Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast The Story of Life on Earth with Sir David Attenborough About this episode In our first episode of Season 6, Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses the history of life on Earth with naturalist Sir David Attenborough, along with a little help in the studio from Bill Nye and Chuck Nice.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk Radio, your personal answer to business. And I am director in my day job of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. And studio with me is the one, the only, the inimitable Chuck Nice.
0:28 Chuck Nice? Oh, yes.
0:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck you baby.
0:30 Chuck Nice? Hey.
0:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck Nice comic.
0:32 Chuck Nice? That's right.
0:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, you know who's a, I've got clips of an interview I conducted with, guess who? Sir David Attenborough.
0:38 Chuck Nice? Wow.
0:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sir, he's one of the great communicators of our time.
0:41 Chuck Nice? A legendary.
0:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And he's like hosted all these science documentaries. I think many people, he is their conduit to, to science.
0:50 Chuck Nice? Absolutely.
0:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and, and given his, his history as a TV host and as a naturalist and as a, a science educator, you were not sufficient alone to help me with this show.
1:00 Chuck Nice? Won't be the first time I heard that.
1:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, so I looked around and I found me some, he's my, I call him sir, I don't know if the queen ever had anything to say about it, Sir William Nye, Bill Nye, thanks for being on StarTalk Radio. Thank you for having me. He's Ed So Bill, you know? So Neil, David Attenborough, dude. He's the, he's it. Dude.
1:20 Chuck Nice? That's the man.
1:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Except I guess it's dude. Is that dude with a British accent?
1:24 Chuck Nice? Yes. But definitely known as the great communicator.
1:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
1:30 Chuck Nice? Peerless educator.
1:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's every, everyone wants him to be their grand, their grandfather. Greatest broadcaster of our time.
1:36 Chuck Nice? So it's been said, you know?
1:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
1:38 Chuck Nice? And the cool thing about this show is that if I might just wet your buttocks with my lips for a second.
1:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is nasty. Why, where are we going with this? Okay, go on.
1:51 Chuck Nice? But I am sitting in a room, we have Sir David Attenborough on the show and I'm sitting in a room with two of the greatest science educators of our time, both of you in your own right, ambassadors of science.
2:05 Chuck Nice? For the entire globe. That's pretty impressive.
2:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, I would have had you on the show anyway, right? You got the job.
2:13 Bill Nye? Chuck, you're fabulous.
2:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Even without that.
2:16 Bill Nye? Thank you.
2:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, well, thank you. Thank you. Well, let's see. Well, maybe we'll have a, a, a, a science educator, uh, dance off or something. That sounds good. Cage match. Let's find out where, where Sir David Attenborough can take us. Let's start. You don't look 87, sir.
2:35 Speaker 03 Sometimes feel it.
2:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So is it because you run around the world that keeps you young?
2:40 Speaker 03 I mean, if we're being serious, it's luck, isn't it?
2:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, yeah, the luck of the genes.
2:43 Speaker 03 I can think of, well, very close friends of mine or relations of mine who got the same sort of genes and they can't get about at all.
2:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Watching you run around the world, you get down with the animals and the plants and you're crawling on the ground and you're rowing boats. And so you're not just a detached observer of nature, you're a participant.
3:01 Speaker 03 Less participatory than I was, but I mean, yeah, I still, yeah, I can pat a rhinoceros on a good day.
3:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's a spooky guy?
3:11 Speaker 03 I can pat an rhinoceros on a good day.
3:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, when I'm 87, I just hope I'm alive.
3:16 Speaker 03 It's true.
3:17 Bill Nye? You're gonna, you're gonna break 30,000 days if you do that. That's a mark for me.
3:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What? About 30,000 days?
3:24 Bill Nye? Eighty-two and seven weeks.
3:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's 30,000 days?
3:27 Bill Nye? Yeah.
3:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you, and you know this why?
3:29 Bill Nye? It's one of my themes about how life, short life is and you have to do your best to, to live well. And we got to admire David Attenborough in that regard.
3:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So Bill, people love you. No doubt about that. They love them some Bill Knight, but they also love them some David Attenborough. So you want to, want to find out why?
3:50 Bill Nye? I say bring it on.
3:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bring it on. Let's find out.
3:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I spent five weeks in the UK. We were filmmaking there and people couldn't stop talking about you. Everyone I met on my crew, they all wanted you to be their grandpa.
4:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You were the grandpa they always wanted or never had. And that's gotta be a greater title than sir.
4:14 Chuck Nice? I don't even want that one.
4:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How do you react when people just wanna adopt you? It's enough for you to go around, come on, you have such a huge.
4:23 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I mean, people are very nice.
4:26 Chuck Nice? That was so terribly polite and British of him, wasn't it?
4:30 Bill Nye? I think that's how they roll.
4:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's exactly it.
4:32 Chuck Nice? Exactly how they roll.
4:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so.
4:34 Bill Nye? And very modest. He's been knighted, which is, my understanding is a big deal over there.
4:40 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
4:40 Bill Nye? And I say over there, in the world.
4:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Bill, what does it take, what does it take to be loved?
4:45 Bill Nye? Well, I think you're talking about science education.
4:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
4:48 Bill Nye? I'd say it takes passion. You have to, you have to really want people to get excited about it. You yourself, Dr. T.
4:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, but I'm just talking about the universe and people come to that. I don't, I'm not really.
5:00 Bill Nye? But you know that feeling.
5:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know, yeah.
5:01 Bill Nye? You know that feeling. Do you realize the sun is a star? You wanna grab people by the collar.
5:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, that's, that's what I've done a couple of times.
5:08 Bill Nye? And say, hey, look at this.
5:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then they call the police.
5:10 Bill Nye? And so, David Attenborough is the, has the same passion, but he is from a different culture and what he does is subtly, in understated fashion.
5:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you also have to be a storyteller.
5:21 Bill Nye? That's what I mean. He widens out and there's the rhinoceros that he's patting on the.
5:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On the, on the nose.
5:26 Bill Nye? On the horn.
5:27 Chuck Nice? On the horn.
5:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We just pictured that as he said it.
5:29 Bill Nye? Just as easy enough.
5:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, we didn't have to try to think that. It was there in front of us as the words came off his tongue.
5:36 Bill Nye? So it's, I think it's your passion. What I always say all the time, what is it about your favorite teacher that you liked or loved? And it was that he or she was passionate about it and wanted you to do well. The teacher wanted you to do well because he cared or she cared about you.
5:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So he's not just a media guy, cuz he studied geology and zoology at University of Cambridge?
5:55 Bill Nye? I hear that's a good school.
5:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
5:57 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
5:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Darwin, I think, went there as well, right? He's got. And he's collected thirty-two honorary degrees from British universities.
