Neil deGrasse Tyson (astrophysicist)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert.

[1] I'm Dan Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Minneson Maus.

[3] Hi.

[4] We have an expert today.

[5] In keeping with Thursdays being experts, we've scrounged one up.

[6] We haven't changed it.

[7] He's a very famous expert.

[8] Very.

[9] He's the face of astrophysics.

[10] He's the face of astrophysic.

[11] Neil deGrasse Tyson.

[12] Yeah.

[13] Biggie.

[14] Take it in.

[15] Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, best -selling author, and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History.

[16] He has a podcast that's out currently called Star Talk Radio.

[17] Science, Pop Culture, and Comedy Collide in Star Talk Radio.

[18] He also has a new book out now called Starry Messenger, Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.

[19] He's a word smith.

[20] He does a little poetry as he does.

[21] He does.

[22] Yes.

[23] It was a real hoot getting to meet this legend legendary astrophysicist.

[24] Please enjoy Neil deGrasse Tyson.

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[28] A little T -Rex skull here, very nice.

[29] Miniurized.

[30] If you only knew the whole story.

[31] We're hoping for a real one at some point, so that's kind of a wishful fulfillment.

[32] Dax, if you're getting beefed up, then you can't play the geeky roles.

[33] I'm done acting, so no problem.

[34] Really?

[35] Yes, yes, all done.

[36] Well, I would never say never.

[37] God knows.

[38] Quinn Tarantino calls me in 10 years.

[39] I'll be there, but I do this.

[40] I love it more than anything, and I don't have to put makeup on ever again.

[41] Yeah, cool.

[42] Yeah.

[43] Also, he was never playing.

[44] Playing geeky roles.

[45] Like some stupid roles.

[46] Imagine him beefed up in eagocracy.

[47] That wouldn't have worked.

[48] We already had Terry Cruz as the muscle president.

[49] Another example, you can't be a comedian and be especially handsome or especially beautiful.

[50] Unless you're black.

[51] No, it's true.

[52] This is the great debate in comedy.

[53] That's an interesting fact.

[54] Yeah, because Eddie Murphy was sexy as fuck in the leather suit.

[55] Right, in the tight pants.

[56] Biggest stand -up routine ever.

[57] Will Smith, very funny, very hilarious.

[58] Martin Lawrence, still in shape.

[59] Black dudes can do it.

[60] Oh, you know why?

[61] If you're really beautiful and privileged, how could you make a joke about anything?

[62] Yeah.

[63] Whereas if you're black, everyone knows you're still oppressed.

[64] It's true.

[65] Even if you're...

[66] Exactly.

[67] Yeah.

[68] And so there's still room between you and the comedic landscape to make things happen.

[69] Because you're still able to have objective observations about the world.

[70] Rather than completely diluted because you're handsome or beautiful.

[71] Yeah, you're the recipient of all benefits.

[72] Okay, you don't even know what a thick and deep conversation you just stepped into.

[73] Like, this is a pervasive comedian conversation.

[74] I think about comedy all the time.

[75] Well, I know you're a pop culture phenom.

[76] So I've even been told, I got in shape for a movie like 15 years ago, ran into Adam Sandler.

[77] And he said, buddy, what, you can't do this?

[78] Well, you can't get in shape.

[79] Joe Pesci.

[80] We've got a canary in the coal mine.

[81] Joe Pesci got jacked.

[82] As did Caratop.

[83] Yes, yes, Carat Top.

[84] Nordinately ripped.

[85] Do you know Joe Pesci's story, though?

[86] It's a really sad one.

[87] Did he have cancer or something, and he wanted to get back in shape?

[88] He got beat up on the street as an adult man and was really humiliated by the experience.

[89] Joe Piscopo, it's not Joe Pesci.

[90] Joe Pesci is, you know what I was saying it wrong, but, you would have gotten his mafia friends and would have taken care of that.

[91] Joe Piscopo.

[92] And then he was in Bally's commercials.

[93] Do you remember that?

[94] Yes, yes.

[95] So that really kind of took him out of the comedy world.

[96] That's the evidence.

[97] I said to Adam, I still have this point of view.

[98] You can only be yourself.

[99] I'm someone who like lifting weights always.

[100] My point of view is me. I can't pretend I don't like being in shape because it fits the archetype of a white comedian.

[101] I feel like that's a little crazy.

[102] You would have thought this is the most sideline conversation, but it actually pertains to you in a way that among the most interesting things I think about you is that an astrophysicist, a scientist, is not supposed to be the captain of a wrestling team.

[103] Oh, yeah.

[104] These two things don't go together.

[105] Right, I was captain and undefeated.

[106] So if anyone should understand my feelings.

[107] Oh, completely.

[108] Yes, I'm going to be whatever I'm interested in at all times.

[109] I'm authentically what I am.

[110] Yes.

[111] And I can't be anything else.

[112] He was simultaneously the captain of the wrestling team and the editor of the science paper.

[113] I read that.

[114] It was mixed messages.

[115] And we really like mixed messages.

[116] Well, I can tell you this.

[117] I can't speak for girls in school, but boys in school were fed images of superheroes and it was Charles Atlas.

[118] Someone kicked sand in your face.

[119] So there was this idea that you want to be big and strong.

[120] and ideally be a superhero.

[121] And so I asked myself if I were a superhero, what would I be?

[122] And I would be a defender of the geeks.

[123] Oh, wow.

[124] Because I studied martial arts and wrestling, and I was bigger than your average kid of my age.

[125] So I knew I can kick ass.

[126] But I was deeply geeked.

[127] I carried slide rules.

[128] Let me just put my protractor down, motherfucker, and then I'll teach you a little.

[129] I'll teach you a lesson without my protractor in my pocket.

[130] I put down my trig cal. for one second.

[131] So I'm old enough to have remembered slide rules, transitioning to calculators, and I went to a geeky high school, the Bronx High School of Science, which boasts eight Nobel Awards.

[132] Get the fuck.

[133] Among its graduates.

[134] That's as many as the country of Spain.

[135] Oh, my God.

[136] Can you hit us with a couple of the standout ones?

[137] Steve Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow shared the Nobel Prize.

[138] They were classmates, their theoretical model, merged the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism.

[139] And it became the electro -weak force.

[140] You might have heard that there are four forces of nature.

[141] Tell us.

[142] Okay, so four forces of nature.

[143] Gravity, the strong nuclear force, which operates inside of atoms, like charges repel, right?

[144] Yeah.

[145] Well, what's crammed inside of the nucleus of an atom?

[146] They're all protons.

[147] Yeah.

[148] They all have positive charge.

[149] What's keeping them together?

[150] Did you ever ask this?

[151] No. Never.

[152] So when you get within a certain distance of each other, a whole other force takes.

[153] And it's got to be a really strong force in the nucleus.

[154] It's called the strong nuclear force.

[155] Oh, wow.

[156] So literal.

[157] That's the official name.

[158] There's something called the weak nuclear force, which mitigates and moderates particle decay.

[159] So particles one thing and it turns into another, there's a weak force involved.

[160] And then there's the electromagnetic force, which is the most familiar to us.

[161] And that's light molecules attaching.

[162] We are held together by electromagnetic forces.

[163] And when our body creates energy, we're harvesting the energy withheld in the bonds of that carbon, yes?

[164] The man. He knows a lot.

[165] Dax.

[166] Okay, I'm trying to slow roll this.

[167] The man, okay.

[168] I hope to be co -authoring a paper by the end of this with you.

[169] When you eat food, you are ingesting molecules that contain energy in whatever it is that you killed to eat, be it a plant or an animal.

[170] And that goes in your body, and your body knows how to exploit the energy of that molecule so that you can maintain your body temperature at 98 degrees, and you can move and do things.

[171] That's why I don't want to be.

[172] cremated when I die.

[173] Because they'll have killed all your energy?

[174] Yeah, what'll happen is if you're cremated, they burn your body.

[175] And all the molecules that you spent your lifetime building off of killing other living things, they all now get broken.

[176] That's what burning means.

[177] You're releasing the energy contained in those molecules.

[178] And that energy goes out into space.

[179] If you bury me, however, the energy of those molecules is now available to flora and fauna, to dine upon my body in death the way I have dined upon them in life.

[180] Okay, but now we have to look at it from another angle, which is you're a large man, we just hugged each other, we're a comparable height, you're going to take up a big chunk of real estate.

[181] Well, until I'm completely decomposed.

[182] Right, I'm just saying we get into another ecological issue if all seven billion of us want to be returned to the earth.

[183] I did the math on that.

[184] You did, what is it?

[185] So if I remember the calculation correctly, I asked myself, how much area would be taken up if every human being who ever lived had an existing plot?

[186] Can I guess it's 18 square feet?

[187] It's not very much.

[188] It's about the area of Pennsylvania.

[189] So it'd probably be about 78 billion square feet.

[190] Three feet wide and six feet tall, so that's 18 square feet.

[191] Yep, right there.

[192] And it's 100 billion.

[193] Yeah, and square feet going into square miles.

[194] You can bury everyone who's ever lived in the state of Pennsylvania.

[195] And the whole rest of the world is still available.

[196] Let's annex it.

[197] But we could also stack.

[198] That works too.

[199] And people do that in family plots.

[200] So I'm not telling other people they should do it.

[201] But for me, you can only exist by killing other living things.

[202] I want to return the favor.

[203] We don't photosynthesize like plants.

[204] We have to eat dead things.

[205] And so I just want to give back.

[206] Now, that being said, I got a notice from a funeral home saying, would I mind writing something on the web page wall?

[207] It was a 12 -year -old girl who was killed by a school bus that rolled over her.

[208] It turns out she was a fan of astrophysics.

[209] And one of her favorite books was a book I had written.

[210] It was an astrophysics for young people in a hurry.

[211] They cremated her in the casket with a copy of my book.

[212] Oh, wow.

[213] And it was like, oh, my gosh.

[214] So I said, I'll see what I can do.

[215] I wrote something.

[216] I'm busy.

[217] No, no, no, no. I took me a while to think of what to say, and then she was cremated.

[218] So in spite of all that I would say for myself, the fact is it's the family's choice, she's cremated.

[219] So what can I do with this information?

[220] Others have written about this.

[221] The title of this article is, Neal deGrasse Tyson gives mother of an 11 -year -old her first smile since she was tragically killed in Colorado.

[222] Here it is.

[223] The curiosity of children famously knows no bounds around the house.

[224] the backyard, the neighborhood, any new place.

[225] But when that curiosity includes the universe itself, you're in the presence of someone poised to change the world.

[226] To lose Annalise at age 11, brimming with so much cosmic ambition, will forever leave me wondering what she might have accomplished as a grown -up kid.

[227] Grown -up kids are scientists and anybody else who retains their childhood curiosity into adulthood.

[228] course, we will never know the answer to that question.

[229] But we do know the physics of cremation.

[230] The energy content of her body, itself reduced to ash, actually enters Earth's atmosphere.

[231] It ultimately escapes to space in the form of infrared energy, radiating in all directions at the speed of light, filling the voids of the cosmos with her presence.

[232] At the moment I write this, Annalisa's energy has extended a half trillion miles into space.

[233] more than 100 times the distance to Pluto.

[234] Though she will live in collective memories for all our lives, in the universe, she lives for all eternity.

[235] Respectfully submitted, Neil de Maasthaisen.

[236] That's fantastic.

[237] Yeah, what a beautiful spin on everything.

[238] So that's what it means to burn.

[239] You're releasing energy.

[240] There are objects, things that have no molecules that have energy, and so you can't burn, like a lump of iron.

[241] It just gets hot, but it doesn't turn to air.

[242] burnt toast doesn't burn because you've broken all the molecules.

[243] And when you burn organic substances, as you know from sci -fi, we are carbon -based life.

[244] Carbon in its base form is black.

[245] When you burn something, you break all the carbon bonds, and what's left is the carbon.

[246] So that's why when we burn something, it turns black.

[247] And then what's really fascinating, and we'll just jump right to that, is as stars go through there are many cycles of burning different elements.

[248] Some stars are burning carbon.

[249] Yeah, we use the word burn, but it's really thermonuclear fusion.

[250] Right, carbon molecules are fusing, and they're creating when they explode humongous diamonds.

[251] Isn't that true?

[252] Oh, there's some examples under high pressure and temperature, because carbon is all over the universe.

[253] So it's not some accident of chemistry that we have carbon as our base element here.

[254] So ours is burning hydrogen.

[255] Unfortunately, we use the word burning.

[256] That's a chemist word for breaking apart the molecules and oxidizing things.

[257] We say burning, but we don't mean burning.

[258] We mean fusion.

[259] But our sun is converting hydrogen into helium, and later on helium into carbon, it's going to stop there.

[260] Right.

[261] And then the mass of it is so enormous, right?

[262] And the gravity is so intense on it that it starts compressing the carbon in the same way the earth compresses carbon.

[263] So we think some stars are like huge diamonds.

[264] Isn't that exciting?

[265] It is pretty wild.

[266] When you were in wrestling, were you acting like you weren't a big science nerd?

[267] or were you totally embracing all of it at once?

[268] So I started wrestling in the Bronx High School of Science.

[269] So it's okay.

[270] But at the time I was there, it's like a regular high school with all of the clicks and with the jocks and the geeks, but it shifted to the geek part of the spectrum.

[271] Right, right.

[272] So the jocks are geeks.

[273] Right.

[274] But the geeks are extra geek.

[275] Right.

[276] But you still have the jocks and geeks.

[277] So I was both.

[278] I was very geeky and very jocky.

[279] That was still uncommon, even in that space.

[280] What weight were you wrestling now?

[281] So at the time, 177.

[282] That's a big class.

[283] There are two classes above that.

[284] When I went to college, I wrestled 190.

[285] It's a very good incentive to stay at 190 because the next category is unlimited.

[286] Oh, God.

[287] Then you're wrestling Dan Sever.

[288] Yeah, exactly.

[289] So you don't want to be 195 wrestling a 300 -pound person.

[290] No, right.

[291] You lose those four pounds.

[292] Although it seems like the optimal, there is diminished returns, right?

[293] Like 260 seems like the cap way.

[294] Thank you for noticing that.

[295] I think about this all the time.

[296] You ask, what is the weight class where up until then you're stronger and you haven't lost any speed or agility?

[297] Yeah.

[298] And I would put it in the 165 category.

[299] I would.

[300] The 165?

[301] Oh, I was saying for heavy weights, it seems to be 265.

[302] Beyond that, they start to drop.

[303] No, no, it's dropping sooner than that.

[304] So when you start getting heavier than 165, you're not moving as fast.

[305] But you're doing other kinds of moves that are sort of muscle moves.

[306] And you get a little more lumbery.

[307] My great advantage was I had the reflexes and the flexibility of someone much lighter.

[308] I just also danced.

[309] I did things and I stayed stretched and I studied martial arts where you can't just walk around and bulked up.

[310] Your body has to do things and perform.

[311] Dancing, you also have to be graceful.

[312] So I was a performing member of three different dance companies at college and into graduate school.

[313] Oh, my God.

[314] So, no, it wasn't the Bolshoi.

[315] Don't be all that impressed.

[316] I'm very excited.

[317] What about Acapella?

[318] In the shower, I carry awesome to.

[319] Outside, it doesn't really work out.

[320] Were you having a hard time meeting the 177?

[321] No, no, no. I was naturally at that way.

[322] You didn't have to put on the trash bag and sit in a sauna or any of that baloney.

[323] The trash bag, you sweat more within it.

[324] The humidity goes up.

[325] Your body sweats even more.

[326] And your temperature's not falling because it's not evaporating off of you.

[327] Yeah, exactly.

[328] So you have to monitor that, but you would lose water weight very quickly.

[329] And you're already pretty much in shape, but I could drop 10 pounds in an afternoon.

[330] Oh, my God.

[331] to or wanted to.

[332] Well, you look at these boxers, yeah, and the way in, they gain 10 % of their weight back in like two days.

[333] Yeah, exactly.

[334] Same with MMA when they do the weight category.

[335] Did being a jock or a geek interfere with my social mobility?

[336] I would say I grew up in the Bronx, not an especially tough part of the Bronx, but still there were tough kids there.

[337] And my athletic abilities definitely gave me advantage so that I would not be ridiculed or pummeled.

[338] Can I ask what the ethnic breakdown was of your neighborhood in that?

[339] This is like in the late 70s, early 80s?

[340] Late 60s, early 70s.

[341] Were you born in 68?

[342] 58.

[343] I'm a full decade off.

[344] Okay, great.

[345] I'm totally old here.

[346] I bet you could still pin me quite quickly.

[347] Only because I know how to.

[348] I could do that because I know physics.

[349] Right.

[350] You're not because you all pumped up now.

[351] You probably still have.

[352] Has your audience know what you look like now?

[353] I would imagine.

[354] So I'm in the photos.

[355] We post a lot of pictures.

[356] My uncle was a state champ wrestler and his great preoccupation in life was hand strength because apparently hand strength.

[357] strength is the most vital thing for a wrestler.

[358] It works.

[359] So I used to squeeze bathroom scales and measure the poundages on it.

[360] And I wanted to make sure that I could squeeze at least my weights worth of...

[361] You should try it.

[362] Just squeeze it.

[363] And so I got up to probably 250 pounds of hand squeezing strength.

[364] That means I can grab someone who's 250 pounds and just pull them.

[365] It'll be hard for them to break the grip.

[366] My uncle lived with tennis balls in his hands.

[367] And if he shook your hand, he wanted you just break it into the sharp.

[368] So there were two things.

[369] There was the neighborhood, but then there's the people who hung out in the park.

[370] And so the basketball courts was a little more diverse than the neighborhood itself.

[371] My earliest memories are the East Bronx, Castle Hill Housing Projects.

[372] And by the time I was in kindergarten, my father's income rose above that level.

[373] He's working for the mayor yet?

[374] Not yet.

[375] He was still in school at the time, in graduate school.

[376] Become a sociologist?

[377] Yes, he was.

[378] And he actually got a degree of Teachers College at Columbia.

[379] But when that happened, then he got a job and income went up.

[380] Then we moved, and we moved to Riverdale, which is a fancy, smanshy part of the Bronx.

[381] Okay.

[382] If you can picture that...

[383] Relative to the rest of the...

[384] You can picture such a place in the Bronx.

[385] It's the fancy part of the Bronx.

[386] The crown jewel of the Bronx.

[387] Right.

[388] But the playground had kids who were tough and kids who were truants and kids who did drugs.

[389] So if you wanted to have any kind of standing in the neighborhood, you had to know how to run fast, defend yourself.

[390] You had to be quick.

[391] And the real measure for me was if you're awaiting to be chosen in a pickup game of five...

[392] on five basketball, what number are you picked?

[393] I would never be captain, but I would be picked anywhere between four and six.

[394] Okay.

[395] Yeah, that's right.

[396] Real midling, that's what we, that's great.

[397] And I'm in the Bronx.

[398] Yes, yes.

[399] This is you're Robert Ori.

[400] And so the Bronx basketball was my base level thing.

[401] We spent a year in Massachusetts.

[402] My father was a fellow up at Harvard.

[403] And we He lived in Lexington, Massachusetts, with like a house and a backyard and like a tree.

[404] And I said, I mean, this is our tree?

[405] How do you own a tree?

[406] It's a tree.

[407] But then I had to shovel snow and rake leaves, all this, like, suburban crap that I had to do this.

[408] All right.

[409] I went to the park and I start playing basketball with these Lexington kids.

