The Evolution of Journalism, with Katie Couric

Neil deGrasse Tyson investigates the search for the truth, the devaluation of facts, staying fair and balanced, debunking “fake news”, and the evolution of modern journalism with Katie Couric, co-host Eugene Mirman, Buzz Machine’s Jeff Jarvis, and data journalist Mona Chalabi. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Photo Credit: Brandon Royal.

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.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My comedic co's Eugene Mirman, Eugene. Hello. StarTalk veteran. Yes, yes, welcome back. And Jeff Jarvis. Jeff.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a professor of journalism at the... City University of New York. At CUNY Graduate School. Yes. Yes, and this is not your first rodeo with us. I am honored to be back. Well, no, we love having you because journalism is such a big part of what we think of as today's culture and society. And we're gonna be relying on your expertise tonight because of course my interview is with Katie Couric. And let me ask you something. I speak as a scientist that our goal is the search for what is objectively true. And it seems to me that would be what a journalist seeks. Would you agree? It should be in theory, but life's too complicated, I think. And we're not as smart as you. Well, so, but clearly there's resonance between the two, at least in principle.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One hopes that we become more fact-based than we are today. So I asked Katie whether her early life experience in school, whether her classes in science might have, knowing that science is trying to find out what is real in the world, whether that had any effect on her becoming a journalist. So let's check it out.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were there any memories, good or bad, with science teachers, math teachers?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Actually, I have a bad memory because Ms. Poland was my eighth grade science teacher. I got a D in science and kicked off the cheerleading squad. Temporarily. I think I got kicked off for smoking in the bathroom once, too. So I probably had a very checkered cheerleading career, Neil. But, you know, I wasn't, I was a bit of a goof-off in school.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. All cheerleaders have a little bit of bad in them.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. We're a little naughty, Neil. All cheerleaders are a little naughty.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so you were upset, not that you got a D in the class, but that you got kicked off the cheerleading squad?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  I was upset about both, actually, because my parents were very, had high expectations for all their kids. I was the youngest of four. And I think got by on my charm and personality a little more than my academic prowess. And

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because charm only gets you so far on the math test.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Yes, it does. You're right. You're right. I still have nightmares, actually, that I am about to take a math test and I haven't studied, or somehow I didn't go to class the whole semester. And suddenly I have a math test or some other subject and I haven't studied. Do you have those?

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the old recurring math nightmare, yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Do you have those ever? No. You probably don't.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, never.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  You dream that you ace every math exam.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I so, no, here's the difference. I don't dream that I ace the exam because I don't think of my learning in terms of grades. I think of my learning just in terms of learning.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  The pleasure, sheer joy of learning.

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm gonna throw up.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Really?

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, no, I just, but okay, so that's a bad memory.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how early was journalism on your sights?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  You know, I always loved to write and I was always a pretty good writer. And I also was a master procrastinator, so I wrote well under pressure. And I remember when my teacher in junior high read my essay in eighth grade and I was so full of pride. And I, I forget exactly what it was on, but I remember the feeling of being appreciated for my good writing. I love words and language. I think also I'm a very social person, you know, I, I'm very outgoing. I like talking to people. I like meeting new people.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Um, and so I think it was the affinity for writing, but also for just human interaction um, that made journalism really a very good career choice for me because it satisfied both of these things.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. So, she got a D in science, but she loved writing. So, that's a good thing, and she became one of the most successful news anchors of all time. She hosted the Today Show for 15 years.

• 4:29Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, which is actually 5,475 todays.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  15 years, is that how that works?

• 4:35Speaker 03

  He's good at math.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the new news anchor arithmetic. She anchored 60 Minutes for five years, CBS's 60 Minutes, and she's hosted major programs on all the three major news gathering networks, broadcast networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS. So, let me ask you, Jeff, she said at the end she's a people person, and I think she credits that, at least part of her success for that. In your experience teaching journalism, is that as important as she says?

• 5:02Speaker 03

  People who know me today would not believe this, but I'm actually very shy inside, and journalism forces you out of a shell. You've got to pick up the phone, you've got to ask people questions.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Strangers.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Strangers. And what it really requires, I think, is curiosity. If you don't ask questions, if you're not curious to find out what the answers are, you probably need to be a good listener, and frankly, journalists could be a lot better listeners than we are.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I agree. Yeah, you all suck at that.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, we do.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear. But, of course, you could have all the curiosity in the world, but if you don't know how to write, no one can use you.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  It's about communication, but now journalists will always say that they're storytellers first and foremost.

• 5:38Eugene Mirman?

  Does it matter if the story is true or not?

• 5:40Speaker 03

  I, huh, huh, huh, yes.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got a whole segment on what is true and what isn't.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, we'll get to the truth later. For now, no. But I think we're more than storytellers now. I think that journalism, properly conceived, is a service to a community, and it has to understand how to give that community what it needs to know to function properly.

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An important point now is, most people are not getting their news from a journalist who's speaking to them.

