A Conversation with John Hodgman

Expert-in-everything John Hodgman addresses a range of topics, from the possibility of alien or robot invasion, to what lobsters have in common with Star Trek's Spock.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, where I also serve as director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium. And joining me on the show today is Charles Liu, a friend and astrophysicist with the City University of New York. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Oh, it's great to be back. Thanks so much for having me.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, you've got that smooth-as-butter voice. You did radio in your day, isn't that right?

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Yes, I did. Classical, jazz, news, even a little bit of punk one night.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the punk dude was punked out?

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, the opera show ended and the punk guy didn't show, so I played 45 minutes of Angry Samoans on his behalf.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, many of you, if you don't know John Hodgman by name, you certainly know him by face. And we'll get to that in just a moment, but he's got a couple of books. One of them is areas of my expertise, but my favorite of his is More Information Than You Require, which is satirical almanacs that fake newspaper reports and historical stories with like really complex charts and figures. He also writes for Wired Magazine and New York Times Magazine and the Paris Review, among other publications. He's a prolific guy. He doesn't just do stand-up. Now, you might remember him and recognize him because he appears regularly as a resident expert on The Daily Show. They bring him in as an expert on whatever they need an expert for, and he's the expert.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, you know, one of his TV shows is Bored to Death, where he plays a literary agent. He actually started his career as a literary agent. Yeah, not many people know that.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  So truly a talented man.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you wonder, how does a literary agent ever become a comedian? This is the question.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've known him best, though, in the Mac versus PC ads.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He is PC.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Oh, amazing.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He is PC. And when I had him in my office and we started talking, I could not resist. I simply could not resist. Charles, I had to go straight out.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and, and, and attack him.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I'm a Mac guy and he's.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Yes, you are.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I had to go there.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that okay? You get?

• 2:27Speaker 02

  I am looking forward to it.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, here we go.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  John, I have to confess, being a Mac user since 1985, when I see you, it's like, "Eek, eek, eek, PC, PC."

• 2:40Speaker 02

  What the radio audience cannot see at the moment is that Neil is actually stabbing me at this moment. He's not just making the psycho noise. He's stabbing me with a knife. Please send help. I have you beat. I've been a Mac user since 1984.

• 2:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right? You can't be a Mac user earlier than that.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  I had a 128K Mac that I convinced my father to buy for me.

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you made an awesome PC dude on the TV commercials.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Thank you very much. Well, the reality is I was an avid Mac enthusiast. Indeed, I would literally get into bar fights, not fistfights, but fights with words while drunk in bars. 1994, 1995, when I first moved to New York, my friends and I would go see a good friend of mine, Jonathan Colton, perform songs at McGovern's on Spring Street.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know Jonathan Colton. He wrote a song about Pluto's moon, Sharon.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, indeed.

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A beautiful song. It's a, it's a love song. Pluto's moon, Sharon, was upset that Pluto was demoted, but said, "But I'm still your moon."

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Yes, but Sharon has left Pluto now.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the follow-on song.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know moons.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you, so you know Jonathan Colton's music and so then what happened?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  He and I went to Yale University together. You see, and we're very good friends. Friends of mine, including him, would get into long drunken arguments about Mac versus PC. And they're the same arguments that you make today. And I always took the Mac side. My feeling was that technology should conform to us rather than us conform to technology.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is so correct.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  And so I went on like that. And then I worked in an office environment and I had to learn to use another platform. And then I ended up buying one of these things. I had had a Mac 128K, then I had a Mac SE, then I had a PowerBook 140.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You never had the Mac Plus then?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  I made the quantum leap from the 128K to the, to the SE, which had a hard drive, which was very exciting.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Internal hard drive.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  I remember it because I was like, what is a hard drive? What's going on? You mean, I don't have to put in a floppy disk? That's half the fun.

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that leads me to the next.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Then I had to buy, then I had to buy a PC. I'm sorry about your next question, but I need to finish this. We need to get through this together. I had to buy a PC, I thought, in order to do my work from home for my office job as a literary agent. So I struggled mightily with that platform for a long time. I was all for it, but then I learned all of the problems. Like I'd sort of thought I had matured and come around and said, you know what? You can use this other thing. No. By 2003 or early 2004, I realized, no, thank you. It was Colton who made me go back. Actually, he bought one and said, you should try this again.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had it deep within you on how to behave like PC.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I had every gag that they came up with or that I helped to improvise on came from a deep personal pain.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deep inside.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Right. I've also flown on airplanes and seen businessmen working on gigantic, non-Macintosh laptops, and I know those guys.

• 5:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you pity them. You pity them. Yeah.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  No, I'm with, they're, they're my people now.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Oh, I tell you, I feel an instant kinship with John now because I also convinced my father to get a Mac. 1984 was the year and it was a 128K. Only I didn't make the quantum leap. I actually did get a Mac Plus later.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You did, you did increment your way through.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  No, John is the true geek among geeks. I am very, very close to him now.

