#1658 - Neil deGrasse Tyson

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, checking out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] How much time do you spend looking at random leaves on television shows to recognize that it's a fake pattern, not created by the wind?

[4] No, I just, you know, you look at scenes from Walking Dead and they enter this deserted town, as so many towns are, when zombies take over.

[5] And the leaves, you know, the autumn leaves.

[6] are evenly spread in the streets and the sidewalks.

[7] And I'm thinking some set designer did that, thinking that this is what leaves do in the breeze.

[8] But that's not what they do.

[9] They collect.

[10] They circulate.

[11] They're like eddies in the air currents.

[12] That'll collect them in one place and not the other.

[13] So we think if something's random, that it's evenly spread.

[14] But in fact, there are many more collected elements.

[15] in something that's random than we typically think.

[16] So I'm looking at your new ceiling here in Austin, Texas, and your star is beautiful, by the way.

[17] Nice things you got here.

[18] Thank you.

[19] But the stars that lights are kind of evenly spread on the sky.

[20] Yeah, they don't look real.

[21] So that's how, and plus, you know, you could have thrown at least a constellation up there or something.

[22] You know what I should do?

[23] I should get someone to make me one and make one and just imitate the Milky Way.

[24] That'd be beautiful.

[25] Right.

[26] That'd be beautiful.

[27] and I'll be happy to certify it.

[28] No, I'm scared.

[29] You give me a call.

[30] I'm scared.

[31] I'm all in.

[32] I don't think you will certify it.

[33] I think it would be a real problem.

[34] I think it would be a genuine issue.

[35] So how you doing, Joe?

[36] I'm doing good.

[37] How you doing?

[38] Yeah.

[39] Austin is an old haunt of mine.

[40] Is it?

[41] Yeah, I met my wife here.

[42] I got my master's at UT Austin.

[43] My wife got her Ph .D. in mathematical physics there.

[44] And I finished my Ph .D. in Columbia and New York.

[45] city, but we spent six years here long ago.

[46] I love it here.

[47] We were here when Austin, Texas had six gates at the airport.

[48] Wow.

[49] And there's never more than one other car in front of you at a red light.

[50] Just picture that.

[51] A lot of folks remember that apparently, and they're very upset.

[52] That I would be totally pissed off.

[53] The traffic here is still adorable.

[54] It's ridiculous, cute traffic.

[55] And the people are so nice.

[56] It's just completely different vibe.

[57] Yeah.

[58] So I miss you, man. So I'm good to see you still at it.

[59] I'm still at it.

[60] I'm still doing the thing.

[61] And I thought, you know, I saw a few of your shows and I said, you know, we can bring some, some deep philosophical thought back.

[62] Because I know there's a part, that's a big part of you, right?

[63] Occasionally.

[64] No, it's in you.

[65] It's in you.

[66] When I'm talking to the right people.

[67] Oh, okay.

[68] Yeah, like you.

[69] Yeah.

[70] Yeah.

[71] Yeah, it comes out.

[72] It comes out.

[73] Good.

[74] I've been meaning to talk to you.

[75] I've been wanting to talk to you quite a bit.

[76] What do you got?

[77] Well, what do you got?

[78] Well, all these UFO disclosures.

[79] Yeah.

[80] Those, you're like one of the first guys that I want to talk to because you always have a skeptical, inquisitive perspective on these things.

[81] You're not necessarily dismissive.

[82] Right.

[83] But you're not willing to just adopt this narrative that we're being visited by UFOs from another planet.

[84] Yeah.

[85] So it's, by the way, let's start with the military.

[86] Yes.

[87] If there are glowing lights in the sky and we don't know what it is, they damn sure.

[88] better look into it.

[89] Right.

[90] We give them folks $700 billion.

[91] Make some percentage of that budget to check out the possible threat of things we don't understand.

[92] I used to think that was a lot of money until I found out that Los Angeles spent a billion dollars on the homeless every year.

[93] Their budget for the homeless is a billion.

[94] A billion.

[95] And they're not doing shit.

[96] All right.

[97] So when I look at like the military getting $700 billion, is that what they get?

[98] Yeah, plus or minus it might be $600.

[99] We need to give them more money.

[100] Clearly, they need more money.

[101] Because if you can't fix the L .A. homeless situation with $1 billion, how are you going to protect us with $700 billion?

[102] Well, it's not the same agency charged with it.

[103] Oh, they're better?

[104] They're better than the homeless people?

[105] No, I'm saying the mayor's office of Los Angeles or of Austin, right?

[106] Yeah, who's running what?

[107] I got in trouble this past February when the electricity went out in Texas and it was cold.

[108] just a couple of months ago.

[109] What did you say?

[110] What I say?

[111] I tweeted.

[112] I said, what did I say?

[113] I say, okay, right now, NASA landed a rover on Mars with a helicopter, and this is at 120 million miles away, controlling it, and it's on Mars where it's 100 degrees below zero.

[114] Meanwhile, Texas, where it's cold, has no electricity.

[115] So all I said was Maybe NASA instead of politicians Should run Texas That seems pretty reasonable People Some people just lost a mind But that's just because it was The power was out And people were freaking out already Plus I don't do what you Advise me the last time We Post and drop What's the phrase?

[116] Post and ghost Post and ghost Yeah No I always peek at what people Say I want to know You are too popular When you're too popular people get mad at you.

[117] Oh, you know, that's deep.

[118] And it doesn't necessarily have to make sense.

[119] But if enough people are angry and upset at their own lives and they just decide they're going to attack Neil de Gras -Tyson because he makes a poignant point.

[120] That's the, I try to have you smile about it a little.

[121] I mean, plus, Texas is no stranger to NASA.

[122] NASA, you know, Texas.

[123] Houston, we have a problem.

[124] Houston, we have a problem.

[125] Yeah, come on.

[126] That was not addressed to the governor.

[127] It was addressed to NASA headquarters.

[128] Yeah.

[129] I just, people are just too easy to get upset.

[130] And also, you're just dealing with the numbers are just unmanageable of people online.

[131] I mean, how many millions of people do you have on your Twitter page?

[132] 14 and a half million.

[133] Just imagine.

[134] Just randomly.

[135] It's a stupidly large number.

[136] And I don't, I'm, I still don't understand it because I want to remind people every few days, you realize you're following an astrophysicist.

[137] Right.

[138] There's still time to unfollow just in case this is something you did by accident.

[139] Yeah, but you're a different kind of astrophysicist.

[140] You're an entertaining educator, and that's so important because you make things fun.

[141] You make things fun while pointing out really important points, like really important things that we should probably understand about the way the universe works and physics.

[142] Well, thanks for thinking about it that way.

[143] I don't think about it that way.

[144] I think that the universe is inherently hilarious, and so I'm just sharing that hilarity with you.

[145] But what I also found is that when people smile, they learn better.

[146] Oh, for sure.

[147] Yeah, when they're less tense?

[148] Yeah, they're less tense.

[149] And there's a pleasing feeling that they had at a point when they learned something.

[150] And so that's got to work some kind of dopamine chemicals.

[151] So that you say, I want to learn something again tomorrow.

[152] Yeah, I mean, science educators are so important because so many people equate, whether it's mathematics or science or even history, they equate it with boredom.

[153] Right.

[154] I think not only science, but many academic subjects.

[155] And what's that song by Alice Cooper, schools out?

[156] Yeah.

[157] Schools out for summer.

[158] Schools out forever.

[159] This is an anthem for people who hate school.

[160] What else is that, right?

[161] And then I thought to myself, when you're in school, your only job is to learn.

[162] And for that to be a chore means something is wrong in that school.

[163] I'm not blaming the people who are throwing their notes in the air running down the school steps.

[164] I'm blaming the system that's not making school fun and entertaining.

[165] And it should be a place where you are trained to become a lifelong learner.

[166] Yeah.

[167] Where some infusion of curiosity, you get bitten by a curiosity bug.

[168] And then when you walk down the steps, you say, wait a minute, I don't want to leave school.

[169] I want to stay.

[170] Or if I have to leave school, because I graduated, let me feel.

[171] find other ways to continue to stay enlightened throughout my life.

[172] Otherwise, you get ossified in one way of thinking with one dimension of information or facts or insights.

[173] And then you're stuck there and you think that's the world and it's not.

[174] It's not.

[175] But let's put this into perspective.

[176] Think about the budget for the homeless.

[177] Think about the budget for the military.

[178] Now it's think about the budget that a school has to work with.

[179] And think about the fact that you have to take 40 kids who may not have been paying attention most of their life and all of a sudden you catch them when they're 14 good luck I mean you got a lot of momentum a lot of momentum behind them of them hating school a lot of negative momentum a lot of like maybe bored disenfranchised teachers who've been teaching these kids are not into it you know and then their hormones are kicking in so they can't pay attention anything anyway yeah I you know it's easy for me to make these statements but I'm not the one in the trenches there especially in those middle schools.

[180] Yeah.

[181] Where hormones are riding everything.

[182] Right when they start popping, the kids don't know what to do with them.

[183] Imagine your whole life.

[184] It's not the time to learn physics.

[185] I got to worry about my body.

[186] Whatever.

[187] And then just trying to get 40 kids or how many is in the typical classroom to pay attention to the same thing at the same time and to be interested in the same thing at the same time.

[188] You know, there's a lot of intelligent kids that get left by the wayside because school, for whatever reason, doesn't jive with the way they learn things.

[189] It doesn't mean that they're not smart.

[190] Well, I think we have similar, each of us, you and I, have similar challenges in a theater audience, right?

[191] Now, you have the advantage that they're all fans, so they know where you're coming from when you do a stand -up routine, but still, there's a thousand people or more who are different from each other, some are old, some are young, some are left, some are right, you know, politically.

[192] and you thread that and I think you thread it brilliantly you get people with you and you get them to want to listen to you so part of what I glean from people's reactions to my Twitter posts is was that how you thought about that I didn't know that oh you know I thought what I posted was funny but nobody laughed that's useful information to me okay I want to know if I'm succeeding or not in what words I choose what phrases what ideas what topics and by the way, those touch points have evolved over the years.

[193] I've done this, a purposeful experiment.

[194] I took an identical tweet and just retweeted it five years after I first didn't, and reactions are different.

[195] Because of the time.

[196] The times have changed, that's correct.

[197] And so if I want to stay effective as an educator, first, I will never want them to meet me at the chalkboard or whatever boards are made of today.

[198] Because what is that?

[199] Okay, you're your professor.

[200] Professor Neal is facing the chalkboard, drawing on the board, and you either get them or you don't.

[201] Right.

[202] But that person cannot claim to be an educator.

[203] The educator is someone who faces the audience and wants to know, how is your brain wired for thought?

[204] And if I know that, I have a chance of shaping knowledge, information, insight in ways that can best be received by your receptors.

[205] And yes, if it's a mixture, so you dance a little bit.

[206] You put out some feelers in this way.

[207] So if I have an audience and some of them are over 75, look for the silver -haired folks, they'll remember, you know, the later stages of the Second World War and early stages of the Cold War, I'll throw in a reference just for them.

[208] You know, the 20 -somethings won't know, and they won't care.

[209] They probably won't even get it, buy it quickly enough that I offer the other community demographic in the audience of something else.

[210] And this is my way, maybe it's a tennis match.

[211] I'm hitting the ball back and forth to different people.

[212] And that way, I can take this body of knowledge that is the universe and have everybody share in it.

[213] Otherwise, I don't know that I can claim to be an educator.

[214] Well, you certainly can claim to be an educator, but maybe you're not making the best use of your particular abilities, your particular abilities that are unique to you or your humor and your fun, you're jovial, along with being deep and philosophical and talking about very heavy things.

[215] I found that matters.

[216] People, like I said, people like to smile.

[217] Yeah, they like silliness.

[218] You're a silly dude.

[219] It's fun.

[220] I mean, for a guy who talks about, yes, it is a compliment for a guy who talks about, like, really intense subjects, you know, the nature of infinity and different kinds of infinities Oh, you remember that?

[221] Yeah, I remember every you.

[222] Some affidies are bigger than other infinities.

[223] Yeah, which is what?

[224] What are you saying?

[225] I'm not going to let you get away with this alien thing, though.

[226] Oh, bring it back.

[227] No, bring it back.

[228] Bring it back to this alien thing.

[229] Damn, I thought I could.

[230] So this, it's weird to me that now the Pentagon is saying that these are real videos that they've captured off of naval vessels and they're been hovering over defense systems and they don't know what they are.

[231] They don't know how they operate.

[232] There's a film that was released recently by.

[233] by Jeremy Corbell that also came from the Navy where it shows one that's a transmedium device it actually flies through the air and then goes into the water and this is being filmed That's how they interpreted the information that was in front of them.

[234] Yeah, exactly.

[235] Just to be clear.

[236] Yes, but it did go in the water.

[237] There's a film of it actually going in the water and they talk about it splashing down.

[238] They're monitoring it.

[239] Well, they talked about there was a white caps where they think it was submerged I think.

[240] Wasn't that the description?

[241] Well, we could see it It actually went underwater, and then they went to look for it, and they couldn't find it.

[242] They used a submarine, they used sonar.

[243] They don't know what it is.

[244] Yes, so I hope they keep checking to find out what it is.

[245] It would be nice to know what that is.

[246] Oh, yeah.

[247] Something that can travel through the sky and it also goes through the ocean.

[248] That's pretty crazy.

[249] I want the military to understand that signal they're getting on their equipment.

[250] Yes.

[251] Because there's equipment between you and what's going on, typically, when it's sort of Navy sensors and trackers and that sort of thing.

[252] Other things are things people see in the sky with their own senses, right?

[253] Just the light in the sky and it moves in ways they don't understand or can't explain.

[254] So, but a point I've made before, I'll just rehash it here, we live in a time where everyone is equipped with a high -resolution color, camera, and video recorder.

[255] Basically everyone.

[256] And if you run the numbers on it, it's about, I got this from someone from Google, There's about six billion photos and videos uplifted to the Internet every day.

[257] And in that collection, you find really rare things that you only heard about, or maybe you saw the results of, but you didn't actually see it happen.

[258] You see, so there are videos of buses tumbling in the winds of a tornado.

[259] Now, in the aftermath of a tornado, there's a bus on its side, and so you knew when, took it there, but previously, no one is going to say, oh, that bus is about to lift into the air, Wizard of Oz style, like the house.

[260] Let me go in and get my movie camera and then come back out and shoot this.

[261] No one did that.

[262] If you did, you'd be stupid that you want to get the hell out of there, but everybody has a video camera.

[263] So we have images of this rare phenomenon, uncommon, hardly ever filmed, buses tumbling in the air.

[264] We have video.

[265] footage of animals doing interesting things that you that no we never had video recordings of like bears walking on two feet we have bears and and one of them right at a traffic cone there's a video of that it was just walking down the street and there's a traffic cone and it looked at it and it was tipped over and it righted it and she kept walking and I'm thinking wow this is what bears do when we're not chasing them or when they're not chasing us this is just a casual they're mammals they have large brains you know compared to any other kinds of...

[266] They're oddly playful, too.

[267] Yes, and they love people's backyard swimming pools, apparently.

[268] And benches.

[269] You ever seen them on picnic benches?

[270] And they're just chilling on the bench?

[271] They lay on benches and roll around a picnic benches?

[272] Yeah.

[273] So, and in another case, I saw it was a magpie, one of these birds known for how smart it is.

[274] There is a full, you know, half -liter you know, plastic thing of water.

[275] It was just water.

[276] Okay?

[277] you know a water bottle and it was full so the magpie goes over and sips out the water now you can only it's the beak is only what an inch and a half long or an inch at moat so it goes in until it can't reach the water anymore so what does it do it goes off to the side gets a rock just the right size drops it into the water bottle and raises the level of there by displacing water here it is that is you've got the there it is and so it's how it comes it comes it and it goes back and gets another stone, drops it in, and every time it drops it in, the water level rises and it can drink more water.

[278] And it just, it keeps doing this.

[279] That's pretty amazing.

[280] Okay?

[281] And so, so every time we study animals, they're smarter than we ever thought they were.

[282] So maybe for our own ego, we kept building ourselves up saying how separate and distinct we are as humans in the animal kingdom.

[283] when maybe we're not as separate and distinct as we think we are.

[284] So, now what's my broader point there that I was making?

[285] I just distracted myself.

[286] Something about UFOs?

[287] Yeah, I know.

[288] I was trying to get back to UFOs on that.

[289] The fact that we have high -resolution cameras in our pocket and we take videos of things that are very unusual.

[290] Exactly.

[291] So here's video of a magpie doing Bernoulli experiments in a water bottle.

[292] Who would have known that even happened, right?

[293] Right.

[294] Okay, you can't bring the bird into a lab and maybe you could, but I don't know that anyone did.

[295] All right, here's my point.

[296] In the 1960s and 70s, there were many, many reports of alien abductions.

[297] People said, the aliens came to me and they brought me in and then they released me. Do you have any footage?

[298] No, they took my camera.

