Neil deGrasse Tyson | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #420

some tour dates to announce if you want to come see The Return of the Rat tour we'll be in Louisville Kentucky January 25th and 26th Indianapolis Indiana January 27th and 28th Shreveport Louisiana February 1 and 2. Baton Rouge Louisiana February 3 through 5. Corpus Christi Texas March 24 Houston Houston sorry Texas March 25th uh Phoenix Arizona April 26th through 29th New York City at the Beacon Theater May 13th in Austin Texas June 1st through 3rd um some of those dates are getting sold out some of those dates we will be adding new shows to I

know specifically Austin uh Phoenix and possibly uh Houston you can get tickets at theovan.com t-o-u-r make sure to access tickets through there to get accurately priced ticketing uh thank you guys so much if you do come out to a show and you want to leave something for us a gift or an item or something you can always leave it with the merch people at the merch table uh just so you know that uh thank you guys so much for all your love and support um I'm excited to uh to come and see you you know

it's hunting season it's hunting people are out there setting traps snares put a Taffy some people put a damn Taffy out there and they'll catch a pigeon on that [ __ ] people do all kind of thing if you like to hunt then check out the hitter hunting club collection new merch now available at Theo vonstore.com we've got hoodies in Orange and maroon we got a raccoon on one of them because you know my brother's out there killing raccoons out there out in um Southern Utah he's out there uh we're just really getting those little

damn criminals they are we got camo hats traditional and orange we got it all Elmer fudge yourself up Elmer fud your cousin man fud your cousin a bunch of cousin futters get that hitter and more at theovanstore.com today's guest is an astrophysicist he's an author he has a new book called Starry Messenger Cosmic perspectives on civilization we're going to chat a little bit about it and he's just that you know he's that Galactic bad boy he's that um you know he's that uh outer space uh Joe Montana you know he's going deep with the facts

baby you know what he is um he's science he's a science man he's a mannequin for science he likes the facts and he wears them and he wears them well we're happy to have him here today Mr Neil deGrasse Tyson out loud [Music] sit and tell you my story [Music] there's an old joke uh there's a guy his name is Tex and people said why they call you text are you from Texas and he said no I'm from Louisiana and he said why they call you texts he said because I don't want anyone calling me

Louise I could see that that was just a cute something from the 1960s what old old sort of old-timer old-timey joke yeah that's one of one of my favorite jokes is uh they have this guy Crystal Lee he's a comedian and he has a joke it says um oh I saw the first 48 it's a TV show where they have 48 hours to solve a crime but really they have as much time as they want that's one of my favorite ones um and then this one's a little edgier but it's um what's the last thing

you want to hear when you're giving a [ __ ] to Willie Nelson what I'm not Willie Nelson okay I've heard that somewhere yeah that's not my joke but it's my favorite joke and you know the uh George Carlin has a [ __ ] joke he said uh here's a sentence that's never been uttered in the history of the world stop giving me a [ __ ] or I'll call the police and ever since I heard that I said there are sentences in the world that just have never been uttered in the history of the

world well that's funny because Joe Rogan when he says that everything has been he says like everything has been done like you've no no no I'll give an example okay okay we uh in New York 20 years ago we opened a new facility to the universe and we have models of planets and molecules and things that are dangling so you get the size the relative sizes of things I gave a tour of the facility to Martha Stewart wow okay She's All That by the way because as we're walking around and it was like a display

surface she's like oh tidy she was taking the fingerprints off the off the off the he's probably taking her fingerprints off she's been guilty or something so Watch What Happens we're walking around and and we have these orbs and she says Dr Tyson you have dust on your molecules and I thought I said wow that sentence has never been spoken in the history of the universe that's fine see I think that's it I agree with that kind of stuff right yeah one time I was on his show and the first thing he said he's like

you know there's been another theovan there's been another in a like there's just he wants to Multiverse to be another one of you oh we can go there we can go that's what he goes into but you actually in your uh did we begin yet we all up in the beginning I think we're rolling we're rolling yeah yeah we're good Let It Go I love what you've done with the place by the way oh that's very nice we're just about to get up we're we're getting a new studio so we're we're getting close to the

end of the time don't make it too impersonal I mean make sure the studio is still intimate just feels intimate yeah yeah I agree it's important right yeah yeah otherwise what are you doing you know you're on stage you know and that's not the point of a podcast dude that's a great point because we've been looking at places and I'm like I don't want something that's too corporate or something no it doesn't feel right it ain't right it ain't right yeah feels like more you want and when you're on stage that's you be on stage

that's different right yeah here we're chilling yeah yeah we're killing you wanted to feel that way yeah exactly that's a great point I'm glad you I'm really glad you said that because I needed some affirmation there um but in your book in Starry Messengers so this is your new book right and thanks for for checking it out yeah yeah yeah definitely I tried to check out as much as I just as much as like um I had time to kind of uh here's what you do you're here in La you're in L.A okay you get

the audiobook and then when you're stuck in traffic you just three days of traffic get through the book just fine right that's how they should Market them how many days of 405 traffic you know four days of traffic um but one thing he said about it was individual that the end of their uh you you kind of almost did a little bit of an equation on the individual it's kind of towards the later in the book you talked about it was just like that each person is unique and you kind of went into you went

straight there yeah oh my gosh because yeah that's the life and death chapter so there's so just tell me about that I just want people to hear how unique they are oh yeah okay so just the book is at Cosmic perspectives on civilization and it's what the world looks like if you're scientifically literate and you have a and and you're thinking about Earth from space and the world looks really different not just the world physically but people's interactions are different you have some strongly held opinion and I say no you don't you think you you

think you've deeply thought this through right but you haven't there's this part of it and have you thought about this and have you thought about that I'm not here to hand you an opinion I just want to make sure that whatever opinion you do have is deeply is is rationally formed that you that you've folded all the information together then I walk away and think how the hell you want I don't care yeah I think yeah it definitely helps like adjust maybe the scope of stuff like if you're looking at some from this angle what

about look at it from this side or what about it look at it from the inside or what about a look at it from the history of its beginning like exactly and a quick one before I get to the the uh how unique we are uh just a quick one you know I don't know if you you buy tuna uh now when you buy tuna it's very clear whether it's line clot tuna oh really mine caught okay that's a big selling point because when it's not wine caught it's net caught you know what happens when

they drag a net occasionally they drag a dolphin dolphins are air breathing so if they're caught in the net they suffocate and die oh okay you don't want that so you get line caught tuna and I'm just thinking so for people who just care about that I'm just I wonder what about the tuna just cares about the two do you just not give a rat's ass about the tuna wait what what what and it's and and and then they said well dude kills the dolphin unnecessarily or so so then I said well then make dolphin

Burgers okay he said you can't have that and I said well why not you go to the deli yeah okay if a deli made Dolphin salad sandwiches they'd be picketing out front wouldn't there okay I'd have a cut of it look at your Theo Von I love it we had owl one time at Thanksgiving oh Thanksgiving oh man okay so uh my point is if you if you go to a deli you and there'd be picketers out front if you're serving Dolphins no watch but what else does the deli serve they sell dead chicken dead

turkey dead salmon dead pig dead cow with with roast beef dead vegetables I'll get to that in a minute but they sell all kinds of dead animals in a sandwich and this is just another dead animal but somehow we culturally philosophically we we've divided up the all the kingdoms of life and we do carve outs yeah for what we want to protect and what we don't and often that carve out is arbitrary at some level yeah and just be self-aware of that are you high and Noble because you're saving the dolphin but you're eating the

tuna right I don't know that you entirely are civil dolphin is a mammal well so are pigs and cows all right last I checked yeah okay they're just I think people they're not as graceful they don't they can't do as many well most of them admit that say I will not eat graceful animals right I'll only eat clumsy animals that are ugly so it's a it's an attempt to just make you more honest yeah with yourself about the opinions you carry there's another one let's say you're a vegetarian this is from the chapter meat eaters

and vegetarians okay I go there because you know saying that's what I'm saying each chapter is a is a point of conflict in Civilization I'm trying to illuminate places where people could think differently or maybe not have to think that way at all because in fact what they felt would was deeply held argument really just evaporates in the face of a cosmic perspective so here's one you're a vegetarian because you just don't want to kill animals okay you you don't want to kill a fine so in your basement you have a Humane mouse trap okay

oh yeah I've seen that you've seen those yeah they some of them it's like a little it goes It goes in it gets an art on the walls inside of it it's inside it's like a mouse condominium all right yeah so they go in you got to check them every few days every few days because they'll they'll dry out all right so anyhow so you check it and then you and what do they do with the mouse once they capture it let it free they let it free into the wall all right because they don't

want to kill animals all right I get that but do you realize that a mouse in the wild lives between 9 and 18 months because it's highly likely to be swallowed whole by a owl or pecked apart by all manner of Woodland Predators okay carnivores and so so what you've done is Doom you've doomed the mouse to be eaten prematurely in its life so the best thing you can do for the mouse is leave it in your basement where it will live sex up to six years of a full fat life in your basement but

you're not doing that no because yeah so I guess it makes us feel like some type of noble if we transfer it I'm just saying but you're really putting into a harder life in a harder life correct so if so if you want to say well that's just Nature's Loop and circle well all right so you're saying it's nature Circle to have a owl eat it then by the way if you crawled into the domicile of any animal they'll kill you if they could they'll kill them they will kill your ass yeah they don't care

bro if you if you lay down into an ant nest they will bite you so so all right but oh no we have the intellect and the power to capture something and remove it from your home and I'm just saying if you cared about the mouse you'd leave it in your basement yeah that's all that's that's my only Point yeah I think well that's a good point a lot of a lot of this book is like that it's kind of I thought it was nice about the book that you can kind of pick it up

whenever you can kind of almost start in on any cash yeah because the chapters are independent of each other and but and each one is a is a is a way in a way a chapter on the things we all argue about yeah the chapter on on there's a one on politics you know are you left wing right wing what are you arguing about and why and have you really thought it through there's the vegetarians and meat eaters there's there's um a chapter on life and death risk and reward that one there's a gap in

the human mind I have no other way to account for this where we do it is not natural to think about statistics and probability oh yeah it's not natural and did you know that that doesn't feel as much fun sometimes that's true it ruins something what you want to be true or what you feel to be true yeah or the mystery it takes away the mystery and but it's a Triumph of human intellect that we even went could figure it out in the first place here's what you have you go to you go to Vegas

and and there's someone puts money on a seven on a roulette and I'll say why are you sticking with the seven let's say it's due and they're looking at and and the roulette table they have a list of all the previous numbers yeah and they say it hasn't shown up it's due no it's not it's not due every role has the same probability every time every time it's not do all right what is so what is that feeling then that we get what is that I feel I'm telling you I'm telling other things that people

rolling Dice and they need a low number like a three or four so the roll the light the dice gently and if they need a high number they'll throw it hard no and so so do you know who exploits this about us casinos casinos know we suck at math and probability and statistics so they exist other human beings learn this about human beings and created an entire industry to exploit it damn it's sad My People my people the American physical Society physicist um this is back in the 80s they were going to have their annual

meeting in in San Diego and there was a snafu with the hotel reservations Vegas said we'll take you you got four thousand people at the MGM said we'll take you so all the physicists went to Vegas and we know probability and statistics we understand the fact that basically you don't win relative to the casino at the end of the week there was a news headline physicists in town lowest Casino take ever [Laughter] so it's just it's sad like almost the saddest chapter that I wrote well why do we feel that so what is that feeling

that makes us feel like is it a feeling that we create is it or where does that come from that makes us feel like this is it it's because we don't have the brain wiring to know otherwise I have no other accounting for it we just don't think by the way that branch of math was one of the last to be discovered do you realize probability and statistics was developed and discovered after calculus wow you can pick I think it's because the brain doesn't even know how to go there I have a I have a

research paper from the mid 1700s which it feels like a long ago but a lot of math had been developed before that including calculus and in that paper it says I've just discovered how helpful it is to take an average of numbers right that's pretty normal that's normal stuff and somebody had to discover this WOW about the world and so so we yeah I guess we don't want because do you think also at that time there was a lot there's also back then there's more sorcery there's more Wizards yeah there's more less than than the

Middle Ages and stuff but right there's still a few Milling around yeah a few and and so and so I think people there's a little bit more mysticism then so probability probably is something it probably would be the last thing you think about if somebody over here is you know Hester prenance somebody at a dam that that's a perception party what you're saying I think is because we had Sorcerers and wizards and people with mysterious powers and shamans and things they could live in the mystery of the probability and statistics and you think it's a

power that they wield and so there's no urge to try to decode it because it's their powers right yeah so I agree with you I think right they hadn't really debunked all those powers and religion was really at the at the on everyone's breath so there was a lot more I think uh mystery and it's not just probably even physiology so for example you go back you know three four hundred years if you fell on the ground writhing and frothing at the mouth people would think you were winning something from God no no it's no

no no no you J and you're doing this and you're shaking the devil just occupied your Bible boy that's what the devil looks like and feels like so oh my gosh the devil's there let me go to get the priest so you're in a small town how far away is the church it's two blocks away okay so you go down you know you could be choking on the damn muffin okay you know what I'm saying it could be but I'm specifically referring to that condition okay you're frothing at the mouth okay so they get the

priest the priest gets the robe the holy water the crucifix they go to on location they bless them put the and then the symptoms go away oh now you're healed by the priest that is the exact and it was a seizure and it was a seizure it was an epileptic seizure epileptic seizure matches the time scale of you going to get a priest down the block in a small town yeah okay wow and so boom why think it's anything but the devil this episode is sponsored by betterhelp that's right unfortunately life doesn't come with a

user manual you won't find when you can check your pockets check your pants check your crevasses check your check out chat go ahead check feel around feel yourself there's no user manual so when life isn't working for you it's normal that you can feel stuck hell I felt so damn stuck I'd feel like I'm got glue on me I'm glued out navigating life's challenges can be challenging that's why better help is here to help better help therapists are trying to help you figure out the cause of challenging emotions and learn productive coping skills which makes