6:06 Chuck Nice? Yeah, but they don't really count. You didn't go there. You didn't attend. They don't really count.
6:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I heard a rebuttal to that once. I'll tell you later.
6:12 Chuck Nice? Okay.
6:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a really good rebuttal.
6:13 Bill Nye? That means they care about you.
6:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, but it's more than that. I'll tell you about that in a minute.
6:17 Chuck Nice? All right.
6:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, Bill, can you see any cultural differences between how you might try to communicate in the UK with the United States? You've been around the world.
6:24 Bill Nye? No, no, it's exactly the same.
6:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you kidding?
6:27 Chuck Nice? Except there.
6:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm just asking.
6:28 Bill Nye? No, it's, uh, well, we all play the hand we're dealt. So I feel that if you're a British guy, you present your art in a British fashion. That understated fashion. If you're an American guy, you wave your arms and jump around.
6:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You go over the top.
6:43 Bill Nye? It's the way we roll.
6:45 Chuck Nice? We need explosions.
6:46 Bill Nye? But what the key to it is.
6:47 Chuck Nice? We're American.
6:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but that means if you go to the UK, you look like some ape that just dropped out of the sky.
6:53 Bill Nye? No, no, no. I look like a guy from the US.
6:55 Chuck Nice? And you also look.
6:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, just a US guy.
6:56 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah.
6:57 Chuck Nice? But you know what? The passion is what does it.
6:58 Bill Nye? That's what I'm saying.
6:59 Chuck Nice? So they see it. They see the passion.
7:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they feel it.
7:01 Bill Nye? Oh, I got, I'm gonna wrap this up here. I'm gonna tie it together.
7:04 Chuck Nice? Okay.
7:04 Bill Nye? The thing is, you wanna be authentic. You want, when the viewer looks at you, you want him or her to feel that you care about him or her, that you're looking right at him. That you, I'm trying to engage you. And that's what, uh...
7:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I feel that when I see him on TV.
7:18 Bill Nye? And this is what, when you're doing your cosmic whole thing. And Carl Sagan, this is, you feel this guy wants you, wants to engage you.
7:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You feel it.
7:27 Bill Nye? And he's authentic. So Carl Sagan's from the US, from New York, very well-educated, enormous vocabulary. Uncle Bill is from somewhere in the US, and he uses some slang words, and he'll say, "Now, right now," which is a meaningful thing, but maybe he's not the best grammar, for example. But you know that he cares about it.
7:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, you get a B minus in grammar and an A plus in everything else. There...
7:51 Bill Nye? God, you give me an A plus from Neil Tyson?
7:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In everything else. So, so what I'm curious about, Chuck was around in another show where we talked about the culture of science. And in England, they have a, in the UK, they have a culture of naturalism. All of these folks who would, part of the British Empire, wherever they went, there are people writing about what they saw, what they felt.
8:11 Bill Nye? Collecting specimens.
8:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Collecting specimens.
8:12 Bill Nye? Darwin's on their pound note. I guess it's five-pound note.
8:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, Darwin, it's not on the one-pound note. That was my man, Isaac Newton. But they don't even make the pound note anymore.
8:21 Chuck Nice? Wow.
8:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah. I mean, they have a pound coin, but it's not a note. So let's find out. Just, I wanted to get a sense of the legacy that he
8:29 Bill Nye? He is David Attenborough, not Isaac Newton.
8:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Here in America, when we learn about British scientists, often the 19th century rises up as the great period of the British naturalist. And now we see you as, dare I say, carrying on that tradition? Am I allowed to say that?
8:46 Speaker 03 No, you're not really. I mean, I'm not in that league. I'm not a professional scientist. I mean, I was educated as a scientist, so I try and keep up. But I'm essentially a television filmmaker.
8:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But can I say that this legacy of British naturalism has influenced what you chose as a life work? Is that fair to say?
9:04 Speaker 03 I would have thought, and no more different here. I'm sure that people here, kids here, are influenced by reading Darwin and Darwin's account of the history of life on Earth, just as they are in you.
9:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but we don't have the legacy of our own doing this sort of thing. So I'm just curious.
9:20 Speaker 03 Well, I'll tell you. People sometimes say to me, "What was the greatest influence? What book did you influence us by?" And my answer is Ernest Thompson Seton. Do you know who Ernest Thompson? Oh, is he an American? Well, he's a North American. He's a Canadian, if you'll allow that. But he is. He wrote a series of books about 1910 called Tales of the Wild and Hunters and Hunted. And it's about caribou and wolves and...
9:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The North American mammal.
9:48 Speaker 03 He was a ranger on the Canadian prairie. And he wrote the most marvelous book by Canadian than I was before I got on to Darwin.
9:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So a little bit of North America helped you there?
9:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, certainly.
9:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Taking some credit for you there. You know what's weird? It just occurred to me, listening to that. He is who we all imitate. We want to imitate a high educated British person.
10:12 Bill Nye? Look here. His picture's in the audiobook. His recording's in the audiobook. The audio dictionary. That's what I'm going for.
10:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is the accent. But it's not. It's just how he speaks.
10:24 Speaker 03 Yes, indeed, indeed.
10:27 Speaker 03 He was a Canadian, if I may say.
10:29 Bill Nye? He was a pretty good child.
10:32 Speaker 03 North American. North American.
10:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? North American.
10:36 Bill Nye? But he's referring to the guy, because if it was Canadian, he'd be sorry. He'd be so sorry.
10:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's true. That's true. So what intrigues me, getting back to this cultural difference between how we bring science to the public, how we bring anything to the public. Uh, one thing I noticed was, in the United States, of course, we don't show humans mating, unless it's XXX and you can't see it. We don't even show other animals mating.
10:59 Chuck Nice? Yes.
10:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But I turned on British TV one time, and there was some...
11:02 Chuck Nice? Action.
11:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There was some action.
11:04 Chuck Nice? Some bum chicka wow.
11:05 Bill Nye? He's still a little... He's still... He's still on his mind.
11:09 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
11:10 Bill Nye? It really made an impression.
11:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bum chicka wow.
11:13 Chuck Nice? That's what it is.
11:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's 1970's porn soundtrack.
11:17 Chuck Nice? I... That's the only porn that I have, is 70's porn. I don't... I don't have a very good internet connection.
11:24 Bill Nye? The principles are the same.
11:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's true.
11:26 Bill Nye? Yes, we are evolving, but not quite that fast. You'll see a lot of the same... interactions.
11:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
11:33 Bill Nye? Can we say interactions on the radio?
11:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, interactions are good. So I had to ask him, what... What is... What accounts for this? Let's... Let's see his analysis of this.
11:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, we have some prudish people here in America. We are not as prone to show mating animals as show up in so many of your... your works. Are the Brits just a little more tolerant of that sort of thing?
11:52 Speaker 03 Never had any problems.
11:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, yeah, okay.
11:55 Speaker 03 And actually, of course, it only... People only have any problems when that's occurred amongst mammals. I mean, the rest of the population and so on is of... is of no consequence.
12:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's... That's a good point. When worms mate, no one cares.
12:07 Speaker 03 That's right. Well, actually, the most sensual... The most sensual reproductive sequence I've ever shot is between slugs. Have you ever seen slug mating?
12:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I'm sorry. I must have missed out on that one.
12:19 Speaker 03 There are a whole... There are a great number of different species of slugs, but there's a certain, particular slug which produces a rope of mucus and hangs down and dangles. And in fact, of course, the things about slugs, as you probably know, is that they are both male and female in the same animal.
12:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
12:34 Speaker 03 But...
12:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In astrophysics, we never learn that.
12:36 Speaker 03 You don't? Boy, they're missing out something on Andromeda IV now, if they don't know about that. By the end of your slugs, you see, the male part of one slug finds a female part of another, and vice versa.
12:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
12:48 Speaker 03 Yeah. But the...
12:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a double life.
12:50 Speaker 03 But the contortions and the dance in which they do, which is in a theory that's called "life in the undergrowth," is... is as sensual as you can probably take.
13:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who would have thought?
13:03 Speaker 03 Well, that's right. And a lot of people in wrote in and said, exactly that. Who would have thought?
13:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And no salt allowed at that party.
13:11 Speaker 03 That's dead right.
13:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Man.
13:14 Chuck Nice? Oh, my. I just love that.
13:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it's the understatement that we Americans find so charming. Well, plus Chuck got turned on by that description of mating slug.
13:24 Chuck Nice? Well, how could you not with that accent? You know what I mean?
13:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm just hearing it. You know, there's something going on.
13:29 Chuck Nice? Hey, you know, there's something. He's not just, here we are witnessing the fecundity of the Indian Ocean sea slug. And believe it or not, you're actually witnessing a terrible rotturing right now. You know, it's, it's very exciting.
13:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I wonder if it's possible to know too much about what's going on with the, in the animal kingdom? I don't think so. That's evolution. The more we know about how everybody does it, the more we're gonna know. Well, you know, he's got a new six-part series. Are you embarrassed by slug sex? Is that what I'm getting from you? You're a little put off? I got, I blushed a little when I. Yeah, it's a little, so. Slug sex. That's what he's talking about. That's how you make more slugs. Yeah. So, so, and if they, if they got into a brawl, it would be a slug fest.
14:09 Chuck Nice? Yeah. Nice.
14:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They, I'm sure they do get into brawls. There's gotta be competition. I thought it was funnier than that. Okay, I didn't get like riproarious laughs from that comment.
14:19 Chuck Nice? It was, it was funny. Okay.
14:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that's how, that's how the experience. The comedian, of course, yeah, okay, Neil, that was funny. Yeah, it was funny. Yeah, it was funny. Yeah. That's, I've never laughed. So he's got a new series on BBC One. I want to say that with a British accent. Chuck.
14:34 Chuck Nice? A BBC One.
14:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you. Thank you. Nicely done. We'll turn, we'll turn to Chuck for this. A new six-part series called Life Story. And it began earlier in the fall and the guy's, he's not, he's unstoppable. He's passionate. That's what he's bringing. He's passionate to the. You live off the passion.
14:53 Chuck Nice? So now, now I'm thinking everyone on this show, except me, has a tremendous educational TV presence. I gotta teach somebody something.
15:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
15:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So. It's passion, people. And the beauty and joy. PB and J. I heard that from someone one time. So, you know, his whole life, he's been making films about life on Earth. His whole life.
15:16 Chuck Nice? Okay.
15:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I had to ask him, is he like, is he gonna do, is that how, is that how he rolls? Let's find out.
15:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Your filmography is huge, I don't need to repeat that here, everyone knows it. But what intrigues me about it is, it spans the entire breadth of life on Earth. It's not just mammals, as we all favor in zoos and things, it's not just birds, as bird collectors would... It's insects, it's plants. Here's one, have you done one on fungi?
15:44 Speaker 03 I mentioned, yeah, yeah, because we didn't, as you rightly infer, plants are not fungi, are not plants.
15:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
15:52 Speaker 03 Different kingdom altogether. But actually, there's only one single subject we're covering, and that's the history of life. But in fact, it's the history, why they appeared and the order they did, why they changed into the way they did.
16:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's an important socio-cultural observation, because we look around the world and we say, "This is one kind of life, that's another kind of life, here's one kind of plant", and what you're saying is, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but if we take a step back, put it all together and say, "This is life on Earth, and we're part of that system", that's a whole other outlook.
16:21 Speaker 03 Well, that's what I've been trying to do all my life, really.
16:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do you think you've succeeded?
16:26 Speaker 03 That's for others to say. I mean, you can chronicle the history of life in a surprisingly detailed way, in quite a short period. You know, that life starts in the deep sea, and it leads to different kinds of invertebrates, and shells, and crustaceans, and shrimps, and so on. But then there are fish with backbone, and fish with backbone emerge onto land and come amphibians with wet skins, and amphibians with wet skins get dry skins and become reptiles, and some of the reptiles turn their scaly skins into feathers and become birds, and the others turn them into hairs and become mammals.
16:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is Biology 101, in 30 seconds.
17:02 Speaker 03 But that's what the history is, and you can put as much or as little detail on that skeleton as you like.
17:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you have put great detail on it.
17:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I mean, that's the essence of evolution by natural selection, right there. There it is. And in the next segment, that's what we're going to focus on. And I heard that Bill did some writing on this recently.
17:25 Bill Nye? I did jot some things down.
17:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's not jot some things down.
17:28 Bill Nye? No, it's exciting, and David Attenborough was part of that for me, you know. This book, that I hope we're going to discuss shortly, is a result of the stories that I've heard my whole life having to do with life science, biology, how we all got here. It answers, addresses that deep question. How did we all get here?
17:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You have answers to that question.
17:50 Bill Nye? Yeah.
17:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that why the book is on the bestseller list?
17:54 Bill Nye? It is to be hoped. That is a cause and effect.
17:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we come back, more of my interview with David Attenborough, Sir David, when we return.
18:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? StarTalk Radio, we're back. I'm Matt Tyson, Chuck Nice, across the table from me.
18:21 Chuck Nice? Yes, I am.
18:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In our radio studio. And to my right, Sir William, Bill Nye. Bill, thanks for being on. We're featuring my interview with Sir David Attenborough when he visited New York, and he gave a public talk at the American Museum of Natural History, and that's when I snared him for my StarTalk interview. And it was all about sort of evolution and the beauties and glories of nature. And in that time, since I made that recording with him, you went away, wrote a book, got it published, and debuted as number eight on the New York Times Bestsellers. That's out of control.
18:53 Chuck Nice? Which is now its natural habitat.
18:57 Bill Nye? Yes.
18:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's all about evolution, undeniable. But it sounds like you're not talking about evolution. You're trying, you're sticking that in somebody's face, it sounds like.
19:05 Bill Nye? Well, this was based on this debate that I did in Kentucky with a guy who insists that the Earth, or seems to believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old.
19:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's Ken Ham.
19:13 Bill Nye? Ken Ham.
19:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ken Ham. I call it Ham on Nye debate.
19:16 Chuck Nice? Ham on Nye.
19:17 Bill Nye? And, uh...
19:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill doesn't like it when I say that.
19:19 Bill Nye? Well, I mean, I thought it'd be Nye on Ham, that's all.
19:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, but there is no such sandwich.
19:25 Bill Nye? Uh, yeah, it could be.
19:26 Chuck Nice? That would be an Inside Out sandwich. You may have started something.
19:29 Bill Nye? That's a wrap. That's a wrap. The thing is, uh, that it's very important for all of us, in my opinion, to understand the basic idea in all of life science, the basic idea in biology, and that is evolution. That is... The natural history of life on earth. That's why it'll be named a museum after it, for crying out loud.
19:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now, allow me to say that Bill's book is not just any other book on evolution. There's tons of them. But he is the science guy, TSG, and he knows how to... I'm talking to Chuck now, not to you, Bill. So, he's... The book is breezy, anecdotal, and the content is real. And you finished reading the book, and it was though Bill was just sitting right next to you and you were just drinking a beer with him.
20:08 Chuck Nice? So, are you saying that Bill is an extremely effective communicator?
20:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, yeah, I guess that... I was saying that in another way. Yes, I could have taken less time.
20:17 Bill Nye? He was like a really good getter acrosser of thingsers.
20:24 Bill Nye? Yeah, and so that's if you wanted to have things across. Thank you, Neil. Seriously, thank you.
20:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, and I'm gonna read my blurb that's on the cover, right?
20:34 Chuck Nice? Oh, look at that!
20:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? With his charming breezy narrative style, Bill empowers the reader to see the natural world as it is, not as some would wish it to be. He does it right, and as I expected, he does it best.
20:45 Chuck Nice? Ooh! I love you, Neil! I love you, brother Neil!
20:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill! Bill! So, you can't know about evolution unless you look around nature and like, collect stuff.
20:57 Bill Nye? Yes.
20:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, Darwin collected stuff.
21:00 Bill Nye? Collected... That's the thing, you gotta respect.
21:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You gotta cl... And then you...
21:03 Bill Nye? You have the theory and the evidence in one book.
21:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then you observe it, and then you draw your conclusion.
21:08 Bill Nye? Yes.
21:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Based on it. So, I want to find out if, uh, Sir David Attenborough, uh, just, did he collect? I just wondered, did he... Was he one of these, this subspecies of human who collects stuff? Let's find out. Uh, you collect stuff as a kid?
21:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, fossils mostly.
21:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Fossils? Yeah, well, wait a minute. You're in the UK. You'll just stumble on fossils?
21:28 Speaker 03 Yes, you don't realize, we don't have buffaloes, and we don't have rattlesnakes, and we don't have all these lovely things you've got.
21:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the Midwest, here in the United States. So, where did you get your fossils?
21:37 Speaker 03 In Britain. I lived in the middle of Britain, in a city called Leicester, and it has rocks of the Jurassic period, uh, which are full of ammonites and, uh, shark teeth and, uh...
21:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, you also have to know what you're looking for. Anyone else will walk by it and just...
21:51 Speaker 03 No, no. If you see a lovely coiled shell in the middle of a block of rock in the middle of England... You think, oh, no, this is gonna be our shell that's obviously come from the deep sea.
22:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, you think that. Most people don't even pause.
22:04 Speaker 03 Well, they pause, they say, and, oh, yes, I mean, in past times, they said, well, of course, those were put there by the saints.
22:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
22:12 Speaker 03 There was a saint here who was, that place was infested with snakes. And she decided to rid the people of snakes and turned them into these things, which are ammonites. But they believed them, they were called snake stones until the 19th century.
22:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was an account.
22:27 Speaker 03 And used, used as charms to cure disease.
22:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do you collect stuff as an adult?
22:33 Speaker 03 I collect anything you could think of, bus tickets, almost anything you want. It's an interesting phenomenon.
22:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Psychologists have words for people who collect everything.
22:43 Speaker 03 Well, no, no, no, as long as they do it legally, it's okay. No, but, but quite seriously, collecting is a very maligned subject. The fact is that if you collect things, you learn about taxonomy, you learn about cataloguing, you learn about what, why an animal is related to another animal and what the differences between they are and which are different species. You learn an awful lot. And it's not an accident that, you know, the greatest naturalist who ever lived, Charles Darwin, was besotted with beetles. He collected beetles, thousands of beetles. Do you know how many species of beetles are?
23:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I, I, I didn't even wanna know. Okay, how many?
23:20 Speaker 03 Oh, I don't know. But it's, it's something like a hundred thousand.
23:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
23:25 Speaker 03 Hundred thousand beetles.
23:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just, just kinds of beetles?
23:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, different species of beetle.
23:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hmm, hmm.
23:31 Speaker 03 And, and, and that led people to think, why? And some people would say because the good Lord decided he wanted three thousand.
23:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good Lord likes beetles.
23:40 Speaker 03 Yes.
23:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Better than he likes humans, actually. You gotta explain that one.
23:42 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. Oh, that's true. And, and it set Darwin wondering as to why there are so many beetles. And he came up with quite an important theory.
23:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What was that?
23:52 Speaker 03 According to evolution by natural selection.
23:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, there it is. Okay. I mean, he's got it. He's got it. So Bill, did you collect stuff as a kid?
24:01 Bill Nye? Yeah.
24:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What'd you collect?
24:02 Bill Nye? Rocks. And then, uh, in ninth grade, we were compelled to get an insect collection.
24:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really?
24:08 Chuck Nice? Ah.
24:09 Bill Nye? I can still give you order and family of a lot of insects.
24:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hmm.
24:12 Bill Nye? And you can see evolution, you know, from your orthopterns to your hymenopterns, for example.
24:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I was, I, clearly.
24:20 Chuck Nice? Right.
