#683 - Neil deGrasse Tyson

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29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson:You know what else? Elon Musk this month might be passing 12 ,000 satellites in orbit around the Earth. Oh, and you know where they're launching them out of, don't you? Well, they're going to—Florida and Vandenberg, California. Well, Louisiana. Is Louisiana making a bid to launch? Yeah, pull that up. I think we just got a big deal down there down in Pecan Island, baby. That must be very far south. Yeah, man. It's like, bro, they're going to have— Dudes down there like, man, they got... Man, you never gonna believe this, shy. They done launched a ship out there, baby. Picon Island. Ten rocket launch pads will be built in Vermilion Parish.

29:54Monday, those who hunt and fish in the area shared complicated feelings. Wow. Construction on what is slated to be the world's largest rocket launch site is expected to begin in rural Vermilion Parish next year. Those who live, visit, and play nearby have mixed feelings about the development. Pecan Island is the closest residential area to the proposed site of Starbase, Louisiana. It is made up of... It's such a crazy dichotomy.

30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson:Well, Texas was in the running for this. But we got that big up. So apparently it landed there. So what's important is that east of the island, I don't know the map, but it's important that there's water east of the launch pad. Really? Why is that? Because as it launches, it wants to orbit the earth. Typically, it goes east. If something bad happens and it blows up, it then falls in the water. Not on residential property. Oh, yeah, bro. They got a lot of boats. They got people sleeping on each other's backs down there, baby. Well, then they got something to look at at night. But launches, there's nothing like a rocket launch.

31:00Neil deGrasse Tyson:Let me just tell you. They never get old. They ain't here to have Boosie written on them bitches. It's going to be. Let's see. Pecan Island is made up of mostly hunting and fishing camps with about 100 permanent residents. SpaceX plans to use the site to support thousands of Starship flights a year. There will be five launch facilities with two launch pads each. How many shuttles will go up a day? Does it say? Well, I mean, so right now, I mean, Starship carries people. He's got his Falcon launch, you know, hundreds a year. So every few days there's a launch. And it's going to be people on it?

31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson:Starship is designed for people. But so that could be where he launches people to go to the moon. Who knows what the future that's going to look like. Bro. So here's what happened in Huntsville, Alabama. When the government says we got to compete with the Ruskies because they got German rocket engineers. We got Wernher von Braun. Let's build a rocket, dude. They put him in Huntsville, Alabama. Rocket city. Well, not yet. it's some backwoods place in the south. And he says, I need engineers. I need mathematicians. And so people moved there and they didn't want to send their kids to the local schools.

32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson:They built new schools. Industries followed it. And that section of Alabama is like it landed from space. It's a high tech corridor in Alabama, unlike other areas of Alabama. So that would completely change the economy of Southern Louisiana. Oh, it's going to be wild down there, man. They'll have definitely unique style rockets. You'll probably have a pecan-crusted rocket. You know, a little bit of crawfish Amon rocket. They're going to have it all down there. I haven't had crawfish in a long time. It's going to be beautiful. But I'll say this. If they just let strangers jump on them rockets, bro, you're going to have...

32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson:There won't be strangers after they pay$10 million. I mean, if it's tourists, it's still really expensive. But they're going to have like a, you know, something for lower income. they'll probably have like that. No, no, see, that's how you do a lower income. They're going to have an EBT seat on that, bitch. You know that. Here's what you do for low income. You just have a lottery. And everyone pays$10 for a ticket. You sell enough tickets. Somebody wins that lottery and they go up. And they don't have to be rich for that. Oh, shit, RoboShow going to be on that rocket, dude. Sherman going to be on that rocket.

33:24That'll work.

33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson:That's going to be amazing, dude. By the way, I don't mind going to Rocket, about it depends on where it's headed. Okay. I don't want to boldly go where hundreds have gone before. Send me somewhere. Moon, Mars, beyond. I'm signed up. Have you ever been offered to go to space? I was, no. Actually, no. But, and space, what people say space, is, you know, you got the Bezos, Branson, billionaire boys space race, but they just go up and fall back to Earth. The whole trip is within 30 minutes. They don't go into orbit, But they go above this magical place called the Karman Line, where if you go above that level of the atmosphere, then daytime sky turns dark, because there's not enough air to turn blue.

34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson:And so they call that the Karman Line. So if you go above that, you're classified as an astronaut. And I'm just saying, I'm an astrophysicist. If you're gonna send me into space, send me somewhere. And if, I don't know if you knew that, take Earth and shrink it down to a schoolroom globe. You can ask, how high up did they go? Down to the schoolroom globe? Yeah. So here's Earth, the schoolroom globe. How high up is the space station? Okay. Space station is less than a half an inch above the surface. Okay. And then the Bezos-Branson trip, they're the thickness of two dimes above Earth's surface.

34:43Neil deGrasse Tyson:You remember that crazy dude that jumped out of a balloon for Red Bull? Felix Bumgarner? Yes. Okay, a few years back. His balloon, he died recently, by the way, doing one of these stunts. Damn, it's tough. RIP. Yeah, he jumped the thickness of one dime above the Earth. So none of this is really going anywhere for me, an astrophysicist. Send me somewhere. Moon, Mars, and beyond, and I'm good. And if Elon says ride one of my rockets, I'll say, Elon, I want you to fly your mother first and bring her back safely. Yeah. Then I'll go. That's fair. Yeah, that's fair. That's totally fair. I think that's very fair.

35:21You got to mom test it. Yeah. Yeah. But surely someone's reached out and offered you said -

35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson:Oh, so I was once given an opportunity to ride in the Vomit Comet. You know, there's a plane that goes up and falls back down, and you're waitless for a little bit of time. Pepsi was going to offer me a spot. But I had to wear a Pepsi jumpsuit because they were advertising zero-calorie Pepsi, and this was a zero-gravity ride, and I could be photographed and end up in an ad, and I say, it ain't worth that much to me. I ain't giving my, so no. So I haven't. But have Katy Perry and those people, have they actually been in space or they've just been above the Carmen line? Well, that's - So technically they have.

36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson:Technically they've been in space. Katy's been in space. And I thought they got a bad rap on that. People cashed on that launch. And well, Katy, she's got a new album out and they all want to make sure they're pretty with their makeup and everything. And I'm thinking, chill, first of all. When planes were invented, the first people to go were famous and rich people yeah and the press wrote about it and so this is kind of interesting let's keep doing this and the industry grew till it became its own thing and so the aviation industry was birthed in exactly the same way i see so you got to use celebrities to advertise it but but i think here's the thing like you're saying it didn't make sense in anybody's mind like i can't even get from uh here to uh hoboken right in a half hour dude that'd be hard right i'm not gonna think they can get to space and come right back and then it kind of looked bizarre and then they like over there like the door was kind of open there was a lot of stuff that didn't they didn't help their own cause oh okay well i'm just saying celebrities in space i that's where i drew the line and that there they are yeah and the fact that we're talking about it now is evidence.

37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson:That's your point. Even if you're, you know. Yeah, if it's just an advertising thing, then yes. Yeah. Right. Even if you're going to be a dick about it, you're still talking about it. But that's brave of those people to just be like, I'm going to trust this thing is going to make it into space and come back. And then come back and land safely. Yeah, yeah. Like I said, if I'm going to put my life at risk in that way, I want to go farther. Give me something, a place to go. Who would you take into space with? I'll bring family. I don't know if they'd agree. you bring family for two days oh oh okay i see what's your point okay ain't nobody bringing family to space bro hey bro you don't bring sand to the solar system cub you feel me okay i get it okay but so you want to bring like you know your who your boys you hang out with you know they're just yeah who would you bring like if you had to bring kind of like a little gang up to space who do you go yeah i don't i haven't thought about that okay i hadn't thought because that would I'd be focusing on them when I'm really focusing on the universe.

38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson:That's fair. Yeah, that's all I'm saying. So maybe bring, yeah, I'm trying to think. Yeah, it's actually a good question because it might take your energy. You know what I'd want to bring? A poet and a comedian. I'd bring you. Dude. Because you look around and you say some funny shit. There's some funny stuff to be experienced. Oh, yeah, Saturn looking thick. Yeah, yeah, dude. No, I highly value the lens through which comedians observe the world. Oh, yeah. Especially if it's a world you have not seen before. So you know what happens? Everything up there comes through your lens, and you're going to think about it in the context of all of your life and all the crazy people you grew up with and all the stories you tell.

38:58Neil deGrasse Tyson:That's going to happen through this lens, and that'll keep me entertained the whole way. Oh, thanks, bro. Yeah, that'd be cool to be up there. And then I will bring Duncan Trussell. Do you know him? No. He's an amazing comedian. So I would bring him, and he has a great mind that loves to think about, like, unique stuff. Okay, weird stuff. Yeah, you need a mind like that, that thinks outside of any other parameters. He is a poet of sorts as well. And then, low key, I bring a couple. A little space candy, you feel me, bro? Okay. And, you know, that's between us, but. Well, it's something you need to know.

39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah. I'm duty-bound to alert you of this. I bring a couple ladies, that's what I'm saying. I get that. I don't know what you think of as drugs. I totally understood. Okay. And which leads me to say. I'm bringing a little bit of drugs. That in space, you might not need them because you're as high as fuck in space. You're lying. No, no, I'm just saying you are in space. Usually on Earth, you say, I want to escape my moment here and float somewhere else. You are literally floating in space. And you're gonna say, I need drugs to now transcend that? That's a waste of drugs. Leave the drugs for people still on Earth, A.

40:21Neil deGrasse Tyson:B, if you bring in some arm candy, I just, I'm duty bound as a physicist to tell you that sex in space is very different to execute. I'm into some shit. I'm just saying most things you do on earth while having sex, you would careen and bounce off the back walls of the spaceship if you're in zero G. What about even oral sex? Is that possible in space? Yeah. Okay, good. But what I'm saying, but you're floating. And so, you know, on earth, you're in the same place at the same time. In space, you have to be strapped down, is my point. So you have to bring kind of straps with you. You have to, that's the way you said that.

41:09Or you have to bring something. Oh, I have to bring straps?

41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, I would have done that anyway. You gotta, I mean, I'm just saying like. Yeah, you have to strap because on earth, you're assuming the person is there every time you're in body contact. Oh, I see. But in space, in zero G, body contact sends someone careening off the wall. So say if you were engaging in some type of sexual activity and one person was to kind of like pressure their body or thrust their body against someone else's body. They're going to bounce off and hit the wall. It's just you have to rethink all the moves and all the motion and all the positions. That's all I'm saying. man, if you're going to bring the candy, there it is.

41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson:I'm bringing you a piece, cut.