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the right therapist learn more and save 10 off your first month at betterhelp.com t-h-e-o that's better h-e-l-p etherhelp.com Theo we are so so I don't blame people for this it's just the reality of Discovery and and if you question what you see and and find ways to to experiment with it and you'll realize no it is not the devil it is epilepsy that's uncontrolled firing of your the synapses of your brain it's still a you know a tragic Affliction that's not entirely cured we can control it with drugs and things but that's an example of

the mystery that existed back then do you believe in the devil I remain unconvinced that such a thing exists dang you challenging him by the way Jews don't think of hell just to Jews into heaven but no hell and therefore there's no devil oh wow that's in taking the easy way that's why I hadn't thought about it that way yeah and it's better Real Estate too if you're if you're I feel like if you're advertising it like that like others are Heaven yeah yeah don't worry about the hell right right right right maybe they needed

less forces of control over their conduct than the Christians later did I don't know yeah that's one thing about Christianity man is too sometimes it's like too much pressure well yeah and no one could fulfill that no one can live up to possible which is why here's another one in the spirit of your earlier comment here's another one oh you got sick and this person didn't God is punishing you you did something against God in the last two weeks yeah you were touching your privates all right whatever I mean we all do stuff oh I

do and it's and it's easy to find it and say oh my gosh I must be punished for that and and when that happens then you blame starts getting handed out so here I got another one consider consider that Muslims the it's part of the rituals of being a Muslim is you're cleaning your hands and your feet and you're and your ears and your nose and there's there's an ablution whatever the word is where you there's a cleansing daily wow daily okay good idea my grandmother I think was Muslim then well just think but just

think about this back then nobody's showering every day nobody people's but some funky times okay all right there's some people don't shower every day today but you could and United States we probably take more showers than anybody else in the world from the research I've done on that but point is if a disease comes through and it comes from contact or or some other thing because you're dirty you get sick and the Muslims don't oh so they seem powerful oh my gosh and you're Christian and they're Muslims you're saying they put us a hex on

me these heathens these non-jesus following okay wow this is how this can happen I got another one you ready so now I'm still around the last one you had one you ready you got okay here it goes all right so we would later learn that many of the plagues uh-huh uh were from a flea okay like from a um like a little fly oh yeah there's a fleet just regular regular flea that the house flea that you get on yeah yeah and pets okay so now watch so the flea would get infected and would bite

you and you'd get the plague okay okay the plagues have killed more people than practically any more than Wars okay wow all right so so wow plague is like a blight on you all right so now Watch What Happens where did the fleas come from we would later learn they came from rats and mice yeah okay that were infected with the plague so if your house had rats or mice and mice were common look at old Renaissance paintings there's mice in the corners of the paintings it's really funny just to see this all right so

now watch maybe they were good luck huh if you owned a cat you didn't have mice you didn't get to play You're Gonna Get the plague no wait a minute who owned cats well there are many women that own cats so women didn't get the plague and they were there for Sorcerers they were witches witches and some of them are and and you still associate a cat with a witch yeah to this day to this day I mean when you're when you're you know storytelling about items these are the two uh uh so attachments those

are them so these are this is what happens when you live in a pre-scientific era wow the blame game begins but that's fun as hell some of it well for a movie but I don't want to live in those times yeah so this book is an attempt to unravel this blame game when you see things happening it's not my fault it's your fault but did you really look through your opinions and your thoughts and and and it was neat some of it made me mad ah good good some of them are like [ __ ]

out a woman no no it's mad because you knew it you knew it's true and it's against your urges yeah it was like damn Neil I want to believe what I want to believe you know that's what it felt like sometimes but no but I'm not I don't think I'm heavy-handed I think it's their offerings right have you thought about it this way yeah no I don't think it came off like I'm trying kind of think no I don't think it came off as like no at all I think it was like I don't it

wasn't my intent right if it ever felt that way that was it's just well you're a fat guy you're a factor you're a man you know and uh you know I battle you know like I think I've always kind of battled the dark arts overall so it's like I've never really looked at a ton of the facts you know it's always been this more ethereal sort of but what you feel what what you want to be true rather than what is true and by the way that's uh that that's that's coming a long way in

life to realize the world this is the difference between the different kinds of truths I spent a chapter in the truth in Beauty chapter I just talk about I'll just say spend a minute on it now so there's something I call personal truths this is something no one's going to take in a free Society no one's going to take it from you if Jesus is your savior and you know true to your bones that's a personal truth in a free society and especially in the United States where it's constitutionally protected your freedom of religion no

one should take that from you okay you'd have a legal case if they try all right other personal truths oh well uh Muhammad is my last savior on Earth my last prophet on Earth okay that this would be a Muslim personal truth other truths are Beyonce is your queen right or whatever the things you feel okay personal truths are the foundation of our strongest held opinions and in a pluralistic world society that we should cherish that this is why people are different from each other all right you don't want everybody to be the same oh

that's called a a dictatorship yeah if everybody aligns with exactly the same yeah they don't want it the problem with your opinion if it's in a personal truth if you try to have someone else agree with you you have to have an act of persuasion so what but in the limit that becomes all-out conflict and War people fight over personal truths kill each other because their personal truths don't agree with your personal truth so personal truths when they go outside of yourself risk Bloodshed right in the history of civilization has demonstrated this all right then

there's a political truth which is just something that becomes true just because you heard it often enough and that's a weakness we have and not a weakness evolutionarily it made sense if you see something repeat a hundred times that's reality oh yeah okay but you know what happens now we would people have hijacked that urge to recognize that something that repeats must be true they've hijacked it now they just find something that they want to be true and they repeat it to you you hear it enough it must be true yeah there it is yeah

this Festival nowadays also we have you know since we have technology and we have this advancement like you know with the internet social media it's so it's easy to get things in front of people so many times yes it's easy to I mean our attention span has been high project it's been hijacked completely that's the word there's no other word but hijacked and in the old days we called it brainwashing where you repeat something and then it becomes true that's hijacking this feature of our evolutionary brain that it's trying to create order out of chaos

like Stockholm syndrome we almost are slowly developing almost uh some variance it seem like of a Stockholm syndrome or something like we're like all like Elizabeth's smart you know without the or Elizabeth dumb that's who we're becoming you know saying we're all like you know we don't we're just bearing with what we have to deal with all the time exactly and so you try to sift through what is true and it must be that which was repeated often enough that's a political truth then there's an objective truth okay what does objective mean and the methods

and tools of science are exquisitely tuned to establish objective truth so these are truths that have been demonstrated by observation and experiment and repeated experiment what is the word objective objective means it's true whether or not you believe in it okay so it's no doubt true yeah because I can show that it's true and it's not my bias that thinks it's true here's the data now you see and I don't believe you I think you had a bias I I think your wall current affected this so I'm gonna do it on 240 volts while you

did yours on 125 volts okay 20 volts you do a different experiment of your own design you get the same result so that's objective it's a fact when you do it enough times and that all experiments are great this is this is why science uh it wasn't really developed as we now practice it until around 1600 all right I know that feels like a long time ago but a lot of the world unfolded before then all right and so once we learn if you say something is true let me test it let me let me

find out let me devise an experiment and if I can verify your statement with this experiment and someone else can in a third person we're good here that's an objective truth and what objective truths have going for them is that they're true whether or not you believe in them I don't like them well because the actual nature can't be fooled nature is the ultimate judge jury and executioner yeah if you overeat this week and you gain three pounds next week you can't protest with placards saying I protest the law of gravity because it made me

heavier no you don't have that option so it seems to me if you're going to base laws on things uh but there's a whole chapter in here on on Law and Order right if you're going to create laws in a pluralistic world you base the laws on the objective truth right because that applies to everyone don't base a law on your personal truth because that's forcing it on me and I have a different personal truth is climate change an objective truth oh yes oh yes so what happens is you believe in climate change it's not

a belief it's not about a belief right it's but it's when it's objectively true you don't have to believe it it just is true yeah I believe in it when it's really hot I believe in it it's like a hot day I'm like damn they're right they're right about oh [ __ ] I'm serious dude so I'm like we gotta fight this so so here's the thing so so if it was only determined that way then another person that was in a cold snap would say no I don't believe it right and everybody's making up

their own theories about it because they're it's their own life experience but an experiment takes the information out of yourself okay it's not your perspective it's not your bias it's not your world view and you get all the data available and then you establish the objective truth so so in climate change and I give an example here in the probability uh in the risk and reward chapter um You probably heard the number 97 scientists say it's happening in three percent it saw that in here in the last 20 years um there are basically no scientists

left denying it so it's basically 100 damn right in one hold out but let's go back to when it was three percent because that's a fun number okay all right let's do an experiment some Engineers there's a bridge that's there you don't know where it came from but it's a bridge but it's brand new and it's about to open and you say I want to drive my truck across the bridge and 97 Engineers come up to you and say but I don't know any of the other Engineers so we're not in cahoots or anything yeah

um if you drive a truck that's going to collapse and you're going to die you'll likely die plunging into the Ravine so 97 of them say that three say oh Theo go take your F-150 drive across go on you'll be fine what are you gonna do making my way he's feeling it he's feeling just saying man I take the General Lee off that Master that's what I'm saying man but no I hear you so so you would probably listen to the 97 Engineers especially if you're not an engineer yourself yeah I'm thinking if you got

to look the engineers in the eyes now no ice got nothing to do with this this that's you trying to be human about this ah don't be human that mess you up let me feel what you're saying no they'll show you the research papers there's no eyeballs in the research paper there's no emoticons in the research paper so then what is that that makes me want to look him in the eyes and see what is that oh I'll tell you I tell you it's a good one it's a good one uh we and again I

think it's understandable evolutionarily if you look someone in the eye and they tell you something that just happened that is more true to you than a statistical table with charts right bar charts then a pie graph then a pie graph that says the same [ __ ] thing so that and advertisers know that they hijack this okay testimonial but in the watch they could just show a bar chart and say this detergent is better than all the others and here's the data they could show that but no they show some parent and a kid and

they put it in the machine they pull it out and look how clean and the eyewitness testimony has huge value to our emotions because another human being is communicating it right and so you so so I'll give you another example you could be it's a little more obscure but you you read in like Consumer Reports or whatever that this one car is like a vacuum a vacuum sure is the best one and it's working every time you walk into the vacuum store because you saw the data and someone's walking out saying I will never buy

one of these again it's struck oh you can't say a vacuum sucks sorry sorry uh no this vacuum was awful oh It reversed and it made my whole place I would never do this and you you you hear this the person you don't even know them but they're not a human and they're speaking with emotions huge effect on me and there's there's fire in their gaze okay you're gonna back out and walk out of that store I ain't getting that you ain't getting ain't getting nothing not gonna happen broom I'd rather use a [ __

] broom okay so I think it's natural to trust another human right in that context but that's why we have to train ourselves to trust the data and in science when you become a scientist I'm taking statistics and data analysis and probability essentially every year I'm in school it's not just one class and you move on there are different nuances over there different ways you think about it different ways you ask questions you know what science is it's a professional way of querying nature so that you can not fool yourself into thinking something is true

that is not or that something is not true that is um did I say that right whatever the opposite you might have I don't know I was following it was good no no I'd say that you don't want to be fooled because nature can't be ultimately nature economy right and we have biases where so you don't want do whatever it takes I'm going to give you the scientific method do whatever it takes and I'm going to reword repeat that do whatever it takes to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not or

that something is not true that is doesn't mean getting a video of it does it mean getting getting someone else to check on you did you have your coffee this morning or not is that the measure were you more alert did you miss something right do whatever it takes and when you do that it ain't got nothing to do with the passion in their eyes oh just okay now so let's take this into a something that is the a realm that doesn't have as much probability probably go for it so let's take it into the

realm of love right love it or affection things like that so whenever you met are you married yes I married 34 years oh wow oh yeah congratulations thank you man wow that is a damn record almost you should win a Nobel Prize for that I met her in relativity class she doesn't really agree in mathematical physics dang yeah in graduate school so that was fun yeah better in relativity that's wild um so all right so you're talking about love okay love so do you I mean are you do you take these same Concepts into like

whenever you were falling in love and stuff like that or was it more like a normal okay so starring class so so the answer is yes I do why I don't often talk about this you want to hear you want to hear it yeah well I'm just curious because I don't have a wife or anything yet but it's mathematical okay then this could be helpful to you okay okay it could be helpful okay all right at this point I'll take on any it's a little bit of mathematical okay how much mass have you had in

school I took a couple of them you took a couple I took at least yeah a couple of weeks I was good I did all right you did all right you did all right okay one of them at high altitude I took one class out in Arizona at pretty high altitude you know what they say that if you learn something under certain psychomotor uh uh conditions that you recover it better under those same conditions oh wow like if you get high and you learn something if you get high again later you'll learn you'll remember that

better because you match the mental States oh dang it yeah I've read that I haven't read it lately but a few decades ago I think I wrote that okay so I'm glad it made it okay so here it is all right here it is all right um you gotta follow me with some math here okay okay it's not complicated by the way I I don't know any dumb professional comedians you all are smart people you're perceptive you know what's going on you have to know deeper what's going on to come at it from the other

side and show why it's hilarious okay that takes Insight you guys are the keepers of the Soul of the social and cultural mores of civilization yeah I think a lot of us try to be Jesus I don't know what I'm doing but I think a lot of us try to do our best yeah you're holding up Windows not Windows mirrors to what we think say and do and so it's a fundamental part I think of modern existence because without it my gosh how how how unpleasant the world would be it would have these perspectives that's

my I'm not just blowing smoke I'm just saying and you especially have a certain authentic honesty that is palpable and it's like whatever you say I'm with you on I feel you this is what he was saying do you feel what the person if I can't feel what you're saying go home right right what are you doing you just just type it up and send you know text it to me I if I if I'm not looking and you're in the eyes you know so okay yeah well it's helping me because it's like you know

