The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

Lawrence joins astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson in his office at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City to discuss Neil’s background, science communication methods, creating the perfect science sound bite, and much more. See the exclusive, full HD videos of all episodes at www.patreon.com/originspodcast immediately upon their release. Twitter: @TheOriginsPod Instagram: @TheOriginsPod Facebook: @TheOriginsPod Website: https://theoriginspodcast.com Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

The Origins Podcast is supported by listeners like you. If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it on Patreon. Subscribers also get access to full video of each episode, as well as bonus content and exclusive perks, science and culture. Together, visit us at patreon.com slash origins podcast. Hello, and welcome to The Origins Podcast. I'm your host, Lawrence Krause. Neil deGrasse Tyson is perhaps the most famous spokesman for signs in the world today.

He's known around the world as the presenter of Cosmos, the director of the Hayden Planetarium, whose renovation he helped oversee, and the host of the podcast StarTalk. I've known Neil for over 20 years, and we've worked together often. He's invited me to present many times for programs of the planetarium, and he's come to participate in my own public events,

most notably one that erupted into a wrestling match between him, Bill Nye, and Brian Green. I wanted to explore Neil's own origins, what motivated his career path and what obstacles he overcame to get where he is. I was also eager to record a conversation between two scientists about our own unique perspectives on science and on science communication.

Our discussion presents, I believe, a perspective that complements that which many people may get from his tweets, his television appearances, and his writing. Neil was, as always, witty, lively, and at times pretty loud. Patreon, subscribers. can find the full video of this program and all our programs the day they appear at patreon.com

slash origins podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. Neil, thank you for welcoming us into your abode. You set up shop like this is your own studio, but my office. That's why we did before you came in, but I really appreciate you letting us. And I compliment you on your vest where the bottom button is unbuttoned. Well, there's two things. The haberdashire old detail with very few people.

No, show the camera. You're blocking it. And I want, and I want, you know, two reasons. I wore the vest in honor of you. And he's, and my camera guy is wears the vest and he was the one who told me I should be undoing. But the bottom button, yeah. I never knew that. Yeah, it's a tradition. It's a true. I think there was some overweight king who couldn't really actually button it. So he unbuttoned it, and that became the style. Like the Spanish Lisp. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, the Castilian. Plus, it allows you to sit down and not bunch up the vest. The vest will naturally then split. I want to start with some, with questions that I never really talked to you about. By the way, I can't think of a question that you would ask me that you wouldn't already know the answer to. Most of what I know is a subset of what you know. Oh, well, that's right. Well, let's accept that fact. Thank you. Okay. Just to be clear. Yeah, yeah. And I'll try and return that favor later on. I'll try to pull stuff from places maybe you've never visited. Okay. Just to enrich the podcast. Well, I never visited your childhood. Okay. So let's start there.

Wow. So when you say origins, you mean. Yeah. Your origins of every, my origins. Yeah. Yeah. I mentioned your origin story. Yeah, exactly. I want your origin story. Your parents, you come from a family of educated parents. Your mother was a gerontologist. Is that right? Well, my mother did not go to college until we were pseudo-empty nest. Oh, really? By prior arrangement in the marriage. Okay. So.

Yeah. When they got married, they agreed that we'd have kids first. And then afterwards, if she retained that interest, she would go back to school, which she did. Got an undergraduate degree and then a graduate degree in gerontology. So she got an undergraduate degree. When I was in high school, just getting out of high school. So you could almost graduate at the same time. I've heard some people do that where they graduate their parents. Well, she, so the way she did it was she, they had programs for adults who had to go back and get their education.

So what you could do, this is brilliant. If you wrote up your life experience, they would then evaluate it and establish a certain number of credits it was worth towards the degree. Oh, that's great. Something that if you're 18 or 21, you wouldn't have the life experience. But if you raise kids, you... Well, you know, I think, I mean, I've now become a... Having taught at universities, I found a lot of kids go into university without really knowing why they're there. And it's really nice to have a sense of why you're in school.

That's more people in community colleges know why they're in school than in sort of regular colleges, four-year colleges. Because they've tasted the real world in some way. Something real happened to them. Did you ever think of taking time off? Or did... I mean, I never... I took time off actually in the middle of college. I was worked on a history book, but when I was growing up, it just didn't seem the thing to do.

But did you ever think it taken? No, no, I enjoyed my arc through life, and time off didn't seem like it would serve that trajectory. What, but, okay, so what? That's my mother. Yeah. My father studied sociology in college and had a master's, and I forgot precisely the wording of it, but he got it from teachers college at Columbia. So they lived in New York their home. Oh, yeah, yeah, but homegrown New Yorkers.

And so my father had sort of academic roots ultimately worked for Mayor Lindsay in New York City during the heat of the civil rights movement. And so I was sort of baptized into social, cultural, racial issues of the day. Even though that early I knew I wanted to study the universe. So this juxtaposition kept me grounded. I had a hard time deciding to go into science in a way, although I was. knew I wanted to do it because it seemed so divorced from people, and I was quite political, even all the time growing up. I don't know if you had the similar conflict. No, I was, it was not so much a conflict, but I just carried the awareness with me and through my life.

And then exploited as it became available. Not that it was a, oh, I got to also do this. Yeah, it was never, there was never. You knew you wanted to do science earlier. Oh, yeah. Why? Age nine. I was called by the universe. You were called by the universe? Yeah, first visit here to the Hayden planet. I just said divinely. I just said the universe. You with the divinity in the universe. That's well, I like to. It's one of my divine bits. So my first visit to New York City's Hayden Planetarium.

Is it? And that was... That's where our office is right now. We're recording this. It's a story that I think plays better in a small town. You know, small town kid goes away, comes back and runs this stuff. Here I tell that to people, they say, yeah, and your point is. It's not as impressive in a big town.

But a part of me is delighted, even enchanted by the duty that I have... have to bring to others what educators and scientists of your have brought to me when I was up and coming. Well, look, I mean, I think, yeah, that I think that notion, I mean, there's very few people who are its renowned science communicators as you. And so with great power comes great responsibility. But was it really, I mean... It's just a script for a superhero movie?

What are we doing here? I don't know. I don't know having to figure out of who yet, but we'll worry about that. Plus you need a deeper voice. With great power comes great responsibility. You've got the voice. There we go. Thank you.

But so was it really a transformative? Was it really an epiphany coming here? Or was it, I mean, when you were growing up before? It was epiphanic. Yes. I'm in the dome and the lights dim. The stars come out. And I'd only seen the stars from the Bronx.

Which can you see? A dozen of them. Yeah, yeah. And so the stars come out in the dome of the planetarium. And think about it. It's kind of planetarium experiences. We probably all remember our first time in a planetary dome. And in a way, it was the world's first virtual reality space.

Just think about that, right? You're transformed, the room disappears, and you're just floating in space. And I was just awestruck, starstruck, I should say. And that star-struckness stayed with me. And at first I thought it was a hoax. There aren't this many stars. I know. I have evidence.

I have Bronx evidence that there aren't this many stars. And then I learned later that that is how many. There's more than that, even. Yeah, yeah. And it was not the space program, even though these years occurred in the late 1960s for me. Yeah. Yeah, I loved that we went to the moon, but that had no forces operating on my ambitions to study the universe. I knew enough then that the moon is like sitting in front of our noses.

Okay. And I cared about, you know, the Big Bang and galaxies and quasars. Wow, okay. So that was on a scale far beyond just joyriding in orbit. 200 miles above Earth's surface, or even the moon that is far to our spaceships, but close in the universe. The space program, I knew I was interested in science well before. I'm a little bit old than you, but not a lot.

I was, I think, I was probably 14 when they went to the moon. And it still was, I mean, I was profoundly interested in what was going on because I was already interested in science, but I found that profoundly interesting. As a kid growing up in Canada, I want, in fact, I think I started to draft. a letter saying that they should have a Canadian astronaut. But that for you was not the epiphany. It was coming here. Not at all.

And you decided then, did your parents, had they any, did they have any plan? My mother wanted me to be a doctor. Did you parents? No, they, I'm actually quite, I don't say proud of them because they're my elders. But I'm, I'm deeply respectful of how they raised us. They didn't put any of their own life's ambitions on us, either what they achieved or didn't achieve. Either those can end up a force operating on what your kids.

I couldn't become a doctor or you're going to become a doctor. Exactly. Right? You know, who knows how many people's actual ambitions were derailed simply because of the forces operating on them by their parents. So they showed no force of alignment among me or my two siblings. But what they did do is expose us. We had the fortune to be raised in New York City in this context, right?

Yes, it was dangerous. Yes, it was, you know, there were riots and all the, yes. All that, that all actually did happen. But we're embedded in quite a repository of cultural institutions. Sure. And so every weekend, we did something different. Yeah. It was, we went to the opera. We went to a play.

We went to a musical. We went to the ball game. We even went to a hockey game. went to the art museum, went to the zoo. Wow. And each of these weekends, it might have been two weekends a month. It felt like every weekend. Oh, that's great.

And this was exposure to things trained adults do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's beyond just the doctor, lawyer, Indian chief options. And my brother ultimately became an artist, having been moved by our visits to art museums. And he ended up going to the high school of music and art, got his MFA, and now teaches art and paints. and, you know, so, and my sister, she's the big sellout. She went into corporate America. Oh, well.

Yeah. Someone had to. She left school, but then came back and got her MBA. So, but my point is, it enabled us. It empowered us to follow our own drummer. Yeah, they sort of planted seeds, and you got to decide which ones grew. Correct. And then once they saw these seeds germinate, they would then feed, once they nourish them.

So my best example of this. Best example, I think you would appreciate this as an academic and someone who's a voracious reader. In middle school, my mother not knowing anything about astrophysics, she would visit bookstores and go to the remainder shelf. And just find any book that said math or science on it or the universe of which there are many, it turns out. And she'd bring them home. And these books cost 50 cents, 25 cents. I had the largest library of any middle schooler. in my school. Oh, that's so nice.

And also brain teaser books, anything that was just fun things to do with your brain rather than just hang out in the street. And so I probably still have books, some of those books on my shelf. They don't have some marker line across the binding saying that it has been marked down. I haven't lately seen remainder shelves much in bookstores.

I used to go looking to see if my own books weren't on them. It's a sad for me. the author, but great for the... Yeah, no, exactly. You've got to feel like it's a good thing. I thought about that. Yeah, if my books were ever remained dirt, it would be bittersweet.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Somebody who couldn't otherwise afford it is picking it up for a dollar. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's bittersweet. That's so neat. And just if you want to know, I've never seen any of your books

on a remaining tape. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Same here, but in any case. So she fostered it. What about teachers? You know, I'm where I am not because of teachers but in spite of them.

