StarTalk Radio - StarTalk Live! A Night at the Neptune Theatre (Part 2)

Episode Date: March 28, 2013

In the second half of our live show at the Neptune Theatre in Seattle, StarTalk geeks out on heroes, villains, and technology that’s changed the world. 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 back to StarTalk Live from the Neptune Theater! Yeah! Today's subject, the geek mecca. Here in Seattle, the home of Microsoft and the patron saint of geeks, Bill Gates. We're celebrating the geekiverse here. And our special guest, Will Wheaton. Will, welcome back to Star Talk. Thank you. Yeah.

Ladies and gentlemen, Kristen Schaal! And Paul F. Tompkins! Oh, and did you say Eugene? Eugene Merman. Eugene Merman, Comedy Festival. Hello. I want to talk about geeks as heroes. Because I'm old enough to remember that geeks were those who were slammed into the locker by the football quarterback in high school.

Someone just had a flashback over there, apparently, in the audience. The geeks would get the wedgie. quarterback in high school. Someone just had a flashback over there, apparently, in the audience. The geeks would get the wedgie, and the greatest of the geeks would get the atomic wedgie. Did that happen to you, Neil? Well, I went to a geek high school, the Bronx High School of Science. That school has seven Nobel laureates among its graduates, all in physics, by the way. So it is its own sort of geek universe, where there are the jocks and then the geeks within this geek universe. And so I was a geek jock. So I was captain of my wrestling team.

So no one gave me a wedgie. When you went to do like geek wrestling, is it like wrestling the way that people think of it? Or is it just sort of like, no, if I apply force here. It is so about the force. It's all about the force! Is it just like when two samurais face each other and you just sort of think the battle out? And you're like, okay, so then I'm going to apply force here.

The battle is won before it is begun. How much scrambling for inhalers goes on? So they were in other sports. They had asthma inhalers. So there was a move I tried to... Varsity inhaler squad. Your asthma inhalers! Your asthma inhalers!

Is there a fight song? That was good. So when I was wrestling, there was a move I wanted to invent. Because I knew about... Was it the atomic leg drop? Because Hulk Hogan already did that. No, no, no. I got one better than that.

And I never perfected it. It was... Do you know how Earth has tidally locked the moon? Yes. The moon... Oh, good. The moon only shows one face to Earth. We did that to it.

The moon used to rotate just fine, and we put the brakes on it so that it now only ever shows the same face. Yeah, moon, we own you. We so own the moon. The moon is trying to do it back to us. You made no one ever be behind you? No, no, it means when you're on the near side of the moon,

Earth never rises or sets. The famous photo, Earthrise above the lunar landscape, is misnamed. People think that moon rises on earth, so of course earth rises on the moon, but it doesn't. Earth rose in that photo because they're orbiting the moon. They came around the backside of the moon, earth rose up, so they call it earthrise, but we're thinking that earth rises on the moon, but it doesn't. It is just stuck up there in the sky. We have tidally locked the moon.

The moon is trying to tidally lock us. It is slowing down our rotation so that the day will come where we only show one face to the moon. No. No. One whole half of the planet doesn't get a moon? Doesn't get a moon. I'd hate to be those guys.

So that is called a double title lock. And that was a wrestling move I wanted to invent. It would be where, like, you lock up the double arm. Oh, please don't demonstrate this on me. I give. I tap out, tap out, tap out. Mickey, Mickey, throw in the towel, Mickey. So Geeks is Heroes.

You're in Leverage, a TV program. Yeah. And you're like a hacker, I guess. Is that right? I am, yeah. And there's a team of you guys that are kind of rogue, but you have a mission statement to do right in the world by hacking back into evil corporations.

