The Digital Revolution with Arianna Huffington

Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the information age with two of its digital elite: Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis. Chuck Nice co-hosts, and Bill Nye shares about sharing.

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.

• 0:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, nice. Welcome back. Hey, it's a pleasure to be here. So you know what we're talking about today? I snared an interview with the one, the only Arianna Huffington. So we bring in Professor Jeff Jarvis. Thanks for being on StarTalk. I feel like I'm gonna get a master's degree just tonight.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have special certificates for that. The evening school certificate. You're a professor of journalism at the City University of New York? That's right. Excellent. And how would you describe your specialty? I teach journalists to make money. That's the good answer. So you wrote a book, Geeks Bearing Gifts. Imagining New Futures for News. Okay. Arguing that there is a future for news. Excellent, because sometimes I wonder. And our guest, my interview, Arianna Huffington, invented a whole other way to bring news. They laughed when she sat down at the keyboard, but by God, she made an empire, didn't she? She certainly did. That's what it is. And so let's find out from my interview with her. She had visited the museum. I brought her up to my office.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just wondered, what is the genesis of this empire? So let's go back to the beginning and find out where she came from, where she's going.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  This year, we are 10 years old.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Happy birthday.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. And when we were born,

• 1:36Speaker 01

  the conversation had not yet moved online in the way that it has moved online now. And one of the first things that we did, we kind of elevated blogging. Because before the Huffington Post, bloggers tended to be stereotyped as people who couldn't get a job blogging in their pajamas in their parents' basements. So we invited, you know, a lot of people who could have access to The New York Times and write their own books to also blog. We wanted them to be part of the online conversation. There was no hierarchy. So that was also the magic of the internet, that you didn't know who would be reading what and what would happen.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jeff, uh, she invents an entire branch of news, effectively. Is that, I don't think I exaggerate when I say this.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  No, she didn't invent blogging, but she then took blogging and used her rolodex to bring stars into it and give it some measure of legitimacy.

• 2:34Chuck Nice?

  Legitimacy.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because before that bloggers, like she said, were just people in their underwear in the basement.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  I'm here in my pajamas today.

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, and thinking that everyone cares about what they think.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, but there were, there were a few steps in blogging. Uh, I started blogging after nine 11. I was here in New York and we were called war bloggers at the time. Uh, there were political bloggers, there were food bloggers and mommy bloggers. There've been these phases of bloggers, but at the end of the day, it's just people owning a printing press. We're all Gutenberg now.

• 3:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting, so would you say that we have entered a new era of news?

• 3:05Chuck Nice?

  But is blogging news?

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I know, yeah.

• 3:07Chuck Nice?

  I mean, that's really, I mean, you, you can say we've entered a new era of news, but is blogging news or is it, or is it more opinion driven?

• 3:16Speaker 02

  It's just a publishing tool. It can be anything. I mean, literally, we all have a Gutenberg press in our pocket now. We can all publish to the entire world. We can say what we want to. That can be news, it can be information, it can be opinion, it can be anything we want it to be.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there was a day when we had tools in place or filters in place to know if you didn't otherwise know for yourself, whether somebody is speaking truth or insightful opinions, whether they just got their head up their rectum.

• 3:41Chuck Nice?

  So you're saying that entire construct was nothing more than a mirage?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:46Chuck Nice?

  Wow. I didn't expect that.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  I was part of it, I was a newspaper guy, but, but no, who, who's to say that, that just because I owned the printing press, I'm the guy who knows everything and you don't. Um, no.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait a minute, wait, wait. If, if, I think of Ben Franklin, he was a printer, okay?

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't become that unless people trusted what you said.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  No, you go out and buy a press. If you got the money.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he had the money.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, you buy a press, that was it.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, never mind, you got that. You win that argument. Let's move on. We're done there. So is it just a matter of speed? Or is it fundamentally different in kind?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  I think it's fundamentally different because now in our little microcosm of the blog world, the blogosphere, we're in networks. And that's critically new.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is a network anything different from the fact that we, in the day, when any big city had two, three, sometimes four different competing newspapers, one set of people read one kind of paper, another kind of people said another kind of paper, and the news was not always reported the same way? So the news, your access to the news, defined communities.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Indeed.

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And weren't they linked together by the news they had in common?

