We just spent half hour talking about

this, and I hardly ever talk about it.

And why is that wrong?

I didn't say it was wrong.

Okay, I'm a

Neil deGrasse Tyson

World-renowned astrophysicist turned TV

host

He's a man with the answers to the

toughest questions on the planet.

And of course, best-selling author.

In the last 50 years, we've increased

life expectancy 20 years. There will be

a time where Homo sapiens have achieved

escape velocity from death. That

generation will never die unless you're

hit by a bus. That brings you the

question

if you could live forever, would you?

How different the world would be.

What are the things that you are most

concerned about the direction of travel

of the human race?

A lot of things.

So, there's some delusional force

operating on people's understanding of

the world in which they live. If you

post an opinion on anything, it gets

attacked.

Did you see what happened with Neil

deGrasse Tyson?

He tweeted something that many people

took great offense to.

Part of what it is to be a scientist is

figure out all the ways you could bias

yourself and remove them as far as

possible. Don't let it interfere with

objective truths.

But what's the personal toll on you?

I don't know why he tweeted that.

stupid and awful

a weird Twitter lunatic.

He's a

How long can I keep talking about

Before this episode starts, I have a

small favor to ask from you. Two months

ago, 74% of people that watch this

channel didn't subscribe. We're now down

to 69%.

My goal is 50%. So, if you've ever liked

any of the videos we've posted, if you

like this channel, can you do me a quick

favor and hit the subscribe button? It

helps this channel more than you know,

and the bigger the channel gets, as

you've seen, the bigger the guests get.

Thank you, and enjoy this episode.

Neil,

I have always believed that to fully

understand a person, you have to

understand their origin story. Maybe

that's a a similar sort of

analogy for the universe. So, the place

I wanted to start with you is by

understanding the most important context

from your earliest years that are

responsible for the person that is sat

in front of me today.

Well, this is very Marvel Comics of you.

What What's the origin story of

Superman, Batman, Spider-Man? Uh

Your question is very well placed

because

everyone has been touched by some series

of events.

Unfortunately, some for some people

traumatic events, but for all people

some series of events that shaped who

they are.

And

I'd like to say that there was a series

of events that planted the seeds of

who I would become.

But I I wouldn't say that they were

responsible. I mean, it requires a lot

of continual investment of time, energy,

and focus

to shape a career.

Rather than say, "Oh, it happened then

and I've just been coasting ever since."

No, that's not how that works.

So,

I I grew up in the Bronx.

And

in New York City, surely as is true in

London,

you don't have a relationship with the

night sky.

In a busy city,

you at least in certainly in New York

City, there were tall buildings. If you

look up to see the sky, there's a

building in the way.

There's light pollution. There's And

back then there was air pollution.

So,

since no one has a relationship with

with the night sky, then one can ask

what is your access to it. Of course,

it's our local planetarium, the Hayden

Planetarium.

And

I would My family, my parents, my

brother and sister,

there was a tactical strategic thing my

parents did. I I didn't know it at the

time, but every weekend or every other

weekend we went places.

We were exposed to all manner of things

that talented adults do.

Beyond just the doctor, lawyer, you

know, engineer, beyond those standard

professions. So, first was entertaining,

but it also meant

we had exposure

to other ways of thinking about what you

might do with your life.

One of those trips, when I was 9 years

old, was to the Hayden Planetarium.

And I was starstruck.

You sit in a big chair and the lights

dim and the stars come out. More stars

than you can count.

And I thought it was a hoax. I said,

"There aren't that many stars. I've seen

the night sky from the Bronx. You're

lying to me."

And only later would I learn, upon going

deep into the

rural areas of the country, we have

relatives in the Caribbean, we visited

there, I'd see the night sky

as nature intended.

And to this day,

when I've access to great telescopes on

mountaintops,

and I look up at the

crystalline clear night skies,

I still say to myself, "Oh, that is so

beautiful. It reminds me of the Hayden

Planetarium."

So, it's a

uh I know that's kind of a sad

commentary on what it is to grow up in a

city, but it's

I feel like the universe chose me. And

since I was 9 years old onward, I have

committed my life to learning more and

more about the universe. And that that's

the the most important seed that was

planted.

Cyril and Suncheta, is that your

parents' names?

Cyril is my father and Sun Cheeta is my

mother, correct.

What was the influence that they

individually had on you? From the From

almost vicariously learning from them,

but also the direct influence they had

on you.

They were a moral influence, a cultural

influence,

and I will add,

not that you

explicitly asked this, but I think it

fits right in this moment.

Um

consider the period, the 1960s.

You could go one of two ways if you're

an angry black man.

It's like you can raise your fist

and threaten violence

as a retaliation of the violence against

you,

or you can find some other way that

doesn't involve violence, that involves

some kind of peace, some kind of

understanding.

And my father, and while he grew up in

the '30s and '40s, he served in a

segregated army, okay? So, the stuff he

lived through,

and while I have my own stories, none of

them compare to his average story.

Yet, at the end of the day, he was never

bitter. I remembered him saying, "When

you look at the images of angry

white people screaming at black children

entering a school who are protected by

the National Guard because an edict had

to be delivered to grant them access to

education,"

he would say,

"They simply don't know any better.

They were raised that way.

You want

to hate them.

And

my father never hated.

Never.

So, I go through life and at least

several times a week, every week of my

life growing up, I have stories. Today

they would call them microaggressions,

but then it was just

same different day.

But I never got bitter. Because you

asked, what influence did they have on

me? It was the non-bitter

influence. You say,

that's they don't know any better. They

think they're doing the right thing.

Maybe we can make a difference

going forward.

I saw the emotion in your face when you

talked about your father.

Yeah. It's

I think we need that today.

The world

I I reached a point where

Okay.

How long can I keep talking about

the universe

and not bring it down to Earth?

Not bring some science principles to

people's thinking.

They want to tribalize. They want to

hate.

They want to

choose

They want to create laws

to restrict your freedoms just because

of

who you worship or don't worship or who

you sleep with or what you look like or

what, you know, how reflective

to light your skin color is, all right?

