Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Sammy Jay and welcome back to this
Speaker 1: week's episode of The Left Bureau Podcast. I am so
Speaker 1: thrilled you're here. This week's episode is so special. We've
Speaker 1: never had an episode like this before, and we're probably
Speaker 1: never going to have an episode like this again because
Speaker 1: I got to chat with astrophysicists Neil de grass Tyson.
Speaker 1: You heard that right, And I am so excited for
Speaker 1: you to listen to this episode because I genuinely learned
Speaker 1: so much and I know you will too. I hope
Speaker 1: you guys enjoy it. Welcome to my podcast. I am
Speaker 1: so honored that you're here. You're my first astrophysicist on
Speaker 1: the show. And now I have to say, science is
Speaker 1: something that I've always been super fascinated by, but it's
Speaker 1: something I've always struggled with learning and understanding like many others.
Speaker 1: And I just want to simply start with what do
Speaker 1: you love about what you do? What do you love
Speaker 1: about space in the universe? So much? Everything, And first
Speaker 1: of all, for you to say i'm your astro physicists
Speaker 1: on the show, there aren't many of us in the world, Okay,
Speaker 1: So basically everything, I like the immensity of it, I
Speaker 1: like that that the boundary between what is known and unknown,
Speaker 1: and you put one foot in what is known and
Speaker 1: one foot in the unknown, and you try to deduce
Speaker 1: or invent or discover what lies beyond. And so so
Speaker 1: I think that the takeaway is as a scientist, you
Speaker 1: have to learn to love the questions themselves, because if
Speaker 1: you if you only think of science the way the
Speaker 1: media reports on it, because the media does a story
Speaker 1: when there's a discovery, right, and you think their discoveries
Speaker 1: are happening all the time. But you have to learn
Speaker 1: to love the journey. And in your whole life you
Speaker 1: might make only one discovery or no discoveries. So the
Speaker 1: journey is what excites you every morning, the possibility of
Speaker 1: reaching into the unknown and pulling something back in and say, WHOA,
Speaker 1: I knew this before. Does that give you any comfort
Speaker 1: in knowing everything you know? Or does it make you
Speaker 1: a little bit more terrified of the beyond? I think
Speaker 1: you have to train yourself. I don't think it's natural
Speaker 1: to walk around in stupefied ignorance of what's going on.
Speaker 1: You know, nobody wants that, all right, And I get it.
Speaker 1: I have sympathy for people who feel that way. And
Speaker 1: one way that that shows up is someone might ask
Speaker 1: me what was around before the Big Bang, and I'll say,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Go top people working on it, and
Speaker 1: they say, that had to be something. It must have
Speaker 1: been something, it must have been God, God did it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was it. And so once they say God, they
Speaker 1: have their answer. And then you know, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to insert deity every place where we have yet to
Speaker 1: tread scientifically, then that's that's kind of a slippery slope,
Speaker 1: because science ever moves forward. So I empathize with the
Speaker 1: need to have an explanation for everything. But if that's
Speaker 1: how you are, you won't make a good scientist because
Speaker 1: most of what we think about every day has no
Speaker 1: answer yet yet, and we don't even know if we're
Speaker 1: asking the right questions. Crazy, it's crazy, It's completely crazy. So,
Speaker 1: Storry Messenger, A Cosmic Perspective on Civilization. You said, the
Speaker 1: troll of insights, informed by the universe and brought to
Speaker 1: you by methods and tools of science. I love that sentence,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if you can expand more upon that. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. So this book, Starry Messenger Cosmic
Speaker 1: Perspectives on civilization. Each chapter has a different title, as
Speaker 1: most chapters would, but in this case, the chapters address
Speaker 1: different sectors of society that have historically been rather combative,
Speaker 1: uh in social settings. So there's a chapter on truth
Speaker 1: and beauty, All right, that that might be good sort
Speaker 1: of bar conversations there, But let's get a little more
Speaker 1: intense a conflict and resolution where I go into political
Speaker 1: factions who are battling for who has access to, if
Speaker 1: not control of the truth. Objective truths, which I'd like
Speaker 1: to distinguish from other kinds of truths. There is an
Speaker 1: objective truth, and there is opinion. Then those need to
Speaker 1: be right right right, Or there's there's like political truths.
