Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #1904. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding Astrophysics, James Webb Telescope Discoveries, and Scientific Literacy. Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan
Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by
night, all day. I don't want every one of my
sentences to sound like Barry White. Is that
what it sounds like in your ears? In headphones,
they do. Oh, hey, baby. I just can't. Whereas
without the headphones, I'm just regular. All
right. Ready? All ready. Good to see you. Hey.
What's happening? I'm excited to talk to you.
I'm excited to talk to you about a bunch of things,
but I've been paying attention to all the web
telescope stuff. Oh, my gosh. Fascinating. It's
all that. Could you please explain the difference
in the ability of the capabilities of this telescope
versus what we've had previously? Yeah. So first
of all, it's all that. And the excitement was
in part because so much could have gone wrong
with this thing. And the fact that nothing went
wrong. We were ecstatic. Could you explain how
complicated it is to get something like that?
So one of the great challenges that we face is
how do you put a telescope in orbit that's bigger
than the rocket that's going to launch it? Is
that even possible? And the Hubble telescope,
do you know what set the size of that 94 -inch
diameter mirror? That's the biggest mirror you
could fit in the payload of the space shuttle.
That's what set the size of that telescope. Big
as it was, we would have made it bigger if the
space shuttle were bigger. Now, I don't know
if you've seen the Hubble telescope. There's
a replica of it at the Air and Space Museum.
Let's take a photo of it. It's there hanging
from the ceiling, but if you want to know how
– it's about the size of a Greyhound bus. So
the space shuttle deployed a Greyhound bus into
orbit, which is the Hubble Space Telescope. And
the value of the Hubble was that you could –
update it with servicing missions. And it was
serviced many times. And as a result, it lived
within our culture for three decades. There are
people who came of age only ever knowing the
majesty of the universe as delivered to you by
the Hubble telescope. 30 years worth of this.
Think about it. Most other telescopes, they put
into orbit and they have a five -year mission
and then they come down. So they don't have a
chance to get inside you. to become something
that you... Oh, you got a nice visual there.
The Hubble telescope on the left, which every
year, every year, I post a tweet at the end of
the Stanley Cup, and I say, the Stanley Cup and
the Hubble telescope had the same designer. Really?
No, I'm just kidding. No, just look at the thing.
It looks like the Stanley Cup. A little bit.
A lot. I wouldn't confuse the two if they were
in a room together. So here's the thing. So notice
the Hubble telescope, its diameter is the spherical
shape that fits in the spherical payload of the
space shuttle. So now we want to put a bigger
telescope into orbit. How do you do that? And
so this is where you need engineers, clever engineers.
We say, here's a rocket, one of the most powerful
rockets we can... But the fairing, that's the
place where you hold the payload, can only be
so big. And they say, all right, why don't we
fold the telescope? Now, how are you going to
fold the mirror? Oh, you turn the mirror into
segments, hexagons. Hexagons, one of only three
shapes that can tile a surface, a square, a triangle,
and a hexagon. No other shape can do this. So,
well, you can have other. Irregular shapes that
can match up. You can tessellate what it's called.
But if you have what's called a regular polygon,
so here in the image there, what you can see
is all of the mirror segments. Those fold into
a narrow structure along with the unfurling solar
panels as well as the heat. NOSA is made at Northrop
Grumman. By the way, Grumman has a long history
in helping NASA put stuff in space. The LEM,
Lunar Excursion Module, remember that? The thing
that landed on the moon? That was designed and
built in Bethpage, Long Island at Grumman Aerospace.
And so this is, and you go to Bethpage today,
people still stand tall because they had aunts
and uncles who worked on that project. Space.
is a force of nature unto itself in our sense
of pride, in our sense of achievement, in our
sense of what operates on civilization to take
us into the future lest we continue to regress
and move back into the cave which we came. There
it is all folded up in the image we now see for
those who are watching this. And you slip that
into a fairing and then you launch it. A million
miles from Earth. Opposite the sun from Earth.
And it unfurls like petals of a flower. Is there
an animation of how that goes down? Oh, yeah.
Yeah, slow -mo animation. Sure, he can find it.
And it's the deployment, how it deployed as it
was on its way to its location, which is one
of the Lagrangian points in orbit. For every
two objects that orbit each other. There are
five Lagrangian points. So here we are unfolding.
So there we have solar panels coming out the
side. And there's the communication antenna.
And it has a unique set of baffles that shield
it from sunlight so that the mirror and the detector
can be very, very cold. Because it's designed,
it's specially tuned to observe infrared that
comes to us from space. And infrared, as you
may know, we normally associate it with heat.
Well, how am I going to detect something that's
very, very cold in space if my detector is hotter
than what I'm trying to detect? There's no way
to see something that is warmer than... the temperature
of your detector. So your detector has to be
very cold, extremely cold. So these are the baffles,
and there are many, many layers. So that when
sunlight hits one layer... That layer absorbs
it and re -radiates it in both directions, forward
and back. So there's less that goes to the next
layer. So then the next layer re -radiates it,
and by the time it gets to the fourth layer,
hardly anything goes towards the telescope. And
so it is insulated, and it drops to deep space
cold temperatures. And it's literally where the
sun don't shine right now. So the solar pounders
are getting the solar energy from the bottom.
Yeah, because that's the direction the sun is,
correct. So it radiates off the bottom, and those
are the things that protect it. And we see how
all those layers. All the layers, yeah. Amazing.
Yeah, and it's specifically tuned for the infrared
part of the spectrum. You remember the spectrum.
So you have, like, visible light, right? Roy
G. Biv, right, if you want to remember it. Red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
Those are the... parts of the spectrum we can
see. But there's light outside of this. There's
like, beyond the violet, there's ultraviolet.
That's how you get that. And below the red is
infrared. Not visible to the human eye. By the
way, insects can see ultraviolet. We can't. That's
why bug zappers work. You put a UV light in a
bug zapper, the bugs say, oh my gosh! I love
ultraviolet. And then they get zapped. And we're
old enough to remember before there were bug
zappers, you'd had a picnic bulb for twilight
picnics. And it's like a yellow bulb, kind of
yellow, amber bulb. It was a bug bulb. It was
sold as bug bulbs. It's not that they repelled
bugs. It's that the bugs couldn't even see it
because their whole vision is shifted towards
the ultraviolet. And it leaves out the deep red.
Yeah. So that's evidence we're smarter than bugs.
Luckily. One piece of evidence that we're smarter
than bugs. So just to bring that to a closure,
the earliest forming galaxies in the universe
radiated a lot of ultraviolet. So you might say,
well, let's get an ultraviolet telescope. No.
Because 14 billion years later. The expansion
of the universe has redshifted the ultraviolet
into the infrared. So if you want to see the
birth of galaxies, you've got to know what they
look like in the here and the now. And in the
here and the now, it's in the infrared. So this
is a telescope specifically tuned to see galaxies
born at the edge of the universe. And infrared
also allows you to see deep into gas clouds.
Now, when they're showing you an image like this.
So right here, this is the Pillars of Creation,
which were so named at the time Hubble. first
attempted this. We were gaga over the Hubble
image of this. And now like the JWST, oh my gosh.
For those who are more prone to religion, some
have called this the hand of God. Because if
you look at the pillars, you can kind of picture
like a, you know, a thumb and fingers. Yeah.
So, but regardless, this is nearby. This is the
telescope. peering deep into gas clouds that
otherwise would enshroud what's going on. And
you get to see stars being born, planets being
born. And so what's remarkable about JWST is
that to be tuned for the edge of the universe
and the birth of galaxies is the same properties
you would want to see the birth of stars. A star
is born right in front of your nose. that would
otherwise be cloaked by gas. And infrared penetrates
those clouds and enables you to see it as though
the cloud isn't even there. And you already know
this because if you're driving through fog, okay,
you put on your fog lights. The fog lights are
not blue. They're like reddish, amber, okay?
That improves your ability to see through the
fog. If we could see infrared, That's the kind
of light you'd use then you wouldn't even know
the fog was there That's why self -driving cars
will be amazing. It won't matter if it's foggy
You'll be able to see everything just give them
infrared sensors. The fog is irrelevant They
can drive 100 miles an hour in dense fog and
all the cars will see each other and they want
to change lanes They tell other cars I'm gonna
change lanes the part for them open up and we
won't get 40 ,000 deaths a year as we currently
do from automobile accidents Now how much bigger
is this telescope so um it's about so you want
to think about collecting area, and I forgot
the exact number Something like eight times around
there more powerful in the sense of it can see
things eight times dimmer There you go. So that's
two. There's about two and a half squared. It's
about eight times the area. And the technology
obviously is improved as well. So like the ability
that. Well, our detectors are better. And let
me remind you that when the Hubble was designed,
it was designed in like the 1980s. And it was
scheduled to go up. And then we had the Challenger
accident. And that delayed the shuttle program.
So there's Hubble sitting there in mothballs
with an old Microsoft chip. And by the time it
launched, it was already not as fast as it could
have been. And so the very first servicing mission
swapped all that out and put in better methods
and tools for measuring what it is we always
needed it to do. So one sad part about this is
that it's not serviceable. We have no access
to that point in space a million miles from the
moon. We haven't left low Earth orbit since 1972.
We're not going out a million miles from Earth
to fix a telescope. So that's unfortunate. Maybe
a robotic fix. I don't know. To refill some of
the fuel. It needs fuel to station keep. Didn't
it get hit by a micrometeor? Yeah. Well, that's
the brakes when you're in space. Yeah. But it's
not. it doesn't affect the overall performance.
That's amazing. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's huge,
and micrometeors will do small damage, but you
don't want it in the middle of a meteor storm.
That would be totally bad. And do they, I mean,
they obviously know, like, where some of the
asteroid belts are and where some of the, like,
nearby Earth objects are. Yeah, so in this context,
so first, most asteroids are in the asteroid
belt. So that's between Mars and Jupiter. So
I have an asteroid named after me. Congratulations.
I don't mean to brag or anything. Can't you get
a star named after you online? Not authentically.
You just get robbed. They just pretend it's yours.
They'll send you a map with your name drawn in
the map. See, pay for a piece of paper. Yeah,
they claim that it gets registered with the astrophysicist,
but it doesn't. There's only one way we name
stars, and that's by committee and by traditions
and this sort of thing. They're fascinating traditions.
So planets are named after Roman gods. And planet
moons are named after Greek characters in the
life of the Greek god who's the counterpart to
that Roman god. So Jupiter, for example, one
of its moons is Ganymede. Ganymede was the manservant
of Zeus. And Zeus and Jupiter were corresponding
gods in Greek and Roman. And not only that, what's
the number? About half, somewhere around there,
of all the stars in the night sky that have names,
have Arabic names. So in my field, we have deep
respect for people who made great inroads into
understanding the natural universe. And the golden
age of Islam from a thousand years ago made material
contributions in this regard. And, of course,
Greek and Roman legends and this sort of thing.
So there they are in its influence on Western
culture. So, yeah, no, the universe is a fun
place. Pretty fun place. Oh, yeah. So this James
Webb telescope, in terms of its ability to recognize
things, like what magnitude of improvement are
we talking about from the Hubble? Yeah, factor
of 10. Yeah, factor of 10. Yeah, easily. That's
right. Well, a factor of 10 for the things Hubble
could see, but it's incalculable. when it sees
things that Hubble could have never seen because
Hubble was not tuned for the infrared. So then
you can't even compare it. It's a complete other
window opened up to the universe for you. So
what has changed in terms of our understanding?
The web has been in the million -mile orbit or
however far away it is for how long now? Well,
it got there and then we did some engineering.
So I guess a year, year and a half. And what
has changed in our understanding? So that's been
people's first question. And what I want to do
is temper that to say something a little different.
So, yes, we expect James Webb to make great discoveries.
We expect that. But the first order of business
is hardly ever let's discover something new today.
It's here's something that we have limited understanding
of. Let's improve on that. And in so doing, we
deepen our understanding of how things work in
the universe. That doesn't always involve overturning
a previous idea or discovering something that
nobody ordered. All right. That will happen.
We fully expect that to happen. But we targeted
parts of the sky. because we know other telescopes
have gone there before. And we're going to say,
how can we further advance and deepen our understanding?
One thing it's going to be able to do, and it
has already done, we have, you know how many
exoplanets there are? I don't know how many of
your audience was born after 1995. How many 27
-year -olds and younger? Probably quite a few.
Quite a few, okay. So I will take this opportunity
to knight them Generation X. 1995 was the first
exoplanet discovered, a planet orbiting another
star. And I'll never forget that because it was
my first time on national television. I was freshly
minted as director of the Hayden Planetarium
in New York City. And NBC sent the – New York
City, there's the media. news headquarters, right,
of all the networks. So NBC sent an action cam.
They interviewed me because of my title, not
because they knew or gave a crap who I was. My
title was director of the planetarium. And so
I gave my best professorial reply. I said, well,
it's the Doppler shift. This is how it's discovered
and what we do and how we measure it. And I was
describing the fact that when you discover these
planets, you don't actually see the planet. You
see the effect of the planet's gravity on the
host star. And so if you'd watch the host star,
the host star like jiggles, okay, just a little
bit in response to the planet going back and
forth around it. So you're measuring the star.
So I motioned that like with my hips. And that
evening on the evening news. That's all they
showed was me jiggling my hips Okay, that's how
you're gonna do this Okay, you don't want me
to be professor Neil you want me to be sound
bite Neil all right so from then on I practice
my sound bites And a soundbite is like three
sentences. Oh, so you recognize that this is
the format now. Correct. And I said, I can't
just give them my stump speech as a professor
of astrophysics. It has to work in their medium.
And so I went home and stood in front of the
mirror and had people just shout out things to
me. Anything in the universe, any idea, object.
Person place or thing and I would come up with
like three sentences that are interesting Make
a smile and be tasty enough to want to tell someone
else the anatomy of a sound bite Try it say anything
in the whole universe. How do we know how just
one word? Just okay anything the Big Bang Big
Bang ooh the birth of space -time energy and
Everything we know and love about this universe
occurred 14 billion years ago, and we have no
idea what happened before it. And we're still
expanding, as we will, forever. I read an article...
That's my soundbite for the Big Bang. That's
a good soundbite. I read an article about the
Webb Telescope, and what they were taking into
consideration is the possibility that the Big
Bang may be incorrect, and that the universe
might be larger and older than we think. So...
I hesitate to ask what pages on the internet
you hang out on. It wasn't saying the universe
is older. It's saying as more data and new information
comes in, there is a distinct possibility that
the Big Bang might just be the – it just might
explain the reach of the technology and not the
actual scale of the universe itself. Okay. So
the way to think about this is – And this is
the way science has worked since basically the
year 1600, where Galileo sort of starts codifying
what people knew probably should be happening,
but no one really did it in large scale. If you
have an idea about something, then you test it
multiple ways and get other people to test it.
And if the tests give you consistent results,
you have a new understanding of the universe.
When that happens, that... knowledge of the universe
doesn't go away. It doesn't get undone. What
happens typically is you have a deeper understanding
of the universe in which that understanding gets
embedded. And you realize that you only understood
a small part of a larger whole. But the small
parts you did understand, where you had multiple
experiments that confirmed it, that doesn't change.
So the cleanest example of this, and I'll get
back to your question, is Newton's laws of motion
and gravity. Did anyone see anything move faster
than a galloping horse in his day? Probably not.
And so the Newton's laws of motion and gravity
worked. They worked not only for galloping horses.
It worked for the moon in orbit around the Earth
and the Earth in orbit around the sun and Jupiter's
moons in orbit around Jupiter. All right, and
for the planets. So, okay, but wait a minute.