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Right, and I think we're coming to the end of the idea of the mass. There's a couple of academics out of the University of Southern Denmark who talk about the Gutenberg parenthesis. That Gutenberg was a 600-year exception in history. And from a time when knowledge was passed around mouth to mouth and changed along the way, and then along came Gutenberg and changed everything, and it changed the way we see the world. We cognate the world now in packages, beginnings and ends.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love that verb, cognate.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Cognate.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do we all cognate, or just in private?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  On Twitter, it's debatable.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  So we see the world differently now. Now we come to the other end, they argue. Where now knowledge is passed around click to click, it's changed along the way, remixed.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The other end, the other parenthesis is kicking in, that's bounding the era of the Gutenberg influence.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Exactly, so now I think we return to a time where we're not seen as a mass all the same. Now we're seen as individuals and communities again, and we redefine ourselves in communities.

• 5:55Chuck Nice?

  Is it really a redefinition, or is it just the fact that because, you know, when Neil was talking about newspapers, what you had was a very particular bias for all of the newspapers.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, a light way would be point of view, but it was really a bias.

• 6:08Chuck Nice?

  But it really is a bias, okay? And each paper had its own bias, and that's how they printed the news, according to that bias. And now what you find is, instead of that particular bias, people just seek out the news that they already agree with.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  And not only that, but let me add to that.

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  Oh, ye have little faith in your fellow man.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you're outnumbered two to one here.

• 6:25Chuck Nice?

  Actually, no, I'm a comedian, I have no faith in my fellow man.

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, no. So here's the thing. So what Ariana also did was aggregate news. So you, so that means she's picking news that she's collecting under this one umbrella. So when you talk about point of view, she could pick points of view that she likes. So, so tell me about aggregation as a, as a movement in the internet age of news.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Well, if you go to any story on Google News right now, there'll be 2,000 versions of the same story. And, and because we have this overabundance, you could argue, of content now, somebody needs to come along and find the good stuff. That's aggregation. It's not a bad thing.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so here's, here's what I'm, here's what I wonder. If I'm a news source and I'm known for my aggregating and everyone reads me, then who's gonna pay for the people to be the investigative journalists?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a very good question. If I'm sitting there just raking it in. If everybody is pulling together news, who is going to go out and get the news?

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I asked Ariana that question.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Check it out.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Right now, aggregation doesn't mean what you think it means because if you do it right, and we do, um, you drive traffic back to the creator of the content.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  And that's really the key.

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the web of this.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Yes, it's the web. So our promise to our readers is we'll bring you the best of the web. Even if we had tens of thousands of journalists, we cannot claim that we're going to produce the only worthwhile things for you to consume.

• 8:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, okay, so that's a good point.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  That is very good.

• 8:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right there. So let me ask you, though. What of, um, rumors that people then treat as fact? What is your responsibility as a journalism professional to contain rumors becoming facts?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  That's what keeps us employed, right? You have a flow of information that's occurring without media anymore, and the journalists are here to add value to that. To debunk rumors, to confirm facts, to answer questions, to ask the questions that aren't being asked and answered. That's what a journalist needs to do in essence. I'm sorry, have you seen Fox News?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Did you define them as journalists?

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Fox is the majority owner of National Geographic Channel. Just to... Can we get him fired?

• 8:52Chuck Nice?

  As an interest, as an interest of full disclosure, as I said, uh, have you seen Fox?

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the next segment, Chuck will be summarily removed by Men in Black. No, so you, you see yourself as the keeper, I'm putting words in your mouth, as the keeper of the truth, selecting from this river of rumors or partial truths, that which the public should receive as the filtered information.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Not anymore. We are not the gatekeepers. We are not the holders of the Holy Temple of Truth.

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's the gatekeeper?

• 9:26Speaker 02

  There isn't one.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's scary. It is a little scary.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  No, there's all kinds of sources of information. There's all kinds of signals of authority and authenticity. And, and, and what do you do in the academe, you real academics, right? You use citations. What did Google do? Google came along and said if the content is, is more often cited, it's probably better content. It's probably more reliable.

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except...

• 9:53Speaker 02

  A wizard of the universe.

• 9:56Chuck Nice?

  You shall not pass!

