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 #1658. 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, Cosmic Perspective, and Scientific Literacy in the 21st Century. Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan
experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan podcast by
night. All day. Oh, yeah. How much time do you
spend looking at random leaves on television
shows to recognize that it's a fake pattern,
not created by the wind? No, I just, you know,
you look at. Scenes from Walking Dead, and they
enter this deserted town, as so many towns are
when zombies take over. And the leaves, you know,
the autumn leaves are evenly spread in the streets
and the sidewalks. And I'm thinking, some set
designer did that thinking that this is what
leaves do in the breeze. But that's not what
they do. They collect. They circulate. They're
like eddies in the air currents that will collect
them in one place and not the other. So we think
if something's random that it's evenly spread.
But in fact, there are many more collected elements
in something that's random than we typically
think. So I'm looking at your new ceiling here
in Austin, Texas. And your star is beautiful,
by the way. Thank you. Nice things you got here.
Thank you. But the stars are, the lights are
kind of evenly spread on the sky. Yeah, they
don't look real. So that's how, and plus, you
know, you could have thrown at least a constellation
up there or something. You know what I should
do? I should get someone to make me one and make
one and just imitate the Milky Way. That'd be
beautiful. Right. That'd be beautiful. And I'll
be happy to certify it. No, I'm scared. You give
me a call. I'm scared. I'm all in. I don't think
you will certify it. I think it would be a real
problem. I think it would be a genuine issue.
So how you doing, Joe? I'm doing good. How you
doing? Yeah. Austin is an old haunt of mine.
Is it? Yeah, I met my wife here. I got my master's
at UT Austin. My wife got her Ph .D. in mathematical
physics there. And I finished my Ph .D. in Columbia
in New York City. But we spent six years here,
long ago. I love it here. We were here when Austin,
Texas had six gates at the airport. Wow. And
there was never more than one other car in front
of you at a red light. Just picture that. A lot
of folks remember that, apparently, and they're
very upset. I would be totally pissed off. The
traffic here is still adorable. Adorable. It's
ridiculous, cute traffic, and the people are
so nice. It's just a completely different vibe
from Los Angeles. So I miss you, man. I miss
you, too. Good to see you're still at it. I'm
still at it. I'm still doing the thing. a few
of your shows and I said, you know, we can bring
some deep philosophical thought back because
I know that's a big part of you, right? Occasionally.
No, it's in you. It's in you. When I'm talking
to the right people. Oh, okay. Yeah, like you.
Oh, okay. Yeah, it comes out. It comes out. Good.
I've been meaning to talk to you. I've been wanting
to talk to you quite a bit. What do you got?
Well, all these UFO disclosures. Yeah. You're
like one of the first guys that I want to talk
to because you always have a skeptical... inquisitive
perspective on these things. You're not necessarily
dismissive, but you're not willing to just adopt
this narrative that we're being visited by UFOs
from another planet. By the way, let's start
with the military. If there are glowing lights
in the sky and we don't know what it is, i they
damn sure better look into it right we give them
folks 700 billion dollars make some percentage
of that budget to check out the possible threat
of things we don't understand i used to think
that was a lot of money until i found out that
los angeles spent a billion dollars on the homeless
every year their budget for the homeless budget
okay a billion and they're not doing all right
So when I look at the military getting $700 billion,
is that what they get? Plus or minus. We need
to give them more money. Clearly they need more
money. Because if you can't fix the L .A. homeless
situation with $1 billion, how are you going
to protect us with $700 billion? Well, it's not
the same agency charged with it. Are they better?
They're better than the homeless people? No,
I'm saying the mayor's office of Los Angeles
or of Austin, right? Yeah, who's running what?
I got in trouble this past February when the
electricity went out in Texas and it was cold
just a couple of months ago. What did you say?
What did I say? I tweeted. I said, what did I
say? I say, okay, right now NASA landed a rover
on Mars with a helicopter, and this is at 120
million miles away, controlling it, and it's
on Mars where it's 100 degrees below zero. Meanwhile,
Texas, where it's cold, has no electricity. So
all I said was maybe NASA instead of politicians
should run Texas. That seems pretty reasonable.
Some people just lost their mind. But that's
just because the power was out and people were
freaking out already. Plus, I don't do what you.
Advise me the last time. Post and drop? What's
the phrase? Post and ghost. Post and ghost. Yeah.
No, I always peek at what people are saying.
I want to know. You are too popular. When you're
too popular, people get mad at you. Oh, you know?
Yeah. That's deep. And it doesn't necessarily
have to make sense. But if enough people are
angry and upset at their own lives and they just
decide they're going to attack Neil deGrasse
Tyson because he makes a poignant point. That's
deep. Try to have you smile. about it a little
I mean and plus Texas is no stranger to NASA.
Houston, we have a problem. Houston, we have
a problem. Yeah. I mean, come on. That was not
addressed to the governor. It was addressed to
NASA headquarters. Yeah. People are just too
easy to get upset. And also, you're just dealing
with the numbers are just unmanageable of people
online. I mean, how many millions of people do
you have on your Twitter page? 14 and a half
million. Just imagine. It's a stupidly large
number. I'm... I still don't understand it because
I want to remind people every few days, you'd
realize you're following an astrophysicist. There's
still time to unfollow just in case this is something
you did by accident. Yeah, but you're a different
kind of astrophysicist. You're an entertaining
educator, and that's so important because you
make things fun. You make things fun while pointing
out really important points, like really important
things that we should probably understand about
the way the universe works and physics. Thanks
for thinking about it that way. I don't think
about it that way. I think that the universe
is inherently hilarious, and so I'm just sharing
that hilarity with you. But what I also found
is that when people smile, they learn better.
Oh, for sure. Yeah, when they're less tense.
Yeah, they're less tense, and there's a pleasing
feeling that they had at a point when they learned
something. And so that's got to work some kind
of dopamine chemicals so that you say, well,
I want to learn something again tomorrow. Yeah,
I mean, Science educators are so important because
so many people equate, whether it's mathematics
or science or even history, they equate it with
boredom, right? I think not only science but
many academic subjects. And what's that song
by Alice Cooper, Schools Out? Schools out for
summer, schools out forever. This is an anthem
for people who hate school. What else is that,
right? And then I thought to myself. When you're
in school, your only job is to learn. And for
that to be a chore means something is wrong in
that school. I'm not blaming the people who are
throwing their notes in the air, running down
the school steps. I'm blaming the system that's
not making school fun and entertaining. And it
should be a place where you are trained. to become
a lifelong learner. Yeah. Where some infusion
of curiosity, you get bitten by a curiosity bug.
And then when you walk down the steps, you say,
wait a minute. I don't want to leave school.
I want to stay. Or if I have to leave school
because I graduated, let me find other ways to
continue to stay enlightened throughout my life.
Otherwise, you get ossified in one way of thinking
with one dimension of information or facts or
insights. And then you're stuck there and you
think that's the world and it's not. It's not,
but let's put this into perspective. Think about
the budget for the homeless. Think about the
budget for the military. Now let's think about
the budget that a school has to work with. And
think about the fact that you have to take 40
kids who may not have been paying attention most
of their life, and then all of a sudden you catch
them when they're 14. Good luck. I mean, you've
got a lot of momentum. A lot of momentum behind
them of them hating school. A lot of negative
momentum. A lot of, like, maybe bored. We're
disenfranchised teachers who've been teaching
these kids. They're not into it. And then their
hormones are kicking in, so they can't pay attention
to anything anyway. It's easy for me to make
these statements, but I'm not the one in the
trenches there, especially in those middle schools
where hormones are riding everything. Right when
they start popping, the kids don't know what
to do with them. Imagine your whole life. This
is not the time to learn physics. I've got to
worry about my body. And then just trying to
get 40 kids or however many is in the typical
classroom to pay attention to the same thing
at the same time and to be interested in the
same thing at the same time. There's a lot of
intelligent kids that get left by the wayside
because school, for whatever reason, doesn't
jive with the way they learn things. It doesn't
mean that they're not smart. I think we have
similar. Each of us, you and I, have similar
challenges in a theater audience, right? Now,
you have the advantage that they're all fans,
so they know where you're coming from when you
do a stand -up routine. But still, there's 1
,000 people or more who are different from each
other. Some are old, some are young, some are
left, some are right, you know, politically.
And you thread that, and I think you thread it
brilliantly. You get people with you. And you
get them to want to listen to you. So part of
what I glean from people's reactions to my Twitter
posts is, was that how you thought about that?
I didn't know that. Oh, you know, I thought what
I posted was funny, but nobody laughed. That's
useful information to me, okay? I want to know
if I'm succeeding or not in what words I choose,
what phrases, what ideas, what topics. And by
the way, those touch points have evolved over
the years. Done a purposeful experiment. I took
an identical tweet and just retweeted it five
years after I first did it. And reactions are
different. Because of the time. The times have
changed. That's correct. And so if I want to
stay effective as an educator, first, I will
never want them to meet me at the chalkboard.
or whatever boards are made of today. Because
what is that? Okay, you're a professor. Professor
Neil is facing the chalkboard, drawing on the
board, and you either get him or you don't. Okay?
But that person cannot claim to be an educator.
The educator is someone who faces the audience
and wants to know, how is your brain wired for
thought? And if I know that, I have a chance
of shaping knowledge, information, insight. in
ways that can best be received by your receptors.
And, yes, if it's a mixture, so you dance a little
bit. You put out some feelers in this way. So
if I have an audience and some of them are over
75, look for the silver -haired folks, they'll
remember, you know, the later stages of the Second
World War and early stages of the Cold War. I'll
throw in a reference just for them. You know,
the 20 -somethings won't know and they won't
care. They probably won't even get it. But I'll
go buy it quickly enough that I offer the other
community demographic in the audience something
else. And this is my way. Maybe it's a tennis
match. I'm hitting the ball back and forth to
different people. And that way I can take this
body of knowledge that is the universe and have
everybody share in it. Otherwise, I don't know
that I can claim to be an educator. Well, you
certainly can claim to be an educator, but maybe
you're not making the best use of your particular
abilities. Your particular abilities that are
unique to you are your humor and your fun, your
jovial, along with being deep and philosophical
and talking about very heavy things. I found
that matters. People, like I said, people like.
To smile. Yeah, like silliness. Yeah. You're
a silly dude. It's fun. I mean, for a guy who
talks about... I guess I'll take this as a compliment.
Yes, it is a compliment. For a guy who talks
about, like, really intense subjects, you know,
the nature of infinity. Yeah. And different kinds
of infinities. Oh, you remember that? Yeah, I
remember everything. Some infinities are bigger
than other infinities. Yeah, which is what? What
are you saying? I'm not going to let you get
away with this alien thing, though. Oh, no. Bring
it back. No, bring it back. Bring it back to
this alien thing. Damn, I thought I could. So...
It's weird to me that now the Pentagon is saying
that these are real videos that they've captured
off of naval vessels and they've been hovering
over defense systems and they don't know what
they are. They don't know how they operate. There's
a film that was released recently by Jeremy Corbell
that also came from the Navy where it shows one
that's a transmedium device. It actually flies
through the air and then goes into the water.
And this is being filmed. That's how they interpreted
the information that was in front of them. Exactly.
Just to be clear. Yes. But it did go in the water.
There's a film of it actually going in the water.
And they talk about it splashing down. They're
monitoring it. Well, they talked about there
was a. White caps where they think it was submerged,
I think. Wasn't that the description? Well, we
could see it. It actually went underwater, and
then they went to look for it, and they couldn't
find it. They used a submarine. They used sonar.
They don't know what it is. Yeah, so I hope they
keep checking to find out what it is. Yeah, it
would be nice to know what that is. Oh, yeah.
Something that can travel through the sky and
also goes through the ocean. That's pretty crazy.
I want the military to understand that signal
they're getting on their equipment. Because there's
equipment between you and what's going on, typically,
when it's sort of Navy sensors and trackers and
that sort of thing. Other things are things people
see in the sky with their own senses, right?
Just the light in the sky, and it moves in ways
they don't understand or can't explain. But a
point I've made before, I'll just rehash it here.
We live in a time where everyone is equipped.
with a high -resolution color camera and video
recorder. Basically everyone. And if you run
the numbers on it, it's about, I got this from
someone from Google, there's about 6 billion
photos and videos uplifted to the Internet every
day. And in that collection, you find really
rare things that you only heard about or maybe
you saw the results of, but you didn't actually
see it happen. So there are videos of buses tumbling
in the winds of a tornado. Now, in the aftermath
of a tornado, there's a bus on its side, and
so you knew wind took it there. But previously,
no one is going to say, oh, that bus is about
to lift into the air, Wizard of Oz style, like
the house. Let me go in and get my movie camera
and then come back out and shoot this. No one
did that. If you did, you'd be stupid that you
want to get the hell out of there. But everybody
has a video camera. So we have images of this
rare phenomenon, uncommon, hardly ever filmed,
buses tumbling in the air. We have video footage
of animals doing interesting things that we never
had video recordings of. Like bears walking on
two feet? Yeah, bears. And one of them right
at a traffic cone. There's a video of that. It
was just walking down the street. And there's
a traffic cone. And it looked at it. It was tipped
over and it righted it and it kept walking. And
I'm thinking, wow, this is what bears do when
we're not chasing them or when they're not chasing
us. This is just a casual. They're mammals. They
have large brains, you know, compared to any
other kinds of. They're oddly playful, too. Yes,
and they love people's backyard swimming pools,
apparently. Yeah, and benches. You ever seen
them on picnic benches? And they're just chilling
on the bench. They lay on benches and roll around
on picnic benches. Yeah. And in another case,
I saw it was a magpie, one of these birds known
for how smart it is. There is a full half -liter
plastic thing of water. It was just water, okay?
You know, a water bottle. And it was full. So
the magpie goes over and sips out the water.
Now, the beak is only, what, an inch and a half
long or an inch at most? So it goes in until
it can't reach the water anymore. So what does
it do? It goes off to the side, gets a rock,
just the right size, drops it into the water
bottle. And raises the level of the water. Thereby
displacing water. Here it is. That is heavy.
There it is. And so it comes and it goes back
and gets another stone, drops it in. And every
time it drops it in, the water level rises and
it can drink more water. And it keeps doing this.
That's pretty amazing. Okay. And so every time
we study animals, they're smarter than we ever
thought they were. So maybe for our own ego,
we kept building ourselves up. saying how separate
and distinct we are as humans in the animal kingdom,
when maybe we're not as separate and distinct
as we think we are. So what's my broader point
there that I was making? I just distracted myself.
Something about UFOs? Yeah, I know. I was trying
to get back to UFOs on that. The fact that we
have high -resolution cameras in our pocket and
we take videos of things that are very unusual.
Exactly. So here's video of a magpie. doing Bernoulli
experiments in a water bottle. Who would have
known that even happened, right? Okay, you can't
bring the bird into a lab, and maybe you could,
but I don't know that anyone did. All right,
here's my point. In the 1960s and 70s, there
were many, many reports of alien abductions.
People said, the aliens came to me and they brought
me in and then they released me. Do you have
any footage? No, they took my camera. Or no,
they zapped my film and now there's no image
on the film. But there were countless stories.
Well, now you can stream live from your camera
anything that's going on in front of you. So
if the aliens come and they want to abduct you,
you can stream it. That would be instantly viral.
Oh, my gosh. You know, the stuff that goes viral
is much less than that. A kitten that jumps to
the table and falls, that goes viral? You don't
think video footage of an alien is not going
to go viral instantly? But there's none. So I'm
just saying, I'm thinking, if we were being visited,
somebody would have some good footage. If we
were being visited... I'm thinking maybe Google
satellite images would catch spaceships that
are not airplanes moving on our surface. If we
were being visited, I'm thinking we'd have something
better than fuzzy monochromatic video. Of objects
that apparently reveal themselves only to Navy
pilots, right? One of the reasons is most of
these sightings actually occur far offshore in
the ocean. And the speculation is this is one
of the ways. Obviously, I'm going to put my tinfoil
hat on nice and tight. Do your thing. This is
one of the ways that they monitor us. The best
way to do it is to do it where they hold their
base where no one is around, which is the ocean.
No, that's not true. So they go in the ocean,
they pop up, and they fly out. That's not true.
What do you mean it's not true? It's not true.
Yeah, nobody lives on the ocean. Yes, that's
correct. In the ocean. Well, so, oh, it lives
down under sea. This is what the speculation
is. Oh, okay, it lives down under sea. That's
why these transmedium devices have been, these
transmedium crafts have been observed. If you
want, if you are sure we are being visited by
aliens and you don't actually have really good
evidence, then you have to say that. Sure. Well,
you know that. You have to say that. You have
to say this is really happening and they're observing
us and they're concealing themselves in this
particular way. You have to say that. So that's
your way to maintain your alien belief system
by saying that. And I don't have a problem with
it. Go get them. Go get them. But all of what
has been put forth as evidence for aliens. to
me, is insufficient evidence to excite my interest,
my research interest, in devoting time to finding
it out. But it definitely has excited other people.
