RE-RELEASE: Neil deGrasse Tyson | SmartLess

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Astronomy, Hayden Planetarium, Black hole, Craig Robinson
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Roman Empire, Apple orchard, Astronomy, Astrophysics
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Cosmology
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Broadway musicals, Infinity, Hamilton, Horoscope
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Infinity, Chris Columbus, Cis-lunar space, Dictionary
6. 25:00 – 30:00: Space shuttle, France, Los Angeles, Space station
7. 30:00 – 35:00: Area 51, Bob Lazar, Gravity, Los Angeles
8. 35:00 – 40:00: Global warming, Crop circles, Serengeti
9. 40:00 – 45:00: Factory, Gravity

Notable quotes from "RE-RELEASE: Neil deGrasse Tyson | SmartLess"

• I went to seventh grade with Janet Jackson. Are you serious? Did you? Yeah.

  about Janet Jackson · at 0:42

• So guys, we have with us today my favorite astrophysicist of all infinity, Neil Degrasse Tyson.

  about Infinity · at 2:28

• Want to Know. so he said, The light you're seeing right now left that star back in the Roman Empire. And I said, Well, what does that mean?

  about Roman Empire · at 7:17

• The light that takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach us. So too does it take the sun's gravity. So if you are some giant and plucked the sun out of the middle of the solar…

  about Gravity · at 8:49

• Another universe. in another universe, I would be writing songs for Broadway musicals.

  about Broadway musicals · at 16:42

• The wiring of our brain because our brain evolved on the plains of the Serengeti to not get chased by a lion.

  about Serengeti · at 21:49

• Because it's too scary. What? Well, sha it can shatter dishes and things and knock them. The space shuttle did it though. Well, well, that's because it's coming in over Florida…

  about Space shuttle · at 26:56

• Scientists getting right now and what are they getting wrong as far as COVID and global warming?

  about Global warming · at 35:54

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Janet Jackson — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:42
• Craig Robinson — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:23
  So I went to college with I was piano majors with Craig Robinson from the office and Oh, I knew that. Wait, I knew that. Piano majors together. Yeah.
• Chris Columbus — Person · 1 mention · first at 24:32
  After. The first foray out there are countries who have geopolitical interest in mind. Huh? Columbus came to the new world. Was that Did Queen Isabella say, Oh, Columbus, take…
• Queen Isabella — Person · 1 mention · first at 24:34
  Countries who have geopolitical interest in mind. Huh? Columbus came to the new world. Was that Did Queen Isabella say, Oh, Columbus, take pictures and bring them back and tell…
• Bob Lazar — Person · 1 mention · first at 33:10
  Obsessed documentarian about aliens in space and all that flying Area 51. So Bob Lazar has this documentary. Did you see it? Was it was about he claimed he had or has some…
• Kristin Chenoweth — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

• Promises, Promises — Book · 1 mention · first at 17:36
  Human emotion. Well, thank you for checking out the 2010 smash hit on Broadway Promises starring Sean Hayes and Kristen Chennowith. That's so nice of you. That's incredible. Way to go backstage, Neil. Yeah.
• Hamilton — Book · 1 mention · first at 18:21
  Really interesting if you somehow I mean would anybody think to make a musical about Hamilton? like that's just bizarre. Yeah. The fascinating fact about Broadway musicals is…
• Cats — Book · 1 mention
• Evita — Book · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• Hayden Planetarium — Company · 2 mentions · first at 2:04
  Bronx. he became interested in astronomy at the age of nine after visiting the Hayden Planetarium. And today, is this Derek Jeter? No, it's not Derek Jeter. Close. He is now the director of that same planetarium.
• Valley Professional — Company · 1 mention · first at 0:48
  At a school called Valley Professional.
• Degrassi Junior High — Company · 1 mention · first at 1:15
  Accredited. I went to high school with one of the kids. this is not a bit from the original Degrassi junior high.
• Factory — Company · 1 mention · first at 41:09
  I can tell you the next time this happens, we got to have a rollout plan and the factory floors factory you go into virus mode and people separate and production goes down a…

Products & tech

• Space shuttle — Product · 3 mentions · first at 27:00
• NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal — Product · 1 mention · first at 2:17
  He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. Sean, you've really done it this time. He's known for his ability to make difficult concepts accessible to every audience. Will Sure.
• Dictionary — Product · 1 mention · first at 20:18
  Not really infinity, but it is something to think about. So if consider that if you open a dictionary, every word used in the definition of every word is in that same…
• Space station — Product · 1 mention · first at 29:34
  Speed so that it doesn't fall out of the sky. Wow. So that so the space shuttle the space station they're all going 18,000 miles an hour sideways. That's why mission control, you're now go through the execute the roll program.
• CO2 — Product · 1 mention
• Concorde SST — Product · 1 mention
• Element 115 — Product · 1 mention
• Navy UFO videos — Product · 1 mention
• Sun — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• Infinity — Concept · 5 mentions · first at 2:29
• Astronomy — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 2:01
  Today, my guest today grew up in the Bronx. he became interested in astronomy at the age of nine after visiting the Hayden Planetarium. And today, is this Derek Jeter? No, it's…
• Gravity — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 8:53
• Broadway musicals — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 16:47
• Global warming — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 35:57
• Black hole — Concept · 1 mention · first at 3:13
  Me and say, Hey, aren't you Neil Degrass? I said, Yes. Tell me more about a black hole and this. So, that's the perfect educational encounter. The one that's not is, Are you Neil Tyson?
• Astrophysics — Concept · 1 mention · first at 5:33
  To that. And to that point, explain to people like us idiots who don't know what the difference between astrophysics and astronomy is. Well, so we all in modern times do astrophysics. Astronomy is the traditional older name for it.
• Spectra — Concept · 1 mention · first at 6:06
  In the 19th century, we learned how to take spectra of stars and a spectra break the light into its colors like a rainbow. And when you do that, you learn things like how fast is it moving, how fast is it rotating, what.
• Light year — Concept · 1 mention · first at 7:47
  Jokes, Will. so, so if you travel at 186,000 miles a second for a year, that's a light year. Yeah. So, that's a so it's a measurement of distance. So he said, so the light…
• Cosmology — Concept · 1 mention · first at 12:08
  Time frames back into the past of the object you're observing. And that's why that's where cosmology comes in. It's how we decode the record of the universe because it takes…
• Horoscope — Concept · 1 mention · first at 15:53
  You were a grown-up walked into the room, and you said something, oh, I checked my horoscope sign today and my 12-year-old, 13-year-old kids heard that, they would say, well…
• Quantum world — Concept · 1 mention · first at 23:08
  That empowers you to think in these other ways. And this is how you think in the quantum. The quantum world is really weird. Particles popping in and out of existence.…
• Wave-particle duality — Concept · 1 mention · first at 23:14
  Weird. Particles popping in and out of existence. particles simultaneously existing as a wave and a wave particle duality. You might have heard of this.
• Crop circles — Concept · 1 mention · first at 35:20
  Saying everybody is a recorder. Where's the evidence of these visitations? Why is it that crop circles only happen when nobody's looking? All right. Why are the aliens just…
• Scientific literacy — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