[410] So someone gets the ball and is ready to shoot.

[411] Really quick.

[412] Is it my stereotype of Boston?

[413] Stereotype it all the way.

[414] And that's what it is.

[415] I'm the one black kid in 100 square miles of Lexington.

[416] Lexington, Massachusetts.

[417] So, I jump to block the shot only to discover that I ended up blocking the shot with my elbow.

[418] Oh, my God, because you're so much taller.

[419] No, I jumped two feet higher than was necessary to block this shot.

[420] Massachusetts isn't different.

[421] You can put it neutral for a little bit.

[422] So I was shocked by that.

[423] Yeah.

[424] That there I am kind of average in the Bronx, and now I'm Mr. Amazing.

[425] But I can imagine that being in the Bronx, say the Bronx, say the Bronx.

[426] I'm not going to say that.

[427] She doesn't do characters.

[428] I don't do it all right.

[429] So I'm fucking playing ball.

[430] I'm in the Bronx.

[431] Look at this can of worms you bumping up.

[432] So I see this fucking guy.

[433] He's about 177, he's 6th tree.

[434] He's good.

[435] He's good.

[436] He's good.

[437] I find out this fucking nerd's also a fucking wrestler.

[438] So I'm like, let's see what this guy's got.

[439] Okay, but I can imagine being in the middle is an advantage, even to being the best or the worst.

[440] The middle child?

[441] No, no, no. You're getting picked four through six.

[442] Good point.

[443] So I have a brief story, if I may. So, in college, I got recruited to row.

[444] At Harvard.

[445] I went to a big rowing school.

[446] Didn't row in the Bronx or anything.

[447] This would be a completely new sport for me. But the coaches there, and they're looking at the freshmen come in, and they totally come and try out.

[448] And they have something called an ergometer.

[449] It's a rowing machine that accurately measures your energy output.

[450] And so they put everyone through this.

[451] They show you how to do a perfect stroke.

[452] And I got the highest erg score in 10 years that they had seen.

[453] I said, what?

[454] I was in awesome shape from wrestling.

[455] There's nothing like wrestling shape.

[456] And I had stamina.

[457] So I show up here and I row and I said, I don't want to be the best rower.

[458] What?

[459] And so I rode for a little bit.

[460] By the way, the camaraderie was fun.

[461] So I said, I'm going to return to wrestling.

[462] And the coach said, rowing is a sport of gods in the Ivy League.

[463] And if you row on the shores, they'll be cheering you the whole length of the race.

[464] And men will come up to you after with their business car and say, join my firm.

[465] Whereas wrestling was not as big a sport.

[466] And so there'd be a few hundred people in the stands rather than thousands of people lining the Charles River.

[467] And I said, I'd rather wrestle.

[468] Because I can still grow.

[469] Here's a saying that comes to me via my sister, who used to work for Dell, the computer company.

[470] And Michael Dell had a saying.

[471] He said, if you find yourself to be the smartest person in the room, change rooms.

[472] Mm -hmm.

[473] Easily sad.

[474] Yeah.

[475] I mean, someone's going to eventually run out a room.

[476] Like, where's Eric Lander going to go?

[477] Only hang out, you know?

[478] I guess he's at MIT.

[479] It's a philosophical point.

[480] It is.

[481] That's good.

[482] It's really good.

[483] So I liked the sport.

[484] I'd like losing to people better than I was so that I could always improve on what that was.

[485] Yeah.

[486] I still rode as a fun sport, but my heart remained in wrestling.

[487] And so I wrestled for four years.

[488] Okay, so that's your story about it.

[489] I got the explanation.

[490] And by the way, I don't think I've ever spent that much time talking about non -astrophysical subjects ever in a podcast.

[491] Well, guess what?

[492] The reason people listen to the show is they know everything about Matt Damon.

[493] They want to hear the stuff they haven't heard about Matt Damon.

[494] I saw you got a poster of him in your shower.

[495] Yeah, he's kissing me. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[496] So Matt Damon.

[497] So is it just me?

[498] Why do I think that Matt Damon is way more convincing playing any acting role than he is, Being himself.

[499] No. As himself, it's like, what is it?

[500] I don't know what he is.

[501] But when he's acting, it's like, hey, that's good.

[502] Hey, hey, hey.

[503] No, he's just normal.

[504] He's perfect.

[505] That's their number one love.

[506] I'm not saying there's something wrong with it.

[507] I'm observing that he's so potent in his acting roles that being himself is.

[508] You think it's boring.

[509] I don't know what he is as himself.

[510] No, I think movies are about exceptional people.

[511] Right.

[512] He's just a human being.

[513] I thought the point you were going to make.

[514] I thought you were going to make the point, why is he more.

[515] convincing as a scientist than you are as an actual scientist.

[516] Now, that would have been a pure point to make, and I literally thought that's where you were going to go with it.

[517] Like, I got imagine you watching The Martian going like, this guy knows his shit.

[518] I think even more than I do.

[519] I know.

[520] Yeah, it was good.

[521] He pulled that off well.

[522] All right.

[523] Cap on wrestling.

[524] So, to further your point about all roads lead to wrestling, so Channing Tatum has played every kind of athlete and every kind of movie.

[525] Including a stripper.

[526] Yes, very athletic endeavor.

[527] That's an athlete, yeah.

[528] And he famously was in the Foxx game.

[529] picture movie where he was playing whatever Stolt's brother that didn't get shot by DuPont, Mark Schultz.

[530] And he said, look, I've done the football movies.

[531] I played football.

[532] The training I did for that movie completely broke my body in half.

[533] It was nine standard deviations above what I thought.

[534] It's not just a slightly harder sport.

[535] No, it's impossible.

[536] Yeah.

[537] So I just wanted to confirm what you were saying.

[538] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[539] Okay.

[540] Now, I heard your story about why you were interested in going back to wrestling because there was room for improvement.

[541] I'm liable to believe that's some percentage of it.

[542] But my guess is more that you're just not a team sport person as much as you are an independent pursuer of things.

[543] No, no, that's not true.

[544] I value human contact and human interaction and to be able to have to depend on someone else.

[545] And that's at a pinnacle in rowing because every single stroke, every single person has to be moving in exactly the same way.

[546] Otherwise, the boat goes out of synchrony.

[547] Then I'll volunteer as someone who doesn't like team stuff.

[548] And I'll tell you why.

[549] I'm super competitive with myself.

[550] And it's really almost impossible to break yourself out of the system to evaluate yourself and to be bettering yourself.

[551] It's hard.

[552] It's better when someone else is right there.

[553] Yes, there are many variables on a rowing team.

[554] I don't know how many people are on the skull.

[555] There's anywhere from...

[556] There's one person in a skull.

[557] Oh, okay.

[558] What's the big one?

[559] The big one is eight.

[560] I wrote eights.

[561] What's that boat called?

[562] These are sweeps.

[563] Okay.

[564] Where both hands are on one or...

[565] Like the war canoes in the movie, you know, like Charlton Heston in whatever those old movies were.

[566] Right.

[567] Okay, so there's a bunch of guys on the boat.

[568] So when you're evaluating yourself post -event, it's really hard to know what you did, don't you think?

[569] If you're someone who's constantly monitoring their own growth, once you put yourself in that situation, it's nearly impossible to do that.

[570] It is, but you can still measure yourself on the machines that they have that are metrics.

[571] And there's something called seat racing where you row in a four -person boat, the coach will do this, and you race against another four -person boat, and then they take two rowers and swap them and see what effect that has on the times.

[572] on the winning time.

[573] Oh, interesting.

[574] If you do this enough times, you can isolate who's making the difference in the boat and who isn't.

[575] And then they assemble their boats based on this.

[576] Okay.

[577] I'm gonna poke a hole.

[578] I love poked holes.

[579] Yeah, right?

[580] Those you don't fall in.

[581] She's a two -time state champion as a cheerleader, so team sport.

[582] I am.

[583] People had to catch you.

[584] Oh, yeah.

[585] As you descended through the air.

[586] That's right.

[587] Yeah, trust, lots of trust.

[588] And physics.

[589] And physics, that's right.

[590] Ding, ding, ding.

[591] I think it's ego.

[592] To come at it as an individual sport is a bigger achievement.

[593] That's not really what you see.

[594] said, but I think it's a far harder achievement for 20 people to come together perfectly.

[595] Oh, right.

[596] To have synchronization within individual great performances is the ultimate symphony of achievement.

[597] I agree with you.

[598] He was just saying it was great.

[599] He was just saying that's what he is that if I take a jog today and then I jog tomorrow, tomorrow I have to jog, even if it's one foot further.

[600] It's my nature.

[601] Or faster.

[602] Whatever the metric is, I'm trying to better.

[603] And so if I'm in anything team, it's very hard to set those little tiny goals, you know what I'm saying?

[604] I still think it requires everyone to be at their very best.

[605] Yeah, but he doesn't control everyone else.

[606] That's a problem.

[607] But that's why I'm saying that the ego's involved.

[608] Well, look, I think there's a lot of things.

[609] Yes, you have to share glory.

[610] Yeah.

[611] You also get to share defeat, which is a little easier.

[612] That's why I love improv over stand -up.

[613] I couldn't handle the singular defeat.

[614] I can handle it shared.

[615] But there's definitely an ego motivation.

[616] But the thing that specifically frustrates me is I don't know if I'm improving.

[617] And I'm in a contest with Dax.

[618] I have been since day one.

[619] I'm only comparing myself to yesterday's Dax, not you, Neil.

[620] So if you have that disposition, I could see being drawn to...

[621] No, I don't think I have that disposition, right.

[622] But it's good to improve.

[623] Whatever you're doing, do it with intensity.

[624] Otherwise, go home.

[625] What's the point?

[626] And by the way, in wrestling, if I lost, because I got beat.

[627] And it's like, damn, that was good.

[628] I was never resentful because I didn't value winning as much as I valued just simply getting better.

[629] If I happened to went along the way, that was fine.

[630] By the way, I was undefeated in high school, but he'd go to college, and then that's when I first met corn -fed wrestlers.

[631] These are people on the farm.

[632] Sixth generation.

[633] Yeah, who had been hauling calves out of the barn.

[634] They weren't going to science school.

[635] No, I don't think they did, but wrestling them, it was clear that I had way more to go compared to where I was.

[636] And I delighted in that.

[637] I had no such hesitation to pursue it.

[638] Okay, so father was a sociologist who ended up working for the mayor of New York City for a while.

[639] Yeah.

[640] Mother had a degree in gerontology.

[641] No, only after we were empty nest.

[642] So they had a pact when they got married.

[643] This is a 1950s wedding that she would be housewife, raise the kids, he would continue his education, and then move on to whatever job would come of that.

[644] And when we were empty nest, she would go back to school.

[645] So that we'd come home, we would not be latchkey kids, come home to a mother.

[646] They ran that, like, clockwork.

[647] Not entirely empty nest.

[648] I was a junior in high school.

[649] My sister was four years younger.

[650] So I was there when she got home and I cooked dinner and things.

[651] She went back to school, got an under.

[652] a graduate degree and then a graduate degree in gerontology and ended up working for the feds for the health and human services administering programs to homeless shelters and homes for aging people.

[653] So they were very into improving the condition of life on earth.

[654] And I'm their son in the universe.

[655] That formed a very important progressive social anchor for me and what I care about.

[656] Your mother is from Puerto Rico?

[657] She was born in New York City.

[658] Both parents are from Puerto Rico.

[659] Is she first generation?

[660] Both of them were first generation born in the United States.

[661] Oh, both were?

[662] But their parents came from elsewhere.

[663] Yes, and are they the first college graduates?

[664] In the family, yes.

[665] My grandmother had sixth grade education.

[666] This is the total American dream.

[667] I have to say, with all of the fits and starts and struggles, the racism and all the rest of this, if you just weigh the total arc, yes, there's American dreaming going on here.

[668] Yeah, a bachelor's degree, a master's, then come to you.

[669] Yes, a PhD.

[670] Yes, a Ph .D. A 21 honorary doctorates.

[671] Yeah, so it's a complete progression there entirely.

[672] Okay, you go to the Hayden Planetarium at a young age.

[673] You become obsessed with astronomy.

[674] Well, the universe called me, I think.

[675] I have no other way to explain it because it was an early relationship, like from age nine.

[676] I could never go outside and not look up.

[677] That was the siren call.

[678] What is that object over there?

[679] And how far away is it?

[680] And what's it made of?

[681] I want to know more.

[682] Let me get binoculars.

[683] Let me get a telescope.

[684] Let me get a camera.

[685] to document it.

[686] And this was an ascent that continued ever since.

[687] And by the time he is 15, he's lecturing...

[688] I gave my first public talk at a university, actually.

[689] I'd just come back from an astronomy camp as a kid.

[690] Oh, this is Apex Nerds.

[691] This is...

[692] Oh, astronomy camp.

[693] Oh, this is Apex Predator.

[694] I get it now.

[695] Okay.

[696] So, yeah, when I was 14, I went for a month into the Mahabee desert of Southern California lived nocturnally.

[697] Oh, baby.

[698] And I can't.

[699] Well, how else you're going to look to this night sky?

[700] Do they plan the mooner cycle?

[701] Yeah, well, so now the lunar cycle was also built into this nocturnal living because when the moon is out, the night sky sucks.

[702] Yep.

[703] It drops from thousands of stars visible to the unaided eye to a few hundred.

[704] I just went to Sedona last week with the sole intention of looking at the stars because they're so spectacular there.

[705] And of course, I did not take the time to see what's happening with the moon.

[706] Yeah, it was a full moon.

[707] Yeah, it was a full moon.

[708] Yeah, Totally suck.

[709] No, there happened to be a lunar eclipse at that time.

[710] Oh, I don't know if you caught that.

[711] I did not.

[712] You got to call me. Now that we're vibing.

[713] I can hook you up, okay?

[714] I want to be on your, like, group alert, lunar eclipse tonight.

[715] Wait, so just because the light's so bright.

[716] Yeah, so the full moon drowns out the light of the night sky.

[717] The moonlight, as it penetrates through the atmosphere, the atmosphere scatters the moonlight and creates a glow of the atmosphere, not very different, except much dimmer, from the fact that we have a blue sky in the daytime.

[718] You think the sky is just naturally blue.

[719] If we didn't have an atmosphere, it would be pitch black with the sun in the sky.

[720] Yeah.

[721] So it's because we have an atmosphere and the atmosphere scatters sunlight.

[722] It's stealing light from the sun, creating a self -luminous canopy above you, which you call the daytime sky.

[723] The same thing happens at night and that prevents you from seeing dim objects.

[724] My own point is, at this camp, during full moon, we went on trips.

[725] And that's when I went to see the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater in Arizona.

[726] And that was the occasion to not try to get through the moonlight, but let's do other culturally, scientifically interesting things.

[727] This is going to be my second time I try to impress you, all right?

[728] I've capped myself at four.

[729] I already did one with the chemical bond.

[730] After idiocry, you don't have to impress you.

[731] Okay.

[732] Plus, I caught you on brain games.

[733] Oh, okay.

[734] Back to the atmosphere and the sky being blue.

[735] So specifically, the sun is emanating the full spectrum of, light.

[736] Yes, it is.

[737] Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo violet, Roy G. Bibb.

[738] And blue has a wavelength of about 4 ,500 angstroms.

[739] And it just so happens that that wavelength collides with the material the atmosphere is made out of.

[740] And the longer wavelengths, red, anything beyond blue, is passing gracefully through it.

[741] Correct.

[742] And so the particles in the atmosphere, there's a lot of things that would then interact with that wavelength.

[743] If you are a particle approximately the size of the wavelength, the particle and wavelength will have an encounter, and the particle will scatter, it will redirect it.

[744] That's why the sun that you see actually had a little bit of blue removed from it, and it's scattered into, like, at sunset, the atmosphere, oh, M .G. So when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, how much atmosphere is going through, there's a thickness that's the least that it would pass through.

[745] As it gets lower in the sky, the path length through the air gets longer and longer until Until it's on the horizon.

[746] Instead of coming down directly vertical through the atmosphere, it's not traveling horizontally through.

[747] It's horizontally through.

[748] And on the horizon, it's going 50 atmospheric thicknesses worth of air.

[749] So whatever was doing in the daytime is magnified at sunset, which is why the sky gets even bluer.

[750] And then ultimately red.

[751] It gets red if you have like California fires.

[752] Okay.

[753] But the more blue you take out of the sun, the redder the sun gets, which is why they're The sun set, the sun itself is a deep amber or deep red or yellow.

[754] And that's why people think the sun is yellow.

[755] Because you're not looking at it in the broad daylight.

[756] You're looking at it as it sets on Santa Monica Beach.

[757] It's pure white light.

[758] But you're taking up way enough blue.

[759] It's going to look yellow.

[760] We have a yellow star.

[761] No, we don't.

[762] It's white.

[763] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[764] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[765] What's up, guys?

[766] It's your girl Kiki.

[767] And my podcast is back.

[768] with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[769] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[770] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[771] And I don't mean just friends.

[772] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[773] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[774] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcast.

[775] We've all been there.

[776] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers and strange rashes.

[777] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[778] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[779] Hey, listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[780] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[781] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[782] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[783] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[784] Okay.

[785] Additionally, what I think is completely impossible, and you and I share similar thoughts on whether or not there's some grand bean orchestrating all this.

[786] Both of us do not think so.

[787] Yet certain things happen that are quite impossible for one to comprehend.

[788] One of those being, you get the attention of Carl Sagan at a young age.

[789] This is in your life story.

[790] This doesn't happen, right?

[791] This is a simulation moment.

[792] When you look back, what is the probability that this person, Carl Sagan, the godfather of all this interest?

[793] Oh, gee.

[794] Notices you, invites you to study at Cornell.

[795] Can we talk about the moment you discover Carl Sagan knows you.

[796] you're human being on planet Earth, and what effect that had on you?

[797] Yeah, so this is many years after I'm nine years old, right?

[798] So I'm deep in the universe.

[799] By the time I'm in high school, Carl Sagan's name percolates up, and he's well known, hadn't done Cosmos yet.

[800] Oh, he hadn't.

[801] No, no, had not.

[802] But he had been a guest on Johnny Carson, the Tonight Show, for those youngens.

[803] He's the original Nail Derogast Tyson.

[804] I mean, he really is.

[805] So Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show before Jay Leno, before Jimmy Fallon.

[806] And scientists didn't do that.

[807] You're on a comedic.

[808] talk show?

[809] What?

[810] Yeah, yeah.

[811] He got some pushback on that.

[812] Among his peers?

[813] Yes.

[814] Oh, okay.

[815] You don't do that.

[816] You belong in the lab.

[817] Don't give it away to the lay people.

[818] Plus, not only just giving away, he's getting famous and they're not.

[819] Oh, Chelsea.

[820] Yeah, yeah.

[821] But anyhow, so he was already famous and I'd applied to Cornell.

[822] I was accepted, but I hadn't decided where to go yet.

[823] I was still thinking it through.

[824] Unknown to me, the admissions office sent my application to him.

[825] He was a professor of astronomy at Cornell.

[826] And he then sent me a letter.

[827] Oh, my God.

[828] My analogy would be, you're into basketball, you get a letter from Michael Jordan.

[829] You're into baking.

[830] Julia Child sent you a letter.

[831] This is what you love, and you're getting a letter from Carl Sank.

[832] Was your essay on, like, how did...

[833] Yes.

[834] My entire application to college was dripping with the universe.

[835] Yes.