I have not stopped them. I am not saying defund
the military program on UAPs, which of course
is just... updated UFO. I know, they like to
say that now because there's like a stigma to
UFO. I know, that's just, that's a really transparent...
Sneaky way of doing it. No, no, it's not even
sneaky. It's actually, I think it's embarrassing.
It's like, maybe if we call them UAPs... People
will take them seriously. People will take them
seriously. I'm of the belief that they're probably
akin to what we did on Mars. I don't think...
there's aliens in them. I have a feeling that
these things are probes. And I feel like if you
just think about biological entities flying through
the universe, why do that? When you have sophisticated
technology that's good enough right now from
our... relatively primitive in consideration
of what we think is possible a million years
from now, right? But we could send that Mars
rover around. We have a helicopter on Mars. I
mean, there's multiple satellites flying through
the universe right now taking images. We can
do all that. Yeah, but our probes are not targeting
the Martian. military fighter pilots because
there's no martian military but if there were
we certainly were sitting out in the open right
but if we had something like are you familiar
with um one of the most famous cases was a case
with uh commander david fravor of the navy who
uh encountered with One or two other jets off
of the Nimitz, they encountered this thing that
was shaped like a tic -tac. Yeah. You know the
story. Everybody knows this, yeah. This story.
It went from, they tracked it going from 80 ,000
feet above sea level to 50 in less than a second.
They have no idea how it moved. There's no visible
propulsion system. It was blocking their radar.
It was actively blocking tracking. This is what
their sensors told them. Exactly. Just be clear
about that. And then - You're stating - I'm stating
information as Commander Fravor related. I don't
care. It doesn't matter. He's human. We're all
human here. But as a scientist, when you're presenting
information, you don't say, this thing was at
80 ,000 feet and it dropped to zero, to sea level
in one second, or whatever it was, the measure.
That's the wrong way to report it. What you say
is, we have sensors that told us this is what
happened. I understand what you're saying. Okay?
Yes. Distinction. Yes. And so now – all right.
Your first question then, tell me about the sensors.
Yeah. Okay. Are they double -checked? Are they
– you know. So – but if you're just going to
say there's this craft at 80 ,000 – then everyone
is thinking about a craft and no one is thinking
about the sensor. They actually saw it with their
eyes too. This is something that they actually
got. You can't see something at 80 ,000 feet.
No, the actual visual on the craft. They didn't
see it at 80 ,000 feet. But this craft, it's
not just something that was tracked with equipment.
Got it. But they didn't see it at 80 ,000 feet.
That's my point. So, by the way, this level of
attention I'm giving to the detail and the reporting
of information, we do that with fellow scientists
for much less. Oh, for sure. If we're being visited
by intelligent aliens from another planet, go
to a scientific conference and watch the level
of scrutiny we put on other people's work. If
they have a sensor that has a new result, we'll
say, did you calibrate the sensor? How long has
the sensor been in use? I'll give you an example.
Here's an example, okay? Do you remember Planet
X? Yes. The search for Planet X. Nibiru. That
was one. Sorry. There were several incarnations
of Planet X. Right. That was among them. That
was the most wacky. I'm talking about 100 years
ago Planet X. Yes. Oh, 100 years ago? Well, there
were several Planet Xs, right? So Uranus was
moving weirdly. Nobody understood. Maybe there's
a planet beyond it whose gravity we have yet
to reckon in our equations. Oh, boom. We discover
Neptune. Wait a minute, Neptune is moving a little
unfamiliarly. My phone is, sorry about that.
Are you going to drop that thing and break it
with no case on? So, yeah, I got the 12, and
yeah, I can still do this. I'm just sorry. Yeah,
I get it. Last time you were here, you had a
broken case. You're a broken back. Remember?
So. Why are you distracting me? Sorry, sorry.
I was like on a roll. Neptune. Neptune. So Neptune,
we're looking at Neptune's orbit, and it's not
following Newton's laws. And this is odd. Well,
we've been down that road before. Uranus didn't
follow Newton's laws. We proposed another planet,
and we found it. So Neptune's not following all
the laws of gravity from all the other planets
in the sun. There must be another planet out
there, a planet X. Let's look for it. Is that
Bode's law? Bose law is a fitting function that
gets you – it got a little more attention than
it deserved. It's just that planets – every next
planet is about twice as far away from the sun
as the previous one. So you just make a quick
equation out of that. Oh, that's it? But it doesn't
work for Mercury. didn't work for Pluto. I thought
it was based on the mass of the planet. No, not
at all. The mass has nothing to do with it. Nothing
to do with it? And it predicted the asteroid
belt, but the asteroid belt, there's no planet
there. Right. Okay? And if you glue together
all the pieces of the asteroid belt, you get
something like 5 % the mass of the moon. So,
yeah, it gave us the location of the asteroid
belt, but that's not a planet. So, Bode's Law,
it's fun to play with, but, you know, there are
limits to how far you want to... declare its
relevance to the actual universe. So we're out
here at Neptune. And so I said, maybe there's
a planet X. Everybody started looking. Everybody
started looking, including Percival Lowell, all
right, back in the 1920s. And he said, I want
to find planet X because something's perturbing
Neptune. So he sets out looking for it and he
doesn't find it. Then he hires Clyde Tombaugh.
And he dies, so he doesn't see the results of
this. Clyde Tombaugh said, I can't find it either.
I will just systematically search everywhere.
Because if you think something's affecting you
gravitationally, you ought to have some idea
where it is to be tugging on you in that way.
That's not some kind of weird – it's like you're
moving differently. Where must the thing be to
tug on you so that you're moving in that way?
No one – could find such a planet X. So Klein
-Thombo said, it's got to be out there somewhere.
I will systematically image the entire sky, all
right? You got to do it on multiple nights because
if something's moving, you'd see it change from
one picture to the next. He does this, discovers
Pluto. Was Pluto where planet X was supposed
to have been? No. Was Pluto the mass that planet
X should have been? Everyone assumed it was.
But over the decades, the mass of Pluto got...
lower and lower and lower as our estimates got
more and more accurate. Then we found out that
Pluto is one -fifth the mass of our moon, made
of half ice. And this is why Pluto got into trouble
later in the 20th century. It's not because we
had some vendetta against Pluto. Pluto just never
belonged in that list to begin with. That's really
how you need to think about it. Anyhow, there's
still the matter of Neptune's orbit. Pluto did
not have enough mass to make Those changes. So
the search for Planet X continued. So what happens?
All right. 1993. A colleague of mine named Miles
Standish. Okay. He's probably related to the
Miles Standish on the Mayflower. He, as an astrophysicist,
looked at all of the data people were using to
say Neptune's orbit was crooked. Looked at all
the data. Then he found out that at one particular
observatory, was it the gearbox or the timing
mechanism had just been cleaned or swapped out?
Because in the observing log, you write down
everything because you just don't know. Was there
a glitch in the current? Was there a bird flyover?
You make notes of everything. One of the observatories
whose data was being grafted together with the
other observatories had this sort of gearbox.
I don't remember if it was a gearbox. There was
some mechanical adjustment that was made. He
said, I wonder if that had an effect on the positioning
of this telescope. He removed those data from
his analysis and fitted data to all the other
telescopes that he had for the positions of Uranus.
Of Neptune. When he did that, Planet X evaporated
in that instant. In that instant. There was no
Planet X. All the other data, when he connects
across, removing the data from the one where
the observing log said they did something different,
Neptune fell right onto Newton's laws. And so
since 1993, there is no planet X. And Pluto,
and not for that, we probably would have been
a long time before we discovered Pluto because
no one would have looked for it. They found another
like Pluto. Let me just finish the lesson there.
Okay. The lesson there is you have information
that you think is correct from your sensors.
This was an observatory, a fine observatory.
And you're going to say this observatory says.
Neptune is misbehaving. But then you learn there
was something wrong with the data. You throw
it out. So I'm trying to say this happens all
the time in science. You have to be careful what
you're analyzing before you declare that what
the thing measured is true and then realign all
your resources to address what you think is true
when it might have just simply been a glitch.
Or multiple glitches or anything. And we do this
all the time in science. So you were saying?
Well, several things. One, when we're talking
about planetoids and planets, the idea about
Pluto is that Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt,
right? It's the first and currently known largest
member of the Kuiper Belt. And it makes sense.
You know, we didn't even know the Kuiper Belt
existed in 1930. So for us, it's just the ninth
planet. And it's the tiniest and the littlest,
and it's got a weird orbit that crosses the orbit
of other planets. And that's a little weird,
but we'll grandfather it in. Okay, Pluto. And
then, wait a minute, you have Brethren. In the
1990s, we discovered other objects out there
with similar orbits to Pluto. So maybe Pluto
is not the ninth planet. It's the first object
in a new swath of real estate discovered in the
outer solar system called the Kuiper Belt. And
that's where it stands right now. And this Kuiper
Belt. There was some speculation. Now, I read
this quite a while ago. Forgive me. But wasn't
there was some speculation that we are we might
be in some sort of a binary star system and there
might be like a burnt out star that's way, way,
way outside of our solar system. Yeah, I mean,
that's causing the galactic shelf to drop off
like this. This Kuiper belt is responding to
some other gravity that's way out there. So,
OK, so you you mix like three or four different
scenarios. That's common to me. There was a while
there where we looked at the extinction records
of species on Earth and found some periodicity
to it. I forgot. Was it every 20 million years
or something? There was some period that repeated
where the fossil records showed a dramatic drop
or a mild drop in the species count from one
layer to the next in the geological sediment.
If this has a rhythm to it, there is nothing
in the solar system that has a 20 million year
rhythm. So someone suggested maybe the sun has
a really eccentric, as in its orbit, it's in
a binary star system where there's another star
that plunges in through the solar system, coming
through the Kuiper belt, and then goes back out
in this dance with the sun. So we wouldn't have
seen it in our civilization because this is –
all right. But when it does that, it disrupts
the Kuiper Belt gravitationally. And if you do
that, you will send a rain of comets down, a
higher than average rate of comets down into
the inner solar system. And then you could render
many life forms extinct on Earth just the way
we lost the dinosaurs from an asteroid. So –
and they even gave a name for it. They called
it Nemesis. That was the Nemesis. double star
system of the sun. But so we took a closer look
at the data. It turned out it had been filtered
in a way that revealed rhythms that were not
really there. And if it's orbital, the rhythm
should be perfect because Newton's law doesn't
mess around and they weren't exactly right. So
that concept has evaporated, but it got people
going for a while. It got a lot of press attention.
And the part about the Kuiper Belt, about the
galactic shelf, that there seems to be some sort
of a drop -off. Okay. So now with regard to another
scenario, which got folded into yours, is that
our orbit around the galaxy is not sort of a
straight circle, I mean a clean circle. We actually
wave in and out of the plane of the galaxy. All
right. Like if you imagine sort of Nessie, Loch
Ness Monster doing that. Okay. So our orbit,
our entire solar system is dipping up and down
and through. So another suggestion was, in fact,
I think there was an entire book on this. Forgive
me for not remembering the name. It suggested
that the entire solar system, as it passes through
the plane of the galaxy, that disrupts the Kuiper
Belt as well. You know, it's basically the Kuiper
Belt says lobbing comets down into the inner
solar system. And so you can look for that in
the extinction record as well. And it was suggested
that that might have been what took out the dinosaurs,
one of those kind of passages through. But anyhow,
yeah. I mean, there's no shortage of... Excuses
for killing the dinosaurs. Yeah, for sure. They're
out there. When you think about this idea of
everyone having these video cameras in their
pocket and high -resolution imagery and where
is that stuff? But the absence of evidence isn't
necessarily evidence of absence. It can be. So
I'll give you an example. Okay. Because that's
a mantra. Right. All right. And in science, so
philosophically, that's true. But in practice,
in science, we do that all the time. Okay? So
I'll give an example. It's a contrived example,
but it's a clean example. There's a cave nearby.
You're a mountain man, all right? And there's
a cave nearby. And you're worried it might have
bears in it. So you don't want to go poking around.
So you conduct some experiments. So here's what
you do. You put chalk dust around the entrance
to the cave, and you check it every day for a
month, and there are no bear prints in the chalk
dust. Winter comes, okay, and you notice there
are no footprints in the snow. Of course, well,
maybe the bear snuck in and you didn't see it,
and it's hibernating. That could be so, perhaps.
Well, you wait until springtime. So you keep
doing this without ever going in the cave and
you have no evidence of a bear going in and out
of that cave over a normal cycle of time that
a bear might go in and out of a cave. That is
evidence of absence in a sense. Okay. In a very
specific place. Correct. So at that point you'd
say, well, I didn't go in the cave. to check,
but I have enough evidence to say the bear is
not there. So it's the thing, oh, you can't prove
a negative. I kind of just did. I'm saying there
is no bear there. And did I prove it in a fully
logical mathematical sense? No. But scientifically,
I've gathered enough information to convince
me there's no bear in the cave, and I will operate
on that assumption going forward. And so much
science happens that way. And it works. And you
think that's a valid way to dismiss the lack
of UFO evidence because these people have these
phones and they're just all filming and taking
photographs of things constantly? What would
happen? You can ask. You're perfectly allowed
to say what would happen if we were visited by
aliens and you crowdsourced the... access to
aliens among 7 billion people in the world. How
many people are out in the middle of the ocean?
I was going to get to that. Have you ever seen
the flight paths of airplanes in a single day?
Yeah, it's pretty wild. It is completely wild.
It's like, what the? If you show this to the
Wright brothers from 1903, dude. Across the oceans.
Of course, there are traffic paths, right, where
you're more likely to find them than in other
paths because there's either no destination there
or the Great Circle route doesn't favor it. But
you look at how often every single day the sky,
the airspace is crisscrossed by way more commercial
carriers than military vehicles. I'm thinking
you'd have an encounter with something that was
not a fuzzy object that no one can describe.
They would photograph something through the cockpit
window. I mean, why not? You'd see something.
There was a recent sighting by a bunch of American
Airlines pilots. By two, I should say, not a
bunch of. Yeah, it can happen. Again, you get
the more – I don't know what I'm looking at.
Yeah, but was it detailed? Did you have – If
you had a guess, if you had a bet, like if you
had a pile of money and you have to put it on
– Green for aliens or red for horseshit? Where
are you putting your money? You're forcing a
binary decision here. I am, I am. We're playing
roulette. But I wouldn't call it horseshit. I
would say not aliens. Not aliens. Right. I don't
think there's things in most of those crafts,
but I think those crafts are some kind of drone.
And I'm not convinced that they're from another
planet. Sure. I don't have a problem with that.
And if you, by the way, if you, if this thing
that they see out the window, okay, and they
don't get a good photo or it's still fuzzy or
it's still a light in the sky, and I'm saying,
okay, I'm not yet convinced, but it's something.
Fine. Go invest resources to figure it out, especially
if you think it's a security risk. If you want
to believe it's aliens, I'm not – if they didn't
want us to see them, you would never see them.
I'm pretty sure. If they had enough technology
to cross the vacuum of space to reach us, you
wouldn't even know they were there. I agree.
You just would have no idea. Perhaps the way
that they slowly integrate into our consciousness,
into our acceptance of their existence, is a
trickle effect. Okay. Every now and then we see
a video. Now think of the hubris of us saying
this advanced civilization of aliens who can
cross the gaps of space are interested in us
and our gonads. paint circles in our crops. That's
kind of weird, I would think. Okay, I hate this
argument. I just think it's a little weird. I
don't think we're that interesting. I think we're
really fucking interesting. I think we can nuke
the entire planet many times over, and yet we
don't. We did it once in 1947. bullshit each
other constantly. We spew out propaganda. We
have this bizarre ritual where every four years
we pick a leader based on a popularity contest.
Who you want to have beer with. Yeah. We're constantly
involved in murder and rape and genocide all
over the world. We choose what things to pay
attention to, what not to pay attention to. We
celebrate people who pretend to be heroes in
films and television and we barely know scientists
who win Nobel Prizes. We're fucking fascinating.
We're the worst. The weirdest things. Fascinating
to whom? The weirdest things. Listen, if you
studied us, if you were from another planet filled
with things like us, like if it was another planet
of us and we found a planet doing the exact same
kind of nonsense that we do somewhere else, we
would be riveted. Here's how I think about another
planet. Okay. If I can share this. This is a
little deep if you're ready for that. Oh, please.
Okay. So whether you are vegetarian or omnivore.
or carnivore, you must kill something that was
alive to survive. Okay? Yes. The only thing that
you consume that was never once alive is sort
of basically milk and honey, okay, and salt.
Everything else was once alive. You're killing.
