The Joe Rogan Experience - #1658 - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City, and host of StarTalk Radio. His newest book, "Cosmic Queries", is available now.

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day oh yeah how much time do you spend looking at random leaves on television shows to recognize that it's a fake pattern not created by the wind no i just you know you look at scenes from walking dead and they enter this deserted town as so many towns are when zombies take over and the the the leaves you know the the autumn leaves are evenly spread in the streets and the sidewalks and And I'm thinking, some set designer did that thinking that this is what leaves do in the breeze. But that's not what they do. They collect. They circulate.

They're like eddies in the air currents that'll collect them in one place and not the other. So we think if something's random that it's evenly spread. But in fact, there are many more collected elements in something that's random than we typically think. So I'm looking at your new ceiling here in Austin, Texas. And your star is beautiful, by the way. Thank you. Nice things you got here.

Thank you. But the stars, the lights, are kind of evenly spread on the sky. Yeah, they don't look real. So that's how. And plus, you know, you could have thrown at least a constellation up there or something. You know what I should do? I should get someone to make me one and make one and just imitate the Milky Way. That'd be that'd be beautiful.

Right. That'd be beautiful. And I'll be happy to certify it. Oh, no. I'm scared. You give me a call. I'm all in. I don't think I don't think

I don't think you will certify it I think it would be a real problem I think it would be a genuine issue So how you doing Joe? I'm doing good How you doing? Good job Yeah

Austin is an old haunt of mine Is it? Yeah I met my wife here I got my masters at UT Austin My wife got her PhD in mathematical physics there. And I finished my PhD in Columbia in New York City. But we spent six years here, long ago. I love it here.

We were here when Austin, Texas had six gates at the airport. Wow. And there was never more than one other car in front of you at a red light. Just picture that. A lot of folks remember that, apparently, and they're very upset. I would be totally pissed off. The traffic here is still adorable. Adorable.

It's ridiculous, cute traffic, and the people are so nice. It's just a completely different vibe. Yeah. So I miss you, man. I miss you, too. Good to see you're still at it. I'm still at it. I'm still doing the thing.

And I thought, you know, I saw a few of your shows and I said, you know, we can bring some deep philosophical thought back. Because I know that's a big part of you, right? Occasionally, yeah. No, it's in you. It's in you. When I'm talking to the right people. Oh, okay. Yeah, like you.

Oh, okay. Yeah, it comes out. It comes out. Good. It's in you to come out. I've been wanting to talk to you quite a bit. What do you got? Well, all these. Oh. Yeah. Yeah, it comes out. It comes out. Good. It's in you to come out. I've been meaning to talk to you. I've been wanting to talk to you quite a bit. What do you got?

Well, all these UFO disclosures. Yeah. You're like one of the first guys that I want to talk to because you always have a skeptical, inquisitive perspective on these things. You're not necessarily dismissive. Right. But you're not willing to just adopt this narrative that we're being visited by UFOs from another planet.

Yeah. So it's – by the way, let's start with the military. Yes. If there are glowing lights in the sky and we don't know what it is, they damn sure better look into it. Right. We give them folks $700 billion. Make some percentage of that budget to check out the possible threat of things we don't understand.

I used to think that was a lot of money until I found out that Los Angeles spent a billion dollars on the homeless every year. Their budget for the homeless is a billion. A billion. And they're not doing shit. So when I look at the military getting $700 billion,

is that what they get? We need to give them more money. Clearly they need more money. Right. So when I look at the military getting $700 billion, is that what they get? Yeah, plus or minus. We need to give them more money. Clearly they need more money. Because if you can't fix the L.A. homeless situation with $1 billion, how are you going to protect us with $700 billion? Well, it's not the same agency charged with it. Oh, they're better? They're better than the homeless people?

No, I'm saying the mayor's office of Los Angeles. Sucks. Or of Austin, right? Yeah. Who's running what? I got in trouble this past February when the electricity went out in Texas and it was cold just, just a couple of months ago. What did you say? What'd I say? I tweeted. I said, what did I say? I say, okay, right now, NASA landed a rover on Mars with a helicopter, and this is at 120 million miles away, controlling it, and it's on Mars where it's 100 degrees below zero. Meanwhile, Texas, where it's cold, has no electricity. So all I said was maybe NASA instead of politicians should run Texas. That seems pretty reasonable. Some people just lost their mind.

But that's just because the power was out and people were freaking out already. Plus, I don't do what you advised me the last time. Post and drop, what's the phrase? Post and ghost. post and ghost post and ghost yeah no i always peek at what people are saying i want to know you are too popular when you're too popular people get mad at you oh you know yeah that's deep and it doesn't necessarily have to make sense but if enough people are angry and upset at their own lives and they just decide they're going to attack neilGrasse Tyson because he makes a poignant point.

That's the... I try to have you smile about it a little. I mean, and plus, Texas is no stranger to NASA. NASA, you know, Texas... Houston, we have a problem. Houston, we have a problem. Yeah. Okay.

I mean, come on. That was not addressed to the governor. It was addressed to NASA headquarters. Yeah. I just... People are just too easy to get upset. And also, you're just dealing with the numbers are just unmanageable of people online. I mean, how many millions of people do you have on your Twitter page? 14 and a half million.

Just imagine. Just randomly- It's a stupidly large number. And I still don't understand it because I want to remind people every few days, you'd realize you're following an astrophysicist. There's still time to unfollow just in case this is something you did by accident. Yeah, but you're a different kind of astrophysicist. You're an entertaining educator. And that's so important because you make things fun. You make things fun while pointing out really important points, like really important things that we should probably understand

about the way the universe works and physics. Well, thanks for thinking about it that way. I don't think about it that way. I think that the universe is inherently hilarious. And so I'm just sharing that hilarity with you. But what I also found is that when people smile, they learn better. Oh, for sure.

Yeah, when they're less tense. Yeah, they're less tense. And there's a pleasing feeling that they had at a point when they learned something. And so that's got to work some kind of dopamine chemicals so that you say, well, I want to learn something again tomorrow. Yeah, I mean, science educators are so important because so many people equate, whether it's mathematics or science or even history, they equate it with boredom, right? I think not only science, but many academic subjects. And what's that song by Alice Cooper, Schools Out? Schools out for summer, schools out forever.

This is an anthem for people who hate school. What else is that, right? And then I thought to myself, when you're in school, your only job is to learn. And for that to be a chore means something is wrong in that school. I'm not blaming the people who are throwing their notes in the air, running down the school steps. I'm blaming the system that's not making school fun and entertaining. And it should be a place where you are trained to become a lifelong learner. Yeah. Where some infusion of curiosity, you get bitten by a curiosity bug. And then when you walk down the steps, you say, wait a minute, I don't want to leave

school. I want to stay. Or if I have to leave school because I graduated, let me find other ways to continue to stay enlightened throughout my life. Otherwise, you get ossified in one way of thinking with one dimension of information or facts or insights. And then you're stuck there and you think that's the world and it's not. It's not. But let's put this into perspective. Think about the budget for the homeless. Think about the budget for the military. Now it's think about the budget that a school has to work with. And think about the fact that you have to take 40 kids who may not have been paying attention most of their life. And then all of a sudden you catch them when they're 14. Good luck. I mean, you've got a lot of momentum,

a lot of momentum behind them of them hating school. A lot of negative momentum. A lot of like maybe bored, disenfranchised teachers who've been teaching these kids are not into it, you know, and then their hormones are kicking in so they can't pay attention to anything anyway. Yeah, you know, it's easy for me to make these statements, but I'm not the one in the trenches there, especially in those middle schools where hormones are riding everything.

Right when they start popping, the kids don't know what to do with them. Imagine your whole life. This is not the time to learn physics. I got to worry about my body, whatever. And then just trying to get 40 kids or however many is in the typical classroom to pay attention to the same thing at the same time and to be interested in the same thing at the same time. You know, there's a lot of intelligent kids that get left by the wayside because school, for whatever reason, doesn't jive with the way they learn things. It doesn't mean

that they're not smart. Well, I think we have similar, each of us, you and I, have similar challenges in a theater audience, right? Now, you have the advantage that they're all fans, so they know where you're coming from when you do a stand-up routine. But still, there's a thousand people or more who are different from each other. Some are old, some are young, some are left, some are right, you know, politically. And you thread that. And I think you thread it brilliantly. You get people with you and you get them to want to listen to you. So part of what I glean from people's reactions to my Twitter posts is, was that how you thought about that? I didn't know that. Oh, you know, I thought what I posted was funny,

but nobody laughed. That's useful information to me. okay? I want to know if I'm succeeding or not in what words I choose, what phrases, what ideas, what topics. And by the way, those touch points have evolved over the years. I've done this, a purposeful experiment. I took an identical tweet and just retweeted it five years after I first did it.

And reactions are different. Because of the time. The times have changed. That's correct. And so if I want to stay effective as an educator, first, I will never want them to meet me at the chalkboard or whatever boards are made of today. Because what is that? Okay, you're a professor. Professor Neil is facing the chalkboard, drawing on the board, and you either get them or you don't. Okay? But that person cannot claim to be an educator.

The educator is someone who faces the audience and wants to know, how is your brain wired for thought? And if I know that, I have a chance of shaping knowledge, information, insight in ways that can best be received by your receptors. And yes, if it's a mixture, so you dance a little bit. You put out some feelers in this way. So if I have an audience and some of them are over 75, you look for the silver haired folks, they'll remember, you know, the later stages of the second world war and early stages of the cold war. I'll throw in a reference just for them. You know, the 20 somethings won't know and they won't care. They probably won't even get it, but I'll go buy it quickly enough

that I offer the other community demographic in the audience something else. And this is my way. Maybe it's a tennis match. I'm hitting the ball back and forth to different people. And that way I can take this body of knowledge that is the universe and have everybody share in it. Otherwise, I don't know that I can claim to be an educator. Well, you certainly can claim to be an educator, but maybe you're not making the best use of your particular abilities. Your particular abilities that are unique to you are your humor and your fun, your jovial, along with being deep and philosophical and talking about very heady things. I found that matters. People, like I said, people like to smile. Yeah, they like silliness.

Yeah. You're a silly dude. It's fun. I guess I'll take this as a compliment. Yes, it is a compliment. For a guy who talks about really intense subjects, the nature of infinity and different kinds of infinities. Oh, you remember that?

Yeah, I remember everything. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. Yeah, which is what? What are you saying? I'm not going to let you get away with this alien thing, though. Oh, no. Bring it back. No, bring it back.

Bring it back to this alien thing. Damn, I thought I could. So it's weird to me that now the Pentagon is saying that these are real videos that they've captured off of naval vessels. And they've been hovering over defense systems. And they don't know what they are. They don't know how they operate. There's a film that was released recently by Jeremy Corbell that also came from the Navy where it shows one that's a transmedium device.

It actually flies through the air and then goes into the water. And this is being filmed. That's how they interpreted the information that was in front of them. Exactly. Just to be clear. Yes, but it did go in the water. There's a film of it actually going in the water, and they talk about it splashing down. They're monitoring it.

Well, they talked about there was a white caps where they think it was submerged, I think. Wasn't that the description? Well, we could see it. It actually went underwater, and then they went to look for it, and they couldn't find it. They used a submarine. They used sonar. They don't know what it is. Yeah, so I hope they keep checking to find used a submarine. They used sonar. They don't know what it is. Yeah, so I hope they keep checking to find out what it is.

Yeah, it would be nice to know what that is. Oh, yeah. Something that can travel through the sky and also goes through the ocean. That's pretty crazy. I want the military to understand that signal they're getting on their equipment. Yes. Because there's equipment between you and what's going on, typically. When it's sort of Navy sensors and trackers and that sort of thing.

Other things are things people see in the sky with their own senses, right? Just the light in the sky, and it moves in ways they don't understand or can't explain. But a point I've made before, I'll just rehash it here. hash it here. We live in a time where everyone is equipped with a high resolution color camera and video recorder, basically everyone. And if you run the numbers on it, it's about, I got this from someone from Google, there's about 6 billion photos and videos uplifted to the internet every day. And in that collection, you find really rare things that you only heard about or maybe you saw the results of, but you didn't actually see it happen.

So there are videos of buses tumbling in the winds of a tornado. Now, in the aftermath of a tornado, there's a bus on on its side and so you knew when took it there but previously no one is going to say oh that bus is about to lift into the air wizard of oz style like the house let me go in and get my my my my my movie camera right and then come back out and shoot this no one did that that. If you did, you'd be stupid that you want to get the hell out of there, but everybody has a video camera. So we have images of this rare phenomenon, uncommon, hardly ever filmed, buses tumbling in the air. We have video footage of animals doing interesting things that we never had video recordings of.

Like bears walking on two feet? Yeah, bears, and one of them right at a traffic cone. There's a video of that. It was just walking down the street, and there's a traffic cone, and it looked at it, and it was tipped over, and it righted it, and it just kept walking. And I'm thinking, wow, this is what bears do when we're not chasing them or when they're not chasing us.

This is just a casual. They're mammals. They have large brains compared to any other kinds of- They're oddly playful too. Yes, and they love people's backyard swimming pools apparently. Yeah, and benches. You ever seen them on picnic benches? And they're just chilling on the bench. They lay on benches and roll around on picnic benches.

Yeah. So, and in another case, I saw it was a magpie, one of these birds known for how smart it is. There is a full half-liter plastic thing of water. It was just water, okay? You know, a water bottle. And it was full. So the magpie goes over and sips out the water.

Now, the beak is only, what, an inch and a half long or an inch at most? So it goes in until it can't reach the water anymore. So what does it do? It goes off to the side, gets a rock just the right size, drops it into the water bottle. And raises the level of the water. Thereby displacing water. Here it is. That is heavy. You've got the, there it is.

And so it comes and it goes back and gets another stone, drops it in. And every time it drops it in, the water level rises and it can drink more water. And it just, it keeps doing this. That's pretty amazing. Okay. And so, so every time we study animals, they're smarter than we ever thought they were. So, maybe for our own ego, we kept building ourselves up, saying how separate and distinct we are as humans in the animal kingdom. When maybe we're not as separate and distinct as we think we are.

So, now what's my broader point there that I was making? I just distracted myself. Something about UFOs? Yeah, I know. I was trying to get back to UFOs on that. The fact that we have high resolution cameras in our pocket and we take videos of things that are very unusual. Exactly. So here's video of a magpie doing Bernoulli experiments in a water bottle. Who would have known that even happened, right? Right.

Okay. You can't bring the bird into a lab, and maybe you could, but I don't know that anyone did. All right. Here's my point. In the 1960s and 70s, there were many, many reports of alien abductions.

People said, the aliens came to me, and they brought me in, and then they released me. Do you have any footage? No, they took my camera. Or no, they zapped my film and now there's no image on the film. But there were countless stories.

Well, now you can stream live from your camera anything that's going on in front of you. So if the aliens come and they want to abduct you, you can stream it. That would be instantly viral. Oh, my gosh. You know, the stuff that goes viral is much less than that. A kitten that jumps to the table and falls, that goes viral? You don't think video footage of an alien is not going to go viral instantly? But there's none.

go viral instantly, but there's none. So I'm just saying, I'm thinking if we were being visited, somebody would have some good footage. If we were being visited, I'm thinking maybe Google satellite images would catch spaceships that are not airplanes moving on our surface. If we were being visited, I'm thinking we'd have something better than fuzzy monochromatic video of objects that apparently reveal themselves only to Navy pilots, right? One of the reasons is most of these sightings actually occur far offshore in the ocean. And the speculation is this is one of the ways, obviously I'm going to put my tinfoil hat on nice and tight. Do your thing. This is one of the ways that they monitor us. The best way to do it is to do it where they hold their base

where no one is around, which is the ocean. No, that's not true. So they go in the ocean, they pop up, and they fly out. It's not true. What do you mean it's not true? It's not true. Yeah, nobody lives on the ocean. Yes, that's correct.

In the ocean. Well, so, oh, it lives down under sea. This is what the speculation is. Oh, okay, it lives down under sea. That's why these transmedium devices have been, these transmedium crafts have been observed. If you want, if you are sure we are being visited by aliens and you don't actually have really good evidence, then you have to say that. Sure. Well, you know that. you have to say that. Sure. Well, you know that.