Yeah, but the character that I play is like, if they're the Fantastic Four, I'm Doctor Doom. So we were like maybe once on the same side, and now they're sort of like bad guys turned good. I'm still just a bad guy. So I'm sort of a nemesis to those guys. Or nemesis, I guess, because there's only one of me, as far as you know. Now that you know that, Neil, do you still want to talk about heroes in geekdom? Skip over that one.

know that, Neil, do you still want to talk about heroes in Geekdom, or do you want to... Skip over that one. Was Will's fictional character the only example you had of the hero? Well, I guess... How about your character on Big Bang Theory? Also a nemesis. That's evil, too. Okay. But listen, when you talk about geeks

as heroes, I think the characters on Leverage are a really good example. You have a tough guy, a hitter, you have a hacker, a grifter, a thief. A grifter, that's like a petty. Like a con man. Yeah, petty. And then a mastermind who sort of helps them all work.

And I'm a counterpart to their hacker. But every one of those five guys, they are a geek in their own way. I think it's great because being a geek doesn't necessarily have to mean that you're a geek for a thing. Being a geek is how you love that thing that you care about. It's a state of mind. Yes, absolutely. It's a state of mind towards a subject. Yes, absolutely.

And one of the things that really drove this home for me was a friend of mine was at a movie theater in Los Angeles when the Sex and the City movie came out. And he went to, and just relax. So he went to see a different movie when that movie was coming out. So when we go to the opening of like an Iron Man movie, some of us might dress up in appropriate costumes. And when we went to see Serenity, some of us may have gone wearing our Jane hats. I mean, something like that may have happened and it might've been me. So you're one of these guys online that reporters go up to and interview so that everyone else can laugh at you. They probably don't go up to me. And they ask you, when's the last time you had sex?

You're one of those people in the line. I'm generally not one of those guys, but you raise a very valid point, and it infuriates me about the popular media. What is this news show where they're asking people when's the last time they had sex? Popular media will go past 600 interesting people with families, and they'll go past all of them, and they'll find the one weirdo. You get enough people together, there's going to be a weirdo.

It's called entertainment. I don't want to hear the regular dad say he's excited about the movie. But they give this impression that if you like science fiction, you don't know how to talk to people. If you like gaming, you can't make eye contact with people. And it's just completely unfair, and it's completely wrong. So when I go to those movies, I like to dress up because I know that my tribe will be there.

And that is a way that we enjoy the movie. So my friend Shane was in a movie theater when Sex and the City movie came out and there were all these women dressed up as the characters from Sex and the City and they were drinking Cosmos. They were Sex and the City geeks. They were Sex and the City geeks.

And it was this real epiphany for me. You don't have to be a geek for something that is completely outside of the mainstream. You can be super geeky for something like Sex and the City that, from our perspective... Our correct perspective. Of course, yeah. You know, it's like, wow, that's lame. I don't know. I totally see what you're saying, but I think that maybe you want to be proud of it. And I wouldn't want to take anything away

from being the genre of geek. Because once you lose that, you've really got nothing. We're back at the Neptune Theater Star Talk Live, Seattle! I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and my special guest this evening is the one, the only, the inimitable Will Wheaton. Wow. Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, also the wonderful

Kristen Schaal. The charmingly mustachioed Paul F. Tompkins. I'm Eugene Merman. America's friend So Will, looking at your resume You were also in that primetime series Numbers Yes

Hold on a second, are you talking about Num 3RS? Num Threers Num Threers Were you an evil person in that too? I was an evil person in that, yeah. You were just an evil guy? I play... I'm not evil in real life.

I play evil... We'll be the judge of that, yes. I play... It is in your interest to agree with me. So what was your character? Is it a recurring character? No, it was just a one-off, and he was a guy who was a comic book publisher

and an artist. Again, this is third person referencing yourself. Because it's a character. I could say I, but I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about a character I play. It is your art. Thank you. I don't tell you how to science. I just know when

Will Shatner, he's not saying Captain Kirk did something. William Shatner, he's not saying Captain Kirk did something. He said I did. William Shatner thinks he's Captain Kirk. It's different. That's a good point. That's not a fair analogy. He doesn't know.