And, of course, vegetarians are doing it as well.
In fact, I'm intrigued that vegetarians in particular
will focus on the baby version of the plant they
would otherwise be eating. Baby spinach, baby
carrots, baby arugula, baby this, baby that.
And on the sort of reproductive organs of plants.
Oh, let's eat the flowers or the seeds or the
nuts. These are things that the plant's trying
to make another plant with. You collect it and
eat it. So now imagine a civilization from another
planet that is entirely energized by photosynthesis.
Just imagine that. Maybe they have what we would
call an animal, but their entire skin photosynthesizes.
So all living creatures on that planet. consume
sunlight from their home star. Okay. And so they
say, I want to explore the galaxy. And so they
build a spaceship and they come to Earth. And
what do they see? Humans and other animals killing
to survive. Inventing means of mass murder of
fellow other life forms on their planet. Just
to survive. They would consider us astonishingly,
inexcusably, bewilderingly barbaric for having
done so. And I don't think they would be interested
in us. I think if they really are. using photosynthesis.
They're plant -based creatures. They're probably
going to be so tired all the time, they're not
going to have the will to travel through the
universe. You're confusing the vegetarian with
the plant life. Oh, it's different? That's right.
You're confusing me. Well, they're plants themselves.
They don't go anywhere. An old man who wrestles
elk and rips out his heart and bites from it.
Is that what you did on that hunting trip? Plants
don't go anywhere. They just sit. They just stay
put. Oh, yeah. They would also say. Nothing that
uses photosynthesis moves. But I'm talking about
another planet. Just imagine a planet that that's
the case. I know. In my planet, they're all lazy.
Okay. But except consider an encounter between
you, your car, and an oak tree. You lose. Yes.
Okay. And the oak tree produces. It's still not
moving. It has, because it doesn't need to. Right.
Here. Okay. Can I name drop for a minute? Please.
Can I name drop? I love a good name drop. Okay.
Steven Spielberg once swung by my office. Well,
we met. We've met. Tell him I'm a big fan. I'll
tell him. I'll tell him. And he had one of his
kids. He had several kids. He had brought one
to the Hayden Planetarium in my office. And the
museum got word that he was in town. He has an
apartment nearby. So they asked if he could come
by in addition to other. activities at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City where
I work. That's my day job. So he comes in and
we're talking and I say hi to his kid and it's
like he's like in middle school at the time.
And so I said I got to talk to him about some
of his work. So I said let's talk E .T. He said
sure. That's when I learned he said he imagined
E .T. as vegetable not as animal. And That's
why, among other reasons, E .T. has this power
to rejuvenate plants with his finger because
it's actually a plant. And so that's an example.
I know it's fictional, of course, but it's an
example of thinking outside of an earth box.
Sure. And if you think outside of an earth box,
there you go. That is a life form that would
not understand us. They would think we how could.
How could such a world exist? And on top of that,
there's how we treat each other. Yes. All right.
And by the way, I bet. Yeah, I'm one of those
who's a little worried when we give our return
address broadcast out into space. Because you
don't give your email to strangers in the street.
Yet we're giving the coordinates of Earth broadcast
out. to the gaps of interstellar space. So I'm
a little worried about that, but then I think
about it, and I see nearly every portrayal of
an alien in Hollywood is evil, going right on
back to War of the Worlds with H .G. Wells. And
I'm thinking, why? Do we have any insights that
aliens would be evil? Or is it really a mirror
to ourselves? It's not... It's imagined knowledge
of how aliens would behave. It's actual knowledge
of how we have behaved. But what about the day
the Earth stood still? It's one of the first.
Well, it's one of the rare ones where the aliens
– Well, no. The War of the Worlds long predates
that by half a century. Yeah. So – but on balance,
the aliens are evil. Okay? That's all I'm saying.
Yes. And so we are – I see those portrayals as
unwitting mirrors of our own conduct because
an alien coming to Earth has a greater technology
than we do, period. That's just the end of the
story. So how has it gone on Earth? Any time
one civilization with higher technology encounters
one with lesser technology. It has never boded
well for the society with lesser technology.
They've been enslaved, killed, put in camps,
exterminated. So I think we fear aliens because,
in fact, we fear ourselves. We fear what we would
do if we had the capability to go to another
planet like they do to us. I think we do that
unwittingly. Yeah. That's what's manifesting
in our storytelling. I think it represents what
we see out of human beings. Sure. Yeah. Definitely.
So getting back to the UFO reports and sites,
you know, the headline I saw recently says, Pentagon
confirms UFOs are real. That title has no meaning.
Well, it gets me happy. Well, no, it has no meaning.
I know what you're saying. Yeah, it just has
no meaning. It's unidentified, so unidentified
things are real. Yeah, of course. That doesn't
mean anything. It doesn't mean they're aliens.
If the title said Pentagon confirms UFOs are
actually aliens, that is a headline. Right. That's
a good headline right there, but that's not what
anybody can report. What do you think this whole
ramping up of all this information is, all the
videos and all the conversations about it and
the article in the New York Times? Yeah, it's
part of what Trump. set into motion. I mean,
the landscape was ripe for it, but the... Oh,
by the way, UFO sightings went up during COVID,
I think, because everyone was home bored with
nothing to do, and you'd go out and look up.
Makes sense. Yeah, there's a lot of cultural
statistics related to the frequency of UFO sightings.
But Trump, just before he left office... He slipped
something into the COVID relief bill, as they
do so often in Congress, where you agree with
the rest of this. I don't agree with that, but
I want to get it through. So he put that in?
Yes. Well, under his administration. It's under
his administration. The full disclosure. Within
six months, he wants all federal agencies that
collect information on unidentified sky objects
to put together reports and deliver it to Congress
within six months. Fine. I don't have a problem
with that. What's weird, though, is. This belief
that somehow the government is some repository
of knowledge and secrets that we don't otherwise
have access to. That's not the kind of country
we live in, nor is the government that competent.
So, yeah, they try to keep secrets and they keep
many secrets. They tend to be of the uninteresting
kind. But if you have an interesting secret.
If you're stockpiling aliens and you're telling
me that the secretary, the admin, the janitor,
that they're not sneaking out an iPhone photo.
Really? Really? Do you think it's that simple?
Really? Really. Do you think it's that simple?
Christopher Mellon, who worked for the Defense
Department, he came on and was talking to us
about. You get all the inside folks here. And
that was it was an intriguing conversation because
he is of the belief that they have had access
to some. and some crafts and some things that
are unexplainable and don't seem to come from
any technology that we're, and I don't want to
put any words in his mouth, but any technology
that we're currently capable of reproducing.
Okay. I mean, he might have seen something that
the military was actually working on that would
be mysterious to someone who is only familiar
with unclassified. propulsion systems and the
like. Do you think it's possible that a propulsion
system so outside of the norm, something that
is not working off burning fuel, something that's
working off some new technology that is, whether
it's some sort of gravity distorting or gravity
-based technology, that that could actually be
conceived in a vacuum where they could get the
top scientists that work in propulsion, people
that do understand. I mean, as much as we do
understand gravity, as much as we understand
the possibility of some sort of propulsion system,
it's pretty minimal, right? In terms of like
mainstream. Yeah, we're still primitive with
our propulsion system. Is it possible that this
could all be done in a vacuum? That it could
all be done without anybody ever having known
about it and they could produce something that's
so preposterously advanced from anything we've
been capable of making before? Advances tend
not to be. large leaps like that. It seems more
likely that it's from a different source than
from human beings. If what he's describing is
true, then it would not be incremental. I mean,
we tend to do things incrementally. That's just
the nature of discovery and human innovation.
So if something actually can move the way supposedly
these units that these various tracking systems
that they have that can follow something from
80 ,000 feet above sea level. I'm saying we don't
understand it. We don't understand it. If it's
actually a thing, we have no, there's no physics
that explains it. That we know of. And if something
can move that way, if it's confirmed that the
systems are accurate and that this thing does
move that fast and can do things that are beyond
our capability currently as far as we understand
it, would it be more likely? that it would come
from some other advanced civilization outside
of Earth? Or would it be more likely that it
was conceived in a vacuum here without anybody
having any access to any of the technology in
these incremental forms? So it's possible you
can have, like, you know, black ops, as they
say. You know, you look at the airplanes that
came out of Lockheed Martin during the Cold War.
These were all the secret, and they gave the
engineers... But kind of incremental. Sure, but
they looked really different and they behaved
very differently. So, yes, it was still incremental.
But let's imagine a deep black ops where they're
making their own incremental changes, but you
don't get to see them. So by the time it shows
up, it looks like it's a big leap, even though
they got there incrementally. And that was unreported.
Sure. Doesn't science rely on other scientists
to coordinate with, like other scientists to
review data and to share ideas? And it also presumes
that the government has the best scientists,
and that's simply not the case. Right. That's
what I would always think. The best scientists
are going to go to the private sector because
there's more money there. Or academia where you
have freedom. of research. Some will go because
there is money in the military, but you're forced
to work on projects that might not be the most
creative investment of your own energies. You
hire a physicist. make a bomb at the end of this
so it would take something pretty monumental
for you to shift your belief to this is probably
it's not belief is show me an alien show me give
me something that i don't i don't i'm not of
the belief that these things are populated okay
okay they may be and maybe maybe it's happened
before but when i'm hearing about these things
flying around and i'm seeing what we're doing
on mars i'm like yeah it's a better version of
that You know what is a much better story to
me is the Transformers, the origin story of the
Transformers. Their cars and then they become
robots? No, no. I don't claim to know the whole
franchise. I don't either. But the little bit
of it that I know. By the way, they had an error
in one of the movies where they're coming to
Earth and they go by the moon and they see the
Apollo. Site? Yeah, they see the Apollo site
and the landers there. And it still has the pod
that carries the astronauts. Oh, whoops. Yeah,
yeah. That returned to the command module that
came back. They should just see the base, all
right? But it's not as interesting, all right?
So that was either on purpose or it was an oversight.
So the claim is they were found and came into
the Arctic or wherever. No one saw it happen
except the military because we're monitoring
the Arctic because that's where rockets get.
We're on the case here. Then they get captured
and we want to mine them for the technology that's
in them. But we want to do it in a way nobody
knows. So where do you do this? Oh, let's build
a dam. So the Hoover Dam was the cover project.
for the analysis of the transformers that we
had captured. And then beginning, so Hoover Dam
was 1920s, right? When was Hoover? 1920s into
the 30s. Beginning of the 1930s, we catapulted.
Quantum physics was invented. Lasers were invented.
Miniaturization of electronics was invented.
And it was all claimed to be traceable to this
new technology that we reverse engineered beginning
with that. research lab built into, I thought
that was brilliant. That was a brilliant way
to say that. Or we're just, humans are smart
and we invented that ourselves. Yeah, I never
watched the Transformers, man. Okay, okay. I'm
just saying. It's okay. It was a clever weaving
of a story, of a science fiction story into our
culture. I thought it was a brilliant. Yeah,
the rest of it. No that when they're fighting
each other. Yes, I'm optimistic No, I'm not doing
that it's ridiculous and then your sports car
on the side no I love a good alien movie though.
I think my favorite is John Carpenter's the thing
That was a good one. I got to go back and check
that one out. It had crashed into Antarctica
or something like that, frozen forever, and then
they discovered it. They were digging in, and
they found this thing, and then it came out,
and it would transform and become an identical
copy of whatever it touched. You don't remember
that? No, I don't think I saw. No, I didn't see
that. But I do know what came. The blob, I thought,
was a very creative alien. That one didn't have
a mouth or legs or arms or teeth or eyes or stomach.
And they could go through the air conditioning
ducts. It could ooze under the door. You couldn't
avoid it. And what people forget about the blob
is that when it first landed, it was completely
transparent. After it ate its first victim, only
then was it red. And it was red for the whole
rest of the movie. Really? Yeah. I don't even
remember that movie much. Yeah, it's Steve McQueen
in one of his first films. Was it really? Yeah,
Steve McQueen is in it. Steve McQueen was in
The Blob? Wow. Yeah. When I look at what we're
doing with human beings and replacing people's
knees and replacing people's hips and artificial
this and artificial that and then with CRISPR
and genetic engineering, I think it's a matter
of time before we are some sort of symbiotic
thing. We're partially created by whatever technology
is available at the time, whether it's 100 years
from now or 500 years from now. Something that's
going to be superior, that's not going to provide
us with all the problems. It's already happened.
You just don't think about it that way. With
your phone and your glasses. No, no, no. Even
before that. We are symbiotic with chemistry.
You're living twice as long. Better living through
chemistry. We control your cholesterol, your
inflammation. We know how to reduce the chance
of stroke. So you're thinking very narrow on
this. I need a new kneecap or I need a new this.
The fact is science and technology has already
been infused in the human condition in a way
that, for example, has doubled our life expectancy
within the last 150 years. So it's already happening
chemically. So now you want to do it mechanically
because that requires material science and that's
a much later field than chemistry was developed
in order to contribute to what our lives are.
Now you want to get into our DNA. That's just
the next level. Okay. Now, are we going to have
some internet infused in our head? I don't think
so. But that's what Elon's working on. I don't
think. Why would you do that when the entire
internet? is in your palm of your hand. Because
you have to touch that stupid thing. You might
drop it. Oh, what you're saying is I don't want
to touch this. Yes, open up my skull and put
in an internet transmitter. That's better. But
it makes you smarter. So does the smartphone.
No, no, no. But like much smarter. What he's
saying is it's going to increase the bandwidth
that you have to access information. You're going
to be able to access information quicker. Because
it's not going to go through all these. Okay,
so people can do stupid things quicker in the
face of information that they think is correct.
One of the things that Elon said to me is people
will no longer have to talk with words. You're
not going to have to speak with your mind. Look
at what people are doing. with the information
they currently have, they don't even know what
is true. Some people. Now you want to accelerate
that by a factor of a thousand. Yes. Maybe they'll
learn. That is the missing chapter in the apocalypse
in the Bible. Okay. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's
the cure. Maybe when people are acutely aware
of what they actually know. Don't equate knowledge
with wisdom. Well, maybe it can bestow wisdom.
I don't find wisdom on the internet. I find knowledge.
You can find some wisdom. You got to go to the
right people. You got to go to the correct meme
pages. Okay, but you got to plow through the
knowledge, some of which, much of it, maybe most
of which is false. That's a problem. But occasionally
you get nuggets of wisdom. Yes. Want to see a
nugget of wisdom? You got one? Yeah, I'm going
to show you one. Show me. You got one now? I'm
going to send it to Jamie, and Jamie, you'll
put this up. Okay. This is a piece of... By the
way, I'm all in for wisdom. I bet you are. Okay.
Because when you look at the arc of... In science,
you want to convert data to sort of facts, and
facts into knowledge, knowledge into insight.
And then ultimately insight into wisdom. And
that wisdom will help you make better choices.
Yes. And help you understand the world you're
living. Correct. Correct. That's what it is.
Wisdom. Just so you know, this is the guy calling
you a Nazi on the internet. Okay. So now don't
you feel better about like digging into your
Twitter? That's just a later version of that
very first comic in The New Yorker when the internet
came up. And there are two dogs on a computer,
and one dog turns to the other. The good thing
about the internet is no one knows you're a dog.
That was like 1991. Was it really? Yeah, it was
very early. Wow, 1991? Yeah, have them bring
it up. Wow. No one knows you're a dog. It should
go straight to it. That's pretty brilliant. Yeah,
yeah. And so I've been thinking that the entire
time. Yeah, there it is. Oh, wow. On the internet.
Nobody knows you're a dog. What year is that
from, does it say, Jamie? Oh, it's got its own
web page, wiki page. 93, wow. Yeah, very early.
I said 91, so it's 93 from The New Yorker, yeah.
What year were you on? Oh, I'm a scientist, so
I was on from 19... I mean, you know, I was programming
computers in high school, and I'm graduating
class of 1976, so I'm an old fart. But we had
very large, clumsy computers, but I was programming
them in. I had my first email account in 1980,
1981. Wow, 1980. That's crazy. Yeah, but you
can only talk to other scientists. I mean, who
else? You're not sending email to your grandmother
in 1980. Did you anticipate it was going to eventually
be public? Oh, yeah. I saw the trends. I didn't
anticipate that everyone would agree to put all
the world's knowledge on it. I thought it would
be very selective knowledge. But the idea that
wiki works at all is astonishing. Pretty crazy.
Yeah, it's a pretty crazy fact. And I'm happy
to boast my field has very excellent wiki pages
on Pluto, on planets, on black holes. A lot of
us are really good educators, and we know they're
not just textbook pages. They're really informative.
And there's very little misinformation on it.
I'm very happy about that. That's extraordinary.
How do they filter that? How do they make sure
that misinformation doesn't get – So I hate to
name drop again, but I had one of the founders
of Wiki in my office. And he wanted to know what
does he do about people who are pirating pages?