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I search Google for "flat earth", it will find me every website in the world that celebrates a flat earth. And I will think that my views are mainstream or that I'm not weirdly, uh...

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Outside of the fray.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Outside of the fray, because other forces are operating to feed my delusion.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  So, Professor Doctor, it is your responsibility...

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Neil to you.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  It is your responsibility to blog more, so you rise up. Put more good stuff on to drive the bad stuff down.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, no, okay, so he's put, see, put it back on me again.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  The universe is on your shoulders.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll get to work on that now. Well, when we have sort of high-profile guests like Arianna Huffington, uh, for StarTalk, I always like asking them whether science played any role in their lives, either good or bad, because we're a science show, and I like seeing what those forces of nature are. So, we'll be checking that out when StarTalk comes back.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. We are back. Here in the beautiful Hall of the Universe, so the Rose Center for Earth and Space.

• 11:16Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm feeling the cosmic forces here.

• 11:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Every time you say that, I feel like we should be wearing costumes. I don't know why.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With lightsabers, yeah.

• 11:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yeah. Here we are in the Hall of the Universe.

• 11:29Chuck Nice?

  He's your father.

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I am your father, yes.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got Chuck Nice here, Jeff Jarvis, professor of journalism. And what's the title of one of your classes?

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Entrepreneurial Journalism.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Entrepreneurial.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  So teaching journalists to start businesses, to feed themselves, and also we have a new master's degree in social journalism.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  So the utilization of social media?

• 11:54Speaker 02

  More than that. Trying to turn journalism on its head, to listen to communities first, to understand what their needs are first, before we think we're so big that we know what you need.

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's good. So what I wonder is, the, I'm always curious whether someone who's successful in one job or another, how much influence science literacy may have had in their lives? Did they enjoy their science classes? Did they not? So, do you find journalists to be better or not? What, what, is there anything in there that you can say, "These make a better journalist if you have that kind of background"?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I think curiosity, I think the ability to listen first, but unfortunately...

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good scientists do that.

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, that's very science.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are curious people.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  But, we need to teach journalists how to appreciate science, write about science, understand science. We don't do that enough, frankly.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so with that, in that spirit, I approached Ariana and I said, "Did science, or science literacy, or science curiosity, did any of that impact your life"? Let's check it out.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  It wasn't really until later in life that I discovered science and fell in love with it, in a very, very unusual way, actually. Because I've always been drawn to spirituality and I've always been drawn to religion. And then I started seeing and reading how many scientists actually had a religious foundation.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's most, if you go far enough back.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's most of them.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Were drawn to science through wonder, which I sort of consider sort of the foundation. So that was kind of my unusual connection to science. And at the Huffington Post, we launched a science section. But I asked our editor to focus a lot on these intersections between science and religion. And to break kind of the illusion that scientists are all anti-spiritual and that science negates spirituality, because it doesn't.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the things, of course, that religion and science would have in common is a sense of wonder.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I may be wondering about different things, but nonetheless, the feeling is surely similar.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  And a sense of mystery.

• 14:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  I mean, I think, I find scientists, the best scientists are very humble. Because even though they discover so much, they are always aware of how much is left to be discovered. And for me, that's probably the essence of religion, that we don't really know a lot of what life is about and the universe is about. So that's kind of another connection.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can't get more humble than staring into the abyss of the universe.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  I have not stared into the abyss of the universe as much as you have, but I bet that's the case.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's interesting to me is that she, I asked her about science and spirituality comes up right in that same phrasings. I was there describing the commonality of feeling, perhaps.

• 14:58Chuck Nice?

  A sense of wonder.

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she says that there's no conflict between science. Well, there is a conflict if religion is going to make a testable claim. And then science tested and it's either true or not. Most of the time, it's actually not true.

• 15:08Chuck Nice?