[299] Or no, they zapped my film and now there's no image on the film.

[300] But there were countless stories.

[301] Well, now you can stream live from your camera, anything that's going on in front of you.

[302] So if the aliens come and they want to abduct, you can stream it.

[303] That would be instantly viral.

[304] Oh, my gosh.

[305] You know, the stuff that goes viral is much less than that.

[306] A cat, a kitten that jumps to the table and falls, that goes viral.

[307] You don't think video footage of an alien is not going to go viral instantly?

[308] but there's none so I'm just saying I'm thinking if we were being visited somebody would have some good footage if we were being visited I'm thinking maybe Google satellite images would catch spaceships that are not airplanes moving on our surface if we were being visited I'm thinking we'd have something better than fuzzy monochromatic video of objects that apparently reveal themselves only to Navy pilots, right?

[309] One of the reasons is most of these sightings actually occur far offshore in the ocean, and the speculation is this is one of the ways, obviously I'm going to put my tinfoil hat on nice and tight.

[310] Do your thing.

[311] This is one of the ways that they monitor us.

[312] The best way to do it is to do it where they hold their base where no one is around, which is the ocean.

[313] No, that's not true.

[314] So they go in the ocean, they pop up, and they fly out.

[315] It's not true.

[316] What do you mean it's not true?

[317] It's not true.

[318] Yeah, nobody lives on the ocean.

[319] Yes, that's correct.

[320] In the ocean.

[321] Well, so, oh, it lives down undersea.

[322] This is what the speculation is.

[323] Oh, okay, it lives down under sea.

[324] That's why these transmedium devices have been.

[325] Okay.

[326] These transmedium crafts have been observed.

[327] If you want, if you are sure we are being visited by aliens and you don't actually have really good evidence, then you have to say that.

[328] Sure.

[329] Well, you know that.

[330] You have to say that.

[331] You have to say this is really happening.

[332] and they're observing us and they're concealing themselves in this particular way.

[333] You have to say that.

[334] So that's sort of, that's your way to maintain your alien belief system by saying that.

[335] And I don't have a problem with it.

[336] Go get them.

[337] Go get them.

[338] But all of what has been put forth as evidence for aliens to me is insufficient evidence to excite my interest, my research interest in devoting time to finding it out.

[339] But it definitely is excited other people.

[340] I have not stopped them.

[341] I am not saying defund the military program on UAPs, which, of course, is just updated UFO.

[342] I know.

[343] They like to say that now because there's like a stigma to UFO.

[344] I know.

[345] That's just that's a really transparent.

[346] Sneaky way.

[347] No, no, it's not even sneaky.

[348] It's actually, I think it's embarrassing.

[349] It's like maybe if we call them UAPs.

[350] People take them seriously.

[351] People take them seriously.

[352] No. I'm of the belief that they're probably akin to.

[353] what we did on Mars.

[354] I don't think there's aliens in them.

[355] I have a feeling that these things are probes.

[356] And I feel like if you just think about biological entities flying through the universe, like, why do that?

[357] When you have sophisticated technology that's good enough right now from our, like relatively primitive in consideration of what we think is possible a million years from now, right?

[358] But we can send that Mars rover around.

[359] We have a helicopter on Mars.

[360] I mean, there's multiple satellites flying through the universe right now, taking images.

[361] We can do all that.

[362] Yeah, but our probes are not targeting the Martian military fighter pilots.

[363] Because there's no Martian military, but if there were, we certainly would.

[364] They're just sitting out in the open.

[365] Right, but if we had something like, are you familiar with one of the most famous cases was a case with Commander David Fravor of the Navy who encountered with one of the or two other jets off of the Nimitz, they encountered this thing that was shaped like a tick -tack.

[366] Yeah.

[367] You know the story.

[368] Everybody knows this, yeah.

[369] The story.

[370] It went from, they tracked it going from 80 ,000 feet above sea level to 50 in less than a second.

[371] They have no idea how it moved.

[372] There's no visible propulsion system.

[373] It was blocking their radar.

[374] It was actively blocking tracking.

[375] This is what their sensors told them.

[376] Exactly.

[377] Just be clear about that.

[378] And then...

[379] You're stating information as though it is facts.

[380] I'm stating information as Commander Fravor related.

[381] That doesn't matter.

[382] He's human.

[383] We're all human here.

[384] But as a scientist, when you're presenting information, you don't say this thing was at 80 ,000 feet and it dropped to zero to sea level in one second or whatever it was the measure.

[385] Yes.

[386] That's the wrong way to report it.

[387] What you say is we have sensors that told us this is what happened.

[388] I understand what you're saying.

[389] Okay.

[390] Yes.

[391] That's a very important distinction.

[392] Yes.

[393] And so, so now, all right, your first question then, tell me about the censors.

[394] Yeah.

[395] Okay.

[396] Are they double -checked?

[397] Are they, you know?

[398] So, but if you're just going to say, there's this craft at 80 ,000 within it, then everyone is thinking about a craft.

[399] And no one is thinking about the sensor.

[400] They actually saw it with their eyes, too.

[401] This is something that they actually got.

[402] You can't see something at 80 ,000 feet.

[403] No, the actual visual on the craft.

[404] Okay.

[405] They didn't see it at 80 ,000 feet, but this craft, it's not just something that was tracked with equipment.

[406] Got it, but they didn't see it at 80 ,000 feet.

[407] That's my point.

[408] So, by the way, this level of attention I'm giving to the detail and the reporting of information, we do that with fellow scientists for much less.

[409] Oh, for sure.

[410] than if we're being visited by intelligent aliens from another planet.

[411] Go visit a, go to a scientific conference and watch the level of scrutiny we put on other people's work.

[412] If they have a sensor that has a new result, we'll say, did you calibrate the sensor?

[413] How long has the sensor been in use?

[414] I'll give you an example.

[415] Here's an example.

[416] Do you remember Planet X?

[417] Yes.

[418] The search for Planet X. Nibiru.

[419] That was one There was, sorry, there were several incarnations of Planet X That was among them Okay, that was the most blacky I'm talking about a hundred years ago Planet X, okay?

[420] Oh, a hundred years ago?

[421] Well, there's several Planet X's right, so Uranus was moving weirdly, nobody understood, maybe there's a planet beyond it whose gravity we have yet to reckon in our equations.

[422] Oh, boom!

[423] We discover Neptune.

[424] Wait a minute, Neptune is moving a little a little unfamiliarly why my phone is sorry about that you're going to drop that thing and break it with no case on so yeah this i got the 12 and yeah i can still do this i'm just sorry yeah i get it last time you were here you had a broken case you're a broken back remember so uh why are you distracting me i was like on a roll um and Neptune Neptune so Neptune we're looking at Neptune's orbit, and it's not following Newton's laws.

[425] And this is odd.

[426] Well, we've been down that road before.

[427] Uranus didn't follow Newton's laws.

[428] We proposed another planet, and we found it.

[429] So Neptune's not following all the laws of gravity that from all the other planets in the sun, there must be another planet out there, a planet X. Let's look for it.

[430] Is that Bode's law?

[431] Bode's law is a fitting function that gets you, it got a little more attention than it deserved.

[432] It's just that planets, every next planet is about twice as far away from the sun as the previous one.

[433] So you just make a quick equation out of that.

[434] Oh, that's it?

[435] But it doesn't work for Mercury and it didn't work for Pluto.

[436] I thought it was based on the mass of the planet.

[437] No, not at all.

[438] Mass has nothing to do there.

[439] And it predicted the asteroid belt, but the asteroid belt, there's no planet there.

[440] Right.

[441] And if you glued together all the pieces of the asteroid belt, you get something like 5 % the mass of the moon.

[442] So, yeah, it gave us the location of the Astroboat belt, but that's not a planet.

[443] So, Bowles Law, it's fun to play with, but, you know, there are limits to how far you want to declare its relevance to the actual universe.

[444] So we're out here at Neptune, and so I said, maybe there's a Planet X. Everybody started looking.

[445] Everybody started looking, including Percival Lowell.

[446] All right, back in the 1920s.

[447] And he says, I want to find Planet X because something's perturbing Neptune.

[448] tune.

[449] So he sets out looking for it and he doesn't find it.

[450] Then he hires Clyde Tombaugh.

[451] And he dies so he doesn't see the results of this.

[452] Clyde Tombo, he said, I can't find it either.

[453] I will just systematically search everywhere.

[454] Because if you think something's affecting you gravitationally, you ought to have some idea where it is to be tugging on you in that way.

[455] All right?

[456] That's not some kind of weird.

[457] It's like you're moving differently.

[458] Where must the thing be to tug on you so that you're moving in that way.

[459] No one could find such a planet X. So Klein and Tombo said, it's got to be out there somewhere.

[460] I will systematically image the entire sky.

[461] All right.

[462] You got to do it on multiple nights because if something's moving, you'd see it change from one picture to an X. He does this, discovers Pluto.

[463] Was Pluto where Planet X was supposed to have been?

[464] No. Was Pluto the mass that Planet X should have been?

[465] Everyone assumed it was.

[466] But over the decades, the mass of Pluto got lower and lower and lower as our estimates got more and more accurate.

[467] Then we found out that Pluto is one -fifth the mass of our moon made of half ice.

[468] And this is why Pluto got into trouble later in the 20th century.

[469] It's not because we had some vendetta against Pluto.

[470] Pluto just never belonged in that list to begin with.

[471] That's really how you need to think about it.

[472] Anyhow, there's still the matter of Neptune's orbit.

[473] Pluto did not have enough mass to make those changes.

[474] So the search for Planet X continued.

[475] So what happens?

[476] All right.

[477] 1993.

[478] A colleague of mine named Miles Standish.

[479] Okay?

[480] He's probably related to the Miles Standish on the Mayflower.

[481] He, as an astrophysicist, looked at all of the data people were using to say Neptune's orbit was crooked.

[482] Looked at all the data.

[483] Then he found out that at one particular observatory, was it the gearbox or the timing mechanism, had just been cleaned or swapped out?

[484] Or there was some, because in the observing log, you write down everything because you just don't know.

[485] Okay, was there a glitch in the current?

[486] Was there a bird fly over?

[487] You make notes of everything.

[488] One of the observatories whose data was being grafted together with the other observatories had this, it a gearbox, I don't remember if it was a gearbox.

[489] There was some mechanical adjustment that was made.

[490] He said, I wonder if that had an effect on the positioning of this telescope.

[491] He removed those data from his analysis and fitted data to all the other telescopes that he had for the positions of Uranus of Neptune.

[492] When he did that, Planet X evaporated in that instance.

[493] instant.

[494] In that instant, there was no Planet X. All the other data, when he connects across, removing the data from the one where the observing log said they did something different, Neptune fell right onto Newton's laws.

[495] And so since 1993, there is no Planet X. And Pluto, and we're, not for that, we probably would have been a long time before we discovered Pluto because no one would have looked for it.

[496] They found another, like...

[497] Let me just finish the...

[498] The lesson there.

[499] Okay.

[500] The lesson there is you have information that you think is correct from your sensors.

[501] This was an observatory, a fine observatory.

[502] And you're going to say, this observatory says Neptune is misbehaving.

[503] But then you learn there was something wrong with the data.

[504] You throw it out.

[505] So I'm just trying to say this happens all the time in science.

[506] You have to be careful what you're analyzing before you declare that what the thing measured is true and then realign all your resources to address what you think is true when it might have just simply been a glitch or multiple glitches or anything.

[507] And we do this all the time in science.

[508] So you were saying.

[509] Well, several things.

[510] One, when we're talking about planetoids and planets, the idea about Pluto is that Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt, right?

[511] It's the first and currently known largest member of the Kuiper Belt.

[512] And it makes sense, you know, we didn't even know the Kuiper Belt existed in 1930.

[513] So for us, it's just the ninth planet.

[514] But it's the tiniest and the littlest, and it's got a weird orbit that crosses the orbit of other planets.

[515] And that's a little weird, but we'll grandfather it in.

[516] Okay, Pluto.

[517] And then wait a minute, you have Brethren.

[518] The 1990s, we discovered other objects out there with similar orbits to Pluto.

[519] So maybe Pluto is not the ninth planet.

[520] It's the first object in a new swath of real estate discovered in the outer solar system called the Kuiper Belt.

[521] That's where it stands right now.

[522] And this Kuiper Belt, there was some speculation.

[523] Now, I read this quite a while ago, so forgive me. But there was some speculation that we might be in some sort of a binary star system and there might be like a burnt out star that's way, way, way outside.

[524] of our solar system.

[525] Yeah, I mean, that's causing the galactic shelf to drop off, like this, this Kuiper belt is responding to some other gravity that's way out there?

[526] So, okay.

[527] So, do I garble all that up?

[528] You mix like three or four different scenarios.

[529] That's common for me. There was a while there where we looked at the extinction records of species on Earth and found some periodicity to it.

[530] I forgot, was it every 20 million years?

[531] or something.

[532] There was some period that repeated where the fossil records showed a dramatic drop, or a mile drop in the species count from one layer to the next in the geological sediment.

[533] And so if this has a rhythm to it, there is nothing in the solar system that has a 20 million year rhythm.

[534] So someone suggested maybe the sun has a really eccentric, as in its orbit, it's in a binary star system where there's another star that plunges in through the solar system coming through the Kuiper belt and then goes back out in this dance with the sun.

[535] So we wouldn't have seen it in our civilization because this is, all right, but when it does that, it disrupts the Kuiper Belt gravitationally.

[536] And if you do that, you will send a rain of comets down, a higher than average rate of comets down into the inner solar system, and then you could render many life forms extinct on Earth, just the way we lost the dinosaurs from an asteroid.

[537] So, and they even gave a name for it.

[538] They called it Nemesis.

[539] That was the nemesis double star system of the sun.

[540] But so we took a closer look at the data.

[541] It turned out it had been filtered in a way that revealed rhythms that were not really there.

[542] And if it's orbital, the rhythm should be perfect because Newton's law doesn't mess around and they weren't exactly right.

[543] So that concept has evaporated, but it got people going for a while.

[544] It got a lot of press attention.

[545] And the part about the Khyber Belt, about the galactic shelf that there seems to be some sort of a drop off?

[546] Okay, so now with regard to, so another scenario, which got folded into yours, is that our orbit around the galaxy is not sort of a straight circle, I mean, a clean circle.

[547] We actually wave in and out of the plane of the galaxy.

[548] All right, like a, if you imagine sort of Nessy, Locknest Monster doing that.

[549] Okay.

[550] So, to imagine, so our orbit, our entire solar system is dipping up and out and through.

[551] So another suggestion was, in fact, I think it was an entire book on this, forgive me for not remembering the name, it suggested that the entire solar system, as it passes through the plane of the galaxy, that disrupts the Khyber Belt as well.

[552] And that lodges, you know, it's basically the Khyber Belt says lobbing.

[553] comets bed down into this inter into the inner solar system and so you can look for that in the extinction record as well so and it was suggested that that might have been what took out the dinosaur one of those kind of passages through so but anyhow yeah I mean there's no shortage of excuses for killing the dinosaurs yeah for sure out there when you when you think about this idea of everyone having these video cameras in their pocket and high resolution imagery and that where is that stuff.

[554] But the absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence.

[555] It can be.

[556] So I'll give you an example.

[557] Okay.

[558] Because that's a mantra.

[559] Right.

[560] All right.

[561] And in science, so philosophically, that's true.

[562] But in practice, in science, we do that all the time.

[563] Okay.

[564] So I'll give an example.

[565] It's a contrived example, but it's a clean example.

[566] There's a cave nearby.

[567] You're, you're mountain man. And there's a cave nearby.

[568] And you're worried it might have bears in it.

[569] So you don't want to go poking around.

[570] So you conduct some experiments.

[571] So here's what you do.

[572] You put chalk dust around the entrance to the cave.

[573] And you check it every day for a month.

[574] And there are no bear prints in the chalk dust.

[575] You winter comes, okay?

[576] And you notice there are no footprints in the snow.

[577] Of course, well, maybe the bear snuck in and you didn't see it, and it's hibernating.

[578] That could be so, perhaps.

[579] Well, you wait until springtime.

[580] So you keep doing this without ever going in the cave.

[581] And you have no evidence of a bear going in and out of that cave over a normal cycle of time that a bear might go in and out of a cave.

[582] That is evidence of absence, in a sense.

[583] okay in a very specific place correct so at that point you'd say well i didn't go in the cave to check but i have enough evidence to say the bear is not there right so so it's the thing well you can't prove a negative i kind of just did i'm saying there is no bear there and no i did i prove it in a in a in a in a fully logical mathematical sense no but scientifically i've gathered enough information to convince me there's no bear in the cave and I will operate on that assumption going forward.

[584] And so much science happens that way and it's where it works.

[585] And you think that's a valid way to dismiss the lack of UFO evidence because these people have these phones and they're just all filming and taking photographs of things constantly.

[586] What would happen?

[587] You can ask you perfectly allowed to say what would happen if we were visited by aliens and you crowdsourced the access to aliens among seven billion people in the world.

