Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Project Hail Mary with Andy Weir About this episode What if a microscopic alien lifeform was slowly eating our sun? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice sit down with Andy Weir, the bestselling author of Project Hail Mary, for a deep dive into designing aliens, science fiction, and science behind the book (and the movie.)
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Andy Weir in the house.
0:01 Chuck Nice? Yes, he is.
0:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Author of the novel Project Hail Mary.
0:04 Chuck Nice? That's correct.
0:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're gonna talk to him, but there's gonna be spoilers.
0:07 Chuck Nice? Yeah, lots of spoilers, but you know why? Cause you didn't read the damn book.
0:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's right.
0:11 Chuck Nice? That's the problem.
0:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Coming up on StarTalk.
0:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And right next to me, I got Lord Chuck Nice.
0:40 Chuck Nice? What's up, Neil?
0:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How you feeling?
0:41 Chuck Nice? Man, I'm feeling great.
0:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
0:43 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
0:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You look good.
0:44 Chuck Nice? Well, thank you, sir.
0:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, looking healthy.
0:46 Chuck Nice? Well, that may not be the case, but you know, it's good to look that way.
0:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Look, whether or not you actually are.
0:53 Chuck Nice? Who cares if I'm actually healthy or not? As long as I look good.
0:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We got a good show today.
0:59 Chuck Nice? Certainly.
1:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh my God, we have a repeat guest.
1:01 Chuck Nice? That's correct, many times.
1:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Many times. I looked at the numbers.
1:04 Chuck Nice? Multiple appearances.
1:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hasn't boy been on this show that many times?
1:07 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
1:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I said, no, yeah. We have the one, the only Andy Weir. Andy.
1:13 Speaker 02 Hello.
1:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk.
1:15 Speaker 02 Thanks for having me again.
1:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is your sixth time.
1:17 Speaker 02 You think you guys would learn by now?
1:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You think? You keep writing books and we keep bringing you back.
1:22 Speaker 02 I like it.
1:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You were birthed into this world as a, was it a software engineer?
1:28 Speaker 02 Well, it took me a while between birth and becoming a software engineer, but yes.
1:32 Chuck Nice? I was gonna say that is, that was one seriously developmental wound.
1:36 Speaker 02 Yeah. There wasn't a lot of software engineering in 1972. I mean, there was some though, I mean, Apollo program.
1:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A turned sci-fi novelist.
1:44 Speaker 02 Yes, sir.
1:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Extraordinaire man from The Martian, a bestselling book.
1:51 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
1:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which became a best.
1:53 Chuck Nice? A very popular movie.
1:55 Speaker 02 A hit.
1:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A hit movie.
1:56 Speaker 02 Movie.
1:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Movie with all kinds of marquee actors in it.
1:59 Chuck Nice? Right.
2:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Jessica Chastain and.
2:02 Speaker 02 Matt Damon.
2:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And Matt Damon.
2:03 Chuck Nice? Who was Mark Watley.
2:05 Speaker 02 Watney.
2:05 Chuck Nice? Was it Watney?
2:06 Speaker 02 It is Watney.
2:07 Chuck Nice? Oh, okay. Says the guy who wrote it. Whatever.
2:12 Speaker 02 At the time, I lived in Boston when I first started writing it and I lived alone because I was a loser. And I was like, at the time, I was really into Red Sox games and they had a sideline reporter named Heidi Watney.
2:24 Chuck Nice? Oh, really?
2:25 Speaker 02 And so that I'm like, I like that name. I like that name. I'm taking it.
2:28 Chuck Nice? Okay.
2:29 Speaker 02 So Heidi Watney, if you're out there, Mark's named after you.
2:33 Chuck Nice? Actually, Heidi, no, no, no, no, he's not because we don't want to owe you any money.
2:39 Chuck Nice? Andy doesn't know what he's saying. He's been drinking since noon.
2:42 Speaker 02 StarTalk personally takes responsibility for any monetary compensation.
2:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There you go. So what year did The Martian come out?
2:52 Speaker 02 Uh, well, it took me years to write the book. I started writing it in 2009, finished around 2012. The book came out, I think, 2013 or 14. Yeah.
3:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so the movie comes out in 2015. 2015, the movie. So that's a quick turnaround between.
3:08 Speaker 02 Yes, it was very fast.
3:09 Chuck Nice? So how's that happen? Was the book that popular that it was like a meteoric rise through the rankings? Let's make a movie.
3:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I see what you did in Meteoric.
3:20 Speaker 02 Meteorites usually go down, not up.
3:22 Chuck Nice? Well, that's not true. They also just go around.
3:24 Speaker 02 No, that's asteroid.
3:26 Chuck Nice? You're right. Correct. The moment they break the atmosphere, right.
3:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A meteor is doomed.
3:34 Speaker 02 See, because inaccurate fun is not fun. You understand. So anyway.
3:37 Chuck Nice? You have been hanging out with the wrong people.
3:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So The Martian, you also bagged a marquee director for that.
3:45 Speaker 02 Yes.
3:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ridley Scott.
3:47 Chuck Nice? Ridley Scott, yeah.
3:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And he did Blade Runner. I think the guy's pedigued in this space. No. Yes. That's Alien One, not Alien Two, because that was.
3:58 Speaker 02 That was James Cameron.
3:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? James Cameron.
3:59 Chuck Nice? Right.
4:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Congratulations on that.
4:01 Speaker 02 Thank you. Thank you.
4:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Yeah. And so then that was followed by Artemis.
4:06 Speaker 02 Artemis, which is the only one of my books not to be made into a movie. So.
