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May 26, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:02:27
Joe Rogan Experience #1658 - Neil deGrasse Tyson
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j
joe rogan
45:56
n
neil degrasse tyson
02:11:19
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j
jamie vernon
00:15
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
The Joe Rogan experience How much time do you spend looking at random leaves on television shows to recognize that it's a fake pattern not created by the wind?
neil degrasse tyson
No, I just, you know, you look at scenes from Walking Dead and they enter this deserted town as so many towns are when zombies take over.
And the leaves, you know, the autumn leaves are evenly spread in the streets and the sidewalks.
And I'm thinking some set designer did that thinking that this is what leaves do.
In the breeze.
But that's not what they do.
They collect.
They circulate.
They're like eddies in the air currents that'll collect them in one place and not the other.
So we think if something's random that it's evenly spread.
But in fact, there are many more collected elements in something that's random than we typically think.
So I'm looking at your new ceiling here in Austin, Texas.
And your star is beautiful, by the way.
Nice digs you got here.
unidentified
Thank you.
neil degrasse tyson
But the stars, the lights, are kind of evenly spread on the sky.
joe rogan
Yeah, they don't look real.
neil degrasse tyson
So that's how...
And plus, you know, you could have thrown at least a constellation up there or something.
joe rogan
You know what I should do?
I should get someone to make me one and make one and just imitate the Milky Way.
neil degrasse tyson
That'd be beautiful.
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
That'd be beautiful.
And I'll be happy to certify it.
joe rogan
Oh, no.
unidentified
I'm scared.
You give me a call.
I'm scared.
neil degrasse tyson
I'm all in.
joe rogan
I don't think you will certify it.
I think it would be a real problem.
I think it would be a genuine issue.
neil degrasse tyson
So how are you doing, Joe?
joe rogan
I'm doing good.
unidentified
How are you doing?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
Austin is an old haunt of mine.
joe rogan
Is it?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, I met my wife here.
I got my master's at UT Austin.
My wife got her PhD in mathematical physics there.
And I finished my PhD in Columbia, New York City.
But we spent six years here, long ago.
joe rogan
I love it here.
neil degrasse tyson
We were here when Austin, Texas had six gates at the airport.
unidentified
Wow.
neil degrasse tyson
There's never more than one other car in front of you at a red light.
Just picture that.
joe rogan
A lot of folks remember that, apparently, and they're very upset.
neil degrasse tyson
I would be totally pissed off.
joe rogan
The traffic here is still adorable.
It's ridiculous, cute traffic, and the people are so nice.
unidentified
It's just a completely different vibe from Los Angeles.
neil degrasse tyson
I miss you, man.
unidentified
I miss you, too.
neil degrasse tyson
Good to see you still at it.
joe rogan
I'm still at it.
neil degrasse tyson
I'm still doing the thing.
And I thought, you know, I saw a few of your shows and I said, you know, we can bring some deep philosophical thought back.
Because I know that's a big part of you, right?
joe rogan
Occasionally.
neil degrasse tyson
No, it's in you.
It's in you.
joe rogan
When I'm talking to the right people.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
Yeah, like you.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
Yeah, it comes out.
neil degrasse tyson
It comes out.
Good.
It's in you to come out.
joe rogan
I've been meaning to talk to you.
I've been wanting to talk to you quite a bit.
neil degrasse tyson
What do you get?
joe rogan
Well, all these UFO disclosures.
Yeah?
You're like one of the first guys that I want to talk to because you always have a skeptical...
Inquisitive perspective on these things.
You're not necessarily dismissive, but you're not willing to just adopt this narrative that we're being visited by UFOs from another planet.
neil degrasse tyson
By the way, let's start with the military.
If there are glowing lights in the sky and we don't know what it is, They damn sure better look into it.
We give them folks $700 billion?
Make some percentage of that budget to check out the possible threat of things we don't understand.
joe rogan
I used to think that was a lot of money until I found out that Los Angeles spent a billion dollars on the homeless every year.
Their budget for the homeless is a billion.
A billion.
And they're not doing shit.
So when I look at the military getting $700 billion, is that what they get?
neil degrasse tyson
Plus or minus.
joe rogan
We need to give them more money.
Clearly they need more money.
Because if you can't fix the LA homeless situation with $1 billion, how are you going to protect us with $700 billion?
neil degrasse tyson
Well, it's not the same agency charged with it.
Oh, they're better?
joe rogan
They're better than the homeless people?
neil degrasse tyson
No, I'm saying...
The mayor's office of Los Angeles or of Austin, right?
Yeah, who's running what?
I got in trouble this past February when the electricity went out in Texas and it was cold just a couple of months ago.
joe rogan
What did you say?
neil degrasse tyson
What'd I say?
I tweeted.
I said, what did I say?
I say, okay, right now NASA landed a rover on Mars with a helicopter and And this is at 120 million miles away, controlling it, and it's on Mars where it's 100 degrees below zero.
Meanwhile, Texas, where it's cold, has no electricity.
So all I said was, maybe NASA, instead of politicians, should run Texas.
joe rogan
That seems pretty reasonable.
neil degrasse tyson
Some people just lost their mind.
joe rogan
But that's just because the power was out and people were freaking out already.
neil degrasse tyson
Plus, I don't do what you...
Advise me the last time we...
Post and drop?
What's the phrase?
joe rogan
Post and ghost.
neil degrasse tyson
Post and ghost.
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
No, I always peek at what people are saying.
I want to know.
joe rogan
You are too popular.
When you're too popular, people get mad at you.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
That's deep.
joe rogan
And it doesn't necessarily have to make sense.
But if enough people are angry and upset at their own lives, and they just decide they're going to attack Neil deGrasse Tyson because he makes a poignant point...
neil degrasse tyson
I try to have you smile about it a little.
Plus, Texas is no stranger to NASA. Houston, we have a problem.
Houston, we have a problem.
That was not addressed to the governor.
It was addressed to NASA headquarters.
joe rogan
Yeah, I just, people are just too easy to get upset.
And also, you're just dealing with the numbers are just unmanageable of people online.
I mean, how many millions of people do you have on your Twitter page?
neil degrasse tyson
14 and a half million.
joe rogan
Just imagine.
neil degrasse tyson
Just randomly- It's a stupidly large number, and I don't, I'm- I still don't understand it because I want to remind people every few days, you'd realize you're following an astrophysicist.
There's still time to unfollow just in case this is something you did by accident.
joe rogan
Yeah, but you're a different kind of astrophysicist.
You're an entertaining educator, and that's so important because you make things fun.
You make things fun while pointing out really important points, like really important things that we should probably understand about the way the universe works and physics and...
neil degrasse tyson
Well, thanks for thinking about it that way.
I don't think about it that way.
I think that the universe is inherently hilarious.
And so I'm just sharing that hilarity with you.
But what I also found is that when people smile, they learn better.
joe rogan
Oh, for sure.
Yeah, when they're less tense.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, they're less tense.
And there's a pleasing feeling that they had at a point when they learned something.
And so that's got to work some kind of dopamine chemicals so that you say, I want to learn something again tomorrow.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, science educators are so important because so many people equate, whether it's mathematics or science or even history, they equate it with boredom, right?
neil degrasse tyson
I think not only science, but many academic subjects.
And what's that song by Alice Cooper, School's Out?
unidentified
School's out for summer, school's out forever.
neil degrasse tyson
This is an anthem for people who hate school.
What else is that, right?
And then I thought to myself, When you're in school, your only job is to learn.
And for that to be a chore means something is wrong in that school.
I'm not blaming the people who are throwing their notes in the air, running down the school steps.
I'm blaming the system that's not making school fun and entertaining.
And it should be a place where you are trained to become a lifelong learner.
Where some infusion of curiosity You get bitten by a curiosity bug.
And then when you walk down the steps, you say, wait a minute, I don't want to leave school.
I want to stay.
Or if I have to leave school because I graduated, let me find other ways to continue to stay enlightened throughout my life.
Otherwise, you get ossified in one way of thinking with one dimension of information or facts or insights.
And then you're stuck there and you think that's the world and it's not.
joe rogan
It's not, but let's put this into perspective.
Think about the budget for the homeless.
Think about the budget for the military.
Now, let's think about the budget that a school has to work with.
And think about the fact that you have to take 40 kids who may not have been paying attention most of their life, and then all of a sudden you catch them when they're 14. Good luck.
I mean, you've got a lot of momentum.
A lot of momentum behind them of them hating school.
neil degrasse tyson
A lot of negative momentum.
joe rogan
A lot of maybe bored, disenfranchised teachers who've been teaching these kids.
They're not into it.
And then their hormones are kicking in, so they can't pay attention to anything anyway.
neil degrasse tyson
It's easy for me to make these statements, but I'm not the one in the trenches there, especially in those middle schools where hormones are riding everything.
joe rogan
Right when they start popping, the kids don't know what to do with them.
unidentified
They're like, ah!
joe rogan
Imagine?
Your whole life.
neil degrasse tyson
It's not the time to learn physics.
I gotta worry about my body.
Whatever.
joe rogan
And then just trying to get 40 kids or however many is in the typical classroom to pay attention to the same thing at the same time and to be interested in the same thing at the same time.
You know, there's a lot of intelligent kids that get left by the wayside because school, for whatever reason, doesn't jive with the way they learn things.
It doesn't mean that they're not smart.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, I think we have similar, each of us, you and I, have similar challenges in a theater audience, right?
Now, you have the advantage that they're all fans, so they know where you're coming from when you do a stand-up routine.
But still, there's a thousand people or more who are different from each other.
Some are old, some are young, some are left, some are right, you know, politically.
And you thread that, and I think you thread it brilliantly.
You get people with you And you get them to want to listen to you.
So part of what I glean from people's reactions to my Twitter posts is, was that how you thought about that?
I didn't know that.
Oh, you know, I thought what I posted was funny, but nobody laughed.
That's useful information to me, okay?
I want to know if I'm succeeding or not in what words I choose, what phrases, what ideas, what topics.
And by the way, those touch points have evolved over the years.
I've done a purposeful experiment.
I took an identical tweet and just retweeted it five years after I first did it.
And reactions are different.
joe rogan
Because of the time?
neil degrasse tyson
The times have changed.
joe rogan
That's correct.
neil degrasse tyson
And so if I want to stay effective as an educator, First, I will never want them to meet me at the chalkboard, or whatever boards are made of today.
Because what is that?
Okay, you're a professor.
Professor Neil is facing the chalkboard, drawing on the board, and you either get them or you don't.
Okay?
But that person cannot claim to be an educator.
The educator is someone who faces the audience and wants to know, how is your brain wired for thought?
And if I know that, I have a chance of shaping knowledge, information, insight in ways that can best be received by your receptors.
And yes, if it's a mixture, so you dance a little bit.
You put out some feelers in this way.
So if I have an audience and some of them are over 75, look for the silver-haired folks.
They'll remember, you know, the later stages of the Second World War and early stages of the Cold War.
I'll throw in a reference just for them.
You know, the 20-somethings won't know and they won't care.
They probably won't even get it, but I'll go buy it quickly enough that I offer the other community demographic in the audience something else.
And this is my way...
Maybe it's a tennis match.
I'm hitting the ball back and forth to different people.
And that way I can take this body of knowledge that is the universe and have everybody share in it.
Otherwise, I don't know that I can claim to be an educator.
joe rogan
Well, you certainly can claim to be an educator, but maybe you're not making the best use of your particular abilities.
Your particular abilities that are unique to you are your humor and your fun, your jovial, along with being deep and philosophical and talking about it.
Very heady things.
neil degrasse tyson
I found that matter.
People, like I said, people like to smile.
joe rogan
Yeah, they like silliness.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
joe rogan
You're a silly dude.
It's fun.
I mean, for a guy who talks about- I guess I'll take this as a compliment.
Yes, it is a compliment.
For a guy who talks about, like, really intense subjects, you know?
The nature of infinity.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
joe rogan
And different kinds of infinities.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, you remember that?
Yeah, I remember everything.
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
joe rogan
Yeah, which is what?
What are you saying?
I'm not gonna let you get away with this alien thing though.
neil degrasse tyson
Bring it back.
No, bring it back.
joe rogan
Bring it back to this alien thing.
neil degrasse tyson
Damn, I thought I could.
joe rogan
So, it's weird to me that now the Pentagon is saying that these are real videos that they've captured off of naval vessels and they've been hovering over defense systems and they don't know what they are.
They don't know how they operate.
There's a film that was released recently By Jeremy Corbell that also came from the Navy where it shows one that's a transmedium device.
It actually flies through the air and then goes into the water.
neil degrasse tyson
And this is being filmed from- That's how they interpreted the information that was in front of them.
joe rogan
Exactly.
neil degrasse tyson
Just to be clear.
joe rogan
Yes.
But it did go in the water.
There's a film of it actually going to water, and they talk about it splashing down.
They're monitoring it.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, they talked about there was a Whitecaps where they think it was submerged, I think.
Wasn't that the description?
joe rogan
Well, we could see it.
It actually went underwater, and then they went to look for it, and they couldn't find it.
They used a submarine.
They used sonar.
They don't know what it is.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, so I hope they keep checking to find out what it is.
joe rogan
Yeah, it'd be nice to know what that is.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Something that can travel through the sky and also goes through the ocean.
That's pretty crazy.
neil degrasse tyson
I want the military to understand that signal they're getting on their equipment.
unidentified
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
Because there's equipment between you and what's going on, typically.
When it's sort of Navy sensors and trackers and that sort of thing.
Other things are things people see in the sky with their own senses, right?
Just the light in the sky and it moves in ways they don't understand or can't explain.
So, but a point I've made before, I'll just rehash it here.
We live in a time where everyone is equipped with a high resolution color, camera, and video recorder.
Basically everyone.
And if you run the numbers on it, it's about, I got this from someone from Google, there's about six billion photos and videos uplifted to the internet every day.
And in that collection, you find really rare things that you only heard about or maybe you saw the results of, but you didn't actually see it happen.
So there are videos of buses tumbling in the winds of a tornado.
Now, in the aftermath of a tornado, there's a bus on its side, and so you knew when took it there.
But previously, no one is going to say, oh, that bus is about to lift into the air.
Wizard of Oz style, like the house, let me go in and get my movie camera and then come back out and shoot this.
No one did that.
If you did, you'd be stupid.
You'd want to get the hell out of there.
But everybody has a video camera.
So we have images of this rare phenomenon, uncommon, hardly ever filmed, buses tumbling in the air.
We have video footage of animals doing interesting things that we never had video recordings of.
joe rogan
Like bears walking on two feet?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, bears.
And one of them right at a traffic cone, there's a video of that.
It was just walking down the street.
And there's a traffic cone, and it looked at it, and it was tipped over, and it righted it, and it kept walking.
And I'm thinking, wow, this is what bears do when we're not chasing them or when they're not chasing us.
This is just a casual—they're mammals.
They have large brains, you know, compared to any other kinds of— They're oddly playful, too.
Yes, and they love people's backyard swimming pools, apparently.
joe rogan
Yeah, and benches.
You ever seen them on picnic benches?
neil degrasse tyson
And they're just chilling on the bench.
joe rogan
They lay on benches and roll around on picnic benches.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
So, and in another case, I saw it was a magpie, one of these birds known for how smart it is.
There was a full, you know, half liter, you know, plastic thing of water.
It was just water, okay?
You know, a water bottle.
And it was full.
So the magpie goes over and sips out the water.
Now, the beak is only, what, an inch and a half long or an inch at moat?
So it goes in until it can't reach the water anymore.
So what does it do?
It goes off to the side, gets a rock, just the right size, drops it into The water bottle.
joe rogan
It raises the level of water.
neil degrasse tyson
Thereby displacing water.
Here it is.
joe rogan
That is heavy.
neil degrasse tyson
There it is.
And so it comes and it goes back and gets another stone, drops it in, and every time it drops it in, the water level rises and it can drink more water.
And it keeps doing this.
joe rogan
That's pretty amazing.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay?
And so every time we study animals, they're smarter than we ever thought they were.
So maybe for our own ego, we kept building ourselves up, saying how separate and distinct we are as humans in the animal kingdom.
When maybe we're not as separate and distinct as we think we are.
So, now what's my broader point there that I was making?
I just distracted myself.
joe rogan
Something about UFOs?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, I know.
I was trying to get back to UFOs on that.
joe rogan
The fact that we have high resolution cameras in our pocket and we take videos of things that are very unusual.
neil degrasse tyson
Exactly.
So here's video of a magpie Doing Bernoulli experiments in a water bottle.
Who would have known that even happened, right?
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
You can't bring the bird into a lab, and maybe you could, but I don't know that anyone did.
All right.
Here's my point.
In the 1960s and 70s, there were many, many reports of alien abductions.
People said, the aliens came to me and they brought me in and then they released me.
Do you have any footage?
No, they took my camera.
Or no, they zapped my film and now there's no image on the film.
But there were countless stories.
Well, now you can stream live from your camera anything that's going on in front of you.
So if the aliens come and they want to abduct you, you can stream it.
unidentified
That would be instantly viral.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh my gosh!
You know, the stuff that goes viral is much less than that.
A cat, a kitten that jumps to the table and falls, that goes viral?
You don't think video footage of an alien is not going to go viral instantly?
But there's none.
So I'm just saying, I'm thinking if we were being visited, somebody would have some good footage.
If we were being visited, I'm thinking maybe Google satellite images would catch spaceships that are not airplanes moving on our surface.
If we were being visited, I'm thinking we'd have something better than fuzzy monochromatic video.
Of objects that apparently reveal themselves only to Navy pilots, right?
joe rogan
Well, one of the reasons is most of these sightings actually occur far offshore in the ocean.
And the speculation is this is one of the ways...
Now, obviously, I'm going to put my tinfoil hat on nice and tight.
neil degrasse tyson
Do your thing.
joe rogan
This is one of the ways that they monitor us.
The best way to do it is to do it where they hold their base where no one is around, which is the ocean.
neil degrasse tyson
No, that's not true.
joe rogan
So they go in the ocean, they pop up, and they fly out.
neil degrasse tyson
That's not true.
joe rogan
What do you mean it's not true?
neil degrasse tyson
It's not true.
Yeah, nobody lives on the ocean.
Yes, that's correct.
In the ocean.
Well, so...
Oh, it lives down undersea.
joe rogan
This is what the speculation is.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, okay.
It lives down undersea.
joe rogan
That's why these transmedium devices have been...
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
joe rogan
These transmedium crafts have been observed.
neil degrasse tyson
If you want...
If you are sure we are being visited by aliens...
joe rogan
I'm definitely not sure.
neil degrasse tyson
...and you don't actually have really good evidence, then you have to say that.
Sure.
joe rogan
Well, you know that...
neil degrasse tyson
You have to say that.
You have to say, this is really happening and they're observing us and they're concealing themselves in this particular way.
You have to say that.
So that's your way to maintain your alien belief system by saying that.
And I don't have a problem with it.