He's an insane person. The character that I played was a total dirtbag. And it was one of the earlier characters I played before I entered the dirtbag phase of my career. From that, I went to The Guild and then eventually to Big Bang Theory and then to Eureka. Those characters are all sort of like those guys you kind of love to hate. Storytelling needs those characters. There's something that's incredibly satisfying

to me, playing a villain that I don't get when I'm playing a hero, which is weird to me because I'm a role player. I play the hell out of Dungeons and Dragons. I play the Dragon Age RPG. You know, you're talking about Seattle as a geek mecca. Also, Wizards of the Coast is headquartered here, and

Green Ronin Publishing is headquartered here. Cheap Ass Games is headquartered here. I mean, like, a lot of incredible, incredible games have come out of this area. I think Candyland is located nearby. When you were in The Big Bang Theory, I've seen, I think, all the episodes of that that you played in.

What was interesting is Sheldon is... He's occasionally an irritating character, but you were more irritating, so that made me love Sheldon because I found a common enemy and I tried to protect, like, the core group in that series. So it's worked very well in that regard. Every time I see it, it's like, eee, eee, eee! You know, off the screen. It's Will

Wheaton. You really know how to endear yourself, Neil. That sound actually came out of my mouth. I asked Bill Prady about the co-creator and executive producer. Bill Prady was one of our guests of the co-creators. He's one of the co-creators and executive producer. Bill Prady was one of our guests on StarTalk Radio, actually. Oh, awesome.

Yes. He is one of my favorite... Check the archives for that, yes. He is one of my favorite people in the world. And he carries peak cred as well. He really does. And so does Steve Malaro, who is one of the other EPs and writers on the show. I asked Bill...

Executive producer. That's like West Coast lingo, executive producer. Once again, I'm very busy, and I don't have time to say long words like executive producer. I try to abbreve things. So I was talking to Prady about what it means to be the villain and the villain's point of view,

and he said the villain is the hero of his own story. And that was... Just ask Magneto. But it's really true. Yeah, no, I know. It's what makes a well-written, fully-formed villain is that they are convinced that what they are doing is right. All of Gene Roddenberry's villains...

It's why Stalin is so believable. All of Gene Roddenberry's villains in Star Trek, when Gene was alive, Gene's villains, he always said, look, these villains aren't, they're not inherently evil. What they're doing, from their point of view, is the right thing to do, and we just misunderstand them. And I really embraced that. I agree with you. For example, in the film, a film you were not in,

but the one with the comic book guy and Bruce Willis. Unbreakable. Unbreakable. Oh, yeah. So the evil guy, I mean, there's a self-consistency to his character. Yeah, because he believes that he's doing the right thing. He believes he's doing the right thing. So it is unthinkable to imagine legions of warriors being led by geeks.

Oh, no, we can do that, too. You can do that, well, in a game, but still. You've never seen people on Twitter get mad at a thing? No. There's no greater wrath than the fury of Twitter. I will assert that there is a level of kindness and there's an absence of judgment that goes on in the geek community that there's no

counterpart to in the rest of the world that's what i have seen i don't think that geeks go out looking for real fights obviously we fight about you know how bad the first three star wars movies that they made were i mean the new trilogy not the original ones that we love but i also think that geeks don't go looking for fights but i think that if we were backed into a corner by a bunch of cool kids, we would fight the hell back. And give them the atomic wedgie. Yeah. There's more of us than there are of them.

You were on a show. Is it still on the air called Eureka? Yeah, Eureka is about to begin its final season. We wrapped the show about a year ago. The final season starts in the next couple weeks. And you played Dr. Parrish? I play a scientist. My name is show about a year ago. The final season starts in the next couple weeks. And you played what? You played Dr. Parrish? I play a scientist. My name is Dr. Isaac Parrish. I was the head of

the non-lethal weapons division at Global Dynamics, the big government contractor in Eureka. And, brace yourself, kind of a d***. But not a villain? Not especially a villain. Although he seems to get blamed for a lot of stuff. That's a victim. You don't feel to get blamed for a lot of stuff. That's a victim.