It doesn't work for Mercury. Mercury's orbit
is not following Newton's laws. Is something
wrong with the data? Let's check it. Data's correct.
Oh my gosh, what's happening? Einstein comes
along and says, I have a new understanding of
gravity and a new understanding of motion. And
it accounts for this weirdness in Mercury's orbit.
What was the weirdness? Its shape was not exactly
what Newton's laws of gravity would give you.
Its shape could only be accounted for when you
throw in Einstein's theory of general relativity.
Why? Because... The sun's gravity is so monstrous
and Mercury's orbiting close enough to it that
it's being influenced by extra phenomenon going
on in the universe that's the product of very
high and significant gravity. And so then do
we throw Newton out the window? No, actually.
You know what Newton's laws are? They're what
Einstein's laws look like when you put in low
speeds and low gravity. If you put it in low
speed, they become Newton's laws in that limit.
Newton's laws don't stop working where they used
to work. Apollo to the moon used only Newton's
laws because Einstein didn't matter at those
scales. The moon and earth and rockets, we're
not going fast enough for any of that to matter.
But when you start going fast enough, you cannot
use Newton's laws. You have to use a deeper understanding.
Einstein take us. You go into the center of a
black hole, you get black holes from Einstein.
Center of a black hole, there's a singularity.
All the theories say the matter occupies zero
volume, thereby having infinite density. And
that's kind of weird. What? No, you can't have
infinite. No. That's a limit of Einstein's theory.
That's where it breaks down. Some have joked
that's where God divides by zero. Remember in
math class, you can't divide by zero. It's not
defined or not allowed. So in Einstein's equations,
we're dividing by zero at the singularity. So
we all know that as brilliant as Einstein was
and as successful as his general theory of relativity
has been, it has limits. And one limit is the
center of a black hole, and another limit is
the very birth of the universe itself. But getting
back to your question, the Big Bang. So we have
top people working on trying to resolve this
singularity problem. And in so doing, you get
to some ideas that, well, maybe our Big Bang,
because the Big Bang is not going to go away.
All the data support this. So now I've got this
Big Bang thing, okay? And, well, is this embedded
in something bigger? Ooh. So when you put like
quantum physics and general relativity and you
try to come up with some bigger understanding,
deeper understanding, strength theorists have
been all into this. You get a multiverse. We
didn't pull that out of our ass. That came out
of the equations. So how old is the multiverse?
I don't know. It's definitely older than our
universe because it birthed our universe and
it births other universes and it births. The
way the equations drive it, an infinity of universes.
This is the idea that maybe there's a version
of us in another where I'm bald and you got the
afro, but everything else is the same. And also
a version where everything's the same. Where
everything would be the same, yes. Everything
you've ever said has been said before exactly
in the same order. Correct. There's no reason
to presume that everything in this universe hasn't
already played out. in the exact way in another
one of these infinite universes. And in an infinite
number of different ways. Correct. And so that
is what comes out of the equations. So that makes
the Big Bang a kind of a small part of a much
larger whole. And so, yeah, we're ready for that.
But the fact that the universe had a beginning
14 billion years ago, and there's the cosmic
microwave background, all of these features are
intact. They're not going to all of a sudden
not... Apply that's my point. That's my long
answer to your so this clean thing that happened
14 billion years ago What is the predominant
theory of why? So this multiverse concept gives
us a reason why okay, so It's like imagine you're
rolling around in a basin Okay, and you're stable
there You're just fine. But then something kicks
you out of the basin and you didn't know that
there's a huge hill to roll down after you come
out of that basin. But you didn't know that.
You thought everything was just fine. You roll
down that hill, you're gaining energy. At the
bottom of the hill, something stops you. And
then where does all that energy go? One of the
hypotheses, and I'm highly simplifying here,
is that... The energy gained by rolling down
a hill, and these are energy hills that would
exist in this sort of higher dimensional space
that we're talking about. That energy has to
manifest in that object somehow, and it becomes
an explosion. With enough energy, it gives birth
to matter, everything that we know and love,
and it expands. Because when you concentrate
that much energy in a small spot, that's the
only thing you... can do. I understand that you're
simplifying it, but I don't understand. Simplify
it in the sense that by using this basin analogy
and rolling down a hill, that there are equations
of the energetics of a system, and this is called
a false vacuum. So you can be in a place that's
not the true bottom energy state of the system,
but you think everything is fine, but it's not.
And so, If you move around among these hills
and valleys, you end up birthing universes out
the other side. And this multiverse concept actually
delivers this for you, basically for free. That
thought would be that the Big Bang is just one
of many events that happen in the multiverse.
Correct. And not only that, it could be that
other... Big Bang events might have a different,
slightly different laws of physics in it. So
you want to watch out for that if you cross over
from one universe to the other and the charge
on the electron is slightly different. You could
like, all your atoms could just scatter or compress
into a pile of goo. Yeah, so take a... Take something
to test first. Yeah, send a chicken out there.
Chickens get no respect. Whatever happened to
guinea pigs? Well, guinea pigs are cute in their
fur. They're cute and furry. Oh, my gosh. Chickens
are way easier to just send to space. I spent
a whole section in this book talking about people
who love animals and want to care for them and
don't want to eat them. But the only loved ones
that are cuddly. Oh, yeah, for sure. You make
a plush toy out of it. My agent said that. She
knows I hunt. She's like, you should hunt pigs
because they're ugly. I'm like, how dare you?
First of all, domesticated pigs are adorable.
They are. Yeah. Domesticated dogs are ugly, too,
because they're desperate. In fact, I have a
voice cameo of a pig. Disney XD cartoon called
Gravity Falls it's a farmhouse and there's a
pig that lives with everybody and the pig eats
some slop that the kids are told makes you smarter
and so they bought it at a fair or something
so they went to sleep putting the slop on their
forehead thinking it would get into their head
and make them smart. But the pig sees it on their
forehead and licks it off of their forehead.
And then overnight, the pig becomes a supreme
genius, builds an atom smasher, builds a voice
translator. And while the pig is smart, I'm its
voice. It's cute. It's cute. And so, but what
was I talking about before? Big bang. Multiverses,
different laws of physics. Yeah, slightly different
laws of physics are a fascinating prospect. How
they might vary and how you might want to avoid
it. Oh, when I was talking about you want to
save animals, I've never seen anyone say save
the leeches. No, no one cares about bugs. Save
the ticks. In particular, parasites. Save the
mosquitoes. Mosquitoes, you know, the biggest
enemy of humans. As big an enemy as we are to
each other through warfare in the history of
civilization, the greatest enemy to human life
has been the mosquito. Responsible for more than
a billion human deaths in the history of civilization.
And so here we have mosquitoes, ticks, tapeworms,
you know, go down the list and you can ask if
you really. Into animals and don't want to kill
them if you heard that ticks were endangered
Would you start a movement to protect ticks?
would you do that and If you would have more
power to you, but I'm thinking you're not why
would you if you know about Lyme disease? This
is my point. This is my point. By the way, the
Lyme virus wants to live too, right? These are
all creatures on God's green earth, right? And
so you end up being a species bigot. In the chapter
Meatarians and Vegetarians, there's the philosophies
that each of those camps will embrace. And the
question is how thoroughly thought through are
those? In one example, let's say you don't want
to kill animals. So you have a humane mousetrap
in your basement. Okay? Why not? You don't want
to snap the neck of the mouse. That's cruel.
And you like animals, right? So you save the
mouse. You got to check on it every few days
because they dry out quickly if you trap it.
So what do you do when you catch it? What do
they do? Release it. Release it back into the
wild. guaranteeing the mouse gets eaten whole
by an owl or pecked apart by all manner of woodland
predators between nine and 18 months of its life.
So the safest thing to do with your mouse is
to leave it in your basement. If you really care
about animal life and the mouse managed to get
into your basement, leave it there. It'll live
up to six years in your basement. I lived in
Colorado for a while next to an ashram. And I
was visiting the ashram and talking to the woman
who runs it. And she sprayed raid all over these
ants. And I go, what are you doing? And she's
like, well, it's unfortunate. But, you know,
we have to address the fact that we have an infestation
of insects. I'm like, you just mass killed all
these living beings with poison from the sky.
And you did it in front of me. Aerial assault.
While you're espousing the benefits of Buddhism
and meditation. Yeah, so people kind of cherry
pick. Yeah. And I understand it. It's odd. I
don't mind if someone cherry picks as long as
they're completely self -aware of it. Most people
aren't. And by the way, the home where you're
saving the mouse, I did a rough calculation.
It's probably made from the wood of about 50
trees. Each tree could have lived 100 years but
didn't because it was cut down to make your home.
The studs, the 2x4s, the floorboards, the wall
panels, the siding. And each of those trees was
home to birds and insects and fungus and squirrels
and every day of that tree's life. Via photosynthesis,
it created 15 times the mass of the mouse in
breathable oxygen. So I ask you, who do you think
nature cares more about? The tree or your one
ounce mouse? Probably the tree. I'm thinking.
And some trees live a thousand years. Well, have
you paid attention to some of the new research
that's being done about how... Trees communicate
with each other. I'll get to that. Yeah, I'll
get to that. That's in that chapter, the meatarians
and vegetarians chapter. So trees are fascinating.
I've heard people say, well, the mouse has a
beating heart and the tree does not or plants
do not and animals do. And I said to my, well,
let me think this through. If you cloak a tree,
does it not suffocate? If you cut a tree, does
it not bleed? If you cut off its nutrients at
the base, does it not wither and die? Well, when
they're aware they're being eaten, they release
plant defense chemicals. I'm getting there. All
I'm saying is the tree gets nutrients from the
soil to the topmost leaf. It does it not for
want of a beating heart. It does it in spite
of not having one. It has a circulation. It just
has a different way of life. It's where I get
my maple syrup from, tree blood. So to fault
a tree or plant life for not having a beating
heart, when it's not that they need one and don't
have one, it's that they don't need one and never
wanted one. Now, you're talking about the mycelium.
So this is an interconnected network. It's a
fungal network. underfoot in a forest where it
connects multiple kingdoms of life. There are
four kingdoms. You might have learned that there
were two. We've upped it since then. Those two
kingdoms are still intact. But like I said, now
there's more. It's embedded in a larger truth.
There's the plant kingdom, animal kingdom, fungal
kingdom. And then we have a kingdom that includes
all of the bacteria and archaea and other microscopic
life forms. And so here's an interesting fact.
Lost sleep for a week over this. Ready? If you
look at the common ancestor between fungus and
animals, because the tree of life ultimately
has one taproot, okay? And as it splits, it speciates,
and you get all these things. The diversity of
life on Earth is enabled by the fact that life
can speciate. Okay. You look at the common ancestor
between animals and fungus. The common ancestor
between humans and mushrooms split later than
its common ancestor split with green plants.
What that means is we and mushrooms are more
alike than either we or mushrooms are to green
plants. Well, mushrooms breathe oxygen. All I'm
saying is, you grill a portobello mushroom? What's
the first word people use to describe it? Vegetarian.
No, no. No, we talk about mushrooms tasting meaty.
Yeah. Yeah, meaty. Meaty mushroom. No one has,
last I checked, no one has ever accused kale
of tasting meaty. No. So in a way, we're kind
of biting into ourselves. Plus mushrooms, you
know, shrooms, you know, people have whole relationships
with mushrooms. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And
mushrooms are fungus. Fungus thrives on our body.
Have you ever done psychedelic mushrooms? I've
never done anything psychedelic. Why? Can I tell
you why? Yeah, please do. So I don't know if
it's a good reason. I don't know if it's the
best reason that can exist. But for me, it's
a really good reason. The human mind barely works
as it is. Barely. You ever see a book of optical
illusions? No one doesn't love a good book of
optical illusions. And you turn the page. Oh,
what is that? Oh, is it in the page? Out of the
page? Is the line longer? Is it shorter? And
you scratch in your head. These are simple line
drawings that confound the human mind's ability
to interpret. Our brain barely works as an accurate
decoder of the natural world around you. You
now want to stir in chemicals? I recognize it'll
take you on a ride, but I have always valued
objective reality. I don't want anything interfering
with my understanding. of what is actually happening
in front of me. And there are people who would
claim that under the influence, they're accessing
some actual other reality. All I can say is if
in that other reality you can, you know, invent
the James Webb Space Telescope, tell me about
it. If you can figure out how to fly, you know,
and if you can do that, tell us about it. And
the people say, oh, I visited Venus when I was
on a head trip. Did you bring back evidence?
Evidence matters. Do you bring it? No. But it
was in their head. Well, the material world,
what we're talking about is actual physical objects,
right? It's like if you could bring back something.
The physical universe. The physical. What they're
experiencing is something akin to what you could
call a hallucination. You could call it. a portal
where physical reality doesn't exist and you
only exist as consciousness. Here's my skepticism.
I don't mind people saying that they visited
another planet or whatever, wherever they visiting
or some astral plane. Okay. I don't. Okay. I'm,
you know, write a travel log and share it with
people as some have done. I guess I would ask.
whether what you experienced is part of an objective
reality that we can all recognize. Because if
it's not, then it's completely in your head.
And if it's completely in your head, it's less
useful. What do you mean by that? Part of an
objective reality? An objective reality. So here's
an example. When people have these near -death
experiences, or one where they're dying on a
table and a common... They leave their body and
they look back on themselves. Okay. That's a
thing going. That's something. Okay. Right. Let's
investigate this. Okay. So the test for whether
you really left your body or whether you were
hallucinating it is get some writing that faces
the ceiling up above your body. Okay? They've
done this experiment. And if you're floating
above your body, above that piece of paper, when
you come back to life, you should be able to
say what's written on that piece of paper. And
that has yet to happen. If you get above it.
Yeah, if you get above it. Correct. That has
yet to happen. So where would that piece of paper
be? Suspended? No, you have to put it up on a
shelf or something. Yeah, you'd be able to put
it in a way that it would be clearly... But then
the person would have to die knowing that piece
of paper was there and then be brought back?
Possibly. So you'd have to tell them, hey, I
know you're going to die. You're going to die.
If you come back, I have a piece of paper up
here. Go read from it. That seems like a pretty
ridiculous experiment to try to achieve. Wait,
wait, wait. Pause. Pause? Ridiculous experiment.
It's like, hey, I know this guy's about to die,
but instead of concentrating on bringing him
back to life, let's write down on a piece of
paper and leave it on the shelf. But who the
fuck is going to do that? You know what they
did? What? In 1895, after Wilhelm Röntgen discovers
x -rays and they find out it penetrates your
body and you can see bones inside your body,
you know what they did? What? They set up x -ray
machines at the bedside of dying people. to see
if they can see a soul leave the body. Then everybody
just got cancer from the radiation. They died
from cancer? I thought that was an admirable
attempt. Yes. Interesting. To make a measurement.
Yeah, that's interesting. Yes. But how would
you possibly know that someone is going to die
and or have a near -death experiment? A near
-death experience, rather, and then put a piece
of paper on a shelf? What you want to do, you'd
have to be really organized about that. Yeah.
And if you want to do this en masse. You'd have
to just, like, have shelves in every bedroom.
Have shelves in every room. Of every ER. Every
ER, correct. How often does that happen where
people have above their body experiences? It's
very frequently reported. Very frequently? Oh,
yeah. I'm just saying that the brain is capable
of so much extraordinary thought within itself.