4:10 Chuck Nice? Yes, but it will be.
4:11 Speaker 02 Mark my words, I will make it happen.
4:13 Chuck Nice? It is now a space program, though.
4:14 Speaker 02 Yes, that's true. That's true.
4:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What more do you want?
4:18 Speaker 02 I want a movie.
4:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good answer.
4:22 Speaker 02 Thank you.
4:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, so how many total books do you have?
4:24 Speaker 02 Just three.
4:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, yeah, so that sentence, "It's the only one of my books not to be made into a movie." You only wrote three damn books, dude.
4:32 Speaker 02 Plural is, the plural is correct in this case. I have had books made into movies.
4:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? True. So, we brought you here because of your latest project.
4:44 Speaker 02 I see what you did there.
4:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? See what I did there? Project Hail Mary. Yeah. Another bestselling book, it's still on the shelves, I see it wherever I go. And that's now a film, starring Ken.
4:55 Speaker 02 That's right.
4:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, I didn't even realize that, yes.
4:58 Speaker 02 Also known as Ryan Gosling.
5:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, is that his name? He was such a good Ken, I can't shake, hard for me to shake that. We're not worried about spoilers in this, because the book predates the movie.
5:09 Speaker 02 Right.
5:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, the storyline is out there.
5:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not some secret.
5:13 Speaker 02 Right.
5:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But, spare the viewer, listener, the ending.
5:17 Speaker 02 The finale, yeah.
5:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The finale.
5:19 Speaker 02 Right.
5:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But, catch us up on just the most important plot development of that story. You know, for the people who don't read.
5:27 Speaker 02 Well, the idea is that an alien microbe, that they later name astrophage.
5:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Astro was star.
5:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Phase is.
5:34 Speaker 02 Eat.
5:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so it eats stars.
5:36 Speaker 02 Well, that's what they named it.
5:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what they named it, okay.
5:38 Speaker 02 It's more like.
5:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They.
5:39 Speaker 02 They.
5:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not like he had anything to do with it.
5:41 Speaker 02 No, I.
5:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The captors just went on their own, and named it, okay.
5:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, and they called it astrophage. What it does is it lives on the surface of the sun, and it absorbs energy and turns it into mass. It uses that mass to create light as propulsion, so that it can migrate to a nearby planet with carbon dioxide, so that it can get the heavier elements it needs to reproduce. And then that, and its sister cell, or sorry, the two daughter cells, return back to the star, and the cycle continues.
6:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
6:12 Speaker 02 And so, and it spores out away from stars to go infect other stars. It's just basically like mold or algae.
6:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
6:19 Speaker 02 Problem is, that there's, it grows exponentially, and there's now so much astrophage on our sun, that it's gonna dim it. And it is dimming it already, and it'll dim it to the. Point where Earth is no longer
6:32 Chuck Nice? Irritable.
6:32 Speaker 02 No longer habitable, right, by anything. And so, um, but they noticed all of the stars in our local cluster have the same problem. They've all dimmed and except Tau Ceti. So they're like, why didn't Tau Ceti have any dimming? So they're like, we're going to make an interstellar spacecraft to find out how. And you know, it's like, how do we make an interstellar spacecraft with modern day technology? You use astrophase as the fuel.
6:55 Chuck Nice? Of course.
6:56 Speaker 02 Because it does mass conversion propulsion.
6:58 Chuck Nice? Right.
6:58 Speaker 02 And that is the, the principal, uh, conflict of the story. Now, do you want me to talk more about it?
7:06 Chuck Nice? Yeah. Let me just say, were you high when you thought of this?
7:10 Speaker 02 No, no.
7:12 Chuck Nice? Like.
7:14 Chuck Nice? Because.
7:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? First just rolled off his tongue.
7:16 Chuck Nice? I mean, yeah, you see how, I mean, and by the way, it's actually, it's completely feasible. It's circular and feasible all at once. Like, I mean, that's pretty.
7:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He said like, yeah, of course, this is how that would have gone down.
7:28 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
7:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
7:29 Speaker 02 Very cool.
7:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So Andy, what we love and deeply respect about you is how much attention you give to the scientific detail infused within your storytelling. Cause I, most stories don't get that level.
7:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of attention.
7:41 Speaker 02 I always imagine you looking over my shoulder, Neil.
7:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I have that quote.
7:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I have the exact quote. I would quote it now. Here it is.
7:49 Chuck Nice? Go ahead.
7:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
7:51 Speaker 02 10 years ago or so.
7:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 10 years ago. Here it was.
7:54 Speaker 02 Okay.
7:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this is my second highest compliment I've ever gotten.
7:58 Speaker 02 All right.
7:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Whenever I was tempted to use hand wavy physics or take a shortcut and not be accurate. I honestly thought to myself, what if Neil deGrasse Tyson reads this?
8:13 Chuck Nice? Wow.
8:14 Speaker 02 It's true.
8:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Man. Cause he'd know I'd be tweeting about it.
8:17 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
8:17 Speaker 02 Looking over, I imagine you looking over my shoulder while I'm typing.
8:21 Chuck Nice? That's, uh, yeah. That would creep me out.
8:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's not what he means by that. Oh, okay.
8:30 Speaker 02 Don't worry, man. He doesn't have to be like be over your shoulder. He's got cameras in your house.
8:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? True that. So the Astrophase, we spent a little bit of time on your last visit, talking about that fascinating organism. And in this one, it's one of the few sci fi films where there's more than one kind of alien in it. And so let's spend some time on the other alien, who the lead character befriends. And this this other alien, it's kind of looks like a pile of rocks.
9:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But but it moves like a crab.
9:05 Speaker 02 A little bit.
9:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So what's your thinking behind that life form?
9:08 Speaker 02 Well, I started off with the exoplanet that he's from, which was at the time believed to be a real exoplanet and has since been proven to be nothing more than like solar flare activity from forty Aradani, which is a bummer. But within the context of when I wrote it, I started with what was known about that exoplanet.
9:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For those who were never amateur astronomers.
9:26 Speaker 02 Okay.
9:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Because they're the ones who know the sky.
9:28 Speaker 02 They know everything.
9:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They know everything about the night sky. Okay. The way we label stars and constellations that are sort of visible easily, we sequence them by Greek letter, and it's followed by the genitive form of the constellation name. So the brightest star in the constellation, Cetus.
9:49 Speaker 02 Which means the whale.
9:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cetus is the whale.
9:52 Speaker 02 Okay.
9:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The brightest will be Alpha Ceti.
9:54 Speaker 02 Okay.
9:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. The second brightest would be?
9:57 Speaker 02 Beta Ceti.
9:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Beta Ceti, third. Whatever comes after that.
10:00 Speaker 02 Gamma Ceti?
10:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gamma Ceti? Okay. So move on your way down. So Tau Ceti is not one of the brighter stars in the constellation Cetus.
10:09 Speaker 02 Okay.
10:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. And the genitive name for Cetus would be Ceti. Then there are certain people who catalog stars going much deeper than naked eye and binoculars. And then they just they just number the stars. And it's it's not as romantic, but it's very precise in cataloging.
10:24 Speaker 02 Okay.
10:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So what star system is this?
10:26 Speaker 02 Um, well, this would be in forty Aradani.
10:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Aradani. So that would be Aradonis.
10:30 Speaker 02 Aradonis.
10:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which is the river.
10:32 Speaker 02 The river. Okay.
10:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there's a non living thing in the sky.
10:34 Speaker 02 Yes.
10:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's several, actually, but this is a river. And I've always disappointed with the river.
10:39 Speaker 02 Okay.
10:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because I think it's just leftover stars that didn't fit into other galaxies.
10:44 Chuck Nice? Oh, wow.
10:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it's just kind of there, you know. Let me grab a couple of these stars, a couple of those. And now call me something. Eridani. So, so this other life form, which is rock.
10:58 Speaker 02 Rocky.
10:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Rocky like.
10:59 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, Iridian is what they is what. What he would be known as.
11:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because he's called Eridian.
11:05 Speaker 02 Iridian species, yeah. Um, yeah, so forty Eridani, uh, had, it was believed at the time, an exoplanet. Um, around forty Eridani A. If you'd like to describe the details of the trinary star system, you can now, or we can just skip over it.
11:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Skip over it.
11:20 Speaker 02 Skip over it, okay. So forty Eridani A is the primary star. And forty Eridani A B is the planet closest to that star. And that was an exoplanet that was eight Earth masses, took about forty six Earth days to orbit the star. Very, very close to the star. Turns out, doesn't exist at all. It was a mistake made and our more accurately, our more accurate, uh, methods of exoplanet detection have disproven it, but.
11:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But so he's not describing the plot of the film.
11:46 Speaker 02 Right. He's just saying the actual science behind.
11:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which misled him initially.
11:50 Speaker 02 Yes, to believing that it was there. Anyway, so, starting from that planet, I said, well, it's going to be really hot because it's very close to its star. It's closer to its star than Mercury is. Wow. And then I said, but, um, because all life in the story was caused by a panspermia event that radiated out from Tau Ceti, including all life on Earth, including all life on Erid, which is the nickname of the planet. Um, everything has to be water based. So how do we have liquid water on a planet that's really, really hot? And the answer is have a really, really high atmospheric pressure. Right. Because water won't boil and, you know, so like their oceans are over two hundred degrees Celsius.
12:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Water boils at one hundred degrees Celsius at.
12:28 Speaker 02 Sea level.
12:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Atmospheric pressure.
12:29 Speaker 02 Right. At, at our atmospheric pressure, yeah. Increases, so they have twenty nine atmospheres at their surface. And so water, even two hundred degrees Celsius water won't boil.
12:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait a minute, so you backed into these alien properties.
12:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From what would have to be the properties of a planet that we would later show doesn't exist.
12:48 Speaker 02 Yes, that's right. Unfortunate. Anyway, I mean, if I was gonna make up a fake planet, if it was gonna be an imaginary planet in the first place, I didn't have to constrain myself. Anyway.
12:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, constraints is the soul of creativity to all engineers.
13:02 Speaker 02 Yes. So anyway, I decided it would have to have a thick atmosphere. How do you have a thick atmosphere when you're that close to the sun? A star is like sand blasting your atmosphere off. So you got two things you can do. You can do what Venus does, or you can do what Earth does. You can do what Venus does, which is have really heavy molecules that are hard to knock out of the planet's gravity well. Venus has carbon dioxide. I decided forty Aridani has ammonia. There's ammonia everywhere in our system, so why not? And then the other thing you can do is have a really powerful magnetic field, like Earth does. So I decided forty Aridani, I've decided Arid, rather, has a tremendous magnetic field. The way you get a magnetic field is, Neil, spin, baby spin, as a mambo king.
13:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, you need a conducting core.
13:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, you need like a mold iron core with convection, but then also spin to make a dynamo. So their magnetic field is about 25 times as powerful as ours, and they rotate once every six hours. So that planet spins like crazy. But with those two things combined.