Okay. And that happens. In physics, in science, unfortunately, that happens a little too much. Yeah, well, so it would happen with girls at the time. We're going way back now. We're going back 40, 50 years. Anyone who did not fit an expectation of what a scientist looked like or sounded like, it's not, I'm growing up late enough in the history of the United States and in the north

so that what I'm describing to was not explicit. It's just implicit. Implicit. So it's, for example, oh, you look athletic. Why don't you stay after school and join the sports teams? I say, no, I want to be on the physics club, you know? And no, no, we need you in the sports thing. And they think they're doing me a favor with these suggestions when, in fact, deep down,

they have no alignment with my ambitions. Yeah, they're stereotyping. Yeah, they're stereotyping. And it was worse for women at that time. In fact, I still have a book where it's called Neil's School Years, and there are pages for each grade, and you put report cards in there and this sort of thing. Did your mother keep that book? No, I kept the book. No, it was a gift to me from my grandmother, and then I kept it from third grade onward.

Oh, that's neat. And so they're the pre-printed pages where they say, list your friends and list your interests. And one of them is what I want to be when I grew up. And if you're a boy, there's this set of options. Yeah, sure. boy. They're the other, a girl, the other set of the options. And the boy could be, you know, a policeman, fireman, doctor, lawyer. The girl was, you know, stewardess, waitress, housewife, this sort of thing. So it was, or mother. So it was odd that the girls had the options

of being mother, but father was not one of the options when you're a guy. So that, so I was actually disturbed by that, even at age nine, that this is, this is not symmetric. and I didn't understand why not. But there was a slough for you to write in, which you wanted to be when you grew up. And it was fifth grade where there was a first appearance to where I wanted to be an astronomer.

Really? Okay. Interesting. And that was my first visit to the Hayden Planetarium. Oh, that's amazing. Well, we have different. That's my origin story. Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, it's very different.

It's fascinating to see because we and I do a lot of things, similar things in certain ways. My parents, neither of my parents went to college and wanted, and by exactly what they wanted us to be professionals, my brother to be a lawyer, me to be a doctor. He unfortunately became a lawyer, actually worse, a professor of law. I don't even know if I would have known quite what an astronomer was.

For me, actually, in a way I would have, because the book that really got me interested was of grade five or six, a book about Galileo. What book was that? It was some kid's book, I forget the name. And, you know, Voyager to the Stars or some, you know, some need. And I think what appealed to me as much, probably because of my rebellious spirit,

was seeing the troubles he had. I mean, that he confronted the misconceptions of the world. And so I saw a kind of scientist as hero, you know, and I think that was. But I would never know, and I remember a friend of mine who his parents were educated. Many years later, I learned he when he was in grade five, he wrote a poems. And when I grow up, I want to be a doctor of philosophy. And I wouldn't know what that was. Anyway, it's neat.

Oh, just one point about Galileo, if I may. Sure. Over my years of reading history and thinking about how people think, something you surely spend a lot of time doing, I would not have characterized Galileo confronting people's misconceptions. Okay. I would have characterized that way, because most of what people thought is exactly what it looked like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in that sense, they're not misconceiving it. They just didn't have the benefit of a telescope. So I don't want to fault people for thinking what looks like it's true. I would rather fault people for once being confronted with, an objective reality experiment, still then resisting what is true. Yeah, no, in astronomy. So it's a subtle, it's even semantic maybe, so I don't want to break out in a fight on it.

No, no, you're absolutely right. It's a good point. I think in astronomy, it's true. In physics, it's kind of interesting because I didn't this experiment once for leaders of the free world where I, you know, they all learned in high school that, you know, things fall at the same rate, but they had gone in one ear and out the other. But you could do the experiment. You confront, they said, why? It's because it's heavier, yeah. and then you do an experiment.

And I loved when I read his books about the, which were very funny, and I often say they're... I mean, Galileo's books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in fact, it sort of saddens me. Yeah. It's quite witty. Exactly, witty.

And I often think it's a shame when they force kids to read great books of literature that they don't include, like, it's easier to read than James Joyce and funnier, in my opinion. But, you know, where he, and he makes fun. But he doesn't by having a foil. Aren't most books easier to read than James Joyce? Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. Absolutely.

But he always says a fuller. foil. So in some sense, it's the person who has the misconception. You know, and one of the ones I love is, it's just a simple thing about, well, so heavier things fall faster. What if you have two books? And then, when they're falling, you tie them together with a rope so they become one thing, are they suddenly going to fall?

And you, no, that's not going to happen. And so that's what I meant. But anyway, but I was far more subtle than I thought at age 11 or whatever. It was just yeah, but it was, that book exposed me to, and in my case, my mother told me doctors were scientists.

And so I got interested in science. It was much later when I discovered that doctors don't have to be. I don't want to say doctors aren't scientists. But the training is different. Yeah, you don't have to be. And unfortunately, did they teach you in school the same way? Oh, you asked me about teachers. Let me just finish that.

Yeah, yeah, I want to talk about teachers. So I had one teacher in sixth grade who noticed that all of my book reports were on astronomy books and that I had a level of social energy that bordered on disruptive in class. Yeah. And so rather than try to muzzle me, she noticed in the newspaper there was an ad for classes that you could take on astronomy at the Hayden Planetarium. Oh. And she cut out the little ad and handed it to me.

And then I took it home and my parents read it. I said, well, let's try this. Yeah. And so I went, I was in the Bronx, so I took a public transportation into Manhattan. And this was great because this institution, the American Museum of Natural History, Beyond the exhibits you see on a first-time visit, there are programs offered in the evening that transcend everything that's written on an exhibit text in all fields. So there were extra courses and advanced courses, and that set me on a path of further enlightenment beyond the school curriculum. And so that was an important step, but that's not a teacher praising me for anything I was doing in class.

that's a teacher saying, how can we bottle this energy in some productive way or channel it? Yeah. And that's exactly what it unfolded. So she could be one of the more significant people in my life. Yeah, exactly. You know, just giving you that opportunity. Right, right. Beyond that, there was no teacher any time in my life, unlike what is surely the case with you,

who would have ever pointed to me and say, he'll go far. Oh, okay. Because my grades were never, because they indexed to grades. Yeah, yeah. And they think the people of high grades are the ones. that are going to be significant shakers and movers in the world, because the system is constructed that way. Yeah, yeah.

And if you hold aside people who become academics, who basically all have near perfect grades and everything, because that's the landscape. Hold aside people who become academics. Other people who enter the real world, if you separated them by who got straight A's and who didn't, you are not separating the people who are the most significant on what matters in this world, the inventors, the entrepreneurs,

the creative types, the poets, the journalists, the comedians, the people, the actors, the people that shape civilization as we know it. And have an impact. And you know what, I guess. And so famous ones are college dropouts. Exactly. And, you know, it took me a long time.

I mean, I've been an academic most of my life, and my trajectory, my personal trajectory was always that way. I viewed that as the goal and what I wanted to be a professor. And, and of course, you know, I was interested in writing, and I had models of people who were communicators like Feynman and other people. But I guess... Does everyone in your audience know you're talking about Richard Feynman, the Caltech physicist? Now they do.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. He's not just a fine man. He's not. He's a fine man. He's a pretty fine man. Thank you.

I love when you correct me. It's great. I'm not correcting. No, no. It's you did the right thing. If you're building an audience, you are. Exactly. Bring them all with you.

But it took me a long time. to realize that now I would say, and it's really true, that among the people that I consider the most intelligent, the most, not just the most ambitious, but broadly intelligent and creative, I would list more people outside of academia than inside academia. I don't know, do you agree? Oh, of course. Oh, by all means. Not only that, people who are, well, in academia, you tend to get deep thinkers about things that most people don't care about.

But outside of academia, you get deep thinkers. thinkers about on topics that people do care about. And that has value. But it's more than that. And academics are more conservative in many ways you can imagine. There's a discipline where you're supposed to be open to anything. But the discipline of academia and the good feature of tenure is it makes it very secure. Whereas when you're not in academia, you're not at all secure.

And you really have to constantly recreate yourself or at least create your own opportunities. where in an academic institution, you've got the whole institution behind you, supporting you, and you just do what you want. And it's a very different feeling. It's not only that in academia. I didn't realize this until I came to this museum,

which has an academic infrastructure. Most people don't even know about it. Departments, we have a grants office. You know, I'm about to reappoint a dean. We have a provost. I report to a provost. So there's the academic trappings that we have here, there's tenure structure.

But most people don't know that. But coming here, my mission is bigger than what is my next published paper. I'm a servant of the public. Whereas in academia, it's actually not that. It's, I need my lab. These are my graduate students. I'm going to publish my paper.

Where's my grant money? Where's my office space? And everything is selfish. But it has to be selfish. The university is the sum of the selfish conduct of researchers. Yeah, because peters have to, I mean, and that's, yeah, again. Whereas here you can't really be that selfish. Because the fundamental dimension of the mission statement is you are a servant of the public's appetite.

Exactly. It's a different, and it's a just, it's not as a, it's not pejorative to say one versus the other. It's a different, it's a different mission. And I'll add another thing. Just to, you, but I hit this some time ago. It might have been when the movie, The Devil Wears Prada came out. Yeah, yeah. I had not thought about the fashion industry in any, charitable way until I saw that film. And here's why.

And in that film, it's all about fashion. It's a fashion movie. And some of the dynamics that goes on. Some could be, you know, exaggerated, whatever. But if you don't know anything about fashion, this is like, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is an interesting. I mean, it's interesting to me.

And count to watch. So I say to myself, is there anything that is as far from academic physics as a profession that you could possibly come up with. And I would say being a fashion model. Okay. That is the most opposite I can possibly think of. All right? Okay.

Now, I thought about it and I said, there exists people walking among us that other people will pay money just to look at them. Oh my God. This is an extraordinary fact. And there are fewer of them. then there are physicists. Yes, yeah. So what, and they will out earn you.

Yeah, uh-huh. So I said to myself, who am I to value judge? Ah. An academic intellectual pursuit versus whatever anybody else does. And I'm embarrassed how long it took me to achieve that revelation. It's not about two decades old for me. Yeah. As a, that's late in my life as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, yeah. Because I kept saying, well, you're intellectual powers. That's what matters. Yeah, yeah. That's all that you. And you just care about fashion. Yeah. And I'm thinking, my gosh, somebody designed the clothes I'm wearing.