Of course. That what I care about for the world
is what is objectively true. And what's objectively
true can be verified by multiple people. And
if it's only true within your head. It's not
useful is all I'm saying. How could it not be
useful if it's useful to you? And if useful to
you – but hold on. If it's useful to you and
then that usefulness to you actually manifests
itself in something that gets created because
of this experience. Like Cary Mullis created
the PCR method because he had an acid trip. And
during the acid trip came up with this idea.
So I – What we'd have to ask is, how frequent
is that? So you get everybody who takes trips
of any kind, be it mushrooms or acid, and look
at the body of their new thoughts that have come
from them for them having, when they credit it.
And Carl Sagan was a big pothead. Okay? And highly
productive scientist. So the question is, does
it give you some insight which, when you were
not under the influence, gets you closer to an
objective reality? That's an interesting question.
Carl Sagan actually believed that there was,
the way he described, what was his description,
the way he described it? But he said he believed
that there are thoughts that were only available
when you were under the influence of marijuana.
That is certainly the case for any drug. But
he felt like those thoughts were beneficial.
Well, I can ask, are those thoughts more connected
to reality than if you were not so influenced?
I did an experiment with myself. When I first
started writing in graduate school at a monthly
column, I... You know, there's that stereotype
of Hemingway with a drink, you know, and they're
writing and that's their creative moment. I said,
I don't really like hard liquor, but I like wine.
So I said, let me get a bottle of wine and drink
wine while I write. And I said, yeah, this is
good. This is good. And I'm doing it. And then
I did it without wine. This is an experiment
I conducted on myself. And it was not as fun.
Composing without the influence of just some
you know a smooth sort of low level sort of wine
buzz But I looked at the two there was no contest
my Completely sober writing was vastly better
than what I was writing under the influence of
Several glasses of wine. Even though I believed
it was really good. But hold on a second. What
kind of writing are you talking about? If you're
talking about fiction? No, no, prose. Okay. Prose.
What are the greatest examples of fiction enhancing,
being enhanced rather by, under the influence
of... drugs and chemicals is Stephen King. If
you go and read Stephen King's early work versus
the stuff after he got sober, and I'm a gigantic
Stephen King fan. Was it just alcohol in his
case? Cocaine. Oh, other drugs too. A lot of
cocaine, a lot of alcohol, cigarettes, a lot
of cigarettes. It was way better. It's vastly
superior. Darker, deeper, stranger, more bizarre,
more shocking. In the day, you're saying? In
the day. Read it today. Read Carrie today. No,
no, no. You're saying what he created in the
day under that influence. Yes. The stuff under
the influence. The stuff he created under the
influence. Carrie is deeply dark. Oh, my gosh.
It's so dark. Oh, yeah. It's so dark. So is Pet
Sematary. Almost all of them. What was Shawshank
Redemption? I think all of them were when he
was fucked up. He wrote some good stuff after
he was fucked up. But like Cujo, he doesn't even
remember writing. And it's fantastic. So is this
something you would recommend for creative people?
I recommend Stephen King. Get back on Coke, sir.
Stay off Twitter. Get back on Coke. I'm kidding.
So my one little experiment with glasses of wine.
Yeah, that's not enough. That experiment's not
enough. I personally feel that under the influence
of marijuana, I come up with some of my best
ideas for comedy. for stand -up comedy writing.
I like to, I do the George Carlin method. I hear
you got a new show ready to drop. I'm looking
forward to that. I love your work, by the way.
Thank you very much. Thank you. I do the George
Carlin method. I write sober and then I punch
it up high. Okay. As opposed to the opposite.
Well, George Carlin had a great point. He's like,
you should write about things that you're thinking
about and things that are important or things
that are on your mind. And then he would let
it sit, and then he would smoke pot and go back
to it. And then he would come up with all the
funny, all the ridiculous aspects of it, and
he would interject them into there. Yeah. Yeah.
So so I'm just saying to the extent I'd like
to know how reliable that is. Well, here's the
other point that I should say. There's many people
that don't do any drugs that write fantastic
stuff. And there's many comedians that are completely
clean and sober that have done their best work
once they got clean and sober. That's true, too.
Both those things are true. Right. But I think
they're tools. And we've lost some comedians.
I mean, you know. Mitch Hedberg, for example,
one of my favorites. Yeah, so Mitch was a genius.
Yeah, I really loved his stuff. And he had a
really bad drug. His injectable heroin was his
thing, which is one of the worst. But the point
is, it's like... Their tools and I used to have
a joke about it like that marijuana is like any
other tool It's like a hammer you could build
a house with a hammer or you could hit yourself
in the dick if you're fucking crazy And that's
that's the problem with all sorts of things They
need to be managed responsibly and people need
to understand what the effects are what the dosage
is and that's where science comes Okay, here's
what I'll do. Here's what I'll do I still have
some writing projects that I'm going to finish.
You're going to take mushrooms? No. When I'm
done with what I know I wanted to write before
I died, then I will consider this. Then come
to daddy. I'll come to papa. I'll come to papa.
We'll hook you up. And then I'll see if some
new creative thing comes out of me at that time.
Well, I don't know if new creative things will
come out of you, but I think thoughts will come
out. that probably wouldn't exist without them.
And when you're talking about like really breakthrough
psychedelic moments like DMT or mushroom psilocybin,
one of the really fascinating things is they
mimic neurochemistry. Like DMT is in the brain,
and it's in all the organs, and it's a part of
natural human neurochemistry. Well, except, of
course, so is fentanyl. Fentanyl is a part of
the human neurochemistry? No, no, you have receptors
for it. Right, but DMT is produced by the human
body. It's actually a thing that the body makes.
We don't know why. The really heavy duty psychedelic
people think that in large doses, when you take
it and have these breakthrough experiences, what
you're doing is you're going through some sort
of chemical portal. And this chemical portal
is only available to people in these near death
experiences under extreme moments of stress,
where they have like these moments where they
go through the tunnel and the bright light and
they meet God. I mean, how many of these? would
I have to see to be convinced that it's a reliable
consequence of it? I think you would have to
do it. I think this conversation is like talking
to a person who's lived in an underground tunnel
their whole life who's dismissing sunlight. They're
like, what's the big deal with sunlight? I'm
fine down here with light bulbs and you and your
sunlight. Oh yeah, photosynthesis. I've got hydroponics.
So you're being a very effective, Drug pusher.
But the drugs that I'm interested in are not
dangerous. They're not ones that kill you. Like,
I've never done cocaine. I've never done heroin.
I've never done amphetamines. I'm not interested
in those. Does cocaine kill you? It can. It can
if you're rich enough. Well, it certainly can
kill you today because so much of it is laced
with fentanyl. Oh, yeah. Which is one of the
number one killers of young people, unfortunately,
is fentanyl. contamination of drugs. But I'm
interested in pharmacology. I'm interested in
what happens to the mind when it's under the
influence of different substances. Yeah, I guess
I'm less interested because I have to think more
about what you said. But look at how people misinterpret
reality. when they're not on anything. It's a
good point, and another good point is there's
many people that under the influence of those
drugs. The failure of eyewitness testimony just
to say what actually happened. Sure, and that's
under extreme duress. People end up in jail because
of that. Yes, for the rest of their lives. Yes.
Listen, I've had many, many conversations with
people on this podcast about that because I've
worked with my friend Josh Dubin, who was originally
an ambassador for the Innocence Project. Innocence
Project. He's done a bunch of stuff on his own
where he's gotten many, many, many people out
of jail. since project even has to exist in this
world is itself a travesty. Well, I'm hoping
that with science, there's going to come a time
where we can actually read the contents of people's
minds and that this will no longer be, I remember
this. It's an episode of Black Mirror. Yes, yes,
yes. But I think maybe, yes, that would be interesting.
But isn't the problem is that false memories
are a real thing. There are people who believe
something, and if you read their mind, you'll
just see what it is that they believe. But I
wonder if you could sort of back -engineer that
belief. I wonder if it could get to the point
where you could say, oh, you believe this because
this is a memory of the way you've described
the memory. No, we just do it Black Mirror style,
and you have a chip that records everything that
you see. That's probably the future. There's
a chapter in here called... law and order, where
I get into the role of science in deciding whether
someone is guilty or innocent. And it's the idea
that in a courtroom, someone says, I need a witness.
This is like in the court of science, that's
the last thing you are ever asking for. Because
we know, psychologists knew this first. The rest
of us figured it out after the fact that Eyewitness
testimony is one of the least reliable forms.
The third time I was rejected from jury duty,
I show up dutifully, okay? And the third time
they said there was a woman who was robbed on
the street of her groceries and her purse. And
they had the person who she accuses positively
identifies and her. It's a literal he said, she
said, okay? We read the particulars of the case.
She said he robbed her, the groceries, took it,
and then ran off. When the cops found the guy,
he was not in possession of anything she said
he took. They looked in the area if anything
stashed in dumpsters or anything. They didn't
find anything, okay? So that's the state of the
case. The judge reads the particulars and goes
to the – I'm down to the last 15. I'm almost
on a jury. For the first time in my life, I'm
almost there. And said, do you have any – does
anyone have any – think they would not be able
to convict based on the kind of information and
evidence that's been presented? And there's a
juror, 14, whatever, you're numbered, right,
until you're selected. He said, would you have
any – I said, yes, I'd have a problem. If the
only evidence available is eyewitness testimony,
then everything I know about it tells me I should
not trust it on the level where you end up putting
someone in jail. So I could not convict if that's
the only evidence you have. What the judge said
next was, are there any other jurors, like juror
14, who needs more than one witness? before they
would be able to convict. And I said, should
I jump in now and say that's not what I said?
What should I do? The person in front of me said,
Your Honor, that's not what he said. Ah! Okay?
And I said, oh, thank you. Thank you, Jesus.
He said, that's not what he said. And I resisted
with all my might to say, Your Honor. you were
eyewitness to what I said 20 seconds ago and
got it wrong. Yes. But I resisted, but I was
nonetheless on the street 20 minutes later. I
think you should have said that just for his
own edification. No, it was a she, by the way.
She. Sorry, I'm sexist. You're totally sexist.
What's wrong with me? We've all known that forever.
Slap myself on the wrist. Right. So I'm just
saying it's clear that the legal system. The
precision of... Deeply flawed. It's deeply flawed.
And they say, well, it's the best we have. Well,
then fix it. Yeah. I mean, if that's how you
were talking when they used to dunk people and
if you died face up, you were innocent and died
face down, you were guilty. That was the best
they had then, but we improved on it. Right.
If they drowned you, you weren't a witch. Congratulations,
you weren't guilty. Well, it depends. Yeah. That's
right. How you died. Yeah. And you'd otherwise
go to heaven. Right. So... Plus there's, in Columbus's
voyage, there's a lot. We talked about Columbus
last time on the show. Oh, I talked about Columbus
many times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's horrific.
So in one of the voyages, they went on some stretch
of time and they didn't have food and they had
Indians from their... that they brought on board
as well as some of their own crew. And people
were dying. And so at sea, what do you do with
a dead body? You throw it overboard, of course.
Okay. So a person who's keeping notes said all
the Indians they threw overboard floated face
down and all the Christians floated face up.
Oh, Christ. That's it. Okay. Okay. I guess that
could happen. Statistically, perhaps. I don't
know. But now we have his handwritten notes in
his testimony of something that is completely
fulfilling his own worldview's expectations of
how things should be. So in the whole sort of
law and order chapter, I just pick all that apart
and just try to say. You know, why not have jurors
that are really good at data analysis? How about
that? That would be nice, but that's really hard
to find. And then on top of that, if you are
dealing with eyewitness testimony, what do you
do? Do you just throw everything out completely?
Or do you try to assess whether or not that person
is capable of objective thought and reasoning?
No, you just, no. Because even people who are
better at it are still flawed at it. Right. Especially
under experiences. Under extreme duress? Stress
experience. Yes. Correct. As they've done many
times in psychology class. Yeah. They have, you
know, the class is unfolding and they stage some
violent thing with an explosion and then they
say, write what you just saw. Right, right. And
nothing agrees. Right, right. So, yeah, it's
a challenge. Which is the problem of conspiracy
theories after big events like 9 -11. Like all
the people that say they saw this and they saw
that and I remember this and I remember that.
Correct. And you have these little sound bites
of all these people and you piece them. together
like oh my god they planted bombs and they're
also there are people who say before before an
earthquake they knew it was gonna they say they
see all the animals running right and it's like
okay you reported that after the earthquake happened
not like before but doesn't that happen during
tsunamis don't don't animals actually do go to
higher ground I think that has actually been
documented I Okay, so I'm highly suspicious of
whether that's true because a tsunami, there's
no way to know that. Tsunami typically occurs
from an earthquake way offshore. Right. Okay,
and it's a very low amplitude wave. in deep water
that continues to gain amplitude as the water
gets shallower and shallower. So that's why waves
get bigger when they crash on the shores. So
as it comes to the shore. So if you're just an
animal in the woods, if you're not on the shoreline,
there's no way to know that. I think they were
talking about animals on islands and animals
that do live closer to the shore. And maybe there's
an indication because the water pulls back before
a tsunami. Sure, I can recognize that. But if
you're just an animal. somewhere onshore, away
from the coast, I don't really see that. I need
to see very good evidence for that and not just
someone's account. Yeah, I don't know if they're
talking about - This is my whole point. People
have accounts of all kinds of things. Do you
know, there's a whole other chapter called Risk
and Reward. All right, here's something. Surely
in your life, you have taken an average of numbers
before. Okay. Tell me yes. Sure. Lie to me even
if it's not true. I have, yeah. Okay. Do you
realize that the first time anyone ever did that,
to realize that maybe there's some interesting
result here, was after the invention of algebra,
trigonometry, geometry, and calculus. Really?
Statistics is just something that the human brain,
it's just not natural. It is completely foreign
to us. We don't know how to interpret simple
random events because we want to give meaning
to them. You know the thing where you're in some
other country in some other city and you meet
someone like a childhood friend. Yeah. And you
say, small world. Yeah. That's your first thought,
right? Small world. Okay. Here's how to cure
that. Okay. Next time you're in a foreign city.
go up to every single person you walk by and
say do I know you and They'll probably say no.
I mean know you personally. They'll know you
cuz you're dude, but they know you person. No,
just keep doing this and If they say no, I don't
know you then say big world Just do that You'll
do that millions of times. Okay before you meet
someone who you once knew And the proper statistics
will then get recorded for that. So no, it's
not a small world. It's a fucking big world.
And there are a lot of people in it who you don't
know. It's just very unusual when you meet someone
in another country that you know from back home.
Well, if you do the math, there are a lot of
things that people say are unusual where it would
be unusual if you didn't. Well, if you fly to
England and you don't tell anybody you're flying
to England and you run into a friend from back
home, That's pretty unusual. Look how often people
say that it happens. Well, we live in a strange
world now. That's precisely my point. Right.
Okay. Everybody you know has that story. If you
run the statistics on it, it would be odd if
you went your life. Presumably you have a normal
life and you know people and your school was
big and all of this. Okay. You didn't grow up
in a. farm with, you know, with, with nobody,
we didn't know anybody. It requires some basic
number of people. So there's a lot of errors
of statistics that we make of probability and
statistics. The sad part of it is there's an
entire industry that has risen to exploit that
fact. And they're called casinos. The fact that
you could go to a roulette table and somebody's
got a lot of money on seven. I said, why do you
have money on seven? It's due. What do you mean
it's due? Well, look at the previous rolls because
they'll show you the previous rolls and seven
hasn't appeared in 20 rolls or whatever the numbers
they put. So it's due. No, it's not due. This
is a failure of the human brain to understand
and interpret probability and statistics. There
are people who are going to roll dice. Okay.