  See, that's where religion wins, Mr. deGrasse Tyson, doctor. Because the claims they make are not testable.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so then there you have it. Okay, we're done, right, right. So let me use this then as metaphor for dialogue, dialogue is not the right word, for conflict that unfolds in public spaces, especially journalistic spaces.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, I'll say something about religion, and then people just jump in and they fight and they argue and they scream. And I just watched this go on, even when I didn't say anything controversial. I was just saying something observational. One of my tweets on Christmas Day, uh, people, people lost their minds on this tweet, right? Christmas Day. On this day, this is my tweet. "On this day long ago, a child was born, who by the time he turned 30 would transform civilization. Happy birthday, Isaac Newton. Born December 25th, 1642." That's a great tweet. People lost their minds. That is a 100% accurate statement. Yes. But people lost their minds. But, wait a second. How many? Because, because, I-

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many? You wanna know how many? Yeah. I can quantify it, right? My average tweet gets like 3,000 retweets. Average. And a good tweet might get 10,000. That tweet on Christmas Day got 81,000 retweets. You know why? Because a media source online, one of your people, had a headline that said, "Tyson trolls Christians on Christmas Day." That's awesome. And I'm thinking, if, if, if I'm, I'm not blogging about Isaac Newton. This is my man, Isaac Newton, who actually has the benefit of actually having been born on Christmas Day. Which, by the way, Jesus was not. Jesus was not. So, so it was- Which is what makes the whole thing so great. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. So people said, "We demand you take down the tweet." I said, "It's an accu-, it's a true tweet."

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the next day, I, I, I like, I wanna fight back in a polite way. And I said, "I dream of a day when..." Little black boys and little white boys will come together.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scientists and believers.

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I dream of a day when objective truths. Well, I dream of a day when people are enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Okay, here's the issue. There have always been bozos, fools and idiots on earth. Always. You can hear them a little easier now, but don't believe just because some small thousand number said something stupid to you on Twitter, that's the end of the universe. It's not. You're okay. It'll be okay.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that was enough to get people fighting. So the modern media allows people to scream at one another, whether or not they have a background to justify their arguments. And what do you do with that in your journalism analysis?

• 18:11Speaker 02

  It's hard because I think that these days we've got to take a stand for what's right. And sometimes things are right. I had this discussion in a class the other day where you tell me, scientist, I believe that we're pretty set now that measles vaccines are the right way to go. So if we as journalists want to deal with the truth, I think that's pretty clear. It's not a two-sided thing, get one side and the other side of CNN.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get half the other argument.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  No. And so how do we judge our success as journalists then?

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, the journalistic ethos is you must give equal time to the other side of a story.

• 18:46Chuck Nice?

  But why, I was gonna say, why is that the ethos?

• 18:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that word?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Bullpucky.

• 18:50Chuck Nice?

  A bullpucky.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Didn't hear that one in the hood.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  If it were just a podcast, I'd say more.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you hear that one in the?

• 18:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, growing up in the hood all the time.

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  Man, what'd you say? Oh, that is bullpucky.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, okay, so we entered a digital era, post-Gutenberg era. Is that fair?

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're on the other side of that parenthesis.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where whole other challenges have befallen us, simply because of that fact. And we'll learn more about that next on StarTalk.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk is back. Chuck Nice, Jeff Jarvis, professor of journalism, Chuck Nice comedian.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just to verify.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Thank you for giving me a handle as well.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  It's just like Chuck Nice, some dude that was out on Fifth Avenue.

• 19:48Chuck Nice?

  I like professor of comedy.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Professor of comedy. I'm gonna let you keep liking that.

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Because I can't claim it.

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what we want to explore here is, we've got this digital age. So information is instant. People can celebrate in an instant. People can argue in an instant. And these, these, these elements did not have a precedent in the world of media reporting.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Every time there's a new major technology, we go through what I would call techno panic. But the first serious discussion-

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That happens every time.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  It does. The first serious discussion of a legal right to privacy in the United States occurred with the invention of what technology? The Kodak camera. Because it freaked people out, that suddenly your-

• 20:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're stealing my soul!

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Right? And it could appear in the penny press, and this was awful. What did we do? We figured it out, we got our norms in, in, in straight now, so now we all take selfies. Now we all like our photos taken.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We grew up in an era where there were spies, there were secrets, and so you didn't want anybody to know anything about you. Now we have a next generation of people, anyone 20 and under, where everybody knows everything about them.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They've got pictures at parties, you know, flashing each other, doing shots, and these are pictures that are now permanently available on the internet.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Okay, but what's wrong about that, Neil? At some point-

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was just observing it.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Did you ever do anything embarrassing as a child?

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  I know you did. You did.