41:59But it's good, dog. Dude, yeah, thanks for thinking about this with me, man. It's just physics at that level. Yeah. That's all it is. But also it takes you, you know, it makes you, I'll just tell you this immediately right now, we just had a lot of people who aren't going to want to be astronauts. I'll tell you that, bro.

42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson:Also, if you're sick to the stomach, okay, you ever either been in a roller coaster or driving on a country road and there's like a short hill and you come down off it, you feel a little thing in there? Well, that's because you're sort of weightless going over the hill because you go up and then it falls right back down and your organs are not accustomed to that. So that happens a lot there? In space, it's the entire feeling. Nuh-uh. Yes, and you have to just get used to that. And until you get used to that, you are throwing up. And so the last thing you want to do is vomit in zero G. It's bad enough when you see the splatter pattern on the outside of bars.

42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson:You know, that's bad enough. You say, you know, who? Oh, yeah, that little bush light Rorschach. Right, yeah, it's a Rorschach. The vomit Rorschach outside of bars. So in space, there's no Rorschach because it doesn't fall down. It just goes everywhere and it gets in your hair and in the vents and everything. unless you got a bag to barf into. And you have to make sure that it has forward velocity so that it gets into the bag. It can't just come up into your mouth because then it wouldn't know where else to go. So it could hypothetically be pumped, but like your stomach - Oh yeah, your stomach pumps.

43:35Can convulse it enough to get it to your mouth and then you would have to spit it out?

43:39Neil deGrasse Tyson:They call it reverse peristalsis, they call it, where all your digestive organs, it says, I got to get this out of here. And by the way, think about it, when you're throwing up, it's going against gravity to begin with. It was in your stomach, and now it's here. So you were already working against gravity. So in zero-G, you would have no trouble doing that. I'm just saying you want it to have some projectile velocity to get into the bag. Oh, for sure. Otherwise, it'll just kind of hang out all on your face. Oh. Just things to think about. Because you're thinking about going into space, dude. Well, you're making me think about it.

44:13Neil deGrasse Tyson:That's why I said I would take you. That's why. You think I'm not going to think about it when you walk in the room? What are you talking about? And let me reassert. They're comedians I love, but they come more from my life experience. And it's fun if they say something that I might have thought of. But I'm going to tell you, you have a completely different life experience than I ever had or dreamt of. And I value that. Aw, thank you, Neil. Well, I appreciate it. Same about you, dude. I feel lucky to be able to talk with you today. No, well, you're in my town. I can't let you come through town without me finding you.

44:42And that's the truth. I appreciate it, man. I really do. Yeah, this is fun, dude. I'll say this. You make communicating fun. Oh, well, thank you.

44:51Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, you know, I thought about it. If there's a professor at the front of a class, and they're like writing on the chalkboard or whatever the board is made of these days, they're expecting you to meet them at the chalkboard. They don't care how you learn. They're just putting it out there. So they're being a professor, but they're not being an educator. an educator or communicator, turns around, looks at their audience, and wonders, how is your brain wired for thought, for learning? And I'm going to shape my information to reach in there so I can access everybody in the room. And I'm going to meet you 90 % of the way to where you are.

45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson:And that's more effort. Otherwise, you're just putting stuff up and leaving. No, it's more effort. So thank you for noticing that. Yeah, I see the shapes you're making, Daddy. I see it. I love it. I love it, man. I read actually in your book, I read somewhere that you can't even smell in space. Is that true? Yeah. So space - Tell me a little bit more about space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Space, there's no, the molecules are very sparse. Okay. It's the world's best vacuum. Okay. And so when you smell, you are inhaling molecules that connect to your olfactory glands and they connect in ways that give you a taste, give you a smell.

46:11Neil deGrasse Tyson:I mean, they're all related. So if I smell something, it's actually a molecule that lands inside. Yes, yes. And that sets off the scent. Or if you taste something, it's a molecule that attaches to your taste buds. Same phenomenon. Got it. Now, here's something interesting. Some molecules twist this way, and other molecules twist the other way. I know which ones twist the other way, Kurt. You know what I'm talking about? So watch. I know a couple of them boys. So, the molecule that gives you the flavor of mint twists, it's exactly the same molecule, except in space it twists the opposite way from the molecule that gives you the flavor of caraway.

46:55Neil deGrasse Tyson:What is caraway? Caraway, that's the seed that's in rye bread. Okay. So caraway and mint, if you write down the chemical equation, it's identical. But if you build them, they turn in opposite directions. And so that tells you that it's not just the chemical, it's how it's configured so that it attaches to your taste buds. And in one way, you taste mint. The other way, you taste this, it's a caraway seed thing. Yeah, I think it's caraway. So it's just because of the way that it moves that the taste... The way that it attaches the configuration of the molecule to the configuration of your taste buds.

47:31Neil deGrasse Tyson:Wow. If it can lock in, then you'll taste it. Otherwise, it goes right on by. Do you remember? You're old enough to remember. There was this thing that Lay's potato chip, did they invent it? It's called Olestra. Oh, I remember that. Do you remember Olestra? Bro, remember that? Do you remember Olestra? The booty chip, they called it. Exactly. The booty chip. It's oil, and they fry the chips in this oil, but that oil, We don't have enzymes to digest that molecule. Man, Neil, man. And so it has - People couldn't handle it. The flavor of the oil, but you can't digest it. So it does not get pulled into your body.

48:18Neil deGrasse Tyson:It moves through your intestine. Man, people was doo-dooing everywhere. So on the bag of chips, it said, don't eat too much. It may cause anal leakage. Yep. First time ever, those words were on a bag of potato chips. And the FDA approved it. Well, so is anal leakage. What? So the point is, my point is, that is something that did not configure to our ability to digest it. We didn't have the enzymes for it. So it just went right on through. I just want to see you. Elustra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools. Ellestera inhibits the absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients. Abdominal cramping, yeah.

49:02Yeah, you may remember them as wow chips, Frito-Lay. They used them in there. Used Ellestera in versions of Lay's, Ruffles, Doritos, and Tostitos. Pringles also had light fat-free version using the ingredient. A serving of wow chips was marketed as having about half the calorie of standard chips and no fat. But it didn't have fat because I think it just ran right through your body, so it didn't even.

49:25Neil deGrasse Tyson:Well, but it's fat that you could not digest. Right. So normally, what happens if you eat fat and you eat it? It becomes fat, your fat, or a source of energy for you. We could not interact with it chemically. Oh, yeah. So we are a sack of chemicals that either do or do not interact with what we put in our mouths, or what we smell, or what we taste. So I'm just saying, there are people who say, I don't like food that has chemicals in it. Everything is chemicals. You are chemicals. Have you ever seen the list of medicines at a pharmacy? There's a book called the PDR, Physicians' Description. It's this thick.

50:05Neil deGrasse Tyson:The four inches thick. It's filled with all the medicines that exist that we take. Why do they work at all? Because we are sacks of chemistry, and so are these medicines. There it is. Got it. And we didn't start living longer until we figured that out. Well, we don't know that necessarily. No, I'm going to tell you. We don't know if that's true now. Yeah, I'm going to tell you. Sorry. No, it's fine, dude. It was fun doing that. No, it's good. We're having a good time. Okay, cave men. We don't know that because there's stories in the Bible where they say people lived a thousand years.

50:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:No, not a thousand. The oldest was, who was it? Lived 969 years. Well, come on, man. You know what I'm saying, bro? Yeah. Methuselah lived 969 years. Methuselah, dang. Shorty was trying to meet somebody. Yeah, yeah. So Noah was, I think, 700-something. Yeah, everybody back then, yeah, look at those ages. So they were living, bro. Oh, no, 950, yeah. But also, they only had a few people, so they had to stay alive. Oh, is that how that works? I would guess, right? So I think people started living normal, quote, normal age, biblical normal ages after Noah. Yeah. That's when the ages came back down.

51:21Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, once the pet showed up, people are like, we can chill, you know? But if you look at the archeological records, which are not what's in the Bible, half of everyone born in caveman days were dead before they were 30, okay? Fast forward to 1840, 1850. Half of everyone born in the world was dead before they were 35. That's 10, 20 ,000 years. And you know, everyone over that time, drank clear water, breathed pure air. They ate organic. Right. Mm. Because sometimes we romanticize the idea. They romanticize it. I do not want to go back to that time. Plus, I'd be someone's slave anyway, right? So, no, I don't want to go back to that time.

52:08Neil deGrasse Tyson:Not in my place you wouldn't be. Oh, thank you, sir. Love you. So, so. Now, you'd have to do something. I'm just saying, we all got to help out. You know what I'm saying? You'll have to do the dishes once in a while. But we all will have our day to do them. Anyway, sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I'm just saying I got you, bro. Anywhere we go in time, I got you, dog. Thank you. Thank you. So what happened between 1850 and like 1950? And that's the truth. So it was 30, maybe 34, you said, until like 1850. Well, for 30 ,000 years. That's how long. Cavemen through the middle of the 19th century.

52:45Neil deGrasse Tyson:That's how long people live. We increased the life expectancy by five years. Okay. Half of everyone born in 1840 was dead before they were 35. A lot of that was infant deaths as well. We've just gotten way better at that. But also, there are three things. Vaccines, antibiotics, and sanitation. Those three things doubled our life expectancy within decades. And now we're damn near triple that when you have other medicines and anti-cancer treatments and this sort of thing. It's not odd to have someone live to be 90-something. them. That's not even weird. But now we're also, I think it seems like we've gotten into a place where some of these things have become compromised or got, like greed has become such a big thing.

53:29Corporate involvement has been, become. Well, it's always been, but. Right. But I think it's big. It seems like across the board.

53:35Neil deGrasse Tyson:Let me read over your health. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. That can, and whatever that is, it's not as big an impact as the positive impact, realizing that we are sacks of chemistry and we can interact with us chemically to get rid of ailments, to cure disease. Oh, for sure. So I'm just saying, I'm giving a shout out to modern medicine and science. Yeah. Because that's what, people take science for granted because it's kind of hidden, you know? Well, I think more recently, what has given it a bad rap probably are during COVID, and we don't have to go into any of this, but I'm just saying some of the things that I I think have given it a bad rap even more specifically, probably during COVID.

54:16I think, to me anyway, whenever they had the opioid epidemic and those people didn't get held liable, that was a big thing. Not about science in general, but just about - That was a medicine that a medical company made. Right. A pharmaceutical company. That stuff. And then now there's a lot of skepticism because there's a lot of ownership of news and media. There's a lot of entanglement.