[588] How many people are out in the middle of the ocean?

[589] You have, so I was going to get to that.

[590] Have you ever seen the flight paths of airplanes in a single day, single 24 out?

[591] It is completely wild.

[592] It's like, what If you show this to the Wright brothers from 1903, dude.

[593] So across the oceans, of course, there are traffic paths, right, where you're more likely to find them than in other paths because there's either no destination there or the Great Circle Route doesn't favor it.

[594] But you look at how often every single day the sky, the airspace is crisscrossed by way more commercial carriers than military vehicles.

[595] And I'm thinking you'd have an encounter with something that was not a fuzzy object that no one can describe.

[596] They would photograph something through the cockpit window.

[597] I mean, why not?

[598] You'd see something.

[599] There was a recent siting by a bunch of American Airlines pilots.

[600] By two, I should say, not a bunch of.

[601] Yeah, it can happen.

[602] Again, you get the more, I don't know what I'm looking at.

[603] Yeah, but was it detailed?

[604] Did you have...

[605] If you had a guess, if you had a bet, like if you had a pile of money and you have to put it on...

[606] green for aliens or red for horseshit where are you putting your money you're forcing a binary decision here yeah I am I am but I wouldn't call it horseshit I would say um I would say not aliens not aliens right I don't think there's things in most of those crafts but I think those crafts are some kind of drone and I'm not convinced that they're from another planet Sure, I don't have a problem with that.

[607] And if you, by the way, the, if you, if you, if this thing that they see out the window, okay, and they don't get a good photo or it's still fuzzy or it's still a light in the sky.

[608] And, and I'm saying, okay, I'm not yet convinced, but it's something.

[609] Fine.

[610] Go invest resources to figure it out, especially if you think it's a security risk.

[611] If you want to believe it's aliens, I'm not, if they didn't want us to see them, you would never see them.

[612] I'm pretty sure.

[613] If they had enough technology to cross the vacuum of space to reach us, that you would just never, you wouldn't even know where they were there.

[614] I agree.

[615] You just would have no idea.

[616] Perhaps the way that they slowly integrate into our consciousness, into our acceptance of their existence, is a trickle effect.

[617] Okay.

[618] Every now and then we see a video.

[619] Now, think of the hubris of us saying, this advanced civilization of aliens who can cross the gaps of space, are interested in us and our gonads.

[620] and they want to paint circles in our crops.

[621] That's kind of weird, I would think.

[622] Okay, I hate this argument.

[623] I just think it's a little weird.

[624] I don't think we're that interesting.

[625] I think we're really fucking interesting.

[626] I think we can nuke the entire planet many times over, and yet we don't.

[627] We did it once in 1947.

[628] We bullshit each other constantly.

[629] We spew out propaganda.

[630] We have this bizarre ritual where every four years we pick a leader based on a popularity contest.

[631] Who you want to have beer with?

[632] Yeah, we're constantly.

[633] involved in murder and rape and genocide all over the world we choose what things to pay attention to what not to pay attention to we celebrate people who pretend to be heroes and films and television and we barely know scientists who win Nobel prizes we're fucking fascinating we're the weirdest things to whom the weirdest things let's say you were if you studied us if you were from another planet filled with things like us like there was another planet of us and we found a planet doing this exact same kind of nonsense that we do somewhere else, we would be riveted.

[634] Here's how I think about another planet, if I can share this.

[635] This is a little deep, if you're ready for that.

[636] Oh, please.

[637] So whether you are vegetarian or omnivore or carnivore, you must kill something that was alive to survive.

[638] Okay?

[639] Yes.

[640] The only thing that you consume that was never once alive is sort of basically milk and honey, okay, and salt.

[641] Everything else was once alive.

[642] You're killing.

[643] And, of course, vegetarians are doing it as well.

[644] In fact, I'm intrigued that vegetarians in particular will focus on the baby version of the plant they would otherwise be eating.

[645] Baby spinach, baby carrots, baby arugula, baby this.

[646] baby that and on the sort of reproductive organs of plants oh let's eat the the flowers or the seeds or the nuts or these are things that the plants trying to make another plant with you collect it and eat it so now imagine a civilization from another planet that is entirely energized by photosynthesis just imagine that okay maybe they have what we would call an animal but their entire skin photosynthesizes.

[647] Okay?

[648] So all living creatures on that planet consume sunlight from their home star.

[649] Okay.

[650] And so they say, I want to explore the galaxy.

[651] And so they build a spaceship and they come to Earth and what do they see?

[652] Humans and other animals killing to survive.

[653] Inventing means of mass. murder of fellow other life forms on their planet just to survive.

[654] They would consider us astonishingly, inexcusably, bewilderingly barbaric for having done so.

[655] And I don't think they would be interested in us.

[656] I think if they really are using photosynthesis, they're plant -based creatures, they're probably going to be so tired all the time they're not going to have the will to travel through the universe you're confusing the vegetarian with the plant life oh it's different that's right you're confusing oh well it plants themselves they don't go anywhere old man who wrestles elk and plants themselves rips out its heart and bites from it is that what you did on that hunting trip plants don't go anywhere they just sit they just stay put oh yeah they would also say nothing that uses photosynthesis moves.

[657] But I'm talking about another planet.

[658] Just imagine a planet that that's the case.

[659] I know.

[660] In my planet, they're all lazy.

[661] Okay, but except, consider an encounter between you, your car, and an oak tree.

[662] You lose.

[663] Yes.

[664] And the oak tree produces, and it's still not moving.

[665] Out, it has, because it doesn't need to.

[666] Right.

[667] Here.

[668] Okay.

[669] Can I name drop for a minute?

[670] Please.

[671] Can I name drop.

[672] I love a good name drop.

[673] Okay.

[674] Stephen Spielberg once, swung by my office.

[675] Well, we've met, we've met.

[676] Tell him I'm a big fan.

[677] I'll tell him, I'll tell him.

[678] And he had one of his kids.

[679] He had several kids.

[680] He had brought one to the Hayden Planetarium in my office.

[681] And the museum got word that he was in town.

[682] He has an apartment nearby.

[683] So they asked if he could come by in addition to other activities at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City where I work.

[684] That's my day job.

[685] So he comes in and we're talking and I say hi to his kid.

[686] And it's like kids like in middle school at the time.

[687] And so I said, I got to talk to him about some of his work.

[688] So I said, let's talk E .T. So, sure.

[689] That's when I learned.

[690] He said he imagined E .T. As vegetable, not as animal.

[691] Hmm.

[692] And that's why, among other reasons, E .T. has this power to rejuvenate plants with his finger because it's actually a plant.

[693] And so that's an example.

[694] No, it's fictional, of course.

[695] but it's an example of thinking outside of an earth box.

[696] Sure.

[697] And if you think outside of an earth box, there you go.

[698] That is a life form that would not understand us.

[699] They would think we, how could such a world exist?

[700] And on top of that, there's how we treat each other.

[701] Yes.

[702] All right, that's, and by the way, I bet, yeah, I'm one of those who's a little worried when we give our return address broadcast out into space because you don't give your email to strangers in the street yet we're giving the coordinates of earth broadcast out to the gaps of interstellar space so I'm a little worried about that but then I think about it and I say nearly every portrayal of an alien in Hollywood is evil going right on back to war of the world with HG Wells and I'm thinking why do we have any insights that aliens would be evil or is it really a mirror to ourselves?

[703] It's not imagined knowledge of how aliens would behave.

[704] It's actual knowledge of how we have behaved.

[705] But what about the day the Earth stood still?

[706] It's one of the first.

[707] Well, it's one of the rare ones where the aliens.

[708] Well, no, the War of the World's long predates that by half a century.

[709] Right.

[710] So, but on balance, the aliens are evil, okay?

[711] And that's all I'm saying.

[712] Yes.

[713] And so we are, I see those portrayals as unwitting mirrors of our own conduct because an alien coming to Earth has a greater technology than we do, period.

[714] That's just, end the story.

[715] So how has it gone on Earth any time one civilization with higher technology encounters one with lesser technology?

[716] It has never boated well.

[717] for the society with lesser technology.

[718] They've been enslaved, killed, put in camps, exterminated.

[719] So I think we fear aliens because, in fact, we fear ourselves.

[720] We fear what we would do if we had the capability to go to another planet like they do to us.

[721] I think we do that unwittingly.

[722] That's what's manifesting in our storytelling.

[723] I think it represents what we see out of human beings, sure.

[724] That's that.

[725] So getting back to the UFO reports and sites, you know, the headline I saw recently says, Pentagon confirms UFOs are real, that's, that title has no meaning.

[726] Well, it gets me happy.

[727] Well, no, no, it has no meaning.

[728] I know what you're saying.

[729] Yeah, it just has no meaning.

[730] It's unidentified, so unidentified things are real.

[731] Yeah, of course.

[732] That doesn't mean anything.

[733] It doesn't mean they're aliens.

[734] If the title said, Pentagon confirms, UFOs are actually.

[735] aliens, that, that is a headline.

[736] Right.

[737] That's a good headline right there.

[738] But that's not what anybody can report.

[739] What do you think this whole ramping up of all this information is?

[740] All the, all the videos and all the conversations about it, the article in the New York Times.

[741] Yeah, it's part of what the Trump said into motion.

[742] I mean, the landscape was ripe for it, but the, oh, by the way, was it, UFO sightings went up during COVID, I think, because everyone was home bored with nothing to do and you'd go out and look out, up, you know.

[743] Makes sense.

[744] Yeah, there's a lot of cultural statistics related to the frequency of UFO sightings.

[745] But Trump, just before he left office, required, he slipped something into the COVID relief bill as they do so often in Congress where you agree with the rest of this.

[746] I don't agree with that, but I want to get it through.

[747] So he put that in?

[748] Yes.

[749] Well, under his administration.

[750] It's under his administration.

[751] It's under his administration.

[752] within six months, he wants all federal agencies that collect information on unidentified sky objects to put together reports and deliver to Congress within six months.

[753] Fine.

[754] I don't have a problem with that.

[755] What's weird, though, is this belief that somehow the government is some repository of knowledge and secrets that we don't otherwise have access to.

[756] That's not the kind of country we live in, nor is the government that competent, right?

[757] So, yeah, they try to keep secrets, and they keep many secrets.

[758] They tend to be of the uninteresting kind.

[759] But if you have an interesting secret, if you're stockpiling aliens and you're telling me the secretary, the admin, the janitor, that they're not sneaking out an iPhone photo?

[760] Really?

[761] Really?

[762] Really?

[763] Do you think it's that simple?

[764] Really?

[765] Do you think it's that simple?

[766] Christopher Mellon, who worked for the Defense Department, he came on and was talking to us about.

[767] You get all the inside folks here, yeah.

[768] And that was, it was an intriguing conversation because he is of the belief that they have had access to some objects and some crafts and some things that are unexplainable.

[769] And don't seem to come from any technology that we, and I don't want to put any words in his mouth, but any technology that we're currently capable of reproducing.

[770] Okay.

[771] I mean, he might have seen something that the military was actually working on.

[772] that would be mysterious to someone who is only familiar with unclassified propulsion systems and the like.

[773] So...

[774] Do you think it's possible that a propulsion system is so outside of the norm, something that is not working off burning fuel, something that's working off some new technology that is, whether it's some sort of gravity distorting or gravity -based technology, that that could actually be conceived in a vacuum where they could get the top scientists that work in propulsion, And people that do understand, I mean, as much as we do understand gravity, as much as we understand the possibility of some sort of propulsion system, it's pretty minimal, right, in terms of like mainstream.

[775] Yeah, we're still primitive with our propulsion system.

[776] Is it possible that this could all be done in a vacuum, that it could all be done without anybody ever having known about it, and they could produce something that's so preposterously advanced from anything we've been capable of making before?

[777] Advances tend not to be large leaps like that.

[778] It seems more likely that it's from a different source than from human beings.

[779] If what he's describing is true, then it would not be incremental.

[780] I mean, we tend to do things incrementally.

[781] That's just the nature of discovery and human innovation.

[782] So if something actually can move the way supposedly these units that they these these various tracking systems that they have that can follow something from 80 ,000 feet above sea level I'm saying we don't understand it we don't understand yeah if it's actually a thing yeah we have no there's no physics that explains it that we know of and if something can move that way if it's confirmed that the systems are accurate and that this thing does move that fast and can do things that are beyond our capability currently as far as we understand it.

[783] Would it be more likely that it would come from some other advanced civilization outside of Earth, or would it be more likely that it was conceived in a vacuum here without anybody having any access to any of the technology in these incremental forms?

[784] So it's possible you can have like, you know, black ops, as they say.

[785] You know, you look at the airplanes that came out of Lockheed Martin during the Cold War.

[786] These were all the secret and they They gave the engineers.

[787] A kind of incremental.

[788] Sure, but they looked really different and they behaved very differently and they had, so yes, it was still incremental, but let's imagine, you know, a deep black ops where, yeah, they're making their own incremental changes but you don't get to see them.

[789] So by the time it shows up, it looks like it's a big leap, even though they got there incrementally.

[790] And that was unreported, sure.

[791] Doesn't science rely on other scientists to coordinate with, like other science to review data and to share ideas.

[792] And it also presumes that the government has the best scientist, and that's simply not the case.

[793] Right.

[794] That's what I would always think.

[795] The best scientists are going to go to the private sector because there's more money there.

[796] Or academia where you have freedom of research.

[797] Some will go because you can, there's, there is money in the military, but you're forced to work on projects that might not be the, the most creative investment of your own energies.

[798] you hire a physicist make a bomb at the end of this so it would take something pretty monumental for you to shift your belief to this is probably not belief it's not a belief is show me an alien show me give me something that i don't i'm not of the belief that these things are populated okay okay they may be and maybe maybe it's happened before but when i'm hearing about these things flying around and i'm seeing what we're doing on mars i'm like yeah it's a better version of that you You know what?

[799] It's a much better story to me, is the Transformers, the origin story of the Transformers.

[800] They're cars, and then they become robots.

[801] No, no. I don't claim to know the whole franchise, but the little bit of it that I know.

[802] By the way, they had an error in one of the movies where they're coming to Earth, and they go by the moon, and they see the Apollo site.

[803] Yeah, they see the Apollo site and the lander's there.

[804] And it still has the pod that carries the astronauts.

[805] Oh, whoops.

[806] Yeah, yeah, that's not, that returned to the command module that went, they came back.

[807] You just see the base, all right?

[808] But it's not as interesting, right?

[809] So they, so that was either on purpose or it was an oversight.

[810] So the claim is they were found and came into the Arctic or wherever.

[811] No one saw it happen except the military because we're monitoring the Arctic because that's where rockets get, you know, we're on the case here.

[812] Then they get captured and we want to mine them for the technology that's in them.

[813] But we want to do it in a way nobody knows.

[814] So where do you do this?

[815] Oh, let's build a dam.

[816] So the Hoover Dam was the cover project for the analysis of the Transformers that we had captured.

[817] And then beginning, so Hoover Dam was 1920s, right?

[818] When was Hoover?

[819] 1920s into the 30s?

[820] Beginning in 1930s, we catapulted.

[821] Quantum physics was invented.

[822] Lasers were invented.

[823] Miniaturization of electronics were invented.

[824] And it was all claimed to be traceable to this new technology that we reverse engineered, beginning with that research lab built into.

[825] I thought that was brilliant.

[826] That was a brilliant way to say that.

[827] Or we're just humans are smart, and we invented that ourselves.

[828] Yeah, I never watched the Transformers, man Okay, okay, I'm just saying, I'm just, it's okay It was a clever, it was a clever weaving of a story Of a science fiction story into our culture I thought it was a brilliant Yeah, the rest of it, no, when they're fighting each other Yeah, it's stupid I'm optimistic pride No, I'm not doing that It's ridiculous And then you're a sports car on the side, no Yeah, I'm not, fuck out of here.

[829] I love a good alien movie, though.

[830] I think my favorite is John Carpenter's The Thing.

[831] That was a good one.

[832] I got to go back.

[833] That's one way.

[834] It had crashed into Antarctica or something like that.

[835] They were frozen forever, and then they discovered it.

[836] They were, like, digging in, and they found this thing, and then it came out, and it would transform and become, like, an identical copy of whatever it touched.

[837] You don't remember that?

[838] No, no, I don't think I saw, no, I didn't see that.

[839] But I do know what came, what, the blob, I thought, was a very creative alien.

[840] That one didn't have a mouth or legs or arms or teeth or eyes or stomach or that, can you, and they could go through the air conditioning ducts.

[841] It could ooze under the door.

[842] You couldn't avoid it.

[843] And what people forget about the blob is that when it first landed, it was, completely transparent after it ate its first victim only then was it red and was read for the whole rest of the movie really yeah I don't even remember that movie much yeah it had Steve McQueen in one of his first films was it really yeah Steve McQueen was in the blob wow yeah I when I look at what we're doing with human beings and you know the replacing people's knees and replacing people's hips and artificial this and artificial that.