• Roman Empire — Place · 2 mentions · first at 7:22
• Serengeti — Place · 2 mentions · first at 21:53
• Los Angeles — Place · 2 mentions · first at 26:36
  Oh, well, wait a minute. why can't they fly to Los Angeles? Oh, we're not going to let them because they'll have a sonic boom over the continental United States. So, we cut them off at their kneecaps and said, Yeah, you can fly,.
• Sherman Way and Vinand — Place · 1 mention · first at 1:05
  Auditions. Yeah. it was sort of like a the back of a gas station on Sherman Way and Vinand and I'm not sure they were accredited. I think chances are high that they were not…
• The Bronx — Place · 1 mention · first at 1:56
  Today, my guest today grew up in the Bronx. he became interested in astronomy at the age of nine after visiting the Hayden Planetarium. And today, is this Derek Jeter? No, it's not.
• Interstellar space — Place · 1 mention · first at 9:09
  For 8 minutes and 20 seconds. And at that instant, we would plunge into darkness and fling out into interstellar space. So, so that is those moments, those things, a teacher…
• Apple orchard — Place · 1 mention · first at 9:58
  Because there's stuff out there. I'll give you here's a simple one. Ready? If you go to the flower of an apple orchard and count how many petals are on that flower, okay, there are five petals.
• Cis-lunar space — Place · 1 mention · first at 24:12
  Just read that? Yeah, because other countries are gaining power over what's called cis lunar space, the space between earth and the moon. And that's the new high ground. So…
• France — Place · 1 mention · first at 26:26
  Do you know something? We didn't have a supersonic commercial plane, but France and England did. Right. That was the Concord. And I always wondered why they stopped making them. Oh, you know why?
• San Francisco — Place · 1 mention · first at 30:04
  Live? Where do you live? LA. Okay. They are less above Earth's surface than the distance of San Francisco from Los Angeles. No. Okay. Wow. In fact, they're half that distance.…
• Area 51 — Place · 1 mention · first at 33:08
  Watched, I'm I'm like an obsessed documentarian about aliens in space and all that flying Area 51. So Bob Lazar has this documentary. Did you see it? Was it was about he…
• China — Place · 1 mention
• Mars — Place · 1 mention
• Moon — Place · 1 mention
• Tokyo — Place · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 Hey everybody, you're listening to Smartless hosted by Jason Baitman, Will Arnette, and myself, Shawn Hayes. I know, I wish my voice was more masculine, too. This show is about learning through laughter and the brains of people around the world who are far smarter than us three idiots. And each week, one of us brings on a guest who the other two don't know about. So, with that, let's jump into the smartless rocket ship and let's blast off into the universe together. Ooh, I think I just turned myself on. Smartless.

0:33 Smart less. Smart bless. I went to uh seventh grade with uh Janet Jackson. Are you serious? Did you? Yeah. At a school called Valley Professional. Um it was a prof was Hold on. It was a school that was only from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. so that you had your afternoons free for auditioning. For auditions. Yeah. Um it was sort of like a the back of a gas station on uh Sherman Way and Vinand and uh I'm not sure they were accredited. I think chances are high that they were not accredited. I went to high school with with one of the kids. Um this is not a bit from from the original Degrassi junior high.

1:19 Um, so I went to college with um I was piano majors with Craig Robinson from the office and Oh, I knew that. Wait, I knew that. Piano majors together. Yeah. What's a piano major? You major in piano and you don't minor in it. Get it? Major major. There are different ranks. There's different cuz I was a piano colonel. But um and then that is so dumb. I can't believe you stupid. Of course you're going to laugh. I just watched you, Hayes, because I knew I knew that would get me down. Anyway, at ease. Um, who's our guest? Whose guest is it today? Whose guest is it today, guys?

1:56 Today, my guest today grew up in the Bronx. Uh, he became interested in astronomy at the age of nine after visiting the Hayden Planetarium. And today, is this Derek Jeter? No, it's not Derek Jeter. Close. He is now the director of that same planetarium. And after studying at Harvard, he earned his doctorate from Columbia University. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. Sean, you've really done it this time. He's known for his ability to make difficult concepts accessible to every audience. Will Sure.

2:28 So guys, we have with us today my favorite astrophysicist of all infinity, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Unbelievable, Sean. What a guest. Hey guys, what an honor. Thank you so much for being on here. I know this is uh very nice of you to to come and chat with us today. I want to, you know, do people kind of like jump right in and ask you things about the universe in the same way one might, you know, after discovering someone's a doctor and go, you know, I have a pain in my lower back without hesitation. Yeah. Instead of asking you about you first. Yeah. No, I I don't care about me and as an educator, I don't think who I teach should care about me. That's like cult building. I really Yeah. So, compare these two scenarios. Someone comes up to me and say, "Hey, aren't you Neil Degrass?" I said, "Yes." "Tell me more about a black hole and this." So, that's the perfect educational encounter. The one that's not is, "Are you Neil Tyson?"