I think I have a I'm not like a naysayer of science I love you know I'm grateful for science because I exist and I'm grateful that the world exists and that we're able to have all types of different experiences of like caring about each other and getting to travel and see different things and then my eyes work like I'm super grateful for science I think sometimes I get a fur like I have a fear sometimes of like if anything's out of like the vid like out of like right here everything else can seem a little

bit questionable you know so I think it's just uh you know it says probably the questionable part is because you you create your own world view yeah and you're and you everything makes sense to you in your world view and something's trying to poke it from the outside you're understandably skeptical of it yeah yeah I'm probably skeptical I'm rejecting it because no I got my thing my my situation it works for me yeah and I like to just I like to daydream and stuff you know so science sometimes they want to really hey bro you

know we need you to pull these Daydreams over here and uh we gotta tag them you know we just we need to get the weight in the uh and the density of these Daydreams so we can have them on file so I respect it um and I'm really really grateful that you're here um but yeah so tell me about that when you went into so here it is and this is a little geeky yeah it was a geeky thing so all right um you can have a line and you can measure the length of the

line okay right whatever okay uh that's the only thing you can measure about it there's no area there's no volume it's just a length all right now I can add another line at like right angles to it and when I do that I can actually Trace out a square okay so now A square has more than just a length it has area okay this area inside the square and that area is defined by both both axes you need both to get an area okay all right let's add a third axis oh now X Y now

Z now you don't have a y you don't have a square what do you have you have a cube now my mushrooms I think you have a cube that's full each of these right so now it's a dimension okay right so now watch now I can take that to higher Dimensions but I won't I would stick to three okay we can go to four in five dimension let's stick to three so now you ask yourself what do you care about in a relationship okay it wants a person to look hot nothing wrong with that make

a note of that okay um you want the person to be good and bad okay that it's not just fine be honest with yourself that's another by the way you can be hot and not good in bed oh yeah or vice versa okay so so these are separate coordinates okay okay so all right now watch let's get a third one uh you want the person to be kind let's say kind you want an evil evil person no okay no so each of these is completely separate from the other you can be beautiful and and evil

you can be ugly and kind but you can be but you care about those three right so now rate this person from zero to ten in those three categories just go ahead and do that so you say um a person's really kind and they're great in bed only give them a five okay in looks the green bed and they're kind all right here's what you do you know how you get the volume of a cube you multiply X by y by Z okay the area of a square is is x times y the area of

a the volume of a cube is you multiply all three I'm telling you to take those three numbers multiply them together you will get the volume of your love the volume of what you care about okay so now watch now here's my point what you need to do is because presumably you're if you're in the field the different people out there get each person's volume and go after the person that has the largest volume because they might be higher in one than the other but if you really care about them it's the total the totality

of that package that matters especially in a relationship those features don't always stay the same they could vary yeah sometimes they grow better looking as they get older or they might you might get more attracted to them or less attractive or less attractive so there's very much different skills often some of them get less you know yeah it's a mix it's a mix so let's say they get a little less attractive but the other bits were strong so you have a volume a strength of a larger volume to work against okay if things start uh

shifting okay in this okay I'm telling you you can take that to higher Dimensions so it really bad what are they hot are they have a maybe a good sense of humor something you might think oh yeah for sure okay um are they curious do they want to keep learning okay that's important do you have of course why wouldn't it be all right because I want them to keep learning about me because or no that's just no that's selfish if they're if they're curious you're part of what they want to keep okay that's fair no

no dude no you're right okay so I sir so I went around with a five-dimensional uh so in math we call it five-dimensional Vector space so that's what I did okay so what I'm saying is there could be someone who's the hottest person you've ever seen and and and you could be distracted by that and so I'm marrying that person and then they're not so hot 10 years from now or they get a little chubby whatever you're valuing or not evaluating and then all of a sudden everything you marry the person for isn't there anymore

and then you divorce seven years later so you gotta look at that volume got to look at the volume and by the way be crass if you want to be crashed do you want to marry someone who's wealthy put that in there too put it in there okay don't be ashamed of that because right because any one of these can change people say oh I want just that's shallow you need the personality people's personalities can change why are we sometimes ashamed to look at the criteria we honestly want to look at I I got my

I got through that I matured out of that because because Society wants you to not want that and if someone is honest I'd like your wealth I enjoy it and by the wealth can go away too in the same way you're looking all the all the things can but if it matters too then it's one of the coordinates in this volume by the way if any of those go to zero because the volume is a product you're multiplying these numbers if anything goes to zero the volume goes to zero oh really yes oh because you

do you're not adding them you're multiplying them wow so so try to make sure that the likelihood of it going to zero is or if it does go to zero if you don't matter then it shouldn't have been in the right it has to be things that nothing could go to zero so then but and if you do that then you're probably going to be picking things that have some real value to you that correct overall value correct objective or just be honest I just want money and if you if you run out of money

I'll divorce you right and but the person could be fun and happy the whole other time oh yeah they're buying sandwiches for everybody y'all are having a good time or whatever you know that's people are their own individuals so what happened what happened when you got delayed you you invite her out where'd you take or where do you oh well we you know we were graduate students at the time you know very poor you know so a big meal is like a 12 oh yeah good dish and uh so um oh oh I have to

say this if if I'm airing all the thing so I took her for granted initially oh and and we broke up initially and then I and then like six months I said what the hell did I just do oh my gosh I went back to that volume and I said all these other people are not feeling that volume the way she did and I was really sad did you go back to her and tell her I was I could because I broke up I can't but you can't do that she knocked on my door she

came back to me and what'd she say and I don't remember because I was distracted by the fact that oh my gosh I have a second chance here wow and so on that second chance that's when we moved in together and got married three years later and he didn't mess it up the second time no no no and and the strength of a marriage is is how how big is that volume because yes they will vary and people will get crabby and people you know you there are things that will test it of course with

something that you and your wife like to do together is there anything like that do you feel like helps keep a marriage together over time is there any you do things together yeah you just and do new things together so that you have a new memory to add to the portfolio if you always do the same old things it can get you know you see the person every day of your life right and so so just make sure it grows have you take do you guys take like classes or is there stuff like uh do

you just take walks like what are some fun stuff yeah we do take walks in fact I should take walks with my ex-girlfriend I liked it yeah walks are simple they're low budget let's go another Block it's an incidental fact about it not the not the instrumental fact okay hey baby I love you because every step is cheap no that's not that's not gonna fly is that why you're not married yet it could be probably I gotta start investing more here's the thing we all are fairy tales you see the courtship which is so romantic

and beautiful and and how do those fairy tales end what's the final word um final phrase the end no before that oh um happily ever after they live happily ever after wait a minute why don't you show me some of that oh yeah that's true give me some hints how do you pull that one off yeah like Rapunzel they don't show you that she's selling her hair in China you know what I'm saying they don't show you it'll show you the odds leave that one out so we we're trained in the courtship and then we'll

say this snow white as an opioid they don't show you some of the truth a dealing with actual life problems and challenges yeah or that uh Goldilocks is in the bestiality they don't show you some of the troops out there Neil damn you're right bro that's what I'm saying they just gave us the Goldilocks are sleeping with the with the Bears you know it's whatever I know they don't tell you that she has a crush on uh Gail Sayers you know they don't tell you she's out there been running around with Jim McMahon they don't

tell you all of that right so we we have no no literary life experience even thinking about what happens Beyond they lived happily ever after so you have to sort of discover that on your own is that band is it do you feel like is it hard for you to let is it this is it just your was it just the brain you were given that made you more scientific um or was it like uh do you feel like it was a nature or nurture like that you develop that as um because as it was

a skill that you needed to help process your own like life and childhood that's an important and perceptive question and I have to unpack that because you put a lot in that one because we talk about that kind of stuff a lot on this show excellent I'll go there let me go there right now so I everyone wants the secret to things what's the secret to intelligence the secret to this that implies it's only one thing and not something more complex and so I remember when I was a kid this is a slight off ramp

but I hope it's worth it when I was a kiss it was in seventh grade I did a book report on Ponce de Leon and he's the guy the Spanish explorer who went into South America searching for the Fountain of Youth okay you drink from it and you have eternal life and I remember reading that and I say that idiot why would he even think that exists he's going to commit an entire Voyage to to believe that there's just some Elixir coming out of the ground and he lives forever really a full-grown human being believe

this I was thinking to him I was already I was a geeky kid okay yeah I'm I'm 12 I think at this point but I did the book report on him and then I noticed as I got older this is something deep within us nobody actually wants to do the hard work to improve their health to live longer healthier lives they want the instant fix yeah and realizing that Ponce de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth allowed me to see what people were doing I'm old enough to remember yogurt eat yogurt that you

live forever Dannon had a commercial with centogenarians eating yogurt oh yeah okay I'm her mom would eat the yogurt I'd be like damn mom's gonna be around but that's what I'm saying so you we're we're we we want there to be quick fixes for things and quick answers and quick Solutions what's the latest kale kale eat did you eat your kale today no if not you would die you're gonna die a miserable death okay you'll be dead by noon yeah there's definitely and kale is so hard to eat you know it feels like it does

not want you eating it if you had bacon too yeah look I ain't saying nothing but it is what it is baby they knew that with collard greens they put in the ham hockey you wanna eat leaves put some dead animals dude you could put bacon under a damn corpse and I'll [ __ ] have a little actually actually you know what um cannibals called humans long Pig really yeah because of all the animals that you would eat the humans and pigs come closest but it tastes like bacon you have to cure it and do

the things whatever but anyhow uh I have some cured human a little yeah I'm just saying would you have any uh if I were starving I mean I have you know I have yeah I see you dog no no I'm starving hey bruh no wait wait if I'm in a mountain and the help is not coming and people died in the plane wreck otherwise we will starve to death I'm eating me some dead humans that is not that isn't I'm not thinking what are you eating first what part you think uh not muscle tissue I

would say you know the bicep maybe or or I would I would take my cue from from just what you'd get in the store ribs are some good eating I love ribs yeah yeah so no I wouldn't hesitate it's not about morals it's about survival yeah so so but by the way if there's a pig over there I'm eating a pig I'm not eating the dead human yeah that would be weird if you're like I'm gonna have Randy instead of Pumbaa I'm eating Pumbaa okay Puma ain't surviving the day okay so that'd be crazy there's

one dude at the plane crash and he just wants to keep eating the people like but do we have and pigs and cows and turkeys and chickens what are you doing he crashes on a farm right yeah he crashes into 7-Eleven and he's still over there cutting up an old lady we got some creeps out there man so now I'm completely distracted what the hell was I talking about Zach um um I I don't we kind of went out you were talking about you know I don't know you started about bacon it's been a long

road I don't know I know it has uh just no we were talking about love love no we got off we okay we evolved evolved uh oh oh I remember how do I how did I become me okay okay oh yeah so did this yeah did you do you think you developed a sense for science out of nature or nurture so watch so I'm walking through life watching people want to believe that simple things will fix everything those are the YouTube uh ads that get your attention you've been doing too many sit-ups just do this

and you'll have ripped ABS just eat this drink this and it'll be and you don't have to do any of that work and I thought to myself there must be something deep within us that just wants to be lazy about what our accomplishment our accomplishments okay yeah but that's a kind of an off ramp just to say I'm not I don't care about nature or nurture what I care about is that whatever you are you know you can improve it you know this in practically everything we do you get better at it from trying from

practicing in practically everything we do so I'm not going to say nature nurture people say oh well Michael Phelps he's got really flexible big feet that flap in the for swimming and he can fly me he's got webbed fingers I don't know he's a long head okay I don't know but they'll say whatever they will about his body but wait a minute uh he's in the water 30 hours a week yeah did you factor that in is that where's that in your equation right for him succeeding how about that okay so generally you part the

curtains someone's working really hard at what might look easy to them that they have accomplished right so I and I don't think that about you I feel like you've obviously put in the um what is it the hours that it takes to have your credibility so let me get back to your point so when you were a kid wondering it's very simple it's very simple all kids are curious about everything they overturn rocks and you know poke things and generally create chaos at home and most of what parents do is they spend the first years

of the kids life teaching them to walk and talk and then the rest of their life tell them to shut up and sit down because they're wherever they go they make a mess but that mess the parents think they're making a mess but no they're not these are the results of experiments they've been doing to discover the operations of nature if you happen to leave an egg up on the counter and a little toddler and because you're making breakfast and the toddler is reaching up you say No don't touch that and I'm saying no let

him grab it let him what did the egg cost you last I checked 40 cents at most watch you know the egg is going to end up breaking but so what once the kid starts playing with the egg yeah and then they do something with it and then it breaks that's interesting something can be hard yet fragile hmm how many things in life are that most of Life eggs are hard and no most things are solid this is hard and not fragile but a lot of experiences in the world and stuff I mean well no

that should be thinking emotional and I'm talking about physical objects at this point the egg is hard but fragile okay and so that's they'll learn about that very fascinating and it's brittle it doesn't bend it breaks yeah okay so these are structural properties of organic substances all right and then what's inside there's this transparent goopy stuff and there's a yellow thing what is that and then you tell them that might have been a chicken oh my gosh blow their mind blow their minds and by the way you see that colorless stuff if I heat it

it turns White you can watch it change color in front of your eyes there's this seven science experiments to do with the kid reaching for the egg that you didn't want them to touch and you just squashed that because you don't want to use the 40 cents yeah because you want to have a damn quiche for yourself okay the president of Harvard once said when people complained why are you charging so much for edu he said if you think the cost of education is high you should try the cost of ignorance that's even higher yeah

okay so all I'm saying is that curiosity is beaten out of us by the time we're in Middle School if you retain that Curiosity that rampant curiosity you're a scientist a scientist is a kid who grew up physically but not emotionally not mentally if I see some hey what is that let me poke that let me see what's behind it and it doesn't have to be a physical object it could be like fictional objects I watched the Thor movie and I'm saying gee I want to know how I wonder how how much does that hammer