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is he, is you about to beatify him now? Is he, is he one of your heroes?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  He's heading up in there.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's getting rising in. So what's your, what's your definition of a geek? I, I get different definitions when I ask different people.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Well, that's true. I, I heard that a geek was somebody in a carnival.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You heard? You are, you are one. So what do you mean you heard?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Well, long ago, before I was a geek.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, do you agree that you are one?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Back when I was cool.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back when you were cool.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Back when I was not a geek, I was told.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, did you ever, were you ever on the football team?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. So what, what do you, how you define when you were cool?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Oh, that's true. Oh, never mind. Uh, okay, I'm a geek, yes. But the carnival guy who bit the head off chickens, that's the original geek, right?

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, really?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, somebody who did morbid or disgusting acts while you went in and paid a few cents.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Creepy, really weird things.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Right, right. So I prefer the word nerd.

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, tool, wonk, those are all good too, but...

• 6:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I think, but you've, I think you've lost the nerd one because the geek movement, the geek squad for, for Best Buy, right?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  That's true, yes, but you know,

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not the nerd squad.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  They didn't make Revenge of the Geeks 1, 2, 3, and 4. They made Revenge of the Nerds.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought they only made 2 of those.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you even know they made 4 of those movies?

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Well, Revenge of the Nerds 3 was called...

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, I thought I knew you, I thought I knew you, Charles.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Revenge of the Nerds 3 was called The Next Generation. Coincidence? I think not. Not to mention the triumph of the nerds, but that's for a different show.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because nerds, nerds and geeks in school, it was defined by who would get slammed into the lockers.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, that's right.

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In gym class, right? That was the dividing line.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  That's right. And, and now nerds are the people who write the computer programs that the jocks use to play fantasy football on.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So therefore they have to protect them.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, please get my pitcher up that little tiny bit percentage, please, so I can win. Oh.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's, let's see what John Hodgman says about the culture of geeks versus jocks. He's done some thinking about this. Check him out. So my read of culture is that geeks and nerds are kind of gaining in stock value.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  They have to.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because they fix people's computers.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Well, exactly so. And I think that it goes beyond just the traditional stereotypes of computer nerds.

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Although I think that obviously they're more essential to the economy than ever before. I mean, jockism as a philosophy, not just team sports, right? But the whole martial philosophy of working together as part of a team.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  In order to attain a certain goal.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  And the pleasure that jocks take, submerging their own identity into a team effort that is often very physical, is a great way to run a country when you are building things and punching things.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is socioculturally deep.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, that's how you build bridges, right? You need engineers, of course, to design them, but you need jocks to go out there and get it done.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying, as we watch team sports on the weekend, they are our cultural emissaries in a way.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Well, of course, effectively, we're watching combat games, right? And which is, serving the role that the military used to serve in almost every culture of sort of tribal cohesion and a sense of who we were as a people. The nationalism of the team sports is insane. It's completely irrational.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  We are the best team because we are the best team.

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Period, period.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  And everyone else is bad.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it works its way all the way down to high school sports. We're the best team because it's my high school, not your high school.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Well, that's proto nationalism. That's how, that's how nation states have always formed a sense of cohesion. And frankly, let's be fair, that's how they protected themselves from other people who wanted to do them harm.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, but we have the geek culture, which.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Well, we live in a different time. If anyone does us harm, it's going to be because they're pushing a button. It's not because

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lone person.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Phalanx of warriors are going to come over the border from New Hampshire into Vermont. That actually might happen, now that I think about it. That's a bad example.

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Muskets in hand, yes.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  New Hampshire, New Hampshire has long planned to take over Vermont.

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that a great newspaper title? New Hampshire invades Vermont.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. It's gonna happen. And they're gonna do it in like 18th century technology.

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And New Hampshire's license plate, "Live free or die."

