An Alien’s Guide to Earth

Jon Stewart is the first guest of the new season. He and Neil discuss the Daily Show book, Earth: A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race.

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. Welcome to the new season of StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I'm also the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. Joining me today as my co-host is comedian Lynn Koplitz.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Thanks Neil.

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Lynn, we've been on hiatus for a while. What have you been up to?

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, I've been on the road a lot.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doing?

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Doing comedy. And I just got back and I've been gone from New York pretty much for like three months. And I've talked about being like an alien. Everything changes. This city doesn't stay the same.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it forgot who you were?

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or it didn't care who you once were?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, my tan salon is gone. It's been there eight years and I went, I thank God I didn't buy points.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No wonder you look so pale today.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  I know, I do look pale. Thank you Neil.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do you, you always got something going on TV. What's that?

• 1:03Speaker 01

  I've got my new show with Joan Rivers called Joan Knows Best.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's your buddy?

• 1:06Speaker 01

  She is my buddy. Hopefully she's gonna do our show again too.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not Lynn Knows Best, it's Joan Knows Best?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  No, it's Joan Show, Joan and Melissa Show.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And who are you to her in the show?

• 1:15Speaker 01

  It's a reality show and it's on WE TV and it'll be on January 25th it premieres. And I'm just good friends to Joan and Melissa.

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you play yourself if it's a reality show?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  I do. I do. It's really fun. I'm now getting paid on this show and on that show to just be me.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Just come and be a jackass. Other people who are taking time to work on science and bettering themselves, you really don't have to.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're proof that that's unnecessary.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  I am proof that that's unnecessary. Me and the Palans.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for StarTalk, what we like to do is begin every show with some review of current events. Because the universe is always flinching, it seems. And so, did you catch the news cycle this past week?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, I just love when the universe is flinching like an abused housewife.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's every week, because we have active people doing active things in the universe. And if it's not a black hole, it's life on another planet, or maybe. And so, there was this highly hyped NASA announcement last week that something was going to be told at an upcoming press conference about life in the universe. Were you aware of that news cycle?

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Isn't that the monolake thing? I have you on my Twitter, I know.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you follow my tweets!

• 2:31Speaker 01

  And I follow your tweets, and I follow some of the people you follow.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, okay, so you're plugged in.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  I can't do my own thing, so I go to the people I like, and I follow their people.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My people and your people will get together.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's stalker by extension.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you already briefed on the story?

• 2:44Speaker 01

  It's the monolake thing, right?

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, in that lake in California.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  There.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They found evidence of microbes that thrive on arsenic, which is really cool. And it's cool because arsenic would normally kill us, but apparently they're bacteria doing the backstroke on it. And we have, because I'm connected this way, we

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have Dr. Mary Voitek on the line, with a name that sounds like it belongs in Star Trek.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a question before we talk to Dr. Mary?

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sure.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Um, so, now, you know me, I'm allowed to ask these questions, please don't tweet and tell us Flynn sounds stupid, because that's why I'm here.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Um...

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not here to sound stupid, no.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Not to sound stupid, but I don't have to be, I'm not an astrophysicist.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  So, my question is, so these are biologists that scoop the stuff up out of the lake, right?

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  So, how many bags of crap did this lady have to dig up? Like, wouldn't this be, like, I mean, I'm just guessing, but isn't this like the major, isn't this the thing you scoop in crap up out of the lake for, hoping to find?

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I would have to ask Mary Voitek, because she's the program scientist for the astrobiology program at NASA headquarters in Washington. And she, in fact, was at the press conference moderating the scientific results. And I think we have her on the line, do we? So, Mary Voitek, are you there?

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Yes, I am. Hi, Neil.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. And your last name sounds completely made up, like you saw it in a Star Trek episode, Mary Voitek. Like, where did that come from?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Uh, well, some people may remember this classic Star Trek episode where, um, the crew confronted an organism called the Horta that was made out of silica.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Instead of life on Earth, which is made out of carbon. And we believe that our scientists found a bug in the mud, uh, in Mona Lake that instead of being made out of phosphorus, is using arsenic, which you mentioned is poisonous to most life.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's not where you got your name. That's where you got the evil bug that, that eats arsenic.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  But, Dr. Mary, isn't this like, wouldn't that be like the Lotto for that scientist who found that?

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The jackpot, you mean?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  The jackpot, the, yeah, the winning Lotto ticket, like, like, I'm guessing you have to scoop up a lot of crap out of the lake before you find something like that.