Because back then anyone could edit any page
at all. Oh, right. All right? And they now have
certain – they can close a page. They can – it
has to be reviewed. But that violates the spirit.
Of the wiki concept. Because you don't know if
the person who wants to edit it has more insight
than everybody else who even wrote the page.
You don't know that in advance. What, are you
going to interview them? No, that's not realistic.
So I thought I had a really good idea, but he
didn't take. What was your good idea? You have
an edit index for every article. And so the edit
index is, it tells you two things. The rate.
that people have made changes to that page. That's
one dimension of information. Another one is,
is it an in -situ edit or is it additive? That's
important. Because if there's some celebrity
who dies, you'll edit the page by adding a paragraph,
though they died in their sleep or whatever.
So that's editing, but that doesn't put the content
at risk if you're just adding information. So
if I know that a page has been edited 40 times
in the last three days. Malarkey. Then the likelihood
that that information is objectively true is
very low. And so when you're doing a book report
or any kind of report and you're citing wiki
pages. You would have a side index that tells
you this page is rife with conflicting and contested
edits. Now that I know that, here is what they
said. Whereas other pages that are stable, I
think we have a good right to say this contains
objectively true information. And you would be
able to make the judgment yourself. And it'd
be easy to track that on a computer, all the
edits. And you'll know, did someone just correct
spelling? You would give the nature of what the
edit is. And I thought that research is, if you
don't know what the answer is, let's at least
know how controversial the information is. This
brings up an interesting point. Because one of
the things that we're talking about when it comes
to technology, we're talking about improvements
in the way the human brain works with a symbiotic
relationship to... Whatever Neuralink or whatever
new technology is invented. That's what he wants.
That's what he wants. What would be great is
if we knew what was true. However crazy I think
that idea is, I'm not going to stop him. You're
not going to stop him. No, I don't want to. But
you're not going to stop him. You need a little
bit of crazy. You do. To move the center mass
of society in new directions. That dude's got
a lot of crazy. So I'm an Elon fan. Yeah, me
too. He's going to do it. No, well. I'm going
to probably get a hole in my head and stick it
in there. I want to see what's up. I'm going
to be a late adopter, though. I'm going to be
like Gen 4. I didn't buy a Tesla until like two
years ago. Really? Oh, no. I was early. They
had them many, many years before. Yeah. The Roadster
was first out. Yeah. The little Lotus Elise clone.
I couldn't fit in it. So I couldn't. Oh, you're
a big fella. I hit my head. I can't. My shoulder
went across the midplane of the seat. So I have
to be there with a small other human. But two
of me wouldn't be able to fit in the front seat
without. being very snuggly at the deltoid. If
we could come to a point where technology could
eliminate deception, how much more information
could be shared and how much more could we understand?
What I don't know is if we cannot eliminate deception
in ourselves, either self -deception or purposeful
deception in others, I don't see how we can program
that into our technology. But I think we can.
If we can understand whether someone's telling
the truth or not. If it's clear and glaringly
obvious. If you and I are talking and I start
talking to you and all of a sudden a green light
pops up, which indicates I'm full of shit. You'll
see it and I'm like, oh, my green light's showing.
No, but that assumes that things are either true
or false. And that's just not true. Something.
The actual world is way more nuanced than that.
Right. Unintended deception. So, for example,
I can think something is true. Right. And what
you're basically saying, not to put words in
your mouth, is that everyone walks around with
a lie detector on their forehead. Yeah, that's
a bad idea. That's a bad example. Well, you just
said this. I know. All right. So everyone has
a lie detector. And if I think something happened,
even though it didn't. then I'm telling the truth.
I'm telling my own understanding of the truth.
Which is a problem with some people with some
stories, right? You can't then indict me for
that truth being wrong if that's how I saw it.
That's like the umpire. That's how I called it
because that's how I saw it. The umpire's not
being evil. That's just what they saw. So that's
one problem with that. Another one is there's
so many things that are... And that's what makes
the world interesting, I think, is... So you
want an example of where the truth is nuanced.
I can't think off the top of my head, but I'm
just telling you that in almost every case where
someone wants to turn a question into a binary
answer, they're doing a disservice to human intellect,
to the real world that's out there. I'll give
you an example. How tall are you? 5 '8". 5 '8".
Okay. Presumably you measure that with some kind
of tape measure. All right. So are you 5 '7 3⁄4"?
It's probably closer to that. Okay. I'm shrinking.
Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So maybe you're 5
'7 3⁄4". So are you 5 '7 1⁄16 of an inch taller
or shorter than 5 '7 3⁄4"? I don't know. We'd
have to bust out a tape measure. Well, so now,
okay, so let's say you are within that. But wait
a minute. The line that identifies a 16th of
an inch itself has a width. So where are you
within the width of the line that you're using
to report how tall you are? So we're giving rough
measurements. Anytime you give a measurement
or something. It can never be exact. But you
get an understanding of it, like go a mile down
the road and then take a right. Okay, but if
I have a truth serum and I say, was it a mile?
No, it was one and an eighth of a mile. But what
if you get to a mile and there's no right turn?
Do you just shut your car off and starve to death?
Or do you go, let me figure this out. It looks
like 30 more feet, I take a right. It's a mile
and 30 feet. Okay, I'm not going to nitpick.
I'm just going to take a right, a mile and 30
feet. Your brain, red light, green light, would
say the person was lying. Yeah, that device sucks.
Okay, okay. Forget I came up with that idea.
All right, all right. I was just trying to say.
My thought was just eliminate purposeful deception.
Like, if you knew someone was lying to you, con
artists. Ponzi scheme people. Someone's trying
to fuck you over. If you knew, if you could be
clear that what this person was doing is they're
not really going to make you a lot of money.
They're trying to rip you off with a pie in the
sky idea. Eliminate deception. You know what
that is? What? There's a device. It's called
science literacy. That's right. How to know when
someone else is. In fact, I just tweeted that
recently. Science literacy. Your boy Steven Spielberg
got busted in a Ponzi scheme. Is the power. to
know when someone else is full of shit. But if
you're dealing with something like Bernie Madoff,
right? You look at his returns and say, these
don't match anyone else's returns. How is this
freaking possible? Because he's a G. Because
you want to believe what he's doing. Right. And
that's not his. Is it his problem or is it your
problem? That you want that outcome so badly
that you are allowing yourself to be conned.
That's how conning works. So as a scientist,
you can never be too invested in an outcome because
it warps your capacity to judge what is true
and what is not. Was Bernie Madoff's return substantially
more impressive than anyone else who was doing
it legitimately? From what I read, that wasn't
the point. It's not that his returns were much
higher than everybody else. They were consistent.
They were consistent. 10%, 15 % every year, whatever
it was. And everyone else was fluctuating, sometimes
getting negative. He was always in the positive.
Or when everyone else was negative, he had low
positive. So, of course, you bring your money
to him. So he has some magic insight into the
marketplace that no one else has. Well, do you
know how the statistics of trading works? Do
you know? You know, it's possible you can be
lucky if you you know a few years in a row But
to do it for 10 20 whatever long he was at it,
right? But wouldn't it be easier if you just
could clearly see deception like the idea behind
any of these? Technologies is they're gonna improve
the way human beings communicate with maybe he
believed he was doing the right thing I don't
think you did you don't think you did. No, I
don't think you did I heard interviews with him.
He sounded like a pure sociopath. He really did.
I don't mean to laugh, but there was a lot of
cost in it. Horrible cost. So you turn a blind
eye to the possibility that what you want to
be true might not be true. And that burden of
rationality falls just as much on the victim
of that scheme as it is on the person perpetrating
the scheme. I think in a free society, you...
You have to arm yourself, equip yourself. It's
not just logic. Logic is overrated, I think.
My favorite paintings in the world could not
have possibly been drawn via logic. There's a
creative spark that comes from nowhere. The painting
Starry Night on the back of my phone. Is this
logic? No. Is that what he saw? No. Although
I can identify the day and the time of day when...
this image was in his head that he painted. Because
you know the geographical location. No, no, no,
no. Even without knowing, I could find out what
latitude it is and it turns out it corresponds
with where he was. It's the phase of the moon
and the location of Venus at that angle relative
to the horizon. You can nail that. And so I got
it for June 21st, 1889. Turns out that is the
year he painted and he was in northern, I forgot
where he was, north of France somewhere. So I
can recreate that. So there's some basics of
it that are factual. The rest, clearly, the sky
doesn't have curly cues in it. And I'm told where
he painted this, there is no town because there's
a town. So he made up a lot of stuff that's in
this picture. But that's not what he saw, but
it's what he felt. I value how people feel. Yeah,
sure. It's artistic interpretation. That is the
full dimensionality of what it is to be human.
Yeah. So a world of just logic, I don't want
that. I'm not necessarily saying the world would
just be logic, but imagine how – look, it's one
of the things that makes people interesting is
that we're so complex. In communicating with
people, there's so many layers and depths and
so many people are so different and you find
these unique personalities and it adds flavor
to your life. And by the way, the future of gene
editing – If we want everybody to be a certain
way, that takes away the diversity of human behavior.
That's what I think aliens are. That's why they
all look the same. They all get the big heads
and the big eyes and the little tiny bodies.
That's where we're going. I want to get an alien
that's jacked. Like The Rock? Comes down off
this thing. All right, who's first? Yeah, The
Rock as an alien. Imagine if all aliens were
built like The Rock. Yeah, I think the thinking
is that they're in the future and they're advanced
and they don't need their body to be advanced,
but their brain is advanced. Well, and also they're
using telekinesis and they probably have the
50th version of Elon's Neuralink installed. I'm
not dismissing the beautiful. things about people,
whether it's our artistic creations or just communicating
with people. The fact that we're so complicated
and there's so many different layers of emotions
and the history of your own life that you're
adding into it, there's a lot of cool things
about being a person. But what's not cool is
deception. If you got rid of deception, could
you have novelists? Everything in a novel is
a lie. Yes, but it's creative. It's not a lie.
It's a lie. Steven Spielberg is not pretending.
I invented somebody that does not exist. I had
to make decisions. It's very different. It's
creation. There's a very different thing. going
on with if artistic creation is very different
than a lie so you have to have in addition to
your lie meter you have to judge whether someone
is being creative in the thing they're telling
you that's not true well if they say it's a non
-fiction book then they're lying If it's a fiction
book, then they're being creative. If someone's
being deceptive in a non -fiction book, that's
a bad person. But if someone is writing something
like Salem's Lot from Stephen King, this crazy
story about a town that gets taken over by vampires,
that's just fun. So he's not lying? No. He's
a creative person. He has imagination. Imagination
will still exist. The unintended consequences
of restricting people's capacity to deceive.
Is there some fallout from that that we don't
anticipate? I think there's a fallout from everything,
right? Yeah, there is. Yeah. Every time we create
pesticide, we fuck someone's endocrine system
up, right? There's always something that goes
wrong. Depends on what the pesticide's made of.
Right, but we know what I'm saying. There's a
lot of unintended consequences to a lot of things
that we do that are ultimately done for good
but turn out to be really bad. Right. That could
be the case. By the way, and there's also the
reverse. Yeah. Things that were done for bad
that turn out to be good. Yeah. That's where
wisdom comes in. Yeah. So here's another. I don't
want to miss the opportunity of discussing questions
that have no answers. So make sure we have time
for that. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Some of them don't
have answers, right? Because some questions don't
have meaning. even in the questions themselves.
Give me an example. Oh, no, but I jumped ahead.
I wanted you to finish your point. Oh, but this
is a good one. I like what you're doing. I just
think that if technology, to go back to, and
we'll come back to the questions, if technology
continues to advance in the direction that it's
going, it seems to me that one of the things
that's happening is the distance. And the distance
between us and information is getting smaller
and smaller. Our access to information is getting
greater and greater. And that as this time goes
on, it's going to be more integrated into who
you are as a person, whether it's through Elon's
creation or someone else's creation. Once that
happens, I could envision a language that's being
used through which we can communicate with each
other that Elon was discussing when he said,
you're going to be able to... communicate without
using words. That once that happens, you're going
to be able, whether it's 100 years from now or
1 ,000 years from now, whatever it is, you're
going to be able to display or to communicate
with pure intent. You're going to be able to
do things without... I get it. Our ability to
use personality and charisma and language and
to be more articulate and impressive in the way
you talk to have a different impact on the way
a person receives your thoughts. Instead, it'll
be purely your intent and your thought. Purely
your thought process. Allow me to ask, suppose
that is possible. Why would you want to do that?
Why wouldn't you want to be living in a tree
-thrown... poop at the other chimps. Those are
the good old days. The good old days when we
were in the trees and we didn't have fire. We
had to catch our rats and eat them alive. In
fact, we got very good at throwing things, even
if it started with poop. We were the best throwers
of any species there ever was. Ever. And they
think that might have contributed to us becoming
what we are. Ever. Just because we can extrapolate
to a thing doesn't mean that's the thing that's
going to happen. True. So I'm old enough to remember
the 1950s and 60s. People were imagining the
future, the home of the future. Well, technology
was automating things. So everything was a button.
So the home of the future was just a button.
And then people imagined that. The future evolution
of humans, we'd grow a big index finger because
you had to be pushing buttons all the time. Right.
And now, no, we don't have buttons all over the
house. Not really. Okay. That's not the thing.
Well, we have the remote control. I guess that's
buttons, but the button can do a thousand different
things, right, depending on how it's programmed.
So there are things that – take a look at computing.
We – you know, there was an era where the more
– The bigger a computer was, the more powerful
it was. Okay? Let's go right up to 1968, 2001,
A Space Odyssey. This is imagining a world in
2001. Oh, computers will be really big then.
There's that one big computer in the center of
the ship. No one imagined that you'd have something
more powerful than that on your hip. No one thought
that way. More on your wrist. People imagined
the future where we have motorized sidewalks
and monorails and everything. And what we didn't
get was we thought energy would cost nothing.
So we imagined a world with transportation, motion,
and actions that all require energy to enable.
And those worlds came out of the heads of people
who extrapolated forward. And they did not understand
that the real action was in... Information. Information
is what became cheap, not energy. And when information
becomes cheap, I have the world at my fingertips,
even though I still have to walk down the sidewalk
and it's not a motorized pathway. Yeah, that's
the thing they never saw coming in any of those.
They didn't see it coming. They didn't see the
internet coming. Information would be cheap.
Right. So I'm not one to just take what's going
on now and extrapolate it and say everyone is
going to be living that differently. Because
other things come in from the side that you don't
anticipate. And when they come in from the side,
it is not an extrapolation of what you're doing
now. It is something. you didn't even imagine
because an innovative, creative person looks
to the left, looks to the right, and says, I
can combine these into something that's completely
new that no one even imagined. So that's how
the future unfolds. So extrapolating, you get
the first couple of years, correct? Five years,
10 years out, you are completely off. And you
said 500 years, 1 ,000 years. Let's shorten that
a little bit. Let's say 30 years. You say, no,
that's not much. You know, we need more time
than that. Ask yourself. Let's go back to 1960.
We didn't have a spaceship. United States did
not have a rocket to carry people that wouldn't
blow up on the launch pad. Okay? We weren't there
yet. 30 years later, it's 1990. People have laptop
computers. And we've been to the moon six times
over. 30 years. So when I think today to 30 years
from now, I'm saying I don't know that I can
predict anything. But there's some things that
I know are going to happen in the next few years.
Self -driving cars, it's going to take over like
that. Why? Because you replace your car. Half
the people replace the car every five years.
So in five years, if I have a self -driving car
and all the HOV lanes are now reserved only for
self -driving cars, that's the next car you're
going to drive. Do you drive one? Do you drive
a Tesla? I have a Tesla. I have a Tesla. Do you
ever do the self -driving thing? Never. It's
awesome. Yeah, no, I don't. It scares me, but
I hit that little button. Yeah, I'm not ready
for it. And that's a quip. I even paid a couple
of dollars, you know, the extra dollars to get
that. I'm not ready for it yet. Don't be scared.
Jamie, do you use it? No, I'm not ready for that.
Most of the time I don't, though, honestly. But
I'm ready culturally for it. Yes, it'll save
30 ,000 lives a year. And no one's going to drive
home drunk. And a self -driving car, when it
changes lanes, it tells the other self -driving
cars, I'm going to change lane. It parts the
traffic for it, and it then opens into a lane.
And it can go 90 miles an hour separated by five
feet in front and back of the car. Let's not
do that. No, because you're thinking of your
own reflexes and not that. I'm thinking of things
going wrong. Every now and then you see one that
hits like a tire iron that's in the middle of
the road. That could happen. However, another
car would have seen it. I'm in my Tesla. I come
up to a road. The Tesla tells me on the screen,
changing suspension because of a bumpy road ahead.
