Speaker 1: Hi, Katie. Hi, Brian. I'm very excited about today's podcast
Speaker 1: because we're talking to a real brainiac. And I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about you, Brian. I'm talking about Neil Degrass Tyson,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited to talk to him because I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a war on science, a war on fact
Speaker 1: based evidence going on in this country, and I want
Speaker 1: to understand why this topic is probably more relevant than
Speaker 1: ever before because you have right now the President's budget
Speaker 1: going after the Environmental Protection Agency. You have the top
Speaker 1: regulators in the country denying that humans are contributing to
Speaker 1: climate change, or at least questioning it. You have a
Speaker 1: big movement in this country of people who are denying
Speaker 1: the things that scientists are telling us based on the
Speaker 1: research that they're doing. And Neil Degrass Tyson wants to
Speaker 1: fight back against all of that and to do it
Speaker 1: through education and information. And he's a great person to
Speaker 1: do that, Brian. He breaks things out and makes them
Speaker 1: very accessible. In fact, he's been called a cross between
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers and Carl Sagan. He makes science fun and
Speaker 1: if you don't believe us, just listen to the way
Speaker 1: Neil begins his podcast from the American Museum of Natural
Speaker 1: History in New York City, and time is starting where
Speaker 1: science and pop culture such a Hey, Brian, how can
Speaker 1: you not enjoy learning about the universe to the strains
Speaker 1: of sexy back? Come on now, well, I think sexy
Speaker 1: Back was actually written for me. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: little known fact, but that's true. I don't want to
Speaker 1: think about that. Meanwhile, did you notice how malef lewis
Speaker 1: Neil's voices? I mean, he's got such a great speaking voice.
Speaker 1: We're not saying he doesn't have a face for television,
Speaker 1: but he also has a voice for audio. Absolutely, So
Speaker 1: we learned so much when we talked to Neil de
Speaker 1: grass Tyson. And here he is, Hi, Katie, how are
Speaker 1: you in a few years? I know we were together
Speaker 1: on TV? I know and uh, and we have so
Speaker 1: much to talk about us. It is vast and Brian
Speaker 1: is joining us from Los Angeles, and I first want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about your childhood and how you
Speaker 1: became so excited by science. You know what it is.
Speaker 1: I think as a kid, we're all excited about everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, just remember that. So how did I keep
Speaker 1: my curiosity? Is really? What what ignited it to to
Speaker 1: to delve into science in particular, right, because you can
Speaker 1: be curious about anything obviously, So so it was you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in New York City, and my parents
Speaker 1: fully understood the role in the value of the cultural
Speaker 1: institutions of the city, the museums, the zoo, and my
Speaker 1: When I was nine, we happened to go to the
Speaker 1: Hayden Planetarium and I said this before I sat down,
Speaker 1: and like they dimmed the lights and the stars came out,
Speaker 1: and I was certain it was a hoax. I was
Speaker 1: so because I grew up in the Bronx and I
Speaker 1: knew how many stars there were in the night sky.
Speaker 1: There's like a dozen stars, so this can't be right
Speaker 1: that there are these countless thousands of stars on the dome.
Speaker 1: Of course, later I would learn that that was closer
Speaker 1: to reality than anything I've ever seen or experienced in
Speaker 1: the Bronx. But I can say without hesitation that that
Speaker 1: day I was star struck and I never left the
Speaker 1: Hayden Planetarium since then, Right, Yeah, I'm kind of still there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then an adulthood I would become director of the planetarium.
Speaker 1: That's right. That is such a cool story. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: think it makes a better story in a small town,
Speaker 1: you know, hometown kid goes away and comes back and
Speaker 1: does good in New York, nobody cares. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's okay. Yeah, I think that is. I think it
Speaker 1: is really cool. And you know, I think the idea
Speaker 1: that you were filled almost immediately with this sense of wonder.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you're so lucky neal, because I
Speaker 1: think many people don't have a calling that way, that
Speaker 1: nothing really strikes them as something they are really passionate about.
Speaker 1: I here's something, here's a bit of delusion for me. Ready.
Speaker 1: So when I was eleven, I said to myself, maybe
Speaker 1: I shouldn't study the universe because it's so amazing. Everyone
Speaker 1: clearly will want to study it. Everyone's going to want
Speaker 1: to be an astro physinesist. That was a thought I
Speaker 1: actually actually went through my head because it would take
Speaker 1: a two years until age eleven where I would have
Speaker 1: the answer to that annoying question that adults always ask kids,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you want to be when you
Speaker 1: grow up? Age eleven onward? My answer was astrophysicist and usually,
Speaker 1: oh god, that sounds so obnoxious. It was completely obnoxious,
Speaker 1: and in the following world I think I'd smack you
Speaker 1: just kidding everyone, I don't I love it. I'd be
Speaker 1: lovingly smacked by Katie. But Katie, you are absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I did not know until I got to college how
Speaker 1: many people did not have a calling that was still
Speaker 1: trying to figure it out, and they were thumbing through
Speaker 1: what to major in in the book, And so I
Speaker 1: would never thenceforth take it for granted. Well, it's interesting
Speaker 1: is we were preparing for this show, we learned that,
Speaker 1: you know, both your parents were intellectuals. Your mom was
Speaker 1: a gerontologist, which apparently has something to do with the
Speaker 1: study of aging, and your dad was a sociologist and
Speaker 1: worked for the City of New York. And so did
Speaker 1: your parents encourage you to to get a PhD? To
Speaker 1: travel this hard road to actually becoming uh Dr Tyson.
Speaker 1: So let me add some some nuances to to what
Speaker 1: you've said. So, my mother was a housewife while raising
Speaker 1: the three of us, and she only went to college
Speaker 1: age after we were empty nest. So she married and
Speaker 1: started a family out of high school, while my father
Speaker 1: went on for further education. Uh And he became a
Speaker 1: practicing sociologist in the sense that he was hired into
Speaker 1: the city under Mayor Lindsay at the time, and this
Speaker 1: is in the nineteen sixties, so the civil rights era
Speaker 1: was fully underway, and so there he was being deeply
Speaker 1: concerned about the plight of the human condition. And later
Speaker 1: on my mother would turn her energies to the plight
Speaker 1: of the aging. And here's their son, the astrost. So
Speaker 1: that was a little weird. It was a little weird.