Go get them.
Go get them.
But all of what has been put forth as evidence for aliens, to me, is insufficient evidence to excite my interest, my research interest, in devoting time to finding it out.
But it definitely has excited other people.
I have not stopped them.
I am not saying defund the military, A program on UAPs, which of course is just updated UFO. I know, they like to say that now because there's like a stigma to UFO. I know, that's just, that's a really transparent...
Sneaky way to do it.
No, no, it's not even sneaky.
It's actually, I think it's embarrassing.
It's like, maybe if we call them UAPs...
joe rogan
People take them seriously.
neil degrasse tyson
People take them seriously.
No, it's just...
joe rogan
I'm of the belief that they're probably akin to what we did on Mars.
I don't think there's aliens in them.
I have a feeling that these things are probes.
And I feel like if you just think about biological entities flying through the universe, like, why do that?
When you have sophisticated technology that's good enough right now from our, like, relatively primitive in consideration of what we think is possible a million years from now, right?
But we could send that Mars rover around.
We have a helicopter on Mars.
I mean, there's multiple satellites flying through the universe right now taking images.
We can do all that.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, but our probes are not...
Targeting the Martian military fighter pilots.
joe rogan
Because there's no Martian military.
But if there were, we certainly would.
neil degrasse tyson
They're just sitting out in the open.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
But if we had something like...
Are you familiar with...
One of the most famous cases was a case with Commander David Fravor of the Navy who encountered with one or two other jets off of the Nimitz.
They encountered this thing that was shaped like a Tic Tac.
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
You know the story.
joe rogan
Everybody knows this.
Yeah.
The story.
They tracked it going from 80,000 feet above sea level to 50 in less than a second.
They have no idea how it moved.
There's no visible propulsion system.
It was blocking their radar.
It was actively blocking tracking.
neil degrasse tyson
This is what their sensors told them.
joe rogan
Yes, exactly.
neil degrasse tyson
Just be clear about that.
You're stating...
Information as though it is facts.
joe rogan
I'm stating information as Commander Fravor related.
unidentified
I don't care.
neil degrasse tyson
That doesn't matter.
He's human.
We're all human here.
But as a scientist, when you're presenting information, you don't say, this thing was at 80,000 feet and it dropped to zero to sea level in one second or whatever it was, the measure.
That's the wrong way to report it.
What you say is, we have sensors.
joe rogan
Uh-huh.
neil degrasse tyson
That told us this is what happened.
joe rogan
I understand what you're saying.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay?
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
That's a very important distinction.
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
And so now – all right.
Your first question then, tell me about the sensors.
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
Are they double-checked?
Are they – you know.
And so – but if you're just going to say, there's this craft at 80,000 – then everyone is thinking about a craft.
And no one is thinking about the sensor.
joe rogan
They actually saw it with their eyes, too.
This is something that they actually got.
neil degrasse tyson
You can't see something at 80,000 feet?
joe rogan
No, the actual visual on the craft.
They didn't see it at 80,000 feet, but this craft, it's not just something that was tracked with equipment.
neil degrasse tyson
Got it, but they didn't see it at 80,000 feet.
That's my point.
So, by the way, this level of attention I'm giving to the detail and the reporting of information...
We do that with fellow scientists for much less than if we're being visited by intelligent aliens from another planet.
Go to a scientific conference and watch the level of scrutiny we put on other people's work.
If they have a sensor that has a new result, we'll say, did you calibrate the sensor?
How long has the sensor been in use?
I'll give you an example.
Here's an example, okay?
Do you remember Planet X? Yes.
The search for Planet X. Nibiru.
There were several incarnations of Planet X. Right.
That was among them.
joe rogan
That was the most wacky.
neil degrasse tyson
I'm talking about 100 years ago Planet X. Yes.
joe rogan
100 years ago?
neil degrasse tyson
Well, there were several Planet X's, right?
So Uranus was moving weirdly.
Nobody understood.
Maybe there's a planet beyond it whose gravity we have yet to reckon in our equations.
Oh, boom!
We discover Neptune.
Wait a minute, Neptune is moving a little unfamiliarly.
Sorry about that.
unidentified
Are you going to drop that thing and break it with no case on?
neil degrasse tyson
So, yeah, I got the 12, and yeah, I can still do this.
I'm just sorry.
joe rogan
Yeah, I get it.
Last time you were here, you had a broken case.
You're a broken back.
neil degrasse tyson
Remember?
So, why are you distracting me?
joe rogan
Sorry, sorry.
neil degrasse tyson
I was like on a roll and...
joe rogan
Neptune.
neil degrasse tyson
Neptune.
So, Neptune, we're looking at Neptune's orbit and it's not following Newton's laws.
And this is odd.
Well, we've been down that road before.
Uranus didn't follow Newton's laws.
We proposed another planet and we found it.
So Neptune's not following all the laws of gravity that from all the other planets in the sun, there must be another planet out there, a planet X. Let's look for it.
joe rogan
Is that Bode's law?
neil degrasse tyson
Bolt's Law is a fitting function that gets you – it got a little more attention than it deserved.
It's just that planets – every next planet is about twice as far away from the sun as the previous one.
So you just make a quick equation out of that.
joe rogan
Oh, that's it?
neil degrasse tyson
But it doesn't work for Mercury and it didn't work for Pluto and – I thought it was based on the mass of the planet.
No, not at all.
The mass has nothing to do with it.
unidentified
Nothing to do with it?
neil degrasse tyson
And it predicted the asteroid belt, but the asteroid belt, there's no planet there.
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay?
And if you glue together all the pieces of the asteroid belt, you get something like 5% the mass of the moon.
So, yeah, it gave us the location of the Astro Belt, but that's not a planet.
So, Bode's Law, it's fun to play with, but, you know, there are limits to how far you want to declare its relevance to the actual universe.
So, we're out here at Neptune, and so I said, maybe there's a planet X. Everybody started looking.
Everybody started looking, including Percival Lowell.
All right?
Back in the 1920s.
And he says, I want to find Planet X. Because something's perturbing Neptune.
So he sets out looking for it.
And he doesn't find it.
Then he hires Clyde Tombaugh.
And he dies, so he doesn't see the results of this.
Clyde Tombaugh said, I can't find it either.
I will just systematically search everywhere.
Because if you think something's affecting you gravitationally, you ought to have some idea where it is to be tugging on you in that way.
That's not some kind of weird...
It's like you're moving differently.
Where must the thing be to tug on you so that you're moving in that way?
No one could find such a Planet X. So Clyde and Tombo said, it's got to be out there somewhere.
I will systematically image the entire sky.
All right?
You got to do it on multiple nights because if something's moving, you'd see it change from one picture to the next.
He does this, discovers Pluto.
Was Pluto where Planet X was supposed to have been?
No.
Was Pluto the mass that Planet X should have been?
Everyone assumed it was.
But over the decades, the mass of Pluto got lower and lower and lower as our estimates got more and more accurate.
Then we found out that Pluto is one-fifth the mass of our moon made of half ice.
And this is why Pluto got into trouble later in the 20th century.
It's not because we had some vendetta against Pluto.
Pluto just never belonged in that list to begin with.
That's really how you need to think about it.
Anyhow...
There's still the matter of Neptune's orbit.
Pluto did not have enough mass to make those changes.
So the search for Planet X continued.
So what happens?
All right.
1993, a colleague of mine named Miles Standish, okay?
He's probably related to the Miles Standish on the Mayflower.
He, as an astrophysicist, looked at all of the data people were using to say Neptune's orbit was crooked.
Look at all the data.
Then he found out that at one particular observatory, was it the gearbox or the timing mechanism, had just been cleaned or swapped out.
Because in the observing log, you write down everything, because you just don't know.
Was there a glitch in the current?
Was there a bird flyover?
unidentified
You make notes of everything.
neil degrasse tyson
One of the observatories, whose data was being grafted together with the other observatories, had this sort of gearbox.
I don't remember if it was a gearbox.
There was some mechanical adjustment that was made.
He said, I wonder if that had an effect on the positioning of this telescope.
He removed those data from his analysis and fitted data to all the other telescopes that he had for the positions of Uranus.
Of Neptune.
When he did that, Planet X evaporated in that instant.
In that instant.
There was no Planet X. All the other data, when he connects across, removing the data from the one where the observing log said they did something different, Neptune fell right onto Newton's laws.
And so, since 1993, there is no Planet X. And Pluto, and not for that, we probably would have been a long time before we discovered Pluto, because no one would have looked for it.
unidentified
They found another, like, Pluto- Let me just finish the lesson there.
neil degrasse tyson
The lesson there is, you have information that you think is correct from your sensors.
This was an observatory, a fine observatory.
And you're going to say, this observatory says Neptune is misbehaving.
But then you learn there was something wrong with the data.
You throw it out.
So I'm trying to say this happens all the time in science.
You have to be careful what you're analyzing before you declare that what the thing measured is true and then realign all your resources to address what you think is true when it might have just simply been a glitch or multiple glitches or anything.
And we do this all the time in science.
So you were saying...
joe rogan
Well, several things.
One, when we're talking about planetoids and planets, the idea about Pluto is that Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt, right?
neil degrasse tyson
It's the first and currently known largest member of the Kuiper Belt.
And it makes sense.
You know, we didn't even know the Kuiper Belt existed in 1930. So for us, it's just the ninth planet.
But it's the tiniest and the littlest, and it's got a weird orbit that crosses the orbit of other planets.
And that's a little weird, but we'll grandfather it in.
Okay, Pluto.
And then, wait a minute, you have brethren.
In the 1990s, we discovered other objects out there with similar orbits to Pluto.
So maybe Pluto is not the ninth planet.
It's the first object in a new swath of real estate discovered in the outer solar system called the Kuiper Belt.
That's where it stands right now.
joe rogan
And this Kuiper Belt, there was some speculation.
Now, I read this quite a while ago, so forgive me.
But there was some speculation that we might be in some sort of a binary star system, and there might be a burnt-out star that's way, way, way outside of our solar system.
And that's causing the galactic shelf to drop off?
Like this Kuiper belt is responding to some other gravity that's way out there?
neil degrasse tyson
Is that correct?
Did I garble all that up?
You mix like three or four different scenarios.
joe rogan
That's common for me.
neil degrasse tyson
There was a while there where we looked at the extinction records of species on Earth and found some periodicity to it.
I forgot.
Was it every 20 million years or something?
There was some period that repeated where the fossil record showed a dramatic drop or a mild drop in the species count from one layer to the next in the geological sediment.
And so if this has a rhythm to it, there is nothing in the solar system that has a 20 million year rhythm.
So someone suggested maybe the sun has a really eccentric, as in its orbit, It's in a binary star system where there's another star that plunges in through the solar system coming through the Kuiper belt and then goes back out in this dance with the sun.
So we wouldn't have seen it in our civilization because this is – all right.
But when it does that, it disrupts the Kuiper belt gravitationally.
And if you do that, you will send a rain of comets down.
A higher than average rate of comets down into the inner solar system, and then you could render many life forms extinct on Earth, just the way we lost the dinosaurs from an asteroid.
And they even gave a name for it.
They called it Nemesis.
That was the Nemesis double star system of the Sun.
But so we took a closer look at the data.
It turned out it had been filtered in a way that revealed rhythms that were not really there.
And if it's orbital, the rhythm should be perfect because Newton's law doesn't mess around and they weren't exactly right.
So that concept has evaporated but it got people going for a while.
It got a lot of press attention.
joe rogan
Trevor Burrus And the part about the Kuiper Belt, about the galactic shelf, that there seems to be some sort of a drop-off?
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, so now with regard to...
So another scenario, which got folded into yours, is that our orbit around the galaxy is not sort of a straight circle.
I mean, a clean circle.
We actually wave in and out of the plane of the galaxy.
All right?
Like, imagine sort of Nessie, Loch Ness Monster doing that.
unidentified
Okay?
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
So our orbit, our entire solar system is dipping up and down and through.
So another suggestion was, in fact, I think it was an entire book on this.
Forgive me for not remembering the name.
It suggested that the entire solar system, as it passes through the plane of the galaxy, that disrupts the Kuiper Belt as well.
And that lodges – you know, it's basically – the Kuiper Belt says lobbing comets down into the inner solar system.
And so you can look for that in the extinction record as well.
So – and it was suggested that that might have been what took out the dinosaurs, one of those kind of passages through.
But anyhow, yeah.
I mean, there's no shortage of excuses for killing the dinosaurs out there.
Yeah, for sure.
joe rogan
When you think about this idea of everyone having these video cameras in their pocket and high-resolution imagery and that where is that stuff?
But the absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence.
neil degrasse tyson
It can be.
So I'll give you an example.
joe rogan
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
Because that's a mantra, all right?
And in science, so philosophically, that's true.
But in practice, in science, we do that all the time, okay?
So I'll give an example.
It's a contrived example, but it's a clean example.
There's a cave nearby.
You're a mountain man, right?
And there's a cave nearby.
And you're worried it might have bears in it.
So you don't want to go poking around.
So you conduct some experiments.
So here's what you do.
You put chalk dust around the entrance to the cave.
And you check it every day for a month.
And there are no bear prints in the chalk dust.
Winter comes, okay?
And you notice there are no footprints in the snow.
Of course, well, maybe the bear snuck in and you didn't see it and it's hibernating.
That could be so, perhaps.
Well, you wait until springtime.
So you keep doing this without ever going in the cave.
And you have no evidence of a bear going in and out of that cave over a normal cycle of time that a bear might go in and out of a cave.
joe rogan
Mm-hmm.
neil degrasse tyson
That is evidence of absence, in a sense.
joe rogan
In a very specific place.
neil degrasse tyson
Correct.
So, at that point, you'd say, well, I didn't go in the cave to check, but I have enough evidence to say the bear is not there.
unidentified
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
So, it's the thing, well, you can't prove a negative.
I kind of just did.
I'm saying there is no bear there.
Did I prove it in a fully logical mathematical sense?
No.
But scientifically, I've gathered enough information to convince me there's no bear in the cave and I will operate on that assumption going forward.
And so much science happens that way.
And it works.
joe rogan
And you think that's a valid way to dismiss the lack of UFO evidence because these people have these phones and they're just all filming and taking photographs of things constantly?
neil degrasse tyson
Why wouldn't they?
You can ask, you're perfectly allowed to say what would happen if we were visited by aliens and you crowdsourced The access to aliens among 7 billion people in the world.
joe rogan
How many people are out in the middle of the ocean?
neil degrasse tyson
I was going to get to that.
Have you ever seen the flight paths of airplanes in a single day?
Yeah, it's pretty wild.
It is completely wild.
It's like, what the?
If you show this to the Wright brothers from 1903, dude!
So, of course, the oceans.
Of course, there are traffic paths, right, where you're more likely to find them than in other paths because there's either no destination there or the Great Circle route doesn't favor it.
But you look at how often, every single day, the sky, the airspace is crisscrossed by way more commercial carriers than military vehicles.
And I'm thinking you'd have an encounter with something that was not a fuzzy object that no one can describe.
They would photograph something through the cockpit window.
I mean, why not?
You'd see something.
joe rogan
There was a recent sighting by a bunch of American Airlines pilots.
Two, I should say, not a bunch of.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, it can happen.
Again, you get the more...
I don't know what I'm looking at.
Yeah, but was it detailed?
Did you have...
joe rogan
If you had a guess, if you had a bet, like if you had a pile of money and you have to put it on...
Green for aliens or red for horseshit?
Where are you putting your money?
neil degrasse tyson
You're forcing a binary decision here.
joe rogan
I am.
unidentified
I am.
joe rogan
We're playing roulette.
neil degrasse tyson
But I wouldn't call it horseshit.
I would say not aliens.
joe rogan
Not aliens.
neil degrasse tyson
Right.
joe rogan
I don't think there's things in most of those crafts, but I think those crafts are some kind of drone.
And I'm not convinced that they're from another planet.
neil degrasse tyson
Sure.
I don't have a problem with that.
And if you...
By the way, if you...
If this thing that they see out the window, okay?
And they don't get a good photo or it's still fuzzy or it's still a light in the sky.
And I'm saying, okay, I'm not yet convinced.
But it's something...
Fine.
Go invest resources to figure it out, especially if you think it's a security risk.
If you want to believe it's aliens, I'm not...
If they didn't want us to see them, you would never see them.
I'm pretty sure.
If they had enough technology to cross the vacuum of space to reach us, you wouldn't even know they were there.
joe rogan
I agree.
neil degrasse tyson
You just would have no idea.
joe rogan
Perhaps the way that they slowly integrate into our consciousness, into our acceptance of their existence, is a trickle effect.
Every now and then we see a video.
neil degrasse tyson
Now think of the hubris of us saying this advanced civilization of aliens who can cross the gaps of space Are interested in us and our gonads and they want to paint circles in our crops.
That's kind of weird, I would think.
joe rogan
Okay, I hate this argument.
neil degrasse tyson
I just think it's a little weird.
I don't think we're that interesting.
joe rogan
I think we're really fucking interesting.
I think we can nuke the entire planet many times over and yet we don't.
We did it once in 1947. We bullshit each other constantly.
We spew out propaganda.
We have this bizarre ritual where every four years we pick a leader based on a popularity contest.
neil degrasse tyson
Who you want to have beer with?
joe rogan
Yeah, we're constantly involved in murder and rape and genocide all over the world.
We choose what things to pay attention to, what not to pay attention to.
We celebrate people who pretend to be heroes in films and television, and we barely know scientists who win Nobel Prizes.
We're fucking fascinating.
unidentified
We're the weirdest things, the weirdest things.
joe rogan
Listen, if you studied us, if you were from another planet filled with things like us, like if there was another planet of us and we found a planet doing the exact same kind of nonsense that we do somewhere else, we would be riveted.
neil degrasse tyson
Here's how I think about another planet, if I can share this.
This is a little deep, if you're ready for that.
Oh, please.
So, whether you are vegetarian or omnivore or carnivore, you must kill something that was alive to survive.
Okay?
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
The only thing that you consume that was never once alive...
It's sort of basically milk and honey.
Okay?
And salt.
Everything else was once alive.
You're killing.
And of course vegetarians are doing it as well.
In fact, I'm intrigued that vegetarians in particular will focus on the baby version of the plant they would otherwise be eating.
Baby spinach, baby carrots, baby arugula, baby this, baby that.
And on the sort of reproductive organs of plants.
Oh, let's eat the flowers or the seeds or the nuts.
These are things that the plant's trying to make another plant with.
You collect it and eat it.
So now imagine a civilization from another planet That is entirely energized by photosynthesis.
Just imagine that, okay?
Maybe they have what we would call an animal, but their entire skin photosynthesizes, okay?
So all living creatures on that planet consume sunlight from their home star, okay?
And so they say, I want to explore the galaxy.
And so they build a spaceship, and they come to Earth, and what do they see?
Humans and other animals killing to survive.
Inventing means of mass murder of fellow other life forms on their planet just to survive.