54:38Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, yeah. It's a problem. and I think life expectancies have stalled a little bit. They're pausing. The opioid epidemic actually impacted that. So did COVID, by the way. Our life expectancy stalled during COVID. But I'm saying overall, are you living a life with science or without science? I'm picking science, okay? And we got to make sure it's working for us and not against us. I think that's where we are in the space now, hopefully, is that there's going to be some purification of a lot of processes that maybe have probably gotten compromised in different places, and some that haven't and have been accused of being compromised.

55:13Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, all I'm saying is people say, I'm just saying it's this. You realize we landed a rover, an SUV-sized rover on Mars that carried a helicopter with it that flew around the surface of Mars. But they lost it. No, it died. The helicopter died. But that rover, that thing is missing. Oh, is it? I haven't checked that. I think it is, isn't it? Is that right? Did they ever get that rover back? You can't lose that rover. I'm not calling you out on it, Neil. You can call me out. I don't claim full knowledge of everything in the whole universe. But the fact that they got it there, yes. That's what I'm saying.

55:43That's what I'm saying.

55:45Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah. Yeah, dude. Most people can't get their kid to pick up their toys from the living room, and science is putting one onto Mars. No, NASA main roads have not gone missing. Curiosity and Perseverance. They remain operating, yeah. Those are the current roads. Those are their names? Yes. Okay. They get named by middle schools. NASA holds a contest. Well, I'm just going to say they were named by urban middle schools, I think. Curiosity and perseverance remain operating on Mars. Older rovers such as Spirit and Opportunity. What, those words too big for you? What are you saying? I'm just saying that those names have more ambiance to them.

56:21Oh, so they're more abstract. Yes, than like Matthew and Susan. Gotcha. That's what I am saying. Gotcha. And that is the truth. Curiosity and perseverance remain operating on Mars. Older rovers such as Spirit and Opportunity ended after NASA lost contact with them.

56:35Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, because their batteries die. That's fine. So no, we're still in contact. All I'm saying is, you know, as a matter of fact, it is rocket science. As a matter of fact, yeah, you got to work hard to get the right answers. Science is done. And, you know, last year, this year, and next year, there's a total solar eclipse. I can tell you the exact second it will begin and where you need to stand to see it. This is an event in the future of the moon moving through space, coming between Earth and the sun, we know what's going on. If I didn't tell you how we figured this out, the scientists would be the gods of this Earth.

57:16Neil deGrasse Tyson:If you don't behave, I'm gonna get rid of the sun tomorrow at 1235. Yeah. And the sun starts disappearing. You'll be groveling at my feet, trying to get the sun back. Damn. And I'll say, yeah, okay, I'll bring it back just this one time. And it comes back. I bet there was a lot of perverted action going on. But we tell you how we know this. We write books. You can learn to do that too. The old missing son trick, huh? I bet a lot of ladies and some dudes fell for that. I bet they fell for that, but you're right. You know, if you needed another reason to think Columbus was a dick, okay, on his third voyage, or might have been fourth.

57:56Neil deGrasse Tyson:How many voyages did he get? Huh? He got more than one? Oh, yeah. Multiple voyages. Oh, I thought he did it on the first - He came back multiple times. No. Oh, I thought he did it on the first try. No, no, no. No, on the third or fourth, is he in Jamaica or Hispaniola? One of the larger Caribbean islands. And he's ready to go back to Spain. And, oh, he's got four voyages. Good. Between 1492 and 1504, he made four voyages across the Atlantic. Yeah, there you go. So on his fourth voyage, it was, he was headed back to Spain and he didn't have enough food for his crew. And so he went to the locals, can you spare me some food for this trip back?

58:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:He says, no, we only grow exactly what we need to get through the winter, so we can't do this. You know what he did? He went, looked up his tables, science tables, and said, if you do not give my crew food, my Christian God, because they're all heathen, because they're running around, they're not Christian. My Christian God will make the moon disappear six days hence if you do not obey. Wow. And some were rightly skeptical, but others were kind of spooked. And six days come, the moon starts disappearing because he knew there was a total lunar eclipse happening and they just brought on the food.

59:22Dang.

59:23Neil deGrasse Tyson:And I don't know, we didn't check back to see if they survived the winter, but - but they definitely - Yeah, if you needed another reason to think Columbus was a dick, that there goes one. Using the laws of physics known to the Europeans - Was he a dick or was he a scientist? You know what I'm saying? But I'm just saying he used trickery. He used knowledge of the rhythms of the heavens as trickery, yes. And I'm saying, so that's the case. If scientists did that today, we would rule the world. But no, we let politicians rule the world for reasons that remain mysterious to scientists. But we tell you how it's all done.

59:59Neil deGrasse Tyson:Mysterious to everybody, I think. Oh, yeah. Okay. There you go. It's a mysterious place that we're in. You know? That's why I'm here today. I'm telling you that comedians make it bearable. Thank you for existing in this world. Well, that's nice of you to say, Neil. I think you guys carry the soul of a society, of civilization. Because you have to be smart enough to know what's there to make fun of, make fun of it and hand it back to the people who would otherwise get angry because you're making fun of them but say hey that's kind of oh you shed some light on something I didn't even know I was doing or I was thinking or I was saying and so yes you make the world bearable.

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1:03:27We thank BlueChew for sponsoring the pod and the bedroom. Yeah, dude, you know what I was just thinking the other day was, I wish they made pants, right? And they should have these, that you can, they have a built-in like liner in between. Oh, to just pee down the leg. That you can pee into the pants.

1:03:46Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, they kind of have that. And the pants holds it. Space suits can do that. Yeah. Really? If not diapers, they used to have these. Well, this is a portable urinal. Stadium pal. There it is. That's a portable urinal though. I'm talking about pants where it just fills up in the legs. and then you don't want to fill it up like dump the stuff dude i don't want to be caught dumping it or whatever and what if you get caught by the city or whatever i want to just fill it up and then drop it like yeah put it at home or put your leg over the toilet this is for people who are drinking beer at a ball game and are too freaking lazy to get off their ass and go to the bathroom yeah they have yeah this is yeah this is you're looking at it anybody this is just some dude who's taped a bunch of plastic to his leg, and he's literally just - We're peeing in it in this commercial.

1:04:36I know.

1:04:37Neil deGrasse Tyson:In that ad, there's pee going in it. Yeah. No, that ain't right. Yeah, of course it's not. Be discreet, dude. Of course, be discreet, and look at the guy. You know that, dude. No, I don't mind getting up, moving my muscles every, you know, however, couple hours. Yes, if I have pee in my body, I want it to get out. You said you were bedwetter as a kid. Oh yeah, I was. Yeah? I was just - When did it go away or is it still a thing? No, it's not. I'm non-practicing. Non-practicing bedwetter. But yeah, but I'm not currently active. So I was not a bedwetter, but it's not like I never did wet the bed.

1:05:14Neil deGrasse Tyson:And the times that I did wet the bed, I can count them. I was dreaming that I was in the bathroom peeing. Oh wow, yeah, sometimes that would happen to me. Yeah, yeah. But other times I would just pee all over. Wait, in your dream you just pee in wherever you are? Oh, dude, I would remember. Yeah, a lot of them, because I would have dreams. And for some reason, sometimes I was like a, it wasn't like a detective or whatever, but it was like somebody who had to have information or something. And people would ask me the information. And my answer was always just to pee all over in the dream. Like it would be like, yes.

1:05:46It was a response. Yes, it was a response.

1:05:48Neil deGrasse Tyson:Wow. And so then I would pee in real life. Look up what type of child, is there like a demographic or a gender? What type of kids wet the bed the most or for the longest, I wonder? I don't know if they've got that figured out, but they later found some medicine that I heard. Oh, I took it. Oh, you did? Okay. Oh, dude, I'll tell you about something else that they got. What? So I finally got a pill, and you get a pill, and you don't wet the bed, but you got to take the pill. And sometimes you forget or whatever, and you just wet the bed. But the other thing that can happen is my mother - By the way, that pill, somebody invented that pill.

1:06:27Neil deGrasse Tyson:Okay. I mean, before that, there was no pill. Oh, I know that. And then there's a pill. So I'm just saying that's a, oh, here's the statistics. Yeah, so the bedwetting drops. You know, as you get into your teens, it's hard to. Yeah, at age five, it's 15 to 20 % of kids. And then it drops a couple of percent here and there until age 10, it's 5 to 6%. In adulthood, about 2 % in some estimates. Scroll back up a little bit. Bedwetting clinically called nocturnal enuresis after age five is about two to three times more common in boys than girls. In one U.S. sample of eight to 11-year-olds, it affected 6.21 % of boys versus 2.15%.

1:07:12Yeah, more than twice. Race itself is not a useful standalone explanation for why an individual child bedwets or will wet the longest. Yeah, so it's, I mean, I'm just saying we're a sack of chemicals.

1:07:25Neil deGrasse Tyson:We give you a pill, that goes away. Well, listen to what happened to me, dude. So my mother for my birthday one time, um, saved up a little bit of money and she got me these electric, a buzzer underwear. Right. And it was an underwears that had a buzzer in the front. And when, uh, when the P hits it, when the P P hits it, it makes it like, so it wakes you up, wakes you up. Right. But dude, uh, I ended up, so I would go over to my grandparents, right. I'd go stay there when I was really, when I was really like like probably four or five, and they let me drink as much apple juice as I could, right?

1:07:59And I would piss big on apple juice, right? If I was drinking apple juice, I knew I was wet in the bed. Okay. And the second it hit my lips, I couldn't stop drinking it. So I would drink like one of the big ones at night. Dude, and my grandparents didn't know I had these underwears. And so in the middle of the night, I'm laying there buzzing. I'm dead asleep. My grandfather has no idea what's going on, dude. I wake up. He's on a chair. The groin is buzzing. He thought I was getting electrocuted. He's on a chair with a broomstick, pushing it against my body like that, trying to get me to be awake.

1:08:28Scared, crying. Yeah. What, a broomstick? Yeah. Because I guess he thought wood wouldn't travel energy. Unless he thought the devil was in you. He was trying to exercise. I mean, look, he might have been trying to touch me with a stick.

1:08:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:Who knows? So maybe the person who invented the pill was given that gift as his grandma. He said, I'm not doing this. And it changed it. And then science helped him figure it out. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. What about this, dude? Can you ejaculate in space? Would that be the same as vomiting, kind of? Like, is it the same? Like, can you ejaculate in space? Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, the muscles do that all by themselves. So the way to test it, here's how to test it. Is, because when they first send astronauts in space, there's the question, can you swallow in space? Yeah. Will phlegm just gather in your throat?