So you don't feel like you're a hero in your world. You're just a jerk. Oh, no. Dr. Parrish is the hero and the star of his own story in a huge way. Well, then that's a villain. I guess. All right, fine. He's a villain.

Are you happy now? Yeah, that's art. Okay, good. All right, so in the show, technology goes wrong sometimes. What are some good examples that you got so here's the thing about this show is that the writers and the science advisors like completely make up science like violating the laws of physics on a weekly basis but it is internally consistent probably as mark twain said first get your facts straight then distort them at your

leisure right well they certainly do that on eurekaka. The premise of Eureka, very quickly, is it's a company town. The company is called Global Dynamics, and Global Dynamics is a government contractor that develops super high-tech things like cloaking devices and lasers and mind control things and stuff like that. And non-lethal weapons. And non-lethal weapons. And when I was building... Can I tell you a quick non-lethal weapon? Do you know about the microwave transmitter? What is it? It's essentially van-mounted. It's an LRAD, right? Is that what it's called?

Shoot noise at you, make you poo, what's it do? Which one of these things is it? So here it is. So let's say there's a crowd over there. And you want to disperse the crowd. Rather than shooting bullets into the crowd, you bring up your van, you beam this strong set of microwaves towards them, and microwaves have a special relationship with water. It vibrates the water molecule, and that's about it. It likes water. That's why you have poorer cell phone connection during rain.

Underwater. Or underwater, yes. That's why when you swim, your phone works poorly. Okay, that's why our microwave telescopes in that band of the spectrum are in very dry places, like the Atacama Desert in Chile, which will soon have the most powerful microwave telescope in the world. So what it does is it beams microwaves at the right frequency that the moisture in your skin

absorbs the microwave and begins to vibrate the water molecule so that your skin begins to tingle with a burning sensation. And you want to do all you can to exit the beam. So all they have to do is put the beam where the concentration of people are and the crowd immediately scatters. Well, this sounds like a thing that will

never be abused by law enforcement. Can I have one? Not on a truck, I'm not a fool, but like, you know, in my pocket. So you just want to disperse one person. If someone is asking directions in a way I don't appreciate, maybe I will disperse them. Non-lethal weapon. So it's a whole branch of the military now for crowd control and this sort of thing. So, yeah, so it's real.

So Dr. Parrish is the leader of the head of the non-lethal weapons. Oh, I've got to say one other thing. So microwaves, just while we're there. Microwaves, since water is an active ingredient in food, microwaves become really good at heating food. Wait, this sounds like that imaginary device from Star Trek that heats things up very quickly. So you can use this to disperse food.

It's like when Spock dispersed those corn kernels into popcorn. I just want to say that non-lethal weapon was the first draft, and it was really boring. Good night! Ha ha ha ha ha! Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

We're continuing the broadcast of our live show at the Neptune Theater in Seattle, recorded on March 30th, 2012, along with my comedic co-host, Eugene Merman. Joining me on stage that night were his fellow comedians, Kristen Schaal and Paul F. Tompkins, as well as the actor, Will Wheaton. So Dr. Parrish had a non-lethal weapons lab, and when I was making this character,

I needed to justify why he's so annoyed by everyone in the world, and I decided that he's really smart, but he's one of those guys who sort of thinks, all right, I'm the smartest person in the room. And until I encounter someone who's my intellectual equal, I will deal with them accordingly. That's his point of view about himself. And he's that way because he's building these incredible non-lethal devices. Like any jerk can build a weapon that kills a person. Right. But to build something that would immobilize and not harm a person and protect people from themselves.

Phaser on stunts. Lou Reed in Metallica did it. So he thinks that that makes him sort of like superior to people. The physicist is an expert in matter, motion, and energy. And a weapon is a means of bringing energy from where you are to where your target is. That's all a weapon is. Energy here, energy is now there. So it's easy to just load up the energy and then break stuff, destroy things. But to have the right range of energy that incapacitates you but doesn't kill you, you're right. That takes way more brain power. See, Dr. Parrish is awesome. So my favorite device that went awry was this thing where

they invented this Heisenberg field destabilizer that Dr. Parrish actually collected and loved. And it activates unobtainium or something. I forget what it's called. And it turns off the gravity in various places in Eureka and things just start disappearing. So stuff just sort of starts flying away. And I just thought that was... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. If you turn off the gravity, it just stays where it is. It just doesn't weigh anything. Right. Like I said, they make up science. Thank God they canceled that show.