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, how, how long were they looking?

• 5:04Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, couldn't hear you there.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how long were they looking for this, for this microbe in, in Mona Lake in California? Is this an easy thing to have come upon, or is this the result of many, many years of work?

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Well, uh, Ron Ormlin, one of the investigators, has been up at Mona Lake looking at lots of different unusual organisms, because it's got very high levels of arsenic.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  It's, it's, uh, has, it has a very high pH, so it's almost like, uh, living in a, in, uh, Clorox, so it's very extreme. It's really inhospitable. You'd never want to swim in it. And he's been studying the life that lives there, uh, and as a, um, a natural continuation of the work they've been doing, where they found organisms that can tolerate arsenic, they decided to see if they could find ones that actually need it or can use it in, in this fundamentally very different and exciting way.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in other words, for the life to thrive in this arsenic-heavy lake, it had to figure out how to use it or thrive on it. Otherwise, it would have been long gone.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you either have to figure out how to avoid it, um, or use it and thrive. And so there's, there's examples of both of that going on, uh, in the lake.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so this adds another element to that fundamental list of the elements of life, right?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and for us at NASA, this is really exciting news because we are interested in understanding life here on Earth because that's what we know and what we have examples of, and understanding where it can live, the extremes in temperature, the extremes in chemical concentrations of things and what they need in order to help us look for life elsewhere.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So basically, it works both ways, where you can explore the extremes of life on Earth, it allows us to look for alien life in new places, and we look out to the universe to see what insight it gives us to life here on Earth.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and in this case, we're finding, this has opened up our concepts of where we might expect to find it. So the more we learn about things here, as you said, the more possibilities there are for life to be harbored elsewhere.

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thank you, Mary. You sound like you're really plugged into the astrobiology frontier. We'd like to know that you're available to us to call back anytime another story breaks.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Anytime, and stay tuned. We have some really exciting stuff going on here.

• 7:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. All right, Mary. Thanks for calling in. Thank you.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Thank you very much.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Thank you. I wanted to know what it was, I wanted a little tester.

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got a show to do here. We got, that's just the beginning, opening.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  She's got some sort of alien foot in her closet. She's not telling me. I want to know what it is.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if she-

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Dr. Mary's holding out on us.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you think she'd tell the world if you asked, even though she's sworn to secrecy.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Neil, was that organism, I didn't get to ask Dr. Mary, was it just, has it been there the whole time?

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have to assume, yeah. Yeah, we have to assume. And so it didn't just show up for their lab experiment.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  I don't know. I was wondering if maybe some waste or something from us created it.

• 8:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, contaminated by other sources. Very good.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  I made the genius think, didn't I?

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's time to get to the beginning of our interview with-

• 8:12Speaker 01

  It's exciting.

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart is our inaugural victim for StarTalk.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  His book's great.

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's great. It's his book that's out now, Earth: A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race. And in this book, it's imagined as just something that we leave behind after we're extinct and aliens come and find it, and that's how they learn all about us.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  The idea that we've been stalking the universe for all this time.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's, let's begin that interview. And in fact, it was, I, I taped it live in his office a few weeks ago, and we're slicing it into our program, and we can chat about it as we interrupt it at will to comment on where it's going and where it's coming. Let's start it off. Very good.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love your book. Man, what a, what a concept that is. I don't know why nobody did it thirty, forty years ago.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Because nobody wanted to waste that much time. But we did here at the show.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything, everything is in that book. It is hilarious. It is fun. And the full title's Earth, the, the book. And the premise there is civilization's gone. All that's left is here is the book. And they pick up the book, and this is how they learn about us.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  This is our record of the entirety of man's existence here on this earth.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is like the Voyager record that went out into space that captured culture.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Stardate. The only difference is, it's obviously abbreviated somehow, in that 234 pages.

• 9:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's your, what's your favorite part of that book? I have my favorite parts, and I'll share them with you in a minute.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  The favorite parts for me are the smallest jokes that we came up with in periods of delirium, like, it was never a good idea to judge a book by its cover, and it's a picture of Wuthering Heights, and on it was a picture of a dog going to the bathroom. You know, that kind of thing. So they're just, some of the most ridiculous little silly jokes are some of my

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and what I like about it is its breadth of subjects that it covers. For example, in the section on psychology, there's no real psychology listed there.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Well, I was a psychology major, so I know just how little there is to list. There's really nothing.