Speaker 1: I'll call it that because the politicians think it's true,
Speaker 1: but it's what becomes true simply by them repeating it
Speaker 1: often and with intensity. And our brain has a weakness
Speaker 1: in it where if you see something repeat he did it,
Speaker 1: or here's something repeated, the urge to think that it
Speaker 1: must be true, otherwise why would it be repeated so often? Exactly,
Speaker 1: So I applaud the fact that we have that urge
Speaker 1: to think that way, But that urge that evolutionary urs
Speaker 1: can be and has been hijacked by people who would
Speaker 1: want to exercise control over you and what you think.
Speaker 1: In the old days they called it brainwashing. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that would be a political truth. And then there's a
Speaker 1: personal truth, right. Personal truth is just stuff that you believe,
Speaker 1: and they don't require that other people have to believe.
Speaker 1: It is your own personal sense of the world. And
Speaker 1: all religions come under personal truths. So that's why I
Speaker 1: distinguish those truths from objective truths. And objective truths are
Speaker 1: true whether or not you believe in them, and high science.
Speaker 1: And so getting back to the sentence that you extracted, Um,
Speaker 1: and thank you for looking for cool sentences, because I
Speaker 1: do spend a lot of effort composing sentences that go
Speaker 1: in the book, and if the fact that they sort
Speaker 1: of rise up off the page or in your because
Speaker 1: you listen to the audiobook, as you told me, I'd
Speaker 1: want those sentences to to live within you. You're very powerful.
Speaker 1: The methods and tools of science are exquisitely tuned to
Speaker 1: find objective truths, and when you do, you then apply
Speaker 1: them to these sectors of society that are famous for
Speaker 1: not embracing objective truths. And because of such people, fight
Speaker 1: and so so, and other chapters are a gender and identity,
Speaker 1: race and color, risk and reward. People really don't understand
Speaker 1: risk and probability and statistics, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: blame people for that. Somehow, it's it's just not natural
Speaker 1: to think statistically about the world, all right. I mean,
Speaker 1: here's't just in an example. Let's say you're ready to
Speaker 1: drive a car off the lot. You just it, and
Speaker 1: someone is driving into the lot saying, wanting to return
Speaker 1: the cars. There's the worst card had it broke the
Speaker 1: wheel fell off. I hate it. And you're just watching
Speaker 1: this and you begin questioning your decision. And it's amazing
Speaker 1: how impactful the testimony of one person can land within
Speaker 1: you relative to the statistics of thousands. You mentioned a
Speaker 1: really interesting point in your book that scientists don't look
Speaker 1: for other scientists opinions but their data, which I think
Speaker 1: is a very important distinction. I don't care how you
Speaker 1: feel or think. I don't care. That has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with my research here, But I just have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the data less. How you feel biases
Speaker 1: your data. So we have methods and tools to establish
Speaker 1: objective truths, and it requires repeated, verified experiments on whatever
Speaker 1: the first thing is you said was true. So we're
Speaker 1: living in a world today where social media and misinformation
Speaker 1: is traveling so fast. I feel like as soon as
Speaker 1: you pull up a social media app, there's just new
Speaker 1: information you don't and it's hard to verify whether it's
Speaker 1: true or not. I mean, I want to take away
Speaker 1: from this conversation is what advice do you have for
Speaker 1: like a go to way to shut down a flat earther.
Speaker 1: I'm not that aggressive. It may feel that way sometimes
Speaker 1: if you read my tweets. Uh So, I just tweeted
Speaker 1: yesterday last night there was a total lunar eclipse, and
Speaker 1: I said, here's a lunar eclipse flat earthers have never seen.
Speaker 1: It would be like the disc of Earth casting horizontal shadow,
Speaker 1: which would just be a skinny, little thin thing. And
Speaker 1: that it went almost viral. I mean it was, it
Speaker 1: went pretty high up there. That's so good. Point is,
Speaker 1: in a free country, I'm not going to beat you
Speaker 1: on the head if you want to think Earth is flat.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of jobs for you where you and
Speaker 1: still think Earth is flight. Science isn't one of them.