• 21:16Chuck Nice?

  Yes, but I had the good sense to make sure that no cameras were there.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  We all did embarrassing things when we were younger. What's wrong with this picture of, of, of taking it out on you when you're older? It means you're intolerant. I think at some point we become a more tolerant society. We recognize that everybody has their foibles, and we'll learn from that.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you know what happens? Because we create our own online presence, it's not created by someone else who took a picture of us, we can paint whatever image of ourselves we want, whether or not it's accurate. So, I brought up that topic with Arianna Huffington. Let's check it out.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  If you look at the way people use social media, a lot of it is artificial. As someone said, there is no human being who is as happy as on Instagram. No human being who is as upset, outraged and miserable as on Twitter. And nobody who is as employable as on LinkedIn.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So everything was an exaggerate.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  So there is, there is a little bit of a manufactured identity. You know, it's always me and the sunset. Me and this fabulous meal. Me smiling, you know, but nobody has a life that's entirely like that.

• 22:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's true. If I see an awesome looking platter of food, I'm taking a picture of that.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  But you know, there are also times.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look what I'm about to eat.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  But there are times when you have a fabulous meal and there are times when you may be upset about something. You don't take a picture of you being upset.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then she just wrapped that up right there.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's exactly what we were talking about, but that, but that is human nature. We show our best selves no matter what. That's why.

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got you, but will we mature out of this to come to a world where we are more honest with one another?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  There's no guarantees either way, but I hope so. I think it's possible. I think there's, there's value in that. There's value when you find the person who has the problem you have. You can share that with, you can understand.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where's the value in someone thinking I'm less than what I want to make people think I am? Where's the value in that?

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Right. Because at some point, you're not your true self and you'll lose credibility.

• 23:16Chuck Nice?

  But see, that's the whole point of actually being online. I don't want to be my true self. That's why my online dating picture is not me sitting on the edge of the bed clipping my toenails.

• 23:30Chuck Nice?

  Like, nobody does that. Just like, you know, nobody takes a picture of themselves clipping their toenails, just like, call me.

• 23:38Chuck Nice?

  You know, because.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  But at some, at some point, we need credibility as human beings with each other. And I think that's what's going to come out on the internet. I think we're going to be real with each other. Uh, or else we're just a whole bunch of comedians.

• 23:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's another sort of emergent force out there. It's not just, uh, people who are creating a version of themselves that isn't real. A new species of life has arisen. The internet troll. And I wondered, what would Arianna do? How does she handle trolls? I wondered that, because she's got a whole empire. Surely there are trolls moving in and out of her situation. So, I asked her that, and we will get to that part of the interview when StarTalk continues.

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Chuck, Jeff, again, thanks for being on the show. So, we're featuring my interview with Arianna Huffington. And in my office, which is great, it's just like, she and I, just talking smack about journalism. And so, what came up, which was unavoidable, I think, you had to land there at some point, if you're talking about the health of an industry, internet journalism, in there, or internet presence of anything, person, place, or thing. You park the curtains, there's a troll lurking. And, and, and they don't go away.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I thought Arianna would have deep insight, perhaps, into this, because she has a media empire. There must be trolls moving in and out of what she does. I had to get her perspective on this. Check it out.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  I'm fully aware of the problems with the internet. And that's why, in fact, finally, last year, the Huffington Post ended anonymity. We do not allow anonymous comments. You know, we had them, and still have the most advanced algorithmic technology, to moderate comments, but the algorithm wasn't smart enough not to be out tweeted by trolls. You know, trolls are incredibly ingenious, some of them. They want to basically have no other life except to circumvent this technology. So, we actually also had-

• 25:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the original trolls?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Like the original trolls.

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That live under bridges.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What else do they do? They just live under the bridges. They don't go shopping, they don't go to the amusement park.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  They don't have a life.