[836] And there were my stories that I walked dogs at 50 cents per dog per walk.

[837] That was the glory days or dog white because there was no pooper -scooper laws yet.

[838] Let it rip, and you don't even have to break stride.

[839] No. I have some karma coming for that.

[840] With that money, I bought my cameras, my telescopes.

[841] I turned my bathroom into a dark room and bought the enlargers and the chemicals and the paper.

[842] All of this was going on in my life.

[843] I was in the astronomy club and they knew that I gave a public talk at age 15.

[844] Right.

[845] Oh, by the way, I'd never finish that story.

[846] Coming back from my astronomy camp, I had all these photos and stories to tell.

[847] And someone got wind of that and they wanted me to give a lecture at City College to an extension school.

[848] they're all adults in the room to talk about the universe so I gave the lecture and later on they sent me a check for $50 and they said thank you I felt cheap actually because it was like I'm just sharing my love and you're paying me for this plus let's put that in context this is 1973 I had just turned 15 I talked for an hour and they hand me a $50 check this might as well be an infinite amount of money well $50 an hour in 1973 would probably be the equivalent today of about $15 ,000 an hour.

[849] Oh, my God.

[850] Not really, but it would be astronomical.

[851] Yeah.

[852] A minimum wage is barely $15 an hour in the year 2022.

[853] Right.

[854] Back then it was a dollar.

[855] Yeah, $1 .40 or something.

[856] And you were making $0 .50 walking dogs.

[857] Per dog per walk.

[858] Which adds up because dogs poop three times a day.

[859] So the point is, all of this was dripping in my application.

[860] They saw this.

[861] They sent it to Carl.

[862] He sends me a letter.

[863] Would I come visit him?

[864] And I said, sure, I checked with my parents.

[865] They agreed it was legit.

[866] And how do I know from letterhead from anything, right?

[867] Sure.

[868] Send us your young athletic son.

[869] So I went up there, took a bus from New York City to Ithaca.

[870] It was in December.

[871] And Matt had met his office.

[872] And I'll never forget.

[873] He reached back.

[874] It was a no -look reach.

[875] Grabbs a book from the shelf.

[876] And it's a book that he wrote.

[877] It was a no -look reach.

[878] This was so badass.

[879] No -look pass.

[880] No, it was a no -look pass.

[881] Reached for a book.

[882] It's one of his.

[883] He signs it, says, to Neon, a future astronomer.

[884] Oh, I still have that book.

[885] Of course you do.

[886] And he gives me a tour of the lab.

[887] He drives me to the bus station, begins to snow.

[888] Really quick, I'm a car now.

[889] What kind of car do you drive?

[890] An early Porsche.

[891] Get the fuck out.

[892] He was driving.

[893] It was a Porsche.

[894] It wasn't the...

[895] 9 -11.

[896] No, early 9 -11, which was not his aerodynamic looking.

[897] Right, right, right.

[898] Oh, my God.

[899] What a stud.

[900] You know what I'm starting.

[901] Yeah.

[902] It's red.

[903] Of course, it was red.

[904] What a stud.

[905] He's at Cornell driving a Porsche.

[906] He's driving a Porsche in the snow, right?

[907] Yeah.

[908] He's got this young wrestler in the car.

[909] Oh, my God.

[910] Seriously.

[911] Doing no -look -reach.

[912] No -look -reach.

[913] That was so good.

[914] And so, but that's not what set it apart.

[915] Begins to snow, he said, and he writes down his home phone and said, it's beginning to snow.

[916] If the bus can't get through, call me, spend the night with my family, go back tomorrow.

[917] And I thought to myself in that moment, who am I to deserve this attention?

[918] And then I said to myself, if I am ever remotely as famous as Carl Sagan, I will treat the next generation of scientists the way he has treated me. Yeah.

[919] Similar pledge about Hayden.

[920] Exactly.

[921] These are two guiding principles.

[922] To this day, I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say, if a student comes to my door, and I'll say, Barack, I got to hang up now.

[923] Let's talk later.

[924] I have a student in my vestibule.

[925] Well, and have you seen I have a great appetite and aptitude for the science.

[926] I hope you'll extend this invitation to me. Am I encouraged to spend the night at your house?

[927] Do you have to pass a test in order to talk?

[928] So to this day, basically, I've committed in that way, and I'm vastly more well -known than I ever imagined for myself at the time.

[929] Right.

[930] Carl Sagan, I'm now older than he was when he died.

[931] All right, he had a rare blood disease.

[932] What was that?

[933] I don't remember, you know, those blood diseases, they get very, they get a lot of syllables, early 60s.

[934] Do you remember how he talks, Monica?

[935] Did you ever watch the original cosmos?

[936] Billions and billions and billions.

[937] Yeah, yes.

[938] Billions.

[939] One of those iconic voices.

[940] Yeah, yeah.

[941] And Johnny Carson would imitate him.

[942] And Johnny Carson actually said billions and billions, and Carl Sagan never did.

[943] Really?

[944] Yeah, that was a Johnny Carson exaggeration.

[945] But that led to one of the last books that he published was called Billions and Billions.

[946] Oh.

[947] I'm very cute.

[948] Just to bring this back to an earlier point, when I first hosted Cosmos, I hosted it twice.

[949] First one was in 2014.

[950] The series was jumpstarted by his widow, who was a highly creative force behind so much of what he did.

[951] The first question I was asked always was, was it feel like stepping into Carl Sagan's shoes?

[952] And there's only one answer I could give, which is I could try to step into his shoes, but then I'd just be sort of imitating who and what he was.

[953] And if I fail at that, I'm failing at trying to be something I'm not.

[954] If I fail, I'd rather fail at something that I'm trying to be that I am.

[955] So I can wear my own shoes.

[956] All I can be is myself, my authentic self, as host of such an iconic series.

[957] This is my theory in life.

[958] If I'm going to go up in flames, I want it to be as the result of my poor plan.

[959] Not someone else.

[960] Right.

[961] Okay, UT, I got to touch on UT for half a second.

[962] University of Texas.

[963] Yes.

[964] I'm obsessed with Austin.

[965] It's my spiritual center.

[966] You know, I was there so long ago that there was never more than one car in front of you at a red light.

[967] No shit.

[968] Oh, wow.

[969] Just imagine that.

[970] When they built Mopac, Route 1, it was criticized as being an unnecessary road disrupting whatever was the terrain of the space.

[971] And now you go back and you cannot imagine the absence of that in the north -south trajectory from the city.

[972] Correct.

[973] You graduated in 83?

[974] I started graduate school there, but I finished at Columbia University.

[975] But I met my wife there.

[976] She has a PhD in mathematical physics.

[977] She got that from U .T. Austin, and we met in a class on relativity.

[978] Wow.

[979] Now, you've been honest about the fact that you did not spend as much time in the lab there that you should have.

[980] Yeah, that's right.

[981] And I guess I'm curious, is it because you were falling in love or because of the absolute eroticism of Austin?

[982] It's such a fun place.

[983] Well, my favorite comment about Austin then, I don't know how much it applies today, was Austin is where young people go to retire.

[984] Yeah, yeah.

[985] Yeah, at one time, highest percentage of doctor degree holders per capita in the country.

[986] I thought New Jersey was that, because New Jersey has all the universities as well as the big pharma companies.

[987] I think they had a really small population.

[988] Yeah, that could probably do it.

[989] I doubt they still have that title.

[990] Here's some of the soul of that.

[991] I came out of college with all manner of extracurricular activities.

[992] I wrestled.

[993] I still rode, but intramurally, because it was still a fun thing to do.

[994] I was on the two different dance companies, a third one when I got to graduate school.

[995] I was doing all these things in addition to getting a degree in physics.

[996] So when I got to graduate school, I just sought to continue this.

[997] Right, right.

[998] It's what I did.

[999] And in doing so, everyone in the department looked at me like, what's wrong with you?

[1000] You should be in the lab.

[1001] And all my fellow graduate students were all in the lab.

[1002] It was very hard for me to shed all of these layers of me that, for me, were part of who I was as a person.

[1003] But so was the universe, a very important part of me. A more important part than all the rest.

[1004] I just had to figure out how to do it But by the time I figured out how to do it It wasn't working And I had to switch graduate schools So I transferred to Columbia University They also didn't they dissolve the doctoral degree Yeah, it wasn't working out My progress wasn't what they wanted Or what they expected I was perfectly happy Really quick before we just blow by it And end up at Columbia This is the first I'd imagine for you You're a Wunderkin But no one is thinking that But everything else you're totally excelling at This has to be the first time where it's like the pace slowed down.

[1005] No, no, there is no time in my academic life where the teacher would have ever said, look at Tyson, he'll go far.

[1006] Okay.

[1007] No teacher ever thought that or said that of me. But Neil, you leave high school and you go to Harvard.

[1008] Right there, that's the greatest one can do.

[1009] My arc through that was a different navigational path.

[1010] So here it is.

[1011] I have a girlfriend in high school who also gets accepted to Harvard.

[1012] Her father was angry because he thought she followed me to Harvard, was the most idiotic.

[1013] What does that even mean?

[1014] She followed him to a Nobel Peterhouse.

[1015] She settled.

[1016] So she graduated fourth or something, low single digits in the Bronx High School of Science.

[1017] 750 graduates.

[1018] I graduated probably about 350th.

[1019] Right where you get picked for basketball.

[1020] Exactly.

[1021] You did the math.

[1022] Okay, I see what you did there.

[1023] Very good.

[1024] And so my GPA was in the middle.

[1025] I get A's, Bs, and Cs.

[1026] So obviously all the extra curricular.

[1027] activity you did tip the balance to get into Harvard.

[1028] Correct.

[1029] Correct.

[1030] So there were people who were saying, this guy does stuff, a man of action.

[1031] That's right.

[1032] He bought his telescope, improved the telescope, was resourceful with the dog walking, and none of that shows up in your GPA.

[1033] So the people who think that selective college is or should be about your GPA, I'm thinking, okay, but then you get people who become the bookworm and not people who become people of action.

[1034] Their action is, I earn the A, rather than whatever else that might be motivating you to achieve in life.

[1035] By the way, on top of that, I went to camp at it, lived nocturnally.

[1036] And I did research in Stonehenge in high school.

[1037] All this happened.

[1038] And Stonehenge, when I saw that, that's what led me to Manhattan Henge.

[1039] Do you only invented this thing Manhattan Henge?

[1040] You don't know about Manhattan Hens?

[1041] Hit her with it!

[1042] As a kid, I visited Stone Hens and other stone monuments less celebrated as part of an expedition to document uncharted stone circles that you never knew about or heard about, but farmers, they're interrupting the farmer's schedules because they're just rocks in the middle of their field.

[1043] I was there with a team of archaeologists, anthropologists.

[1044] I was on the scientific team, and I'm 14 when this is happening.

[1045] You had a busy school.

[1046] No, I'm busy, no, you're right.

[1047] And it was over the summer, so we went, and our expedition leader was a guy named Gerald Hawkins, who was the first person to discover that Stonehenge was an observatory, not just some religious temple.

[1048] He found the alignments with the sun and the moon, It's a calendar.

[1049] You can track the seasons in it as well.

[1050] So he's the right expedition leader.

[1051] I do all of this.

[1052] This is in my application to college.

[1053] But the point is, it's in me. It's an imprinting of something such as that.

[1054] And I said, you know, wouldn't it be cool if I could find some place to stand in Manhattan where the sun, moon, or stars rises over the Chrysler building or the Empire State or some monument and then everyone would gather there those few times a year and watch it?

[1055] And I couldn't find anything good.

[1056] So then I resorted to just the grid.

[1057] Manhattan is laid down on a grid.

[1058] They don't go exactly east -west.

[1059] They're rotated a bit to stay with the geometry of the island itself.

[1060] So I calculated what day the sun will set exactly on the grid.

[1061] Meaning if you're on a side street, you can be looking and watch the sunset at the end of the street.

[1062] There'll be no building obstruction.

[1063] No building in the way.

[1064] And it'll be true for every cross -street.

[1065] That's what's amazing.

[1066] And so sunset on the Manhattan grid, I published the dates.

[1067] I originally call it Manhattan Henge with a hyphen.

[1068] Then I made it just one word.

[1069] And my first photo of this was in 2002, published, from pictures I had taken in 2001.

[1070] And since then, tens of thousands of people flood the streets.

[1071] I'm delighted that there's a reason other than con -ed digging holes or police activity for people to block traffic.

[1072] So that's the origin.

[1073] And now Manhattan Hinge was uplifted into the OED, the Oxford English Dictionary.

[1074] So I'm very happy about that.

[1075] But anyhow, so all this is going on, and that doesn't show up in your GPA.

[1076] That's my only point here.

[1077] most of my own confidence came from myself and not from other people's assessments of me because people say, what's your exam score?

[1078] And they want to look at the score and the rest of who and what you are gets ignored because the system doesn't really care.

[1079] What I don't think is evident in the standardized testing is there's certainly drive for the marks, but drive for the field, I mean, that's such a quintessential ingredient and whether someone's going to excel.

[1080] It's not coded.

[1081] What is the measure of your ambition?

[1082] Right?

[1083] So I'm ingradually, I'm doing all these other things, and my master's thesis is delayed, and everyone else is on time, right?

[1084] There's a homogenization that was working for everybody else and was not working for me. And so they just gave up on me, basically.

[1085] And when you went to Columbia, then did you prune out some of your...

[1086] Yeah, I did.

[1087] I was more mature as a student then, so I don't want to blame Texas for their decision.

[1088] By the way, they've seen students that it doesn't work out, and they go off.

[1089] And they would say things to me like, well, when you leave astronomy, me, what else do you want to do?

[1090] Have you thought about this?

[1091] And they had no idea how deep my gas tanks were.

[1092] My gas tank was filled since I was nine years old.

[1093] You don't just tell me because it wasn't working out with you.

[1094] What else are you going to do?

[1095] You're going to sell computers.

[1096] What are you going to do?

[1097] So I stayed with it.

[1098] Transferred schools to Columbia was able by then to shed some of these commitments, but they valued me for who I was and did not try to homogenize me in any way.

[1099] So then I got the PhD, gave the graduate commencement speech.

[1100] then postdoc at Princeton, so left UT in my rearview mirror.

[1101] Yeah, so it wasn't my hope that you just went there and got intoxicated with the fun culture and then just was like, I don't care about shit.

[1102] So the fact that I switched schools, it wasn't devastating to me in the sense that I knew what I was capable of.

[1103] Just because other people didn't was not the measure of my own self.

[1104] That's pretty confident.

[1105] Yeah, well, it's not just a matter of, you know, your parents say, oh, you can make it.

[1106] No, you have to be very serious.

[1107] about your assessments.

[1108] Otherwise, you can come out on either side of that and it's not good.

[1109] If you think you're better than you actually are, then you think the whole world is against you.

[1110] If you think you're worse than you actually are because everyone is telling you, neither of these is good.

[1111] You want an accurate sense.

[1112] And I put in a lot of energy.

[1113] I attend conferences and I would see what questions I had versus others who were ascending.

[1114] And I said, this person doesn't know what they're talking about.

[1115] I know.

[1116] I've researched this and I know.

[1117] So I knew I had a place, a parking space among those who would count among the ranks of the educated.

[1118] Yeah.

[1119] So we're really kind of caught up on your life story up until the point where we start knowing you as a public figure.

[1120] So before you start hosting Nova in 2004, where do you start making public appearances?

[1121] I know you become the director of the Hayden Planetarium.

[1122] There's probably some kind of public acknowledgement of that.

[1123] But when do you start getting forward -facing in media?

[1124] While in graduate school, another one of the things I shouldn't have been doing, I should have been in the lab, I wrote a column for the public and it was called Merlin's Words to the Wise which were just shortened to Merlin.

[1125] You just ask questions.

[1126] Dear Merlin, how big is the universe?

[1127] So it was like a nom de plume and I got paid for that.

[1128] It was like $25 per answer and that was great and I could live alone rather than with roommates so I could afford things I wouldn't otherwise be able to on a graduate student salary.

[1129] And I got to see how people react to information and what makes them curious.

[1130] And then you'd be on an airplane and a person next you tell, you do?

[1131] I so have an astrophysicist.

[1132] Oh, tell me about black holes and the Big Bang.

[1133] And I'd start answering and I'd monitor, are their eyebrows raised or do they look bored with this explanation versus another?

[1134] You're like a stand -up comedian who's trying out.

[1135] Yes, and a standard comedian, did this material work?

[1136] They thought it would, but it didn't.

[1137] So you got to ditch it and try something else.

[1138] So I'm gathering this portfolio of things that excite people versus things that don't.

[1139] And I start including that in my writing.

[1140] Your routine becomes your explanations.

[1141] Yes, in ways that are not just wiki page explanations, but they have a little flavor interest.

[1142] So you'll come back for it.

[1143] But the real evidence here was 1995.

[1144] The first exoplanet is discovered.

[1145] Planet orbiting another star.

[1146] It was banner headlines.

[1147] By the way, today there's 5 ,000 of them.

[1148] But back then, banner headline.

[1149] What year were you born?

[1150] 87.

[1151] Okay.

[1152] So anyone born after 1995?

[1153] I knight them Generation Exoplanet.

[1154] Oh.

[1155] Okay.

[1156] Because all of you have only known life with the knowledge that we have planets orbiting other stars.

[1157] So for me, that's a generational thing.

[1158] That was until 95?

[1159] Yes, 95, dude.

[1160] Of course, science fiction imagined it.

[1161] Yeah.

[1162] And it was not a stretch.

[1163] But the first date, it was 1999.

[1164] My first astronomy class was 98.

[1165] Your formal knowledge was in the generation exoplanet.

[1166] But soon as I'm being educated on the universe.

[1167] It's already known.

[1168] And I'm assuming that has been known for a long time.

[1169] I didn't know.

[1170] Yeah, yeah.

[1171] No, it was not.

[1172] It was fresh info.

[1173] Wow, wow.

[1174] Hot off the press.

[1175] At that moment, I'm interim director of the planetarium.

[1176] The previous director left, and they want to find another one.

[1177] I did some PBS and things, but I'm not heavily known.

[1178] NBC or ABC sends an action cam to the planetarium to get the director's view on this discovery.

[1179] Have you just done the $200 million remodel, or that's coming?

[1180] We had not remodeled yet.

[1181] Okay, it's a slow news day.

[1182] ABC headquarters is in Manhattan.

[1183] The planetarium is in Manhattan, and they don't know who I am, but they know I carry the title.

[1184] So that gives the right Chiron.

[1185] So they come to me. Tell us what this is.

[1186] And I give my best professorial reply.

[1187] And I talk about the Doppler shift and how it's measured.

[1188] And the planet doesn't orbit the star.

[1189] The planet and the star orbit their common center of gravity, which means the stars do a little jig as the planet goes around them.

[1190] And I gestured with my hand and my hips to show that the star is just kind of jiggling while the planet makes full orbits around it.

[1191] And you've got to dance back on you're the perfect guy to be jibes.

[1192] So, yes, I could do the jig for the...

[1193] But they said, okay, we're going to cut this and air it on the evening.

[1194] It called everybody, okay?

[1195] Oh, yeah.

[1196] It's my first real -time national news.

[1197] It would be more exciting.

[1198] And I was on local news, but national news.

[1199] And I watched the segment.

[1200] All they had of me was me jiggling my hips.

[1201] Of course, of course.

[1202] That was all that they used.

[1203] And I said, oh, my gosh.

[1204] Even though they're visiting me in my habitat, they want something that works in their habitat.