• 6:03Eugene Mirman?

  Most of them find it in a trash can, and they believe it.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, they're getting their news off a smartphone.

• 6:10Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? And so, there's not a personality involved in that. So, I asked Katie about the evolution of news in the digital era. She had thoughts about that. Check it out.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  You used to wait until the end of the day for the local news to find out what was going on in the world, the evening news, maybe the morning shows, right? Maybe your local newscast at noon, if they had one. And it just wasn't everywhere. And now it is constant, non-stop, 24/7, just boom, boom, boom, at you all the time.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not breaking the story, someone's iPhone is.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Well, no, someone's breaking the story that is then getting broken on an iPhone. But now there are also so many, a whole panoply of media outlets and individuals who can also be reporters, right? So it's just, I think, the sheer volume of information. I always call it a tidal wave. It's like a tsunami of information that washes over you every day, that, that, I think, it's, it's all happening so quickly, so fast and furiously, it's hard to, I think, gain a really proper perspective and to think about events, rather than just have them kind of go by you in a nanosecond.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So would you say that the ubiquity of information has diluted your profession? With the profession you cut your teeth in?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  I think it's, it's made more opportunities for people who want to be journalists, and I think it's, in some cases, ushered in less thoughtful journalism because of the time crunch.

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was so polite, the way you said the less thoughtful journalism.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  But you know, I think, I think speed has trumped accuracy, and, and people, I think, as a result, have shorter attention spans, so, you know, I think it has definitely changed it dramatically. Having said that, there's still a lot of very good journalism going on, incredible reporting, investigative reporting. I think what's challenging for the consumer is there's so much of it.

• 8:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Too Much News.

• 8:13Eugene Mirman?

  That's the name of my band.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Too Much News.

• 8:17Eugene Mirman?

  It's not very good, but it's very informative.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jeff, Jeff, is there such a thing as too much news?

• 8:24Speaker 03

  There's a thing of too much information without context, too much information without some sense of why it's there. I think right now with 24-hour cable news, we are bombarded constantly, not always with new news, with news that's repeated over and over and over again, but acting as if it's new, acting as if it's always breaking. When that itself is a lie, it's not. We need some way to pull back more and understand the context and have smart people explain to us what's going on, answer questions.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe journalists should spend less time breaking news and more time fixing news.

• 8:55Eugene Mirman?

  Or maybe more people should become addicted to heroin and really just relax. Where there's probably 100 million people on heroin away from everything being fine.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember, I must have been in high school, the local news declared that there would no longer be a 30-minute broadcast to lead into the evening news. They would expand to an hour. And people said, "Whoa, there can't be that much news in the world." "That's a lot of news." And I remember they said, "You think that might be too much time? In fact, we had to cut things out."

• 9:29Eugene Mirman?

  Is it because?

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I knew they had to be lying. And then a few years later, CNN would show up 24/7. And now we have infomaniacs, right, who can't get enough news, so...

• 9:40Speaker 03

  But the problem too, Neil, is the business model behind. We're taking the old mass media business model, which is built on eyeballs, eyeballs, volume, more of you that we can get, rather than a model of the internet, which is built on relevance and value and knowing you as an individual. And so these two things are clashing horribly. The old business model in this new world will inevitably lead to one place.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 10:02Speaker 03

  Cats and Kardashians.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And sex.

• 10:05Eugene Mirman?

  Not terror? Just like a little bit of like, "Ah!" A little of that, right?

• 10:10Speaker 03

  It's okay, we'll get you something.

• 10:11Eugene Mirman?

  We'll see. I don't know that you can.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so contrast for me this tension, I have no other way to describe it, between the actual content of an article and the headline that gets you to click on it, or in the old days, to get you to read the story.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Clickbait.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Clickbait.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  That is the business model.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll tell you clickbait. You want to hear clickbait?

• 10:28Eugene Mirman?

  I'd love to.

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would tell you clickbait, okay? January 21st, 2000.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  2001, January 23rd, 2001. What should have filled the paper's headlines that day?

• 10:43Speaker 03

  Uh, inauguration?

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Inauguration of George W. Bush, of course. Because that would have been the day before. That's not what was in the lower half of the New York Times that day.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Was it Pluto?

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it was! In the New York Times. Pluto not a planet? Only in New York.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  You just can't get away from the story, can you?

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm just, just, just, just, start it.

• 11:03Eugene Mirman?

  That doesn't sound like clickbait. That sounds like information being passed on through the New York Times.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, just don't get me started.

• 11:09Eugene Mirman?

  Clickbait is more like, "Cats, cats, cats." And when you click on it, you're like, "There is collusion with Russia." And then you're like, "Oh."

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe that's how it should be. He's got an idea.

• 11:17Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, that's how we'll get real information to people. Title everything, "Cats."

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 11:24Eugene Mirman?