But it's entirely consistent. Teaching children lies. I'm just saying, if the gravity turns off, it's entirely consistent. Teaching children lies. I'm just saying, if the gravity chair is off, it doesn't fly to the ceiling. It just floats there. Neil, let's go through all the shows we can and say what's wrong. I may actually

have the fake science wrong. Maybe it actually created some kind of kinetic reaction and it pushed things away. But another one of my favorites was this thing that went around sort of like creating micro black holes in places. Yeah. And that was actually really cool. I mean, the science behind it was really hinky, but the special effects were great.

Wait, but that's also a real thing. Are there tiny black holes everywhere, Neil? Yeah, well, in the early universe, there were surely many. And what about now? There was a concern that... What about tomorrow? Are we in danger if we walk out of this theater? Like, the dark matter could just be tiny black holes.

No, not likely. We're pretty sure the dark matter is not even black holes. But you don't know. No, no. Can you just admit? We're as sure as we're... You're as sure as you're unsure. I am pretty really sure

that the dark matter is not even composed of black holes. In fact, I didn't finish my definition of black hole. I know. From earlier on. I've been sitting here this whole time. I don't want to say anything. A hole in space is a three-dimensional hole you fall in no matter a three-dimensional hole.

You fall in no matter what direction you hit it. Not only that, the gravity field is so strong that the escape velocity of that region has exceeded the speed of light itself. And so if I take from Earth, I have this bottle of water, and I toss it. Ah, look out for the black hole! It goes up, it comes back down. Hence the adage, what goes up comes down. That adage is false. That's not the saying they have in black holes. That's not the saying, what? Or in Eureka. No, no. That saying only actually is always correct

in black holes. There's a speed with which I can throw this so that it'll never come back. And that's seven miles per second. That's like how you can't fold a piece of paper more than seven times. To be technical about it, it would be to fold it in half seven times because you can easily put seven creases in it. That's what I meant. Yeah, yeah, okay.

Because then that seventh fold is two to the seventh power number of sheets of paper that you're folding. It's very difficult to do that. So, in a black hole, if you sent up a beam of light, it would turn around and come right back. You fall into a black hole, you don't get out, light doesn't get out. It is a hole, it is dark. We call it black hole.

But you don't come out from where you came in, but you would come out on the other side, which is the white hole, correct? Okay, so it was hypothesized in the 1970s that if you looked at the equations that give you a black hole, there is the opposite of those equations. There's a second solution to those equations. In the same way, I can ask you, what's the square root of nine? Anyway, we'll all say three. No, I'd say negative three. Okay, it is it is also who would bother with regular three it is also negative three times negative three gets

you nine so it has two solutions so the einstein's equations that give you a black hole there is a solution to those that is the mathematical opposite of the black hole in the way the square root of nine has two solutions so So that one is a white hole. Stuff only ever comes out of it. Yeah. Like my mouth. But then stuff does come in. Oh, forget it.

So it was hypothesized that, wait a minute, if mathematically you can have a white hole and we know we would have a black hole, then maybe they're connected together through a wormhole. And it was the first introduction of the concept of a wormhole. You're really throwing wormhole around then because you were like, ah, the spaceship goes through the wormhole when we flip space like the tortilla. Now you're saying that there's a wormhole between a black hole and a white hole.