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They want to liberate Vermont from, from the colonies.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. They're not talking about themselves. They're talking about Vermont.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so emergent, we have an emergent geek culture. I think that's great. It's long overdue.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Fits the pattern of civilization and the economy that we're in now, puts high value on intelligence.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gave a commencement speech at my high school some years ago, the Bronx High School of Science, and I titled it Revenge of the Nerds.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the richest person in the world is a nerd, that's all you need to know.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  They are, they are avengful people.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  So I mean, I think that we need to find a way to get the best of both traits. There's something to be really admired in jockism, which is a sense of intuitive moral clarity and gut instinct and a decisiveness that really does enact getting things done. On the geek side, boy, oh, boy, I love my people. Do you know what I mean? We can go down some pretty crazy rat holes about religion and Firefly or whatever.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's, Charles, he's right about that.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  I'm afraid so. And just in case any of you, you out there don't know what Firefly is, it was sort of like a mix between Star Trek meeting Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there it was. There it was. It was a TV show that became a movie, right?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  And you can imagine the religion to which John is referring in that case. But what's interesting to me is that if you think about, say, evolutionarily, jocks represent the ideal of the present, the strong man, whereas geeks represent the promise of the future, the one who will earn a lot of money.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you couldn't have said that 30 years ago because the geek was not making a lot of money. It was the jock who inherited the wealth of their family and took over daddy's job. That's where the money was. Geeks, I don't think they had much hope of owning companies and becoming the richest people in the world.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  On the other hand, those of, say, the people who immigrated over to the United States from other nations which were not so prosperous, they would come over because they were well educated. They couldn't get visas unless they had advanced degrees or, you know, had parents in graduate school or something, so.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'd say now the patron saint of geeks is Bill Gates and he's got, he's worth a gazillion dollars or 50 billion.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Well, Steve Jobs is really up there.

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's up there too. He's up there too. And you know what I find fascinating? Is what I just, maybe the last person in the world to see a social, the social network, just saw it a couple of days ago. And the end credits, it describes Facebook being valued at $25 billion. Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest, Zuckerberg is the, is the.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, youngest billionaire in the world.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what I find interesting is he's portrayed, and I think accurately, as, as kind of socially awkward.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet he creates the most socially connective software the world has ever seen.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Right. Just because you can't necessarily look at somebody in the eye when you're talking, doesn't necessarily mean that you don't understand human interaction on a very deep level.

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it most times means that.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  (laughing).

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Maybe you have no choice, right?

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one exception.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I, I, I always like thinking about whether a president is a geek.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, Obama, you know, he, he talks about science every now and then.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Doesn't he collect comic books or something?

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I, I, we, we can find out after the break.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  John Hodgman knows Obama well.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, do you know why?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was selected to be the comedic entertainment during the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  A tremendous honor.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A tremendous honor. It was back in 2009. When we come back, we'll find out just what John Hodgman had to say during his comedic rant in front of Obama.

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Joining me is my colleague, astrophysicist Dr. Charles Liu.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever my geek credentials are, they are geek squared when it comes to Charles. So I brought him on for this because our, our, we're interviewing John Hodgman.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He came to my office, it was a few weeks ago, and we, we just sat there for like an hour and a half.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just chewing the fat. And he's, he's, he's, he's a very deep thinker about a lot of different things.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Well, you know, comedians are. In a sense, comedians have to be the biggest geeks of us all because they have to see... Who we are, see through it, and then make us laugh about it when they talk.

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, back at ourselves, right, right. And he does it brilliantly and in a kind of demure sort of way, like he's coming out of, like he had Quaaludes or something. So you gotta sort of be calm with him, you know. So, did you know that in 2009, for the White House Correspondents Dinner, he was selected by the White House?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  That's fantastic.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be the entertainment for the dinner.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  That tends to launch people's careers, too.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I agree, I agree, right there for President Obama. And so I was curious about this, and what he talked about, and how that works. So let's see what he tells us.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  By tradition, the comedian usually goes before the president, and the president closes out the night.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And reacts to the comedian.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Yes, but our president did not want to do that, because he did not understandably want to be held responsible for anything the comedian might say. So I was told, for the first time in the history of the dinner, I was going to follow the President of the United States.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Which was fine with me, because as you know, I am the most dynamic public speaker of our generation. So there was no question.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your scintillating prose just would run every time.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  And the thing about our president, of whom I am a supporter, is that not only is he good at so many things, and he is obviously a politician, a good basketball player when he's not getting hit in the mouth, but he is a great writer. He also has tremendous comedic chops. It's really frustrating after a while. And I had to get up there and follow him.

• 16:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's your best, what's your best thing you said that night?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  My favorite thing was referring to his Spock-like calm, and his obvious prosthetic ears.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Was able to show a picture of Mr. Spock and say, "There's another prosthetic ear enthusiast, Mr. President, I'm sure you're a fan."

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is good.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Because I was testing him on his nerd.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On his nerd geek credentials. So does he pass your threshold?

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Well, he's the first, no, not really.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, okay.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Enough.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I tweeted about his busted lip.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I tweeted about it. I said, "Evidence that the president is a geek is that playing basketball at the White House, he got 12 stitches." He got hurt. And then people tweeted back, saying, "No, that means he's a tough player." I said, "No, no, no, no. 12 stitches in the NBA? You're a hero. 12 stitches in a pickup game at the White House? You're a geek." I'm sorry.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  At least he didn't have an asthma attack. I would have.

• 17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's another geek feature, right? Do you have asthma?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I hurt my back just doing this radio show.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  I'm gonna need some Bengay. He melds the two worlds of jockism and geekdom.