Yeah. And it wasn't me. Yeah. And what that also did, it freed me up to, this was a liberation to not criticize politicians who academics would otherwise criticize for being dumb or stupid or whatever. But talk about, so let's take George W. Bush for an example. Okay, let's take them. Comedians made fun of them.

Everybody made fun of him. Yeah. And academia, which, as you know, is mostly liberal Democrat anti-war as voters. Yeah. Yeah. Point is, you could say whatever you want about the intelligence of George W. Bush. But you know what? He's president and you're not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He convinced people to vote for him and you didn't. So to sit on your duff and complain that he's president and you're not, and whatever it is about his intellectual prowess that he's. has or does not have, you've got nothing to say, all right? You want to become president and bring your ideas to the table? Then go ahead and run for freaking president. See, if you can get 60 million people to vote for you and you can't, you probably can't. Yeah, yeah. Okay. We'll talk about, well, yeah, no, no, that's, you know, I'm screaming because I, these were, I love it when you

scream. I'm screaming because these were revelatory to me. Yeah, sure. And since then, I've just been so more balanced in my sense of who and what people are, what they think, what they believe, what they care about pomposity is you it's great to it's great to be humbled at some point by observing exactly especially people people I'm always what amazes me is the older I get I discover people who can do so many other things better than me but you know actually your story's interesting it resonates because I once knew I was on I had some programs once years ago with a guy who had been vice president of Halliburton where Dick Cheney had been and he told me and he was talking to him Cheney about Bush,

when during the whole time when Bush was running, yeah, yeah, W, yeah. And Cheney said, you know, and this guy was complaining about, you know, during the campaign, how can you know, support this guy? And he said, you know, and Cheney said exactly the same thing. He said, you don't like it, you run. Yeah.

You run, see how you do. And it's a really important point. There's no democracy or republic, yeah. Yeah, yeah. These are the elements. Well, this actually leads me. in a roundabout way, which is always fun with you. Did I finish my origin story?

Sufficiently for the origins program. Actually, the one thing that amazes me, first of all, I have to say, among the people I've known, you were the most, one of the most focused in knowing what you want to. I've known you an awful long time. And I'm trying to get first. We go back. We go back.

Way, way back. I don't even remember when it began, but we go back. Yeah, I'm trying to think. I know I used to, you invited me to programs here a long time ago. And I remember you once coming to a lecture I did on science and religion or something, but. I enjoyed that. Actually, it was up in... Yeah, you and your wife came, and I was touched.

I remember that. But anyway, it's a long time. And so I've watched... I've watched you progress, and it's been focused. I... My life is sort of... I haven't had plans. It's sort of haphazard.

I've planted seeds and seen which ones take off, but I've not been directed, and I've always thought of you as directed. Historically, you made a decision early on after doing your PhD to essentially leave academic... or leave conventional academia, you did your PhD,

and then you came to, you know, shortly there afterward to the museum. Was that with malice of fourth thought? I mean, did you already plan your trajectory and that was part of it, or did just be an opportunity that came along? That may have been what it looked like, but that's not how it happened.

Okay, good. That's always funnels. So I never wanted to leave academia. Okay. Never. Nor did I ever have ambitions of being some famous scientist. Okay.

If by what I did, it brought sort of fame, and attention fine, but that was never a goal. Okay. Okay. I guess the counterpart to that in the performance world would be, I want to be a really good actor, rather than someone saying, I want to be a famous actor.

Yeah, I want to win the academy. Yeah, exactly. You want to be a good actor, and then whatever happens, it happens. Yeah. Okay. So I want to be a good scientist, and I deeply value and love academia. I like the structure, it's students, classes, research papers, conferences, okay.

So I get my PhD and I postdoc at Princeton University. That's where I am. So the academic trajectory is... Pretty good from there. It's working. It's doing its thing. Yeah, yeah. Okay? And by the end of my postdoctoral research fellowship, it's a three-year thing,

there is buzz that the museum, the American Museum in Natural History, wanted to sort of update the planetarium. It had seen, it was growing long and tooth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the exhibits were kind of old. And so they were looking for advice. Yeah. And I grew up here.

That's my place. Yes, I said, I'm happy to offer advice for your plans to upgrade, upgrade the Hayden Planetarium. So I was on a committee. How did you get on the committee? So others knew this before I knew that the museum needed this to happen. and was folks at Columbia University. And you had connections there. Yeah, I just got my PhD at Columbia.

And the Board of Trustees actually visited Princeton as well. They went to the nearby places that had astronomy departments. Sure, sure, sure. Princeton being just 50 miles away in New Jersey. So, and I just come from Columbia. I was post-talking at Princeton. The faculty theirs, both faculties said, well, there's this guy who we know he's had some talents in this way.

He might be able to serve you. So then they came knocking on my... I'm going to interrupt for a second. How did they know you had talent that way? Just because they knew as a person? I mean... I published my first book while I was still in graduate school. Okay.

So it was clear... So you can say, oh, I like doing public things, but if you publish a book, that's the end of the conversation. It's done. Because you mentioned with you found a publisher. They're saying... So my first book was Merlin's Tour of the Universe.

That was two years before my PhD. Okay, let's step back on again because somehow you had to make that decision, which... Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. impacts on your ability. Yeah, so go on. Okay.

Before I was at Columbia, I was at the University of Texas at Austin. I know well. I heard a great story by my friend Steve Weinberg. While I was there when he arrived. When he moved there. I think it was on the same airplane after he was recruited by the University of Texas from Harvard to bring his physics to there. And you know what the headlines were at the Daily Texan? What?

The next day. Because the University of Texas at Austin had a very good football team. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Highly celebrated. And so the headline was UT Austin, finally gets a faculty member that the football team could be proud of. It was a cute, there was a cute headline.

Because they had aggressive recruiting posture in the way they did for athletes. I remember when I was at, I was at Harvard at the time, and we're watching them try and recruit lots of people. Yeah, you just assemble the program. I mean, you can do that. I mean, why not? If you care. Yeah.

So, so where was I? Oh, you were at Texas. So while I was there to make extra money, because we were very underpaid as graduates. students, I wrote a column for the then known as the McDonald Observatory newsletter, which then became Startate. Yeah. And it's a thin little sort of thing, but I wrote a question and answer column called Merlin's

Tour of the Universe. Oh, so then you were able to. And then after five years of that, I had a lot of... I had, and I said, maybe this will work as a book. So I didn't say, let me write a book and read in school. You had already in the... Yeah, it had assembled for that. Had you written anything before?

Had you written in high school? I mean, look, I was editor-in-chief of my school's high school's physical science journal, but these are writing science articles. Yeah, but I mean, I did history, which is where I learned how to, I mean, for a while, which I always attribute for me anyway, we're learning how to write. Generally, I think, well, I know that the way to learn how to write is to write. It's just writing. Also to read, to read, good writing.

Exactly, to read a lot. And I was, as you, I was an end of very... I subscribed to the New Yorker for many years. Yeah. And I said to myself, it would be extraordinary. if one day I had the facility with words the way these writers do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that was, I had sort of ambitions of being as good a writer

as what I was weekly exposed to in that magazine. I haven't read it much lately, so I don't know where it is or where it has headed since then, but that's definitely... They used to have science stuff in it, and then they stop. I remember you used to read a guy. Jeremy Bernstein, I used to know years ago, and still know, but he used to have a calm, but then they removed it. Far later, I was very pleased to write for the New York

But interesting enough, my columns were always on the online New Yorker. They would never, it was some firewall with science and the New Yorker. But anyway, so you admire good writing. So that first book, so what I'm saying is it was not some ambition to be. It was available and I could do it. And it was fun. You found an agent or an editor or how did it work? No, it was published by Columbia University Press.

And generally, you don't use agents for the first book with a university press. So anyhow, I'm in. graduate school, and for a while I'm still writing that column, right? But then it gets harder to keep up with it. I just don't, and so it stops. But that made, it was enough column for two books, just so you know, okay. Meanwhile, there's other things I'd written. Again, it was just to get money. You write an essay for this magazine or that, and I get $500 here or $1,000 there. And that makes a very big difference on a, on its very severe budget.

And then, after a while, I had a collection of essays. And that was another book that I published, and it was called The Universe Down to Earth. So what happened was the faculty of Columbia and of Princeton saw that I had this real interest. Interest. Okay. And said, you should look up Tyson. Okay. They didn't even know that I was native to New York.

But I said, I'm native New York, and I have this, I've a ton of thoughts. Yeah. Here's some plan for you, here, for free. There's a 10-page growth plan for the future of the Hayden Planetarium. and afterwards they started knocking on my door more and say, do you want to come and be head of the place? We're going to renovate it. And I said, there is no academic astronomy department here, so I have no interest.

I said, oh, but you can be head of the planetarium. You'll be famous and overnight because we're investing a lot of money, it'd be a lot of media. And later on, we could talk about whether we build it. And I said, no. Uh-huh. No. Yeah.

No. And I don't think they believed me. They didn't believe me for like two years. At the end of the two years, I said, you clearly don't believe me. Here's a list of people, you should look up, because I think they would jump at this opportunity,

but without an academic department, I'm simply not interested. You have the wrong guy. And then I walked away. Then they came back and said, okay, will you come be a director, and we will commit to building a department. I do remember that.

That was the birth of this astrophysics department. I remember that vividly. I don't know. I lecture here, there was a long-standing astronomy program. As you point out, they had these evening programs. And I did it, I think before, maybe why you're still student.

In the 70s and 80s, the astronomy department evaporated was never rejuvenated. Okay. So the museum viewed it. The planetarium is just an income generating source rather than as an academic dimension, such as the other departments where the Department of Memology, you know, vertebrate paleontology, this sort of thing. The zoological departments that are common in natural history museums were all represented here. Departments of anthropology as well.

The astronomy department evaporated. was never um so i my biggest achievement in life which no one is going to know or remember and i don't care that they know or remember but they will now know because of us right now tonight is is basically convincing an institution and a board of trustees and donors and and that we can build a department from scratch because it was a buyer's market at the time yeah there are other departments here that said well you know they're worried that it would

take resources from them yeah yeah there's the normal academic infighting and Sure. And, but I knew we could do it, and I knew we could make a competitive department, and that's exactly what we have now. Yeah, I was going to say, I remember that sea change. So at that point, I said, I'm there. Yeah. So when I finished my postdoc, I came here, we built a department,

and now we have a research department as well as all the rest of what goes on here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've never left academia. I brought academia with forged academia where I landed. But your activities. Oh, no, that's different now. So now my personal activities, right now, I would say, they are 90% public work and 10% research,

and that's just to not fall off a cliff. I have possibly delusional ambitions of giving up all of my public activities and just going back to the lab and you never seen that again. That's not going to happen. Are you too valuable? Thanks for saying that.