weigh I'm still curious okay wasn't hammerway and I heard a sentence in the movie that enabled me to calculate how much is Hammer weighed wow they say uh hammer forged in the heart of a Dying star oh my gosh I'm an astrophysicist we deal in dying Stars I got this hide some dense stuff going on in a dying star I filled out the density and I tweeted it and I said if Thor's hammer is made of in the way the movie says it has the weight of a herd of 300 million elephants ah that's why

nobody could pick it up the Hulk couldn't pick it up you need the magical powers of of Thor to do it so now I saw Lou Ferrigno at the post office one time luffino both the original TV yeah the original one yeah and his wife was making him move boxes around he was all pissed and I'm like you're the freaking hole man move a couple of blocks you know he's got to be green to do that yeah dude get with the program he was without his paint but watch what happened okay because I'm in the

geekiverse yeah I'm thinking yes I tweeted that out that was like total nerd alert and then I got out nerded no oh somebody said uh Dr Tyson is wrong about this calculation okay so yeah I got totally smoked on this one so what happened was in 1991 Marvel issued a Thor's hammer trading card where they said Thor's hammer is made of a fictional material uru and it weighs precisely 42.3 pounds ah so they kind of cheated well yeah yeah but but uh I I'm getting to your earlier point I wanted my answer to be true

right I think it's a way better answer than 42.3 pounds but it's wrong it's in the cannon in the marble Cannon it's just simply wrong and you got to know when to hold them when to uh when to fold him and went to what's the third one and when to walk uh when to walk away we're in a run I think yeah and that's I think usually out around alimony yeah yeah hold them fold them run so so that's an example of still being curious into a dollar and all scientists are like that so so

no it's not nurture nature it's did you protect your curiosity in childhood if not you'll ossify I love that word you'll Harden in your own beliefs you won't even seek out things that might conflict with what you think is true and because you're comfortable where you are right you know what it is and we want to be where we are we want to be it's right here it is well yeah you get you want to yeah you get from a place of like I'm right and it's funny because I don't really like being in that

place even there's part of me that does like it because it feels like I'm winning but there's another part of me that knows it's not helpful to me as a evolving human which wins sometimes one when sometimes the other I think sometimes someone One Way some of the other but I'm grateful that that I have that I have awareness of both and I do find my own way that's half the effort by the way if you know that this is going on you're there and I'm grateful that the one does does battle a lot of

times and say you know I know you want to sit right here with this but there's you it's only fair if you look at more to the story I think I told her to myself too there's a name there's a guy named Walter badge hot I think is his name I quote him in the book and I think this is the right quote where he said there's no greater pain of the human existence than the prospect of having a new idea because it would just conflict with what you who you are and how you've defined

yourself yeah so and why do we want to be why do we want to stay why do we want to have that definition I think I know why it's comfortable here it is here it is you ready you must have been the worst person in class you must have been no no every time the teacher's like does anybody have an idea you know you must have brought a fake hand no it just just put it on your desk straight up every time every time so no I'm so here's what I think is going on you

know the Alice Cooper song I don't know the title of it but I know the lyric schools for summer schools out forever okay this is a celebration of not learning ah and we know people if not ourselves on at the end of the school day we can't wait for the the alarm to go off at the end of the day or the Friday comes or more likely the last day of school and the summer say school's out and you toss your books in the air and you run down the steps and I'm thinking to myself

your only job was to learn about this beautiful world about this Majestic universe and you're celebrating not learning and so I'm not going to blame the people I'm going to blame the school because if I have you for six hours a day and you come out and you'd rather not be there I have failed not in a little great sense as a teacher I have failed the system you know what should be happening in school I shouldn't be loading you with textbooks with with with bold face vocabulary words that you memorize once for the exam

before you move on no no no I should figure out a way to make you excited about everything you learn yeah so that at the end of the school day you're sad to walk out of school imagine the world that would be and you know what schools should do it's not let me load you with knowledge it's let me prepare you to be a lifelong learner so that this curiosity that we have infused in you in kindergarten through 12 or kindergarten through 16 if you're in college there whatever when you come out that is just

the beginning of the flame that will coerce within you for the rest of your life because you will spend much more time not in school than you ever did in school and once again I'll use the word again if you ossify in your knowledge by getting out of college getting out of high school if that's if that's where you are you will never grow the world will leave you behind and you'll just be the grumpiest person on the porch say get off my lawn you what what are these youngins know I know because you are

comfortable in your ignorance and you don't even know your ignorance because you came to it from from Having learned but only up to a point and without the Curiosity you don't keep learning curious It's All About the Curiosity and the ambition you have attached to it it's don't tell me about nature nurture I'm not even I'm not even thinking that way yeah I think well I grew up in a place you know I grew up in a place um in Louisiana we had you know I've talked about this before like the uh primate testing facility

where they uh created the polio vaccine was in our town so Tulane University didn't know that it's just a primate testing facility in um in St Tammany Parish Louisiana and I remember one time a bunch of the monkeys had gotten out right and they came and got us out of YMCA summer camps the police did the tallest kids to help them and so we're out there by like the monkeys on the trees and you got to reach for him or how are you going to get them the monkeys are just out yeah they wanted like

a chain of people I guess oh okay and so uh By the way when the monkeys get out there's nowhere that's that's a scary fact right oh in hindsight knowing now what I know about monkeys and chimpanzees I think it was a bad idea oh okay but at the time we didn't know so you know it was a smaller town then and so we're out there just wrangling chimps out by this Kenny Rogers Roasters he used to have like a Kenny Rogers had a uh chicken establishment for a while and they had like kind of

rotisserie chicken it's pretty good they had like this cornbread thing they're pretty good but um but anyway and also in our area um they had a thing called ligo ligo it was the it's still there it's um you know what I'm talking about laser interferometer gravitational Observatory yeah there's only two of them in the well in the United States in Louisiana and I feel isn't it Louisiana and up in Oregon or Washington Washington yeah so that was another thing in our area so you know there was by the way just to be clear that is

discovering colliding black holes in other galaxies Across the Universe damn it's a new kind of telescope and you got it there in your home state I knew they were up to something no yeah and by the monkeys are running hey skate monkeys achieved Consciousness and intelligence I wouldn't be shocked that's a Planet of the Apes [ __ ] going on I would not be shocked yet I've seen some people there that work at some of the gas stations definitely they have a banana for lunch I'll say that dude there's some interesting folks there no chimpanzees

peel the banana from the bottom you know that yeah yeah you know what my friend does he breaks the banana in half if it's if it's unripe yeah that'll work yes that's true otherwise you got some mashed banana right there but we used to hear about um because they were over there hunting grass all we heard was that they had gravity Hunters out there that's that's a that's a good way that's a poetic way to put it so that's what we heard and so there'd be people like if you saw somebody that could dance real

good you'd say they were like one of those gravity babies or whatever or sometimes people would have parties and people would say oh you know we're gonna get so and they would live near there by the in Livingston Parish Louisiana where that ligo Center is and they'd say we're going to get so [ __ ] up we can't even feel the gravity yeah yeah there it is yeah wow zoom in on that that's crazy yeah yeah so what's going on there if if your listeners have access to this viewers so those are two long tubes

and they send a beam of light from that Central Building simultaneously the full length of both tubes and then there are mirrors at the end of those two both tubes and it reflects back and they recombine the light and if the light recombines perfectly then nothing happened between those two uh Reflections but if a gravitational wave washes over Earth and goes through this facility one of those beams will be slightly delayed compared to the other they're doing that out there and they can measure it I know people that can't read out there they delay and

so they're looking for a variation in a fraction of the diameter of a proton and that is a completely evacuated tube that goes up and back um so tell me this so say they find a say say there's some variation what does that tell them that there's some pull on there of course it tells you that the thing actually happened Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves this discovered them it's 8 60 70 years later wow okay no no more than that uh this was 2000 when was that uh this this Century Einstein made the

prediction in in 1916. so you're talking basically 100 Years A Century there's a prediction and then a discovery and this is this is ground truth that our ideas actually match objective reality okay and you want to say well how does that put food on your plate it doesn't but it advanced technology in a way that will surely have applications later on Einstein wrote down the first equation in a paper called on the stimulated emission of radiation obscure quantum physics paper in the 1920s okay late teens and why are you doing that you're a smart guy

why don't you help put food on people's plates wanna do you know what that's the foundation of the laser which would not be built until the 1950s and and lasers back then were like cost tens of thousands of dollars in their room size now they're impulse items at at Walmart yeah and for laser pointers right oh yeah but lasers are now you know barcode now photos can do it but in their day barcode reading laser surgery LASIK surgery for your eyes um laser Cosmetics removal so who oh lasers you put a laser on anything on

anything and do you think Einstein's saying yes we're gonna have LASIK surgery with this equation that I wrote now nobody's thinking that so the people say why are we doing this with smart people when the smart people could be solving the homeless problem because we don't know what the future is you don't know what the future is somebody might invent a laser that makes home homeless people happy okay so you don't know what about this though so say that thing picks up some sort of gravitational wave what does it mean it means that there's a

black hole that's kind of sucking on earth a little bit no it meant two black holes collided and the Collision is quite catastrophic and it sends a ripple it's like tossing a pebble in a pond okay and you see the Ripple go out in all directions except the pond surface is only two it's flat in space this is a ripple that goes through full three dimensions of space and it's moving at the speed of light and it washes over Earth at the speed of light and by the way remember I said make sure you don't

think something that's true that's not or there's that or isn't true that it okay so suppose you're just a mischievous graduate student and you're in that facility say I want to I'm going to tweak this and all everyone else is going to think they actually discovered something okay yeah yeah or I suppose you did suppose you you're diabolical you're just a prank oh I would do that either uh you're just a prankster all right we have built-in protections against that oh damn we have another one they got a ring camera we have an entire other

ligo in Washington oh making sure yes okay so you would have to coordinate with another prankster yeah to do it at the exact moment okay whatever now okay they both made the measurement but separated by a fraction of a second just what you'd expect if the wave came from One Direction continues to wash over Earth and goes across and comes out Seattle on the other side of the Earth okay that 1500 miles whatever that distance is takes like time to do that they were able to measure that precisely it was good so tell me about

this so let's talk about outer space for a second yeah so I'm your guy yeah who's in been in the seat but uh there aren't that many astrophysicists out there so you have you know if we did have a guy who was a science man recently and he was he uh well he he was in charge of the cryonic freezing you know those the there's a chronics Institute where they freeze people on the possibility that they bring them back to life on the possibility that one day they'll be able to bring him back to life

do you think that that's possible or no I'm not con so I think what will happen is we'll figure out what ages us and we'll Nip Tuck fix that and then who cares about the Frozen people at that point we can all just keep living oh I mean I don't right right is it are we gonna need them that's right that's what I'm saying I don't know I you know uh people that want to live forever in the life and death chapter here I comment on that do you really want to live forever it's a

whole thing because if you live forever what motivation do you have to do anything today nothing nothing but that's what I kind of like about reincarnation it's like when people are doing reincarnation they're like I'll get to it you know when you believe in reincarnation yeah but you you don't know what you'll be reincarnated as and so you could be recording as a roach or an ant or something yeah it's hard to fix a shelf as an ant so that's a risk Risky Business there but let me lay a little bit of mathematical thinking on

you okay um for me there's nothing more motivating then the knowledge I'm going to die um think of the prisoner in the cell and they're putting an X through every one because every X is one day closer to getting out well let's do that for your life every X you spend doing nothing that's a day you could have done something and you're gonna die one day yeah and it's there on the calendar okay this would so motivate me as it does to be as productive as I can as helpful as I can Try to Make

a Better World for your privilege of having lived in it so if knowing you're gonna die brings meaning to your life then living forever is a life of no meaning at all damn that's how I think about it so no I don't I don't want to live forever yeah I think if I got to if I could live forever I'd probably go swim more honestly or do something like you know that I don't really love doing but I kind of wish I did more that's a weird that's a weird wish if I live forever I

would swim more even though I don't like it who's what do you I'll give you another chance answer that again there was a lamest no if I could live forever I would do stuff I didn't really feel like doing well yeah because it would be like you'd have so much time you know I don't know if I can live forever I don't know what I would do that's a great question what would you do if you could live forever no I would say that is the sentence you have to do it I I I don't

know I I don't know because so much of how I organize my life is knowing I'm gonna die right and I have to think about and get back to you on that okay I'll get back to you on it too then fair and I hope it's not I'll swim even though I don't like it that's the lamest no no okay I'll try and do better but I just that's how that's what I think I would do I know you are cleverer than that you're gonna give me an answer that's better than me do we what

culture or ethnicity on Earth say they're say aliens show up right is there a society or culture or ethnicity that's best evolved you think to handle it scientists really scientists go ahead Theo if an alien landed right in front of us and said to you Theo take me to your leader are you going to take him to the White House no no of course not are you thinking to Congress no no that's a great question what's my point you would take him to well I'm not going to speak for you but I happen to be

a scientist but if I were not a scientist I would take him to a scientist you would yes a biologist or a a physicist somebody who's by the way say science is closed that day come back out to lunch come back tomorrow open at nine in the morning so you know even science has a sandwich bro where would you take him you speak of science like is the one dude behind the counter let me finish what happens if you're trying to talk to him okay my point is mathematics I give him a treat first I

think you'd have to treat they're not a pet they just flew here in a it's ship way more advanced than anything we've ever conceived okay here here's a chew toy dude I'm just saying you gotta give them a little you'll be the first human Zapped by a alien laser oh at that point you hit him with that Snicker dog then your friend forever Steven Spielberg where they're eating what are they the the Reese's Pieces no no oh yeah dude well he'd bring his friends next week now you give a Reese's to an alien it's gonna