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have all this like pseudo-scientific stuff listed there.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're just telling it like it is.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  Tell it like it is.

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's, it's taken names and, and Pluto is in there? Pluto is in there?

• 10:29Speaker 03

  I will not back down from Pluto.

• 10:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You still haven't gotten over it.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Can I tell you something, though? We did.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You couldn't keep it out of your book.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  We did call it a transneptunian object.

• 10:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  We did not call it a planet.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got the science right. That's good.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  That's right. We don't want to mess around.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of my favorite parts is where you talk about how we all thought everything revolved around us and the evolution of that thought and what remained after it like okay, so we learn we're not in the center of everything, but there's still sort of a holdout, right? It's like

• 10:56Speaker 03

  An arrogance.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An arrogance, so but we nonetheless named the planets after gods.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  What we learned is that we were in control of our destiny, that there was no real spirituality, that it was all a series of chemical interactions, but we named the planets after gods, just to be sure.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be

• 11:10Speaker 03

  You just didn't know, okay, that's what we think, but at the end of the day, let's say we're wrong. Hey, look, Saturn, huh? Saturn, you're Saturn, Saturn.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want to piss them off too bad.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. So we work it all through.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there are people who think there's actually a face on Mars. Who are these people? Do they watch your show?

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would assume, I would hope so. Well, you know, the man on the moon, there's always a big thing that that there was a face on the moon, you know, the craters from this distance.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they didn't think it was actually a man on the moon, they just said it looked like it. The people are thinking there's actual civilizations on Mars, or that, you know, or Mount Rushmore was naturally carved. The people who

• 11:45Speaker 03

  You know, the Mount Rushmore being naturally carved is probably because people are confusing Mount Rushmore with something else. So they're hearing Mount Rushmore. It's a lack of knowledge of what Mount Rushmore is, more than you would show them a mountain with presidents' heads on it, and then they would go, that's gotta be wind, right?

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is so hopeful for this country that you say that.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I'm sure that's what it is.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is so hopeful.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  Whenever they ask those questions, I was like, is Mount Rushmore a natural? And people always think like, oh, right, Mount Rushmore, they're just thinking of a different

• 12:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wish I had that much hope.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Oh, I absolutely have that much hope. Although my kids still believe the moon is following them.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how old are they?

• 12:18Speaker 03

  Twenty-eight, twenty-six.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  Six and four.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  But they believe that the moon is following them.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  And that daddy is powerless to stop them.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't they credit daddy with the power for having done that in the first place?

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Here's what they credited daddy with, the power to tint our windows so that we can roll them up and not see the moon anymore. Other than that.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You missed out on a

• 12:38Speaker 03

  They know daddy's got nothing.

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On a power opportunity over your kids.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  That's exactly

• 12:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Saying, I have, it is by the power that I have over the cosmos that I make the moon follow us and nobody else.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  Listen, I put the milk on the highest rack in the refrigerator, believe me, I have the power. There's nothing that happens in that house. They're not, they can't open a juice box. I don't need to lord it over them anymore.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the first segment of our interview with, on StarTalk Radio with Jon Stewart.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  He's great.

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Lynn, what did you think of that?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  I think it's great, and I can't wait to hear more. But Neil, I have to tell you, the first thing that made me laugh out loud was when you guys were talking about planets, and you said, "Oh, I see Pluto is in there." Like, like he invited your ex-girlfriend to a dinner party. "I see you noted Pluto. You know I think she's a whore, right?"

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pluto is a victim of all of our ignorance. That's the problem there.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  You know I told you she's not marriage material. Why is she there?

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got Jon Stewart's book in front of you, fully doggie-eared. We'll have to get back to some of the points that you're, look like you're ready to...

• 13:44Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to take a quick break, but more of my interview with Jon Stewart when StarTalk returns.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to the season premiere of StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson with Lynn Koplitz.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Um, we've been, at the break, I was looking through Earth, the book, A Visitor's Guide to Human Race.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is, this is his book, and we chatted a bit about things like the Voyager record that's giving a signal to the aliens who might collect this intrepid spacecraft that's been going for 35 years.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Okay, Neil, I have a million questions. Let's start with, I'm looking at this page now in the book.

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  That's got all of this stuff, how we've been trying to get a hold, how we've been stalking any kind of, you know, alien life that could be out there.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the section on like biology and exotic biology.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  We're like drunken dialing all these people. Just wondering if you're out there, aliens. Call.