You have to say that. You have to say this is really happening and they're observing us and they're concealing themselves in this particular way. You have to say that. And so that's your way to maintain your alien belief system by saying that. And I don't have a problem with it. Go get them. Go get them. But all of what has been put forth as evidence for aliens, to me, is insufficient evidence to excite my interest,

my research interest, in devoting time to finding it out. But it definitely has excited other people. I have not stopped them. I am not saying defund the military Program on UAPs, which of course is just updated UFO. I know they like to say that Stigma to you. I know that's just that's a really transparent Sneaky way. No, no, it's not even sneaky. It's actually I think it's embarrassing It's like maybe if we call them UAPs people take them seriously No, it's I'm of the belief that they're probably akin to what we did on mars i don't think there's aliens in them i have a feeling that these things are probes and i feel like if you just think

about biological entities flying through the universe like why do that right when you have sophisticated technology that's good enough right now from our relatively primitive consideration of what we think is possible a million years from now, right? But we could send that Mars rover around. We have a helicopter on Mars. I mean, there's multiple satellites flying through the universe right now taking images.

We can do all that. Yeah, but our probes are not targeting the Martian military fighter pilots. Because there's no Martian military. But if there were, we certainly would. They're just sitting out in the open. Right. But if we had something like, are you familiar with, one of the most famous cases was a case

with Commander David Fravor of the Navy, who encountered with one or two other jets off of the Nimitz, they encountered this thing that was shaped like a tic-tac. Yeah. You know the story. Everybody knows this. Yeah. This story. It went from, they tracked it going from 80,000 feet above sea level to 50 in less than a

second. They have no idea how it moved. There's no visible propulsion system. It was blocking their radar. It was actively blocking radar. It was actively blocking tracking. This is what their sensors told them. Exactly. Just be clear about that.

You're stating information as though it is facts. I'm stating information as Commander Fravor related. I don't care. It doesn't matter. He's human. We're all human here. But as a scientist, when you're presenting information, you don't say, this thing was at 80,000 feet, and it dropped to zero, to sea level in one second, or whatever it was, the measure. That's the wrong way to report it.

What you say is, we have sensors that told us this is what happened. I understand what you're saying. Okay? Yes. That's a very important distinction. Yes. That's a very important distinction. Yes. And so now, all right, your first question then, tell me about the sensors. Yeah.

Okay. Are they double-checked? Are they, you know? But if you're just going to say, there's this craft at 80,000 feet. Then everyone is thinking about a craft, and no one is thinking about the sensor. They actually saw it with their eyes too. This is something that they actually got. You can't see something at 80,000 feet.

No, the actual visual on the craft. They didn't see it at 80,000 feet, but this craft, it's not just something that was tracked with equipment. Got it, but they didn't see it at 80,000 feet. That's my point. So, by the way, this level of attention I'm giving to the detail and the reporting of information, we do that with fellow scientists for much less than if we're being visited by

intelligent aliens from another planet. Go to a scientific conference and watch the level of scrutiny we put on other people's work. If they have a sensor that has a new result, we'll say, did you calibrate the sensor? How long has the sensor been in use? I'll give you an example. Here's an example. Do you remember Planet X? The search for Planet X? Nibiru. That was one. Sorry. There were several incarnations of Planet X.

Right. That was among them. That was the most wacky. I'm talking about 100 years ago Planet X. Yes. 100 years ago? Well, there are several Planet Xs, right? So Uranus was moving weirdly.

Nobody understood. Maybe there's a planet beyond it whose gravity we have yet to reckon in our equations. Oh, boom. We discover Neptune. Wait a minute. Neptune is moving a little unfamiliarly. My phone is – sorry about that. Are you going to drop that thing and break it with no case on?

So, yeah, I got the 12, and yeah, I can still do this. I'm just sorry. Yeah, I get it. Last time you were here, you had a broken case. You're a broken back. Remember? So, why are you distracting me? Sorry, sorry.

I was like on a roll, and... Neptune gravity. Neptune, so Neptune, we're looking at Neptune's orbit, and it's not following Newton's laws. And this is odd. Well, we've been down that road before. Uranus didn't follow Newton's laws. We proposed another planet, and we found it. So Neptune's not following all the laws of gravity from all the other planets in the sun.

There must be another planet out there, a planet X. Let's look for it. Is that Bode's Law? Bode's Law is a fitting function that gets you... It got a little more attention than it deserved. It's just that planets, every next planet is about twice as far away from the sun as the previous one.

So you just make a quick equation out of that. Oh, that's it? But it doesn't work for Mercury, and it didn't work for Pluto. I thought it was based on the mass of the planet. No, not at all. The mass has nothing to do with it. And it predicted the asteroid belt, but the asteroid belt, there's no planet there.

Right. Okay? And if you glue together all the pieces of the asteroid belt, you get something like 5% the mass of the moon. So, yeah, it gave us the location of the astro belt, but that's not a planet. So Bode's Law, it's fun to play with, but there are limits to how far you want to declare its relevance to the actual universe. So we're out here at Neptune. And so I said, maybe there's a planet X. Everybody started looking. Everybody started looking, including Percival Lowell, all right, back in the 1920s.

And he said, I want to find planet X because something's perturbing Neptune. So he sets out looking for it and he doesn't find it. Then he hires Clyde Tombaugh and he dies so he doesn't see the results of this. Clyde Tombaugh said, I can't find it either. I will just systematically search everywhere. Because if you think something's affecting you gravitationally, you ought to have some idea where it is to be tugging on you in that way. All right?

That's not some kind of weird – it's like you're moving differently. Where must the thing be to tug on you so that you're moving in that way? No one could find such a planet X. So Klein and Tombo said, it's got to be out there somewhere. I will systematically image the entire sky. All right. And you got to do it on multiple nights because if something's moving, you'd see it change from one picture to the next. He does this, discovers Pluto. Was Pluto where planet X was supposed to have been? No. Was Pluto the mass that planet X should have been? Everyone assumed it was.

But over the decades, the mass of Pluto got lower and lower and lower as our estimates got more and more accurate. Then we found out that Pluto is one-fifth the mass of our moon, made of half ice. And this is why Pluto got into trouble later in the 20th century. It's not because we had some vendetta against Pluto. Pluto just never belonged in that list to begin with. That's really how you need to think about it. Anyhow, there's still the matter of Neptune's orbit. Pluto did not have enough mass to make those changes.

So the search for Planet X continued. So what happens? All right. All right. 1993, a colleague of mine named Miles Standish. Okay. He's probably related to the Miles Standish on the Mayflower. He is an astrophysicist, looked at all of the data people were using to say Neptune's orbit was crooked. Looked at all the data. Then he found out that at one particular observatory, was it the gearbox or the timing mechanism had just been cleaned or swapped out? Or there was some, because in the observing log, you write down everything because you just don't know. Okay. Was there a glitch in the current? Was there a bird flyover? You make notes of everything. One of the observatories whose data was being grafted together with the other observatories had this sort of gearbox. I don't remember if it was a

gearbox. It was some mechanical adjustment that was made. He said, I wonder if that had an effect on the positioning of this telescope. He removed those data from his analysis and fitted data to all the other telescopes that he had for the positions of Uranus, of Neptune. When he did that, Planet X evaporated in that instant. In that instant. There was no Planet X. All the other data, when he connects across, removing the data from the one where the observing log said they did something different, Neptune fell right on to Newton's laws. And so since 1993, there is no planet X. And Pluto, and not for that,

we probably would have been a long time before we discovered Pluto because no one would have looked for it. They found another like Pluto. Let me just finish the lesson there. Okay. The lesson there is you have information that you think is correct

from your sensors. This was an observatory, a fine observatory. And you're going to say, this observatory says Neptune is misbehaving. But then you learn there was something wrong with the data. You throw it out. So I'm trying to say this happens all the time in science. You have to be careful what you're analyzing before you declare that what the thing measured is true. And then realign all your resources to address what you think is true.

When it might have just simply been a glitch or multiple glitches or anything. And we do this all the time in science. So you were saying? Well, several things. One, when we're talking about planetoids and planets, the idea about Pluto is that Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt, right? It's the first and currently known largest member of the Kuiper Belt. And it makes sense. We didn't even know the Kuiper Belt existed in 1930. So for us, it's just the ninth planet.

But it's the tiniest and the littlest, and it's got a weird orbit that crosses the orbit of other planets. And that's a little weird, but we'll grandfather it in. Okay, Pluto. And then wait a minute, you have Brethren. The 1990s, we discovered other objects out there with similar orbits to Pluto. So maybe Pluto is not the ninth planet. It's the first object in a new swath of real estate discovered in the outer solar system called the Kuiper Belt. And that's where it stands right now. And this Kuiper Belt, there was some

speculation. Now, I read this quite a while ago, so forgive me. But there was some speculation that we might be in some sort of a binary star system, and there might be like a burnt-out star that's way, way, way outside of our solar system. Yeah, I mean— And that's causing the galactic shelf to drop off, like this Kuiper belt is responding to some other gravity that's way out there. Is that correct? So— Can I garble all that up So you mix like three or four different scenarios. That's common for me.

There was a while there where we looked at the extinction records of species on Earth and found some periodicity to it. I forgot, was it every 20 million years or something? and found some periodicity to it. I forgot, was it every 20 million years or something? There was some period that repeated where the fossil records showed a dramatic drop, or a mild drop in the species count from one layer to the next in the geological sediment. And so this has a rhythm to it. There is nothing in the solar system that has a 20 million year rhythm.

So someone suggested maybe the sun has a really eccentric, as in its orbit, it's in a binary star system where there's another star that plunges in through the solar system, coming through the Kuiper Belt, and then goes back out in this dance with the sun.

So we wouldn't have seen it in our civilization because this is, all right. But when it does that, it disrupts the Kuiper belt gravitationally. And if you do that, you will send a rain of comets down, a higher than average rate of comets down into the inner solar system, and then you could render many life forms extinct on Earth, just the way we lost the dinosaurs from an asteroid. So, and they even gave a name for it. They called it Nemesis. That was the Nemesis double star system of the sun. But so we took a closer look at the data.

It turned out it had been filtered in a way that revealed rhythms that were not really there. And if it's orbital, the rhythm should be perfect because Newton's law doesn't mess around and they weren't exactly right. So that concept has evaporated, but it got people going for a while. It got a lot of press attention. And the part about the Kuiper belt, about the galactic shelf, that there seems to be some sort of a drop off? Okay, so now with regard to, so another scenario which got folded into yours is that our orbit around the galaxy is not sort of a straight circle, I mean a clean circle. We actually wave in and out of the plane of the galaxy. All right? Like if you imagine sort of Nessie, Loch Ness Monster doing that.

Okay? So our orbit, our entire solar system is dipping up and down and through. So another suggestion was, in fact, I think there was an entire book on this. Forgive me for not remembering the name. It suggested that the entire solar system, as it passes through the plane of the galaxy, that disrupts the entire solar system, as it passes through the plane of the

galaxy, that disrupts the Kuiper Belt as well. And that lodges, you know, it's basically the Kuiper Belt says lobbing comets, but down into the inner solar system. And so you can look for that in the extinction record as well. So, and it was suggested that that might've been what took out the dinosaurs, one of those kind of passages through. So, but anyhow, yeah. I mean, there's no shortage of excuses for killing the dinosaurs. Yeah, for sure. They're out there.

When you think about this idea of everyone having these video cameras in their pocket and high-resolution imagery and that where is that stuff? But the absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence. It can be. So I'll give you an example. Okay. Because that's a mantra. Right. All right. And in science, so philosophically, that's true. But in practice, in science, we do that all the time. Okay. So I'll give an example. It's a contrived example, but it's a clean example. There's a cave nearby. You're a mountain man, right? And there's a cave nearby. And you're worried it might have bears in it. So you don't want to go poking around. So you conduct some experiments. So here's what you do. You put chalk dust around

the entrance to the cave and you check it every day for a month and there are no bear prints in the chalk dust. Winter comes, okay? And you notice there are no footprints in the snow. Of course, well, maybe the bear snuck in and you didn't see it and it's hibernating. That could be so perhaps. Well, you wait until springtime. So you keep doing this without ever going in the cave and you have no evidence of a bear going in and out of that cave over a normal cycle of time that a bear might go in and out of a cave. cycle of time that a bear might go in and out of a cave. That is evidence of absence, in a sense. Okay. In a very specific place. Correct. So at that point, you'd say, well, I didn't go in the cave to check, but I have enough evidence to say the bear is not there. Right.

So it's the thing where you can't prove a negative. I kind of just did. I'm saying there is no bear there. And did I prove it in a fully logical mathematical sense? No. But scientifically, I've gathered enough information to convince me there's no bear in the cave and I will operate on that assumption going forward. And so much science happens that way.

And it works. And you think that's a valid way to dismiss the lack of UFO evidence because these people have these phones and they're just all filming and taking photographs of things constantly? You can ask what would happen. You can ask. You're perfectly allowed to say what would happen if we were visited by aliens and you crowdsourced the access to aliens among 7 billion people in the world.

How many people are out in the middle of the ocean? I was going to get to that. Have you ever seen the flight paths of airplanes in a single day, single 24-hour? Yeah, it's pretty wild. It is completely wild. It's like, what the – if you show this to the Wright brothers from 1903, dude. So across the oceans, of course, there are traffic paths, right, where you're more likely to find them than in other paths because there's either no destination there or the Great Circle route doesn't favor it. But you look at how often every single day the sky, the airspace is crisscrossed by way more commercial carriers than military vehicles.

Way more commercial carriers than military vehicles. And I'm thinking you'd have an encounter with something that was not a fuzzy object that no one can describe. They would photograph something through the cockpit window. I mean, why not? You'd see something. There was a recent sighting by a bunch of American Airlines pilots. By two, I should say, not a bunch of. Yeah, it can happen.

Again, you get the more – I don't know what I'm looking at yeah but it was it was it detailed did you have if you had a guess if you had a bet like if you had a pile of money and you have to put it on green for aliens or red for horseshit where you putting your money you're forcing a

binary decision here. I am. I am. We're playing roulette. But I wouldn't call it horseshit. I would say not aliens. Not aliens. Right.

I don't think there's things in most of those crafts, but I think those crafts are some kind of drone. And I'm not convinced that they're from another planet. Sure. I don't have a problem with that. And if you – by the way, if you – if this thing that they see out the window, okay, and they don't get a good photo or it's still fuzzy or it's still a light in the sky. And I'm saying, okay, I'm not yet convinced, but it's something.

Fine, go invest resources to figure it out, especially if you think it's a security risk. If you want to believe it's aliens, I'm not... If they didn't want us to see them, you would never see them. I'm pretty sure. If they had enough technology to cross the vacuum of space to reach us, you wouldn't even know where they were there. I agree. You just would have no idea. Now, perhaps the way that they slowly integrate into our consciousness, into our acceptance of their existence

is a trickle effect. Okay. Every now and then we see a video. Now think of the hubris of us saying this advanced civilization of aliens who can cross the gaps of space are interested in us and our gonads and they want to paint circles in our crops. That's kind of weird, I would think. Okay, I hate this argument. I just think it's a little weird.

I don't think we're that interesting. I think we're really fucking interesting. To an event. We can nuke the entire planet many times over and yet we don't think we're that interesting. I think we're really fucking interesting. To an event. We can nuke the entire planet many times over, and yet we don't. We did it once in 1947. We bullshit each other constantly. We spew out propaganda. We have this bizarre ritual where every four years we pick a leader based on a popularity contest.

Who you want to have beer with. Yeah, we're constantly involved in murder and rape and genocide all over the world we choose what things to pay attention to what not to pay attention to we celebrate people who pretend to be heroes in films and television and we barely know scientists who win nobel prizes we're fucking fascinating we're the weirdest things the weirdest things listen you were if you studied us if you were from another planet filled with things like us, like there was another planet of us and we found a planet doing the exact same kind of nonsense that we do somewhere else, we would be riveted.

Here's how I think about another planet. If I can share this. This is a little deep if you're ready for that. Oh, please. Okay. if I can share this. This is a little deep if you're ready for that. Okay, so whether you are vegetarian or omnivore or carnivore,

you must kill something that was alive to survive. Okay? Yes. The only thing that you consume that was never once alive is sort of basically milk and honey, okay, and salt. Everything else was once alive. You're killing. And, of course, vegetarians are doing it as well.

In fact, I'm intrigued that vegetarians in particular will focus on the baby version of the plant they would otherwise be eating. Baby spinach, baby carrots, baby arugula, baby this, baby that. And on the sort of reproductive organs of plants. Oh, let's eat the flowers or the seeds or the nuts. These are things that the plant's trying to make another plant with. You collect it and eat it. So now imagine a civilization from another planet that is entirely energized by photosynthesis. Just imagine that, okay? Maybe they have what we would call an animal, but their entire skin photosynthesizes, okay? So all living creatures on that planet

photosynthesizes. Okay? So all living creatures on that planet consume sunlight from their home star. Okay? And so they say, I want to explore the galaxy. And so they build a spaceship and they come to earth. And what do they see? Humans and other animals killing to survive, inventing means of mass murder of fellow other life forms on their planet just to survive. They would consider us astonishingly, inexcusably, us astonishingly, inexcusably, bewilderingly barbaric for having done so. And I don't think they would be interested in us. I think if they really are using photosynthesis, they're plant-based creatures, they're probably going to be so tired all the time, they're not going to have the will to travel through the universe. You are confusing the vegetarian with the plant life.