Speaker 1: Science is not one of them. Here's here's one thing
Speaker 1: to do. You say, what would be the best evidence
Speaker 1: you would need to show that Earth was a sphere
Speaker 1: in space? What what evidence would you seek? If you
Speaker 1: ask that of such people, typically there is none, There
Speaker 1: is none. Well, sorry, I did that once with someone
Speaker 1: who was sure we didn't go to the moon, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: And I said, well, what evidence? I went through this exercise.
Speaker 1: What evidence would you want? And he said, well, photographs
Speaker 1: of the landing sites? That would that would work. So
Speaker 1: I said, well, we do have photos of the landing site.
Speaker 1: You said really, I said, because there are satellites that
Speaker 1: were put in orbit around the Moon. That's close enough
Speaker 1: and you could see the rover tracks. You can see
Speaker 1: the landing site. And so go to this web page.
Speaker 1: So he so the next day, but this is a
Speaker 1: full grown adult human being with with kids, always concerning right.
Speaker 1: So the next day, uh, he says, nil, I went
Speaker 1: to that website and sure enough I saw the tracks
Speaker 1: and I saw this. But then I looked at the
Speaker 1: bottom and it said that the web page was sponsored
Speaker 1: by NASA. So how am I going to know that
Speaker 1: they didn't fake this? And I said, pause, hold up, rewind.
Speaker 1: You asked me what would convince you, and I provided
Speaker 1: that evidence, and now that evidence isn't working for you.
Speaker 1: So this is the end of our conversation. But anyhow,
Speaker 1: so a good test would be ask what would convince
Speaker 1: you otherwise if you don't really have a good answer
Speaker 1: for that then, or if your only answer is I
Speaker 1: know the truth, it's just be hidden from us by
Speaker 1: this organization. It's never going to be good enough, never
Speaker 1: good enough. Correct. There's an old saying in the skeptics
Speaker 1: community which I think is correct. It's you can't use
Speaker 1: reason to argue someone out of a point of view
Speaker 1: that they didn't use reason to get into. So true.
Speaker 1: Something that I'm very interested in talking about is what
Speaker 1: are your thoughts on managing space trash and programs like starlink,
Speaker 1: especially with the impact of satellites in space imaging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so those are two separate issues. Starlink is you know,
Speaker 1: how many elon how many satellites do you need in space?
Speaker 1: How how many? How many do you need? And it
Speaker 1: it becomes a form of light pollution, where especially we
Speaker 1: have a telescope about to come online this coming year
Speaker 1: that will be taking basically snapshots of the entire sky
Speaker 1: every night and and stitching them together. It basedically in
Speaker 1: a movie, which will allow you to watch asteroids that
Speaker 1: might be headed towards Earth. But if while we're trying
Speaker 1: to find an asteroid headed towards Earth, there's you know,
Speaker 1: hundred seventy eleven Starlink satellites coming through your field. If
Speaker 1: you I don't want to miss the asteroid, because you're
Speaker 1: contaminating my data with things that otherwise look like asteroids
Speaker 1: but they're not. So there's the how it will contaminate science,
Speaker 1: but there's also how it will change what the night
Speaker 1: sky will beat to you as you look up affect
Speaker 1: the Earth. So there's fortunately, there are there's an organ
Speaker 1: there are people today who are thinking about this and
Speaker 1: trying to find ways to reduce the impact of this
Speaker 1: technological progress on what is otherwise the sanctity of the
Speaker 1: night sky. And as for trash, we've got nothing for you, okay.
Speaker 1: And I think people say, where the aliens? How come
Speaker 1: they haven't visited. I think they tried to visit and
Speaker 1: they saw all the trash around the Earth. We're going
Speaker 1: to pass on this one. Let's let's let's go to
Speaker 1: the next planet. Okay. Yeah, these folks are just nasty.
Speaker 1: It's the trash that's in the higher orbits that will
Speaker 1: basically be there forever unless someone goes around and vacuums
Speaker 1: it up. And we have no such plans nor such
Speaker 1: ideas about how to make that happen. It's too trashy.
Speaker 1: We need to fix it, too trashy. Give it up.