1:09:13Neil deGrasse Tyson:But there were all these questions, and it had never been tested. But you could sort of test it. Yeah. You can say, Okay, on Earth, can you ejaculate standing up? Clearly. Yes. Okay. Can you ejaculate horizontally? Mm-hmm. Clearly. Can you ejaculate upside down? Now that's harder to test, but there's no reason why you think that wouldn't happen. Well, if you can ejaculate vertical to gravity, horizontal to gravity, and opposite gravity, then no gravity should be no problem for that action. And sure enough, yeah, you can ejaculate in space. Women ovulate in space. All the normal things. Because the body doesn't know if you're horizontal or vertical.

1:10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson:It's got to be able to do it all by itself. Veins sending blood. Why doesn't blood collect in your down here? because you have veins and arteries that help move the blood through your system, get it back to the heart. Because otherwise blood would just gather all in your feet? Correct, without that. Because of gravity? Yes, here's what happens in space. Your brain doesn't know how to get rid of the blood as efficiently as other parts of your body. So people, their heads can swell up a bit. Really? In zero G, yeah. and there's pressure on the eyeballs. So it's not a picnic. How do they relieve that in there?

1:10:49Neil deGrasse Tyson:I don't know all the ways that they figured this out. So you know the solution? Rotate the space station. Like any sci-fi movie you've ever seen, it rotates. And it creates an artificial gravity. And then you don't have to worry about it. Get on with your life. So NASA still hasn't gone there, even though all science fiction has. So I'm very disappointed. That's fascinating, man. Oh, by the way, in Lost in Space, there are chapters on every one of these subjects. Oh yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. Everything in there. There's on space exploration, what, you know. Like half of the stuff we've been talking about are things out of there, but also it's like - Yes, that's right, that's right.

1:11:25It's all a bunch of like, it's so many different facts and things that are kind of conversation starters, man. I read, one thing I read in there was that that you'll be younger in space. Or that, does space make you younger?

1:11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, it doesn't make you younger. you, well, okay, it depends how fast you're moving. If you're moving really fast, you will age more slowly than people back on Earth. And so it's just Einstein's relativity. So you don't reverse so much as everything ticks slower. Your heart rate, your watch, everything is normal to you. And you look to Earth and everybody's kind of moving faster. It's a relativity problem. So it's a fascinating fact. Wait, explain it to me a little bit better if you want to? Well, it's not, it just is. But like if you come back, will you have aged as much? That's the famous twin paradox, right?

1:12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson:So you send off your twin and they go and travel at the speed of light or half the speed of light. Wait, they did that. Was it Mark and Scott Kelly are the twins, right? Yeah. They're twin astronauts and they sent, they're identical twins, and they sent one into the space station for like a year or so. And then the other one stayed here on Earth. And when they came back, then they tested their DNA. They looked at their health. There they go. We got good pictures of them. What'd they learn? I think I had Scott Kelly on my podcast, and I said, so which twin are you? He said, oh, I'm the good-looking one.

1:12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson:That was a fun reply. He's probably been asked that a hundred times. Oh, yeah, I don't even believe in twins, but I believe that people love them. So I have no idea what you meant by that, that you don't believe in twins? It just makes me very nervous. Okay. And I don't hold any edge against people that are twins. I love them, but it makes me very skeptical. You creeped out. No, skeptical. Of? The reality of it. Okay. And maybe the science. So here's what I said. The good thing about science is it's true whether or not you believe in it. Right. Right. So whether or not you believe in it has no effect.

1:13:27Oh, let them cook. But I'm just saying if they show up like that. You're a little creeped out. No. I'm just. You don't believe this can happen. I want to see the paperwork. That's what I'm saying. I want to see the VIN numbers. You want to see? I want to see the Carfax, okay? Show me the Carfax. That's what I want to see, Neil.

1:13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson:By the way, by the way, by the way, okay? Twins have different fingerprints.

1:14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson:There's their VIN. That's fair. I refuse to say VIN number because the N in VIN stands for number, so I refuse to say that, okay? Okay. It's like people said, where's the nearest ATM machine? The M in ATM stands for machine. I respect that. Okay, so the VIN is their fingerprint. Got it. There you go. It's two different fingerprints. Huh. Do they have the same DNA? Identical DNA. What? So one of them could do a murder and you could think it's either one? Depending on the, yes, yes, you wouldn't know. Yes, it could be the twin who did it, but you know what's crazier than that? There's some people who are, what's the word?

1:14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson:Chimeras. There's some people - They can see at night? No, that'd be good if you could. There's some people where the zygote, some in their fertilization merge two different DNAs into one life form. I think it's, don't quote me on this. And I think it has to do with two that might have been fraternal twins, but the yokes merged. So when you come out as an adult, if I take a DNA sample of your arm, I'll get a different DNA than I get a DNA sample from some other part of your body. And they're called chimeras. Let me see that. A chimera is a single organism, object, or concept made up of completely different parts, genotypes, or origins.

1:15:33a single organism whose body contains cells from two or more distinct zygotes. Yes. It can happen when two fertilized eggs fuse together early in the womb or through cell exchange in twins.

1:15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right, it's two separately fertilized eggs. So they would be, it's not a twin, it's not an identical twin. Got it. But it can show up in the same body. Ooh. So it means if I do commit a crime and I leave Diana on the scene and then they get DNA off my cheek or something, and it's not the DNA that I left, they wouldn't implicate me. Yeah, it's pretty wild. That is wild. It'd be a good murder mystery if you want to just throw in some chimeras. They're very rare, people. Just throw a couple in. Well, what we've been talking about, people going to space, right, and space travel and what's going on.

1:16:16And it's kind of become this privatized thing now, it seems like, in a way. You know, Elon's trying to get there. Bezos is running it. And what are your fears about space? And do you think it's going to get gentrified? I know in your book, you talk about how much stuff is getting left in space. What are your fears about the privatization of space?

1:16:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, so the space debris is a whole separate issue. There's not only all the satellites. As I said earlier, Elon is now rising through his 12 ,000th satellite. Wait, wait, tell me about that again. Well, no, he's launched 12 ,000. He has 80 % of all satellites orbiting the Earth were launched by SpaceX, okay? So aliens coming to Earth, and they see not only how many satellites are orbiting it, but the level of debris that's left over from destroyed satellites and paint chips and rocket boosters and things. I think that's why we haven't been visited by aliens. They're like, what the hell are you doing down there?

1:17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson:And they just move on, because it's a trash heap. and it doesn't become a trash heap until it's every trip you take, you encounter trash. You know, you go in the wilderness, you toss a candy wrapper over, no one's ever gonna see that again. They're not gonna come arrest you. But if a thousand people do that and the candy wrapper's everywhere, you've destroyed the wilderness. Oh, yeah. So space is kind of approaching that. Really? So dude, check this out. So this is a video of debris orbiting the Earth. This is real? Yes, and NASA tracks this. This is just what NASA tracks. The military tracks even more.

1:18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:Earth is in the center of that, and the low Earth-orbiting debris is what's directly on the surface. The rest of that are, like I said, satellite. This is just the debris, not even the satellites we care about. How are we going to fix it? Look, we're zooming in. Look at this. Nuh-uh. Yeah, huh. Well, how can planes even be out there? What is this? Well, because that's orbiting in space. Planes are much, much lower than that. Dude, how do you know it? How do I know what? This is real? Yes. It's as real as twins. Okay. This is the debris that we are actively tracking. Dang. Okay. Look, and some of y 'all cannot see this at home.

1:18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson:It is. Some of your people just listened to the podcast. About half. About half. We're looking at a NASA video of all of the - This looks like a snow globe inside out. A snow globe. I love that. You have to go look at this. But do we know that this is factual, Neil? How do they get this information? We're tracking it. You can track the debris. Oh yeah. Yeah, in fact, sometimes launch windows are affected by whether there's a hunk of debris that might collide with the thing you're trying to launch. Well, at this rate, how could they launch anything with this much debris going on? It's dangerous, and you're taking a risk.

1:19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson:Space is very empty. You're looking at this compressed onto a screen. Got it. So usually you don't hit any of it, but if this gets worse, which it will, there's something called a Kessler effect. Ooh, let me hear go, ooh. Ooh. Okay, the Kessler effect. It's where there's so many satellites. These are going 18 ,000 miles an hour, multiple times the speed of a rifle bullet, okay? Okay. And if you're hit by one of those bits and pieces, they're small. It'll destroy your, you break into pieces if you're another satellite. So one piece can break a satellite into, to let's say 10 pieces. So they're hitting each other all the time.

1:20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson:Well, not yet. At the Kessler effect is there's a threshold, above which if a single satellite gets destroyed, there are enough other satellites ready to be destroyed by its debris that it systematically destroys 100 % of the satellites in orbit. That's called the Kessler effect. And you don't want to ever get near that. Really? Yes. And in fact, the movie - Armageddon? No, gravity was basically the Kessler effect. Do you remember that? Where the debris just started taking everything out? It says, number of rocket launches since the start of the space age in 1957, about 7 - 7 ,300. 7 ,320. Number of satellites these rocket launches have placed into Earth orbit, 27 ,490.

1:20:54Wow. Number of these still in space, 18 ,840.

1:20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson:And of those 18 ,000, about 12 to 14 ,000 are SpaceX. Wow. And about 2 ,500 of those, or 2 ,800 of those are not even functioning anymore, but they are still out there. Now here's the next one. Space objects regularly tracked and maintained in their catalog, 46 ,000, okay? Wow. And then this is wild, total mass of all space objects in Earth's orbit. 17 ,000 tons. God. Yes. I'm not going out there. I'm not going out there. Stay here on Earth. Oh, yeah. Unless it gets weird, man. Isn't it already weird? What is your threshold for weird if it hasn't gotten weird enough for you yet? We're there. Thank you.

1:21:47I think we're even past there. Yeah, do you start to think about that? Like, what do you think's going on? What do you think that these elites are trying to do? because obviously going into space is Elon's big thing, right? Like, is it just him having a blast because he has unlimited ideas? It's like a kid who can - And he's got the money. Right, he can do whatever he wants. Or do you think we will need colonization? Like, do you think there's something coming that they're not letting the rest of us know about?

1:22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson:I'm not authorized to comment. If you make it in and I don't, dude. I said I'm taking you with me. Didn't I already say that? My boy. You're my first call. Okay. I'm coming. Thank you, dude. Thank you, bro. And I'm going to hold you to that. Yeah, no, no. I will be there. Banging on the window. Hey, Neil. I got you on tape saying. Didn't they have that space treaty? What was? Well, there's the original outer space treaty from 1967. Yeah, what was that about? And that was peaceful cooperation in space. Amongst different countries, right? All the space. Because it came out in 1967. We're about to land on the moon.

1:22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson:We're trying to beat Russia. And it says, we're all going into space and that's the next frontier. We should do it together peacefully. Now here's my rebuttal to that. Okay. If you can go into space with all these countries and be peaceful and kind to one another, then don't go ahead and do that on earth. What do you mean you can't do that on earth, but a treaty is going to make us do that in space? I know. Show me that you can do it on Earth. Then I'll have evidence that this will work in space because I don't believe you. Type of shit. I don't believe you for a minute. Space don't want us, dude.