Oh, it's different? That's right. You're confusing. Well, the plants themselves, they don't go anywhere. An old man who wrestles elk and rips out his heart and bites from it. Is that what you did on that hunting trip? Plants don't go anywhere. They just sit. They just stay put. Oh, yeah. They would also say. Nothing that what you did on that hunting trip? Plants don't go anywhere. They just stay put. Oh yeah, they would also

say... Nothing that uses photosynthesis moves. But I'm talking about another planet. Just imagine a planet that that's the case. I know. In my planet, they're all lazy. Okay, but except, consider an encounter between you, your car, and an oak tree. You lose.

Yes. And the oak tree produces... It's still not moving. It has... Because it doesn't need lose. Yes. Okay. And the oak tree produces- It's still not moving. It has, because it doesn't need to. Right. Here. Okay. Can I name drop for a minute? Please.

Can I name drop? I love a good name drop. Okay. Steven Spielberg once swung by my office. Well, we met. We've met. Tell him I'm a big fan. I'll tell him.

I'll tell him. And he had one of his kids. He had several kids. He had brought one to the Hayden Planetarium in my office. And the museum got word that he was in town. He has an apartment nearby. So they asked if he could come by in addition to other activities at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where I work. That's my day job. So he comes in and we're talking and I say hi to his kid. And it's like he's like in middle school at the time. And so I said, I got to talk to him about some of his work.

So I said, let's talk E.T. He said, sure. That's when I learned. He said he imagined E.T. as vegetable, not as animal. And that's why, among other reasons, E.T. has this power to rejuvenate plants with his finger because it's actually a plant. And so that's an example. I know it's fictional, of course, but it's an example of thinking outside of an earth box. Sure.

And if you think outside of an earth box, there you go. That is a life form that would not understand us. They would think we how could how could such a world exist? Mmm, and on top of that there's how we treat each other. Yes. All right, that's and by the way, I bet yeah I'm one of those who's a little worried when we give our return address Broadcast out into space because you don't give your email to strangers in the street. Yet we're giving the coordinates of Earth broadcast out to the gaps of interstellar space. So I'm a little worried about that. But then I think about it and I say nearly every portrayal of an alien in Hollywood is evil.

Going right on back to War of the Worlds with H.G. Wells. And I'm thinking, why? Do we have any insights that aliens would be evil? Or is it really a mirror to ourselves? It's not imagined knowledge of how aliens would behave. It's actual knowledge of how we have behaved. But what about the day the earth stood still? It's one of the first.

Well, it's one of the rare ones where the aliens- It was one of the first. Well, no. The War of the Worlds long predates that by half a century. Right. Yeah. So, but on balance, the aliens are evil. Okay?

That's all I'm saying. So – but on balance, the aliens are evil. Okay? That's all I'm saying. Yes. And so we are – I see those portrayals as unwitting mirrors of our own conduct because an alien coming to Earth has a greater technology than we do. Period. That's just – end of story. So how has it gone on Earth?

Anytime one civilization with higher technology encounters one with lesser technology. It has never boded well for the society with lesser technology. They've been enslaved, killed, put in camps, exterminated. So I think we fear aliens because, in fact, we fear ourselves. We fear what we would do if we had the capability to go to another planet like they do to us. I think we do that unwittingly. That's what's manifesting in our storytelling. I think it represents what we see out of human beings sure yeah, definitely that's that so so getting back to the the UFO Reports and sites you know that the headline I saw recently says Pentagon confirms UFOs are real

That's that's that title has no meaning Well it gets me happy well no no it has no meaning I know what you're saying yeah It just has no means it's un, so unidentified things are real. Yeah, of course. That doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean they're aliens. If the title said, Pentagon confirms UFOs are actually aliens, that is a headline. That's a good headline right there, but that's not what anybody can report.

What do you think this whole ramping up of all this information is? All the videos and all the conversations about it. It's part of the New York Times. It's part of what the Trump said into motion. I mean, the landscape was ripe for it. But the oh, by the way, was it UFO sightings went up during covid, I think, because everyone was home bored with nothing to do. And you go out and look out, look up, you know. Yeah. There's a lot of cultural statistics related to the frequency of UFO sightings. But Trump, just before he left office, required he slip something into the COVID relief bill as they do so often in Congress where you agree with the rest of this. I don't agree with that, but I want to get it through.

So he put that in? Yes. Well, under his administration. It's under his administration. The full disclosure. Within six months, he wants all federal agencies that collect information on unidentified sky objects to put together reports and deliver it to Congress within six months. Fine.

I don't have a problem with that. What's weird though is this somehow – this belief that somehow the government is some repository of knowledge and secrets that we don't otherwise have access to. That's not the kind of country we live in nor is the government that competent, right? So, yeah, they try to keep secrets and they keep many secrets. They tend to be of the uninteresting kind. But if you have an interesting secret, if you're stockpiling aliens and you're telling me that the secretary, the admin, the janitor, that they're not sneaking out an iPhone photo, really? Really? Do you think it's that simple? Really? Really? Do you think it's that simple? Christopher Mellon, who worked for the Defense Department, he came on and was talking to us about. You get all the inside folks here.

Yeah. And that was it was an intriguing conversation because he is of the belief that they have had access to some objects and some crafts and some things that are unexplainable and don't seem to come from any technology that we're. And I don't want to put any words in his mouth, but any technology that we're currently capable of reproducing. Okay. I mean, he might've seen something that the military was actually working on that would be mysterious to someone who is only familiar with unclassified propulsion systems and the like. So do you think it's possible that a propulsion system so outside of the norm, something that is not working off burning fuel, something that's working off some new technology that

is, whether it's some sort of gravity distorting or gravity-based technology, that that could actually be conceived in a vacuum where they could get the top scientists that work in propulsion, people that do understand, I mean, as much as we do understand gravity, as much as we understand the possibility of some sort of propulsion system, it's pretty minimal, right? In terms of like the mainstream. Yeah, we're still primitive with our propulsion system. Is it possible that this could all be done in a vacuum, that it could all be done without anybody ever having known about it and they can produce something

that's so preposterously advanced from anything we've been capable of making before Advances tend not to be right large leaps like that. It's more likely that It's from a different source than from human beings. If what he's describing is true, then it would not be incremental. I mean, we tend to do things incrementally. That's just the nature of discovery and human innovation. So if something actually can move the way, supposedly units that they these these various tracking systems that they have that can follow something from 80,000 feet i'm saying we don't understand it we don't understand

yeah if it's actually a thing yeah we have no there's no physics that explains it that we know and if something can move that way if it's confirmed that the systems are accurate and that this thing does move that fast and can do things that are beyond our capability currently as far as we understand it, would it be more likely that it would come from some other advanced civilization outside of Earth? Or would it be more likely that it was conceived in a vacuum here

without anybody having any access to any of the technology in these incremental forms? So it's possible you can have like, you know, black ops, as they say. You look at the airplanes that came out of Lockheed Martin during the Cold War. These were all the secret, and they gave the engineers- But kind of incremental. Sure, but they looked really different, and they behaved very differently, and they gave the engineers. But kind of incremental. Sure, but they looked really different and they behaved very differently. And they had, so yes, it was still incremental,

but let's imagine a deep black ops where, yeah, they're making their own incremental changes, but you don't get to see them. So that by the time it shows up, it looks like it's a big leap, even though they got there incrementally. And that was unreported, sure. Doesn't science rely on other scientists to coordinate with, like other scientists to

review data and to share ideas? And it also presumes that the government has the best scientists. And that's simply not the case. Right. That's what I would always think. The best scientists are going to go to the private sector because there's more money there. Or academia where you have freedom of research. Some will go because there is money in the military, but you're forced to work on projects that might not be the most creative investment of your own energies. You hire a physicist, make a bomb at the end of this. So it would take something pretty monumental for you to shift your belief to this is probably not believe it show me an alien show me give me something I don't I'm not of the belief that these things are populated. Okay, okay

They may be and maybe maybe it's happened before but when I'm hearing about these things flying around and I'm seeing what we're doing on Mars I'm like, yeah, it's a better version of that You know, it is a better version of that. You know what is a much better story to me is the Transformers, the origin story of the Transformers. They're cars and then they become robots. No, no. I don't claim to know the whole franchise. I don't either. But the little bit of it that I know.

By the way, they had an error in one of the movies where they're coming to Earth and they go by the moon. And they see the Apollo site. Yeah, they see the Apollo site and the landers there. And it still has the pod that carries the astronauts. Oh, whoops. Yeah, yeah. That's not, that returned to the command module that came back.

They should just see the base. Yeah. All right. But it's not as interesting. All right. So they, so that was either on purpose or it was an oversight. So the claim is they were found and came into the Arctic or wherever. No one saw it happen except the military because we're monitoring the Arctic because that's where rockets get.

We're on the case here. Then they get captured and we want to mine them for the technology that's in them. But we want to do it in a way nobody knows. So where do you do this? Oh, let's build a dam. So the Hoover Dam was the cover project for the analysis of the transformers that we had captured. And then beginning – so Hoover Dam was 1920s, right? When was Hoover? 1920s into the 30s. Beginning of the 1930s, we catapulted.

Quantum physics was invented. Lasers were invented. Miniaturization of electronics was invented. And it was all claimed to be traceable to this new technology that we reverse engineered beginning with that research lab built into. I thought that was brilliant. That was a brilliant way to say that. Or we're just humans are smart and we invented that ourselves.

Yeah, I never watched the Transformers, man. Okay. I'm just saying. It's okay. watch the Transformers, man. Okay, okay. I'm just saying. I'm just,

it's okay. It was a clever, it was a clever weaving of a story, of a science fiction story into our culture. I thought it was, I thought it was a brilliant, yeah.

The rest of it, no. When they're fighting each other. Yeah, it's stupid. I'm Optimus Prime. No, I'm not doing that. It's ridiculous. And then you're a sports car on the side. No, I'm not doing that. It's ridiculous. No, and then you're a sports car on the side. No, I'm not.

Yeah, fuck outta here. I love a good alien movie though. I think my favorite is John Carpenter's The Thing. That was a good one. I gotta go back and check that one out. It was, it had crashed into Antarctica or something like that. Uh-huh.

Frozen forever and then they discovered it they were like Digging in and they found this thing and then it came out and it would Transform and become like an identical copy of whatever it touched You don't remember that one. No, I don't think I saw no I didn't see that what I do know what came it what? The blob I thought was it I saw – no, I didn't see that. But I do know what came – the blob, I thought, was a very creative alien. That one didn't have a mouth or legs or arms or teeth or eyes or stomach. And it could go through the air conditioning ducts.

It could ooze under the door. You couldn't avoid it. And what people forget about the blob is that when it first landed it was completely transparent after it ate its first victim only then was it red and it was red for the whole rest of the movie. Really? Yeah

I don't even remember that movie much Yeah it's Steve McQueen in one of his first films Was it really? Yeah Steve McQueen is in it Steve McQueen was in the blob? Yeah Wow When I look at what we're doing with human beings Was it real? Steve McQueen was in it. Steve McQueen was in the blob? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. When I look at what we're doing with human beings and replacing people's knees and replacing people's hips and artificial this and artificial that and then with CRISPR and genetic engineering, I think it's a matter of time before we are some sort of symbiotic thing.

We're partially created by whatever technology is available at the time, whether it's 100 years from now or 500 years from now. Something that's going to be superior, that's not going to provide us with all the problems. It's already happened. You just don't think about it that way. With your phone and your glasses. No, no, no. Even before that. We are symbiotic with chemistry. You're living twice as long.

Better living through chemistry. Sure. Okay. You have, we control your cholesterol, your inflammation, we know how to reduce the chance of stroke. So you're thinking very narrow on this. So I need a new kneecap or I need a new this. The fact is science and technology has already been infused in the human condition in a way that, for example, has doubled our life expectancy within the last 150 years. So it's already happening chemically.

So, now you want to do it mechanically because that requires material science and that's a much later field than chemistry was developed in order to contribute to what our lives are. Now, you want to get into our DNA. That's just the next level. Okay. Now, are we going to have some internet infused in our head? I don't think so. But that's what infused in our head? I don't think so. But that's what Elon's working on. I don't think.

Why would you do that when the entire internet is in your palm of your hand? Because you have to touch that stupid thing. You might drop it. Oh, what you're saying is I don't want to touch this. Yes, open up my skull and put in an internet transmitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's better. But it makes you smarter. So does the smartphone. No, yes, open up my skull and put in an internet transmitter, that's better. But it makes you smarter. So does the smartphone. No, no, no.

But like much smarter. What he's saying is it's going to increase the bandwidth that you have to access information. You're going to be able to access information quicker because it's not going to go through all these... Okay, so people can do stupid things quicker in the face of information that they think is correct.

One of the things that Elon said to me is people will no longer have to talk with words. You're not going to have to speak with your mind. Look at what people are doing with the information they currently have. They don't even know what is true. Some people.

Now you want to accelerate that by a factor of a thousand. Yes. Maybe they'll learn. That is the missing chapter in the apocalypse in the Bible. Okay. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's the cure.

Maybe when people are acutely aware of what they actually know. Don't equate knowledge with wisdom. Well, maybe it's not the same wisdom. I don't find wisdom on the internet. I find knowledge. You can find some wisdom. You got to's not the same wisdom. I don't find wisdom on the internet. I find knowledge. You can find some wisdom. You gotta go to the right people. You gotta go to the correct meme pages. Okay but it's it's but you gotta plow through the knowledge some of which much of it maybe most of which is false. That's a problem. But occasionally you get nuggets of wisdom. Yes.

Want to see a nugget of wisdom? You got one? I'm going to show you one. Show me. You got one now? I'm going to send it to Jamie, and Jamie, you'll put this up. Okay. This is a piece of...

By the way, I'm all in for wisdom. I bet you are. Okay. Because when you look at the arc of there's – in science, you want to convert data to sort of facts and facts into knowledge, knowledge into insight, and then ultimately insight into wisdom. And that wisdom will help you make better choices. Yes. And help you understand the world you're living in. Correct.

Correct. Correct. That's what it is. Wisdom. Just so you know, this is the guy calling you a Nazi on the internet. Okay. So now don't you feel better about digging into your Twitter? That's just a later version of that very first comic in The New Yorker

when the internet came up and there are two dogs on a computer and one dog turns to the other. The good thing about the internet is no one knows you're a dog. That was like 1991. Was it really?

Yeah, it was very early. Very early. Wow, 91? You can probably find it. Yeah, have them bring it up. Wow. No one knows you're a dog. It should go straight to it. That's pretty brilliant. Yeah, yeah. bring it up. Wow. No one knows you're a dog. It should go straight to it.

That's pretty brilliant. Yeah, yeah. And so that's, I've been thinking that the entire time. You got, yeah, there it is. Oh, wow. On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. What year is that from, does it say, Jamie? Oh, it's got its own webpage, wiki page.

93, wow. Yeah, very early. I said 91, so it's 93 from the New Yorker, yeah. What year were you on? Oh, I'm a scientist, so I was on from 19- You were on the 80s? I mean, you know, I was programming computers in high school, and I'm graduating class of 1976, so I'm an old fart.

But we had, you know had very large, clumsy computers, but I was programming them in. I had my first email account in 1980, 1981. Wow, 1980, that's crazy. Yeah, but you can only talk to other scientists. I mean, who else? Still. You're not sending email to your grandmother in 1980. Did you anticipate it was going to eventually be public?

Oh yeah, I saw the trends. I didn't anticipate that everyone would agree to put all the world's knowledge on it I thought it'd be very selective knowledge that the idea that wiki works at all is Astonishing pretty crazy. Yeah, it's a pretty crazy fact and all we have I'm happy to boast My field has very excellent wiki pages on Pluto, on planets, on black holes. A lot of us are really good educators and we know they're not just textbook pages, they're really informative.

And there's very little misinformation on it. So I'm very happy about that. That's extraordinary. How do they filter that? How do they make sure that misinformation doesn't get? So I hate to name drop again, but I had one of the founders of wiki in my office and he wanted to know what does he do about people who are pirating pages

because back then anyone could edit any page at all oh right all right and they now have certain they can close a page they can has to be reviewed and but that violates the spirit of the wiki concept because you don't know if the person who wants to edit it has more insight than everybody else who even wrote the page. You don't know that in advance. What, are you going to interview them? No, that's not realistic. So I thought I had a really good idea, but he didn't take.