What side of a line in the sand

you

were born on.

I like invoking an alien trope.

Aliens, they don't know anything about

us. They just see this beautiful planet

with water on it and

continents and clouds and they visit and

they say, "Oh, this is cool. Oh, this is

one species that's everywhere. Oh,

they're very successful. They are humans

and they're homo sapiens. That's cool."

And then they get a little closer look

and they say, "Oh my gosh, what are they

There's a war over here. Why?" Oh, cuz

there's some resource on this side

that's not over there and they want it.

There's a coastline, there's oil,

there's this, there's a

elements in a mine. They They They They

worship a different god.

They look at the violence and hatred

that we commit upon each other.

And they'll run back home and tell their

fellow alien brethren,

"There's no sign of intelligent life on

Earth."

So,

anyhow, so I've I've

Yeah, my head has been in the stars, but

my feet have been on Earth my entire

life.

Why Why Why does that

connect so deeply cuz it's so obvious it

connects so deeply with you? Is that

linked to what you the resilience to

bitterness that your father demonstrated

when he was abused and was

attacked

with racial abuse? Is that Is that the

the reason why it's so linked so closely

to your heart?

I I I don't know. Um

He didn't He didn't burden us with his

stories unless we asked or unless it

came up in a moment. It was It wasn't

that way.

It was I saw his integrity in the face

of what was going on in the world and

it's

You can

A person could be a mentor even if they

don't say anything.

Because you can

observe them.

Observe their conduct.

Their their behavior. Their

how they respond to adversity.

Do they fight back?

Do they want to commit violence?

Do they

want to have a conversation

to explore the differences?

You know, I am I'm uh

my mother's from Nigeria, my dad's from

England. So, I'm of I guess dual

ethnicity or whatever the politically

correct term is now.

It's called human.

Okay, I'm human.

It's called just say it. Repeat after

me. What race are you? You're the human

race.

race.

You You just spent

Mhm.

10 seconds

telling me how anthropologists liked to

divide up the world and force us to then

agree with their categories.

Mhm.

Line everybody up from ghost white to

coal black and you will have a human

being of every single skin color in

between.

Okay, well, did you happen to be born

over there? So, you're human.

I'm Nigerian.

mixture you are. I don't give a rat's

ass. You're a human being sitting across

the table from me.

Now, continue.

Sorry, it's your podcast.

Sorry, I don't mind.

I don't mean to jump all in your face.

fine. I'm good I'm fine with it. Um

and I've I've come to learn about what

it was to be

black

in the 19

60s, 70s from my guest and it's helped

me to understand my mother better

because I have to I have my mother

didn't react like your father did.

And you talked about

was a Nigerian.

Nigerian. She came to the UK. We lived

in an all white area. She didn't react

like your father did and so it skewed my

perspective on

on race relations. But then from doing

this podcast and meeting people like

you, hearing some of those very specific

stories of abuse, I almost can't believe

it. And now I have this huge amount of

empathy for my mother because I've sat

here with the guests. And one of the

stories I heard you tell was about your

father competing in athletics and how

people would scream the N-word at him

while he was running.

Oh, yeah. So, that that this was for me

one of the most

insightful

lessons

that I got from all the stories from

him. Yes, so he uh he was an an athlete

actually world-class uh track.

Uh that's its own story because he he

was uh

kind of muscular, mhm, all right,

certainly in his day.

Not Charles Atlas muscular, but uh

relative to other kids in his class in

high school, he was muscular. And they

were in their gym class and you line up

and getting ready for the next unit. All

right, there was gymnastics and then

there was like track and field. So, they

had the track unit and the

gym teacher pointed to my father

on the line and said "I we're about to

do the running unit and just so you

know, um

do you see Cyril Tyson over there?" They

would turn. He says, "He has the kind of

body that would not make a good runner."

And he said to himself

"No one is going to tell me what I can't

do in this world."

And he started running.

And he became world-class.

And at one point he had the fifth

fastest time in the world

in his special event. So, that was an

that's an important lesson career

lesson.

Why are there people running around

telling you what you can't accomplish?

In in a free society?

I I can get it if we're not a free

society, but why should anyone tell you

what you can't or shouldn't do?

So, that was lesson number one for me.

But then

his best friend, also a runner

Johnny Johnson was his name.

Uh

there's a race. Johnny Johnson is

running around on the last turn of the

track.

And there's a runner from the New York

Athletic Club several paces behind him.

The coach of that runner

goes up the side of the track

and screams to his runner

as he points to Johnny Johnson ahead of

him

"Catch that

Johnny Johnson overheard this. Okay?

And all Johnny Johnson said to himself

was

"This is one he ain't going to catch."

And just

increased the distance.

Okay?

So So that comment from the coach

could have done one of two things.

It could have demotivated you because

then you wallow in the racism of the

world

or it could motivate you to succeed.

Ever since I heard that story

every racist encounter I have ever had

simply motivates me to succeed all the

more.

Period.

And I see that throughout your story as

you go through in a college university

um and you go into your postgrad,

there's moments over and over again

where people or circumstance encourage

you away from what's clearly your

passion, the thing you're clearly

pursuing.

Yeah, people didn't Yeah, and again,

this is not the kind of racism that the

1950s or 40s, you know, I wasn't

lynched, you know, so So again, I don't

want to claim

equal

trauma to what earlier generations had

experienced, but you can get let's call

it institutional racism where you don't

even

I'm talking about people trying to put

you off your passion telling you it's

not

That's not calling that racism. What I'm

saying is

they see that I'm athletic. I've been

athletic most of my life

and they can't wrap their head

around me being something other than an

athlete that they watch on television.

When I say, "Well, I actually like

astrophysics." But you're so good at

this other sport.

No, I want to be in the physics club.

No, we we need you on the the basketball

team.

And they think they're doing me a favor.

They think they're saying nice things to

me.

But every one of those is a force

operating against my ambitions.

And so, in a way, just that my skin

color

in my life's arc was a path of most

resistance

compared to where I wanted to land.