They would consider us astonishingly, inexcusably, bewilderingly barbaric.
For having done so.
And I don't think they would be interested in us.
joe rogan
I think if they really are using photosynthesis, they're plant-based creatures, they're probably going to be so tired all the time, they're not going to have the will to travel through the universe.
neil degrasse tyson
You're confusing the vegetarian with the plant life.
joe rogan
Oh, it's different?
unidentified
That's right.
neil degrasse tyson
You're confusing.
joe rogan
Oh, well, the plants themselves.
They don't go anywhere.
neil degrasse tyson
An old man who wrestles elk and rips out his heart and bites from it.
Is that what you did on that hunting trip?
unidentified
Plants don't go anywhere.
joe rogan
Plants don't go anywhere.
They just stay put.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
They would also say- Nothing that uses photosynthesis moves.
neil degrasse tyson
But I'm talking about another planet.
Just imagine a planet that that's the case.
unidentified
I know.
joe rogan
In my planet, they're all lazy.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, but except consider an encounter between you, your car, and an oak tree.
You lose.
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay?
And the oak tree produces...
joe rogan
It's still not moving.
neil degrasse tyson
It has...
Because it doesn't need to.
Right.
Here.
joe rogan
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
Can I name drop for a minute?
joe rogan
Please.
neil degrasse tyson
Can I name drop?
joe rogan
I love a good name drop.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
Steven Spielberg once swung by my office.
Well, we've met.
We've met.
joe rogan
Tell him I'm a big fan.
neil degrasse tyson
I'll tell him.
I'll tell him.
And he had one of his kids.
He had several kids.
He had brought one to the Hayden Planetarium in my office.
And the museum got word that he was in town.
He has an apartment nearby.
So they asked if he could come by in addition to other activities at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where I work.
That's my day job.
So, he comes in, and we're talking, and I say hi to his kid, and the kid's like in middle school at the time.
And so, I said, I got to talk to him about some of his work.
So, I said, let's talk E.T. He said, sure.
That's when I learned, he said he imagined E.T. as vegetable, not as animal.
And that's why, among other reasons, ET has this power to rejuvenate plants with its finger because it's actually a plant.
And so that's an example.
I know it's fictional, of course, but it's an example of thinking outside of an earth box.
joe rogan
Sure.
neil degrasse tyson
And if you think outside of an earth box, there you go.
That is a life form that would not understand us.
They would think, how could such a world exist?
And on top of that, there's how we treat each other.
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
All right?
And by the way, I bet.
Yeah, I'm one of those who's a little worried when we give our return address broadcast out into space because you don't give your email to strangers in the street.
We're giving the coordinates of Earth broadcast out to the gaps of interstellar space.
So I'm a little worried about that.
But then I think about it and I see nearly every portrayal of an alien in Hollywood Is evil.
Going right on back to War of the Worlds with H.G. Wells.
And I'm thinking, why?
Do we have any insights that aliens would be evil?
Or is it really a mirror to ourselves?
It's not imagined knowledge of how aliens would behave.
It's actual knowledge of how we have behaved.
joe rogan
But what about the day the Earth stood still?
It's one of the first.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, it's one of the rare ones where the aliens...
Well, no.
The War of the Worlds long predates that by half a century.
But on balance, the aliens are evil.
Okay?
That's all I'm saying.
And so we are...
I see those portrayals as Unwitting mirrors of our own conduct.
Because an alien coming to Earth has a greater technology than we do.
Period.
End of story.
So, how has it gone on Earth any time one civilization with higher technology encounters one with lesser technology?
It has never boded well for the society with lesser technology.
They've been enslaved, killed, put in camps.
Exterminated.
So I think we fear aliens because, in fact, we fear ourselves.
joe rogan
We fear what we would do if we had the capability to go to another planet like they do to us.
neil degrasse tyson
I think we do that unwittingly.
That's what's manifesting in our storytelling.
joe rogan
I think it represents what we see out of human beings, sure.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Definitely.
neil degrasse tyson
So, getting back to the UFO reports and sites, you know, the headline I saw recently says, Pentagon Confirms UFOs Are Real.
That title has no meaning.
joe rogan
Well, it gets me happy.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, no, it has no meaning.
joe rogan
I know what you're saying.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, it just has no meaning.
joe rogan
It's unidentified, so unidentified things are real.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, of course.
joe rogan
That doesn't mean anything.
neil degrasse tyson
It doesn't mean they're aliens.
If the title said, Pentagon confirms UFOs are actually aliens, that is a headline.
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
That's a good headline right there, but that's not what anybody can report.
joe rogan
What do you think?
I think this whole ramping up of all this information is, all the videos and all the conversations about it, the article in the New York Times.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, it's part of what Trump set into motion.
I mean, the landscape was ripe for it, but...
Oh, by the way, UFO sightings went up during COVID, I think?
Because everyone was home bored with nothing to do, and you'd go out and look up.
Makes sense.
Yeah, there's a lot of cultural statistics related to the frequency of UFO sightings.
But Trump, just before he left office, Required, he slips something into the COVID relief bill, as they do so often in Congress, where you agree with the rest of this, I don't agree with that, but I want to get it through.
joe rogan
So he put that in?
neil degrasse tyson
Yes.
Well, under his administration.
It's under his administration.
The full disclosure, within six months, he wants all federal agencies that collect information on unidentified sky objects to put together reports and deliver it to Congress within six months.
Fine.
I don't have a problem with that.
What's weird, though, is this belief that somehow the government is some repository of knowledge and secrets that we don't otherwise have access to.
That's not the kind of country we live in, nor is the government that competent.
So yeah, they try to keep secrets, and they keep many secrets.
They tend to be of the uninteresting kind.
But if you have an interesting secret, if you're stockpiling aliens and you're telling me that the secretary, the admin, the janitor, that they're not sneaking out an iPhone photo, Really?
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
Do you think it's that simple?
neil degrasse tyson
Really?
joe rogan
Really.
Do you think it's that simple?
Christopher Mellon, who worked for the Defense Department, he came on and was talking to us about...
neil degrasse tyson
You get all the inside folks here, yeah.
joe rogan
And that was...
It was an intriguing conversation because...
He is of the belief that they have had access to some objects and some crafts and some things that are unexplainable and don't seem to come from any technology that we're...
But any technology that we're currently capable of reproducing?
neil degrasse tyson
OK. I mean he might have seen something that the military was actually working on that would be mysterious to someone who is only familiar with unclassified propulsion systems and the like.
joe rogan
Do you think it's possible that a propulsion system so outside of the norm, something that is not working off burning fuel, something that's working off some new technology that is, whether it's some sort of gravity distorting or gravity-based technology, that that could actually be conceived in a vacuum where they could get the top scientists that work in propulsion, people that do understand, I mean, as much as we do understand gravity.
As much as we understand the possibility of some sort of propulsion system, it's pretty minimal, right?
In terms of, like, mainstream...
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, we're still primitive with our propulsion systems, yes.
joe rogan
Is it possible that this could all be done in a vacuum?
That it could all be done without anybody ever having known about it, and they could produce something that's so preposterously advanced from anything we've been capable of making before?
neil degrasse tyson
Advances tend not to be large leaps like that.
joe rogan
It seems more likely that it's from a different source than from human beings.
neil degrasse tyson
If what he's describing is true, then it would not be incremental.
I mean, we tend to do things incrementally.
That's just the nature of discovery and human innovation.
joe rogan
So if something actually can move the way, supposedly, these units, these various tracking systems that they have that can follow something from 80,000 feet above sea level.
neil degrasse tyson
I'm saying we don't understand it.
We don't understand it.
If it's actually a thing, there's no physics that explains it that we know of.
joe rogan
And if something can move that way, if it's confirmed that the systems are accurate and that this thing does move that fast and can do things that are beyond our capability currently as far as we understand it, would it be more likely that it would come from some other advanced civilization outside of Earth?
Or would it be more likely that it was conceived in a vacuum here without anybody having any access to any of the technology in these incremental forms?
neil degrasse tyson
So, it's possible you can have, like, you know, black ops, as they say.
You know, you look at the airplanes that came out of Lockheed Martin during the Cold War.
These were all just secret, and they gave the engineers- A kind of incremental.
Sure, but they looked really different and they behaved very differently.
So yes, it was still incremental, but let's imagine a deep black ops where they're making their own incremental changes, but you don't get to see them.
So by the time it shows up, it looks like it's a big leap, even though they got there incrementally.
And that was unreported.
Sure.
joe rogan
Doesn't science rely on other scientists to coordinate with, like other scientists to review data and to share ideas?
neil degrasse tyson
And it also presumes that the government has the best scientists, and that's simply not the case.
joe rogan
Right.
That's what I would always think.
The best scientists are going to go to the private sector because there's more money there.
neil degrasse tyson
Or academia where you have freedom of research.
Some will go because there is money in the military, but you're forced to work on projects that might not be the most creative investment of your own energies.
You hire a physicist, make a bomb at the end of this.
joe rogan
So it would take something pretty monumental for you to shift your belief to this is probably not from us.
unidentified
It's not belief.
neil degrasse tyson
It's show me an alien.
joe rogan
Give me something that- I'm not of the belief that these things are populated.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
joe rogan
They may be, and maybe it's happened before, but when I'm hearing about these things flying around and I'm seeing what we're doing on Mars, I'm like, yeah, it's a better version of that.
unidentified
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
You know what is a much better story to me?
It is the Transformers.
The origin story of the Transformers.
joe rogan
Their cars and then they become robots?
neil degrasse tyson
No, no.
I don't claim to know the whole franchise.
joe rogan
I don't either.
neil degrasse tyson
The little bit of it that I know.
By the way, they had an era in one of the movies where they're coming to Earth.
And they go by the moon and they see the Apollo...
joe rogan
Sight?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, they see the Apollo sight and the lander's there.
And it still has the pod that carries the astronauts.
joe rogan
Oh, whoops.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, yeah.
That returned to the command module that came back.
You just see the base.
But it's not as interesting.
So that was either on purpose or it was an oversight.
So the claim is they were found...
It came into the Arctic or wherever.
No one saw it happen except the military because we're monitoring the Arctic because that's where rockets get, you know, we're on the case here.
Then they get captured and we want to mine them for the technology that's in them.
But we want to do it in a way nobody knows.
So where do you do this?
Oh, let's build a dam.
So the Hoover Dam was the cover project for the analysis of the Transformers that we had captured.
And then beginning...
So Hoover Dam was in the 1920s, right?
When was Hoover?
1920s into the 30s.
Beginning in the 1930s, we catapulted.
Quantum physics was invented.
Lasers were invented.
Miniaturization of electronics was invented.
And it was all...
It was all claimed to be traceable to this new technology that we reverse-engineered, beginning with that research lab built into...
I thought that was brilliant.
That was a brilliant way to say that.
Or we're just...
Humans are smart, and we invented that ourselves.
joe rogan
Yeah, I never watched the Transformers, man.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, okay.
I'm just saying...
It's okay.
It was a clever weaving of a science fiction story into our culture.
I thought it was a brilliant...
The rest of it, no.
When they're fighting each other.
unidentified
I'm Optimus Prime.
neil degrasse tyson
No, I'm not doing that.
joe rogan
It's ridiculous.
neil degrasse tyson
And then you're a sports car on the side?
No, I'm not.
unidentified
Fuck out of here.
joe rogan
I love a good alien movie though.
I think my favorite is John Carpenter's The Thing.
That was a good one.
neil degrasse tyson
I gotta go back and check that one out.
joe rogan
It had crashed into Antarctica or something like that.
Frozen forever and then they discovered it.
They were like digging in and they found this thing and then it came out and it would transform and become like an identical copy of whatever it touched.
You don't remember that with Kurt Russell?
neil degrasse tyson
No, I don't think I saw...
No, I didn't see that.
But I do know what came...
The Blob, I thought, was a very creative alien.
That one didn't have a mouth or legs or arms or teeth or eyes or stomach.
And it could go through the air conditioning ducts.
It could ooze under the door.
You couldn't avoid it.
And what people forget about The Blob is that when it first landed, it was completely transparent.
After it ate its first victim, only then was it read, and it was read for the whole rest of the movie.
joe rogan
Really?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
joe rogan
I don't even remember that movie much.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, it had Steve McQueen in one of his first films.
joe rogan
Was it really?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, Steve McQueen.
joe rogan
Steve McQueen was in The Blob?
unidentified
Yeah!
joe rogan
Wow.
Yeah.
When I look at what we're doing with human beings and, you know, replacing people's knees and replacing people's hips and artificial this and artificial that, and then with CRISPR and genetic engineering, I think it's a matter of time before we are some sort of symbiotic thing.
We're partially created by, you know, whatever technology is available at the time, whether it's 100 years from now or 500 years from now.
Something that's going to be superior, that's not going to provide us with all the problems.
neil degrasse tyson
It's already happened.
You just don't think about it that way.
joe rogan
With your phone and your glasses?
neil degrasse tyson
No, no, no.
Even before that.
We are symbiotic with chemistry.
You're living twice as long.
Better living through chemistry.
We control your cholesterol, your inflammation, we know how to reduce the chance of stroke.
So you're thinking very narrow on this.
I need a new kneecap or I need a new this.
The fact is, science and technology has already been infused in the human condition in a way that, for example, has doubled our life expectancy within the last 150 years.
So it's already happening chemically.
So now you want to do it mechanically because that requires Material science, and that's a much later field than chemistry was developed in order to contribute to what our lives are.
Now you want to get into our DNA that's just the next level.
Okay?
Now, are we going to have some internet infused in our head?
I don't think so.
joe rogan
But that's what Elon's working on.
neil degrasse tyson
Why would you do that when the entire internet is in your palm of your hand in your smartphone?
joe rogan
Because you have to touch that stupid thing.
You might drop it.
neil degrasse tyson
What you're saying is, I don't want to touch this.
Yes, open up my skull and put in an internet transmitter.
That's better.
joe rogan
But it makes you smarter.
neil degrasse tyson
So does the smartphone.
joe rogan
No, no, no.
But, like, much smarter.
What he's saying is it's going to increase the bandwidth that you have to access information.
You're going to be able to access information quicker because it's not going to go through all these...
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, so people can do stupid things quicker in the face of information that they think is correct.
joe rogan
One of the things that Elon said to me is people will no longer have to talk with words.
You're not going to have to speak with your mind.
neil degrasse tyson
Look at what people are doing with the information they currently have.
They don't even know what is true.
joe rogan
Some people.
neil degrasse tyson
Now you want to accelerate that by a factor of a thousand.
joe rogan
Yes.
Maybe they'll learn.
neil degrasse tyson
That is the missing chapter in the apocalypse in the Bible.
Okay?
joe rogan
Maybe it's not.
Maybe it's the cure.
Maybe when people are acutely aware of what they actually know.
neil degrasse tyson
Don't equate knowledge with wisdom.
joe rogan
Well, maybe it can bestow wisdom.
unidentified
It's not the same thing.
neil degrasse tyson
I don't find wisdom on the internet.
I find knowledge.
joe rogan
You can find some wisdom.
You got to go to the right people.
unidentified
All right.
joe rogan
You got to go to the correct meme pages.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, but you got to plow through the knowledge, some of which, much of it, maybe most of which is false.
That's a problem.
joe rogan
But occasionally you get nuggets of wisdom.
neil degrasse tyson
Yes.
joe rogan
Want to see a nugget of wisdom?
neil degrasse tyson
You got one?
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm gonna show you one.
neil degrasse tyson
Show me.
You got one now?
joe rogan
I'll send it to Jamie, and Jamie, you'll put this up.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
joe rogan
This is a piece of...
neil degrasse tyson
By the way, I'm all in for wisdom.
joe rogan
I bet you are.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
Because when you look at the archive, there's...
In science, you want to convert data to sort of facts, and facts into knowledge, knowledge into insight, and then ultimately insight into wisdom.
joe rogan
And that wisdom will help you make better choices and help you understand the world you're living.
neil degrasse tyson
Correct.
Correct.
That's what it is.
joe rogan
Wisdom.
Just so you know, this is the guy calling you a Nazi on the internet.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
joe rogan
So now don't you feel better about like digging into your Twitter?
neil degrasse tyson
That's just a later version of that very first comic in The New Yorker when the internet came up.
And there are two dogs on a computer and one dog turns to the other.
The good thing about the internet is no one knows you're a dog.
That was like 1991 or something.
unidentified
Was it really?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, it was very early.
Very early.
joe rogan
Wow, 91?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, have them bring it up.
joe rogan
Wow.
neil degrasse tyson
No one knows you're a dog.
It should go straight to it.
joe rogan
That's pretty brilliant.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, yeah.
And so I've been thinking that the entire time.
Yeah, there it is.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
neil degrasse tyson
On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
joe rogan
What year is that from, does it say, Jamie?
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, it's got its own web page, wiki page.
joe rogan
93, wow.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, very early.
I said 91, so it's 93 from the New Yorker.
joe rogan
What year were you on?
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, I'm a scientist.
I was programming computers in high school, and I'm graduating class of 1976, so I'm an old fart.
But we had very large, clumsy computers, but I was programming them.
I had my first email account in 1980, 1981. Wow, 1980, that's crazy.
Yeah, but you can only talk to other scientists.
I mean, who else?
Still.
You're not sending email to your grandmother in 1980. Did you anticipate it was going to eventually be public?
Oh yeah, I saw the trends.
I didn't anticipate that everyone would agree to put all the world's knowledge on it.
I thought it would be very selective knowledge.
But the idea that wiki works at all is astonishing.
joe rogan
Pretty crazy.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, it's a pretty crazy fact.
And I'm happy to boast, my field has very excellent wiki pages on Pluto, on planets, on black holes.
A lot of us are really good educators and we know they're not just textbook people.
Pages, they're really informative.
And there's very little misinformation on it.
So I'm very happy about that.
joe rogan
That's extraordinary.
How do they filter that?
How do they make sure that misinformation doesn't get...
neil degrasse tyson
So I hate to name drop again, but I had one of the founders of Wiki in my office.
And he wanted to know, what does he do about people who are pirating pages?
Because back then, anyone could edit any page at all.
joe rogan
Oh, right.
neil degrasse tyson
All right?
And they now have certain...
They can close a page.
It has to be reviewed.
But that violates the spirit of the wiki concept.
Because you don't know if the person who wants to edit it has more insight than everybody else who even wrote the page.
You don't know that in advance.
What, are you going to interview them?
No, that's not realistic.
So I thought I had a really good idea, but he didn't take.
joe rogan
What was your good idea?
neil degrasse tyson
You have an edit index for every article.
And so the edit index is, it tells you two things.
The rate that people have made changes to that page is one dimension of information.
Another one is, is it an in-situ edit or is it additive?
That's important.
Because if there's some celebrity who dies, you'll edit the page by adding a paragraph, though they died in their sleep or whatever.
So that's editing, but that doesn't put the content at risk if you're just adding information.