If they need a low number, they'll take the dice
and like. Gently roll them. If they need a high
number, they'll throw them hard. This is crazy.
But those people are suckers. There's other people
that do understand statistics and they kick them
out of casinos because they count cards. Only
for those that are not purely random like a roulette
table or dice. Right. You think things like blackjack.
Correct. You can tilt the odds in your favor
a little bit and be systematic about it. But
I'm talking about pure probabilities. The fact
that someone thinks that a number is due. Right.
is itself. Do you realize the American Physical
Society? These are my physics peeps. That's our
physics society. 1986, they were going to have
their annual meeting in San Diego and there was
a hotel snafu. So they had to reschedule. And
so Vegas said, we'll take you. The MGM Marina,
which became the MGM Grand, we'll take you. 4
,000 physicists said, okay. 4 ,000 physicists
had their... Annual meeting in Las Vegas. And
let me tell you, okay, K through 12, is there
even a course offered in probability and statistics?
You learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, not
reading, writing, and probability and statistics,
right? It's kind of not there. And if it's there,
it's an elective, okay? So as a scientist, especially
as a physical scientist, I take some form of
probability and statistics. Every single year
I am in school. Different nuances and how data
can be looked at and analyzed and put together
and averaged. The average that I told you about,
you add numbers, divide by that. That's one of
a dozen kind of ways you can average numbers.
There are other ways. You can have a statistically
weighted average. It depends on the needs. Depends
on the situation. Point is, the physicists came
to Vegas. One week later, there was a news headline.
Physicists in town. lowest casino take ever.
We're told to never return to Vegas. Really?
Yes. They were told to never return? They were
told. Well, that might be apocryphal, but it
was in the headline. Really? Yeah. That's funny.
So these are people, these are my peeps, this
is what we do. A little too smart. We think about,
it's not because we took advantage of the blackjack
table, it's because they just simply didn't gamble.
Well, I'm the same way. I don't gamble either.
I look how big the place is. I'm like, how is
this made? By selling tickets to the buffet?
I don't think so. I don't think so. No, this
is made from suckers. Not. Me and my wife went
a few months ago. Let's say you're winning in
something. You're in the one -armed bandit and
you had a jackpot. What do they do with you at
that point? They see this is happening. What
does the house do? They check the machine. No,
no, no. They check you. They give you free drinks.
They give you free drinks. Yeah. They got a comely
server to come over to you and say, would you
like a free cocktail? Yes. To stir chemicals
into your brain to disrupt the little bit of
objective reality that you're experiencing. Release
your inhibitions. You're feeling lucky. Are you
feeling lucky, Neil? You're feeling lucky. Yeah.
I don't feel lucky at all at casinos. I feel
stupid. Oh, and another thing with the... State
lotteries? This is all in the risk and reward
chapter. State lotteries? Do you know what most
of the revenue, you know, it's the state money
that goes into the coffers, tax coffers. Do you
know where most of that money is allocated in
most states? No. It goes to education. Oh, that's
good. You didn't know that? No, that's great.
So that makes you feel a little better like you're
helping out your own state when you buy your
state lottery. Here's the thing. Part of me wonders.
Okay. Let me join you in a conspiracy thing here.
Okay. Okay. It's my conspiracy. Okay. Am I allowed?
Yes, please. Am I allowed one per year? I'll
give you all the ones you want. I love a good
conspiracy. The conspiracy is they have to make
sure that the school curriculum does not teach
probability and statistics. What? What? Because
if they did - Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait
a minute. If they did, then no one would play
the lottery. So they allocate money to education
with a specific mandate that you can't - No,
I'm not saying that. What are you saying? Yes,
I'm saying that. Jamie's saying no, no, no. It's
not like a law. No, no, no. No, I'm just saying
it's a little suspicious. That the very knowledge
of math that would undermine the ability of the
state lottery to make money is not a required
part of the math curriculum in kindergarten through
12. So you think – but you don't think that's
why. I'm just playing with the – no, I don't
really think that's why. Right. Okay, so I see
what you were doing there. You were assuming
that I was totally in on this conspiracy theory
and I have charts on my wall and websites devoted
to it. No, it just crossed my mind how odd it
is that when you know enough about probability,
you bet less. And when you bet less, the revenue
to the state would drop and that's the revenue
that would go to education. So it has the power.
to plant the seeds of its own undoing. And it
doesn't do that. I'm intrigued by that fact.
Just removing ourselves from the conspiracy theory
aspect of it, do you think that it would be beneficial
to teach probability and statistics to people?
Oh my gosh! Look at how many bad decisions we
make because we think we have an understanding
of what is random and what is not. There's the
one, they did this, but actually their analysis
was flawed, but the basis was well placed. So
the idea, you're playing a basketball game, and
somebody hits a few shots in a row, they've got
a hot hand, give it to them. They don't have
a hot hand. It is the natural consequence. If
you're shooting 50 % in a game, or 40%, and you
take, I don't know how many shots, you take 30
shots, You can look at the probability that you'll
have multiple shots in a row that are made. And
it's very high and it's very real. So it's not
something special happening. It is the randomness
of the statistics that's happening. Okay, but
this is talking about statistics, but from an
individual basis. Do you discount the idea that
sometimes people feel really good and they have
a very good sense of where the ball's going,
where they're more loose or relaxed or more practiced,
whatever it may be, and they're more accurate
because of that? If that's the case, no, so people
have good days, right? Right. Clearly. So this
is why that original analysis was slightly flawed.
Because a person can have more than what is typical
shots in a row. Right. Okay? And for that game,
you could look at their data, and they would
make 60 % of the shots instead of 40 % of the
shots. And if you make 60 % of the shots, you
then expect three in a row here, six in a row
there, five in a row here. In the random expression
of having a 60 % success rate in a basket, you
expect intervals where you make multiple shots
in a row. That's my only point. And that could
be a good day for you because you're shooting
60%. Right. And I want to recognize that. I'm
going to hand you the ball if you're having a
good day. You can totally have a good day. But
at the end of the day, you're not sinking. 20
here and none before it. No. The statistics maintain
themselves in the game, unless you get injured
or something, of course. So, but my point is,
we have such, and I don't want to blame people
for this. If it was natural to think statistically
about the world, it would have been the first
branches of math we would have ever discovered.
But it wasn't. It was like 1753. Sounds like
a long time ago, but it's 50 years after calculus
was invented. After calculus, which is not even
taught in school. Not long ago at all, really.
Okay, correct. There's a simple paper on the
benefits of taking the mean, mean is average,
of observations in astronomical data. This is
what an astronomer did it. First to take a mean.
And this is just, so that tells me we are victims
of our own brain wiring. And so – and it takes
many years to undo that wiring or to see through
it so that you are not – and it prevents you
from seeing other things, OK? How so? Do you
realize last year we lost as many people in the
United States to traffic accidents as we did
in all the years we fought in Vietnam? Look at
the effort we – put up as a country beginning
maybe 1967, certainly 68, to stop the carnage?
And that's just the American deaths, not to mention
the millions of deaths of the Vietnamese themselves,
North and South. Point is, our reactions to statistics
are very different depending on what caused it.
And I'm intrigued by that. I don't have a good
understanding of it. Any laws that treat it?
are going to have to fold in people's emotions.
Here's an example. You shoot deer with your bow
and arrow. There's a certain number of deer deaths
and human deaths by cars hitting deer in the
roads, especially in suburban, rural places,
okay? What do you do about this? What are you
going to do? Get a truck with a big -ass bumper.
That's what they do out here. The Joe Rogan solution.
That's the Texas solution. You ever see those
guys that work on ranchers? Make sure your truck
has significantly more mass than the deer. No,
they have specific bumpers that they build to
save people's lives. Right. And, of course, this
is what the old locomotives had if there were
cattle on the – you ever see that pointy front
on locomotives? Yes, exactly. Yeah, that was
the pride catalog. Yes. So it wouldn't roll over
the cow and derail the thing. So what do you
do? Do you accept the 100 deaths a year in your
county? Whatever. Human deaths. No one's counting
deer deaths here, right? Or do you find something?
Get yourself a big -ass bumper. Oh, there you
go. Big -ass bumper. Deer killer bumpers. Look
at those suckers. I like the Ford F -250 right
there. That's what I'm saying. Look at that one,
the Ford F -250, that red one. That's what I'm
talking about. The problem is if the center of
mass of the deer is above the level of that bumper.
But it's not. Well, for elk it would be. For
moose it would be. My wife grew up in Alaska.
No. Yes. No, not a 250. F -250? Center of mass
of an elk? A moose. A moose, yes. I'm sorry,
a moose. A moose is a different thing, yeah.
I saw a moose. Oh, boy. My wife grew up in Alaska.
When you see them for the first time, you're
like, how is that real? What the hell is that?
What? The first time I saw a moose - How did
that happen? I was in British Columbia, and I
saw it. It was like the scene in Jurassic Park
where Jeff Goldblum gets out of the Jeep, and
he's like - Yeah. It's like, who invented that?
Right, right. Look at the size of that thing.
Right, so if you're under the center of mass,
then it will just roll up and crush your windshield.
Yes. So you have to watch out for that. It will
go through your windshield. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's horrific. So here's my point. There is a
group, I forgot where, somewhere in New England,
who did a study. And the study was, if you have
100 deaths a year, we can drop that to maybe
30 deaths a year. How? By introducing... the
natural cat predator to the deer so it would
be like the puma or bobcat one of these sort
of mid -sized cats that hold the deer as their
quarry okay and they ran some models of how this
would go and you could drop the number of human
deaths by a factor of three okay uh because still
some deer would wander onto the road but You'll
lose about 10 children a year Yeah They'll just
snatch your kid out of the backyard and eat your
child So look at these numbers you killed a hundred
people in their cars or or the deer kill 30 people
plus 10 children No, no. The deer killed 30 people.
The bobcat kills 10. And the bobcat might kill
an adult. Not bobcat, but whatever is the next
mountain lion. Or whatever was native in the
region long ago. Okay? And so they did a study.
And the point is, you could not bring that suggestion
forward. Right. Because the government would
be introducing an animal that killed your children.
But no one's looking at the hundred people that
were, whatever the numbers were, it was a factor
of three or so. Do you know there's another solution?
The correct numbers are in the book. No, I'm
just giving this as an example. I understand.
We're not equipped to fold our emotions with
the data to arrive at a solution that would save
the most lives. I see what you're saying. There
is a technological solution that they've come
up with. a device that they put at the front
of the car that makes a very certain sound that
alerts deer to the presence. I've heard about
that. It's right on the edges of the... I've
heard about that, but I haven't... I read about
it, like, 20 years ago, so I haven't heard much
about it since. I don't know how effective it
is. It runs... The air going through it makes
a kind of a siren effect. Is that what it is?
Yeah, when I last remembered it. Yeah, well,
whatever it is, it develops some sort of a sound
that the deer can hear, and they avoid it, but...
They have a problem with headlights. I was in
Alaska, and there was a deer and a grizzly bear.
Must have been 300 yards away. Way down in the
valley. And the deer noticed it. And it was eating,
but it was eating very cautiously, always looking
to the bear. And I'm saying, if it could notice
a bear 300 yards and be cautious of it. Why can't
it know a Ford 250 barreling down a road? Because
it's not natural. Figure it out. It's a mammal.
It's got a brain. That takes forever. Let me
get angry with the deer for a second. And how
come we haven't killed all the stupid deer by
now, so the ones that are left are the ones that
recognize that cars kill them? Because they're
all stupid. They just have really good senses.
They have senses that are designed to avoid predation.
But they're living with us now. But how long
have they had headlights? Mice and rats figured
out how to coexist with humans. Rats are very
intelligent. They figured this out. Yeah, but
deer don't know what to do with headlights and
cars. It's a completely unnatural thing. So everyone
that doesn't, they... die, and the ones that
have a little bit of genetic variation that figures
it out, they'll survive. Sort of, because then
they get horny. The problem with deers, if you
look at the number of deaths - Sorry, I don't
know anything about the sex life of deer. I do.
Okay. One of the things that happens - Don't
tell me how you know. The uptick. Well, the rut.
When deer rut is when you hunt them, and one
of the things that happens during the rut is
they get ridiculous, and they just run out into
traffic. They can't even control themselves.
They chase does into the street. That's oftentimes
does. The male deer chase the female deer. Because
they're just chasing them. The females are just
trying to get away, and they just run out into
traffic. That happens. Or the male is trying
to chase the female, and all he's got on his
mind is he's got tunnel vision, and they just,
boom, gets hit by that F -250. Speaking of deer,
by the way, my sister drives an F -250. Or is
it a 450? Is there a 450? No, she does a 350.
Excuse me. Oh, she has a dually? Yeah, she's
got one where the tires can do separate things.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, she's serious. Don't mess
with my sister. Okay. Is your sister out there
off -roading? What is she doing with that crazy
truck? She just likes being badass when the time
comes. I like the way she thinks. But she doesn't
hunt, so it's missing half the equation there.
So on the subject of deer. in the chapter on
gender and identity. So I go there, gender and
identity, because it's a very hot topic. And
I just apply some rational thinking to it. Do
you know about Santa's reindeer? Do you know
about them? Sure, I know very much about them.
Oh, you do? Yeah. Okay, so do you know that -
A caribou. Yes, a caribou, correct. And, well,
you can domesticate the caribou. And when you
do, then both the - the boys and the girls have
antlers. Okay? Well, that's just the fact of
all caribou. Oh, all caribou. Excuse me. But
sorry, the domesticated ones are called reindeer,
but they're derived from the caribou. Correct.
So now watch what happens. So, as you may know,
the male deer lose their antlers in late October,
early November. Depending upon where they're
at. Unless you castrate them. You castrate them,
they'll keep their antlers. But otherwise, they
drop their antlers. Right. Before winter begins.
Generally not. No. Well, it depends on the animal.
But a lot of them keep it until almost spring.
And then they drop and they grow back very quickly.
That's nothing of what I've read or learned.
Of this animal. Or just caribou? No, caribou
specifically. Okay. The ones that became Santa's
reindeer. We're not talking about the deer in
Central Texas. No. They dropped them in the winter.
They dropped them November. Okay. The female
don't. The female don't. So all that means is
all eight of Santa's reindeer are female, which
means Rudolph has been misgendered. Interesting.
Well, do you know where the myth of Santa's reindeer
flying comes from? I think it's from mushrooms,
isn't it? Yeah, Amanita muscaria mushroom, which
looks like Santa Claus. Yeah. That's it. With
the red and white dots. And they love those things.
They love the Amanita muscaria mushroom to the
point where when people are doing mushroom ceremonies
and they go outside to urinate, caribou will
knock you over to get to your urine. Yeah. If
you have domesticated caribou, they will knock
you over to get to the urine because they smell
the Amanita muscaria and whatever. It's not psilocybin.
It has to be such a major. I'm trying to imagine.
how high I want to get to drink someone else's
pee. Well, caribou are not that wise, nor are
they educated, nor do they even understand the
concept of urine. Whatever the psychoactive compound,
well, their sense of smell is preposterously
intense. I mean, we can't even imagine what a
deer can smell. They can smell you hundreds of
yards away. I mean, I've seen deer go like this.
A hundred yards away. And then they bolt because
they smell you. They catch your wind. Yeah, they're
amazing. Here's a mystery that I've always had
to this day. Because dogs have very acute sense
of smell as well. Yeah. That's how you say that.
If you just say dogs smell good, you don't know
what that means, right? Do they smell better
than we do? Right. It's an ambiguous sentence.
Right. So they have an acute sense of smell.
So if they smell so acutely, why do they? get
within like a half inch of each other's butt.