Let me give my interpretation of that. I'm thankfully in a position where I am evaluated professionally in whatever is the activity that I do that I can excel in. And whatever is the ratio of the public versus research, it's whatever that is. If it's 50-50, is it 70-30, 30-70? Whatever that is, that is the landscape on which I'm evaluated.

And as you know, especially in physics, if you are an academic and a research program of a competitive university and you start writing books, nobody looks positively. You do that in spite of its effect on your professional evaluation. I first spoke when I was professor at Yale and assistant professor. Oh, yeah. It does not, the public doesn't know that. It does not accrue to your evaluation. It's negative.

At least in astronomy, because we had Carl Sagan before you guys had it. It became neutral. Yeah. I don't think it's subtracted. It was like, okay, we don't. And now it's positive, I think, for the precise reason that science has become big science. And I think scientists finally learned that after the Cold War, stopped giving them free money all the time.

In order to get the government to spend money in science, they actually got to start convincing people that it's interesting. And that it's worth doing. And then it's worth having some people who speak out. Who can do that. So that's the, correct. So that's the landscape we're entering where other academic fields have basically joined astronomy and astrophysics. And say, going to change the culture.

I think so. There were other popularizers before him, James Jeans. Yeah, yeah. That was a book that got me interested in physics. That's surely, which one? Which one of his books? Physics and philosophy. Oh, yeah.

It's a good book. And I, you know, and I have pretensions. He's got a half a dozen, eight books or so. Yeah, yeah. And I remember thinking, you know, I originally, in spite of the fact that I poop, Pooed philosophy a lot later. I really, that got me fascinated. And I almost went when I grew up.

But it was written by a physicist, not by philosophy. Yeah, I must do a Rhodes Scholarship to go study philosophy and physics. And I decide in the end to come to the United States and do physics, which I'm happy about in retrospect. You could have done physics as a Rhodes Scholar. Yeah, but I wanted to do physics and philosophy, and I would have been seduced, I think. Oh, yeah. To the dark side.

So what I do is when a request comes my way, I don't evaluate, oh, do I have time to do it? should I do it? That's not what I say, can I do this uniquely? And if I say no, I think other people can do this, then I decline. Interesting. Because I mean, I've, we've talked a lot over the years. That's why I did Cosmos. I was approached by Andrewian, who's the keeper of the flame of Carl Sagan and Cosm, she's his, his widow. His widow. Yeah. And she's a creative force in the original cosmos, in the second country, in the third cosmos. And she, approached me and I said so Cosma's going to happen again

maybe are you interested? And I said and I thought about it and I said you know there probably a lot of people who would want to do this I don't need to get it but I said wait a minute I met Carl in a certain way with a story and I could possibly do this uniquely. Yeah yeah. So then I said yes but only after thinking about it. I think about that interesting I mean I talked to her years before

because I was already sort of interested in it's been doing TV and stuff we talked about this. You know she'd been thinking about this for years I mean, because Carl, you know, she wanted to carry his legacy on. And she's done it successfully, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But I have to say, I do remember, I think the time I remember meeting you now that comes out, most specifically, and it may have been before, is I'd done some things at this museum, public lectures, evening lectures, that was a long tradition of evening lectures.

I remember there's one book that had me sign. Oh, but that was for the Amateur Astronomers Association. Yeah, yeah, and Einstein signature. Yeah, and I'd done that when I was at Yale. But then when you inviting me back, I remember the pride. I mean, it all had changed and you'd said, look, and they showed me the research. And he said, look what I've got here. And you was like a kid in a candy shop.

It was just, it was really exciting. Okay, but that's interesting. So the fact that you wrote in college. Oh, sorry. One last thing. When I started working here, I was interviewed for, there was some cosmic event, and there's always a room to interview an astronomer. And the editor-in-chief of Natural History Magazine overheard that interview was on NPR and immediately called me up and said,

would you write a column for the magazine? And I said, you know, every month, that feels oppressive. Let me just pause for a minute and think this through. And I said, if I were to write articles, what would it be on? And I wrote a list of 50 articles that I could just do off the top of my head. And I sent that to her that's good enough to start this. And so I would ultimately write about 100. 120 articles, and that became the source of three other books that I've written.

Is it, I mean, the huge seller, is that, from that, from that. It's been modified. Almost every essay in there had first appeared in Natural History magazine, that's correct. But at a time where, I mean, it's been tuned and shaped for an audience with a slightly shorter attention span. So it's curated mind-blowing astrophysics. Yeah, sure. And it's not astrophysics for dummies.

holding aside the fact that that title was already taken. Holding that aside, it's actually real astrophysics. You go in there, no, you can't just breeze through it. But the chapters are short. The tactic was, here's a tactic. If you haven't trouble with this paragraph, the next paragraph is four words long. Okay.

So you see ahead that there's a little bit of breathing. You having trouble with this page, the chapter ends in three pages. Yeah, yeah. Right? So there's not so daunting. I'm never dragging you through Muck and Meyer. I've often thought in terms of that kind of thing that if people can read in the bathroom, that they're not going to be so daunted by the possibility. If they think they have to spend four weeks reading intensively something in order

get the idea. Because science, I often say that when it comes to history books, people want long books, science books, people want short because it is immediately to many people daunting. And the book that I published just after that is basically a history book. Yeah, I know the book. It was the accessory to war. Yeah, I was proud of you for that book. I never told you.

The unspoken alliance between astrophysics and the military. That's a full-up, you know, fully indexed and 500-page. And it took 15 years, basically, from concept to. I did the math, and I said, if I wrote this alone, it would take me a thousand years. So I brought it a co-author, which keeps that going. It works in many ways. Like if you have a co-author in a research paper,

it forces you to keep that moving. Yeah. And the pace of exchange. Otherwise, you can get lazy. Let me go on vacation for now. I'll come back. No, I'm going to be running some programs on my origins project

on collaboration, creativity, and in different fields, including science. Because I don't think people realize how collaborative enough science is and how it's exact, it's not just ideas. If someone carries a ball while you have other things

and people have this idea that science, because of Weinstein, I think, and maybe Newton, you know, science is done by someone in a room in the middle of the night. Burning the midnight oil. Alone with the, you know, with sudden revelations. It is so not that. Yeah, it is so not that. Oh, I want one last thing for you before we move on. And there's a reason to talk about you, because you are a public figure. And I want to talk science. And you and I've talked about many things over the years. But I think it's important for people to see different trajectories. Just like one thing you said that's also really important about grades,

I think a lot of kids get turned off science because they're not the best in their class. And there will always be people better at anything almost than anyone. It's true for everyone but two people. What was that? It's true for all but two people. Better and worse people than you? Is that true for all but two people? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But I know Nobel laureates who were not the top of their class. I mean, it takes all types. And the key thing, I think, is what your teacher did for you, the one teacher who had a positive impact, which is to say, let me encourage whatever it is that interests you, because that's the ultimate thing. It's interest.

As you said, it's, I mean, academia is selfish for a reason. Most scientists aren't doing it because they're trying to change the world, or they're doing it because they like it. And that's what causes good science. Because if you don't like it, you're not going to spend 20 years of your life

trying to solve something that may go nowhere. So I think your enthusiasm, I think, was one thing. The last thing I asked, though, is it interested me that it was your writing that opened doors, but then you mentioned this interview. Because one can't be in a room with you without recognizing your charisma. You are a charismatic. Of course, if you don't. I mean, if you did, you wouldn't be charismatic.

Is that how it works? Yeah, I think it does. I think it does. Some people can fake it, but I think on the whole. But the interesting thing to me is that you didn't do a lot of public speaking before. You didn't take advantage of going to planetary speak or going. when you were a student or before the... No, no, no.

I mean, other than scientific conferences where you just present your paper. No, no, it was not. I mean, I did do some public speaking, but no, it was not a fun of, it was not a deep part of my activities. I would say my modern public speaking is largely shaped

by my efforts to communicate in the media. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember my first interview where I was on national television, the new planet had been discovered, first planet, ever been discovered. And I gave my best professorial reply. And the whole thing got sound bitten down to 90 seconds. And I said, oh, they don't, even though they came here to interview me at the

planetarium, they don't want what I would normally do here. They want something to fit their media. Yeah. So I practiced sound bites. Oh. And it helped me sharpen the juxtaposition of information with something that makes you smile and something that's tasty enough that you'll want to run and tell somewhere else. That's the anatomy of a sound bite. And that's what they found within my 20 minute interview to make it 30 seconds. And I said, why don't I just give 90 second sound bites? And that way, it's pre-parceled. When I started doing that, they all came running. No, it's really, I remember, well, that's interesting. It helps that I'm sitting here in New York City, which is a major news gathering headquarters. That really helps a lot. Yeah.

But it's funny. When I, you know, I've, over the years, done many, many interviews, and I've always had fun saying, okay, I'm going to try and do a sound bite, and I'm going to bet it'll become the last line of the column or whatever. And it's always, it almost always is because coming up with good sound bites is not just pandering. It's really, there's a reason for it, as you point out. Yeah, yeah. And it can trigger interest and spawn further investigation.

When you say you practiced, did you? I looked in a mirror, and I had, what you have is you have someone sort of bark out to you, yeah. Single word of anything in your field. Yeah. Black Hole, Saturn, the sun, the Big Bang, and we can try it, right? Say anything in my field. Say anything in your field.

Dust. Dust. Wait, wait, wait, wait, hang on, hang on. So, the regions of the universe where gas clouds become so cold that atoms come together and make molecules, and molecules come together and make dust. and these are atoms forged in stars that have given their lives beforehand. And this dust ultimately makes planets in life.

So we are star dust. Okay, good. That's a soundbite. That's a soundbite. It's a great soundbite. And they would use that entire three sentences. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like, whoa, I never knew that.

Oh, my gosh, that's what happens. And you get a little education in there. Adams become molecules, molecules become something we call dust. So that's, so I practice that. And I said, well, let me think. Well, you take some hydrogen, No, that's not relevant.