What was your good idea? You have an edit index for every article. And so the edit index is, it tells you two things. The rate that people have made changes to that page. It's one dimension of information. Another one is, is it an in situ edit or is it additive? That's important because if there's some celebrity who dies, you'll edit the page by adding a paragraph that though they died in their

sleep or whatever. So that's editing, but that's not, you're not that, that doesn't put the content at risk if you're just adding information. So if I know that a page has been edited 40 times in the last three days, then the likelihood that that information is objectively true is very low. And so when you're doing a book report or any kind of report and you're citing wiki pages,

doing a book report or any kind of report and you're citing wiki pages, you would have a side index that tells you this page is rife with conflicting and contested edits. Now that I know that, here's what they said. Whereas other pages that are stable, I think we have a good right to say this contains objectively true information. And you would be able to make the judgment yourself. And it'd be easy to track that on a computer with all the edits. And you'll know, did someone just correct spelling? You would give the nature of what the edit is. And I thought that research is, if you don't know what the answer is, let's at least know how controversial the information is. This brings up an interesting point because one of the things that we're talking about when it comes to technology,

we're talking about improvements in the way the human brain works with a symbiotic relationship to whatever Neuralink or whatever new technology is invented. That's what he wants. That's beyond Neuralink. Yeah, that's what he wants. What would be great is if we knew what was true. However crazy I think that idea is, I'm not going to stop him. You're not going to stop him. No, no, I don't want to because- But you're not going to stop him. You need a little bit of crazy-

You do. To move the center mass of society in new directions. That dude's got a lot of crazy. So I'm an Elon fan. Yeah. Yeah, me too. He's going to do it. No, well.

I'm going to probably get a hole in my head and stick it in there. I want to see what's up. But I'm going to be a late adopter, though. I'm going to be like Gen 4. I didn't buy a Tesla until like two years ago. Really? Oh, no. I was early.

And I had them. Yeah, they had them many, many years ago really Oh, no, I was early and I had yeah, they had them many many years before yeah Yeah, the roadster was first out. Yeah, the little little Lotus Elise clone. I couldn't fit in it So I couldn't oh you're my head. I can't my shoulder went across the mid plane of the scene So I have to be there with a small other human But two of me wouldn't be able to fit in the front seat without being very snuggly at the deltoid. If we could come to a point where technology could eliminate deception, how much more information-deception or purposeful deception in others. I don't see how we can program that into our technology. But I think we can if we can understand whether someone's telling the truth or not.

If it's clear and glaringly obvious, if you and I are talking and I start talking to you and all of a sudden a green light pops up, which indicates I'm full of shit. You'll see it and I'm like, oh, my green light's showing. No, but that assumes that things are either true or false. And that's just not true. That's not. Something. The actual world is way more nuanced than that. Right. So.

Unintended deception. So, for example, I can think something is true. Right. And what you're basically saying, not to put words in your mouth, is that everyone walks around with a lie detector in their forehead. Yeah, that's a bad idea. That's a bad example. Well, you just said this. I know. All right.

So everyone has a lie detector. And if I think something happened, even though it didn't, then I'm telling the truth. I'm telling my own understanding of the truth. Which is a problem with some people with some stories, right? You can't then indict me for that truth being wrong if that's how I saw it. That's like the umpire. That's how I called it because that's how I saw it. The umpire is not being evil.

That's just what they saw. So that's one problem with that. Another one is there's so many things that are – and that's what makes the world interesting I think is – so you want an example of where the truth is nuanced. almost every case where someone wants to turn a question into a binary answer, they're doing a disservice to human intellect, to the real world that's out there. I'll give you an example. So how tall are you? 5'8".

5'8". Okay. Presumably you measure that with some kind of tape measure. All right. So are you 5'7 and 3 quarters? It's probably closer to that. Okay. I'm shrinking. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So maybe you're 5'7 and 3 quarters. So are you 5'7 and 1 16th of an inch taller or shorter than 5'7 and 3 quarters?

I don't know. We'd have to bust out a tape measure. Well, so now, okay. So let's say you are within that, but wait a minute. The line that identifies a 16th of an inch itself has a width. So where are you within the width of the line that you're using to report how tall you are? So we're giving rough measurements. Any time you give a measurement of something, it can never be exact. But you get an understanding of it, like go a mile down the road and then take a right. Okay.

But if I have a truth serum and I say, was it a mile? No, it was one and an eighth of a mile. But what if you get to a mile and there's no right turn? Do you just shut your car off and starve to death? Or do you go, let me figure this out. It looks like 30 more feet. I take a right. It's a mile and 30 feet. Okay. I'm not going to nitpick. I'm just going to take a right, but a mile and 30 feet. Your brain red light, green light device would say the person was lying. Yeah, that device sucks. Okay, okay.

Forget I came up with that idea. All right, all right. I was just trying to say. My thought was just eliminate purposeful deception. Like if you knew someone was lying to you, con artists, Ponzi scheme people, someone's trying to fuck you over. If you knew, if you could be clear that what this person was doing is they're not really going to make you a lot of money. They're trying to rip you off with a pie in the sky idea. Okay, you know what device that what this person was doing is they're not really gonna make you a lot of money

They're trying to rip you off with a pie-in-the-sky idea. Okay, you know Deception you know what that is. Well, there's a device it's called logic science literacy How to know when someone else is in fact, I just just tweeted that recently Science literacy your boy Steven Spielberg got busted in a Ponzi scheme. Is the power to know when someone else is full of shit. But if you're dealing with something like Bernie Madoff, right? You look at his returns and say, these don't match anyone else's returns. How is this freaking possible? Because he's a G.

Because you want to believe what he's doing. Right. Is it his problem or is it your problem? That you want that outcome so badly that you are allowing yourself to be conned. That's how conning works.

So as a scientist, you can never be too invested in an outcome because it warps your capacity To judge what is true and what is not was Bernie Madoff's returns Substantially more impressive than anyone else who was doing it legitimately from what I read that wasn't the point The point what it's not that his returns were much higher than everybody else. They were consistent. They were consistent 10% 15% every year whatever it was And everyone else was fluctuating, sometimes getting negative.

He was always in the positive. Or when everyone else was negative, he had low positive. So, of course, you bring your money to him. So he has some magic insight into the marketplace that no one else has. Well, do you know how the statistics of trading works? Do you know? It's possible you can be lucky a few years in a row, but to do it for 10, 20, whatever long he was at it? Right, but wouldn't it be easier if you just could clearly see deception?

Like the idea behind any of these technologies is they're going to improve the way human beings communicate with each other. Maybe he believed he was doing the right thing. I don't think he did. You don't think he did? No, I don't think he did. I've heard interviews with him. He sounded like a pure sociopath. Okay, he really did Yeah, I mean laugh. Yeah. Yeah, but there's a lot of costs in it horrible so you you turn a blind eye to the possibility that what you want to be true might not be true and that that burden of

Rationality falls just as much on the victim of that scheme as it is on the person perpetrating the scheme. I think in a free society, you have to arm yourself, equip yourself. It's not just logic. Logic is overrated, I think. My favorite paintings in the world could not have possibly been drawn via logic. There's a creative spark that comes from nowhere. The painting Starry Night on the back of my phone. Is this logic?

No. Is that what he saw? No. Although I can identify the day and the time of day when this image was in his head that he painted. Because you know the geographical location. No, no, no, no. Even without knowing the – I could find out what latitude it is and it turns out it corresponds with where he was. It's the phase of the moon and the location of Venus at that angle relative to the horizon.

That – you can nail that. And so I got it for June 21st, 1889. It turns out that is the year he painted. And he was in northern – I forgot where he was, north of France somewhere. And so I can recreate that. So there's some basics of it that are factual. The rest, clearly, the sky doesn't have curlicues in it. And I'm told where he painted this, there is no town because there's a town.

So he made up a lot of stuff that's in this picture but that's not what he saw but it's what he felt well it's just i value how people feel yeah sure that's artistic interpretation that is the full dimensionality of what it is to be human yeah so i'm you know a world of just logic i don't want that i'm not necessarily saying the world would just be logic, but imagine how, look, it's one of the things that makes people interesting is that we're so complex in communicating with people. There's so many layers and depths and so many people are so different and you find these unique personalities and it adds flavor to your life. And by the way, the future of gene editing, if we want everybody to be a certain way, that takes away the diversity of human behavior. That's what I think aliens are. That's why they all look the same. They all get the big heads and the big eyes

and the little tiny bodies. That's where we're going. I want to get an alien that's jacked. Like The Rock? Comes down off this thing. All right, who's first? Yeah, The Rock as an alien. Imagine if all aliens were built like the rock.

Yeah, I think the thinking is that they're in the future and they're advanced and they don't need their body to be advanced, but their brain is advanced. Well, and also they're using telekinesis and they probably have the 50th version of Elon's neural link installed. I'm not dismissing the beautiful things about people, whether it's our artistic creations or just communicating with people. The fact that we're

so complicated and there's so many different layers of emotions and the history of your own life that you're adding into it, there's a lot of cool things about being a person. life that you're adding into it. There's a lot of cool things about being a person. But what's not cool is deception. And then if deception can be eliminated- If you got rid of deception, could you have novelists? No. Everything in a novel is a lie. Yes, but- It's a lie.

It's creative. It's not a lie. They're not pretending. It's a lie. I just invented somebody that- Steven Spielberg is not pretending. I invented somebody that does not exist. I had to make decisions. It's very different. It's creation. There's a very different thing going on. Artistic creation is very different than a lie.

So you have to have, in addition to your lie meter, you have to judge whether someone is being creative in the thing they're telling you that's not true. Well, if they say it's a nonfiction book, then they're lying, right? If it's a fiction book, then they're being creative. If someone's being deceptive in a nonfiction book, that's a bad person. But if someone is writing something like Salem's Lot from Stephen King's crazy story about a town that gets taken over by vampires. That's just fun. Mm-hmm. So he's not lying. No.

Okay. He's a creative person. He has imagination. I just worry about the- Imagination will still exist. The unintended consequences of restricting people's capacity to deceive. Ooh.

Is there some fallout from that that we don't anticipate? I think there's a fallout from everything, right? Yeah, there is. Yeah. Every time we create pesticide, we fuck someone's endocrine system up, right? There's always something that goes wrong. Depends on what the pesticide's made of. Right. But yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like there's a lot of unintended consequences to a lot of things that

we do that are ultimately done for good, but turn out to be really bad. Right. That could be the case. By the way, and there's also the reverse. Yeah. Things that were done for bad that turned out to be good. Yeah. That's where wisdom comes in. Hmm. Yeah. So here's another. I don't want to miss the opportunity of discussing questions that have no answers.

So make sure we have time for that. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Some of them don't have answers, right? Because some questions don't have meaning, even in the questions themselves. Give me an example. Oh, no, but I jumped ahead.

I wanted you to finish your point. Oh, but this is a good one. I like what you're doing. I just think that if technology, to go back to it, and we'll come back to the questions, if technology continues to advance in the direction that it's going it seems to me that one of the things that's happening is the Distance and the the distance between us and information is getting smaller and smaller our access to information is getting greater and greater and that as this time goes on it's going to be more

Integrated into who you are as a person, whether it's through Elon's creation or someone else's creation. Once that happens, I could envision a language that's being used through which we can communicate with each other that Elon was discussing when he said, you're going to be able to communicate without using words. when he said you're going to be able to communicate without using words. That once that happens, you're going to be able, whether it's 100 years from now or 1,000 years from now, whatever it is, you're going to be able to display or to communicate with pure intent.

You're going to be able to do things without Our ability to use personality and charisma and language and to be more articulate and impressive in the way you talk to have a different impact on the way a person receives your thoughts. Instead, it'll be purely your intent and your thought. Purely your thought process. Allow me to ask, suppose that is possible. Why would you want to do that? Why wouldn't you want to be living in a tree throwing poop at the other chimps? Those are the good old days. The good old days when we were in the trees and we didn't have fire, we had to catch our rats and eat them alive. In fact, we got very good at throwing things, even if it started with poop. We were the best throwers of any species there ever was, ever.

And they think that might have contributed to us becoming what we are. Ever. So just because we can extrapolate to a thing doesn't mean that's the thing that's going to happen. True. So I'm old enough to remember the 1950s and 60s. People were imagining the future, the home of the future.

Well, technology was automating things. So everything was a button. So the home of the future was just a button. And then people imagine that the future evolution of humans, we'd grow a big index finger because you have to be pushing buttons all the time. Right. And now, no, we don't have buttons all over the house. Not really. Okay. That's not the thing. Well, we have the remote control. I guess that's buttons, but the button can do a thousand different things, right? Depending on how it's programmed.

So there are things that, take a look at computing. There was an era where the bigger a computer was, the more powerful it was. Okay. Let's go right up to 1968, 2001, a space odyssey. This is imagining a world in 2001. Oh, computers will be really big then. There's that one big computer in the center of the ship. No one imagined that you'd have something more powerful than that on your hip. Yeah. No one thought that way. People imagined the future where we have motorized sidewalks and monorails and everything. And what we didn't get was we thought energy would cost nothing. So we imagined a world with transportation, motion, and actions that all require energy to enable. And those worlds came out of the heads of people who extrapolated forward and they did not understand that the

real action was in information. Information is what became cheap, not energy. And when information becomes cheap, I have the world at my fingertips, even though I still have to walk down the sidewalk and it's not a motorized pathway. Yeah, that's the thing they never saw coming in any of those. Didn't see it coming. They didn't see the internet coming. Information would be cheap. Right. And so I'm not one to just take what's going on now and extrapolate it and say everyone is going to be living that differently.

Because other things come in from the side that you don't anticipate. And when they come in from the side, it is not an extrapolation of what you're doing now. It is something you didn't even imagine because an innovative, creative person looks to the left, looks to the right, and says, I can combine these into something that's completely new that no one even imagined. So that's how the future unfolds. So extrapolating, you get the first couple of years, correct? Five years, 10 years out, you are completely off. And you said 500 years, 1,000 years. Let's shorten that a little bit. Let's say 30 years. You say, no, that's not much. We need more time than that. Ask yourself. Let's go back to 1960. We didn't have a spaceship. United States

did not have a rocket to carry people that wouldn't blow up on the launch pad. We weren't there yet. 30 years later, it's 1990, people have laptop computers, and we've been to the moon six times over. 30 years. So when I think today to 30 years from now, I'm saying I don't know that I can predict anything, but there's some things that I know are going to happen in the next few years. Self-driving cars, it's going to take over like that.

Why? Because you replace your car. Half the people replace the car every five years. So in five years, if I have a self-driving car and all the HOV lanes are now reserved only for self-driving cars, that's the next car you're going to drive. Do you drive one? Do you drive a Tesla? I have a Tesla. I have a Tesla.

Do you ever do the self-driving thing? Never. It's awesome. Yeah. No, I don't. It scares me. I'm not ready for it. I hit a Tesla. I have a Tesla. Do you ever do the self-driving thing? Never. It's awesome. Yeah. No, I don't. It scares me, but I hit that little button. Yeah, I'm not ready for it. And that's the question.

I even paid a couple of dollars, the extra dollars to get that. I got that too. I'm not ready for it yet, but- Don't be scared. Jamie, do you use it? Yeah. No, I'm not ready. I'm not ready for that.

Most of the time I don't though, honestly. But I'm ready culturally for it. Yeah. Yes, it'll save 30,000 lives a year, all right? So this is, and no one's going to drive home drunk. And a self-driving car, when it changes lanes, it tells the other self-driving cars, I'm going to change lane. It parks the traffic for it, and it then opens into a lane, okay? This is the kind, and it can go 90 miles an hour separated by five feet in front and back of the car.

Let's not do that. No, because you're thinking of your own reflexes and not that. I'm thinking of things going wrong. Every now and then you see one like that hits like a tire iron that's in the middle of the road. That could happen. However, another car would have seen it. I'm in my Tesla. I come up to a road.

The Tesla tells me on the screen changing suspension because of a bumpy road ahead. I said, how does it know it's a bumpy road ahead? There's a clearinghouse of this information. Some other Tesla went on that road and figured that out. My Tesla went on that road before it had figured it out. Okay. So the shared information becomes hugely valuable. And yeah, you might have the tire iron in the road and so 5,000 people a year die rather than 35,000 people. We got to wrap our heads around that one this time around.