• 17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In ways that others hadn't.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  I hope a very productive way, but he was certainly, I think, one of the first mainstream politicians to basically throw up geek signifiers in a way that I think tells a lot about where we are as a culture now. He gave the Vulcan salute, and he made references to Star Trek, and he made passing references to comic books. And I'm not saying that he's got all this stuff at the tip of his fingers, or even that he has total overriding enthusiasm for it. I think he's probably more interested in keeping the economy together and the country together. But I think it tells something about where we as a culture that this was even allowable.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not even something to criticize, but to celebrate. Exactly, exactly.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  And I think that's terrific. Even though he did not know the name, supposedly he was a collector of Conan the Barbarian comic books, and he did not even know the name of the deity that Conan believed in. By Krom.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that the name?

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that either.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Well, see.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I wasn't a collector of the comic books.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Because you believe in science, you don't believe in Krom. We'll see, come Judgment Day, come Krom's Day, which one of us was right.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  By Krom, we'll have that president's head.

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had no idea who the featured god of Conan is.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, Krom. Eternal battle with Taram and Ehrlich.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, you scare me.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to follow StarTalk Radio, you can do it online. You can like us on Facebook, StarTalk Radio. Just find us there, we're there, easy to find. And of course, we tweet the show, StarTalk Radio is our Twitter handle. I tweet the universe at Neil Tyson. You can tweet no more than one or two a day, so I don't overload your inbox there. But, Charles, we get to, do you agree we have a geek president on our hands?

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think so.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see, I wonder if geek becomes, becomes the norm, then there could be things like the geek chic. Have you heard that phrase?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've heard it?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I only heard it recently.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Oh, no, geek chic is great. You gotta wear the dark horn room glasses with a piece of tape in between.

• 19:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so it's, it's, it's, it's celebrating the culture.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Right, absolutely. Although I like nerd chic better, but geek chic rhymes.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're still on your nerd thing.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  I am, I'm sorry. The, the term nerd is still my favorite compared with geek.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so let's, so let's get back to presidents. Who do you think was the geekiest president? I think Clinton was the first to wear a digital watch.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A digital wristwatch.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Well, that would put him in that category.

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's start, that's start, that's a start, for sure.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  But, you know, so many of our founding fathers really were geeks.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jefferson, my bet, for sure.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Jefferson played the violin. Come on.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Uh, John Adams, socially very awkward, obnoxious and disliked. Benjamin Franklin was known more in the, around the world as a scientist than he was as a statesman.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he, but he was like drank and womanized and that, that, is that part of the stereotype?

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Well, the physicist, yeah, try to keep up with them at some party sometime. My goodness.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what John Hodgman has to say about his own ranking of geek presidents.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Theodore Roosevelt was probably our geekiest president before Obama.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, that's interesting to know.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  But he was a kind of a self-hating geek because he, he was a good, sickly asthmatic child.

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's number one criterion for geek, geek childhood.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  A natural, natural historian from, from childhood.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you think he overcompensated in his later life by, by like going on hunting expeditions?

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Completely. I mean, the whole strenuous life was him trying to fix himself from being a sickly young asthmatic child. What Sarah told me was that he called his own bedroom the Theodore Roosevelt Museum of Natural History as a child.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is Sarah, the historian, not Sarah Palin.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Sarah Palin, not Sarah, not Sarah Palin.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not the other hunter that who's out there.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 21:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Teddy Roosevelt, he's the patron saint of the American Museum of Natural History where I work.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Yes, indeed. He built it with his own hands and teeth. Do you know why he built it?

• 21:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To put all his stuffed animals that he shot. It took a person who slaughtered innocent woodland creatures to then tell us all that we have to conserve them.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  What better way to conserve them?

• 21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, think about it. You put them all in a museum and you say, "These are the creatures we now want to protect. Get to know them."

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. What better way to protect them than by tearing the skin off their bodies and stuffing it with sawdust?

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just the unlucky few who happen to be in the way of the bullet.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Those elephants are now immortal.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're immortal. They've saved countless millions of other elephants.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Look, I don't want to talk about mortality, but we all have to face at one point or another. Will you donate your body to the museum to be stuffed and put on display?

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So not. I want to be buried. So that.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Really?

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. I don't want to be cremated. I want to be buried.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Why?

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I tell you what?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Possibility of reanimation. Please, possibility of reanimation.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, me and Walt Disney, yeah. No, yeah, I don't want like Igor putting the wrong brain in my body. When I, yeah, okay. So, no, I want to be buried because I spent my life dining on flora and fauna that has given me the energy to live. Just as I want to give the energy of my body to the flora and fauna that comes after.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  You want to give back?