get diabetes how do you know it can handle it it's just so pretty that's a good point bro now he's stuck what if he becomes all lazy and stuff when you start getting them acclimated it's fat and lazy on Earth that has to be a movie right you want to do a movie like that I don't know but okay so he's here what do you do what I'm saying is that I have a periodic table of elements that are elements across the universe I know mathematics that laws of physics that apply Across the Universe they

got here from across the universe so those those laws would be totally the same when they're planning totally the same so if you're going to start with a language like oh this is a cup and this is a fork and this is it's like this is our elements and this is we call this aluminum we call this and they will know and they start to develop a common vocabulary so that you can communicate with them because they're not going to speak English nor French nor Mandarin none of the above that being said if they send

radio signals here the largest radio telescope is going to pick it up first and you know where that is hold on let me think Arizona uh it was once in on American soil in Puerto Rico the the art of sibo telescope but that collapsed out of disuse and okay the largest radio telephone in the world is in China wow so the first humans that will hear hear the signal sent by aliens will be Chinese astrophysicists but we're talking about if they visit so if they visit I'm saying bring them to a scientist the scientist will

know how to think about and pose questions to them for this for this reason and I got a little dust up when I saw the movie arrival and Aliens visit and they Park these pods floating over there and so the government gets two people they get a a linguist and a physicist to decode their and I'm thinking no no you get a cryptographer and an astrobiologist that's what you want to do I don't know if you saw the movie the alien is like a septipod looks like an octopus but it was only seven things and

it's squid inking messages on a on a glass it's underwater or whatever medium it's in and so oh there it goes okay your boy brought it up on the on the on the screen you got it right here okay arrival yeah yeah yes arrival diplomacy scene yeah so we're trying to find out what are they trying to say to us and why and so I would have brought a cryptographer and uh and an astrobiologist but they brought a was it a linguist a cultural linguist and a not an angle linguist um uh could you look

that up real quick the the profession of the woman that was she hot too I don't remember because you got to bring a hottie out if an alien shows I think you gotta show up with some real diamonds yeah she was a linguist linguish okay so so they have a linguist and a physicist physicist is good but not as good as a cryptographer who's trying to figure out what the hell they're saying so I posted that and I shouldn't have uh that should have been my forbidden Twitter file because no because with my people are

in movies all the time right we have astrophysicists all how often is a linguist in a movie yeah all right I always did one chance and I felt bad I burned them I throw some shade on there on there but now what about this so tell me this if the Chinese so the Chinese would be the first people to know that right no no to hear a signal okay that comes over do you think that they would tell the rest of us or not uh probably not initially but uh but eventually no no the thing

is what what should they they they built their own damn telescope that telescope is a mile in circumference by the way you want to get a sense of how big it is it's called the fast telescope 500 meter aperture spherical telescope acronym fast but if they know and they don't tell us man but then they get to they can they can have a horse and they say we are the chosen ones and everyone else on Earth isn't uh send your ray beams to you know I don't know what they're gonna do um but there it

is uh we have another image oh we are we're looking at the image on the screen I was there I visited there we filmed there for Cosmos what oh my gosh bro you gotta hold on to that footage oh my gosh we gotta make this why are we why don't we have anything like that because we are not we'd like to think of ourselves we're Americans and we're lead we're we are we over history we've been reactive to challenges from other countries not proactive and what are we now as far as when it comes to

challenges from outer space we have nothing that Rivals that wow at all so when it comes to space we're not really the number one no no in in space in access to space plus you have the billionaires boys race that's up there you know and by the way there's a whole chapter in here called Earth and Moon where I just talk about the relationship between Earth and the moon and going to the Moon how we went to the moon to explore the Moon and we looked over our shoulder and we discovered Earth for the first

time and it changed us between 1968 and 1972 do you know what happened well we saw the picture of earthrise over the moon and I claimed that there was a firmware upgrade to our awareness in this universe because what happened immediately by 1970 we founded the Environmental Protection Agency the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that monitors climate and weather we had the comprehensive Clean Air Act Clean Water Act we banned leaded gas we banned DDT the first Earth day was 1970. birthday was pretty chill okay it's chill yeah but if you ask any of them

why you have Earth Day now well because it's the right thing to do this is the firmware upgrade they're not thinking space right they're just thinking obvious we should no you know what else was going on in 1970 we were at War Hot War Cold War campus unrest civil rights movement in 1968 two leaders were assassinated 1971 was it was the shootings on Kent State campus we had issues here on Earth don't tell me oh it felt like the right time to protect Earth we had other issues something else was operating in your brain stem

that you weren't even aware of that's the that's the firmware upgrade do you remember you would have seen videos of it the crying Indian yeah okay people throw trash out the window and he turns around any tears and he's in headdress of course that dude was was Italian who's an Italian actor yeah he was Italian Italian Heritage so so back then you can do that right right you could do that back then but my point is when did that public service announcement come 1970 . people were people throwing trash out their window for decades so

something at that point upgrade made us think we got to start looking at this place that we're on you know what that's called a cosmic perspective now what about this do you think we are due for other firmware upgrades I would like to think so a former upgrade where we stopped killing each other yeah you think you know there's no greater argument someone gives for killing someone else than what they believe in rather than what is actually true it's almost like the less evidence you have for something the more you're willing to give your own

life or to take someone's else's life for it and that's some weird stuff for our species weird Behavior pattern for now the world is a much safer place than ever before here's a number to sleep on you ready yeah probably we live in a time where if a bus drives into a crowd of protesters kills 10 people that's world headlines for a day it's National headlines for a week it's local headlines for a month okay kills 10 people between 1939 and 1945. 1 000 humans were killed per hour of every hour between 1939 and 1945.

that doesn't happen today when yes we have War we have conflict people are dying it's not like that not like that it is not like that and not long before that there was another world war plus a pandemic on top of it that ultimately killed more people than the world war did so less people are dying yes we have more people and fewer people are dying and fewer people are living in poverty than ever before okay and so yeah so we have about eight billion people in the world uh we'll level off at 10 billion

there are very good reasons to think that that it won't go above 10 billion it's not it's not going to keep growing yeah because people aren't having as many children they're not having as many children we're living longer so that mitigates that but then not having as many children and the developed worlds developing worlds that used to have the most babies the women are getting educated and educated women have fewer children yeah it's true man they was just running is that how you say that I didn't know that was a way to say that that's

a new way I never thought of saying it man this black hole is close no more kids when the day you'd have many take that thing you have many kids because kids would kids would die right you didn't you want to run the farm or whatever you're doing right so now they don't die we keep them alive and so you the so the birth rates are dropping uh even in the developing companies and in some countries the birth rate is below replacement level so this all averages out and you will settle out at about 10

billion but what my point is we live in sort of safer times than ever before even if it doesn't feel that way interesting you were talking about feeling before uh was it Gallop or or one of the polling agencies for the last 30 years they've asked people is your community and yours is it are you safer this year than you were last year no it's more dangerous it's fear for 27 out of 30 years people have said it's more dangerous than the previous year and in those years the crime rate has dropped precipitously the entire

time so they're slang in fear that's what sells Evening News really does evening news and I have a I have an example on this when I grew up every night I grew up in New York City every night the Evening News would lead off with a fire in some home usually it's a space heater there's a little space heaters no back then people smoked in bed okay okay and it was before that's great and it was before that's fun to do but smoke alarms yeah okay and by the way I got something funny for you

I'll just tell you just in a quick minute but the point is I was certain I would die in a fire dang I would never live to adulthood because I saw that every single day and so now there are fewer fires because we have some there's a few and they make big news but the rate compared back then New York has fewer firehouses we've been closing firehouses people just don't need them but it's more boring though and by the way what really saved things are smoke detectors because I'm old enough to remember you might be

a little too young for this where before smoke detectors you had to buy flame retardant things in your home your curtains were flame [ __ ] you're you you're your child had flame retardant onesies yeah really okay and but if you think that through if they're in the crib and the flame is strong enough it's not going to help to burn their onesies you don't want the onesies to ignite your kid is dead oh yeah long dead it's almost like when you get the hash brown but it's in that little thing you know I don't

know if it's exactly like that but I know I know exactly what you're talking about where's the potato if the whole thing is brown is hash brown okay yeah I don't know if I need this little holster for like I just you know okay so so uh so my my point is this flame and we later learned some of them cause cancer that's not what kept people alive ultimately it's the smoke it's the smoke detector wow um but where was I going with that I was at some bigger point I was making well I think

things like that take the fun out of everything you know they used to have these um you know what you're talking about crime rates so everyone thought the crime rate was going up it's been going down the whole time your perception is not reality oh yeah and that's a lot of what this book is but the whole the whole book is that um oh I remember we had these underwears that had a buzzer in them right because I wet the bed right so I was probably probably late 20s and we had these underwear when I

was a child that got a buzzer right in the car I didn't know that yeah so the P would would he liquid hit it they'd go off and you'd wake up and you'd go to the bathroom yeah didn't know they had that I mean it was interesting it helped I mean it was embarrassing because you hit like a lot of people with the buzzer was right right like are the cops coming did it work is something in the oven it'd be like 4am you'd tell your friends like I think something's in the oven yeah sleepovers

are awkward right so does it did it work for you it worked pretty good I think and then a pill came out and that really yeah I think the pill was it yeah I mean that shut me off Better Living Through Chemistry we are sacks of chemicals yeah and the evidence of that is you ever seen the book of medicines to treat your ailments it's all chemicals yeah I'm just saying we're sacks of chemicals yeah that's what helped uh so you went to bed until your 20s oh yeah that's late dude oh I was late

you gotta set up a hose or something oh dude my whole life I'm in a late bloomer wait so in your not to get all TMI here but uh when you were peeing in the bed were you dreaming that you were peeing in a bathroom sometimes I would be dreaming that I was peeing sometimes I would even be dreaming that I was peeing in a bed you know it was like my brain couldn't get well that's an authentic reality couldn't give me any more clues okay but sometimes yeah I would just be just deep asleep

I don't know but yeah I just I just wet the bed man I wet it as a child and I wedded as an adult um you turned out okay though yeah I think I'm just a late bloomer man everything has been about 10 years okay really your first one you know you're okay with that um why does it feel sometimes when I look at outer when I look at space right I'm standing there I'm looking out at Space by the way if you're in space and your jet pack stopped working if you pee forward you'll

you'll move backwards that much propulsion will help well in space any propulsion works because there's no friction anywhere so if you send any liquid out for you could fart the other direction and it'll Propel backwards so don't pee and fart at the same time no no no you lose your your net momentum yeah you just stay there so choose are you gonna fart or you're gonna pee okay and we're good right damn I wasted all my fuel you're just sitting there um what if um no that's advice I'm pretty sure you didn't think you'd be

getting today I didn't at all right but I'm glad to know that take a can of beans if you're headed out um by the way you know the swamis that they always show pictures of who are levitated yeah with their cross legs um so you can't do that unless he is actively expelling gas out of his butthole okay so you'd have to like eat a lot of beans and sew up the butthole to get very high pressure damn and then pop it open and then he can levitate wow yeah so there yeah so that's that's

definitely advertising then they're using that they're obviously well no I'll say completely defying known laws of physics so nobody can really levitate like that no one has ever done that in a controlled laboratory okay so if they can do it there's some magic that they do and okay it's just not useful if I can't reproduce it in the lab uh under control conditions with cameras and everything it's just not useful yeah and it's so magic isn't real um no well you know the Arthur C Clarke edict any sufficiently advanced science uh-huh is indistinguishable from Magic

hmm that's a good one okay so if an alien comes up and and waves their hand and something happens you'll say It's Magic but to them it's science it's just super science correct if in fact I I tell you I don't mean to brag or anything you do magic no I did when I was a kid actually I can see that I did physics magic I'd pull the the the tablecloth out from under I still do that it's fun yeah yeah I have large hands so I can Palm a card pretty easily um so so

I did that as a kid I made money at kids birthday parties I think I was 12 or something wow doing it for six-year-olds what was your first job oh I was a camp counselor and I worked whole summer and I made 150 for YMCA uh it was a version of that yes it was it was some other thing but it was through through a church thing yeah yeah I went to YMCA Camp it was fun yeah yeah and then I went to well before then I went to Camp I was in a YMCA Camp

several years in a row Camp was fun no it's good it was good it was good so but but let me tell you the job I hated the most just just the whole Optics of it I got to college and I'm on a work study program but the the work part was like whatever job you can get that and that was contributed to your tuition yeah same I had to be in the bookstore well no now fine if it was a bookstore but not the job I got okay I cleaned the bathrooms in the dorms

of other students probably just all semen in there I mean not you know so I'm just saying just the just the out of my cleaning bathrooms you know but I'm doing it for fellow students who I'm I'm gonna see in my physics class or in my art class right and it was it was just I did it but I just thought they need a different way to work this out yeah okay and so um yeah but it puts you through college and you get through college and that was that you earned your stripes man I'll

say you went through I mean you but but you know what I regret I've never had a job where I had to tolerate the behavior of someone else like a checkout grounder or a server at a restaurant or a flight attendant I've never had to tolerate someone being a complete [ __ ] and smile while you're doing it because corporate policy says the customer is always right I've never had to do that oh that's everybody at a CVS now I feel like they have to put up with everything now yeah so that's interesting I try

to be empathetic even though I've never recognized that yeah oh my gosh is that it usually it's kind of an important job to have yeah um is outer space like is outer space gay or straight uh so there's an entire chapter here called gender and identity okay uh-huh I'm just putting it out there okay General it's an entire chapter what that looks like through a scientific lens and what I will tell you is oh yeah I remember you talking about the facial structures okay so I'm gonna give you an answer are you ready yeah is

outer space gay or straight every 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 I'm going to tell you whatever the universe is it's on a spectrum okay in fact the very word spectrum comes from what happens when you take light and break it up into its colors we just happen to assign names to the seven colors red orange yellow green blue indigo violet but it's an it's a continuum we're just being lazy by assigning

seven colors our brain doesn't want to see nuance because it's easier for us to think in binary so it's are you with me or are you against me well maybe you're somewhere in between are you a boy are you a girl maybe they're expressing themselves somewhere in between and your brain has a difficult time recognizing a spectrum and so you're requiring it be into a bin so there you are forcing other people to match how you see the world and that's wrong that's no I'm not let me not say it's wrong I'm gonna say um