  Cats? Pluto not a planet.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I don't mind too much information. Uh, even if it's slightly out of context, or in no context at all, provided it's at least true.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's not what's going on right now.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  No.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have, it's, so it's not a tidal wave of news and information. It's a tidal wave of disinformation, or misinformation.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Well, it's a combination. The problem is, you have information, you have speculation, you have disinformation, and the problem is telling them apart.

• 11:50Eugene Mirman?

  I like that song.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  It does, it's nice. Your band can do a very good cover of it.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I asked Katie about these sort of alternative media realities that people thrive in. Let's check it out. I can type any crazy idea into Google, and I will find every other website in the world that resonates with my crazy idea. And then I create a bubble without any counter-check on whether I'm connected to reality at all.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  I think you can form your own reality today, right? Your personal reality, and I think that's really scary, because you can find conspiracy theorists who believe that Sandy Hook never happened, or it was a government plot. To have better gun regulation. I mean, all sorts of, the moon landing never happened. Flat Earth, yeah. Right, right, flat Earth. And so, I think it's quite scary that you can find affirmation for all kinds of wild ideas. But more commonplace is that you find people who agree with you politically, who see the world from a particular point of view, and it's very black and white.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  You know, you're Fox or MSNBC. And it's, I think, as a friend of mine said, people are looking for affirmation, not information. And I think in a democracy, you know, you have to have your ideas challenged. You have to have a healthy debate, right? But if you're just listening to people who agree with you and have the same opinion, how are your notions going to be challenged?

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jeff, in my field, we call it confirmation bias. Well, any field presumably would call it.

• 13:32Eugene Mirman?

  Mine too.

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the same issue, right? You believe something is true, you find things that support it, you discount, discard, dismiss things that don't agree with it, and you live happily in what you think is a reality. So, how do you deal with this?

• 13:48Speaker 03

  I think it's a problem, and the argument is made that social media makes it worse, but I'm not sure that's true, actually. I think that there have been some studies from the Pew Foundation that have found out that people who got their news online in the early days were more likely to know of an other side's argument than people who got their news offline. The problem was-

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Offline like broadcast TV?

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, the problem was, of course, that way back when, in a city like New York, we had tremendous diversity of voices, if not diversity in the newsrooms. You had a dozen, 20, 30 papers. Then you got down to one or two. Then you got down to three networks. And then you got down to cable news that just all repeats each other. So we lost, I think, a certain diversity of perspective and viewpoint in this myth of objectivity in news.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But do you have a test to know if you're in a bubble? An echo chamber? How would you know? Because people who are in a bubble don't know they're in a bubble!

• 14:39Speaker 03

  We know, I've been thinking about this with Facebook.

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You slap them? What do you do? How do you, how do you? Drag them out of the bubble?

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Or out of the airplane.

• 14:45Eugene Mirman?

  If you push them into a lake and they float, they're not in a bubble.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  I think that what Facebook could do for us is to introduce us to strangers and make them less strange. If you look at the kind of panic-

• 14:59Eugene Mirman?

  I think you're thinking of Grindr.

• 15:03Eugene Mirman?

  But I understand the spirit of what you mean.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  What's scaring him so much is that the politicians come along and say, "There are strangers coming across our borders. They're gonna steal your jobs. They're gonna steal your wives and your children." And we let that happen. And if we could just meet people in other circumstances and understand their worldviews and understand the perspective.

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you prevent it?

• 15:24Speaker 03

  I think diversity matters. I think understanding that you have different perspectives in the world and how you serve those perspectives.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, education.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  Education.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't we just say, "For every hour of Fox News, you're watching an hour of MSNBC."

• 15:36Eugene Mirman?

  Then you can have two wrong opinions.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eugene, how do you?

• 15:42Eugene Mirman?

  That's not an opinion.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you get your news?

• 15:45Eugene Mirman?

  I get my news, uh, through...

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I have no... Based on everything you've said in the last 10 minutes, I have no idea where you get your news. Do you have any faith in...

• 15:54Eugene Mirman?

  I get my news from carrier pigeons.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, coming up, we will discuss what fair and balanced actually means when StarTalk returns.

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History, and we're talking about the intersection of science, science principles, and journalism, featuring my interview with renowned journalist Katie Couric. Check it out. Why is it that today, we still have journalists who will give a fringe view, half the column inches, compared to the non-fringe view of science, leaving the public confused about what is true and what is not?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  No journalist I respect does that.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  I mean, I think there was a school of thought for many years that you did have to give equal weight to two sides of an argument. Um, and it's sort of on one hand, on the other hand, according to this expert, but according to that expert. It's a search for truth, right? The truth is ultimately our goal, not one opinion versus another. Now, there are areas where good, smart, and well-meaning people can disagree. As you said, politically, if they... Believe in more government, if they believe in less government. If they, you know, believe in higher taxes or lower taxes. I mean, there are areas of honest disagreement, which I think in those cases, it's fair to do that.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  But when one side has no credibility and no basis in fact, then you do not give that person equal weight, if any weight at all.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jeff, when I think of this issue, I think, alright, you're gonna give 50/50 column inches if it's on religion or politics or things that are strongly opinion-based. If it's anything else, no, you don't do that. And so, I have to assume you agree with this?