[1205] That's right.

[1206] People then sign up for a class.

[1207] did not sign up to be lectured at.

[1208] So I said they want sound bites.

[1209] All right, I can do that.

[1210] And this is my attempt to just improve myself.

[1211] So I went home, stared in the mirror, had my wife speak out words, ideas, objects of things in the universe, black holes, quasars, Pluto, the sun, fusion.

[1212] And for each one of these words, I would construct three sentences, one that was informative, one that was tasty.

[1213] Like, hey, that's kind of interesting.

[1214] you might want to tell someone else.

[1215] And ideally, a third sentence that would make you smile.

[1216] Because being tasty could be just intriguing, but doesn't make you happy.

[1217] So if I can put three sentences together, that would be the anatomy of the sound bites I'm ready to deliver.

[1218] So I started doing that.

[1219] Why don't you throw some out and he can do it?

[1220] Oh, you want to try it?

[1221] Okay, redshift.

[1222] Redshift.

[1223] Yeah.

[1224] Ooh.

[1225] So there are objects that emit light, and if they're moving away from you, that wavelength of light stretches.

[1226] And if it starts out blue, it can stretch and change color and become red.

[1227] And that's how we can measure how fast the object is moving away from this.

[1228] If it's coming towards you, it's a blue shift.

[1229] A great example of this is if you're standing the side of the road and you hear a car coming at you.

[1230] The sound you're hearing is a higher...

[1231] It's shifted to higher frequency coming towards you?

[1232] And it goes...

[1233] Lower frequency moving away from you.

[1234] I have to improve on what you did there.

[1235] You ready?

[1236] Yeah.

[1237] You're at a racetrack, and here it goes.

[1238] Niu.

[1239] That was really good.

[1240] You got to start with the high frequency.

[1241] Think to yourself, how come it doesn't go?

[1242] Neum, neo.

[1243] Doesn't do that.

[1244] Right.

[1245] Have you ever paused and thought about this?

[1246] It doesn't go, wah, wah.

[1247] It goes, no. Yeah.

[1248] It is not symmetric.

[1249] Right.

[1250] The Doppler shift was first measured for sound by Christian Doppler, a German physicist.

[1251] He might, I think, even been a chemist.

[1252] But he showed it for sound.

[1253] and it also works for white.

[1254] Now, you may me utter more sentences there.

[1255] That's my goal.

[1256] So a friend of mine, who's geeky, has bumper stickers, and on the front, it's painted blue, and the rear sticker is painted red.

[1257] Oh, that's great.

[1258] Okay?

[1259] So if you see his bumper sticker coming towards it, it's like he's blue shifting towards me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1260] Oh, that's funny.

[1261] But anyhow, so my point is, when I started doing that, they came back for more.

[1262] Mm -hmm.

[1263] He became a reliable soundbod guy.

[1264] And other people would see it on one newscast, and they'd say, that on our newscast.

[1265] Can you do it for space time?

[1266] Are you a little bit confused by it?

[1267] Yeah.

[1268] You ready?

[1269] Yeah.

[1270] Let's have lunch tomorrow at 12 o 'clock.

[1271] Okay.

[1272] What's your natural next question?

[1273] Where?

[1274] Oh!

[1275] You heard me give a time, but that was insufficient information.

[1276] You also needed space.

[1277] Uh -huh.

[1278] Okay.

[1279] Let's go have coffee at Starbucks.

[1280] What time?

[1281] What time?

[1282] I gave you a place.

[1283] And now you have to ask what time you know intuitively that your existence in this world is determined by a time coordinate and a space coordinate.

[1284] Interesting.

[1285] You cannot intersect with any other human being without knowing both of those together.

[1286] Yeah.

[1287] Okay?

[1288] You can cross a street the same street that a truck was on and not get hit by it.

[1289] You were in the same place but at different times.

[1290] Right.

[1291] You and the truck are on the street at the same time, but you're not getting flattened by the truck.

[1292] Why?

[1293] Because you're not in the same place.

[1294] In order for you to intersect with someone, you have to be at the same time at the same place.

[1295] Now, something really deep.

[1296] Coming through COVID, do you know what Zoom did?

[1297] It broke the space time continuum.

[1298] Oh.

[1299] Because now you only had to be at the same time.

[1300] You didn't have to be at the same place.

[1301] Right.

[1302] But same with phone calls.

[1303] Yeah, you could say that L .C. Alexander Graham Bell started that before Zoom did.

[1304] I just want to add one thing previously to the theory of relativity.

[1305] We thought of the world being organized in three dimensions, right?

[1306] Let's say the length away from you or the width or the height.

[1307] You could give those three coordinates and place anyone in the universe and that the time aspect is the fourth dimension that's added to really know where something was.

[1308] That's right.

[1309] So time is a dimension.

[1310] You can think about it that way, except what's different.

[1311] about it is you can move back and forth, front, back, left, right, up, down, and you can repeat that.

[1312] You are not a prisoner of your coordinates in space, but you are a prisoner of the present in time.

[1313] You are forever transitioning from the inaccessible past to the unknowable future as a prisoner of the present.

[1314] See, there's your soundbite.

[1315] That's the soundbite.

[1316] That's the soundbite.

[1317] That's the thing that makes you smile.

[1318] Yeah, I'd say, wow, I want to tell someone else that at the water cooler.

[1319] So you do this enough and then people come back for more.

[1320] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1321] Okay, so now we're going to go to some hot button topics that are in your world of expertise.

[1322] You, of course, have a podcast called StarTalk podcast, and it's a collision of pop culture and science.

[1323] And humor.

[1324] I always have access to a professional comedian to bring a force of levity to the force of gravity that's represented in the science itself.

[1325] And you cover a whole range of topics, conspiracy theories.

[1326] Can robots feel?

[1327] Can we bring back people from the dead?

[1328] Exit velocity.

[1329] That's on a baseball that you swing and hit with a baseball bat.

[1330] Yeah.

[1331] Exit velocity is north of 17 ,500 miles an hour for Earth.

[1332] Well, that would be escape velocity.

[1333] What's the difference between exit and escape velocity?

[1334] Exit velocity, that was probably from our Start Talk sports edition where they have a new metric for a batter.

[1335] It's called exit velocity.

[1336] What are they measuring?

[1337] The speed of the ball as it comes off the bat.

[1338] And what is the average percentage increase?

[1339] So let's say the pitch is 90 miles an hour.

[1340] What's it coming off the bat?

[1341] Yeah, it's not going to be a home run unless it comes off the bat, at least 95 miles an hour.

[1342] 100 mile an hour at the right angle is going to be a home run.

[1343] So the best the batter can do is redirect the original velocity.

[1344] Well, that's hard because the ball has all this momentum in the opposite direction.

[1345] So the bat has to not only slow down the ball, stop it, and then give it velocity in the other direction.

[1346] Right.

[1347] Oh, wow.

[1348] Yeah, I think people would wrongly think, oh, 90 plus 90.

[1349] If the guy's swinging the bat at 90 miles an hour.

[1350] Nope.

[1351] You have to stop the ball for it to end up going in the opposite direction.

[1352] Yeah.

[1353] Yeah.

[1354] So about the max of that you're saying is like 95?

[1355] Yeah, it's hard to hit a homeowner.

[1356] If you have a short porch left or right field, you might be.

[1357] be able to do it at 90 miles an hour, but for exit velocity, it's got to be up, so bat speed matters.

[1358] Ten is they're getting the ball up to like 120, 130.

[1359] Yeah, 130, that's correct.

[1360] The elasticity of the racket, is that what's aiding?

[1361] Yeah, because the ball is not coming towards them.

[1362] The ball is just sitting there.

[1363] But they're not up or 100.

[1364] Then the regular volley, they're not getting 130 miles an hour.

[1365] That makes sense.

[1366] You're not absorbing the 90 miles of hour.

[1367] Exactly.

[1368] So there's the speed of their racket and the squeasiness of the ball, all that energy, the ball recovering its shape helps propel it for.

[1369] So the ball's just sitting there, stationary in the air.

[1370] Yeah.

[1371] Huh.

[1372] Oh, that's fantastic.

[1373] You were asking about escape velocity, and you said 17 ,500 miles per hour.

[1374] You want to know a fun fact?

[1375] Tell me. That's the orbital speed.

[1376] Right.

[1377] If you multiply that by the square root of two, that's the escape velocity of the Earth.

[1378] Okay, if you multiply that by the square root of two.

[1379] Yeah, I'm just saying.

[1380] But what does it mean?

[1381] Oh, escape velocity.

[1382] Sorry, thank you.

[1383] Let me do one, let me do one.

[1384] Let's back to be the astrophysicist.

[1385] So the best way to imagine this is we know the Earth, Earth is curved.

[1386] So if you're standing here with a baseball and you throw the baseball, it starts falling to Earth.

[1387] But if you threw it so fast as it was falling, it started matching the curvature of the Earth, it would never fall and hit the Earth, right?

[1388] So that magic speed that the baseball would have to be traveling to 17 ,500 miles an hour.

[1389] That's the speed of the Space Station and the Hubble Telescope.

[1390] Got it.

[1391] All of the satellite.

[1392] That's why, I don't know if you notice, if you see a rocket launch, people say, oh, the rocket is going up?

[1393] No, most of the energy is going sideways.

[1394] Ah, interesting.

[1395] That's why they switch and go down rates because they're trying to achieve orbit.

[1396] Right.

[1397] And when you achieve orbit, you were in free fall, and that's why they're weightless.

[1398] Nine out of ten people who see weightless astronauts think they're weightless because they've left Earth's gravity.

[1399] But in fact, they are fully under the influence of Earth's gravity.

[1400] They're on the vomit comment.

[1401] Free fall, correct.

[1402] Yeah.

[1403] I guess I would have stupidly thought they were in a zero gravity situation.

[1404] Yeah, no, no, no. They're falling.

[1405] Wow.

[1406] Towards the Earth, at the same rate that Earth's curves.

[1407] You said it's matched.

[1408] So now take that speed, multiply by the square root of two, and it'll escape to infinity and never fall back to Earth.

[1409] Oh, my God.

[1410] It's called the escape velocity.

[1411] To infinity and beyond, I think it's the same you're looking for.

[1412] Actually, if you multiply it by more than the square root of two, it'll reach infinity and keep going.

[1413] It's really hard for me to wrap my brain around.

[1414] Okay, so some more fun things that you talk about.

[1415] I want to get your opinion because you do this regularly.

[1416] You'll critique movies.

[1417] So you have an issue with Back to the Future.

[1418] It's all Monica why.

[1419] Marty wouldn't have landed in the Twin Pines Farm after he took off from the Twin Pines Mall.

[1420] Oh, he might have.

[1421] Here's what you have to watch out for.

[1422] If you invent a time machine, I want to go back in time or forward in time, and you want to go 20 minutes or a month or eight hours.

[1423] It's in the driveway, and you go out in the time machine and you come out eight hours later, you were in the middle of the vacuum of space because Earth was in a different part of its orbit at the time you exited versus the time you entered.

[1424] So if you want to build an effective, time machine and you want to be where you were when you stepped off it has to be a space time machine.

[1425] Uh -huh.

[1426] I see.

[1427] I think that one's really abstract but even if you just thought about how the earth itself is spending a thousand miles an hour.

[1428] Even if Earth was not moving in orbit, eight hours you end up in Moscow or something.

[1429] Yeah, yeah.

[1430] So we take off in my driveway, but the Earth is spun below us.

[1431] Yeah.

[1432] Correct.

[1433] That's just something to keep in mind.

[1434] The reason why they may have lucked out with...

[1435] 1955?

[1436] Yeah, because they went back a whole number of years rather than extra day.

[1437] So if you go back in the exact whole number of years, Earth is back in its same place in its orbit.

[1438] And so you can cut them some slack there.

[1439] Yeah.

[1440] So that was one you flagged.

[1441] Maybe they wouldn't have landed at the Twin Pines Company.

[1442] Yeah, that's cool.

[1443] Okay.

[1444] Oh, by the way, you know about the Twin Pines Mall.

[1445] Maybe not.

[1446] You know I call the Twin Pines Mall.

[1447] Yeah, because he drives over a third pine tree?

[1448] No, no, no. It's Twin Pines Mall because the farmer, whose land that was before it became a mall was Twin Pines Ranch.

[1449] And so it was natural you would keep the name, the historical name.

[1450] When And Marty goes back in time and he's in the DeLorean and this is America and he's in a farm.

[1451] What does the farmer do?

[1452] You pull the gun on it.

[1453] Get out of here.

[1454] No, you shoot him.

[1455] Oh, God.

[1456] You're right.

[1457] Where's your American mentality here?

[1458] Shoot first, ask questions later.

[1459] I'm trying to escape it.

[1460] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1461] Transpars will be shot.

[1462] Survivors will be prosecuted.

[1463] All right.

[1464] So, he's trying to escape and the farmer is shooting at him and he can't see where he's going and he accidentally knocks over one of the twin pines that this farmer is cultivating on his property with a picket fence around it.

[1465] The end of the movie, he returns to the mall.

[1466] What is it now?

[1467] Lone pine.

[1468] There we go.

[1469] I knew they lost a pine.

[1470] I thought they went from three to two, but they went from two to one.

[1471] And they didn't even zoom in on it.

[1472] That's great.

[1473] It was just there.

[1474] Subtle.

[1475] That's a detail.

[1476] Okay, what grade would you give interstellar?

[1477] Because that's the movie that I felt like really put what I understood to the very max.

[1478] Okay, so I get public talks titled An Astrophysicist Goes to the Movies.

[1479] There's some movies that do a really good job and they put a lot of thinking behind it.

[1480] That's less interesting to critique.

[1481] Right.

[1482] We can celebrate that they got it right.

[1483] But for me, what's interesting is the science they got right in the movie A Bug's Life.

[1484] There's a boatload of interesting factual science that happens in Bug Life.

[1485] On entomology or...

[1486] No!

[1487] Unfortunately, not for the entomologist.

[1488] For physics.

[1489] Oh, okay, okay.

[1490] Really good physics in a bug's life that somebody had to know because you wouldn't have done it otherwise.

[1491] So I can comment on sci -fi, but for me, it's more interesting to find the science in movies that you wouldn't know otherwise think about.

[1492] Oh, great.

[1493] So this bug's life is one of them?

[1494] Bugs' life.

[1495] Bugs' life, not this bug's life.

[1496] And Frozen has some interesting science, too.

[1497] What?

[1498] Ah!

[1499] That's like skeptical.

[1500] Yeah, I don't know.

[1501] Oh, at the beginning, the ice harvesters?

[1502] Yeah.

[1503] You know, they're cutting the ice because where do you get ice before you invent electricity?

[1504] They're harvesting the ice on the top layer and the ice cubes are floating with exactly 10 % of their volume above the water.

[1505] And that's accurate.

[1506] That is completely accurate.

[1507] And it's just like icebergs.

[1508] It's 10 % above the water 90 % below.

[1509] Not only that, when they pull the ice out of the water, they first push it down and then the bobbing force gives an upward speed and that's when they lift it.

[1510] They utilize the momentum that they're on.

[1511] Correct.

[1512] The buoyant momentum of each country.

[1513] Good job, Frozen.

[1514] Not only that, while they're doing it, where does this take place?

[1515] In a fjord.

[1516] Okay, being a fjord, it's in the Nordic country.

[1517] Very far north.

[1518] In the background, there is brilliantly rendered Aurora.

[1519] Borialis.

[1520] Oh, right.

[1521] Now, that's a fascinating one, the aurora borealis.

[1522] Beautiful.

[1523] It's particles from the sun, solar wind, that collide with the molecules in Earth's atmosphere, and it kicks the electrons into a higher energy level.

[1524] So the speed of the particle kicks them up and the electron wants to go back.

[1525] But to go back it can't just do it unless some other energy budget gets reconciled and it emits light.

[1526] It gives up that energy in the form of light.

[1527] It got the energy by a kick in the ass, it gives it up in a form of light.

[1528] And the nitrogen, the sodium, and the atmosphere, they each have different colors.

[1529] And depending on the wave of particles that hit us, you get waves of Aurora.

[1530] That's why Aurora is a dynamic phenomenon.

[1531] Have you observed it in reality?

[1532] No, but my wife has from Alaska.

[1533] I think I've seen it.

[1534] There was a glow on the northern horizon and there was not a city there.

[1535] If you're far enough away, you don't see the colors because you're not activating the cones of your retina, which need higher level intensity before you see any color at all.

[1536] That's why at night it's hard to see color.

[1537] Oh, yeah.

[1538] They were in Detroit in 93, really vibrantly.

[1539] And it was very...

[1540] Well, no, they were far north but bright enough to see as far south as Detroit.

[1541] They weren't in Detroit.

[1542] I'm being a stickler here.

[1543] Well, but you're saying they couldn't have existed...

[1544] Not over Detroit.

[1545] No, what you would see, there's what we call a ring of fire, which is around the North Magnetic Pole, which is in Canada.

[1546] If it's really intense, it gets bigger and bigger, and then you can see it farther and farther south.

[1547] Okay, but it's directly overhead.

[1548] Directly overhead.

[1549] 1 ,000%.

[1550] Oh, my gosh.

[1551] The point where I heard neighbors yelling in my neighborhood, people thought there was a nuclear explosion.

[1552] That was the most obvious explanation in 1993.

[1553] Excellent.

[1554] I hear neighbors in the street yelling and be like, come out.

[1555] People are yelling.

[1556] Come out.

[1557] I come outside.

[1558] The sky is far.

[1559] It looks like an ominous gas is escaped, a reactor, and it was the most surreal thing I've ever experienced, and unexpected at that latitude.

[1560] No one's going, oh, that's the northern...

[1561] Overhead, so that's the Mondo storm right there.

[1562] So that was 93 for whatever that's worth.

[1563] But interstellar, though, you don't want to comment because it's too good.

[1564] Yeah, I have a couple of comments.

[1565] Like, for example, you remember that there's a blight on the crops and the human population and it's starving, they want to find another planet.

[1566] Yeah.

[1567] And I'm just thinking, if you find another planet, you're probably going to have to terraform it first to ship a billion people there, right?

[1568] Yeah.

[1569] So I'm looking at the effort it takes to build a spaceship, find a wormhole, travel through the wormhole, land on a planet, terraform the planet, and shift a billion people there rather than get the biologist to fix the genome of the crops.

[1570] Yeah.

[1571] Yeah.

[1572] Well, that would be GMOs, though.

[1573] We won't stand for that.

[1574] So I'm just comparing the effort that might be required.

[1575] Just fix the genetic problem.

[1576] We know the genomes of plants now.

[1577] Just go and nip -tuck.

[1578] Go grab some all -o.

[1579] This was a long time ago, though, 2000.

[1580] What was?

[1581] No. Post -2013 because I had Lincoln already.

[1582] It's less than 10 years ago.

[1583] Rob.

[1584] 8ish because Lincoln was here.

[1585] 2014.

[1586] 2014.

[1587] 8 years ago.

[1588] Yeah.

[1589] It's not that long ago.

[1590] Now, here's one we might be able to dance.

[1591] You had a campaign called Penny for NASA.

[1592] First of all, I did not have a campaign, Penny for NASA.

[1593] Okay.

[1594] I made a comment about that that resonated with the public, and then the public created a website called Penny for NASA.

[1595] What I said was NASA's budget.

[1596] If you ask people, what do you think NASA's budget is?

[1597] Well, let's ask, Monica.

[1598] It's got to be a percent.