Speaker 1: We have to take a quick break. But when we
Speaker 1: come back, I'm going to talk about what types of
Speaker 1: research and that's going on in the world of science
Speaker 1: you're most excited about and what you love list about learning.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back and we're back. Are there any
Speaker 1: scientists work that you're really interested in that isn't very
Speaker 1: well known or talked about. I generally look at sort
Speaker 1: of consensus work. So uh, it's not whether one science
Speaker 1: just did one particular thing, because that's not what makes
Speaker 1: an objective truth. As I said earlier, it hasn't been
Speaker 1: verified by someone else. So for me, one of the
Speaker 1: more interesting sub branches of astrophysics is one where we
Speaker 1: have people looking for bio markers in the atmospheres of
Speaker 1: exo planets. Well, so, can you explain what bio markers
Speaker 1: are for totally? Well, first, ex planet is so exo
Speaker 1: planets are planets orbiting other stars, and the first of
Speaker 1: these was discovered in all right, so what year were
Speaker 1: you BORNO? Two two? So you count as someone who
Speaker 1: has been born since and so I now I will
Speaker 1: night you generation X planet. You've only known life in
Speaker 1: a world where we've had exo planets to talk about,
Speaker 1: all right, that is that is if you want to
Speaker 1: attach a generation to a scientific result, there you have it,
Speaker 1: all right. And when you were born, we might have
Speaker 1: known maybe a few dozen exoplanets, and now we know
Speaker 1: more than five thousand. That's how old you are. We're
Speaker 1: up in the five thousands. A lot can happen in
Speaker 1: twenty years. A lot can happen in twenty years. So
Speaker 1: you're just an old fart now because we're up in
Speaker 1: the thousands. But will we ever know if they have life? Well,
Speaker 1: if the planet has an atmosphere, light from the star
Speaker 1: will pass through the atmosphere on the edges and continue
Speaker 1: on to us, so that whatever is the chemistry of
Speaker 1: that atmosphere, it leaves its fingerprint on the starlight. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is this opened up an entire new field in
Speaker 1: the search for life in the universe, because if your
Speaker 1: planet has life. Life has certain gaseous consequences. Alright, Oxygen
Speaker 1: on Earth is only here because we have photosynthesizing life,
Speaker 1: trees and plankton. That's the only reason why we have oxygen.
Speaker 1: And so if you find an exo planet and you
Speaker 1: let the light of the star pass through and you
Speaker 1: see oxygen in that atmosphere, oh yeah, I put that
Speaker 1: higher on your list of one of the first planets
Speaker 1: you might want to visit. So what am I following.
Speaker 1: I'm following the work of that group of researchers who
Speaker 1: are searching for bio markers in the atmospheres of exoplanets,
Speaker 1: and the James Web Space Telescope is helping with that.
Speaker 1: By the way, Sorry, I'm just processing all that you said.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Yeah, No, I'm totally I'm all in on it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. So I'm assuming you love stars,
Speaker 1: don't we all? Actually, I'm sure I'm not alone there.
Speaker 1: You know, our star is pretty important. I think clouds
Speaker 1: are also very underrated. I love seeing them. They're so
Speaker 1: beautiful and I just see them. Gonna go shout out
Speaker 1: clouds because they don't get enough appreciation out there. Okay,
Speaker 1: So uh, in the book Starry Messenger. Um, I quote clouds.
Speaker 1: I quote a line from Joni Mitchell her song both Sides. Now,
Speaker 1: that's so good. Wait wait, wait, we have to be
Speaker 1: very precise here. Okay, I just want to properly quote. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pull up this quote. The glasses are coming on.
Speaker 1: That's when you know it's been serious. I've got to
Speaker 1: go there. Okay. Yes, So clouds are one of the
Speaker 1: things she looks at in one of the verses. But
Speaker 1: I get that's not the verse I chose. I'm really
Speaker 1: I'm remembering now, but I will get you that cloud
Speaker 1: verse because you sound like a cloud person. I'm a
Speaker 1: cloud person because they're just not appreciated and they do
Speaker 1: so much. Okay, they make my day. So here we
Speaker 1: go rose and flows of angel hair, and I scream
Speaker 1: castles forgive Mike because I can't. I think you should
Speaker 1: become a singer and a rare path for you. Everywhere
Speaker 1: looked at clouds that way, but now they only block
Speaker 1: the sun. They rain, and they snow on everyone. So
Speaker 1: many things I would have done, but clouds got in
Speaker 1: my way. I've looked at clouds from both sides, now
Speaker 1: from up and down and still somehow it's clouds illusions.