13:59 Chuck Nice? Rocky's dizzy.
14:00 Speaker 02 Maybe. With those two things combined, I figured that's enough to protect the atmosphere. So now finally, I have liquid water on this exoplanet.
14:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was a long way to go.
14:08 Speaker 02 That was a long way to go.
14:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Get that puppy some liquid water.
14:10 Speaker 02 And then with those constraints, I'm like, well, I'm not sure light would make it to the surface through that thickened atmosphere. Ammonia has a color at large scales. So I decided that no light gets to the surface. And so the biosphere works kind of like an ocean. There's photophilic life up top that absorbs the sunlight and reproduces that way. And then beneath that, there's life that eats it. Beneath that, there's life that eats it, just like our ocean.
14:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like our ocean.
14:35 Speaker 02 Yeah. And then so the apex predators are things that are the Iridians, which are the intelligent species. They live on the surface. There's no light down there. There's no reason for them to evolve eyes.
14:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of course.
14:46 Speaker 02 And they do everything through echolocation, et cetera, et cetera. So bit by bit, I put it together. There's also no free oxygen in the air. So they have to have an enclosed body that deals with the carbon dioxide, oxygen, back and forth reactions. So they have different kinds of cells within their body. Everything's fine as long as they keep adding energy to the system. So they need to eat food. That's found on the ground. That's why they're obligate predators. So all this
15:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's kind of like some of the animals that live near volcanic vents here on Earth.
15:13 Speaker 02 Well, they're, they're, for their biosphere, they're not really extremophiles. This is the normal thing for them. But they are obligate carnivores. And so if you imagine things that live on the seafloor, like crabs, or things like that, so far down that the light isn't even reaching them, but there's still plenty to eat.
15:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
15:45 Speaker 03 This is Ken the Nerd Neck Zabera from Michigan, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
16:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It looks like a pile of rocks, an animated pile of rocks, but the appendages move in a crab-like way.
16:11 Speaker 02 Well, he has, he has five legs or arms, they can use them interchangeably, that each end in three claws. And so it's pentagonally symmetrical, you might say. And he doesn't actually move specifically like a crab. He walks on those legs, but he can walk on, he can walk on three of them while holding stuff with two of them, or he can walk on two of them even if he needs to.
16:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I learned in the, in the Wiki fan page of your book.
16:39 Speaker 02 Oh, excellent. An undeniable source of absolute truth.
16:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. And I hadn't thought about it. And I read this before I, I saw a preview of your film. The creature does not have a front or a back.
16:54 Speaker 02 Right. Because it has, so the way it does a techalocation is it has, I call them oracles, but they're basically like all over his body are, just like we have nerve endings for touch. He has nerve endings for sound. And so his body, his brain untangles all that information. He knows his body shape. And yeah, he knows his body shape and his position, like an Iridian might reach out his arm to get a better view of something. He's like, wait, let me hear this a little better. Yeah.
17:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's like this. That's the way of doing that.
17:26 Speaker 02 And also, wouldn't it be neat if you could just go like this, and the room gets brighter for a second? You could be like. You know, because that's how that works. Because of that, they have a constant input of their 3D environment. Constantly going on in all directions.
17:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There has to be some sound somewhere for that to be the case.
17:45 Speaker 02 That's true, but there's always ambient sound. There's wind or whatever, and if they don't have any, they can make some, right? But so they have this constant input of their 3D environment. So they don't have the part of their brain that we have that maintains cognition of what's around us. So you're looking at me, but you know what's behind you. In your brain, you don't have to think about it. Your brain's just keeping track of that. You know there's a bookshelf there. In a way, you can see it in your mind. You know where it is.
18:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And if I turn around, it's not there, I'll notice it's not there.
18:14 Speaker 02 You'll notice it's not there. They don't have that part of a brain. They don't have to track that because they constantly have 360 degree input. It's like if you had eyes all the way around your head.
18:24 Chuck Nice? That's pretty brilliant.
18:24 Speaker 02 Now, if they suddenly can't hear anything, they will lose all of that information. If you close your eyes, you still know pretty much everything that's going on. You know, but in addition to that, you just close your eyes. You know where everything is in the room. I mean, not precisely, and you probably bump into stuff. But you know there's a table there, a microphone here, a chair here, bookshelves, Neil's desk.
18:45 Chuck Nice? Why wouldn't they be able to do the same thing we do? Because when we close our eyes, we have lost the input. But what we're doing is recreating it in our mind.
18:55 Speaker 02 Your mind has a whole system of maintaining a 3D model of your environment because you can't look at it all the time.
19:03 Chuck Nice? I understand what you're saying. Because our minds are acclimated to always tracking what's around us. And persisting. If we didn't have that, when that would be taken away, we'd be lost immediately. Because they don't need to do that.
19:18 Speaker 02 Basically, they don't have object permanence.
19:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, this is a famous test with infants. It's a famous test. The object's still there when it goes behind the wall. And until a certain age, it goes behind the wall, and then they just look somewhere else. It's gone. And then after a certain age, they'll look and they'll anticipate it coming out the other side.
19:36 Speaker 02 That's why peek-a-boo is so effective with infants. You vanish from reality.
19:40 Chuck Nice? I was gonna say, I still like it.
19:43 Speaker 02 Still working on object permanence.
19:46 Speaker 02 Well, they do have object permanence. Iridians, if something leaves their sensory input, they do. But they don't have that spatial map in their head.
19:52 Chuck Nice? Okay.
19:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Richard Dawkins thinks that bats that use echolocation, being mammals, that means they're structurally similar to us in important ways. He thinks they might use echolocation and map colors onto it.
20:06 Speaker 02 Interesting.
20:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He thinks they might be able to, because they have the capacity to think of color. Why not add color to echolocated objects? I mean, why not?
20:14 Chuck Nice? Why not? Yeah. I mean, you know, the only way we'll know is to ask a bat.
20:18 Speaker 02 Ask a bat, right. What color is this wood? One thing I saw interesting lately is they took a, they took a thing, you know, how your, your, the, the cones in your eye are, react to different wavelengths. So there's red, green and blue cones, and there's overlap and stuff like that. Well, there are some, there, there, there are some activations that never happen. Because like, any wavelength that's this, you know, any wavelength in this range will activate your greens a little bit and your blues a little bit. And it's something like that. And so what they did for the hell of it, I think, was they took somebody, they took tests, human test subjects and shined lasers into their eyes to just activate the blue cones.
21:01 Speaker 02 And so now their brain is getting a signal that has just blue cone activation and no green cone activation. And that makes a new color because they have never experienced that in their life. And they kind of, they have a hard time describing it. They say, it's like this really, really brilliant blight, bright blue, which should surprise no one. But it's interesting. Imagine being able to go in and have somebody shoot a laser in your eye and see a color you have never seen. Nor will you ever see again, because it can only be done by specifically activating those. We are way off topic.
21:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I love me some color. Through your pen, through your mind, the main character names this life form Rocky.
21:45 Speaker 02 Rocky, cuz he looks like a rock.
21:46 Chuck Nice? Looks like a bunch of rocks.
21:47 Speaker 02 Very imagined.
21:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Then, it took me a half second, I wanna alert people of this so that they don't lose this half second. Everyone on Rocky's planet is facing the same fate as people from Earth.
22:01 Speaker 02 Ah.
22:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they both notice this one star that is not dimming.
22:06 Speaker 02 Aha.
22:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they gotta find out what's going on there and not over here.
22:10 Speaker 02 Gotcha.
22:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So they both arrive at the same star for the same purpose with the same mission.
22:16 Speaker 02 Oh my god.
22:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And what an alignment that is.
22:18 Speaker 02 It is. It's like Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks at the Empire State Building.
22:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He asks Rocky, is there someone back at home?
22:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
22:29 Speaker 02 And Rocky goes, Adrian. Well?
22:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you can't understand him.
22:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, uh, uh, okay, uh, I'll call you Rocky and I'll call your mate Adrian.
22:43 Speaker 02 Adrian.
22:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Adrian. But you gotta, that's, that's very, that's, that's, that's very pop culture.
22:48 Speaker 02 Very pop culture.
22:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Retro, decade, decades.
22:51 Chuck Nice? I'm from Philly, it's totally fine, we love it.
22:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's fifty years ago.
22:55 Speaker 02 Decades.
22:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes!
22:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, so am I. I am also from Philly years ago, so.
23:01 Speaker 02 As for Philly, here's the thing, I wanted to do this as part of the publicity, but I came up with the idea too late. Everyone agrees it would've been a great idea.
23:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We didn't say what's going on, in case you don't know. Rocky the Movie with Sylvester Stallone.
23:14 Chuck Nice? Yes.
23:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And he's from Philadelphia.
23:16 Chuck Nice? Correct.
23:17 Speaker 02 And his wife's name is Adrian.
23:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? His wife's name is Adrian. We all know that cuz there's a big scene where it's, Adrian! Adrian!
23:24 Speaker 02 But I wanted, from the marketing, I wanted them to either CG render or have the puppeteers do it, to show Rocky from Project Hail Mary running up the steps.
23:32 Chuck Nice? Of the RV museum in Philadelphia.
23:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, the RV museum in Philadelphia. Put his little.
23:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Put his appendages up, you know?
23:38 Speaker 02 And everything like that.
23:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why not?
23:40 Speaker 02 Because I came up with it, it would've been, it would've taken too long and cost too much at the point that I came up with it.
23:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it would've been stupid, okay?
23:50 Speaker 02 What are you talking about?
23:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the first thing people do when they go to Philly, is run up those damn stairs. So I'm like, how are you getting Rocky to Philly?
23:57 Speaker 02 How you get what?
23:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Through astrophase propulsion!
24:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Stupid.
24:01 Chuck Nice? Come on, man!
24:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Duh!
24:04 Speaker 02 They did, they did, they did little things where they, you know, CGI put like Rocky on the red carpet for the London premiere and he's like signing autographs.
24:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay.
24:12 Chuck Nice? That's cool.
24:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You got it. So, one thing that I didn't quite follow precisely, how, by what means and mechanism was the lead character, of course, played by?
24:25 Speaker 02 Ken.
24:29 Chuck Nice? You know what? I can't think of his name now.
24:30 Speaker 02 Ryan Gosling.
24:31 Chuck Nice? You guys keep calling him Ken!
24:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By Ryan Gosling. Thank you. So, he sets up his computer to, there's initially a shared vocabulary. They start with science and symbols and things. And then, that rapidly becomes full-on exchange of translated knowledge. So, I didn't quite follow how that got so effective so quickly.
24:54 Speaker 02 Well, it's just, he had his computer, like, be able to analyze the waveforms. And so, Rocky would say a word.
25:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Acoustic waveforms, yeah.