3:19 I said, "Yes." "Oh, uh, what's your favorite color? What's your favorite?" And all of a sudden, I become the object of their curiosity rather than the universe itself. And in that way, I have failed. And you don't like that? No, it's it's it's a failure. No, no. I I'm just It's a failure of my educational efforts. If I become the object of their interest, that's all. I'll do it and I'll accommodate it and you know but on a certain level you feel like you failed in in your objective must not have made the science interesting enough for them to come at that but not knowing you I would think you know all all I ever see of you and again I'm I'm such a huge fan of yours and I could hear you talk about all of this crap which I love for hours.

4:01 Oh the stuff that he spent his life studying you you you've summed up as crap. Thank you Sean PhD in craft. This is why I don't have a PhD. Crap is piled high and deep. That's what the PhD stands for. But you know what I'm saying? Like I I I like I want to get into that. And believe me, you will answer all of my questions. I'm here for you. Yes. But like when I read that thing that you first became enamored with universe at 9 years old going to the Hayden Planetarium and now you're the director of the Hayden Planetarium.

4:28 Like most teenagers don't have that drive, you know, when you because I read that you obsessively studied astronomy when you were a teenager. And so most teenagers don't have that drive. What was the thing that kept you going? I was like, "Oh my god, the thirst for knowledge." It was the It wasn't so much the thirst for knowledge, but the fact that I knew that when I looked up, I was completely steeped in ignorance and and boundless ignorance. And so there's this quest. Jason usually just looks in the mirror and that happens. He is. He's so connected with that thought.

5:03 I actually sleep with my eyes open. No, cuz they, you know, the fact that there's something around us that we know about which we know so little uh became this infinite source of curiosity for me and I've never been the same since since age n and I didn't know that most people are still sort of amling in college. What am I going to major in? Oh, you major in astronomy. Was that because it's early in the alphabet? You know, no, no, my stuff goes deep with regard to that. And to that point, explain to people like us idiots who don't know what the difference between astrophysics and astronomy is. Well, so we all in modern times do astrophysics. Astronomy is the traditional older name for it.

5:42 But in the late 1800s, uh we figured out how to apply the laws of physics to what was going on in the universe and thus was birthed astrophysics. Before then, it's like, oh, the star is over here and it's this bright and it's that color. Oh, it might be moving. Okay. So, let's call it a planet or it's got a tail. So, we call it a comet. It was descriptive. In the in the in the 19th century, we learned how to take spectra of stars and a spectra break the light into its colors like a rainbow. And when you do that, you learn things like how fast is it moving, how fast is it rotating, what it's made of, how long ago it was born.

6:19 You can create models of that. And so, all of a sudden, the universe becomes our backyard. Yeah. Because you know when I I still do this I mean on the dumbest level on the most you know simplest level I' there's a there's places on earth and it's wearing thin where the air is cleaner and you can see more stars somewhere like Hawaii or whatever and you lie there and you like a kid I'm still act like a kid and I look up and the longer you look up at a clear sky to all the stars you can't help but think about everything you're talking about which is where do we come from how that light that we're seeing is like way older than the earth and whatever That's the one that got me.

6:55 When I when I was about 12 years old, a teacher said to me, he said, "Look up." He said, "You see you see that star?" I don't know what I was doing with the teacher in the middle of the night, but um he said, "The light that you're seeing um that's the next that's another episode. It's a different episode. It's a whole different podcast. That one's called You Don't Want to Know on a very special You Don't Want to Know." Um so he said, "The light you're seeing right now left that star back in the Roman Empire." And I said, "Well, what does what does that mean?"

7:25 He says, "Well, the speed of light is," and correct me if I'm wrong, you're 186,000 m a second. You got it. Okay. So, 186,000 m a second. You just pulled that out. You know that? I mean, he left a mark. Um, hold your jokes. Hold your jokes, Will. Um, so, so if you travel at 186,000 miles a second for a year, that's a light year. Yeah. So, that's a so it's a measurement of distance. So he said, so the light traveling at 186,000 m per second since the Roman Empire, that's how far away that that and that light is only just now reached. Correct.

8:01 Yeah. And he said and he he said he said for instance the sun the heat that you're feeling on your face. This was this is after we woke up. Um he said he said he said he said that's and and he put down the cigarette to Yeah. He put it out on my forearm and he said that that is seven minutes old. Um the that that the heat from the sun. So that's how far the the sun is away. Okay. So I don't know how you got the speed of light correct and that number wrong. So uh oh you're close enough. No. No. You're close enough. It's a long night.

8:36 So it's not 7 minutes away. I would to give you the correct number. I mean to know the speed of light to that precision and then get that other number wrong. That's a little weird. But uh it's 8 minutes and 20 seconds. 500 seconds. Wow, I was so close. And by the way, it's not only it's it's not only the light that takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach us. So too does it take the sun's gravity. So if you are some giant and plucked the sun out of the middle of the solar system, we would still orbit. We would still feel its gravity. We would not know any different for 8 minutes and 20 seconds. And at that instant, we would plunge into darkness and fling out into interstellar space. So, so that is those moments, those things, you know, a teacher telling Jason that thing, th those are mind-blowing moments. And I've had those mind-blowing moments where I've hear these things which obviously throughout

9:24 because of what you do throughout your life, you must have had a million mindblowing revelations and stats and things thrown at you and discoveries that you've made. Have you reached the point where it doesn't blow your mind anymore? or what are the things that blow your mind about about the universe around us? So, everyone I think should have their mind blown at least once a week. Okay, that's that's the mind-blowing quota I think is a should be about that. And if you're a mindblowing means you're not reading enough or you're not exploring enough because there's stuff out there. I'll give you here's a simple one. Ready? If you go to the flower of an apple orchard and count how many petals are on that flower, okay, there are five petals.