[1599] One.

[1600] You say one percent.

[1601] Yeah.

[1602] Okay.

[1603] So most people will guess much higher than that, 5 percent, because they see the James Webb Telescope and the Space Station and the launches and the space shuttle and the NASA centers.

[1604] NASA's actual budget is one -half of one percent of your tax dollar.

[1605] So it's half a penny instead of the one -penny.

[1606] Correct.

[1607] And I said, imagine if NASA only got a penny on your tax dollar.

[1608] It would double what they're doing.

[1609] People think they're getting a lot of money because of how visible they are.

[1610] Right.

[1611] And then I said, we should start a movement that government agencies get the budget people think they're getting.

[1612] That would transform NASA.

[1613] I just simply made this point.

[1614] Yeah.

[1615] Because one half of one percent is half a penny.

[1616] I said if you take a dollar bill and cut one half of one percent of it off, it doesn't even get into the paint.

[1617] No one will know that that's even been removed.

[1618] So that's what I did.

[1619] I wasn't advocating anything.

[1620] I was simply telling people that is less than what they think and imagine if it were one penny, what else NASA could do.

[1621] that became a website penny for NASA and because I in my public posture hardly ever tell people what to do yeah I love that about you there's so much I love about you you say you're an agnostic non -athies you don't want to be co -opted by the atheist movement another thing I love about you you're like I'm not doing interviews where the premise of the interview is I'm black let's talk about it correct I'm a lockstep with everything but I want to keep dancing okay so first of all one penny out of a dollar doesn't sound like much until you consider the cabillion things we have to fund and that if there were only 100 things we are funding, yes, this is a great premise I like it, 1 % should go to NASA.

[1622] The big issue I have with it is in addition to the myriad of issues we have to put money into that I do think are more critical than space exploration.

[1623] As a fan of astronomy, I think there are more pressing issues for humans, but even more important to me is, and this is my question for you, What's your takeaway from the privateers in this space now?

[1624] Now you have Elon Musk launching rockets successfully and putting satellites into orbit.

[1625] The billionaire boys' race.

[1626] Yes.

[1627] Have they not done it for far less than what NASA's been doing it for?

[1628] Okay, there's a lot to unpack there.

[1629] Sure.

[1630] So people's issues might not be that they want NASA funded.

[1631] Their issue might be it's the most expensive way to fund this and that they don't have a track record of being entirely efficient.

[1632] So someone's very fair criticism might be, sure, we need to explore it, but I don't know that this agency with the way they spend money should be the stewards of that investment.

[1633] So, let's take an historical example.

[1634] I don't know if you know how expensive the Columbus voyages were as an investment made by Spain.

[1635] They were hugely expensive.

[1636] You're saying the boats that came?

[1637] Correct.

[1638] The construction of the boats, what they were equipped with, everything about them was very expensive.

[1639] Expensive enough that Italy didn't do it.

[1640] Spain did it by decree of the king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella.

[1641] Vikings, notwithstanding, no one had done this before.

[1642] So there are a lot of unknowns.

[1643] Is there an edge of the earth?

[1644] Will he ever come back?

[1645] They didn't know, by the way, Columbus happened to travel during hurricane season, and it didn't happen to be a hurricane, all right?

[1646] Otherwise, wouldn't he be a footnote at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean?

[1647] Talk about not landing at the Twin Pines farm.

[1648] Okay.

[1649] Right.

[1650] So, why wasn't the Dutch East India trading company the first Europeans to the new world?

[1651] Oh, because they could not make a business case by going into the unknown because there are variables that you could not quantify and therefore could not gather investors to make it happen.

[1652] They wait for a government -funded mission to unfold because governments will do it for different reasons, for geopolitical reasons, for hegemonistic reasons.

[1653] Us going to the moon to beat Russia.

[1654] Okay, correct.

[1655] So a government will do something.

[1656] something expensive without necessarily an obvious return on that investment beyond the power accumulation that they seek.

[1657] When Columbus went to the new world, Queen Isabella didn't say, oh, when you come back, give us a slideshow of the plants and natives who were there.

[1658] No, she said, here's a satchel of flags.

[1659] Plant them in the name of Spain every place you land.

[1660] This was a hegemonistic move.

[1661] The point is, now that we know how long the trip takes, where the trade winds are, where the hostels are, where the friendlies are, the Dutch East India trading company rises up and makes it a commercial enterprise.

[1662] What I submit to you is to do anything first in space has no business case.

[1663] Governments do this sort of thing, which have way deeper pockets than commercial enterprise.

[1664] When they do, and then the commercial looks over the fence, is it ready for us yet?

[1665] Can we do it?

[1666] When Elon Musk sent a cargo ship to the space station, the headlines were new era open private enterprise going into space.

[1667] They're delivering cargo, which is what NASA has already done, and now they know how to do it cheaper because it's already been done.

[1668] We can shave costs over here and not over there.

[1669] We need this and not that.

[1670] The government paid for the R &D.

[1671] That's what happened with airplanes.

[1672] The early airplanes were people fighting for the mail contract to deliver airmail.

[1673] I want that contract and I'm a plane enthusiast, so I'm going to build a bigger cargo and I want to make a buck, so it's got to be efficient, let me make a better airfoil, let me put bigger cavity, and now I win the contract.

[1674] Well, how about the person who didn't win the contract?

[1675] They came close, wait a minute, I can take out the mail that would have been there, put in seats, and I can give people a ride.

[1676] Thus was the birth of commercial aviation, after the government invested in the innovation of people who are fighting over each other for the contract to deliver airmail.

[1677] Today, the U .S. Postal Service doesn't have airplanes.

[1678] They rent space in the belly of Delta Airlines to carry the bags of mail.

[1679] Of course, that's how that works.

[1680] So, you want to go into space and do something that's never been done before?

[1681] Here's Elon, venture capitalist meeting at SpaceX.

[1682] Elon, what do you want to do?

[1683] Because we're venture capitalists.

[1684] We're investors.

[1685] I want to send people to Mars.

[1686] What will it cost?

[1687] Half a trillion, maybe a trillion.

[1688] That's a lot.

[1689] Is it dangerous?

[1690] Yes.

[1691] Will people die?

[1692] What's the return on the investment?

[1693] Nothing.

[1694] That's a five -minute conversation.

[1695] The meeting's over.

[1696] Sure.

[1697] Now, watch what happens.

[1698] I'm making this up.

[1699] China leaks a memo that say they want to put military bases on Mars.

[1700] We're in Mars in 10 months with people.

[1701] Now, if we don't have a rocket, Elon says, I have a rocket that will go to Mars.

[1702] If we ride Elon's rocket to Mars, it's not because he...

[1703] paid for it.

[1704] It's not because there was a commercial driver for it.

[1705] It's because the geopolitics paid it.

[1706] My tax money did it.

[1707] Yeah.

[1708] So Elon says, I just want to put some astronauts on Mars.

[1709] If there's no geopolitical reason and there's no obvious economic return on that first voyage, it is not going to happen.

[1710] That is my read of the history of human conduct in the history of exploration and discovery.

[1711] We went to the moon.

[1712] Our cleansing of that period in our memory, thinkers and futurists said, oh, we went to the moon by 1960.

[1713] We'll be on Mars by 1985.

[1714] No, we're not.

[1715] Because you think we went to the moon because we're explorers and we're American.

[1716] No, we went to the moon because we were scared witless because the Russians beat us at everything in space.

[1717] The first satellite, Sputnik, the first non -human animal.

[1718] Lika.

[1719] German Shepherd.

[1720] Okay?

[1721] Wasn't it a German Shepherd?

[1722] Yeah.

[1723] What do you think it was in Akita?

[1724] Yeah, some of what a smaller thing?

[1725] We can check on that.

[1726] We will.

[1727] Rob, find out what the dog was.

[1728] By the way, there's no plans to bring the dog back alive, by the way.

[1729] It's burn up reentering the atmosphere.

[1730] The first human in space, the first woman in space, the first dark -skinned human being, a black Cuban.

[1731] They beat us at everything.

[1732] And we had to show the world that we were the better government than the better things.

[1733] And we went to the moon, and we said, we win, even though they beat us at everything else.

[1734] Sure.

[1735] We just moved the finish line to where we could hit it.

[1736] We changed the finish line to where we could hit it.

[1737] Yeah.

[1738] So those were geopolitical reasons.

[1739] Not only that, we didn't go back to the moon.

[1740] We haven't back in 50 years.

[1741] And that's Artemis?

[1742] You're more Artemis.

[1743] Oh, why are we thinking of going back to the moon now with Artemis?

[1744] Why not 10 years ago or 20 years ago?

[1745] Well, why not continue it after 1972?

[1746] What's how?

[1747] Oh, oh, China says they want to put astronauts on the moon.

[1748] All of a sudden it sounds like a idea we have to do next.

[1749] We are reactive in the history of space rather than proactive.

[1750] So for you to say that the private enterprise is going to lead us into space, that is not going to happen.

[1751] That's not what I said.

[1752] I asked you to compare the efficiency of privateers versus government.

[1753] Yes, of course.

[1754] But there's no such thing as an efficiency of something that's never been done before that doesn't exist.

[1755] Somebody has to do it first and make the mistakes and learn how to do it.

[1756] I don't know if I agree with that statement.

[1757] By the way, the private enterprise can do inexpensive things and risk R &D money, sure.

[1758] Yeah, yeah.

[1759] But $500 billion, a trillion dollars?

[1760] No. Oh, I'm in locked up with you in the fact that a state agency has to fund this exploration.

[1761] Only if it's very expensive.

[1762] Yeah.

[1763] They will and they do.

[1764] What I'm trying to point out is that people might raise an objection because they don't have a track record of being ultra -efficient.

[1765] That implies that they would continue to do it forever.

[1766] But that's not what would ever happen here.

[1767] For example, when the military launches satellites, they used to do it on their own.

[1768] Now they just get Lockheed Martin.

[1769] Right.

[1770] You have one of their rockets to take it up.

[1771] Not that that is itself necessarily as efficient as it could be.

[1772] The space industrial complex is that.

[1773] But private enterprise has been with us actually ever since the beginning.

[1774] You don't think in any way it is a bit of proof.

[1775] The fact that the government now contracts out, doesn't in some way prove that they can't do things inexpensively?

[1776] Is that not evidence of that?

[1777] I never denied that.

[1778] Okay.

[1779] I'm just saying to do things first.

[1780] Yeah, I got you.

[1781] I just think it's incredibly evident.

[1782] at this point.

[1783] Because the privateers are doing what NASA has already been doing for 60 years.

[1784] We were using Russian rockets.

[1785] You're absolutely right.

[1786] So it's not a debate about that.

[1787] It's just if it's very expensive, the history of human investments in expensive projects has only ever had three drivers.

[1788] One of which doesn't really exist anymore.

[1789] You could list the most expensive things we've ever done.

[1790] The pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Project.

[1791] We might quibble of what's above or the other, but we'll agree what the top ten are.

[1792] Every one of those top ten have only one of three things in common.

[1793] Either they're built or done in praise of deity or royalty.

[1794] They're done with the promise of economic return or they're done in the interest of not dying, a military driver.

[1795] So war, money, or worship.

[1796] And nowadays, no one does anything in the praise of deity or royalty that's not driving the most expensive projects of the world.

[1797] So that leaves money and war as the drivers.

[1798] So the Manhattan Project was war, of course, the bomb.

[1799] That raises an interesting philosophical question.

[1800] If we did achieve some kind of peaceful world order, would it all come crashing down?

[1801] I don't know it would come crashing down, but we would innovate less.

[1802] Yeah.

[1803] And it's hard to admit that to ourselves.

[1804] You don't want that to be true.

[1805] Competition does drive.

[1806] Did you find out what kind of dog it was, Rob?

[1807] Yeah, it was a stray, so they don't know for sure, but a terrier.

[1808] A young terrier.

[1809] Oh, wow.

[1810] And by the way, people get upset.

[1811] Where the hell they get a German shepherd in?

[1812] It's the opposite of a terrier.

[1813] People get upset when they learn that there were no plans.

[1814] to bring Lika back alive.

[1815] And I thought to myself, sure, it would have been nice if they made those provisions.

[1816] But Lika was a homeless dog in the streets of Moscow, now became as famous as Lassie.

[1817] So if I were to choose a way to die, I could starve in the streets of Moscow in the cold of the winter, or I could burn up in the atmosphere being the first mammal in space.

[1818] I'm going with space.

[1819] Yeah.

[1820] Well, I hope if anyone had any long -term resentments, I hope that cleared that up.

[1821] I think that's a good frame, you know that.

[1822] Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, this has been such a blast.

[1823] We've been wanting to talk to you forever.

[1824] I urge people to hear your fun banter about science and pop culture on Star Talk podcast.

[1825] Also, you can go to your YouTube channel.

[1826] You know, it's part of the StarTalk platforms.

[1827] It's all the platforms.

[1828] But I'm on social media where I throw random thoughts out there.

[1829] And I have a book that just came out.

[1830] It's called Starry Messenger.

[1831] cosmic perspectives on civilization and each chapter is some branch of culture that are rife with tribal arguing so there's gender and identity is one of the chapter color and race risk and reward life and death truth and beauty all of these are addressed through the lens of science literacy with a dose of cosmic perspective on top of that oh there's another one that's called war and peace, but I changed it to conflict and resolution.

[1832] It's about being leftist and rightest and making arguments thinking that you are right or not.

[1833] It's an attempt to rebalance or jumpstart what you think is an opinion versus what is objectively true or objectively false in this world.

[1834] Oh, there's also a chapter on meatarians and vegetarians.

[1835] These are battlefields, all right?

[1836] Let's say you are vegetarian because you just don't want to kill animals.

[1837] Very defendable position.

[1838] Of course, of course.

[1839] And you've got a humane mouse trap in your basement.

[1840] You don't want to snap the neck of the mouse.

[1841] So what do you do when you capture the mouse?

[1842] You've got to check every couple of days because they dry out fast.

[1843] Okay?

[1844] Don't go away on holiday.

[1845] Ours got really wet.

[1846] We caught it.

[1847] It was soaking wet when we got to it.

[1848] So you get the mouse and what do you do with it?

[1849] You release it.

[1850] You release it back into the wild where it is guaranteed to be swallowed whole by an owl or picked apart by all manner of woodland predators.

[1851] The average life expectancy of a mouse in the wild is between nine and 18 months.

[1852] Oh, wow.

[1853] Because they get eaten.

[1854] The safest thing you could do for the mouse is let it live in your basement, where it will then live for up to six years, unharmed by predators.

[1855] But you don't do that.

[1856] Why not?

[1857] You said you care about the lives of other animals.

[1858] If you really cared, you would not only preserve it in your basement, you might invite more, but you don't.

[1859] that is an irrational analysis of your conduct.

[1860] I don't care what you do.

[1861] I'm not here to hand you your opinion.

[1862] I'm here to ensure that whatever opinion you do have is as informed as it could possibly be.

[1863] I don't think you knew that you're dooming the mouse to an early death.

[1864] Although 9 to 18 months is much better than one second.

[1865] In the wild.

[1866] Yeah, so 9 to 18 months is far superior.

[1867] If you gave me the option of dying this afternoon when you walk out of here or dying in 18 months?

[1868] I'm definitely going to happen.

[1869] The option was dying in 18 months or living six years in the warmth and comfort of your basement.

[1870] So I'm only saying that there's three options on the table.

[1871] There's kill it right away with some poison or a mousetrap.

[1872] Yeah, but you're not doing that.

[1873] You'll care about life.

[1874] You care about mice.

[1875] You care about mice.

[1876] I'm not talking about the people who don't care about the mice because they don't have any conflicted philosophy about that.

[1877] So if I'm that person, I'm just arguing back.

[1878] I'm not that person, but I'm going to be that person for the sake of this argument.

[1879] So by capturing it and releasing it, I am guaranteeing it a life of 9 to 18 months.

[1880] So I choose that over letting it live in my house for six years.

[1881] But then don't say that you care about the life of the mouse because that's an inconsistent philosophical point when faced with the fact that the mouse will live six years in the basement.

[1882] If there's binary options, which you constructed, which is you either let it live in your house for six years or you put it outside for 90 months.

[1883] What else would you do?

[1884] You care about the mouse.

[1885] Well, another option is killing it.

[1886] That's what most people do.

[1887] No, but not the people who care about life.

[1888] Right, the person that says I care about it that releases it says, I chose the second worst option.

[1889] Okay.

[1890] They're still on intellectual footing with that argument.

[1891] So let them say, I'd rather release it into the wild than snap its neck.

[1892] Yes.

[1893] But don't say you care about the life of the animal, because there's a third option that will demonstrate that you actually care about the mouse more than you are exhibiting.

[1894] And the people who trap them live, the psychological pride they take in not having snapped the neck of their mouse.

[1895] You know what it sounds like to me, that argument?

[1896] It sounds like I want higher taxes.

[1897] And then the conservative says to me, if you want the government to have all your money, just give all your money.

[1898] If you really believe that you would just start volunteering your money, that's what that sounds like.

[1899] To which I would reply, no, my goal isn't to give away all my money.

[1900] If I do it individually, it has no outcome.

[1901] So if we institute it and all 300 million of us are doing it, now they'll all enact a change.

[1902] Okay, here's where I think that analogy fails.

[1903] Tell me. Unless I don't understand the people who do not eat meat because they don't want to kill animals.

[1904] It is the mind of that person that I am addressing.

[1905] And that person, it was never on the table to snap the neck of the mouse.

[1906] Right.

[1907] They don't want to kill animals.

[1908] And by releasing it into the wild, they did not kill them.

[1909] animal, the eagle did.

[1910] So what they'd have to say is, and maybe they do, none that I've met do, but what they'd have to say is, I'm not the one who kills it, nature kills it, and I'm okay with that.

[1911] The circle of life.

[1912] And so the mouse could have lived four and a half more years, and you doomed it, because you were in possession of a mouse.

[1913] You then controlled its fate.

[1914] That's right.

[1915] And you said, I can leave it in my basement, it can live six years, I can put it out there and live no more than 18 months.

[1916] I am choosing to shorten the life of the mouse.

[1917] Be self -aware of that, and go ahead and do it.

[1918] I'm not going to stop you.

[1919] But I want you to be fully informed.

[1920] It's like the people who eat line -caught tuna.

[1921] It's on all the cans because before then, tuna was...

[1922] Oh, net.

[1923] Net caught.

[1924] And they caught too many other...

[1925] And you catch a, like, a dolphin's air breathing.

[1926] The dolphin can't go up and breathe.

[1927] They suffocate and die.

[1928] So they say, well, we don't want to do that.

[1929] So let's line catch them.

[1930] And that way we don't kill the dolphins.

[1931] And I'm thinking, what about the tuna?

[1932] You just killed the tuna.

[1933] And you're okay with that.

[1934] So you're being speciesist by carving out which kind of animal life you're okay with killing and what kind you're not.

[1935] Just be self -aware.

[1936] But the tuna is getting killed regardless.

[1937] So it's saying instead of...

[1938] No, keep the dolphin and make dolphin burgers.

[1939] Oh, so you make it a face?

[1940] Sounds delicious.

[1941] But you're okay with tuna fish.

[1942] All I'm trying to get people is to think rationally about their choices.

[1943] And so what happens?

[1944] We protect the dolphin, but suppose we didn't, and we made dolphin sandwiches at the deli.

[1945] They'd probably be picketing out front.

[1946] Yeah.