They're not going to remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The soundbite should contain that which they would have remembered the next day. Okay. In a longer explanation that you would have given. Okay, good. No, I'm with you. And, you know, I'll do a soundbite for you sometime when you invite me in back on StarTalk or wherever.

We'll try you. We'll try it. Ready? Okay. Okay, let's try it. Okay, what the heck? You ready? And you're a particle guy, right?

Yeah, well, throw it at me, and I'll tell you if I can do it or not. Okay. And if I can't, we'll cut it. Okay. Quark. Quark. It's a kind of cheese. The amazing thing is that people are as different as you can imagine. And when you look around the universe, it seems like it's made of so many different things that it's unfathomable.

What's amazing to me is that what science has discovered is that you and I and everything we see are made of the same things, these particles called quarks. at the basic level, we are all the same made of things that are, as far as we know, infestinely small. And amazingly, even though we know they're there, we also know that you can never see a single quark. Not bad. What do we give him? Cameraman? Give them a B-plus.

Quarks are harder than dust. I'm sorry, I threw dust in because it started. Okay. I mean, I wanted to do this. But the interesting thing is, and it's one of the reasons that I think biologists sometimes have a hard time, is that because some of the aspects of the field are so complex, that it's hard to get to them in a way that people can into it. And the point is the challenge that, and I wrote a book on this recently,

the challenge to getting to quarks versus dust. Is that the book that I blurbed? You blurbed a number of books. It's probably the book you blurred, but yes, and you've been kind enough to blurb a bunch. The problem that I consciously recognized. The one where I called you the bard. Yeah, you did. It was a beautiful blurb.

Well, in fact, you're as good with blurbs as you are with soundbite. You know, my goal in a blurb is for it to be the shortest blurb on the jacket. Because you, and so then generally they put that first. First, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you, it's not that I don't want to put words, but it's the choice of words. Okay, but how was that phrase go? I'm sorry, this letter is so long. No, long if it was, it's so long if it was better.

I ran out of time to make it short. Yeah, if I'd worked longer, I would have been shorter. Yeah. But here's the thing that more seriously a little bit, when the challenge of science and say with particle physics versus, to some extent, it's around me. The frontiers of particle physics are so far removed from people's experience that it takes many steps to get there before you can really appreciate what's there.

That's why my last book is a lot longer than it would have been. And the point is to get to quarks is a lot more, is, you know, atoms, molecules and dust is something as people can have in some sense, some basic level and intuitive appreciation of because of school and stuff. Quarks are just so far removed that it's hard to know how to get there in a really short time. I don't agree. Okay, quarks. You do it. No. Okay. Do you remember in chemistry class you learned about like protons and neutrons? There are particles inside of those. They're called quarks. And the proton had a positive charge and a neutron at any... Quarks have fractional charges.

Oh, my gosh. And when we discovered this, the guy who discovered it named them after a word in a James Joyce novel. And three quarks for cork muster... Mustermark. And that's back when we thought there were only three quarks. We've discovered more since then. Now we recognize that quarks are more fundamental than protons and neutrons. Quarks.

One of the fundamental particles in the universe. Well, it just sounds better when you say it. And I add, now, if they come back for more, if they come back for more, I add. We've only ever found them in pairs. Actually, they come in three. Okay. And pairs, and pairs. At least pairs.

Okay. Let me say it's different. Okay. We've never isolated a single cork. That's what I try to. Yeah. Okay. They're always bound with other corks.

Well, why don't you just split them apart? We tried that. Here's what happens. You try to pull them apart. And to do that, you know, you're putting energy in it like you're pulling a rubber band apart. You got to take energy. You know how much energy you're putting in? Eventually it snaps. You put in so much energy, E equals MC squared kicks in and it creates another quark. Yeah. And bada-bing. Now you got pairs of quarks

just the way you began. That's what I was just going to say to you. I was first going to say it takes more energy than there is in the whole entire universe to create a single quark. But the point is that's not the case because if you got that much energy, you can produce a lot of other particles and you get the rubber band stretch. Actually, the way I would say it now, is I'd say it's like you break the rubber band, and now you've got two rubber bands. And that's what happens with quarks. Anyway, together we could work on this.

I think we got to... Okay, well, this went in an interesting direction. I'm trying to think what people want to hear, and I think one of the things people want to hear is to talk a little bit of science. In the end, there's only four, as far as we know, only four fundamental particles. And you have quarks, electrons, photons, light, and neutrinos. this other mysterious particle we'll get into later.

Yeah, instead of electrons, it's leptons, really, because there's three kinds of electrons. Yeah, but you have to do that. And they say, who ordered that? See, that's your problem. Yeah. What you're trying to do is teach at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? So you start with something that is defensively, pedagogically sensible.

Mm-hmm. You talk about the particles that exist in the realm in which we experience, okay? Yeah. Then when they come back, is it, you know something? Those just represent families of particles. Mm-hmm. We have three or four of whatever is the super symmetry. We have families of these particles.

Yeah, we got a heavy electron. Did you know that? Then you take them there. And then you say what your guy here in Columbia said, Rabby, which when they discovered it, the heavy electron, he said, who ordered that? I would say anything since that. Yeah, no, it was a great thing. Like, who ordered that?

It's like, why should the world? One of the big unanswered questions is why are their families of particles? I mean, we could do a whole program where we start with the desire. to a sound bite it, but a quark, and lead that into it. Well, so, but I do this all the time. For example, I don't want to say I delight in this because it's a bit snarky. So let me just say I watch for it when it happens. When someone wants to correct something I said, because it's wrong.

Mm-hmm. Okay? Yeah. All right. So I'll say, the Earth has a circular orbit around the sun. Yeah, and they'll say, you're wrong. It's elliptical. Yeah.

They said, no, it's elliptical. And so I say, well, then I draw on a page, the elliptical orbit that is Earth's orbit, and then I draw a very elongated ellipse. I say, which of these do you think comes closest? No, no, I draw a perfect circle. Yeah. And then I draw an ellipse. And they point to the ellipse.

Which is wrong. And which is wrong. So I say, it is more a circle than it is any ellipse you're currently thinking of. Yeah. Apart from that, okay, let's call it an ellipse. actually it's not an ellipse because Earth orbits the common center of mass

that it has with the moon. So it does loop to loops around this arc. It's epicyclical. Okay, exactly. Oh, by the way, the path that the Earth takes around the sun does not close back on itself.

It's not really an orbit in that sense, right? Because it processes. So it is a non-closed elicid you drawing elliptical shape. The point is, if you put all that information up front, you're losing the other points you're trying to make. And you are allowed pedagogical approximations.

Otherwise, you cannot communicate in any way with someone who doesn't know anything. Oh, absolutely. You can communicate with people who know more. And they're the ones who are usually showing off their knowledge that they can take you to levels that are... But, no, I think you're right. Although...

I was talking about Australia, and I said, mammals got to Australia and they all became marsupials. And no marsupials anywhere else. Someone said, wait a minute, there's the opossum in North America. That's a man that carries a john. I said, okay, fine. I don't have a problem with it, but I was making a whole other point. Yeah, yeah.

Strand a branch of a genome and it takes on properties there. Yeah, and one could talk about isolated populations and the neck go home. But look, it's actually fun to have for us, because we both, you know, we both, you know, we both communicators to talk about the things that we think are good and bad. I'm not saying it's good as bad. It's necessary. But what's necessary, of course it's necessary to make approximations to communicate. Even in, well, in any field, I mean, science is an approximation of the universe.

Every level you're approximately. But I think it's important at some level, especially when you're given the time in writing, to make it clear it's an approximation. The only thing we all mislead, I remember the first time I wrote a book and I got a, you know, I got a fan letter. And I said, I loved your book. And I learned this. And it was, whatever he learned was nothing what I said.

And I was depressed for a while. And then I thought, well, the problem is, I can't control what people get or what I write. And I'm, you're going to be. Well, in spite of that, what I wanted to say is, there will always be misconceptions about what you write. The one thing you shouldn't do is knowingly give misconceptions. That's the only thing as a writer or reader of other popular. civilization and science that I have no tolerance for is when people knowingly mislead. Because I could say, I could say, you know what, you know what, Neil?

Inside a quarks are little elephants. Okay? And there be people that would believe it because I said it, you know, and I'm a particle physicist. And the point is, I may have some reason for doing it, maybe because it's my pet theory that there are little elephants inside quarks. And I want to get that out there, although none of my colleagues like that idea. So we, at some level, we have to make approximations, but we have to be very careful to sort of frame them within the context of sort of innocent approximations that don't loyingly mislead you on the wrong direction. Of course.

You know. Of course. And that's, I think that's the skill and demand. You have to be skillful about when you make an approximation and when you don't. Yeah. Yeah. And exactly what the consequences of that approximation are. And saying the orbit of the earth is a circle going around the sun, that's perfect.

Which I never have because people do know oval. I don't have to get them up to, I don't use elliptical as a first time. They know that an oval. I say, Earth's shape is an oval. It's not much of an oval, but an oval. So I do go there. But if the shape of Earth's orbit was something they never heard of and a circle comes very close to it, I'm going with a circle.

Later on, if they want to get deeper, we can get deeper. And so that, but I say that it's kind of, especially since I know where you're going, it's kind of an innocent and useful approximation, as opposed to one that leads you to think something to go in a direction. Of course. Yeah. And then people depend on the, quote, experts, to lead them in the right direction, given the correct perspective, if not the details. Because the details almost never matter. Correct. And people don't know that details don't matter in most cases.

Yeah. The other thing that I want to talk about in terms of technique, before I actually, we talk about science and government and some other things, is that I know, I sense that I know you're trying to engender and you do very well is awe. By the way, you do that by not telling them that it's awesome. Of course. Of course. But it's part of its delivery.

And part of it is the fact that you know, you delivered the way you do it. And you have a Neil Grass-Ison delivery. And that's a thing. That's a thing. Well, I noticed it. I mean, besides being louder. But, no, but it's almost, and I want to use this word in a play with it. It's almost religious in the sense of saying,

of a style. It's evangelical. That's the word you're looking for. Yeah, it is all, and it's fine, and I think we should all be evangelist for science. But I guess I want to ask you, did you go to church when you were younger? Yes, as a family, we went to Catholic Church.

Catholic Church. Weekly. So I'm just wondering if the style is just unique to your personality, or did you ever see role models who sort of had an evangelical fervor to the way they spoke that got a group of people moved, as happens in a lot of churches.

