

Right, right, right. But, you know, accuracy in journalism, that leads to, what's this phrase? Is it fair and balanced? I had to ask Miles, what's this fair and balanced movement that we've been hearing about? Let's check it out. What's this fair and balanced movement that we've been hearing about? Let's check it out. Some stories have one side that is represented by, say, 95% of the scientific community of the world.

Is it fair in a story about climate change, which I'm obviously talking about, to do this classic journalistic convention of equal time for both sides? This is a huge mistake, I think, for journalists. So you get 95%, and then there's the 5%. So you get a person from that 5%. Now it gets 50% of your time. Is that serving the truth? I would submit to you not. As a matter of fact, that is feeding obfuscation. That is actually perpetuating a myth, dare I say a lie. And so for journalists who are hung up on this idea of, well, we've got to go out and get the guy from the Cato Institute to balance out all this global warming stuff. I fought long and hard. I did an hour long documentary for CNN back in the mid nineties,

and it was about 90, 10, basically saying the scientific jury is in here. That was the word I use. It's not out. It's in. Yeah. It's in. There's no more scientific debate. There's a political debate. There's a debate over money, over how we should spend it, what we should do. But there's no scientific debate. OK, let's just get over that. And this caused it.

Remember, I'm talking to these science phobic poli-sci guys in the newsroom who don't really follow this the way we do. And they thought it was just a journalistic aberration. How could you write a piece this way? Where's the other side? And I started sending them papers and I started going through things and trying to explain to them where the science really was and where the peer-reviewed science was, where the fossil fuel industry, and I'm using the finger quotes, science was at the time. And I managed to convince them. It didn't end up 90-10, but I got to probably about 75-25, which I considered a victory at the time because that was big for them. It was hard for them to wrap their heads around this. This was not journalism in their view. This was advocacy. But I managed to at least move the needle and get them to the idea

that doing 50-50 on this is not accurate. You know, you have to fight that battle. It requires doing your homework and understanding a lot of nuance. And those are two things that TV reporters do very little of. So he's totally, totally getting on the case of all his colleagues. I wonder what they think of him. Well, you know what? I'm so glad to hear somebody actually say this. Because that 50-50 argument is

stupid. It's like, four out of five dentists recommend brushing. The fifth dentist, he actually works for the National Sugar Council. You know, come on. Let's do some homework and find out who are these scientists that are saying that this isn't the case. Right, right, right, right. And so this concept of fair and balanced implies that everything is a 50-50 or even that there are always two sides to a story.

There could be three, four, five, or six. Right. Right. So it's an odd ethos that they've put themselves in. I think maybe it's because journalists historically would report on politics and religion and all these other social cultural factors where you always had warring factions and so you got to give everybody time. Exactly.

When we come back, more of my interview with Miles O'Brien. We're back on StarTalk Radio. Chuck Nice right here with me. Hey. At Chuck Nice Comic. That is correct. Cool. So, Chuck, we're talking about science journalism, you know, and do they do it right? Do they do it bad? I got my interview with Miles

O'Brien. I caught up with him in Washington. Miles O'Brien, the leading science journalist of our times. And the only one that I know. You got to get out more. I don't know where you hang out, but we got to work on you. I'll give you a list of places to visit and shows to watch. hang out, but we got to work on you. I'll give you a list of places to visit and shows to watch. I always wondered, you know, in the old days, you would send your story back in via telegraph or something. You know, they're invading over the border. Stop. And they're coming. It's beginning to rain. Stop. Right. And so now, obviously, everything is instant. And I've always been intrigued by all the ways technology has affected science reporting or reporting in general. And so I asked him about it because he's old enough to have been there in the old days and then in the new days.

Naming Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. I got it. Mr. Newsreel. That was your first job back in 1938. Newsreel reporter. That's right. So let's get Miles' reflections on this topic. Go.