And by the way, I don't you we we are we

just spent a half hour talking about

this and I hardly ever talk about it. I

don't talk about cuz I don't you know,

I don't need to. Maybe if if it's a

counseling session, but I'm perfectly

fine.

I'm a happy guy, happily married, got

two kids, and

uh I hardly ever talk about skin color.

Because

I I want to make it

irrelevant as quickly as I possibly can

in every context I'm possibly in.

So, if you're going to invite me to give

a public talk in February, Black History

Month, I will decline that invitation.

If you only think of me as a black

scientist,

then I have failed as a scientist.

Period.

Period.

Uh you want me to Oh, what do

You know how I realized this?

Okay? So, I will tell you the moment

after which

I was a different person interacting

with the public.

Okay, I'm in graduate school. There's an

explosion on the sun.

And the press is over the wires. Press

hears about this.

So, they want to get a comment on it.

An explosion on the sun. So, they called

Columbia, the Department of Astronomy.

And they're looking for some It was

lunchtime.

They were all out to lunch.

I'm a I'm a grad I'm a doctoral

candidate. I'm there for my PhD. And so

the department

admin is going through the the roster

and they get to me. They say, "Neil, no

one is here. Can you take this call?" So

I said, "Sure."

And they said, "Oh, hello. Who are you?"

I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, doctoral

candidate in astrophysics. They say,

"You know, there's this an explosion on

the sun. Should we be worried?" I said,

"Oh, it's a solar flare. They happen

with some frequency. It's a wave of

particles coming towards Earth." And

they said, "You mean the Earth is fine?"

I said, "The Earth is fine."

And they said,

"Can you tell us that on camera?"

I uh sure. Okay, we'll send up a limo to

pick you up in a half hour.

And so the whole conversation, there it

was.

And it was pre-taped. I get home. I put

on the TV.

And I watch this interview.

And I hadn't out-of-body experience.

I just witnessed something I've never

seen before in my life.

And you know what that was?

It was the news

interviewing a black person, me,

who was not an entertainer or athlete,

okay?

Interviewing a black person

for expertise

that had nothing to do with being black.

The interview didn't say at the end,

"Well, how do black people feel about

solar flares? Oh, does this affect

affect dark skin differently?" NONE OF

THAT.

It was,

"Will Earth be safe?"

And he's getting that expertise from a a

black person. I had never seen that Then

I thought, well, is it just cuz I'm on

TV and I'm a little more aware?

So, I watched for the next 2 years.

Every time there was a black person

brought onto the news for expertise,

it was someone who's a

member of Congress representing a

community and they want enterprise zones

for the economics. There is someone who

is worried about the poverty in the

inner city.

Never

had an audience seen a black person as

an expert.

Oh, that they would have attorneys, but

it's talking about a court case about a

black person.

Would there ever be a black attorney to

talk about a court case about a white

person? No.

And I said to myself, that's

is the answer.

That's how I we turn an entire world of

people who think black people are just

dumb and stupid, lazy, shiftless, have

and all they can do is shine my shoes

and entertain me and sing and be the

athlete on the field, if there was an

ever a force to change that.

It's not people telling them they should

think differently.

It's me being visible in a way

where they have no other choice but to

say, "Oh my gosh, this person knows more

about this subject than I do and he has

dark skin."

So, the next time they see a homeless

black person, they're not saying, "Oh,

black people are just like" They have to

confront the fact that they just saw a

black person tell them that Earth was

safe.

So, it's just quite simple. The next

time you're driving your car

and somebody comes up with a squeegee to

wash your window at the red light and

begs for money and if that person is

black,

maybe you'll think twice

about the causes and effects of poverty,

of the forces that operate

that discriminate against one community

of people versus another.

So, ever since that moment, I have

declined interviews

that want me

because I'm black.

And even in this interview, I'm not

entirely comfortable spending a half

hour talking about it because it

it turns this interview into something

about me being black.

Which then is someone hears or hears me

for the first time, oh let's get him. He

has all these stories about being black.

Let's get him to talk to this group

about in this racial uh in this race

conference. No.

I will decline that invitation.

So let's talk about um

a separate point. What advice would you

give me on how you pursue the thing that

sets your heart on fire, your passion,

whatever you want to call it, without

falling into the or conforming to the

like external pressure to become a

doctor or lawyer. Like, I'm thinking

about the people that are watching this

that have a passion, but they don't

consider it to be a job as many people

didn't consider what you do now to be a

job back then, and they're being forced

by the external words, parents,

expectations, social media to go and do

something else they don't want to do.

What would you say to those people?

I can tell you this, that if you don't

have a I didn't realize when I was nine

how unusual it was to be that passionate

that young. Not until I got to college,

half the people my freshman year didn't

yet know what they wanted to major in.

And I said I'm majoring in astrophysics.

They say was that cuz it was early in

the catalog alphabetically of things you

might major No, I

felt this and known this half my life.

And so I

I in college, I was sensitized to people

who are still looking,

still searching.

Well, we have the benefit of longer life

expectancy today than 50 years ago.

I mention this only because if you You

know what you want if you don't know

what you want to be when you grow up

and you're 30,

that's just fine.

But,

I don't want to have to blame you for

not exposing yourself to what you can be

when you grow up.

If you're sitting home watching football

and say, "I don't know what I want to do

with my life."

Why don't you do what my parents did?

Visit a new thing every weekend.

Go on a trip.

Talk to experts in all manner of

tasks and uh you know, visit a chef

school, visit a uh a geology

uh expedition. Do Just do things.

And and if you like it,

you'll probably be better at that than

anything else you choose to do.

Because you you will invest even your

downtime doing it.

And as the saying goes,

uh pick something you would do for free

and make that your career.

And you'll never live a sad day in your

life.

So, that's one variant on a pick

something that you love.

And all the time when other people say,

"You know, I need a vacation from this

job." You You're going to say,

"Vacation? What's that?"

And people say that to me.

"Do you want a vacation?" From From

what?

"From the astrophysics you're doing."

But, I like what I'm doing.