Speaker 1: But they never told me what to study. All they
Speaker 1: did was encouraged the interest that they saw manifest on
Speaker 1: its own. But clearly you know from your story about
Speaker 1: how they would take you all different places and exploring
Speaker 1: really the world in the microcosm of New York, that
Speaker 1: must have kind of stimulated you. And and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: that's the right word, the world explore? Right? Who who
Speaker 1: thinks about it that way? But that's exactly what it was.
Speaker 1: You go to a different institution each weekend. That's exploration,
Speaker 1: urban exploration is what that was. But at no time
Speaker 1: where my parents saying I want you to do what
Speaker 1: I what I did. That would be and I we
Speaker 1: all know people where that was the case, right, What
Speaker 1: would you tell parents about instilling this intellectual curiosity and
Speaker 1: their children. I would say, expose them to as many
Speaker 1: kinds of things they can be when they grow up
Speaker 1: as is possible given your resources and given your geography,
Speaker 1: and I think they'll find they'll find their way, So
Speaker 1: expose them and let them decide. There you go. And
Speaker 1: as you were trying to figure out what to be,
Speaker 1: I read that you had some reservations about becoming an
Speaker 1: astrophysicist because as an African American you worried that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't do enough to help your fellow African Americans. But
Speaker 1: you change your mind to about that. Can you describe
Speaker 1: what happened? Oh? Yeah, I briefly. Um, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit about this in my memoir which I wrote some
Speaker 1: years ago, midlife Memoir. I guess I was going to say,
Speaker 1: you're prettily on to write a memoir. Several years ago.
Speaker 1: We publisher approached me this is this is basically twenty
Speaker 1: years ago and said we want to hear your story.
Speaker 1: And I said, do you know something about my life
Speaker 1: expectancy that I don't? So they said, oh, this one
Speaker 1: could be just the first installment. I said fine, So
Speaker 1: so in there I just tell the story. When I
Speaker 1: was in college, I was on the wrestling. I wrestled,
Speaker 1: and I had a fellow wrestler who's my weight class,
Speaker 1: and he's black, majored in economics. And we're walking home
Speaker 1: one day. This was at Harvard. At Harvard, yeah, that school,
Speaker 1: and came too ready with the Harvard bashing. Never had
Speaker 1: Brian went to Harvard to I basically have an inferiority complex.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I think she actually has a superiority complex
Speaker 1: about U v A. All right, moving on, go ahead
Speaker 1: and me up, and let the record show that both
Speaker 1: of you mentioned this on your own. I did not
Speaker 1: mention it myself. And so he would later go on
Speaker 1: to be a Rhodes scholar and study in Oxford. And
Speaker 1: so he's an accomplished guy. But we're walking home and
Speaker 1: he says, oh, so, how how how studies? And I said,
Speaker 1: I barely have time for anything. You know, my problem
Speaker 1: sets are killing me. So remind me what you're studying.
Speaker 1: I said, physics. Ultimately want to get a PhD in astrophysics.
Speaker 1: And he said, quote, the black community does not have
Speaker 1: the luxury of you studying astrophysics. Ouch. Oh oh, are
Speaker 1: you channeling very white all? So what did you say
Speaker 1: to that? Well? So I was very conflicted because of
Speaker 1: course my father was in the service of helping the
Speaker 1: black community or anyone disenfranchised more generally, and so I
Speaker 1: knew where where that argument comes from. And I also
Speaker 1: knew that here I am in one of the finest
Speaker 1: institutions of the land, and I'm studying the Big Bang
Speaker 1: and black holes and planets. Oh my gosh, And I said, so,
Speaker 1: So what he did was he he dug me into
Speaker 1: a hole and left me there. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to get out of the hole. But so, so
Speaker 1: I was conflicted for many years. I would say, I
Speaker 1: can quantify it was I was conflicted for like twelve years.
Speaker 1: I still went on to get a PhD and studied astrophysics,
Speaker 1: but I was conflicted the whole time because of that
Speaker 1: one thing he said to me. And you know how
Speaker 1: I finally got out of it, Yeah, because it's it
Speaker 1: involved like your your people, right, your your species. So
Speaker 1: so I'm in graduate school and a phone call comes
Speaker 1: to the department and it was Channel five news, local
Speaker 1: news in New York. Apparently there were explosions on the
Speaker 1: Sun and they called the astrophysics department at Columbia to
Speaker 1: get somebody to calm meant on these explosions. So I
Speaker 1: got on the phone with the guy. It was the
Speaker 1: weather guy, because the weather Guy is the science the
Speaker 1: token science person on all the shows. And they said, uh,
Speaker 1: can you tell us about this? I said, yes, it's
Speaker 1: just solar flares. This happens every now and then part
Speaker 1: charged particles head towards Earth. Earth magnetic field deflects them.
Speaker 1: We're safe from it. This use this as an excuse
Speaker 1: this weekend to go north and enjoy the northern lights.
Speaker 1: That's what he said, Oh, could you say that on camera?
Speaker 1: So I said sure, Okay. So I went into the studio,
Speaker 1: sat down in front of these fake books because my
Speaker 1: first time like in your space, you're kind of space Katie.
Speaker 1: So we're sitting for it was when we were sitting
Speaker 1: for these sawed off books, glued fake you know, edge
Speaker 1: side into the thing, and so we recreate this conversation
Speaker 1: and then I So that was and for airing later
Speaker 1: that night. So I went home and I called everybody. Mom,
Speaker 1: Dad says, I'll be on TV tonight, right right. So,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm watching TV and I'm watching me interviewed,
Speaker 1: and I had a kind of out of body experience.