• 14:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're trying to send signals in case they're out there. What, you got a problem with that?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I do, because in 1973, it says, "We sent the Pioneer Plaque."

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it's a plaque that tells aliens who collect the plaque where we came from.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, a plaque that, anyone listening, please go online, look for this plaque, Pioneer Plaque, and I want you to look at the picture. It looks like something my nieces could have drawn.

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  They're 11 and 8. And they're white people, first of all. This is what we want to... And what I do like is that the girl is kinda chunky, like she's my size.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, she's got, she's a little, got extra hips there. It's an earlier, uh, standard for female body illustrated there. Because the plaque, if you've never seen it, contains sort of geometric information about where we came from, information about molecules.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  I see, I see a star and this woman who obviously has a Brazilian in 1973.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And two, two illustrations, line drawings of a man and a woman. And you're right, the woman is, is not, doesn't have the body of a, of a supermodel.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  She's well groomed for the seventies.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some extra seventies kinda body. That's right. That's right.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Well, do you think that's because we're trying to tell the aliens we're fertile?

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Come, come breed with us.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Come breed.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My favorite response to that was, I forgot where I saw it, it was a comic, where two aliens collect this plaque, they're dressed in tuxedos and they're looking at the pictures of the humans and it said, they're just like us, except they don't wear any clothes.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Oh hilarious. Wait, but what, what's that bra thing at the top of it?

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, it's not a bra, it's, it's the, it's the hydrogen atom.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  But how, how would they know that?

• 16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we're assuming they're intelligent, or at least as intelligent as we are, or at least as knowledgeable as our scientists are.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Interesting. So then, then they made a record.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so then they put some of that on a, on the record and that went on to the Voyager spacecraft, which followed the Pioneer spacecraft as the only spacecraft to ever have enough energy to leave the solar system. That's why we're trying to talk to the aliens on it.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  I honestly, Neil, no offense, I think this is crap. I don't think it's real. I, I think that's crazy. Those pictures are just, I think they're made to look like they're something.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just impressed there's a whole section in Jon Stewart's book about ways that we try to communicate with aliens and what, what effect that might have had.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Well, the radio transmissions, is that supposed to be like, that's like contact, like listening to?

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, radio, radio waves. Cause they travel, they can cut through the galaxy without leaving a mark. I mean, they're...

• 17:10Speaker 01

  You listen to your laundry washing?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Isn't that what happened in Contact? She's listening to the wash?

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's, she's, she's got the headphones on trying to hear, hear the aliens talk to her. I mean, and, and she did. They finally told her about prime numbers in the movie.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have more to talk about with that because I like the idea too, that that was in that situation, it was like science kind of led you to a religious.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, at the end, yeah. Oh, actually, well, religion, no topic is left untouched in Jon Stewart's book, including religion. And I don't know that he's ever been charitable to religious thinking.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he, I, I, he is definitely a comic who has a point of view and I, and I like it.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in, in our next segment, we get to, I talk to him about the religious content of the book and see where he, where his points of view take us.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's go right on in and find out what he says. So in this book, it touches all parts of culture and people and time.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Religion, science.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Religion. What do you say about religion in there? Do you remember?

• 18:19Speaker 03

  Uh, we just mentioned it as being a 100% purely positive thing and nothing ever going wrong. I think.

• 18:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not, not, I'll tell you what it says.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  I think it was, uh, religion provided great comfort to a world torn apart by religion. I believe that was the ending.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Period. That's all, that's what you got.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  Now, here's the thing, here's, here's a good question.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  Where are we going with science? What if science is just leading us to a religious epiphany? Do you ever wonder about that?

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, some people have speculated about it, like we find the god particle or the theory of everything or the big bang or, and we, and science has its sort of godlike figures in your book. You list science gods, Newton and Einstein, you have Edison in there.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Marie Curie.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So science has its idols and it also has its martyrs.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Has its idols, its martyrs, and its faith, to some extent. Isn't a hypothesis, to some extent, faith?

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the difference is, when you find out the hypo- when you find a hypothesis is wrong, you stop believing in it. See, that's the difference.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  The difference is, you will, but no one knows yet if religion is wrong. No one has yet to figure out. They may figure out that the books that man created for it are wrong, but they have yet to prove that religion itself is wrong.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because it's hard to prove a negative. Yeah, yeah, that's.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  Well, it's a pop-up.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just, I'm just.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  I'm just saying.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Do you think scientists have just pure faith in methodology?