[844] And then with CRISPR and genetic engineering, I think it's a matter of time before we are some sort of symbiotic thing.

[845] We're partially created by, you know, whatever technology is available at the time, whether it's 100 years from now or 500 years from now.

[846] Something that's going to be superior that's not going to provide us with all the problems.

[847] It's already happened.

[848] You just don't think about it that way.

[849] With your phone and your glasses.

[850] No, no, no, no, no. Even before that.

[851] are symbiotic with chemistry.

[852] You're living twice as long, better living through chemistry.

[853] Sure.

[854] Okay, you have, we control your cholesterol, your inflammation, you're, we know how to reduce the chance of stroke.

[855] So you're thinking very narrow on this.

[856] So I need a new kneecap or I need a new this.

[857] The fact is, science and technology has already been infused in the human condition in a way that, for example, has doubled a life expectancy within the last 150 years.

[858] So it's already happening chemically.

[859] So now you want to do it mechanically because that requires material science, and that's a much later field than chemistry was developed in order to contribute to what our lives are.

[860] Now you want to get into our DNA.

[861] That's just the next level.

[862] Okay.

[863] Now, are we going to have some Internet infused in our head?

[864] I don't think so But that's what Elon's working on I don't think Why would you do that When the entire internet is In your palm of your hand Because you don't You have to touch that stupid thing You might drop it Oh What Elon's doing What you're saying is I don't want to touch this Yes open up my skull And put in an internet transmitter Yeah yeah That's better But it makes you smarter So does the smartphone No no no But like much smarter What he's saying is It's going to increase the bandwidth that you have to access information.

[865] You're going to be able to access information quicker because it's not going to go through all these...

[866] Okay, so people can do stupid things quicker in the face of information that you think is correct.

[867] One of the things that Elon said to me is people will no longer have to talk with words.

[868] You're not going to have to speak with your mind.

[869] Look at what people are doing with the information they currently have.

[870] They don't even know what is true.

[871] Some people.

[872] Now you want to accelerate that by a factor of a thousand.

[873] Yes, maybe they'll learn.

[874] That is the missing chapter in the apocalypse in the Bible, okay?

[875] Maybe it's not.

[876] Maybe it's the cure.

[877] Maybe when people are acutely aware of what they actually know.

[878] Don't equate knowledge with wisdom.

[879] Well, maybe it can bestow wisdom.

[880] I don't find wisdom on the internet.

[881] I find knowledge.

[882] You can find some wisdom.

[883] You got to go to the right people.

[884] You got to go to the correct means.

[885] Okay, but you've got to plow through the knowledge, some of which, much of it, maybe most of which is false.

[886] That's a problem.

[887] But occasionally you get nuggets of wisdom.

[888] Yes.

[889] Want to see a nugget of wisdom?

[890] You got one?

[891] Show me. You got one now?

[892] I'll send it to Jamie, and Jamie you'll put this up.

[893] Okay.

[894] This is a piece of...

[895] By the way, I'm all in for wisdom.

[896] I bet you are.

[897] Okay.

[898] Okay.

[899] Because when you look at the arc of, there's, there's, in science, you want to convert data to sort of facts and facts into knowledge, knowledge into insight, and then ultimately insight into wisdom.

[900] And that wisdom will help you make better choices.

[901] Yes.

[902] And help you understand the world you're living.

[903] Correct.

[904] Correct.

[905] That's what it is.

[906] So you got.

[907] wisdom just so you know this is the guy calling you a nazi on the internet okay so now don't you feel better about like digging into your twitter that's just a later version of that very first comic in the new yorker when the internet came up and there are two dogs on a computer and one dog turns to the other the good thing about the internet is no one knows you're a dog that was like 1991 was it really yeah it was very early very early wow Wow, 91?

[908] You can probably find it.

[909] Yeah, have them bring it up.

[910] Wow.

[911] No one knows you're a dog.

[912] It should go straight to it.

[913] That's pretty brilliant.

[914] Yeah, yeah.

[915] And so that's, I've been thinking that the entire time.

[916] Yeah, there it is.

[917] Oh, wow.

[918] On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

[919] What year is that from, does it say, Jamie?

[920] Oh, it's got its own web page, wiki page.

[921] 93, wow.

[922] Yeah, very early.

[923] I said 91.

[924] So it's 93 from the New Yorker, yeah.

[925] What year were you on?

[926] Oh, I'm a scientist, so I was on.

[927] from 1980s?

[928] I mean, you know, I was programming computers in high school and I'm graduating class of 1976, so I'm an old fart.

[929] But we had, you know, very large, clumsy computers, but I was programming them.

[930] I had my first email account in 1980, 1981.

[931] Wow, 1980, that's crazy.

[932] Yeah, but you can only talk to other scientists.

[933] I mean, who else?

[934] Still.

[935] You're not sending email to your grandmother in 1980.

[936] Did you anticipate it was going to eventually be public?

[937] Oh, yeah, I saw the trends.

[938] I didn't anticipate that everyone would agree to put all the world's knowledge on it.

[939] I thought it would be very selective knowledge.

[940] But the idea that wiki works at all is astonishing.

[941] Pretty crazy.

[942] Yeah, it's a pretty crazy fact.

[943] And all we have, I'm happy to boast, my field has very excellent wiki pages on Pluto, on planets, on black holes, on, there are a lot of us are really good educators, and we know they're not just textbook pages.

[944] They're really informative, and there's very little misinformation on it.

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

[946] That's extraordinary.

[947] How do they filter that?

[948] How do they make sure that misinformation doesn't get?

[949] So I hate to name drop again, but I had one of the founders of Wiki in my office.

[950] And he wanted to know, what does he do about people who are pirating pages?

[951] Because back then, anyone could edit any page at all.

[952] Oh, right.

[953] All right.

[954] And they now have certain, they can close a page, they can, has to be reviewed.

[955] and but that violates the spirit of the wiki concept because you don't know if the person who wants to edit it has more insight than everybody else who even wrote the page.

[956] You don't know that in advance.

[957] What are you going to interview them?

[958] No, that's not realistic.

[959] So I thought I had a really good idea, but he never, he didn't take.

[960] What was your good idea?

[961] You have an edit index for every article.

[962] And so the edit index is, it tells you two things.

[963] the rate that people have made changes to that page.

[964] It's one dimension of information.

[965] Another one is, is it an in -situ edit or is it additive?

[966] That's important.

[967] Because if there's some celebrity who dies, you'll edit the page by adding a paragraph, though they died in their sleep or whatever.

[968] So that's editing, but that's not, you're not, that doesn't put the content at if you're just adding information.

[969] So if I know that a page has been edited 40 times in the last three days, then the likelihood that that information is objectively true is very low.

[970] And so when you're doing a book report or any kind of report and you're citing wiki pages, you would have a side index that tells you this page is rife with conflicting and contested edits.

[971] Now that I know that, here is what they said.

[972] Whereas other pages that are stable, I think we have a good right to say, this contains objectively true information.

[973] And you would be able to make the judgment yourself.

[974] And it'd be easy to track that on a computer with all the edits.

[975] So, and you'll know, did someone just correct spelling?

[976] you know, you would give the nature of what the edit is.

[977] And I thought that research is, if you don't know what the answer is, let's at least know how controversial the information is.

[978] This brings up an interesting point because one of the things that we're talking about when it comes to technology, we're talking about improvements in the way the human brain works with a symbiotic relationship to whatever Neurlink or whatever new technology is invented.

[979] That's what he wants.

[980] Yeah, that's what he wants.

[981] What would be great is if we knew what was true.

[982] Ever crazy, I think that idea is, I'm not going to stop them.

[983] You're not going to stop them.

[984] No, no, I don't want to.

[985] But you're not going to stop them.

[986] You need a little bit of crazy.

[987] You do.

[988] To move the center mass of society in new direction.

[989] That dude's got a lot of crazy.

[990] So I'm a, I'm a, I'm a Elon fan.

[991] Yeah, me too.

[992] He's going to do it.

[993] No, well, I'm going to probably get a hole in my head and stick it in there.

[994] I want to see what's up.

[995] But I'm going to be a late adopter, though.

[996] I'm going to be like Gen 4.

[997] I didn't buy a Tesla until like two years ago.

[998] Really?

[999] Oh, no. I was early and I had them.

[1000] Yeah, they had them many, many years before.

[1001] Yeah, the roadster was first out.

[1002] Yeah, the little Lotus Elise clone.

[1003] I couldn't fit in it, so I couldn't.

[1004] Oh, you're a big fella.

[1005] I hit my head, I can't.

[1006] My shoulder went across the midplane of the seat.

[1007] So I have to be there with a small other human, but two of me wouldn't be able to fit in the front seat without being very snugly at the Delta If we could come to a point where technology could eliminate deception, how much more information could be shared and how much more could we understand?

[1008] What I don't know is if we cannot eliminate deception in ourselves, either self -deception or purposeful deception in others, I don't see how we can program that into our technology.

[1009] But I think we can if we can understand whether someone's telling the truth or not.

[1010] If it's clear and glaring.

[1011] If you and I are talking and I start talking to you and all sudden a green light pops up, which indicates I'm full of shit, you'll see it and I'm like, oh, my green light's showing.

[1012] No, but that assumes that things are either true or false, and that's just not true.

[1013] That's not, the actual world is way more nuanced than that.

[1014] Right.

[1015] Unintended deception.

[1016] So, for example, I can think something is true.

[1017] Right.

[1018] And what you're basically saying, not to put words in your mouth, is that everyone walks around with a lie detector in their forehead.

[1019] Yeah, that's a bad idea.

[1020] That's a bad example.

[1021] Well, you just said this.

[1022] I know.

[1023] All right.

[1024] So everyone has a lie detector.

[1025] And if I think something happened, even though it didn't, then I'm telling the truth.

[1026] I'm telling my own understanding of the truth.

[1027] Which is a problem with some people with some stories, right?

[1028] You can't then indict me for that truth being wrong if that's how I saw it.

[1029] That's like the umpire.

[1030] That's how I called it because that's how I saw it.

[1031] The umpire's not being evil.

[1032] That's just what they saw.

[1033] So that's one problem with that.

[1034] Another one is there's so many things that are, and that's what makes the world interesting, I think.

[1035] So you want an example of where the truth is nuanced.

[1036] I can't think of off the top of my head, but I'm just telling you that in almost every case where someone wants to turn, a question into a binary answer, they're doing a disservice to human intellect, to the real world that's out there.

[1037] I'll give me an example.

[1038] So how tall are you?

[1039] 5 -8.

[1040] 5 -8.

[1041] Okay.

[1042] Presumably you measure that with some kind of tape measure.

[1043] All right.

[1044] So are you 5, 7 and 3 quarters?

[1045] It's probably closer to that.

[1046] Okay.

[1047] I'm shrinking.

[1048] Oh, yeah.

[1049] Okay.

[1050] All right.

[1051] So maybe you're 5 .7 .3 quarters.

[1052] So are you 5 .7 and 1 16th of an inch taller or shorter than 5 .7 and 3 quarters?

[1053] I don't know.

[1054] We'd have to bust out a tape measure.

[1055] Well, so now, okay.

[1056] So let's say you are within that.

[1057] But wait a minute.

[1058] The line that identifies a 16th of an inch itself has a width.

[1059] So where are you within the width of the line that you're using to report how tall you are?

[1060] So we're giving rough measurements.

[1061] Any time you give a measurement or something, it can never be exact.

[1062] But you get an understanding of it, like go a mile down the road and then take a right.

[1063] Okay, but if I have a truth serum and I say, was it a mile?

[1064] No, it was one and an eighth of a mile.

[1065] What if you get to a mile and there's no right turn?

[1066] Do you just shut your car off and starve to death?

[1067] Or do you go, let me figure this out.

[1068] It looks like 30 more feet, I take a right.

[1069] It's a mile and 30 feet.

[1070] Okay, I'm not going to nitpick.

[1071] I'm just going to take a right, a mile and 30 feet.

[1072] Your brain red light green light device would say the person was lying.

[1073] That device sucks.

[1074] Okay.

[1075] Forget I came up with that idea.

[1076] I was just trying to say.

[1077] My thought was just to eliminate purposeful deception.

[1078] Like if you knew someone was lying to you, con artists, Ponzi skiing people, someone's trying to fuck you over, if you knew, if you could be clear that what this person was doing is they're not really going to make you a lot of money, they're trying to rip you off with a pie in the sky idea.

[1079] Okay, you know what device that is?

[1080] You know what that is?

[1081] What?

[1082] There's a device.

[1083] It's called logic.

[1084] Science literacy.

[1085] That's right.

[1086] How did know when someone else is, in fact, I just tweeted that recently.

[1087] Science literacy.

[1088] Your boy, Stephen Spielberg, got busted in a Ponzi.

[1089] scheme is the power to know when someone else is full of shit but you would deal with something like Bernie made off right you look at his returns and say these don't match anyone else's returns how is this freaking possible because he's a G because you want to believe what he's doing right so that's not his is it his problem or is it your problem that you you want that outcome so badly that you are allowing yourself to be kind of That's how conning works.

[1090] So as a scientist, you can never be too invested in an outcome because it warps your capacity to judge what is true and what is not.

[1091] Was Bernie Madoff's return substantially more impressive than anyone else who was doing it legitimately?

[1092] From what I read, that wasn't the point.

[1093] The point, it's not that his returns were much higher than everybody else.

[1094] They were consistent.

[1095] They were consistent.

[1096] 10%, 15 % every year, whatever it was, and everyone else was fluctuating, sometimes getting negative.

[1097] He was always in the positive.

[1098] Or when everyone else was negative, he had low positive.

[1099] So, of course, you'd bring your money to him.

[1100] So he has some magic insight into the marketplace that no one else has.

[1101] Well, do you know how the statistics of trading works?

[1102] Do you know, it's possible you can be lucky a few, you know, a few years in a row, but to do it for 10, 20, whatever long he was at it.

[1103] Right, but wouldn't it be easier if you just could clearly see deception?

[1104] Like, the idea behind any of these technologies is they're going to improve the way human beings communicate with each other.

[1105] Maybe he believed he was doing the right thing.

[1106] I don't think he did.

[1107] You don't think he did?

[1108] No, I don't think he did.

[1109] I've heard interviews with him.

[1110] He sound like a pure sociopath.

[1111] Okay.

[1112] He really did.

[1113] I mean to laugh, but there was a lot of costs in it.

[1114] Horrible cost.

[1115] So you turn a blind eye to the possibility that what you want to be true might not be true.

[1116] And that burden of rationality falls just as much on the victim of that scheme as it is on the person perpetrating the scheme.

[1117] I think in a free society, you have to arm yourself, equip yourself.

[1118] It's not just logic.

[1119] Logic is overrated, I think.

[1120] My favorite paintings in the world could not have possibly been drawn via logic.

[1121] There's a, creative spark that comes from nowhere, that, you know, the painting Starry Night on the back of my phone.

[1122] Is this logic?

[1123] No. Is that what he saw?

[1124] No. Although I can identify the day and the time of day when this image was in his head that he painted.

[1125] Because you know the geographical location.

[1126] No, no, no, no. Even without knowing the, I can, I wouldn't, I could find out what latitude it is and turns out it corresponds with where he was.

[1127] It's the phase of the moon and the location of Venus at that angle relative to the horizon that you can nail that and so i got it for june 21st 1889 turns out that is the year he painted and he was in you know northern i forgot where he was north of france somewhere and so i can recreate that but so there's some basics of it that are factual the rest clearly that sky doesn't have curly cues in it right and i'm told where he painted this there is no town because there's a town and so he made up a lot of stuff that's in this picture But that's not what he saw, but it's what he felt.

[1128] Well, it's just...

[1129] I value how people feel.

[1130] Yeah, sure.

[1131] That's artistic interpretation.

[1132] That is the full dimensionality of what it is to be human.

[1133] Yeah.

[1134] So I'm, you know, a world of just logic, I don't want that.

[1135] I'm not necessarily saying the world would just be logic, but imagine how...

[1136] Look, it's one of the things that makes people interesting is that we're so complex.

[1137] Yes.

[1138] In communicating with people, there's so many layers and depths and so many...

[1139] Many people are so different and you find these unique personalities and it adds flavor to your life.

[1140] And by the way, the future of gene editing, if we want everybody to be a certain way, that takes away the diversity of human behavior.

[1141] That's what I think aliens are.

[1142] That's why they all look the same.

[1143] You all get the big heads and the big eyes and the little tiny bodies.

[1144] That's where we're going.

[1145] I want to get an alien that's jacked.

[1146] Like the rock.

[1147] Comes down up to the thing.

[1148] All right.

[1149] Who's first?

[1150] Yeah.

[1151] The rock as an alien.

[1152] Imagine if all aliens were built like the rock.

[1153] Yeah, I think the thinking is that they're in the future and they're advanced and they don't need their body to be advanced, but their brain is advanced.

[1154] Well, and also they're using telekinesis, and they probably have the 50th version of Elon's neural ink installed.

