StarTalk Radio - When Science Crashes the Party

Episode Date: March 28, 2013

Janeane Garofalo engages in political warfare, delving into the furious debates between Democrats and Republicans and the science issues that divide them. 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 Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist and director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium. This week's subject, when science crashes the party. What do I mean by party? I mean political party. We're going to spend a whole hour analyzing how science gets made in Congress.

The contents of that sausage is mysterious to most people. It's something I couldn't do by myself. I had to bring in a special guest co-host for this analysis. None other than the one, the only, Janine Garofalo. Janine, welcome to Star Talk Radio. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, my gosh.

I feel like I'm in the presence of royalty here. I mean, comedic royalty. No, that's very kind of you, but you need, I'm here, I'm here. I already agreed to do it. You don't have to. You don't have to. I don't have to keep kissing up to you. Kill the lily here.

I'm here. Yeah, you may know her from, she has many TV and movie roles, and I first learned of her existence as a stand-up comedian, but she, in recent years, she's been a writer and political activist, right? Very left-wing, like off-the-left-edge political activist, I would say. Would you agree to that? Yeah, well, I'll take it. I'll take left-wing and liberal, progressive, however you want to call it.

I prefer to, if you mean by that social justice issues and intellectually curious and a person who cares and has an I-thou relationship with the world as opposed to I-it, then yes. Okay. And you just started a new season of Delocated on Adult Swim that's what Comedy Central becomes at night I guess yeah yeah well welcome welcome thank you because I want to just talk about these skirmishes that have been going on between the Democrats and Republicans because well of course they're going to argue about anything but there's some things you think maybe they shouldn't be arguing about and that's science and what I have for this show is clips with a 20-year Republican.

Well, he served in the House of Representatives for 20 years, and he's Republican. We're going to get to my interview clips with Bob Walker in just a few minutes. But I just wanted to just talk about this with you a bit. Right now, of course, there aren't there are no Democratic debates because, I guess, Obama... Not yet. Not yet. But right now, we've been exposed practically weekly

to Republican debates. And last night was the Huckabee debate. The Fox-Huckabee ridiculous. I haven't seen, I haven't been following them. You only need to see one. I did only see one. They're very similar.

They're all just variations on the theme. So how would you characterize them? Well, I'd characterize it the way that I would characterize Republican politics over the last 30 years, but especially over the last 15 years. Just much more anti-intellectual, much more pandering, much more myth. They love myth. They love a good story. But the newest component...

Well, such as they, apparently the public loves a good story. No, half the public. The public that responds to their message. Okay, so you're arguing about the candidates? Are you arguing about the people who they're getting to vote for them? It's the same thing. There's the cynics and the suckers, right? So there's the cynics at the top.

I'm saying, if a good story gets people to vote for you, then why aren't we all telling good stories? Well, because sometimes a good story doesn't make it a true story. And it can be detrimental. So the truth matters is what you're saying. Yes. So when the Republicans pander to their base, which basically is the Republican Party at this point, the Tea Party, which is merely a subset of the Republican Party. They are not a grassroots deficit hawk organization which is merely a subset of the Republican Party. They are not a grassroots deficit hawk organization.

They are a subset of the Republican Party. They are fully financed. Okay. And a lot of them primarily motivated by racial intolerance and anti-immigrant sentiment. So we can call them the Tea Party if you want. That's fine. All right. They're merely part of the Republican base.

But the stories that appeal to them, as that base gets catered to, the rest of society suffers. And as the Democratic base gets ignored, society suffers. All right. So let's get to my first clip of my interview with Bob Walker. He's a Republican. He represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives and was there for 20 years, from 1977 through 1997. House of Representatives, and was there for 20 years, from 1977 through 1997. So that's the entire tenure of the Reagan administration, for example, is right smack dab in the middle of his survey.

Clinton as well. That's right. And he was an outspoken conservative, as so many leading Republicans had been, and a strong ally of Newt Gingrich. They're like golf buddies as well. But this is when Republicans and conservatives were slightly different than they are now. Oh, so there's a change over. There's been a change happening over 30 years, but it still wasn't quite where it is now back when he was serving.