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to give back. And if you cremate yourself, you burn, you become heat, it heats the atmosphere, radiates into space. Nobody can use your body energy. I'm a fan of the circle of life.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  You have just changed my whole opinion.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right?

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just, this is a.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  On what I'm gonna do.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you die.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not gonna die, but I was thinking about when my cat dies.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Okay. John is out of control there, man. Well, you know, you have to realize that, yes, when you die, you want to be buried and give your energy back to the earth. But if you get cremated and burned, your energy goes back into the larger earth, the universe, the atmosphere.

• 23:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It goes back to the universe for sure, but no other living creature can use it. That's the problem.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  On earth?

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, still not. Still not. Nobody's getting my, my, my infrared photons moving through space from earth. No.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  You sure?

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm pretty sure about that.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  All right.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's not gonna happen.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Well, it could be reflected back down onto the ocean.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to give it to the microorganisms that are currently in my gut that are waiting to dine upon me, sitting right next to the burial.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Oh, but did you know actually that when you die, many of those. flora and fauna in your gut die too?

• 23:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'll die too, but they'll give, that's fine, but they'll be consumed by others. Wait, ready and waiting.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the burial plot.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I promise.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  All right, so, so no fancy protection or preservation?

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, not the lead coffin, not the, in fact, I don't even really want to be embalmed because that just delays it even further.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think it's a great idea. I think when I die, I'm gonna ask my family to just drop me into the Passaic River. How's that?

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That works too.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then eaten by fish, whatever fish, the Passaic River. Why? How about the Amazon or the Hudson or someplace noble? The Passaic?

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Well, the Passaic.

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You live in Jersey, right?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I take it to the Amazon, then that means you have to put me on a boat or a plane. So. It's gotta use up energy and heat and so.

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the first sentence ever uttered where someone says, when I die, I want to be tossed into the Passaic River. When we come back from the break, we're gonna find out just what John Hodgman thinks about killing and eating lobsters.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson with Charles Liu. Charles, I can't believe I had a 10 minute conversation with John Hodgman about boiling lobsters and I gotta, I gotta go straight to it to tell you what it's all about.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Excellent.

• 25:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here we go. Let's find out.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Do you cut a lobster in half before you put it on the grill or do you boil it?

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we boil it.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Horribly cruel.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we boil it first.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Exactly so.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Head first, yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Do you have a strong opinions about this?

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  So, head first?

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, totally head first.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Do you think a lobster feels pain?

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, a little bit and briefly, but they have copper hemoglobin, so they have green blood.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  You're gonna have to explain what difference that makes. When you're being boiled.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I, I.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Well, I guess it's not so bad. I do have copper, copper blood.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just a bit of biology that people might not know or appreciate.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Yes, indeed.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lobsters have copper blood like Spock.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you didn't know? Well, then, that's why Spock had green blood and the rest of them.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  When I'm eating a Vulcan, I like to suck the meat out of the ears.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go to pith it, pith the Vulcan first.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of people don't think it's worth the time and effort, but that's some sweet.

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sweet meat.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Sweet meat.

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just as you know, when copper oxidizes, it turns green and when iron oxidizes, it turns red. That's why we have red blood and Vulcans have green blood, as do lobsters and other crustaceans.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  What benefit do they get from that?

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  They still boil like the rest of us.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They still boil, you boil them, they're done.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Have you heard about this machine that uses high pressure water to shell a lobster while it is alive?

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not right.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  That is true and it comes out.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's wrong. That's just wrong.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  It comes out whole.

• 26:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like the lobster takes his jacket off and it's done.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically.

• 26:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not right. When I cook a lobster, I remove the rubber off of its claws.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Oh, to give it a fighting chance.

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that it has, so it can try to bite me as I try to shove it into the water. Just to give it the last attempt.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Do you also explain to it?

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  And you think that that gives it comfort?

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll try it next time.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  All a lobster knows is that you have taken off hurty bendy things and is now going wah wah wah wah wah wah and then pain and then death. That's what it's gonna be like when the aliens come too. They're gonna be like, we're gonna be nice to these people as we destroy them. And we're gonna, we're gonna be very confused. It's like wah wah wah wah. It's gonna sound like the teacher on Charlie Brown.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wah wah wah wah wah.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  It's probably, probably for the best.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's crazy. And you know, he gave a TED Talk? Really? He gave a TED Talk on the Fermi paradox. Impressive. Yeah, let's find out what that, how that sounded. Let's go.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  I was talking about alien visitation. And it was spurred by the Fermi paradox.

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is?

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Well, Enrico Fermi.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Famous physicist.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Famous physicist and creator of the atomic pile.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Which.

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a weird.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  It's a technicality.

• 27:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a weird phrase.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Technically, all piles are atomic.

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean?