I said, how does it know it's a bumpy road ahead?
There's a clearinghouse of this information.
Some other Tesla went on that road and figured
that out. My Tesla went on that road before it
had figured it out, okay? So the shared information
becomes hugely valuable. And, yeah, you might
have the tire iron in the road, and so 5 ,000
people a year die rather than 35 ,000 people.
We got to wrap our heads around that one this
time around. My analogy to this is we used horses
for thousands of years. Yeah. Now you go from
1910 to 1930. 1930, you can't give away a horse.
Not in urban areas, no. Isn't that crazy? Within
20 years, we went from horses and an entire industry
that supported the horses, the buggy whips, the
carriages, the stables, the food, the blacksmiths,
an entire industry. Vanishes. Vanishes within
two decades, basically within two decades. And
you're going to tell me when are automatic cars
coming? We already have them and we just, you
know, when it's ready to go down, it's going
down. My kids are 20 and 24. They don't want
to know how to drive. They can't wait until the
self -driving car. They want nothing to do with
it. And by the way, you might say, but how about
people who love to drive? They're not going to
give up their Camaro or whatever it is that they
love. You say that mockingly. I don't like it.
No, I said that. I listed that first. I said,
let me not say the Corvette because I think there
are more Camaros out there than Corvettes. I'm
appealing to Corvettes. So anyhow, you might
like to drive your Mustang GT. Okay, fine. Then
we build tracks for you. Oh, God. No, no, no,
no, no, no, no. There are people today who like
riding horses. They don't do it in the street.
You go to the stables, and you can jump, and
you can ride the countryside. What kind of world
are we making, Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm saying
you don't have to give up your car in order to
have everybody. There'll be car tracks. And then
the government's just going to shut down your
car and pull you out. It's going to shut down
the highway because everything's going to be
automated, and they're going to need access to
all the cars just in case there's a high -speed
chase. The government built the freaking highway.
Did they, though? Yes, they did. I don't think
they did. It's called the Eisenhower Interstate
System. It cost $100 billion and it was a military
project. So they have the right to shut your
car down? Is that what you're saying? Are you
opting out? You can make your own damn road and
do what you want on it. What if it's like iPhones
where you can opt out of sharing your information
with advertisers? You want to opt out of what?
The government being able to shut down your car?
You don't have a right to drive in the HOV lane.
That's not in the Constitution. Yeah, we're not
talking about the HOV lane. They don't even have
those out here. Oh, they don't? Well, you have
the pay routes. If the government controls, if
laws control one lane versus another, that's
the first lane to go to self -driving, for sure.
Yeah, for sure. Yes. Plus, self -driving cars
that you don't own, that you just sort of use,
that reduces the number of cars in the road by,
what, a factor of 10? Yes. I just worry about...
You probably own a drill. A hand drill. Yeah,
I got a drill. How many total minutes in a year
do you use that hand drill? I don't use it ever.
Fine. So you spent money on something that you
hardly use, and even if you did use it, it's
for minutes. Okay? So you get on the horn. You
go to Home Depot, get online, say, I need a hand
drill with this bit. And then a drone drops it
off that afternoon, and you use it, and then
it takes it back. You don't need a garage. You
don't need a parking spot. You don't need anything.
It's a shared commodity. It sounds like a good
deal for Jeff Bezos. He's probably real excited.
He'll be delivering you drills. I think he's
buying roof rights for drone landings. Really?
Yeah. Of course he is. Yeah. That's what I heard.
It's a rumor. When you see a guy that's that
wealthy, do you ever ponder what makes a person
like that continue to work every day? That is
the actual fact of it, right? people like that,
it's a different species, right? It's someone
who has an idea and they want to execute the
idea. And he was at it when no one thought it
was fashionable. Amazon used to be just a bookstore.
Yeah, I remember how dumb it was. I was mocking
it. Like, who the fuck's going to buy books on
the internet? But you can't even browse it. You
can't smell it. You can't. Right? So is he driven?
Is he saying, no, I want to be a hundred billionaire?
No, he's got an idea. He's got a business idea.
He wants to gain wealth, of course, as any business
person does. But the people who are actually
driven? are driven by forces that are not money.
As Elon famously said, you know, how do you make
a small fortune in rockets? Start with a large
fortune. But it's just these people that are
doing this insane innovation like him, like trying
to deliver things with drones and trying to spread
the business further and further and further.
It's like you always wonder, like, what is the
motivation? Like, what keeps you doing this?
I can tell you this. Did I imagine 10 years ago
that when I ordered something on the internet?
I would be disappointed if it didn't come tomorrow.
Or today. Or this afternoon. Amazon has their
own trucks now. Right. They can deliver it to
you today. Right, right. Gone are the days. Oh,
it'll get there in two weeks and three weeks.
Like, what's wrong with you? No, tomorrow. Tomorrow.
I need this now. Yeah. And even if I don't need
it, I want it now. Yeah, if I see it like the
toothpaste is going to come on Friday, I'm like,
today's Tuesday. Why the fuck do I have to wait
until Friday for toothpaste? Come. Let's go.
Let's go. So Jeff Bezos did that to you. I know.
It's amazing. You've been brainwashed. by the
man it's amazing but people like that do push
innovation in that that's why i don't get anywhere
yeah i'd let him go oh yeah well i'm just joking
around about him motivating his motivation i
mean i saw his new yacht i think that's where
the motivation is those are expensive yes you
need 150 billion bucks if you want to have a
couple of those yeah yachts are a whole other
thing but he's got like a city it's like a city
that floats around have you seen it No, but I've
been on other yachts of highly wealthy people.
Is it preposterous? I've never been. I don't
judge it, but I— I do. I'll judge for you. I
was on a yacht. Describe it to me. I'll tell
you why it's stupid. I was on Charles Simone's
yacht. He's one of the Microsoft billionaires.
And there's a staff there, and I like talking
to people, talking to the staff. And I said,
oh, you know, there are people cleaning, and
there's a sailor type or whatever that role is
in the thing there. I say, oh, so where do you
live? And he says, here. I said, oh, in New York,
because it was important. No, here, on the yacht.
And I said, oh, well, when you're not on the
yacht, weird. Oh, I'm from Italy, but I live
on the yacht. I said, how do you get your mail?
He said, well, I get back to Italy. I'll pick
it up there, but I live on. And so the idea that
you are so wealthy, you can buy people and put
them in this floating place. And they call that
their home. I had to wrap my head around that.
I couldn't. That's heavy. That was just a little
weird to me. But it makes sense. If you have
like some 500 foot long boat. It's a permanent
staff. You have to have people there all the
time because things are probably always breaking.
Yep. Yep. Yep. And I went into the pantry and
you can see the multiple refrigerators and the
wine cellar. It's like a giant restaurant slash
apartment building. Correct. Correct. And he's
got a chopper on the top. Let me see what Jeff
Bezos' looks like. Someone I saw has its own
yacht. The yacht has a yacht. Well, this guy,
the billionaire, what was his name? Charles Simone.
Go to that guy. Actually, it is Bezos' yacht.
Oh, let's see it. Bezos' yacht has a yacht? Has
a separate yacht. Look at that fellow. Why does
every picture come up with his bald head right
there? Looking happy. Looking so happy. All right.
So you got the yacht. 417 -foot super yacht that's
so massive. It has its own support yacht. That
doesn't include the cost. A helipad. Estimated
cost, not including the boat's support boat,
is $500 million. That is wild. That's a half
a billion dollar. Yeah. Yeah. That's one 300th
of his wealth. He made $75 billion in 2020 alone.
During COVID. Yeah. There you go. Insane. Project
721. Because he kept delivering while everyone
else says we can't deliver. Yeah. So that's his
boat. Let me see that thing. Woo. Good Lord.
Wow. That's not it. That's it. That's it? This
is it. That was something else called Project
Valkyrie or something. Oh, some other thing.
That yacht, that doesn't look all that impressive.
I got a yacht that big. Look at the size of that
thing. I mean, it's basically. You can have a
great star party on the deck of that. Oh, for
sure, right? If you get out in the middle of
the ocean. Oh, yeah, that'd be cool. That's the
move, isn't it? Yeah, okay. When I get my first
hundred billion, I'll invite you. Please, I'll
go. We'll do a few shows from there. I'll do
whatever you want. We'll do shows. So I tried
to quantify. What is that, Jamie? That's where
they made it, I believe. Oh, wow. They built
it in a giant warehouse on the water. Then you
drop it in the water, I think. Whoa. Slide it
in there. What a weird market, the market for
half -billion -dollar yachts. Who would have
thought there even was such a market? I just
want to try to find my tweet. Can you dig up
a tweet? Sure. Can you search tweets? Can you
do it? Just tweet my handle and Bezos. And I
quantified his wealth at $100 billion, and I
want you to see this calculation that I did.
Well, what's crazy is that's what he made basically
last year, right? We said he made $70 -something
billion last year. Mm -hmm. A year? In 2007.
Okay. Okay. Not that anybody asked, but laid
end to end, Jeff Bezos' $200 billion can encircle
Earth 180 times, then reach the moon and back
30 times, and with what's left over, make a stack
10 kilometers high. Holy shit. With what's left
over. That's all $1 bills. Yeah, sorry. Those
are $1 bills. You know. That's what I pictured
there, the $1 bill in the tweet. I just wanted
to sort of, it was a reality check on how much
money that is when you can do amazing space things
with it and then you have leftover money. What's
interesting is he's not slowing down, right?
And he seems relatively healthy. Yeah. Like he's
fit, works out a lot, he's gotten jacked. Got
jacked in a few of those photos. Yeah. That's
fine. He's probably going to keep going for decades.
Maybe he's found the serum for infinite life.
Yeah, billions of dollars. By the way, the world
has always been influenced by billionaires, so
this is not a special time. And sometimes with
terrible results, right? That's right. William
Randolph Hearst. Yeah, all of them. Count them
up. Yeah. Count them up. Ben Franklin was pretty
wealthy in his day as well. Was he really? Yeah.
And he still flew that kite by himself? What
a wild man. He didn't even hire somebody? Hey,
I got an idea, but this might suck. You might
die. You might get electrocuted, but let's do
it. Yeah, if YouTube was around then, you'd see
him doing that experiment on YouTube. I wonder
if it really happened. Like the whole George
Washington and the cherry tree. That's probably
bullshit. Yeah, but I think people want legends.
Of course. Yeah, yeah. Of course. They help give
meaning to events in your life. When you got
a guy like Bezos, though, that is at the helm
of this intense empire and also is in many ways
like Elon. He's fascinated with technological
growth, right? He's got this deep, what is this,
blue sky, blue origin? Blue origin, yeah. Blue
origin. So he has his own rocket ship program.
He's got his own, I think it's Evian? Plus people
worry that all the billionaires are building
rockets to get to Mars, and they wonder, are
they just going to leave us all here on Earth?
What is it, Revion? He's got an electric car
company as well that they're heavily invested
in. So there's many things that are similar,
that they're doing these kind of fascinating,
groundbreaking, innovative business practices.
Let them do it. Yeah, fuck yeah. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. I'm all in. I'm just watching. I'm just
like, it's fascinating, this cat. So can we talk
about questions? Yes. Want to do that? Yes. Okay.
That's my - Questions that have no answers. Well,
that's my segue, my awkward segue. to the book
I just published called Cosmic Queries. It's
a book that is not based on answers that we have.
It's based on questions that we've posed. And
some questions have really good answers, and
we're good. Others, we're still poking around,
and we think we're on the tail of it. And other
questions, we don't even know if it's the right
question. So it's a celebration of human curiosity
at its deepest level. With whole sections, one
of them is, how did it all begin? What's it all
made of? Are we alone in the universe? Very relevant
to now. Also, how will it all end? And when you're
on the bleeding frontier of science, you don't
always know if the question you ask is even valid.
This idea where every question is equal. No,
that's not true. That's not true. It's just not.
Trust me, I've asked a lot of stupid questions.
No, I'm not saying that. But when you're on the
frontier, you just don't know. So I can give
an absurd example. Suppose you posed a question.
You say to yourself, I want to design an experiment
that will visit the moon and test what kind of
cheese the moon is made out of. So you have special
equipment. Is it goat cheese? Is it brie, roquefort?
And then you get there and it's made out of silicates.
The question had no meaning. Even though nouns
and verbs were in the right place and it had
a question mark and you were able to design an
experiment, the question had no meaning in that
realm. Let me get a more philosophical one. Visit
Santa Claus. Okay? Santa Claus on the North Pole.
And you say, Santa, which way is north? And every
direction Santa points is due south. Because
on the North Pole, the question, which way is
north, has no meaning. You can't even go east.
Every way you point is south. Correct. So on
the grid that we've all agreed that we use to
establish coordinates of Earth. Santa Claus can
only go south. The question, which way is north,
has no meaning. So these are clear to us. That's
heavy. These are clear to us that this is the
case. There are other questions where you know
not to ask because you just know not to ask.
We live on a spherical earth, and I say to you,
how far do you have to walk before you fall off?
Earth's surface. You know to not even ask that.
I am assuming you're not a flat earther. You
know not to ask that because the Earth's surface
curves back on itself. The question has no meaning
on a curved surface. But you thought you were
proud of yourself for even coming up with the
question. Now you design a whole research project
to answer that question and you find out you
shouldn't have asked the question to begin with.
But you didn't know in advance necessarily. Here's
another one. How about Pinocchio? Let's visit
Pinocchio's universe. Okay? Okay. All right.
And Pinocchio's there. And Pinocchio says, my
nose is about to grow. What happens next? He
has to tell a lie. Tell me what happens to his
nose. It grows when he lies. He just said, my
nose is about to grow. And if it grows, that
meant he was telling the truth. No. It means
he's about to tell a lie. That's all he says
is, my nose is about to grow. Right. But maybe
he keeps talking. Okay. So like someone says,
do I look fat in this outfit? He says, my nose
is about to grow. You look great. All right.
Let's tighten it up then. Okay. Pinocchio says,
my nose is growing. So what's his nose doing?
Well, I would assume he just got done lying.
So his nose is probably growing. No, because
he's lying. He just told the truth. His nose
is growing. What if he lied and then his nose
grows because he lied? What if he says my nose
is growing because his nose isn't growing? But
because he lied about his nose growing, his nose
grows. No, that's not how it works. Bro, I just
cracked it. No. Didn't I just crack it? I think
I just cracked it. I'm glad you made sense to
yourself in that sequence. No, I did make sense.
If Pinocchio's nose was not growing and he said,
my nose is growing, that would be a lie, then
his nose would grow. Correct. Oh! So if his nose
is not growing. When he says my nose is growing.
It's a lie. He's lying, which means his nose
should grow. Yes. Okay. What I'm saying is that
Pinocchio cannot interact with his nose in any
truthful way because the world of rules associated
with his universe prevents it. I see what you're
saying. So in his universe, it has to be that
he's deceiving someone and his nose involuntarily
grows. Yeah, but that's not how that works in
his universe. In his universe, if he tells a
lie, his nose grows. If he tells a truth, his
nose doesn't grow. If he says my nose is growing
and it's not growing, he's lying and his nose
should grow. So my only point there is the Pinocchio
universe and the rules that apply within it.
prevent that sentence from having any meaning
at all. In the same way, Santa Claus, which way
is north, has no meaning. So now we ask, what
was around before the universe began? I do not
know if that's an authentic question. Do we have
an idea about the birth and death of the universe
based on our own biological limitations? Not...
Not that we're not measuring, not that there's
not a keen understanding of the radio frequency
from the Big Bang, but just the idea. Do we put
a limitation? Do we think of the idea of the
universe beginning or ending based on our own
idea of life and death, that these things must
apply to all things that we see? No, because
until 1930s... We had no idea the universe would
have a beginning. It was assumed other than biblical
account. Scientifically, the universe just simply
always was. There was no evidence for that, but
we had no reason to think any other way about
it. And so we didn't force the universe to have
a beginning because that felt good to us. You're
not going to do that unless you have authentic.
justification for it. So just no one really talked
about it. I have books from that period. There
is no chapter on cosmology. It ends with the
starry skies of the night. It's starting with
the discussion of the planets. And it doesn't
even go there because it doesn't know to go there
until you have data forcing the question. There
wasn't enough information. Correct. And then
we say, oh my gosh, the universe is expanding,
discovered by Hubble in 1929. That means it's
bigger today than it was yesterday. It's bigger
yesterday than it was the day before. Let's run
the clock back. Could all the universe have been
in the same place at the same time? That meant
it might have had a beginning. Say that again?
If we're expanding, run the clock back, we were
smaller in the past. Could the whole universe
have been in the same place at the same time
at some distant point? If it was, that means
the universe had a beginning. That's when the
whole conversation began about the universe having
a beginning. It had nothing to do with the fact
that we're born and we live out our lives and
die. It had nothing to do with that. So now we
have a beginning, but what was around before
the beginning? That's an important and interesting
question. I don't know. I should say that differently.