Okay, so he was like a good Republican. I have no idea. I haven't heard the clip. I'm just saying that there wasn't the absurdity that goes on today. My interest in him is that he served as the chair of the science committee, the House science committee. And, in fact, I worked with him many times in my tours of duty in Washington. Let's find out his opening remarks here the process that our forefathers established is an adversarial process it was purposely adversarial our forefathers did not want power to be exercised easily and so you created three branches of government all of which

have tensions among them and you have two houses of Congress that institutionally hate each other. And so the fact that you get something through the House doesn't mean that it will even ever come up in the Senate. The fact that the Senate is able to achieve some sort of compromise in order to get it through its very, very stringent processes doesn't mean that once it gets over to the House that it will achieve a majority vote there. The forefathers wanted it to be that difficult. So no one can run away with power. Right, precisely. And so people who are used to decision-making that's either based upon a known stream of knowledge

or are used to, as many businessmen are, used to the fact that, okay, we've accumulated the data. Here's the decision. Here's the decision. Buy here, sell there, import from there. But that doesn't work in the Congress. I've known some CEOs that have come to Congress, gotten themselves elected to Congress and so on, who ended up spending the first three or four years they were there just frustrated as all get out because the way in which they were used to making decisions simply didn't happen in the Congress.

So it's institutionally resistant. It's not just the resistance of an individual. Right. So we can't implicate any individual, any one party. Or a party. It is designed to prevent you from making swift, powerful decisions. Look, I often tell people that the difference between being in the majority and being in the minority is, in the minority, you can fight wonderful ideological battles every

day. You can take a look at a piece of legislation and say, here are the weaknesses in it. You charge up the hill with your flag flying and so on. You come down at the end of the day, you're all bloody. You really feel good about the battle. You lose, but you feel good about it. The majority actually have to work because at the end of the day, you have to win. There's no sense being in the majority if you don't win. How does that happen? Well, the chairman, for example, goes around and talks to members of the committee. He starts with a bill that then gets compromised out over a period of time as each member says, I can live with this section, but this section here I can't live with, and so on.

Well, you say, well, you know, now Congressman so-and-so from Tennessee, he had to have that section of the bill. Well, can we modify it this way, and will he take it that way? And so you go through writing bills through a series of compromises. So at the end of the day, you win, but sometimes you don't feel all that good about it. But that's the essence of the process. That's what has to take place, and it's very, very different in that sense. That's how we became a country in the first place, I guess. It's a tapestry of compromise.

It's the essence of our constitutional convention. That's right. Oh, man. I didn't want to hear that. I can't even disagree with that, because I know it's true. But I was hoping it wasn't. Janine. Well, you know, you can bring up the forefathers, and that's all well and good.

Now, the difference there would be the forefathers were all intellectuals who were not under the impression that epileptics were possessed by the devil, which was a common theme at that time. Okay, yeah, yeah. They didn't have that in mind that they would be arguing. What they were trying to do is make sure there was no monarchy, and they were developing their system upon the Enlightenment, a lot of it the French Enlightenment. They had a very different idea. They did not foresee K Street and lobbyists and Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and all manner of citizens united. All the forces at play. All the things that are at play now could not have been foreseen then. So, yes, the idea of you don't want somebody to consolidate power, there should be rigorous debate.

What they meant was rigorous intellectual debate from honest brokers. And you know what? It isn't both sides' fault. There is an intractability that has been stated very clearly by Jim DeMint and Mitch McConnell at this point. It is a zero-sum game right now. The Republicans refuse to allow Barack Obama any victories. Unfortunately, Barack Obama hasn't shown the greatest leadership skills either, but they are intractable.

You've appeared on Fox News, haven't you? Unfortunately, yes. So how do ideological issues get hashed out there? Well, there's two things I would say. Ideology is another word that I don't think adheres to fact. We're forgetting about facts here. And I want to be annoying and read the dictionary definition of fact for you for just one second. Just in case any of us forgot.

No, no, no, not that you didn't, but I just want to, anything that actually happens in time or space, a strictly true statement, a certain truth or reality. Now, ideology is defined as a set of ideas, prejudices, beliefs and doctrines of a group or a movement. So I am not an ideologue, right? I am a fact-based person, and I try and do my due diligence, and I try and understand what's going on, because I don't want life to just happen to me, right? So when I go on Fox, that's a propaganda network set up entirely to coarsen and dumb down.

So I hadn't appreciated this. Ideologies don't have to be fact-based. No, right. So I'm not, you know, and also saying partisan is not accurate either. A partisan is defined as. You looked that one up too. Yeah, I did. Not that I didn't know what it meant, but I just want to read these.