[1155] I'm not dismissing the beautiful things about people, whether it's our artistic creations or just communicating with people.

[1156] The fact that we're so complicated and there's so many different layers of emotions, and the history of your own life that you're adding into it there's a lot of cool things about being a person but what's not cool is deception and then if you got rid of deception could you have novelists everything in a novel is a lie yes it's a lie it's creative it's not a lie they're not pretending Steven Spielberg is not pretending I invented somebody that does not exist I have to make decisions it's very different.

[1157] It's creation.

[1158] There's a very different thing going on with artistic creation is very different than a lie.

[1159] So you have to have, in addition to your lie meter, you have to judge whether someone is being creative in the thing they're telling you that's not true.

[1160] Well, if they say it's a nonfiction book, then they're lying, right?

[1161] If it's a fiction book, then they're being creative.

[1162] If someone's being deceptive in a nonfiction book, that's a bad person.

[1163] But if If someone is writing something like Salem's Lot from Stephen King's crazy story about a town that gets taken over by vampires, that's just fun.

[1164] So he's not lying there, okay.

[1165] He's a creative person.

[1166] He has imagination.

[1167] Imagination will still exist.

[1168] The unintended consequences of restricting people's capacity to deceive.

[1169] Is there some fallout from that that we don't anticipate?

[1170] I think there's a fallout from everything, right?

[1171] Yeah, there is.

[1172] Yeah.

[1173] Every time we create pesticide, we fuck someone.

[1174] one's endocrine system up, right?

[1175] There's always something that goes wrong.

[1176] Depends on what the pesticides made of.

[1177] Right, but, yeah, we know what I'm saying.

[1178] Like, there's a lot of unintended consequences to a lot of things that we do that are ultimately done for good, but turn out to be really bad.

[1179] Right.

[1180] That could be the case.

[1181] By the way, and there's also the reverse.

[1182] Yeah.

[1183] Things that were done for bad that turn out to be good.

[1184] That's where wisdom comes in.

[1185] Yeah.

[1186] I think.

[1187] So here's another, I wanted to, I don't want to miss the opportunity of discussing questions that have no answers.

[1188] So make sure we have time for that.

[1189] Okay.

[1190] Yeah, some of them don't have answers, right?

[1191] Because some questions don't have meaning, even in the questions themselves.

[1192] Give me an example.

[1193] Oh, no, but I jumped ahead.

[1194] I wanted you to finish your point.

[1195] Oh, but this is a good one.

[1196] I like what you're going.

[1197] I just think that if technology, to go back to them, we'll come back to the questions, if technology continues to advance in the direction that it's going, It seems to me that one of the things that's happening is the distance and the distance between us and information is getting smaller and smaller.

[1198] Our access to information is getting greater and greater.

[1199] And that as this time goes on, it's going to be more integrated into who you are as a person, whether it's through Elon's creation or someone else's creation.

[1200] Once that happens, I could envision a language that's being used.

[1201] through which we can communicate with each other that Elon was discussing when he said, you're going to be able to communicate without using words.

[1202] That once that happens, you're going to be able, whether it's 100 years from now or a thousand years from now, whatever it is, you're going to be able to display or to communicate with pure intent.

[1203] You're going to be able to do things without, I get it.

[1204] Our ability to use personality and charisma and language and to be more articulate and impressive in the way you talk to have a different impact on the way a person receives your thoughts.

[1205] Instead, it'll be purely your intent and your thought.

[1206] Purely your thought process.

[1207] Allow me to ask, suppose that is possible, why would you want to do that?

[1208] Why wouldn't you want to be living in a tree throwing poop at the other chimps?

[1209] Those are the good old days.

[1210] The good old days when we were in the trees and we didn't have fire.

[1211] We had to catch our rats.

[1212] They need them alive.

[1213] In fact, we got very good at throwing things, even if it started with poop.

[1214] We were the best throwers of any species that ever was, ever.

[1215] And they think that might have contributed to us becoming what we are.

[1216] Ever.

[1217] So I'm, just because we can extrapolate to a thing, doesn't mean that's the thing that's going to happen.

[1218] True.

[1219] So I'm old enough to remember the 1950s and 60s.

[1220] People were imagining the future, the home of the future.

[1221] Well, technology was automating things.

[1222] So everything was a button.

[1223] So the home of the future was just a button.

[1224] And then people imagine that the future evolution of humans, we'd grow a big index finger because you have to be pushing buttons all the time.

[1225] Right.

[1226] And now, no, we don't have buttons all over the house.

[1227] Not really.

[1228] Okay.

[1229] That's not the thing.

[1230] Well, we have the remote control.

[1231] I guess that's buttons, but the button can do a thousand different things, right, depending on how it's programmed.

[1232] So there are things that take a look at computing.

[1233] We, you know, there was an era where the more, the bigger a computer was, the more powerful it was.

[1234] Okay?

[1235] Let's go right up to 1968, 2001, a space odyssey.

[1236] This is imagining a world in 2001.

[1237] Oh, computers will be really big then.

[1238] There's that one big computer in the center of the ship.

[1239] No one imagined that you'd have something more powerful than that on your hip.

[1240] Yeah.

[1241] That was, no one thought that way.

[1242] People imagine the future where we have motorized sidewalks and monorails and everything.

[1243] And what we didn't get was we thought energy would cost nothing.

[1244] So we imagined a world with transportation, motion, and actions that all require energy to enable.

[1245] And those worlds came out of the heads of people who extrapolated forward.

[1246] And they did not understand that the real action, was in information.

[1247] Information is what became cheap, not energy.

[1248] And when information becomes cheap, I have the world at my fingertips, even though I still have to walk down the sidewalk and it's not a motorized pathway.

[1249] Yeah, that's the thing they never saw coming in any of those.

[1250] Didn't see it coming.

[1251] They didn't see the internet coming.

[1252] Information would be cheap.

[1253] Right.

[1254] And so I'm not one to just take what's going on now and extrapolated and say, everyone is going to be living that differently.

[1255] Because other things come in from the side that you don't anticipate.

[1256] And when they come in from the side, it is not an extrapolation of what you're doing now.

[1257] It is something you didn't even imagine because an innovative, creative person looks to the left, looks to the right, and says, I can combine these into something that's completely new that no one even imagined.

[1258] So that's how the future unfold.

[1259] So extrapolating, you get the first couple years, correct?

[1260] Five years, 10 years out, you are completely off.

[1261] And you said 500 years, a thousand years, let's shorten that a little bit.

[1262] Let's say 30 years.

[1263] You say, no, that's not much.

[1264] You know, we need more time than that.

[1265] Ask yourself, let's go back to 1960.

[1266] We didn't have a spaceship.

[1267] United States did not have a rocket to carry people that wouldn't blow up on the launch pad.

[1268] Okay?

[1269] We weren't there yet.

[1270] 30 years later, it's 1990, people have laptop computers, and we've been to the moon six times over.

[1271] 30 years.

[1272] So, when I think today to 30 years from now, I'm saying, I don't know that I can predict anything, but there's some things that I know are going to happen in the next few years, self -driving cars, it's going to take over like that.

[1273] Why?

[1274] Because you replace your car, half the people have replaced the car every five years.

[1275] So in five years, if I have a self -driving car and all the HOV lanes are now reserved only for self -driving cars, that's the next car you're going to drive.

[1276] Do you drive a Tesla?

[1277] I have a Tesla.

[1278] I have a Tesla.

[1279] Do you ever do the self -driving thing?

[1280] Never.

[1281] It's awesome.

[1282] Yeah, no, I don't.

[1283] It scares me, but I'm not ready for it.

[1284] I hit that little button, do -do.

[1285] Yeah, I'm not ready for it.

[1286] And that's a quick.

[1287] I even paid a couple of dollars, you know, the extra dollars to get that.

[1288] I got that too.

[1289] I'm not ready for it yet.

[1290] But don't be scared.

[1291] Jamie to use it?

[1292] Sometimes.

[1293] Yeah, no, I'm not, I'm not ready.

[1294] I'm not ready for that.

[1295] Most of the time I don't, though, honestly.

[1296] But I'm ready culturally for it.

[1297] Yeah.

[1298] Yes, it'll save 30 ,000 lives a year, all right?

[1299] So this is, and no one's gonna drive home drunk.

[1300] And a self -driving car, when it changes lanes, it tells the other self -driving cars, I'm gonna change lane.

[1301] It parts the traffic for it, and it then opens into a lane, okay?

[1302] This is the kind, and it can go 90 miles an hour, separated by five feet in front and back of the car.

[1303] Let's not do that.

[1304] No, because you're thinking of your own reflexes and not that.

[1305] I'm thinking of things going wrong.

[1306] Every now and then you see one that hits like a tire iron that's in the middle of the road?

[1307] That could happen.

[1308] However, another car would have seen it.

[1309] I'm in my Tesla.

[1310] I come up to a road.

[1311] The Tesla tells me on the screen, changing suspension because of a bumpy road ahead.

[1312] I said, how does it know it's a bumpy road ahead?

[1313] It gets the, there's a clearinghouse of this information.

[1314] Some other Tesla went on that road and figured that out.

[1315] My Tesla went on that road before it had figured it out, okay?

[1316] So the shared information becomes hugely valuable.

[1317] And, yeah, you might have the tire iron in the road, and so 5 ,000 people a year die rather than 35 ,000 people.

[1318] We got to wrap our heads around that one this time around.

[1319] My analogy to this is we used horses for thousands of years.

[1320] Yeah.

[1321] Now you go from 1910 to 1930.

[1322] 1930, you can't give away a horse.

[1323] Not in urban areas, no. Isn't that crazy?

[1324] Within 20 years, we went from horses and an entire industry that supported the horses.

[1325] The buggy whips, the carriages, the stables, the food, the blacksmiths.

[1326] An entire industry.

[1327] Vanishes.

[1328] Vanishes within two decades, basically within two decades.

[1329] And you're going to tell me when are automatic cars come?

[1330] We already have them, and we just, you know.

[1331] when it's ready to go down, it's going down.

[1332] My kids are 20 and 24.

[1333] They don't want to know how to drive.

[1334] They can't wait until the self -driving car.

[1335] They want nothing to do with it.

[1336] And by the way, you might say, but how about people who love to drive?

[1337] They're not going to give up their Camaro or whatever is that they love.

[1338] You say that mockingly.

[1339] I don't like it.

[1340] No, I said that.

[1341] I listened to that first.

[1342] I said, let me not say the, the, the, um, the, the, um, the, the, um, the, the, the, um, the, the, the, um, the, the, the, um, the, the, um, the, the, um, the, the, um, because I think there are more Cameras out there than Corvettes.

[1343] I'm appealing to Corvettes.

[1344] So, anyhow, you might like to drive your Mustang GT.

[1345] Okay, fine.

[1346] Then we build tracks for you.

[1347] Oh, God.

[1348] No, no, no, no, no, no. There are people today who like riding horses.

[1349] They don't do it in the street.

[1350] You go to the stables, and you can jump and you can ride the country.

[1351] What kind of world are we making Neil de Gras Tyson?

[1352] I'm saying you don't have to give up your car in order to have everybody but there'll be car tracks and then the government's just going to shut down your car and pull you out just going to shut down the highway because everything's going to be automated and they're going to need access to all the cars just in case it's a high -speed chase the government built the freaking highway did they though yes they did I don't think they did it's called the Eisenhower interstate system it costs a hundred billion dollars and it was a military project and so you know so they have the right to shut your car down Is that what you're saying?

[1353] Are you opting out?

[1354] You can make your own damn road and do what you want on.

[1355] But if it's like iPhones where you can opt out of sharing your information with advertisers?

[1356] You want to opt out of what?

[1357] The government being able to shut down your car?

[1358] You don't have a right to drive in the HOV lane.

[1359] That's not in the Constitution.

[1360] Yeah, we're not talking about the HOV lane.

[1361] They don't even have those out here.

[1362] Oh, they don't?

[1363] Well, you have the pay route.

[1364] Yeah.

[1365] If the government controls, if laws control one lane versus another, that's the first lane to go to to self -driving for sure.

[1366] Yeah, for sure.

[1367] Plus, self -driving cars that you don't own, that you just sort of use, that reduces the number of cars in the road by, what, a factor of 10?

[1368] Yes.

[1369] I just worry about...

[1370] You probably own a drill, a hand drill.

[1371] Yeah, I got a drill.

[1372] How many total minutes in a year do you use that hand drill?

[1373] I don't use it ever.

[1374] Fine.

[1375] So, you spent money on something that you hardly use, and even if you did use it, it's for minutes.

[1376] Okay?

[1377] Okay, so you get on the horn, you go to Home Depot, get online, so I need a hand drill with this bit, and then a drone drops it off that afternoon, and you use it, and then it takes it back.

[1378] You don't need a garage, you don't need a parking spot, you don't need anything.

[1379] It's shared commodity.

[1380] It sounds like a good deal for Jeff Bezos.

[1381] He's probably real excited.

[1382] We're delivering new drills.

[1383] I think he's buying roof rights for drone landings.

[1384] Really?

[1385] Yeah.

[1386] Of course he is.

[1387] Yeah.

[1388] That's what I heard.

[1389] It's a rumor.

[1390] When you see a guy that's that wealthy, do you ever ponder what makes a person like that continue to work every day?

[1391] That is the actual fact of it, right?

[1392] People like that, it's a different species, right?

[1393] It's someone who has an idea and they want to execute the idea.

[1394] And he was at it when no one thought it was fashionable.

[1395] Amazon used to be just a bookstore.

[1396] Yeah, I remember how dumb it was.

[1397] I was mocking it.

[1398] Like, who the fuck's going to buy books on the internet?

[1399] But you can't even browse it.

[1400] You can't smell it.

[1401] You can't.

[1402] Right?

[1403] So is he driven?

[1404] Is he saying, no, I want to be a hundred billionaire?

[1405] No, he's got an idea.

[1406] He's got a business idea.

[1407] He wants to gain wealth, of course, as any business person does.

[1408] But the people who are actually driven are driven by forces that are not money.

[1409] Yeah.

[1410] As Elon famously said, you know, how do you make a small fortune in?

[1411] Rockets, start with a large fortune.

[1412] But it's just these people that are doing this insane innovation like him, like trying to deliver things with drones and trying to spread the business further and further and further.

[1413] It's like you always wonder, like, what is the motivation?

[1414] Like, what keeps you doing this?

[1415] I can tell you this.

[1416] You know, did I imagine 10 years ago that when I ordered something on the internet, I would be disappointed if it didn't come tomorrow.

[1417] Or today.

[1418] Or this afternoon.

[1419] Amazon has their own trucks now.

[1420] They can deliver it to you today.

[1421] Right.

[1422] Gone of the days.

[1423] Oh, it'll get there in two weeks and three weeks.

[1424] Like, what's wrong with you?

[1425] No, tomorrow.

[1426] Tomorrow.

[1427] I need this now.

[1428] And even if I don't need it, I want it now.

[1429] Yeah.

[1430] If I see it like the toothpaste going to come on Friday, I'm like, today's Tuesday.

[1431] What the fuck do I have to wait till Friday for toothpaste?

[1432] Come.

[1433] Let's go.

[1434] Let's go.

[1435] So Jeff Bezos did that to you.

[1436] I know.

[1437] You've been brainwashed by the man. It's amazing.

[1438] But people like that do push innovation in that...

[1439] That's why I don't get in the way.

[1440] I'd let him go.

[1441] Oh, yeah.

[1442] Well, I'm just joking around about him motivating.

[1443] His motivation...

[1444] I mean, I saw his new yacht.

[1445] I think that's where the motivation is.

[1446] Those are expensive.

[1447] Yes.

[1448] You need $150 billion if you want to have a couple of those.

[1449] Yeah, yachts are a whole other thing.

[1450] But he's got like a city.

[1451] It's like a city that floats around.

[1452] Have you seen it?

[1453] No, but I've been on other yachts of highly wealthy...

[1454] people.

[1455] Is it preposterous?

[1456] I've never been.

[1457] I don't judge it, but I do.

[1458] I'll judge for you.

[1459] I was on a yacht.

[1460] Describe it to me. I'll tell you why it's stupid.

[1461] I was on Charles Simoni's yacht.

[1462] He's one of the Microsoft billionaires.

[1463] And there's a staff there.

[1464] And I like talking to people, talking to the staff.

[1465] And I said, oh, you know, there are people cleaning and, you know, and there's a sailor type or whatever that role is in the thing there.

[1466] And I sell, so where do you live and he says here I said oh in New York is important in there no here here on the yacht and I said oh well when you're not on the yacht weird oh I'm from Italy but I live on the yacht I said how do you get your mail and say well I'll go back to Italy I'll pick it up there but I live on and so the idea that you are so wealthy you can buy people and put them in this floating place and they call that their home I have had to wrap my head around that.

[1467] I couldn't.

[1468] That was just a little...

[1469] That's heavy.

[1470] That was just a little weird to me. But it makes sense.

[1471] If you have like some 500 foot long boat.

[1472] It's a permanent staff.