Speaker 1: I recall I really don't know cloud so any that
Speaker 1: that's all those singing I'm going to give you here
Speaker 1: because I was like, I do not expect a performance.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is a new career path for you.
Speaker 1: So here's the so for me, obviously, it's a song,
Speaker 1: it's a poem. It's it's metaphorical of course, and so
Speaker 1: um So she starts out by saying, clouds they rain
Speaker 1: and snow on everyone. Yes, they do, but when they're not,
Speaker 1: they're not right. And most of the time they're not,
Speaker 1: They're just floating there. And if you look at it
Speaker 1: from both sides. And I really don't know clouds, and
Speaker 1: most people don't understand what clouds are. Why they up
Speaker 1: there and they're not down here? Well, sometimes they are
Speaker 1: down here. But we have a different word for them.
Speaker 1: You know what we call them? Am I totally missing? Yes,
Speaker 1: it's just it's a cloud that's in your face. So
Speaker 1: so we just have a different word for it. But
Speaker 1: it's a cloud, all right. So all air in most
Speaker 1: parts of the Earth has some amount of moisture in it. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: And if the air gets heated, and then it rises.
Speaker 1: As you ascend, the temperature drops, so as you ascend
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, it gets colder and colder and colder.
Speaker 1: You might notice that from the temperature if you see
Speaker 1: it on the video monitor of airplanes outside, it's forty
Speaker 1: degrees below zero outside the window. Okay, so it's because
Speaker 1: the ground is what's heating the air. The sunda and
Speaker 1: heat the air. The sun heats the ground and the
Speaker 1: ground heats the air. So I watched it happens if
Speaker 1: a pocket of air with a little bit of moisture,
Speaker 1: as it ascends, it gets colder, and the colder is
Speaker 1: the pocket of air, the less capable it is of
Speaker 1: carrying that moisture. And so what happens is something called
Speaker 1: the relative humidity goes up because the air can it's
Speaker 1: becoming less and less able to hold the moisture. And
Speaker 1: at a particular temperature at the dew point, which is
Speaker 1: a combination of how much humidity is in it and
Speaker 1: the temperature at that dew point, the the water molecules
Speaker 1: they coalesce and they become basically droplets. Okay, it's no
Speaker 1: longer water vapor, it's water droplets. And in that moment
Speaker 1: that that pocket of air is high above your head
Speaker 1: and bend, a cloud forms and there it is. You're
Speaker 1: making me love clouds even more. Okay, No, it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful thing. That's why the clouds are high up and
Speaker 1: rarely on the ground. How do you know all this information?
Speaker 1: Just off the bat? What about learning do you love?
Speaker 1: I know that's a two parter, but you've just so
Speaker 1: much information. Here's what I here's my normal and we
Speaker 1: only just met, so I don't know, but it for
Speaker 1: most people, for many people in the United States, here's
Speaker 1: what I would tell them. They said, how does it
Speaker 1: you know all of this? How do you have time
Speaker 1: to write these books? And how does you do this?
Speaker 1: And my answer is I bet I watched less football
Speaker 1: than you do. That's a great answer. That's my simplest answer. Okay,
Speaker 1: So whatever you do on the weekends or when you're
Speaker 1: otherwise doing nothing, are you binging? You know the Bachelor?
Speaker 1: Are you whatever else is going on or Jersey Shore
Speaker 1: or whatever whatever people do. I'm not doing that, and
Speaker 1: I'll do it a little bit just so I know
Speaker 1: what interests people, because that I value that. But no,
Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time a lot of time
Speaker 1: that other people spend doing nothing, I spend learning. That's
Speaker 1: so awesome and so cool. I have always loved learning,
Speaker 1: but it's always been a struggle for me because I've
Speaker 1: grown up with learning differences, so being able to understand
Speaker 1: information has been a struggle. But when it's you're very
Speaker 1: good at visualizing it and just explaining it very complicated topics.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for that. And I try to
Speaker 1: be a responsive to the what do they call it,
Speaker 1: the neurodiversity of us all? Uh, some people think in pictures,
Speaker 1: some in words, some in gestures, you know, hand gestures.