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, it is kind of odd to put on your business card, "I invented the atomic pile." It's just, that doesn't even sound nice.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Except it was in Italian. So he sat down at lunch one day and said, basically, if the universe is this vast, the likelihood of there being other civilizations in this universe somewhere is pretty high.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gotta be high.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Right. So the question is, where are they?

• 28:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if it's that high, they should have been here by now.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 28:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so your conclusion was?

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Uh, that he's an alien.

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Based on what evidence?

• 28:25Speaker 02

  He looks like one.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He looks like, because you know what an alien looks like, and so therefore he looks like that.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Seen a picture of an alien?

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, they have almond eyes and big triangular head.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Slits for mouths.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Slit for mouths and very wimpy little bodies.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  If you ever saw-

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wouldn't it be cool if an alien came with big muscles? We never draw that.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  That's true. Well, one suspects that if an alien actually gets here, its muscles will be in its technology and will no longer need to flex physical muscles.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is part of our fear factor. They beat us with their brains, I guess.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  That's what's gonna happen, don't you think?

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Alright, so he looks like an alien. What other evidence you have?

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Well, wouldn't an alien want to convince other research scientists that aliens are not already here?

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  It's just, look, it's one plausible theory. I mean, the other plausible theory is that they're on other planets, which are far away.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than here.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our aliens, they just haven't-

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Or that they went through a mass extinction event long before we came up. I mean, just because there have to be a number of civilizations, we also are dealing with huge amounts of time.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so there are out there, they just haven't visited because they're too far away.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  They're too far away, or they blew themselves up. I didn't know a lot about Fermi's Paradox until I had to write a piece for Wired Magazine. And then I became fascinated with it because it really did depress me.

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think they've actually studied Earth and have concluded that there's no sign of intelligent life.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What hubris it is to suggest that we would want to be visited in the first place.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Exactly, you know-

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't go there, I'm sorry.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Think of the amount of energy and resources it would take to reach this planet. What would be gained?

• 29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'd have to totally get return on that investment, and the way I've seen humans behave, I don't think it's there.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  You know, the traditional alien abduction mythos is that something happens in your life that is so weird and incomprehensible and sort of incongruous with normal everyday life, that it can be no product other than alien-

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Abduction or intervention, we're talking about lost time.

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's called argument from ignorance, where I don't know what it is, therefore it must be intelligent aliens from another civilization that came to visit us.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is odd, because you just admitted you don't know what it is.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Right. That was the only way that I could explain, for example, as a teenager, going to see the movie Dune. And having a girl talk to me. Like, that had to have been.

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An alien encounter.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Alien encounter, because what human female would talk to me? Never mind, why would she be going to see the movie Doom?

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doom.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  With her mother?

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's weird.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  That was weird.

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be the first mother-daughter.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Mother-daughter Doom outing.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Outing ever.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's good evidence. That's the best evidence you've given yet.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  What is the likelihood that there is civilization?

• 30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Near certainty.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Near certainty.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, the universe is large, it's been around forever. And the ingredients of life is everywhere. And life started pretty quickly on Earth. And Earth is not, Earth is just Earth. So, anyone who's.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Well, how, how dare you? What a, Earth is just Earth.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a speck.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  I brought my torch and pitchfork, by the way. You start removing the centrality of Earth from the universe any further.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  I will round up a mob.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was not the first to do that, I assure you. So.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  So, it's a certainty. Put aside your questions. I have questions for you.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Now, listen, it's a certainty.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  What about, I'm just curious of your point of view, because you've obviously given us some thought. Civilization, is it something that we simply can't imagine what it would be like? Or do we think it would be primate-like?

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On another planet?

• 31:37Speaker 02

  On another planet.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, look at Hollywood. Every alien they show, it's got two legs, two arms, a neck, a head, shoulders, mouth, eyes. It looks basically human. If you were a jellyfish, the aliens would look indistinguishably from humans. If you're a jellyfish, right? Because they'd have all the total features that we have. So, if there's life form from another planet that visits Earth, and it has no DNA in common with us, it better for sure look more different from us than any other creature on Earth looks from us.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Right, so it could look like Enrico Fermi.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Enrico Fermi, nice Italian boy.

• 32:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Charles, this is green blood.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What color is your blood?

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Uh, mine is red because it's got hemoglobin in it. Lobsters are green because they have hemocyanin. It's an earlier version of hemoglobin. It's only about 25% as efficient as hemoglobin.

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  So, basically lobsters never needed to evolve red blood. The green blood is actually less evolved than our red blood.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it was working fine for them.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  For them, yeah.

• 32:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have an exoskeleton.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're kicking butt down there.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  They live 70 years, 80 years, yeah. They're doing great.

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, John Hodgman also has a podcast where he's Judge John Hodgman?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's crazy, it's crazy. I had to find out, what's that about? Let's find out. Judge John Hodgman.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  And I rule.