If I'm on vacation on I I love being on

the beach, but if I'm on the beach, I'm

thinking about

the universe. It's not to get away from

the universe. All right? Not that that

could literally happen anyway.

Uh so,

uh that's what I would say. You want to

be independent-minded. Listen to

people's comments. People have life

experience. Don't ignore it.

But, what you want to do is fold it in

to your own sensibilities.

Provided you have sensibilities to begin

with.

Otherwise, you become this ping-pong

ball uh batted back and forth between

one person's suggestion and another.

In the cover of your book, um

it talks about the polarization that

we're we're seeing in the world at the

moment. What is, you know, as you What

is the What are the things that you are

most concerned about when you think

about the direction of travel of the

human race and life here on Earth and

what's going on? What are the things

that trouble you at a very deep level in

terms of our direction of travel?

A lot of things.

So,

let me put this in context.

In science, if I put a conclusion

forward,

it's not You're not going to ask me,

"Did you look at both sides of that?"

No, that's not the question. It's, "Did

you look at all sides of it?"

We have this binarity mind where we

feel, "Oh, you're for me or you're for

us or against us. Is it black or white?

Are you a boy or you a girl? Is it up or

is it down?" This is intellectually lazy

because practically everything that

exists in this universe manifests on a

spectrum.

So, here's a here's a thought. And

you're going to say, "Well, did you look

at both sides?" No, I looked at all

sides.

"Did you realize that if this changes,

that could change this?" And did you Did

you figure out how sensitive it is to

that? If I didn't, I'm not doing my job

as a scientist. Okay?

So,

we live in a time

especially fractured by the forces of

social media. I say this only because if

you post an opinion on anything

in social media,

it gets attacked. Yeah, there'll be

people who agree with it, fine. But the

noise and the fireworks

are when you get attacked.

I don't think it used to be that way.

I think there was a time when

I would express an opinion and you'd

say, "Oh, that's interesting. Here's my

opinion."

Uh so, why do you think that way? And

here's why I think that way. That's

interesting. I never thought about it

that way. Cool. You You spend 15 minutes

talk com-

comparing and con- contrasting opinions,

then you go out for a beer at the pub.

This is how I remembered it at Am I

misremembering? I I I don't think so.

To get be attacked? No, what are the

consequences? What are you actually

after by attacking someone with a

different opinion? Oh, I know what it

is. You want everyone to have exactly

the same opinion you do.

Well, that's not this country, either.

No.

You know what's on our currency?

On our currency, E pluribus unum.

Okay?

Out of the many, we have one.

Not out of the one, we have one.

It is the many. It is the plurality.

Pluribus. Plura- It's Latin, okay?

A plurality means people coexist who

think differently about the world, and

we celebrate that, or at least we ought

to.

Otherwise, we're all the same, and we

can make a country where everybody's the

same, and that's called a dictatorship.

Is that really what it really

Think through fully the consequences of

that. Yeah. Let me get back to the

violence part.

I wanted to on the on the point of

social media, you had a you had a tweet

that you did that went viral that got

attacked, right? I mean, there there was

one in particular that I think

was was attacked more than the others. I

can't even remember off the top of my

head.

my intent Yeah. to post a tweet that

gets attacked.

Of course not.

If If it gets attacked, it's like, I

didn't see that coming. I I'm I count

myself as an educator among the ranks of

educators,

and

my goal is to enlighten and educate, not

to anger people. So, I still maintain a

forbidden Twitter file

Yeah.

on my computer. These are tweets

that No, I'm not going to post it, even

though it's true, objectively true. They

would be too upsetting to people. Is

there another way? So, anytime that

happens, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, okay.

Let me see if I can tune that

differently next time."

But if you know it's true and you

believe it's important,

you still might not post it because it

might upset people.

In ways that are not productive.

Give me an example.

No, no. I I will quote my father.

Okay.

It's not good enough to be right.

You also have to be effective.

If you're not effective, go home.

Doesn't matter if you are in the right.

So, if I post something that just

creates more

divisiveness,

I need to find another way

to achieve the same goal without the

conflict. So, no, I'm not just about put

the truth out there and if it if it if

if it triggers landmines, so what? It's

the truth. No, that's not being an

educator.

I'm really There's a point here I really

want to answer for my for my own cuz

something I've been thinking a lot

about. As we see this polarization in

every facet of conversation and public

discourse, I've started to think that

maybe the antidote is the very few

amongst us that have the guts to stand

by the truth regardless of the arrows

they take. And I'm seeing that a little

bit with with some big commentators. I

shan't name names cuz that'll be a

headline. But um I'm thinking actually

they're like they're

they're braver, I guess, in their

courage to say the truth regardless of

the fact they're going to get piled on

because it doesn't fit the narrative is

actually helping us. It's helping us

almost um

Yeah, it's it's helping

It moves the needle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. So, I I see that. I'm just saying

I believe, however delusionally, that

you can achieve the same goal without

angering people.

And part of the goal of that book is to

offer ways to think about points of

conflict

in fresh ways that do not

trigger people to dig their heels in and

fight more ferociously to defend their

opinions.

Now, I want to put this in context cuz I

started out by describing

an idea and you're going to say, "Did

you consider both sides?" No, I

considered all sides.

I'm

People want to think we're in the most

violent times. Okay, we look at the

violence against trans the trans

community.

First, there was always violence against

trans people. Nobody was talking about

it.

Because there was violence against

other people. There was violence against

black people. There was violence against

women. There's There's a whole list of

people

who were more represented

statistically in the world than trans

people

where we went through periods of our

social justice arc

to try to rectify those problems.

And so

the fact that trans rights are on the

table now

is itself a measure of progress.

Because we're not talking about

gay marriage anymore.

We're not talking under President

Clinton, one of our more progressive

liberal presidents, do you know what the

the thing was? It was

gays in the military, don't ask, don't

tell.

That was considered a progressive stance

in the 1990s under a liberal president.

Don't ask, don't tell.

Now, in Qatar

with the with the they say, "We will

welcome

uh gay people, but don't exhibit the

gayness in the stands.