Because they want to smell each other. But you
could smell that 100 yards away. Yeah, but they
want to smell everything. They want to smell
the hormones. Yeah, well, they're intensely attracted.
Okay, so it's so good. Yeah. Let me get up on
it. Yeah, they want to know if you're feeling
aggressive. Okay. If you're in heat. They want
to know all those things. Yeah, I just, I never.
Fascinating animals. Had that urge to do that
with other humans. You know, a bear could smell
somewhere in the neighborhood of nine times greater
than a bloodhound. So we should domesticate bears
and track down. Good luck with that. By the way,
have you seen a bear? You got to be able to find
this. I saw it on social media. There's a bear
walking down a highway and there's a tipped over
traffic cone and it looks at it and then writes
it back up and keeps walking by it. Wow. And
I say to myself, because I have a chapter in
here called Body and Mind. There it is. Check
this out. Just watch. It's a black bear. Clearly.
This looks wrong. Yeah, it looks wrong. Okay.
By the way, you found this video really fast.
Thank you for this. I think that's a grizzly
bear. Oh, he's got the lump on the neck? Yeah,
the way he looks. That's pretty crazy. Yeah,
that's grizzly. That's a total grizzly bear.
And it keeps going. Didn't even look back. Right.
What do you think is going on with that? I don't
want to say that's evidence of intelligence so
much as it's evidence of more going on inside
the animal's head than any of us would have previously
ever credited. Yeah. In another example, and
I get this example in Body and Mind again, there's
a magpie bird who there's a bottle of water in
some... playground area, park area. And it goes
up to the bottle of water and it dips its beak
in to drink from it. Okay, here it is. See it
is? Okay, it goes in and drinks from it. So watch,
it's going to drink. But the problem is there's
a limit to how far its beak can reach inside
of it. And so it gets a stone. That fits inside
the bottle, which raises the water level so that
its beak can continue to drink from it. Yeah.
This is some Archimedean crazy stuff going on.
It really is. The magpie, by those in the know,
is ranked among the smartest of birds. And this
is doing something I think humans wouldn't even
think to do. Probably many humans. Right. And
so do you remember? How did they teach you where
humans were in the tree of life when you were
in school? Like we were the smartest or the biggest
brain. How did they describe it to you? Yeah,
we're the top of the food chain. Okay. And what
do they say about our brains? Just tell me in
your – Well, it's the size of our brains that
makes us so superior. Okay. But then you look
at a magpie. Yeah, but dolphins' brains are bigger.
Yeah, 40 % larger. Okay. So then therefore what
is – whale brains are bigger. Yeah. So then how
do they, if there are other animals with bigger
brains and we want to stay at the top, what do
they say about those other animals? I don't know.
What do they say? No, I'm saying, okay, so you
know what they did? They say they're inferior?
So no, so what they did was say, they said, oh,
no, we don't have the biggest brain. Oh, but
brain to body weight ratio, then we're the highest.
Okay. Is that accurate with dolphins? Yes. So
our, because they're, they're bigger, much bigger
creatures than we are. And when you divide the
weight of the brain by the weight of the body,
we win. We beat out whales. We beat out dolphins.
We beat out elephants. Then there are those who
are fans of those say, well, you want to do it
lean weight because the dolphins and the whales
have a lot of blubber, and the brain is not having
to control the blubber. So cut away the blubber.
That boosts them, but they're still not as high
as us. So we walk away saying we're at the top.
However, what they did not say, which I had to,
40 years later, I learned this, that we do not
have the highest brain to body weight ratio among
animals, only among mammals. The magpie has a
higher brain to body weight ratio than humans
do, as do all other mid -sized birds, like crows,
owls, eagles, these folks, okay? All. have a
higher brain -to -body weight ratio than humans
do. So that rule that put us at the top was specifically
for mammals. And I'm angry that I didn't think
to hear how specific that was when I was taught
that in eighth grade. Isn't our understanding
of crows using tools very recent, like within
the last hundred years? All I can tell you is...
Any animal that we have ever got to study in
more detail than we previously did has shown
to be more intelligent than we ever gave it credit
for being. And you know who has the biggest brain
-to -body ratio of any creature on Earth? Who?
Some species of ants. Really? 15 % of their body
weight is their brain. And it's kind of obvious.
Some of them, like the whole front section is
their head. Right. It's kind of... In retrospect,
it's kind of obvious. And ants are very busy
doing some complicated things, and we don't know
what they're doing. Especially leafcutter ants.
They're busy, carpenter ants, leafcutting ants,
and cross over into termite land. I don't know
how big their brains are, but they're busy building
stuff. And they work in communication with each
other somehow. And they communicate. Yeah. One
of my favorite cartoons was two dolphins swimming
together, and there's a human. You know, it's
like one of these water parks, right? And one
dolphin says to the other. Speaking of the humans
that are up on dry land, they face each other
and make noises, but it's not clear they're actually
communicating. So I'm just saying we have a close
-up of an ant. Yeah, they recently released this
image, I think. So. What a horrific demon that
would be. Insects with so much detail on their
bodies. And to say, well, we're at the top. Really?
I got one for you. How much of the top are you?
Do you realize one slice of your lower intestine,
your colon? One centimeter slice lives and works
more microbes than all. than the total number
of humans who ever lived. So ask yourself, what
are you to those microbes? Are you Joe Rogan?
No, you are an anaerobic vessel of fecal matter
in which they thrive. And without them, you don't
exist. Well, you don't digest your food, first
of all. Second, you want to keep them happy because
if they're not happy, then they're in charge.
They send you to the nearest toilet as fast as
can be. So part of a cosmic perspective on this
world is looking at things in a way that decentralizes
who and what you are relative to everything else.
And you get a much more honest account of how
things work, how they're put together. That's
very hard for people to really grasp. You're
actually an ecosystem. Yes. Yes, and what is
the number? Some percent of your total body weight
is the weight of other living things, especially
what's alive and thriving in your gut. You're
just carrying them along. Well, that's the case
with all organisms, though. We like to think
of organisms as being individuals, but they're
actually hosts. No, I don't think amoebas have—
Well, not all, not when you get down to single
cells. Not single cells, but others, yeah. A
lot of symbiotic relationships going on. Oh,
yeah. And so you can have a cosmic perspective
that's not just the cosmos. Yes. The cosmic perspective
just here, life on Earth. And, you know, they
talked about the overview effect where the astronauts,
you probably had a few astronauts here as your
guests. Looking down. Yeah, you look down. I
prefer the view from the moon. I'll take it from
orbit. Are you going to do any of those? Like
if they let you up on the Jeff Bezos spaceship?
They send people up there all the time now, right?
It's fairly regular. I'm an astrophysicist. You're
not interested? No. Hear me out. Hear me out.
So take Earth and shrink it down to like a schoolroom
globe. So now we can think of distances relative
to that. And ask, how high up did Bezos and Branson
go? Okay. So here's a school. How far away would
you say? Quarter inch. You say quarter inch?
Okay. They went the thickness of two dimes. Oh.
And a boy who jumped out of a balloon some years
ago. Yeah. What's his name? Felix Baumgartner?
Mm -hmm. Thickness of one dime. So this idea
that they go, oh, I see the curvature of the
earth. No, you don't. You don't. I'm sorry. Jeff
Bezos doesn't see the curvature of the Earth?
You will see the edge of the Earth, but ask how
far away is your horizon when you're only that
high up? You can just look at that, go to the
schoolroom globe, go two dime thicknesses up,
and then draw a line to ask how much of Earth
do you see? You will see a circle, but that's
a circle cookie cut out of the larger sphere.
So it's a perspective issue. It's a perspective
issue. And by the way, the images when they showed
Felix Baumgartner, where he's prepared to jump,
you see this curved earth. That's a fisheye lens,
dude. Okay? Fisheye lenses take horizontal lines
and bend them convex when you're above the midplane
of the photo. In order to gather in more of the
image. Correct. That's the only way you can distort
it to fit it onto a flat plane because it's looking
at a full sort of 360, well, 180, and it's trying
to get it in. But what happens if you take that
horizontal line, the horizon, and put it below
the midplane of the camera? It then bends the
other way. Bends the other way. In fact, I have
a tweet. that did this. Look for Felix and throw
some keywords in there with my Twitter handle,
and I have an example of the photos. So, no,
he didn't see the curvature of the Earth, but
you think he did, and he's high up, and what
do we need NASA for, right? He's one dime thickness.
Elon Musk authentically goes into orbit, because
they didn't go into orbit. They went up and fell
back to Earth. He authentically goes into orbit.
So he is a centimeter. Well, not even. Let me
see. Yeah, a little less than a centimeter above
Earth's surface. The folks who really saw Earth
were the folks that went to the moon. We went
to the moon nine times, three astronauts a pop,
27 astronauts have seen Earth from the moon.
And that'll change you. Do you know Apollo 14
astronaut Edgar Mitchell? I have a quote from
him that opens this book. And that's all you
have to read because the whole book issues forth
from that quote. Here it is. Edgar Mitchell,
Apollo 14. You develop an instant. global consciousness,
a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction
with the state of the world, and a compulsion
to do something about it. From out there on the
moon, international politics looks so petty.
You want to grab a politician by the scruff of
the neck and drag him a quarter million miles
out and say, look at that, you son of a bitch.
Edgar Mitchell also believes some wacky stuff.
Did you know that? Yeah, I've spoken with him
about it. And he was one of the, was he co -founder
of the Noetic Institute? He was a big fan of
the possibility that there was a deeper level
of consciousness. And I don't think it involved
drugs, but just that there was a deeper level
of consciousness that the brain might be capable
of if subjected to the proper influences. And
he told me how he. came across this. Okay. I'll
tell you. They're on their way back from the
moon and they're in the capsule and the capsule
rotates. It helps to stabilize it among other
reasons for that happening. And he happened to
be positioned in the capsule for three days where
the windows to the capsule were aligned with
the plane of the solar system, which means Every
time the capsule rotated, what came in and out
of view was the sun, the moon, earth, and all
the planets. And so he's there for three days
watching this drift by. And he felt like he had
descended or ascended into a trance state that
was beyond what he had ever experienced before.
here on Earth, by normal things you encounter
just being a human on Earth. And that led him
to wonder whether this was an achievable state
by some other means, by some other forces that
you could emulate here on Earth. And because
he experienced that and I didn't, who am I to
say? I'm not going to judge that. He believed
in psychokinetics. He believed people can do
things with their mind. He had a lot of very
strange things that he was interested in. I think
the cleanest way to say that is he believed there
was much more capacity of our mind than we had
previously tapped. And that opens up the gates
to all these other things. But I was just sharing
with you the experiential origins of why he thought
that way. But the point is that that can change
you. And in the chapter Earth and Moon, I talk
about cosmic perspectives. As you ascend, the
Earth does not look like the schoolroom globe.
Right. Color -coded countries. You know, only
as an adult did I look back on that and I say,
you trained me from elementary school. to know
who my enemies are and who my friends are by
color -coding contiguous land masses on a globe
to teach me about the planet Earth. But they
weren't trying to do that. They were trying to
explain geography. It's a consequence of it.
I knew who the evil, godless Soviet Union was.
Right. Okay? Their country was painted red. All
right? Not ours. I knew this even if it was not
on purpose. It had a subliminal effect. And when
you go into space, the country borders go away.
Except for two places. There are two places.
You can still see two borders from space. One
of them in the daytime. You can see the border
of Israel with surrounding deserts. Because Israel
irrigates. And so it's green. And the surrounding
areas are brown. You can see that from space.
Another border, which you can see from space
at night, is, of course, North and South Korea
right there. Yeah. That's crazy. And that's punched
up. I mean, if you're in the dead of night, you
don't know the difference between the ocean and
the land as your sight line crosses North and
South Korea. So if you look at the GDP per capita
differences between Israel and surrounding nations
and South Korea and North Korea, it's factors
of 8, 9, 10, 12. So space can reveal economic
inequities in at least those two places, which
is itself kind of a stunning fact. So I want
to tell Elon, you're now neighbors with him,
right? Get him back here and say, Elon, build
a bus, a space bus. We have an air bus. Why not
a space bus? A space bus where you put all the
warring leaders. And have them send them to the
moon, have them look back on Earth. Say, you
know, we're fighting over that border. We are?
Once they came back down, I think they'd just
go right back to work. You think so? I just went
to the Keck Observatory on Wednesday. Nice. It
was amazing. Hawaii. Yeah. Big island. Very nice.
Did you go to the base camp or already at the
top? The base camp. Yeah. I went specifically
there because I had an experience there about,
I was. Six, 17 years ago, I went there and I
caught it on a perfect night where the moon wasn't
out and it was phenomenal. And the view is so
astounding. There's so many stars. You see the
Milky Way in such clear detail that you have
a totally different perspective of the cosmos.
And you feel like you're flying through space
with a windshield over your head, like you're
in a spaceship. You know, there's some other,
my entire... PhD thesis involved mountain going.
It's a lost ritual because now we'd have what's
called service observing. You just write in what
things you want to observe and what nights for
how many hours and then they send you back the
data. There used to be a pilgrimage to the top
of a mountain and you'd live nocturnally and
you'd go to the and be up all night with the
telescope and the universe. There's a certain
almost spiritual connectivity. that brings upon
you when it's just you alone. And there are moments
that mountains are high up enough so that if
clouds roll in, you're above the clouds. We were
above the clouds. You're above the clouds. This
is what makes it especially spooky, magical,
mystical, Mount Olympus -like. Because you're
on the top. There's no other land. It's just
clouds. So it's you, the tops of clouds, and
the universe. Yeah. Communing. with the cosmos.
Just the view of it is so astounding. And many
people who go to Australia say, oh, you got to
see the southern skies. What they don't know
when they say that is any clear sky anywhere
in the world will get you that. Yeah. In the
southern hemisphere, only 15 % of humans live
there. So there's essentially no light pollution.
anywhere there. 85 % of all humans in the north,
you're hard pressed to find a completely dark
sky in the north, leaving you to think that there's
something magically beautiful and different about
the southern sky. You're observing the northern
sky. Hawaii's like 15 degrees north, so it's
a lot of the southern sky as well. Point is,
you have the best observing site in the world,
which is why they wanted to put a 30 meter telescope
there and there's some conflict with the... indigenous
groups regarding that and whether the mountain
is sacred and in what ways it's sacred and the
like. And so that's still going on, last I checked.
But I'm not surprised and I'm delighted that
you had that experience. And now you know how
I feel when I look up. I was baptized in emotionally,
psychologically baptized with the night sky in
New York City's Hayden Planetarium. Because as
a city kid, I grew up in the Bronx. We don't
have a relationship with the night sky. We might
see the moon and an occasional planet, the setting
sun, that's it. You look up, that's it. You see
the tall buildings. Back then there was air pollution,
light pollution. So my first night sky was the
Hayden Planetarium. To this day, I was nine years
old. To this day, when I go to mountaintops,
just as you experience, and I look up, I said
to myself, this is so beautiful. It reminds me
of the Hayden Planetarium. That's funny. I know
that's messed up, but that's how I feel. And
you've got a sky here with meteors. I'm loving
it, man. Shitty stars. I'm loving it. Yeah. The
view that I saw on Wednesday was not as good
as the view that I saw whatever it was 16, 17
years ago. Wait, who laid out these stars? Oh,
it's just there's LED panels. You didn't call
me. No, they're not accurate. They're just little
dots. Dude. All right. At least you have stars.