Not in Catholic churches. Not in Catholic churches. No, no, they never do in Catholic churches. Yeah, this is not the Baptist revival. No, definitely not in Catholic churches. And I went to church early enough in the history of Catholicism. So early enough when the priest faced away from the parishioners and spoke only in Latin during the important parts of the mass.

And we would face you later and give a, give the delivery, but the mass is a very sort of impersonal thing relative to other Protestant traditions. Yeah, yeah. So, no, no, it was more empirical. It was, I'm being called to communicate because there's an eclipse or Pluto or whatever. Yeah. I might as well try to be as good at it as I can be. Let me monitor their reactions as I speak. And then you learn. When I use these words, oh, their eyebrows open. Yeah. When I, you know, this may be impossible. if you're autistic or on the spectrum. Yeah.

To be, but I'm reading people's body language as I communicate with them. Wherever it is, I'm going to, if it's in the street, is their body square to me? Or they turn slide because they really want to finish the conversation sooner and they can't just tell me that I got to leave. So I'm monitoring this. Do their eyes brighten? Sure. Do they come back with a question?

Yeah, yeah. As I do this, I'm honing methods, tools, and tactics to communicate as, as, you know, as potently as I possibly can. And I will add to this that in the era of Twitter, I've been more effective than ever before. Because I will post a tweet that it's not where I am and what I'm doing. It's something about the universe. It's basically a sound bite.

Yeah. And I'm just going to get to the fact that your sound bites lead to beautiful tweets, right? Exactly. So I look to see how people respond. Yeah. Did they laugh where I thought they should laugh? Did they laugh at something I had not intended? Did they misinterpret it?

Well, could I have been clearer? This has honed my communication skills like no other force on my life. Yeah, no. And I want to talk to Twitter because you are a huge force on Twitter, and Twitter's had a huge impact on you in certain ways. But one versus the other. But it's interesting when you say this because I was talking to Ricky Jervais and we were talking about humor.

And I want to talk about humor too, which is another facet of, I think both of our, we try to approach reaching people. But he was pointing out as a comedian. Yeah, Ricky was pointed out as a comedian. you're doing the same thing as a scientist. You're honing your act and you're watching the audience. So by the time you get to see the act of Ricky's on a television show, it's gone through a lot of empirical testing so that you use what works and you throw out what doesn't.

Even if it's against what you thought would work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's the best thing. And that's the thing I think where scientific training helps, because the great thing about science is learning to throw things out you felt so dearly about. I think that, for me, that's the greatest legacy of science, is that you're required. You have a pet idea that turns out to be wrong and you have to throw it out.

It's probably almost the only area of human activity where not only do you have to do that, it's a central part of progress. And for me, I like to say, and I don't know if you've had some experiences. I like to say that central part of progress because as you're going down the road, you don't even know where the road leads.

Exactly. Stuff in the way. Yeah. And you get the bulldozer, push it off the road, because it's not helping you move forward. It's not, and I don't know. And for me, I've had those experiences

and always say I hope some student, or every kid, everyone has at some point in their life the experience of having something that they hold very dear to them, some idea proved to be wrong because it's liberate. Conspiracy theorists don't understand. And this, you know, Miss may be out of left field. Do you have an example of that

where you first saw something you thought was, you know, what was the first thing you saw in science that really sort of went against what you really thought was the way the universe was. I try not to think how the universe is without actually learning how it is in the first place. But yeah, we still have that, but I do have some examples. There are things that I thought were true that later in life learned they were not true. Or I slightly misunderstood it. Yeah. And that was astonishing to me. It was, whoa. Whoa. Yeah. Okay, I have one for you.

You ready? Easter. For me, I, for, for, 20 years of my life. It was the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the Vernal Econox. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's really, that was for the first 20 years of life, that's how you define Easter.

No, no, no, no. That's what, it's not how I defined it. I was very impressed. It was my understanding of Easter in the Gregorian calendar. Oh, okay. The Grosian calendar redefined Easter. Yeah, okay. For all of the Catholic world at the time in 1582.

and the Protestants were later to uptake this, this new definition. Anyhow, it turns out it's not that. It's the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 21st. After, literally March 21st? Yes. So that's the religious equinox. And then there's the astronomical equinox, which could go to the 22nd or go to the 20th. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And right now it happens to be in March 20th, which was all. awkward in the year 2019 because there was a full moon on March 21st. Oh. So Easter would have been, according to my definition, the very next Sunday, like two days later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was not. And that confused me.

So I had to call up all my expert friends to say, no, no, no, you're using the astronomical equinox. It's the religious equinox, which by definition is March 21st. Okay. Yes. And what was your reaction to learning? that. Was it... I was a little embarrassed that I would have been publicly

saying this? Okay, well, I decide, yeah, I'm okay because you're a public figure, but personally, was that exciting? It was fun. It was fun. Corrected it. Oh, yeah. That's the point. And I tell people often, I want to learn something new every day. Yeah, I mean, being proved you're wrong is actually personally, well, not

for everybody, but it's fun. The aha experience is essentially saying, aha, I never realized it was that way, and we get a kind of inner joy at that. Because they always said, March 21st, and for many decades, that was when the equinox landed. And I did not give myself the occasion to imagine that even the Jesuit priests who came up with this would have anchored it to that day on the calendar and not actually chased it to the equinox, because they knew enough

astronomy, even pre-Galileo, to know when the equinox, what, you know, what day the equinox occurred on. Anyhow, that was the most recent, and that was just a few weeks ago from the time of this recording. About a subject, about Easter, which I never heard of. And Passover is the first full moon after the Equinox. Because the Jewish calendar is really lunar-based, right? It's lunar-based, but you do it on the full moon. Don't look at me.

Your people. Your genetic brethren. Your genetic brethren. Yes. In fact, I have to say the 23 and me told me that they are definitely my generic. Okay. What is it again? So I know.

Okay. So it turns out the Jewish definition of the Equinoxes, the same as the Christian one. It's just March 21st. Oh, I see. Okay. So it is the first full moon after March 21st. Oh. And so the way the Catholic Church said, we're never going to have these overlap, because there was a risk of that happening, the way it was previously defined. Yeah, okay. It was previously defined as the first Sunday after the Equinox. Okay. That's it. The full moon was not even in the picture. Okay. Okay. And until 1582, the Julian calendar was not properly accounting for leap days.

And so it had a leap day every four years that overcorrected the calendar. We had to start taking out leap days to recorrect it. And we had accumulated 10 days that didn't belong there. You got me started on this. Yeah, I know. I'll finish in 10 seconds. So they took out the 10 days and jumped started the calendar. October that year lost 10 days, which was interesting for how you're going to pay rent.

You have to invent sort of amortizing rent schedules. And so therefore, and they added just for good measure. I'm going to let you go because I know that 10 seconds. They added for good, Major. It's a fascinating five minutes, though. It's the Sunday after the first full moon, after March 21st. And Passover's on the full moon, and so we're good. Okay, good.

They'll never be on the same day. Okay. Okay, that's good to know they'll never be on the same. But they almost were. And that was the confusion. They're very close this year. Yeah, and 2019, everything lands in the religious, most religious possible way. Yeah.

Passover is on Thursday, which is Holy Thursday. Passover you have your Seder. It's rumored that the Last Supper was a Seder. Yeah, even I know that. And then Good Friday. Jesus gets tortured and crucified. Why it's called Good, I don't know. Oh, yeah, exactly.

One of the mysteries of the Trinity. And three days, you know, on the third day, Sunday he rose. And then you get Easter. That's the story. Yeah. Yeah. And... Plus, they had to go through a lot to turn the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.

the Sabbath was everybody Sabbath. Yeah, so they had to turn it to setting. And now you have the Christian Sabbath. They said we can't do it. They can't do this with Jews. Jews are bad. So look at look at another day, so they pick Sunday.

But if you look at the name for Saturday in the romance languages, in Spanish, Sabbath, though, it's all Sabbath. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's all rooted there. Yeah. I love letting you go off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and the funny thing is...

It's the seventh day, God rested. And a sabbatical, you go on a sabbatical, it's the seventh year. See, it's all good. Any other, any? No, we're good. Beat that one into the ground. What's next in your note? The one thing I hadn't attended to talk about was Easter and Passover.

No, it's good. But as an example, but my goal is never to know when Easter or Passover is. But anyway. Now you know. Yeah, now I know. But the point that I was getting at was discovering you wrong. It's fun. But it's also, but I want to combine it with this awe thing we were talking about before.

Let's talk about something that is fascinating in a cosmic sense. I just want to talk about the black hole observation, for a second, the recent one, which is no doubt provoked incredible awe and wonder in everybody. Banner headlines in all the major newspapers. Yeah, and you probably got a million requests I did about to talk about it, or at least to comment about it. I declined all requests because I was not in a position to answer those questions uniquely.

And when I do that, it forces the media to fatten their rolodex and find any physicist. Great. Okay. And it was good. And the same with the eclipse, the 2017 August eclipse. Yeah. I did not offer myself to be interviewed. You can get community college professors, local planetarium folk. Any number of thousands of people could be interviewed for that.

So what is it when it makes you decide when you're a unique source? Is it that you have a unique take? Yeah, a unique take or a unique, or if it needs me because no one else knows why it's interesting. If everyone already knows it's interesting, you don't need me. I think my biggest, my biggest contribution is helping people recognize what is mind-blowing in the world that they might not have otherwise seen. Yeah, okay. And I think I can do that. Oh, no, no. I think that's what, by the way, there's a whole chapter in astrophysics for people in a hurry on the periodic table of elements, for goodness sake. But why it's fascinating. And so I just riff,

on the periodic table of elements, what you surely thought you'd never see after high school chemistry. And there it is in a best-selling book. And so I'm happy to say that that was succeeded in having people celebrate something that they always knew was there but never really thought to think about it. Okay. No, I agree. I think that's one. I give an example.

Okay. Let me give my opinion of art. Okay. I think an artist, an artist task, is not to capture that. that which is evident to everyone for being extraordinary. They should capture things that we forgot to notice or never noticed at all. And let's take music, for example. Obviously, there's some important exceptions to this.

Holding aside the fact that Chikovsky's 1812 overture was panned when it first was really. It's a highly celebrated thing for a big event. Okay, fine. But have you ever heard Beethoven's Wellington victory? It's one of the worst pieces of music I've ever heard in my life. You've never heard it because that's why you've never heard it. Yeah, I'm not good of labeling. Okay, Wellington defeats Napoleon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You go to your greatest composer of the day and say, and give me something to commemorate this, and I'm saying, what is this? What have you done here? You've wasted my... There might be some Wellington Victory fans out there for this piece of music,

but I bet you, if you speak to music scholars, it would be very low in the portfolio of Beethoven compositions. Yeah. That's one of many examples I can give. Let's go to poetry, okay? Who is Paul Revere? Who is he? You mean the...