[1473] You have to have people there all the time because things are probably always breaking.

[1474] Yep.

[1475] Yep.

[1476] Yep.

[1477] And I went into the pantry and you can see the multiple refrigerators and the wine cellar and the...

[1478] It's like a giant restaurant slash apartment building.

[1479] Correct.

[1480] Correct.

[1481] And he's got it and he's got a chopper on the top.

[1482] Let me see what Jeff Bezos has looked like.

[1483] It's someone I saw has its own yacht.

[1484] The yacht has a yacht.

[1485] Well, this guy, the billionaire, what was his name?

[1486] The Charles Simony.

[1487] Go to that.

[1488] Yeah, actually, it is Bezos's yacht.

[1489] Oh, let's see it.

[1490] Bezos's yacht has a yacht?

[1491] Has a separate yacht.

[1492] Look at that fellow.

[1493] Why does every picture come up with his ball head right there?

[1494] Looking happy.

[1495] Looking so happy.

[1496] All right.

[1497] So you got the yacht.

[1498] 417 -foot super yacht that's so massive has its own support yacht.

[1499] That doesn't include the cost.

[1500] A hella pad, according, estimated cost, not including the boat's support boat, is $500 million.

[1501] That is wild.

[1502] Yeah, that's a half a billion dollar, yeah, I guess.

[1503] That's one three hundredth of his wealth.

[1504] He made $75 billion in 2020 alone.

[1505] During COVID.

[1506] Yeah, there we go.

[1507] Insane.

[1508] Project 721.

[1509] Because he kept delivering while everyone else says we can't deliver.

[1510] Yeah.

[1511] So that's his boat.

[1512] Let me see that thing.

[1513] Woo!

[1514] Good Lord.

[1515] But, uh...

[1516] Wow.

[1517] That's not it.

[1518] That's it.

[1519] That's it?

[1520] This is it.

[1521] That was something else called Project Valky or something it said.

[1522] Oh, some other thing.

[1523] That doesn't look all that impressed.

[1524] I got a yacht that thing.

[1525] Look at the size of that thing.

[1526] I mean, it's basically...

[1527] You can have a great star party on the deck of that.

[1528] Oh, for sure, right?

[1529] If you get out in the middle of the ocean...

[1530] Oh, yeah.

[1531] That's the move, isn't it?

[1532] Yeah.

[1533] Okay.

[1534] Do you go out there?

[1535] first hundred billion i'll invite you you'll please i'll go do a few shows from there i'll do whatever you want i'll do shows so i tried to quantify what is that jamie that's where they made it i believe oh wow they built it in a giant warehouse on the water and then you drop it in the water i think whoa slide it in there that what a weird market the market for half billion dollar yachts who who would have thought there even was such a market yeah i just want to try to find my tweet can you dig up a tweet?

[1536] Sure.

[1537] Do you search tweets?

[1538] Can you do it?

[1539] Just tweet my, my handle and Bezos.

[1540] And I quantified his wealth at $100 billion.

[1541] And I want you to see this calculation that I did.

[1542] Well, it's crazy is that's what he made basically last year, right?

[1543] We said he made 70 -something billion last year.

[1544] Mm -hmm.

[1545] Mm -hmm.

[1546] A year.

[1547] In 2007.

[1548] Okay.

[1549] Okay.

[1550] Not that anybody asked, but laid end -to -end, Jeff Bezos is $200 billion.

[1551] can encircle Earth 180 times, then reach the moon and back 30 times, and with what's left over, make a stack 10 kilometers high.

[1552] Holy shit.

[1553] With what's left over.

[1554] That's all $1 bills.

[1555] Yeah, sorry, those are $1 bills.

[1556] You know, that's what I pictured there, the $1 bill in the tweet.

[1557] I just wanted to sort of, it was a reality check on how much money that is, when you can do amazing space things, it and then you have left over money.

[1558] What's interesting is he's not slowing down, right?

[1559] And he seems relatively healthy.

[1560] Yeah.

[1561] Like he's fit, works out a lot, he's gotten jacked.

[1562] Got jacked in a few of those folks.

[1563] Yeah, that's fine.

[1564] So he's probably going to keep going for decades.

[1565] Maybe he's found the serum for infinite life.

[1566] Yeah, billions of dollars.

[1567] I mean, that's...

[1568] By the way, the world has always been influenced by billionaires, so this is not a special time.

[1569] And sometimes with terrible results, right?

[1570] That's right.

[1571] So I don't...

[1572] William Randolph Hearst.

[1573] Yeah, all of them.

[1574] Just count them up.

[1575] Count them up.

[1576] Ben Franklin was pretty wealthy in his day as well.

[1577] Was he really?

[1578] Yeah.

[1579] And he still flew that kite by himself?

[1580] What a while, man. He didn't even hire somebody?

[1581] Hey, I got an idea, but like, this might suck.

[1582] You might die.

[1583] You might get electrocuted, but let's do it.

[1584] Yeah, if YouTube was around then, you'd see him doing that experiment on YouTube.

[1585] I wonder if it really happened.

[1586] Like, you know, the whole George Washington and the cherry tree, That's probably bullshit.

[1587] Yeah, but I think people want legends.

[1588] Of course.

[1589] Yeah, yeah.

[1590] Of course.

[1591] To help give meaning to events in your life.

[1592] When you got a guy like Bezos, though, that is at the helm of this intense empire and also is in many ways, like Elon, fascinated with technological growth, right?

[1593] He's got this deep, what is this blue sky, blue origin?

[1594] Blue origin.

[1595] Blue Origin.

[1596] So he has his own rocket ship program.

[1597] He's got his own, I think it's Evian.

[1598] Plus, people worry that all the billionaires are building rockets to get to Mars, and they wonder, are they just going to leave us all here on Earth?

[1599] What is it, Reveon?

[1600] He has got an electric car company as well that they're heavily invested in.

[1601] So there's many things that are similar, that they're doing these kind of, you know, fascinating, groundbreaking, innovative business practices.

[1602] Let them do it.

[1603] Yeah, fuck yeah.

[1604] Yeah, yeah.

[1605] Oh, I'm all in.

[1606] I'm just watching.

[1607] I'm just like, it's fascinating this cat, you know?

[1608] So can we talk about questions?

[1609] Yes.

[1610] Let me do that?

[1611] That's my...

[1612] Questions that have no answers.

[1613] Well, that's my segue, my awkward segue to the book I just published.

[1614] Ah.

[1615] Okay?

[1616] Called Cosmic Queries.

[1617] It's a book that is not based on answers that way.

[1618] we have.

[1619] It's based on questions that we've posed.

[1620] And some questions have really good answers and we're good.

[1621] Others, we're still poking around and we think we're on the tail of it.

[1622] And other questions, we don't even know if it's the right question.

[1623] So it's a celebration of human curiosity at its deepest level.

[1624] With whole sections, one of them is, how did it all begin?

[1625] What's it all made of?

[1626] Are we alone in the universe?

[1627] Very relevant to now.

[1628] Also, how will it all end?

[1629] And when you're on the bleeding frontier of science, you don't always know if the question you ask is even valid.

[1630] This idea where every question is, no, that's not true.

[1631] That's not true.

[1632] It's just not.

[1633] Trust me, I've asked a lot of stupid questions.

[1634] No, I'm not saying the question, but when you're on the frontier, you just don't know.

[1635] Right.

[1636] So I can give an absurd example.

[1637] Suppose you posed a question.

[1638] You say to yourself, I want to design an experiment that will visit the moon and test what kind of cheese the moon is made out of.

[1639] So you have special equipment.

[1640] Is it goat cheese?

[1641] Is it Brie, Rogoffert?

[1642] And then you get there and it's made out of silicates.

[1643] The question had no meaning.

[1644] Even though nouns and verbs were in the right place and it had a question mark and you were able to design an experiment, The question had no meaning in that realm.

[1645] Let me get a more philosophical one.

[1646] Visit Santa Claus.

[1647] Okay?

[1648] Santa Claus on the North Pole.

[1649] And you say, Santa, which way is north?

[1650] And every direction Santa points is due south.

[1651] Because on the North Pole, the question, which way is north, has no meaning.

[1652] You can't even go east.

[1653] Everywhere you point is south.

[1654] Correct.

[1655] So on the grid that we've all agreed that we use to establish coordinates of Earth, Santa Claus can only go south.

[1656] The question, which way is north, has no meaning.

[1657] So these are clear to us.

[1658] That's heavy.

[1659] These are clear to us that this is the case.

[1660] There are other questions where you know not to ask because you just know not to ask.

[1661] We live on a spherical earth, and I say to you, how far do you have to walk before you fall off Earth's surface?

[1662] You know to not even ask that.

[1663] I am assuming you're not a flat earther.

[1664] You know not to ask that because the Earth's surface curves back on itself.

[1665] The question has no meaning on a curved surface.

[1666] But you thought you were proud of yourself for even coming up with the question.

[1667] Now you design a whole research project to answer that question, and you find out you shouldn't have asked question to begin with but you didn't know in advance necessarily here's another one uh about pinocchio let's visit pinocchio's universe okay okay all right and pinocchio's there and pinocchio says my nose is about to grow what happens next he has to tell a lie tell me what happens to his nose it grows when he lies.

[1668] He just said, my nose is about to grow.

[1669] And if it grows, that man he was telling the truth.

[1670] No. It means he's about to tell a lie.

[1671] That's all he says is my nose is about to grow.

[1672] Right, but maybe he keeps talking.

[1673] Okay.

[1674] So, like, someone says, do I look fat in this outfit?

[1675] He says, my nose is about to grow.

[1676] You look great.

[1677] All right, let's tighten it up then.

[1678] Okay.

[1679] Pinocchio says, my nose is growing.

[1680] So what's his nose doing?

[1681] Well, I would assume he just got done lying, so his nose is probably growing.

[1682] No, because he's lying.

[1683] He just told the truth if his nose is growing.

[1684] What if he lied?

[1685] And then his nose grows because he lied.

[1686] What if he says, my nose is growing because his nose isn't growing?

[1687] But because he lied about his nose growing, his nose grows.

[1688] No, it's not how it works.

[1689] So I just cracked it.

[1690] No. Didn't I just crack it?

[1691] I think I just cracked it.

[1692] I'm glad you made sense to yourself in that sequence.

[1693] No, I did make sense.

[1694] If Pinocchio's nose was not growing and he said, my nose is growing, that would be a lie, then his nose would grow.

[1695] Correct.

[1696] Oh!

[1697] No, so if his nose is not growing, when he says my nose is growing, it's a lie.

[1698] He's lying, which means his nose should grow.

[1699] Yes.

[1700] Okay?

[1701] What I'm saying is that Pinocchio cannot interact with its nose in any, with his nose, with his nose.

[1702] in any truthful way because the world of rules associated with his universe prevents it.

[1703] I see what you're saying.

[1704] So in his universe, it has to be that he's deceiving someone and his nose involuntarily grows.

[1705] Yeah, but that's not how that works in his universe.

[1706] Right.

[1707] In his universe, if he tells a lie, his nose grows, if he tells a truth, his nose doesn't grow.

[1708] Right.

[1709] If he says, my nose is growing and it's not growing, he's lying, He's lying and his nose should grow.

[1710] All right.

[1711] So, so my only point there is the Pinocchio universe and the rules that apply within it.

[1712] Yeah.

[1713] Prevent that sentence from having any meaning at all.

[1714] Got it.

[1715] In the same way, Santa Claus, which way is north?

[1716] Has no meaning.

[1717] Got it.

[1718] So now we ask, what was around before the universe began?

[1719] Yes.

[1720] I do not know if that's an authentic question.

[1721] Do we have an idea about the birth and death of the universe based on our own biological limitations?

[1722] Not that we're not measuring, not that there's not a keen understanding of the radio frequency from the Big Bang and all.

[1723] But just the idea, do we put a limitation?

[1724] Do we think of the idea of the universe beginning or ending based on our own idea of life and death that these things must apply?

[1725] to all things that we see?

[1726] No, because we, until 1930s, we had no idea the universe would have a beginning.

[1727] It was assumed other than biblical account.

[1728] Scientifically, the universe just simply always was.

[1729] There was no evidence for that, but we had no reason to think any other way about it.

[1730] And so we didn't force the universe to have a beginning because that felt good to us.

[1731] You're not going to do that unless you have authentic justification for it.

[1732] So just no one really talked about it.

[1733] I have books from that period.

[1734] There is no chapter on cosmology.

[1735] It ends with the starry skies of the night.

[1736] It's starting with the discussion of the planets.

[1737] And it doesn't even go there because it doesn't know to go there until you have data forcing the question.

[1738] There wasn't enough information.

[1739] Correct.

[1740] And then we say, oh, my gosh, the universe is expanding, discovered by Hubble in 1929.

[1741] That means it's bigger today than it was yesterday.

[1742] It's bigger yesterday than it was the day before.

[1743] Let's run the clock back.

[1744] What about...

[1745] Could all the universe have been in the same place at the same time?

[1746] that meant it might have had a beginning.

[1747] That's what started.

[1748] Say that again?

[1749] If we're expanding, run the clock back, we were smaller in the past.

[1750] Could the whole universe been in the same place at the same time at some distant point?

[1751] If it was, that means the universe had a beginning.

[1752] That's when the whole conversation began about the universe having a beginning.

[1753] It had nothing to do with the fact that we're born and we live out our lives and die.

[1754] It had nothing to do with that.

[1755] So now we have a beginning, but we have a beginning, but we have a beginning.

[1756] What was around before the beginning?

[1757] That's an important and interesting question.

[1758] I don't know.

[1759] I should say that differently.

[1760] That is a question, an English language sentence question.

[1761] I do not know if that question has any more or less meaning than asking Santa Claus which way is north.

[1762] When we look at the Big Bang and we look at the fact that the universe is expanding and they know that there was some sort of an event, by many, measuring, how exactly do they measure the radio frequencies that come from the Big Bang?

[1763] Like, what is, what's the signal?

[1764] Oh, so it's microwave, it's microwave, and it's really, it's, it's not as deep as you might want to think it is.

[1765] Okay, so do you realize you can't see through the sun?

[1766] Right.

[1767] The sun is not transparent to visible light.

[1768] Because visible light, when it enters the sun, the sun is made a plasma, which is a gas, where electrons have been ripped off, ripped into the soup.

[1769] So you have free -moving electrons and atoms.

[1770] And it's a soup.

[1771] The atoms are not part of the – the electrons are not part of the atoms.

[1772] The consequence of that is light interacts heavily with free electrons.

[1773] So you try to move light through a plasma, and the light sees an electron, it careens off of it.

[1774] And it does not travel in a straight line.

[1775] It bounces and careens and scatters.

[1776] and so by the time the light comes out the other side, you lost all hope of any information about what was on the other side of the star or on the other side of that plasma.

[1777] Okay.

[1778] So, the early universe was very hot.

[1779] You can calculate what those temperatures must have been.

[1780] So hot that all atoms are ionized and the whole universe is plasma.

[1781] So light is just bouncing around within the universe.

[1782] In fact, a lot of visible light is doing this.

[1783] Then the universe expands and cools.

[1784] The electrons combine with the atoms.

[1785] All of a sudden, the beam of light is no longer batted to and fro by these free electrons.

[1786] And you reach a point where the universe clears, and it becomes transparent to the passage of light.

[1787] In that moment, all the light that was contained in that fireball now moves free.

[1788] across the universe.

[1789] That light for the last 14 billion years has been expanding with the expanding universe and the energy of the visible light is now microwaves.

[1790] You point a microwave telescope in any direction.

[1791] It is bathed into microwaves from that event.

[1792] Whoa.

[1793] Now when you're measuring something that is the estimated date of the Big Bang is 13 .8.

[1794] Billion years?

[1795] Billion years ago, right.

[1796] Is that...

[1797] October 3rd.

[1798] Is that the amount that they can measure?

[1799] Or is there a potential further point that can't be measured?

[1800] So we see objects that sent their light to us basically 14 billion years ago.

[1801] How about objects farther away than that?

[1802] There are surely objects farther away.

[1803] But the universe isn't old enough yet for its light to reach us.

[1804] Whoa.

[1805] So it's possible that things are far, far more distant.

[1806] We could be living in an infinite universe, but all we have access to is our little bubble.

[1807] And so every year goes by.

[1808] We got a little more data.

[1809] The bubble gets one light year larger.

[1810] Oh, wow.

[1811] And we see a little bit more of whatever universe is out there.

[1812] Now, here's what makes it like lose sleep deep.

[1813] Okay, you ready?

[1814] Oh, boy, I love these.

[1815] Okay.

[1816] So how is it we can see the birth of the universe?

[1817] That already happened.

[1818] It's because it takes light time to travel.

[1819] We look at 13 .8 billion light years ago.

[1820] We are seeing galaxies being born.

[1821] Okay.

[1822] Wait a billion years.

[1823] Now, these galaxies are a billion years older.

[1824] They're no longer being born.

[1825] In fact, they're not giving us this light that I was telling you about that became microwaves.