Is worm a color now? Through the black hole. A wormhole can serve multiple uses. Okay, so you can take a wormhole and you can lift it from those holes and you can just put the wormhole wherever you want it. Yes. Yes, I'm just saying,

if you wanted to connect the white hole to the black hole, you have a wormhole. That's all. Yeah, a wormhole is like a scarf you can wear in many ways. You're welcome, Sex in the city fans welcome back to star talk radio i'm your host neil degrasse tyson our live show at the neptune theater in seattle continues with eugene merman kristin shaw pa F. Tompkins, and Will Wheaton. All right, we're going to talk about technological breakthroughs brought to you not only from the imagination of the geek fictional universe, but just out of the brains of creative geek folk. I got a partial list here of major technological breakthroughs in the last 50 years,

like the remote control for the TV. Wait, that wasn't just around? That's right. In my day, you had to get off your butt, walk up to the TV, and turn a dial. And change it to the second channel. That's right. And they'd be like, oh, so not that great.

All right. The cell phone. The birth control pill. It's not all just mechanical. It's chemical here. The cell phone. The birth control pill. It's not all just mechanical. It's chemical here. I take it. Makes me feel great. Is that how you got your man boobs?

Is that what that is? I don't know. Oh! Oh! Oh! Yeeks aren't mean. What else do we have here? Lasers? You know that's actually an acronym.

The light amplification for the stimulated emission of radiation. The laser was in fact invented by Albert Einstein. He wrote down the equation for the stimulated emission of radiation. So when he derives this equation, he's not thinking barcodes yet it is an application of laser that would come a century later so you just never know what is going to be derived from what it is you got going

how close was Einstein what frequency was that first syllable that came out of your mouth how close was Einstein to holding the world hostage. He was, as they say, one lab experiment away. Right? He had to have thought about it. From becoming an evil superhero villain.

Yeah, he had to have thought about it. God, he would have been such a good villain. He would have been so cool. I bet he would have thought he was doing the right thing. He totally would have. All right, so here's what I want to know. What device, what instrument, what bit of psychochemistry, whatever, do you want to see in the next 50 years? Go, Will.

From the world of science fiction, I want point-to-point transporters, either from Star Trek or stepping disks from the known space. Because I hate to travel. I was at the Charlotte airport. I must've walked a mile to go from the regional jet branch to like a regular jet. And so I tweeted and I said, well, someone please hurry up and invent the wormhole. So I don't have to walk this far in the terminal. And someone in reply said, if we had wormholes, you wouldn't need the airport. So I totally got owned on that one. Okay. So Kristen, what do you need?

Well, there's so much. Are you so unfulfilled by technology today? Yeah. I guess I would want a translator for animals so that we can figure out what they're saying. What did you do today, dog? a translator for animals so that we can figure out what they're saying. Ooh. What did you do today, dog? One time I thought something was food, but it wasn't. What are you going to do? Wait, so Kristen, in the movie Up,

the dogs had translators. That's right. So clearly it can happen. Yeah, okay. I walked dogs for a living when I was a kid, and from that money, I bought my first telescope. That was in a day when you didn't have to clean up after them. So I had it good.

That was the poop era, I believe is what that was called. The streets were paved with poop. So, Paul, what do you need? Uh, jetpack. Oh! Jetpack! Paul, I have some very good news for you. They're $75,000. This is...

They exist. This is the hitch in this problem. They're not very manageable right now. They're unstable. But I would love something like that. I would love commuter space travel. It would be great if regular people

could go up. I want stuff that we already have to be less expensive. That's what I want. All right, so here's the problem. Okay?

Yes. Because I'll lump with the jetpack flying cars. Let's lump them together. Lump them in there. Flying motorcycles and boats.

Rocket submarines. What about a hot air balloon lump them together. Yes, lump them in there. Flying motorcycles and... Boats. Rocket submarines. What about a hot air balloon that can go underwater? So, Paul, here's the problem. Yes. In the 60s, we imagined that the future would bring us unlimited access to energy. But what the future actually brought us, unlimited access to energy. But what the future actually brought us, unlimited access

to information. And so we need another kind of access to energy. And I tweeted once, I said, I'd be so embarrassed when the alien comes to tell them, look, we're still pulling energy out of the ground. That would just be embarrassing to me if they flew here from another part of the galaxy. We're still fueling clocks with potatoes. That's right. I wish we'd known you were coming. In our defense, the streets are no longer covered with poop. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio.