1:23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson:This is how we're acting. Plus, it's very hostile to human physiology. Space is. Space. Yeah. Yeah. There are a hundred ways you can die. People say, oh, going to Mars, that's like Columbus going to the New World. No, it's not. You know why? Because when Columbus came to the New World, the trees where he landed are made of wood just like the trees in spain where he built his ship so he can repair his ship oh what else he steps off the ship he can breathe the air he steps off the ship there are other human beings there to greet him and to feed him yeah on mars no such luxuries if you crash on mars you dead dang you something breaks on your ship You day it, unless you have like a 3D printer, okay?

1:24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson:And what, you could just print you up a little something? Yeah, print up a nut or a bolt or something, you know. Ooh, that's a good idea to bring. I know, I know. From now on, when people say, what do you bring into an island? I got an idea. So what you do is you preload the Martian surface with these things you might need. Understood. The Outer Space Treaty, these are the rules. This is hilarious. No weapons of mass destruction are allowed in space, right? No ownership? Yeah, no ownership. No nation can claim sovereignty or ownership of outer space, the moon, or other planets. Peaceful use. Celestial bodies must be used only for peaceful goals.

1:24:56Military base and weapons are banned there. Space is open for exploration and used by every country equally. Right.

1:25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson:So there's a later version of this called the Artemis Accords, where in the Artemis Accords, we wrote it. It's the same as this. Okay. It's the same. but it allows you to maybe make a business case for mining an asteroid. Nuh-uh. Okay. The Artemis Accords? Yeah, Artemis Accords. A non-binding set of principles established by NASA and the US Department of State in 2020 to guide civil space exploration and cooperation on the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies. So it leaves open business cases, okay? Now, here's the thing. A hundred something odd countries have signed it. You know who hasn't signed it?

1:25:46Russia, China, North Korea, and Venezuela.

1:25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson:Wow. So that's the treaty in progress right now. India's not spacefaring. They have a rover on the moon. Oh, they do? I bet it's picking up other people and driving them somewhere. Is that crazy, dude? I'm just joking, India. Can you still tell jokes like that? Oh, yeah, we can. Yeah, you can? We can. And I'm just joking. On the side of the tracks, you can tell those jokes. And my Indian friends will love that joke. Okay. Because I love them. Okay. So here's something that - That's wild, though. Here was such a dick move that I only thought Americans would have done, but the Indians did it, and I was just so sad.

1:26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson:Okay? Because, you know, India and Pakistan have got this thing. Right. They don't get along together. They don't get along. Right there, they don't get along. Okay. Me buddies. Okay. Watch. India on their rover, on the rover tracks, they imprinted their flag with the Indian Space Research Organization, ISRO. They have a little logo. Their flag and that logo is on the tracks of the rover. So as the rover moves along the surface of the moon, the Indian flag gets repeated there. It'll stay there for a thousand years because there's no weather, there's no wind. Nothing's going to erode it. Now, here's the dick move.

1:27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson:You ready? Someone on social media, I can't blame the whole country for this. Some dick on social media

1:27:21said Pakistan has the moon on its flag because it's got the moon and the star,

1:27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson:the Islamic symbol, whereas India has its flag on the moon. really, did you need to do that? You're already ahead of them in all these ways and you got to like cast shade, really? That's a cheap dig. That's a cheap dig. I thought it was punching down. Yeah, and also - I mean, it was clever. Yeah, I agree. It was a clever joke, but it was like - But it's like you are the meditation guys. Good point. You know? Good point. You're the ones that should be supposed to be cool and copacetic with everything. But at least they're not attacking other people with missiles. So I think I would take the first, you know what I'm saying?

1:28:07Okay. I would take that over. But it's still not conducive to peaceful cooperation in space. Well, I'll say this. It does break the outer space treaty. Don't be a dick in space. I think that's kind of what the treaty said. It does. And what was that second one that allowed the business, the Artemis Accord? Can you just show me that one more time?

1:28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson:It's worded in a, the way I should say it, it's worded in a way that does not preclude business interest. Yeah, that's what I wanted to just read. So there it goes. And look at all the countries that have signed it. There it is. That's huge. Half these countries never getting into space. No, but they might. Would you let them be ambitious, dude? You're right. Give them a dream. You're right. Please. Go back to the, if you go back to the table of contents, registration of space objects, scientific data, space heritage, space resources. Space resources. How's that for a code word? Let's go to page four.

1:29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson:Utilization that can benefit humankind by providing critical support for safe and sustainable operations. The extraction and utilization of space resources. Recovery from moon, Mars, comets, asteroids, should be executed in a manner that complies with the treaty. safe sustainable activities they affirm that the extraction of resources do not inherently constitute national appropriation see it's very loosey goosey there but it opens the door because we have a lot of space enterprise space industry ready to jump on all of them do we have that? yeah is there a lot of things that are kind of like in the hopper that if we when Artemis lands on the moon it'll be supported by three or four or five different large space industry companies space industrial complex right so we talked about that last time didn't we what was it oh yeah yeah we talked about generational uh yeah that that's an interesting subject because if the destination is too far and it takes longer than your lifetime then you just they have what's called generational ships in science fiction we talked about them last time we were on okay yeah yeah and you thought maybe you weren't really sure about it.

1:30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson:I don't want to be born on a ship that's predestined to go somewhere because someone three generations before me mandated that. But what if we need you? When we land, we need me. What if we need you? What if you're out there for a purpose? Because somebody's going to be born on a ship in space and have to save us. You think that'll be how that goes? That's a good science fiction story, right? So they are the chosen one. They are the savior. They're the one. They're Neo in the Matrix. It's gotta happen. Don't you think? That's a modern day Jesus. Jesus was the savior. The story of a hero always repeats itself.

1:31:00It feels like we need one. A savior.

1:31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah. Yeah. So all these private companies are participating and they'll each do what they do best and you bring it all together and you get the best of private enterprise, which runs efficiently and they'll bring the cost down. So. But if they have a damn Jenny's ice cream on the moon or whatever, I'm going to fucking. Why you got a problem with that? I don't know. In our town where I live at, they took a lot of the mom and pop stuff and they put in the bigger stuff. It's okay. Oh, you want. Okay. Well, if it's a frontier, maybe mom and pops will be the ones who do it. Yeah, you're right. That's a good point.

1:31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson:It usually starts that way. That's true, right? Right. Because it's not a big enough industry yet for the big companies to buy everybody out. That's true. And I joke about this. on the moon, if they have, they want to have a colony on the moon, have restaurants, right? But you have to cook a little differently because the gravity is different and the air is, you know, and - Yeah, you have that whole chapter on gravity and - Yes, yes, a whole thing. Yeah. A whole thing. But here's my bad dad joke. Okay. Okay. But you have to promise to laugh. Okay. Okay. That wasn't very confident. That was like, really?

1:32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson:No, I got you. Okay. I got you, son. You got my back on this one? Yes, sir. So restaurants on the moon would surely have an interesting menu. They just won't have any atmosphere. Is that an authentic laugh? I thought it was pretty good. Okay. Yeah. I'll tell that to someone. Okay. Restaurant with no atmosphere. Yeah. I'll tell that to someone. So a lot of what Elon Musk, you know, people, you know, he's, sometimes he goes off the rails and off the chain, but. I think he literally goes off the rails sometimes. What he has done through his efforts is reduced the cost of access to space. And that enables whole industries to jump in and play.

1:32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson:How has he done that? Well, so for one, he's reusing his rockets, okay? He has boosters that go up, and he leaves a little bit of extra fuel in the booster, and then the computers take over, and the boosters fall back to Earth, and they land on pads. Damn, they gonna hit a shrimp boat down there. Well, actually, so depending on the trajectory, they'll either come all the way back to Cape Canaveral or they have a landing pad out in the ocean and they'll land on the landing pad. Oh, they're going to miss that bit. They're going to miss that bit. That'll be bad. Yeah, but I'm telling you, you know how many shrimp boats are going to be out there suddenly?

1:33:26You know how many new LLCs are going to be formed in Louisiana? People waiting. They want to be hit by, they want, no. Oh, waiting for that booster to hit them, bro.

1:33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson:Waiting for that rocket, bro. So it's gorgeous. It comes down, and then the legs come out, and then it lands. It sticks the landing. Oh, Larry got hit by that rocket, huh? Larry got hit by that rocket. So think about it. If you flew to Europe, and every time you did that, they pushed the plane off a cliff and rolled out a new one, your ticket would be very expensive. Right. But they reused the planes. And if you reused the rockets, that's one way to cut it down, among others that they're working on. so um we talked about we mentioned gravity a second ago is gravity changing at all like over time no at all well if you go to a mountaintop you will weigh less on the mountain that at sea level oh really yeah because you're farther away from the center of the earth but if you're just sitting here gravity is not changing okay no um all right let's get into this let's let's chat a little bit more um and i do want to say too i know the holidays are kind of coming up they're not here yet but uh i think your book's a good holiday gift thank you for saying that i hadn't thought about that yeah just because it's so beautiful yeah it's nice it's like a nice it's like something you can get you could tap in at any moment and you gift it and it's you know most coffee table books you open as a pretty picture you might read the caption you close it this one you open it and it pulls you in i think i wrote it so should i be saying that i don't know yeah but every next fact because it's been star talkified the fact has been brought to life with another way to think about that information, then it means more to you.

1:35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson:And there's a whole chapter on stuff that people hope they would never have seen again. There's a whole chapter on the periodic table of elements. So for example, okay, do you know the symbol for lead on the periodic table? Do you know what that is? N-A. That's sodium. Damn. White lead, they call it. Interesting, yeah. So PB. PB. Well, PB, where do you get that, how do you get that from lead? Well, PB is plumbum, which is lead in Latin. Plumbum, plumber. Plumbers used to work in lead. All pipes used to be lead. That's how plumbers get their name, plumb. PB on the periodic table. There you go. I got another one.

1:36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson:There's an element we discovered on the sun before we discovered it here on Earth. I think it's called, what is it?

1:36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson:We named it after the Greek sun god. Radon. Helios is the Greek sun god. And that element is helium. there it is helium's good radon that was discovered by Marie Curie first radioactive element she died of cancer it was sad she didn't discover mercury no mercury's been around forever you'd think she would've why Marie Curie maybe not should I have to laugh at that joke maybe not maybe I'm off okay you laughed at my joke I'll laugh at that one okay that's fair Okay, then we cut to me. That was good. I see what you did there. Okay, we're even, dude. Let's talk about just a couple more little things, and then I want to get a few more things about your book, and then we'll get you on your way.