My analogy to this is we used horses for thousands of years. Now you go from 1910 to 1930. 1930, you can't give away a horse. Not in urban areas, no. Isn't that crazy? Within 20 years, we went from horses and an entire industry that supported the horses,

the buggy whips, the carriages, the stables, the food, the blacksmiths, an entire industry vanishes within two decades, basically within two decades. And you're going to tell me when are automatic cars coming? We already have them, and we just, you know, when it's ready to go down, it's going down. My kids are 20 and 24. They don't want to know how to drive.

They can't wait until the self-driving car. They want nothing to do with it. And by the way, you might say, but how about people who love to drive? They're not going to give up their Camaro or whatever it is that they love. You say that mockingly. I don't like it. No, I said that. I listed that first. I said, let me not say the Corvette because I think there are more Camaros out there than Corvettes. I'm appealing to Corvettes. So anyhow, you might like to drive your Mustang GT. Okay, fine. Then we build tracks for you.

Oh, God. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There are people today who like riding horses. They don't do it in the street. You go to the stables, and you can jump, and you can ride the countryside. What kind of world are we making, Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm saying you don't have to give up your car in order to have everybody. There'll be car tracks. And then the government's just going to shut down your car and pull you out. It's going to shut down the highway because everything's going to be automated. And they're going to need access to all the cars just in case there's a high-speed chase.

The government built the freaking highway. Did they, though? Yes, they did. I don't think they did. It's called the Eisenhower Interstate System. It cost $100 billion, and it was a military project. And so- So they have the right to shut your car down?

Is that what you're saying? Are you opting out? You can make your own damn road and do what you want on it. What if it's like iPhones where you can opt out of sharing your information with advertisers? You want to opt out of what? The government being able to shut down your car? You don't have a right to drive in the HOV lane. That's not in the Constitution.

Yeah, we're not talking about the HOV lane. They don't even have those out here. Oh, they don't? Well, you have in the Constitution. Yeah, we're not talking about the HOV lane. They don't even have those out here. Oh, they don't? Well, you have the pay routes. Yeah. If the government controls, if laws control one lane versus another, that's the first lane to go to self-driving, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Yes. Yeah. Oh, plus, self-driving cars that you don't own, that you just sort of use, that reduces the number of cars in the road by what a factor of 10 yes i just worry about you probably own a drill a hand drill yeah i got a drill how many total minutes in a year do you use that hand drill i don't use it ever fine so you spent money on something that you hardly use and even if you did use it it it's for minutes. Okay? So you get on the horn. You go to Home Depot, get online, say, I need a hand drill with this bit.

And then a drone drops it off that afternoon, and you use it, and then it takes it back. You don't need a garage. You don't need a parking spot. You don't need anything. It's shared commodity. It sounds like a good deal for Jeff Bezos. He's probably real excited. He'd be delivering you drills.

I think he's buying roof rights for drone landings. Really? Yeah. Of course he is. Yeah. That's what I heard. It's a rumor. When you see a guy that's that wealthy, do you ever ponder what makes a person like that continue to work every day?

That is the actual fact of it, right? People like that, it's a different species, right? It's someone who has an idea and they want to execute the idea. And he was at it when no one thought it was fashionable. Amazon used to be just a bookstore. Yeah, I remember how dumb it was. I was mocking it. Like, who the fuck is going to buy books on the internet? But you can't even browse it.. I was mocking it. Like who the fuck's gonna buy books on the internet?

But you can't even browse it. You can't smell it. That was the dumbest idea ever. You can't do it. Right? So is he driven? Is he saying, no, I want to be a hundred billionaire? No, he's got an idea.

He's got a business idea. He wants to gain wealth, of course, as any business person does. But the people who are actually driven are driven by forces that are not money. Yeah. As Elon famously said, you know, how do you make a small fortune in rockets? Start with a large fortune. But it's just these people that are doing this insane innovation like him, like trying to deliver things with drones and Trying to spread the business further and further and further It's like you always wonder like what is the motivation like what keeps you doing this?

I can tell you this you know did I imagine ten years ago that when I ordered something on the internet I Would be disappointed if it didn't come tomorrow something on the internet i would be disappointed if it didn't come tomorrow or today or this has their own trucks now right you can deliver it to you today right right gone are the days oh it'll get there in two weeks and three was like what's wrong with you no tomorrow tomorrow i need this now yeah and even if i don't need it i want it now yeah i see it like the toothpaste gonna come on friday i'm like today's tuesday Why the fuck do I have to wait till Friday for toothpaste? Come, let's go. Let's go.

So Jeff Bezos did that to you. I know, it's amazing. You've been brainwashed by the man. It's amazing. But people like that do push innovation in that endless desire. That's why I don't get in there. I'd let him go.

Oh yeah, well I'm just joking around about him motivating his motivation. I mean, I saw his new yacht. I think that's where the motivation is. Those are expensive. Yes. You need $150 billion if you want to have a couple of those. Yeah.

Yachts are a whole other thing. But he's got like a city. It's like a city that floats around. Have you seen it? No, but I've been on other yachts of highly wealthy people. Is it preposterous? I've never been. I don't judge it, but I do. I'll judge for

you. Describe it to me. I'll tell you why it's stupid. I was on Charles Simone's yacht. He's one of the Microsoft billionaires. And there's a staff there. And I like talking to people, talking to the staff. And I said, oh, so, you know, there are people cleaning and, you know, and there's a sailor type or whatever that role is in the thing there. And I say, oh, so where do you live? And he says, here. I said, oh, in New York because it was important there. No, here.

On the yacht. And I said, oh, well, when you're not on the yacht, weird. Oh, I'm from Italy. But I live on the yacht. I said, how do you get your mail? And he said, well, I'll get back to Italy. I'll pick it up there. But I live on the yacht. I said, how do you get your mail? They said, well, I'll get back to Italy. I'll pick it up there, but I live on. And so the idea that you are so wealthy, you can buy people and put them in this floating place and they call that their home. I had to

wrap my head around that. I couldn't, that was just a little weird to me. But it makes sense. If you have some 500-foot-long boat. It's a permanent staff. You have to have people there all the time because things are probably always breaking. Yep, yep, yep. And I went into the pantry, and you can see the multiple refrigerators and the wine cellar. It's like a giant restaurant slash apartment building. Correct, correct.

And he's got a chopper on the top. Let me see what Jeff Bezos' looks like. It's someone I saw has its own yacht. The yacht has a yacht. Well, this guy, the billionaire, what was his name? Charles Simone. Go to that guy. Actually, it is Bezos' yacht. Oh, let's see it.

Bezos' yacht has a yacht? Has a separate yacht. Look at that fellow. Why does every picture come up with his bald head right there? Looking happy. Oh, let's see it. Basel's yacht has a yacht? Has a separate yacht. Look at that fellow. Why does every picture come up with his bald head right there? Looking happy. Looking so happy. All right, so you got the yacht. 417-foot super yacht that's so massive, it has its own support yacht.

That doesn't include the cost. A helipad, estimated cost, not including the boat's support boat, is $500 million. That is wild. Yeah, that's lunch money. It's a half a billion dollar, is $500 million. That is wild. Yeah, that's lunch money. It's a half a billion dollar, yeah, I guess. Yeah, that's one 300th of his wealth. He made $75 billion in 2020 alone. During COVID.

Yeah. There you go. Insane. Project 721. Because he kept delivering while everyone else says we can't deliver. Yeah. So that's his boat. Let me see that thing.

Woo. Good Lord. Wow. That's not it. That's it. That's it? This is it. That was something else called Project Valkyrie or something it said.

Oh, some other thing. That yacht, that doesn't look all that impressive. I got a yacht that big. Look at the size of that thing. I mean, it's basically- You can have a great star party on the deck of that. Oh, for sure, right?

If you get out in the middle of the ocean. Oh, yeah, that'd be cool. That's the move, isn't it? Yeah, okay. When I get my first hundred billion, I'll invite you. Please, I'll go. We'll do a few shows from there.

I'll do whatever you want. We'll do shows. So I tried to quantify- What is that, Jamie? That's where they made it, I believe. whatever you want. We'll do shows. So I tried to quantify. What is that, Jamie? That's where they made it, I believe. Oh, wow. They built it in a giant warehouse on the water. And you drop it in the water, I think.

Whoa. Slide it in there. What a weird market. The market for half billion dollar yachts. Who would have thought there even was such a market? I just want to try to find my tweet. Can you dig up a tweet? Sure.

Do you search tweets? Can you do it? Just tweet my handle and Bezos. And I quantified his wealth at $100 billion. And I want you to see this calculation that I did. Well, what's crazy is that's what he made basically last year, right? We said he made $70-something billion last year. Mm-hmm.

A year. In 2007. year. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. A year. In 2007. Okay. Okay. Not that anybody asked, but laid end-to-end, Jeff Bezos' $200 billion can encircle Earth 180 times, then reach the moon and back 30 times, and with what's left over, make a stack 10 kilometers high. Holy shit.

With what's left over. That's all $1 bills. Yeah, sorry. Those are $1 bills. That's what I pictured there, the $1 bill in the tweet. I just wanted to sort of, it was a reality check on how much money that is. When you can do amazing space things with it, and then you have leftover money What's interesting is he's not slowing down

Right, and he seems relatively healthy. Yeah, like he's fit works out a lot He's gotten jacked got jacked in a few though. Yeah, that's right. So he's probably gonna keep going for decades Maybe he's found the serum for infinite life. Yeah, billions of dollars. I mean, that's a- By the way, the world has always been influenced by billionaires, so this is not a special time. And sometimes with terrible results, right? That's right.

That's right. So I don't- William Randolph Hearst. Yeah, all of them. Count them up. Yeah. Count them up. Ben Franklin was pretty wealthy in his day as well.

Was he really? Yeah. Yeah. And he still flew that kite by himself? What a wild man. He didn't even hire somebody? Hey, I got an idea, but this might suck. You might die.

You might get electrocuted, but let's do it. Yeah, if YouTube was around then, you'd see him doing that experiment on YouTube. I wonder if it really happened. Like the whole George Washington and the cherry tree. That's probably bullshit Yeah, but you know I think people want legends of course. Yeah, yeah Of course they help give meaning to events in your life when you got a guy like Bezos though That is at the helm of this intense Empire and also is in many ways like Elon

empire and also is in many ways like Elon fascinated with technological growth. He's got this deep... What is this? Blue sky? Blue origin? Blue origin, yeah. Blue origin. So he has his own rocket ship program. He's got his own... I think it's Evian. Plus people worry that all the billionaires are building rockets to get to Mars and they

wonder are they just just gonna leave us All right Was it revion he has got a electric car company as well that they're heavily invested in you know so There's many things that are similar that they're doing these kind of you know Fascinating groundbreaking innovative business practices and I'm doing yeah, it. Yeah, fuck yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm all in. I'm just watching. I'm just like, it's fascinating, this cat.

You know? So can we talk about questions? Yes. Want to do that? Yes. Okay. That's my- Questions that have no answers.

Well, that's my segue, my awkward segue to the book I just published. Oh. Okay. Called Cosmic Queries. It's a book that is not based on answers that we have. It's based on questions that we've posed. And some questions have really good answers and we're good. Others we're still poking around and we think we're on the tail of it. And other questions, we don't even know if it's the right question. So it's a celebration of human curiosity at its deepest level. With whole sections, one of them is,

how did it all begin? What's it all made of? Are we alone in the universe? Very relevant to now. Also, how will it all end? And when you're on the bleeding frontier of science, you don't always know if the question you ask is even valid. This idea where every question is, no, that's not true.

That's not true. It's just not. Trust me, I've asked a lot of stupid questions. No, that's not true. That's not true. It's just not trust me I've asked a lot stupid questions No, I'm not saying that but when you're on the frontier, you just don't know right so I can give an absurd example Okay, suppose you you you posed a question you say yourself I want to design an experiment that'll visit the moon and test what kind of cheese the moon is made out of So is it so you have special equipment. Is it goat cheese?

Is it brie, roquefort? And then you get there and it's made out of silicates. The question had no meaning. Even though nouns and verbs were in the right place and it had a question mark and you were able to design an experiment. The question had no meaning in that realm. Let me get a more philosophical one. Visit Santa Claus, okay? Santa Claus on the North Pole. And you say, Santa, which way is north?

And every direction Santa points is due south. Because on the North Pole, the question, which way is north, has no meaning. You can't even go east. Everywhere you point is south. Correct. So on the grid that we've all agreed that we use to establish coordinates of earth, of Earth, Santa Claus can only go south. The question, which way is north, has no meaning. So these are clear to us. That's heavy. These are clear to us that this is the case. There are other questions where you know not to ask because you just know not to ask. We live on a spherical earth and I say to you, how far do you have to walk before you fall off earth's surface? You know to not even ask that.

I am assuming you're not a flat earther. You know not to ask that because the earth's surface curves back on itself. The question has no meaning on a curved surface. But you thought you were proud of yourself for even coming up with the question. Now you design a whole research project to answer that question and you find out you shouldn't have asked the question to begin with, but you didn't know in advance necessarily. Here's another one. about Pinocchio. Let's visit Pinocchio's universe. Okay? Okay.

All right. And Pinocchio's there. And Pinocchio says, my nose is about to grow. What happens next? He has to tell a lie. Tell me what happens to his nose. It grows when he lies. He just said, my nose is about to grow.

And if it grows, that meant he was telling the truth. No. It means he's about to tell a lie. That's all he says is, my nose is about to grow. Right. But maybe he keeps talking Okay So like someone says

Do I look fat in this outfit He says my nose is about to grow You look great Alright let's tighten it up then Okay Pinocchio says my nose is growing So what's his nose doing Well I would assume he just got done lying Pinocchio says, my nose is growing. So what's his nose doing?

Well, I would assume he just got done lying, so his nose is probably growing. No, because he's lying. He just told the truth, if his nose is growing. What if he lied, and then his nose grows because he lied? What if he says, my nose is growing, because his nose isn't growing, but because he lied about his nose growing, his nose grows. No, that's not how it works. Bro, I just cracked it't i just crack it i think i just cracked it i'm glad you made

sense to yourself in that sequence no i did make sense if pinocchio's nose was not growing and he said my nose is growing that would be a lie then his nose would grow correct oh no so if his nose would grow. Correct. Oh! So if his nose is not growing, when he says my nose is growing... It's a lie. He's lying, which means his nose should grow. Yes. Okay? What I'm saying is that Pinocchio cannot interact

with his nose in any truthful way because the world of rules associated with his universe prevents it. I see what you're saying. So in his universe, it has to be that he's deceiving someone and his nose involuntarily grows. Yeah, but that's not how that works in his universe.

Right. In his universe, if he tells a lie, his nose grows. If he tells a truth, his nose doesn't grow. Right. In his universe, if he tells a lie, his nose grows. If he tells a truth, his nose doesn't grow. Right. If he says, my nose is growing

and it's not growing. He's lying. He's lying and his nose should grow. Right. So, my only point there is the Pinocchio universe

and the rules that apply within it. Yeah. Prevent that sentence from having any meaning at all. Got it. In the same way, Santa Claus, which way is north, has no meaning. Got it.

So now we ask, what was around before the universe began? Yes. I do not know if that's an authentic question. Do we have an idea about the birth and death of the universe based on our own biological limitations? Not that we're not measuring, not that there's not a keen understanding of the radio frequency from the Big Bang and all, but just the idea. Do we put a limitation? Do we think of the idea of the universe beginning or ending based on our own idea of life and death that these things must apply to all things that we see? No, because we until 1930s, we had no idea the universe would have a beginning. It was assumed other than biblical account. Scient scientifically, the universe just simply always was.

There was no evidence for that, but we had no reason to think any other way about it. And so we didn't force the universe to have a beginning because that felt good to us. You're not going to do that unless you have authentic justification for it. So just no one really talked about it. I have books from that period. There is no chapter on cosmology. It ends with the starry skies of the night, and starting with the discussion of the planets.

And it doesn't even go there, because it doesn't know to go there, until you have data forcing the question. There wasn't enough information. Correct, and then we say, oh my gosh, the universe is expanding, discovered by Hubble in 1929. That means it's bigger today than it was yesterday. It's bigger yesterday than it was the day before.

Let's run the day before. Let's run the clock back. What about? Could all the universe have been in the same place at the same time? That meant it might have had a beginning. That's what started. Say that again? If we're expanding.

Right. Run the clock back. We were smaller in the past. Could the whole universe been in the same place at the same time at some distant point? If it was, that means the universe had a beginning. That's when the whole conversation began about the universe having a beginning. Had nothing to do with the fact that we're born and we live out our lives and die. Had nothing to do with that. So now we have a beginning, but what was around before the beginning?