[1947] But they'd be picketing the dolphin sandwich.

[1948] Yes.

[1949] And not the chicken sandwich, not the turkey, not the salmon, not the beef, not the pork, not any other kind of dead animal, including dead mammals that are prepared and slapped into a sandwich.

[1950] Yeah.

[1951] So that means you want to carve out for the dolphin.

[1952] I might just ask why.

[1953] And you might say, it's got a big brain.

[1954] Or it's a mammal.

[1955] But by the way, last I checked, cows and pigs are mammals.

[1956] And pigs are quite smart.

[1957] Okay, but we eat them in a sandwich like that.

[1958] Well, it's 100 % cultural.

[1959] So in Japan, they eat whale meat, we don't eat it here and it's cultural.

[1960] So just be self -aware that culturally, I'm going to protect dolphins and golden retrievers, not because you have some deep philosophical argument.

[1961] You do not.

[1962] Yeah, there's no absolutes.

[1963] Yeah.

[1964] That's what I would hope What the thrust would be is that anyone who thinks they're standing on unshakable moral high ground.

[1965] Best, you've got 65%.

[1966] I'm trying to dismantle the strength with which people are holding their opinions.

[1967] I couldn't agree with you more.

[1968] Everyone needs a huge fucking dose of humility.

[1969] I'm a liberal, so I happen to hear a lot of liberal stuff.

[1970] Liberals want to forget we supported Marxism.

[1971] They want to forget we broke up families in the inner city.

[1972] They want to forget.

[1973] I mean, there's so much shit we've done wrong.

[1974] Both sides have screwed the pooch numerous times.

[1975] In the conflict of resolution chapter, I go back and forth to liberal and conservative.

[1976] So at no point am I telling you what to think.

[1977] Yeah, yeah.

[1978] I'm just simply saying, did you know this?

[1979] Same.

[1980] I just want everyone to enter it with some humility going like, oh, we've all fucked up.

[1981] We don't have a monopoly on good ideas.

[1982] And be honest about your own opinions and not have bias serve as a substitute for what is or is not true in this world.

[1983] Starring Messenger and also StarTalk Podcast.

[1984] And by the way, the chair you're sitting in now looks like the chair that was in idiocracy that you also sat in.

[1985] You remember that chair, sir?

[1986] Yes, it was a toilet recline.

[1987] And you haven't gotten out of that chair this whole time.

[1988] I don't know if there's a toilet sitting underneath.

[1989] I've gone three times.

[1990] And you didn't perceive one of them.

[1991] That's how good I've gotten there.

[1992] Thank you for your interest in my work and what you got here.

[1993] Love you're so fun.

[1994] Thank you.

[1995] And now my favorite.

[1996] part of the show the fact check with my soulmate monica badman okay well uh welcome back from our little break yeah well we had a little break but the world didn't have a break no now this is thursday this is thursday yeah today i'm on day four of my gift guide wait okay okay i got you okay okay i got you I got stuck in the wormhole of our time continuum.

[1997] Ding, ding, ding, this is Neil deGrasse Tyson.

[1998] You didn't even know.

[1999] Oh, my gosh.

[2000] Somehow I must know.

[2001] You knew.

[2002] Something.

[2003] Yeah, so day one of my gift guy went up today.

[2004] Oh, my God.

[2005] What was the item?

[2006] Let me. Okay, great update then.

[2007] Okay.

[2008] You were supposed to be giving them to me first.

[2009] I know.

[2010] So that there, and when there's a run on the product, which you'll definitely cause that I'm ahead.

[2011] Sorry.

[2012] In line.

[2013] What happened?

[2014] Things went crazy, okay?

[2015] First of all, my caption was so long.

[2016] Okay.

[2017] That there's a limit.

[2018] There is?

[2019] I've never reached the limit.

[2020] Would you write a book?

[2021] Well, kind of.

[2022] Like, that's the fun part for me is writing those little things.

[2023] So I was so stressed this morning because I had reached the limit and I was like trying to make it shorter and I couldn't make it short enough.

[2024] So then I had to write it out.

[2025] paste it into a story.

[2026] Oh, my gosh.

[2027] And then scream grab that, make it into a picture.

[2028] So now it's pictures with text.

[2029] Oh, my God.

[2030] What a workaround.

[2031] I know.

[2032] I know.

[2033] And I'm sure there's like a 10 -second way to do this that I just don't know how because I'm not savvy.

[2034] You should have called Liz.

[2035] Isn't she capped on Instagram?

[2036] Of course she is.

[2037] But I didn't want to bother her.

[2038] She's busy, you know, and I needed it now.

[2039] Yeah, you needed it yesterday.

[2040] So I'm sorry.

[2041] I didn't have time to send it to you because stuff.

[2042] Stuff was exploding.

[2043] Okay.

[2044] I'm going to accept that excuse on day one.

[2045] But I actually this morning was in bed reading the New York Times gift guide for Cyber Monday.

[2046] Oh, shit.

[2047] And I literally had the thought, why am I reading this stupid gift guide?

[2048] I mean, it's fine.

[2049] Yeah.

[2050] When I should be reading monicas.

[2051] Well, you can.

[2052] God, did you cut me. If the rolls were reversed, you would feel betrayed.

[2053] Oh, no. I'm sorry.

[2054] I probably would.

[2055] Yes.

[2056] You promised me on air.

[2057] I thought you were joking.

[2058] I don't joke 100 % of the things I say are serious That's why it's confusing for me I have a little update Oh, okay I feel like this might evolve Into something kind of fun Okay Okay, so I told that embarrassing Neff Campbell story On the Yuval Harari fact check Yeah And I listened to it I went to the track on Saturday And on my ride home As I often do on my car rides I check in with our show And see how we're doing Yeah What'd you think?

[2059] Well first of all I love the fact check you shouldn't say that probably it's like gross point is listen to the fact check listen to that story the nev campbell one and it occurred to me Nate will love this story because Nate produced the movie he was there for all that because it's just so embarrassing it's just so there's something so funny about really truly embarrassing stuff yeah and Nate has a great story about we should have him coming and tell but Nate has this great story about being in college at UCSB he's in a fraternity He might be a senior.

[2060] It's his year.

[2061] He's peaking.

[2062] He's peaking.

[2063] He goes to one of these mixers that a sorority and a fraternity get together and throw.

[2064] There's a dance floor.

[2065] His memory of his performance on the dance floor is like he was John Travolta in Saturday Fever.

[2066] Yeah.

[2067] He feels so good about it.

[2068] And then like maybe a few weeks later he finds out, oh, someone was videotaping this whole dance party.

[2069] And he sees it and he realizes this thing he was doing with his hands.

[2070] He's like, it was not working.

[2071] Like it was not working the way I thought it was working.

[2072] There's something about his story.

[2073] I mean, he's got to tell it.

[2074] That is so funny.

[2075] Yeah.

[2076] When you get busted.

[2077] It's funny because we can all relate and that we all can cringe and it feels good that other people have the similar experiences.

[2078] Yeah, so I kind of, I think it would be best if I read his response.

[2079] So basically I say to Nate and it's a weird thing to say, but I really want you to listen to the fact check of the Yuval Harari episode because I want It'll remind you of that time, right?

[2080] And this is this exchange we end up having after he listens to it.

[2081] Ha, ha, ha, I'm going to drink my breakfast.

[2082] And what are they doing on set?

[2083] I can't believe it.

[2084] What a memory.

[2085] I remember so many details of that night, so embarrassing.

[2086] I wrote, it was really funny to explore her side of it, probably quite scary in a way.

[2087] He said, I never knew how much you loved her.

[2088] That's new to me. I said, you didn't?

[2089] Nate, that's impossible.

[2090] He said, I guess I knew you loved her because I remember being nervous, nervous about you.

[2091] You upset with her.

[2092] Oh, no. Oh, my God.

[2093] I said, you had every right to be nervous.

[2094] That may have been the very best I could do at that point in my life.

[2095] I may have nailed it.

[2096] He said, I also remember you talking about your line to her.

[2097] What a moment.

[2098] So I find out in that moment I was bragging to everyone as I was nervous.

[2099] I suspected I did.

[2100] Yep.

[2101] He said, I remember it like it was yesterday.

[2102] You were on fire for 16 hours.

[2103] I thought you were killing.

[2104] How could he have thought you were killing it if he also was worried about you and then you did the exact thing he was worried about?

[2105] I was not expecting Nate to think that I had done a good job.

[2106] Yeah.

[2107] He did.

[2108] And I'm now I feel like reality is distorted.

[2109] Well, I guess it more just goes to say how flawed both he and I's perspective was back at 23 years old.

[2110] I find it a slightly disturbing that he watched this go down.

[2111] His takeaway was, oh, he's killing it.

[2112] Well, he probably saw that we were engaged in chit -chat up at the craft service line.

[2113] And maybe she laughed at some point.

[2114] Like, maybe I'm forgetting that she may be scared.

[2115] Yeah, yeah, nervous laughter.

[2116] Pawning, is that what you called?

[2117] Yeah, yeah, fawning.

[2118] Oh, God.

[2119] That's a scary idea.

[2120] Okay.

[2121] Anywho, I bring all that up just to say, I wasn't expecting that outcome that Nate thought I was killing it.

[2122] Sure, none of us were.

[2123] I mean, he clearly now realizes I was not killing it.

[2124] But he too was trapped in that bubble of being 23.

[2125] So I don't think she would ever remember that.

[2126] Why on earth would she?

[2127] There's no way.

[2128] But I am going to try to get her on the show.

[2129] Okay.

[2130] I just want you to know that.

[2131] I'm making that effort and maybe this is a multi -part story that unfolds.

[2132] I love it.

[2133] Okay.

[2134] Great.

[2135] Yeah.

[2136] It reminds me that Jamie Presley moment when I finally got, it was sitting in the hot tub and I got to ask car.

[2137] Yeah.

[2138] And I was wrong for four years, maybe five.

[2139] Yeah.

[2140] What a moment.

[2141] It's rare in life.

[2142] It is rare.

[2143] Once your life, you're just trying to figure out what happened, and you come up with a good theory, and you don't ever really get to find out.

[2144] Yeah, that's really true.

[2145] It's like when people at a high school reunion run into each other 10 years later, and the person says, I was so embarrassed to say this to you back then, but I was in love with you.

[2146] And they go, what?

[2147] Yeah.

[2148] I was in love with you.

[2149] Oh, that's so wonderful.

[2150] That happens.

[2151] And then do they leave their spouses and then hook up?

[2152] That happened with Brie, yeah.

[2153] She had that moment.

[2154] No -uh.

[2155] Yes.

[2156] And then they hooked up?

[2157] Yes.

[2158] What?

[2159] Yes.

[2160] And I was supportive of it.

[2161] Oh, while you were together.

[2162] Oh, yeah.

[2163] You were in an open relationship.

[2164] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2165] And I was like, oh, I get it.

[2166] Boy, what a thing to find out that the person you pined for also was pining for you and neither of you said anything.

[2167] Oh.

[2168] Sliding doors.

[2169] I wonder if Richard O 'Cardy ever pined for me. He didn't.

[2170] I bet.

[2171] He didn't.

[2172] Let's add that to the list of people we're going to get in here.

[2173] Let's get them.

[2174] We're not getting him, and I'm cutting it.

[2175] No, he's in love with you.

[2176] No, oh my God.

[2177] And the professor.

[2178] The professor was.

[2179] No. Yeah, he was.

[2180] Absolutely.

[2181] The professor wasn't.

[2182] You guys met at a bar for drinks.

[2183] No, you misunderstand this all the time.

[2184] No, we didn't.

[2185] Okay.

[2186] Weren't you at a bar though and he was there?

[2187] No, you say this every time.

[2188] Why do I say this?

[2189] Where am I getting that?

[2190] I don't know.

[2191] I think you thought maybe I, I mean, I'm sure I fantasized about that.

[2192] So I'm sure I said, like, oh, I fantasized about, like, running into him at a bar and then.

[2193] You wrote him a letter, though, right?

[2194] I did write him a letter.

[2195] And what did the letter say?

[2196] We should go get drinks?

[2197] No. Okay, what did that?

[2198] It wasn't a proposition.

[2199] It was a, you're just so special.

[2200] It was.

[2201] Yeah, yeah.

[2202] It was sweet.

[2203] I still believe that he is very special.

[2204] Well, yeah.

[2205] I do.

[2206] I do, too.

[2207] I still want to marry him.

[2208] Oh, my God.

[2209] If he moved here and when he was.

[2210] was single, I would marry him.

[2211] He's so much older, though, now.

[2212] Probably, like, he's probably, like, 10 or 12 years older than me. That's great.

[2213] He's younger than me. He's probably your age.

[2214] He's probably younger than me. He might be.

[2215] Oh, this guy.

[2216] Okay, well.

[2217] Because he was probably, let's see, I was 18 or 19, and he was probably, like, 30.

[2218] Mm, wow.

[2219] Wow.

[2220] Oh, man. Oh, I just got sweaty.

[2221] Oh, wow, wow, wow.

[2222] If you could, in the total history of your life, you could sleep with one person.

[2223] Anyone?

[2224] Yeah.

[2225] Oh.

[2226] I think we should rule out Matt and Ben.

[2227] Celebrities are ruled out.

[2228] Yeah, real people from your life.

[2229] Oh, for sure him.

[2230] It'd be him.

[2231] He's number one.

[2232] For sure.

[2233] More than any dude in high school.

[2234] Yeah.

[2235] Oh, yeah.

[2236] You're wild.

[2237] Oh, wow.

[2238] Your eyes are spinning in your head.

[2239] Cartoon.

[2240] Oh, my God.

[2241] You're making me cough.

[2242] What is he saying during this?

[2243] No, we're not doing that.

[2244] No, is he being smart?

[2245] He is so smart.

[2246] I know he is.

[2247] He's a professor.

[2248] I know.

[2249] Ding, ding, ding.

[2250] I know it is.

[2251] But wait.

[2252] Doug Doug Goosey.

[2253] Your fantasies didn't get that intricate?

[2254] No, they did at the time.

[2255] Oh my God, this is a ding, ding, ding.

[2256] This is crazy.

[2257] On Friday night, night of Black Friday.

[2258] The next day, Saturday, I had my tree day.

[2259] We had a pig day with Jess.

[2260] Pig.

[2261] He's my pig.

[2262] We say we're pigs.

[2263] Okay.

[2264] And that started because when we were at Matt's birthday party and Joshua Tree, is that where we were?

[2265] Or we were playing heads up.

[2266] Uh -huh.

[2267] And the word, it was babe, the movie, Babe.

[2268] We were trying to get Jess to get Jess to.

[2269] guess it.

[2270] It was him on the thing.

[2271] So we were saying like, it's pink and it's, and he was saying, pig, pig.

[2272] And then Laura said, it's what you call Monica, you're, and he said, pig.

[2273] Ah.

[2274] And so now we're pigs.

[2275] Anyway, so we went, got Christmas tree, whatever.

[2276] But then, but I was late because the night before in my sleep, I had a dream about Matt.

[2277] Damon?

[2278] And he hasn't visited my dreams in a long.

[2279] long time.

[2280] What a bummer.

[2281] Well, I know, but then it was really exciting that he appeared.

[2282] Uh -oh.

[2283] He came, no, it was good.

[2284] Yeah.

[2285] He came over to my parents' house.

[2286] Sure.

[2287] Where you're always at.

[2288] I was at my parents' house in the basement.

[2289] Yeah.

[2290] And I guess there was something wrong with the VCR.

[2291] Okay, great.

[2292] So it's circa 92, where you're using a VCR.

[2293] I guess things were probably getting mixed up because I did have a VCR when I've, who knows?

[2294] Anyway, and he arrived to help with the VCR.

[2295] Like, he was like, he was still Matt Damon.

[2296] No, but he was.

[2297] Like, he came as a repair man, but he was still Matt Damon.

[2298] This is kind of like a porno now.

[2299] Right.

[2300] Yeah.

[2301] And he was hung over.

[2302] Oh, of course.

[2303] Yeah, from the night before, because he had been out and Britney Spears was with him out.

[2304] Oh, okay, wow.

[2305] Anyway, that's how it started.

[2306] Where did it end up?

[2307] Well.

[2308] Was there, did it get physical?

[2309] I feel weird talking about it.

[2310] Why?

[2311] It's just like fun to explain the lead up.

[2312] Oh yes.

[2313] It did?

[2314] How does it go from him fixing your VCR to you guys fucking?

[2315] What do you mean how?

[2316] Like what thing led to another?

[2317] The VHS gets jammed and.

[2318] You know, you're both wrenching on it.

[2319] Oh, oh my God.

[2320] I'm just now reeling the hungover part is probably like he was sick.

[2321] He wasn't sick.

[2322] He wasn't like puking.

[2323] but yeah he wasn't in a good place uh -huh and how did it how did he's like i got to fix this vCR how do you get from there to kissing we you just start kiss like he's working on the vCR and then i'm there and i don't want to keep talking about i do i need to know the logistics of this anyway i'll to say was it how long so what sucks for me in my love -making dreams is there always interrupted.

[2324] I never ever get to enjoy so this is why I was late so I woke up mid -coitus like yeah we were in the middle of stuff and then I was like fuck no so I just kept my eyes closed and I was trying to stay half dreaming of course so then I was late to meet my pig okay wait really quick back to the dream yeah were you your high school self or were you a full grown woman and you knew how to take charge of this situation it was me now Were you taking charge of the situation?

[2325] Take charge.

[2326] It was mutual.

[2327] Right, right.

[2328] But it was on.

[2329] Yeah.

[2330] It always, it's not.

[2331] Okay.

[2332] Imagine when you were younger, he's kind of, I don't know what your young fantasy is.

[2333] He lays down on you missionary, like the biblical sense.

[2334] He kisses you and then all of a sudden you realize you're having sex.

[2335] Whereas when you're a full -grown woman, you might be thinking like, oh, I want to look at those buns and I want to maybe give this thing a kiss or two before.

[2336] before that happens?

[2337] Yeah, the younger self fantasies were also...

[2338] Pretty wild?

[2339] Weird.

[2340] They were weirder, but they were not...

[2341] He lays on me boringly.

[2342] Okay.

[2343] Boring.

[2344] Anyway, that was just really exciting event.

[2345] Okay.

[2346] So you were laid...

[2347] And it was a ding, ding, ding for Covington, I guess.

[2348] Okay, in a very tangential way.

[2349] How was the Brentwood Market for you and Callie's Black...

[2350] Friday.

[2351] It was great.

[2352] It was.

[2353] Yeah.

[2354] I didn't get anything on sale.

[2355] Great.

[2356] But I bought stuff.

[2357] But you still bought a lot of stuff.

[2358] Not that much.

[2359] I wish I bought more.

[2360] Sure.

[2361] I bought a cute locket.

[2362] Uh -huh.

[2363] I forgot to wear today.

[2364] A pajama set.

[2365] Oh, fun.

[2366] Really cute pajama set.

[2367] Some socks.

[2368] Boy, right in that list is the defining difference between you and I. And I would argue most men and women.

[2369] Okay.

[2370] Which is like, what's clear to me about that list is you had no objective.

[2371] You were just walking around.

[2372] If you saw some socks, you're like, boom, let's go grab those.

[2373] Look at these jammies.

[2374] I'd like those.

[2375] Yep.

[2376] I have no experience.

[2377] I know.

[2378] I go for a thing.

[2379] I know.

[2380] Like, I got to get X, Y, and Z. Yeah.