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's worked before, so we keep at it. I mean, you'd need the faith if you tried it before and it never worked, but you keep trying it. That would require faith. But if it's worked before, do you want to call that faith? I call it, hey, it worked before.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  You're talking about it, that's experience.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  Scientific method.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's experience.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Can I tell them I love the scientific method?

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's awesome. And people overdefine it. People overdefine the sci- you know what it is? It's do whatever it takes to not fool yourself. Period. That's the scientific method.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  I always thought it was to create something recreatable.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but to know that you've done it successfully, you have to make sure your bias didn't affect your measurements. So, so you write it down instead of just trying to remember, because your brain, that brain's don't work.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  Are there things in theoretical physics, are there theoretical physicists that you are uncomfortable with their relying on scientific method? And do they ever in any way veer into the lane of faith? Dark matter, that kind of thing?

• 20:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, we, we measure.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  Not dark matter. Uh, what was it called?

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's dark energy, there's dark matter, the string theory.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, there's some branches of science that are not really susceptible to experiment. And so these folks are out there on the dangling, bleeding edge of inquiry. But it's a pencil, a paper, maybe a laptop. They're not expensive to keep in business. So, I don't, I don't lose sleep over that.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are the.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  What about the climate stuff? Is that, do you lose any sleep?

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The climate stuff, man, people, here's the problem.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  It's become so political.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the problem. People think that the criterion for believing something is whether or not it feels good. That that's the measure of truth, if it made you feel good. And there's something wrong about that. That's a recipe for disaster. It's the ostrich with the head in the sand. I don't want to know about it because it'd make me feel bad. I will only believe and listen to the stuff that makes me feel good. And if I have this investment in the oil industry, I'll believe what makes me feel good about that.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Let me go the other way, though. Is it also though, people have become calloused to the dire warnings that are no longer valid, is it ostrich head in the sand, or boy who cried wolf? Because there is also-

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or sky falling, yeah, yeah, we got all of them, yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  We got all of them, and trying to discern between those can be very difficult.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, like, so I guess, when the science has a fuzzy edge, where we can say, this might happen in the next fifty years, people, yeah, people don't know how to deal with that, that uncertainty.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but I say the sum rises-

• 22:00Speaker 03

  And there's also, it's difficult now, because there is no organization that has earned a certain credibility anymore. There is no Walter Cronkite of science. Does that make sense?

• 22:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, someone where everyone turns to and says, this is the man who tells it like it is, and we'll all believe it, even if it's uncomfortable.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  That's right, and who will also tell us the things that are uncomfortable that are not true.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we need a Walter Cronkite of science.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  Done. And I, I have a nomination. Want to hear my nomination?

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's your nomination?

• 22:28Speaker 03

  You! No heavy sigh, what kind of heavy sigh is that?

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's the way it will be.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  Alright, that's not it.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  You are the Walter Cronkite of science.

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the way it once was. And if I remember correctly from our last season, you're, you're actually a bit spiritual yourself, right? So what do you think of his-

• 22:48Speaker 01

  I'm actually kinda religious.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Religious, yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  I mean, for, I mean, I'm like a foul-mouthed, I'm like a Mary Magdalene, kinda. But, um, here's my, here's, I, I'd wash Jesus's feet with my hair, I'm that person. But here's my question, Neil, when you were talking about, um, we got, oh, you were talking about religion, and you said that you think people want, you want to believe only what makes them feel good, but, you know, the Bible, if you read it, it doesn't make you feel good. There's a lot of negative stuff in there, and it, you feel guilty a lot of the time. You feel bad.

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're Catholic, yeah, you get, you get the guilt.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  No, I think Jewish people get it, and Christians get, we all get it, I get it. But I mean, if anything you read in there, lots of it, you can't live up to Jesus.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just see, it wouldn't have to be religious, it's just ideas that make people feel good that I have found that they're more likely to want to believe, whether or not it's religious.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  I think we're just lazy. I think it's laziness. I think people just don't want to do anything. It's like, well, if I don't see it, I'm not going to worry about it.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm also the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, here with Lynn Koplitz, professional comedian, who deign to spend an hour with us on this Sunday.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Thank you, Neil. Don't you have a new show too, coming out?

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yes, yes, well, the spinoff of Nova, PBS Nova, Nova Science Now. Yes, thanks for, thanks for mentioning that.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  You're welcome. It's a very good show.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, you can find us on StarTalkRadio.net. That's where you get back episodes, as well as the, uh, the one day delayed podcast of anything you might hear live on the radio. And what?