• 18:11Speaker 03

  So we had the-

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The answer is yes?

• 18:12Speaker 03

  The answer is yes.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, fine, thank you. Now speak, okay?

• 18:16Eugene Mirman?

  How liberal.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  We don't have that methodology in journalism at all. We certainly don't have that methodology in politics. How do you bring that way of looking at things? So we get to facts, we get to understand an extension of language and not just emotion.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got this. So, so, so, let me add, I don't have an answer to you, but I have a element. So, in my field, in science, I do a research and I have a result. And I publish that result in a peer-reviewed journal. That is not the truth. The truth is, only one emerges if other people duplicate that experiment and get kind of the same result. And if all these experiments align and come out with the same general idea, we have discovered a new emergent, objective truth in this world. And there'll always be outliers, because that's the nature of experimental measurements, so now watch. But what you guys do is, I publish one research paper, you come running to it,

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and report that as the new truth. And without any sense that no-

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Confusing the heck out of the public, because it doesn't agree with-

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, is cholesterol good today or bad tomorrow?

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:26Eugene Mirman?

  So maybe if we could take away healthcare from 22 million people five times, we would know if it was effective.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  We'd have to try a few times not doing it. That would be the experiment.

• 19:39Eugene Mirman?

  We would pick, we would divide the country in half. We would, we would kill some and let others thrive. And then we'd be like, yep, that works.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so would you consider the case where, if we take climate science, for example, where there's the overall, by the way, when I speak of an emergent truth, if I ever use the word consensus, I'm not referring to opinion. I'm referring to a consensus of observations and measurements. Okay, so it's not at that level about opinions at all. So now you're gonna report on climate change and you have the urge to bring in the climate denier. Now, you're not gonna bring in the 99 others because there's no room in your studio. So how do you go about doing this?

• 20:20Speaker 03

  So let me tell you a little story about Google. Six months ago, if you searched-

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not what I thought would be the next thing to come out of your mouth.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  I surprise you, don't I?

• 20:26Eugene Mirman?

  I hope it's a dirty story.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  If you searched, you wait a while. If you searched Google six months ago for climate change, you would've gotten, in my view, good results. If your query was, is climate change real? You got half hinky results. Why? Because Google valued relevance. People who asked that question clicked on that. That must be good. Well, what was happening? There was a manipulation occurring. The 99 crazy guys outside were raising up the bad results. Now, if you, if you ask Google, is climate change real? You don't get bad results anymore. Bad in the scientific view. Why? Google has sided with science. That's a big deal. And they're doing it very quietly, but that's a big deal.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a new thing, I didn't know that.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  It is, it is.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this devaluation of facts, are you prepared to accept some of that blame as a journalist? Or is there some emergent other thing going on in the world that the rest of us should be paying attention to?

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Oh, I think we should stand first in line, being at fault.

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 21:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the journalists-

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's brave of you.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  Look at it this way, Neil. If our job is to inform the public conversation, and I'm not even saying which side you have to agree with or disagree with, but if you looked at the quality, the credibility, and the civility of the public conversation in the last election, we failed the public. Somehow or another, we have to figure out how to get the conversation away from pure emotion, though emotions matter, back to facts.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it got so bad that people marched?

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In support of objective truths. Science. There was a march for science. But this is a stunning... Did you march? That that should even be necessary. Well, so what did you think about that? So you're a scientist and people are marching in favor of my job. Wow. What is the world that we gotta march for something that is true?

• 22:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, coming up next on StarTalk, we talk about the bane of journalism today. Fake news on StarTalk.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. And we're talking about facts and journalism with renowned news anchor Katie Couric. And I asked her, if you're a young person today, can you even tell what is real news and what is fake? Let's check it out. Here's news and here's other news. And one of them is invented in someone's basement and it's fake. But I do not have the capacity to judge that. And I think they're both journalists. Who am I to judge?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  I think it's, I mean, it's a big, complicated issue, especially right now with fake news everywhere, with less ethical journalists putting, or journalists, with a small j, putting things out there.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a small j. I'm a big j.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  So, so I think it's a, it's a very complicated issue. And I think it's one that the journalistic community is grappling with. You know, I, I talked to Marty Baron, who's the editor at the Washington Post, who's been behind some of the best journalism that's been done, I would say, in the last couple of years. And I said, what's wrong with like doing a good housekeeping seal of approval? Or the... You know, the, something along those lines that will say to people, this story, we followed certain rules, we had certain, you know, we double sourced our things, or we didn't use anonymous sources, or we did, or, you know, we, this went through an editor, like, certain values and certain protocols that are followed, that will let a reader know, this is a real

• 24:14Speaker 01

  news operation. But then, I guess, it raises a question, well, who's gonna make those decisions, right? Who's gonna say what news organizations are worthy of the good housekeeping seal of approval, or good reporting seal of approval?