Adherent or follower to a person, cause, or party. That still doesn't address facts. So we've got to use the right words here. They're very important. There's a difference between believing in facts and then arguing partisan stuff or arguing ideology or arguing propaganda. These are the comments of Janine Garofalo, my guest co-host for StarTalk. They're very strident and annoying. Even my own voice irritates me to a degree I cannot even tell you.

It irritates yourself. It irritates me, but believe me, I'm the strident over ordering a cup of coffee. Just the way I sound, unfortunately. Let me go to my next clip, where we talk about science as a partisan topic in Congress. Which it is not. Which it is not. But in practice it is. Let's get some insight into that

from my pre-recorded interview with Representative Bob Walker, 20-year representative in Congress. Let me give you an example of the kind of thing where you end up with some divides. I'm the co-author of the first climate change bill that ever came in the Congress.

George Brown of California and I sponsored the first climate change bill. It's a bill that said what we need is additional research data on what impacts the climate. And so over a period now, we did this back in the late 70s. But just as a reminder, so George Brown is a Democrat. Was a Democrat. So you have a

bipartisan bill. Bipartisan effort, yeah. And that's always safer. Right. Yeah. Yeah, precisely. And this was a time when they were in control of the Congress. So when was this approximately? End of the 70s. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Precisely. And this was a time when they were in control of the Congress. When was this approximately? End of the 70s. Right. Democrats ran everything, right?

Yeah, precisely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so at that point, we co-authored this bill, and it has produced a lot of the satellites and science instruments that are now used to measure climate activity across the world. I think that that kind of data is what gives us a basis then on which to make good judgments. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm, as a Republican and as a conservative,

necessarily enthusiastic about changing the entire economy of the country and the world in order to accommodate what people now theorize as climate change. And I actually end up being somewhat suspicious of some of the research models that are out there that predict the climate change. And I actually end up being somewhat suspicious of some of the research models that are out there that predict the climate change, only because I got involved early in the research on it and know that there's data out there that we have yet to collect. I mean, we only have a few years of data of the ocean atmospheric interface, for example. And without that kind of data, it's real hard to say that you know with great certainty what's going to happen going forward in climate. And so you can get a partisan divide then over what the policies should be that follow on from some of the research. Right, I see. So what you're saying is because

there are policy implications, that changes how people react to information. And in particularly in something that big, I happen to think that you ought to have pretty firm data and you ought to have a lot of it before you begin to make fundamental policy changes about changes in the entire economy and culture. We're going to pick up on that interview when we get back from our first break.

This is StarTalk Radio. Welcome back. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Joining me this week is guest host, Janine Garofalo. We had to cut Bob Walker short, but I want to get the full answer to my question of him. He was describing some of the sort of Republican resistance to the emergent science on global climate change. And I told him that there's a point where I couldn't agree with where they were taking those scientific issues. Let's see how he replied to me.

Well, those are really very much individual judgments. I mean, each individual has to decide for himself whether or not he thinks this is fundamentally important enough to take an adversary position on it. Within your party. Within the party or sometimes within the Congress. I mean, there were times when I decided as a member of Congress that this just wasn't right and that I had a few bills where passed and the only vote against them on the House floor was mine.

No, because I just, you know, I came to the conclusion this isn't right. So is it fair to say that if there's a science topic that does not have policy implications, there's no obvious reason for anybody to split along party lines. Right, and generally don't. So, Janine, what he's saying is that when a science,

when a factual issue has policy implications, people split along party lines. But if there are no policy implications, then everyone agrees. That's what it comes down to, it seems. I'm not sure if that's accurate, if everyone agrees at this point. But the thing is, it isn't up to the individual. There are certain things. Just say we're talking about gravity, electricity, desegregation, women's suffrage.

This is not up to the individual. There are some things that are true and that are, it's being a good citizen. You know what I mean? Human rights are not up for debate. And science is not up for debate when we can clearly see the effects of global warming all around us. And Frank Luntz can call it anything he wants and rename it. But the fact is that the Republicans are resistant to it because they're pandering to their corporate backers. And because it's not good for business.

And also then there's, of course, a few very anti-intellectual Republicans who believe that God, you that God has a plan. Okay, but for those who are not that anti-intellectual, the fact is he's saying that it has policy implications, and they're politicians. So this is why it becomes a debate. He's being very honest about that. Okay, but the debate has implications to the air that we breathe, the water that we drink. They have kids, don't they? Do they not have children? Do they not have grandchildren? Is it not that important to them?