CNN was chicken noodle news until which night? Do you recall the night? Oh, of course. Well, it was the Gulf War. Thank you. The first Gulf War. And if you really think about what happened that night. I saw the plots of CNN's audience.

Oh, yeah, you've seen that. Yeah, yeah. It matches the world event. They hate that graph because CNN's audience. Oh yeah, you've seen that. It matches the world event. They hate that graph because they'd like to figure out how to fill the gaps. Because it's always been that way. There isn't a war. Yeah. Either manufacturer wars or, you know, Anderson, what's going on, Ann? Come on. Talk to me.

So anyway, that night, if you really want to know how CNN won that night, it was technology. It was a young producer by the name of Eason Jordan who had the foresight to buy a dedicated line, audio line, into Baghdad back to Jordan. And that is the only reason CNN was on the map was because of that one line. Nobody else had done that. Nobody else guaranteed transmission. Most people think, well, I watched that on TV. Actually, you didn't watch that on

TV that night. It was all audio. It was just a phone call. Later, you saw the footage coming. We had the boys from Baghdad, Peter Arnett, John Holloman. The late John Holloman. Yeah, the late John Holloman and Bernard Shaw. And most people don't remember who was there or whether they saw it on TV or heard it, but they just know that it happened. So that was a long way of saying the CNN has always had at its core embracing technology to get the story done. So while I was there, I was schooled in a lot of this by some of the best in the business who are always looking at new different ways to get signals back from remote places. And as time went on, those big

live trucks were shrinking. Pretty soon it was, you know, a suitcase and pretty soon it was a Mac attached to a phone. And it's getting to be Dick Tracy time pretty quickly, right? And I know as a comic book hero, you understand what I'm talking about. Only of late. Yeah. I've been in a Superman comic, yes. So when I was summarily dismissed, along with the rest of the science and technology unit, because after all, what do we know about the Kardashians, right? So the entire unit disbanded from CNN, gone, we're pink slipped. I was really crestfallen because I thought, certainly it's bad for me, but I figured I'd figure out some way to make a living. But really, I actually do care about

making people understand how important all this is that I cover. I really do. It means a lot to me. And I think it's so important for our nation and everything else. So I was really upset about that. And then I realized, I don't need nation and everything else. So I was really upset about that. And then I realized I don't need no stinking truck. I don't need no Time Warner Center. I don't need all that stuff. You got fired at just the right time. I did.

Technology's waiting for you to be your one man newsman. You know, I remember way back when on Saturday Night Live with Al Franken. He had the satellite hat. Yeah, remember that? It's classic. Anyway, so I was fired. And frankly, I just did not want to miss a shuttle launch. That's what it boiled down to. So I called my friends at Spaceflight

Now, Steve and Young, and I said, do you have an internet connection? Spaceflight Now is an internet site that tracks every single launch. They have a great... Space nerds love this site. And I say space nerd as being one of them. I don't say that as a pejorative at all. On this show, nerd is a compliment. A badge of honor. Thank you. Thank you. Of course. Anyway, so I said, I mean, what's your internet connection

like there? I'll bring down my Mac and a DV camera and we'll just stream out coverage. And that way I won't miss a launch. So we started doing this and it got progressively a little more complicated. We do a three camera shoot, but basically we were doing it for the cost of the travel down to Florida and the T1 line to the launch pad 39. It was no money at all. Toward the end, we did seven or eight launches this way. And we would do six, eight-hour length webcasts. You were on them.

It was great for a guy like me who loves space to have six or eight hours to just keep talking. Everybody's there. And they're all there and they all come in. And we all love you, so we'll talk a couple of minutes out with you. And people were tweeting back questions it was fantastic and toward the end we were getting a couple 300 000 people watching the world over now it's not a huge thing but we weren't spending any money we were just there with our little mac and so i realized suddenly that we are in the boutique age of journalism i mean if cnn is the department store or the walmart

and think about what that does to quality there is is room for a Madison Avenue boutique still, right? For people who care about things that are specific to them. And they will seek you out. They will find you. They will find you. They will come. And you have learned this by the way you tweet, by the way you use all the tools out there. You really can do it on your own.