Speaker 1: So I try to fold all of that in. So
Speaker 1: thank you for noticing that. But what I would say
Speaker 1: is with all the learning differences that exist out there,
Speaker 1: and finally the education system is coming to terms with that,
Speaker 1: figuring out slowly but surely slowly. Um My daughter was
Speaker 1: a special ed teacher and people ask her what's different
Speaker 1: about a special ed teacher? She said, She said, especially
Speaker 1: teachers are simply better teachers. I went to a special
Speaker 1: ed school, so I can vouch for that. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just better teachers. They know more about they know how
Speaker 1: to teach in different ways exactly exactly. Oh, I got
Speaker 1: in big trouble one time. What happened? I should have
Speaker 1: left it to my forbidden Twitter file. Um, so I tweeted.
Speaker 1: I said, for the teachers who feel compelled to say,
Speaker 1: these students just don't want to learn, And I said,
Speaker 1: maybe they should consider the possibility that they suck at
Speaker 1: their job. I believe you're not wrong, but you know,
Speaker 1: I put it out there. I've had a maybe in
Speaker 1: front of it. I said possibly, like a possible. You know,
Speaker 1: people said, do you remember? Remember? And then of course
Speaker 1: it's Twitter, so it's the cesspool of opinions. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: not every teacher is sainted, okay, and we all had
Speaker 1: bad teachers in our lives. Well maybe you didn't because
Speaker 1: you had speciales. I did before I moved to special
Speaker 1: at and then I went there. You go, and you know,
Speaker 1: and you can you can list not here, don't do it,
Speaker 1: but you can list bad teachers right who really should
Speaker 1: have never entered the profession. All right, we have to
Speaker 1: take one more quick break. But when we come back,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about how you define success for yourself.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back and we're back. You've accomplished so
Speaker 1: many incredible things. Throughout your career, and everyone has a
Speaker 1: different definition of what success means to them, and I
Speaker 1: was wondering, how do you personally define success for yourself?
Speaker 1: Thank you? That's an excellent question. It's excellent on many levels.
Speaker 1: And I don't often get that because now it gives
Speaker 1: me the opportunity to for me redefined success. All right,
Speaker 1: uh so let me take a slightly windy route to
Speaker 1: get there. So let's say you have someone who wants
Speaker 1: to be an actor, and then you say what kind
Speaker 1: of actor you want to be? Well, I want to
Speaker 1: be a famous actor. Oh so they don't want to
Speaker 1: be a good actor, they just want to be a
Speaker 1: famous actor. So that's a different goal, always the same
Speaker 1: thing as you want to be the best actor you
Speaker 1: can be. Sometimes I would even say often being the
Speaker 1: best actor you can be will lead to that. But
Speaker 1: if your goal is simply to be famous, then all
Speaker 1: the times you're not famous, you're miserable. Right. You put
Speaker 1: so much like definition on one thing and you're not
Speaker 1: that right, right, right, and so much emphasis, and you're miserable.
Speaker 1: If you instead say I want to be the best
Speaker 1: actor I can be, then every performance you give on
Speaker 1: stage or in a uh, which is I'm from New York,
Speaker 1: so we entirely value stage performances in New York. Okay,
Speaker 1: at the end of that performance, how'd you do? What
Speaker 1: would you have done differently? How can you And now
Speaker 1: that you've given that and you deliver that line that way,
Speaker 1: is there a better way to deliver that line? And
Speaker 1: then this is you constantly and persistently focusing on how
Speaker 1: much better you can be at your craft. The goal
Speaker 1: here to be as good as you possibly could be.
Speaker 1: And what I've done in my life is whatever I've attempted,
Speaker 1: I tried to be as good at it as I
Speaker 1: could possibly be without regard to how people see it
Speaker 1: or receive it or value it. And well that that's
Speaker 1: not entirely true. So for example, let's go back to
Speaker 1: the first what was discovered? Shoot, what was discovered? A
Speaker 1: nineteen oh the uh space um a planet thing with
Speaker 1: my age twenty years Okay, you gotta be plus on that,
Speaker 1: but you know is in it? Okay? Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: first exo planet was discovered, Okay, generation X planet, and
Speaker 1: so I was interviewed by I was then the interim
Speaker 1: director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, This
Speaker 1: was banner headlines that exo planet was discovered. So NBC
Speaker 1: News sent one of their action cams, you know, up
Speaker 1: to do an interview to air that evening. And they
Speaker 1: sent them up and and they said, and they didn't
Speaker 1: know me yet. I just they just wanted me for
Speaker 1: my title. And I gave my best profess soil response.