10:08 Then that flower uh shrivels up and then it becomes the fruit of the tree, the apple. If you cut the apple horizontally through it and you see the chambers, there are five chambers. So there's a correspondence between the number of seed chambers in the apple and the petals on the flower that became the apple. I mean this is just kind of if you don't notice that start noticing it and then there places where and that's not even anything that's got nothing to do with the origin of the universe but it's something simple that's around you.

10:39 I've had a question that I've been waiting to talk with somebody uh like you to help me try to answer and it takes a cream, right? You're looking for a cream or an ointment. or an ointment or an uh gel. Um the Okay, so if you look with a strong enough telescope, uh you can see uh further and further back in time, right? Because you're seeing light that is older and or or new. Well, you'll contextualize that for me, but basically you could effectively look at uh the big bang. Yeah. The origin of the universe. Exactly. So you are looking at the past and then but by the way just to be clear uh we're in a coronaverse right now but if I were sitting across the table from you don't see me in your present you see me in your past light at 186,000 m per second goes 1 foot per nancond 1 foot per billionth of a second. So if we're like 3 ft across from each other, you see me not as I am, but as I once was 3 billionth of a

11:44 second ago. We don't make a big deal of that because human lifespan is much longer than billionth of a second. But if I start getting farther and the moon is one and a half light seconds, the sun 500 light seconds, the nearest star four light years. you keep going farther and farther away, you get to significant time frames back into the past of the object you're observing. And that's why that's where cosmology comes in. It's how we decode the record of the universe because it takes light so much damn time to reach us. And Sean, you were going to take cosmology right at one point. Uh just Yeah. For my skin. For my skin.

12:27 That's why I glow. So that's why I glow like a star beautifully. Yes. So the so if you're looking back at at something that happened a long time ago i.e. the big bang um somewhere in that big bang is our planet is is the earth and therefore every you see the earth before anything has ever happened on it. No. So if you can see so if you can see back I'll let you continue but I I should really stop you there but I'll let you continue. Well so let's let's make an assumption that the big bang was the start of everything. So, at some point, whatever we're we're rolling around on here on this this rock was in there. So, my my point is, if you can see all the way back that far, is there a a theory um because it would be impossible to actually construct where you could set up a series of mirrors where you could look back and forth and back and forth and back and forth enough times theoretically where you could see

13:22 yesterday. Yes. If you if we can already see the big bang, that's got to be harder than seeing yesterday. But if you if you constricted that into or contracted that rather into a series of mirrors, then maybe you could eventually see last week, last month. Yeah. So if if you put a mirror one light day away from you and you look at it, you will see yourself yesterday, right? Okay. But that requires a mirror. The Big Bang is not a mirror. So when you see evidence of the Big Bang that far out, you're not seeing us go through the Big Bang.

13:53 You're seeing another part of the universe go through the Big Bang. If they looked to where we are, they don't see our light from you right now in this podcast. No, they see Earth and our galaxy 14 billion years ago when we were going through the Big Bang. So you have to be that distance away to see that far in the past. So there is no way to construct a a a window into the past by setting up a series of of of welltuned mirrors. Well, if if someone else set that up for you. Yeah. You So you can set up a a mirror seven light days away and then you look at it, you'll see yourself two weeks ago. Um because it's seven days out, seven days back. So you So in theory, like Jason could apologize to me for certain things that he did. In theory, do you think we could set enough mirrors in a row so that we could look far back enough to see the start of Jason's question?

14:52 No, that's top top scientists still trying to I want to go back again. A lot of people don't ask you about you and I'm interested in you as well as all the other stuff and I still want to get to that, but you're you have two kids, right? Mhm. Did they ever follow in your passion or do they have are they on TikTok and that's it? There was there was never that expectation or obligation and they had freedom to think what they want to study what they want and they're each doing different things right now. But I can tell you that by the time they were 12 or 13 certified scientifically literate. Oh wow. Oh yeah. You don't have to tell us but are they in that world of science? No. No. but they're scientifically literate. So the the difference is if you're scientifically literate means your brain is wired for inquiry. It's wired for thought. So that at a young age, I'm happy that they were also polite when they did this because

15:48 it otherwise would be embarrassing. If you were a grown-up walked into the room, and you said something, oh, I checked my horoscope sign today and my 12-year-old, 13-year-old kids heard that, they would say, well, what did you find? They would start they would start asking questions and and what are you basing that on and have you tested it? And they would just calmly sort of ask the questions to drive you into the corner that you really are in because you you have no foundation for those thoughts. That's the science literacy that I'm talking about that anybody can and should cultivate for themselves whether or not you become a scientist.

16:21 Uhhuh. Neil, if you could pick one subject that you would have an equal level uh depth of knowledge about, uh what what would it be? Is there is there another is there another area? Thanks for that question. If I had a if there's a parallel universe, uh oh, here we go. An alternative not in this universe, but another universe. Uh in another universe, I would be writing songs for Broadway musicals. Why? Do you write? Do you play anything? Oh, here. No. This is why it's another universe. That's why I said this is this is so I don't have musical ability. But I do I I like to write. I like knowing the effect that words have on your emotions, on your thoughts, on your enlightenment. I like simplifying phrases. And good songs are are not complex stories. Go read a book if you wanted a complex story. It's got to hit you emotionally. So, um, I am, my family, we go to musical theater often.

17:22 I will tear up at a simple Broadway boy meets girl musical or or or nowadays it's boy meets boy, girl meets girl. Any of those where there's the expression of human emotion. Well, thank you for checking out the 2010 smash hit on Broadway Promises Promises starring Sean Hayes and Kristen Chennowith. That's so nice of you. That's incredible. Way to go backstage, Neil. Yeah. So, so if I had a an alternative universe, so I like to write and so when I write my books, each sentence, each phrasing, each turn of the syllables of a word, I'm thinking about how that lands in the reader. And I I think if it's done well, that's what it should be like because then you'll just want more of it. So, if there's another universe, that's what I'd be doing in that universe. I have an idea, and this is I'm not being snarky here at all. What what if you wrote a space musical? Like if you I I could see that would be

18:18 really interesting if you somehow I mean would would anybody think to make a musical about Hamilton? You know, like that's just bizarre. Yeah. The fascinating fact about Broadway musicals is that they have been on every possible subject you couldn't ever have imagined. Hamilton cats uh uh the the the prime minister of of Argentina, you know, just just make the list. How does that even So why don't you So why don't you do that? Because that's another Didn't I just How do I start this? I said in another universe. You But you could be the creative consultant. You're saying he could write the book and somebody else could write the music. Yeah, I think so. I would need some I would need a I do have some ideas and I have notes in my book, but that's not I got other I got the universe, but we're making deals here.