The World Is Not Gonna Change to fit your inability to recognize how it's actually manifesting it's not going to do that so so it's by no it's on a continuum so whatever it is you can say is is is the universe sweet or salty is the universe whatever it is you're asking me is it this or is it that Ah that's the binary brain trying to force a Continuum into two categories so it's like Chex Mix except with more objects more kinds of objects than what you find in check checks mix has like five things

in it yeah that's true okay imagine if Chex Mix had everything damn in a Continuum and it kept changing now look at how our brain works we have hurricane strengths right oh yeah they measure this wind speed do you realize it's a continuum but we we divided it into five categories right but it's a Continuum do you realize you can go from low category three to high category three and it's and they'll just talk about uh Irma is still a category three one mile an hour faster and it's category four it's breaking news oh yeah

hurricane Irma is now category four yeah excuse me it's one mile an hour faster than it was yesterday yeah people lie to say the wind's broken okay so I'm just on the winds making a bowl of cereal some guy said that's funny that's funny so my point is even with hurricane speed strengths we force them into categories when it's actually a container I see so it's a Continuum out there so so because it looks kind of gay I feel like but then sometimes it does things that seem really straight but those are also my definitions

of those correct you're forcing the universe into your two categories right I think what's tough I think for people just in layman's terms is when you have a template of society over time and the and things start to come in and make it evolve or adjust it's hard sometimes to get those things all the way to the Grassroots level I would claim that the template was always people forcing a natural variation into categories ah do you know Joan of Arc you remember she was remember you read she was burned at the stake yeah yeah 1400

was she doing witchery okay well okay that would be one way you would burn people at the stake but uh uh they couldn't burn her at the stake for not being religious she was very religious she was trying to kick the British out of France her mother country she led soldiers into battle wow do you know half I don't know it was half precisely but a big reason why they indicted her and burned her at the stake was for cross-dressing damn and I thought okay there's a there's a passage in the Bible in Deuteronomy you

ready it's if a woman Don the clan the clothes this is very close to precise if the woman does the clothes of a man she is an Abomination unto the Lord thy God oh man and so they said we can get her on that they're like looking trying to throw the book at her right we got her on this because you can't lead soldiers into battle with a skirt riding side saddle yeah that does not work no you got to put on at least a strong hat at the Earth so is she an early person

who's just a tomboy who's expressing herself and male though she's biologically female oh she'd have been in A League of Their Own probably okay so we know yeah grown up in classes where there was the Tomboy girl and the slightly effeminate boy we we if not ourselves this has been with us forever yeah it's in literature and it's in the thing and the difference between then and now is we have a a raised social Consciousness so that those folks on the Continuum are are less so the object of mockery in storytelling they're just other characters

now and there's still more room to improve that but I'm saying um you have people who are trans people who are who are uh all full up trans or just simply wearing clothes they're the not what you want them to wear based on what you think they should be yeah is that a free country if this is what what concerns me a bit a lot of the resistance to this comes from the conservative side of the voting public and they're trying to control the freedoms of people's expressing themselves in some way I read so that

the pursuit of happiness did we read this somewhere in the founding documents of and if my Pursuit of Happiness is wearing a skirt and putting on makeup and lipstick no matter whether or not I have a penis um you want to take that away from me why that is it in a way that's a violation of what it means to live in a free country yeah I think people just accuse you of gayen or whatever they accuse you of like queering the fact that it would be an accusation at all rather than a recognition that

there are people different from you who live in this free country well look I'll tell you this a lot of times I've been around a lot of Dr like sometimes there's a lot of drunk man you know and I don't drink but I'll get around them sometimes and you could see they start wanting uh you know they start you know their lips get a little wet and you see them wanting to be you know so I think you know if we were honest with ourselves it wouldn't even be a problem if we were honest with

it centuries ago well yeah there's probably just old and also some of it is templates some of it is tradition and people want to like people worry I think it's too much if you lose TR like and I'm not saying they're correct Traditions but I think a lot of people worry if you lose tradition then what does that mean I think you know I think we're still evolving in a way that we want to look at at existence in a larger scale and not just in the scope of our own life I'm a big fan

of traditions and let's call them rituals for the moment okay a Thanksgiving dinner is a ritual the traditions and rituals in and of themselves I greatly value them they become they're some of the greatest uh binding forces in a culture are Traditions yeah okay in Passover the Jew the the observant Jews of the world are all doing the same thing basically at the same time relative to the sunset okay and so that's a binding Force but if your tradition is not the celebration but what you look like what you sound like what you say how

what you think then that's those are Traditions trying to remove freedoms that your country might otherwise be giving you yeah and so they come from Traditions yeah they kept tribes together oh my gosh where does the other stuff come from like yeah like where does it but I think it maybe it feels like I'm trying to decide what that feels like to people that makes them so commonly that those are things that are hung onto you know uh well if they it's one thing because you have your own ritual okay I used to always have

candles for dinner okay I I blow through yards of candles it's a romantic and I'd like a bottle of wine and with my wife no no I and so but so for me that was a little bit Rich when my mother burn candles and she was Catholic and candles are a thing in a Catholic Church oh yeah yeah so I and the candles are burning during the mass so I a little bit of candle worked into me but I'm not that's nice I'm not forcing someone to do something with the candle right okay I'm not

forcing someone else to pray to the candle I'm not trying to change the behavior of someone else it's just something I do and I do it all right it's when you cross over and require other people recognize this yeah um or or you require other people abandon it just because you don't want it that's not a free country that's all I'm saying you can imagine a country where everyone's homogenized in whatever way you want those countries exist I didn't think that was America yeah I didn't say that right I didn't think that was Merck I

think it was America well it's just it's really it's I spent six years in Texas I've met my wife in Texas oh but Austin Texas UT Austin are you a Texas Fan uh so the funny thing be honest I don't know if I haven't told anybody this uh so I'm a New Yorker in Texas which was a little bit mind-blowing you know just the Confederate flag is everywhere and the gun the gun rack on the back of the pickup yeah and it's just a really I I was I was almost anthropological for me to observe

the Texas tribe that's what I was thinking what does anthropological mean it means I'm I'm I don't know that I'll ever assimilate but this is something interesting to observe and take notes on okay okay I'd be an anthropologist okay guys studying the culture okay so I did that and were you really wearing that hat really and those boots like really and this is a woman you're talking and your belt buckle is that big really and so it's all weird but again I'm recognizing it's another place right I don't want to homogenize him to be New

Yorkers this is Texas a good point just got his own history Six Flags Over Texas yeah okay it's sick Texas with six different countries all right I don't know anybody else that can say that you know the six countries right Mexico uh Spain I think France uh the Confederacy the United States itself and the Republic of Texas oh damn what did I did I leave one out or count one twice but that's where you get Six Flags the the the amusement park you didn't know this dude you didn't know that finally some stats I can

use oh my gosh finally some information I can use it that's how you get Six Flags if the kid didn't come out of nowhere yeah I didn't know I never thought you go into the state capitol and you see the flags yeah I've actually been in state capital right there yeah but um so I'm there and I and no so here's what happened when I left Texas it was six years later I I get back to New York and say you know I want to wear some of those boots so the next time I visited

I picked up some boots yeah and then I you know I kind of liked that hat not the full up you know seven inch brand but the smaller brand so I own six cowboy hats five pairs of boots and one of them is like ostrich you know I guess a stretch they get out digging out the animals I don't have the lizard or whatever that one is the no the alligator I don't have the alligator but uh so I got some stretch at the house dude I wear that on Fifth Avenue I'll do that yeah

and so it people it turns heads but I'm comfortable in that because I I felt it it took it was a time delay yeah right it was I feel it now and now I can appreciate a Texas movie or Texas culture Texas Music which is not it's not country western really uh it's not it's not it's not Nashville I should say no it's not it's it's a lot more it's a lot more like red clay kind of yeah yeah um and I didn't know a sad song Until I heard a sad Texas song I mean

yeah I'm a big fan of the Blues you know Blues all up the coast you know the Mississippi on up to Chicago Blues but up the river I guess I should say but um Texas you know up some singing and uh you know in my dog oh this is sadness sadness okay Parker McCollum you gotta listen to him he's kind of a sad I'm a blues guy I'll do it he's yeah you know what his is a little bit of Blues in a way um so you know I often theorize we talk about a lot

of this show like beige the future is all going to be based like eventually everything's kind of merging we mean skin color yeah that eventually everything is just kind of merging um and I wonder if it'll be like that with sexuality as well that everything will just will everyone be like kind of this beige trans kind of like you know uh gang bang you know or like everybody just like you know will everybody just be like a beige trans graffiti artist that's what I feel like I feel like we're all just kind of because I

think there are enough people in the world that value individual out individuality that we will never be so homogenized really yeah that's what I think uh so let's take this to a a scientific limit okay we cannot control the genome what is that uh you know so I got your genes and I can see you in in the uterus and I can nip and Tuck and snip and think and you'll come out uh six feet tall uh with this color skin this gender with this thing and this that and I can make you and that's

not outlawed we don't the the ethics of this we don't know how to do that yet but I don't see why we'll net that wouldn't one day happen our ethics are not really quite keeping up with it not from what I've read yet but there are people thinking about it okay the first thing we're going to do is cure diseases for sure all right you know genetic right you'll go in and stop people from having different kind of down syndrome right exactly exactly exactly so obvious ones and we all have to agree which what to

cure because even that has ethical issues that's true for example it was not until 1987 I report on that here in the gender and um Express gender and identity chapter not until 1987 where the American Psychological Society Psychiatric association whatever their acronym is um the the American Association of psychiatrists it wasn't until 1987 where they removed homosexuality from the Encyclopedia of mental disorders oh it used to be in there yes so you asked the question it was before 1987 or even earlier and you had the medical capacity to quote fix someone whose genetic profile if

that's where it's found it makes them gay would you do that back then they probably would because that's a disorder they thought it was a mental distance and then you find out that at least 15 of the one out of six is this at what point is it a disorder and what point is it's just the natural variation of who we are as a species damn that's crazy so the guy who's writing the disorders obviously was a straight guy ah perceptive right on and and there's the guy what's his neuroscientist I always forget his name

but I guess if you're super straight say you're super straight you wandering out of a cave or whatever right you're a straight guy you see him I know that I'm straight can I tell you how I know I'm straight how I know I'm straight because I wrestled for eight years the muscled sinewy sweaty bodies of other men yeah and at no time did I even have a tingle in my body it's like I'm gonna pin your ass to the mat and get up and walk away okay that's what I'm good I was Captain of my

high school's wrestling team I'm just thinking my hands are all over men's bodies if I had any urge I would have felt it then so if they do one two three four and you still have to tapping out the longer you stay there oh it's counting the thing but I think yeah you just stay there and don't tap because it feels good I think that's crazy baby yeah so so so I'm I'm just gender heterosexual do you ever wonder if you could ever but because some people think you could evolve into it like I you

know I wouldn't like I I would wonder if one day I could be when I'm 70 years old be a homosexual you know I don't I don't know all the drivers and causes and what's genetic and what's cultural I I don't know I don't even care it's just whatever people want to be in a free country let them be that yeah right so to even argue it it's like that's like arguing should someone wear their hair one way or the other where the part it's it's how you express but I wouldn't say I'm a straight

guy you got your moment and you're rocking that you've been rocking the mullet from day one that's your thing if you came out with an afro you're somebody else at that point yeah but this country allows that I don't know if your fans would allow it but the country would allow it like okay what about this so I think yeah I could see if you're a straight guy you're writing the book right on what is yeah a straight psychiatrist right right in the book you see a guy you know you're hanging out with your buddies

one of them reaches for another guy's wiener or whatever I could see you being like oh this is uh this is but do you think he thought it was wrong or he just thought just it simply I don't know that they value judge they're just saying it's a disorder right the need of repair so but it was a disorder based on that things are just supposed to be this way because they had whatever biases they had whatever inability to embrace the spectrum of humanity presented to him right does nature is nature just or does nature

gay also oh okay uh their books on this the I forget rainbows can we look this up real quick rainbows uh just look at Rainbow and sex and there's a book that'll come up uh just real quick uh Evolutions rainbow okay so so there's a book called Evolution's rainbow okay which explores what species out there actually have full spectrum sex okay gay sex bang sex there's some there's rape in some there's Dolphins there's some there's no other way to understand it unless okay so there's a full range of what's and I don't care if there's

a line called or so here's my point that I don't know that we should care what the rest of the animal kingdom is doing do you know there's a there's a mole rat that's called this this comes in a mole rat where one variant on it they mate for life and the other one there is promiscuous as go all get out damn and they're both mole rats I got both varians so they're both they're both mole rats so and then people say oh Eagles mate forever and they want that to be we want to emulate

that and then you find out that Bonner boat chimps they're [ __ ] all the time oh to resolve differences to to fight each just look at this video yeah it's behind the wall gotta go behind the wall on the video and so and but also very close to us genetically my point is we're human I don't care what the other animals are doing you can find an animal that'll support or or deny whatever claim you're trying to make about us so forget them we're our own species yeah and that's true we have the capacity

to Grant freedoms in some governments to your to support your happiness we value that yeah that's cool because it's crazy to think that some countries don't right that's why I'm glad I'm in America yeah am I good at that right am I getting like a B plus um what about this so um so do you think we'll ever really be able to travel like into another galaxy like interstellarly do you think you need you need a wormhole we're not doing that without Wormhole we don't have like diesel or whatever we don't have anything that'll push

us there is no rocket no there's a rocket that would get there eventually like in a few million years but you don't live that long yeah we we have Rockets powerful enough to get you around the solar system in your lifetime but to the nearest stars at those speeds it would take 50 000 years that's why they're talking about generational ships where you go you have babies no they grow up they have babies so people it's called a generational ship wow it's a little weird because it's a little weird because you're we're we're obligating The