And everyone is jumping all over them

for that regressive posture.

It's exactly what we were

30 years ago.

Don't ask, don't tell.

I don't mind if you're gay, just don't

kiss another

man in front of me

if you're a man.

I'm otherwise okay with it, all right?

So, what I'm saying is

look at the other things that preceded

it and you can declare progress having

led up to it. That's my point. Not that

it's still, you know, it's still have to

worry about it and it still needs

solutions and you still have to

somehow change people's sense of what

equality is and equal access and

opportunity and equity and inclusion.

That all still needs to happen.

But

that is not happening now

or less so with black people. So, there

are measures of progress that are kind

of perverse

but real.

And you know what my father used to say?

He said

I'll know we've achieved equality

when a black person

can be indicted

for embezzlement

when a black person can be sent to jail

for embezzling

$500 million.

I know we've made it, okay?

Okay? Like I said, it's a perverse

measure, but it's it's another way to

think about the progress that has

actually happened in this world.

All I'm saying is

we may be living

in some of the safest times there ever

was

in the history of civilization.

I don't think we should lose sight of

that. People are afraid to say it, I

think, because the worry, and it's an

and a legitimate worry, that you might

just get complacent and sit back and

say, "See, everything is fine. It

requires no more work and no more

effort."

I'm saying,

maybe

we should pay

In addition to worrying about the

violence that persists to this day,

we should look at the successes

and say, "Well, what did we do right?

Let's do more of that."

And

there's not much of people saying, "Look

how far we've come.

Let's list how we achieved this."

Why don't people do that? Why don't Why

don't they Cuz I was on a poll on

Twitter 2 days ago, and the question was

do you It was essentially do you feel

optimistic about the future? I clicked

yes, and I was in the tiny minority and

78 roughly 70% of people I think it was

slightly more felt pessimistic about the

future. Either were worried and fearful

about the future.

Right. And there's here's another

statistic, which is in the spirit of

that, but it's a little more more

thorough. It was a Gallup poll, one of

the I I forgot which one. It might have

been a different one, but one of the

official polling agencies

for the past 30 years

have asked people

each year

in the United States

um

are things more dangerous for you

just in your community and in your this

year than last year?

27 of those years

people said it's more dangerous this

year than last year.

I don't feel as safe as I did last year.

Okay?

Now, let's plot the crime rate over the

past 30 years. It has been a precipitous

drop.

It's dropped.

There's some bumps in there, but

basically it has dropped for 30 years

since the basically the 1980s, 90s up

until today.

So, there's some delusional force

operating on people's understanding of

the world in which they live.

And then people wanted to blame it, I

think in part correctly, on local news.

What's the first thing you see? You put

up not the national the local news.

Um there's a crime committed and that we

have video. So, you know, we didn't used

to have surveillance video. Now you see

the person beating up on the old person

or the person breaking into the jewelry.

Now you see it. You say, "Oh my gosh."

Um you know, clutch your

your loved ones and your valuables.

Our ability to show you violence is

greater than ever before.

And it affects us emotionally.

Part of what it is to be a scientist is

to figure out all the ways you could

bias yourself.

And remove them as far as possible as

much as you can.

What is the scientific method if not

I give my own word in the of the

scientific method.

It's simply

do whatever it takes

to not fool yourself

into thinking something is true that is

not

or that something is not true that is.

So, I So, that poll would have told me,

"I'm going to look at the actual data."

And I'm going to look at the and and I'm

going to react to the actual data, not

to my feelings about an objective truth.

Nothing wrong with feelings. It's the

source of the greatest art in the world

and it's our emotions, how we feel for

people. But if you're going to make

legislation

if you're going to act on your feelings

and there's an objective truth that

informs those of feelings

that's the path you should take.

Otherwise, we're a house of cards that

could collapse at any moment cuz

somebody feels like you're going to harm

them or they feel like it's dangerous or

they feel like you're

Excuse me?

I love human feelings. But, don't let it

interfere with objective truths. Don't

let it interfere with legislation, laws

that would have to affect us all.

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Your documentary Cosmos.

I don't know if I'm saying that right.

Cosmos Cosmos. I think it's a

might be an English

You're a Brit. I don't know how you

pronounce anything.

It's Arabic. So Cosmos Cosmos.

You will never find an American

correcting British pronunciation.

Well, it happens sometimes.

don't know. Okay.

Um so objective truth and and reality

and feelings. One of the things I

learned from that documentary, which was

honestly, I I remember the day I found

it.

I shouldn't say this, but

I didn't have a lot of money, so I found

it on some like dodgy like pirated

website and I just I watched I think it

was eight episodes.

Security.

I watched them all that night and I and

then I went back and watched the

previous one with Carl Sagan. Um it just

captivated me and it has ever since. I

actually would cite that as my

as the start of my fascination with the

universe. And one of the

really profound things I took from it

when we're talking about objective truth

and feelings is there's a scene in the

in the documentary where you kind of

like zoom out and it keeps going and

going and going and going and going and

going and it made me talking about truth

and feelings it made me feel so

insignificant. I realized that I am

objectively

irrelevant. And that was a wonderful

feeling because with that it strips away

the the burden of your own

self-importance and ego.

Um do we matter?

So the cosmic perspective is

incompatible with your ego.

Okay.

I should say your ego is incompatible

with the cosmic perspective.

That's the proper way to order that

sentence.

The cosmic perspective shows you

how small we are

in size, in time,

in space.

And if you go in with a high ego, you

might resist that. You might say, "No,

I'm important. I

But I think of it differently.

The

We know one of the greatest gifts of

modern astrophysics to civilization,

dare I call it a gift,

is the knowledge that the atoms of your

body

are traceable

not only to the Big Bang origin

of the universe itself,

but especially to stars

that had manufactured those elements

and later in their lives, on death,

exploded, scattering that enrichment

across gas clouds,

so that their next generation of stars

would have planets.

And on at least one of those planets,

life.

So,

we are not

just figuratively, we are literally

stardust.

So, when you go out and look up at the

night sky,

yeah, your urge is I'm small and that's

large.