Speaker 1: At the end of that conversation, I realized, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: the reporter did not ask me, how do black people
Speaker 1: feel about the sun exploding? What do you you know?
Speaker 1: What what is does? Does that? Does this radiation affect
Speaker 1: black skin differently from white skin? There was not a
Speaker 1: single mention of the color of my skin in that interview.
Speaker 1: And then I realized I had never seen an interview
Speaker 1: ever of a black person on TV that had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with being black, not including athletes and entertainers
Speaker 1: with nine Okay, then I realized what I just did
Speaker 1: there maybe the most potent force, of the most potent
Speaker 1: equalizing force there is. You see an expert as a
Speaker 1: black person telling you whether Earth is going to survive,
Speaker 1: Earth is gonna survive. So now you see an educated
Speaker 1: black person on TV, no mention of their skin color.
Speaker 1: Now you see a homeless black person in the street.
Speaker 1: Now you're gonna think twice. You're gonna say, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: is this for law? Lack of opportunity to have we
Speaker 1: done something wrong? Is there can to society? And no
Speaker 1: longer can you just stereotype and entire group of people
Speaker 1: who would just be your entertainers or your athletes. And
Speaker 1: I've realized at that point this is the ticket out
Speaker 1: of this hole that I've been standing in for thirteen years.
Speaker 1: It's not that the black community can't afford to have
Speaker 1: me study astrophysics, is that the world cannot afford to
Speaker 1: have me not study astrophysics. That's what I can call
Speaker 1: and the world can cannot afford not seeing you explain astrophysics.
Speaker 1: And that's why with this interview as an exception, if
Speaker 1: someone wants to interview me, and I know in advance
Speaker 1: it's because I'm black and they want to ask me
Speaker 1: black stuff, I say, no, that's not I'm not the
Speaker 1: right person for that. But you did have to have
Speaker 1: this epiphany, and you thought, why aren't there more African
Speaker 1: American experts having nothing to do with their race on television? Correct? Correct?
Speaker 1: So beginning in the early nineties, you started having black
Speaker 1: attorneys commenting on, you know, civil cases. So attorneys were
Speaker 1: the first out of the box. Then you'd have others.
Speaker 1: You would have authors and poets and and and newscasters,
Speaker 1: and so now it's not even a thing. And I'm
Speaker 1: delighted to announce that. You know, it's interesting. I was
Speaker 1: thinking when I read this as well. Preparing for this interview,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about when I had my colonoscopy. When
Speaker 1: I got my colonoscopy on television, I used a doctor
Speaker 1: who was highly recommended, named ken Ford, because he was
Speaker 1: recommended by a friend of mine, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: my friend, who was also a gastro orologist, to get
Speaker 1: that close to me, if you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So I a friend of mine came up to me
Speaker 1: Neil after that colonoscopy and said, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for using an African American doctor to give you your colonoscopy.
Speaker 1: And I said, I didn't even think of that. There
Speaker 1: you go, that's it. But but it was so important.
Speaker 1: It's so important to your point to continue to show
Speaker 1: really diversity of all kinds exactly in a number of
Speaker 1: television general case. It's a general statement. It's the diversity
Speaker 1: of gender, race, of the nationality. If once you see that,
Speaker 1: it makes it harder for you to stereotype. We have
Speaker 1: a caller question which I think is actually perfect for
Speaker 1: this moment, so let's listen. I'm Brian, Hi Katie. I
Speaker 1: first only thank Neil because a few years ago he
Speaker 1: gave me the best advice for being a physicist applying
Speaker 1: to grad school, which is the double the amount of
Speaker 1: schools you're applying to, because if you're dumb enough to
Speaker 1: go to grad school on any stone field, I don't
Speaker 1: remember using the word dumb. One's going to be dumb
Speaker 1: enough to take you. You just gotta find them. But
Speaker 1: a question for Neil is how did you go from
Speaker 1: being an academic researcher to becoming one of the leading
Speaker 1: scientific communicators today? Okay, great question. So uh so this
Speaker 1: trajectory is not what you think. So because I'm not
Speaker 1: entirely what I seem. If you tell me rank what
Speaker 1: it is you would want to do today, probably engaging
Speaker 1: the public would not make the top fifty. I would
Speaker 1: just stay home, or I'd write, or I'd go to
Speaker 1: the lab. That's what I really want to do in
Speaker 1: a day. But what has happened is I live in
Speaker 1: New York City. This is the news gathering headquarters of
Speaker 1: the country and possibly the world, And so when the
Speaker 1: universe flinches, the press calls me because I give them
Speaker 1: a sound bite that they can embrace, that they like,
Speaker 1: and then they want more. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: worked at that. All right, if you give me a minute.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you my very first time on national news.
Speaker 1: Because that the case with the with the fake books.
Speaker 1: That was local news, but my first time on nationals.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you national news budget has anyone cracked, any
Speaker 1: of them know, But they make a more authentic They
Speaker 1: make a beauty of wallpaper, like three D wallpaper. So
Speaker 1: here's what happened. I'm freshly hired at the Hayden Planetarium.
Speaker 1: I'm interim director actually okay, and the first Excel planet
Speaker 1: is discovered, a planet orbiting another star, banner headlines. The
Speaker 1: call comes into the planetarium. They said, can we interview
Speaker 1: the director? They don't know me from anything, but I'm
Speaker 1: the director, all right, So they said, fine, we'll set
Speaker 1: you up with Tyson, who's tight. It's fine, he's the
Speaker 1: interim director. So this is Tom Brokaw's NBC Nightly News. Okay.
Speaker 1: Now they just send up an action camp to get
Speaker 1: to get this interview. An action was called back then,
Speaker 1: his Action News. But I don't think that NBC at
Speaker 1: nightly news with action whatever the local news had the
Speaker 1: action can absolutely right. Um so, but this was going
Speaker 1: to air on the NBC Nightly News, and so I'm
Speaker 1: there and they send up a correspondent and they asked me,
Speaker 1: how is this planet discovered? And I I go on
Speaker 1: for ten minutes with my best profisoil reply. Hopefully this
Speaker 1: wasn't live. It was not live, it was prerecorded. And
Speaker 1: so then I commented that that the way you can
Speaker 1: know that there's an orbiting planet is that the star
Speaker 1: responds to the gravity of the planet. We think planets
Speaker 1: orbit stars know they both orbit their common center of gravity.