Unborn to continue a mission that you're starting that they didn't have freedom to reject that's an ethical thing right there I don't know are you for it I'm just waiting around for the Wormhole just say yeah dude let's sit in the boat okay come on um so so yeah so then we don't have anything right now that'll ever get us so we are almost kind of stranded here stranded in the solar system it's not so bad a lot of good stuff going no it's cool yeah yeah why is it when I um when I look

up at the like the sky by the way just to be clear we got to the Moon hung out on the moon and came back in less time than it took Columbus to cross the Atlantic wow so we're doing all right you know I'm okay I'm okay we get to Mars when I'm 10 people but we can send Hardware to Mars in nine months a little less that's good the Wormhole what would it how big would it be would you have to would you be able to walk into it or you have to kind of

step into it I I we okay no it's like let me step across it like as a threshold yeah you've seen uh Marvel and and doctor strange or uh Rick and Morty these are these are literal they call them portals to other dimensions whatever but a wormhole would just be that you would just go through on one side come out the other and you would not see the fabric of the Wormhole it would just be a hole in space and it's a whole every direction you look at when we think of a hole in a

floor and you fall through this is a hole in full three-dimensional space no matter which direction you go in you're entering the hole and you'll come out in another place and uh in some places if you take space time and curve it in one of the illustrations we have up on the wall now it's curved so if you were to travel that whole distance around there because that could take you a long time you bend this it imagine it's a piece of paper you bend it cut a hole through the two edges you didn't have

to take that long route and you bypass it and you get to the other side of the Galaxy before the end of the TV commercial and that's how the warp drive people do it is that mathematically possible yes really you promise oh yes on paper we can do that but you need some matter that can that's the opposite of gravity so it's negative energy stuff are we building that can pry open I'm not authorized to say if we're building that are you really not yeah I'm just kidding oh plus that's what I would say if

I wasn't authorized I'm just kidding that's exactly what I would say uh that's like asking someone if you're a spy yeah say no I'm not a spy that's what a spider says you know there's no way out of that one you know dang man no no so so what we could you take stuff with you or would you have to not have any like carry-ons or whatever like how would you do you remember Terminator when he came through time he had to come through naked okay oh yeah because uh clothing couldn't go through the the

the portal uh or only living tissue could go through the portal but here's a problem that I think they forgot or they hair is not alive so you're going through balls she should have gone through complete bald ass bare-ass ball plus he has living tissue but it's on top of his metallic skeleton oh yeah so so the skeletons shouldn't have made it through he would have just been a pile of Flesh or along the ground they weren't entirely consistent with their own rules would you be brave enough to go if they offered it to go

no I'd send a gerbil first true first I'm not going through first damn bro people ask me do you want to ride on elon's rocket and say only after he sends his mother yeah brings her back safely then I'll go yeah until then I'm sitting right here wow yeah you wouldn't go huh until I know it's safe all right two gerbils go then they come back and they're not weird or anything when I'm doing the uh the hamster wheels we're doing the hamster dance right right Smooth Criminal on the wheel yeah yeah so um did

he do that in Smooth Criminal maybe he might have I think it was yeah but he did a lien on it yeah yeah it was the first concert you ever went to oh thanks for asking uh I don't go to many concerts for for not Noble reasons one of them is I prefer the quality of a studio album to people screaming in the background oh yeah the occasional song is good like like free bird live that's the only way I'm consuming that song because it it's longer than the album it's like three minutes longer or

something and Leonard Skynyrd is jamming and every of the instruments so occasionally you get the extra stuff going on in the life but mostly I like the acoustic quality of Studio albums so therefore I'm not going to see you in concert I'm going to buy your album and just listen to you at home okay that's one two concerts are too expensive dude I'd have that money growing up it's expensive so I just didn't go and plus I didn't have a car because I grew up in the city so concerts were not just when you're in

the city it's less of a thing most of the people went to concerts in Madison Square Garden where out of town or it's coming in from Jersey and Long Island and things so but I think my very first concert was Earth Wind and Fire oh yeah I saw them in Austin Texas and then I saw uh The Commodores Oh yeah then my sister worked for PepsiCo which had retained Michael Jackson for things and I saw Michael Jackson pretty good seats too in Madison Square Garden no way so these are some good stuff I'm not yeah

that's good uh how was that that was good he did stuff white all the way back from ABC it was a full retrospective wow yeah it was a full retrospective and so I saw him uh I saw Simon and Garfunkel but my favorite it's like my they're my my people let us Fila is that them no that's the Beatles huh right so we're saying that again got some real estate here in my oh yeah that's him yeah yeah that's him that's one of the songs yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um and so just

a a balladeer is that a word a balladeer of the era yeah uh Simon and Paul Simon and and or Garfunkel and a couple of other concerts oh oh this one was good I saw the 50th anniversary concert of the who oh my gosh and and you know who open for him Joan Jett oh oh that's good that was good was it good oh man and I I I recorded I know I was allowed to do this but I recorded Roger Daltrey singing the line because he's 70 now singing like I hope I die before

I'm old that was his lyric right his dude's lyrics that's uh research yeah that was told I was totally I was at dinner the other night I went to dinner the other night with David Spade actually we were both doing shows somewhere in San Diego cool and I'm name dropping there but he's my friend and we had and anyway Roger Daughtry came and he sat at the table next to us oh and he and David knew each other so I just got to watch them talk to each other for a second very cool so that

to me was pretty cool cool yeah um God you know I do cities too do you know that you go perform yeah oh and speak yeah and just answer questions and and and and they're in theaters dude yeah I believe that right and and the numbers that they get for stand-up comedians they because we're not Broadway right we're not you know you're you're a one-person show on the stage right with very little overhead to produce your show right and so that's the same with me whether it's a screen and I show the universe but uh

I always interesting to see what comedians came before me or after me because I'm a big fan of your trade uh so thanks yeah I think a lot of guys obviously well it's interesting thing about Joe Rogan is he introduces people to a lot of other people that they may not have been introduced from his audience yeah audience base it's pretty fascinating yeah yeah I mean he's done it all he's the stand up and the TV host and everything yeah yeah and he just is so cute he is one of the most curious people I've

ever met in my life he's a consummate researcher that's an example of it and the difference is he's curious in the moment and he's got an expert and he fills it up and then the expert goes away and then he fills in the blanks with his own thoughts yeah so so if you want to do that right you have the Curiosity your guest stimulates that curious curiosity and then you go take out books and finish the gaps yeah you know look at the documentaries and then your your curiosity isn't just satisfied in the moment it's

something that goes beyond the moment so that you get the broader deeper understanding of what's going on that would have helped him when he got that dust up with the vaccines yeah oh yeah they got on to him huh yeah yeah totally got on them and people pulling out of Stitcher and things you know was it Stitcher or SoundHound I forget what what whatever is his Spotify sorry um yeah and people are pulling out of Spotify you know out of solidarity so I it's so he got in his dust up it's because he's curious in

the moment but in an add sort of way right right because the next the next shiny object he wants to know about that right and then he gets he knows just enough about that and you get into uh into that zone yeah where you know just enough to think you're right but not enough to know you're wrong hmm that's a zone that many people get into yeah I think a lot I I from what I remember and I don't know all of it I think a lot of his stuff was that the the bio the

the bio companies were really pushing the vaccines on people a ton you know there'll be yeah but is that a reason to not protect yourself against covet what you have to do is yeah some of that can happen all right I don't know how much it happened during covet but we're honest with ourselves about profit motives right yeah so now you watch now you look at who's dying in the hospitals okay it's people who are unvaccinated with comorbidities primarily and then other people who are sort of unvaccinated and older who were just sort of at

risk but not being old is not as self a comorbidity like being right but it is but right these are factors they're people who were not getting vaccinated and so do you want to stay out of the hospital do you want to not die and you look at the death toll the excess death because of kovid um it is a you can see the bump in the in the in the um mortality Statistics over those two years there's there's whatever it is that's level because with the same amount of approximately same amount of people number

of people die every year in the United States and then in 2020 it went up and then when the vaccine came in you saw it coming down a little and then the people so yes it's a free country but you can catch it and then spread it to somebody else who needs the protection or can't get vaccinated because they have an immune problem do you so at that level you're being selfish that's all do you think in hindsight that I always felt like herd immunity would have been the best thing for that I don't I'm

not a scientist yeah sure but here at immunity it depends on The lethality of the drug and how quickly it spreads that'll determine the exact herd immunity but you got to typically be up around 90 vaccination so that 10 would not have to be vaccinated and they won't catch it but the herd immunity in a rational society that cares about its citizens the nine percent ten percent that don't get immunized it's because they can't be immunized do you want the herd immunity to protect the weak the people who are immune compromised the people who have

some genetic disorder where they rely on you to be vaccinated so I don't catch so they don't catch the disease that's how we should be using herd immunity not because you're because you're um by the way the Liberals and conservatives met each other on the other side of the fence for this the OG anti-vaxxers we're liberals okay who don't trust the Pharma and don't trust the big business and all the rest of this and then the the the freedom angle came in from the right uh you can't you can't I don't want to yeah okay

don't put this in my body right right it's dangerous vaccines are dangerous that vaccines cause or yeah so they cherry-picked things and they go to websites and they spend you know an hour or more but researching it and then there will claim to know more than the medical professionals so sure if you if you don't want to be get vaccinated go live alone until the till the virus goes away but stay out of the zones of people who could catch it from you if you caught it do you feel like if we would have not

done a vaccine and just let the virus go through us it would have just went through us it would have killed five times as many people really easily easily wow you don't remember hospitals were overrun people were in the corridors they have mass burials oh my gosh how quickly people forget well I remember they put people on ventilators but didn't then then they realized that they shouldn't have put people well yeah so on the moving Frontier of a new thing yeah it's easy to sell you shouldn't have done that right right no at the time

it's like you're having trouble breathing there's a ventilator and then people do experiments this is the value of experiments say well if you tip this way or you you breathe through a hole in the table whatever and there's a better chance and that gets published gets disseminated and then you have a new best practice in that moment and the public the public saw this happening in real normally it happens you don't even see it right because it's a controlled study on some corner of the world or in some country you don't even see it until

it's already tested out but you don't want to hold a vaccine longer than necessary if you could be saving lives with it hence the emergency Provisions that were put into place so the problem was I think people don't know what science is or how on why it works and if you taught that in school you'd say okay this is a The Mask but we also need to clean the things because we know viruses transmit on the surfaces turns out this virus was less a surface virus and more of an Airborne virus oh yeah I remember

I had a buddy who was wearing a hazmat suit to get his instacart deliveries and he was pressure washing boxes of Triscuits because at the time that we know that to be successful against variants of a virus but it not that one we didn't know yet yeah but are you going to say well we don't know yet so therefore I'm not going to do anything no you do what has worked in other okay you do that until we refine it people were not allowing science to run its course do you think that during the pandemic

that the uh that the um the uh vaccine and the bio company the pharmaceutical companies that they hijacked science or hijacked them well their studies get reviewed by uh panels of scientists that's what the FDA does that's the whole point one of the main points of the FDA is to do this so they study the efficacy of the of the virus of the vaccine and they study how effective is it against children also things like it can be effective but at what dose the most there's more than one moving part here in the studies they

did the studies and they found it was like 95 effective against that variance so they said let's roll it out no need to do further experiments on this on the effectiveness of the vaccine now here's here's an interesting challenge if your vaccine is so perfect that it knocks out this variant perfectly it might not be effective against another variant of that same virus right oh it could be too perfect okay it could be too perfect correct and so though we need search research this may be going I'm not I'm not on that Frontier of of

a viral serum that's more sort of a cocktail of antiviral elements so that whenever the thing tries to morph or or or mutate we got you you can't mutate out of this out of this group of um and so what they do now with the flu vaccine is they just they have the specific um uh uh uh they have the specific recipes and they they do cocktail together uh for the the seasonal flu virus because they see different fluids showing up and and they put them together but I I foresee a day when you take

one antiviral serum it takes cat takes out all viruses that'd be a fun day do you think that yeah because a lot of we had Bobby Kennedy on and he was talking about like he was really against Dr fauci in a lot of like yeah he's yeah he has a book The Truth About Dr fauci right so he's he's he's an environmentalist so he was always grew up like about the environment right yeah then he's like about the environment inside of your body he you know I he believes that a lot of vaccines and stuff

like can cause more damage over time yeah except when you look at the people who don't die for having had the vaccine so there's a a lot of I mean there's a lot of cherry picking of data I mean I think he came to this vaccine argument uh this vaccine world because he's he sees the abuses of corporate agreed yeah all right and in the environment a corporation will do something regardless of its effective environment or its effect on people so he I think that not that he's an expert on vaccines and virology or anything

but that he sees big corporations he sees governments like he's a lawyer yeah and he sees people and he wants to protect people so that's a noble cause a legacy of his entire family of course that in multi-generations so but what happens is people can get they get onto something that they think is true and but the law there's a larger statistical truth that negates what you think if you see three cases because the testimony is strong because or or someone coincidentally gets some other thing after they get a an injection and they and they

they stand up and give a talk he said oh my gosh this is the this is what I'm telling you they're looking into the person's eyes and you feel their emotions and you see the fire and that becomes more real to you than a pie chart yeah so it's interesting you can get caught up in that and but do you think that these days like that because you're from the science community that like big Pharma like they have enough money and power that they could alter because that's what I feel like a lot of people

that they could alter the data or cherry pick it enough and present it to humans in a way that would just support what they want well so so what that's what I think in the end a lot of people probably that's the thing that I think people think that big Pharma hijacked a lot of the information or adjusted it to make people believe and think okay except we have people dying in the hospital who are not vaccinated and people alive who were right so you can keep talking okay you can keep saying whatever you want