19:04 But, you know, it's funny that you say, Neil, that you say, you know, that they've they've there are Broadway musicals based on every conceivable subject, the president of of Argentina with Avita there um you know, whatever it is. And that kind of reminded me of and this whole conversation reminded me of somebody one time explaining to me the idea of infinity. And they said imagine infinity is imagine a room imagine a library that is filled with books on every possible subject including me describing that library to you. There's a book on uh about me describing describing that book to you.

19:39 There's like on every possible go the mirrors again the effect of me describing that uh conver you know to you what effect that has on butterflies like whatever understood moving forward and so then imagine that they're stacked in every direction. Yeah. As far as you can see they said that's what infinity is. We got it. No no no the libraries themselves. End it with a question. Will can I talk to you for a sec? My my my question is this. No. I got one for you. Let's let's have I'll give you a starter infinity, right? Because it's not really infinity, but it is something to think about. So if consider that if you open a dictionary, every word used in the definition of every word is in that same dictionary. Yeah, that's kind of mind-blowing. Yeah, that is interesting. I never thought about that. Okay. Now, now, now other things that are sort of transcend comprehension. Pinocchio. Okay. Here's a

20:41 sentence that Pinocchio utters. Ready? My nose is about to grow. What will happen? It's going to grow. It's going to grow. Probably. It's not going to grow. It's not going to grow. Cuz he's a liar. Let me finish. It's not going to grow. That That means he was lying. So, that's right. So, it's not going to grow. No, that means he was telling the truth. Okay. So, let me get to some other questions I have. So, so my my point is that sentence has no meaning in Pinocchio's universe, even though the nouns and verbs are all in the right place. It transcends the world that you have set up to understand Pinocchio's statements and his actions. It's a very simple sentence. Given that we agree upon the rules of Pinocchio. Yes. Yes. We all of course we agree. Of course we agree.

21:38 Given those rules, this is a sentence that cannot even be uttered in his world. Okay. So infinity is something that is not fundamentally accessible to the wiring of our brain because our brain evolved on the plains of the Serengeti to not get chased by a lion. Okay? Not get eaten by a lion. This is so the the tools we need to not die in our evolutionary past do not include infinity. Now so based on that so so Neil so our brains are not wired to understand the concept of fundamentally to understand the concept of of infinity. It's yeah there there's an absence of logic in we we are logical creatures relative to other life forms but our capacity to not be logical knows no bounds. But the but the fact is you know that and so you have to make certain leaps in order to try to how do you hack that in order to make you know discoveries and things that you have to do. What is do you know and and are you

22:40 just aware of your own inability to do it at the same simultaneously it comes from the math. So you do the math long enough then you absorb the math as part of your intuition so you can think intuitively about what the math equations would have done rather than relying solely on how you would have not getting eaten by a lion and the wiring that that provides. So you start building up other wiring in your brain that empowers you to think in these other ways. And this is how you think in the quantum. The quantum world is really weird. Particles popping in and out of existence. particles simultaneously existing as a wave and a wave particle duality. You might have heard of this.

23:18 All of this is fundamental and it the mathematics describes it. The experiments measure it. The brain cannot comprehend it. I know we don't have a lot of time and I have tons of questions. So, let's do like not a rapid fire. Well, lightning round. I'm good. I got you. Okay, let's do it. So, how boxers are briefs? And by and by the way, my lightning answers need to be matched with your lightning questions, just to be clear, in order for that to work. No, we're you're we're here to listen to you. If you guys have like something to follow, but these are really I wrote I wrote these down because I'm really want to know, are we ever going to get to Mars? And why do we want to? We will if it has geopolitical priorities, but otherwise, I think it's a very distant dream. So, if China says they want to put military bases on Mars, we're there in nine months. If not, really? Really? Yeah. Yeah, we're going

24:06 to the moon again. Is that right? Did I just read that? Yeah, because other countries are gaining power over what's called cis lunar space, the space between earth and the moon. And that's the new high ground. So they're geopolitical forces that make all of that happen. The business cases come later, the tourism, then all the rest of this and the SpaceX that all comes after. The first foray out there are countries who have geopolitical interest in mind. Huh? Columbus came to the new world. Was that Did Did Queen Isabella say, "Oh, Columbus, take take pictures and bring them back and tell us." No, it was like, "Here's a satchel of Spanish flags. Plant them wherever you go and find a shorter trade route to India."

24:46 It's always been the driver of humanity. Always. Always. So, because I'm obsessed with the speed of light, how soon will we be able to travel the speed of light? Because so many scientists, you know, through the through the Wait, next, they But wait, they've informed us of certain laws of physics. I'm just wondering when do we start applying those? Uh, so breaking the light barrier is not the same thing as breaking the sound barrier, right? When you heard people say, "Oh, we'll never fly." And they were just idiots. You know why? Because birds fly, all right? And they're heavier than air. You just haven't figured it out yet. And and uh, can you never go faster than sound? Rifle bullets went faster than sound before we had planes. So, we can make things faster than sound. Just figure it out.

25:26 The speed of light is not just a good idea. It's the law of the universe. And if you want to go faster, you have to like tunnel through spaceime or or have warp drives, which is what all the science fiction ones do. They don't just actually travel faster than light. They try to find some plausible scientific accounting for how they can travel faster than light. And I applaud them all for that. Right. So why then after what seems like a hundred years is the only means of fast travel an airplane? Because doesn't it seem like by now there should be some kind of improvement on the plane? The only improvement is, you know, the Sean, don't get pissed off. I know he sounds angry.