Do you know what I'm saying? Sometimes the Supreme Court has to step in, right, over the years. Occasionally. Now they've screwed things up a number of times, too. But they have, over the years, historically, led people to better themselves by doing things. So the making of science policy is a complicated business. And in Congress, there's an authorization process, an appropriation process. And I got Bob Walker to explain some of that to me.

So let's check him out. There are two different processes in Congress. There's an authorization process, which sets the policy and says, okay, to implement this policy, we think this kind of money needs to be spent on it. Then there's the appropriations process that actually spends the money. And sometimes authorizers and appropriators are not on the same page. It works best if we actually follow the rules of Congress that say that you cannot appropriate the money unless you have an authorization. The problem with appropriations process is it only has a one-year horizon.

They appropriate money every year. In the science area, it's really important to be setting policies that are three, four, five years out. Of course, the timescale of the research, the development, the end product, forget it. You can't do it in a year. You can't do it in a year. And so if you're dealing strictly with people whose horizon is a one-year horizon, the chances are that you'll end up really undermining the science mission rather than enhancing it. So you need people with that kind of foresight, obviously. You need to have a process where committees are looking at what's in the best long-term interests of the program and then setting priorities because there are thousands, maybe

millions of good things that you can be doing in the arena of science. And you have to do is say, okay, what is the most important thing we can be doing at the present time? And there's always a tendency to say, well, we've started this program and it's been going for a long, long time. And once a program's in place, it's very hard to get rid of it.

But sometimes you really have to say, no, that was a priority of a few years ago. If we're going to have the resources spent wisely, we need to move on to some of the new things that are now. Policy has shifted. Policy needs to shift to reflect the realities. And I've watched the budget within NASA redistribute according to just such policy recommendations. Yeah, and one of the problems becomes, for instance, when you have jurisdiction over NASA,

then people want to load all kinds of things into it that some of us think gets superfluous. I mean, there are all kinds of things that NASA is then told to do. The question is whether or not if you have limited dollars in NASA, whether that's where the money needs to be spent. And that's why we elect you guys to hash this out. Yeah. One of the problems often is, though, that you have people on the committee that have a NASA facility in their district. So they want to make certain that they carve out a unique stream of money to go into that special project that particular center is interested in. I see many people criticize that, but that's how it works.

That is what a representative does. They're not going to represent anybody else. They're representing the people who voted for him and put him into office, right? That's true. If they behaved any differently from that, you'd be surprised. Well, except that you've got to be real careful on that. Let's say it's a university research project, and some member of Congress wants to get something for his favorite university and put it in place.

They all have a favorite university. They all have a favorite university in their district. Well, this ends up being then money that's allocated for something that hasn't been appropriately peer-reviewed. It goes against the grain of science also making a determination about what is the most useful source of distribution of limited science dollars. So, it's a complicated process in Washington, Janine. Yes, it is. Of course it is.

It's geared toward failure. But the thing is, there doesn't seem to be anything stopping science when they want to weaponize or militarize or weaponize space or get things from MIT that make us have full-spectrum dominance. That is all fine. Or if big pharmaceuticals... Full-spectrum dominance. Full-spectrum dominance. That's what it's called.

That's what it's called. That's what it's called to you. And it's something that Reagan was into and Bush and Bush were into. They want to make sure that science can be utilized in violation of multiple treaties to weaponize and dominate the rest of the world. Both of the executive branch has the Office of Science and Technology Policy, OSTP, and there's a head of that. Right now, it's Dr. John Holdren.

The previous head, by the way, under Bush, he was a Democrat, by the way. He was a former head of the Brookhaven National Labs. And so there's some mixture in there. They happen to all be physicists. But if you're working under Bush, you're what they call a blue-dog Democrat, or you play ball. What does that mean?

Conservative Reagan Democrat. You've got a label for everything. It's not a label, it's just what it is. That's what they call themselves. So I'm just going to use that. But the Bush administration doesn't have anybody working under them that isn't going to play ball with them. Okay, so now also Congress used to have something called the Office of Technology Assessment, where they would use them to advise them on science policy and science issues, but that was disbanded.

And so now they are, I guess they're making their own phone calls, you know. Well, they wanted it disbanded so they could just deal directly with the lobbying groups and deal directly with the corporate entities. You know, why have a middleman when you can just go right to the money source who are writing policy papers? At the end of the day, what matters is not what people think or feel, but where money goes. And so it's interesting. You touched on it. I want to get back to it after this next clip, about the difference between how Democrats and Republicans fund policy. Because at the end, money talks.