And yes, you're alive in this universe,

but there's another way to look at it.

The universe is alive within you.

You have kinship

with the cosmos.

That

feeling to me is greater than any ego

you could have possibly walked into the

room with.

First, that feeling borders on

spiritual.

Second. Third,

we have trained ourselves

to equate

being special with being different.

You're special.

You do something think some way that no

one else does.

So, I'm special.

Well, let me turn that on its head

and say,

maybe we're special

not because we're different,

but because we're the same.

All humans

are stardust.

All humans share a chemistry

with all a biology with all other life

on Earth.

There's one genesis on this Earth.

We have DNA in you have DNA in common

with a banana.

I beg your pardon.

You can ask, well, where are the arms

and legs? No, DNA goes deeper than that.

DNA controls chemistry. It controls

metabolism. It controls all kinds of

things that are prescribed in the DNA,

and that's where we have commonality

with other life forms on Earth.

So, why not look around and say,

I'm not special because I'm a different,

I'm special because

I'm the same

as you, as others,

as the tree,

as the brook, as the animals, you know,

the woodland creatures.

And we can all sit here and look up at

the night sky and say,

yes, we have kinship with the cosmos.

I feel large because of that, not small.

You mentioned the pursuit of happiness

earlier when you were talking about one

of the central sort of like doctrine

doctrines of the American dream, that

pursuit of of happiness. And um

in in in what you've just said about the

universe I was I was pondering where

meaning is derived from. So I kind of

asked the question at the same time this

happiness and meaning

where does where does that come from in

in your perspective?

What I have found is

there's an urge people have

to search for meaning.

Is it under this rock be metaphorically

right is it under a rock I'm going to

search under the what is there meaning

is it behind a tree?

Is if if I join this group will that

will be will I find meaning with them?

If I and I think to my okay

go ahead.

But what you're doing is relegating

meaning in your life to a search.

Suppose you don't find meaning.

That'd be a force of disappointment in

your life. You're setting yourself up

to be disappointed

if you don't find meaning.

So how

I have another idea.

I I use this for myself I

may or may not work for others.

I recognized long ago

that in a free society

where I'm not enslaved and I'm not you

know an indentured servant and I have

some freedom of choice

that I have the power to manufacture

meaning in my life.

I can make decisions about my own life

that create the meaning.

For me

a meaningful life is learning something

new tomorrow that I didn't know

yesterday.

Otherwise it's a wasted day.

You know the prisoner who who puts X's

in the boxes on the wall for the day

they get out?

I have that in my head and the day that

I get out is the day I die.

All right?

And what these boxes remind you of is

every day alive,

you're one day closer to death.

So, there's one fewer days in there

to accomplish something that you might

have wanted to accomplish.

So,

I want to keep learning about our world,

about each other, about things I don't

otherwise know about.

And

there are people who only read things

that they agree with or that they

already know about or that it's there's

they're feeding

some urge to be

uh

what's the word? To be

validated.

I have books on my shelf

at my bedside.

Every book is a subject that I either

know nothing about or I completely

disagree with

going into the book.

I said, "Maybe it'll change my mind."

Learn new ideas.

Okay? I once presented that list to the

New York Times when they said cuz I my

book was doing well at one point and

they try to get

authors to talk about other books to

keep the the book wheel turning cuz

fewer people are reading today. So, what

books are you reading? So, I on your

shelves I listed the books.

One of them was

uh

a book in its in its

30th printing or something. It was

originally written back in the early

'60s, I think. Maybe even the '50s. A

book by Barry Goldwater. It's called The

Conscience of a Conservative.

And so, I'm reading this and

people wrote to me after they saw this

list. They said,

"I didn't know you're a closet

conservative. I didn't know you're

really a Republican. Did you vote for

Trump?" And all of a sudden people

were presuming that if I'm reading a

book on something, that book must be

what my whole life is about. Rather than

it's a portal to another place of how

people think

and what people do.

So, that shocked me, actually.

That because that tells me that most

people must have just books that

continue to feed their own interests.

And that is the best way to not grow in

this world. So, one of my measures of

meaning is how much more do I know about

the world tomorrow than I did yesterday

because

almost any path you take take will make

you wiser as a person.

So, I value wisdom that gives meaning to

my life. A new perspective is not just

knowledge.

No.

What is the arc? It's It's there's

There's data.

Data can become information.

Information with on further study

becomes knowledge.

And after enough time,

when you see how the knowledge plugs in

and applies,

it can become wisdom.

Wisdom is the distilled essence of all

the details.

The wisest statements ever spoken to you

generally have no detail in them at all,

do they?

It's

It's I've heard it said this way, wisdom

is what's left over after you've

forgotten all the details. It's the

distilled essence of it all. So, I want

to be wiser

on the porch on my rocking chair. I

don't want to be the old curmudgeon.

In my day, we did it best. No, I don't

want to be that guy. No.

So, that's one source

of meaning.

Another, and this is directly traceable

to my parents, but I'd like to also

think it's traceable to

common sense,

is

spend a little bit of your life

lessening the suffering of others.

I don't mean to redirect your life. Some

people do.

They work in soup kitchens and start

not-for-profits to serve Yes.

I I'm not that person.

No, cuz my the universe is what calls

me.

But in my day

in in a week

do something

that lessens the suffering

of someone else.

However trifling that gesture is.

And

that's an infusion

of

good.

Yeah, I'm value judging it. I'm saying

yes. It is a good thing to lessen the

suffering of others. I'm Yeah, I'm I'm

declaring that. I try not to ever put

opinions out there, but it's my opinion

that if you lessen the suffering of

others

you make a better world.

And

don't we all want to live in a better

world?

If your happiness were a recipe, right,

consisting of various ingredients that

needed to be present in certain

quantities for you to be a happy person,

and under the assumption that you know,

no one is perfectly happy under any kind

of vague sense of the word,

what what is missing from your list of

ingredients at the moment?

Or what could you have more of that

would make you happy?

think of life that way.

Okay, how do you think of life? Why is

that wrong, that question?