I used to think, well, it's just going to be this group of already interested folk. But the truth is that shows you have no appreciation for what social networking is all about. There is an exponential nature to it that is just infused in it. And yes, you might have this core that begins with you, but inevitably it gets bigger. You've probably seen this study. Pew did a survey. They asked people, what's the thing you care most about that you see the least of in the mainstream media? Answer, science.

Science. So you and I know that there's an audience out there. The mainstream media has decided for whatever reason, they're scared of it. It's too complicated. It's too expensive to cover it. I can just throw people in here in a studio and have them yap about the election, whatever. Maybe they're still burned from their science classes. Could be. You were never wounded because you never had science. I think that there is much work to be done, admittedly, but there are avenues for those of us who care about this to share our knowledge and passion and interest that lead me to believe not all is lost.

All right. So he's liking the technology. Yeah. But we've both seen technology taken a little too far. It can go awry. You know, I saw one. Was it CNN where they had a hologram? Yes.

Wolf Blitzer's hologram, which now is not just Wolf Blitzer using the hologram. Is everybody? Not everybody, but they're using it for specific stories. So if I remember the story correctly, in 2008, during the presidential election returns, Wolf Blitzer brought in via hologram Jessica Yellen, a reporter, and we see her floating in the middle of the space. So apparently it wasn't an actual physics hologram because he would have seen it. It was put into that space for we the viewers. Correct. And she was three-dimensionally photographed image, teleported, put here on our screen.

But why does anyone want to see all sides of a reporter? Right, exactly. I don't get that. Who cares? Who needs a three-dimensional reporter in a two-dimensional medium? That makes no sense whatsoever. You could just have her pirouette while she's speaking and you get the three all sides of her. No, I didn't understand that.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe we should applaud it for the experiment because you've got to step in new places to see what works. The experiment would be I'm sitting in my living room and Wolf Blitzer shows up in my living room as a hologram. That's cool. But, you know, watching it on TV. Watching a 3D hologram on your 2D projector. That's stupid. I'm sorry. And the fact that she kept saying, help me, Obi-Wan

Kenobi, you're my only hope, really got on my nerves. It just... Star Wars Episode 4. Exactly. Right, right, right. So, yeah, so technology, it can always be overused, and I think you need time to have it sort out. Do you remember when CDs first came out? Yes.

Okay? It could capture so many different channels of music with such accuracy, the early CDs went overboard, and they just piled on all instruments and all, and they had the stereo running back and forth ear to ear. And they were, they called it overproducing. Oh,

there's a phrase for it. Okay. Yeah. It was overproduced. And then maybe you had to go there to feel out the space and then pull back on it. You know? And so what you really need the technology for is if you're going to go to Mars and like, like he said in the first of these two interviews with

Miles O'Brien, he wants to report back from Mars. They're going to need some technology, right? Yes. And a breathing apparatus. Not to mention a Motel 6 or something along those lines, because I hear there's not a lot up there. Yeah, you'd have to like terraform Mars first or something. so uh so no technology is good and if you can get news faster but maybe you don't need any more technology now that we have twitter because somebody's eyewitnessing every news event in the world i was just about to say that you being a a big presence on twitter i mean you know we had the whole arab spring and it happened pretty much

on twitter happened on twitter and there's nothing a reporter's going to tell me that i is not that's better information than people actually live in it. Right. In real time. In real time. What are you going to do to that story that's going to improve it? Right, exactly. Right, right, right. And it happens when there's earthquakes, you get instant accurate reporting on

when people felt it, what time it happened. And each tweet is time-stamped. Exactly. So you know exactly when it happened, how it happened, where it happened, and then I am happy that I'm here. And alive. Sending out the tweet in the first place. When we come back, more of my interview with science journalist Miles O'Brien. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. Chuck Nice sitting across from me.