So if I know that a page has been edited 40 times in the last three days, then the likelihood that that information is objectively true is very low.
And so when you're doing a book report or any kind of report and you're citing wiki pages, You would have a side index that tells you this page is rife with conflicting and contested edits.
Now that I know that, here's what they said.
Whereas other pages that are stable, I think we have a good right to say this contains objectively true information.
And you would be able to make the judgment yourself.
And it'd be easy to track that on a computer with all the edits.
And you'll know, did someone just correct spelling?
You know, you would give the nature of what the edit is.
And I thought that research is, if you don't know what the answer is, let's at least know how controversial the information is.
joe rogan
This brings up an interesting point because one of the things that we're talking about when it comes to technology, we're talking about improvements in the way the human brain works with a symbiotic relationship to whatever Neuralink or whatever new technology is invented.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, that's what he wants.
That's beyond Neuralink.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what he wants.
What would be great is if we knew what was true.
neil degrasse tyson
By the way, however crazy I think that idea is, I'm not going to stop him.
joe rogan
You're not going to stop him.
neil degrasse tyson
No, I don't want to.
joe rogan
But you're not going to stop him.
neil degrasse tyson
You need a little bit of crazy.
joe rogan
You do.
neil degrasse tyson
To move the center mass of society in new directions.
joe rogan
That dude's got a lot of crazy.
neil degrasse tyson
I'm an Elon fan.
joe rogan
Yeah, me too.
He's going to do it.
I'm going to probably get a hole in my head and stick it in there.
I want to see what's up.
But I'm going to be a late adopter, though.
I'm going to be like Gen 4. I didn't buy a Tesla until like two years ago.
neil degrasse tyson
Really?
Oh, no.
You know what I'm saying?
joe rogan
They had them many, many years before.
unidentified
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, the Roadster was first out.
joe rogan
Yeah, the little Lotus Elise clone.
neil degrasse tyson
I couldn't fit in it, so I couldn't...
joe rogan
Oh, you're a big fella.
neil degrasse tyson
I hit my head, I can't.
My shoulder went across the midplane of the seat, so I have to be there with a small other human, but two of me wouldn't be able to fit in the front seat without being very snuggly at the deltoid.
joe rogan
If we could come to a point where technology could eliminate deception...
How much more information could be shared and how much more could we understand?
neil degrasse tyson
What I don't know is if we cannot eliminate deception in ourselves, either self-deception or purposeful deception in others, I don't see how we can program that into our technology.
joe rogan
But I think we can if we can understand whether someone's telling the truth or not.
If it's clear and glaringly obvious, if you and I are talking and I start talking to you and all of a sudden a green light pops up, which indicates I'm full of shit, you'll see it and I'm like, oh, my green light's showing.
neil degrasse tyson
No, but that assumes that things are either true or false.
And that's just not true.
The actual world is way more nuanced than that.
joe rogan
Right.
Unintended deception.
neil degrasse tyson
So, for example, I can think something is true.
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
And what you're basically saying, not to put words in your mouth, is that everyone walks around with a lie detector on their forehead.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a bad idea.
That's a bad example.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, you just said this.
joe rogan
I know.
unidentified
All right.
neil degrasse tyson
So everyone has a lie detector.
And if I think something happened, even though it didn't, then I'm telling the truth.
unidentified
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
I'm telling my own understanding of the truth.
joe rogan
Which is a problem with some people with some stories, right?
neil degrasse tyson
You can't then indict me for that truth being wrong if that's how I saw it.
That's like the umpire.
That's how I called it because that's how I saw it.
The umpire's not being evil.
That's just what they saw.
So that's one problem with that.
Another one is there's so many things that are...
And that's what makes the world interesting, I think.
So you want an example of where the truth is nuanced?
I can't think off the top of my head, but I'm just telling you that in almost every case where someone wants to turn a question into a binary answer, They're doing a disservice to human intellect, to the real world that's out there.
I'll give you an example.
So, how tall are you?
joe rogan
5'8".
neil degrasse tyson
5'8".
Okay.
Presumably you measure that with some kind of tape measure.
All right.
So, are you five seven and three quarters?
joe rogan
It's probably closer to that.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
joe rogan
I'm shrinking.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So, maybe you're five seven and three quarters.
So, are you five seven and one sixteenth of an inch taller or shorter than five seven and three quarters?
joe rogan
I don't know.
We'd have to bust out a tape measure.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, so now, okay, so let's say you are within that.
But wait a minute.
The line that identifies a sixteenth of an inch itself has a width.
So where are you within the width of the line that you're using to report how tall you are?
joe rogan
So we're giving rough measurements.
neil degrasse tyson
Any time you give a measurement of something, it can never be exact.
joe rogan
But you get an understanding of it, like go a mile down the road and then take a right.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, but if I have a truth serum and I say, was it a mile?
No, it was one and an eighth of a mile.
joe rogan
But what if you get to a mile and there's no right turn?
Do you just shut your car off and starve to death?
Or do you go, let me figure this out.
It looks like 30 more feet, I take a right.
It's a mile and 30 feet.
Okay, I'm not going to nitpick.
I'm just going to take a right, a mile and 30 feet.
neil degrasse tyson
Your brain red light, green light device would say the person was lying.
joe rogan
Yeah, that device sucks.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
Forget I came up with that idea.
neil degrasse tyson
I was just trying to say.
joe rogan
My thought was just eliminate purposeful deception.
Like if you knew someone was lying to you, con artists, Ponzi skiing people, someone's trying to fuck you over, if you knew, if you could be clear that what this person was doing is they're not really going to make you a lot of money, they're trying to rip you off with a pie-in-the-sky idea.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, you know what device that is?
joe rogan
Eliminate deception.
neil degrasse tyson
You know what that is?
joe rogan
What?
neil degrasse tyson
There's a device.
It's called...
joe rogan
Logic.
neil degrasse tyson
Science literacy!
That's right.
How to know when someone else is...
In fact, I just tweeted that recently.
Science literacy...
joe rogan
Your boy Steven Spielberg got busted in a Ponzi scheme.
neil degrasse tyson
Is the power to know when someone else is full of shit.
joe rogan
But if you're dealing with something like Bernie Madoff, right?
neil degrasse tyson
You look at his returns and say, these don't match anyone else's returns.
How is this freaking possible?
unidentified
Because he's a G. Because you want to believe...
neil degrasse tyson
What he's doing.
Is it his problem or is it your problem?
That you want that outcome so badly that you are allowing yourself to be conned.
That's how conning works.
So, as a scientist, you can never be too invested in an outcome because it warps your capacity to judge what is true and what is not.
joe rogan
Was Bernie Madoff's return substantially more impressive than anyone else who was doing it legitimately?
neil degrasse tyson
From what I read, that wasn't the point.
It's not that his returns were much higher than everybody else.
joe rogan
They were consistent.
neil degrasse tyson
They were consistent.
10%, 15% every year, whatever it was.
And everyone else was fluctuating, sometimes getting negative.
He was always in the positive.
Or when everyone else was negative, he had low positive.
So, of course, you bring your money to him.
So he has some magic...
Insight into the marketplace that no one else has?
Well, do you know how the statistics of trading works?
Do you know?
You know, it's possible you can be lucky a few years in a row, but to do it for 10, 20, whatever long he was at it?
joe rogan
Right, but wouldn't it be easier if you just could clearly see deception?
Like the idea behind any of these technologies is they're going to improve the way human beings communicate with each other.
neil degrasse tyson
Maybe he believed he was doing the right thing.
joe rogan
I don't think he did.
neil degrasse tyson
You don't think he did?
joe rogan
No, I don't think he did.
I've heard interviews with him.
He sounded like a pure sociopath.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
joe rogan
He really did.
neil degrasse tyson
I don't mean to laugh, but there's a lot of cost in it.
unidentified
Horrible cost.
neil degrasse tyson
So you turn a blind eye to the possibility that what you want to be true might not be true.
And that burden of rationality falls just as much on the victim of that scheme as it is on the person perpetrating the scheme.
I think in a free society, you have to arm yourself, equip yourself.
It's not just logic.
Logic is overrated, I think.
My favorite paintings in the world could not have possibly been drawn via logic.
There's a creative spark that comes from nowhere.
The painting Starry Night on the back of my phone Is this logic?
No.
Is that what he saw?
No.
Although I can identify the day and the time of day when this image was in his head that he painted.
joe rogan
Because you know the geographical location.
neil degrasse tyson
No, no, no, no.
Even without knowing the – I can – I could find out what latitude it is, and it turns out it corresponds with where he was.
It's the phase of the moon and the location of Venus at that angle relative to the horizon.
You can nail that.
And so I got it for June 21st, 1889. Turns out that is the year he painted, and he was in northern...
I forgot where he was, north of France somewhere.
And...
So I can recreate that.
So there's some basics of it that are factual.
The rest, clearly, the sky doesn't have curlicues in it.
And I'm told where he painted this, there is no town.
So he made up a lot of stuff that's in this picture.
But that's not what he saw, but it's what he felt.
I value how people feel.
That is the full dimensionality of what it is to be human.
A world of just logic?
I don't want that.
joe rogan
I'm not necessarily saying the world would just be logic.
One of the things that makes people interesting is that we're so complex.
In communicating with people, there's so many layers and depths.
So many people are so different and you find these unique personalities and it adds flavor to your life.
neil degrasse tyson
And by the way, the future of gene editing, if we want everybody to be a certain way, that takes away the diversity of human behavior.
joe rogan
That's what I think aliens are.
That's why they all look the same.
They all get the big heads and the big eyes and the little tiny bodies.
That's where we're going.
neil degrasse tyson
I want to get an alien that's jacked.
unidentified
Right?
joe rogan
Like The Rock.
neil degrasse tyson
Comes down up to the thing.
Alright, who's first?
joe rogan
Yeah, The Rock as an alien.
Imagine if all aliens were built like The Rock.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, I think the thinking is that they're in the future and they're advanced, and they don't need their body to be advanced, but their brain is advanced.
joe rogan
Well, and also they're using telekinesis, and they probably have the 50th version of Elon's Neuralink installed.
I'm not dismissing the beautiful things about people, whether it's our artistic creations or just communicating with people.
The fact that we're so complicated and there's so many different layers of emotions and the history of your own life that you're adding into it.
There's a lot of cool things about being a person.
But what's not cool is deception.
neil degrasse tyson
If you got rid of deception, could you have novelists?
Everything in a novel is a lie.
joe rogan
Yes, but it's creative.
It's not a lie.
It's a lie.
Steven Spielberg is not pretending.
neil degrasse tyson
I invented somebody that does not exist.
I had to make decisions.
joe rogan
It's very different.
It's creation.
There's a very different thing going on.
Artistic creation is very different than a lie.
neil degrasse tyson
So you have to have, in addition to your lie meter, You have to judge whether someone is being creative in the thing they're telling you that's not true.
joe rogan
Well, if they say it's a nonfiction book, then they're lying, right?
If it's a fiction book, then they're being creative.
If someone's being deceptive in a nonfiction book, that's a bad person.
But if someone is writing something like Salem's Lot from Stephen King, this crazy story about a town that gets taken over by vampires, that's just fun.
neil degrasse tyson
So he's not lying?
joe rogan
No.
He's a creative person.
He has imagination.
Imagination will still exist.
neil degrasse tyson
I just worry about the unintended consequences of restricting people's capacity to deceive.
Is there some fallout from that that we don't anticipate?
joe rogan
I think there's a fallout from everything, right?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, there is.
joe rogan
Yeah, every time we create pesticide, we fuck someone's endocrine system up, right?
There's always something that goes wrong.
neil degrasse tyson
Depends on what the pesticide's made of.
joe rogan
Right, but you know what I'm saying.
There's a lot of unintended consequences to a lot of things that we do that are ultimately done for good but turn out to be really bad.
neil degrasse tyson
Right.
joe rogan
That could be the case.
neil degrasse tyson
By the way, and there's also the reverse.
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
Things that were done for bad that turn out to be good.
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
That's where wisdom comes in.
joe rogan
Hmm, yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
So here's another, I don't want to miss the opportunity of discussing questions that have no answers.
So make sure we have time for that.
joe rogan
Okay.
Yeah, some of them don't have answers, right?
neil degrasse tyson
Because some questions don't have meaning, even in the questions themselves.
joe rogan
Give me an example.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, no, but I jumped ahead.
I wanted you to finish your point.
joe rogan
Oh, but this is a good one.
I like where you're going.
I just think that if technology, to go back to it, and we'll come back to the questions, if technology continues to advance in the direction that it's going, it seems to me...
That one of the things that's happening is the distance between us and information is getting smaller and smaller.
Our access to information is getting greater and greater.
And that as this time goes on, it's going to be more integrated into who you are as a person, whether it's through Elon's creation or someone else's creation.
Once that happens, I could envision A language that's being used through which we can communicate with each other that Elon was discussing when he said you're going to be able to communicate without using words.
That once that happens, you're going to be able, whether it's 100 years from now or 1,000 years from now, whatever it is, You're going to be able to display or to communicate with pure intent.
You're going to be able to do things without our ability to use personality and charisma and language and to be more articulate and impressive in the way you talk, to have a different impact on the way a person receives your thoughts.
Instead, it'll be purely your intent and your thought.
Purely your thought process.
neil degrasse tyson
Allow me to ask, suppose that is possible.
Why would you want to do that?
joe rogan
Why wouldn't you want to be living in a tree throwing poop at the other chimps?
Those are the good old days.
The good old days when we were in the trees and we didn't have fire.
We had to, like, catch our rats and eat them alive.
neil degrasse tyson
In fact, we got very good at throwing things, even if it started with poop.
We were the best throwers of any species there ever was.
Ever.
joe rogan
And they think that might have contributed to us becoming what we are.
neil degrasse tyson
Ever.
So, I'm...
Just because we can extrapolate to a thing doesn't mean that's the thing that's going to happen.
True.
So I'm old enough to remember the 1950s and 60s.
People were imagining the future, the home of the future.
Well, technology was automating things.
So everything was a button.
So the home of the future was just a button.
And then people imagine that the future evolution of humans, we grow a big index finger because you have to be pushing buttons all the time.
And now, no, we don't have buttons all over the house.
Not really, okay?
That's not the thing.
Well, we have the remote control.
I guess that's buttons, but the button can do a thousand different things, right?
Depending on how it's programmed.
So there are things that...
Take a look at computing.
There was an era where the bigger a computer was, the more powerful it was.
Let's go right up to 1968, 2001, A Space Odyssey.
This is imagining a world in 2001. Oh, computers will be really big then.
There's that one big computer in the center of the ship.
No one imagined that you'd have something more powerful than that on your hip.
No one thought that way.
People imagined the future where we have motorized sidewalks and monorails and everything, and what we didn't get was we thought energy would cost nothing.
So we imagined a world with transportation, motion, and actions that all require energy to enable.
And those worlds came out of the heads of people who extrapolated forward, and they did not understand.
That the real action was in information.
Information is what became cheap, not energy.
And when information becomes cheap, I have the world at my fingertips.
Even though I still have to walk down the sidewalk and it's not a motorized pathway.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's the thing they never saw coming in any of those.
neil degrasse tyson
Didn't see it coming.
joe rogan
They didn't see the internet coming.
neil degrasse tyson
Information would be cheap.
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
And so I'm not one to just take what's going on now and extrapolate it and say everyone is going to be living that differently.
Because other things come in from the side that you don't anticipate.
And when they come in from the side, it is not an extrapolation of what you're doing now.
It is something you didn't even imagine because an innovative, creative person looks to the left, looks to the right, and says, I can combine these into something that's completely new that no one even imagined.
So that's how the future unfolds.
So extrapolating, you get the first couple of years correct.
Five years, ten years out, you are completely off.
And you said 500 years, 1,000 years?
Let's shorten that a little bit.
Let's say 30 years.
You say, no, that's not much.
We need more time than that.
Ask yourself.
Let's go back to 1960. We didn't have a spaceship.
United States did not have a rocket to carry people that wouldn't blow up on the launch pad.
Okay?
We weren't there yet.
Thirty years later, it's 1990, people have laptop computers, and we've been to the moon six times over.
Thirty years.
So, when I think today to thirty years from now, I'm saying I don't know that I can predict anything, but there's some things that I know are going to happen in the next few years.
Self-driving cars, it's going to take over like that.
Why?
Because you replace your car.
Half the people replace the car every five years.
So in five years, if I have a self-driving car and all the HOV lanes are now reserved only for self-driving cars, that's the next car you're going to drive.
joe rogan
Do you drive one?
Do you drive a Tesla?
neil degrasse tyson
I have a Tesla.
I have a Tesla.
joe rogan
Do you ever do the self-driving thing?
neil degrasse tyson
Never.
joe rogan
It's awesome.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, no, I don't...
joe rogan
It scares me, but I hit that little button.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, I'm not ready for it.
And that's a quiz.
I even paid a couple of dollars, you know, the extra dollars to get that.
I'm not ready for it yet, but...
joe rogan
Don't be scared.
Jamie, do you use it?
neil degrasse tyson
Sometimes.
Yeah, no, I'm not ready for that.
joe rogan
Most of the time I don't, though, honestly.
neil degrasse tyson
But I'm ready culturally for it.
Yes, it'll save 30,000 lives a year.
And no one's going to drive home drunk.
And a self-driving car, when it changes lanes, it tells the other self-driving cars, I'm going to change lane.
It parts the traffic for it.
And it then opens into a lane.
Okay?
And it can go 90 miles an hour separated by five feet in front and back of the car.
joe rogan
Let's not do that.
neil degrasse tyson
No, because you're thinking of your own reflexes and not that.
joe rogan
I'm thinking of things going wrong.
Every now and then you see one that hits like a tire iron that's in the middle of the road.
neil degrasse tyson
That could happen.
However, another car would have seen it.
I'm in my Tesla.
I come up to a road.
The Tesla tells me on the screen, changing suspension because of a bumpy road ahead.
I say, how's it known as a bumpy road ahead?
There's a clearinghouse of this information.
Some other Tesla went on that road and figured that out.
My Tesla went on that road before it and figured it out, okay?
So, the shared information Becomes hugely valuable.
And yeah, you might have the tire iron in the road and so 5,000 people a year die rather than 35,000 people.
We got to wrap our heads around that one this time around.
My analogy to this is we used horses for thousands of years.
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
Now you go from 1910 to 1930. 1930 you can't give away a horse.
Not in urban areas, no.
joe rogan
Isn't that crazy?
neil degrasse tyson
Within 20 years, we went from horses and an entire industry that supported the horses, the buggy whips, the carriages, the stables, the food, the blacksmiths, an entire industry vanishes within two decades, basically within two decades.
And you're going to tell me when are automatic cars coming?
We already have them and we just, you know, when it's ready to go down, it's going down.
My kids are 20 and 24. They don't want to know how to drive.
They can't wait until the self-driving car.
They want nothing to do with it.
And by the way, you might say, but how about people who love to drive?