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Brought to you by science.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brought to you.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  The podcast.

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's all brought to you by science.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Oh, Neil.

• 24:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think, we're gonna have time for another, uh, Jon Stewart clip.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, and, because I hung out in his office, like, for a long time, trying to milk him for everything he's got.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  He couldn't shake ya?

• 24:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a little odd that he was, like, kissing my butt at the end there, saying, "Oh, you're the next one." Why, why's he doing that? He doesn't have to do that.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  You're pretty, you're getting kinda famous.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, he doesn't have to do that. I don't think, you know, I don't know about that.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  He felt bad about what he did with Pluto.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we've got our, our second break coming up, and, like I said, you're listening to StarTalk Radio.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I have with me my co-host, Lynn Koplitz. And in this program, I've been interviewing Jon Stewart. I interviewed him in his office, like, between takes on his show. It was, it was very, very kind to give us the time that he had. And I asked him about his book. It's a, it's an, it's an extraordinary collection of comedic reflections on human culture, Earth.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  It's so great. It's the best Hanukkah gift.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Visitor's Guide to the Human Race. And in there, if you never thought how to look at yourself from a different perspective, this book will do it because it's sort of what's left over of our culture. It's imagined to be the book that aliens would find, and it's how they would think about the extinct species that once ruled the world.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  It's such a clever way of discussing pop culture and mixing it with science and history. It's just great.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And humor, and humor.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Oh, it's hilarious.

• 26:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we just came out of a segment with John where he talked about what role religion has played in the world, and he's not always been charitable. In that particular case, he was okay, he was all right there. He didn't.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  He, I thought he was very diplomatic.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Diplomatic.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Very careful, more careful than he usually is. I thought it was pretty cool.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of my great worries is people's urge to believe things that just make them feel good rather than what might be the truth that would make them feel bad.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  That's my worry when I'm dating someone. You just want to feel good. Look at me!

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Sometimes you gotta take the bad with the good. There's not, you can't always feel good. You gotta look at the real stuff, too.

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got to, you got to. And, but although, I mean, consider that in our lives today, we're doing things that are not necessarily good for our long-term survival. There's all this talk about, oh, you've heard global warming and polluting the atmosphere and the environment.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  I was just home with my mother, and I said, "Mom, do you recycle?" "People do." I said, "But you don't?" "No, I find it annoying." "Oh, really?"

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she's not a people?

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Really? You don't, you find it annoying? Okay.

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So you're helpless to convince her that this is good to do?

• 27:22Speaker 01

  I think, I think she's coming around because I'm, I'm, I'm starting to just kind of push him, because I pointed out that it was the very least she could do.

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's what happens if you don't, then what happens is the, we become, our survival is at peril, given the resources that Earth has so graciously given of itself to us over all these years. There's a point where that could run out, we could poison ourselves, we could kill ourselves. And in fact, the entire appendix, or a big part of the appendix of

• 27:53Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  John Stewart's book explores ways that we might have gone extinct. And I wanted to find out what inventive ways he came up, he and his staff of writers came up with to explore just that.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Oh, you guys talk about that now?

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just that possibility. Let's check it out.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  Tell me about the appendix of your book. Does it actually say how humans die out? You know, you hate to be a spoiler. Now, do we know? Look, the aliens are coming to Earth with no people, so some, something happened. You want them to get to the end of the book. You don't, they don't know why we're gone. So you want to give them eight different possible ways. What's the top scenario? Shark bee hybrid. Genetic shark bee. Killer shark. What is that? What is that? It's a flying killer shark. These are the geneticists gone wild. Geneticist gone wild. What nobody did, you know, in the meetings, they said, hey, what if we combine a killer bee with a killer shark? Nobody raised their hand and said, you know, I'm not so sure that's a great idea. So they went ahead and did it. No one said, let's not do that.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  And wouldn't you know it, imagine killer sharks that live in giant hives and just come out. And, and they can fly and swim. That's right. To get you no matter what you're doing. There's no way getting around it. Wow. Okay, is that the number one? That's the number one likelihood? I don't like to rank them, but yeah. Okay, well, that's scary. I think that's pretty likely. That's a scary thing. Pretty likely. Sharks that hang out in hives. That's right. Well, they're not sharks necessarily. They're shark bees. Shark bees, of course. Yeah. Of course. Shark bee hybrid. And they've been bred. Bred to render us extinct. That's right. Yes. Okay. So what else is on the list? Obviously, technology overtaking us. Except it never has in the past. Well, no, that's why it's a future. Not a history book. It's a future book.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  Okay. Stupid comment on my part. Yes. Exactly. Now, I'm not suggesting that in the future, you won't be able to send yourself back to the past to stop the robots. To kill the grandmother of the robot. Right. So that it doesn't, yeah, I'll come back naked. That's right. Thank God this is radio. So there's that. Obviously, superbug. You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lie to you. Like a, like a virus kind of bug. Like an andromeda strain. Yeah, okay, that's cool. Turns us all to dust. Yeah. For those who are not old enough, in the andromeda strain, the, the virus rendered blood into powder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like instantaneously, where like, you'd walk out in the street and you're like, cars would still be there, everything. Everything, yeah, you're in. People were just frozen. In situ death. What a great movie that was.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  Uh, oh, Death by Black Hole. Hadron Collider. The guys are like, oh, there's nothing gonna go wrong here. Bonk. Wrong. Oh, we're not gonna create a molecule that eats all other molecules. Wrong. If the world ends in that scenario, the last words uttered on earth by man will be, "Hey, it worked."