That's an important and interesting question. I don't know. I should say that differently. That is a question, an English language sentence question. I do not know if that question has any more or less meaning than asking Santa Claus, which way is north? When we look at the Big Bang and we look at the fact that the universe is expanding and they know that there was some sort of an event, by measuring, how exactly do they measure the radio frequencies that come from the Big Bang? Like what's the signal? Oh, so it's microwave. It's microwave.

And it's really, it's not as deep as you might want to think it is. Okay? So do you realize you to think it is. Okay? So do you realize you can't see through the sun? Right. The sun is not transparent to visible light. Because visible light, when it enters the sun, the sun is made of plasma, which is a gas where electrons have been ripped off, ripped into the soup. So you have free-moving electrons and atoms, and it's a soup.

The electrons are not part of the atoms. The consequence of that is light interacts heavily with free electrons. So you try to move light through a plasma, and the light sees an electron. It careens off of it, and it does not travel in a straight line. It bounces and careens and scatters. And so by the time the light comes out the other side, you lost all hope of any information about what was on the other side of the star

or on the other side of that plasma. Okay. So the early universe was very hot. You can calculate what those temperatures must have been. So hot that all atoms are ionized and the whole universe is plasma. So light is just bouncing around within the universe. In fact, a lot of visible light is doing this. Then the universe expands and cools.

The electrons combine with the atoms. Then the universe expands and cools. The electrons combine with the atoms. All of a sudden, the beam of light is no longer batted to and fro by these free electrons. And you reach a point where the universe clears and it becomes transparent to the passage of light. In that moment, all the light that was contained in that fireball now moves free across the universe. That light, for the last 14 billion years, has been expanding with the expanding universe, and the energy of the visible light is now microwaves. You point a microwave telescope in any direction, it is bathed in microwaves from that event. Whoa.

Now when you're measuring something that is, the estimated date of the Big Bang is 13.8 billion years. Billion years ago, right. Is that? October 3rd. Is that the amount that they can measure or is there a potential further point that can't be measured? So we see objects that sent their light to us basically 14 billion years ago. How about objects farther away than that?

There are surely objects farther away. But the universe isn't old enough yet for its light to reach us. Whoa. So it's possible that things are far, far more distant. We could be living in an infinite universe, but all we have access to is our little bubble. And so every year goes by. We get a little more data. The bubble gets one light year larger.

Oh, wow. And we see a little bit more of whatever universe is out there. Now, here's what makes it like lose sleep deep. Okay? You ready? Oh, boy. I love these. Okay.

So how is it we can see the birth of the universe? That already happened. It's because it takes light time to travel. We look at 13.8 billion light years ago. We are seeing galaxies being born. Okay. Wait a billion years. Now, these galaxies are a billion years older. They're no longer being born. In fact, they're not giving us this light that I was telling you about that became microwaves. But wait a minute. The universe is now 15 billion years old. I can now see objects that have given their light to me

from 15 billion years ago. They are now being born. I'm seeing them be. So as long as there is a universe out there, and as long as the whole universe had the same birth date, which all evidence points to, I will always see evidence of the Big Bang. Because that information is always fresh to us from a distance whose light only just now reached us. So what you're going to look for is the day when this expanding horizon washes over nothing. If this expanding horizon moves and there's no galaxies there and there's nothing, then all the information about the formation of the universe goes away. And the Big Bang no longer has anybody telling us it is going through a Big Bang. That would be the edge of the known matter content

of the universe. When scientists study this information and they look back at this time period of 13.8 billion years and they hypothesize or they try to come up with theories about how far it could go back beyond that. How do they do that? No, the birth date is the same for this entire universe. Even the part of the universe we can't see. So even the part of the universe we can't see. We all have the same birth date. No matter what, it's 13.8 billion years. Correct. Now, what about the idea that things expand and contract and that it ultimately will all come back together? It's allowed

in the equations, but the data has never supported that. And all data support a one-way expansion. Not only that, the discovery of dark energy is accelerating the expansion. There's a whole section of the book on how it'll all end. And you get really speculative. It's like, okay, given what's happening now

and given what we know, here's what we think. If the accelerated expansion goes unchecked, it will overcome all the forces that are currently binding everything you know and love. Like gravity? Yes. It'll overcome gravity.

So the galaxies will no longer be able to hold together because the expansion of the universe is now manifesting at a local level rather than on a much larger level. So galaxies start getting stretched apart. And then the planets orbiting stars start getting stretched apart. And then the molecules start getting broken apart. And then the atoms themselves. And then in the limit, this stretching reaches the very pixels that comprise the fabric of space and time. It's called the Planck length. That is the very structure of what comprises everything we know in the universe.

And so the expansion will ultimately hit that. And we do not know. We don't know what the consequence of that. You know what we call it? It's called the big rip. What happens when you stretch fabric? There's a point where it doesn't stretch anymore and it rips. That's in between 20 and 22 billion years from now. If the cosmic acceleration goes unchecked, the world will end in a big rip. Wow. What could possibly check it? Not with a bang, but with a rip. Now the idea of something, of it being unchecked like what?

What could potentially cause it to be checked? So We don't know we don't know there could be some other thing that lands in the left way just one quick Can I run to the bathroom? Yeah? Yeah? It's not live right no Yeah, no, we'll be fine right back to real quick me and Jamie would talk shit about you This is not live, right? No, no, we'll be fine. We'll be right back to it real quick.

Me and Jamie would talk shit about you. Where are you going? Not too long. Which way is it? Take a left. Dude. Yeah, I know 20 billion years doesn't sound like, I mean, it sounds like you don't have to worry about it. But doesn't that, like, the idea that the universe is gone in 20 billion years, that freaks me out.

It shouldn't. I don't have much time left personally. But the idea that there'll be no universe at all to speak of what we're looking at, it'll all be molecules broken down. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to even wrap my head around it. I'm trying to figure out how to even wrap my head around it. Yeah, well, it's why it's so important for people like that to be out there that have these things that they can pose, these questions and these scenarios they could describe, where your mind is like, wait, what?

And then what happens? No one knows. But we have this extreme desire to know what happens next. Like what happens? What happens when I die? What happens if Austin has 5 million people? What happens if they don't get rid of the tents? What happens if, you know what I mean? Like there's always a what happens if. What happens if there's no more matter in the universe? It gets broken down to pixels. First of all, I thought pixels were just a visual representation of things on phones and screens and laptops and shit.

Did you even know that a pixel was a unit of measurement of the fabric of the universe? Definitely not. Yeah. Proof simulation theory, it sounds like. Yeah, right? If you get further and further out? If you had to bet all your money, if you had, again, if you had one side yes, one side no for simulation theory.

No worries. Yes. If I'm betting? Yes. Yes. If I'm betting UFOs? No. No?

Wow. Heavy. Jamie I'm betting UFOs, no. No? Wow. Heavy. Jamie just blew my mind. He doesn't believe in UFOs. He does believe in simulation theory. I was taking his bet earlier. I would bet that. Oh, okay. I bet it's something.

I bet it's us. I bet with UFOs, I bet they're from another planet, and I think they're probes. That's what I think. I think they're probes. You think they're from here? That means what I think. I think they're probes. You think they're from here? That means we don't get to touch the aliens. Yeah, I don't think they're interested in touching us. I think they think we're too volatile.

We're crazy. We shoot each other all the time. So let me tell you about the big rip. Yes. So it's terrifying. Yes. Because fabric, you stretch it to a point, and it rips. So that's just the end of the end of the end with that happens.

If something puts it in check, then we keep expanding. And what happens is all stars die, and the proton decays, and we're left with an entire universe of just sort of base particles where nothing happens. Right. Because there's no source of energy left.

And that's a less interesting fate than a big rip. But what's for me interesting is, and by the way, all this is in the last chapter. We talk about how it might all end. What for me is interesting is the levels of multiverses that might exist. So in our universe, there are likely other bubbles that are also expanding. And we're just one bubble among them. And this is the sort of traditional multiverse that people think about. And there may be an infinite number of these dotted into the total universe.

Can I pause you right here? Yeah. So the idea is that our universe is infinite. Possibly, yes. The bubble that we exist in may be infinite? No. Our bubble is one bubble within an infinite universe, and that infinite universe contains an infinite number of other bubbles. Correct.

and that infinite universe contains an infinite number of other bubbles. But our bubble is essentially, as we can measure it, 13.8 billion light years across. No, it's bigger than that. It's just that it's been 13.8 billion years travel time for the light. But over that time, the universe has expanded. So we have a diameter of like 100 billion light years across. And how do they estimate that? Because you know the rate that you're expanding. So that object sent us its light 14.8 billion years ago. The light's been traveling that long.

Well, what has the universe been doing for 14.8 billion years? It's been expanding. So that actual object is much farther away from us than 14 billion light years away. That's a point of confusion for many people. It's because in my field, we're kind of loose about it. We say 14 billion light years to the edge. Well, no, it's 14 billion years the time the light has been traveling from the edge. And where did the concept of these bubbles come from?

The idea that each one of these little universes, not little, obviously, but each one of these universes exists in some sort of a realm. It's a great question and an important question. So here's what happens. So now we have the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang. This has been around with us for 70, 80 years. Big Bang. This has been around with us for 70, 80 years. And that's pretty stable in terms of our understanding of things. But now we take quantum physics, which is the science of the small, and add it to Einstein's general relativity, the science of the large. And why would you do that? Because at the beginning of the universe, the large is small. So think about this. We have general relativity, which gives us black holes and all the rest of

this. That applies to big macroscopic things. I'm good with that. No problem. Quantum physics refers to atomic things primarily and molecules and how they behave. And the two don't talk to each other. It's like they don't, in fact, they're incompatible. And this is how you get string theorists. String theorists say, well, these are incompatible. Maybe there's a third theory above those two that combines them. And that's, we have top people working on that. When you start combining quantum physics with general relativity, because there was a time when the universe was small, then the entire universe behaves in quantum ways. And so you can create a state of the universe where it's what's called a false – it's in a false state. So it's a false state.

Let's say you have a hill that goes down, but then the hill goes back up and then it goes down to a much lower point. So now you take a marble and roll it down. Maybe it'll just sort of get stuck up there in that first dip. Well, if our universe is there, we might not become a universe. But it's possible to tunnel out of that and then slide all the way down to the bottom. When you do that, you release energy. And when that happens, you birth a universe.

And it turns out this process is not limited to happening once. So this can happen multiple times. And from people I've spoken with who work in this field, because it's slightly outside of my direct astrophysics interests, there are different kinds of these multiverses. One of them could have the same laws of physics that we have. That's what leads people to say there's another Joe Rogan, but he's the evil Joe Rogan with a goatee or whatever. But also there's another Joe Rogan that said everything that I've said, exactly the way I've said it.

This would be the claim. You're a twin, but maybe there's a little difference or not. Correct. Correct. An infinite number of them, right? The idea is that if the universe is that big... And it has an infinite number of universes. There have been infinite combinations of events and particles and manifestations of energy. An infinite number of Neil deGrasse Tysons. Possibly. On an infinite number of these podcasts.

I wouldn't want that because that would be... It's fine. I'd like different people. There are plenty of those too. Okay, plenty of those too. So now watch. Now imagine a universe where the laws of physics are slightly different.

That's a different manifestation of this process. Right. Is the speed of light a little different? Is the, you know. So that's another level of multiverse. And there's several levels. But the most significant one is one where not only are the laws of physics different, but maybe there's a universe where there are no laws of physics at all.

A wild west of physics? A wild west. Or maybe there's one where even the parameters that establish mathematical truths are fungible. Ooh. Right? So the value of pi is something else. Extra props for using the word fungible. It's one of my new favorite words.

Is that right? Excellent. Non-fungible tokens have brought it up. So all I'm saying is in the last part of the book, we explore all of these exit ramps from the universe that take us to the end of the universe. And we don't even know if we're asking the right question. But what we share with you is a sense of where the current thinking would take us if you extended it to its limits. When you ponder questions like this, when you ponder questions like other universes with different laws of physics or no laws of physics or fungible laws of physics, when you sit around, like,

what is your process? Do you sit alone in your office and sit in front of a laptop and start writing this stuff out? Like, how do you ponder these things? I think I can speak for many of my colleagues. There's some experiments that are collaborative. And so, for example, the mission to Mars. Everyone got together. You get the engineers. We want this craft. We're going to put in this experiment.

We're going to look for water. We're going to look for life. OK. That's not the solo burning midnight oil. When you're trying to think deep thoughts about what might or might not be true, objectively true in the universe, that can be a little more solitary, I think. And you can come up with ideas anyway. Forget this deductive reasoning, inductive, forget all that. You can have an idea just sitting on a toilet, okay?

And it could be a spark. It could be because you saw some great work of art. OK. And it could be a spark. It could be because you saw some great work of art. And and so sources of sparks of creativity and inspiration can come from anything. You could be religious and you want to manifest the glory of God. And that's what's triggering you to have these thoughts. OK, that's. So the creative process is not so regimented as the teaching of scientific method would have you believe. You go to a science lab, well, what is your hypothesis?

What is your this? Then what is the test of the hypothesis? You know, I don't even have an hypothesis. I don't know. I just wonder. So the formality that we are often exposed to is not always how that unfolds. So on top of that, getting back to your question, often new thoughts, you're alone. You're just, you know, you're not distracted in this world of multitasking.

No, no. Great ideas. I don't think come out of multitasking. I don't think so either. And there's a saying, great saying. It's if you want to be more creative, become less productive. Because in a day, you can say, oh, I got all my email done and I got the groceries and

I did, well, did you think about any, did you create anything? Well, we're rarely bored, right? That's part of the problem. That's a problem. It is a problem and people don't think it is. Yeah, that's a problem. They say, I've been busy and that's good. And I'm saying, did you create anything? Maybe you don't want to create anything. I don't want to judge you for not having done so. But if you want creativity to be a fundamental part of your life, then you're going to have to not get stuff done at some point.

That's a nice excuse for a lot of lazy people out there. I'm just trying to be creative, man. That's why I'm on the couch with the bong. Yeah. This is a creative moment. But your process is what I'm asking specifically. I read a lot of science. Well, there's journals, there's books that people have read. There are fields within astrophysics that are slightly outside of my research expertise.

And some of those folks have written popular level books. I'll read those. Those are fun because they're sort of scoped. There are review papers that are written. And for me, new ideas, I mean, think about it. What is a new idea? You might even call it the definition of genius. It's you see what everyone else sees, but you think what no one else has thought.

But now you want to make sure, but add to that, maybe you are so diverse in what you expose yourself to that you see more than what other people see. And when you see more, you have the capacity to make connections that might not have previously been imagined, either by you or by anybody else. This is the value of cross-pollinating fields. cross-pollinating fields. It's why major discoveries can come in from the side in what is otherwise a very staid path of progress. So in a hospital, people say, how do you want to invest money? In physics? That's so 20th century with the Cold War and the bombs. Let's invest in biology. That's the ticket. Okay?

So that makes sense, you know, as a headline. But let's unpack that. Go walk into a hospital and line up every single machine brought into the service of diagnosing the condition of the human body without cutting you open. So you'd have the MRI or the x-ray machines. You'd have the ultrasound. There's no end of these machines that are in the service of the hospital. And MRI, admittedly, is the doctor's best friend in studying what's inside your body.

studying what's inside your body. To a machine, every single one of them is based on a principle of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine. Really? Yes. Wow. Okay. Even the radiology department. The doctors are using radioactive elements.

Were there doctors that discovered radio? No. There are physicists. There's chemists. There's Marie Curie. These are people who are not in the medical community. The x-ray machine. Who discovered that?

Wilhelm Röntgen. The very first Nobel Prize in physics went to him. So by specifically concentrating on biology. Now, he immediately saw the applications. He saw there's a picture of the bones of his hand, but he's a physicist. He's not saying, let me help orthopedic surgeons set bones. This is not his motivation. So new ideas, especially new things that can transform society, tend to come from fields that, if they're not tangent to your field, they're just some other kind of way in.

And so some of the greatest advances in my field came about because chemists were in the coffee lounge at the same time we were. Or biologists walked in. That informs our astrobiology exploits. So it's not just let me sit down alone in an armchair and deduce the nature of the world. You want to be exposed to what everybody else is doing. You want to talk to them. You want to hear their ideas, collaborate. No one person, you know, the midnight oil makes a good TV show or movie, the midnight loner genius.