Speaker 1: So the star is actually doing a kind of jiggle
Speaker 1: around with the center of mass, right, And so I
Speaker 1: said all of this. The only thing that ended up
Speaker 1: in the evening news that night was me jiggling my hips,
Speaker 1: the imitating, imitating the host star and all the rest
Speaker 1: of that got sound bitten. And I said, oh, now,
Speaker 1: I understand. They didn't come to hear me give a
Speaker 1: professorial reply. They want something they can use in their mode,
Speaker 1: even though they're in my house, right in my in
Speaker 1: my planetarium. So I went home and I practiced sound
Speaker 1: bites because I don't want them sound biting me. I'll
Speaker 1: gonna hand you a sound bite that way, you don't
Speaker 1: have to cut it, give me any word in the
Speaker 1: entire universe object, idea thing just right now? Do it?
Speaker 1: You want to do that single word Pluto, Pluto, Get
Speaker 1: over it. Earth's moon is five times the mass of Pluto,
Speaker 1: and many Pluto lovers don't know that, and when you
Speaker 1: tell it to them, only then do they begin to
Speaker 1: understand the controversy that surrounded it. So, yes, Pluto got demoted.
Speaker 1: Get over it. That's the sound bite I would give
Speaker 1: you if you came to melt So, so I worked
Speaker 1: at that. So my only point of this is to say,
Speaker 1: from that moment onward, I said, if I'm going to
Speaker 1: serve the press, serve television, I want to give them
Speaker 1: what they want and what they need. So so a
Speaker 1: sound bite is like two or three sentences that are informative, tasty,
Speaker 1: and maybe make you smile and make you smile so
Speaker 1: that you might want to tell someone else. So that's
Speaker 1: what I started working on, and they kept coming back,
Speaker 1: but also accessible. If I were interviewing you now, I
Speaker 1: would say, this explanation has to be for the non
Speaker 1: scientists in the audience who need to understand in very
Speaker 1: simple and accessible terms complicated concepts. And you became an
Speaker 1: expert at that, you know, Tom Friedman explained complicated concepts,
Speaker 1: and he said, to explain something simply, you have to
Speaker 1: understand it deeply. Yes, that is definitely the case. You
Speaker 1: have to You have to know twenty ways to come
Speaker 1: at that idea so that you can find the key
Speaker 1: to the mind of the person you're communicating with in
Speaker 1: that moment. So what I what happened to me is
Speaker 1: when I started giving soundbites, the press couldn't get enough
Speaker 1: of it, and so I became more and more and
Speaker 1: better and better known simply from showing up on the
Speaker 1: news commenting on the universe. To this day, people say,
Speaker 1: who's your agent? I see you and all the talk
Speaker 1: shows and all the news, and I say, my I
Speaker 1: don't have an agent. My agent is the universe itself.
Speaker 1: Because the universe flinches and people call. Of course, when
Speaker 1: I have a book, the book has a has a
Speaker 1: marketing person and they try to get you on. But
Speaker 1: I would say, three quarters of the time you ever
Speaker 1: see me on TV, I'm not hawking a book. I
Speaker 1: got called because the universe flinched and they want to
Speaker 1: know about it. It's like dial and astrophysics, like the
Speaker 1: bat signal. You know, okay, we need the astro physicists.
Speaker 1: Now you know. So I'm a servant of the cosmic
Speaker 1: curiosity that burns in the belly of of us all,
Speaker 1: and I'm the I'm a servant. I'm the servant of
Speaker 1: the cosmic curiosity, a servant of the cosmic curiosity that
Speaker 1: burns burn in the belly. Where do you come up
Speaker 1: with this? Have you used that before? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe pieces of it, I don't know. But my point
Speaker 1: is that that the question, the caller's question. They wanted
Speaker 1: to know how I became this, But it was not
Speaker 1: because I wake up in the morning saying how can
Speaker 1: I bring the universe to the public today. It's if
Speaker 1: I'm being asked, let me do the best job I
Speaker 1: can and then go back to my work. Well, I
Speaker 1: have a lot more questions to ask you, and so
Speaker 1: does Brian. We're going to take a break, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk to you, Neil about the current universe
Speaker 1: we're living in the political universe and what it means
Speaker 1: for science in America. We can go there, all right,
Speaker 1: that's right after this, We're back with Neil Degrass Tyson,
Speaker 1: America's personal astrophysicist, as you say on your TV show
Speaker 1: and your podcast, and we want to ask you about
Speaker 1: President Trump and the political universe in which we're living now.
Speaker 1: You've been very outspoken about the administration's budget cuts. You tweeted,
Speaker 1: the fastest way to make America Week again is to
Speaker 1: cut science funds. Can you describe the consequences of some
Speaker 1: of the policy sees that Trump is proposing, particularly with
Speaker 1: respect to science. Yeah, by the way, so thanks for
Speaker 1: noticing that. My tweets, I try to keep them general
Speaker 1: enough so that they would apply in any administration. In fact,
Speaker 1: I don't think I even mentioned Trump once in any
Speaker 1: of the tweets. Well, make America Week again. That's pretty
Speaker 1: that's pretty clear. I'm just because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's not actually about Trump. It just isn't.
Speaker 1: It's about what kind of country the electorate wants. And
Speaker 1: I'm not into politician bashing. You just won't see me
Speaker 1: shouting down duly elected officials. They are elected because there's
Speaker 1: an electorate that elected them. I look at it as
Speaker 1: here's the president, here's President Trump. Sixty million people voted
Speaker 1: for him. He is doing basically exactly what he said
Speaker 1: he was gonna do, or exactly what we all figured
Speaker 1: he would do. So people are surprised by this. I'm
Speaker 1: not surprised at all. So here's the challenge the challenges
Speaker 1: What about the sixty million people that voted for him.