Hello. We're in studio, New York City, and we're slotting clips from my interview with Miles O'Brien, science journalist extraordinaire. And I had caught up with him in Washington to get this interview. And we were talking about everything. I mean, he's been around long enough. He's got a story about everything.

And I finally had to ask him about, you know, nowadays, there are news sources that are just aggregators, right? They don't actually have their own reporters. They just pick and choose. That's an interesting, you know, I mean, Huff actually have their own reporters. They just pick and choose. That's an interesting, you know, I mean, Huffington Post is largely that, right? And Drudge, Drudge Report. The Drudge Report, yeah. And so what would happen if everybody were an aggregator? Then no one would actually be getting any news.

They'd be aggregating each other's aggregations. Let's see what Miles' reaction is to this. Well, eventually somebody's going to have to go to the city council meeting, right? I mean, somebody's got to show up for the launch. Somebody's got to be there. I mean, we can aggregate all we want, but we're running out of actual primary news gathering instruments here, right?

And then it gets repeated that many times because it only has one source. And then everyone thinks that's what's more true. Yes. Because it shows up in more places. Yes. source and then everyone thinks it's that much more true yes because it shows up in more places yes and you can be reading in the midst of hurricane sandy making stuff up it from whole cloth about the stock exchange being flooded and it gets on tv because this is where it's all come to we don't have reporters there anymore don't we don't bother with that silly we can just read the

tweets so yes it's a big problem. However, when you think about journalism, you can almost always say the goals of true journalism will be an anathema, dare I say, mutually exclusive to the goals of corporate America. There will always be a conflict there because if journalism's job is to poke questions at the status quo and the establishment, what is corporate America but the ultimate embodiment of the establishment? So there was a time when the networks, there were three of them, right? And they had the Fairness Doctrine and they were worried about the FCC and news was a lost leader. And they had unlimited budgets and the ability to give us people like Cronkite and Murrow and great television journalism. And have bureaus in all these cities around the world.

Because there was not a money motive. And then things changed. The fairness adapter went away. The cable began. There was much more competition. Suddenly the news divisions had to be entertainment. Well, they had to make money. So therefore they had to be entertainment, right?

They had to make entertainment. Well, they had to make money, so therefore they had to be entertainment, right? They had to make their own way. And that was the beginning of the end for serious journalism, in my view. And if you really look at it, there are two kinds of truly successful journalistic endeavors. There are family-owned enterprises, the Times, newspapers, the few that are left, that are run by families in communities. This is actually how Ted viewed CNN. There was an element of cocktail party braggadociousness that goes into this, right? You want to be the upstanding citizen and the pillar of the community and whatever the case may be, you're not in it just to make a buck, right? Then there are the outright nonprofits now, like the Poynter Institute, which runs the

Tampa Bay Times in Florida, or places like ProPublica or the Center for Public Integrity that are actually doing true journalism funded out of the goodness of people's hearts. That's where the journalism lies. When you get into corporate ownership of big chains of newspapers and TV, you don't see a lot of good journalism. You really don't. And I don't think that's a coincidence. And all the three networks are owned by corporate interests, right? That's correct. ABC is Disney, right? Right. NBC is GE. Now Comcast. Okay. Yeah. Well, GE, Comcast, whatever they are. CBS is what? Well, CBS is Viacom. So there is hope for journalism. It's just journalism doesn't fit well into the corporate business model.

And so maybe we're evolving. We're in the middle. But you don't believe in evolution, right? Maybe we've had some intelligent design into a new era where journalism is bastion of these entities who, going back to that, it fits in with my boutique idea. Boutique journalism. Journalists not. I mean, imagine a story comes up that is really bad for Disney. What will ABC do with that story? You wonder.