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jon Stewart, thank you for being our inaugural guest.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  Stop it. I enjoyed it very much.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For StarTalk Radio.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was Jon Stewart.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta love the guy. You gotta love the guy.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  The appendix is my favorite part of this book.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and what's interesting is how glibly he goes in and out of real science and pseudoscience and pokes fun at, at, at pseudoscientific concepts.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is not a good book for an idiot. Because it, it really does speak like it's truth and some of it is really, I mean, you're reading it and you're like, "Oh, I was filling out the form."

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  The alien questionnaire, speaking of idiots, and then I realized, "Oh, this is a complete joke."

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what concerns me is as a scientist and as an educator, we find ourselves spending a lot of time undoing people's misconceptions about the world, among them, the Mayan calendar in 2012. You know, this has, this has been going on, adults, kids, even some educated people are totally wrapped up in the belief that somehow the world is going to come to an end. And, uh, this could-

• 31:40Speaker 01

  But people felt like that about the millennium?

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, every ten years.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  They'll always feel like that.

• 31:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They seem like they're only happy when they're sad about the end of the world.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what it's gonna be.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Don't laugh at me. Zombies.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Zombies.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Not zombies, per se, but my point is, is I've been watching that show, Walking Dead.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  And I think it's gonna be some sort of incurable disease, like something, we're paying so much attention to all the other stuff, like I think some weird thing's gonna happen.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So some, people will be like walking down the street, infected.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  No, no, I don't know, I don't think it's gonna be zombies.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tap 'em twice in the head.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  But I think that show is like a metaphor for what happens when, when, when the thing you didn't plan for happens. Like, who plans for zombies?

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, here's the thing, well, that, that'd be a different kind of-

• 32:24Speaker 01

  That's my point.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -end of the world than what has preoccupied people for so long, where people look up to the sky and think the sky is gonna kill us. Now, it's odd because I've got a, you know, I wrote a book called Death by Black Hole, so I'm not, I'm no stranger to the-

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Shameless plug.

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To the ways the universe wants to kill us. I'm just saying, uh, throughout history-

• 32:42Speaker 01

  What's the book called again?

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Death by Black Hole.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there in the Bio Tapestry.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Or the Lincolpi story.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know the Bio Tapestry with with that retells the Norman conquest?

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's right next to my bed.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a comet in the sky and it's actually it turns out to be Halley's Comet, by the way.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was gonna say they didn't know it at the time. Well, of course they didn't because it came much later. It turns out to be the same comet, but it but the what I found interesting is that people always say that a comet portends disaster, yet whatever disaster happens, whatever leader steps down from power, someone else ascends to power. So you could just as easily say a comet is the sign that someone ascends to greatness. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Now, there are real, real life disaster scenarios. You've heard about Apophis. That's my favorite asteroid out there.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  I love him. He's great. He's the best Backstreet Boy.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Don't say that. You know, I don't know who Apophis is.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apophis, Apophis, the Apophis is the asteroid that's the size of the Rose Bowl that's headed our way.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  The, what do you call it? The movie? What's the one? Deep Impact?

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, okay. Uh, well, yeah. So they had that our this one is littler than the one in Deep Impact. The the size of the Rose Bowl. This one would only take out the West Coast of the United States. It wouldn't necessarily render us all extinct.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  And we have proof that this is happening.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we have proof that's gonna come. It's gonna give Earth a buzz cut on April 13th, 2029.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  See, what I think is funny is we have like, how can people not believe things that we can prove?