I didn't say it was wrong. I don't value

judge, okay? It's not what's right or

wrong. It's It's

um

I don't live life that way

because

it means you carry with you the emotions

I could be happier if I were doing this,

and how come I'm not? And all of a

sudden, well, then I must be miserable

if I'm not as happy as I could be. No, I

don't measure day-to-day, am I happy or

not.

I I it's not the measure.

Yes, it's in there.

But it's not the metric. The metric is

am I successful

at what at what I'm doing.

Am I

No, no.

It's not even that. It's am I as good at

this as I can be.

If you're not going to try to improve,

go home.

Find something else.

So,

I remember in my first interview on

national television.

A new planet had just been discovered

around another star.

An exoplanet. It was banner headlines.

We now have 5,000 in the catalog, but

back then 1995, it was banner headline,

another planet.

And we kind of always knew they'd be out

there. We just didn't have the tools to

figure it out. Uh NBC News sent an

action cam up to the planetarium. I was

freshly appointed as director. They

didn't know me as a person, but I

carried title.

And so the Chiron on the TV image gets

to say, Neil deGrasse Tyson, director,

Hayden Planetarium. Okay.

They came up and interviewed me. Tell us

about this new planet. How was it

discovered? Right. So, I gave my best

professorial reply.

Best Oh my gosh, it was it's a Doppler

shift that the orbiting planet um

influences the position of the star in

space.

It's not just the star sits there fixed

in the universe and planets orbit it.

They both orbit their common center of

gravity. And so the star You can't see

the planet, it's too dim, but you look

at the star and the star is jiggling

back and forth and I motion that with my

body. And I said, and you measure this

movement back and forth with the Doppler

shift. You calculate it and you can

infer the existence of this planet. And

bottom being, it's a planet.

And I went on I went on for like

probably four times that length with my

pro pro And then, I go home. It's

national news. I get to call everybody.

Hey, everybody, my friends in

California, I'm going to be on TV. Check

it out. And so,

when the segment aired,

all they showed was me jiggling my hips

like this

and saying, "It's a planet." And I said,

"Oh,

they don't want my professor reply.

They want a reply that fits in their

medium.

A soundbite medium.

So, let me practice that.

So, I went home and stared in the mirror

and had people just shout out objects,

names, places, people, things, and I

assembled soundbites for each one of

them. It's like three sentences. It's

got to be informative,

makes you smile a little bit,

and the information has to be tasty so

that you want to tell someone else.

That's a soundbite. Okay? We we could do

that now. Mention anything in the

universe. Just just Not a question, just

a word. Just anything.

Mars.

Mars. Ooh. Do you know Mars is red

because it's rust?

It's a rusted planet.

And rust has the color of red.

The whole planet cuz there's a lot of

iron on Mars.

And

red is the color

of blood.

Hence, Mars, the god of war.

It might have life there. We're still

looking.

Boom. SOUNDBITE.

VENUS.

OKAY.

VENUS, THE goddess of love and beauty.

And Venus as an object in the night sky

is stupifyingly brilliant.

Until you learn it's has a runaway

greenhouse effect and it's 900° F, 500°

C

on its surface. It would vaporize you.

So much for the love and beauty in

Venus. So it's the it's the least

explored planet because of how hostile

it is to our

space probes.

But we got this. I'm not giving you a

10-minute lecture on the thermodynamics

of Venus. So my point is

when I saw

that what I did did not serve the needs

I invested a lot of energy

so that I could be exactly what they

needed.

So that their task is simplified and I

be get better at something that could

serve a greater good.

I'm not I don't want to say that's

happiness. I'm going to say that's

fulfillment

of an objective where I improve

in what it is I was doing.

I have to say when I knew I was going to

meet you, this question which is so

front of mind for me is there is so many

people that talk about the stars in the

universe, but there's only one you.

And what I mean by that is

Yeah, I don't know what you mean by

that.

So I'll tell you yeah.

What what

So would I have had anyone else on this

podcast that talks about the stars in

the universe? No. The reason why you are

a dream guest is because you create a

bridge through exactly what you've

described, making it engaging and

interesting and

uh

fun and exciting because of the way that

you communicate.

And like people don't often think about

this whether they're computer

programmers or they are archaeologists

or whatever that it's great to know

stuff, but like I think Ricky Gervais

makes the joke with the daddy long legs

where he says you can have all the venom

in the world but if you don't have the

the teeth to inject the venom, if you

don't have the skill of like

communication and storytelling and

engagement, the venom is pointless.

So what I will say is

uh I will give one other example and

I'll tie a bow on it.

Uh Uh, the first time I was invited to

appear on The Daily Show, which is a

very popular comedic news program in the

United States,

uh, hosted by

um, Jon Stewart.

Jon Stewart was a comedian.

He's brilliant.

He's very into current events.

We all know him.

He's sharp.

And I've seen politicians get

interviewed by him,

and they want to deliver their stump

speech, and they're a deer in the

headlights cuz he's just dancing circles

around them.

And on my first interview I said, "I am

not going to be the deer in the

headlights. Okay?"

So, I studied his show

with a stopwatch, and I said, "How many

seconds does he, on average, does he

give his guest to speak before he

comedically interrupts them?"

Okay? Write that down.

It was anywhere between 9 and 12

seconds, which doesn't sound like much,

but it's it it works comedically, right?

Then I said, "How far back in time does

he reference a current event

to put in a joke that he might

give?" Cuz you can't go too far back cuz

no one remembers it. The joke has to

work without you reminding people what

they're supposed to know. So,

very intensely the the previous day,

little less the second day, by the time

of the third day in the past, there's

hardly any reference to it. Okay?

So,

I studied the last two or three days of

current events.

I practiced my sound bites even more to

fit them into this time frame. And I get

on the show,

and I deliver the lines, that I mean the

sound bites. Oh, but I come preloaded

with anything he could possibly ask me.

So, I'm like I'm I'm

I I I waddle into the studio with a

utility belt's worth of thoughts and

ideas that he could be asking me. Okay?