Let's find out. There is a fundamental difference between where many liberal Democrats are on the issue of technology development and where many Republicans are, in that there are many liberal Democrats who have believed that the government ought to set up technology administrations development and where many Republicans are, in that there are many liberal Democrats who have believed that the government ought to set up technology administrations that kind of pick and choose among emerging technologies and then fund those ones that they think are the best technologies out there. Whereas many on my side of the equation, many of the conservative Republicans say no.

When the government starts picking winners and losers we are in deep trouble because it could well be that the government picks badly and the one thing that we do know is that government takes a long time to pick and so it may be months it may go through a couple of appropriation cycles before they can actually get the money out to one of these companies and in the meantime the technology has moved forward and if what we're doing is waiting for the government to act it simply doesn't get done so that disagreement is a tactical disagreement it's not a disagreement on whether the technology is good or useful it's how you implement it yeah well you're easy on this guy you might as well work at fox news man can. Can you lob any more softball?

No, he's the guy. When he speaks, did you not, let's unpack what he just said. Okay, unpack. First of all, he said, well, what the Democrats want to do is wait and see and pick and choose. By the way, I have a whole other show with Rush Holt, a leading liberal Democrat who's a Ph.D. physicist. We have a whole other show that we're going to, no, just I'm saying, it's not, that's to come.

Just so you know. But what I'm saying now is you just let him kind of walk, just give you such a line of bull. It is unbelievable to me. First of all, if the government picks

winners and losers, first of all, the government, especially under conservative hands, Republicans, that's all they do is pick cronies and give contracts to special people that they have relationships with.

And also, you tell me Democrats don't do that at all. I'm sure they do. But, you know, they are not absolutely the same. And this this type of devil's advocate you're doing to me is no different than being on a mainstream news show. I mean, let's get serious here. This guy is a cent serious here. This guy is centrist advocate. This guy is also... I stand in the middle

and look at the hot air on both sides. What it means is you don't want to take a stand because you're right. I do take stands. I think science is a stand that can be taken strongly in the middle. You know what? It can't be in the middle. Right now, the stakes are too high. You've got to go to the mat for something

I will put it in the middle because that's where it belongs And have everyone come to science in the middle That's right So you're saying That as the environment is degrading And as we are not investigating renewable and sustainable energy And as there's more mercury And lead and more autism

And more children suffering And all of these things You're going to stay in the center on this one. And you're going to talk to guys like him. I claim. We can't wait for government. I claim there's a place to stand in the center where everyone then comes to you because you end up speaking the truth. Oh, yeah, because that works. Oh, sure.

Yeah, the truth works like a real beacon, real clarion. I will tell you all the things that belong in the center. We've got to take a quick break, but more StarTalk, and today's subject, politics and science, featuring my interview with Bob Walker. And I have in studio with me, Janine Garofalo. Hello, Governor. That's my different voice now. Janine, I think you blew a gasket before the break. I did blow a gasket.

How many gaskets do you have? I got a lot of gaskets. Apparently. So get ready. All right, I'm ready for you. So politics, I mean, it's fascinating because, yes, I think there's a lot of hot air at both extremes, and I've found it and I've identified it.

But at the center where I like to stand and give me the vista on both sides, I find that the liberal left and the conservative right will fund science. They do get together. When they want to up the budget for the National Science Foundation, they all get together and they up the budget. And for the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, Science, Physics, basically the particle accelerators, there are places where they agree that they should up the budget. But let me just stop you for one second on that.

The liberal left, there are so very few representatives of the liberal left in the Congress, the Senate, the House, and the mainstream media. So let's just get that straight. The liberal left operates mostly outside of the narrow frame of Washington. To their detriment, apparently. It's very hard to get into these positions of power, because about as liberal as you get, with a few exceptions, is centrists, or center-right.

And the Republican Party has moved so far to the right that even those in the center have to move to the right to even get any negotiations done. To be in the newly defined center. To be in the newly defined center. So in our mainstream media, and in our positions of power in corporations and in government, for the most part, it is, quote unquote, conservative with a few centrists in there. The liberal left does not have access to power. Well, how about this? Wait, wait, wait.

The fake news talk shows, those are all essentially liberal based, right? I mean, the shows on Comedy Central and the like. Are they without power? What I would say is they're telling the truth. You keep using the... If, yes, if the truth and social critique is... You're going to call it liberal, then good. I'll take it.