[2381] Never would I be like, oh, those look fun.

[2382] Or a top hat.

[2383] I wasn't looking for one, but that would look great on me. Yeah, you never do that.

[2384] No. It's a true.

[2385] I bet it is.

[2386] You're just like wandering and there's beautiful stuff everywhere and you get to decide.

[2387] You wait to something talks to you.

[2388] Yeah, speaks to you.

[2389] I ran into my designer, Amy.

[2390] Oh, wonderful.

[2391] Yes, which was really fun.

[2392] Unplanned.

[2393] Was Matt Damon wearing a repair outfit or was he in his normal clothes?

[2394] No, he was in a T -shirt.

[2395] Okay.

[2396] Not for long, I bet.

[2397] Oh.

[2398] Okay.

[2399] Yeah.

[2400] We had a great day.

[2401] And then I saw, what's that?

[2402] Go ahead.

[2403] You want to talk about the fantasy moments?

[2404] Well, the human ego is starting to get involved for me. Yours?

[2405] Yeah.

[2406] Like, I'm enjoying it.

[2407] And then I just had this moment of jealousy where I was like, nobody in America is having a sex dream about me. Like, Matt Damon's, like, Matt Damon's in all these women's dreams.

[2408] Mine.

[2409] I bet there's a lot of women who he's there to fix their fridge.

[2410] He's there to deliver a package.

[2411] Listen, Jacks.

[2412] Yeah.

[2413] Nobody, though.

[2414] Yes, they are.

[2415] I don't.

[2416] By the way, no one's entitled to be in people.

[2417] dreams.

[2418] I just got jealous of Matt Damon, though.

[2419] I'm trying to own it.

[2420] I know, and you're allowed to own it.

[2421] Listen, first of all, you are in people's dreams.

[2422] This is a ding, ding, ding for tomorrow's episode of Armchair Anonymous.

[2423] Okay.

[2424] Something comes up on Armchair Anonymous.

[2425] There's going to be so many comments of people saying they do.

[2426] Well, good.

[2427] I want to hear them all.

[2428] I want to hear every single one.

[2429] Great.

[2430] Now this is turned into you getting fucking flated by the, The arm cherries.

[2431] No, no, no, no. I don't want that.

[2432] I don't want that.

[2433] Yes, you do.

[2434] No. No, yes.

[2435] All those, like, robot accounts of the women with, like, the water icons that are coming up.

[2436] No, those are.

[2437] Those aren't real people.

[2438] Those aren't real people.

[2439] Listen, I'm just, I, how lucky for him, you know.

[2440] God, does he deserve it?

[2441] Having met him.

[2442] He is lucky.

[2443] Speaking of, we did for Thanksgiving Secret Turkeys, which is so cute.

[2444] This is great.

[2445] This is great.

[2446] First of all, Thanksgiving report.

[2447] So fun.

[2448] That was one of my favorites, if not my favorite one.

[2449] I felt like it was calm and peaceful.

[2450] There was a pace to it that just, I don't know how I would ever try to replicate.

[2451] Yeah.

[2452] It was so calm.

[2453] It was so relaxing.

[2454] There was no stress.

[2455] Your grass was in, so we had a beautiful view.

[2456] Yard has never looked prettier.

[2457] Like, just overwhelmed with gratitude with how beautiful our spaces.

[2458] It's incredible.

[2459] And the fact that we could be outside.

[2460] So many wonderful things.

[2461] And then, yes, this very funny thing, so Eric's daughter, Lily, she's 12, she sent a text to 24 of us.

[2462] All of us, yep.

[2463] Two weeks ago.

[2464] Yep.

[2465] Saying here's what you're doing on Thanksgiving.

[2466] You're going to have a secret, what is it called?

[2467] Well, let's back it up, okay?

[2468] Last year, day of Thanksgiving, we're all sitting, we're all, like, relaxing, and she comes and she hands everyone a piece of paper.

[2469] And we open it up, and Lily is going to be.

[2470] president.

[2471] Like, she is the most go -getter, smart leader of a kid.

[2472] And she always puts on plays and makes these movies and we all have to watch.

[2473] And, like, look, sometimes it's a...

[2474] Sometimes they're terrible.

[2475] Dumbums are really, really bad.

[2476] Yeah, sometimes they're really good.

[2477] You don't know what you're going to get.

[2478] So she hands as pieces of paper.

[2479] It has the name of somebody in the group and then an instruction.

[2480] Mine last year was to her.

[2481] It was Lily.

[2482] And it said, write a letter to your secret turkey about what you like about them.

[2483] I was like, oh, wow, okay.

[2484] Other people, like Kristen got, I don't know, Laura and had to make an origami for her.

[2485] You got Kristen and you had to write a song for her.

[2486] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2487] So this is, and when I got this letter, I was furious.

[2488] Right.

[2489] Yes, you're being told what to do.

[2490] You're giving marching orders by a child.

[2491] I have a task today, absolutely.

[2492] homework yeah i got really pissy and then we all did it and we were so filled with joy and love totally totally totally and last year was like i'm going to give last year a seven but again yeah i got i was told i got to go write a song in the next hour about christend i don't want to do that on thanksgiving i want to eat food maybe take a nap they never happened down but anyways i pretend i love that yeah this year we had a couple weeks head heads up exactly she did random generator names and we got to pick what we did for secret turkey she didn't assign it this time but she gave you a list of options like you could write a you can do a poem you do a song you can do this right can i read it yeah yeah yeah yeah it's very to the point like we're all employees at lily corp exactly hold on a 12 year old member of this group of 24 people hits us all with a text like you're all doing this in the next two weeks and we're all just like, okay.

[2493] And it even said in there, which I don't want to steal your thunder, you're like, you're going to tell me what you're, like there's a lot of instructions.

[2494] Go ahead.

[2495] Okay, this is it.

[2496] This is Lily, colon.

[2497] Ladies and lads, boys and babies, dogs and cats.

[2498] It's that time of year once again.

[2499] Secret turkey is back.

[2500] Secret turkey.

[2501] Mother hen, Molly, should have explained to those who didn't know what this is.

[2502] We've changed up a few things this year to make it even more.

[2503] Juicy, like you can have the option to pick what you want to do for a secret turkey or I can assign to you.

[2504] Ideas for what to do are a song, a poem, an art, a performance of any kind, a craft or card, parenthesis, good for youngsters.

[2505] These are just ideas, and please get creative with it.

[2506] Extra info.

[2507] Thanks to random number generator, you have each been given one turkey.

[2508] Each of you will get an individual message of who you have is your turkey.

[2509] You must, all caps.

[2510] Please tell me what you plan to do so that we don't end up having people all doing a dance.

[2511] What's none of us complied with, by the way.

[2512] I think three people.

[2513] Two people, me and Charlie.

[2514] Okay, just you and Charlie.

[2515] Responded to her.

[2516] I'm like, I'm not telling her what I'm doing.

[2517] She doesn't get to know.

[2518] That's not why you forgot.

[2519] Oh, that too.

[2520] But I even remember when I read it, I was like, no, no, this is where I draw the line.

[2521] I don't owe you a text of what I'm planning to do.

[2522] I'll figure out what I'm doing on the day of.

[2523] I know.

[2524] Okay, so it said, kids, we can't leave out the kiddos.

[2525] So, moms, you'll be getting a hidden message about who your kids have.

[2526] So complicated.

[2527] I purposely put no families together so you can brainstorm and work with them.

[2528] That's so, she's so great.

[2529] She really thought it through.

[2530] Thank you so much.

[2531] I'm so thankful for you all, and I know that we can make this your epic.

[2532] If you need an individual idea for what to do for your turkey or have any ideas of how to improve secret turkey.

[2533] Or have any questions, comments, or concerns.

[2534] Please do not hesitate to text, call me at her email.

[2535] Give it out.

[2536] Thank you all for this wonderful holiday.

[2537] Oh, my God.

[2538] So it starts with like maybe some hemming and hauling about it.

[2539] Yep.

[2540] Even on the day, I was like, oh gosh.

[2541] And then I started getting super insecure like, God, if people really put a ton effort in this, I'm going to look like a bozo.

[2542] Yep.

[2543] And then, of course, it kicks off.

[2544] Yes.

[2545] And it's immediately the greatest thing to witness.

[2546] Yes.

[2547] The kids start.

[2548] They have each other.

[2549] They have to say what they're thankful for first.

[2550] Oh, what they're thankful for.

[2551] Then they present their secret turkey.

[2552] Some of them were incredible.

[2553] Millie made this incredible book.

[2554] Burlington, I know.

[2555] Yes, it was so touching.

[2556] Oh, my God.

[2557] And Wilder, the littlest of the group.

[2558] He's five.

[2559] He said, I'm grateful for eggs and bacon.

[2560] Which we all laughed hysterically.

[2561] He's a little tiny baby boy that looks like a cartoon.

[2562] And his number one thing he's thankful for in the world is eggs and bacon, which we couldn't get over.

[2563] We could not.

[2564] And then his secret turkey.

[2565] had a picture of eggs and bacon.

[2566] So I'm like, hold out, that was all a setup.

[2567] It was all tied together.

[2568] Yes, it was all one cohesive piece.

[2569] Oh, it's incredible.

[2570] Yeah, so then we moved into the adults.

[2571] They were all pretty overwhelmingly good.

[2572] They were really fucking good.

[2573] Yeah.

[2574] And it made me so happy.

[2575] It's just a metaphor for life.

[2576] It's like we're annoyed to do something for other people, basically.

[2577] That we didn't think of.

[2578] It's not our idea.

[2579] It's not our plan.

[2580] Yes.

[2581] and we end up feeling so good about ourselves.

[2582] Our goodness saves us.

[2583] We're like, you can't let this 12 -year -old down that we all love.

[2584] Yes.

[2585] You're right.

[2586] It was life in an entire nutshell.

[2587] And I feel like particularly for me, who's a control freak and doesn't turn over the reins to anyone or give the steering wheel to anyone else, it's like a great forced example of how much fun it can be when you get the fuck out of the way and just go along with someone else's...

[2588] A kid.

[2589] The fact that we all put in all this effort because a kid told us to.

[2590] There was hours an hour.

[2591] Like what you saw is that people really.

[2592] Like took time out of their adult lives to do this.

[2593] There's also one great moment I think we should out Charlie for.

[2594] Oh my God.

[2595] Because it was just me, you, and Eric.

[2596] The three shit heads.

[2597] So Charlie presents his, he got Kristen for his secret turkey.

[2598] Yep.

[2599] Which is its own side funny thing, ongoing thing about I think they should be together.

[2600] They're both so beautiful.

[2601] they're made for what every time I'm out of town somehow there's almost an intruder and he has to come sleep here with a baseball bat like there's some history there it's great yeah so he presented her with this hand -drawn sketch of her face on a turkey body and then him standing behind her like sharpening a butcher's knife it's incredible I mean it's incredible is incredible people immediately assume he drew it well because that's what we're supposed to do make the thing well true we're just to outsource it So people start complimenting him.

[2602] Uh -huh.

[2603] And he starts taking it.

[2604] Yep.

[2605] Yeah, if you sit down and you really, it's funny if you put your mind.

[2606] He's going on and on.

[2607] Everyone is in.

[2608] And in my mind, I'm like, there's no way Charlie's that good of an artist.

[2609] And we're just finding out about it 10 years later.

[2610] That's not how the world works.

[2611] I know what everyone's good at at this point.

[2612] I think there could be secrets.

[2613] Like, I think he could be good at that.

[2614] But we got our turkey on Monday.

[2615] And I was like, there's absolutely no way.

[2616] It was a professional drew that.

[2617] I mean, that's what was kind of obvious.

[2618] Yeah.

[2619] But I'm also thinking, you know, you're such a misanthrope.

[2620] Of course, you don't think Charlie can do that or you would have already known about it.

[2621] Basically, like, there's no way you could have been deceived into it, right?

[2622] Right.

[2623] But I'm also thinking, I'm the only one here that thinks that.

[2624] It would be rude to suggest I don't believe he drew that.

[2625] And then thank God I look over and you and Eric are already snickering.

[2626] You guys are both like, no, there's no way he drew that.

[2627] I know.

[2628] And I asked, I said, what medium did you use?

[2629] Yes, yes.

[2630] You started.

[2631] Pencil or?

[2632] He said pen.

[2633] Regular pen.

[2634] Yeah.

[2635] And then once the three of us realized we were a voting block, it bolstered my confidence to challenge him.

[2636] Yeah.

[2637] And then I said to him, I will give you $15 ,000 if you can draw a sketch of one of the kids here tonight.

[2638] Yeah.

[2639] Yeah.

[2640] Yeah.

[2641] To which he had some excuse why he wouldn't want to, like, bastardize his skills by taking money for this.

[2642] Of course not.

[2643] Yeah.

[2644] That became one of the funest parts for me. It was very funny.

[2645] It was busting Charlie that he had not drawn that picture.

[2646] He did not.

[2647] But he got a friend to who did do it that quickly, and that is amazing.

[2648] And you did a poem for Amy, which was really sweet.

[2649] Oh, thank you.

[2650] And Eric was my secret turkey.

[2651] Uh -huh.

[2652] So I painted the bottom of my feet.

[2653] and did a canvas art of my feet for him and framed it.

[2654] A 2D mold, I guess.

[2655] Well, so what I tried to do, I tried it twice.

[2656] You know how kids you can buy, like, plaster and put their hands in it and make an ornament out of it?

[2657] Yep.

[2658] I tried doing that with my feet.

[2659] Mm -hmm.

[2660] But you couldn't really get the shape that well in that plaster.

[2661] So then last minute, morning of, I had to pivot to the paint picture.

[2662] And then you opened yourself up to a little bit of sexual harassment after that.

[2663] I know what I was getting myself into.

[2664] Yeah, yeah.

[2665] Yeah, so anyway, it was...

[2666] It was so fun.

[2667] Really, really, really fun.

[2668] Yeah, so relaxing, so fun.

[2669] Yummy food.

[2670] I didn't eat gluten.

[2671] I was so proud of myself.

[2672] I know, you didn't get to eat my stuff.

[2673] I know, I felt really bad.

[2674] Like, what's funny is I was resolute to not eat gluten.

[2675] Because I felt terrible after that meal.

[2676] We all had, which was so delicious, but I just felt terrible.

[2677] And I was like, I'm not going to do that on this day.

[2678] Then you arrived and's like, I made all that stuffing.

[2679] And I was like, oh, now I've got an ethical dilemma.

[2680] That was my only real poll why I was like, well, I got to try Monica's stuffing.

[2681] But ultimately I didn't.

[2682] But I did feel guilty if that helps.

[2683] Doesn't.

[2684] I don't want you to feel guilty.

[2685] I guess that's codependency right there.

[2686] Yeah, it's fine if you.

[2687] I didn't make it.

[2688] You're going to hurt yourself to make someone happy.

[2689] It's probably not a great.

[2690] No. Rob and I both made the stuffing.

[2691] Okay.

[2692] And I haven't checked in.

[2693] How did yours turn out?

[2694] That's good.

[2695] That's really good.

[2696] Yeah.

[2697] So good.

[2698] Did it fly off the shelves where people like devouring?

[2699] Just me and Calvin and my mom.

[2700] eating it.

[2701] Okay.

[2702] Where was Natalie?

[2703] It has cheese in it so.

[2704] Yeah.

[2705] She's what?

[2706] It had cheese in it so she couldn't eat it.

[2707] She's like, I thought he said she was in it.

[2708] I know, me too.

[2709] Like he murdered her and served her to the children.

[2710] I have one Seinfeldian story.

[2711] Oh great.

[2712] I didn't tell you this, Rob.

[2713] So I was making stuffing for 20 people.

[2714] That's too many.

[2715] Okay.

[2716] And I'm realizing as, you know, you Perip powder with all the bread, you let it dry overnight till it's like croutani.

[2717] And I was like, I have so much fucking bread.

[2718] Yeah, yeah.

[2719] And four loaves.

[2720] Mine was a lot for three people, so I can't imagine.

[2721] It was so much.

[2722] And I was like, how am I going to mix all this together?

[2723] Because you have to do the bread.

[2724] Then there's all of the actual stuffing mixed with the custard port.

[2725] So there's so much stuff going on.

[2726] I don't have a bowl.

[2727] Who, how do I do this?

[2728] Then I realized I had a drink bowl.

[2729] basically like where you would like put a bunch of bottles of wine okay like a cooler i guess you would say but it was a bowl that i got from the farmer's market so i cleaned that out but i got nervous because it's like old and kind of antique sure what if some like residue gets in this got like it puts a metal taste exactly yeah yeah so then i put all this wax paper oh Jesus Christ this is smart and like hanging over so i put the bread then i put the stuff and then i put the stuff and then i put the cushion.

[2730] I was like, this is amazing.

[2731] I nailed it.

[2732] I was really proud of myself.

[2733] Okay.

[2734] I'm mixing it all up and it's very wet.

[2735] Yeah.

[2736] The wax paper starts like joining the part.

[2737] Disintegrating or like breaking apart.

[2738] And once I realized it, I was like, oh, fuck.

[2739] What do I do?

[2740] So I pull the sides out, get what I can.

[2741] And then I'm just like picking through.

[2742] I caught my hands are clean.

[2743] I'm picking through looking for pieces of wax paper.

[2744] This is a nightmare.

[2745] I feel like I got it all and then I just decided and I told people if you get a little bit of wax paper that means it's good luck that was part of the sales pitch when you put it out yeah and people wanted that bit of wax paper they did and nobody got it it's all about framing yeah that really is yeah anyway but it was still so delicious we have so much how long are we 40 minutes oof okay we have facts but I also wanted to talk about something else why can't the fact check me an hour It can.

[2746] Okay, so I saw three pieces of media this break.

[2747] Okay.

[2748] I saw a glass onion.

[2749] Okay.

[2750] The knives out.

[2751] You saw it too?

[2752] Yeah, we wouldn't saw it.

[2753] Okay.

[2754] In the movie theater, I loved it.

[2755] Awesome.

[2756] I loved it.

[2757] Wow.

[2758] And you saw it in the theater?

[2759] Yeah.

[2760] Oh, my God.

[2761] I saw it Friday night.

[2762] We did too.

[2763] You did?

[2764] Burbank?

[2765] We almost went to Burbank and instead went to the gallery.

[2766] What time?

[2767] 1030 oh 1030 well we went with carly and keith because we had natalie's birthday dinner and then we're like my mom's here watching the kids let's go to see a movie that's a two and a half hour movie wow i'm impressed so uh glass onion oh white lotus sure caught up on white lotus course and triangle of sadness have you seen that what is that it's a foreign film have you seen it i want to it's on my list oh my god foreign movie Swedish it won't once some stuff it can.

[2768] It's incredible.

[2769] Oh, I can't wait.

[2770] It is so, I think it might be the force major guy maybe.

[2771] Okay.

[2772] That's right.

[2773] Which you've seen, I think.

[2774] Is that the avalanche?

[2775] Yes.

[2776] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2777] It was so good.

[2778] It's absurd.

[2779] Like, it's a farce.

[2780] It just takes all these different turns.

[2781] But there's a running social commentary throughout all three of these things about status, wealth, class.

[2782] And it's so interesting to just see it coming from all angles.

[2783] Like, everyone's thinking about this.

[2784] And Glass Onion, Easter egg, we'll be talking more about Glass Onion soon.

[2785] Right, right.

[2786] We'll have a guest that was in it.

[2787] Yes.

[2788] I mean, for one, it's just so fun.