24:20 Bill Nye? Your locusts to your four-winged flies.
24:23 Chuck Nice? Gotcha.
24:24 Bill Nye? And you, you can see it.
24:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, do you ever collect anything?
24:26 Chuck Nice? I collect dung beetles.
24:28 Bill Nye? Um, do you really? Cause it would be pretty cool if you did.
24:31 Chuck Nice? It would be pretty cool because quite frankly, they're so varied and, uh, it really depends on, upon where they live.
24:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, when you speak of dung, you have to use a British accent.
24:40 Chuck Nice? Oh, yes, as a matter of fact, I collect dung beetles.
24:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There you go.
24:43 Chuck Nice? Uh, people don't know, but some dung beetles.
24:45 Bill Nye? I think you're pulling our metal tarsal.
24:50 Chuck Nice? No, uh, I, I did collect things as a kid.
24:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I didn't collect Jack as a kid. No.
24:55 Chuck Nice? You know what's funny? I still, okay, I'm ashamed to say what I collect right now, but it's hotel key cards. Don't ask me. Let's not go into it. That's what I collect right now.
25:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. When I was older, I started collecting keys.
25:05 Chuck Nice? Really?
25:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. I have a key ring that has maybe 500 keys on it.
25:07 Chuck Nice? Okay.
25:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
25:08 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
25:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, then I stopped. I said, why the hell am I doing this? And I just stopped. That's just one morning I woke up.
25:13 Bill Nye? Open every door you encounter.
25:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Bill, Darwin was a big collector. He came up with evolution by natural selection. Could you give us like a three-minute exposition of Darwin's theory of evolution?
25:25 Bill Nye? The big idea is that, uh, living things make more of themselves than can survive. Troubling, troubling realization, but left to their own, dandelions would take over the world. Left to their own.
25:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's why there's so many acorns on the ground under an acorn tree.
25:39 Bill Nye? Exactly.
25:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's why there's so many sperm.
25:43 Chuck Nice? Right.
25:44 Bill Nye? Yes.
25:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Half a billion last I counted.
25:46 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
25:46 Bill Nye? Uh, wow, that would take you all afternoon. And so.
25:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I estimated.
25:53 Bill Nye? So, uh, that fundamental idea.
25:55 Chuck Nice? Damn it, I lost count.
25:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Start again.
25:57 Chuck Nice? Starting over.
25:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Go ahead.
25:59 Bill Nye? Uh, well, that'd be, and you can't really tag them. I mean, there's probably a radioactive technique. Probably radioactive technique, but the thing is, uh, species make more of themselves than can survive. So they compete, uh, for places and ecosystems. And then they compete within their own species. That's sexual selection. And then here we all are. Now, uh, along this line.
26:25 Bill Nye? People, the consequ- the conclusion that Darwin reached, and I think many naturalists reach naturally, is that we're all to have a common ancestor, we're all descended from the same thing.
26:37 Chuck Nice? Right.
26:37 Bill Nye? Whatever that thing is. And people throw out the word, "single-celled organism, archaea," well, something like this. But, uh, there's no evidence on earth, so far, that there's any other way to do it, except with DNA. So, uh, this, the thing that is fascinating is Charles Darwin wrote this book where he has the theory and the experiments. He was quite a diligent experimental, in one volume. And he didn't know about DNA.
27:04 Chuck Nice? Yes.
27:04 Bill Nye? He didn't know about genes as such, genetics. He didn't know what we think of as genes, he didn't know chromosomes, really. He just was jamming, looking at his collections and reaching amazing conclusions, world-changing conclusions. Gotta respect that.
27:19 Chuck Nice? Which have since been confirmed via DNA.
27:23 Bill Nye? Oh, man, every which way.
27:24 Chuck Nice? Every which way. Chromosomes and genes and so forth.
27:26 Bill Nye? Oh, yeah. So, we're all connected. That's right. We are the world. Yeah, well, there's a lot to that. We are the children. And speaking of which, talking some more about me. We are the... I have a chapter in here about race.
27:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Here is undeniable, the book.
27:40 Bill Nye? Yes.
27:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
27:42 Bill Nye? I have a chapter in here about race.
27:43 Chuck Nice? Okay.
27:44 Bill Nye? If you, you can run this experiment, I don't think we should do it right now during the show.
27:48 Chuck Nice? Is that because you are outnumbered?
27:50 Bill Nye? No, because...
27:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, because we can easily, because we can easily outrun you.
27:54 Chuck Nice? No, I'm joking.
27:57 Bill Nye? Uh, no, no, you can try this. A guy from Africa could interact, can we say interact? With a woman from Japan.
28:06 Chuck Nice? Right.
28:07 Bill Nye? And all you're gonna get is a human. You're not gonna get anything else, people.
28:10 Chuck Nice? Anything else.
28:11 Bill Nye? I'm sorry.
28:12 Chuck Nice? Nothing else.
28:13 Bill Nye? That's all you're gonna get.
28:14 Chuck Nice? Right.
28:15 Bill Nye? And I know we all love our doggies.
28:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was very Miss Saigon there, you know, the man from the west and the woman from the east.
28:19 Bill Nye? Well, there's a guy who became the most powerful, influential man on earth, who was a product of that sort of thing, somebody, uh, from East Africa and somebody from Kansas.
28:28 Chuck Nice? So true.
28:29 Bill Nye? Right?
28:29 Chuck Nice? Yes.
28:30 Bill Nye? Kansas who was no doubt from European, northern European descent where they got so far north, migrated from Africa so far north, they had to get the skin light enough to get enough vitamin D or they're, they ain't gonna make it.
28:44 Chuck Nice? Or they would have perished.
28:44 Bill Nye? That's right.
28:45 Chuck Nice? Yes.
28:46 Bill Nye? We're all playing the hand we're dealt. We're all alike.
28:48 Chuck Nice? And that man went on to become our first Kenyan president.
28:53 Bill Nye? And with all that said, seriously, it is a deep evolutionary lesson that there is no such thing as race.
29:01 Chuck Nice? Sweet.
29:02 Bill Nye? There's tribes, but not races.
29:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright, so what do you say, people say, "Well, if we're descended from apes, how come they're still around?"
29:08 Bill Nye? Oh, no, no. You're descended from an ancestor before apes and why wouldn't the apes still be around?
29:15 Chuck Nice? Right.
29:15 Bill Nye? You don't have to get rid of the apes when you go, "Why wouldn't a 1955 Chevy be available at an auction even though you're making 2016 Chevys?"
29:24 Chuck Nice? Right.
29:24 Bill Nye? Not a perfect analogy.
29:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Evolution of cars.
29:27 Bill Nye? Why would they go away?