Who is he? Well, he's famous in American history, that, Paul Revere, for his ride, which he... Okay, he was waiting, I know you're not famous in American history. He was... Who knows in any war that is... In any war that has ever been a... Peter Yeah, pewter.

Who knows in any war that has ever been fought the name of the person who told everybody the enemy is coming. Do you know that name of that person in any war that has ever been fought? No, no.

But you know Paul Revere. Why? Because a poet wrote a poem about it. Yeah, okay. He took a... A nighttime right. Can you name generals from that war other than General Washington? No. No, you can't.

But you name Paul Revere. I can name the British ones because I grew up in Canada. So the poet, now I don't know if the midnight rival Paul Revere is considered high poetry, but it's memorable poetry. Okay? How about Joyce Carroll, I mean Joyce Kilmer? Joyce Kilmer. What's your most famous poem? It's about a tree. Okay. A tree. Is it about some famous event, some general, some battle, some, so no, it's about a tree. It's about a tree. It's about a tree. And you read that poem, you never look at a tree the same way again, and you've been walking by them every day of your life. Yeah, so you're right. But that's, look, I think I say it a different way.

So therefore, that's what I'm saying. My, my, what I, I see one of my tasks is to help people celebrate things about the world, about the universe, about laws, the physics, that they either take for granted or never knew we're there, and they walk away from it having a new appreciation. of their world. Well, look, and that's... I'm trying to scream at you again. It's okay. You make me scream at you all the time.

And I love it. I know you mean well. But no, but I guess I think of it the same way, but I think of it. I put it slightly differently, which is that it's great that you gave poetry, art, and music as examples. Because I always point out one of my...

And what's on my wall here? As I know, you done that riff in my... I did in your... In your event at Phoenix. At your event, I wore a Starry Night t-shirt. You took it on it. You did a sputees first.

This painting, is it of a battle? Is it of a famous? No. It is one of the most famous paintings in the world. In part, somebody wrote a song about it. It's called Starry Night. That's in part. It's in part.

It's in part. Well, it wasn't until it got more famous that the Museum of Modern Art, because it's here in New York City, put it on a more visible wall. It used to be around a corner in the back in a room that was not centered. I remember this. Okay. And then they put a fancy. your frame around it. They're responding to the public's reaction as the popularity of Van Gogh has

risen because Bango has been written about in movies and pop culture. And so it's because the poet, the artist, took ownership of Van Gogh. I don't think he did, he portrayed any famous anything. Yeah. He wore. He did sunflowers. But it's okay. I think I'll be a little more just about portraying famous things in the sense that, or things that people think are already extraordinary. And the famous one of George Washington. What's the most famous painting of George Washington? Okay. What is the most famous one?

Crossing the Delaware. Is he, in him in battle? Is it him punching somebody out? He's him standing there in a freaking boat. Okay. Crossing the Delaware. A completely unmemorable thing, but rendered memorable by the creativity of an artist. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. Now shut up about artist. What you've demonstrated there was that what I think is why, if you ask me what my sort of overriding goal is in that sense, is to demonstrate that science is part of our culture, that science, art, music, and literature are the same thing. And the way I put it in maybe a less poetic or sound bite way, maybe not, is that I view the goal of science or one of the beauties of science, and the reason it's the same as art literature, is each of them forces us to reassess our place in the cosmos, to see how we fit in to the universe. A good poem, a good piece of music, a good piece of art forces you to reassess what you always thought the universe was all about, or your personal universe, if it's a story about

something you can resonate to, and science does that very well, and that's why we have to celebrate it. Not because science has the misfortune of also producing technology. So people, well, I don't know if people come up to you because astronomy isn't practical. And that people come up to me, I'll say, what's the use of this? Because they're trained to think that science produces useful things, lights, lights, motors, engines, it's changed our lives. We're here because of medicine. But, you know, Picasso or Van Gogh didn't produce something that, that, you know, allowed you to live longer. So never people will ever say, what's the use of a Van Gogh painting? Because they don't know it has that technology. Science does. So unfortunately, people think science is only useful because

of its technology. But I think you and I would agree that the real virtue of science is exactly that, is to inspire us to re-assess ourselves. But on the other hand, I would disagree. I would say it's okay to portray things that people already think are extraordinary if you

reveal new facets of it. Rainbows are something people are fascinated by. But Feynman did a big riff once about knowing how a rainbow works doesn't make it less beautiful. It makes it more beautiful. I have the New York times from June 21st,

um, 1969. Okay. And it covers the moon landing that took place on June 20th. Yeah. There's an entire pull-out section where poets

and writers are waxing about this event. And is the most boring tracts of literature. We have reached out to touch the sky and we've pierced the image of our ignorance and we have,

we have opened a new. it's like, do I need the poet to make me excited about landing on the moon? No, the event is sufficient enough to trigger whatever emotion I need in me. I don't need the artist for that. Yeah, okay. By the way, none of those poems survive to this day. Dig them up. It's like you can't even read them.

I'm just saying, I'm being very opinionated here. I'm not normally opinionated in public. Well, no, I'm glad. Well, the bottom line is there are things that are fascinating intrinsically. But it's always possible to add something new and interesting to those things. Of course. And so the fact that it already is wonderful, there are things that I'm sure you've commented on that people have found fascinating where you think you have a new take.

Right? It's not, you don't do it. Rainbows among them. Yeah, exactly. I tweeted once. People didn't know. They said, everyone sees their own rainbow. I mean because it's where you're standing?

Every rainbow is unique to every person who sees it. And that's why every rainbow is exactly sideways to you. You've never seen a rainbow edge on. Yeah. Or at a proportional angle. And if you approach a rainbow, it stays that distance from you. So this is why you can never get to the pot of gold. It's a good place to put the pot of gold.

Yeah, it's a good place to say it's there because you know someone you can ever reach it. Excellent. Okay. I want to, there's a few more. Before we get the last, I want to talk about space at some point because I know we've had interesting discussion about it. And it puts it space. Space exploration.

Space, the final frontier. No, it's just the next frontier. Yeah, yeah, okay. The next frontier. I like that. Okay. But I do want to talk about humor a little bit because that helps in my, I mean, it's integral to my own approach, just because I like jokes, but I know it is for you too.

And I think you have a, I'm reasonably certain you have a thought process for why you want to include humor in your discussions of science. So maybe you could talk about that a little bit. Well, a couple of fundamental facts. a good joke, too. Sure. A couple of fundamental facts that when people are happy, they're more, they come back for more. So you get the repeat visitor.

Yeah. That's one fact. Another fact, I found that people, if they're happy, they're more willing to learn. It's related to becoming a repeat visitor. Sure, sure. More willing to stay and not run away. But not only that, I think people like having fun. Yeah, of course.

More than they like not having fun. I think that's empirically obvious fact. So even though while you're in college, you attend lectures, the word lecture is a bad word for all of your life after college. Don't lecture me on this. Why are you lecturing me? Stop lecturing me. All of a sudden, lecture is a bad word when that was the fundamental thing of what's going on in college. So the implication is the lectures don't contain humor.

And if there was the lectures that did, you remembered that class and you enjoyed it and you were on time every day. Yeah. The format of my StarTalk radio program is my co-hosts is always a professional stand-up comedian. Yeah, yeah. They bring a source of levity to the conversations. My academic expert that I bring in, if it's not myself, depending on the topic, they bring a source of gravity to the conversation. So you have the levity and the gravity, and I have a valve that vents or does not,

one or both of those at any given moment to make sure we hit a consistent delivery of content and fun. I tried to violate that when I was on Star Trek. I tried to be a source of levity as well as gravity. Yeah. So I also think the universe is particularly hilarious. Yeah. So I don't actually tell jokes.

Yeah. I just talk about things in ways that the context can be humorous and make you smile. One of the reason I was humor is it opens people up. It removes barriers. And I heard someone say that you told them, you told them, and I thought it was a different way of framing, and I thought was a nice thing. And I was, is that, is that, you can't laugh and be afraid at the same time that, that, that sort of humor removes the fear, which I think is a really, I don't think I said that,

but someone, they probably heard it on a Star Talk, because I've interviewed some key, oh, you know who did it? You know, said that was Stephen Colbert. Okay. Sitting in this chair, would be interviewing him. Okay. Yeah, no, it's, but it is. And the point is that.

So that's what they associate me with it because I was on the program. Yeah, on the program, yes. But I think that for me, that's the point. I mean, science, not because it intrinsically is, but largely, partly because the educationalism that you talked about, where people try and steer people away if they can, and especially if they're stereotyping them. But people have this impedance bearer, this fear, this wall that science is something to be afraid of. And so if it's funny, then it doesn't, then at least you've tried to tear down that wall a little bit. For me, that's part of the reason. Also, because I, you know, I do find the universe absurd. And I think interesting, Gail Collins was saying that to try and write something if people don't want to kill themselves.

You don't want to, it can be depressing, but it's more fun if it's absurd. And so it's, I... That's how and why I titled one of my books, Death by Black Hole. Okay. Yeah, I'm going to ask you about that. Would that be your favorite way of dying? Oh, it would be my preferred way. Favorite is probably not the right thing.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if I'd rather, if Detroit's getting... hit by bus, withering away on a deathbed or falling into a black hole and being able to report to others right till the last moment where I can't, yeah, then I'll be part of an experiment. I would totally do that. You'd rather be part of the experiment. Oh, yeah.

Although Feynman said, you know, when he was, he did that when he was dying, he said, I'm going to, you know, basically report the experience. And he said it was very boring. No, really. He thought, you know, he would take, he would, of course, he died of cancer, unfortunately. But he, he was, as he did everything, his life. It was sort of, I want to learn what this is like. You say, unfortunately, not specifically because he died of cancer, but he died younger than he otherwise would have.