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jeff, so, should there be a stamp of approval? And if there is, who does the stamping?

• 24:35Speaker 03

  No, because of the second answer, which is, I don't want to do it, no, I don't trust you for a second.

• 24:41Eugene Mirman?

  What?

• 24:42Speaker 03

  Not for a second.

• 24:43Eugene Mirman?

  What if it was myself in conjunction with Aerosmith? Would that be at all helpful?

• 24:49Speaker 03

  What we need instead is dialogue. Democracy is discussion. Now, the problem today is, you know, fake news is a terrible label. Some of it is economically motivated, some of it is politically motivated. But what I've come to see more and more, is that much of what we're seeing today, is outright manipulation.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, can you define fake news in this moment?

• 25:07Speaker 03

  There's no one definition. Some of it is economically motivated, clickbait, I'll just get you to click on anything, the Pope endorses Donald Trump, that's fake news.

• 25:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  But some of it is downright manipulation. Some of the Russian papers...

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had one, there was, I commented on some news, I don't want to get the details, but the headline was, Tyson endorses Scientology. That was, yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  Did they just spell it wrong?

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the clickbait. And then the article was actually serious and got general facts right, but then people laid into them in the comment section.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  Because all they read is the headline.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, those who went further down, yeah, yeah, yeah, laid into them, saying, I'm never gonna come here again, because you guys, what the hell are you doing?

• 25:51Eugene Mirman?

  What was, was it MTV?

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, no, yeah, something, no, no, yeah. So, so, because we used to call the comedic evening news the fake news. And we were perf- everyone was content to just, they had some real stuff in there and some comedy, and they would twist it, but you knew exactly how, when, and where they're twisting it. And now, no, we can't call that fake news anymore, that's legit news compared to anything else.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Indeed, their job is to call BS. That should be the job of the journalist.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  So now comedians, with exceptions, do a better job

• 26:27Speaker 03

  of interpreting the world for us.

• 26:30Eugene Mirman?

  I do a pretty good job. Go on.

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, to help us assess the severity of fake news in our lives, we go to data journalist Mona Chalabi. Mona!

• 26:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm told you've got some numbers for us.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  I do, but this is kind of tricky, because with thousands of news articles being published every single day, it's practically impossible to figure out exactly what percentage are fake. And that's part of the problem, right, this deluge of information. But I do have some numbers for you. So a recent study by Columbia University attempted to assess this by taking the most read articles during the US presidential election. They took the top 20 that were fake and the top 20 that were real. And when they compared the two-

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They get this from, from, from Google data?

• 27:16Speaker 04

  Like all websites, including The Guardian-

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  -have all kinds of analytics about how many people are reading our stuff, yeah. So they used this data to take the most read ones that were real and the most read that were fake. And when they compared the two, they found that the fake news had a huge presence particularly on Facebook. So to give you just one example, completely fabricated story, the story that Pope Francis had endorsed President Trump. Now, that story alone received almost a million likes, comments, and shares on Facebook, and it was believed by two-thirds of adults who were shown this story.

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's sad.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, tell me then about, was there an age dependence in this? Because the younger generation has only ever known the internet. Maybe they've got some inoculation.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I can understand why you'd think they might fare a little bit better, but they actually don't. So another study from Stanford University spent a year testing students' ability to sniff out fake news. And they found that students got it wrong with, quote, "stunning and dismaying consistency," unquote. So for example, in one test, they were shown photoshopped images with absolutely no attribution. And most of the students simply accepted the fake images as real. My advice is basically just don't trust anyone. There's kind of a responsibility on all of us to research every single news source that we come into contact with before we simply accept it as fact.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Mona, you're bumming us out here. Is there any positive?

• 28:32Eugene Mirman?

  Sounds very doable.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what hope is there for society?

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Well, I would say that actually, democratically, we should have always been doing that stuff.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  And actually, the pursuit of this information is interesting in and of itself. When I'm producing data journalism, I try to make the methodology interesting to readers too. So by talking through the steps of how I got there, hopefully that's kind of compelling.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there it is. That's what I would try to do as an educator, so that a person becomes self-empowered.

• 28:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. Thank you, Mona. Mona Chalabi.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jeff, in my field, we have a built-in mechanism to ferret out people, scientists, who are guilty of fraud, or neglect, or sloppy work. Do you have anything built into your system, a journalistic police force?

• 29:20Speaker 03

  No, but we do have the public. And the public is now armed with the internet, with Google, with facts, when they want to use them. And they can come after us, and they do.

• 29:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They do, in what way?

• 29:30Speaker 03

  Comments. The problem is, it's hard to separate, uh, real news from fake news. It's hard to separate trolls from, from good critics sometimes. But there are people there who I think will be on our case and will correct us. And that's what we have to count upon, is the public itself. Mona's right. The public has a role in the dissemination of real news.

• 29:48Eugene Mirman?