29:29 Chuck Nice? So, so when you speak to that, this common ancestor, this is where people wanna know. Like, who, what was that common ancestor? So they're, they're become, that's, that's where everybody gets all caught up.
29:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But there are naysayers. There are naysayers, of course, evolution and creationism, okay? Now, Attenborough gets hate mail from creationists, I'm gonna tell you. He, he, cuz he's, he's Mr. Evolution Man. So, let's, let's get a sample of some and see what, what he says there. Do you have creationists running after you saying, "Are you embracing God's creation?"
30:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. But I mean, if people think that the first woman was made by God putting Adam in a trance and then taking a rib from his side, if you believe that, there's no argument. I mean, because you can't argue with people.
30:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's no place to go from there.
30:17 Speaker 03 No, there's no rational argument.
30:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Often also people single out the most beautiful things in nature, forgetting the most atrocious things.
30:25 Speaker 03 Yes, exactly so. They don't think about malaria parasite or the worm in the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of an African river that's boring its way through a little boy's eyeball and turn him blind. And if you believe God created every species individually, you have to believe that God deliberately put that on down, which is not compatible with what I understand about the Christian God.
30:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not a state of benevolence.
30:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I didn't know about that worm.
30:50 Chuck Nice? Yeah, and you know what? I'm keeping an eye out for it, I'm telling you.
30:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, there was in the movie.
30:56 Bill Nye? An eye out, get it?
30:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I didn't get it at that moment, thanks.
31:00 Bill Nye? I could tell, ladies and gentlemen, here with these two smart guys.
31:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck's joke needed help on that one, okay.
31:04 Bill Nye? Ball went right through the wickets.
31:06 Chuck Nice? I couldn't resist.
31:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sorry, I was too slow on that one too.
31:09 Bill Nye? So, one of the things to appreciate about parasites is they are apparently the best reason to have sex. I'm not joking you, and this is called the theory.
31:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cause we needed more reasons to have sex.
31:22 Chuck Nice? Okay, I thought he was talking about gold diggers, I'm so sorry.
31:30 Bill Nye? Right, no, so, one of the old questions in biology, if you will, I say evolutionary biology, is why do you have sex? And apparently it's to get a new mix of genes, so modern, so different from the previous set, that germs and parasites can't quite keep up.
31:45 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
31:46 Bill Nye? And you stay just a little ahead. Why don't you just divide yourself in half, like any self-respecting bacteria?
31:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Amoeba.
31:53 Bill Nye? Yes, and just move on. No, we're all complicated with all this sports cars and high heels and all this complicated.
32:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Otherwise, one virus could take us all out.
32:02 Bill Nye? And it may.
32:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It still may, but it surely would have by now.
32:06 Chuck Nice? Right before it bores through our eyeball.
32:08 Bill Nye? Oh, it's creepy, isn't it?
32:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so Bill, you debated a creationist, Ken Ham, the Ham on the Night debate. Is that other, you know, the science community, there were mixed reviews about whether you should have done that at all?
32:20 Bill Nye? Yes.
32:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How did you deal with that?
32:21 Bill Nye? Well, I did my best. This is to say.
32:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Insufficient answer.
32:26 Bill Nye? Uh, so, this is to say, the downside is, when you do something that, it energizes his base. The upside is.
32:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The creationist's base.
32:33 Bill Nye? Yeah, and he gets more money from rich people, apparently, in coal country. But, uh, but also a lot of just regular donors. With that said, it also raised awareness of his activities, and those guys may have crossed a line that will be their undoing. It's an interesting thing, and it would not have been noticed, maybe, not to take credit where it's not due. But you cannot apply for a job at his new facility, the Ark Park, if you are homosexual. You cannot apply for a job without testifying to your Christian belief. You can apparently do that if you're the Hobby Lobby company or something, but you cannot do that if you're going to take tax dollars from the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
33:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this is a, there's a museum, a creationist museum?
33:17 Bill Nye? The word museum, there's no artifacts there. They're all things built by the museum people.
33:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Theme park.
33:24 Bill Nye? Theme park. It's a theme park with a roof.
33:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so now more people know about this.
33:27 Bill Nye? And so I think that voters in Commonwealth of Kentucky may rise up and not tolerate this unconstitutional thing.
33:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you getting mail as well, hate mail?
33:38 Bill Nye? Uh, I get, you read hate blogs.
33:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hate blogs.
33:43 Bill Nye? But these are, these are not people, as David Attenborough remarked, they're not people you're going to reason with.
33:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Comes with the turf.
33:49 Bill Nye? Yeah.
33:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, Gallup poll in 2014 said 42% of the United States believes in the creationist view of human origins.
33:56 Bill Nye? All the more reason to write a book.
33:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what does that say for the future of America?
34:00 Bill Nye? We are doomed. We're working on it. The longest journey starts with a single step.
34:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, they're all going to heaven on a doomed country.
34:06 Bill Nye? Is the fundamental idea in all of life science. I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about the observable feature of nature.
34:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we come back, more of my interview with. With. StarTalk Radio, we're back. Neil Tyson here, Neil deGrasse Tyson, that is, with Chuck Nice, Bill Nye.
34:26 Bill Nye? So good to be here.
34:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you. We got Sir David Attenborough on the line. Yes, we did. Yeah, I got an interview with him when he came through New York, gave a public talk, and I snared him.
34:35 Bill Nye? A compelling one.
34:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Indeed. There is nothing he doesn't do that isn't compelling. How's that for three negatives coming out with a?
34:43 Bill Nye? Minus one cube, just minus one. That's brilliant.
34:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So in that interview, we talked about life, we talked about the environment, and I got some clips of him just going on about just our climate and what's going on there. And, and what is our relationship with Earth? Bill, you've done some thinking about this.
35:04 Bill Nye? A great deal.
35:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's find out what he says, and then let's pick it up and see what we can take it.
35:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At some point, you must have, in a life in this work, you sit down and sort of digest it all and then offer wisdom for humans.
35:32 Speaker 03 I would have thought that you start doing that, I mean, if you're interested in the natural world, you start learning it as soon as you're knee-high to a glass upper. And that you go through life that way, because it's changing, you know. When I was a student, nobody knew anything about DNA. Nobody knew whether continents shifted across the surface of the globe. The changes in our understanding of the working of the life on Earth has changed beyond recognition in my lifetime.
35:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but the wisdom, not simply about how to think about life on Earth, but how to think about humans and their relationship to life on Earth. I mean, in the 2000s, you had a series of shows that talked about humans and our relationship to nature.
36:09 Speaker 03 Well, I've done programs about what we're doing to the natural world, that's for sure. We're giving it a very, very bad time. And we're not careful, we'll get a comeback, already getting a comeback.
36:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A bad comeback.
36:21 Speaker 03 Sure, I mean, yeah, extreme weather, acidification of the oceans.
36:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The new normal is extreme weather.
36:27 Speaker 03 Indeed so. I mean, it's easy enough to understand why. Anybody who's boiled a saucepan of water, knows they're overcooked. Knows that if you heat something up, you increase the reaction and things start cooking. We have heated up the Earth since the Industrial Revolution, and we're now getting the consequences.
36:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What do you tell people to do?
36:45 Speaker 03 I mean, I think that the general attitude should be that we shouldn't waste the bounty of the Earth, that's the main thing. You know, the waste that we inflict on the Earth is just dreadful.
36:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Especially Americans, of course.
36:57 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, and us too, and what we do with plastic. I got a film the other day of albatross, nesting albatross that had just circled the Antarctic Ocean, an ex-antarctic continent, collecting food for its young. And flew all the way back, turned up after 10 days, and fed this nesting that was toweling Antarctic gale, regurgitating stuff in its crop, everything. Everything that it put in that chick's mouth was plastic.
37:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Antarctica.
37:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, but that happens everywhere, I mean, all over the Pacific. Birds that are collecting food from the surface are taking that food and they're giving it to the chick. And it's plastic, and it'll be there forever.
37:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, the environment doesn't know how to dissolve the plastic, it had never seen it before.
37:38 Speaker 03 We said, "It's wonderful, we're into this new compound that is indestructible." And nobody said, "Oi, if we're gonna keep on doing that, what's gonna happen to it?"
37:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If it's indestructible, it never leaves nature.
37:49 Speaker 03 Isn't that extraordinary?
37:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ever, yeah. No one thought that through.
37:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No one thought that through. Bill, you're cl- I- I know separately, because your book is on evolution, I know separately that you're a big climate change guy.
38:03 Bill Nye? Yes, and by the way, there is convergence, intersection between those who claim the Earth is 6,000 years old and those who deny climate change.
38:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is.
38:14 Bill Nye? Ken Ham is explicit that the Earth is getting cooler, it's not warming. He's just wrong. I mean, and it wouldn't matter except-
38:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So in the Venn diagram, these two are over- strongly overlapping-
38:24 Bill Nye? A sharpie, a black sharpie, where they intersect. You can see it from across the room, the intersection.
38:30 Chuck Nice? Yeah, well, you know, it's, uh, isn't it, it's probably because there is, uh, even if, let's say, the Earth was heating up and we are all headed towards imminent disaster, it does make a difference.
38:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Imminent.
38:44 Chuck Nice? Imminent.
38:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I thought you said imminent.
38:45 Chuck Nice? No, imminent disaster, as in very soon coming with great urgency.
38:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
38:50 Chuck Nice? Uh, it does not make a difference because one day, there will be a new heaven and a new earth. So who cares about this place?
39:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so, so what do we do about that, Bill?
39:02 Bill Nye? Well, the longest journey starts with a single step. So people who listen to this show, for example, right? These are scientifically literate people, people who want to know more about science. I strongly believe that in the next few years, we're gonna reach a tipping point, but it is going to be, as we say in sailboat racing, a near-run thing.
39:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I say that all the time when I race my sailboats.
39:24 Bill Nye? It's gonna be a close call.
39:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That, because that makes it so much clearer to me, what you're saying.
39:28 Bill Nye? It's gonna be a close call.
39:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A near-run thing.
39:30 Bill Nye? It's not gonna be, it's not clear who's gonna get to the buoy first. The climate change that undoes so many of our urban populations and causes enormous upheaval, or the scientifically literate populace that is emerging with an enthusiasm for scientific truth and understanding the world by critical thinking.
39:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's the rate at which people are learning versus the rate at which people are-
39:52 Bill Nye? Deny.
39:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are denying.
39:54 Chuck Nice? See, here's the only problem with that, and I think you're absolutely right. The problem with that is, as we continue down this road, which there is also a tipping point, where things become irreversible and damage becomes extremely catastrophic, you know?
40:12 Bill Nye? Not somewhat catastrophic.
40:14 Chuck Nice? Not somewhat. Extremely catastrophic. Which is a term that I'm trying to get people to understand.
40:19 Bill Nye? You're over-exaggerating about everything. I'm with you.
40:21 Chuck Nice? You understand me? So, here's the problem. Those, let's say we reach the catastrophe, those that believe in denial, will find another way to deny. It won't be because of climate change.
40:35 Bill Nye? And so when I say it's a close call, I mean, we could lose. I mean, the humankind could really be in huge trouble. Not just the coastal populations in the developing world, but everybody could be in trouble. So, this is why, uh, it's a race. This is why we do what we do, to try to, dare I say it, change the world.
40:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When is that book coming out?
40:55 Bill Nye? Uh, next year.
40:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Next year, okay.
40:56 Bill Nye? Yeah, this will be a book about climate change and, uh, how we're gonna address it.
41:01 Chuck Nice? And we're going to name it, again, Undeniable.
41:05 Bill Nye? Well, actually, I'm not joking, you guys, the title that's being pitched to me is unsustainable. I'm not even joking.
41:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's gonna be the series of Un-books. Undeniable, understandable, unremarked, you know?
41:20 Bill Nye? So, what we could do, everybody, do we want to talk about this specific thing? Or do we have more David Attenborough to include?
41:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, we totally have some more David Attenborough.
41:28 Bill Nye? So, uh, because there is a specific thing that I'd like to address, and the model for this specific thing is economic, and it's from the Arctic.
41:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hmm, let's find out. Can you, if you can put a pin in that, Bill?
41:40 Bill Nye? The pin is in it. The pin is in it.
41:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is in it. Let's find out what David Attenborough thinks about the future. Are you hopeful about our future as humans on Earth?
41:50 Speaker 03 I think our grandchildren, looking back, saying those blokes back there, the beginning of the 13th century, 13th and 1st century, had it good, much better than we've got it now, I think they'll say.
42:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you're not hopeful about the future?
42:03 Speaker 03 No, I think it's going, I think things are going to get worse or less comfortable. They get more comfortable for some people, some people who haven't got it pretty good now, I mean, they will either disappear from that part of the world, or else their, their living standards will be increased a bit. But by and large, I mean, the people who are living high on the hog, which is you and me.
42:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
42:23 Speaker 03 Our equivalents won't be quite so high.
42:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm. And so it's a, it's a reality check on the excesses of, of modern life. Alright, so he, he thinks we're, that's it.
42:35 Chuck Nice? You know what's funny is that every scientist you talk to, I don't care what their particular concentration, if they know anything about science, they're not hopeful. No one says, you know what, it's gonna be great. You know, I mean, people need to wake up and realize that every single scientific mind in the world basically says, hey, you know what, we might be in trouble.
42:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill, are you hopeful, cause you're, you're our last hope here.
42:59 Bill Nye? I'm always optimistic. If you're not optimistic, you're not gonna take action and get things done. But I say it's gonna be a close call, and this is not an extraordinary claim. It's gonna be a, a, a tough nut to crack. So what we wanna do is have a fee for carbon, carbon dioxide production, and then we will return the fee to the people.
43:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Power to the people.
43:23 Bill Nye? Because...
43:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I didn't know Bill was a communist, man. Had I known that before I invited him on the show.
43:28 Bill Nye? But here's the trouble.
43:29 Chuck Nice? I can hear Ted Cruz right now.
43:31 Bill Nye? Okay, so Ted, Ted, here's the trouble. Where's the model for this? Collect, using, um, wealth from the public and redistributing it to the people. Well, I don't know, don't they call that socialism? Yeah, and where is it in the United States? Alaska. Alaska.
43:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah.
43:48 Bill Nye? Has the Alaska.
43:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They have a reverse income tax. That's, that's right. Yeah.
43:52 Bill Nye? Okay, so that is not known for.
43:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The state makes money. My wife came from Alaska. Oh, my, that's. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, so every family get. It's like a thousand dollars per, I don't know what it is now.
44:01 Bill Nye? This year it's eighteen hundred.
44:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, in her day, it was a thousand dollars per member of the family, which also meant you might want to have more babies. But it's per year. And this is the, it's called, it's a tax, um, a negative tax rate for their oil profits.
44:16 Bill Nye? Alaska Production Fund, yes.
44:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
44:18 Bill Nye? So we could do this, and this would provide economic incentives, which I think is the key to getting her done.
44:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To keep it in the capitalist motivated.
44:27 Bill Nye? Well, not just that. So people who make a lot of carbon dioxide, these would be rich people who live high on the hog, as David Attenborough described it. Where the meat is strong and properly marbled. And then, uh, the middle class would get the money back. Oil companies, fossil fuel companies already have this built in. They're anticipating a forty dollar a ton surcharge. That's in their economic modeling. It's cool. We could, if we did this, and then the countries that don't produce carbon, as much carbon, I said, would have a, a tariff or a fee on the goods that were, that were being imported that had a high carbon output. This is a solv- this is not, everything's going to be fine. It is part of the solution.
45:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So bill for president's economic advisor, that's what you're.
45:14 Bill Nye? Well, this is not an extraordinary claim, and it's not really my idea.
45:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It makes sense.
45:18 Bill Nye? But I gotta say, it's from a libertarian point of view, strangely enough.
45:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, we gotta end the show on some kind of nice note. Okay. I don't want to send people away crying. Thank God.
45:28 Bill Nye? Okay. No, let's get her done.
45:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, thank sir, sir. So, Mr. Attenborough, I, I had to ask him, what are a few of your favorite things? Hmm. Let's, let's see where that goes. Okay.
45:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what's your favorite plant?
45:42 Speaker 03 I don't have one.
45:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't have one? You like them all?
45:44 Speaker 03 Well.
45:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Venus flytrap?
45:46 Speaker 03 Sure, I've got a Venus flytrap on my desk.
45:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You have, you have one on your desk?
45:50 Speaker 03 Sure, sure, don't you?
45:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'd, I'd love to have one on my desk.
45:55 Speaker 03 Well, it's easy enough. You can buy them in the normal stores.
45:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, Venus flytrap and.
46:01 Speaker 03 Well, that's you, what you do. I, I didn't think of the, I, I could think, I, well, I could think of something else, a, a passion flower.
46:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, your favorite fungus?
46:11 Speaker 03 That one red with a red cap with white spots on, do you know that one?
46:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know.
46:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
46:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, yeah, show that in cartoons, actually.
46:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, of course, that's what Snow White was.
46:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, of course.
46:22 Speaker 03 Sitting on them all the time.
46:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I remember that, right. What's the oddest animal, oddest animal that you've seen?
46:28 Speaker 03 Well, there's a nice little creature that only lives in crocodile's tears. That's interesting, that's pretty odd.
46:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow. Yeah, that wins, the ugliest animal?
46:37 Speaker 03 Oh, I'm trying to keep it quiet.
46:43 Speaker 03 She'd be very upset.
46:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, out of respect for the animal, if you don't want to say.
46:49 Speaker 03 Ugliest? I think some of those internal parasites are pretty horrible.
46:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, plus what they do and how they work.
46:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, and where they live.
46:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How about your favorite animal?
46:58 Speaker 03 If you really wanted to know what animal made me make tears come to my eyes.
47:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the animal I want to know.
47:03 Speaker 03 Okay, a six-month-old human baby.
47:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's a good answer. There it is.
47:10 Chuck Nice? Wow, look at that.
47:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sir David Attenborough.
47:12 Chuck Nice? And you know what? I was really expecting him to say like raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens. And didn't get any of that.
47:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? These are a few of my favorite things when I'm a naturalist.
47:24 Bill Nye? You both have had six-month-old babies.
47:27 Chuck Nice? Yes.
47:28 Bill Nye? But they're always, they move away from that.
47:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck is a baby-making machine. Chuck, how many babies you, how many children you have?
47:34 Chuck Nice? Um, I'm.
47:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? See, he had to think, see that?
47:36 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
47:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It didn't just come right off his mouth. He said, "Oh, let me count."
47:39 Chuck Nice? I'm like the old dirty bastard of StarTalk Radio. I have a, no, I only have three. And I have to tell you, each one of them, thank God, has made it past the six-month mark. And I couldn't stand them as people when they were there. I despise babies.
47:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah?
47:55 Chuck Nice? Yeah, yeah.
47:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, you want to birth them as full-grown adults?
47:58 Chuck Nice? Oh, God, that would be so awesome.
48:01 Bill Nye? That's really hard.
48:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so you'll never be as popular as David Attenborough. Because you don't like babies. Okay, if you're a politician, you'd, what would you do to the baby that was brought up to your mouth?
48:10 Chuck Nice? I, um, believe it or not, I would kinda turn my head and go, "That's a nice baby," and I'd give it right back.
48:15 Bill Nye? Wow.
48:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. Chuck Nice, thanks for being on. As always, Sir William Nye. It's a pleasure and an honor to have you on StarTalk Radio.
48:27 Bill Nye? Oh no, it is we who must thank you, Dr. Tyson.
48:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We are supported in part by a grant from the Sloan Foundation. Very cool. Thanks.
48:35 Bill Nye? And we encourage our listeners to keep looking up.
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