In my old pool in California, I had the star
system of where, like, you know, I was born in
August. So it's the constellation Leo. When you
were born. Yeah, when I was born. Okay. Embedded
into the ground of the pool. All right. There
you go. There you go. Allegedly. You know, if
they're asking me to verify it, I'm like, wow,
it looks like stars. But that view of the Keck
Observatory, just even from the base station,
it's so stunning that it does reset your understanding
of where we are. And it makes you angry that
we have so much light pollution that people are
denied that because I think it changes the way
people view our relationship with the cosmos.
In fact, it goes even deeper than that. But let
me quickly. comment that there is an entire indigenous
community in the world that is very concerned
about the loss of very dark night skies because
so much of the culture relates to that night
sky as part of what it values and what it passes
down from one generation to the next. And it
goes beyond just the light pollution because
now folks like your boy Elon Is launching – and
I don't like the fact that they use the word
constellation to refer to satellites because
that's my word. That's my people's word, constellations.
They're actual stars. Right. Not moving hardware.
We've got people talking to people. I can connect
you. No, no. We're friends. You're using the
wrong words. I feel completely at home speaking
to – he's on the spectrum a bit. I'd say one
out of six of my colleagues is probably on the
autism spectrum. In retrospect, now that I look
at – and once you learn what the spectrum is,
it used to be Asperger's and then they folded
that in. There are colleagues who just – would
not relate to another person or a camera, but
they were graded in their lab and in the things.
And so you say you're just not socialized. No,
there's something else going on. Can I ask you
a question about that? Oh, sure. Do you think
that that is an evolutionary advantage that in
some way people are developing in this manner
so that they can concentrate on things like technology,
like... astrophysics like these like very specific
things that require immense amounts of concentration
and extreme focus do you think there's possibly
that human beings are developing in that way
specifically to accentuate our ability to innovate
so it would be very hard to draw that conclusion
as some kind of modern force of evolution because
for that to be the case What would have to happen
is those who had this sort of autistic level
of focus, so high -functioning autism, they would
have to be making more babies than other people.
Well, Elon is. He's out there doing his part.
So they'd have to be making more babies relative
to everyone else. to affect the evolutionary
path of modern civilization. And it's not clear
that that's what's actually happening. So we
have to ask, did that have any value historically?
I mean, in the history of the evolution of our
species. So in the chapter Body and Mind, I go
over the variations that exist within our species.
Huge variations in height, in weight, in speed,
in all kinds of things. And you can ask, well,
then what is normal? The day that we control
the genome. Is there going to be some place somewhere
where there's a normal human and you're going
to take your genome that you're about to control
in your unborn child and say, let me adjust it
so that it matches this so that all your senses
are working as they're supposed to and all the
proportions. Is that the future? We should ask
that. Because if that's what you're going to
do, you're going to homogenize the species. Yes.
Okay? Do you realize? I have a run here of content.
I have a run of descriptions of what people have
accomplished, okay? All right, so for example,
there's a guy growing up, he wanted to play basketball,
okay? And he wanted to be a professional basketball
player, all right? So he worked really hard.
at it. And he just wasn't tall enough. So he
said, you should give it up. But he stayed with
it. Stayed with it. He said, no, this is for
tall people. You're not tall. Okay? He now plays
for the Harlem Globetrotters. His name is Hotshot.
What's his last name? Well, Muggsy Bogues is
a great example. This guy is four feet five.
Whoa. Yes. He's a genetic dwarf. People told
him he can't play basketball, and now he's one
of the most popular basketball players. There
he goes. Wow. Okay? Swanson. Hotshot Swanson.
Okay? Well, there kind of seems like there'd
be an advantage of being that small so he can
move around that quick. I'm making a different
point. Okay. Yes, the best part of the point.
Right. The point is... When you look at someone
and they're not quote normal and then you start
listing what you think they should not do in
life Hmm Constraining the options that maybe
they have ambitions that are greater than anything
you imagined right and so There's a letter There's
a letter beautifully written Someone took a voyage
on a steamship in 1915. And I reproduced the
letter in here. Beautifully written. And this
passenger was given a tour of their steamship,
okay, by the captain. And this letter, I can't
find it in here, but it's beautifully. I mean,
is there time for me to read something? Sure.
Can I do it? You have plenty of time. I got to
read it. We have all the time in the world. Give
me a second here. And talk among yourselves.
Let me see. H -A -J -G. I got it. Okay. There
it goes. Okay. Here's a letter. Okay. Again,
this is in the body and mind chapter where we
explore. Here it is. I had the wrong year. How
about a letter written on April 10th, 1930, to
Captain Von Beck of the U .S. lines SS President
Roosevelt? That's Teddy Roosevelt, of course.
The captain had given a tour of the bridge to
a passenger who later that day waxed poetic about
the experience. Again, I stood with the captain
on the bridge, and he was quiet and composed
in the presence of a million universes, a man
with the power of a god. In imagination, I saw
the captain standing on the bridge, gazing into
the wide canopied heavens and seeing the darkness
sprinkled with stars, systems, and galaxies.
That passenger was Helen Keller. A 1904 graduate
of Radcliffe College. Okay? So what my point
is, and I have other, there's a whole run of
pages of things, and there's a whole description
of hotshot here, okay? From the Harlem Goat Trust.
My point is, the moment you homogenize, and quote,
normalize who and what humans should be, you
have cut off So much of what has enriched civilization
simply because people were different. Yes. Simply
because. And so if everybody's the same, what
kind of world? I don't want to live in that world.
Give me a different world. Do you worry that...
I got another one here. One more, okay? You probably
know this, but those who don't know the name...
Hold off on it, okay? Okay. Here it is. Jim Abbott.
You know Jim Abbott? Sure. Okay. Some people
won't, but here it goes. Jim Abbott wanted his
whole life to be a professional baseball player,
a dream shared by many American boys. Jim wanted
to be a pitcher in the major leagues. He succeeded
and played for many teams, chalking up a mixed
record of wins and losses, but on September 4th,
1993, while playing for the storied... I don't
remember. New York Yankees. Dude. I thought it
was the Mets. No. He pitched a no -hitter. That's
when no batter gets a hit in the entire game.
There have been about 320 no -hitters in Major
League history out of 220 ,000 games played.
Due to a congenital birth defect, Jim Abbott
was born without a right hand. Is Jim Abbott
disabled? Is he? He pitched a fucking no -hitter
for the New York Yankees. What I'm saying is,
obviously not everyone who has a disability will
achieve this way. Yes. Don't get me wrong here,
but what I want to say is, look at what people
would have told, and I have six other examples
here, one right after another. What people would
have told them coming up, and Temple Grandin
among them. Probably the most famous autistic
person there ever was. She's professor of farming
at the University of Colorado, somewhere in the
West, where because she sees the world the way
animals do, she could advise farmers in ways
they can handle and herd cows that does not create
stress in them. She figures stuff out. She has
research papers. Yes. But you're going to say,
oh, she's not the life of the party. Get her
out of here. What are we doing? Can I give you
an example? A personal example? What the hell?
And so I was angry writing that chapter. I was
angry. One more. I got to go. Okay. Let me keep.
Okay. Let me give you a personal example. My
jujitsu instructor. Yes. John John Machado. Yes.
Was born with on his left hand. He only has a
thumb. He has a genetic defect where he has no
fingers on his left hand. Call it a genetic feature.
A genetic feature. You value judging. It is a
feature because he's a multiple -time world champion.
And because of the fact that he was born with
this one hand that didn't have fingers, he developed
a style of jiu -jitsu that enabled him. You see
his hand there? He's one of the absolute best
that's ever done it. And he developed a style
of jiu -jitsu where he utilizes that left hand
to get under chins because it's not in control.
The other fingers aren't in the way. And he slides
it in there and sinks rear naked chokes on people.
And he also developed a style that didn't rely
on grips. He developed a style that's overhooks
and underhooks, which became modern no -gi jiu
-jitsu, which is incorporated in mixed martial
arts because in mixed martial arts, they don't
wear the kimono. And people who have fingers.
Probably would have never even thought to think
that way. And people who saw Jean -Jacques Machado
as a child said, oh, this poor child, he will
never reach his full potential and turned out
to be one of the greatest ever. Got one here.
So Oliver Sacks was a noted neurologist pioneering
entire subfields within his profession. He was
also a bestselling author describing the human
brain as the most incredible thing in the universe.
He led a remarkably varied life while suffering
from a neurological affliction called prospopagnosia,
more commonly known as face blindness. This condition
contributed to his severe shyness since he couldn't
recognize faces, even if he recognized everything
else about you. At times, he would not even recognize...
His own face in the mirror. Whoa. And he's shy
because if he's interested in a... How does that
work? If he has a love interest, he doesn't know
the next time he sees that person whether that
was who he had the conversation with. Okay? In
2012, after a lecture on hallucination at Cooper
Union College in New York City, I asked him,
if you could go back in time, would you take
a magic pill in your youth? to cure your neurological
disorder. Without hesitation, he replied, no.
His entire professional interest in the human
mind was inspired by the very disorders in his
own brain. He wouldn't have it any other way.
How does that work? Where they can't see faces,
but they can read. No, you can see faces. They
just don't recognize them. It doesn't land in
any place that you recognize. Every face, even
if you've seen it before, is like a brand new
face. Wow. So he'd have to recognize your voice,
your vocabulary, your accents, your body gestures,
this sort of thing. Wow. So doesn't Brad Pitt
supposedly have that? That I don't know. I don't
know. Prospo... Diagnosia? Yeah, I... Let's see
if that's true. I felt like he said he has some
form of that. Is that what he told one girlfriend
when he saw the next one? Is that what you're
saying? How dare you? Yeah, he does? He has some
variant on that? What does it say? Yeah, he explained
that. He hasn't officially been diagnosed with
it. He has extremely... Extreme difficulty recognizing
people's faces Wow, so maybe there's a varying
spectrum Of course, as there would be in anything
Yeah, there it is Yeah, yeah Face blindness That's
a very recent article there in this past year
How crazy is he? He's got one of the best faces
ever And he can't recognize his faces Yeah, so
it's the idea So all of this you'd expect to
happen on some kind of spectrum Yes. Severity,
let's call it, or featurity. And depending on
where you are on that spectrum, you will have
certain access to ways people have never thought
before, ways people have never done things before.
Have you seen the video of the woman somewhere
in East Asia who has no arms? And she gets out
of bed, folds up her, takes care of her child,
puts on her makeup. With her feet. With her feet.
Yeah. With her feet. Yeah. And so, yeah, she
puts on her makeup and puts on her coat, puts
on, there's a whole video about this. And so,
I don't know what else to tell you. Oh, you must
know this, my other guy here. You must know him.
If not, get him on, okay? Get the dude on your
show. Hang on. Studies show one in 50 people
may have developed that face blindness. It could
be genetic, but this doesn't say. Developmental.
Hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. But how is it that
he always winds up with hot women? Come on, Brad.
He said people don't believe him because they
think it's self -absorbeness and stuff. Yeah.
Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting. Here's
another one. You ready? Yes. Matt Stutzman. I
recognize the name. Is a championship archer.
Oh, yes. Who can outshoot most people who have
ever wielded a bow and arrow. He's actually coached
by my friend John Dudley. In competition. Yeah.
By a bow and arrow in competition. He's also
a car enthusiast. Oh. He was born without arms.
Yes. He shoots his arrows and fixes his cars
using his uncommonly nimble legs, feet, and toes.
Is Matt Stutzman disabled? All I'm here to say
is, because you started this conversation asking
me on the spectrum of... autism, where at some
point in that spectrum, you focus like no one
can focus before, possibly to the exclusion of
personal hygiene and other concerns related to
your health. And civilization has definitely
benefited from those who have been able to focus
in such a way. So maybe our species and civil...
spitballing here, that our species and the advance
of civilization itself has pivoted on the fact
that in the variation of who, what, and what
we are, some of us can focus and solve a problem
like it was the most important thing we would
ever do in our lives and end up doing so, thereby
pivoting civilization into some future that would
have not otherwise been realizable. So, yeah,
I'm all there. Yeah. I mean, the diversity of
human beings and their interests and what they
look like and their sizes and the way they interact
with the world is one of the reasons why we can
create such an amazing world. Consider also,
and it goes beyond just this, what we call these
disabled features, right? People with disabilities.
It goes to other things. For example, you must
know that it was not until 1987. Where the American
Psychiatric Association, with some names such
as that, but the psychiatrists, removed homosexuality
as a mental disorder from their records, from
their encyclopedia. 1987. Yeah. A disorder. And
so what does that even mean if whatever the number
is, 10, 20 percent of people or higher are on
a gender spectrum? as measured in the multiple
dimensions that have been revealed in recent
years, if you had control over the genome of
your children 50 years ago, and if homosexuality
has a genetic component, would you say, I don't
want that. That's abnormal because you're going
to go through that list of what is normal. And
you can say, I don't want any abnormalities in
my children. Not at all. So there's an entire
ethical frontier that is yet to be touched, yet
to be resolved, I should say. Certainly there
are people thinking about it. Yes. What kind
of child are you going to create? Well, this
is the question. When you have, and this is what
I wanted to get to, when you have things like
CRISPR and you have what could be... Legitimate
genetic engineering of fetuses and of embryos.
Legitimate, you mean authentic. Yeah. Legitimate
implies it's - Yeah. I mean, like they can do
it. Sanctioned, yes. I mean, not sanctioned.
But the fact that that is an emerging technology
and that, like all technologies, it will increase
in its ability with innovation, with new versions.
Where do you think this goes? Do you think it's
inevitable that human beings engineer ourselves
into these super creatures that are homogenous?
Do you think? I think we, as has almost always
been the case, the science is advancing faster
than our morality. Yes. Or our. Sensibilities.
Or appreciations of humanity. You know, and often
the scientific advance has very important plus
sides to it. Here's what I want to see happen.
If we can control the genome, let's just start
with what already exists in nature. All right?
We put ourselves at the top of the tree of life.
But if newts could draw the tree of life, they
put themselves at the top. Why? They can regenerate
their limbs. And we can't. They would value that
very highly. So would we. Let's get whatever
that is in the newt, splice it into us, line
up all the veterans who have, you know, missing
limbs, put them first. Regenerate them. If lobsters
can do it and crabs can do it and newts can do
it. They are doing research on that, correct?
I haven't checked it. I believe I read. I would
hope so. But we're doing research on... growing
organs. Yes. There's a huge need for that. Yes.
You don't have to wait for someone to die. Right.
Particularly the day we have self -driving cars
on the road dominating the population of cars.
I see that happening within decades, by the way,
and I have good reason for thinking that. But
the day that happens, we lose. So no longer do
35 ,000 people a year die. Peak physical health
which has been a source of so many organs organ
donors, right? Yes, you sign your card when you
get your driver's license so that when you die
in a car accident We can harvest your organs.
You're young and all your organs work. We don't
harness harness organs Harvest organs of 80 year
olds because they're 80 or 90 right right so
The day we lose the 35 ,000 deaths per year,
I hope that happens at a time when we can start
growing artificial organs. Have you done any
playing around with auto driving features on
things like Teslas? I know it's there, but I'm
not mentally ready. It's pretty amazing. Jamie
and I have the latest beta of Tesla self -driving.
Have you messed with it at all, Jamie? Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. What's your take on it? I had
someone drive me around with it in the beta.
It's not comfortable yet is the best I would
say. You keep your hands on the wheel? Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Yeah, me too. Yeah, yeah. And I haven't
had to take over, but there was like one time
I was like, well, I'm not doing this right now.
I'll test it another time. Here's what I did
do in a Tesla. You put it on the... Self -driving?