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You rule.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  And people come to me with their disputes.

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And?

• 32:51Speaker 02

  And I tell them who is right and who is wrong and how to live their lives, which is something I'm very good at. And a couple of young women came to me with a very weird dispute in which they had picked up a toy giraffe in a street fair in Tokyo when they were on a student trip together and they had lived together as roommates and sharing the giraffe and enjoying the giraffe. It is a small robotic giraffe, not even robotic giraffe. It is.

• 33:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mechanical.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  It is a mechanical toy called Jeffrey. They were fighting over who gets to keep it.

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they are separating, they're no longer roommates.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Right. One of them is going on to graduate school in computer science in Stanford University, a good school. And the other one is going to art school. I said, look, you can't let the one who's going to art school have that giraffe because she's just gonna end up selling it for food or marijuana.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they're no, they're street musicians, they're street performers, they're no street engineers.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No street scientist.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I'll solve your equation for you. No, because they're employed doing it for real.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Right. No busking astronomers.

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  You're about the closest thing there is to a busking astronomer.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Busking, I feel very Shakespearean with that word.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  You could go onto the subway platform and, and give a lecture and I'd buy your cassettes or whatever.

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Judge Hodgman.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Yes, but here's another thing about robots. There were these two guys who called, both of whom are computer scientists. They've had a longstanding fight about whether or not a machine gun is a robot. And the argument for this definition was that a machine gun does a repetitive task that a human could not do on its own, that it is programmable and that it can go from automatic to single fire mode and burst mode apparently, which.

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, a pulse of two or three. Yeah, because if you shoot too many, you'll go off target and you waste bullets.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Why do you know this?

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Let's table that for a further discussion.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't tell you too much, but go on.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  And the third thing is that he wouldn't want to fight a machine gun.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  And he doesn't want to fight a robot, so that's his criteria, which is all faulty, obviously. A machine gun is a tool, it is not a robot. The machine gun is the first thing you'd want to fight.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A human has to operate the machine gun.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Exactly. It has no autonomy whatsoever. But when the singularity comes and the machines become self-aware.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Then we're gonna have a problem.

• 34:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then they start taking people out.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Exactly so.

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  So, tell me about your familiarity with burst mode on machine guns?

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physics is the study of matter, motion, and energy.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is central to the interests of the military.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  I see.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, it turns out, they found that a gun, because there's such a recoil into your shoulder, that if it's on full automatic, your shoulder can be taken out of direction for where you want to point the gun.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Oh, I see.

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it pulses them like two or three at a time, maybe four at most, and then you get to re-aim and pulse again. Otherwise, the bullets fly, and they found out that a lot of ammo was wasted because the gun had a mind of its own.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, what do you know about the Fermi paradox?

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Well, it's very simple. If there were aliens that could even travel a small fraction of the speed of light, they'd have basically taken over the galaxy.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe they already have.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Well, we should be able to see them with telescopes.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we don't.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, nothing's waving back to us at the other end.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  And the possibility, of course, is that maybe by the time you get good enough to get that technology to explore the galaxy, you wind up destroying yourself instead of actually exploring.

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay. So it's a self-limiting.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Prospect.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all these advanced civilizations just are extinct because they just, they had the power to destroy themselves? We've gotta take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.

• 36:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and with me is my colleague, astrophysicist Charles Liu. So Charles, we've had John Hodgman on the show.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He came to my office. I spent like an hour talking to the guy. We're just bringing you the best clips to the view, to the listeners here. And one of the favorite topics was whether robots would ever take over. Or robot aliens.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and you were, you were saying before we went to the break that aliens, there may be a reason why they haven't visited us.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because their technology is so, so potent.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  So potent, that's right. That the, the desire to explore and the desire to conquer may be so similar. That if you say have technology that can get your spacecraft moving at a high percentage of the speed of light. Instead of making a spacecraft, you'd actually make a cannon. And then the cannon will wipe out your enemy, but then your enemy wipes you out at the same time.

• 37:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  And therefore you lose your spacecraft.

• 37:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is the urge to explore and the urge to conquer may be linked to the same gene.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Well, we hope not.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We hope not.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  If geeks rule the exploration, then maybe we don't have that war jockman.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Because geeks don't, don't ever go to fisticuffs.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Well, yes, that's right.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not that I've ever seen.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  We do yell very loudly about which Star Trek captain was better. Does that count?

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I thought that was obvious.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Well.

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what my interview with John Hodgman revealed about his thoughts regarding robots taking over and alien invasions. Do you think robots will take over one day? Are they?

• 38:13Speaker 02

  Oh, you're talking about the singularity.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you tell me.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  How dare you boomerang that back on me?

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you think?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Well, as you know, I, I am mainly aware of popular culture interpretation of advanced technology.