Speaker 1: I talked about the Doppler shift and the physics of
Speaker 1: the movement of the stars and the center of mass
Speaker 1: of the system. And I did all of this, and
Speaker 1: I said, and once we discovered that there was the
Speaker 1: Doppler shift on that star, and you can make it
Speaker 1: very hard measurement. And because the star is kind of moving,
Speaker 1: it's like jiggling. Uh, And so that's what you're going
Speaker 1: to measure. And so I moved my body and in
Speaker 1: the way the star would move. And all they used
Speaker 1: from that interview was me jiggling my That was it, okay,
Speaker 1: And maybe one sentence, you know, And so I said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they don't want to hear my professor reply. They want
Speaker 1: to sound bite. So I went home and practiced sound bites,
Speaker 1: and so the next time I got asked, I just
Speaker 1: get handled them sound bites and they came back for more,
Speaker 1: and then other people came back, and this just continued
Speaker 1: to build. And I said, I'm a servant of their curiosity.
Speaker 1: I want to be the best servant I can be.
Speaker 1: And one other example I'll give is the first time
Speaker 1: I was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, okay
Speaker 1: before Trevor Noah. John Stewart hosted that. And he's sharp,
Speaker 1: he's smart, and he's funny. And I've seen politicians deer
Speaker 1: in the headlights as he's dancing circles around them because
Speaker 1: they're trying to get their speech out and he's not
Speaker 1: letting them, and it's a disaster. I said, that is
Speaker 1: not going to happen to me. So I studied him,
Speaker 1: and I said, with a stopwatch, and I said, how
Speaker 1: many seconds does he give you on average to speak
Speaker 1: before he comedically interrupts, Okay, it's like time back. He
Speaker 1: really studied this. I forgot the number like between eight
Speaker 1: and twelve seconds, which doesn't sound like much, but it's
Speaker 1: actually you can say a lot in ten seconds. So
Speaker 1: I got on the show. I also had to know
Speaker 1: three days of current events, I judged, because he's blending
Speaker 1: it's a new show. He's blending current events with whatever
Speaker 1: he's talking about. Because I did this, and I get
Speaker 1: on the show and I deliver the ten seconds and
Speaker 1: he jokes and then I come back, so I complete
Speaker 1: the idea. He completes the joke, we go on to
Speaker 1: the next thing. So it's it's working like it's it's
Speaker 1: But was your dance, thank you, beautiful reference. It's a dance.
Speaker 1: It's a dance. So in dancing in the interview and
Speaker 1: at the end of it, people came up to me
Speaker 1: and said, Neil, you and Johnston would have such good chemistry.
Speaker 1: That's it's so natural. Little do you know? You have
Speaker 1: no freaking idea? What kind of homework went into this?
Speaker 1: And that was trying to be the best I can be.
Speaker 1: So for me, I am successful if whatever I did
Speaker 1: it was the best I could do in that time
Speaker 1: for the research I was able to conduct. That's that's
Speaker 1: how I measure my success. And if that, if the
Speaker 1: public happens to like that, that's just bonus. I'm glad.
Speaker 1: And that's all you can do at the end of
Speaker 1: the day is be the best version of yourself correct
Speaker 1: And if you're not that I think you are, how
Speaker 1: should I put this you. If you don't do that,
Speaker 1: I think this one time you have on life is
Speaker 1: under capitalized for all that you could do, think, accomplish, feel,
Speaker 1: and why waste any of it. So if a day
Speaker 1: goes by where I didn't learn something or improve something
Speaker 1: about myself, that's a wasted day. And you can guarantee
Speaker 1: unless you happen to be the generation that will live forever.