Speaker 1: I'm an educator. It's my duty to edge, that's to educate.
Speaker 1: That's I wrote. I wrote an op ed a several
Speaker 1: months ago titled what Science is and How and Why
Speaker 1: it works? And in it I share with people that
Speaker 1: science is an exploration. It's not a matter of here's
Speaker 1: a fact, not regurgitate that later. It's here's here is data.
Speaker 1: What does the data mean? How does data turn into knowledge?
Speaker 1: How does knowledge turn into wisdom and insight? How do
Speaker 1: you judge whether something is true or not? And the
Speaker 1: methods and tools of science, when applied sensibly, they're designed
Speaker 1: to empower you to know when something is true when
Speaker 1: you otherwise think it's not, and when something is not
Speaker 1: true when you otherwise think it is. That it's in
Speaker 1: an noculation against Charlotte's of the world, who would exploit
Speaker 1: your ignorance of the laws of nature for their gain
Speaker 1: or or maybe they don't know themselves, but they've risen
Speaker 1: to power and just simply don't know. So this anti science,
Speaker 1: anti intellectualism that seems to be pervasive not only in
Speaker 1: this country, but in other countries as well, Australia as well.
Speaker 1: It's the result of a lack of education, lack of
Speaker 1: a kind of education that that enables you to confront
Speaker 1: information skeptically. So when Americans hear from commentators on cable
Speaker 1: news shows or even from senior government officials that we
Speaker 1: don't know what's causing climate change, we don't know the
Speaker 1: extent to which humans are impacting it, how are they
Speaker 1: supposed to assess that information and confront it. So, now
Speaker 1: you're an adult, and you've already been sort of ossified
Speaker 1: from however you are educated in school. How do you
Speaker 1: fix adults? That's the hardest thing. That's really hard because
Speaker 1: you you weren't trained how to think freshly about new ideas.
Speaker 1: And what you can say is, well, um, are you
Speaker 1: in denial of equals mc squared? That's the founding formula
Speaker 1: for all of the Cold War? Are you in denial
Speaker 1: of the GPS instructions on your smartphone that tells you
Speaker 1: to turn left to get to Grandma's house? You know,
Speaker 1: there's the famous apocryphal quote where you know, what do
Speaker 1: I need a space program. For I have the Weather Channel,
Speaker 1: and of course every image we have of hurricanes is
Speaker 1: from a satellite. Okay, unless there's a plane that flew
Speaker 1: over it, but that's you don't you don't get the
Speaker 1: best images from that. So you get people who don't
Speaker 1: fully know and understand and appreciate the magnitude of the
Speaker 1: impact of science on their lives. But that seems to
Speaker 1: be translating into antipathy towards science and towards intellectual Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a complacency with the science that
Speaker 1: has made their lives so comfortable and so healthy. So
Speaker 1: is it a complacency or is it an ideology that
Speaker 1: leads them to that conclusion, because it's the only conclusion
Speaker 1: that validates their politics. So if you're against government intervention
Speaker 1: in the economy, and confirming climate change requires government intervention
Speaker 1: in the economy, you can't be for confirming climate change, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the ossification of your mind. So so
Speaker 1: people need to realize, and I've said I've said this
Speaker 1: many times that when when a new truth emerges through
Speaker 1: scientific research, it is true whether or not you believe
Speaker 1: in it. And so the sooner you come to realize
Speaker 1: that the sooner you will recognize what a scientific truth is,
Speaker 1: and then you should have the politics conversation on the
Speaker 1: about those truths. Okay, So in other words, rather than
Speaker 1: deny that humans are warming the earth, you recognize that
Speaker 1: humans are warming the earth because that's what the science shows. Now,
Speaker 1: go in the back room and duke it out with
Speaker 1: your opponents across the aisle. Do you have carbon tax?
Speaker 1: Do you? Yeah? Exactly? The politics you don't have to
Speaker 1: explore that if you just say it's not happening, right.
Speaker 1: So what I thought of doing was taking everyone who
Speaker 1: denies the climate chase and put them on a low
Speaker 1: lying island. So I have to ask them, will you
Speaker 1: buy real estate on coastal communities and just see if
Speaker 1: they'll put their money where their mouth is. Do you
Speaker 1: know who is fully aware of this and who is
Speaker 1: listening to scientists, the military and insurance companies, because an
Speaker 1: urban planners and urban planners. So it's it's embarrassing that
Speaker 1: in this the twenty one century, the United States of America,
Speaker 1: a country that went to the moon in a decade
Speaker 1: that was itself rather turbulent. We had a hot war,
Speaker 1: a cold worth, civil rights movement, campus unrest. But at
Speaker 1: no time where people saying, I don't that science, that's
Speaker 1: not for me. Nobody said it. Back then. We were
Speaker 1: celebrating what science could do for us. What do you
Speaker 1: think this will do to our standing in the world.
Speaker 1: How can we invest? How can we start training this
Speaker 1: next generation of scientists because we can't keep going the
Speaker 1: way we're going. So I have some glimmer of hope.
Speaker 1: Here's the reality. Historically, throughout the entire twentieth century, immigrants
Speaker 1: came to the United States from many countries who had
Speaker 1: an interest in science. In fact, a third of all
Speaker 1: the science Nobel prizes that went to Americans went to
Speaker 1: first generation immigrants a third a third. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: don't mind if American born citizens are not going into science.