It's not self -driving. Auto... No, just the
simple... What's it called? All the old cars
had it. Yeah, cruise control. But it's managed
cruise control, right? So I put it at 50 miles
an hour. The traffic slows to 30. It slows to
30 with a prescribed car distance in front of
me. The traffic goes to a standstill. The car
stops, all right? The traffic picks up. The old
cars wouldn't do that, right? Right. So it's
doing this. So I experiment with that. And I
noticed that when it starts from a stop or when
it slows down, it's way, Harder on its brakes
than I am. Yes. I'm way smoother driver than
my cruise control Yeah, so and I've seen cars
come in from the side and it abruptly stops when
I saw it before it did and and so so i don't
know but we're at the beginning judgment it's
dawn it's the dawn of this but you're recognizing
patterns and judgment and whether or not someone's
paying attention whether or not it's all that
has to happen is that it goes into an ai learning
mode and it gets the sum of all of these experiences
of all drivers in in in these situations yeah
ai is going to kill some people in self -driving
mode but i guarantee you it's going to kill a
lot less it will kill fewer people yeah than
than without it. Have you seen Lex Friedman playing
guitar while he's driving around in a self -driving
car? Yeah, Lex drove around in a Tesla while
playing guitar. It's pretty fascinating. Right,
so there's a headline here, and that I'm going
to read to a very simple headline, but where
is it here? T -E... Oh, my gosh, where is it?
There it is. There's Lex. Oh. That's pretty good.
Lex can shred. Give me some of that. You got
to listen to this. Listen to this. Oh, yeah.
He was playing along. Here it goes. That's good.
It's good stuff. Listen to here. Have you done
Lex's podcast? No. You would love him. He's an
AI researcher from MIT originally. Now he's mostly
doing independent work and doing his own podcast.
Brilliant, brilliant guy. You would love him.
And he's got an amazing podcast, too. Okay, so
here. It's going to be in this section here.
I don't think you're interested in Lex's podcast.
Seems like he's not paying attention. No, hang
on. I got this. No, thank you for the tip. I'm
trying to get him on, buddy. I'm trying to get
him on. Lex actually is one of the most brilliant
people I know. I think you would love talking
to him. We have an interesting quote here from
Walter Badshot. One of the greatest pains to
human nature is the pain of a new idea. Really?
That guy's an idiot. That's not the greatest
pain. Someone needs to kick him in the nuts.
It's human nature. The pain of loss, the pain
of failure. There's a lot more pains. New ideas
are amazing. The longer quote I have here, just
in all fairness to the fellow, is, it is, as
common people say, so upsetting, it makes you
think that, after all, your favorite notions
may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill -founded.
Naturally, therefore, Common men hate a new idea
and are disposed, more or less, to ill -treat
the original man who brings it. Oh, boy. Now
we're in the common man thing. All right. That's
19th century. I like that even less. All right.
Here's a headline. Ready? Mm -hmm. And it's why
our brain is not statistically prepared. A headline.
Okay. Tesla says autopilots. Autopilot makes
its car safer. Crash victims say it kills. Both
of those are true. Yeah, but less. It's sort
of like introducing mountain lions into areas
to kill deer. Correct. Yeah. Both of those are
true. And if you keep at it, yes. AI self -driving
will kill people, but that number will drop every
single year. And you know why? Because every
way that someone dies, no other person will die
that way again because they'll upload all the
software, and that does not happen. This is what
the airline industry did. The FAA investigates
every single crash. You know why you can't take
lithium ions onto a plane? Because there was
a UPS plane that had lithium ion batteries in
the cargo and it caught fire. And there's the
audio of the pilots talking to each other and
to the thing while the plane is on fire just
before the thing crashes. Do you remember when
they used to make you take the batteries out
of Samsung phones when you got on planes? I never
used a Samsung phone. Samsung phones had an issue.
One of their Galaxy Notes burst into flames because
they juiced up the battery capacity. I remember
it. Yeah. Yeah, and they went a little too far,
went a little crazy. So all I'm saying is that
part of the diversity of who and what we are
is who you love, what you want to look like.
This resistance to the gender spectrum. concerns
me because it's a force of restriction on people's
freedom. And somewhere I read that America is
like pursuit of happiness. I read that somewhere,
some document, right? And so if someone wants
to dress in whatever way they want, and if it
doesn't conform with your binarity, You're going
to create a law to prevent them from doing it?
What is that? Are we any longer in a free country?
If you have that power over me to express my
happiness. And another thing we're not good at,
and I got to go soon. How long have we been talking
here, dude? A couple hours. Damn. Dude. Come
on. This is fun. But I love you, man. I love
you, too. I love you, man. I love you. I love
you, too, man. People don't know, we were outside
wrestling a few moves. I used to wrestle. I know
you used to wrestle. I was like captain of my
high school team. You started to have a little
flashback. No! It was the third period. I was
down four points. Uh -oh. Yeah, yeah. The buzzer.
So, what was I saying? We were talking about
diversity. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were talking
about... Yeah, yeah. So... Here's another thing
we're bad at. We're bad at recognizing a spectrum
of things when we confront it. Our urge is to
categorize it. That urge is so great. We categorize
things that are fundamentally not categorizable.
For example, hurricane strengths. Hurricane strength
is a continuum of miles per hour of wind speed.
Cut it into five categories. And you know what
happens? That affects us. Right. So a hurricane,
Hurricane Irma, goes from low Category 3 to high
Category 3. They're just, oh, it's just Category
3, Irma. It goes up one mile an hour? It's breaking
news. Hurricane Irma strengthened to Category
4 just this past hour, and everybody crowds around
the TV set. So our brain doesn't allow a continuum.
We can't. So what happens? Are you a boy or are
you a girl? You have to be one of them. Maybe
there's a continuum. Okay. Oh, you want to talk
X chromosome, Y chromosome? We can do that. Fine.
All right. So biogenetically, I can say that
there's a boy and a girl or some variant on that,
which is in the rare case where you have doubled
up on the chromosomes. Intersex. Sure, we can
have that conversation, but that's not visible
to me. In what you do when you wake up in the
morning. I don't see your chromosomes. You know
what I do? I see what you do to make yourself
look like a boy. You go to the gym. You'd have
wimp muscles if you didn't work out. Okay? That's
what you do because you're a boy. You wear boy
clothes so that everyone knows you're a boy.
If it was that obvious you were a boy, you wouldn't
have to do all of that. So, so much of what we
do. to split us into this binarity is artificially
added on top of the chromosomes. So... Like I
said, if you're a wimpy guy and you go wear man's
clothes and you go to the gym because you want
to look like a boy. If you're a girl, you're
a woman, and you have hair on your lip, can't
have a mustache, you're a girl. Got hair between
your eyebrows, can't have that, got to remove
that. Okay? Your breasts are not large enough,
get them enlarged. As what happens to, what is
the number? 300 ,000 breast augmentations a year
in the United States. Okay? These are huge numbers
to make us look more to fit into this binarity.
And suppose I don't buy into that binarity. I
say I like the spectrum. Someday I feel a little
feminine. Sometimes I feel I'm not going to wear
clothes that way. You're going to come after
me and say I don't like that. I'm going to pass
a law. Oh, my gosh. That's no longer a free country.
Is anybody saying that you should pass a law
that men can't wear whatever they want or women
can't wear whatever they want? There are forces
of resistance in society that are strongly preventing
it. Yes. Well, I think that's unfortunate. And
by the way, some solutions, like which bathroom
do you use? There's solutions there. Just make
unisex bathrooms. Every new restaurant in New
York City is that. So that takes an entire category
of people's worries and concerns off the table.
When we're talking about genetic engineering.
By the way, that's in the chapter gender and
identity. And I didn't even get to color and
race. Oh, my gosh. Just before I go, I want to
read a quick thing from that section. Please.
Go ahead. No, no, no. Finish with your point.
Mike, my wonder is, like, where, if you try to
look at what human beings are capable of doing
now in terms of genetic engineering and what
the hopes are, where do you think this leads
us if this is allowed? It's not whether or not
it's going to be allowed. It's going to happen.
Where do you think this leads us to? Do you think
this leads? When you look at this is. When you
look at the archetypal alien, what is it? It's
got a large head and no sex organs. And they
never have hair. I want a hairy alien one day.
With a hairdo. Right. Yeah, right. They're always
bald, big eyes. 1970 Afro. Yeah, yeah. What do
you think that leads us to? Do you think that
leads us to one uniform shape? Or do you think
it leads us to everyone looking like Thor? Where
does that lead us to? Yeah, but of course Thor
still had to go to the gym. But what if there
comes a point in time where that's not necessary?
Sorry, the actor who plays Thor still had to
go to the gym. Right, well, with things like
biostatin inhibitors, you aware of those? Yeah,
I am. Yeah, so if they incorporate that into
the human genome, then you're going to have people
that have incredible amounts of muscle mass,
and they don't even have to do anything to achieve
it. But what you would have done was, as a parent
or as someone in control, predetermine. what
they can or should be in life. Whereas in a free
world, in a free society, a person's own ambitions
should be what guides them, in my opinion. And
I don't think that's a controversial opinion.
Certainly. I agree with you. But my concern is...
Yeah, it's a real concern. Oh, yeah. And if the
technology gets to the point where it's a uniform
strategy and that... people just start doing
that to their children. We're talking 100 years
from now, 1 ,000 years from now. Oh, way sooner
than that, 50 years easily. Where does this go?
Easily 50 years. Yeah, so you want to have the
muscle -bound family, but suppose one of them
wanted to be a ballet dancer and had to be a
little more lanky and elegant. What if we get
to a point where genetic engineering could be
utilized on fully formed adults? And you could
change the shape of, like, you know, there's
people that are transgender. What if you could
literally become a double X chromosome human
being and you will literally have a vagina, literally
have breasts, ovulate, have a womb? I don't know
how that would, I have to think about how that
would happen. That would be like an extreme limit
of controlling your genomes. Yeah, so that's
a really interesting different world. It means
you can be whoever you want. Right. That's what
we are on Halloween, right? You're wherever you
want to be. What are your thoughts on human neural
interfaces, like things like Neuralink and these
technologies that are being proposed that would
allow human beings to integrate with technology
in a physical way, symbiotically? civilization,
which is extraordinary. But most predictions
are wrong. You get it right in the first few
years and after a few decades. Well, with new
technology, new possibilities emerge that couldn't
even be anticipated. It comes in from the side.
Yeah. Rather than... Like the internet. More
of what... Correct. Correct. It reminds me of...
There was an ad in 1990. 1902, 1903, early 90s
from AT &T. They had a relatively successful
ad campaign where they said, have you ever wanted
to ba -di -da -di -da -di -da -di -da? And they
say some futuristic thing. And they say, you
will. AT &T will bring it to you. Yeah, I've
seen that. One of the things, one of the commercials
was something I've never wanted to do, never
dreamed of doing, never did, and never will do.
They show a guy on a beach, okay? And he's working
on a tablet, which was a good... predictive thing.
Tablets did come. He's looking at the tablet
and said, have you, and there's a surf coming
in. It was a beautiful beach scene. He said,
have you ever wanted to send a fax from the beach?
Well, you will. AT &T was like, no, thank you.
No one has ever in the history of the universe
wanted to do that. But why wouldn't they if that
was all that existed? I'm just saying. Well,
now it's email. It's the same thing. No, it's
email attachment. Correct. Sure. But you don't
see that coming if you're extolling the virtues
of faxes. Right. That's like in Back to the Future
Part 2. A film made in 1989. We're riding high
on faxes. 89 to the early 90s. Do you know what
year that took place? Was supposed to take place?
Back to the Future 2. It's like modern. Yeah,
2015. Yeah. Okay. So Marty pisses off his boss
and he gets fired. Yeah. All right. So the boss
communicates this via fax. To his residence.
Except this is the residence of the future. He
has three fax machines in his home. So you see
them come out on three different fax machines.
And no matter what room he was in, he would see
it. Because that's the home of the future. Because
a modern home in 1989 with one fax machine, many
homes had no fax machines. So this is how we're
linear thinking people. You're fired. There are
three different fax machines. That's the future.
it is. That's what they thought. Isn't that funny?
Oh, no. The future. Wow. And so I talk about
here how we also have linear brains, which prevents
us from seeing exponential change. Yes. And the
best example of this is algae on a pond. Okay?
So algae, you know, as it grows and it floats
on the pond, you see like one square foot of
it and you learn. Someone tells you the algae
is doubling every day. And you have this huge
pond and you're told this, okay? You go away
for a month and come back, the pond is half covered
with algae. They say, oh my gosh, I was away
for a month and this happened. When will it be
completely covered? So what's the answer? It
took a month to get halfway. So how much more
time? A week? No, a day. What did I say? Doubles.
It doubles every day. Yes. That's how I started
this conversation. Yes. See, the linear brain
overrides even the stated facts. And you know
how they deal with that? They introduce carp.
Oh, good. I didn't know that. And carp eat all
the algae. I didn't know that. Very good. Yeah,
but then the problem is they eat all the vegetation
and you get like Lake Austin. Oh, yeah. There's
almost no vegetation and all the bass have no
place to hide. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Lake
Austin looks like the bottom of a swimming pool
now. Interesting. Yeah, it's a mistake. Nothing
there. Whoops. Yeah. You think you know all the
causes and effects of things. and then you don't.
Well, when I was on the Big Island, I found out
about mongooses. Big Island, Hawaii. Yeah. Can
we call them mongoose? Is that allowed? They're
so adorable. We saw one at the resort, a mongoose.
Cute little fella. But Hawaii has no snakes.
So what do the mongoose eat? Unfortunately, they
brought them in for rats, and they went after
ground -nesting birds. And so they've devastated
local wildlife. There it is. When you're an island
in the middle of the Pacific, that stuff is pretty
tightly configured. Those little fellas are so
cute. Okay, the mongooses found in Hawaii are
native to India. They were introduced to Hawaiian
islands in 1883 by the sugar industry to control
rats and sugar cane fields. Any species in Hawaii
is going to be invasive. Yes. But then it gets
to a point where people are making the argument
that wild pigs are no longer invasive because
they've been there as long as the humans have.
Yeah, so it's only a problem when it's a problem
is really what that comes down to. Right. I'm
told that L .A. Palm trees are not native. Right,
they're not. Yeah, but they do really well there,
and they haven't overrun the city or anything.
Well, also, they're symbolic of Los Angeles,
the palm tree. Yeah, you got it. They're everywhere.
Okay, so I make a prediction by the year 250.
I have a bunch of predictions here. Okay, let's
hear it. And this is so that in 2050, you can
say, Tyson, you had your head up your ass, okay?
I have no hesitation, because I go through a
whole set of predictions that all didn't come
out right. People predicting 30 years ahead.
And so I just want to join the susceptibility
parade here. Okay, maybe you'll nail a few. Neuroscience
and our understanding of the human mind will
become so advanced that mental illness will be
cured, leaving psychologists and psychiatrists
without jobs. In a shift that echoes the rapid
conversion from horses to automobiles in the
early 20th century, self -driving electric vehicles
will fully replace all cars and trucks on the
road. If you want to be nostalgic with your fancy
combustion engine sports car, you can drive on
specially designed tracks akin to horse riding
stables of today. Very nostalgic. The human space
program will fully transition to a space industry
supported not by tax dollars, but by tourism
and anything else people dream of doing in space.