• 38:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  And all I know is that futurist slash transhumanist slash keyboard inventor Ray Kurzweil is taking a thousand vitamins an hour in order to stay alive until the singularity can happen. And the singularity is, I believe, when artificial intelligence becomes self-aware enough to be self-replicating.

• 38:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  And at that point, I think robots take over.

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we become their slaves.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  We become their slaves, or we're able to transfer our consciousness into a robot body.

• 38:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leaving us unnecessary, as was the plot of The Terminator.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly so. Skynet goes online.

• 39:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  As soon as Ray Kurzweil goes full cyborg. I don't know what's gonna happen. So what was your question?

• 39:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, so.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Robots gonna take over?

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, do you do you believe that that is the future?

• 39:15Speaker 02

  I think that it's probably more likely that robots will take over than aliens invade.

• 39:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so then.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  But that's only because aliens aren't gonna bother to get here and the robots have an investment.

• 39:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when the robots take over, then the aliens might come and meet the robots and think that's the sort of the organism of the earth.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Look, we're all gonna be in a lobster pot by then, so. Sure, maybe.

• 39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's that episode of The Twilight Zone where it's a cookbook.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, to serve man.

• 39:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To serve man.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the aliens came and fattened us up and gave us new growing me- methods and the wheat harvest was as big as ever and everybody's happy and fat. And they didn't have to work anymore and they shipped them off to get eaten.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  And soon does that.

• 39:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what psychologists know? That what scares a child the most is not dying.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Robots.

• 40:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. It's not simply the act of dying. We're getting shot. It's getting eaten. That's why they fear big monsters, because a monster will eat them. They don't fear guns. They don't fear traps. They fear things that will eat them.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Usually when you're eaten, you die also.

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, yeah, that's true. That's true, but.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  But it is that particular method.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The method of death.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Do you think that it is a child perceiving that its existence is limited that is so scary, or the feeling that it is going to be chewed up and swallowed?

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to go with the chewed up and swallowed.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  That is, that is the hallmark of being eaten.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what I wonder is if as adults, we capture some of that fear with aliens. Five minutes, you're telling me how much they're gonna put us in their lobster pot because we'll then get eaten. You didn't say those vaporizes with their ray gun. So maybe you're still a kid and you think that the biggest fear is that we're gonna be eaten by aliens.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Of course, we're a childlike race. We're largely irrational. There are very few of us who are even stopped to contemplate our mortality and then those of us who do think we're gonna go to a special place afterwards, so therefore we don't need to worry about what we do on this planet.

• 41:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sums up the world.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  You have to agree with me on this, right?

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  If they ever do find us, they are so technologically advanced.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are worms beneath their feet.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Unless they are extremely politically correct, they are going to. But why would they come here? We've used up all of our resources.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  We're not very smart. Maybe for comedy. Maybe they don't have comedy.

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the answer. No resources would go to we to anybody else.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Let me tell you.

• 41:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not even ourselves.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Let me tell you how we're gonna handle. First handling alien invasion. Recall all the probes. Or you know what? At least stop putting plaques on them with naked men and women. Because that's gonna make us look like we're walking around naked all the time. Waving hi to everybody. Do you know what I'm talking about? The plaques are...

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, the plaque...

• 41:47Speaker 02

  That's an invitation to disaster.

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For some listeners, the plaque is, he's referring to the plaque on the Voyager and on the Pioneer, the space probes that escaped the solar system. And it's got an illustration of a naked man and woman on it.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  We need to stop sending pornography out into the universe. What are they going to think of us?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  It, it's not pornography. It's National Geographic specials.

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. So Charles, what's your, what's your take on all this?

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Well, look, fear of technology is not a new problem. You remember the song, "The Ballad of John Henry"?

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, one of my favorites.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  That's right. He's a man, he's gonna beat the steam drill, right? And he winds up dying with a hammer in his hand.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll beat the steam drill in hammering railroad ties.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  That's right, through a mountain.

• 42:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think he does beat the steam drill.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  He does beat the steam drill, and then he lays down and he dies.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he dies.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  That's right. So I hopefully, you know, I have great optimism that we're not gonna lay down and die. Like, we are creating Watson. I mentioned earlier, remember the...

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Watson, the IBM computer that competed on Jeopardy.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And wiped the floor with Jeopardy's greatest contenders.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, but a VW Beetle wipes the floor with me if I'm running. He beats me anyway. The technology which we've created helps our lives. And if we are wise about using it, we will be just as much helped by Watson in the future as we are by VW.

• 43:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kumbaya!

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Kumbaya!

• 43:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, where are you going?

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends?

• 43:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Charles. So you, so you're hopeful that the technology will just continue to serve us rather than make itself our master?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Very much, very much so.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this is good to hear. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.