I got a feeling that Mickey is not talking about it. Mickey's silence. Mickey's not been available for comment on the story. Mickey's not available for comment on the story. Mickey's not available for comment. No comment. A few years ago, Peter Jennings did a round-the-world New Year's Eve program where they had reporters in every time zone, which I thought was cute. It was a little slow, but I applaud the experiment. And they invited me in right at the time that scientists at the South Pole moved the location of the pole.

And that freaked people out. So what's going on with Earth's rotation? Someone had to explain that their glacier is moving and this pole that's stuck in ice is moving with the moving glacier. So you have to realign it to the actual rotation axis of the Earth. But fine. But in there, Peter Jnings, he's smooth. And he says, I wonder how they're celebrating New Year's Eve in Disney World.

Let's check it out there. And so Disney World is an icon of America. Of course. But I thought, why didn't he go to Universal? And then I was reminded, oh, Disney owns ABC. But I'm thinking I was duped by that little smooth move of his. He should have said, oh, by the way, they own us, so we have to go there. Right.

To tell this story. You know, I was taken in at that brief second, thinking that there was something honestly genuine about going to Disney World for that story. But, yeah, I mean, and that's who cares about a New Year's Eve? We're talking about real stories. Right. And what's the future of news if corporations are going to Disney World for that story. But yeah, I mean, and that's, who cares about a New Year's Eve? We're talking about real stories. Right. And what's the future of news if corporations are going to own it? More of my interview with Miles O'Brien,

science reporter extraordinaire, when we get back. StarTalk Radio, Tyson here. Nice on the other side of the table. That is correct. Chuck Nice, they call him. That was very fine. I'm nice, Chuck Nice. Chuck Nice.

My chicken baked, not fried. Because if you weren't black, I'd be like, why's it got to be chicken? Why's it got to be chicken? All right. Okay. So here's the thing. How soon do you know when you want to be a reporter? When does that happen? All right. Okay. So here's the thing. How soon do you know when you want to be a reporter?

When does that happen? Right. I ask myself, and of course I ask that of Miles O'Brien, and I wonder for you, when did you know you wanted to be a comedian? Was it the teacher saying, what, are you a comedian? You got it. Pretty much every comedian I think has that same experience. It's the same experience. So what great, that That happened in elementary school. Elementary school, when you get in trouble

for trying to be funny, that's... And that's counted as something bad. Not that you can make a boatload of money doing that later on in life. No, it's just awful. And it just gets your life into complete peril. But you're like, I can't wait to do this again.

That's when you know. That's when you know you're onto something. Alright, so you're like, I can't wait to do this again. That's when you know. That's when you know you're on to something. Alright, so you knew early. Let's find out about Miles, how soon he knew, how early he wanted to know he would be a journalist. I remember wanting to be a reporter. Just watching the old

Al Primo style eyewitness newscasts in Detroit in the 70s and just thinking that was the coolest possible job. But at that time, in Detroit, not knowing anybody who ever did it, assumed it was out of reach, because I couldn't even go to anybody and say, how do you do that? Those people could have come in from another planet. Plus, who knows anyone who's a reporter? That's not a common trade. It isn't a common trade. And especially when you're in Detroit and, you know, automobile town, it's not a town that celebrates the media, right? So I didn't see it as a job. So I went to school at Georgetown, majored in history, because I found that of interest. I was

always on the newspaper, photography, you know, news editor, all those things interested me. And I gravitated toward them. But I always thought this is way too much fun to be a job. and I gravitated toward them, but I always thought this is way too much fun to be a job. And so I never saw myself doing that until it sort of got to the end of the line at Georgetown. I thought, what the heck am I going to do? And I took an internship at NBC. NBC DC in Washington. In Washington at WRC and NBC. And I walked in that newsroom and I just knew immediately I was home. You know, it was just like, this is the coolest place ever. These people are having a ball.

Everybody's busy, and they're enjoying it. They're busy, and they're getting a paycheck. I was like, I can do this. And suddenly it all clicked, and I just never turned back. So it's a drug. Yeah. Absolutely. They're in there.