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, they're aptly named, yes, trolls.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  And they, and, so, we also had 30 human moderators to supplement the algorithm. And that didn't work. And then, I thought one day, you know, is this really worth it? Why are we spending all this money on basically dealing with a tiny infinitesimal percentage? Like, like 00001%.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  And so we ended anonymity.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  And can invest the resources of these thirty human moderators in more productive ways. There is something about anonymity that brings the worst out in people. And I don't believe that we have the responsibility to allow them. Unless they have a particular reason why they need to remain anonymous and we have made allowances for that, like if you are a whistleblower. Then you can come backstage and tell an editor why you need to remain anonymous.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then you reveal yourself, obviously, to the editors, yeah. And of course, there are famous experiments, psychology experiments, on the conduct of people in the face of anonymity versus not. Yeah, how do you administer punishment? If you, if the person you're punishing knows it's you.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Versus you being behind a door. And we're a mean people, a mean species.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  We are both. That's what is fascinating about human nature. We are a mixture. Every one of us is a mixture.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some differently mixed than others.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Yes, some very differently mixed. But there's nobody who is not mixed in some way, right?

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. She's so hopeful there, man. I'm ready to indict whole groups of people. She's, no, everyone has a nice side.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's wrong.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, who are trolls? And why do they, why do they do this?

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Trolls are sad souls who want to get a rise out of people, who sometimes need their meds, let's be honest. And, and I think that we have to deal with them in a lot of levels. One is that the rest of us, the untrolls, the civilized beings on, on the internet, too often encourage the trolls. You feed the trolls, you say, oh, look over there, there's a fight over there. All we're doing is giving them the, the nourishment they want.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Feed the trolls.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Don't feed the trolls, don't give them attention, don't, don't reward them, don't laugh, uh, cause you're giving them what they want. And what it means is that the rest of us bear responsibility. If you end up pointing to a troll, then you are an accessory to the troll. You're part of the crime. This is the problem. We give, we give attention to these moments of bad behavior.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's someone whose name I forgot, who hypothesized that every, every chat thread...

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  degrades to a point where somebody mentions Hitler or Nazis.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Godwin's Law.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Godwin's Law. What is Godwin's Law?

• 28:59Speaker 02

  That given enough time, any chat thread will disintegrate into a mention of Hitler.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any chat thread?

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Any chat thread.

• 29:07Chuck Nice?

  At some point.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could be talking about the Teletubbies.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  The longer it goes, the more likely it'll end up in Hitler.

• 29:12Chuck Nice?

  Tinky Winky was really a brown shirt.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, why? What is the attraction of Hitler and Nazis to make its way into every blog?

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Because you run out of arguments.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I run out of arguments, the first thing that my thought is not Hitler. I'm just, I...

• 29:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, when I run out of arguments, I know I'm talking to my wife.

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in my interview with Ariana, it became clear, she's a successful woman, and I'd like hearing wisdom from successful people. And she recently wrote a book called Thrive, where she explores the challenges of being successful, but still leading a life that is sane. Let's find out what she told me when StarTalk returns.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. We're back. Hall of the Universe. Chuck, Jeff, good to have you.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Good to be here.

• 30:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, uh, so where did we leave off? We've got my interview with Arianna Huffington, and she actually published a book called Thrive. She's a successful person. Everyone wants to know, how do you do it? And you know, she had, I don't want to quite call it a secret, but she has a revelation. The revelation is, in our Western society, there are basically only two measures of success. One of them is wealth, the other is power. In our society, if you have those two, you are considered successful, no matter what else might be true about you. And she's concerned that if that's the only measure and metric of your success, what about your mental health?

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you, are you burnt out? Are you, do you not have time to love, for a family, to go to the beach? What? Where is the rest of the completion of your life? I asked her all those questions. Let's find out what she says.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  All the signals we are getting are the lives of the rich and powerful, and how do you climb the ladder? And so people, as a result, are living now under the collective delusion that burnout is the price you have to pay for success. So that's really why I wanted to write the book. And then I looked at the science, and all this ancient wisdom is validated by modern science now. The ancient wisdom about the importance of renewal, and sleeps and dreams, and meditation, or whatever you want to call it, prayer, you know, mindfulness, whatever word you want to use, that time to be alone, to be silent, to be connected with ourselves.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  So now, we have had an explosion of science around these things. I mean, we've had Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin using MRIs on the brains of Buddhist monks to demonstrate the plasticity of the brain, and the generation of gamma waves, and to show that giving is a shortcut to happiness. I mean, that sounds like a cliche, but now you have science proving it.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so she's on a roll there, right? She's ready to redefine success. And do I get agreement that we live in a world here in America today, that if you said, "Last night I got only two hours of sleep. I was working all day." You say, "That's a hard-working person." You'll go far. You'll climb the ladder. You'll succeed. This is how we treat it.