Speaker 1: If we have others from around the world. We're getting
Speaker 1: the best and brightest from around the world if they're
Speaker 1: interested in science, and they can exploit our institutions and
Speaker 1: stay here and bring their intellectual capital to our land
Speaker 1: and our economy and our health. But well, and staying
Speaker 1: here is the key point, because what we want to do,
Speaker 1: what we're doing now in many cases, is they come here,
Speaker 1: they're educated here, and then we kick them out, so
Speaker 1: we don't get the benefits of the education. And now
Speaker 1: HTB visas are being reconsidered, right, those important visas for
Speaker 1: people who are working in tech, especially in science. Yes,
Speaker 1: so either we kick them out or we didn't let
Speaker 1: them in in the first place. So in that case,
Speaker 1: you it is double disaster because now we're not training
Speaker 1: the next generation of native born Americans, nor are we
Speaker 1: allowing in international people who have an interest in science.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, countries that were previously developing countries or countries
Speaker 1: we never thought would be science powerhouses are building their
Speaker 1: own infrastructure for this, like Singapore, which dedicates a percentage
Speaker 1: of its GDP to medical research. There you go, there
Speaker 1: you go. And as that rises up in China and
Speaker 1: Singapore and India, no longer will people want to come here,
Speaker 1: even if we wanted them to, because they will have
Speaker 1: opportunities in their motherland and there and we will be
Speaker 1: sort of orphaned in place, and we will our stature
Speaker 1: will decrease. That was my very next sentence. We will
Speaker 1: fade from significance on the world stage. It's not a
Speaker 1: cliff that you fall over, which which maybe would be
Speaker 1: better if it were, because then you get injured at
Speaker 1: the bottom and pick yourself up and fix it. It's
Speaker 1: this slow glide, and in fact, I think it's already happening, because,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, I spent last night talking to a
Speaker 1: lot of the pre eminent cancer researchers in the country,
Speaker 1: and one said that when she was at the Royal
Speaker 1: Swedish Academy of Sciences, they said, you know, somebody said
Speaker 1: to her, we used to look up to the United
Speaker 1: States as the pinnacle of scientific exploration, scientific investigation, and
Speaker 1: now justifiably, we don't feel that way. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's the beginning of the end of America's greatness. And
Speaker 1: so so I've made this point many times with Trump
Speaker 1: as president. I said, you cannot make America great again
Speaker 1: until you make America smart again. It's that simple. And
Speaker 1: we all want to make America great again. And I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone wants to make America dumb. So let's
Speaker 1: try to make America smart again, because it's that investment
Speaker 1: in who, in what we are, in our creativity and
Speaker 1: in our innovations that enables the greatness that we all remember,
Speaker 1: especially when you think of the future. You were talking
Speaker 1: about that earlier about science being the key to our future.
Speaker 1: Brian and I both talked about, uh, this study we
Speaker 1: read recently that said of almost foreign tent American jobs
Speaker 1: could be reassigned to automated bots by their early twenty thirties,
Speaker 1: according to a new I have no doubt. So if
Speaker 1: you know, if we're going to adjust to this new economy,
Speaker 1: if we're going to thrive in this new economy, we
Speaker 1: have to teach science. Yes, well, and and it used
Speaker 1: to it used to feel like scientific and technological progress
Speaker 1: was our friend, that it was helping us to experience
Speaker 1: better products and services. Now it seems like it's stealing
Speaker 1: our jobs and crushing our incomes. So how do we
Speaker 1: run around that exception? No, it's always been taking jobs.
Speaker 1: It's always been doing that, especially automation. You know, look
Speaker 1: at any automotive factory. You know, their their bots welding
Speaker 1: your cars. By the way, when cars were handmade rather
Speaker 1: than bought made, that was an error where I mean,
Speaker 1: we're old enough on this call to remember there was
Speaker 1: a very there was a very real chance in the
Speaker 1: morning that your car would not start for some mysterious reason.
Speaker 1: My son, who was at the time fourteen, we're watching
Speaker 1: a movie and there's a chase scene and the person
Speaker 1: runs to the car, gets in the car and tries
Speaker 1: to start the car. And he said, he said, why
Speaker 1: isn't the car started? He had never seen this as
Speaker 1: a thing in his entire life. The car just always started.
Speaker 1: His only thought was is it out of gas? I said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: there's a chance cards didn't used to start it. Give
Speaker 1: it a chance. He'll get it started eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: unless he floods. Unless he floods it. But then I
Speaker 1: have to explain what that is. Right, And so my
Speaker 1: point is that you want to be prepared for the future,
Speaker 1: and there's a limit to how many jobs bots can take.
Speaker 1: You know why, because if robots take all of our jobs,
Speaker 1: then none of us will have any money to buy
Speaker 1: the products that the robots make. So it's a self
Speaker 1: limiting issue. What do you say to people who are
Speaker 1: very concerned about this, who work maybe even an advance
Speaker 1: manufacturing or accounting or architects, whose jobs weren't vulnerable to
Speaker 1: technological disruption before, but now they seem to be. That's
Speaker 1: why it's always important to stay on the leading edge
Speaker 1: of innovation, because you're not going to have a bot
Speaker 1: on the leading edge. You know you're gonna have your body.
Speaker 1: The body is after you have invented something, and then
Speaker 1: the bot can do it for cheaper than the labor
Speaker 1: would otherwise be to pay to have it made. You
Speaker 1: move jobs forward with that innovation frontier. If you stagnate,
Speaker 1: then you'll spend your entire life wine winding that the
Speaker 1: rest of the world is taking your jobs and why
Speaker 1: they say this is not fair. Then you gotta put
Speaker 1: on a tariff, and then it becomes a whole political thing.