25:03 Speaker 02 The acoustic waveforms that Rocky's making. And it would say a word, and then, then he'd put that in his program and say this, and this is the word, like, hello. And then, when the computer heard something close enough to that, it would then have a synthesizer voice say hello, to be Rocky's voice. So, and Rocky is not speaking full, you know, poetic, very high-end. He's talking like, real simple words for dumb human, you know?
25:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
25:32 Speaker 02 He's speaking sort of a pidgin, you know, Iridian English hybrid thing to try to keep the words simple and keep the sentence structure simple, so that they can each talk to each other.
25:42 Chuck Nice? Oh, cool.
25:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But there had to be some starter exchange of vocabulary.
25:46 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm. And they started with, I think, the number one. Yeah, this, this, this, this is my number one.
25:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One.
25:53 Speaker 02 One. So, what do you say for one? Okay, cool. Two?
25:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
25:57 Speaker 02 You know?
25:58 Chuck Nice? Okay. That's cool.
25:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That works. So, I-
26:00 Speaker 02 Oh, by the way, since you're talking about Rocky and Adrian, I'm surprised, did you notice that the name of the ship is the Hail Mary, and it's full of?
26:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It better be Grace, but-
26:09 Speaker 02 Grace?
26:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Wow.
26:10 Speaker 02 The main character's name is Dr. Ryland Grace.
26:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ah.
26:14 Speaker 02 The Hail Mary is full of Grace. I could not resist it.
26:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
26:17 Speaker 02 I am weak. I'm weak, Neil.
26:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But is the Lord with thee?
26:22 Speaker 02 Uh, well, the writer would be the Lord, right? In this case?
26:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. I guess so.
26:28 Chuck Nice? Hilarious.
26:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I guess so. But are you blessed art thou?
26:35 Chuck Nice? I don't wanna know anything about the fruit of your womb.
26:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know.
26:37 Chuck Nice? That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying.
26:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're blessed art thou among women.
26:42 Chuck Nice? Let me ask you this, though, because you seem to have this theme of alone in space.
26:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
26:49 Chuck Nice? What is it that fascinates you about alone in the cosmos?
26:56 Speaker 02 Well, to be fair, Ryland is not alone, right? He's got his, he's got his brother from Iraqi mother with him, right?
27:02 Chuck Nice? Okay.
27:03 Speaker 02 But failing that, it's just a, it's just a very convenient method of storytelling. You have your, your hero is like completely isolated. When they're out in space, it's like, even if all of humanity wanted to help him, which was the case in The Martian, there's very little they can do.
27:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the lead character in this story is, he's kind of a reluctant hero.
27:26 Speaker 02 To say the least.
27:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's kind of a selfish coward.
27:30 Speaker 02 I wouldn't say selfish.
27:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He doesn't wanna save the world. He doesn't want, and yet he's cast into this spot kind of against his will, reminding me of the great Shakespearean line.
27:42 Chuck Nice? Yes.
27:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Some people are born great. Some people achieve greatness. Other people have greatness thrust upon them.
27:53 Speaker 02 He had it thrust into him. It was not a good experience. He had greatness just absolutely injected into him.
27:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Injected in. He was a reluctant participant in this mission.
28:02 Speaker 02 Right.
28:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But everyone knew they needed him, so they just drugged him and put him on.
28:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's a pretty big spoiler, by the way, for the movie. So you might wanna make an extra warning.
28:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
28:12 Speaker 02 And, and the book also, but yes, he was there against his will. And I wanted to make a likable protagonist. And it's, I think we can all feel, like we've all felt at times that we are like unqualified, unwilling and scared. I don't know, maybe not you. You just radiate confidence to the rest of us morals.
28:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But that's not interesting to a viewer. You want the person to overcome these weaknesses.
28:38 Speaker 02 Which he does.
28:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then triumph.
28:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:40 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
28:41 Speaker 02 Which he does.
28:41 Chuck Nice? Yeah. Okay, alright, this, I mean, that, that always redeems a, a character too. And he could start off scared cowardly, but then overcomes that to do heroic feats.
28:53 Speaker 02 Right.
28:53 Chuck Nice? You know, especially if they're selfless heroic feats.
28:56 Speaker 02 Right, I mean, the first time he was willing to really risk his, really risk his neck was because of the friendship he had made with Rocky.
29:02 Chuck Nice? Well, okay, so, that's cool, man. Mm-hmm. That's cool, so he didn't want to save humanity, but he put his ass on the line for some Rocky ass alien.
29:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
29:11 Chuck Nice? Yeah, yeah. Now I'm pissed off.
29:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:14 Chuck Nice? Now I'm angry.
29:15 Speaker 02 Within the context, saving humanity was a guaranteed death sentence. It was a, it was a suicide mission.
29:20 Chuck Nice? Gotcha.
29:21 Speaker 02 Saving Rocky was, um, uh, high risk of death. It was a little different.
29:26 Chuck Nice? Okay.
29:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's, that's an interesting distinction.
29:28 Chuck Nice? I like, I like the distinction.
29:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. High risk of death or certain, or certain death?
29:32 Chuck Nice? Certain death, yeah.
29:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm taking the high risk.
29:34 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
29:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I want to just compliment you on conceiving of aliens that are not just actors in a suit.
30:05 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
30:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so therefore, you have the freedom for them to not be humanoid.
30:11 Speaker 02 Right.
30:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which is one of the weakest points of all Hollywood aliens.
30:15 Speaker 02 Well, to be fair, Hollywood aliens are usually not in $200 million movies, right? And so you've got to, you've got to be realistic.
30:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that what the movie cost?
30:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? $200 million?
30:25 Speaker 02 Actually closer to $250, but we got tax rebates from the UK for shooting there. Yeah.
30:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
30:30 Speaker 02 Nice, yeah, we better make a lot of money on this.
30:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's why he's got an expensive Panama hat.
30:34 Speaker 02 That's why I've got this expensive Panama hat.
30:38 Speaker 02 So half of that budget went to this. All right. But yeah, um, most of the time, you know, for, if you're going to write a science fiction story and you want to tell it in a reasonable budget, like an episode of Star Trek or something like that.
30:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You get the rubber costume.
30:53 Speaker 02 You get the, yeah, you get the forehead prosthetics. You have the alien be in the same environment. You're good. Um, but yeah, with the luxury of being able to do whatever you want, we can have our alien require, you know, xenonite barriers, you know, and stuff like that and be completely non-humanoid.
31:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, tell me about the barriers because your alien requires a different environment.
31:14 Speaker 02 Twenty-nine atmospheres of ammonia.
31:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Twenty-nine atmospheres. A lot of pressure and ammonia.
31:18 Speaker 02 And a lot of heat.
31:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's right. Hot, high pressure and poisonous gases. So. Sounds a lot like me and Melania.
31:27 Speaker 02 And it went, sorry.
31:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So how do you? After a lot of tacos. How that the boundary between the regular spaceship and the alien in the spaceship, what was that bound? It was transparent.
31:43 Speaker 02 It was made of xenonite, which is a material that is somehow, one of the main components of it is xenon, a noble gas that doesn't normally react with things. What I wanted.
31:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And makes super bright headlights.
31:56 Speaker 02 But yes, so Ryland has no idea how that stuff works or how it's made.
32:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so it's a rocky, it's a rocky.
32:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, it's Iridian technology.
32:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
32:05 Speaker 02 And so what I wanted was, what, I didn't want either, either species to be like completely scientifically more advanced than the other. From the Iridians' point of view, we're kind of the advanced aliens because we have computers, we have better technology across the board. Uh, but Iridians have much better materials technology.
32:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the material scientists, basically.
32:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, their material science is far better than ours. Um, but our, like, like they didn't understand relativity. The Iridians didn't.
32:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Those idiots.
32:32 Speaker 02 They didn't understand.
32:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We've only known it for about a hundred and twenty years, so don't get so high in mighty. Wait, so why was it important that they didn't know relativity?
32:43 Speaker 02 We figured out flight before we figured out relativity. Okay, so.
32:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why was it important that they did not know relativity as a storyteller?
32:50 Speaker 02 Because it gave me an excuse to, if you calculate, if you assume Newtonian physics, which they did, uh, they calculated how much fuel they would need to get from their home star, Forti Erdone, to Tau Ceti. And, and, and for a trip back, it was supposed to be a round trip thing. Um, and you calculate that fuel, you get a certain number. The real amount of fuel you need to use is considerably less due to the time dilation and, and the relativistic effects you have when you're going there. So he ended up with a whole bunch of excess fuel, which enables him.
33:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There, I didn't catch that.
33:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There it is.
33:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so the evidence, they didn't know relativity, otherwise they would have done the, the proper calculation.
33:28 Speaker 02 Right.
33:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
33:29 Speaker 02 And Rocky, it's in the book, but not in the movie. Rocky says they were very confused. It's like, okay, we, the, the planet was, you know, the other star was closer than it should be, so he slowed down, but then it got further away. And what?
33:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so they're experiencing relativity, not knowing what the hell's going on?
33:44 Speaker 02 What is going on?
33:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow. So do you regret that that wasn't in the movie?
33:48 Speaker 02 No, that, you had to cut things out.
33:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so what's, what, okay. What, cause you don't have final edit control, I presume, cause you're just the author.
33:56 Speaker 02 Well, I'm also a producer, so I had to say.
33:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But were you executive producer?
33:59 Speaker 02 No, I was a real producer.
34:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh! So is there a scene you felt should have been in the movie?
34:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, my only regret, and Drew and I both fought for this, Drew made, wrote the adaptation for it.
34:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I saw, he credited him for that, huh? Drew, the full name?
34:16 Speaker 02 Drew Goddard.
34:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Drew Goddard.
34:18 Speaker 02 Drew Goddard wrote the adaptation, did a fantastic job. And he and I both wanted this one scene, and we just didn't have time for it, cause the runtime was going so long. But there's a scene in the book where they nuke Antarctica. They basically put.
34:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Back on Earth, yeah.
34:30 Speaker 02 On Earth, they dropped, they set off a bunch of nuclear explosions in Antarctica to make an entire ice shell fall into the ocean, so that it will melt and release all the methane, which is greenhouse gases, so that Earth will retain more of the heat that it is getting from the sun.
34:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because they are, because the astrophase is eating the sun.
34:49 Speaker 02 Dimming the sun, not dimming the sun.
34:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, wow.
34:52 Speaker 02 So they're like, we need some global warming.
34:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
34:56 Speaker 02 And that's why.
34:59 Speaker 02 Are you doing Trump? Is that it?
35:02 Chuck Nice? And that's why I'm
35:04 Speaker 02 This is between Trump and Fat Albert.
35:09 Chuck Nice? There's something wrong with your ears.
35:11 Speaker 02 You're sounding pretty gravelly, Trump, my friend.
35:13 Chuck Nice? No, if you've listened to him now, that's how he talks. So I'm not doing rally Trump. I'm doing the Trump that talks in front of the cameras and wants you to know, wants you to know that's great frankly.
35:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that's something that was not in the film where we don't see Earth descending into
35:35 Speaker 02 Right, and that's also not in the book. We see in the beginnings of it in the book, there's issues, they're starting to have problems, and a lot of their problems are caused by the amelioration techniques they're proactively doing. So they knew, they're gonna, things are gonna get worse, but then we're gonna need that heat.
35:51 Chuck Nice? So we have a, we have a mouse problem. Well, let's get a bunch of hawks. And now we have a hawk problem, okay?
35:58 Chuck Nice? That's the deal. All right, and it was a stretch for me, if I may.
36:04 Speaker 02 You and I are enemies now.
36:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was a stretch for me to, as an academic, to completely embrace the idea that the entire world of biochemists is insufficient to handle this mission, and they need the one guy who has the expertise that no one else has, and he's a middle school, a middle school chemistry teacher.
36:35 Speaker 02 Right. So to be fair, he was, you know, a speculative xenobiologist. He has PhD, you know, astrobiologist. So he had done that, and then he'd left that field. He'd written papers and stuff.
36:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But he wrote papers, so the papers are out there, and other people are still active. And he's no longer active. So why does he still become the guy?
36:54 Speaker 02 Because he's been part of the mission and the mission planning the whole time. So he understands all the other aspects of the mission as well. He knows all about the Hail Mary itself. And they don't have time to train someone else up on all the other stuff. And he's as well trained as any of the other biologists.
37:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the, in the way they need it to be.
37:14 Speaker 02 That they need him to be.
37:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. All right, he got out of that.
37:17 Chuck Nice? Does that work for you?
37:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He got out of that one.
37:18 Speaker 02 I got wriggled out of that one.
37:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So again, congratulations.
37:21 Speaker 02 Thanks so much.
37:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Some of your books getting turned into movies.
37:24 Speaker 02 On two, two out of three.
37:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Some of your books getting turned into movies. And it's a delight anytime you come visit us here. And for whatever might be your next book still, we want to stay on your tour.
37:38 Speaker 02 Okay.
37:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Your tour list.
37:39 Speaker 02 Always.
37:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
37:41 Speaker 02 All right.
37:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent.
37:42 Speaker 02 Thank you. Thanks for having me.
37:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And any last, just bits of wisdom or advice for us all? How about aspiring writers?
37:48 Speaker 02 Aspiring writers? I've got three bits of advice for aspiring writers. One, you have to actually write. Ideating and imagining and world building is not writing. You need to type. Number two is resist the urge.
37:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Execute the idea.
37:59 Speaker 02 Yeah. Number two is resist the urge to tell your friends and family your story. It satisfies your need for an audience and saps your will to write.
38:07 Chuck Nice? Oh, very nice.
38:08 Speaker 02 So you, you can, you can give them a chapter at a time as you write it to satisfy that need.
38:13 Chuck Nice? Don't tell them.
38:14 Speaker 02 Don't tell them. Okay. And then the third one is there's never been a better time in human history to self-publish. There's no old boy network between you and the readers anymore. You can, for absolutely zero financial risk, you can put your book out there and millions of people.
38:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Says the man who's published with Penguin Random House.
38:30 Chuck Nice? Okay.
38:30 Speaker 02 I was gonna say. Initially published on Kindle Direct Publishing.
38:33 Chuck Nice? Oh. But for all of you who aren't this talented, don't quit your job.
38:40 Speaker 02 I didn't quit my job until I had. I'm just a publisher and I'm on Penguin, so.
38:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
38:46 Speaker 02 All right.
38:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're, we're done here. That was Project Hail Mary.
38:50 Speaker 02 Nice.
38:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Full of grace.
38:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The Lord was with thee.
38:55 Speaker 02 Well, Phil Lord.
38:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, always good to have you, man.
38:59 Speaker 02 Always a pleasure.
39:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and Andy, thanks for being high up on my compliment list.
39:04 Speaker 02 Oh, thank you.
39:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And let me give you the highest compliment I could ever give. Don't stop moving the needle in your storytelling for Hollywood because.
39:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was looking like same shit, different day.
39:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For so many years. And with your stories out there, it gives us something fresh to embrace and imbibe.
39:27 Speaker 02 Thanks so much. It means a lot to me.
39:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the genre. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, do keep looking up.
39:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So.
39:54 Speaker 02 They say in that song, they're going to Venus, and then they also say they have so many light years to go.
39:59 Chuck Nice? Oh, God.
39:59 Speaker 02 This is me.
40:00 Chuck Nice? What a shame.
40:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, don't get me started.
40:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, God damn it.
40:02 Chuck Nice? That's awful.
40:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But we almost started with the, I did that Kessel Run in 12 parsecs.
40:06 Speaker 02 No, no, the Kessel, hey, hey.
40:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, that's, don't, don't come after the fact and explain that.
40:12 Speaker 02 No, no, no.
40:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At the time, they didn't know what the.
40:15 Speaker 02 There are two black holes orbiting each other.
40:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't make me slap you.
40:18 Speaker 02 And so if you go between the black holes.
40:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't make me slap you.
40:21 Speaker 02 Then you manage to do it in under 12 parsecs. Everyone else goes around the black holes.
40:26 Chuck Nice? Okay. So I've heard that was, I've heard that, that explanation before too.
40:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is bailing out there.
40:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's what we're doing.
40:33 Chuck Nice? No, but nobody has given me a compliment at all. I don't know what.
40:37 Speaker 02 I don't know, man.
40:40 Speaker 02 Way to, way to, way to escape Philly.
40:45 Chuck Nice? Oh, that was, man, that hurt.
40:49 Chuck Nice? That one hurt.
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