They're not going to give up their Camaro or whatever it is that they love.
joe rogan
You say that mockingly.
I don't like it.
neil degrasse tyson
No, I said that.
I listed that first.
I said, let me not say the Corvette because I think there are more Camaros out there than Corvettes.
I'm appealing to Corvettes.
So anyway, you might like to drive your Mustang GT. Okay, fine.
joe rogan
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
Then we build tracks for you.
joe rogan
Oh God.
neil degrasse tyson
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
There are people today who like riding horses.
They don't do it in the street.
You go to the stables and you can jump and you can ride the countryside.
joe rogan
What kind of world are we making, Neil deGrasse Tyson?
neil degrasse tyson
I'm saying you don't have to give up your car.
unidentified
Oh my God.
neil degrasse tyson
In order to have everybody, there'll be car tracks.
joe rogan
And then the government's just gonna shut down your car and pull you out.
Just gonna shut down the highway because everything's gonna be automated and they're gonna need access to all the cars just in case there's a high-speed chase.
neil degrasse tyson
The government built the freaking highway.
joe rogan
Did they though?
neil degrasse tyson
Yes, they did.
joe rogan
I don't think they did.
neil degrasse tyson
It's called the Eisenhower Interstate System, and it cost $100 billion, and it was a military project.
joe rogan
So they have the right to shut your car down?
Is that what you're saying?
Are you opting out?
neil degrasse tyson
You can make your own damn road and do what you want on it.
joe rogan
What if it's like iPhones, where you can opt out of sharing your information with advertisers?
neil degrasse tyson
You want to opt out of what?
joe rogan
The government being able to shut down your car?
neil degrasse tyson
You don't have a right to drive in the HOV land.
That's not in the Constitution.
joe rogan
Yeah, we're not talking about the HOV lane.
They don't even have those out here.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, they don't?
Well, you have the pay routes.
If the government controls, if laws control one lane versus another, that's the first lane to go to self-driving, for sure.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
neil degrasse tyson
Plus, self-driving cars that you don't own, that you just sort of use, that reduces the number of cars in the road by, what, a factor of 10?
joe rogan
Yes.
I just worry about...
neil degrasse tyson
You probably own a drill, a hand drill.
joe rogan
Yeah, I got a drill.
neil degrasse tyson
How many total minutes in a year do you use that hand drill?
joe rogan
I don't use it ever.
neil degrasse tyson
Fine.
So, you spent money on something that you hardly use, and even if you did use it, it's for minutes.
Okay?
So, you get on the horn, you go to Home Depot, get on the line, say, I need a hand drill with this bit, and then a drone drops it off that afternoon, and you use it, and then it takes it back.
joe rogan
Mmm.
neil degrasse tyson
You don't need a garage.
You don't need a parking spot.
You don't need anything.
It's shared commodity.
joe rogan
It sounds like a good deal for Jeff Bezos.
He's probably real excited.
He'll be delivering you drills.
neil degrasse tyson
I think he's buying roof rights for drone landings.
unidentified
Really?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Of course he is.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
That's what I heard.
It's a rumor.
joe rogan
When you see a guy that's that wealthy, do you ever ponder what makes a person like that continue to work every day?
neil degrasse tyson
That is the actual fact of it, right?
People like that, it's a different species, right?
It's someone who has an idea and they want to execute the idea.
And he was at it when no one thought it was fashionable.
Amazon used to be just a bookstore.
joe rogan
Yeah, I remember how dumb it was.
I was mocking it.
Like, who the fuck's going to buy books on the internet?
neil degrasse tyson
Get out of here, dude.
But you can't even browse it.
You can't smell it.
That was the dumbest idea ever.
Right?
So is he driven?
Is he saying, no, I want to be a hundred billionaire?
No.
He's got an idea.
He's got a business idea.
He wants to gain wealth, of course, as any business person does.
But the people who are actually driven are driven by forces that are not money.
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
As Elon famously said, you know, how do you make a small fortune in rockets?
Start with a large fortune.
joe rogan
But it's just these people that are doing this insane innovation like him, like trying to deliver things with drones and trying to spread the business further and further and further.
It's like you always wonder, like, what is the motivation?
Like, what keeps you doing this?
neil degrasse tyson
I can tell you this, you know, did I imagine 10 years ago that when I ordered something on the internet, I would be disappointed if it didn't come tomorrow?
joe rogan
Or today.
neil degrasse tyson
Or this afternoon.
joe rogan
Amazon has their own trucks now.
neil degrasse tyson
Right.
joe rogan
They can deliver it to you today.
neil degrasse tyson
Right, right.
Gone are the days.
Oh, it'll get there in two weeks and three weeks.
Like, what's wrong with you?
joe rogan
No, tomorrow.
neil degrasse tyson
Tomorrow.
I need this now.
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
And even if I don't need it, I want it now.
joe rogan
Yeah, if I see it like the toothpaste is going to come on Friday, I'm like, today's Tuesday.
Why the fuck do I have to wait till Friday?
Friday for toothpaste.
Come, let's go.
Let's go.
neil degrasse tyson
So Jeff Bezos did that to you.
joe rogan
I know, it's amazing.
neil degrasse tyson
You've been brainwashed by the man.
joe rogan
It's amazing.
But people like that do push innovation in that- That's why I don't get in the air.
neil degrasse tyson
I'd let them go.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Well, I'm just joking around about him motivating, his motivation.
I mean, I saw his new yacht.
I think that's where the motivation is.
Those are expensive.
neil degrasse tyson
Yes.
joe rogan
You need 150 billion bucks if you want to have a couple of those.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
Yachts are a whole other thing.
joe rogan
But he's got like a city.
It's like a city that floats around.
Have you seen it?
neil degrasse tyson
No, but I've been on other yachts of highly wealthy people.
joe rogan
Is it preposterous?
I've never been.
neil degrasse tyson
I don't judge it, but I... I do.
joe rogan
I'll judge for you.
neil degrasse tyson
I was on a yacht.
joe rogan
Describe it to me.
I'll tell you why it's stupid.
neil degrasse tyson
I was on Charles Simone's yacht.
He's one of the Microsoft billionaires.
And there's a staff there, and I like talking to the staff.
And I said, oh, you know, there are people cleaning, and there's a sailor type or whatever that role is in the thing there.
And I say, oh, so where do you live?
And he says, here.
I said, oh, in New York, because it was important in New York.
No.
Here.
On the yacht.
And I said, oh, well, when you're not on the yacht, weird.
Oh, I'm from Italy.
But I live on the yacht.
I said, how do you get your mail?
They said, well, when I get back to Italy, I'll pick it up there, but I live on...
And so the idea that you are so wealthy, you can buy people and put them in this floating place...
And they call that their home.
I had to wrap my head around that.
I couldn't...
That was just a little...
unidentified
That's heavy.
neil degrasse tyson
That was just a little weird to me.
joe rogan
But it makes sense.
If you have, like, some 500-foot-long boat...
neil degrasse tyson
It's a permanent staff.
joe rogan
You have to have people there all the time, because things are probably always breaking.
neil degrasse tyson
Yep, yep, yep.
And I went into the pantry, and you can see the multiple refrigerators and the wine cellar and the...
joe rogan
It's like a giant restaurant slash apartment building.
neil degrasse tyson
Correct.
Correct.
And he's got a chopper on the top.
joe rogan
Let me see what Jeff Bezos looks like.
jamie vernon
Someone I saw has its own yacht.
unidentified
The yacht has a yacht.
joe rogan
Well, this guy, the billionaire, what was his name?
neil degrasse tyson
Charles Simone.
joe rogan
Go to that guy.
jamie vernon
Actually, it is Bezos' yacht.
joe rogan
Oh, let's see it.
neil degrasse tyson
Bezos' yacht has a yacht?
joe rogan
Has a separate yacht.
Look at that fellow.
neil degrasse tyson
Why does every picture come up with his bald head right there?
joe rogan
Looking happy.
Looking so happy.
417 foot super yacht that's so massive, it has its own support yacht.
That doesn't include the cost.
A helipad, estimated cost, not including the boat, support boat, is $500 million.
That is wild.
Yeah, that's lunch money.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, that's one three hundredth of his wealth.
joe rogan
He made $75 billion in 2020 alone.
neil degrasse tyson
During COVID. Yeah.
joe rogan
Insane.
neil degrasse tyson
Project 721. Because he kept delivering while everyone else says we can't deliver.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So that's his boat.
Let me see that thing.
unidentified
Woo!
joe rogan
Good lord.
unidentified
Wow.
That's not it.
joe rogan
That's it.
That's it?
unidentified
This is it.
jamie vernon
That was something else called Project Valkyrie or something it said.
joe rogan
Oh, some other thing.
neil degrasse tyson
That yacht, that doesn't look all that impressive.
unidentified
I got a yacht that big.
joe rogan
Look at the size of that thing.
I mean, it's basically...
neil degrasse tyson
You can have a great star party on the deck of that.
joe rogan
Oh, for sure, right?
If you get out in the middle of the ocean?
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, yeah, that'd be cool.
joe rogan
That's the move, isn't it?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, okay.
When I get my first hundred billion, I'll invite you.
joe rogan
Please, I'll go.
neil degrasse tyson
We'll do a few shows from there.
joe rogan
I'll do whatever you want.
We'll do shows.
neil degrasse tyson
So I tried to quantify.
joe rogan
What is that, Jamie?
That's where they made it, I believe.
Oh, wow.
They built it in a giant warehouse on the water.
jamie vernon
And then you drop it in the water, I think.
joe rogan
Whoa.
jamie vernon
Slide it in there.
joe rogan
What a weird market.
The market for half-billion-dollar yachts.
neil degrasse tyson
Who would have thought there even was such a market?
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
I just want to try to find my tweet.
Can you dig up a tweet?
Sure.
Do you search tweets?
Can you do it?
Just tweet my handle and Bezos.
And I quantified his wealth at $100 billion.
And I want you to see this calculation that I did.
joe rogan
Well, what's crazy is that's what he made basically last year, right?
We said he made 70-something billion last year?
neil degrasse tyson
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
A year.
In 2008. Okay.
There it is.
Okay, not that anybody asked, but laid end to end, Jeff Bezos' $200 billion can encircle Earth 180 times, then reach the moon and back 30 times, and with what's left over, make a stack 10 kilometers high.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
neil degrasse tyson
With what's left over.
joe rogan
That's all $1 bills.
neil degrasse tyson
Sorry, those are $1 bills.
That's what I pictured there, the $1 bill in the tweet.
It was a reality check on how much money that is, when you can do amazing space things with it, and then you have leftover money.
joe rogan
What's interesting is he's not slowing down, right?
And he seems relatively healthy.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, he's fit.
Works out a lot.
He's gotten jacked.
neil degrasse tyson
Got jacked in a few of those photos.
unidentified
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
That's fine.
joe rogan
So he's probably going to keep going for decades.
neil degrasse tyson
Maybe he's found the serum for infinite life.
joe rogan
Yeah, billions of dollars.
I mean, that's...
neil degrasse tyson
By the way, the world has always been influenced by billionaires.
So this is not a special time.
joe rogan
And sometimes with terrible results, right?
neil degrasse tyson
That's right.
That's right.
So I don't...
joe rogan
William Randolph Hearst.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, all of them.
Just count them up.
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
Count them up.
Ben Franklin was pretty wealthy in his day as well.
joe rogan
Was he really?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
Yeah.
joe rogan
And he still flew that kite by himself?
What a wild man.
He didn't even hire somebody?
Hey, I got an idea, but this might suck.
neil degrasse tyson
You might die.
You might get electrocuted, but let's do it.
Yeah, if YouTube was around then, you'd see him doing that experiment on YouTube.
joe rogan
I wonder if it really happened.
Like, you know, the whole George Washington and the cherry tree.
That's probably bullshit.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, but I think people want legends.
joe rogan
Of course.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Of course.
neil degrasse tyson
They help give meaning to events in your life.
joe rogan
When you got a guy like Bezos, though, that is at the helm of this intense empire and also is, in many ways, like Elon, fascinated with technological growth, right?
He's got this deep, what is this, blue sky, blue origin?
neil degrasse tyson
Blue origin.
joe rogan
Blue Origin.
So he has his own rocket ship program.
He's got his own...
I think it's Evion?
neil degrasse tyson
Plus, people worry that all the billionaires are building rockets to get to Mars, and they wonder, are they just going to leave us all here on Earth?
joe rogan
What is it, Revion?
He's got an electric car company as well that they're heavily invested in.
So there's many things that are similar, that they're doing these kind of...
You know, fascinating, groundbreaking, innovative business practices.
neil degrasse tyson
Let him do it.
joe rogan
Yeah, fuck yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, I'm all in.
I'm just watching.
I'm just like, it's fascinating, this cat.
You know?
neil degrasse tyson
So, can we talk about questions?
unidentified
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
Want me to do that?
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
That's my...
joe rogan
Questions that have no answers.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, that's my segue, my awkward segue to the book I just published.
joe rogan
Ah.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay?
Called Cosmic Queries.
unidentified
Oh.
neil degrasse tyson
It's a book that is not based on answers that we have.
It's based on questions that we've posed.
And some questions have really good answers and we're good.
Others, we're still poking around and we think we're on the tail of it.
And other questions, we don't even know if it's the right question.
So it's a celebration of human curiosity at its deepest level.
With whole sections, one of them is, how did it all begin?
What's it all made of?
Are we alone in the universe?
Very relevant to now.
Also, how will it all end?
And when you're on the bleeding frontier of science, you don't always know if the question you ask is even valid.
This idea where every question is equal.
No, that's not true.
joe rogan
That's not true.
neil degrasse tyson
It's just not.
joe rogan
Trust me, I've asked a lot of stupid questions.
neil degrasse tyson
No, I'm not saying the question.
But when you're on the frontier, you just don't know.
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
So I can give an absurd example.
unidentified
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
Suppose you posed a question.
You say to yourself, I want to design an experiment that will visit the moon and test what kind of cheese the moon is made out of.
So you have special equipment.
Is it goat cheese?
Is it brie?
Roquefort?
And then you get there and it's made out of silicates.
The question had no meaning.
Even though nouns and verbs were in the right place and it had a question mark and you were able to design an experiment, the question had no meaning in that realm.
Let me get a more philosophical one.
Visit Santa Claus.
Okay?
Santa Claus is on the North Pole.
And you say, Santa, which way is north?
And every direction Santa points is due south.
Because on the North Pole, the question, which way is north, has no meaning.
You can't even go east.
joe rogan
Everywhere you point is south.
neil degrasse tyson
Correct.
So on the grid that we've all agreed that we use to establish coordinates of Earth...
Santa Claus can only go south.
The question, which way is north, has no meaning.
So these are clear to us.
joe rogan
That's heavy.
neil degrasse tyson
These are clear to us that this is the case.
There are other questions where you know not to ask because you just know not to ask.
We live on a spherical earth, and I say to you, how far do you have to walk before you fall off...
Earth's surface.
You know to not even ask that.
I am assuming you're not a flat earther.
You know not to ask that because the Earth's surface curves back on itself.
The question has no meaning on a curved surface.
But you thought you were proud of yourself for even coming up with the question.
Now you design a whole research project to answer that question and you find out You shouldn't have asked the question to begin with, but you didn't know in advance necessarily.
Here's another one.
About Pinocchio.
Let's visit Pinocchio's universe.
Okay?
joe rogan
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
All right.
And Pinocchio's there.
And Pinocchio says, my nose is about to grow.
What happens next?
joe rogan
He has to tell a lie.
neil degrasse tyson
Tell me what happens to his nose.
joe rogan
It grows when he lies.
neil degrasse tyson
He just said, my nose is about to grow, and if it grows, that meant he was telling the truth.
joe rogan
No, it means he's about to tell a lie.
neil degrasse tyson
That's all he says is, my nose is about to grow.
joe rogan
Right, but maybe he keeps talking.
So like someone says, do I look fat in this outfit?
He says, my nose is about to grow.
You look great.
neil degrasse tyson
Alright, let's tighten it up then.
joe rogan
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
Pinocchio says, my nose is growing.
So what's his nose doing?
joe rogan
Well, I would assume he just got done lying, so his nose is probably growing.
neil degrasse tyson
No, because he's lying.
He just told the truth, if his nose is growing.
joe rogan
What if he lied, and then his nose grows because he lied?
What if he says, my nose is growing because his nose isn't growing, but because he lied about his nose growing, his nose grows?
neil degrasse tyson
No, that's not how it works.
joe rogan
Bro, I just cracked it.
neil degrasse tyson
No!
joe rogan
Didn't I just crack it?
I think I just cracked it.
neil degrasse tyson
I'm glad you made sense to yourself in that sequence of sentences.
joe rogan
No, I did make sense.
If Pinocchio's nose was not growing and he said, my nose is growing, that would be a lie, then his nose would grow.
neil degrasse tyson
Correct.
Oh!
No, so if his nose is not growing...
When he says my nose is growing...
joe rogan
It's a lie.
neil degrasse tyson
He's lying, which means his nose should grow.
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay?
What I'm saying is that Pinocchio cannot interact with his nose in any truthful way because the world of rules associated with his universe prevents it.
joe rogan
I see what you're saying.
So in his universe, it has to be that he's deceiving someone and his nose involuntarily grows.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, but that's not how that works in his universe.
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
In his universe, if he tells a lie, his nose grows.
If he tells the truth, his nose doesn't grow.
Right.
If he says, my nose is growing, and it's not growing...
joe rogan
He's lying.
neil degrasse tyson
He's lying, and his nose should grow.
Right?
So, my only point there is, the Pinocchio universe and the rules that apply within it...
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
Prevent that sentence from having any meaning at all.
joe rogan
Got it.
neil degrasse tyson
In the same way, Santa Claus, which way is north?
Has no meaning.
joe rogan
Got it.
neil degrasse tyson
So now we ask, what was around before the universe began?
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
I do not know if that's an authentic question.
joe rogan
Do we have an idea about the birth and death of the universe based on our own biological limitations?
Not that we're not measuring, not that there's not a keen understanding of the radio frequency from the Big Bang, but just the idea.
Do we put a limitation?
Do we think of the idea of the universe beginning or ending based on our own idea of life and death that these things must apply?
neil degrasse tyson
No, because until 1930s, we had no idea the universe would have a beginning.
It was assumed other than biblical account.
Scientifically, the universe just simply always was.
There was no evidence for that, but we had no reason to think any other way about it.
And so we didn't force the universe to have a beginning because that felt good to us.
You're not going to do that unless you have authentic justification for it.
So just no one really talked about it.
I have books from that period.
There is no chapter on cosmology.
It ends with the starry skies of the night, starting with the discussion of the planets.
And it doesn't even go there because it doesn't know to go there until you have data forcing the question.
joe rogan
There wasn't enough information.
neil degrasse tyson
Correct.
And then we say, oh my gosh, the universe is expanding, discovered by Hubble in 1929. That means it's bigger today than it was yesterday.