But when Jon Stewart and Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert, among others, and, you know, it's George Carlin and a great tradition of this, inherent in comedy, when it's goodlin and a great tradition of this inherent in comedy uh when it's good is is a great tradition of social critique what role do you think it plays social critique it plays a very great role because it picks up the slack where people in power are not doing their uh they're doing their job you think comedians have have special insight that others wouldn't well this depends i mean there's some comedians who are hacked terrible hacks who don't have any insight whatsoever and and it's case by case, just like anybody.

There's some comedians that, you know, I'll just use George Carlin or Nichols and May or, you know, back in the day, or the Lampoon, National Lampoon. Yeah, yeah. The Onion. Yeah, they're above average intelligent, and they have, I guess, an insight into pointing out the absurdities. Should comedians run for office? Well, Al Franken did a great job.

Yeah, okay. But should a comedian? I don't know. Just because you're a comedian doesn't make you fit for office. But it does mean it. But if a comedian of great mainstay of comedic material is criticizing politicians, become a politician. But the thing is, is you can get a lot more done outside of the system. You know, that comedian is going to be heard by a lot more people outside of having a Senate seat. So let me tell you, Republicans are

on and off being accused of being anti-science. But I think the first measure in Washington of whether you're anti-something or pro-something is whether you vote to fund it. They're pro-business more than anti-science. They're pro-business. What is good for the corporation is good for whatever their scientific policy is. Okay, and so in there, some of the science policy that is voted for and funded does promote the science that would go on in business, so the R&D and business circles, not directly other pure science necessarily. I'm just saying. But they're willing to throw stem cell research out the window.

They're willing to throw, at certain points, help for third world countries. They'll allow Monsanto to patent seeds. They have big pharmaceutical giveaways. So there is science and there is science. There's science that's good for the corporation that the Republicans and some Democrats are fully behind. And then there's science that would be good for humanity that there's no profit in. Except that Bono recently noted on The Daily Show regarding his AIDS charity work that he gave a shout-out to George W.

for the amount of money his administration gave AIDS programs. Right, but let's not forget that there was a contingent that when they gave that money, they could give no more sex education and no more condoms. Okay? So to get that money, the institutions that were helping the AIDS victims in those countries could no longer have sex education or birth control. Okay, now some of that is derived from people's religious principles. Again, I can't have it.

I can't have it with this religious principles. No, no, I'm just asking. I'm coming. And there was religious people who used to think women couldn't ride bikes because of hysteria of the womb. Do you want to go down that road, too? Let's find out with Bob Walker. Let's find out with Bob Walker. Let's find out with Bob Walker. Oh, God.

I've got to. You're going to hear these clips. I asked him. He was in Congress, and you were not. So this matters. Hey, wow. So let's find out. But you asked me to be here.

I want you here. So he had a comment about faith-based versus information-based decision-making in politics. I just want to find out what he had to say about that. Can't wait. As a scientist, I like being evidence-based in my decision-making, right? There's a lot of non-evidence-based politics going on today. It's specifically faith-based posturing. Well, I mean, one of the questions that's out there, for instance, that falls into the area you're talking about is the whole question of evolution.

that's out there, for instance, that falls into the area you're talking about is the whole question of evolution. I think for most people in the political realm, that these are not the same kinds of questions that they are for some of the people who advocate on one side or the other of those issues. For example, I see nothing in the theories of evolution that violates the principles of the Bible whatsoever. Now, if you believe that God works on the same 24-hour days that we have on earth, I suppose that you've got a problem there understanding this, but I'm prepared to believe that one of God's days may be billions of years. And inside of that framework, evolution then is simply that which God has ordained over a period of time. And what interests me is how close those ancient writers in the Bible came to the sequencing that we have found is true in evolutionary theory. It missed a couple of things, but yeah. Considering the knowledge base

that they have, you have to believe that they had some sort of inspiration to that. But I'm saying that I don't find fundamental differences in all of that. But I don't remember that, you know, from my read of history, I just don't remember seeing any of that get into policy. Did I miss some things back there? Sure. Go back to the Great Awakening of the 1840s. It was a religious revival period during the mid part of the 19th century. I know what you're talking about now. Massive political implication. Like Mormonism came out of that. It was the origins of prohibition, for example. Yes, yes. You know, I mean, the temperance movement started as a religious movement. Yeah, precisely, in the 40s.

The whole issue of slavery, the abolitionists grew out of religious antecedents and so on. So, I mean, the idea that this hasn't played a role is, I think, wrong. The question is whether or not you elect people who sort through that and understand that the constitutional principle is to permit the free exercise of religion, but not use that free exercise in a way that ends up being the establishment of a state religion in any way. He's being honest. Maybe. Or he's pandering. You know, if he's going to cite the founders, let's be consistent. The founders were quite secular.