[1826] But wait a minute.

[1827] The universe is now 15 billion years old.

[1828] I can now see objects that have given their light to me from 15 billion years ago.

[1829] They are now being born.

[1830] I'm seeing them being born.

[1831] So as long as there is a universe out there, and as long as there is a universe out there, and as long as the whole universe had the same birth date, which all evidence points to, I will always see evidence of the Big Bang because that information is always fresh to us from a distance whose light only just now reached us.

[1832] So what you're going to look for is the day when this expanding horizon washes over nothing.

[1833] If this expanding horizon moves and there's no galaxies there and there's nothing, then all the information about the formation of the universe goes away.

[1834] And the Big Bang no longer has anybody telling us it is going through a Big Bang.

[1835] That would be the edge of the known matter content of the universe.

[1836] When scientists study this information and they look back at this time period of 13 .8 billion years and they hypothesize or they try to come up with theories about how far it could go back beyond that.

[1837] How do they do that?

[1838] No, the birthday is the same for this entire universe.

[1839] Even the part of the universe we can't see.

[1840] So even the part of the universe we can't see.

[1841] We all have the same birthday.

[1842] No matter what, it's 13 .8 billion years.

[1843] Correct.

[1844] Now, what about the idea that things expand and contract and that it ultimately will all come back together?

[1845] It's not.

[1846] It's allowed in the equations, but the data has never supported that.

[1847] And all data support a one -way expansion.

[1848] Not only that, the discovery of dark energy is accelerating the expansion.

[1849] There's a whole section of the book on how it'll all end, and you get really speculative.

[1850] It's like, okay, given what's happening now and given what we know, here's what we think.

[1851] If the accelerated expansion goes unchecked, it will overcome all the forces that are currently binding everything you know and love.

[1852] Like gravity?

[1853] Yes, it'll overcome gravity.

[1854] So the galaxies will no longer be able to hold together because the expansion of the universe is now manifesting at a local level rather than on a much larger level.

[1855] So galaxies start getting stretched apart, and then the planets orbiting stars start getting stretched apart, and then the molecules start getting broken apart, and then the atoms themselves.

[1856] And then in the limit, this stretching reaches the very pixels that comprise the fabric of space and time.

[1857] It's called the plank length.

[1858] That is the very structure of what comprises everything we know in the universe.

[1859] And so the expansion will ultimately hit that.

[1860] And we do not know.

[1861] We don't know what the consequence of that.

[1862] Do you know what we call it?

[1863] It's called the Big Rip.

[1864] What happens when you stretch fabric?

[1865] There's a point where it doesn't stretch anymore.

[1866] and it rips.

[1867] That's in between 20 and 22 billion years from now.

[1868] If the cosmic acceleration goes unchecked, the world will end in a big rip.

[1869] Wow.

[1870] What could possibly check it?

[1871] Not with a bang, but with a whipper.

[1872] Now, the idea of something of it being unchecked, like what could potentially cause it to be checked?

[1873] so we don't know we don't know there could be some other thing that lands in the left wait just one quick can I run to the bathroom yeah yeah yeah yeah it's not live right no no we'll be fine right back to it real quick me and Jamie would talk shit about you where you're going well take a left dude yeah I know 20 billion years doesn't sound like I mean it sounds like you don't have to worry about it.

[1874] But doesn't that, like, the idea that the universe is gone in 20 billion years, that freaks me out.

[1875] It shouldn't.

[1876] I don't have much time left personally.

[1877] But the idea that there'll be no universe at all to speak of what we're looking at, it'll all be molecules broken down.

[1878] Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to even wrap my head around it.

[1879] Yeah, well, it's, it's why it's so.

[1880] so important for people like that to be out there that have these things that they can pose, these questions and these scenarios they could describe, where your mind is like, wait, what?

[1881] And then what happens?

[1882] No one knows.

[1883] But we have this, like, extreme desire to know what happens next?

[1884] Like, what happens?

[1885] What happens when I die?

[1886] What happens if Austin has five million people?

[1887] What happens if they don't get rid of the tents?

[1888] What happens if, you know what I mean?

[1889] There's always a what happens if what happens if there's no more matter in the universe that gets broken down to pixels first of all i thought pixels were just a visual representation of things on phones and screens and laptops and shit did you even know that a pixel was a unit of measurement the fabric of the universe definitely not yeah well proof simulation theory sounds like yeah right if you get further and further out how much if you had a bet all you might money if you had uh again if you had uh one side yes one side no for simulation theory no worries yes if i'm betting yes yes if i'm betting UFOs no no wow heavy jammy just blew my mind he doesn't believe in UFOs he does believe in simulation theory i was taking his bet earlier i would bet that okay i bet it's something i did it bet it's us I bet with UFOs, I bet they're from another planet.

[1890] And I think they're probes.

[1891] That's what I think.

[1892] I think they're probes.

[1893] You think they're from here?

[1894] That means we don't get to touch the aliens.

[1895] Yeah, I don't think they're interested in touching us.

[1896] I think they're too volatile.

[1897] We're crazy.

[1898] We shoot each other all the time.

[1899] So let me talk about the big rip.

[1900] Yes.

[1901] So it's terrifying.

[1902] Yes.

[1903] Because fabric, you stretch it to a point and it rips.

[1904] So that's just the end of the end of the end with that happens.

[1905] If something puts it in check, then we keep expanding.

[1906] And what happens is all stars die, all, and the proton decays, and we're left with an entire universe of just sort of base particles where nothing happens.

[1907] Right.

[1908] Because there's no source of energy left.

[1909] And that's a less interesting fate than a big rip.

[1910] but what's for me interesting is and by the all this is in the last chapter we talk about how it might all end what for me interesting is the levels of multiverses that might exist so in our universe there are likely other bubbles that are also expanding and we're just one bubble among them and this is the sort of traditional multiverse that people think about And there may be an infinite number of these dotted into the total universe.

[1911] Can I pause you right here?

[1912] Yeah.

[1913] So the idea is that our universe is infinite.

[1914] Possibly, yes.

[1915] The bubble that we exist in may be infinite?

[1916] No. Our bubble is one bubble within an infinite universe, and that infinite universe contains an infinite number of other bubbles, correct.

[1917] But our bubble is essentially, as we can measure it, 13 .8 billion light years across.

[1918] No, it's bigger than that.

[1919] Bigger than that.

[1920] It's just that it's been 13 .8 billion years travel time for the light.

[1921] But over that time, the universe has expanded.

[1922] So we have a diameter of like 100 billion light years across.

[1923] And how do they estimate that?

[1924] Because, you know, the rate that you're expanding.

[1925] So that object sent us its light 14 .8 billion years ago.

[1926] The light's been traveling that long.

[1927] Well, what has the universe been doing for 14 .8 billion years?

[1928] It's been expanding.

[1929] So that actual object is much far.

[1930] away from us than 14 billion light years away.

[1931] That's a point of confusion for many people.

[1932] Yes.

[1933] It's because in my field, we're kind of loose about it.

[1934] We say 14 billion light years to the edge.

[1935] Well, no, it's 14 billion years the time the light has been traveling from the edge.

[1936] And where did the concept of these bubbles come from?

[1937] The idea that each one of these little universes, not little, obviously, but each one of these universes exists in some sort of a realm?

[1938] It's a great question and an important question.

[1939] So here's what happens.

[1940] So now we have the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang.

[1941] This has been around with us for 70, 80 years.

[1942] And that's pretty stable in terms of our understanding of things.

[1943] But now we take quantum physics, which is the science of the small, and added to Einstein's general relativity, the science of the large.

[1944] Now, why would you do that?

[1945] Because at the beginning of the universe, the large is small.

[1946] So think about this.

[1947] We have general relativity, which gives us black holes and all the rest of this.

[1948] That applies to big macroscopic things.

[1949] I'm good with that.

[1950] No problem.

[1951] Quantum physics refers to atomic things primarily and molecules and how they behave.

[1952] And the two don't talk to each other.

[1953] It's like they don't, in fact, they're incompatible.

[1954] And this is how you get string theorists.

[1955] String theorists say, well, these are incompatible.

[1956] Maybe there's a third theory above those two that combines them.

[1957] And we have top people working on that.

[1958] When you start combining quantum physics with general relativity, because there was a time when the universe was small, then the entire universe behaves in quantum ways.

[1959] And so you can create a state of the universe.

[1960] where it's what's called a false, it's in a false state.

[1961] So it's a false state.

[1962] Let's see you have a hill that goes down, but then the hill goes back up and then it goes down to a much lower point.

[1963] So now you take a marble and roll it down.

[1964] Maybe it'll just sort of get stuck up there in that first dip.

[1965] Well, if our universe is there, we might not become a universe, but it's possible to tunnel out of that and then slide all the way down to the bottom.

[1966] When you do that, you release energy.

[1967] And when that happens, you birth a universe.

[1968] And it turns out this process is not limited to happening once.

[1969] So this can happen multiple times.

[1970] And from people I've spoken with who work in this field, because it's slightly outside of my direct astrophysics interests, There are different kinds of these multiverses.

[1971] One of them could have the same laws of physics that we have.

[1972] That's what leads people to say, there's another Joe Rogan, but he's the evil Joe Rogan with a goatee or whatever.

[1973] But also there's another Joe Rogan that said everything that I've said, exactly the way I've said it.

[1974] This would be the claim.

[1975] You're a twin, but maybe there's a little difference or not.

[1976] Correct, correct.

[1977] An infinite number of them, right?

[1978] The idea is that if the universe is that big.

[1979] And it has an infinite number of universes.

[1980] says there were infinite combinations of events and particles and manifestation.

[1981] Infinite number of Neil deGrasse Tyson's.

[1982] Possibly.

[1983] On an infinite number of these podcasts.

[1984] I wouldn't want that because that would be, I want, I'd like different people.

[1985] There are plenty of those too.

[1986] Okay, plenty of those two.

[1987] So now watch.

[1988] Now imagine a universe where the laws of physics are slightly different.

[1989] That's a different manifestation of this process.

[1990] Right.

[1991] Is the speed of light a little different?

[1992] Is the, you know.

[1993] So that's another.

[1994] level of multiverse, and there's several levels, but the most significant one is one where not only are the laws of physics different, but maybe there's a universe where there no laws of physics at all.

[1995] A wild west of physics?

[1996] A wild west of physics?

[1997] A wild west of physics.

[1998] Or maybe there's one where even the parameters that establish mathematical truths are fungible.

[1999] Ooh.

[2000] So the value of pie is something else.

[2001] Extra props for using the word fungible.

[2002] It's one of my new favorite words.

[2003] Is that right?

[2004] Non -fungible tokens have brought it up.

[2005] So all I'm saying is in the last part of the book, we explore all of these exit ramps from the universe that take us to the end of the universe.

[2006] And we don't even know if we're asking the right question.

[2007] But what we share with you is a sense.

[2008] of where the current thinking would take us if you took it if you extended it to its limits when you ponder questions like this when you ponder questions like other universes with different laws of physics or no laws of physics or fungible laws of physics when you sit around like what is your process do you sit alone in your office and sit in front of a laptop and start writing this stuff out like how do you how do you ponder these things I think I can speak for many of my colleagues.

[2009] There's some experiments that are collaborative.

[2010] And so, for example, the mission to Mars.

[2011] Everyone got together.

[2012] You get the engineers.

[2013] We want this craft.

[2014] We're going to put in this experiment.

[2015] We're going to look for water.

[2016] We're going to look for life.

[2017] Okay.

[2018] That's not the solo burning midnight oil.

[2019] When you're trying to think deep thoughts about what might or might not be true, objectively true in the universe, that can be a little more solitary, I think, and you can come up with ideas anyway.

[2020] So forget this, deductive, reasoning, inductive, forget all that.

[2021] You can have an idea just sitting on a toilet, okay?

[2022] And it could be a spark.

[2023] It could be because you saw some great work of art. And so sources of sparks of creativity and inspiration can come from anything.

[2024] You could be religious and you want to manifest the glory of God, and that's what's triggering you to have these thoughts.

[2025] okay that's so the creative process is not so regimented as as the teaching of scientific method would have you believe you go to a science lab well what is your hypothesis what is your this then was the test of the hypothesis you know I don't even have an hypothesis I don't I just I don't know I just wonder you know so the formality that we are often exposed to is not always how that unfolds so on top of getting back to your question, often new thoughts you're alone.

[2026] You're just, you know, you're not distracted.

[2027] In this world of multitasking, no, great ideas, I don't think, come out of multitasking.

[2028] I don't think so either.

[2029] And there's a saying, great saying.

[2030] It's if you want to be more creative, become less productive.

[2031] Because in a day, you can say, oh, I got all my email done and I went to groceries.

[2032] Well, did you think about any?

[2033] Did you create anything?

[2034] Well, we're rarely bored, right?

[2035] That's a part of the problem.

[2036] That's a problem.

[2037] It is a problem, and people don't think it is.

[2038] Yeah, that's a problem.

[2039] They thought, I've been busy, and that's good, and I'm saying, did you create anything?

[2040] Maybe you don't want to create anything.

[2041] I don't want to judge you for not having done so, but if you want creativity to be a fundamental part of your life, then you're going to have to not get stuff done at some point.

[2042] That's a nice excuse for a lot of lazy people out there.

[2043] I'm just trying to be creative, man. That's why I'm on the couch with the bomb.

[2044] This is a creative moment.

[2045] But your process is what I'm asking specifically.

[2046] I read a lot of science, well, there's journals, there's books that people have read.

[2047] There are fields within astrophysics that are slightly outside of my research expertise.

[2048] And some of those, they've written popular -level books.

[2049] I'll read those.

[2050] Those are fun because they're sort of scopes.

[2051] They're review papers that are written.

[2052] and for me new ideas I mean think about it what is a new idea you might even call it the definition of genius it's you see what everyone else sees but you think what no one else's thought but now you want to make sure but but add to that maybe you have you are so diverse in what you expose yourself to that you see more than what other people see.

[2053] And when you see more, you have the capacity to make connections that might not have previously been imagined, either by you or by anybody else.

[2054] This is the value of cross -pollinating fields.

[2055] It's why major discoveries can come in from the side in what is otherwise a very stayed path of progress.

[2056] So in a hospital, you know, people say, how do you want to invest money?

[2057] In physics?

[2058] That's so 20th century with the Cold War and the bombs.

[2059] Let's invest in biology.

[2060] That's the ticket.

[2061] Okay?

[2062] So that makes sense, you know, as a headline, but let's unpack that.

[2063] Go walk into a hospital and line up every single machine brought into the service of diagnosing the condition of the human body without cutting you open.

[2064] So you'd have the MRI or the x -ray machines, you'd have ultrasound.

[2065] There's no end of these machines that are in the service of the hospital, and MRI, admittedly, is the doctor's best friend, okay, in studying what's inside your body.

[2066] To a machine, every single one of them is based on a principal.

[2067] of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine.

[2068] Really?

[2069] Yes.

[2070] Wow.

[2071] Okay?

[2072] Even the radiology department.

[2073] The doctors are using radioactive elements.

[2074] Were there doctors that discovered radio?

[2075] No, they're physicists.

[2076] There's chemists.

[2077] There's Marie Curie.

[2078] These are people who are not in the medical community.

[2079] The X -ray machine, who discovered that Wilhelm Routengin, the very first Nobel Prize in physics, went to him.

[2080] So by specifically concentrating on biology.

[2081] Now, he immediately saw the application.

[2082] He saw, took a, there's a picture of the bones of his hand.

[2083] But he's a physicist.

[2084] He's not saying, let me help orthopedic surgeons set bones.

[2085] This is not his motivation.

[2086] So new ideas, especially new things that can transform society, tend to come from fields that, if they're not tangent to your field, they're just some other kind of way in.

[2087] And so some of the greatest advances in my field came about because chemists were in the coffee lounge at the same time we were.

[2088] Or biologists walked in.

[2089] That informs our astrobiology exploits.

[2090] So it's not just, let me sit out alone in an armchair and deduce the nature of the world.

[2091] You want to be exposed to what everybody else is doing.

[2092] you want to talk to them you want to hear their ideas collaborate no one person you know the midnight oil makes a good TV show a mix or a movie the midnight loner genius but science most science today does not unfold that way so you get so getting back to my point you can I personally I do a lot of reading and when I have an idea then I bounce it off of people who are highly critical and skeptical of any new idea.

[2093] And if it survives that, and you can't have an ego going into it.

[2094] How do you do these bounce -offs?

[2095] Do you sit down?

[2096] Oh, I say, oh, I get colleagues, and I say, what do you think of this idea?

[2097] So do you prepare them?

[2098] Like, hey, George, I'd like to sit down and have a chat with you?

[2099] It can be.

[2100] Hey, Mary, I've got a crazy idea to throw your way.

[2101] It could.