1:37:11And thanks so much for hanging out, Neil. Sure, love it. I appreciate it. But I'm saying I think it's a good holiday gift, and it's not a lot of pressure. Some books you pick it up, it's a ton of pressure. Yeah, that's good.

1:37:19Neil deGrasse Tyson:And personally, I'm not a big reader. If someone hands me a 500-page book, when do you start it? When do you stop? And while busy. You hide it. No, but this is not that. It's biscuits of information that just rise up, and then you can't not reach for another. It's galactic biscuits, man. Starbohydrates. Okay, that's bad. That's a good one. No, that's good. Oh, damn. Starbohydrates? Yeah. Good, good one. Thanks, thanks. What are you going to be for Halloween? Let's get into that. I was never a Halloween person. Come on, Neil. You know why? Once I learned why people dress up, I said, that's why I don't dress up.

1:38:03Neil deGrasse Tyson:Why? Do you think it's sacrilegious kind of? No, no, no, no, no. People dress up because it's the one day where they can be something in their fantasies. Okay? And I never had fantasies. I never had, I was a very literal kid. You were just a reality-based. Yeah, I was completely reality-based. and so to dress up like something and pretend to be that, I was just myself, I didn't need to pretend. So I was a literal kid and it was, I was much later before I would appreciate what it is to be fully human, which is you have feelings, emotions, you cry, you. That came later in life for you? Later in life, later in life.

1:38:46Neil deGrasse Tyson:Wow. In my life I have never, we used to have telephones with handsets. I've never slammed down the handset. That's an emotion that I've never slammed a door out of anger. I just never had that. Which is weird because I used to wrestle. I spent eight, I was captain of my high school wrestling team. So, but it was, if someone beat me, it was like, good. Now I know I need to get better. It wasn't, I'm angry, let me run. No, I'd never had emotions like that. So I'm enchanted by Halloween, but I'd never had the urge to dress up. Now you can say, if I did dress up, what would it be? I'll tell you. That's fair.

1:39:25Neil deGrasse Tyson:I'll tell you. I would be a nerd savior man. Okay, I don't have a word for it. Because in high school, because like I said, I used to wrestle. I was 190 pounds in high school, captain and undefeated. But I went to a geeky high school. So everybody's a geek. And there's a high school across the way that would take our lunch money every time. And I wanted to fight against that. So I had this fantasy that first I could fly, and that if there was a geek in trouble, they'd beam like digits of pie on the sky. And the more digits of pie, the more serious the situation was. And I see it in the sky, and I fly, and it come down, and the kid would be wedged or something on the hook, or something that cool kids did to geeky kids.

1:40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson:and I would just pummel the shit out of them. Yeah. And I'd say, go forth in freedom. But I'm a geek too, so I'm a geek protector. But you a boss geek. Yes, I was a kick-ass geek protector. Yeah. And to this day, if I see geeks getting abused in the street because they're not as cool, they're not dressed as nice, I will intervene because I know I can kick some ass if I have to. Plus, I used to study martial arts, but more as a curiosity thing. But, and I wanted to be Bruce Lee, you know, not for Halloween, but. You would have been good, Eddie. Yeah, so the moral to that for me is just, I don't like seeing people harmed or abused just for being who they are.

1:41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson:Amen. Yeah, I agree with you though, right on that. Yeah. It's not good. Yeah, it's just. Well, I don't know what I mean, it's not good. Of course it's not. But yeah, I agree with you that. Yeah, there's something about like - They didn't do anything to you. They didn't - And they're already the underdog. Right, right. Sometime. Yeah, right. Now, a lot of that changed in my life. I don't know why, I'm a little older than you. A lot of it's changed in our lifetime. Yeah, yes it has because the bullies learned that the geeks know how to program their computer. Yeah. They could help them with the math homework.

1:41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson:And now the world is run by geeks. Run by geeks. Yes. Yeah, I'm trying to just - In other words, the most powerful people in the world are geeks. On the spectrum, half of them. Yeah, I think half of them are on the spectrum. Yes, yes, easily. Do you believe that? One out of six. I'm not clinically authorized to make this diagnosis, but based on being around my colleagues my whole life, I would say one in six, one in five is on the spectrum in some way. Perfectly happy in the lab. Eye contact is a little difficult. But do you think that that's why we're starting, like we create more stuff that like is tech, but there's not that we're losing the connection because some - Oh, interesting point.

1:42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson:Because they're very focused and they can build stuff. But they sometimes lack an element of being able to read certain - That's deep. And I'd have to do the research to conclude that. But let me restate what I think you just said. Okay. If geeks on the spectrum are inventing the next wave technology, should we be surprised that that next wave technology has no understanding or sensitivity to the human element, the interpersonal human element. Right. Because that wasn't in the people who invented it in the first place. Yeah. That's deep. I wonder if that's true. Because here we are, and we're letting these guys do some stuff.

1:43:04Right. And we're all, it's hurting.

1:43:06Neil deGrasse Tyson:It's hurting. And they didn't want it to hurt on purpose. No. They just didn't have the need themselves. Right, they didn't understand. Right. So why would they incorporate it? Right, why would they even know that you become so addicted to your social media and how you look to other people? What's it called? Your self-image. It's, you know, you enter a depressed state because you're not as beautiful as other people who are online curating their presence. Right. You don't even know that they're not even real. Yeah. They're not authentic, I should say. Yeah. The creators don't understand that because they don't have that software.

1:43:46Maybe that's intriguing.

1:43:49Neil deGrasse Tyson:I'd be curious to see what research says about that. And I'm not saying all people that are on the spectrum. No, no, no, but it's a hypothesis worth testing. Ooh, I like that. Dude, now we're doing something together. That's exciting. Yeah, I was trying to think of some good, what is this one right here? Oh, pie in the sky. That would be a serious - Bro, you look tough, Neil. Oh, I didn't create that. That's somebody, I don't know who did that. But still, that looks good. What about Michael - We are now looking at AI rendered version of me with a pie superhero outfit with a cape, stars on it. And there must be 500 digits of pie in the sky.

1:44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson:That'd be tough. That means the world is about to end. And I think that's current. What about a Halloween costume, Mike DeGrasse Tyson? See if you can put that in AI, see what happens. No. Well, the thing about science is, you know. And then there's the supermodel, Tyson Beckford. Ooh, here you go. Oh. Oh, let's go. Oh. Oh. Dude, let me say. What does it say on my arm there? Frick or knock out. Oh, okay. What about Tyson chicken nugget? That would be good if he was a little nugget. Oh. That'd be good. but you'd eat yourself too, probably. You know, who wouldn't? That works until you die. Yes, okay.

1:45:09I don't know, that's true. But hey, if you're starving, that'd be a risky moment, wouldn't it be? That'd be a risky moment. Oh, that's cute, Neil. You do not look happy about it. No. But you would definitely probably have a little bit of yourself. Chicken tender. Ooh, chicken tender's good.

1:45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson:No, let me see with Tyson Beckford, because he's a supermodel. Yeah, let's see if I look hot. At the very least, man. I'm not going to look hot with Tyson Beckford. Or Neil deGrasse Tyson, too. Put that in there. You don't mean deGrasse High? Yeah, remember that? That'd be weird. How are they going to? They can't mash that. Neil, it's science. There you go. Why am I in a wheelchair? Because that character was in a wheelchair, Drake's character. But Tyson Beckford? No, no. This is deGrasse. Oh, deGrasse. Oh, oh, oh, gotcha, gotcha. Neil deGrasse High. You stepped ahead of me there. Yeah, this was Neil deGrasse Tyson.

1:46:03Neil deGrasse Tyson:Oh, that looks innocent enough. Yeah, it looks good. Yeah. Oh. Let's go. Oh. Oh. Let's go. Oh. Dude, that's awesome, man. Well, look, there you go. Look, I'll say this. You got some great costumes that come, that just because you exist, some cool new universes can show up in the world. I officially give you my permission to post these that you just created. Okay, thank you. Of me in there. Okay, thank you. Okay. um oh there he goes yeah that was drake i forgot that was drake yeah that was him man yeah he's talented um let me see where can we uh did you ever want to be abducted by aliens do you fear them or do you i more than ever would like them to come get me really yeah and that's the truth i think and i don't mean that in any like i'm scared for my life way or anything like that Yeah, but so my same sentiment is maybe for a different reason.

1:47:04Neil deGrasse Tyson:I want to be abducted ever since I was 10 years old. I wanted to be abducted, not because I wanted to leave Earth, but that I wanted to see what the rest of the universe was like. And if they could abduct me, they clearly have access to the universe in ways that I don't. So it was because I was a cosmically curious kid. Wow, that's pretty cool, man. Yeah. Did you ever feel like they might not abduct you because of your skin color? Never. Never. They're aliens, for goodness sake. I didn't mean that in a bad way. No, no, no. I had no such thoughts. Because I've had black friends that are like, aliens don't abduct us and this type of shit.

1:47:43Oh, there was the Key and Peele skit.

1:47:46Neil deGrasse Tyson:Huh? You know the Key and Peele skit? Uh-uh. It was hilarious. It's a suburbia, right? They're so funny. And there's zombies coming up the street.

1:47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson:and they turn to this home where black people live and it goes around back and they're barbecuing and then the zombie just like recoils and it goes back to the street and chases the white people. So these are like racist zombies. It's a whole skit. It's an entire skit. And so all the black people just hanging out on lawn chairs and the white people are just going crazy. So I had no such thoughts that Alien would somehow see me as a black human, just as a human. But I knew, because I'm old enough to remember, the Apollo program, the Mercury 7 astronauts and all these guys, none of them look like me in the slightest.

1:48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:Not only that, on Broadway was the number one hit musical, Hair, and none of these guys had hair longer than an inch on their head, all these crew cuts. So I was interested in space not because of the Apollo program because it looked like there was nothing in there for me. Wow. And it was more pure curiosity with the universe, and me and the aliens will take it. Wow. Yeah. If you got in there, right, say they come and get you, okay? They're doing a special, right, and they want to get different types of folks up there. Uh-huh. You know? The whites aren't cutting it anymore. Well, no, just think about it.

1:49:20Neil deGrasse Tyson:Ask yourself this. Okay? When you look at pigeons, are you grouping them into kinds of pigeons? No, you're not because they're just pigeons to you. But if you really did it, some surface patterns of their feathers are different. Okay? And when you look at an alligator, do you even know who's a female and who's a male alligator? No. No. You don't, and do you know what the, you don't even care because you are so different from the alligator. you're not focused on how alligators different from each other. You're focused on the fact that it's a fricking alligator. Yeah. So if you're an octopus and you look at humans, are you saying, oh, this human has a different color skin than this human?