Yeah, well, both ways. I mean, it's sort of, you know, you're right, younger than he otherwise. People die. So, people die. It happens. It's not unfortunately he died. Yeah. It's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, why you're telling me everything that's on your mind about me. Exactly why. That's not exactly the reason. But it's probably, I don't know. I mean, find it had an impact maybe that Sagan had on you. And it's why I've told people that if they want to, they shouldn't hold back if they want to relate to someone, it's a good idea to do it when you have the opportunity rather than later on because you often regret it. And let me, let me then,

there's one last thing I want to ask you. Twitter has been a huge part. You were one of the earliest as far as I know, kind of adopt. Not earliest in the Twitterverse, but earliest to use it as an educational platform, I would say. Because the early users were all, I'm having a hamburger now. I'm crossing the par. I'm going to see this movie.

And it's more a storytelling of your life rather than as a tool. So I may have been, I certainly was in my own field. I don't know about other educational. But you use it, but I was intrigued when you say use it empirically because when you talk to an audience,

you can use it empirically or talk to people, you can see if their eyes are glazing over it else. But one of the only problems I can see with Twitter, and maybe this is adjusted, I'm wondering how you've adjusted your Twitter-tuttering from being just wonderful soundbites to get people thinking to maybe something else, is that it seems to be a medium that unfortunately does encourage negativity in response more than almost any other medium I know. And I wonder how you respond to that. It encourages negativity when you say something that someone else doesn't agree with.

If you express an opinion, there will be people. who have a different opinion, and we live in a world where if you're not going to talk about the opinion, you'll be attacked for your opinion. That is what's changed in this world. And I knew that early on in Twitter. So I said, I will never present an opinion. And so the negativity lands on hollow ground. And others who read a negative conversation, that's not what he said.

Okay, yeah. No, no, I agree. But aren't you surprised, I mean, or are you surprised and does it disappoint you, that you write something or, you know, or I read something about science, which is wonderful. And people say, oh, yeah, but I hate you for this. Or, oh, yeah, but some, you know, they'll find some reason to this. And you're right.

No, they're just like that. On that level, they're just trolls. And you just keep moving. Yeah, but it's interesting that that medium encouraged, it seems to someone. But trolls are everywhere. Trows have been, maybe not. Trolls on Reddit before Twitter even existed.

Trolls are just a part of life. Well, unlike a stand-up comic, I found, for example, that trolls are rarely at, public events. I mean, you know, no, seriously, I mean, it's rare that we've done a lot of public events together. It's rare. It's efforts every now and then, but it's rare that someone makes an effort to try and sort of confront you as they might a comic. Have you found that? Sure, but again, I'm less confrontable if I'm not always trying to tell you what your opinion should be or who you should vote for or what politician you should love or hate. I just don't do that. I give you

information that you falls into your worldview and then, make your own opinion. Okay, let's end asking you some opinions. Okay, sure. Specifically... I don't care that other people know my opinions. I just don't care. No, that's fine.

Because they're my opinions. No, no. And nor do I want people to adopt my opinion because they like me. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I want them to make their own opinion because I... Because as an educator, I have fed them tools to shape opinions of their own that would be informed, ideally, that are thought through, ideally. and in that way we have a more powerful democracy.

Of course. In fact, it's the essential part of a democracy. Unless you have an informed public, you can't possibly, and ultimately inform legislators. Informed electorate. Yeah, yeah, informed electorate. And informed legislators at some level. And if the public is informed in principle, they would vote for informed legislator. Let's talk about opinions, informed opinions about space.

Because we've had these discussions, and I don't think people really, people think we somehow are angry about it, partly because you like to yell at me. But it's relevant now because we are in principle, it seems to me, at the cost of something that you pointed out very eloquently when we've had debates about human explorations of space. And you pointed out when I said,

once you jumped on me, I remember once, that I was saying, you know, human exploration of space is not best way doing science. And you jumped and said, but Lawrence, it's never had to do with science. It was always geopolitical. And you talked about the moon landing as a geopolitical enterprise. So we were in violent agreement with each other.

Yeah. I was just noting that you implied by your comment that it once did, and now it doesn't. But the interesting question I have now is we're almost in the cost of that now. In terms of we saw Mr. Pence talk about the United States trying to go back to the moon in five years. It seems to me practically unlikely that that may happen. But there's a reason for it because we're seeing India. and China, it's going back to the moon has become once again a mark of national prestige and national eminence. And I wanted to get your reflection on whether, so I worry that a lot of

money is going to be diverted to that enterprise that could be spent on other aspects of space exploration, which I find more fascinating. And I wanted to get your take on that. It's not about prestige or eminence. You can get that, but it's never been about that. It's been about about power. It's power. Well, okay, prestigious. Yeah, power. And with power, it can come, prestige and image. Yeah, yeah. But what drives it is power. What kind of power? Military. Military power.

Or soft power works as well in the interest of your military mission statement. So soft power is, you come to Rome and you see they built the Coliseum. And you say, oh my gosh, who are these people who did this? So soft power being the technology, the demonstration. Demonstration of what you can do. Exactly. And that way is don't fuck with us. Yeah, okay.

All right. It's in the subtext of what the demonstrated power is. So let's put the current, let's put the current what's going on in perspective. And where would you like to see it go? Where do you think it's going to go? And yeah, both those. Yeah. Because you've had an intimate relationship.

The motivation to do so is, yeah, it's India, but it's also China. Yeah, yeah, sure. So primarily China, I would say. I think so. China says they're going to do something and they do it. Yeah. You know? Yeah, it's amazing to do it. It's pretty difficult.

We'll just do it. Yeah. Because they have the power over industry and money and allocations. Yeah. They have a dictatorship. Yeah. Yeah. So it's something that a democracy can only do once everybody agrees.

And if we live in a fundamentally disagree. I'm not sure everyone agree. You could win the, yeah, anyway. What do you mean? Well, democracy does things, not when everyone agrees, but when you convince enough people who are control. There are tipping points where enough people agree where it might as well be everyone agree. Yeah, okay.

Because all votes then go in that direction and you're done. Yeah, yeah, right? So it's how we could get into the Second World War as thoroughly as we did. Yeah, yeah. It's how we can found NASA as quickly as we did. On your birthday, right? A day before. A year and a day before my birthday. I heard someone from someone was telling me that. I thought, oh, I didn't know that. Okay. No, sorry, sorry, I didn't say that right. NASA was founded the same week I was born.

Sputnik was a year and a day before my birthday. found the same week. The same week. Right. Okay. And you've been involved in NASA and advisory panels and celebrated for that.

So you have an experiential relationship with NASA as well. And so NASA is going to be doing... But also with the public, and that matters here. Yeah, yeah. NASA's not some isolated agency. Yeah. More than any other, it's sort of plays

to the public. Correct. It really does play much more efficiently the public than National Science Foundation or... It's why people think NASA's budget is way bigger than it actually is. I want us to start a movement where all agencies get paid what people think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I was once, a Department of Energy once put together a group that I was on. How can we be as effective as NASA in terms of trying to promote what we're trying to do? Which, NASA has done it effectively. But now we're going to spend a lot of money, and there's a lot of neat projects. And you know that I have a huge love of non-humans exploring the universe. I find it not just from a scientific perspective. I actually find it more romantic.

I find rovers on Mars more romantic than if human were on Mars, personally. But why didn't, okay, well then had we not sent people to the moon, would you have been as enchanted by science? I was younger then. What I'm saying is there was a rover on the moon at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one knew because we were sending people to the moon. Yeah.

You can say all you want about how good robots are. You put a person in any place a robot is. The robot is chopped liver relative to the interest and energy that would be in very very very, you can very and following and tracking the human beings who are where the rovers are. Why do you think? Because we are humans. Well, maybe. Maybe, no, we are humans.

Okay, we had this. Well, some of us. But I would also argue it's because humans can die. When the rover dies, it's just not as interesting. I know I sound very cynical about that, but I think we find astronauts exciting because they're confronting death. They're brave. They're going boldly going where no one's gone before, but there's a reason no one's

I don't have an argument with that, but let me enhance it. Okay. By whatever genetic encoding, the human species has endured over the millennia, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. One thing is for sure. If somebody leaves the tribe and goes over the horizon and comes back, you want to know what they saw, what they... You want to know everything, every story they can possibly tell.

And that has been the stuff of legends ever since we've been able to communicate with each other, with one another. And so these are the voyages of Odysseus. These are voyages that people take. And then you come back and you tell your story. Statues are built to those people. I've yet to see a statue built to a robot. So you should not deny humans the value of, of the story that another human brings back to us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That we can then tell. Yeah, no, I think that that's a beautiful... And I'm taking my cue from the history of this exercise in our species. Yeah, and I suspect in the future robots will be able to tell stories and people will find... In fact, they may be better at it. But that's a wonderful way to end this discussion, because one of the reasons why I wanted to hear your stories is you have gone over the horizon in communication and discussion. and I wanted you to come back and tell me your stories.

And as always, in spite of the yelling, I find it fascinating. I think you can agree, because you've been in this, you've been on tour with, you've made a movie, this sort of thing. I am astonished every morning I wake up and look at how many people follow me on Twitter. I feel like reminding them at least once a week, you realize you're following an astrophysicist. There's still time to pull out. I'm astonished that I can show up in a theater and have it on a Thursday night, date night, and have a full house of people coming just to hear about science.

I'd like to think, however delusional this is, that given all the challenges that scientists and scientific ideas confront in modern culture, that there's a groundswell of people, if they're not scientifically literate, they want to be. And they value all of the efforts that scientists have put in to write books, to make YouTube videos, to testify in courts, which I've never done. You've been there. And I've, and I tell you anytime I see you, you're one of our bulldogs. You go in there, fighting that fight, in the trenches. And anytime science confronts religion in a, in a school classroom, for example, that these are important. frontiers. So, but I'd like to think that we are transitioning from a culture and a society

that didn't care about science or didn't know how and why science mattered to a culture, certainly this next generation, 30 and under, who, who are ready to say an understanding of science is the difference between a future where I'm alive and a future where my descendants are dead. I certainly, I certainly hope that. I think I'm maybe more optimistic. I think people have always been fascinated in science. Producers didn't understand that people are fascinated by science. And I'm just really happy that there are people like you who, for whatever accidents of history or innate talent,

have been able to convince the public and, to some extent, producers, that there's that need, that desire, and that the end product can be so good. So thank you, Neil. The Origins podcast is produced by Lawrence Krause, Nancy Doll. Amelia Huggins, John and Don Edwards, and Rob Zeps, directed and edited by Gus and Luke Holwurda, audio by Thomas Amison, web design by Redmond Media Lab, animation by Tomahawk Visual Effects, and music by Ricolus. To see the full video of this podcast, as well as other bonus content, visit us at patreon.com

slash origins podcast.