I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Our live show at the Neptune Theater in Seattle continues with Eugene Merman, Kristen Schaal, Paul F. Tompkins, and Will Wheaton. So, Eugene, what are we missing? Well, I mean mean I would definitely like an energy ring powered by willpower Is that a thing you can have?

An energy ring Yeah, where I would police the universe with He wants to be Green Lantern is what he's saying He wants to be Eugene wants to be Green Lantern Yeah, I guess it's not as much a future thing as I would like to be Green Lantern A mind control helmet? wants to be Green Lantern. Yeah, I guess it's not as much a future thing as I would like to be Green Lantern.

A mind control helmet? Is that better? And I have that. Oh, now you want to be Magneto. No, I want to be the ape thing in Justice League, the villain. But I would use it for guns. Oh, Gorilla Grog. Yeah, it'd be Gorilla Grog, but a good one, who meant well that I would support PBS. When the Green Lantern... Wait, wait, wait. Does Magneto control...

No, it's Professor X. No, it's Professor X who controls Mike. He does it naturally. I flipped them. Sorry. Magneto, you'll be surprised. Magnetic. Everyone, I have a very important Green Lantern question. Yes? How come they never show when Green Lantern would make a big hammer to hit a bad guy with?

There was never a reaction from the bad guy like, What? You get a f***ing hammer? You're making a big cartoon hammer to hit me? That's just so dismissive and rude. You're no better than me. I'm just trying to rob a bank. Wait, I want to change my answer slash amended to I want a thing that can make telekinesis real. So I want to move objects with some sort of invisible beam. Can you help me?

Towards what goal? Towards what goal? Yeah. It being super cool. I need a reason to want to move that with like a laser. Yeah. I guess you asked about science and I was like, I want to be magic. So what I want for the future, here's the thing. The greatest technologies that we embrace in modern times, many of them, if not most, are needs we have fulfilled that we didn't even dream of needing before it was fulfilled within us. So think about it. Our grandparents and their parents, however, I don't know how old you are, but go back to like the 1920s. Your radio was a piece of furniture in the living room.

Nobody is thinking at the time, gee, I want to carry that around on my hip. It's a non-thought. And so then you can't. And what is Sony thinking after they invent the Sony Walkman, where you can carry a cassette on your hip and they're saying, well how do we improve on that? Let's make it play

a CD. Yeah, that's the thing. But the real revolutionary advance was the smartphone that puts stuff on your hip that no one even dreamt of having there. Like Angry Birds?

Like Angry Birds, now going into space. Inspired by Star Trek The Next Generation, by the way. Inspired by Star Trek The Next Generation. You're welcome. Angry Birds is now going into space, I read. It's Angry Birds in space, where you can put trajectories. Star Trek.

Angry Birds, if you're unfamiliar, uses laws of physics to plot the trajectories of objects, things known to Galileo and to Isaac Newton. And now we'll go into space where you can plot orbits and trajectories around planets. Here's my point. Here's my point. I will assert that I am not creative enough to imagine what in 50 years I cannot live without.

And so, I don't have a list of things... Is that because you're content? No, it's in fact... You don't want a telekinetic wand? No, I... Okay. All I'm saying is that... that the real future,

provided we allow nations to enable it, provided that systems are in place where dreaming about tomorrow becomes a pastime once again, under those conditions, with the right support of funding, and the right initiatives, the right inspiration to reverberate its way down the educational pipeline, I imagine a future that is filled with technologies and discoveries and chemistries and biologies

that I cannot imagine even today. That is the future that I want. And that is the end of StarTalk Live! Thank you, Seattle! This has been StarTalk Radio, StarTalk Video, brought to you in part by

a grant from the National Science Foundation. As always, I am Neil deGrasse Tyson telling us all to keep looking up. Thank you.