1:50:08Neil deGrasse Tyson:No, you're a creature that swims in the ocean with eight legs, okay? All you're going to see are these humanoid things that have a head, only four limbs and not eight. Okay? And you're living in the air, not in the water. That will preoccupy your awareness of them. If humanoid aliens came, which is all Hollywood can think of creating, the octopus will not distinguish between us and them. Yeah. Because they always have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, a head, shoulders, neck, arms, legs, torso, feet, arms, hands, and fingers. And that's it. Do you know, do you realize that all life on Earth has common DNA and that bananas have 25 % identical genes to human beings?

1:51:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:Nuh-uh. And because of that, if you get an alien from another planet that has no DNA at all or has DNA, but none of it is in common with us, it should look at least as different from humans as bananas and humans look from each other. And all Hollywood depictions are they're walking, they're talking and walking, coming down the street. Well, you know, so I had no such thoughts that aliens will notice my skin color. And I'm pretty sure any future aliens would feel the same. I just didn't know because a lot of abductions seem like it's a lot of times often a guy that it seems kind of white. Yeah, well, actually one of the first and most famous abductions, you can look this one up, is the Betty and Barney Hill case.

1:51:51Neil deGrasse Tyson:Barney Hill is a black man. Was he? Betty Hill was a white woman. Let me see him. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, he looks kind of black. Yeah, yeah. Barney and Betty Hill were American couple and civil rights activists who claimed they were abducted by extraterrestrials in a rural portion of the state of New Hampshire from September 19th to 20th, 1961. The incident came to be called the Hill Abduction and the Zeta Reticuli Incident because two UFOlogists connected the star map allegedly shown to Betty Hill with the Zetter reticuli system. Their story was adapted into the best-selling 1966 book, The Interrupted Journey, and the television film, The UFO Incident.

1:52:31Neil deGrasse Tyson:And that television film, James Earl Jones played Barney Hill. Did he really? Yeah, yeah, it was pretty cool. Very cool. But so anyhow, so - And you obviously played James Earl Jones. This is CNN. So, so I, so anyhow, so aliens early on have been abducting black people, but not in the numbers that they do with white people. But this is an early mixed couple. That might've been why they got them. Oh, you know what I'm saying? It might've been, who knows? And they look like a beautiful couple. Yes. They're very well-groomed, I think is the way you say that. They look like a beautiful couple. And I'm glad they got brought back.

1:53:13Did they get brought back? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good.

1:53:15Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah. And so it's, so I'm just saying, there's precedent for at least some black people to be abducted, but you are correct. The overwhelming majority are white people and English speaking people. Hmm. If you look at a map of all reported UFO incidents in the world, they go MUFON, M-U-F-O-N, they'll have a map. Mapped, there, UFO sighting maps. That's it. Whoa, okay. Okay, notice hardly any in Mexico, every dot there on this map is a reported UFO sighting. Now it could be that if you don't speak English, you don't know where to report it. That could be so, I get it, but - But you could just tell your friend.

1:53:58Neil deGrasse Tyson:Difference here is staggered. You know what I'm saying, bro? Now, rotate the map or go to some other place. Can you rotate the map? There you go, rotate it around. Look at that. Okay, a little bit in India, keep turning. England, there you go. And then right across the channel. Okay, now come down to Australia. Okay, well, Australia doesn't have many people to begin with, but in all the major cities are sightings. Correct. And what about China? Are they reporting them? They're not allowed to, are they? I'm just saying this UFO thing is such an American phenomenon. And so either the aliens just like English-speaking people.

1:54:41Neil deGrasse Tyson:or no one else gives a shit or it's just it's the English people know better how to report their sightings than other people do or we're more gullible in thinking that something is aliens when it's just some natural phenomenon so this this this map is staggering I think and and dude I'll tell you this honestly I think that um the final war on the planet is going to be blacks versus aliens. Really? Black humans versus aliens, yeah. Really? So that's a movie that looks like it's going to be in the sequence with Predator versus aliens. I mean - Predator versus aliens, humans versus aliens, black people versus aliens, okay.

1:55:26Neil deGrasse Tyson:Because somebody's going to have to battle them. Oh. And I - Let me cut you off here. Or is it like, wasn't there some movie called Jason Takes Manhattan? And someone did a parody on that. Jason tries to take Harlem. Jason comes up with this mask and action. Boom, get out of my back. Black people are not going to stand for this. Black people at a certain point are not going to stand for aliens bullshit. Yeah, yeah. And I think more of a white society will just fall into it too easy. At a certain point, black people are going to detect this bullshit. We've all seen the videos of people trying to scare black people with Halloween tricks.

1:56:13Neil deGrasse Tyson:Like someone pops out of the can and gets punched. Yeah, it's just - Yeah, stay in the can. Stay in the can. I see. That's interesting. So all the white people of the world would have acquiesced to the demands of the aliens and would have just gotten absorbed. And black people are holding out. Yeah. And it'll be the final battle. Yeah, I think that they end up being the savers of the world. Wow. Wow. Because I think it's just like. That's a movie. Because every great story is the arc, you know. No, that missed its time. That should have come out in like 1973. That movie? With black exploitation films.

1:56:49Neil deGrasse Tyson:Where black people are kicking ass and it was okay for everybody to do it. Even white people said, okay, we'll give it to you. We've been so hard on you all these years. will kick our ass for a few years in the movies. That would have been a good time, Black People Versus. But I'm talking about - That one had the movie Blackula. Did they have that? Yes, Blackula. Oh, damn. Yeah, yeah. So that was the era where this movie should - Who is that? It's not Richard Pryor, is it? No, no, no, no, no. It was a serious movie. It looks like it would be a joke, but no. I would love to see that. And look, there he is biting some white chick.

1:57:28I've seen that before. But no, I think, I'm not even joking, Neil. I believe that that's going to be the battle, and I believe that they saved the planet. That's what I believe.

1:57:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:Somebody is going to hear this podcast and is going to write that script. We need it. We need it. I mean, I'm at a point where we need, that's what, because I don't know what else can save everything. Yeah, yeah. Another thing, they come down to these badass spaceships, and here we are getting our guns out of the cabinet and shooting at, really? Don't you just see what has happened here? The bullet will absorb into their ship and it will become part of their ship. For example, right? Can you just extrapolate what's happening here? So that's right. So the black people, we don't have as many guns as the white people do, but we would know the guns would be pointless.

1:58:20Neil deGrasse Tyson:We'd have to find some other way to get them. They'll figure it out. Yeah. Maybe barbecue. You think? That seems racial. That seems racial to me, dude. After all the stuff we've said. I know. They'll listen to jazz. Jazz will, oh. Now we're talking. Yeah. And then the aliens just be chilling, smoking.

1:58:51Dude, that's how they'll, there'll be some way. But that's how it happens. That'll be, it'll be their muse. I believe that. It'll be their. That's how I've always believed that. How long have I said that for, Nick? That which calms. 26 years ago. How long ago? Two to six years ago. Two to six years ago, sorry.

1:59:09Neil deGrasse Tyson:That which calms the inner beast of the alien is some smooth jazz.

1:59:18Your book, before you go, yeah, anything else about aliens? Or we can go into your book as a chapter on the Zodiac.

1:59:23Neil deGrasse Tyson:So thanks for giving my alien book a shout out. It came out earlier this year, back in May. Take Me to Your Leader. Yeah, yeah. It's a small book, very fits in your pocket kind of thing. And that book is like everything you need to know for your alien encounter. And it's grounded in physics. I mean, so it's not, it's to try to anchor the conversations people are having about what they see, what they think they see, what they want to see. It's in there. There's a chapter on alien intelligence, alien technology, alien powers. What powers do aliens show in a movie that might be possible on Earth, even if it's beyond our current technologies?

2:00:03Neil deGrasse Tyson:So it's a very serious but fun exploration in that. So thanks for giving that a shout out. Yeah. But the Lost in Space, like I said, that's a big fat old 5 ,000 fact book. Yeah. National Geographic, they don't do ugly. yeah right oh yeah some of the images and just like yeah it's a nice journey of like kind of information and yeah yeah enjoying yourself you're laying on the couch yeah enjoying something you're sitting there you got to dip dip in yeah put a dip in yeah yeah and you know for my podcast i wanted it to have a tagline but our marketing person nixed it i want it because you come and you have fun and you learn something so the tagline was learn something for a change that's I was gonna say.

2:00:49Neil deGrasse Tyson:And they said, no, that's too off-put. It was too, and so in this book, it's like learn something for a change. Yeah, yeah. Last question before you go, I guess. All right. Could aliens bring new elements and stuff and new science here that we haven't seen? Like, would it alter the fabric of our science? Does that make sense? Yeah, it's a great question. So in the chapter Alien Powers and Alien Science and Technology, I explore the science that we have discovered on Earth that applies across the universe and across time. They are beholden to that. But then there's other things about the universe that are mysteries to us that they might have harnessed, like dark matter, dark energy, wormholes.

2:01:41Neil deGrasse Tyson:You know how to make a wormhole? You need a negative gravity material. It'd be a substance. Normal things have gravity. This is negative gravity. Like what, mud or something? No, no, no. It just doesn't exist. We don't know. But maybe an alien figured out how to make it. And if you can make a negative gravity thing, instead of bringing things together, which gravity does, it pries things apart, which is what you need to make a wormhole. Yeah. So, but here's the thing. If they master wormholes, then they connect where they are to where we are, and they just stepped through, they wouldn't need spaceships.

2:02:16Neil deGrasse Tyson:They would step through like Rick and Morty. Rick has a, he opens a portal. Or who's this dude in the Avengers? Doctor Strange. You just step through. And they would just be here. They'd just be here. Or wherever. If it's a proper wormhole. Right, it's not a whole tube that you pass through. You just step through. So if they mastered that, then they would not be seen in spaceships. Where would you go if you could wormhole? Oh.

2:02:46Neil deGrasse Tyson:I'm gonna go to the center of the galaxy. That's gotta be bad. There's a supermassive black hole there. I would need radiation protection because there's a lot of lethal electromagnetic energy coming out of there. But the center of the galaxy feels cool to me. How many people have we sent there? Zero. Ever? To the center of the galaxy? Yeah. What do you mean? We've only been to the moon like six times. Oh, man. So what do you mean? Go to the center of the galaxy is like - Fuck it's good, yeah. 30 ,000 light years away. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, galaxy, dude. Galaxy. I don't know. Okay, well, Earth.