• 32:46Chuck Nice?

  You know, and that's because people, they don't realize that that's not true.

• 32:53Chuck Nice?

  But my father has passed away, and he was a workaholic. And that is a real disease, just like any other addiction. He was a man who felt like he had to be defined by what he did, and so he just worked.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ariana had mentioned sort of Buddhist meditation as a thing you might fold into this. And I had to take her to task on that. But I think she had a good answer. Let's see how that shook out.

• 33:26Chuck Nice?

  I can't wait.

• 33:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Buddhist monks are not inventing airplanes. They're not inventing computers. They didn't invent much that I know of, of anything of what we call modern society. They're not the ones who invented the internet. It's a bunch of restless people who were not getting much sleep and who were not meditating.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  But here, no.

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what is it?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  In the book, I quote a lot of the people who created the modern age, like Steve Jobs, who said that his best ideas that led to the iconic Apple products came after Zen meditation. Because, and I'm quoting him, he said, "That's when I could hear subtler things." It's not going to be while you're processing your email or while you're dealing with all the distractions of modern life. It is inevitably going to be in a moment of quiet. I mean, and if you look through science, you know, Newton came up with the theory of gravity while in a contemplative mood.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he was not...

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Having tea in his garden.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He wasn't partying, he wasn't doing email.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Right. And we have so many examples like that.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not that we should all just meditate. It's that this aspect of introspection should be a component.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Part of our lives, absolutely.

• 34:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that way, we can still invent the internet in a moment of meditation.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  And develop.

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, if all we did was meditate, nothing gets invented.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  No, no, no, of course not.

• 34:54Chuck Nice?

  That was awesome.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  I think where I absolutely agree with her is that we have an epidemic of anxiety in society. We have a huge problem among our youth, among ourselves, in how we treat ourselves and what we expect of ourselves. And I don't think that's about just simply getting more sleep or working less. I think it's what we expect of ourselves.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is there's also an information overload where we think we have to process it?

• 35:16Speaker 02

  No, no. There's, ever since the library in Alexandria, there's been too much information for anybody to take in.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This guy goes way back. Man, this guy...

• 35:23Chuck Nice?

  I mean, he went Alexandria on us.

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He went Alexandria on us.

• 35:28Chuck Nice?

  Okay? He wasn't talking like Sixth Avenue Public Library.

• 35:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's talking about scrolls and stuff. Right, so...

• 35:36Speaker 02

  No, we've always had too much information for any one person to take in. That's not a source of stress.

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what do you think of information being like we overeat food and we get fat? We have access to too much information and we need to go on an information diet?

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Let me ask you this way. Would you agree that we have too much stress and anxiety in society?

• 35:55Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm pretty, me and the universe are tight and I'm really relaxed in the presence of the cosmos.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  But you work harder than anybody.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do, but does anyone think that I'm uptight?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  You're in your 40th hour today alone.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do I come across as an uptight person?

• 36:08Speaker 02

  No, you don't. So how do you do that?

• 36:10Chuck Nice?

  And this is the way I feel. It really is about what works for you.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:14Chuck Nice?

  And so I do agree with the stress and anxiety that that puts you in a position where other things will not work. Sleep doesn't work, relationships don't work, and it really is due to stress and anxiety.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  It's also about doing something that makes you happy.

• 36:28Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Now, tell me this. Comedians have a reputation for being internally sad people.

• 36:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He stared at you flat-footed.

• 36:46Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 36:48Chuck Nice?

  And he was just like, "Hey, man, I know you are hurting inside."

• 36:55Chuck Nice?

  So what we do is we spend a lot of time sitting around thinking about stuff that nobody else does. And that kind of makes you a little nuts.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And out of that comes humor.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  But you give people a relief from their stress.

• 37:09Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yes. Yeah, I do. Yeah, I'll give you that.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  We made him happy while we were at it.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, you made him happy.

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In situations like this, I always turn to my good friend Bill Nye to see if he's got some take on life in the information age. So we're gonna check in on him when we come back to StarTalk.