[2789] I just love those mysteries and it's so fun.

[2790] And Daniel Craig's so good in it, I think.

[2791] Yeah.

[2792] But this commentary on billionaires who are propped up by other people made to seem like infallible geniuses.

[2793] Yes.

[2794] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2795] It's fascinating.

[2796] Yeah.

[2797] Well, in the forthcoming episode, my take on that is just like we're so susceptible to deifying people.

[2798] We just like two great things and we're like, oh, they've got it all figured out.

[2799] Except also you see in this movie You see that it's more than that You see how everyone's gaining Oh sure sure sure And that they know it Which is also in White Lotus It's this acknowledgement That they are part of the game They know it's bad But I'm gaining enough Well and as I was saying In this episode we keep now talking about But I think it happens in every single social group too It's not even just like the tech billionaire in someone's group.

[2800] Yes.

[2801] It's the guy with the biggest swimming pool at his house.

[2802] It's the person with the...

[2803] There's just status.

[2804] Hot his husband.

[2805] It's all these things that we end up playing a role in.

[2806] I know.

[2807] We participate in it.

[2808] I know.

[2809] It's impossible not to.

[2810] Yeah, it is, but it's fucked.

[2811] It's very animalistic.

[2812] I mean, for me, it's like, yeah, we're never going to transcend being a social primate.

[2813] Yeah.

[2814] It's not going to happen.

[2815] We are social primates, and we will always be driven.

[2816] by status because it's life or dad.

[2817] Well, when status is on your side, that's the thing.

[2818] When it's not, it's easy to be like, that's bad or that's unjust.

[2819] But I don't think anyone, even someone who's screaming that, they themselves are in a group where status exists.

[2820] So it might not be material, but it's going to be righteousness.

[2821] It's going to be purity.

[2822] It's going to be the most liberal or the most conservative.

[2823] You know, there isn't a group where there isn't some metric of status.

[2824] And they can vary greatly, but it's all going to be there.

[2825] Who's suffering the most?

[2826] There's, like, groups of victims.

[2827] And it's like, who's had the most victimhood?

[2828] Who's most trauma, most intersectionality.

[2829] There's the most of everything.

[2830] Yeah, yeah.

[2831] We can't.

[2832] It's fascinating.

[2833] Get out of it.

[2834] But also, in that movie, you see everyone's willingness to overlook what they, know is a problem because they need that person.

[2835] Yeah.

[2836] They want that person.

[2837] They recognize that the status of that person is beneficial to them.

[2838] Yeah.

[2839] And so they're choosing that over maybe what they believe is right.

[2840] Well, that was like an oversight in pollsters and political pundits and theorists about it would seem natural that all women would vote for Hillary Clinton.

[2841] Like that's just kind of an assumed reaction.

[2842] or that overthrowing the patriarchy would be in the interest of women.

[2843] But it undermines the significant percentage of women who are benefiting from the patriarchy because they're the wives of the patriarch, right?

[2844] So it's like you forget to include that they may be benefiting and not being incentivized to topple it.

[2845] Exactly.

[2846] Once you watch Triagull of Sadness, we can break that down too.

[2847] But there's this major status shift that happens in the movie.

[2848] and then the end of the movie leaves you wondering, are we better off with everything dismantled?

[2849] Right.

[2850] Or not?

[2851] Well, yes.

[2852] It's really good.

[2853] That we would need a three -hour fact check, but that's kind of my new obsession, my new hypothesis, driven mostly by, don't worry, darling.

[2854] That thing put me on a trajectory of, like, thinking about where all of these developments will end us as a species.

[2855] It's very interesting, like, if you just start from maybe for a second you accept that you've all Harare's right and that we were better off as hunting and gathering people.

[2856] We had more free time, we were closer to each other, you know, all these things.

[2857] If you buy into that notion that with safety in our food storages and safety in these things, what do we give up?

[2858] Maybe it wasn't worth it, right?

[2859] Yeah.

[2860] I'm starting to get curious when this period is viewed 500 years from now if all of this stuff, is leading to more happiness or purpose or fulfillment.

[2861] Or less.

[2862] Or less.

[2863] Like what's going to happen when none of us need each other?

[2864] Because that seems like the trajectory is basically every time someone needs someone less, that's seen as progress.

[2865] And it'll just be a curious world when none of us need each other.

[2866] Well, what's tricky is we will always need each other emotionally.

[2867] But we don't need each other increasingly more physically so easy to forget that we need each other emotionally.

[2868] And there are pacifiers now that fill the void of what the emotional connection would leave you with.

[2869] The computer, the phone.

[2870] This thing makes you feel not lonely.

[2871] That's crazy.

[2872] Yeah, you're walking around with everyone and everything in your hand.

[2873] Yes, I used to go eat by myself all the time and I'd feel lonely for a period of it.

[2874] Yeah.

[2875] And I haven't felt lonely in years because I just look at Instagram.

[2876] As soon as you start to feel a little bit of discomfort, you can pull out.

[2877] that phone right so it's like this is curious we don't really experience loneliness and probably the way we should so that we're motivated to make connections so that's one little incremental change will so i'm just you know in 120 years it's like i could see a future where there no one procreates no one needs each other no one's going to have to compromise like no one's going to go through any of the business of being connected with other people because it's there's challenges to it there's a lot there, but, um, so it was an interesting couple days.

[2878] It was interesting couple days of thinking about all of that stuff.

[2879] Yeah.

[2880] Did you watch any movies?

[2881] I watched so mad they weren't all available because I wanted to watch the second one so bad, but the Shaquille O 'Neal documentary series on HBO came out.

[2882] Oh, I need to watch that.

[2883] It's fucking awesome.

[2884] The first episode's so good.

[2885] I was like, I couldn't believe I got to wait to get the next episode.

[2886] I hate that tantrum.

[2887] Uh -huh.

[2888] Uh -huh.

[2889] We did that.

[2890] I did.

[2891] I did.

[2892] that solo.

[2893] I get to do a lot of solo watching on long weekends because Kristen sleeps with the girls when they don't have school.

[2894] I'm just kind of like a bachelor up in my bedroom like what do I want to watch anything I want.

[2895] Yeah.

[2896] Here it is.

[2897] Unencumbered.

[2898] Do we eat popcorn?

[2899] I love popcorn.

[2900] I mean, what do you eat?

[2901] I did have it over the break.

[2902] Yeah.

[2903] I try not to eat up there so boring.

[2904] I try not to eat, you know, try not to.

[2905] If I do, it'll be a packet of almond butter.

[2906] That's my big sneak.

[2907] I know.

[2908] And then you No, I'm just kidding And then I want Nothing.

[2909] What do I do?

[2910] I was gonna make a mean joke So I'm not going to Do that.

[2911] Farts?

[2912] No, I was just gonna say And then and not No, I can't even say It's too mean But it was a joke Is it?

[2913] Yes This is why I can't say Because I know you'll not take it As a joke And it is Oh okay I think I take jokes Pretty well Okay I was gonna say And then you wonder Why no one Wants to sleep with me?

[2914] Yeah, yeah, that's great.

[2915] I make it all the time.

[2916] No. It's just not true.

[2917] That's why I could make it.

[2918] Well, I say to the kids because neither will want to lay with me at night.

[2919] It's time to snuggle to go to bed.

[2920] They're like fighting over who mom goes to what bed first, right?

[2921] And I always say to them, guys, how do you think I feel?

[2922] I have to sleep with me every night.

[2923] Yeah, I know Delta told me that she loves that.

[2924] Think about how dad feels.

[2925] He is asleep with himself every night.

[2926] Anywho, so the Shaquille thing, great.

[2927] I did that.

[2928] I got into, I'm watching the Holocaust, Ken Burns' Doc, so I'm popping back and forth to that.

[2929] That's heavy, so I try to lighten up with Shaquille in between.

[2930] Yeah.

[2931] Then Lincoln spearheaded watching Truman Show.

[2932] Oh, cool.

[2933] So we did that great movie.

[2934] That really held up.

[2935] Okay.

[2936] Really, really good movie.

[2937] I can't remember what else I watched.

[2938] Okay, well, those are good.

[2939] Yeah.

[2940] I want to watch Stutz again.

[2941] Oh, me too.

[2942] Yeah, I got to watch it again.

[2943] Yeah, I'm going to watch it again.

[2944] This time with my eyes closed and this time with your eyes open.

[2945] Yeah, I'll see what happens.

[2946] Okay, a couple of facts.

[2947] Joe Piscopo.

[2948] Yeah.

[2949] You said he got beat up.

[2950] Yeah, that's what I've been told.

[2951] I'm not seeing that.

[2952] It wasn't in public.

[2953] This was dudes that or cast members of S &L who were there.

[2954] This is very anecdotal.

[2955] Okay.

[2956] So I'm not seeing any public information of that.

[2957] There's a lot on him getting like big and buff.

[2958] Well, first of all, I didn't know who he was.

[2959] Oh, you didn't.

[2960] No. He's a little before your time.

[2961] He's an S &L guy, but apparently, when I did some reading, he was like him and Eddie Murphy.

[2962] He was huge.

[2963] Yeah.

[2964] He was like the standout cast member, one of the standout cast members.

[2965] But then like.

[2966] And he got jacked.

[2967] Yeah.

[2968] Then he was in Bailey's total fitness commercials.

[2969] Oof.

[2970] Okay.

[2971] So this is saying that when he was on S &L, they found cancerous cells and he had a tumor and they removed it from his thyroid.

[2972] Okay.

[2973] The cancer had been caught early, and the prospects for full recovery were good.

[2974] He indeed did recover, but at the time, Mr. Piscopo says he was terrified not only for his life, but also for his career.

[2975] He told virtually no one about his illness.

[2976] I thought it would define weakness.

[2977] When a doctor mentioned that exercise might help keep the cancer at bay, he headed for the gym.

[2978] His sudden transformation from an average -looking guy into Schwarzenegian behemoth helped Ms. They said Schwarzeneggian?

[2979] That's an interesting.

[2980] Schwarzenegarian.

[2981] Oh, wow.

[2982] Helmiscopo land lucrative endorsement contracts in the last few years with Valley Health Clubs and general nutrition centers.

[2983] It also, he can all just set him up as an object of ridicule.

[2984] Oh.

[2985] So it's mainly talking about his cancer.

[2986] And then there were a couple other things, too, that I looked up that said some stuff about his cancer, and I didn't see anything about getting beat up.

[2987] But, oh, and then he had a messy divorce.

[2988] Oh, he did.

[2989] Yeah.

[2990] He's one, you know, he is this huge cautionary tale in comedy.

[2991] It's like he's a legend in some way as a tale in comedy.

[2992] But it's hard to know.

[2993] Like, if you're a sketch performer, I guess your life after a Sarant Live, it's all you can go do stand -up and then go do a stand -up.

[2994] You need the whole system to do what you do.

[2995] You need the troop in a stage and on the whole thing.

[2996] I guess you go into movies and TV.

[2997] You either, yeah, go into movies or TV or become a host of a talk show.

[2998] Or a spokesperson for Bailey's Total Fitness.

[2999] You're limited.

[3000] I was a member back then of Bailey's Total Fitness.

[3001] It worked.

[3002] Absolutely, absolutely.

[3003] Okay, so I looked up the amount of space it would take if everyone had a plot.

[3004] Oh, okay.

[3005] And then this was a article, will the U .S. run out of space to bury people?

[3006] There's a lot of math -y stuff in here, which you might love.

[3007] I don't want to read all of it.

[3008] Yeah, don't.

[3009] I'm just going to.

[3010] Don't do it.

[3011] Basically.

[3012] No. What?

[3013] Well, the question was, is that we're going to run out of space?

[3014] And why if you say, well, basically, no. We're not going to run out of space.

[3015] I'm just looking at the amount.

[3016] Nassau County, New York.

[3017] We could bury the entire population of the U .S. Oh, great.

[3018] On a fraction of Long Island.

[3019] Oh, okay.

[3020] Sagada Hot County, Maine.

[3021] These are weird examples.

[3022] San Bernardino County.

[3023] Oh, okay.

[3024] That sounds a little more familiar.

[3025] Yeah, and sad.

[3026] What's sad about San Bernardino?

[3027] The shooting.

[3028] Oh, that's not what I thought of.

[3029] Okay.

[3030] That's always what I...

[3031] Why do you clarify?

[3032] It had to be buried there.

[3033] Always what I think about.

[3034] Oh, the San Bernardino, you could bury the entire population of the U .S. 85 times.

[3035] Wow.

[3036] That's crazy.

[3037] Wow.

[3038] Big county.

[3039] It says it's the largest county in the contiguous United States by land area.

[3040] Holy smokes.

[3041] Congratulations, San Burdue.

[3042] You know the San Bernardino Hells Angels chapter goes by Sam Burdue.

[3043] Oh, my God.

[3044] Who is it?

[3045] Let's talk.

[3046] Telemarketer.

[3047] Let's talk to them.

[3048] Nope.

[3049] It'd be so fun.

[3050] Hi, you're on the radio.

[3051] Okay.

[3052] Oh, you guys, Bill sent us his books again.

[3053] He did?

[3054] Yeah.

[3055] Oh, my gosh.

[3056] It's up to bring him over.

[3057] He sent a stack for me, you, Rob, and David.

[3058] Oh, my God.

[3059] I don't want David to be included.

[3060] I know, but he is.

[3061] Okay.

[3062] We can throw those out.

[3063] I think Rob should take all the duplicates.

[3064] Rob has his own.

[3065] I know, but he should take David's just to get even.

[3066] Listen, they all.

[3067] It's not good for the show, though, if they bury their beef.

[3068] I got to keep it.

[3069] I got a fan the flame.

[3070] Not him and Monica.

[3071] Discord.

[3072] Oh, God, what's your beef now?

[3073] She didn't get framed.

[3074] Yeah, now I have beef because I didn't get frame.

[3075] This guy can't make you guys have.

[3076] I'm going to send you a frame, but it's going to pretend it's from David.

[3077] You don't have to protect him, Rob.

[3078] Okay, he also sent us.

[3079] The books come in our very own L .L. Bean tote with our initials on it.

[3080] Oh, my God.

[3081] It's really cute, cool.

[3082] Yeah, they do a good job.

[3083] They do.

[3084] Yeah, they do.

[3085] Do you think he's, he personally.

[3086] Engraved it?

[3087] Yeah, he stitched it.

[3088] Yeah, he did.

[3089] But listen, this one's really good.

[3090] The stack is extra good this year.

[3091] because it's not just from the year, it's of his all time.

[3092] Oh, my God, he's not...

[3093] No, don't say it.

[3094] Why would he do an end of life?

[3095] No, it's not end of life.

[3096] These are the ones of my whole life?

[3097] Knock on wood right now.

[3098] Not his whole life, probably, because there's only like five books.

[3099] Okay, okay.

[3100] I'm going to rest easier.

[3101] Oh, my God.

[3102] Okay, the blood disease that Carl Sagan died of is called MDS.

[3103] Myelodee's Plastic Syndrome.

[3104] myelodi splastic syndrome I know It can't be right The press that the kids books come on Scholastic Myeloty Scholastic Scholastic syndrome I'm not sure MDS You want me to do it Make it say it Yeah Make it talk right Myelodisplastic Milo dysplastic Okay It's myelodisplastic Myelotisplastic Myelotisplastic syndrome And he died when he was 62 Ugh Yeah That's my old man's age Oh, that's so young.

[3105] It's pretty young.

[3106] Yeah.

[3107] Okay, $50 in 1973 is what now?

[3108] Oh, great.

[3109] $335 .60.

[3110] So he's making $3 .35 an hour?

[3111] Yeah.

[3112] Pretty good.

[3113] Pretty darn good stuff.

[3114] Okay, highest percentage of doctorate degree holders in the country.

[3115] Oh.

[3116] Per capita.

[3117] Right.

[3118] Exactly.

[3119] Trust me. I know.

[3120] Okay.

[3121] Not total volume.

[3122] New York's going to win that Los Alamos New Mexico Sure sure sure You knew that Well you have all the You have all the Nuclear I didn't know that I didn't know that Yeah that makes a lot of sense Yeah The only people there are scientists Working on these projects Highest percentage of people With doctor degrees in the nation 17 .7 % In Los Alamos Okay It says nearly twice The 9 .5 % Report about by Tompkins County, New York, home of Cornell.

[3123] Oh.

[3124] Orange County, North Carolina, home of UNC Chapel Hill, ranks third at 8 .9.

[3125] Congrats.

[3126] I guess.

[3127] Is this something you should congratulate?

[3128] I think more than 100 counties have no residence with doctorate degrees.

[3129] Where do you go to the doctor?

[3130] I guess you don't have a MD in your county.

[3131] Yeah, you have to go to a neighboring county.

[3132] There's a hundred counties with no MD.

[3133] Okay.

[3134] Okay.

[3135] Okay.

[3136] Okay.

[3137] the percentage of people in your county with doctor degrees use social explorers customize online mapping tool oh okay i'm gonna let's do um can you do austin oh sure i'll find out what county austin's in what county is austin in yeah there Travis Travis County yeah let's do Travis County oh don't break anything okay two point three two Oh.

[3138] Not very good.

[3139] Let's do Los Angeles County.

[3140] 1 .33.

[3141] So worse.

[3142] Yeah.

[3143] Country with the most is only 5%.

[3144] What country is that?

[3145] Slovenia.

[3146] Slovenia.

[3147] Congratulations.

[3148] So I think it's going to be super low.

[3149] Yeah.

[3150] Well, that's why I guess the 17 is really high for Los Alamos.

[3151] Anyway.

[3152] All right.

[3153] Okay.

[3154] So on average, only one -tenth of an iceberg is above the surface of the water.

[3155] This is in relation to Frozen did all that right, where they had the little ice.

[3156] He was really proud of Frozen.

[3157] Yeah.

[3158] And that's really it for the most part.

[3159] I mean, that's not it.

[3160] There was so many facts.

[3161] Too many.

[3162] Sometimes you just got to take a mulligan on an episode, don't you think?

[3163] Well, no, I just have to decide what I can check.

[3164] What's, like, worthy of me checking and what's not?

[3165] Because, again, he's the expert.

[3166] So I'll be looking at like Nealdegrassthysen .com and it's going to say this is what gets tricky.

[3167] It is.

[3168] He's the source of the facts.

[3169] Yeah.

[3170] Okay.

[3171] Well, I love you.

[3172] That was a really fun rehash of the holiday.

[3173] Really good.

[3174] Really good stuff.

[3175] What's on your sleeve?

[3176] Who knows?

[3177] Is it planets?

[3178] No, no. It's a face.

[3179] His eyes.

[3180] Dr. Covington.

[3181] That's what he looks like now.

[3182] Take a Papa Duke.

[3183] He's cute.

[3184] Is it a dog?

[3185] It's a. It's a Covington.

[3186] It has ears.

[3187] I don't know what it is.

[3188] I don't know what I wear.

[3189] I just, if Travis Scott made it, I wear it.

[3190] Oh, you have Todd Snyder and Travis Scott.

[3191] You're T's my T's.

[3192] You only buy stuff by T .S. You only buy T .S. Eliot.

[3193] Oh, my God, I should buy more of his books.

[3194] Tildes Winton.

[3195] Oh, I watch all her movies.

[3196] Tuna salad.

[3197] She eat more tuna salad.

[3198] Wow.

[3199] Oh, God, you threw your back.

[3200] I hurt my back in that one.

[3201] All right, I love you.

[3202] I love you.

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