but we have evidence that conflicts with your conspiratorial views right and evidence matters in the end and so you know could they have faked could they have put their entire 100-year reput Pfizer or whatever how old they are but I think it's around there 100 Year reputation on the line by faking data so that we would all think their vaccine will keep us out of the hospital just to sell it we would know within weeks if not days if that was all a lie yeah we would know because there would be as many people in

the hospital who've been dying who've been vaccinated who were not and those are two samples you want to compare with each other yeah and when you compare that no that it's effective it's effective now what what what took people by what surprise people is yeah you vaccine vaccinate me against the measles I'm not getting the measles you can breathe on me I'm not getting the measles all right so how why do people still get coveted after they got vaccinated against covid yeah they got a lighter case of covet then they would have otherwise gotten ah

okay you surely know people who got coveted who were vaccinated there was a you know five-day vacation at home okay use a box of tissues and you're back a few days later were they on ventilators and were they even admitted to a hospital no no when people get it now I'm like I almost think they're [ __ ] you know people are like I got covered like [ __ ] get in here yeah do your work dude I'll take it um do you worry about the like so science is information right and objective information are

things that can't change if it's been verified by multiple experiments right and there's a result that comes out of it that's not tomorrow going to be different from today do you worry about the way that we share information now because that's almost scarier that's you know just like news channels and outlets and clips the way we see things it's adjusting people's the way we think all the time it's taking over the value of the information that's insightful and perceptive and correct that they're not only controlling the information you receive they're shaping how you receive it

which has an effect on how you then behave and act on that information so as a scientist we're trained not only successfully we're trained to detach from the emotions of a testimony we're trained to be skeptical of a claim that's made that's opposite other claims that have been made before if someone says we've seen the YouTubers who's the dude hanging on his arm uh uh no no no no the guy who wants you to do his diet uh his muscle grow he wants you to grow muscles he's a muscle Sylvester Stallone no no he's just

some guy he's just some guy okay like a fitness expert okay but he's got something he's selling you and he's saying you know the best way to get ripped muscles it's not by going to the gym every day it's by doing my thing oh okay so it's we respond to that once again it's the easy way out we respond to a testimony that's saying everybody else is wrong but this is right as a scientist we are trained to be skeptical of that claim the person that says all these scientists and all they're all wrong and

they're all in conspiracy but I'm correct listen to me we're trained to be and then not to just be skeptical and go on with life I'm gonna find out if what you're saying is true why is conspiracy because conspiracies uh and the idea of conspiracy theories have grown more in the past 10 years I think so I think so it seems like sadly but yes do you wait what do you attribute that to the urge to be comfortable in your own belief system we started the conversation that way yeah you were saying this is what

I am and if someone's poking at the sides I don't want it I don't want to know about it so now you create a world view you create an understanding of how things are either because someone convinced you or you convinced yourself okay now there's a gap or there's some information that conflicts with it so you're going to say if you cherish this world view that information that conflicts with it was falsified or that was wrong they don't know what they're doing or if there's a gap in the information you'll say someone's hiding and that

so you say by saying someone hiding it that Bridges you from one bit of information to another and you can maintain your world view um as a scientist it is our duty to disturb our worldview every day the headline that says scientists have to go back to the drawing board because their cherished theories might be put in Jeopardy this is [ __ ] we're at the drawing board every single day of Our Lives that's what we do is what we live for a new discovery who is this we're not in our office with our feet

up on the desk masters of all the knowledge of the universe that's not us who is uh who tests who is the final say-so of something from science that it can go into society well in my field there's none of that because we the patient doesn't die okay I can be spectacularly wrong about how a galaxy is rotating and uh there's no there's no product that's going to be made based on it right so so as you as what you do gets closer and closer to the condition to The Human Condition then you need sort

of regulations and careful scrutiny that's why the FDA exists and there's no counterpart to the FDA for astrophysics can the FDA be compromised or not uh in principle I think anything can be compromised but what you so what it comes down to is you would say the FDA is saying this does any other agency say something completely different I'm not talking about a YouTube page A Little Agency if this isn't complete then then let's take a closer look it's a reason to look closer not a reason to reject or accept that's all and uh might

they give oh so here's one I got one uh the food pyramid oh yeah I remember that this is a completely red interesting I I'm even gonna say honest uh should I say let me not use the word it's an interesting sequence of events okay here it is okay there's a study in Europe tens of thousands of people it's a diet study okay okay and they find out that uh the Mediterranean diet is healthier for you low in saturated fats low butter not so much meat uh grains are been there so beans and and wheat

and this sort of thing and so and saturated fats that's bad for you it'll reduce your so this study came out here we are okay this study came out and it was it took the World by storm because it was so many people and European Europe is is westernized right and we all live a western life so This was oh my gosh we all got to do this so drop the saturated fats drop the cholesterol drop all this stuff that'll kill you fast and eat the Breads and things and that okay that's what contributed to

uh to impart the the the just the die the a carb diet okay and when we did that everybody started getting fat um everybody started getting fat you know what happens something else happens right there's a other side of it there's another carb in your diet puts your metabolism on a roller coaster and you end up with food cravings that you didn't previously have because you got your calories from sources other than carbohydrates so there was a secondary effect that was not folded in but more important that European study of have forgot how many countries

was missing France how do you have a European study that doesn't have France in it I don't know people don't like them okay I mean that was no other explanation we hate the French maybe they didn't call them maybe they didn't answer when you called okay you have a study but that is yeah that's the cholesterol well not just you have to have everybody which is true you have a study telling people that cholesterol is bad for you and you're missing a country that is steeped in animal fat the foreground the butter the croissant the

duck fat all of this ducks are [ __ ] awesome do you know that the life expectancy in France is like 30 six months no it's like six months shorter than Italy which has the Mediterranean France has also got to Mediterranean thing but their diet you don't think it was the Mediterranean diet so they had no it's not significantly less life expected than other countries that didn't eat any of that and that was not in the study put it in so the study had a built-in bias that people were not thinking of at the time

the study was so this is the bias you have to watch out for yeah here we are doing experiment believing something that's not true and that's why lately they say put in some cholesterol back in your diet it's and and and because we're learning that what we thought was true out of that from that one study that's the point one study doesn't make the truth you need other study that test it and re-verify it yeah because I saw I was watching uh well I was just watching that show dope sick and it was about like

the opioid crisis or whatever yeah yeah it was crazy yeah yeah it's crazy sometimes that why do we let bad things into our society that seems so bad you know um it would seem like sometimes we would be able to well we have addiction problems I mean that's a problem yeah that's a good point yeah right if we didn't have addiction problems then you need none of that right right yeah let me get high today and then I'm fine tomorrow right I'm not you know so that's a susceptibility we have in our physiology so but

you can be a gambling addicted and the many addictions oh yeah we got a lot of addicts listening to this okay the addictions are are that weakness and when you have other people that exploit that weakness yeah like the casinos and the drug dealers anything yeah anything yeah anything someone's there to make money offer your inability to stop what you're doing yeah that's what I worry about like even with the drug dealers at like big levels it's like are we is our FDA compromisable sometimes I worry you know or if we've gotten to that point

as a country where everything's com like we're just it's more well if you if you lose all confidence in the agencies and the entire system um then where are you going to put your confidence is it the YouTube channel you were looking at is it the yeah is it the guy on the YouTube channel say the FDA is wrong about everything right I'm right buy what I'm selling you right where so it's a good question I think but that's what I think you see a I don't know if you see a lot of that happening

but I think there's people who don't know where to put their confidence anymore I feel like we used to all know where to put our confidence does that make any sense um yes but I'm saying there are people who are sowing doubt in places where there's no need to do so uh people who are indicting the entire scientific Community oh by the way while they're still using their smartphone okay I I sent out a tweet should I have left it in my forbidden file I don't know it was a letter it was like deer flat

earthers anti-vaxxers uh homeopath homeopaths and on a whole list of like pseudoscience okay dear you you found each other and communicate with one another using a device that that using a sophisticated device that uses Frontier Advanced discoveries in engineering science technology and math just thought I'd alert you of this fact sign your your smartphone okay this is the letter your smartphone should be telling you every day yeah it's true I don't trust science science is this oh wait what's the best way to root the round of traffic to get to Grandma's house which is using

GPS satellites and what do you think we do as scientists and by the way people think that scientists are somehow conspiring have you ever been to a scientific conference we're arguing all the time yeah we don't agree it's a great point no it's just I that's a great point it's really you're living twice as long as your great-grandparents because of science yeah oh I don't trust science science it's interesting right I yeah I don't know I wonder where all this dis where the distrust started to really come from I feel like 20 years ago it

wasn't here well I think maybe it was there was some distrust that began uh with Nixon and Watergate oh yeah where can we trust our government and institutions we knew they were corrupt politicians every now and then but the system for it to be embedded and the and the the the papers the Pentagon papers this is stuff going that was released out of the Vietnam War smuggled out the New York Times reported on it you learned the the shaky stuff Shady stuff we're doing are we the noble Freedom Fighters to the world or are we

sleazy corporate so I think it began then so it means yes skepticism is fine but skepticism is not the same thing as everything you tell me is wrong right sister says let me double check that yeah that's a that's a really really great thing to say man and that's a great thing to remember and I think it's interesting because that's what it's some of your book a lot of your book is interesting things to think about different ways to think about them um and like I said if you're going to read it at all read

it before Thanksgiving dinner and you just calmly say well have you thought of this thought of this you'll be the calmest arguer there ever was that's what I will say there's a lot of great have you thought of this and it's it was some parts were like I don't know if I want to think about that but it's nice my one last question for you what do you got sometimes I look up at the sky right and I'll look up and I feel like especially if there's stars out there I'll feel like uh uh it's

kind of like like something's looking back at me does that make any sense to you at all I I once tweeted something like that I said sometimes I wonder as i gaze into the night sky whether the Stars themselves are gazing back at me oh damn I didn't realize I sounded so damn bi about it and that's when people said are you high and you'll put down the joint are you this is this is a reliable influx of people who are certainly look up I think there's a like a thing I don't know what it

is bro I don't think it's gay or anything I think it'll just feel like the space is looking back at me well maybe I'm gay for space bro well so I we're not likely the only life forms in the universe there's probably very many some vastly more intelligent than we are here here we're sitting here looking up into the night sky countless thousands of stars with binoculars it rises into the millions of stars with telescopes it rises into the billions oh God there is surely civilizations there looking up at their night sky and they see

our star the Sun as part of some constellation that they identify in their night sky and there's a Theo Von there looking up asking is anyone up there looking down at me and we get to say yes we have your counterparts we gotta feel fun in this galaxy too no no I'm just saying uh it's fun to think about we being in the night sky of some children's diagram as seen by another place in the galaxy you got to answer the question what do you tell me about the individuals whatever would you say oh yeah

yeah okay I'll take you out with that do you know how precious life is most people don't I didn't know I think because look at the risks we take oh let me jump out of an airplane you know and maybe the shoot will open all right that's a whole kind of person we got out there just look at YouTube videos oh yeah all right with the GoPro yeah exactly exactly all right there's been about a hundred billion people who have ever lived wow really yes and there's only eight billion now no about 100 billion if

you add it up over all time damn all right so now do you know how many people can exist you take a look at the genes find out how many combinations of genes can make an authentic human being and you do that you can do the math on this and it is stupendously larger number than the 100 billion it it is I I I've given number in here but that even that's a low estimate that could have existed over time or that could exist total same difference okay okay so I give a low end number

of a million trillion trillion total possible numbers of plausible human beings that could exist what it means is you are alive against stupendous odds you are breathing air observing sunsets gazing into the night sky most people who could exist will never experience that wow in fact as Richard Dawkins has said brilliantly you get to die and he said I don't want to die I'm die most people who could exist will never even be born and you're going to complain about the life you have yes not all lives are equally I get that yes and you

could get the wrong hand dealt to you either birth defects or or your family whatever it is oh my God that is your whatever it is that's what you've got yeah use it develop it do all you can within your power and the power of others who love you to to maximize what you can be what you can think what you you can learn how you can love all of this your gift it's the gift because as you most people most people that could exist mathematically will never exist wow so right there you are a

you you are a special a living entity as there ever was amen so that so in the end of this chapter and and and what I do as an Epitaph there's a quote from an educator Horseman uh you might have heard the name he was 200 years ago brilliant guy head of universities he gave a commencement speech and he said I beseech you love that word nobody uses it anymore yeah you get I mean you feel girls hang up immediately oh is that right is that right I I haven't tested it I don't know I'll

try to bring it back and maybe it'll stay on with you I beseech you yeah if you say I beseech you to go on a date with me right that's that's the end of that call right there good day um I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words be ashamed to die until you've scored some victory for Humanity and if you've got one time on Earth there it is there it is uh Neil deGrasse Tyson thank you so much for your time man it really uh Delight to meet you of

course I know your work and it's it's as it says authentically honest it's you know it's unpretentious you're just feeling it out there on stage and people people people know you're feeling it and they feel it too and I think it's some it's some potent humor which which gives you some power that you know you have power but it's even more power than that because you can bring people with you I'm starting to realize that more you know I want to be able to be as creative as I can in work and also I want

to be able to question things and think about stuff as much as I can so I'm really grateful for this conversation right now in my life and to stay relevant as a comedian you got to stay on that Frontier right you can't relax for a minute oh man plus a joke you told last week you can't tell next week yeah we're scientists well I'll tell a few but but you'll hear the groan the audience reaction evolves right well part of the groan is deep inside of myself because it knows it's not I'm not maximizing my

potential yeah okay so yeah um but thank you so much for your time man uh dude thanks for having me yeah you're uh you're a value to humanity and we appreciate you thank you now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be Cornerstone I'll share this piece of my life and I can feel it in my bones it's gonna take