  We also have, like, foreign powers and trolls and, like, conspiracy theories. I mean, it isn't just like... There's a concerted effort to mislead people to create. And then business interests, there's a lot of stuff. It's not just like people randomly believing things.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this is where empowerment of mind matters.

• 30:07Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then you have been inoculated against all these forces that would otherwise have that would otherwise hand you their opinion without you even knowing it.

• 30:17Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 30:19Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh. The mic dropped. No.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up next with my interview with Katie Couric. We will discuss that line between opinion and fact on StarTalk.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History. We're talking about presenting the news. And I asked veteran journalist Katie Couric where the line is between opinion and fact. Let's check it out.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  It's getting very murky, Neil, because now on social media journalists often express their opinion, you know, like.

• 31:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'll just blog it out there.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, or they'll put something in a tweet that's clearly has a point of view or sort of a kind of undercurrent of snarkiness. And I think there's much more latitude as a social on social media to kind of express your opinion, which was really kind of considered a no-no when I was coming up through the ranks.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember in that era, I'd be watching the local news, you know, the six o'clock news or whenever it was. And at the end.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  The opinion?

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yeah, at the end, it was like, okay, we are now going to bring an opinion to you. Sit down, get ready.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Or the opinion expressed is not necessarily the views of our station, right?

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what it said.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was like a really big deal that you were breaking ranks there and framing whatever comes next as opinion. And now there's no such distinction.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jeff, what have we lost? Or is it still there? Who does it? Why?

• 32:04Speaker 03

  I think we've always...

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Answer me, man!

• 32:07Speaker 03

  The question to end all questions.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Answer me!

• 32:09Speaker 03

  We've always had opinion in fact. Uh, I think the journalists have to become more transparent about their own worldview, and then judge them whether they are intellectually honest and truthful. I think we lied to the public too long that we were objective, that we weren't liberal or conservative. No, we all have our perspectives. And indeed, we need more perspectives in news to be able to understand more parts of this country and how the world operates.

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is, in the era where you pretended you were neutral, even though deep down you weren't, that was an era where we actually trusted... We had more trustworthy news. I mean, I'm putting what you said on its head. Because now we live in an era where you've been outed as a liberal source of commentary. And, okay, let's say that's a good thing. But now everybody gets outed, and now everybody's just screaming what their political angle is.

• 33:00Eugene Mirman?

  But it's also turned opinions into fact. Like, it's... everybody has, like, sets of facts.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Many communities feel they are not represented in media, thus media doesn't understand them, thus media can't speak to them, and thus, we don't have the opportunity to inform their worldview.

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but that means that all the news that they're seeing, they think is against them because they don't think it's pure fact and objectively true.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, should the future journalists say, "Here's the facts, now, here's my opinion"? Should they do that? Or should the opinion be infused in how you deliver the facts in the first place?

• 33:32Speaker 03

  No, I don't think the opinion is infused. I think the worldview is there. I think it says, "This is where I'm from, this is the perspective I have, judge me on that basis." I think that's okay.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw... I once tweeted at... This was like an amazing litmus test. Because the tweet had no point of view. It just contrasted two facts. And so, it was after one of the horrific shootings in the schools, and I said, "Walmart, the world's largest gun seller, at Walmart, you can buy an AR-15 rifle."

• 34:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But company policy prevents them from selling rock albums with curse words. That's all I tweeted. That's all I did. And the people are, "Yeah, they ought to be able to protect kids from their thing." Why, how could you say they shouldn't? Well, I never said they shouldn't. It's a Second Amendment right. Because First Amendment versus Second Amendment. Freedom of speech, freedom of carry guns. And everybody started fighting. I just sat back.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Everybody's got their own amendment.

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And watched them. I had my own amendment. So.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  We're primed to fight right now.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  Here's the real question. And he's yelling at me about it.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 34:34Eugene Mirman?

  He's agreeing with you so loudly.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, this was just information.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And people chose sides over the information.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  So how do we get back to civility?

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know. Maybe, getting back to a point you said earlier. The task should be not handing someone an opinion. Maybe not even handing someone processed information. But go on an exploration with them.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To then find knowledge together.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or insight and wisdom together. By the way, Katie Couric is a master of this craft. And she recently hosted a documentary on the National Geographic Channel that tackled one of society's most complex topics. And I asked her about the success of that project. Check it out.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  I was noticing that virtually every day, there was a headline involving gender in some way, shape, or form, and how it was impacting every aspect of society. And yet I thought, gosh, I'm confused. Like, what's going on here? Gender identity. I would be confused with that and sexual orientation. And, you know, I made a few missteps. I made a mistake on my talk show where I asked a transgender person an inappropriate question. And people were very upset about the way I handled it. And I feel like I'm a very open-minded.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  A fairly well-read person. And if I was really grappling with these issues, I thought a lot of other people probably were too, especially people of my age and generation. So I thought, you know, let me explore this. Let me try to understand it better and really kind of explore the origins of gender identity. How science affects our choices or our feelings, something deep within us that makes us identify a certain way. How intersex people have been treated throughout history.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Intersex are babies that have...