We develop a perfect antiviral serum and cure
cancer. Medicines will tailor to your own DNA,
leaving no adverse side effects. And this is
in response to your earlier question. We will
resist the urge to merge the circuitry of computers
with the circuitry of our brains. Have you ever
seen the statistics? I'm happy enough to just
dig it up here. No, I don't need to surgically
implant this. I'm seconds away from all the knowledge
of the world that I could possibly want. I don't
have to surgically implant it. I'm not. I don't
have that urge. I'm sorry. Right, but if they
do increase the capacity for human knowledge
and your access to information substantially
to the point where someone with a neural interface
has an enormous advantage over anybody who doesn't.
Well, they'll do it faster, perhaps. But not
just faster, but change the way you interface
with information. That remains to be seen. And,
of course, our guy says that, Mr. Singularity.
No, no. Oh, Ray Kurzweil? Ray Kurzweil, right.
He's a big fan of that. Here's a new book where
it's... The singularity is nearer. His first
book was The Singularity Was Near. What a prediction.
We will learn how to regrow lost limbs and failing
organs, bringing us up to the level of other
regenerating animals on Earth, like salamanders,
starfish, and lobsters. Instead of becoming our
overlord and enslaving us all, artificial intelligence
will be just another helpful feature of the tech
infrastructures that serve our daily lives. Those
are my predictions to be found wrong. Do you
have any fears of artificial general intelligence?
No. Not at all? I don't think that's where it's
going to head. Neither does Kurzweil, by the
way. Do you believe— I think we'll put intelligence
in things that need to do things. Get the perfect
cup of coffee. Put it in your car so it drives
and doesn't get in an accident. Put it in things.
To have the one thing that does it all, I don't—
I would love to hear you talk to Elon about this
because he has a deep fear of it. Yeah. I'm anomalous
there, so don't listen to me. Listen to others.
You're anomalous in the fact that you're not
concerned? Yes. If you go to AI experts, most
of them are concerned that it poses an existential
threat. I think it'll just be more stuff. That'll
help us out. But what about when it's used in
military applications? Well, that isn't ethical.
I mean, all military operations involve some
ethical decision tree. Right. So it would be
added to the ethical decision tree. But when
you have unethical foreign countries that will
use these sort of artificial generals. Well,
that's tank, anti -tank warfare. So you need
ways to combat that. Yeah. It'll escalate. By
the way, the countries have ministers of AI.
We don't. We're behind on that curve. I'm worried.
Worried about that. That's the concern, right?
The concern is that someone else is going to
implement it and they're not going to have ethics
or morals behind it. They're just going to have
this idea of control and dominance. Correct.
And so there's always the bad actor that you've
got to – and the military, they're paid to consider
the conduct of a bad actor. And the real concern
is that we become them to beat them. That's the
fear. Yeah. Except we're not autocratic or we
don't think we are. So we would have to get an
entire Congress, an entire electorate to vote
that way. Yeah. And that's – if we do, I don't
know what the future of the world will be at
that point. It's spooky. It's spooky because,
again, we don't have the ability to sort of extrapolate
and look at the future in terms of like how all
these things are implemented and what the – overall
result is going to be. So you're not worried
about these human neural interfaces at all? No,
I don't see it happening. You don't see it happening
at all? No, I think we'll resist it. But didn't
we, there's a lot of people that resisted email.
Like, I don't even have email, man. Those people
all got on board. A lot of people resisted cell
phones. They print it and then read the printed
email. Yeah. But a lot of people resisted this
idea of cell phones, but now they're everywhere.
No, the only resistance I'm referring about is
the machine biology interface. Right. That's
what we're going to resist. We're not going to
resist the continued advance of the technology.
But if it creates a superior human being. It
already has. It beats us at chess, at go, at
any intellectual task we give it. It's already
superior. But I mean if it's a symbiotic thing,
if it becomes integrated with the human biology.
I think we'll resist that. That's all. It's a
prediction. I think you will. I'm going to hop
on board right away. I'm going to be one of the
first people. I'm going to drill a hole in my
head, Elon. Let's go. Implant it. I don't want
to be left behind. Okay. Well, the real concern
is that it's really going to separate the haves
from the have -nots because if it does give you
an advantage economically, an advantage in terms
of your intellectual capacity, you're going to
have this advantage because it's going to be
prohibitively expensive, I would assume, initially.
Often things that are prohibitively expensive
initially don't. Forever stay that way. Like
cell phones. Of course. But eventually it becomes.
Or flat panel TVs. Sure. They're like impulse
items at Kmart. I was just at Walmart. I can't
believe how cheap they are now. 50 inch TV. It's
nuts. It's nuts. It's crazy. They were so expensive.
I remember. And heavy. Like 20 grand. Yes. Tens
of thousands of dollars. And they'd come in like
wood crates. Yep. Yep. And now you can. You needed
power tools to undo it. You can do it yourself
and mount them yourself on the wall. Let me leave
you with some thoughts here. Okay. Please do.
There's a section here on race and color, which
is another thing with the variation of what we
have in the world. Just a point I want to make.
When European anthropologists started running
through Africa and started describing what they
saw, their urge was to say everyone in Africa
is this thing. And they have dark skin, woolly
hair, and that is a thing. And they called it
a race, and they called it the Negroes. Okay?
And this is our attempt to classify into few
categories something that might actually in real
life be on a spectrum. We know that the human
species began in Africa. And everybody who populates
everywhere else in the world came out of Africa
to do that. What that tells you is that the genetic
diversity... within Africa as the origin of our
species is greater than it is between any other
two people anywhere else in the world. But because
the anthropologists were not thinking genetic
diversity, they're thinking skin color. They
put them all in one bin. But if you have the
most genetic diversity, then... In practically
every way humans vary, you would find the extreme
of that in the African continent. Where would
you find the tallest people in the world? Watusi
tribe of Africa. How about the shortest people
in the world? Pygmies. The pygmies. Not even
that far away. Right. Geographically. They have
the same skin color, so the Europeans said these
are one. Group of people, one race. Where might
you find the slowest people in the world? Well,
no one looks for them. Where would you find?
There's no races to find the slowest people.
How about the fastest people? Africa. Okay. People
of African descent have dominated the long distance
as well as the sprint. Two completely different
physical abilities. Oh, but they're all dark
-skinned people. They're all Negroes. Okay. Where
would you likely find the dumbest person in the
world? Africa. How about the smartest person
in the world? Africa. How about the Egyptians?
The Europeans did not look for people smarter
than they were. Okay? And to this day, where
they find evidence where that might have been
the case, you have people saying aliens did it.
Egypt is, of course, in Africa. Yeah. A brilliant
civilization. Oh, my gosh. While Europeans were
still either disemboweling heretics or whatever
the hell they were doing, even before that, thousands
of years ago. So my point is, if you don't look
for it and you don't find it and you're going
to create a map of humans of the world, you're
going to put yourself at the top. That's what
you're going to do. And you're going to write
things. Like this. Who do you want to hear from?
Thomas Jefferson or Francis Galton? Jefferson.
Jefferson. 1785. Speaking of the Negroes. Comparing
them by their faculties of memory, reason, and
imagination, it appears to me that in memory,
they are equal to the whites. In reason... Much
inferior. As I think one could scarcely be found
capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations
of Euclid. And in imagination, they are dull,
tasteless, and anomalous. What is Euclid? I honestly
don't know how many Euclid -fluent white people
Jefferson knew in the original American colonies.
Euclid invented geometry. Okay, Euclidean geometry
is ancient Greece. And his books still exist
to this day. So he's saying the black slaves
don't know Euclid, can't figure out Euclid. Well,
they haven't been educated. Regardless, how many
white farmers in 1785 USA knew Euclid? Zero.
Okay. But whatever were his observations and
objections to black people, he had no hesitation
continually mating with at least one of them,
producing six children. So you know what I did
here? Oh, then there's a guy who wrote a whole
book comparing black people and white people,
a book that was used into the 1960s. It was called
The Origin of Races by Carlton Kuhn. He wrote.
If Africa was the cradle of mankind, which he
recognizes, it was only an indifferent kindergarten.
Europe and Asia were our principal schools. So
these are people putting themselves at the top.
He's white, so he's got to put white people at
the top. Then I thought, suppose anthropologists
were black racists instead of white racists.
What would they write? What would they come up
with? Well, also what he's saying is ridiculous
because if it's kindergarten, how did they do
the pyramids? It's the most complex structures
ever known to man. Hold on. We can't reproduce
today? All of us. My only point is when you have
that mindset and you have to put yourself at
the top and all people with dark skin are one
entity, you're not looking for people smarter
than you. There's other evidence here. Do you
realize that the people who get the highest scores
on standardized tests in England are people,
immigrants from the Igbo tribe in Nigeria? And
their kids outscore all the, quote, native white
people in the town. If you're not looking for
them, you're not finding them. It just doesn't
– it's a thing. It's all here in this chapter.
And all I'm doing is bringing science to it.
That's all I'm doing here. And where is it here?
Okay. So a black – yeah. Here it goes. Then I
got to go. I can't keep staying here, dude. It's
okay. You can come back. There's a lot of little
stickies on that book. I'm sure you have many
other things to talk about. What is the book,
by the way? Oh, Starry Messenger. Is it available
now? Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. Came
out eight weeks ago. Please tell me you did the
audio version of it. I did. Thank you. I did.
I hate when people have other people do the audio
version. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I did the audio version.
I'm glad. Oh, yeah. Of course, you. You'd have
to. I could not do the audio version of this.
Some fucking actor? I talk about the pyramids
here. Even Elon Musk, by the way, tweeted pyramids.
Aliens built the pyramids, obviously. Elon said
that? I think he was joking around. Possibly,
but he said it, and it's in a - You know, Elon
likes to joke around about shit. Here's one.
On May 1st, 2021, a talented chess player reached
the title of National Master for having achieved
a U .S. Chess Federation rating above 2200, landing
among the top 4 % of 350 ,000 rated players in
the world. A rating achieved that was 500 points
higher than that of a chess coach, just a few
years after learning how to play the game. That
prodigy is a 10 -year -old boy named Tanitalua
Adewumi, the son of Nigerian refugees to the
USA in 2017. His family spent a brief time living
in homeless shelters in New York City before
his parents established stable employment and
permanent residence. I played a brief chess game
against the little fellow in March 2021 on Grandmaster
Maurice Ashley's Twitch platform. A live streaming
social media interface. The game was indeed brief.
Yeah, he wiped the floor with me. Speaking of
Nigerians, immigrants to the U .S. Enjoy an 8
% higher household income than the national average.
Nigerian immigrants in the United States. And
ethnic Nigerian children in the United Kingdom,
especially those from the Igbo tribe, consistently
attain higher test scores on average than their
white UK counterparts. What is it about Nigeria?
Occasions to pause and wonder what depths of
intellect. These are occasions to pause. What
depths of intellectual capital in math, science
and engineering or any field lay hidden deep?
within the African continent or anywhere else
on earth, lost for now or lost forever for want
of an opportunity to flourish. I'm going to leave
you with a fast list. I want to tell you what
my racist black anthropologist found. Let's go
back to the 19th century. Let all anthropologists
be black racists instead of white racists. Okay?
Okay. What would they say? So. All right. Chimpanzees
are humans closest genetic relative. We just
need to find similarities between chimps and
white people. And that would be surefire evidence
of their less evolved state, because that's what
people were saying. The blacks were still evolving
and they show a chimp, a black person and a white
person. And so that's you can enslave black people.
laws against them, a way to justify it, because
of course you're going to put yourself at the
top. So now, hypothetical black racist anthropologist.
Chimps and other apes. So this is a list. This
is in a book that was never written. Chimps and
other apes grow hair all over their bodies. The
hairiest people you've ever seen have been white
people. with mats of hair across their chests
and ascending their backs. Their body hair can
even reach upward and out of their shirt collar.
Black people do not remotely approximate this
level of hairiness. There was no mention of this
in any of those books. Distinct from their face,
hands, and feet, part the hair of most chimpanzees
the way they do to each other when checking for
lice, and their skin color is white, not any
shade. Chimps tend to have big ears relative
to their head size. After decades of ear watching,
I can attest that the biggest ears I've ever
seen on humans have been on white people. Have
a look yourself next time you're in a crowded
public place. Doubtless there's strong overlap,
but the size of black people's ears can be as
little as half the size of white people's ears.
You might now ask about the famously large ears
of President Barack Obama. But he is precisely
half white, just as much white as black. So maybe
his big ears come from the white half of his
family. For most of the 20th century, Neanderthals
were portrayed as stupid and brutish. Turns out,
beginning in the 1990s, genetic research revealed
that Europeans are between 1 and 3 % Neanderthal.
Africans, 0%. That can't be good for Europeans.
Time to clean up that backward primitive image.
Since then... published references to Neanderthals,
instead comment on what must have been their
creative, artistic, inventive, and articulate
ways, crafting sophisticated tools and technologies
to shape their world. Look how easy it is to
be racist. Let's continue. Chimpanzees invest
quality family time pruning each other's hair.
We've all watched them do this. Apparently, the
lice they find must be tasty because whoever
plucks them from the other chimp's head also
eats them. Ever hear of a lice outbreak among
black children? Probably not. White children
are 30 times more susceptible to lice infestation
than are black children. The parasite simply
likes to lay eggs in the hair of chimpanzees
and white people more than on the hair of black
people. This goes on. This could have been included
and they would have said, well, wait a minute.
Maybe all humans are together and chimps are
something completely different. But they didn't
go there. Their bias prevented their analysis
of information that stares flat into their face.
Okay. Here's one. I'm going to skip some here
because I got to go. I got a plane waiting for
me. I'm skipping some here. Ready? Yeah. This
is one more from the chimp vault. I have others
that are not chimp related. Here's one. Chimpanzees
love to swing in trees. Apparently, so do suburban
white children. They typically can't wait to
build and live in a backyard tree house. You
have not likely seen black children. even contemplate
the idea. The white people clearly want to return
to their fully primitive state. This would be
a racist black person, okay, from the 19th century,
publishing, trying to find ways to enslave white
people. That's a cosmic perspective. That's a,
look, dude, this is what we were doing as humans
to each other. Not recognizing authentic diversity
in who and what we are. Trying to separate to
say I'm better. I make the rules and whatever
rule I'm making, I'm going to put myself at the
top. And you're not going to be at the top because
you're different. Do you anticipate that as people
get more education, more information, and as
we evolve? I want to believe that. That we'll
stop doing that and we'll start recognizing the
importance of diversity. I want to believe that.
And that it's our strength. I want to believe
that. I want to believe that too. I so want to
believe that. Okay. Here it is. Then I really
got to go. Okay. Last one. There's a quote, a
short quote from Horace Mann 200 years ago. I
want this on my tombstone. I beseech you. Nobody
uses beseech anymore. I love it. I beseech you
to treasure up in your hearts these my parting
words. Be ashamed to die until you have won some
victory for humanity. Our primal urge to keep
looking up is surely greater than our primal
urge to keep killing one another. If so, then
human curiosity and wonder. the twin chariots
of cosmic discovery, will ensure that starry
messages, these are messages from science, from
the sky, from the universe, continue to arrive.
These insights compel us for our short time on
Earth to become better shepherds of our own civilization.
Yes, life is better than death. Life is also
better than having never been born. But each
of us... is alive against stupendous odds. We
won the lottery only once. We get to invoke our
faculties of reason to figure out how the world
works. But we also get to smell the flowers.
We get to bask in divine sunsets and sunrises
and gaze deeply into the night sky they cradle.
We get to live and ultimately die in this glorious
universe. That's a hell of a tombstone. Dude.
I got to run. Thank you, sir. And one day I'll
come back and just chill. We'll lift weights
together. Okay. Wrestle a few rounds. Let's do
it. You know. Thank you very much. Appreciate
you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. All right.
Bye, everybody.