Yeah, that's completely. And they wanted freedom from religion, but he was quite willing to cite them earlier when it came to government confusion and things taking too long to go down the pipeline. And secondly, I can't, again, this is an adult, right? This is an adult. I cannot hear these conversations or have them with other adults about these gods that did or didn't exist. If we lived in Egypt in another era, we'd be talking about the sun god. Ra.

Yes, Ra, who made it happen. First of all, evolution is real. Intelligent design is not, creation is not, this should not be part of school board policy. This is not up for debate. In the same way, gay rights are not up for debate. And they are human rights. Women's rights, reproductive justice are not up for debate. And they are human rights. Women's rights, reproductive justice is not up for debate. There is not two sides to every story.

People are people. They deserve to be respected. You're going to say, why couldn't this guy be respected? Because inherently, he's lying to me. Janine, do you think that religion has become more of an issue in emerging politics than in the past? I mean, we're not old enough to have been around during the temperance movement. Well, there was the Scopes trial and the temperance movement. But what we're talking about now is what happened in 1979 when Bush I was advised by Jerry Falwell, among other people,

that it would be wise to go after the evangelicals because the Republican Party's base has been shrinking and shrinking over the years because as society progresses forward, the message the Republican Party has is less and less vital. Okay, but there are science issues that both Republicans and Democrats come together and fund. And that includes NASA. Even though NASA's funding is not what I'd like it to be, it should be way more than And they cut way more corners than they should. There's been plenty of problems. And the Republicans want to fund it for weaponization purposes.

And again, full spectrum dominance. But they cut corners like crazy at NASA. There's been NASA scientists who've been complaining about this for years. Right, okay, but did you know that NASA real spending dropped by 25% under President Clinton? But that doesn't get talked about much. Yeah, but you have no idea what contracts were dropped or for what reason. Okay, so the portfolio of the spending of the money would then be partisanly different. You don't know where, what was going where.

Like I said, what the Republicans tend to fund science for is very different than what, hopefully, Democrats are funding for. So the motivations are different. The motivations are very different. And one of the Republican motivations said it'd be for dominionism, you know, to make sure that we're armed to the teeth. And so that we will, unfortunately, go the way of the former Soviet Union. We will bankrupt ourselves, just like they had been bankrupted during the Cold War, which is happening right now. So just so you know, the different agencies that are part of the science portfolio of the government, NASA is one of them, the National Institutes for Health, NIH, National Science Foundation, NIST.

No one's ever heard of NIST, National Institutes for Standards and Technology, and also the Department of Energy. As I said earlier, they fund the particle accelerators. And so those have been, you know, money comes and goes. But you're right, the motivation for why those budgets are increased or decreased are different between the two parties. But basically, there's some agreement that science matters at some level. Right, and you can't have faith-based policy affecting things like it does for our Israel policy. There are some evangelical right-wing nuts who believe Jesus can't come back

unless the Palestinians are completely gone from Israel. So it affects the policy decisions that they make regarding Israel. This is very important stuff. And people vote for those who then represent them with those views. So your argument is really not with the politicians, but with your fellow countrymen. It's with both. It's completely with both.

And it's on behalf of my fellow countrymen. We've got to take a quick break, but more StarTalk, and today's subject, politics and science, featuring my interview with Bob Walker. And in studio with me is Janine Garofalo, cutting nobody any slack. It's not that I'm not cutting you slack. What I'm saying is, I don't sort of understand where you're coming from. You are the scientist. You're the astrophysicist. I'm an astrophysicist.

And you're talking to a gentleman, a grown adult, who's telling you that the Bible has the underpinnings of evolutionary process. No, he just said, you know, he can disagree with the Bible. Stop it, stop it, stop it, and stop it. You're doing it right now. He was not taking the Bible literally. It sounded like he was taking it pretty literally to me. And you were allowing him to do that. Well, so let's find out. So there's a lot of issues

that show up and become, that are, that have science technology involved in them. Stem cell research, assisted suicide, government-sponsored vaccinations, a vaccine against HPV, which some people say, well, that means people just have more sex. Which is absurd, absurd, absurd. Again, another thing, you know, sex education, people have more sex. And here's the fundamental problem with, again, the mainstream media.