26:01 I aggro today. I I am because because I'm frustrated that this is the lightning round, right? I'm going to tell you. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Here it is. Now, somebody else is angry. Uh, some of you are old enough to remember the the the Concord SST Supersonic, right? So, um, that's like the next leap from an ordinary airplane. Do you know something? We didn't have a supersonic commercial plane, but France and England did. Right. That was the Concord. And I always wondered why they stopped making them. Oh, you know why?

26:34 Oh, well, wait a minute. Um um why can't they fly to Los Angeles? Oh, we're not going to let them because they'll have a sonic boom over the continental United States. So, we cut them off at their kneecaps and said, "Yeah, you can fly, but you can only cross the ocean." That greatly limited the growth of that supersonic industry. And why don't we want a sonic boom over the country? Because it's too scary. What? Well, sha it can shatter dishes and things and and knock them. The space shuttle did it though. Well, well, that's because it's coming in over Florida and it's over low density area and mostly ocean. So, you have to you have to understand Neil Sean's theory is that if you're high enough, anything's okay. You know, it's so stupid. So, what we really want is hypersonic transportation where you get to Tokyo in an hour and a half.

27:21 This would be suborbital. I want that, right? Okay, that's even faster than just the Concord. I I you know, if you go suborbital, you are no you are not farther than 45 minutes from any two places anywhere on Earth. Here's the problem. What does it mean that it took you an hour and a half to drive to the airport and another 45 minutes in TSA? So, it took you 3 hours and then you got to park the car. 3 hours to take a 45minute trip to Tokyo. There's a point where just put me on an airplane where I have internet and movies and I'm fine and I don't need to get there faster. So correct me if I'm wrong. This this is what suborbital is. The the Earth is rotating at 1,000 miles an hour, right?

27:58 At the equator. At the equator. Okay. So So it's it's spinning around let's say 1,000 miles an hour. A plane really, let's for in in math or what easy numbers that goes 500 miles an hour. 500 miles an hour. Right. So if you're going the direction the Earth is rotating, you're never going to get to that destination because you cuz you're inside this 3mile uh gravitational bubble. Right, Neil? You should know that the teacher told him that on the second night cuz he he stayed for a second night. We had a wonderful time.

28:26 Wonderful time. No. No. So, so if you launch your plane at the equator y and you stay in Earth's atmosphere because it's flying through the Earth's atmosphere. Earth is turning is 1,000 miles an hour. The air is moving at 1,000 miles an hour. The plane is moving at 1,000 miles an hour. Now it goes 500 miles an hour. So, it's going 1500 mph through space, but if you go straight up and you leave this 3m sort of bubble, you then leave gravitational pole and you can take advantage of that,000 mph spin. So, they want that th000 miles to get a little extra boost to go into orbit around the Earth and orbital speed is 18,000 mph. So, you get a little you get a little boost by doing that. If you go back the opposite way, you got to make up 2,000 miles hour worth of speed.

29:10 But even if you just went straight up like a rocket does and you in fact they don't I'm saying if but if most just to be clear just some people don't know most of the energy of a rocket launch is not to go up it is to go downream and give it enough sideways speed so that it doesn't fall out of the sky. Wow. So that so the space shuttle the space station they're all going 18,000 miles an hour sideways. That's why uh mission control, you're now go through the execute the roll program. And this is the space shuttle now going sideways downstream or down. Um so that's so they're not going up, they're going sideways. That's most of their energy. We think space is up. You know how high up they go? Where do you guys live? Where do you live? LA. Okay. They are less above Earth's surface than the distance of San Francisco from Los Angeles. No. Okay. Wow. In fact, they're half that distance. What's it? What? How

30:10 many miles San Francisco? It's like four three 300 miles. 350 mi. Yeah, it's about Yeah. Yeah. About 350 mi. So 2/3 of that. That's the height that the space shuttle flies. So you can drive that in a few hours. That's not even what the rocket is doing. Okay. It's just getting up above the atmosphere because it doesn't have to plow through air. By the way, if we didn't have an atmosphere, it would just go sideways. Just launch it sideways. Okay. So once you're above the atmosphere, you're outside the gravitational pole, right? How tall is the atmosphere? No, the last we checked, Earth uh is orbited by the moon. The moon feels Earth's gravity. So all astronauts are deep within Earth's gravity. The difference is they're weightless not because they've left Earth's gravity, but because they're falling towards Earth.

30:56 So here's the brilliance of Isaac Newton. You want to mind something mind-blowing? Here it is. Isaac Newton. He said, "hm, there's the moon in orbit around the Earth and I drop an apple and it falls straight to Earth. Is this the same thing or is it two different things going on?" And then he had a thought experiment. This is why he's Isaac Newton and we're the rest of us. He said, "Suppose I have a mountain and I have a a cannon and I fire a cannonball from that mountain horizontally. It'll go out a few, you know, hundred yards and hit the ground, right? Suppose I fire it faster. It'll go farther along Earth's surface before it hits the ground. Let me keep increasing the speed. And it falls farther and farther away from you. There must be a speed where it falls so far away from you, it completely goes around the Earth and hits you in the back of the head. Well, at that point, just duck and the ball

31:45 continues in what we call orbit. And that entire time it was falling towards Earth. The difference is it fell by the exact amount that Earth curved away from it. I try to throw knowledge at Jason from a a distance and it never hits him in the head. Never ever hits him in the head. No, just think about this is this is profound. Think about this. Yeah, it's going sideways so fast that when you've dropped a foot when you've dropped a foot, Earth's curvature curves away from you by a foot. So, you never catch you never catch up to it. You never catch up to the Earth. Thus is the definition of an orbit. And you are in freef fall the entire time. like cutting the cables of an elevator falling straight down except you happen to have sideways motion and so falling straight down means you never hit the earth. Neil, there's a lot of debate about this because I know you got to go but there's a lot of debate about