• 37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from Manhattan, New York City, North America,

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Western Hemisphere, Earth, solar system, Sagittarius arm,

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Milky Way galaxy,

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  Uh, next.

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Local group.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Virgo supercluster.

• 38:00Chuck Nice?

  Ohhh.

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The universe, and we don't yet have a coordinate within the multiverse, we're working on that.

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my friend Bill Nye, he moved to town, he started in Seattle, went to LA, but he's a New Yorker now, and he's loving it, and he sends in these dispatches from around town. He has some thoughts about sharing in the information age, as we knew he would. Check it out.

• 38:24Bill Nye?

  When it comes to sharing information, humans are in a class by themselves. I mean, sure, a dog may walk up to a tree and take a pee to let other dogs know that it's his territory. Coyotes may howl to communicate. Monkeys may screech to let other monkeys in the barrel know that there's a predator nearby. Or a whale can swim real fast and breach up out of the sea and flop back down with a great big splash and a great big sound.

• 38:56Bill Nye?

  But humans, humans, we share all kinds of information with everybody all the time. We use these big, wide, thin sheets. But the best you can do with a piece of paper is sort of, uh, last night's news. Now we get news 24/7, every day. We can share information in a flash, at the speed of light, all over the world. That is, as long as you got one of these, and you're connected.

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My man Bill.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jeff, you wrote, you wrote a book, Geeks.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Geeks Burying Gifts, um, imagining new futures for news.

• 39:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, what, in that, what have you imagined?

• 39:41Speaker 02

  I've imagined that we move past the idea of mass media, we get treated again as individuals and communities with respect. We find relevancy and value.

• 39:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you just making this up, or are you actually looking at trend lines and extrapolating?

• 39:53Speaker 02

  No, I'm saying what I think news needs to do to survive.

• 39:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  I think as long as we continue to try to replicate our old mass media models in this new thing we call the internet. Look at it this way, I have my dear phone, right, and when I go home tonight, I'll put in Waze, and it'll say...

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Waze, W-A-Z.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Whoa, you had a new phone!

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your phone is now busted on the floor of the Hall of the Universe.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  I have a lot of anxiety right now.

• 40:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what?

• 40:24Speaker 02

  So Waze...

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we get it. You have a cellphone.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Waze will tell, will say, "Are you going home?" Google, through Waze, its traffic app, knows where I live and where I work. My local newspaper doesn't know that. That's ridiculous. My local newspaper treats me the same as millions of other people. Whereas big, huge Google sees me as an individual. I think media has to shift to seeing people as individuals and communities and giving us greater relevance and greater value. And I think that in there is a new business model that's going to support journalism and create more value.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this the next media billionaire?

• 40:57Speaker 02

  I hope so. In the meantime, what do we have? We just have a lot of cats online.

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. In fact, I've joked that if aliens came to visit Earth and observed all that goes on, they would conclude that the internet is powered by kittens.

• 41:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There would be no other conclusion they could draw. So this is the continued evolution of something in its infancy.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, let's find out what Arianna Huffington had to say about the future of journalism. Check it out.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  You know, The New York Times famously says all the news that's free to print. And my concern is that all of us in the media are not really giving our readers or viewers all the news. We're giving them all the bad news. There is a bias towards crisis, beheadings, rapes, mayhem. Obviously, we have to cover all that. Obviously, we have to uncover corruption and dysfunction. But we also feel it's about time that we do a better job bringing to our readers solutions journalism. You know, the things that are working.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Solutions journalism.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Yes. We want to focus on what is working because, you know, a lot of things are working. But you wouldn't know that. So that's kind of my new priority for The Huffington Post.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she's thinking that through. What do you think of this? Changing what you report? So that the good things show up as much as the bad things. Can you catch people's attention with good news?

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you can. No, you can. You know what? You can capture their attention with useful news. There you go. It is our job to call on the powerful and the pompous and tell them when they're full of it. But we don't do that enough.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, in fact, I'd like to take that one step further. That as an educator and as a scientist, one of the great powers of the mind is achieving a level of science literacy that can enable you, no, empower you to know when someone else is full of [BLEEP].

• 43:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guys, thanks for being on StarTalk. This has been great. Just, I learned a lot. I laughed a lot. And I didn't know that Chuck was depressed.

• 43:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. And as always, I bet you