They indulge this nonsense they they allow somebody who says if they have the hpv that people will have more sex or uh intelligent design is a theory that would you know could be viable it as if there are two sides to this it is not or the bullying the anti-bullying law that just uh should i no no no go yeah anti-bullying law that they tried to pass recently in Michigan that the Republicans gutted because they said you can bully if you really believe there's a religious basis behind it. And the fertilized personhood, fertilized egg person law that did not pass, luckily in Mississippi, saying that a person, just recently, as soon as the egg is fertilized, it is a person and has the full rights of said person. Just like a corporation. They have all the rights and freedoms of a corporation, a person.

But these things are utterly absurd. Now, they won't allow in vitro. They don't want birth control. These so-called religious convictions, as they enter into politics, which they are not supposed to because there's supposed to be a separation of church and state by law. They muddle the process and they dumb down a segment of the society. You know what's most interesting to me about whether the freshly fertilized embryo is a person is that most abortions are spontaneous and they happen naturally within the human body and most women who have such an abortion never even know it because it happens in the first month it's very

very common so in fact the biggest abortionist if in fact god is responsible for what goes on in your body is then god it's an interesting fact that isn't talked about the words again it's anti-choice it's not pro-life it's anti-choice because a lot of these pro-life people they love guns and death penalty and war and torture and no social services. They love an electrocuted fence for immigrants to hang off of. So there's nothing pro-life. Guns and death penalty. They love the guns and the death penalty and more war.

Attack Iran if they could. Let's find out about the future of America. I think science is a fundamental dimension of what America needs to embrace and to appreciate and to be fact-based as we go forward. In my last clip with Bob Walker, I asked him just what he thought challenged America in the future and what role the prevailing geopolitical landscape played in that. Let's find out. I think our challenge right now is competing with countries on the Pacific Rim, in particular China. I think the whole issue of asymmetrical warfare is something that is certainly a challenge to our preeminence.

Asymmetric warfare, just remind me, that's... Asymmetrical warfare means that you're not faced off against a particular country. You're faced off against movements that have the power and the ability these days to attack you in a variety of different ways. It's primarily the whole advent of terrorism. Some of it's state-sponsored. That's right. Some of it not. Okay.

So understanding those kinds of challenges that we face, if in fact what we can do is strengthen the economy to reflect 21st century concerns. Yeah. I don't think we're in the 21st century yet. Well, precisely. One of the problems that we've got is that many of the decisions think we're in the 21st century techniques. So we are undergoing a fundamental change that America needs to get ahead of, and we're not doing it.

And is that change brought about because we have sunk so low? Because my sense of this is, when I reviewed the space race, and I realized we didn't lead anything. Every decision we made in space was reactive to something that we knew was going on in Russia. And so I can't then claim that we were leaders. Even if we ended up ahead, we ended up ahead only because we didn't want

to fall behind. And so is there ever a time where we could just say let's lead the world just because that's a good thing to do, rather than let's lead the world because we're scared witless because the Pacific Rim is going to be eating our lunch. Yeah. I think there are four revolutions taking place simultaneously.

I think there's a political revolution, there's an economic revolution, there's a technological revolution, and there's a cultural revolution. All of the above. I agree. We need to figure out how to understand that it is a revolutionary period and how to adapt ourselves to the new circumstances. Revolutionary in a good way, right. Not in a destabilizing way.

No, this is revolutionary in a good way. But in parts it means developing an energy policy that allows you to sustain the future with clean energy. It means that you cannot do, as some people out there want to do, shut down your ability to utilize energy. What you've got to do is figure out where new resources of energy is. One of the reasons why I've been for 30 years now a proponent of moving to a hydrogen economy is because it allows us to utilize a resource that is, at least in theory, unlimited. No shortage of hydrogen in the universe.

Yeah, precisely. No shortage of hydrogen in the universe. Janine, where do you want to take the future? Do you want everybody to have exactly your political view going forward? That'd be great. That would be wonderful. But I'm certainly not the type of person who thinks, you've got to be like me. But what I'm saying...

You sound like that, right? Because I'm trying to tell you, and it gets me very upset and very strident, is that some of these issues are not debatable. And we don't have the time to keep going through these nonsense arguments. And to stay in the center or to pretend you're being journalistically objective is just as much of a time waster and just as dire to me. And, you know, the threats from outside of us are not our biggest threat. What's going on inside this country is our biggest threat. We do need sustainable energy.

We do need better public education. We do need infrastructure. We need tax reform. We need more revenue streams. You know what I mean? We need Occupy's message to resonate with people. We are out of time, but I want to thank my guests, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up