So, I'm there, and if you see me on

these shows, I'm a little manic because

they it's coursing through me all this

knowledge and information that I need to

respond to it just in case he asks me.

So,

we do this and I I get the point and he

makes the comedic point and now my

thought is not dangling in the middle of

a joke because I completed the thought.

The joke tightens that up and then we

move on, right? So, we go through this

whole interview.

And he mentions the current event and I

have a little sound bitey thing about

that.

After the interview, people come up to

me, you know what they said? They said,

"Neil,

you're such a natural and you have such

good chemistry with Jon Stewart. My

They have no idea

how much time I invested

to look natural.

Just pardon my expletive there.

But, we swear all the time here.

What I'm saying is

I wanted to be as good as I possibly

could have been in that interview.

Knowing his audience cuz each

host has their own audience. You want to

serve their audience. I don't want to

just give the stump speech. So,

everything that I imagined for myself

was for him and his audience. I would

speak communicate differently on a

different talk daytime talk shows are

different than the evening comedic news.

Uh on a documentary, it's different.

So, my only point of this with these

examples

are

I pay attention to whether people are

paying attention to me.

If I'm giving you an explanation and

you're drifting, all right, that's not

working. Let me pull that out of the

utility belt. Let me try something else.

Um if I talk about black holes in a

particular way, oh, you're leaning in in

the conversation. Your eyebrows are

raised. That worked.

So,

I have a database

of people's expressions

while I'm talking to them.

And and I sift that

Yeah.

so that I pick and choose what is most

impactful in the few minutes we have

together.

Otherwise, I'm dragging you through a

syllabus that who the hell cares?

What are the devices that you you

probably don't do it even do it intense

actually from

So you're saying it's natural. Yeah.

What?

say it's natural. I didn't say I'm going

to edit

Yeah, yeah, you know, don't edit that

out. Don't Don't edit that out, okay?

But okay, so what are the what are the

devices that you actually work very very

hard on to employ that that I might take

from you and become

as good a speaker as you are, as

engaging and as like captivating,

despite the fact that you're delivering

such complex subject matter at times,

but it still seems accessible to someone

like me that is just simply a a chimp.

Not

everything that excites me as a

professional in the field

will excite you.

You need to know

you need to sort them

into those categories.

And maybe there's something that will

excite me and you'll see me get all

excited and you'll get giddy because you

like watching me get excited. That's a

different dynamic in that moment.

Mhm.

All right, it is kind of fun. I like

watching uh you know, I have a colleague

who's like all into leeches.

Right? He specializes in invertebrates

and leeches among them. Just to hear him

talk about I I don't care about leeches,

but he does. It's like, "Wow, I didn't

know anyone could care that much about a

blood sucking invertebrate." But it was

just I'm delighted to watch that, all

right? Uh but so you sort things that

excite you from

things that could excite someone else.

Well, how do you know? You have to

practice that.

Okay? Uh strike up conversations. Watch

if people

care about what you say.

Is there some other conversation that

distracts them from your conversation

with them? Well, go back to the drawing

board on that one.

Okay? And

I also be a good listener. Watch what

excites other people when they're in

conversations with other people.

And that's what I've done. So, in that

way, I'm I'm fully socialized.

My parents were social creatures.

And we held dinner parties often.

Uh hosting conversations and I'd watch

that.

Uh I'm a I'm a kid, so I'm not

for their dinner parties, I didn't have

a seat at the table. But um the idea of

being able to communicate and my

father's a sociologist, that's all he

ever did.

Uh that I think mattered within me.

And

you have to be able to read people's

facial You know what we did with my

kids?

Uh it was first evidence that they were

not autistic, but also I think it's good

practice.

Get a when they're old enough

to start thinking about human emotion.

Maybe

8, 9 to to early the between years,

between 8 and 12.

Where they can actively think about what

someone else thinks and feels. Okay?

Is the person angry? Is the person

happy? Are they sad? Are they jealous?

Are they whatever? Okay.

So, what I did was

or what you can do is

find a romantic comedy

that is well acted.

All right?

Where where So, you have stars that

really do it right.

And sit down and watch the movie with

the sound off.

And have your kids

ask them, "What do you think

they're thinking now? What do you think

she's

feeling?

What do you think she's saying? What do

you think she's going to do next?" And

you just watch it. And the actors are

not only delivering lines, they're

feeling

their roles. And you might have to wait

if your kid is a little slower that way,

maybe they have to be 13 or 14, middle

school,

where your social standing begins

matters more than in elementary school

where you're not even you don't even

care, right? So, maybe it's a middle

school thing more than an elementary

school thing.

In that way, you can say you thought she

said, "Well, let's check." And you go

back and it turns out, "Yes, she was

jealous in that moment." And so, it

trains you to read a facial expression,

and a good actor will do this. That's

what makes them good actors. And you And

you don't rely on the sound, just the

visual. And it's an exercise in reading

faces, reading people, reading emotions.

And

so, you want to do this.

And in the limit, you you become a full

up empath, right? I think that's a noun.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh an empath.

Uh that has shaped some people's

careers.

And this is real.

We're human we're social creatures. So,

yeah, I fold that in.

Because I want to reach you.

Oh, and what things do you care about?

In my podcast, it's called StarTalk,

I have a co-host who's a comedian, a

professional stand-up comedian.

And the anatomy of the podcast is

there's sort of the trinity, there's the

science content, there's the humor,

and it's pop culture.

Why do I care about pop culture? Because

you walk into the room

already framed in a scaffold of pop

culture.

If I know that in advance, I don't have

to start from scratch

when I'm teaching you something. I'm

going to say, "Oh, I have a bit of

science that I can clad onto this part

of your scaffold, your pop culture

scaffold." And you know something? It

fits, it sticks, and you You "Whoa, I

never knew that about this."

There was a American football game that

ended in a tie.

And but

we don't end in ties, right? So, there's

an overtime.

And you reach a point where it's sudden

death overtime. Sudden death where the

next person that scores wins the game.

So, this person was was ready to kick

for a It's called a field goal, and it's

50 yards out.

50 yards, oh my gosh, okay?