It's bigger yesterday than it was the day before.
Let's run the clock back.
joe rogan
What about...
neil degrasse tyson
Could all the universe have been in the same place at the same time?
That meant it might have had a beginning.
That's what started...
joe rogan
Say that again?
neil degrasse tyson
If we're expanding, run the clock back, we were smaller in the past.
Could the whole universe have been in the same place at the same time at some distant point?
If it was, that means the universe had a beginning.
That's when the whole conversation began about the universe having a beginning.
Had nothing to do with the fact that we're born and we live out our lives and die.
Had nothing to do with that.
So, now, we have a beginning, but what was around before the beginning?
That's an important and interesting question.
I don't know I should say that differently.
That is a question, an English language sentence question.
I do not know if that question has any more or less meaning than asking Santa Claus which way is north.
joe rogan
When we look at the Big Bang and we look at the fact that the universe is expanding and they know that there was some sort of an event, by measuring, how exactly do they measure the radio frequencies that come from the Big Bang?
Like, what's the signal?
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, so it's microwave.
It's microwave.
And it's really, it's not as deep as you might want to think it is.
Okay?
So, do you realize you can't see through the sun?
The sun is not transparent to visible light.
Because visible light, when it enters the sun, the sun is made of plasma, which is a gas where electrons have been ripped off, ripped into the soup.
So you have free-moving electrons and atoms, and it's a soup.
The electrons are not part of the atoms.
The consequence of that is light interacts heavily with free electrons.
So, you try to move light through a plasma, and the light sees an electron.
It careens off of it.
And it does not travel in a straight line.
It bounces and careens and scatters.
And so, by the time the light comes out the other side, you lost all hope of any information about what was on the other side of the star, or on the other side of that plasma.
Okay.
So, the early universe was very hot.
You can calculate what those temperatures must have been.
So hot that all atoms are ionized and the whole universe is plasma.
So light is just bouncing around within the universe.
In fact, a lot of visible light is doing this.
Then the universe expands and cools.
The electrons combine with the atoms.
All of a sudden the beam of light is no longer batted to and fro by these free electrons.
And you reach a point where the universe clears and it becomes transparent to the passage of light.
In that moment, all the light that was contained in that fireball now moves free across the universe.
That light For the last 14 billion years has been expanding with the expanding universe and the energy of the visible light is now microwaves.
You point a microwave telescope in any direction, it is bathed in microwaves from that event.
unidentified
Whoa.
joe rogan
Now when you're measuring something that is the estimated date of the Big Bang is 13.8 billion years?
neil degrasse tyson
Billion years ago, right.
Is that- October 3rd.
joe rogan
Is that the amount that they can measure or is there a potential further point that can't be measured?
neil degrasse tyson
So we see objects that sent their light to us basically 14 billion years ago.
How about objects farther away than that?
There are surely objects farther away, but the universe isn't old enough yet for its light to reach us.
joe rogan
Whoa.
So it's possible that things are far, far more distant.
neil degrasse tyson
We could be living in an infinite universe, but all we have access to is our little bubble.
And so every year goes by...
joe rogan
We got a little more data.
neil degrasse tyson
The bubble gets one light year larger.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
neil degrasse tyson
And we see a little bit more of whatever universe is out there.
Now, here's what makes it like lose sleep deep.
Okay?
You ready?
unidentified
Oh, boy.
joe rogan
I love these.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
So how is it we can see the birth of the universe?
That already happened.
It's because it takes light time to travel.
We look at 13.8...
A billion light years ago, we are seeing galaxies being born.
Okay.
Wait a billion years.
Now, these galaxies are a billion years older.
They're no longer being born.
In fact, they're not giving us this light that I was telling you about that became microwaves.
But wait a minute.
The universe is now 15 billion years old.
I can now see Objects that have given their light to me from 15 billion years ago, they are now being born.
I'm seeing them being born.
So as long as there is a universe out there, and as long as the whole universe had the same birth date, which all evidence points to, I will always see evidence of the Big Bang.
Because that information is always fresh to us From a distance whose light only just now reached us.
So, what you're gonna look for is the day when this expanding horizon washes over nothing.
If this expanding horizon moves and there's no galaxies there, and there's nothing, then all the information about the formation of the universe goes away.
And the Big Bang no longer has anybody telling us it is going through a Big Bang.
That would be the edge of the known matter content of the universe.
joe rogan
When scientists study...
This information and they look back at this time period of 13.8 billion years and they hypothesize or they try to come up with theories about how far it could go back beyond that.
How do they do that?
neil degrasse tyson
No, the birth date is the same for this entire universe.
Even the part of the universe we can't see.
joe rogan
So even the part of the universe we can't see.
neil degrasse tyson
We all have the same birth date.
joe rogan
No matter what, it's 13.8 billion years.
neil degrasse tyson
Correct.
joe rogan
Now, what about the idea that things expand and contract and that it ultimately will all come back together?
neil degrasse tyson
It's allowed in the equations, but the data has never supported that.
And all data support a one-way expansion.
Not only that, the discovery of dark energy It's accelerating the expansion.
There's a whole section of the book on how it'll all end and you get really speculative.
It's like, okay, given what's happening now and given what we know, here's what we think.
If the accelerated expansion goes unchecked, it will overcome all the forces that are currently binding everything you know and love.
joe rogan
Like gravity?
neil degrasse tyson
Everything.
Yes, it'll overcome gravity.
So the galaxies will no longer be able to hold together because the expansion of the universe is now manifesting at a local level rather than on a much larger level.
So galaxies start getting stretched apart.
And then the planets orbiting stars start getting stretched apart.
And then the molecules start getting broken apart.
And then the atoms themselves.
And then, in the limit, this stretching reaches the very pixels that comprise the fabric of space and time.
It's called the Planck length.
That is the very structure of what comprises everything we know in the universe.
And so the expansion will ultimately hit that.
And we do not know.
We don't know what the consequence of that.
You know what we call it?
It's called the Big Rip.
What happens when you stretch fabric?
There's a point where it doesn't stretch anymore.
And it rips.
That's in between 20 and 22 billion years from now.
If the cosmic acceleration goes unchecked, the world will end in a big rip.
Wow.
joe rogan
What could possibly check it?
neil degrasse tyson
Not with a bang, but with a whipper.
joe rogan
Now, the idea of something, of it being unchecked, like what could potentially cause it to be checked?
neil degrasse tyson
So, we don't know.
We don't know.
There could be some other thing that lands in the lab.
Wait, just one quick.
Can I run to the bathroom?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
This is not live, right?
joe rogan
No, no, we'll be fine.
neil degrasse tyson
I'll be right back to it real quick.
joe rogan
Me and Jamie would talk shit about you while you're going.
Take a left.
Dude.
I know 20 billion years doesn't sound like...
I mean, it sounds like you don't have to worry about it.
But doesn't that, like, the idea that the universe is gone in 20 billion years, that freaks me out.
It shouldn't.
I don't have much time left, personally.
But the idea that there'll be no universe at all to speak of what we're looking at, it'll all be molecules broken down.
jamie vernon
Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to even wrap my head around it.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, it's why it's so important for people like that to be out there that have these things that they can pose, these questions and these scenarios they could describe, where your mind is like, wait, what?
And then what happens?
No one knows.
But we have this, like, extreme desire to know what happens next.
Like, what happens?
What happens when I die?
What happens if Austin has five million people?
What happens if they don't get rid of the tents?
What happens if, you know what I mean?
Like, there's always a what happens if.
What happens if there's no more matter in the universe that gets broken down to pixels?
First of all, I thought pixels were just a visual representation of things on phones and screens and laptops and shit.
Did you even know that a pixel was a unit of measurement of the fabric of the universe?
Definitely not.
jamie vernon
Proof simulation theory, it sounds like.
joe rogan
Yeah, right?
If you get further and further out, if you had to bet all your money, if you had, again, if you had one side yes, one side no, For simulation theory.
No worries.
unidentified
Yes.
If I'm betting?
joe rogan
Yes.
Yes.
unidentified
If I'm betting UFOs?
No.
joe rogan
No?
Wow.
Heavy.
Jamie just blew my mind.
He doesn't believe in UFOs.
He does believe in simulation theory.
unidentified
I was taking his bet earlier.
I would bet that.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
unidentified
I bet it's something.
joe rogan
I bet with UFOs, I bet they're from another planet.
And I think they're probes.
That's what I think.
unidentified
I think they're probes.
joe rogan
You think that from here?
neil degrasse tyson
That means we don't get to touch the aliens.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't think they're interested in touching us.
I think they think we're too volatile.
We're crazy.
We shoot each other all the time.
neil degrasse tyson
So let me tell you about the big rip.
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
So it's terrifying.
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
Because fabric, you stretch it to a point and it rips.
So that's just the end of the end of the end with that happening.
If something puts it in check, then we keep expanding.
And...
What happens is all stars die, and the proton decays, and we're left with an entire universe of just sort of base particles where nothing happens because there's no source of energy left.
And that's a less interesting fate than a big rip.
But what's for me interesting is – and by the way, all this is in the last chapter.
We talk about how it might all end.
What for me is interesting is the levels of multiverses that might exist.
So in our universe, there are likely other bubbles that are also expanding.
And we're just one bubble among them.
And this is the sort of traditional multiverse that people think about.
And there may be an infinite number of these dotted into the total universe.
joe rogan
Can I pause you right here?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
joe rogan
So the idea is that our universe is infinite.
neil degrasse tyson
Possibly, yes.
joe rogan
The bubble that we exist in may be infinite?
neil degrasse tyson
No.
Our bubble is one bubble within an infinite universe, and that infinite universe contains an infinite number of other bubbles, correct.
joe rogan
But our bubble is essentially, as we can measure it, 13.8 billion light years across.
neil degrasse tyson
No, it's bigger than that.
joe rogan
Bigger than that.
neil degrasse tyson
It's just that it's been 13.8 billion years travel time for the light.
But over that time, the universe has expanded.
So we have a diameter of like 100 billion light years across.
joe rogan
And how do they estimate that?
neil degrasse tyson
Because you know the rate that you're expanding.
So that object sent us its light 14.8 billion years ago.
The light's been traveling that long.
Well, what has the universe been doing for 14.8 billion years?
unidentified
They're expanding.
neil degrasse tyson
It's been expanding.
So that actual object is much farther away from us than 14 billion light years away.
That's a point of confusion for many people.
It's because in my field we're kind of loose about it.
We say 14 billion light years to the edge.
Well, no, it's 14 billion years the time the light has been traveling from the edge.
joe rogan
And where did the concept of these bubbles come from?
The idea that each one of these little universes, not little, obviously, but each one of these universes exists in some sort of a realm.
neil degrasse tyson
It's a great question and an important question.
So here's what happens.
So now we have the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang.
This has been around with us, you know, for 70, 80 years.
And that's pretty stable in terms of our understanding of things.
But now we take quantum physics, which is the science of the small, and add it to Einstein's general relativity, the science of the large.
And why would you do that?
Because at the beginning of the universe, the large is small.
So think about this.
We have general relativity, which gives us black holes and all the rest of this.
That applies to big macroscopic things.
I'm good with that.
No problem.
Quantum physics refers to atomic things, primarily, and molecules and how they behave.
And the two don't talk to each other.
It's like they don't...
In fact, they're incompatible.
And this is how you get string theorists.
String theorists say, well, these are incompatible.
Maybe there's a third theory.
Above those two, that combines them.
We have top people working on that.
When you start combining quantum physics with general relativity, because there was a time when the universe was small, then the entire universe behaves in quantum ways.
And so you can create a state of the universe where it's what's called a false, it's in a false state.
So what's a false state?
Let's say you have a hill that goes down, but then the hill goes back up and then it goes down to a much lower point, right?
So now you take a marble and roll it down.
Maybe it'll just sort of get stuck up there in that first dip.
Well, if our universe is there, we might not become a universe.
But it's possible to tunnel out of that and then slide all the way down to the bottom.
When you do that, you release energy.
And when that happens, you birth a universe.
And it turns out this process is not limited to happening once.
So this can happen multiple times.
From people I've spoken with who work in this field, because it's slightly outside of my direct astrophysics interests, There are different kinds of these multiverses.
One of them could have the same laws of physics that we have.
That's what leads people to say there's another Joe Rogan but he's the evil Joe Rogan with a goatee or whatever.
joe rogan
But also there's another Joe Rogan that said everything that I've said exactly the way I've said it.
neil degrasse tyson
This would be the claim.
You're a twin but maybe there's a little difference or not.
Correct.
Correct.
joe rogan
An infinite number of them, right?
The idea is that if the universe is that big...
neil degrasse tyson
And it has an infinite number of universes.
There are infinite combinations of events and particles and manifestations of energy.
joe rogan
An infinite number of Neil deGrasse Tysons.
neil degrasse tyson
Possibly.
joe rogan
On an infinite number of these podcasts.
neil degrasse tyson
I wouldn't want that because that would be...
joe rogan
It's fine.
neil degrasse tyson
I'd like different people.
joe rogan
There are plenty of those too.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, plenty of those too.
So now watch.
Now imagine a universe where the laws of physics are slightly different.
That's a different manifestation of this process.
Is the speed of light a little different?
So that's another level of multiverse.
And there's several levels, but the most significant one is one where not only are the laws of physics different, but maybe there's a universe where there are no laws of physics at all.
joe rogan
A wild west of physics?
neil degrasse tyson
Or maybe there's one where even the parameters that establish mathematical truths...
Are fungible.
Ooh.
Right?
So the value of pi is something else.
joe rogan
Extra props for using the word fungible.
It's one of my new favorite words.
neil degrasse tyson
Is that right?
Excellent.
joe rogan
Non-fungible tokens have brought it up.
neil degrasse tyson
So all I'm saying is in the last part of the book, we explore all of these exit ramps from the universe That take us to the end of the universe and we don't even know if we're asking the right question.
But what we share with you is a sense of where the current thinking would take us if you extended it to its limits.
joe rogan
When you ponder questions like this, when you ponder questions like other universes with different laws of physics or no laws of physics or fungible laws of physics, When you sit around, what is your process?
Do you sit alone in your office and sit in front of a laptop and start writing this stuff out?
How do you ponder these things?
neil degrasse tyson
I think I can speak for many of my colleagues.
There's some experiments that are collaborative.
And so, for example, the mission to Mars.
Everyone got together.
You get the engineers.
We want this craft.
We're going to put in this experiment.
We're going to look for water.
We're going to look for life.
Okay.
Okay.
That's not the solo burning midnight oil.
When you're trying to think deep thoughts about what might or might not be true, objectively true in the universe, that can be a little more solitary, I think.
And you can come up with ideas anyway.
Forget this, deductive, reasoning, inductive, forget all that.
You can have an idea just sitting on a toilet, okay?
And it could be a spark.
It could be because you saw some great work of art.
And so sources of sparks of creativity and inspiration can come from anything.
You could be religious and you want to manifest the glory of God and that's what's triggering you to have these thoughts, okay?
So, the creative process is not so regimented as the teaching of scientific method would have you believe.
You go to a science lab, well, what is your hypothesis?
What is your this?
What is the test of the hypothesis?
You know, I don't even have a hypothesis.
I don't know.
I just wonder, you know?
So, the formality that we are often exposed to It's not always how that unfolds.
So, on top of that, getting back to your question, often new thoughts, you are alone.
You're just, you know, you're not distracted.
In this world of multitasking, no, great ideas, I don't think, come out of multitasking.
joe rogan
I don't think so either.
neil degrasse tyson
And there's a saying, great saying.
It's, if you want to be more creative, become less productive.
Because in a day, you can say, oh, I got my email done, and I went to groceries.
Well, did you think about it?
Did you create anything?
joe rogan
Well, we're rarely bored, right?
That's part of the problem.
neil degrasse tyson
That's a problem.
joe rogan
It is a problem, and people don't think it is.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, that's a problem.
They say, oh, I've been busy, and that's good, and I'm saying, did you create anything?
Maybe you don't want to create anything.
I don't want to judge you for not having done so.
But if you want creativity to be a fundamental part of your life, then you're going to have to not get stuff done at some point.
joe rogan
That's a nice excuse for a lot of lazy people out there.
I'm just trying to be creative, man.
neil degrasse tyson
That's why I'm on the couch with the bong.
This is a creative moment.
joe rogan
But your process is what I'm asking specifically.
neil degrasse tyson
I read a lot of science.
Well, there's journals.
There's books that people have read.
There are fields within astrophysics that are slightly outside of my research expertise.
And some of those folks have written popular-level books.
I'll read those.
Those are fun because they're sort of scoped.
They're review papers that are written.
And for me, new ideas...
I mean, think about it.
What is a new idea?
You might even call it the definition of genius.
It's you see what everyone else sees, but you think what no one else has thought.
But now you want to make sure...
But add to that, maybe you are so diverse in what you expose yourself to that you see more than what other people see.
And when you see more, you have the capacity to make connections that might not have previously been imagined, either by you or by anybody else.
This is the value of cross-pollinating fields.
It's why major discoveries can come in from the side in what is otherwise a very staid path of progress.
So, in a hospital, People say, how do you want to invest money?
In physics?
That's so 20th century with the Cold War and the bombs.
Let's invest in biology.
That's the ticket, okay?
So that makes sense, you know, as a headline, but let's unpack that.
Go walk into a hospital and line up every single machine brought into the service of diagnosing the condition of the human body without cutting you open.
So you'd have the MRI, you'd have the x-ray machines, you'd have the ultrasound.
There's no end of these machines.
and MRI admittedly is the doctor's best friend, okay, in studying what's inside your body.
To a machine, every single one of them is based on a principle of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine.
unidentified
Really?
neil degrasse tyson
Yes.
unidentified
Wow.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
Even the radiology department.
The doctors are using radioactive elements.
Were there doctors that discovered radio?
No.
There's physicists.
There's chemists.
There's Marie Curie.
These are people who are not in the medical community.
The x-ray machine.
Who discovered that?
Wilhelm Röntgen.
The very first Nobel Prize in physics went to him.
joe rogan
So by specifically concentrating on biology.
neil degrasse tyson
Now he immediately saw the applications.
There's a picture of the bones of his hand.
But he's a physicist.
He's not saying, let me help orthopedic surgeons set bones.
This is not his motivation.
So, new ideas, especially new things that can transform society, tend to come from fields that, if they're not tangent to your field, they're just some other kind of way in.
And so some of the greatest advances in my field came about because chemists were in the coffee lounge at the same time we were.
Or biologists walked in.
That informs our astrobiology exploits.
So it's not just let me sit down alone in an armchair and deduce the nature of the world.
You want to be exposed to what everybody else is doing.
You want to talk to them.
You want to hear their ideas.
Collaborate.
No one person, you know, the Midnight Oil makes a good TV show or movie.
The Midnight Loner genius.