But science, most science today does not unfold that way. So getting back to my point, personally I do a lot of reading. And when I have an idea, then I bounce it off of people who are highly critical and skeptical of any new idea. And if it survives that, you can't have an ego going into it. How do you do these bounce-offs? Do you sit down? Oh, I say, oh, I get colleagues and I say, what do you think of this idea? So do you prepare them? Like, hey, George,'d like to sit down and no no no chat with you It can be it came Mary. I've got a crazy idea to throw throw your way it could And in fact I was once at a wine tasting and there's someone else there

Who's a biologist and we came up with an idea together? We're probably gonna write a paper on it about life on earth and in the universe and Just from a conversation at a wine tasting. You were both hammered. Talking shit. Well, what wine was that? That we were the vintage or whatever. No, so, like I said, creativity can unfold in many

ways, but because he's a biologist and I'm not, he says something and I say, wait a minute. What do you think of this? And he never thought of what I thought and I never thought of what he thought. Together, it's magic. And so this kind of creativity, this sort of cooperative exploration of ideas, then that gives birth in your mind to the idea of writing a book about something. It can, but first you would write a research paper and get a peer review, this sort

of thing. And then if it's good and it's successful, then, and the public wants to know about it, that's ripe for a book. My books tend to be a little more summative than that. I don't write books on single topics. They're, as an educator, I'm broad. And how do you get inspired in terms of like the subject matter you choose? I mean, it's always about the cosmos,

but in terms of like specifics. You know what it is? It's, I'm in terms of like specifics you know what it is it's um i'm a servant of your curiosity and his curiosity and her curiosity i'm a servant of that and as i tweet and as i post and as i walk the streets and as i sit in an airplane with someone next to me who learns that i know astrophysics and and i their questions and as I reply, do their eyebrows go up and their eyes lighten or do they look bored and want to order their next drink?

I monitor this and I make mental inventory of what excites people in the universe. And when I'm overloaded by what I know excites people it's got to go into a book so it just has to kind of catch fire catch fire yeah and especially my goal is to reignite curiosity within your soul of of knowledge and and and searching that may have once ignited when you were a kid, but has long been dampened because we don't live in a world that promotes curiosity. We're in a very gullible world. Is that why it's part, is it part of your strategy when you do your star talk, you do

it with comedians? Is it part of your strategy? Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. So you yourself are a professional comedian among all the other hats you wear. So I deeply respect your field in that way. My co-host for StarTalk, the podcast, is always a professional stand-up comedian. Not the kind who just tells jokes, right? But the kind that sees the world and explores ways you might not have thought about it, connects it to the topic, and then you end up smiling while you're learning. And in my experience, if you smile while you learn, you learn better. You learn more deeply and you come back for more.

And do you like actively curate these comedians? Do you go to comedy clubs? And do you like actively curate these comedians you go to comedy clubs? Yes Well, I don't do it. I don't do all that footwork, but we have people who do yeah We go to comedy clubs and we find and we like new comics you know the lot of new folks go with you know open mic night that sort of thing and There's some we return to more often than others Chuck. Nice is Chuck's great on you. He's one of our favorites and he's obviously Fascinated by the same topic and he's smart so and as all comedians are in my experience. But he's obviously fascinated by the same topics. And he's smart, as all comedians are, in my experience.

So he's not only smart. You need to meet some of my friends. I could change your theory. I'm sticking to it. You guys are smart. And so just the format of the show is, so it's not just comedian in the science there's a pop culture element to it so some ridiculous fraction of my life is invested staying fluent in pop culture so that when i talk about the science and you don't know where i'm coming from i say well consider

this this is what beyonce did or this is what some politicians said or this is what Beyonce did, or this is what some politician said, or this is what the Pope was thinking about. And when you come to me with a pop culture scaffold, and what makes a pop culture, everyone has a similar scaffold. I don't have to construct that. And I look at it and I analyze it from three dimensions and I say, I'm going to clad this bit of information on that part of that scaffold. And how do you actively, like, engage with pop culture and curate sort of a knowledge base about what these wacky kids are interested in today? It's I read responses to my social media posts. Oh, that's so that's. So the response is a neurosynaptic snapshot of what people are thinking in response to the very words I choose, to the phrasing. If I think something is funny and nobody laughs, I want to know that.

That's important information for me. If I think something isn't funny and they do laugh, if I missed something, if I was insensitive to something that I would have wanted to be had I known, that comes out. That's there. And that informs future encounters I have with people, informs sentences I compose for books. And that's me, in my mind's eye, being a servant of your curiosity. So you think of it almost as an ingredient in your education. Yes. Yes. It's not just here's something, you better learn this or you're going to

flunk the test. Every student who flunks the test is a statement for me about the instructor, not about the student. That's interesting. So you have teachers who say I just have some students that just don't want to learn. And all right. But have you ever heard a teacher say, I have students who aren't

learning, so that must mean I suck at my job? I'm sure someone said that. I've never heard anyone say that. Okay. So at what point are you going to invert the table and say the burden of them learning is on me, not on them? Now, of course, in some cases it's impossible. Large classes, you can't be babysitter to everyone. Some people have emotional stability problems. So I get that. But I don't want to hear a teacher say, I have students who refuse to learn. My response is, I see a teacher who refuses to figure out how to get them to learn. Yeah, that takes more effort. Yeah.

Yeah, that's hard. But is anything in life worth achieving that isn't itself hard? Your role as an educator, and as an educator, a public educator, meaning you're someone who's in the public eye all the time educating people in a pop culture way. Basically, right. But you're doing it about things like the nature of the universe itself. Super complex issues.

And you're doing this all under all this heavy scrutiny. I mean, the fucking, the people from the meat company went after you the other day. What the hell was that? Steakums. Steakums had at you with you about a tweet. Yeah, here's what happened. I thought it was a little disingenuous on Steakums's part. Okay, so here's what happened. There's an anatomy of that that I find fascinating. All right? I post a tweet. Right.

The tweet is... Something about not having to believe the science. Yeah, so the good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it. Right. Then Stakeham's went after you. No, no, hold on, hold on. So now my very next tweet said, if you have the urge to argue with my previous tweet,

please read this link before doing so. And it's a link to a four-minute read essay I wrote called What Science Is and how and why it works Okay, did you post that before after steakums went after you? No, that's been posted for years, right? But I'm saying did you post the second tweet? I? Don't that the second tweet was ten minutes after the first tweet. Okay. Okay. It was immediate essentially immediate So you're basically just following up with the reference, like here's-

Because I knew people might want to try to take issue with this. I knew that. But you didn't know it was gonna be steak almost. Okay. So watch. Here's what happened. That first tweet escaped from my following

because so many people retweeted it. So now people are reading the first tweet without the benefit of the second tweet. Stakehams is among them. And I know this because when I read their reply to me, I looked at their header and it doesn't say Stakeham follows Neil Tyson. They don't follow. If you don't follow me, you didn't see the first tweet. I mean, the second tweet. You had no idea that that was there. So you essentially said what they said to you, but with far more information. It's like his tweet to you, criticizing you, is essentially much of the same that was in your article.

You're talking about- That article was entirely about what it means for science to establish truth. Yes. That science uniquely establishes what is objectively true in this world. And what did Stakeham say? Do we know what Stakeham said?

No, they just screamed, and scientists said the world was flat, or before Copernicus- Well, it's a little bit more articulate than that it was a total quite clever there was a total body of attack yes regarding citing occasions when scientists have been wrong okay well he's also explaining clarifying what the actual scientific method is versus just a flat statement like science doesn't need you to believe it's true or however you phrased it.

Well, I'm just saying that, yeah, so the Stakeham one, there's some informed people there, I think, and they just like creating controversy. I don't have a problem with that. Isn't that bizarre that it's Stakeham's? Well, it's fine. Okay. I wrote back to them and I said, hi, Stakeham's. It looks like you don't follow me.

So that accounts for why you didn't read this link. Had you read this link? And then I tried to be a little clever, clumsily. I said, if you and your followers took four minutes to put down your steak and cheese hoagie to read this essay you would then understand the meaning of that treat and you would not so i i said that and then it became a whole thing but that's the nature of social media but but i realized that i cannot have one tweet reference another because if the previous one is alive and it gets out, no one has any sense of where I'm going. My following does. And they were so fascinating four-minute read.

Thank you. I see and I agree. And I talk about truths, the three kinds of truth. Do you know about that? Did I tell you this? Sure. Go ahead. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. I thought deeply about this and this was my conclusion. Okay. The three kinds of truths. One of them is a personal truth. This is something that's true to you, and no one can take it away from you. Jesus is your savior.

In a free country, no one is going to take that from you. No one should take it from you. All right Mohammed is the last prophet. These are personal truths that you hold dear I Don't have a problem with your personal truth. Is that the right word for it? I'm calling it that your beliefs We can call it beliefs, but they call it personal truths I'm respecting if you look at the word word truth, the first websites are religious websites. Truth is a very important word within belief systems.

And so I studied that and I said, all right, I'm not going to tell them, give me the word truth because you're not describing truth, you're describing belief. That's a fight I'm not interested or willing to have. Okay. Give him the truth. Look, there are whole posters with a cross and it says seek the truth in Jesus, right? So I'm not going to fight that. That's a personal truth. It's not just a political truth.

A political truth is something that becomes true in your head because it was repeated so many times and aligns with what you want. Okay? So hearing Trump talk about Hillary Clinton, it was Crooked Hillary, right? So what's Hillary's first name? Crooked because it was repeated so many times. And our brain gets co-opted because we, in nature, in the Serengeti, if we see something repeating, it gives us a good indication that maybe it's real and we should be careful about it or we can, it's a reliable thing.

In modern times, we have co-opted that feature of human evolution. modern times, we have co-opted that feature of human evolution. And now we give you information that has no foundation in truth, but repeat it, and in your head, it becomes true. It becomes true, especially if you want it to be true. I call that a political truth, but there are other... The third truth is an objective truth. This is a truth established by the methods and tools of science and verified by the methods and tools of science. Once that is established, it doesn't later on become false. Like the temperature of boiling water. For example, under atmospheric conditions. Like the fact that Earth orbits the sun,

like the fact that Earth is round, the sun is hot, there's thermonuclear fusion in the core, that the universe is expanding, that the galaxy is rotating, that there are other galaxies, that there's such a thing as quantum physics, that there are things called electrons and protons and neutrons and atoms and carbon. There is a body of objective truths established by the methods and tools of science that when it is established, it is not later found to be false. You can expand on that truth. The truth can become deeper, but it doesn't become false. And these methods and tools have been in practice basically since Galileo and Sir Francis Bacon around 1600. Before then, some people knew about this process that science goes through, but it wasn't widespread practice, not until about 1600.

So if you're going to say – you should see the responses in here. Scientists told us the Earth was flat. That was before 1600. Scientists used to, oh, we used to bleed you with leeches. Okay. Well, let's go back to when we did that. All right. This would be biologists doing it.

And what was the state of research at the time? That was a frontier thing they were doing. It wasn't verified. It was a frontier thing they were doing. It wasn't verified. It was a hypothesis that they were acting on. Okay? So yeah, the bleeding edge of science, most of that will turn out to be wrong. Most of it. It's when it gets tested. And the press gets the single scientific result that's kind of intriguing and interesting, and they report it as a new scientific truth because it was a scientific study, especially if it comes from a place like Harvard where they'll put that up in the front sentence without saying, we don't know if this

is actually true. We need verification from other studies. They don't say that typically, or that's later on in the article. So that's how you can go from, oh, cholesterol is good for you. No, cholesterol is bad for you. No, cholesterol is good for you. No, cholesterol is bad for you. That was an unresolved research result. But you cited one research result that was consistent with your own desires and that became your new truth. That's in a way a political truth if it's repeated enough.

But then you find it's not that a political truth if it's repeated enough, but then you find it's not that. It's because it's still an actively researched frontier. When you wrote out these three truths, how did you come to only three? Do you think there's room for more? Maybe. This is not an edict that thou shalt only have, but when you see something repeated,

I call that a political truth, but it's also a kind of a, there are other truths. So, for example, you've heard this. We only use 10% of our brain. Yeah, but that's not real. There's an entire movie based on that premise. Lucy. Lucy. Yeah. Okay? That premise is based on that premise. Lucy. Lucy. Yeah. Okay?

That premise is false. It was never true. That's another kind of thing. It was never true. That annoyed me. I liked that movie, though. It was fun. It was good seeing Scarlett in that.

And Morgan Freeman's in it. It's had some good roles. So let's go back to where it started from. You know where that came from? There was a neuroscientist. Well, a brain scientist who, because you can't do experiments on human brains, that's not ethical. All you can do is wait until someone gets an accident. And so there's a nail gun that damages this part of the brain.

Oh, you lost your language. Damage of the brain. Oh, you lost your language. Damage of this part. Oh, you lost your short-term memory. Oh, you lost your long-term memory. And so you assemble the bits of what the brain is doing by people who were injured. This is a very slow, clumsy process, but that's all you've got. The person who had an article said, the brain is so complex, today we only know what 10% of it is used for.

Overnight, that became we only use 10% of our brain. And that became the mantra of school teachers getting children to rise to their potential. And there was no force operating against that coming into our culture. It wouldn't have ruined the movie if they didn't have that in there. I mean, there's no reason for that to be in the movie. The movie was fascinating as it was.

They could have just given her some other power, but they went with that 10% thing. Yeah, but they didn't even need to do that. Okay, can I give my critique even of that? Let's say we did only use 10% of our brain. Here's my critique. Even if that were true. Okay. Let's say we did only use 10% of our book. Here's my critique even if that were true. Okay, the smartest people, you know

Do they have an inkling of kinetic powers over objects in front of them Why are we obsessed with extremely high intelligence having power over matter Why aren't people with extremely high intelligence just good at solving problems they're just the best people at solving problems in the world we want superpowers that so they're becoming superpowers that's right and even in the movie that had John Travolta in it oh yeah phenomenon was that the one he gets struck by lightning? Right, right. Yeah. And he's up there and he makes a top spin just by spinning his hand and the top pops up and spins. It's like, no.

If you're smarter than everybody, you'll do smart things. You're not going to sort of levitate objects. His brain works better. He can make things move. By what force? No. By telekinetics. We know what forces are operating in this world.

There's no way telekinetics is real? No. Okay. We've got, we understand what forces there are. But people that make things move with their mind, what do you think they're doing? They're lying? Yes. To themselves or to others.

People get so upset if you say that. Right? What do you think about psychic ability? Think there's any of it? I'm not convinced by any of it I've ever seen. Anything? Nothing. Put them in a controlled situation. If there is psychic ability, it's not particularly repeatable. Right. Like maybe an emerging phenomenon. Okay. So, but you have to be invoking forces that don't otherwise show up in a laboratory. Right. So that's A. B, the laboratory has a hard time duplicating your claims.

Okay. C, if one of your psychic ability is to help the police find the criminal, why is it, oh, they're in a ravine? Why don't you just give the person's name and their address and their phone number? Well, it's not that good. It's like a dog. Well, when you get a bloodhound to go find a guy, they're not that good at it. Okay, I don't know. They're pretty good at it.

They're like, they run around the woods and they catch a scent. They could find somebody else's underwear. Smell it. Well, the idea is you give them yours so they know what you smell like and they go a scent and try to follow? They could find somebody else's underwear smelling. Well, the idea is you give them yours so they know what you smell like and then they go looking for you. Yeah, how unique are you in 7 billion people? For a dog, pretty fucking unique.

Okay, so a dog's good. Dogs can smell COVID-19. So then why are they not good? So why did you say they weren't good? They're pretty good, but they're not perfect. It's not like you let a dog loose and it just runs full clip. Well, they're better than any of us would be

in that situation. My point is it's gathering evidence. It's using its ears and its ears are actually wafting up smells. So the amazing Randy, who's a magician, who also exposes frauds and claims, there is a woman who claimed

to be a very important psychic, I think, in Russia. And she sees events and she can look at frauds. Exposes frauds and claims. There is a woman who claimed to be a very important psychic, I think, in Russia. And she sees events and she can know things. She can look at a photo of you and figure out, you know. All right. So he brings a photo of someone and gets her to talk about it. She looks at it. Oh, you know, he went to college and he majored in psychology. Turned out to be correct.

Although that's the number one major in colleges in the United States. It's the number one major. But she got that correct. Okay. Then she says other things about it, where she might be living. And what she got wrong or never didn't reveal about him is that he's dead. You think that would have made a signal big enough for her to have captured. And the person was Ted Bundy, the serial killer.

The photo was of Ted Bundy? Yes. And those two really important bits of information. The dead part's kind of important, but the serial killer part is really important. You'd think that would have risen up out of the page. That's the most interesting thing about him. So if there is psychic power, I'm just very disappointed in it. Well, that lady.