Speaker 1: And I don't think they're born yet, that's another sort
Speaker 1: of generation where we increase life expectancy. So right now,
Speaker 1: increasing life expectancy by one year every five years something
Speaker 1: like that, okay for of the general population. So but
Speaker 1: what the day will come where we increase life expectancy
Speaker 1: by one year for every year of research that we do,
Speaker 1: that generation will live forever. I think that's younger than
Speaker 1: you at this point, because we agreed you're an old part.
Speaker 1: That is going to be my new bio on Instagram.
Speaker 1: So I don't really want to live forever because I
Speaker 1: like a motivation knowing that I'm going to die. Because guaranteed,
Speaker 1: if a day goes by that you do not serve
Speaker 1: your own curiosities and your own enlightenment in your own wisdom,
Speaker 1: that's you've seen the calendars on the prison walls. It's
Speaker 1: an X in a day that you're never getting back,
Speaker 1: and so my motivation correlates with that. Okay, the fewer
Speaker 1: days I have left, the more motivated I am to
Speaker 1: get stuff done. And so I don't envy the first
Speaker 1: generation who will live forever, because I wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: live forever. That sounds exhausting, Yeah, it can be exhausted.
Speaker 1: Why put why do today what you can put off
Speaker 1: until tomorrow? Well, thank you so much. This conversation has
Speaker 1: really been eye opening for me. I feel like I've
Speaker 1: learned a lot today and I've been really inspired, and
Speaker 1: I would now want to learn a lot more. So
Speaker 1: I really appreciate why why not? Right? You know the
Speaker 1: people who graduate from school and throw their books in
Speaker 1: the air and say schools out? It's like, why are
Speaker 1: you be about that? What I know isn't you should
Speaker 1: always be curious and want to keep larring correct what
Speaker 1: school should teach? I granted school is a pain, I
Speaker 1: get that, But the least that should happen in school
Speaker 1: is when you do graduate, you you your curiosity is
Speaker 1: stoked to continue to learn on your own. So my
Speaker 1: great regret in the system is that school doesn't teach
Speaker 1: us all to continue to be curious. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like you stop when it's done. If you stop it,
Speaker 1: and then you get ossified, which is a great s
Speaker 1: a t word. You get ossified in your thinking. Whatever
Speaker 1: was your last thoughts the last time you were in
Speaker 1: a classroom, that's it. And then you want to start life.
Speaker 1: You get married, have kids, and that's how you're going
Speaker 1: to think about the world. And do you see these
Speaker 1: older folks that are just sort of crusty in their
Speaker 1: ways because they didn't keep learning. They didn't they didn't
Speaker 1: stay flexible, nimble, nimble in the mind. There's a quote
Speaker 1: in the book, second to last page of the entire book,
Speaker 1: which is from Horace and an educator, and there's school
Speaker 1: is named after him. He's a brilliant educated in New
Speaker 1: York City right in the Bronx, actually from two centuries ago.
Speaker 1: And he was giving a commencement speech and he used
Speaker 1: the word beseech in his Nobody uses that word anymore,
Speaker 1: and it's very I feel like it's Shakespearean, but maybe
Speaker 1: we should bring it back. He says, I beseech you
Speaker 1: to treasure in your heart. These my parting words be
Speaker 1: ashamed to die until you have scored some victority for
Speaker 1: humanity that I want that on my tombstone and has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with being famous or rich. And it
Speaker 1: is the world a little better off for you having
Speaker 1: lived in it. And here's what I'm gonna recommend. Because
Speaker 1: I don't like telling people what to do. I like
Speaker 1: compelling them to want to do something on their own,
Speaker 1: but not going to tell people what to do. I
Speaker 1: tell all your your viewers and listeners, I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna get this book at all, do it
Speaker 1: be for Thanksgiving. So all of your arguments will be honed.
Speaker 1: So that when the crazy and and the and the
Speaker 1: weird uncle will all come over and they want to
Speaker 1: talk about the flat earth they wanted to, you'll be equipped.
Speaker 1: You have answers for everything, for every comeback, and ways
Speaker 1: to help them think through what as they're thinking about,
Speaker 1: because a cosmic perspective is and always is transformative of
Speaker 1: whoever basks in its light. Well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on my podcast. I am truly honored to
Speaker 1: have had this conversation. It's truly also made my day.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted sim Thanks for having me