Speaker 1: So I cannot over emphasize the importance of fostering innovation
Speaker 1: in a country. As long as you innovate, you will
Speaker 1: always have a place to work that the bots haven't
Speaker 1: figured out how to catch up with. You stay ahead
Speaker 1: of the bots. And speaking of innovating, UM, I just
Speaker 1: want to quickly ask you about STEM because it's something
Speaker 1: I think about a lot, especially for girls. We need
Speaker 1: more women involved in I T. We need more women scientists,
Speaker 1: we need more women researchers. Um, how can we get
Speaker 1: girls more engaged in science? Neil? Yeah, I don't have
Speaker 1: the silver bullet here. And it's not just girls, it's
Speaker 1: underrepresented groups in general. What is going on African Americans,
Speaker 1: for example. So I don't have a silver bullet. I
Speaker 1: don't interact with the public differently if the audience is female, male,
Speaker 1: or ethnically. I'm I try to bring the same messaging
Speaker 1: anytime I'm exposed in the public. So I don't have
Speaker 1: an answer here, and I'm still thinking about it. What
Speaker 1: what might be interesting innovative ways educationally um to to
Speaker 1: stimulate a broader baseline of interest. Meanwhile, we've seemed to
Speaker 1: have a run on ignorance lately, with four NBA stars
Speaker 1: since February publicly saying that the Earth is flat. You
Speaker 1: got into a Twitter feud with a rapper who believes
Speaker 1: that as well. How do you explain this regression that
Speaker 1: seems to be happening around scientific knowledge? You know, there
Speaker 1: is shock Shack saying well, I don't see how I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 1: How could the Chinese people be upside down? They'd fall off,
Speaker 1: so Earth must be flat. So that someone played that
Speaker 1: quote back to me on the radio station, and I
Speaker 1: was trying to think, how am I going to respond
Speaker 1: to this? So I said, we live in a free country.
Speaker 1: You ought to be able to think whatever you want.
Speaker 1: You want to think the world is flat. Go right ahead,
Speaker 1: just try to make sure you never become head of NASA. Well,
Speaker 1: we will find jobs for you where you can think
Speaker 1: the world is flat and they'll still pay you for
Speaker 1: what you're doing. So in a free country, I don't
Speaker 1: beat people over the head to say whatever they want.
Speaker 1: But if you rise to positions of power and influence
Speaker 1: and influence and you do not understand what science is
Speaker 1: and how and why it works, that's just the beginning
Speaker 1: of the end of an informed democracy, and that's what
Speaker 1: we should fear. Let me ask you about space exploration. UM.
Speaker 1: Last week, Elon Musk's company SpaceX reused a rocket to
Speaker 1: launch a satellite into space. UM, what do you think
Speaker 1: about the future of space exploration? Because it was interesting
Speaker 1: to me that NASA's budget, compared to a lot of
Speaker 1: other places, wasn't cut nearly as much. It was good
Speaker 1: to cut just by a tiny little bit, that's correct.
Speaker 1: And so that's a little bit of of of a
Speaker 1: wolf in sheep's clothing there, because from from statements that
Speaker 1: I've seen and heard, a tandem goal is yes, NASA
Speaker 1: keep exploring the universe. Meanwhile, we will remove all obligation
Speaker 1: we have previously given you to study Earth. So they's
Speaker 1: been talking about removing Earth research from the portfolio of NASA,
Speaker 1: and that and and that would that's that's that's a
Speaker 1: recipe for disaster, because the Earth is a planet, and
Speaker 1: you want to study planets in context. We have a
Speaker 1: planet to our left that has a runaway greenhouse effect, Venus,
Speaker 1: it's nine degrees fahrenheit. We have a planet to our right, Mars,
Speaker 1: that once had running liquid water coursing over its surface,
Speaker 1: bone dry today. Something bad happened on each of those planets.
Speaker 1: And one is to our left and one is to
Speaker 1: our right. And the context of this study is what
Speaker 1: gives you insights into what knobs are we turning. I
Speaker 1: don't want to look like Venus, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to look like Mars. Is there insights I can get
Speaker 1: to how I should then treat my own planet. Why
Speaker 1: do you think people wouldn't want to learn those insights? Oh,
Speaker 1: because it would give you further information about how much
Speaker 1: human intervention in the environment is warming the planet. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's a way to undermine studies that would find
Speaker 1: scientific results that conflict with your political philosophy. A quick
Speaker 1: footnote Shack did say he was kidding when he made
Speaker 1: that statement, but Kyrie Irving from the Cleveland Cavaliers says
Speaker 1: he was not joking. So maybe they should have a debate,
Speaker 1: or we we take everyone who thinks Earth is flat
Speaker 1: and just put him into orbit and leave him there
Speaker 1: and put them only bring him back after they confess
Speaker 1: that they were wrong all along. So Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: trying to do this on the cheap, and occasionally you'll
Speaker 1: see a rocket explode and people say, oh, what was this?
Speaker 1: Does this? Is this a bad Is this a setback
Speaker 1: for Elon Musk? The fact that has exploding rockets is
Speaker 1: evidence he's on the frontier. You are only on the
Speaker 1: frontier when you are making mistakes him. Yes, oh you
Speaker 1: need somebody now Now. I'm also as big as critic.
Speaker 1: The people, the press especially is thinking he's gonna lead
Speaker 1: us into space, not NASA. That's not gonna happen. That's
Speaker 1: not how this works. Okay. Oh, because just imagine that
Speaker 1: I mentioned the venture capitalist meeting. All right, So here
Speaker 1: I'm Elon Musk, and then I got five venture capitalists.
Speaker 1: What's up, Elon? You need some cash? What four? Well?
Speaker 1: I want to put the first humans on Mars. Okay,
Speaker 1: how much will it cost? Hundreds of billions of dollars?
Speaker 1: Probably more? Uh okay, um will it be dangerous? Yes,
Speaker 1: people will probably die. What's the return on our investment?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. Probably nothing. It's a five minute meeting. Okay.