32:37 do you agree a lot of people say uh that the best season of Will and Grace was season five. Do you think that that's true? Because Okay, wait. I know you have to go but I really this is the biggest one I wanted to talk to you about and you can we can just plow right through it. I want to talk about aliens. I love them. I want to meet them if I Nobody doesn't love the aliens. I'm old. Okay, sure. I would be with them. Are they real? Have we been visited by them? And if not, will we? Because because And this is the other follow-up thing. I watched, you know, I'm I'm like an obsessed documentarian about aliens in space and all that flying Area 51. So Bob Lazar has this documentary. Did you see it? Was it was about he he claimed he had or has some element that is not of this earth, which alien craft is made up of. Is this Do you know this? Um, yeah, I've heard of these claims, but the they don't offer it to laboratories

33:27 to I mean I mean here's the thing. If if we're visited by aliens, why maybe we've been visited. Okay, maybe I I think we have. Okay, let me offer you counterveiling uh thought regarding that. Do you realize we collectively upload a billion photographs and videos to the internet per day? Per day. Every day we upload more photos and videos to the internet that existed in the world in the first hundred years of photography. We we have photos of extremely rare phenomena like buses tumbling in in hurricanes. I mean or in in tornadoes in the day. You wouldn't say, "Oh, that's interesting. Let me go home and get my camera and film this." No, everybody's got a camera, right? Until we had until everybody had a camera, you had all these reports of people getting abducted.

34:29 Where's the photo of the craft? Where's the high? Why is it that your your best evidence for aliens visiting is fuzzy Navy video? Yeah, I know. I Why Why is that your best evidence? What do you think? What do you think about the Navy video? Uh Neil, what do you think? I I don't know what it is. That's why it's you unidentified flying. But in this documentary, they say, you know what you're saying? Why Why wouldn't aliens come down and greet greet us and why don't they say hello? Because and the the explanation is they are afraid of us and they are afraid what we would do to them. So the common denominator of all conspiracy theorists is when they don't have the data. Yeah. They have to invent something to bridge the gap in their data. So I'm not bridging any gap. I'm saying everybody is a recorder. Where's the evidence of these visitations? Why is it that crop circles only happen when nobody's looking? All right. Why are the

35:25 aliens just shy? Okay, aliens are shy. I then maybe they don't want to be disturbed by us. Fine. Okay, but when the aliens finally come who are not shy, I don't think they're only going to show up in fuzzy Navy video. So, let's let's close with this. Um, first of all, we do have one thing in common, you and I. You have over a dozen honorary doctorates because of all the knowledge in your brain, while I have over a dozen doctors treating the condition of my brain. So, what are the scientists? What are the scientists getting right right now and what are they getting wrong as far as COVID and global warming?

36:00 Okay, so one of the challenges is when you model climate, it's very messy. There's a lot of there's this heat from the sun, there's the uptake of carbon dioxide in the ocean, there's the spewing of carbon dioxide. It's it's very complicated. And so what we need is training on how to think about models presented by scientists because every model has an uncertainty range. And so you present the model and the uncertainty range to lawmakers and to policy people and say here's the best available knowledge. Now find a political solution to this. You don't say take the politics and say oh we deny what your scientists are saying. What is that? What what what are you doing? What what this is a recipe for disaster? As I've said I think I tweeted this recently. Every disaster movie begins with what? People ignoring the warnings of a scientist. Right. Right. Right. Of course, but but it goes to what you were

36:54 saying before. As we know and and whether people want to admit it or not, we're constantly driven by geopolitical goals, etc. personal uh and I accept that, but just don't don't put those in front of objectively true scientific information because then what then you're arguing you're arguing a house of cards and nothing good will ever come of that. So maybe we need to retrain people to understand what science is, how and why it works. What is an objective truth? What does it mean to be convinced by something? Why do we have people who think earth is flat? Why? What? I know it's crazy. Where is the failure? Do you think global warming is the next quote pandemic that we're going to be dealing with? Well, it's it's an existential crisis that's happening on a longer time scale than the pandemic is. So the time frames over which things have been happening with regard to the pandemic are rapid. They're happening hourwardly.

37:50 All right. Right. And we all need to behave coherently to fight it. It's like saying, "Oh, well, some states wants to open before other states." And the my favorite analog to that is that's like opening a peeing section of the pool. Okay. Okay. You just go to that section of the pool and pee there. Here's the problem. The the virus is not visible. Okay? If if by the way, if your pee turned purple in contact with the chlorine, everybody would be called out for that. Okay? Instantly. But you can't see the virus. And so people think they're somehow immune to it. But if a monster came out of the woods, grabbed people at the rate that COVID deaths are happening, grabbed them and bit their head off and spilled their bloods in the streets, the coordinated effort in the world to get rid of this creature would would know no bounds. Okay, so here we have a virus that you can't see and somehow you think is not going to affect

38:49 you. This is a problem with human cognition and human um again it's it relates to the Serengeti. Is it big and it can eat you? I'm scared of it. Otherwise, I don't know. I'm not scared. Okay. Even though if I should be. It's amazing the resources and that the government uses and the money and the power to to solve this problem almost immediately when they could do that with anything. Very good point. And so for me, it was a shot across our bow. Think of if hostile aliens came and visited. We should all coordinate. Put down your weapons against each other because they're after humans and we are all human. And it could be the greatest peace inducing force there ever was for all humans to realize they have a common enemy. So my point is this is a practice run. Global warming is happening on a slower time scale than weeks. Yes. Yet we all have to coordinate. You can't say well if China's not going to fix the

39:41 air, why should I? When air molecules don't need passports to go from one country to another. Neither do water molecules and pollution molecules. So at some point we have to think globally as one species and I don't see that happening anytime soon. You know we did there was an initial big response to this pandemic and when people were you know everybody's locked down all of a sudden nobody knew what to do. But it's about that sustained interest in it and it's somebody I remember somebody saying it's such a we're experiencing such an American lockdown that eventually people are like I'm kind of bored of it now. Um and right it's not headlines anymore.