But science, most science today does not unfold that way.
unidentified
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
So getting back to my point, personally I do a lot of reading and when I have an idea then I bounce it off of people who are highly critical and skeptical of any new idea.
And if it survives that, you can't have an ego going into it.
joe rogan
How do you do these bounce-offs?
Do you sit down?
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, I say, oh, I get colleagues, and I say, what do you think of this idea?
joe rogan
So do you prepare them?
Like, hey, George, I'd like to sit down and have a chat with you?
neil degrasse tyson
It can be.
joe rogan
Hey, Mary, I've got a crazy idea to throw your way.
neil degrasse tyson
It could.
In fact, I was once at a wine tasting, and there's someone else there who's a biologist, and we came up with an idea together, and we're probably going to write a paper on it.
unidentified
Oh.
neil degrasse tyson
About life on Earth and in the universe.
joe rogan
Just from a conversation at a wine tasting.
unidentified
At a wine tasting.
joe rogan
You were both hammered.
Talking shit.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, what wine was that?
That we were the vintage or whatever?
No.
So, like I said, creativity can unfold in many ways.
But because he's a biologist and I'm not, he says something and I say, wait a minute.
What do you think of this?
And he never thought of what I thought and I never thought of what he thought.
Together, it's magic.
joe rogan
And so this kind of creativity, this sort of cooperative exploration of ideas, then that gives birth in your mind to the idea of writing a book about something.
neil degrasse tyson
It can, but first you would write a research paper and get a peer review, this sort of thing.
And then if it's good and it's successful and the public wants to know about it, that's ripe for a book.
My books tend to be a little more summative than that.
I don't write books on single topics.
As an educator, I'm broader than that.
joe rogan
And how do you get inspired in terms of the subject matter you choose?
I mean, it's always about the cosmos, but in terms of specifics.
neil degrasse tyson
You know what it is?
I'm a servant of your curiosity and his curiosity and her curiosity.
I'm a servant of that.
And as I tweet and as I post and as I walk the streets and as I sit in an airplane with someone next to me who learns that I know astrophysics and I hear their questions and as I reply, do their eyebrows go up and their eyes lighten or do they look bored and want to order their next drink?
I monitor this.
And I make mental inventory of what excites people in the universe.
And when I'm overloaded by what I know excites people, it's got to go into a book.
joe rogan
So it just has to kind of catch fire.
neil degrasse tyson
Catch fire.
And especially my goal is to reignite Curiosity within your soul of knowledge and searching that may have once ignited when you were a kid but has long been dampened because we don't live in a world that promotes curiosity.
We're in a very gullible world.
joe rogan
Is it part of your strategy when you do your StarTalk, you do it with comedians?
Is it part of your strategy?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, thanks for mentioning that.
You yourself are a professional comedian among all the other hats you wear, so I deeply respect your field in that way.
My co-host for StarTalk, the podcast, is always a professional stand-up comedian.
Not the kind who just tells jokes, right?
But the kind that sees the world...
And explores ways you might not have thought about it, connects it to the topic, and then you end up smiling while you're learning.
And in my experience, if you smile while you learn, you learn better.
You learn more deeply.
And you come back for more.
joe rogan
And do you, like, actively curate these comedians?
Do you go to comedy clubs?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, so I don't do all that footwork, but we have people who do.
Yeah, we go to comedy clubs.
And we like new comics.
You know, a lot of new folks, you know, open mic night, that sort of thing.
And there's some we return to more often than others.
Chuck Nice is...
joe rogan
Chuck's great on your show.
neil degrasse tyson
He's one of our favorites.
joe rogan
He's obviously fascinated by the same topics.
neil degrasse tyson
And he's smart, as all comedians are in my experience.
joe rogan
You need to meet some of my friends.
unidentified
I could change your theory.
neil degrasse tyson
I'm sticking to it.
You guys are smart.
And so just the format of the show.
So it's not just comedian in the science.
There's a pop culture element to it.
So some ridiculous fraction of my life is invested staying fluent in pop culture.
So that when I talk about the science, and you don't know where I'm coming from, I say, well, consider this.
This is what Beyonce did, or this is what some politician said, or this is what the Pope was thinking about.
And you come to me with a pop culture scaffold.
And what makes it pop culture?
Everyone has a similar scaffold.
I don't have to construct that.
And I look at it, and I analyze it from three dimensions, and I say, I'm going to clad this bit of information on that part of that scaffold.
joe rogan
And how do you actively, like, engage with pop culture and curate sort of a knowledge base about what these wacky kids are interested in today?
neil degrasse tyson
I read responses to my social media posts.
joe rogan
Oh, that's easy.
You're going to have to read.
neil degrasse tyson
The response is a neurosynaptic snapshot.
Of what people are thinking in response to the very words I choose, to the phrasing.
If I think something is funny and nobody laughs, I want to know that.
That's important information for me.
If I think something isn't funny and they do laugh, if I missed something, if I was insensitive to something that I would have wanted to be had I known, that comes out.
That's there.
And that informs future encounters I have with people, informs sentences I compose for books.
And that's me, in my mind's eye, being a servant of your curiosity.
joe rogan
So you think of it almost as an ingredient in your education?
neil degrasse tyson
Yes.
Yes.
It's not just, here's something, you better learn this or you're going to flunk the test.
Every student who flunks the test is a statement for me about the instructor, not about the student.
joe rogan
That's interesting.
neil degrasse tyson
So you have teachers who say, you know, I just have some students that just don't want to learn.
And, all right, but have you ever heard a teacher say, I have students who aren't learning, so that must mean I suck at my job.
joe rogan
I'm sure someone said that.
neil degrasse tyson
I've never heard anyone say that.
Okay.
So at what point are you going to invert the table and say the burden of them learning is on me, not on them?
Now, of course, in some cases it's impossible.
Large classes, you can't be babysitter to everyone.
Some people have emotional stability problems.
So I get that.
But I don't want to hear a teacher say, I have students who refuse to learn.
My response is, I see a teacher who refuses to figure out how to get them to learn.
Yeah, it takes more effort.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's hard.
But is anything in life worth achieving that isn't itself hard?
joe rogan
Your role as an educator, and as an educator, a public educator, meaning you're someone who's in the public eye all the time, educating people in a pop culture way.
neil degrasse tyson
Basically.
joe rogan
Yeah.
But you're doing it about things like the nature of the universe itself.
Super complex issues.
And you're doing this all under all this heavy scrutiny.
I mean, the people from the meat company went after you the other day.
What the hell was that?
Steakums.
Okay.
Steakums had at you with you about a tweet.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, here's what happened.
joe rogan
I thought it was a little disingenuous on Steakums' part.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, so here's what happened.
There's an anatomy of that that I find fascinating.
I post a tweet.
The tweet is...
joe rogan
Something about not having to believe the science.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, so the good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.
joe rogan
Right.
Then Stakems went after you.
neil degrasse tyson
No, no, hold on.
Hold on.
So now, my very next tweet said, if you have the urge to argue with my previous tweet...
Please read this link before doing so.
And it's a link to a four-minute read essay I wrote called What Science Is and How and Why It Works.
Okay.
joe rogan
Did you post that before or after Steakums went after you?
neil degrasse tyson
No, that's been posted for years.
joe rogan
Right, but I'm saying, did you post the second tweet?
neil degrasse tyson
I don't...
The second tweet was 10 minutes after the first tweet.
joe rogan
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay?
It was immediate.
Essentially immediate.
joe rogan
So you're basically just following up with the reference.
neil degrasse tyson
Because I knew people might want to try to take issue with this.
joe rogan
But you didn't know it was going to be Steakums.
unidentified
Okay!
neil degrasse tyson
So watch.
Here's what happened.
That first tweet...
Escaped from my following because so many people retweeted it.
So now people are reading the first tweet without the benefit of the second tweet.
Stakem's is among them.
And I know this because when I read their reply to me, I looked at their header and it doesn't say, Stakem follows Neil Tyson.
They don't follow me.
If you don't follow me, you didn't see the first tweet.
I mean, the second tweet.
You had no idea that that was there.
joe rogan
So you essentially said what they said to you, but with far more information.
It's like his tweet to you criticizing you is essentially much of the same that was in your article.
neil degrasse tyson
You're talking about- That article was entirely about what it means for science to establish truth.
joe rogan
Yes.
neil degrasse tyson
That science uniquely establishes what is objectively true in this world.
joe rogan
And what did Stakem say?
Do we know what Stakem said?
neil degrasse tyson
No, they just screamed, yeah, and scientists said the world was flat.
Or, you know, before, you know, Copernicus.
joe rogan
Well, it's a little bit more articulate than that.
It's quite clever.
neil degrasse tyson
There was a total body of attack regarding citing occasions when scientists have been wrong.
Okay.
joe rogan
Well, he's also explaining, clarifying what the actual scientific method is versus just a flat statement like science doesn't need you to believe it's true or however you phrased it.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, I'm just saying that, yeah, so the Stakem one, there's some informed people there, I think, and they just like creating controversy.
I don't have a problem with that.
joe rogan
Isn't that bizarre that it's Stakems?
neil degrasse tyson
Well, it's fine.
Okay.
I wrote back to them and I said, hi, Stakems.
It looks like you don't follow me.
So that accounts for why you didn't read this link.
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
Had you read this link...
And then I tried to be a little clever, clumsily.
I said, if you and your followers took four minutes to put down your steak and cheese hoagie to read this essay, you would then understand the meaning of that treat and you would not...
So I said that and then it became a whole thing.
But that's the nature of social media.
But I realized that I cannot have one tweet reference another because if the previous one is alive...
And it gets out.
No one has any sense of where I'm...
My following does.
And they would say, oh, fascinating four-minute read.
Thank you.
I see and I agree.
And I talk about truths.
The three kinds of truth.
Do you know about...
Did I tell you this?
joe rogan
Sure.
neil degrasse tyson
Go ahead, Doug.
joe rogan
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah?
I thought deeply about this, and this was my conclusion.
Okay.
The three kinds of truths.
One of them is...
A personal truth.
This is something that's true to you and no one can take it away from you.
Jesus is your savior.
In a free country, no one is going to take that from you.
No one should take it from you.
Muhammad is the last prophet.
These are personal truths that you hold dear.
I don't have a problem with your personal truth.
joe rogan
Is that the right word for it?
neil degrasse tyson
I'm calling it that.
joe rogan
Beliefs.
neil degrasse tyson
We can call it beliefs, but they call it personal truths.
If you look at the word truth, the first websites are religious websites.
Truth is a very important word within belief systems.
And so I studied that, and I said, all right, I'm not going to tell them, give me the word truth, because you're not describing truth, you're describing belief.
That's a fight I'm not interested or willing to have.
joe rogan
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
Give them the truth.
Look, there are whole posters with a cross and it says, seek the truth in Jesus, right?
So I'm not going to fight that.
That's a personal truth.
It's not just a political truth.
A political truth is something that becomes true in your head because it was repeated so many times and aligns with what you want, okay?
Hearing Trump talk about Hillary Clinton, it was Crooked Hillary, right?
So what's Hillary's first name?
Crooked.
Because it was repeated so many times.
And our brain...
It gets co-opted because we, in nature, in the Serengeti, if we see something repeating, it gives us a good indication that maybe it's real and we should be careful about it or it's a reliable thing.
In modern times, we have co-opted that feature of human evolution and now we give you information that has no foundation in truth but repeat it and in your head it becomes true.
It becomes true.
Especially if you want it to be true.
I call that a political truth.
The third truth is an objective truth.
This is a truth established by the methods and tools of science and verified by the methods and tools of science.
Once that is established, it doesn't later on become false.
joe rogan
Like the temperature of boiling water.
neil degrasse tyson
For example, under atmospheric conditions, like the fact that Earth orbits the sun, like the fact that Earth is round, the sun is hot, there's thermonuclear fusion in the core, that the universe is expanding, that the galaxy is rotating, that there are other galaxies, that there's such a thing as quantum physics, that there are things called electrons and protons and neutrons and atoms and carbon.
There is a body of objective truths established by the methods and tools of science That when it is established, it is not later found to be false.
You can expand on that truth.
The truth can become deeper, but it doesn't become false.
And these methods and tools have been in practice basically since Galileo and Sir Francis Bacon, around 1600. Before then, some people knew about this process that science goes through, but it wasn't widespread practice, not until about 1600. So if you're going to say, you should see the responses in here, scientists told us the Earth was flat.
That was before 1600. Scientists used to, oh, we used to bleed you with leeches.
Okay?
Well, let's go back to when we did that.
All right?
This would be biologists doing it.
And what was the state of research at the time?
That was a frontier thing they were doing.
It wasn't verified.
It was a hypothesis that they were acting on.
Okay?
So, yeah, the bleeding edge of science, most of that will turn out to be wrong.
Most of it.
It's when it gets tested.
And the press gets a single scientific result.
That's kind of intriguing and interesting, and they report it as a new scientific truth because it was a scientific study, especially if it comes from a place like Harvard, where they'll put that up in the front sentence without saying, we don't know if this is actually true.
We need verification from other studies.
They don't say that typically, or that's later on in the article.
So that's how you can go from, oh, cholesterol is good for you.
No, cholesterol is bad for you.
No, cholesterol is good for you.
No, cholesterol is bad for you.
It was an unresolved research result.
But you cited one research result that was consistent with your own desires and that became your new truth.
That's in a way a political truth if it's repeated enough.
But then you find it's not that.
It's because it's still an actively researched frontier.
joe rogan
When you wrote out these three truths, how did you come to only three?
Do you think there's room for more?
neil degrasse tyson
Maybe.
This is not an edict that thou shalt only have.
But when you see something repeated, I call that a political truth, but it's also a kind of a...
There are other truths.
So, for example, you've heard this.
We only use 10% of our brain.
joe rogan
Yeah, but that's not real.
neil degrasse tyson
There's an entire movie based on that premise.
joe rogan
Lucy.
neil degrasse tyson
Lucy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay?
That premise is false.
It was never true.
That's another kind of thing.
It was never true.
joe rogan
That annoyed me.
I liked that movie, though.
neil degrasse tyson
It was fun.
It was good seeing Scarlet in that.
And Morgan Freeman's in it.
It's had some good roles.
So...
Let's go back to where it started from.
You know where that came from?
There was a neuroscientist, well, a brain scientist, who, because you can't do experiments on human brains, that's not ethical, all right?
All you can do is wait until someone gets an accident, and so there's a nail gun that damages this part of the brain.
Oh, you lost your language.
Damage of this part, oh, you lost your short-term memory.
Oh, you lost your long-term memory.
And so you assemble the bits of what the brain is doing by people who were injured.
This is a very slow, clumsy process, but that's all you've got.
The person who had an article said, the brain is so complex, today we only know what 10% of it is used for.
joe rogan
And that got...
neil degrasse tyson
Overnight, that became we only used 10% of our brain.
And that became the mantra of school teachers getting children to rise to their potential.
And there was no force operating against that coming into our culture.
joe rogan
It wouldn't have ruined the movie if they didn't have that in there.
I mean, there's no reason for that to be in the movie.
The movie was fascinating as it was.
neil degrasse tyson
They could have just given her some other power, but they went with that 10% thing.
joe rogan
Yeah, but they didn't even need to do that.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, can I give my critique even of that?
Let's say we did only use 10% of our brain.
unidentified
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
Here's my critique.
Even if that were true.
joe rogan
Okay.
neil degrasse tyson
The smartest people you know, do they have an inkling of kinetic powers over objects in front of them?
Why are we obsessed with extremely high intelligence having power over matter?
Why aren't people with extremely high intelligence just good at solving problems?
They're just the best people at solving problems in the world.
joe rogan
We want superpowers.
neil degrasse tyson
So they're becoming superpowers.
That's right.
And even in the movie that had John Travolta in it, Oh, yeah.
Phenomenon?
Was that the one?
joe rogan
The one he gets struck by lightning.
neil degrasse tyson
Right, right.
And he's up there and he makes a top spin just by spinning his hand and the top pops up and spins.
It's like, no.
If you're smarter than everybody, you'll do smart things.
You're not going to sort of levitate objects.
joe rogan
His brain works better.
He can make things move.
neil degrasse tyson
By what force?
No.
joe rogan
By telekinetics.
neil degrasse tyson
We know what forces are operating in this world.
joe rogan
There's no way telekinetics is real?
neil degrasse tyson
No!
We understand what forces there are.
joe rogan
But people that make things move with their mind, what do you think they're doing?
They're lying?
neil degrasse tyson
Yes.
To themselves or to others.
joe rogan
People get so upset if you say that.
unidentified
Right?
joe rogan
What do you think about psychic ability?
Think there's any of it?
neil degrasse tyson
I'm not convinced by any of it I've ever seen.
Put them in a controlled situation.
If there is psychic ability, it's not particularly repeatable.
joe rogan
Right.
Like maybe an emerging phenomenon?
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, so...
But you have to be invoking forces that don't otherwise show up in a laboratory.
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
So that's A. B, the laboratory has a hard time duplicating your claims.
Okay?
C, if one of your psychic abilities is to help the police find the criminal...
Why is it, oh, they're in a ravine?
Why it just gives the person's name and their address and their phone number?
joe rogan
Well, it's not that good.
It's like a dog.
Well, when you get a bloodhound to go find a guy, they're not that good at it.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, I don't know.
joe rogan
They're pretty good at it.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, I don't know.
joe rogan
They're running around the woods and they catch a scent.
neil degrasse tyson
They could find somebody else's underwear.
Smell it!
joe rogan
Well, the idea is you give them yours so they know what you smell like and then they go looking for you.
neil degrasse tyson
How unique are you in seven billion people?
joe rogan
For a dog?
Pretty fucking unique.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, so a dog's good.
joe rogan
Dogs can smell COVID-19.
neil degrasse tyson
So then why are they not good?
So why did you say they weren't good?
joe rogan
They're pretty good.
But they're not perfect.
It's not like you let a dog loose and it just runs full clip.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, they're better than any of us would be in that situation.
joe rogan
That's right.
My point is, it's gathering evidence.
It's using its ears, and its ears are actually wafting up smells, you know?
neil degrasse tyson
So the amazing Randy, who's a magician...
Who also he...
joe rogan
Exposes frauds.
neil degrasse tyson
Exposes frauds and claims.
There was a woman who claimed to be a very important psychic, I think, in Russia.
And she sees events and she can know things.
She can look at a photo of you and figure out, you know, all right.
So he brings a photo of someone and gets her to talk about it.
She looks at it.
Oh, you know, he went to college and he majored in psychology.
Turned out to be correct.
Although that's the number one major in colleges in the United States.
It's the number one major.
But she got that correct.
Okay.
Then she says other things about it where she might be living.
And what she got wrong or never didn't reveal about him is that he's dead.
You'd think that would have made a signal big enough for her to have captured.
And the person was Ted Bundy.
The serial killer.
joe rogan
The photos of Ted Bundy?
neil degrasse tyson
Yes.