That is a question, an English language sentence
question. I do not know if that question has
any more or less meaning than asking Santa Claus
which way is north. When we look at the Big Bang
and we look at the fact that the universe is
expanding and they know that there was some sort
of an event, by measuring, how exactly do they
measure? the radio frequencies that come from
the big bang like what is what's the oh so it's
microwave it's microwave and it's it's really
it's it's not as deep as you might want to think
it is it okay so do you realize you can't see
through the sun right the sun is not transparent
to visible light because visible light when it
enters the sun the sun is made of plasma which
is a gas where electrons have been ripped off,
ripped into the soup. So you have free -moving
electrons and atoms, and it's a soup. The electrons
are not part of the atoms. The consequence of
that is light interacts heavily with free electrons.
So you try to move light through a plasma, and
the light sees an electron. It careens off of
it. And it does not travel in a straight line.
It bounces and careens and scatters. And so by
the time the light comes out the other side,
you lost all hope of any information about what
was on the other side of the star or on the other
side of that plasma. Okay. So the early universe
was very hot. You can calculate what those temperatures
must have been. So hot that all atoms are ionized
and the whole universe is plasma. So light is
just bouncing around within the universe. In
fact, a lot of visible light is doing this. Then
the universe expands and cools. The electrons
combine with the atoms. All of a sudden, the
beam of light is no longer batted to and fro
by these free electrons. And you reach a point
where the universe clears. And it becomes transparent
to the passage of light. In that moment, all
the light that was contained in that fireball
now moves free across the universe. That light,
for the last 14 billion years, has been expanding
with the expanding universe, and the energy of
the visible light is now microwaves. You point
a microwave telescope in any direction, it is
bathed in microwaves from that event. Whoa. Now,
when you're measuring something that is – the
estimated date of the Big Bang is 13 .8 billion
years. Billion years ago, right. Is that – October
3rd. Is that the amount that they can measure
or is there a potential further point that can't
be measured? So we see objects that sent their
light to us basically 14 billion years ago. How
about objects farther away than that? There are
surely objects farther away, but the universe
isn't old enough yet for its light to reach us.
Whoa. So it's possible that things are far, far
more distant. We could be living in an infinite
universe, but all we have access to is our little
bubble. And so every year goes by. We got a little
more data. The bubble gets one light year larger.
Oh, wow. And we see a little bit more of whatever
universe is out there. Now, here's what makes
it, like, lose sleep deep. Okay? You ready? Oh,
boy. I love these. Okay. So how is it we can
see the birth of the universe? That already happened.
It's because it takes light time to travel. light
years ago, we are seeing galaxies being born.
Okay. Wait a billion years. Now, these galaxies
are a billion years older. They're no longer
being born. In fact, they're not giving us this
light that I was telling you about that became
microwaves. But wait a minute. The universe is
now 15 billion years old. I can now see objects
that have given their light to me from 15 billion
years ago. They are now being born. I'm seeing
them being born. So as long as there is a universe
out there, and as long as the whole universe
had the same birth date, which all evidence points
to, I will always see evidence of the Big Bang.
Because that information is always fresh to us
from a distance whose light only just now reached
us. So what you're going to look for is the day
when this expanding horizon washes over nothing.
If this expanding horizon moves and there's no
galaxies there and there's nothing, then all
the information about the formation of the universe
goes away. And the Big Bang no longer has anybody
telling us it is going through a Big Bang. That
would be the edge of the known matter content
of the universe. When scientists study this information
and they look back at this time period of 13
.8 billion years and they hypothesize or they
try to come up with theories about how far it
could go back beyond that. How do they do that?
No, the birth date is the same for this entire
universe. Even the part of the universe we can't
see. So even the part of the universe we can't
see. We all have the same birth date. No matter
what, it's 13 .8 billion years. Correct. Now,
what about the idea that things expand and contract
and that it ultimately will all come back together?
It's allowed in the equations, but the data has
never supported that. And all data support a
one -way. Not only that, the discovery of dark
energy is accelerating the expansion. There's
a whole section of the book on how it'll all
end. And you get really speculative. It's like,
okay, given what's happening now and given what
we know, here's what we think. If the accelerated
expansion goes unchecked, it will overcome. all
the forces that are currently binding everything
you know and love. Like gravity? Yes, it'll overcome
gravity. So the galaxies will no longer be able
to hold together. Because the expansion of the
universe is now manifesting at a local level
rather than on a much larger level. So galaxies
start getting stretched apart. And then the planets
orbiting stars start getting stretched apart.
And then the molecules start getting broken apart.
And then the atoms themselves. And then in the
limit, this stretching. reaches the very pixels
that comprise the fabric of space and time. It's
called the Planck length. That is the very structure
of what comprises everything we know in the universe.
And so the expansion will ultimately hit that.
And we do not know. We don't know what the consequence
of that. You know what we call it? It's called
the Big Rip. What happens when you stretch fabric?
There's a point where it doesn't stretch anymore,
and it rips. That's in between 20 and 22 billion
years from now. If the cosmic acceleration goes
unchecked, the world will end in a big rip. Wow.
What could possibly check it? Not with a bang,
but with a rip. Now, the idea of something, of
it being unchecked, like what could potentially
cause it to be checked? So, we don't know. We
don't know. There could be some other thing that
lands in the lab. Wait, just one quick, can I
run to the bathroom? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is
not live, right? No, no, we'll be fine. We'll
be right back to it real quick. Me and Jamie
would talk shit about you. Take a left. Dude.
Yeah, I know 20 billion years doesn't sound like,
I mean, it sounds like you don't have to worry
about it. But doesn't that, like, the idea that
the universe is gone in 20 billion years, that
freaks me out. It shouldn't. I don't have much
time left personally. But the idea that there'll
be no universe at all to speak of what we're
looking at, it'll all be molecules broken down.
I'm trying to figure out how to even wrap my
head around it. Yeah, well, it's why it's so
important for people like that to be out there,
that have these things that they can pose, these
questions and these scenarios they can describe,
where your mind is like, wait, what? And then
what happens? No one knows. But we have this
extreme desire to know what happens next. Like,
what happens? What happens when I die? What happens
if Austin has 5 million people? What happens
if they don't get rid of the tents? What happens
if, you know what I mean? There's always a what
happens if. What happens if there's no more matter
in the universe? It gets broken down to pixels.
First of all, I thought pixels were just a visual
representation of things on phones and screens
and laptops and shit. Did you even know that
a pixel was a unit of measurement? The fabric
of the universe? Definitely not. Proof simulation
theory, it sounds like. Yeah, right? If you get
further and further out? If you had to bet all
your money, if you had, again, if you had one
side yes, one side no for simulation theory.
No worries. Yes. If I'm betting? Yes. Yes. If
I'm betting UFOs? No. No? Wow. Heavy. Jamie just
blew my mind. He doesn't believe in UFOs. He
does believe in simulation theory. I was taking
his bet earlier. I would bet that. Oh, okay.
I bet it's something. I bet it's us. I bet with
UFOs, I bet they're from another planet, and
I think they're probes. That's what I think.
I think they're probes. You think they're from
here? That means we don't get to. Could be. Touch
the aliens. Yeah, I don't think they're interested
in touching us. I think they think we're too
volatile. We're crazy. We shoot each other all
the time. So let me tell you about the big rip.
Yes. So it's terrifying. Yes. Because fabric,
you stretch it to a point and it rips. So that's
just the end of the end of the end with that
happening. If something puts it in check, then
we keep expanding. And what happens is all stars
die. All – and the proton decays and we're left
with an entire universe of just sort of base
particles where nothing happens. Right. Because
there's no source of energy left. And that's
a less interesting fate than a big rip. But what's
for me interesting is – and by the way, all this
is in the last chapter. We talk about how it
might all end. multiverses that might exist.
So in our universe, there are likely other bubbles
that are also expanding. And we're just one bubble
among them. And this is the sort of traditional
multiverse that people think about. And there
may be an infinite number of these dotted into
the total universe. Can I pause you right here?
Yeah. So the idea is that our universe is infinite.
Possibly, yes. The bubble. That we exist in.
Maybe infinite? No. Our bubble is one bubble
within an infinite universe. And that infinite
universe contains an infinite number of other
bubbles. But our bubble is essentially, as we
can measure it, 13 .8 billion light years across.
No. It's bigger than that. It's bigger than that.
It's just that it's been 13 .8 billion years
travel time for the light. But over that time,
the universe has expanded. So we have a diameter
of like 100 billion. light years across. And
how do they estimate that? Because you know the
rate that you're expecting. So that object sent
us its light 14 .8 billion years ago. The light's
been traveling that long. Well, what has the
universe been doing? For 14 .8 billion years.
They're expanding. It's been expanding. So that
actual object is much farther away from us than
14 billion light years away. That's a point of
confusion for many people. Yes. It's because
in my field, we're kind of loose about it. We
say 14 billion light years to the edge. Well,
that's 14 billion years the time the light has
been traveling from the edge. And where did the
concept of these bubbles come from? The idea
that... Each one of these little universes, not
little obviously, but each one of these universes
exists in some sort of a realm. It's a great
question and an important question. So here's
what happens. So now we have the beginning of
the universe, the Big Bang. This has been around
with us for 70, 80 years. And that's pretty stable
in terms of our understanding of things. But
now we take quantum physics, which is the science
of the small. and add it to Einstein's general
relativity, the science of the large. Why would
you do that? Because at the beginning of the
universe, the large is small. So think about
this. We have general relativity, which gives
us black holes and all the rest of this. That
applies to big macroscopic things. I'm good with
that. No problem. Quantum physics refers to atomic
things primarily and molecules and how they behave.
And the two don't... talk to each other. It's
like they don't, in fact, they're incompatible.
And this is how you get string theorists. String
theorists say, well, these are incompatible.
Maybe there's a third theory above those two
that combines them. And we have top people working
on that. When you start combining quantum physics
with general relativity, because there was a
time when the universe was small, then the entire
universe behaves in quantum ways. And so you
can create a state of the universe where it's
what's called a false. It's in a false state.
So it's a false state. Let's say you have a hill
that goes down, but then the hill goes back up
and then it goes down to a much lower point.
So now you take a marble and roll it down. Maybe
it'll just sort of get stuck up there in that
first dip. Well, if our universe is there. we
might not become a universe. But it's possible
to tunnel out of that and then slide all the
way down to the bottom. When you do that, you
release energy. And when that happens, you birth
a universe. And it turns out this process is
not limited to happening once. So this can happen
multiple times. From people I've spoken with
who work in this field, because it's slightly
outside of my direct astrophysics interests,
there are different kinds of these multiverses.
One of them could have the same laws of physics
that we have. That's what leads people to say
there's another Joe Rogan, but he's the evil
Joe Rogan with a goatee or whatever. But also
there's another Joe Rogan that said everything
that I've said exactly the way I've said it.
This would be the claim. You're a twin, but maybe
there's a little difference or not. Correct.
Correct. An infinite number of them, right? The
idea is that if the universe is that big. And
it has an infinite number of universes. There
are infinite combinations of events and particles
and manifestations of energy. An infinite number
of Neil deGrasse Tysons. Possibly. On an infinite
number of these podcasts. I wouldn't want that
because that would be... It's fine. I'd like
different people. There are plenty of those too.
Okay, plenty of those too. So now watch. Now
imagine a universe where the laws of physics
are slightly different. That's a different manifestation
of this process. Right. Is the speed of light
a little different? Is the, you know... So that's
another level of multiverse. And there's several
levels, but the... The most significant one is
one where not only are the laws of physics different,
but maybe there's a universe where there are
no laws of physics at all. A wild west of physics?
A wild west. Or maybe there's one where even
the parameters that establish mathematical truths
are fungible. Ooh. Right. So the value of pi
is something else. Extra props for using the
word fungible. It's one of my new favorite words.
Is that right? Excellent. Non -fungible tokens
have brought it up. So all I'm saying is in the
last part of the book, we explore all of these
exit ramps from the universe that take us to
the end of the universe. And we don't even know
if we're asking the right question. But what
we share with you is a sense. of where the current
thinking would take us if you extended it to
its limits. When you ponder questions like this,
when you ponder questions like other universes
with different laws of physics or no laws of
physics or fungible laws of physics, when you
sit around... What is your process? Do you sit
alone in your office and sit in front of a laptop
and start writing this stuff out? Like, how do
you ponder these things? I think I can speak
for many of my colleagues. There's some experiments
that are collaborative. And so, for example,
the mission to Mars. Everyone got together. You
get the engineers. We want this craft. We're
going to put in this experiment. We're going
to look for water. We're going to look for life.
Okay. That's not the solo burning midnight oil.
when you're trying to think deep thoughts about
what might or might not be true, objectively
true in the universe, that can be a little more
solitary, I think. And you can come up with ideas
anyway. Forget this deductive reasoning, inductive,
forget all that. You can have an idea just sitting
on a toilet, okay? And it could be a spark. It
could be because you saw some great work of art.
And so sources of... sparks of creativity and
inspiration can come from anything. You could
be religious and you want to manifest the glory
of God and that's what's triggering you to have
these thoughts. Okay? So the creative process
is not so regimented as the teaching of scientific
method would have you believe. You go to a science
lab, well, what is your hypothesis? What is your
this? What is the test of the hypothesis? You
know, I don't even have an hypothesis. I don't
know. I just wonder, you know? So the formality
that we are often exposed to is not always how
that unfolds. So on top of that, getting back
to your question, often new thoughts, you are
alone. You're just, you know, you're not distracted.
In this world of multitasking, no, great ideas,
I don't think, come out of multitasking. I don't
think so either. And there's a saying, great
saying. If you want to be more creative, become
less productive. Because in a day, you can say,
oh, I got my email done, and I went to groceries.
Well, did you think about anything? Did you create
anything? Well, we're rarely bored, right? That's
part of the problem. That's a problem. It is
a problem, and people don't think it is. Yeah,
that's a problem. They say, well, I've been busy,
and that's good. And I'm saying, did you create
anything? Maybe you don't want to create anything.
I don't want to judge you for not having done
so. If you want creativity to be a fundamental
part of your life, then you're going to have
to not get stuff done at some point. That's a
nice excuse for a lot of lazy people out there.
I'm just trying to be creative, man. That's why
I'm on the couch with the bong. This is a creative
moment. But your process is what I'm asking specifically.
I read a lot of science. Well, there's journals.
There's books that people have read. There are
fields within astrophysics that are slightly
outside of my research expertise. And some of
those folks have written popular level books.
I'll read those. Those are fun because they're
sort of scoped. There are review papers that
are written. And for me, new ideas, I mean, think
about it. What is a new idea? You might even
call it the definition of genius. It's you see
what everyone else sees. But you think what no
one else has thought. But now you want to make
sure. But add to that, maybe you are so diverse
in what you expose yourself to that you see more
than what other people see. And when you see
more, you have the capacity to make connections
that might not have previously been imagined,
either by you or by anybody else. This is the
value of cross -pollinating fields. It's why
major discoveries can come in from the side in
what is otherwise a very staid path of progress.
So in a hospital, people say, how do you want
to invest money? In physics? That's so 20th century
with the Cold War and the bombs. Let's invest
in biology. That's the ticket. So that makes
sense as a headline, but let's unpack that. Go
walk into a hospital and line up every single
machine brought into the service of diagnosing
the condition of the human body without cutting
you open. So you'd have the MRI or the x -ray
machines. You'd have the ultrasound. There's
no end of these machines. that are in the service
of the hospital, and MRI, admittedly, is the
doctor's best friend, okay, in studying what's
inside your body. To a machine, every single
one of them is based on a principle of physics
discovered by a physicist who had no interest
in medicine. Really? Yes. Wow. Okay. Even the
radiology department. The doctors are using radioactive
elements. Were there doctors that discovered
radio? No. There are physicists. There are chemists.
There's Marie Curie. These are people who are
not in the medical community. The x -ray machine.
Who discovered that? Wilhelm Röntgen. The very
first Nobel Prize in physics went to him. So
by specifically concentrating on biology. Now,
he immediately saw the applications. He saw there's
a picture of the bones of his hand. But he's
a physicist. He's not saying let me help orthopedic
surgeons set bones. This is not his motivation.
So new ideas, especially new things that can
transform society, tend to come from fields that
if they're not tangent to your field, they're
just some other kind of way in. And so some of
the greatest advances in my field came about
because chemists were in the coffee lounge at
the same time we were. Or biologists walked in.
That informs our astrobiology exploits. So it's
not just let me sit down alone in an armchair
and deduce the nature of the world. You want
to be exposed to what everybody else is doing.
You want to talk to them. You want to hear their
ideas, collaborate. No one person, you know,
the midnight oil, it makes a good TV show or
movie, the midnight loner genius. But science,
most science today does not unfold that way.