[2102] In fact, I was once at a wine tasting, and there's someone else there who's a biologist and we came up with an idea together and we're probably going to write a paper on it about life on earth and in the universe and just from a conversation at a wine tasting at a wine taser hammered talking shit right well what wine was that that we were the vintage or whatever no so like I said creativity can unfold in many ways but because he's a biologist and I'm not he says something I said wait a minute I what do you think of this and he never thought of what I thought, and I never thought of what he thought.

[2103] Together, it's magic.

[2104] And so this kind of creativity, this sort of cooperative exploration of ideas, then that gives birth in your mind to the idea of writing a book about something.

[2105] It can, but first you would write a research paper and get a peer review, this sort of thing.

[2106] And then if it's good and it's successful, then the public wants to know about it, that's ripe for a book.

[2107] My books tend to be a little more summative than that.

[2108] I don't write books on single topics there.

[2109] As an educator, I'm broad.

[2110] And how do you get inspired in terms of, like, the subject matter you choose?

[2111] I mean, it's always about the cosmos, but I'm in terms of, like, specifics.

[2112] You know what it is?

[2113] It's, I'm a servant of your curiosity and his curiosity and her curiosity.

[2114] I'm a servant of that.

[2115] And as I tweet and as I post and as I walk the streets and as I sit in an airplane with someone next to me who learns that I know astrophysics.

[2116] And I hear their questions, and as I reply, do their eyebrows go up and their eyes lighten, or do they look bored and want to order their next drink?

[2117] I monitor this, and I make mental inventory of what excites people in the universe.

[2118] And when I'm overloaded by what I know excites people, it's got to go into a book.

[2119] So it just has to kind of catch fire.

[2120] Catch fire.

[2121] Yeah.

[2122] And especially my goal is to reignite curiosity within your soul of knowledge and searching that may have once ignited when you were a kid, but has long been dampened because we don't live in a world that promotes curiosity.

[2123] We're in a very gullible world.

[2124] Is that why part, is it part of your strategy when you do?

[2125] your StarTalk, you do it with comedians?

[2126] Is it part of your strategy?

[2127] Yeah, thanks for mentioning that.

[2128] So you yourself are a professional comedian among all the other hats you wear, so I deeply respect your field in that way.

[2129] My co -host for StarTalk, the podcast, is always a professional stand -up comedian.

[2130] Not the kind who just tells jokes, right?

[2131] But the kind that sees the world and explores ways you might not have thought about it, connects it to the topic, and then you end up smiling while you're learning.

[2132] And in my experience, if you smile while you learn, you learn better.

[2133] You learn more deeply and you come back for more.

[2134] And do you, like, actively curate these comedians?

[2135] Do you go to comedy clubs?

[2136] Yeah, so I don't do all that footwork, but we have people who do.

[2137] Yeah, we go to comedy clubs and we find, and we like new comics.

[2138] You know, a lot of new folks, you know, open mic night, that sort of thing.

[2139] And there's some we return to more often than others.

[2140] Chuck Nice is, is...

[2141] Chuck's great on your show.

[2142] He's one of our favorites and...

[2143] But he's obviously fascinated by the same topics.

[2144] And he's smart, so, and as all comedians are, in my experience.

[2145] So he's not always smart, he's also...

[2146] You need to meet some of my friends.

[2147] I could change your theory.

[2148] Change my hypothesis.

[2149] I'm sticking to it.

[2150] You guys are smart.

[2151] And so just the format of the show is...

[2152] So it's not just comedian in the science.

[2153] There's a pop culture element to it.

[2154] So some ridiculous fraction of my life is invested staying fluent in pop culture.

[2155] So that when I talk about the science and you don't know where I'm coming from, I say, well, consider this.

[2156] This is what Beyonce did or this is what some politician said or this is what the Pope was thinking about.

[2157] And when you come to me with a pop culture scaffold and what makes a pop culture, everyone has a similar scaffold.

[2158] I don't have to construct that.

[2159] And I look at it and I analyze it from three dimensions and I say, I'm going to clad this bit of information on that part of that scaffold.

[2160] And how do you actively like engage with pop culture and curate sort of a knowledge base about what these wacky kids are interested in today?

[2161] It's, it's, I read responses to my social media postage.

[2162] Oh, that's so that's a social, so have to read the response is as a neurosynaptic snapshot of what people are thinking in research.

[2163] response to the very words I choose, to the phrasing.

[2164] If I think something is funny and nobody laughs, I want to know that.

[2165] That's important information for me. If I think something isn't funny and they do laugh.

[2166] If I missed something, if I was insensitive to something that I would have wanted to be had I known, that comes out.

[2167] That's there.

[2168] And that informs future encounters I have with people and form sentences I compose for books.

[2169] And that's me, in my mind's eye, being a servant of your curiosity.

[2170] So you think of it almost as an ingredient in your education?

[2171] Yes.

[2172] It's not just here's something, you better learn this or you're going to flunk the test.

[2173] Every student who flunks the test is a statement for me about the instructor, not about the student.

[2174] That's interesting.

[2175] So you have teachers who say, you know, my student, I just have some students that just don't want to learn.

[2176] And all right.

[2177] But have you ever heard a teacher say, I have students who aren't learning, so that must mean I suck at my job.

[2178] I'm sure if someone said that.

[2179] I've never heard anyone say.

[2180] Okay.

[2181] So at what point are you going to invert the table and say the burden of them learning is on me, not on them?

[2182] Now, of course, in some cases, it's impossible.

[2183] Large classes, you can't be babysitter to everyone.

[2184] Some people have emotional stability problems.

[2185] So I get that.

[2186] But I don't want to hear a teacher say, I have students who refuse to learn.

[2187] My response is, I see a teacher who refuses to figure out how to get them to learn.

[2188] Yeah, it takes more effort.

[2189] Yeah.

[2190] Yeah, that's hard.

[2191] but is anything in life worth achieving that isn't itself hard your role as an educator and as an educator a public educator meeting you're someone who's in the public eye all the time educating people in a pop culture way basically yeah right but you're doing it about things like the nature of the universe itself super complex issues and you're you're doing this all under all this heavy scrutiny I mean the fucking the people from the meat company went after you the other day what the hell was that uh steakhams okay steakums steakums we had at you with you okay so about a tweet yeah here's what happened I thought it was a little disingenuous on steakams part okay so here's what happened there's an there's an anatomy of that that okay I find fascinating All right.

[2192] I post a tweet.

[2193] Right.

[2194] The tweet is something about not having to believe the science.

[2195] Yeah, so the good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

[2196] Right.

[2197] Then stake them's when after you.

[2198] Well, no, no, hold on.

[2199] Hold on.

[2200] So now my very next tweet said, if you have the urge to argue with my previous tweet, please read this link before doing so.

[2201] and it's a link to a four -minute read essay I wrote called what science is and how and why it works okay did you post that before after Steakams went after you no that's been posted for years right but I'm saying did you post the second tweet I I don't the second tweet was 10 minutes after the first tweet okay okay it was immediate essentially immediate so you're basically just following up with the reference like here's because I knew people People might want to try to take issue with this.

[2202] But you didn't know it was going to be Steakums.

[2203] Okay.

[2204] So watch.

[2205] Here's what happens.

[2206] That first tweet escaped from my following because so many people retweeted it.

[2207] So now people are reading the first tweet without the benefit of the second tweet.

[2208] Stakems is among them.

[2209] And I know this because when I read their reply to me, I looked at their header, and it doesn't say Stakeham follows Neil Tyson.

[2210] They don't follow them.

[2211] If you don't follow me, you didn't see the first tweet.

[2212] I mean, the second tweet.

[2213] You had no idea that that was there.

[2214] So you essentially said what they said to you, but with far more information.

[2215] It's like his tweet to you, criticizing you, is essentially much of the same that was in your article.

[2216] You're talking about...

[2217] That article was entirely about what it means.

[2218] for science to establish truth.

[2219] That science uniquely establishes what is objectively true in this world.

[2220] And what did Stakem say?

[2221] Do we know it's...

[2222] No, they just screamed...

[2223] Yeah, and scientists said the world was flat and...

[2224] Or, you know, before, you know...

[2225] Well, it's a little bit more articulate than that.

[2226] It was a total...

[2227] It was quite clever.

[2228] There was a total body of attack.

[2229] Yes.

[2230] Regarding citing occasions when scientists have been wrong.

[2231] Okay?

[2232] Well, he was also...

[2233] explaining, clarifying what the actual scientific method is versus just a flat statement, like science doesn't need you to believe it's true or however you phrased it.

[2234] Well, I'm just saying that, yeah, so the Stakem one, there's some informed people there, I think, and they just like creating controversy.

[2235] I don't have a problem with that.

[2236] Isn't that bizarre that it's Stakems?

[2237] Well, it's fine.

[2238] Okay.

[2239] I wrote back to them, and I said, hi, Stakeems.

[2240] It looks like you don't follow me. that accounts for why you didn't read this link.

[2241] Had you read this link, and then I tried to be a little clever, clumsily, I said, if you and your followers took four minutes to put down your steak and cheese hoagie to read this essay, you would then understand the meaning of that treat and you would not.

[2242] So I said that, and then it became a whole thing, but that's the nature of social media.

[2243] But I realized that I cannot have one tweet reference another because if the previous one is alive and it gets out, no one has any sense of where my following does.

[2244] And they were so fascinating four -minute read.

[2245] You know, thank you.

[2246] I see and I agree.

[2247] And I talk about truths, the three kinds of truth.

[2248] Do you know about, do I tell you this?

[2249] Sure.

[2250] Go ahead.

[2251] Okay.

[2252] Yeah, yeah.

[2253] I thought deeply about this.

[2254] And this was my conclusion.

[2255] Okay.

[2256] The three kinds of truths.

[2257] One of them is the truth, a personal truth.

[2258] This is something is true to you and no one can take it away from you.

[2259] Jesus is your savior.

[2260] In a free country, no one is going to take that from you.

[2261] No one should take it from you, all right?

[2262] Muhammad is the last prophet.

[2263] These are personal truths that you hold dear.

[2264] I don't have a problem with your personal truth.

[2265] the right word for it?

[2266] I'm calling it that.

[2267] Beliefs.

[2268] We can call it beliefs, but they call it personal truths.

[2269] I'm respecting, if you look at the word truth, the first websites are religious websites.

[2270] Truth is a very important word within belief systems.

[2271] And so I studied that, and I said, all right, I'm not going to tell them, give me the word truth, because you're not describing truth, you're describing belief.

[2272] That's a fight.

[2273] I'm not interested.

[2274] or willing to have.

[2275] Okay.

[2276] Give them the truth.

[2277] Look, look, there are whole posters with a cross, and it says, seek the truth in Jesus, right?

[2278] So I'm not going to fight that.

[2279] That's a personal truth.

[2280] It's another truth.

[2281] It's a political truth.

[2282] A political truth is something that becomes true in your head because it was repeated so many times and aligns with what you want.

[2283] Okay?

[2284] So, hearing Trump talk about Hillary, Clinton, it was Crooked Hillary, right?

[2285] So what's Hillary's first name?

[2286] Crooked.

[2287] Because it was repeated so many times.

[2288] And our brain gets co -opted because we, in nature, in the serengeti, if we see something repeating, it gives us a good indication that maybe it's real and we should be careful about it or we can, it's a reliable thing.

[2289] In modern times, we have co -opted that feature of huge.

[2290] evolution, and now we give you information that is no foundation in truth, but repeat it, and in your head it becomes true.

[2291] It becomes true, especially if you want it to be true.

[2292] I call that a political truth, but the third truth is an objective truth.

[2293] This is a truth established by the methods and tools of science and verified by the methods and tools of science.

[2294] that is once that is established it doesn't later on become false like the temperature of boiling water for example under atmospheric conditions okay like the fact that earth orbits the sun like the fact that earth is round the sun is hot there's thermonuclear fusion in the core that the universe is expanding that the galaxy is rotating that there are other galaxies that there's such a thing as quantum physics that there are things called electrons and protons and neutrons and atoms and carbon there is a body of object objective truths established by the methods and tools of science, that when it is established, it is not later found to be false.

[2295] You can expand on that truth.

[2296] The truth can become deeper, but it doesn't become false.

[2297] And these methods and tools have been in practice basically since Galileo and Sir Francis Bacon, around 1600.

[2298] Before then, some people knew about this process that science goes through, but it wasn't widespread practice, not until about 1600.

[2299] So if you're going to say, you can see the responses in here, scientists told us the Earth was flat.

[2300] That was before 1600.

[2301] Scientists used to, oh, oh, I'd say, we used to bleed you with leeches, okay?

[2302] Well, let's take it.

[2303] Let's go back to when we did that.

[2304] All right, this would be biologists doing it.

[2305] And what was the state of research at the time?

[2306] That was a frontier thing they were doing.

[2307] It wasn't verified.

[2308] It was a hypothesis that they were acting on.

[2309] Okay?

[2310] So, yeah, the bleeding edge of science, most of that will turn out to be wrong.

[2311] Most of it.

[2312] It's when it gets tested.

[2313] And the press gets the single scientific result that's kind of intriguing and interesting, and they report it as a new scientific truth.

[2314] because there was a scientific study, especially if it comes from a place like Harvard where they'll put that up in the front sentence without saying, we don't know if this is actually true.

[2315] We need verification from other studies.

[2316] They don't say that typically or that's later on in the article.

[2317] So that's how you can go from, oh, cholesterol is good for you.

[2318] No cholesterol is bad for you.

[2319] No cholesterol is good for you.

[2320] No cholesterol is bad for you.

[2321] It was an unresolved research result, but you cited one.

[2322] one research result that was consistent with your own desires, and that became your new truth.

[2323] That's, in a way, a political truth, if it's repeated enough.

[2324] But then you find it's not that.

[2325] It's because it's still an actively researched frontier.

[2326] When you wrote out these three truths, how did you come to only three?

[2327] Do you think there's room for more?

[2328] Maybe.

[2329] I'm not, this is not an edict that thou shalt only have.

[2330] Right.

[2331] But the, when you see something repeated, I call that a political truth, but it's also a kind of a, there are other truths.

[2332] So, for example, you've heard this.

[2333] We only use 10 % of our brain.

[2334] Yeah, but that's not real.

[2335] There's a total, there's an entire movie based on that premise.

[2336] Lucy.

[2337] Yeah.

[2338] Okay?

[2339] That premise is false.

[2340] It was never true.

[2341] That's what's, that's another kind of thing.

[2342] It was never true.

[2343] That annoyed me. I liked that movie, though.

[2344] Yeah, it was fun.

[2345] It was good seeing.

[2346] seeing Scarlett in that.

[2347] So, so, and, and Morgan Freeman's in it.

[2348] It's had some good, good, good, good, good roles.

[2349] So, so, so let's go back to where it started from.

[2350] You know where that came from?

[2351] There was a neuroscientist, well, the brain, brain scientist, who, because you can't do experiments on human brains, that's not ethical and, all right, all you can do is wait until someone gets an accident.

[2352] And so there's a nail gun that damages this part of the brain.

[2353] Oh, you lost your, your language.

[2354] damage.

[2355] Damage over this part, oh, you lost your short -term memory.

[2356] Oh, you lost your long -term memory.

[2357] And so you assemble the bits of what the brain is doing by people who were injured.

[2358] This is a very slow, clumsy process, but that's all you've got.

[2359] The person who had an article said, the brain is so complex.

[2360] Today we only know what 10 % of it is used for it.

[2361] Mm. And that got...

[2362] Overnight, that became we only used 10 % of our brain.

[2363] And that became the mantra of school teachers getting children to rise to their potential, and there was no force operating against that coming into our culture.

[2364] It wouldn't have ruined the movie if they didn't have that in there.

[2365] I mean, there's no reason for that to be in the movie.

[2366] The movie was fascinating as it was.

[2367] They could have just given her some other power, but they went with that 10 % thing.

[2368] Yeah, but even the 10, I mean, they didn't even need to do that.

[2369] Okay, can I give my critique even of that?

[2370] Let's say we did only use 10 % of our brain.

[2371] Okay.

[2372] Here's my critique.

[2373] Even if that were true.

[2374] The smartest people you know, do they have an inkling of kinetic powers over objects in front of them?

[2375] Why are we obsessed with extremely high intelligence having power over matter?

[2376] Why aren't people with extremely high intelligence just good at solving problems?

[2377] They're just the best people at solving problems in the world.

[2378] We want superpowers.

[2379] So they're becoming superpowers.

[2380] That's right.

[2381] And even in the movie that had John Travolta in it.

[2382] Oh, yeah.

[2383] Phenomenon?

[2384] Was that the one?

[2385] The one, he gets struck by lightning.

[2386] Right, right.

[2387] And he's up there and he makes a top spin just by spinning his hand and the top pops up and spin.

[2388] It's like, no. If you're smarter than everybody, you'll do smart things.

[2389] You're not going to sort of levitate objects.

[2390] His brain works better.

[2391] He can make things move.

[2392] By what force?

[2393] No. By telekinetics.

[2394] We know what force.

[2395] are operating in this world.

[2396] There's no way telekinetics is real?

[2397] No!

[2398] Okay?

[2399] We've