And those two really important bits of information.
joe rogan
The dead part's kind of important, but the serial killer part is really...
neil degrasse tyson
You'd think that would have risen up out of the page.
joe rogan
That's the most interesting thing about him.
neil degrasse tyson
So if there is psychic power, I'm just very disappointed in it.
joe rogan
Well, that lady.
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, she was heralded by others.
I mean, what else do you do?
You're going to go to someone who's not heralded?
You go to the best who they claim.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think most of the ones that claim to be psychic are full of shit.
I'm not discounting the possibility of psychic phenomenon.
neil degrasse tyson
That's what...
The amazing Randy did.
He bypassed everyone who everyone else said was full of shit.
They said, go to her, go to her.
That's what he did.
What else do you want him to do?
joe rogan
Yeah.
No, I mean, look, I've never seen any evidence that psychic ability is real.
But I've left the door open because I think...
Intuition is a weird thing.
And then the ability to think that you know when something's going to happen and then something does happen.
People claim that has taken place.
I don't know if it really ever has.
But if it ever has, if someone really did tell someone that something was going to happen and it did happen, that to me is very fascinating.
I've seen no evidence that it does.
That it does work that way.
neil degrasse tyson
Well, it's got to be...
It's got to be a reliable prediction.
Maybe.
joe rogan
But again, maybe it's an emerging phenomenon.
Maybe it's a thing that one day human beings will have in our natural toolbox.
neil degrasse tyson
What's the difference between you manifesting this yet-to-be-fully-harnessed power intermittently and other times it doesn't work for you, but sometimes it does?
So what's the difference between that and you hitting on something correctly at random?
joe rogan
Well, one thing would be if you're hitting on something at random, you don't really know, you're guessing.
The idea about this phenomenon is that you're getting a signal.
It's just not reliable.
The idea would be, and again, I'm not a biologist, right?
But if something was emerging from the human species, something like language.
Language did not start out the way you and I are talking right now on a podcast.
Vision.
Vision.
The ability to see things with the eyes.
It did not start out crystal clear, 20-20 vision.
This is an emerging thing that conceivably took millions, if not billions of years to evolve.
neil degrasse tyson
Just to be cautious, so emergence in biology means something different from what you're saying.
All you're saying is that it evolved.
joe rogan
What is emergent?
neil degrasse tyson
Emergence is a property, a fascinating property of an organism that That is not derivable from any of its parts when you look at it.
So, for example, you can study a bird and you can know everything there is about a bird.
But you would not have necessarily, I don't think, been able to predict that birds flock together.
So the flocking is emergence.
That's an emergent phenomenon.
joe rogan
What I'm talking about is something emerging?
neil degrasse tyson
That's just evolution.
That's just evolution.
You just say it evolved.
joe rogan
Sight evolved.
So something like psychic phenomenon evolving from human beings.
Something slowly but surely.
You can call it intuition.
Oh, I thought about someone and my phone rang.
It was them and I haven't talked to them for years.
I mean, that might be a coincidence.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, but did you keep track of all the misses?
I mean, this is confirmation bias, right?
For sure.
So my favorite example here is you line up 1,000 people.
It's a coin toss thing.
Line up 1,000 people and then flip a coin.
And if you've got tails, you sit down.
Okay?
So now you've got 500 left.
Flip it.
250. Okay?
You know, what are we down to?
We have 250 people.
They flip a coin.
Half get heads.
120 sit down.
Now we're down to 60. And then 30. And then 15. And then 8. And then 4. And then 2. And then 1. Alright?
So, in a classic execution of this experiment, there's one person left at the end.
And you know something?
That person flipped heads 10 consecutive times.
So what does the press do?
The press goes to that person.
Say, how do you feel about winning this coin toss?
You know, I felt some heads energy halfway through.
This felt really real to me.
And I saw signs and I saw a heads up coin on the street.
So I knew I was going to win.
Did they interview anyone else who didn't win to see if they had heads energy feelings?
No.
They don't even get interviewed.
And plus, we are so hubristic and ego-driven that we think we are special for having flipped head ten times in a row, when almost every time you do this experiment, somebody's going to flip heads ten times in a row.
joe rogan
That mirrors what I've always said about the secret and the law of attraction.
I'm like, you're only talking to winners.
neil degrasse tyson
Yes.
joe rogan
Talk to people that imagined they were going to be rock stars.
Correct.
unidentified
And we don't.
neil degrasse tyson
That's correct.
joe rogan
It didn't work out for them because they might have really been thinking hard about it all day and night, but you can't just manufacture things from your mind.
But what you can do is have a goal, work towards it, have discipline, have focus, learn from your mistakes, improve upon your approach, and then eventually get to a place where you can look back and say, you know, I did it all with my mind.
I made it happen.
I envisioned it, and I made it happen.
And people are like, oh my God, he's using the secret.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
They're using the law of attraction.
neil degrasse tyson
Right, right, right, right.
And that's in a lot of talk shows, you know.
Yeah.
Mid-afternoon talk shows.
joe rogan
Yeah, like the gals.
The ladies like those.
And stay-at-home dads.
They're really into those.
neil degrasse tyson
So, I want to just give a brief...
I've got to catch an airplane at some point.
joe rogan
Do you?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Where are you going?
neil degrasse tyson
I'm going back home tonight.
unidentified
Yeah, okay.
neil degrasse tyson
I'm going back home tonight.
So, let's go back 150 years.
Michael Faraday.
joe rogan
Faraday cage.
neil degrasse tyson
Among many things credited to him.
Physicist in the UK. Very religious man, by the way.
But he left religion outside the lab when he walked in.
God wasn't participating in his thoughts as he was conducting the experiments.
God was everywhere else in his life.
But when he walked in, it's all physics.
So he invents the concept of the field.
Because what does it mean?
Something can be here and influence something else over there.
Is there anything connecting them?
I don't see anything.
There's nothing there.
I can wave my hands.
There's a field.
The concept of a field is birthed with Michael Faraday.
It stumped Newton.
I have action at a distance.
How does this work?
How can Earth pull the moon?
Is there a rope?
Is there a chain?
How does this work?
The field.
It was invented with Faraday.
All right.
What's Faraday's experiment?
He takes a wire, puts it through a magnetic field, and then a meter turns over here.
Moving a wire through a magnetic field made electrons move through the wire, and he measured current over here.
Doing this over here made something else happen over there.
And no one understood this.
Oh my gosh.
There is action happening and I don't understand it.
Let's figure it out.
And the attempt to figure that out was the birth of our modern understanding of electromagnetism.
All I'm saying is, today, there is no mysterious phenomenon happening on a tabletop.
There isn't.
Everything that's happening here, we understand.
From the material science, to the strength, to what happens, there's liquid in my glass, there's paint, there's material, all of this is understood.
So where's the frontier of physics?
It's in particle accelerators.
It's at the limits of the energetics of the world.
And yes, there, there's some things we don't understand.
Just recently, One of the particles in the universe, the muon, was sent into a magnetic field and it started moving in ways nobody predicted.
Our understanding of what the muon is supposed to do, it did not obey.
Deeply interesting.
The press puts it as, oh, physics is tossed on its ear.
Everything else still works as we imagined it, as we've measured it, but there's a new phenomenon.
People are all in it right now trying to figure out what this particle called the muon is making it do something that we didn't expect it to do.
That's not on the tabletop.
So to say you're gonna have a psychic power that manifests on a tabletop, there is no...
We got the tabletop.
joe rogan
What do you think about that phenomenon, about the idea of the phenomenon, psychic phenomenon, is so interesting to people?
Why is that something that's so compelling and has been so prevalent throughout history?
neil degrasse tyson
I think we have always deeply respected anyone who had the power of prophecy.
Anyone.
Now, what's weird is the people who really have the power of prophecy are scientists.
I can tell you that on June 10th, there's going to be a solar eclipse visible from New York, and the sun will rise eclipsed.
Now, if I didn't tell you how I knew that, I can create a cult.
Okay?
But I say, well, there's an equation.
You've got to take some physics and some math, and you learn some astrophysics, and you can predict that, too.
Well, that takes away any mystique I might have had over you for knowing the future.
But you go back to all cultures.
There's the shaman who's, oh, the weather this and the future that and the moon this.
These are people with power over others.
Even we are so into this that we're thinking that dreams matter.
Oh, I dreamed that they were...
Oh, is that going to be true?
Oh my God.
Look at how much we invest in thinking somebody's dream is something that's going to come true.
That was especially true in the past.
Less of it today, because we know more about dreams and things.
But the urge to want someone else to have the power to predict the future seems to be without limit.
And psychic powers and astrology...
What is astrology but a method to predict what's going to happen to you today?
All of that.
joe rogan
But that's a weird one.
Because you lump it in with astronomy.
Because astrology and astronomy sort of like get lumped in together in a lot of people's eyes.
Like, oh, but it's based on where the planets are.
And we know that the planets have an effect on you.
Because the gravity and it changes and shifts.
That's why the tide goes in and out.
We're always constantly being affected by these invisible forces.
And Neil deGrasse Tyson, they can shape your personality.
If you just let me read your chart, I'll tell you.
neil degrasse tyson
Do you know the tidal force wrought upon Earth by the moon has nothing to do with the phase of the moon?
joe rogan
It doesn't?
neil degrasse tyson
It's the same all the time.
joe rogan
It's the same all the time.
unidentified
A full moon has the same amount of gravity.
neil degrasse tyson
It has the same tidal force on the Earth and on you as a quarter moon, as a half moon, as a, you know, whatever, all those phases.
joe rogan
So the tidal force that is on, that we know the tide shifts.
Like, is it gravity alone that's causing that tide to shift in and out?
neil degrasse tyson
Okay, so the tide actually doesn't shift.
joe rogan
It doesn't?
neil degrasse tyson
No.
unidentified
What happens?
No.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay.
So, wherever the moon is in space, the side of Earth closest to the moon is more attracted to the moon than the side that's farthest away.
Okay?
So, because the total force is different across Earth, Earth gets stretched a little, elongated.
It's especially visible in the oceans relative to the land, but Earth's physical body is also stretched in a direction towards the moon, except it's a little ahead of it, but we don't have to worry about that for the moment.
So the moon stretches the tide.
That's called the tidal force on the Earth.
Okay, so now watch.
As Earth rotates, we rotate once a day.
How long does it take the moon to go around the Earth?
Once a month.
So here's this tidal bulge.
Earth rotates inside the bulge.
And what you say at the beach, oh, the tide is coming in and out.
No.
It is you rotating into and out of a tidal bulge that's fixed in space towards the moon.
Wow.
That's a heavy one.
Well, it's because our language doesn't reflect reality.
We say the tide comes in and out, but we are rotating into the bulge and then out of the bulge.
That's why there are two high tides in a day.
And then into the other bulge, which is on the other side, and then out of the bulge.
Two high tides, two low tides.
All right, so now, why are high tides higher during full moon?
joe rogan
Why?
neil degrasse tyson
Because the sun also makes tides on Earth.
joe rogan
Oh my goodness.
neil degrasse tyson
About a third the strength of the moon tides.
And there's the sun tides trying to blend in with the moon tides and it's on a different cycle.
Okay?
And, oh, when we have full moon, the sun is creating tides that are added to the moon's tides.
unidentified
Okay?
neil degrasse tyson
So we have higher tides on the full moon because the sun's tides add to it.
Not because the moon has any special extra powers over us.
So it is uninformed and in some cases just outright BS that people are saying, the full moon has extra power and tides over you.
No, it doesn't.
The moon itself, no.
joe rogan
Now, the moon itself...
The thing that people always want to say is that people are 60-whatever percent water.
What percent are we?
neil degrasse tyson
It's about that.
joe rogan
That's fine.
neil degrasse tyson
More than half.
joe rogan
If the moon affects the tides, wouldn't it affect the water in your body?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
So the tidal force is the force across the size of the object.
joe rogan
Right.
neil degrasse tyson
Okay?
So Earth is 8,000 miles across.
So...
The gravity from the moon is somewhat less on the far side of the earth compared to the side of the earth nearest the moon.
So you have to ask, how much stronger is the moon's gravity from one side of your head to the other?
That's the question.
Right.
joe rogan
It would have to be pulling you in a certain direction.
neil degrasse tyson
It would have to be stronger on one side than the other and have to stretch your head.
We can calculate how much that is.
And I did it once.
It was something like a millionth the force that's operating on your head from the weight of your pillow.
But you're not creating lycanthropic stories based on whether you had a Tempur-Pedic pillow or a down pillow.
joe rogan
What do you think is the origin of those stupid stories then?
Because there is always a thing.
neil degrasse tyson
People like finding excuses outside of themselves to account for their reprehensible behavior.
joe rogan
Oh.
neil degrasse tyson
But don't— For me, that's the number one.
It relieves you of accountability.
And of course, Shakespeare knew this, and hence his line in, was it in Julius Caesar, the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but within ourselves.
So Shakespeare knew this, and notice he's talking about fault, right?
It's always what caused that to happen.
And you want to blame things that are not within yourself.
joe rogan
But even if you're not talking about yourself in terms of what's happening, if you're working in an emergency room, a lot of doctors will swear that there's more activity during a full moon.
neil degrasse tyson
Oh, yeah.
So here's what happens.
A full moon...
Oh, by the way, what you really have to test is, is there more activity during a full moon when it's overcast at night?
When no one sees the full moon.
So what you have is a self-fulfilling process.
You read all these stories about acting crazy under full moon.
A full moon is the only phase that rises at sunset and sets at sunrise.
So it's up all night.
You go to the bar.
Most places the bar closes at 2 a.m.
You come out.
The full moon is high in the sky.
And you read all these stories.
And so you just, you're ready to just act crazy.
Okay?
So this is life imitating art in that case.
So what you really need to do is check to see when you don't know it's a full moon because it's cloudy and you come overcast and you come out of the bar, do you act crazy?
I bet you the answer is no.
But not only that, people's ability to judge when the moon is full is kind of loose.
So to the untrained eye, the moon is full for about four days.
So just consider that as well.
joe rogan
I've always thought it was the actual light that the moon is shedding and it allows people to do more things outside.
neil degrasse tyson
As well.
joe rogan
Which makes people do stupider shit.
neil degrasse tyson
The full moon is six times brighter than the half moon.
It's a law of reflection that makes it extra bright relative to if it's half lit.
And so, yeah, you can see more things going on at night and possibly get into more trouble that way.
And there's another one.
There were some municipalities where there were slightly more births during full moon than others.
Not everywhere, but...
And people say, well, the extra gravity from the full moon.
Full moon does not have extra gravity, first of all.
Plus, even if that were true, You'd have to be in the delivery room with your legs in the stirrups facing the moon out the window.
joe rogan
The moon pulls the baby up.
neil degrasse tyson
And the moon yanks the baby up.
But how about the delivery rooms where you're facing the other way?
Then the baby is pulled in.
I mean, so just the absurdity of how you'd have to imagine this would play out.
But also, and you can do the calculation, that the gravity of people in the room on you And the machine, the light fish, is greater than the gravity of the moon on you.
But you're blaming the moon for this.
So here's the thing.
But it is true that in some municipalities, slightly more babies are born during full moon.
So you can say, oh, it's mysterious, it's aliens, it's magic, it's this.
Or you can say, is there another reason?
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
The human gestation period, human female gestation period is about 295 days.
That's not what the doctor tells you because the doctor doesn't count it from when you get pregnant.
Doctor counts your gestation period from when you first missed your period.
Okay?
That's because that's a known, that's a very well known date on the calendar.
So that's how they do their numbers.
So 295 days.
Turns out A cycle of moon phases is 29 and a half days.
It's a full cycle.
Full moon to full moon.
So, if you were born under a full moon, it meant you were conceived under a full moon.
joe rogan
Likely.
unidentified
If you came out the right time.
neil degrasse tyson
If you went to full term, 295 days, that's 10 cycles of the full moon.
So that can affect the statistics of births.
joe rogan
So it just means people are more sexually active when it's bright out.
neil degrasse tyson
Or it's just that it's romantic.
joe rogan
Ah.
neil degrasse tyson
It's romance, too.
joe rogan
Moonstruck.
The Cher movie, right?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, Moonstruck.
joe rogan
Yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
neil degrasse tyson
The moon's out.
You're walking along the beach, along the park.
joe rogan
I'm going to get a picture of you when we wrap this podcast up.
neil degrasse tyson
Down the street.
joe rogan
We know we got a good time.
Bam.
Perfect.
neil degrasse tyson
I need my hat.
joe rogan
Can I put my hat on top of it?
Go ahead.
Take the headphones off.
Why do you like that hat so much?
neil degrasse tyson
It's my hat.
I'm in Texas now.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
neil degrasse tyson
Texas.
joe rogan
There you go.
Beautiful.
Neil, you're a gem.
I appreciate you very much.
neil degrasse tyson
Dude, we went everywhere today.
joe rogan
We did.
It was a good one.
neil degrasse tyson
Man, who's going to sit there for five hours and listen to that?
joe rogan
They have other stuff they're doing while they're doing it.
That's the beautiful thing about podcasts.
neil degrasse tyson
That's the thing.
joe rogan
You could be driving and running and whatever.
neil degrasse tyson
That's the thing.
joe rogan
That's the thing.
neil degrasse tyson
So yeah, if people can think about Cosmic Queries, it's all about that.
joe rogan
Did you do the audio for the audiobook?
neil degrasse tyson
I did selected audio within it, so you hear my voice.
My tweets are in there when they relate to the content.
I did all my tweets and some of the boxes that are in there.
joe rogan
And someone else read the book?
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah, I found a reader.
joe rogan
Why would you do that when you can do it?
neil degrasse tyson
Because I can do it, but it's someone else's rent money.
joe rogan
Oh, how sweet of you.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Fuck that dude.
You should be doing it.
That guy should get a Patreon page.
You should do it, man.
Everybody wants to hear you talk.
neil degrasse tyson
I did my other books.
I did...
joe rogan
I know.
That's why I'm like, why didn't you do this one?
Either way, I'm sure it's awesome.
neil degrasse tyson
I don't see people at job.
joe rogan
All right.
Well, that's a very nice gesture on your part.
neil degrasse tyson
All right.
joe rogan
Thank you very much.
neil degrasse tyson
Dude.
joe rogan
Always a pleasure.
Let's do it again.
neil degrasse tyson
Yeah.
I mean, I think I come and give a talk.
I'll give you tickets to your staff.
joe rogan
Okay.
Yeah.
Let me know.
neil degrasse tyson
When are you doing that?
They're rescheduling.
It's all post, you know.
joe rogan
Right, right.
neil degrasse tyson
The COVID year has to land.
joe rogan
Well, get a hold of me and I'll put it up on the Instagram and all that jazz.
neil degrasse tyson
Totally do it.
All right.
joe rogan
Thank you.
neil degrasse tyson
Great to have you in the audience.
joe rogan
For sure.
neil degrasse tyson
I'll give you a shout out.
joe rogan
All right.
neil degrasse tyson
Get with me in the audience.
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