So getting back to my point, personally, I do
a lot of reading. And when I have an idea, then
I bounce it off of people who are highly critical
and skeptical of any new idea. And if it survives
that. You can't have an ego going into it. How
do you do these bounce -offs? Do you sit down?
Oh, I get colleagues and I say, what do you think
of this idea? So do you prepare them? Like, hey,
George, I'd like to sit down and have a chat
with you. It can be. Hey, Mary, I've got a crazy
idea to throw your way. It could. In fact, I
was once at a wine tasting, and there's someone
else there who's a biologist, and we came up
with an idea together, and we're probably going
to write a paper on it about life on Earth and
in the universe. Just from a conversation at
a wine tasting. You were both hammered. Talking
shit, right? Well, what wine was that? That we
were the vintage or whatever? No, so like I said,
creativity can unfold in many ways, but because
he's a biologist and I'm not, he says something.
I said, wait a minute. I what do you think of
this and he never thought of what I thought and
I never thought of what he thought together It's
magic and so this kind of creativity the sort
of cooperative exploration of ideas then that
gives birth in your mind to the idea of writing
a book about something. It can, but first you
would write a research paper and get a peer review,
this sort of thing. And then if it's good and
it's successful, and the public wants to know
about it, that's ripe for a book. My books tend
to be a little more summative than that. I don't
write books on single topics. As an educator,
I... I'm broad. And how do you get inspired in
terms of the subject matter you choose? I mean,
it's always about the cosmos, but in terms of
specifics. You know what it is? It's I'm a servant
of your curiosity and his curiosity and her curiosity.
I'm a servant of that. tweet and as I post and
as I walk the streets and as I sit in an airplane
with someone next to me who learns that I know
astrophysics and I hear their questions and as
I reply, do their eyebrows go up and their eyes
lighten or do they look bored and want to order
their next drink? I monitor this and I make mental
inventory of what excites people in the universe.
And when I'm overloaded by what I know excites
people, it's got to go into a book. So it just
has to kind of catch fire. Catch fire. And especially
my goal is to reignite curiosity within your
soul of knowledge and searching that may have
once ignited when you were a kid, but has long
been dampened. Because we don't live in a world
that promotes curiosity. We're in a very gullible
world. Is it part of your strategy when you do
your star talk, you do it with comedians? Is
it part of your strategy? Yeah, thanks for mentioning
that. So you yourself are a professional comedian
among all the other hats you wear. So I deeply
respect your field in that way. My co -host for
StarTalk, the podcast, is always a professional
stand -up comedian. Not the kind who just tells
jokes, right? But the kind that sees the world
and explores ways you might not have thought
about it, connects it to the topic, and then
you end up smiling while you're learning. And
in my experience, if you smile while you learn,
you learn better. You learn more deeply. And
you come back for more. And do you actively curate
these comedians? Do you go to comedy clubs? Yes.
Well, I don't do all that footwork, but we have
people who do. Yeah, we go to comedy clubs. And
we like new comics. A lot of new folks, open
mic night, that sort of thing. And there's some
we return to more often than others. Chuck Nice
is - Chuck's great on your show. He's one of
our favorites. But he's obviously fascinated
by the same topics. And he's smart, as all comedians
are, in my experience. So he's not only smart,
he's also - I need some of my friends. I could
change your theory. Change my hypothesis. I'm
sticking to it. You guys are smart. And so just
the format of the show is, so it's not just comedian
in the science. There's a pop culture element
to it. So some ridiculous fraction of my life
is invested staying fluent in pop culture. So
that when I talk about the science and you don't
know where I'm coming from, I say, well, consider
this. This is what Beyonce did or this is what
some politician said or this is what the pope
was thinking about. And when you come to me with
a pop culture scaffold and what makes a pop culture,
everyone has a similar scaffold. I don't have
to construct that. And I look at it and I analyze
it from three dimensions and I say, I'm going
to clad this bit of information on that part
of that scaffold. And how do you actively engage
with pop culture and curate sort of a knowledge
base about what these wacky kids are interested
in today? I read responses to my social media
posts. Oh, that's easy. So the response is a
neurosynaptic snapshot. of what people are thinking
in response to the very words I choose, to the
phrasing. If I think something is funny and nobody
laughs, I want to know that. That's important
information for me. If I think something isn't
funny and they do laugh, if I missed something,
if I was insensitive to something that I would
have wanted to be had I known, that comes out.
That's there. And that informs future encounters
I have with people, informs sentences I compose
for books. And that's me, in my mind's eye, being
a servant of your curiosity. So you think of
it almost as an ingredient in your education.
Yes. Yes. It's not just, here's something, you
better learn this or you're going to flunk the
test. Every student who flunks the test is a
statement for me about the instructor, not about
the student. That's interesting. So you have
teachers who say, you know, I just have some
students that just don't want to learn. And all
right, but have you ever heard a teacher say,
I have students who aren't learning, so that
must mean I suck at my job? I'm sure someone
said that. I've never heard anyone say that.
Okay. So at what point are you going to invert
the table and say the burden of them learning
is on me, not on them? Now, of course, in some
cases it's impossible. Large classes, you can't
be babysitter to everyone. Some people have emotional
stability problems. So I get that. But I don't
want to hear a teacher say, I have students who
refuse to learn. My response is, I see a teacher
who refuses to figure out how to get them to
learn. Yeah, that takes more effort. Yeah. Yeah,
that's hard. But is anything in life... worth
achieving that isn't itself hard? Your role as
an educator, and as an educator, a public educator,
meaning you're someone who's in the public eye
all the time, educating people in a pop culture
way. Basically, right. But you're doing it about
things like the nature of the universe itself.
Super complex issues. And you're doing this all...
under all this heavy scrutiny. I mean, the people
from the meat company went after you the other
day. What the hell was that? Steakums. Steakums
had at you with you about a tweet. Yeah, here's
what happened. I thought it was a little disingenuous
on Steakums' part. Okay, so here's what happened.
There's an anatomy of that that I find fascinating.
I post a tweet. The tweet is... Something about
not having to believe the science. Yeah. So the
good thing about science is that it's true whether
or not you believe in it. Right. Then steak.
Hold on. Hold on. So now my very next tweet said,
if you have the urge to argue with my previous
tweet, please read this link before doing so.
And it's a link to a four minute read. essay
I wrote called What Science Is and How and Why
It Works. Okay. Did you post that before or after
Stakehams went after you? No, that's been posted
for years. Right, but I'm saying did you post
the second tweet? I don't. The second tweet was
10 minutes after the first tweet. Okay. It was
immediate, essentially immediate. So you're basically
just following up with the reference. Because
I knew people might want to try to take issue
with this. But you didn't know it was going to
be Stakehams. Okay. So watch. Here's what happened.
That first tweet escaped from my following because
so many people retweeted it. So now people are
reading the first tweet without the benefit of
the second tweet. Stakehams is among them. And
I know this because when I read their reply to
me, I looked at their header and it doesn't say
Stakeham follows Neil Tyson. They don't follow
me. If you don't follow me, you didn't see the
first tweet. I mean, the second tweet. You had
no idea that that was there. So you essentially
said what they said to you, but with far more
information. It's like his tweet to you, criticizing
you, is essentially much of the same that was
in your article. You're talking about... That
article was entirely about what it means for
science to establish truth. Yes. That science...
It uniquely establishes what is objectively true
in this world. And what did Stakeham say? Do
we know what Stakeham said? No, they just screamed.
And scientists said the world was flat. Or, you
know, before Copernicus. Well, it's a little
bit more articulate than that. It's quite clever.
There was a total body of attack. Yes. Regarding
citing occasions when scientists have been wrong.
Okay. Well, he's also explaining, clarifying
what the actual scientific method is versus just
a flat statement like science doesn't need you
to believe it's true or however you phrased it.
Well, I'm just saying that, yeah, so the Stakeham
one, there's some informed people there, I think,
and they just like creating controversy. I don't
have a problem with that. Isn't that bizarre
that it's Stakeham's? Well, it's fine. Okay.
I wrote back to them and I said, hi, Stakeham's.
It looks like you don't follow me. So that accounts
for why you didn't read this link. Had you read
this link, and then I tried to be a little clever,
clumsily. I said, if you and your followers took
four minutes to put down your steak and cheese
hoagie to read this essay. you would then understand
the meaning of that treat and you would not.
So I said that and then it became a whole thing.
But that's the nature of social media. But I
realized that I cannot have one tweet reference
another because if the previous one is alive
and it gets out, no one has any sense of where
my following does. And they would say, oh, fascinating
four -minute read. Thank you. I see and I agree
and I talk about truths, the three kinds of truth.
Do you know about that? Did I tell you this?
Sure. Go ahead. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I thought deeply
about this and this was my conclusion. Okay.
The three kinds of truths. One of them is the
truth, a personal truth. This is something is
true to you and no one can take it away from
you. Jesus is your savior. In a free country,
no one is going to take that from you. No one
should take it from you. All right. Muhammad
is the last prophet. These are personal truths
that you hold dear. I don't have a problem with
your personal truth. Is that the right word for
it? I'm calling it that. Beliefs. We can call
it beliefs, but they call it personal truths.
I'm respecting. If you look at the word truth,
the first websites are religious websites. Truth
is a very important word within belief systems.
And so I studied that and I said, all right,
I'm not going to tell them, give me the word
truth because you're not describing truth, you're
describing belief. That's a fight I'm not interested
or willing to have. Okay. Give them the truth.
Look, there are whole posters with a cross and
it says, seek the truth in Jesus, right? So I'm
not going to fight that. That's a personal truth.
It's not just a political truth. A political
truth is something that becomes true in your
head because it was repeated so many times. And
aligns with what you want. OK, so hearing Trump
talk about Hillary Clinton, it was crooked Hillary.
Right. So what's Hillary's first name? Crooked
because it was repeated so many times. And our
brain gets co -opted because we. In nature, in
the Serengeti, if we see something repeating,
it gives us a good indication that maybe it's
real and we should be careful about it, or it's
a reliable thing. In modern times, we have co
-opted that feature of human evolution, and now
we give you information that has no foundation
in truth, but repeat it, and in your head it
becomes true. It becomes true. Especially if
you want it to be true. I call that a political
truth. The third truth is an objective truth.
This is a truth established by the methods and
tools of science and verified by the methods
and tools of science. Once that is established,
it doesn't later on become false. Like the temperature
of boiling water. For example, under atmospheric...
conditions, like the fact that Earth orbits the
sun, like the fact that Earth is round, the sun
is hot, there's thermonuclear fusion in the core,
that the universe is expanding, that the galaxy
is rotating, that there are other galaxies, that
there's such a thing as quantum physics, that
there are things called electrons and protons
and neutrons and atoms and carbon. There is a
body of objective truths established by the methods
and tools of science that when it is established,
it is not later found to be false. You can expand
on that truth, the truth can become deeper, but
it doesn't become false. And these methods and
tools have been in practice basically since Galileo
and Sir Francis Bacon, around 1600. Before then,
some people knew about this process that science
goes through, but it wasn't widespread practice,
not until about 1600. So if you're going to say,
you should see the responses in here. Scientists
told us the earth was flat. That was before 1600.
Scientists used to, oh, we used to bleed you
with leeches. Okay. Well, let's go back to when
we did that. All right. This would be biologists
doing it. And what was the state of research
at the time? That was a frontier thing they were
doing. It wasn't verified. It was a hypothesis
that they were acting on. OK, so, yeah, if the
bleeding edge of science, most of that will turn
out to be wrong. Most of it. It's when it gets
tested and the press gets the single scientific
result that's kind of intriguing and interesting.
And they report it as a new scientific truth
because it was a scientific study, especially
if it comes from a place like Harvard. They'll
put that up in the front sentence without saying.
We don't know if this is actually true. We need
verification from other studies. They don't say
that typically or that's later on in the article.
So that's how you can go from, oh, cholesterol
is good for you. No, cholesterol is bad for you.
No, cholesterol is good for you. No, cholesterol
is bad for you. That was an unresolved research
result. But you cited one research result that.
was consistent with your own desires, and that
became your new truth. That's, in a way, a political
truth, if it's repeated enough. But then you
find it's not that. It's because it's still an
actively researched frontier. When you wrote
out these three truths, how did you come to only
three? Do you think there's room for more? Maybe.
This is not an edict that thou shalt only have.
When you see something repeated, I call that
a political truth, but it's also a kind of a,
there are other truths. So, for example, you've
heard this. We only use 10 % of our brain. Yeah,
but that's not real. There's an entire movie
based on that premise. Lucy. Lucy. Yeah. Okay?
That premise is false. It was never true. That's
another kind of thing. It was never true. That
annoyed me. I liked that movie, though. It was
fun. It was good seeing Scarlett in that. And
Morgan Freeman's in it. It's had some good roles.
So let's go back to where it started from. You
know where that came from? There was a neuroscientist,
well, a brain scientist, who, because you can't
do experiments on human brains, that's not ethical.
All right. All you can do is wait till someone
gets an accident. And so there's a nail gun that
damages this part of the brain. Oh, you lost
your language. Damage of this part. Oh, you lost
your short term memory. Oh, you lost your long
term memory. And so you assemble the bits of
what the brain is doing by people who were injured.
This is a very slow, clumsy process, but that's
all you've got. The person wrote who had an article
said the brain is so complex. Today, we only
know what 10 % of it is used for. And that got...
Overnight, that became we only use 10 % of our
brain. And that became the mantra of school teachers
getting children to rise to their potential.
And there was no force operating against that
coming into our culture. It wouldn't have ruined
the movie if they didn't have that in there.
I mean, there's no reason for that to be in the
movie. The movie was fascinating as it was. They
could have just given her some other power, but
they went with that 10 % thing. Yeah, but they
didn't even need to do that. Okay, can I give
my critique even of that? Let's say we did only
use 10 % of our brain. Here's my critique. Even
if that were true. Okay. The smartest people
you know, do they have an inkling of kinetic
powers over objects in front of them? Why are
we obsessed with extremely high intelligence
having power over matter? Why aren't people with
extremely high intelligence just good at solving
problems? They're just the best people at solving
problems in the world. We want superpowers. So
they're becoming superpowers. That's right. And
even the movie that had John Travolta in it.
Oh, yeah. Phenomenon? Was that the one? The one
where he gets struck by lightning? Right, right.
And he's up there and he makes a top spin just
by spinning his hand and the top pops up and
spins. It's like, no. If you're smarter than
everybody, you'll do smart things. You're not
going to sort of levitate objects. His brain
works better. He can make things move. By what
force? No. By telekinetics. We know what forces
are operating in this world. There's no way telekinetics
is real? No! Okay? We've got, we understand what
forces there are. But people that make things
move with their mind, what do you think they're
doing? They're lying? Yes. To themselves or to
others? People get so upset if you say that.
Right? What do you think about psychic ability?
Think there's any of it? I'm not convinced by
any of it I've ever seen. Put him in a controlled
situation. If there is psychic ability, it's
not particularly repeatable. Right. Like maybe
an emerging phenomenon. Okay. But you have to
be invoking forces that don't otherwise show
up in a laboratory. Right. So that's A. B, the
laboratory has a hard time duplicating your claims.
Okay. C, if one of your psychic ability is to
help the police find the criminal. Why is it,
oh, they're in a ravine? Why don't you just give
the person's name and their address and their
phone number? Well, it's not that good. Okay.
It's like a dog. Well, when you get a bloodhound
to go find a guy, they're not that good at it.
Okay, I don't know. They're pretty good at it.
Yeah, I don't know. They're like, they run around
the woods and they catch a scent. They could
find somebody else's underwear. Well, the idea
is you give them yours so they know what you
smell like and they go looking for you. Yeah,
how unique are you in 7 billion people? For a
dog? Pretty fucking unique. Okay, so a dog's
good. Dogs can smell COVID -19. So then why are
they not good? So why did you say they weren't
good? They're pretty good, but they're not perfect.
It's not like you let a dog loose and it just
runs full grip. Well, they're better than any
of us would be in that situation. My point is
it's gathering evidence. It's using its ears,
and its ears are actually wafting up smells.
So the amazing Randy, who's a magician, who also
he – Exposes frauds. Exposes frauds and claims.
There is a woman who claimed to be a very important
psychic, I think, in Russia. And she sees events
and she can know things. She can look at a photo
of you and figure out, you know. All right. So
he brings a photo of someone and gets her to
talk about it. She looks at it. Oh, you know,
he went to college and he majored in psychology.
Turned out to be correct. Although that's the
number one major in colleges. in the united states
it's the number one major but she got that correct
okay then she says other things about it which
he might be living and what she got wrong or
never didn't reveal about him is that he's dead
you think that would have made a signal big enough
for her to have captured and the person was uh
ted bundy the serial killer The photos of Ted
Bundy? Yes. And those two really important bits
of information. The dead part's kind of important,
but the serial killer part is really important.