Speaker 1: Governments do these things because governments have time horizons much
Speaker 1: longer than quarterly and annual reports. So what will happen
Speaker 1: is the first humans on Mars will likely be Chinese
Speaker 1: humans or American humans paid by the government. We may
Speaker 1: do it on Elon's rocket. That could happen. I don't
Speaker 1: have a problem with that, but it's not him doing
Speaker 1: it as a business case, not initially. But this brings
Speaker 1: us back to what we were talking about at the
Speaker 1: outside of our conversation, which is, if you cut the
Speaker 1: e p a s Office of Research and Development in half,
Speaker 1: if you cut the National Institutes of Health by and
Speaker 1: your argument as well, private industry and drug companies should
Speaker 1: do this research, not taxpayers. What you're really doing is
Speaker 1: cutting off this research entirely that the private industry won't
Speaker 1: do it. So what you're cutting off I think people
Speaker 1: don't understand R and D. So R and D when
Speaker 1: conducted by a company, is money invested on the premise
Speaker 1: that it will bring a return on that investment in
Speaker 1: their near future in the same year, in a couple
Speaker 1: of years, at most five years. Okay, that's what people
Speaker 1: think of as R and D. But there's another kind
Speaker 1: of R and D. Well, there's just are the R
Speaker 1: that goes on in universities where there is no yet
Speaker 1: known return on that investment because they are on a
Speaker 1: frontier that has a greater distance from the applicability of
Speaker 1: that research. That is the seed corn of tomorrow's innovations,
Speaker 1: technological innovations. If you take that away and require that
Speaker 1: all research has to be directed towards a thing, we
Speaker 1: would have never had the I T Revolution in the
Speaker 1: first place. And that's when all the scientists go to
Speaker 1: another country because they can get funding there exactly. And
Speaker 1: then America America. There's another excuse for how and why
Speaker 1: America will fade. Let's end on a more positive note,
Speaker 1: Chille declining America. So tell us what you're excited about
Speaker 1: when you look to the future. Is there anything please you? Well?
Speaker 1: So yes, I am okay, So the next generation call
Speaker 1: them thirty and under. I think by my sort of
Speaker 1: empirical observations. Uh, they're more scientifically literate than any previous demographic. Ever,
Speaker 1: they grew up with a smartphone. They know whether or
Speaker 1: not they understand it. They know that the smartphone which
Speaker 1: they embrace was created by this summation of physics and
Speaker 1: engineering and space. So they're not the ones statistically telling
Speaker 1: you I will choose to believe this science and not
Speaker 1: that science. I don't trust scientists scientists, No, these are
Speaker 1: not those people. They have an agenda, write agenda. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we all all. That's what we do. All scientists get
Speaker 1: together just to put on a hoax. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: we that's really what we do. So that next generation
Speaker 1: is is embracing films like the Martian films like like
Speaker 1: The Imitation Game, films like The Theory of Everything, biopics
Speaker 1: about scientists, and first run dramas that features science as
Speaker 1: a character unto itself. There's Matt Damon's character trying to
Speaker 1: not die by the invocation of his formidable knowledge of
Speaker 1: stem fields. Okay, so let's do the man. I have
Speaker 1: enough food to last for fifty days. He's going to
Speaker 1: starve to death long before we can open. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have the science that was the suspense in the film,
Speaker 1: with a marquee director which was Ridley Scott, and and
Speaker 1: five starring actors, each who have started their own film
Speaker 1: come together for a movie that was anchored in science.
Speaker 1: I think, if you're under thirty, you're just not old
Speaker 1: enough yet to be senator or president, or head of
Speaker 1: state or head of agency or head of corporation. I
Speaker 1: give him a few more years. I think they'll straighten
Speaker 1: it all out, and then I can go to the
Speaker 1: Bahamas and they they can fix everything that we broke
Speaker 1: for them. I understand you have a new book coming out,
Speaker 1: by the way about it. So it comes out in
Speaker 1: just a couple of weeks, the beginning of May. And
Speaker 1: it's titled Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, And so
Speaker 1: it is a it is my it's a short book.
Speaker 1: It's an adorable little book. My intent is to take
Speaker 1: all this fragments of astrophysics headlines that have come your way,
Speaker 1: Exo Planets, big Bank, black Hole spaces, all of these
Speaker 1: fragments of headlines that are sort of dangling there in
Speaker 1: front of you, and this book brings it together, enabling
Speaker 1: you to consummate your relationship with the cosmos. I like
Speaker 1: that consummate your relationship with the cosmos. That's that's sort
Speaker 1: of sounds sort of dirty, but you're so poetic when
Speaker 1: you speak. It's it's I'm I'm kind of annoyed. I'm
Speaker 1: jealous because don't you wish you could be this eloquent Brian?
Speaker 1: I mean you are, Brian, but no, I never I
Speaker 1: never will be. I feel like I could really use
Speaker 1: the universe for dummies, which is what I'm calling your
Speaker 1: new book, Neil. So I'm very excited about that. It's
Speaker 1: not for dummies, it's for people in a herb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people in a hurry. That's a little euphemistic, isn't it
Speaker 1: Those of us who aren't educating. It is so not
Speaker 1: dumbed down. All the language is real for non deep thinkers,
Speaker 1: and all the language is real. Well, this has been
Speaker 1: really fun, really enlightening, and I think really important. So
Speaker 1: god speed, Thank you, and that's what we say to
Speaker 1: anyone go into space. God speed, and I take that
Speaker 1: very warmly and dearly from you. As always, we want
Speaker 1: to thank our fantastic producer, Gianna Palmer for putting together
Speaker 1: the show, to Ryan Connor and Eric krupkey for engineer
Speaker 1: officer crucky, you've done it again, and then the end
Speaker 1: of the song, I like g officer crupkey, crup you.
Speaker 1: And to Jared O'Connell for mixing the show and sadly
Speaker 1: there's no song about Jared. Thanks also to our social
Speaker 1: come up with something Maybe. Thanks also to our social
Speaker 1: media maven Alison bres Nick, and to Emily Beena for
Speaker 1: her part in producing the show. We also want to
Speaker 1: thank Nora Richie for additional editorial assistance. Mark Phillips, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for our theme music. Katie Currik, Mitch
Speaker 1: Simil and I are the executive producers of this show.
Speaker 1: We love hearing from you, We truly do, so. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to call us with questions for Eina Garden. I
Speaker 1: love Eena Garten and my daughters are absolutely obsessed with her.
Speaker 1: You can call us at nine to nine to four
Speaker 1: four six three seven, or you can email us at
Speaker 1: comments at correct podcast dot com, or you can find
Speaker 1: me on social media. I'm Katie Currik on Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 1: Katie dot correct on Snapchat, Brian is Goldsmith B on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and if you haven't already, please subscribe to our show,
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Speaker 1: off the presses. God, how old I sound. And we'd
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