40:18 Yeah. It's not really Yeah. it's not really that interesting to me anymore. And and the problem is is that what happens is once again certain interest, special interest, they start to outweigh uh the value of this sustained interest in overcoming this. So let me let me be devil's advocate here for the moment. So you're a restaurant worker and now restaurants are closed by law. Okay? You're a bus boy, you're whatever. And so the problem is we didn't go into this with a plan to give people hope and expectations for how they will return to normal. Right? The so so the the governmental handling of this scientific information uh you know in hindsight it's easy to say that it was botched. I don't know how to done it differently. I I don't have a a silver bullet here. But I can tell you the next time this happens, we got to have a rollout plan and the factory floors factory you go into into virus mode and people separate

41:14 and production goes down a little but it doesn't go to zero. Okay? And you have people shifts and people work this 8 hour shift and that 8 hour shift so that they're not right on top of each other there. We didn't have any of those plans and that's what you need. Do you think that we need to get ready for this happening? Not necessarily with Corona or a different corona or whatever it is that this is this is our new reality. It's called disaster preparedness and the problem is no one wants to spend money on it if it's not an obvious threat. And let me get back to the CO2 warming the planet. If CO2 were purple and you'd walk by a car and you saw purple stuff coming out, well, purple's too pretty. Uh if it was sludgy brown and you see this coming out and you see it coming out of smokes and you see that and it just stayed in the air, right?

41:58 You would say, "We got to stop this. This is hurting me. This is coming, but it's invisible and you can't smell it." And so we we're very ostrich-like in this regard. Yeah. Well, Neil, I know you got to run. I'm a huge fan of science. I'm a huge fan of facts. And I'm a huge fan of good people. And you are all three of those things. So, thank you so much for being here. You've had you've had like three or four fax machines in your life, haven't you? Yeah, for sure. And I and I just I still use it. I get like auditions from it and like Yeah. coming left. I got to refill it actually. No, but Neil, thank you so much. Yeah. Please keep sharing your your your your knowledge in the in the generous and interesting way that you do and and Well, thanks for that. And I'd love to come back on. I mean, when you um if all your other guests say no, I'm never doing that again, you can call me back.

42:46 Listen, I was going to say I can't speak for the other guys, but I can. I I would say we I know that we that we would all be delighted to have a part two with you if you'd be willing to do it because the universe is vast. And I also want to say just if I could spend just one moment fanboying, you guys make really fun movies and they're just for me a little bit a little bit of escapism in it. Movie. Uh so just keep keep it going. We need it. We need the the diversion. The escape. Yeah, the levity. Thanks, which would be the opposite of gravity.

43:18 Levity. Gravity. Way to bring it back around. Beautiful. Right there. Well, thank you very much, Neil. Thank you very much. See you later. Mhm. Bye. Isn't he like for me uh I I don't know why I have that chip in my brain that is endlessly fascinated by that stuff. I could talk for hours and hours and hours about all of those topics. Same same here. I I'm I'm incred. Well, the one thing I wanted to ask him and and I I could ask you guys the same because I don't know what my answer would be about it either. Do you think if you went up to space and then you came back down, if you just did like one lap and you came, would you be like depressed? Oh, just literally to get up so high to like look back down at the earth then come back down everything would be so anticlimactic. I wonder if it would be I think more people need to think like that. Like you're saying Jason is well any astronaut I've heard in an interview

44:14 or anything they say the exact same thing you're saying. You go up there you get a picture and an image of the world we live in and you realize how small it is. And every astronaut that has experienced that has said you realize that we're all the same and that why can't we figure out how to get along? You know what I mean? And and I think every astronaut always says ask like what is that experience when you're out in space and they say it's out of this world. Oh, nice. Well, you just dropped out for a little bit. Sorry. What happened? Oh, there you are. You're back.

44:47 Trust me, it was pretty good. Sean, um Well, did you guys learn anything today? So much. How how how badly do we need to have him? He should be We should have him on like once every three months just to keep us, you know, what's going on with the cosmo? What's happening? Right. Right. when Neil said, um, "Every single day we upload over a billion photos." Will goes, "You mean the four of us?" Yeah, he loves to post. Will's a real poster. I know. I just tag it, post it, like it. Will, do you tweet still? Rarely. Yeah, he does. Will's with a very frequent. It's like, "Hey, lines are long at Starbies today." It's like, "Shut up, Will." Hey, it's my right to call it Starbies. Okay. I wanted to I wanted to ask Neil if he starts his day off at Starbucks.

45:36 Wow. Wow. He probably pays with Starbucks. Do you guys get that? Do you guys get that? Yeah. No, I got it. Sean, do you get your own joke? Do you even get your own joke? All right, let's let our listener get to dinner or whatever. I like the idea that all our anybody who listens to our podcast is going is rushing to a meal. We have to book our sole listener at some point. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Thank you, Sean. All right. Love you guys. Love you guys. Love you, too. Bye. Bye. Bye. Smart less.

46:18 Smart less.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "RE-RELEASE: Neil deGrasse Tyson | SmartLess"?

In order: 0:00 Astronomy, Hayden Planetarium, Black hole, Craig Robinson; 5:00 Roman Empire, Apple orchard, Astronomy, Astrophysics; 10:00 Cosmology; 15:00 Broadway musicals, Infinity, Hamilton, Horoscope; 20:00 Infinity, Chris Columbus, Cis-lunar space, Dictionary; 25:00 Space shuttle, France, Los Angeles, Space station; 30:00 Area 51, Bob Lazar, Gravity, Los Angeles; 35:00 Global warming, Crop circles, Serengeti; 40:00 Factory, Gravity.

What is mentioned in this SmartLess episode?

53 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Infinity, Astronomy, Gravity, Broadway musicals, Space shuttle, Global warming. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "RE-RELEASE: Neil deGrasse Tyson | SmartLess"?

The episode runs 46 min; the transcript is about 8,904 words in 63 timestamped sections.

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