You'd think that would have risen up out of the
page. That's the most interesting thing about
him. So if there is psychic power, I'm just very
disappointed in it. Well, that lady. Yeah. Well,
she was heralded by others. I mean, what else
do you do? You're going to go to someone who's
not heralded? You go to the best who they claim.
Yeah, I think most of the ones that claim to
be psychic are full of shit. I'm not discounting
the possibility of psychic phenomenon. That's
what the amazing Randy did. He bypassed everyone
who everyone else said was full of shit. They
said, go to her, go to her. That's what he did.
What else do you want him to do? Yeah. No, I
mean. Look, I've never seen any evidence that
psychic ability is real. But I've left the door
open because I think intuition is a weird thing.
And then the ability to think that you know when
something's going to happen and then something
does happen, people claim that has taken place.
I don't know if it really ever has. But if it
ever has, if someone really did tell someone
that something was going to happen and it did
happen, that to me is very fascinating. I've
seen no evidence that it does. that it does work
that way. Well, it's got to be a reliable prediction.
Maybe. Right. But again, maybe it's an emerging
phenomenon. Maybe it's a thing that one day human
beings will have as in our natural toolbox. What's
the difference between you manifesting this yet
-to -be -fully -harnessed power intermittently
and other times it doesn't work for you, but
sometimes it does? Wait, so what's the difference
between that? Okay. And you hitting on something
correctly at random. Well, one thing would be
if you're hitting on something at random, you
don't really know. You're guessing. The idea
about this phenomenon is that you're getting
a signal. It's just not reliable. The idea would
be, and again, I'm not a biologist, right? But
if something was emerging from the human species.
something like language language did not start
out the way you and i are talking right now on
a podcast vision the ability to see things with
the eyes it did not start out crystal clear 2020
vision this is an emerging thing that conceivably
took millions if not billions of years to evolve
just to be cautious so emergent And biology means
something different from what you're saying.
All you're saying is that it evolved. What is
emergent? Emergence is a property, a fascinating
property of an organism that is not derivable
from any of its parts when you look at it. So,
for example, you can study a bird and you can
know everything there is about a bird, but you
would not necessarily, I don't think, be able
to predict. That birds flock together. Oh. So
the flocking is emergence. That's an emergent
phenomenon. What I'm talking about is something
emerging. That's just evolution. That's just
evolution. Okay. Just say it evolved. Okay. Sight
evolved. So something like psychic phenomenon
evolving from human beings. Something slowly
but surely. You can call it intuition. Oh, I
thought about someone and my phone rang. It was
them and I haven't talked to them for years.
I mean, that might be coincidence. Yeah, but
did you keep track of all the misses? I mean,
this is confirmation bias, right? For sure. So
my favorite example here is you line up 1 ,000
people. It's a coin toss thing. Line up 1 ,000
people and then flip a coin. And if you get tails,
you sit down, okay? So now you got 500 left.
Flip it, 250, okay? You know, what are we down
to? We have 250 people. They flip a coin. Half
get heads, 100. 20 sit down. Now we're down to
60. And then 30. And then 15. And then 8. And
then 4. And then 2. And then 1. All right? So
in a classic execution of this experiment, there's
one person left at the end. And you know something?
That person flipped heads 10 consecutive times.
So what does the press do? The press goes to
that person. Say, how do you feel about winning
this? coin toss. You know, I felt some heads
energy halfway through. This felt really real
to me. And I saw signs and I saw a heads up coin
on the street. So I knew I was going to win.
Did they interview anyone else who didn't win
to see if they had heads energy feelings? No.
They don't even get interviewed. And plus, we
are so hubristic and ego -driven that we think
we are special for having flipped heads 10 times
in a row. When almost every time you do this
experiment, somebody's going to flip heads 10
times in a row. That mirrors what I've always
said about the secret and the law of attraction.
I'm like, you're only talking to winners. Yes.
Talk to people that imagined they were going
to be rock stars. Correct. And we don't. That's
correct. It didn't work out for them because
you can't just – they might have really been
thinking hard about it all day and night, but
you can't just manufacture things from your mind.
But what you can do is have a goal, work towards
it, have discipline, have focus, learn from your
mistakes, improve upon your approach, and then
eventually get to a place where you can look
back and say, you know – I did it all with my
mind. I made it happen. I envisioned it, and
I made it happen. And people are like, oh, my
God, he's using the secret. Yeah, yeah. They're
using the law of attraction. Right, right, right,
right. And that's in a lot of talk shows, you
know. Yeah. Mid -afternoon talk shows. Yeah,
the gals, the ladies like those. And stay -at
-home dads. They're really into those. It's a...
So I want to just give a brief thing. I've got
to catch an airplane at some point. Do you? Yeah.
Where are you going? I'm going back home tonight.
Yeah, okay. I'm going back home tonight. So let's
go back 150 years. Michael Faraday, okay? Faraday
Cage. Among many things credited to him. Physicist
in the UK. Very religious man, by the way. But
he left religion outside the lab when he walked
in. And, like, God wasn't. participating in his
thoughts as he was conducting the experiments,
right? God was everywhere else in his life, right?
But when he walked in, it's all physics. So he
invents the concept of the field because what
does it mean? Something can be here and influence
something else over there. Is there anything
connecting them? I don't see anything. There's
nothing there. I can wave my hands. There's a
field. The concept of a field is birthed with
Michael Faraday. It stumped Newton. I have action
at a distance. How does this work? How can Earth
pull the moon? Is there a rope? Is there a chain?
How does this work? The field was invented with
Faraday. All right. What's Faraday's experiment?
He takes a wire, puts it through a magnetic field,
and then a meter turns over here. Moving a wire
through a magnetic field made electrons move
through the wire, and he measured current over
here. Doing this over here made something else
happen over there. And no one understood this.
Oh my gosh. There is action happening and I don't
understand it. Let's figure it out. And the attempt
to figure that out was the birth of our modern
understanding of electromagnetism. All I'm saying
is, today, there is no... mysterious phenomenon
happening on a tabletop. There isn't. Everything
that's happening here, we understand. From the
material science to the strength to what happens
as liquid in my glass. There's paint. There's
material. All of this is understood. So where
is the frontier of physics? It's in particle
accelerators. It's at the limits of the energetics
of the world. And yes, there there's some things
we don't understand. Just recently, one of the
particles in the universe, the muon, was sent
into a magnetic field and it started moving in
ways nobody predicted. Our understanding of what
the muon is supposed to do, it did not obey.
Deeply interesting. The press puts it as, oh,
physics is tossed on its ear. No, we're like,
everything else still works as we imagined it,
as we've measured it. But there's a new phenomenon.
People are all in it right now trying to figure
out what this particle called the muon is making
it do something that we didn't expect it to do.
That's not on the tabletop. So to say you're
going to have a psychic power that manifests
on a tabletop. There is no... We got the tabletop.
What do you think about that phenomenon, about
the idea of the phenomenon, psychic phenomenon,
is so interesting to people? Why is that something
that's so compelling and has been so prevalent
throughout history? I think we have always deeply
respected anyone who had the power of prophecy.
Anyone. Now, what's weird is... The people who
really have the power of prophecy are scientists.
I can tell you that on June 10th, there's going
to be a solar eclipse visible from New York and
the sun will rise eclipsed. Now, if I didn't
tell you how I knew that, I can create a cult.
Okay? But I say, well, there's an equation. You
got to take some physics and some math and you
learn some astrophysics and you could predict
that too. Well, that takes away any mystique
I might have had over you for knowing the future.
But you go back to all cultures. There's the
shaman who's, oh, the weather this and the future
that and the moon this. These are people with
power over others. Even we are so into this that
we're thinking that dreams matter. Oh, I dreamed
that. Oh, is that going to be true? Oh, my God.
Look at how much we invest in thinking somebody's
dream is something that's going to come true.
That was especially true in the past. Less of
it today. Because we know more about dreams and
things. But the urge to want someone else to
have the power to predict the future seems to
be without limit. And psychic powers and astrology.
Well, it's astrology, but a method to predict
what's going to happen to you today. All of that.
But that's a weird one because you lump it in
with astronomy. Because astrology and astronomy
sort of like get lumped in together in a lot
of people's eyes. Like, oh, but it's based on
where the planets are. And we know that the planets
have an effect on you because the gravity and
it changes and shifts. That's why the tide goes
in and out. We're always constantly being affected
by these invisible forces. And Neil deGrasse
Tyson, they can shape your personality. If you
just let me read your chart, I'll tell you. Do
you know the tidal force wrought upon Earth by
the moon? Has nothing to do with the phase of
the moon. It doesn't the same all the time It's
the same all the time a full moon has the same
amount of gravity same tidal force on the earth
and on you as a quarter moon as a half moon as
a You know what all those phases so the tidal
force that that is on that we know the tide shifts
like what is it gravity? Alone that's causing
that tide to shift? The tide actually doesn't
shift. It doesn't? No. What happens? Okay. So
wherever the moon is in space, the side of Earth
closest to the moon is more attracted to the
moon than the side that's farthest away. Okay?
So because the total force is different across
Earth, Earth gets stretched a little, elongated.
It's especially visible in the oceans relative
to the land, but Earth's physical body is also
stretched in a direction towards the moon, except
it's a little ahead of it, but we don't have
to worry about that for the moment. So the moon
stretches the tide. That's called the tidal force
on the Earth. Okay, so now watch. As Earth rotates,
we rotate once a day. How long does it take the
moon to go around the Earth? Once a month. So
here's this tidal bulge. Earth rotates inside
the bulge. And what you say at the beach, oh,
the tide is coming in and out. No. It is you
rotating into and out of a tidal bulge that's
fixed in space towards the moon. Wow. That's
a heavy one. Well, it's because our language
doesn't reflect reality. We say the tide comes
in and out, but we are rotating into the bulge
and then out of the bulge. That's why there are
two high tides in a day. And then into the other
bulge, which is on the other side, and then out
of the bulge. Two high tides, two low tides.
All right, so now, why are high tides higher
during full moon? Why? Because the sun also makes
tides on Earth. Oh, my goodness. about a third
the strength of the moon tides. And there's the
sun tides trying to blend in with the moon tides,
and it's on a different cycle, okay? And, oh,
when we have full moon, the sun is creating tides
that are added to the moon's tides. So we have
higher tides on the full moon because the sun's
tides add to it. Not because the moon has any
special extra powers over us. So it is uninformed
and in some cases just outright BS that people
are saying, the full moon has extra power and
tides over you. No, it doesn't. The moon itself,
no. Now, the moon itself, the thing that people
always want to say is that people are 60 whatever
percent water. What percent are we? It's about
that. More than half. If the moon affects the
tides, wouldn't it affect the water in your body?
Yeah. So the tidal force is the force across
the size of the object. Right. Okay. So Earth
is 8 ,000 miles across. So the gravity from the
moon is somewhat less on the far side of the
Earth compared to the side of the Earth nearest
the moon. So you have to ask. How much stronger
is the moon's gravity from one side of your head
to the other? That's the question. Right. It
would have to be pulling you in a certain direction.
It would have to be stronger on one side than
the other and have to stretch your head. We can
calculate how much that is. And I did it once.
It was something like a millionth the force that's
operating on your head from the weight of your
pillow. But you're not creating lycanthropic
stories based on whether you had a Tempur -Pedic
pillow or a down pillow. What do you think is
the origin of those stupid stories then? Because
there is always a thing. People like finding
excuses outside of themselves to account for
their reprehensible behavior. Oh. But don't.
For me, that's the number one. That's the number
one. It relieves you of accountability. And,
of course, Shakespeare knew this, and hence his
line. Was it in Julius Caesar? The fault, dear
Brutus, lies not in the stars but within ourselves.
So Shakespeare knew this. And notice he's talking
about fault, right? It's always what caused that
to happen. And you want to blame things that
are not within yourself. But even if you're not.
Talking about yourself in terms of what's happening.
If you're working in an emergency room, a lot
of doctors will swear that there's more activity
during a full moon. Oh, yeah. So here's what
happens. A full moon. Oh, by the way, what you
really have to test is, is there more activity
during a full moon when it's overcast at night,
when no one sees the full moon? So what you have
is a self -fulfilling process. You read all these
stories about acting crazy under full moon. A
full moon is the only phase that rises at sunset
and sets at sunrise. So it's up all night. You
go to the bar. Most places the bar closes 2 a
.m. You come out. The full moon is high in the
sky. And you read all these stories. And so you're
ready to just act crazy. Okay? So this is life
imitating art in that case. So what you really
need to do is check to see when you don't know
it's a full moon because it's cloudy. and you
come out of the bar, do you act crazy? I bet
you the answer is no. But not only that, people's
ability to judge when the moon is full is kind
of loose. So to the untrained eye, the moon is
full for about four days. So just consider that
as well. I've always thought it was the actual
light. that the moon is shedding, and it allows
people to do more things outside. As well. Which
makes people do stupider shit. The full moon
is six times brighter than the half moon. It's
a law of reflection that makes it extra bright
relative to if it's half lit. And so, yeah, you
can see more things going on at night and possibly
get into more trouble that way. And there's another
one. There are some municipalities where there
are slightly more births during full moon than...
Others, not everywhere. And people say, well,
the extra gravity from the full moon. The full
moon does not have extra gravity, first of all.
Plus, even if that were true, you would have
to be in the delivery room with your legs in
the stirrups facing the moon out the window.
The moon pulls the baby out. And the moon yanks
the baby out. But how about the delivery rooms
where you're facing the other way? Then the baby
is pulled in. So just the absurdity of how you'd
have to imagine this would play out. But also.
And you can do the calculation that the gravity
of people in the room on you and the machine,
the light is greater than the gravity of the
moon on you. But you're blaming the moon for
this. So here's the thing. But it is true that
in some municipalities, slightly more babies
are born during full moon. So you can say, oh,
it's mysterious. It's aliens. It's magic. It's
this. Or you can say, is there another reason?
Well, yeah. Yeah. The human gestation period,
human female gestation period is about 295 days.
That's not what the doctor tells you because
the doctor doesn't count it from when you get
pregnant. Doctor counts your gestation period
from when you first missed your period. Okay.
That's because that's a known, that's a very
well known date on the calendar. So that's how
they do their numbers. So 295 days. Turns out.
A cycle of moon phases is 29 and a half days.
It's a full cycle, full moon to full moon. So
if you were born under a full moon, it meant
you were conceived under a full moon. Likely.
Because the, no. If you came out the right time.
If you're born on. Oh, yeah, exactly. If you
went to full term, 295 days, that's 10 cycles
of the full moon. So that can affect the statistics
of births. So it just means people are more sexually
active when it's bright out. Or it's just that
it's romantic. Ah. It's romance, too. Moonstruck.
The Cher movie, right? Yeah, Moonstruck. Yeah.
The moon's out. You're walking along the beach,
along the park. I'm going to get a picture of
you when we wrap this podcast up. Down the street.
We know we had a good time. Bam. Perfect. I need
my hat. All right, good. Put your silly hat on.
Indiana Jones. Go ahead. Take the headphones
off. Why do you like that hat so much? It's my
hat. I'm in Texas now. Oh, okay. Texas. There
you go. Beautiful. Neil, you're a gem. I appreciate
you very much. We went everywhere. We did. It
was a good one. Man, who's going to sit there
for five hours and listen to that? They have
other stuff they're doing while they're doing
it. That's the beautiful thing about podcasts.
That's the thing. You could be driving and running
and whatever. That's the thing. That's the thing.
So, yeah, people can think about Cosmic Queries.
It's all about that. Did you do the audio for
the audio book? I did selected audio within it,
so you hear my voice. My tweets are in there
when they relate to the content. I did all my
tweets in some of the boxes. And someone else
read the book? Yeah, I found a reader. Why would
you do that when you can do it? Because I can
do it, but it's someone else's rent money. A
professional horse. Oh, how sweet of you. Yeah.
Fuck that dude. You should be doing it. That
guy should get a Patreon page. You should do
it, man. Everybody wants to hear you talk. I
did my other books. I did. I know. That's why
I'm like, why didn't you do this one? Either
way, I'm sure it's awesome. All right. Well,
that's a very nice gesture on your part. All
right. Thank you very much. Dude. Always a pleasure.
Let's do it again. Yeah. I mean, I think I come
and give a talk. I'll give you tickets to your
staff. Okay. Yeah. Let me know. When are you
doing that? They're rescheduling. It's all post,
you know, the COVID year has to land. Well, get
a hold of me and I'll put it up on the Instagram
and all that jazz. Totally do it. All right.
Thank you. Thank you. Great to have you in the
audience. For sure. I'll give you a shout out.
All right. I got with me in the audience. Bye,
everybody.