2:03:22Neil deGrasse Tyson:Earth and the planets and the sun. Solar system. Okay. We and 400 billion other stars. Uh-huh. Milky Way galaxy. Okay. We and thousands of other galaxies. The Virgo super cluster of galaxies. Other super clusters combine the universe. They keep renaming this thing and making it bigger. Bigger and bigger, yeah. as we discover it. As we discover it. It's like they just kind of give you a little more bread, a little more bread crump. Well, yeah, incremental discovery. That's where we make new telescopes. So is there new physics? There could be, but the physics we know is not going to be different for them.

2:04:00Neil deGrasse Tyson:So our physics would have to apply to them? Certain aspects of our physics, yes, because we've tested it on Earth and across the universe. Got it. So the periodic table of elements, which you saw in your chemistry class, that is full. It used to have gaps in it. And we said, wait, there's a gap here. There must be an element. Let's look for it. Let's synthesize it. Let's create it. Bada bing. Here's the element. The first element, this is in the book, the first element that was manufactured, because there was a gap in the whole element. Do we see this in nature? No, nature doesn't make this element.

2:04:36Neil deGrasse Tyson:Let's make it ourselves. That's how badass we are. We made this element. And we named it after the prefix we use for things that are artificially made. Do you know that prefix? Tech. It's called tech-nesium. Tech-nesium. We invented that. And? Wow. And that's a real element? Yeah. In fact, it has very important and significant medical application. And can you just buy it? Or is it like a - I've never tried. There are labs that can synthesize it. Wow. Yeah, you can't. No. What are you gonna do? I mean, what would you do with it if you? I don't know, I'm just half some. I guess, I don't even know.

2:05:16I didn't know it existed. Right, right, so there's. Yes, you can buy technetium. Technetium, but it is strictly regulated and very difficult for private individuals to obtain in pure form because it is radioactive. Yes. Nevermind. Radioactive.

2:05:30Neil deGrasse Tyson:Do not want that in my house. Wanna keep your gonads. Yeah. So the element is full. When the Knicks were in the playoffs, they hadn't been since I was in middle school. Wow. 52 years or something. Yeah, yeah. I'm an old fart. And so while they were in the playoffs, I tweeted. I said, I forgot the exact number, but it's approximate. I said, the last time the Knicks won the championship, the periodic table had 11 fewer elements. Just to measure time by our rate of discovery of these elements. So we're up to 118. Nature only makes 92 of them. Wow. We've manufactured. So we got the periodic table.

2:06:16Neil deGrasse Tyson:That is what the universe is made of materially. What I looked like last time in New York Knicks won a championship. Look at you, boy. Oh, yeah. See, I'm very geeky. I got a camera. That was one of the world's first selfies, it turns out. You know who selfied this before me? is Colin Powell has a photo of himself in a mirror. So I just thought this would be a cool thing to do when I was 14 or something. Dude, that's cool. So that's one of several posts. And I have like a karate kimono thing on it. Yeah, I can see that, man. So you had some cool hobbies. Yeah, I developed my own film. And I was a geek kid, like I'm saying.

2:06:55Neil deGrasse Tyson:Can there be more elements, though? So no, because those elements are just how many protons are in the nucleus. There's an element with one proton that's hydrogen, two protons, helium, three, lithium, four, boron, five, six is carbon, seven is nitrogen, eight is oxygen. Good. They all have names and they're in sequence. There's no room to fit any other element because we're counting protons. At the high end, we're up to 118 proudly, but maybe the aliens have 119, 20, 120, yes. What about kryptonite? That's entirely, krypton, that's a gas. And we have it? That's a gas. Do we have it? Oh yeah. Fuck yeah.

2:07:42Neil deGrasse Tyson:Oh yeah, krypton, it's a noble gas. Good. Not that anybody asked, but in the time that has elapsed since the Knicks last won a championship, we've discovered eight new subatomic particles. Dang. the the j-psi meson the tau lepton the bottom quark the gluon the wz boson the top quark the tau neutrino and the higgs boson nobel prizes all around and they are all entering the portal as well this week probably what's the next one not that anybody asked but the last time the new york nicks won a championship steven spielberg had not yet made a feature length movie about aliens That's how long ago that was.

2:08:23Neil deGrasse Tyson:That's all I'm saying. So whatever they make their craft out of, it's got to be these ingredients. Got it. So I can talk about these ingredients that they have. Maybe they may have some fancy alloy, sure, but they'll be made of these ingredients. Do they have negative gravity substance? Maybe, I don't know. I'm not going to preclude that. Maybe they figure that out. Can they read your mind?

2:08:54Neil deGrasse Tyson:If they get close enough, maybe, because your brain is electromagnetic signals. It does? Yes, and that's why you can put electrodes on your head and read your brain waves. So yes, in principle, yes. We don't know how to do that yet, but I give that to them. No, give it to them. They're more advanced. Sure, they came all the way here giving that. They came all the way here, give it to them. So there's a whole conversation there about powers they have, but I'm not giving them the physics that we've already established. Got it. We're good with that. Yeah. And we know that because we can measure atomic phenomenon in other stars and other galaxies across space and throughout time.

2:09:37Neil deGrasse Tyson:And so we're good there. Be proud of that. Amen. What do you think is the next biggest realm of discovery in science? Where is science really going to start to? I think we're going to get in our genome and start messing. We're going to start playing God, I think. Oh, you want to play a piano with 12 fingers? Let's put in the gene that gives you a sixth finger on each hand and then compose something that'll do that. I think who we are and what we look like might become boutique-y. Okay? And that's, I hope that doesn't happen. because so much of what makes life interesting is working with what you've got, how inventive you need to be to work with how you are and what.

2:10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right, it gives us a purpose. It gives you, let me work with this. Right. Let me see what I can do here. And this urge to be normal, I think every interesting thing that's ever happened in civilization was created or imagined or assembled by people who are not normal. If everybody were normal, nothing would happen. Think about that. Yeah. So in praise of being abnormal, there's a famous quote. I think it was George Bernard Shaw. Reasonable people follow rules and do what they're told. Unreasonable people break rules and do things that they're not supposed to do. So all advances in civilization have come about from the work of unreasonable people.

2:11:25Wow.

2:11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson:If you only do what you're told, you will never make a discovery. Amen. I mean, that goes back to even some of the stuff. It's like the person that's different, the person that's going to do things at a beat of a different drummer or whatever. Right. celebrate that. Yeah. That might be the savior. That might be the liaison. It might be the patriot that gets us to the next level. The link there. And here's just an interesting fact. I don't know what percentage of the public is trans. Some numbers put it in low single digits. And then if you're like a normalist, you will say, well, fix that. They're not normal.

2:12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson:They're abnormal. Okay. Do you realize that 98 % of all atoms in the universe are hydrogen and helium? 98%. Everything that is what we care about in love is enabled by what's in that 2%. The iron, the oxygen, the silicon, the nitrogen, the phosphorus, the everything else. is what makes this universe what it is. And it's in that 2%. The variety. There it is. The cadmium. That's in there too. Is it? Yes. Yeah, dude. Yeah, man. You got to have variety. You got to have difference. And also - It's the forces we put on ourselves to try to make people conform to what is normal or average. So that disturbs me.

2:13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson:I want people to celebrate being different. Yeah. Not be sad that they're not the same. Yeah, amen to that, dude. Yeah. And a lot of it is like stuff, like media, online stuff, that just it's created to create the fight. Oh, yeah. Because in the end, I think people, you walk up to anybody, most people would take care of each other. I'd like to think so. I think that's true. But generally, they would do so if you were the only two in the boat and all you have is each other. but if you're with a clan of 100 people and there's three people who are different out there, it's way too easy to reject them.

2:13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson:It almost comes naturally within us to protect what's in group and reject what's out of group. Well, hopefully we don't get into a place where people are like, you know, things are getting that rough out there, you know? I hope not. I mean, it definitely has happened that way in some parts of the world. Oh, for sure. Definitely. I'm not saying that it hasn't, for sure. Yeah. But I mean, I hope it doesn't get to like, where things get so dystopian out there and stuff. I don't think that's going to happen. In the end, do you think that existence wins, like that good wins? So in that vein, there's a paragraph I want to read from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot.

2:14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson:Okay. Okay. And it encapsulates so much of what my people feel as astrophysicists. Because we see Earth not just as living humans on the surface. we think of Earth from space and from deep space. And what does it look like? What does it feel like? What are you thinking? And there's Earth, just this orb adrift. What are you thinking?

2:14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson:Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that in glory and in triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another. How fervent their hatreds, our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light.

2:15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson:So I think about that all the time. You will not find legions of astrophysicists leading soldiers into battle. Yeah. That is not ever gonna happen. You would think we could do better. And I think most of us want to. Yeah, yeah. You know? Well, you know what, it has to be what I found, the most potent way to get someone to accept someone else is to have your kids want to marry one of them. I mean, think about it. Historically, marriages were like pacts between countries to bring peace among them. They marry the royalty off, and now you gotta be friends. So. That's the truth. Maybe there's deep truth in that.

2:16:24Oh, I've always said beige power, man. I think it all ends really beige, man. I've always said beige power, dude. Neil deGrasse Tyson, thank you so much, brother.

2:16:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:Thanks for having me back. I mean, I enjoyed our last time together. But I can't, I'm not leaving until we both look at this babyfied version of us when you asked me a question and I answered it. Okay. Let's take a look at this. That sounds fair. Let's check it out right here. This is like, I think, what AI was intended for. Oh, yeah. Is outer space gay or straight? Okay, so I'm going to give you an answer. Are you ready? Yeah. Is outer space gay or straight? Practically everything we see and measure in space, not only objects, but temperature, size, density, is on a spectrum. So for you to say, is the universe gay or straight?

2:17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson:I'm going to tell you, whatever the universe is, it's on a spectrum. So it's bi.

2:17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson:That was terrible. Yeah, I never even seen that, dude. You haven't seen it? You don't see your own stuff? Uh-uh. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. My mother sends me stuff sometimes. Yeah, okay. It was fun, dude. Our last conversation was fun, man. I've listened to it a couple times over the years. Just grateful to have you back and just grateful that you keep. Well, thank you. Just contributing to the world, sharing and opening your heart up and sharing things that are important. Whoever will listen. I'm there for you. You've done a great job over the years, man. So thank you so much for your contributions.

2:18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson:I keep laughing and I meant that in space. Yeah. You knock on the door. I'll let you in. Hey, and if you do that, then I won't be lost in space. How about that? You'll have a guide. Yeah, I will. Lost in Space, 5 ,000 Facts for Navigating the Universe. That's your new book. It's a beauty. Thanks for the shout out. Yep, you bet, man. And thank you so much, Neil. I appreciate it, man. All right.

2:18:50I see you.

2:18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson:Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. Go, go, go, go! A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick! Avatar Fire and Ash Now streaming on Disney Plus Rated PG-13