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, or have...

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Male and female sex organs.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sex organs.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Either externally or internally.

• 36:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it's up to the doctor to decide where you send...

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which way you operate to commit.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  More often than not, it's transforming a baby into a female because it's easier to remove something than to, you know, to develop or create something. And so, anyway, it was a fascinating topic for me because I was learning in the process.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what she did was she had a shared learning journey with the viewer.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, the role of the journalist...

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, when I teach a class, I try to do it that way.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an exploration. If I'm just master of all knowledge and dishing it out, there's no shared experience there.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  Neither is it good to yell at somebody and say, "You're wrong!", right?

• 37:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but to yell information... It looks like you've done that before. Just the way you did that, you've done that before. You basked...

• 37:26Speaker 03

  In my heart, in my soul.

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You basked in that.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  Right. And so that doesn't do any good. It is a matter of mutual respect, of trying to get somewhere and understand someone's worldview and understand their perspective. Again, I go back to this idea of the mass media. The mass media presumes that we are all the same. Needs us to all be the same. Same with mass marketing and mass manufacturing. The internet takes us out of that. Gigantic Google and gigantic Facebook are personal services companies. They're not the same to any two people on earth. But we still try to treat everybody the same. We have to get past that.

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's an interesting point. I know in science, we can come up with discoveries that may or may not impact culture and civilization. If it does, then sometimes there's a dialogue that is kicked up in response. Is it your goal to kick up a dialogue?

• 38:14Speaker 03

  Yes, that's what democracy has to be. And democracy, by the way, is a cacophony. Part of the problem is, we didn't hear that cacophony because it was filtered through a very few channels. We have to learn how to have the dialogue again. We have to learn how to understand each other in our diverse viewpoints. We have to learn how to value facts again. We have to learn how to find people we trust to give us those facts. I also think journalists have to break out of this presumption that everybody has to come to us and read our thousand-word article to be enlightened. I think we also have to go to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and wherever people are having conversations and bring journalism and facts there. Find out what they're wrong about, what they're confused about, what they want to know, what they need to know, and bring journalism to them.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  We've got to be reaching out more as a service rather than as the manufacturer of an old product called content.

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you think Facebook doesn't have any journalists on staff?

• 39:05Speaker 03

  I've argued that Facebook should hire journalists not to create content, not to edit, not to compete, but instead to bring that sense of public responsibility to what Facebook does. And Mark Zuckerberg has said this, that he wants to move from just connecting people face-to-face or among friends and family

• 39:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a bubble.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  To a community.

• 39:25Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, I'd love to argue with strangers, not just people who are relatives. I'd love to take the argument of climate change and bring it to a random person in Ohio.

• 39:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up, journalist Katie Couric shares a powerful, personal story of her own. Next on StarTalk. Welcome back to StarTalk, featuring my interview with one of the world's most successful news anchors, Katie Couric. In 1998, Katie Couric's husband, Jay, died of colon cancer. And Katie shared that experience with millions of people publicly on The Today Show. And I asked her about that decision. Check it out.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  It was such an... horrific experience as you can imagine and I think I felt so powerless during the course of Jay's illness and you know I think we're both can do people you see a problem you fix it or you try to come up with a solution but there was nothing nothing absolutely nothing that I could do I mean I tried I tried yeah and I think after Jay died I realized how much we didn't know how how how not only how much we didn't know about this disease but how little people knew about how to prevent it and so I thought if I could

• 40:55Speaker 01

  use this bully pulpit the Today Show and share with people who watch that show not only really I think they understood the pain that I had experienced but help them avoid what had happened to Jay by sharing information which is really what a journalist is trained to do so I decided that I was going to talk about it and use this very personal experience to to change hearts and minds and to educate people

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  so Jeff should this be a responsibility of journalists or is this a is this an outlier here

• 41:38Speaker 03

  no I think that journalists are human beings too I had my own personal experience not as not as bad as Katie's certainly but I I wrote about my prostate cancer online and the operation which means I told the entire world about my malfunctioning penis you cannot get more public than that

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  okay

• 41:54Speaker 03

  yet good came of it right people gave me advice they gave me support I got to encourage other men to get tested for PSA have you done yours yet

• 42:03Eugene Mirman?

  no I'm looking forward to it and actually Katie Couric got an on-air colonoscopy after

• 42:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  on air I forgot about that that's right

• 42:12Eugene Mirman?

  yeah which increased the number of colonoscopies that people got by 20%

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  wow so

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She did this, and it was very warmly received by her audience. But also, like, ratings go up, right? When this kind of thing happens. Is this... What is the ethics of that, would you say?

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Oh, I can't believe for a second that someone would go through that kind of pain and exposure for cynical reasons of ratings.