Yeah. Well, she was heralded by others. I mean, what else do you do? You're going to go to someone who's not heralded? others and what else you do you can go to someone who's who has who's not heralded you Go to the best who they claim yeah, I think most of the ones that claim to be psychic or full of shit I'm not discounting the possibility of psychic Phenomenon, that's what? The amazing Randy did he he right he bypassed everyone who everyone else said was full of shit

They said go to her go to her. That's what he did. What else do you want him to do? Yeah. No, I mean, look, I've never seen any evidence that psychic ability is real, but I've left the door open because I think intuition is a weird thing, and then the ability to think that you know when something's going to happen and then something does happen. People claim that has taken place. I don't know if it really ever has, but if it ever has, if someone really did tell someone that something was going to happen and it did happen, that to me is very fascinating.

I've seen no evidence that it does, that it does work that way. Well, it's got to be a reliable prediction. Maybe. But again, maybe it's an emerging phenomenon. Maybe it's got to be a reliable prediction. Maybe. Right. But again, maybe it's an emerging phenomenon. Maybe it's a thing that one day human beings will have as in our natural toolbox. What's the difference between you manifesting this yet-to-be-fully-harnessed power intermittently and other times it doesn't work for you, but sometimes it does? Well, wait, wait. So what's the difference between that? Okay, and you hitting on something correctly at random

well One thing would be if you hitting on if you're hitting on something at random you don't really know you're guessing The idea about this phenomenon is that you're getting a signal. It's just not reliable. The idea would be, and again, I'm not a biologist, right? But if something was emerging from the human species, something like language, language did not start out the way you and I are talking right now on a podcast. Vision, the ability to see things with the eyes. It did not start out crystal clear, 20-20 vision. This is an emerging thing that conceivably took millions, if not billions of years to evolve. Just to be cautious, so emergence in biology means something different from what you're saying. All you're saying is that it evolved.

What is emergence? All you're saying is that it evolved. What is emergent? Emergence is a property, a fascinating property of an organism that is not derivable from any of its parts when you look at it. So, for example, you can study a bird and you can know everything there is about a bird. But you would not necessarily, I don't't think being able to predict that birds flock together so the flocking is emergent that's an emergent what i'm talking about is something emerging that's just that's just evolution that's just right okay you just just say it evolved okay so something like psychic phenomenon evolving from human beings.

Something slowly but surely. You can call it intuition. Oh, I thought about someone and my phone rang. It was them and I haven't talked to them for years. I mean, that might be coincidence. Yeah, but did you keep track of all the misses? I mean, this is confirmation bias, right? For sure. So my favorite example here is you line up 1,000 people.

It's a coin toss thing. Line up 1,000 people. It's a coin toss thing. Line up 1,000 people and then flip a coin. And if you get tails, you sit down. Okay? So now you got 500 left. Flip it, 250. Okay? You know, what are we down to?

We have 250 people. They flip a coin. Half get heads, 120 sit down. Now we're down to 60. And then 30. 15 and then 8 and then 4 and then 2 and then 1. All right? So in a classic execution of this experiment, there's one person left at the end. And you know something? That person flipped heads 10 consecutive times.

So what does the press do? The press goes to that person. That person flipped heads 10 consecutive times. So what does the press do? The press goes to that person and say, how do you feel about winning this coin toss? You know, I felt some heads energy halfway through. And this felt really real to me. And I saw signs and I saw a heads up coin on the street. So I knew I was going to win. Did they interview anyone else who didn't win to see if they had heads energy feelings?

No, they don't even get interviewed. And plus, we are so hubristic and ego driven that we think we are special for having flipped head 10 times in a row. When almost every time you do this experiment, somebody's gonna flip heads 10 times in a row. That mirrors what I've always said about the secret and the law of attraction. I'm like, you're only talking to winners. Yes. Talk to people that imagined

they were gonna be rock stars, imagined. Correct, and we don't, that's correct. It didn't work out for them because you can't just met they might have really been thinking hard about it all day and night but you can't just manufacture things from your mind but what you can do is have a goal work towards it work towards it have discipline have focus learn from your mistakes improve upon your approach and then eventually get to a place where you can look back and say, you know, I did it all with my mind. I made it happen.

I envisioned it, and I made it happen. And people are like, oh, my God, he's using the secret. Yeah, yeah. They're using the law of attraction. Right, right, right, right. And that's in a lot of talk shows, you know, mid-afternoon talk shows. Yeah, like the gals. The ladies like those.

And stay-at-home dads. They're really into those. So I want to just give a brief thing. I feel like I've got to catch an airplane at some point. Do you? Yeah. Where are you going? I'm going back home tonight.

Yeah, okay. I'm going back home tonight. So let's go back 150 years. Michael Faraday. Faraday Cage. Among many things credited to him. Physicist in the UK. Very religious man, by the way.

But he left religion outside the lab when he walked in. God wasn't participating in his thoughts as he was conducting the experiments, right? God was everywhere else in his life, right? But when he walked in, it's all physics. So he invents the concept of the field. Because what does it mean? Something can be here and influence something else over there. Is there anything connecting them?

I don't see anything. There's nothing there. I can wave my hands. There's nothing there. I can wave my hands. There's a field. The concept of a field is birthed with Michael Faraday. It stumped Newton. I have action at a distance. How does this work? How can Earth pull the moon? Is there a rope? Is there a chain? How does this work? The field was invented with Faraday. All right. What's Faraday's experiment? He takes a wire, puts it through a magnetic field, and then a meter turns over here. Moving a wire through a magnetic field made electrons move through the wire, and he measured current over here.

Doing this over here made something else happen over there. And no one understood this. Oh my gosh. There is action happening and I don't understand it. Let's figure it out. And the attempt to figure that out was the birth of our modern understanding of electromagnetism. All I'm saying is today there is no mysterious phenomenon happening on a tabletop. There isn't. Everything that's happening here we understand from the material science to the strength to what happens is liquid in my glass. There's paint.

There's material. All of this is understood. So where's the frontier of physics? It's in particle accelerators. It's at the limits of the energetics of the world. And yes, there, there's some things we don't understand. Just recently, one of the particles in the universe, the muon, was sent into a magnetic field and it started moving in ways nobody predicted. Our understanding of what the muon is supposed to do, it did not obey.

Deeply interesting. The press puts it as, oh, physics is tossed on its ear. Everything else still works as we imagined it, as we've measured it. But there's a new phenomenon. People are all in it right now trying to figure out what this particle called the muon is making it do something that we didn't expect it to do. That's not on the tabletop. That's not on the tabletop. So to say you're going to have a psychic power that manifests on a tabletop, there is no – we got the tabletop. What do you think about that phenomenon, about the idea of the phenomenon, psychic phenomenon, is so interesting to people?

Why is that something that's so compelling and has been so prevalent throughout history? Why is that something that's so compelling and has been so prevalent throughout history? I think we have always deeply respected anyone who had the power of prophecy. Anyone. Now, what's weird is the people who really have the power of prophecy are scientists. I can tell you that on June 10th, there's going to be a solar eclipse visible from New York and the sun will rise eclipsed. Now, if I didn't tell you how I knew that, I can create a cult. Okay? But I say, well, there's an equation.

You got to take some physics and some math and you learn some astrophysics and you could predict that too. Well, that takes away any mystique I might have had over you for knowing the future. But you go back to all cultures. There's the shaman who's, oh, the weather this and the future that and the moon this. These are people with power over others. Even we are so into this that we're thinking that dreams matter. Oh, I dreamed that they were, oh, is that going to be true? Oh my God. Look at how much we invest in thinking somebody's dream is something that's going to come true. That was especially true in the past.

Less of it today because we know more about dreams and things. But the urge to want someone else to have the power to predict the future seems to be without limit. And psychic powers and astrology, what is astrology but a method to predict what's going to be without limit. And psychic powers and astrology, what is astrology but a method to predict what's going to happen to you today? All of that. But that's a weird one because you lump it in with astronomy because astrology and astronomy sort of like get lumped in together in a lot of people's eyes like, oh, but it's based on where the planets are.

And we know that the planets have an effect on you because the gravity and it changes and shifts. That's why the tide goes in and out. We're always constantly being affected by these invisible forces and Neil deGrasse Tyson, they can shape your personality. If you just let me read your chart, I'll tell you. Do you know the tidal force wrought upon Earth by the moon has nothing to do with the phase of the moon it does it's the same all the time it's the same all the time a full moon has

the same amount of gravity same tidal force on the earth and on you as a quarter moon as a half moon as, you know, all those phases. So the tidal force that is on, that we know the tide shifts, like is it gravity alone that's causing that tide to shift in and out? The tide actually doesn't shift. It doesn't?

No. What happens? No, okay. So wherever the moon is in space, the side of Earth closest to the moon is more attracted to the moon than the side that's farthest away. Okay? So because the total force is different across Earth, Earth gets stretched a little, elongated. It's especially visible in the oceans relative to the land, but Earth's physical body is also stretched in a direction towards the moon, except it's a little ahead of it, but we don't have to worry

about that for the moment. So the moon stretches the tide. That's called the tidal force on the Earth. Okay, so now watch. As Earth rotates, we rotate once a day. How long does it take the moon to go around the earth? Once a month. So here's this tidal bulge. Earth rotates inside the bulge. And what you say at the beach, oh, the tide is coming in and out. No. It is you rotating into and out of a tidal bulge that's fixed in space towards the moon. Wow.

Okay, so now- That's a heavy one. Well, it's because our language doesn't reflect reality. We say the tide comes in and out, but we are rotating into the bulge and then out of the bulge. That's why there are two high tides in a day. Oh. And then into the other bulge, which is on the other side, and then out of the bulge. Two high tides, two low tides. All right.

So now, why are high tides higher during full moon? Why? Because the sun also makes tides on Earth. Oh, my goodness. About a third the strength of the moon tides. about a third the strength of the moon tides. And there's the sun tides trying to blend in with the moon tides, and it's on a different cycle, okay?

And, oh, when we have full moon, the sun is creating tides that are added to the moon's tides. So we have higher tides on the full moon because the sun's tides add to it, not because the moon has any special extra powers over us. So it is uninformed, and in some cases just outright BS, that people are saying, the full moon has extra power and tides over you.

No, it doesn't. The moon itself, no. Now, the moon itself, the thing that people always want to say is that people are 60 whatever percent water. What percent are we? It's about that. That's right. More than half.

If the moon affects the tides, wouldn't it affect the water in your body? Yeah. So the tidal force is the force across the size of the object. Right. Okay. So Earth is 8,000 miles across. So the gravity from the moon is somewhat less on the far side of the Earth compared to the side of the Earth nearest the moon.

So you have to ask, how much stronger is the moon's gravity from one side of your head to the other? That's the question. Right. It would have to be pulling you in a certain direction. It'd have to be stronger on one side than the other and have to stretch your head. We can calculate how much that is. And I did it once.

It was something like a millionth the force that's operating on your head from the weight of your pillow. But you're not creating lycanthropic stories based on whether you had a tempur-pedic pillow or a down pillow. What do you think is the origin of those stupid stories then? Because there is always a thing. People like finding excuses outside of themselves to account for their reprehensible behavior.

Oh. But don't. For me, that's the number one. That's the number one. It relieves you of accountability. And, of course, Shakespeare knew this, and hence his line. Was it in Julius Caesar? The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but within ourselves.

So Shakespeare knew this. And notice he's talking about fault, right? It's always what caused that to happen. And you want to blame things that are not within yourself. But even if you're not talking about yourself in terms of like what's happening, if you're working in an emergency room, a lot of doctors will swear

that there's more activity during a full moon. Oh, yeah. So here's what happens. A full moon, oh, by the way, what you really have to test is, is there more activity during a full moon when it's overcast at night, when no one sees the full moon, oh, by the way, what you really have to test is, is there more activity during a full moon when it's overcast at night, when no one sees the full moon? So what you have is a self-fulfilling process. You read all these stories about acting crazy under full moon.

A full moon is the only phase that rises at sunset and sets at sunrise. So it's up all night. You go to the bar. Most places, the bar closes 2 a.m.m you come out the full moon is high in the sky and you read all these stories and so you just you're ready to just act crazy okay so so this is life imitating art in that case so what you really need to do is check to see when you don't know it's a full moon and you cut because it's cloudy and You come overcast and you come out of the bar. Do you act crazy? I Bet you the answer is no. I always not only that just the only that People's ability to judge when the moon is full is kind of loose

So the food to the untrained eye the moon is full for about four days so So to the untrained eye, the moon is full for about four days. So just consider that as well. I've always thought it was the actual light that the moon is shedding, and it allows people to do more things outside. As well. Which makes people do stupider shit. The full moon is six times brighter than the half moon. It's a law of reflection that makes it extra bright relative to if it's half lit.

And so, yeah, you can see more things going on at night and possibly get into more trouble that way. And there's another one. There are some municipalities where there are slightly more births during full moon than others. Not everywhere. And people say, well, the extra gravity from the full moon. The full moon does not have extra gravity, first of all. Plus, even if that were true, you would have to, like, be in the delivery room with your legs in the stirrups facing the moon out the window. The moon pulls the baby out.

And the moon yanks the baby out. But how about the delivery rooms where you're facing the other way? Then the baby is pulled in. I mean, so just the absurdity of how you'd have to imagine this would play out. But also, and you can do the calculation, that the gravity of people in the room on you and the machine, the light fish is greater than the gravity of the moon on you. But you're blaming the moon for this. So here's the thing. But it is true that in some municipalities, slightly more babies are born during full moon. So you can say,

oh, it's mysterious, it's aliens, it's magic, it's this. Or you can say, is there another reason? Well, yeah. Yeah. The human gestation period, human female gestation period is about 295 days. That's not what the doctor tells you because the doctor doesn't count it from when you get pregnant. Doctor counts your gestation period from when you first missed your period. Okay. That's because that's a known, that's a very well-known date on the calendar. So that's how they do their numbers. So 295 days.

Turns out a cycle of moon phases is 29 and a half days. It's a full cycle, full moon to full moon. So if you were born under a full moon, it meant you were conceived under a full moon. Likely. Because the, no. If you came out the right time. If you're born on, oh yeah, sorry, yeah, exactly.

If you went to full term. Right. To 295 days, that's 10 cycles of the full moon. So that can affect the statistics of births. So it just means people are more sexually active when it's bright out. Or it's just that it's romantic. Ah. It's romance, too.

Where's your romance? Moonstruck. The Cher movie, right? Yeah, Moonstruck. Yeah. Yeah. The moon's out. You're walking along the beach, along the park.

I'm going to get a picture of you when we wrap this podcast up. Down the street. We know we had a good time. Bam. Perfect. I need my hat. Do we get to wear my hat? All right, go ahead. Put your silly Bam. Perfect. I need my hat.

Do I get to wear my hat? All right, go ahead. Put your silly hat on. Can I put my hat on top of it? Indiana Jones. Go ahead. Take the headphones off. Why do you like that hat so much? It's my hat.

I'm in Texas now. All right. Oh, okay. Texas. There you go. Beautiful. Neil, you're a gem. I appreciate you very much.

We went everywhere today. We did. It was a good one. Man, who's going to sit there for five hours? Other stuff they're doing while they're doing it. That's the beautiful thing about podcast That's like saying you could be driving and running and whatever. That's the thing. That's the thing So yeah, if people can think about cosmic queries, that's what's all about that Did you do the audio for the audio book? I did selected audio within it So you hear my voice my tweets are in

there when they relate to the content i did all my tweets and some of the boxes that and someone else read the book yeah we have i have i found a reader i know why would you do that when you can do it because i can do it but it's someone else's rent money Oh, how sweet of you. Yeah. Fuck that dude. You should be doing it. That guy should get a Patreon page. You should do it, man. Everybody wants to hear you talk.

I did my other books. I did. I know. That's why I'm like, why didn't you do this one? Either way, I'm sure it's awesome. I don't see people a job. All right.

Well, that's a very nice gesture on your part. All right. Thank you very much. Dude. Good to see people at job. All right. Well, that's a very nice gesture on your part. All right. Thank you very much. Dude. Always a pleasure. Let's do it again. Yeah.

I mean, I think I come and give a talk. I'll give you tickets to your staff. Okay. Yeah. Let me know. When are you doing that? They're rescheduling. It's all post-COVID year.

It has to land. Well, get a hold of me, and I'll put it up on the Instagram and all that jazz. Totally do it. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Great to have you in the audience. For sure. I'll give you a shout-out. All right. Get with me in the Instagram and all that jazz. Totally do it. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Great to have you in the audience. For sure.

I'll give you a shout out. All right. Yeah. With me in the audience. Bye, everybody.