It's fast-paced. And we all saw the movie, what was it, Network News? Network, yeah. Not Network, but Network News. Right, right. Or Broadcast News. Broadcast. There you go.

There you go. I'm mad as hell. No, that's Network. Oh, that's Network. Yes, yes, yes. It was before your time. I was going to say, I don't know Broadcast News then. No, you know Broadcast.

It had Holly Hunter in it and William Hurt. Okay, I do know. So, yeah, but it showed the fast-paced. It's highly energized, and they have to be on time, and the tape has to be working, and the interview's got to be in place, and the anchor's hair has to be just right, and everything's got to come together. So there's got to be some kind of drug going on, drug influence. Yeah, but that's a good drug, you know, unlike comedy, which is like crack. Just straight-up crack. Just straight up crack. It's awful.

So I think the universe is a drug. Really? Yeah. Is that your personal drug? Your drug of choice? It's ecstasy. It's ecstasy? I can see you right now with a couple glow sticks getting high on the universe.

That's it. How much higher than the universe can you possibly get? glow sticks getting high on the universe. That's it. Yeah. How much higher than the universe can you possibly get? That's true. It is as high as it comes. That's so true. So what I wonder is, in journalism, if they print something that is not true but people think it's true, how long does it stay how people think it's true? Does it stay that way forever? You know, for a lot of people it does.

You know. Especially if it lines up with what you already believe there's the bias you don't even put in energy to ask if it's not true that's right you just accept it because it already lines up with your beliefs and then at that point if the redaction is made redaction uh uh uh retraction retraction. A retraction. Redaction. Well, I'm looking at it in print form. But if a retraction is made, at that point, you're like, oh, well, you don't even hear that. That doesn't even register. This is a famous bias that we have.

It's a selectivity bias. Right. We remember and pay attention to the things that we already want to be true. And we remember the hits and forget the misses. There you go. That's what it is. You're listening to StarTalk Radio.

When we come back, more of my interview with Miles O'Brien, science journalist. We are back on StarTalk Radio. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your astrophysicist. Can I say I'm people's personal astrophysicist? I love it when you say that. You like that. Your personal astrophysicist. But what I really want is that. You like that. Your personal astrophysicist. But what I really want is there be a whole bunch of more astrophysicists and I can just go to Bahamas and not be anybody's at that point. That's what I'm trying to do.

Yeah, it's no good if it's just me. I want company. We should get some Neil impersonators. Oh, okay. You know what I mean? Like they had Elvis, Elvi. Yeah, but what about me would you impersonate that's what I'm asking

do I have ears that stick out do I have some weird facial feature I don't know no you don't do I say thank you very much no I don't have any you have a very distinctive voice though oh so you come back one day

and you we'll try it We'll try it. Okay. You know, they tried it on Saturday Night Live. Oh, my God. I saw that. Yeah, yeah. And I got to say, that was the worst.

Oh, you didn't like it? That was the worst Neil impression. No, how could it be the worst? It was the only Neil impression there ever was. So how could it be the worst? It's not the worst. It's the first. It's the first.

Get through the first, and then you start comparing them. All right. I'll give you that. On Saturday Night Live. I was very flattered. Okay. I would be imitated. Back to Miles O'Brien, journalist. Yeah, so, you know, he survived

CNN in the beginning pink slip there, and he had his little, his freelance interval for a while, and now he landed on his feet at PBS. And so let's see how that is going for him to find out. I was available, as we know.