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  And so I think that it was done only and strictly as a matter of generosity. I mean, I've met Katie Couric too, and she's someone that people trusted, and she knew she could use that trust to convince people. We know how many more people got colonoscopies. We don't know how many lives were saved, but I have to believe some were. That's worth it. She used the public pulpit to inform people about something that mattered in their lives. Isn't that the essence of journalism?

• 43:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if you're trying to communicate, let's say, try to communicate risk, all right? Because this will kill you, colonoscopy. You don't get your prostate cancer look checked, it can kill you. So, how do you distinguish communicating risk as a measured phenomenon from just fear-mongering?

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Right, and there's a continuum here, Neil, I think, where we see a lot of studies that come out where scientists, doctors, say, "Get tested, don't get tested," and they're looking at it as a collective risk. But I also, I look at it as an individual, right? I think that we journalists made ourselves kind of unhuman, not inhumane, but unhuman. We thought we were above and apart from the world so much that we put ourselves in a role that said, you know, "We're special." No, we're not. We're just people like any other people trying to learn life. We have a job to do, which is to go and try to find the facts to inform that process.

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, why is it that when I grew up, and I watched the local news, and I'm very serious about this, in my single-digit year lives, so, you know, age four to nine... Every night, I would see the local evening news and it would begin with a house burning. And I was certain I would not survive to adulthood, that I would die in a fire. Simply because of the statistics that, and I even, when I was old enough, I did the calculation. I said, "All right, every day, there's a house that burns. How many houses are out there? And when will that house be mine?"

• 44:35Speaker 03

  You would calculate that, wouldn't you?

• 44:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, "When will that house be mine?" Then I realized, "Okay, there's still a risk, but it's not as bad as I thought."

• 44:40Eugene Mirman?

  Meaning, it's barely anything?

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, yeah, but it was, but it was more than zero. And because, this was delivered to me every single time.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  And we go back to the business model. This is why I concentrate my time now in journalism, trying to worry mainly about new business models for news. Because the old business model, which worked pretty much, okay, in the old world, is a disaster now. So, local television news right now is fire after fire after fire. Because it's a pretty orange flame.

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  Right? What's cable news? If it's not missing women in the islands, and the old days are missing planes, now it's, "Let's ruin democracy." Uh, you know, what, what do we see happening to news because of the business model? We've got to figure out new mechanisms to support journalism. And it's not going to be just charity, and it's not going to be government. It's got to be new ways that we are more efficient as a business, and that we use our power responsibly.

• 45:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of the dimensions is, in that power, is every now and then, if not most of the time, make it personal.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  Not all the time, but when it is relevant to do so, and not self-centered and egotistical, yes.

• 45:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I asked Katie about that, let's check it out.

• 45:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know from psychology that you can give statistics, or you can tell a personal story. And the personal story has way more impact than just handing people numbers.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Oh, definitely, I mean, I think that's-

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unfortunately, that's the case, but if, if we recognize that's the reality, then let's do it.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  And I think that's one reason my gender documentary worked. I, I told stories of real people going through real situations. And as Dr. Oz said to me, "It's hard to hate up close." You know, when you get to know people, and our, our differences kind of start to dissolve.

• 46:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, is it hard to hate up close? It's an interesting concept.

• 46:25Eugene Mirman?

  It's probably hard, but if you're maybe, I don't know, but if you're like four feet away, you're like, "Nah."

• 46:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what I learned from psychologists is that they have a term for this, the vividness effect, where your personal retelling of a story can overwhelm what might otherwise be numerical statistics to the contrary. Or even if it's the same, you might not have paid attention to it, but you do when it's when there's a personal story.

• 46:51Eugene Mirman?

  So like if like Pluto, you say Pluto is not a planet, but if I was like Pluto's my son, people would be like, alright, it's a planet?

• 46:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, basically, yeah.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  You gotta keep bringing up the Pluto. You gotta let it rest. You gotta let it rest.

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, get over it. Get over it. Pluto had it coming anyway.

• 47:06Eugene Mirman?

  It's my son!

• 47:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is it, is it a bad thing, a good thing? Is it just a reality and then you work with that?

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Well, but here, here's what I think, as, as I've talked to you in this, in this show. I press you to bring scientific method and facts and, and, and, and discipline to journalism. But we can't forget that in the end of the day, journalism is about people. Imperfect, screwed up, striving people. And, and so we have to remember the humanity of that. Not exploit it, not play just to the emotions, but remember that we're more imperfect than the world you deal in.

• 47:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jeff, you make a very good point. I think no matter who you are, you can benefit by learning what science is and how and why it works. Because there are methods and tools that are invoked to establish what is objectively true. In the sciences, if someone comes up in front of you in a conference and says, "You gotta believe me, this is what happened in the lab, I swear it's true." No! Bring me data. Bring me the cold, hard data. And that matters for everything. In fact, we shouldn't even call it science. We should just call it life. That is a cosmic perspective. You've been watching StarTalk.

• 48:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jeff Jarvis, always, Eugene Mirman. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up!