You were between jobs. I was between jobs, as they say. I was flailing about. Actually, I was living large. CNN gave me severance. I still have the contract. And I was like, do you want to send me home? You got to pay me. Anyway, the news hour was approached by a bunch of funders who said, we want you to do more science. Well, who do you call? There it is. Science busters right here. And what's really interesting is when I was at Georgetown, my first ever taste of television was in that very building at WETA where the PBS NewsHour is located. And my boss at the time was Linda Winslow. Now Linda Winslow is the EP for the news hour. So

I've come completely full circle. Executive producer. Executive producer. So there I am back and it is extraordinary. I mean, here's the thing. You work at CNN. CNN is on 24 hours, 365, right? I believe that is all the time we have, right? Pretty much. And yet, they would say, when I came in with a two minute and 30 second piece, we don't have enough time. I'm sorry, you have all the time. And I go into the news hour and I say, I've got a 13 minute script here. And they say, well, can you trim it to 11? And I think to myself, I have died and gone to journalistic heaven. Thank God for Big Bird. What would I do without him? died and gone to journalistic heaven.

Thank God for Big Bird. What would I do without him? Wow. Yeah, so he goes from people asking why his two-minute shot is worth anything to can he trim a 13-minute segment to 11 minutes? You know what? That is the beauty

of what I call crowdfunded journalism. That's why I listen to NPR, you know, not because they have a particular bent. You don't listen to StarTalk radio? Well, I listen to StarTalk all the time. I'm listening to it right now. You're creating it.

But, you know, the fact is that they don't have to worry about corporate financing. They just do what they do. Do what's right as as they gotta do it. Exactly. And you know, I'm old enough to remember that the,

was it NBC, the local news in New York, all right, they, you know, they give their half hour news before the evening news.

Mm-hmm. They said, we're gonna go to an hour. And people said, right. That's, that's, how do you do that? How do you do that? Oh my God. What are you going to talk about for a whole hour?

How could you do an hour's worth of news? An hour's worth of news before the news, you're going to do an hour's worth of news. And they said something that's, well, I thought they were just BSing. They said, if you're wondering how we could fill that hour, actually, we had a hard time finding out what to cut. Wow. And I said, no, that can't be right. Right. And sure enough, they filled the hour, and the rest is history. Now we have 24 hours.

24-7, 365, plus leap day maybe leap day should be a day without news oh god that would be great because it's not you know is it it's not every it's one day in four years four years right just just give us a break for goodness sake yeah yeah but that's it 24 hours a day 24 7 and so then you look are they actually filling it with 24 7 if you look at headline news they're not they're on a? If you look at Headline News, they're not. They're on a loop. You almost, don't you have a gig coming up on Headline News? I can't talk about it.

Oh, sorry. It's top secret. Sorry. We might see you on Headline News. Okay. Sorry. Or might not. Or might not.

But there's a loop going on there. And SportsCenter. Same thing. Same loop. They go on loops. You know what that is? So they're not really filling 24-7. No, they're not. And you know why? That's the radio model. I mean, I don You know what that is? So they're not really filling 24-7. No, they're not.

And you know why? That's the radio model. I mean, I don't know if this is what they actually call it, but I remember when I worked in terrestrial radio. Terrestrial radio, that's old-fashioned radio that doesn't come off a satellite. Thank you, sir. Okay, fine. Absolutely. So we would say, why can't we play deeper cuts on the album?

And they said, well- Deeper cuts, you mean more than just the top hit? More than just the top hit. And they would say, nope, you got to play the on the album? And they said, well, deeper cuts mean more than just the top hit. More than just the top hit. And they would say, nope, you've got to play the hits. People only listen for a certain period of time, so you've got to play the hits. You can't show them what else this artist might do. Because then they won't hear the hits in the time they're tuning in. That's right.

Because you've got to, just while they're in the car. That's it. Just while they're at the beach. And that's the news. That's what we're doing now with the news and the information that we have. Okay. It's awful. So they're lying to say they're 24-7 coverage.

They're 24-7 repeats. That's what it is. Absolutely. We're finishing up my interview with Miles O'Brien, science journalist extraordinaire. I had Chuck Nice in studio. Always good to have you, man. It's always my pleasure. And you're always doing good stuff.

We'll try to keep up with you. Please. Thank you. You've been listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson for StarTalk Radio. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.