• 34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I that's a thank you for that question because that I'm puzzled by that all the time.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  People do it all the time. Like, no, that didn't happen. But but there's proof. Here's a bone. I'm shaking the bone at you. We know these people were here. No, they weren't here. Yes, they were.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so what you have is this asteroid that'll come so close to Earth, it'll come closer than our orbiting communication satellites. It'll be the biggest, closest thing we've ever seen in recorded history. And it's not gonna hit us on April 13th, 2029, which, by the way, is a Friday, in case you were wondering.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was sweating it. But you know, I was actually wondering how we get someone in outer space to get on top of the asteroid and put a drill bit in it or whatever like we did.

• 34:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think we would easily get volunteers to do that. If if someone had the option of saving the world, I think they would take it up. There are people who dangle off airplanes and bungee jump and rock climb for fun. And if you can say, here, put your life at risk and you might be saving the world, you know, the line will be around the block, you know?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  I'd have to think about it.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  I'm kidding.

• 35:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so you have ideas? I, I have ideas of how I think the world is gonna end.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Okay, what do you think?

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got a few ideas. So, I think what'll happen is, we, right between the time when we have an active space program where we could have defended us against an astro- ourselves against an asteroid.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And before other countries have built up their space program to do it, that's when an asteroid's gonna come. And they will all go extinct, just like the dinosaurs.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  I find it, but, but, but see, I don't know about that. I'm telling you, listen to my zombie thing for a minute.

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're still on the zombie thing?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  No, because the thing I like, it's just a metaphor for other things. The thing I like about it is, if you watch that show, it also shows that they have no technology anymore. They, they can't call.

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  They can't go on computers, so they have to learn other ways to communicate and deal with things, and it's frustrating.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just odd that they always get the, the, the upper edge on regular people, if they have no technology at all. And they don't even, they have no, and zombies don't know how to run, apparently.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Not the zombies, the regular people in the LG whiz that are still alive.

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've gotta take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.

• 36:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. Lynn Kopfletz, my co-host. Lynn, do you have a day job? You only work at night?

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Well, thanks, Neil.

• 36:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I didn't mean it that way.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Are you just a hooker? Or do you do other stuff?

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Um, no, I, I don't have a day job. I mean, I, I write and do, you know.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you work at your, your, you do nightclubs and stuff?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I work all night. I, I got off at 3 o'clock in the morning.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Came here. Okay, Neil?

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the show, we interviewed Jon Stewart in three segments, and we have his latest book sitting right in front of us on this table, Earth: A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race. And Lynn, your copy of the book is dog-eared completely.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  I like it.

• 37:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been hanging out in the appendix.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  I have this job now that, where I have science stuff, and this is funny science. That's my, it combines you and me, funny and science.

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there stuff there you need some?

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yes, I have a question.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, what?

• 37:30Speaker 01

  I wanna know, see, this is what people, people say to me, "Oh, is it, is it fun co-hosting with Neil?" I'm like, "Yeah, are you kidding?" It's, it's great to have an astrophysicist right by your side. And like, "What about this? What does this mean?" Um, I wanna-

• 37:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thank you for that, yes.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  You're welcome. I wanna go through, my own private genius. I wanna go through, um, the things that John, some jokingly and some seriously, that he said could be the end of the world. And just quickly, I want you to tell me on a scale of one to 10, what the chances are.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotcha.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Ecological catastrophe.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For rendering us extinct?

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On a scale of one to, the likelihood?

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where one is unlikely, 10 is likely?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  One to 10.

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I would, ecological disaster, five. Of all, if we do go extinct, the chances of it being ecological disaster, I'd say five. I'll put on a scale of-

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Nuclear holocaust.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Five.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay, robot rebellion?

• 38:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know you'd be giving me a test, you know, had I known.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  I'm just writing them down, there are things I wanna know about, what I have to focus on.

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Robot rebellion, zero.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Oh my god, some people peeled the Spock ear back right now and cried.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, well, a one, I'll give him a one, not a zero.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  A one, a one, yeah.

• 38:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, whatever.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Uh, black hole?

• 38:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black hole, that would be, if you had to go, that's a fun way to go. So, just-

• 38:42Speaker 01

  I didn't ask you what you think is a fun way. What's the chances?

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, a half.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  A half, that's not gonna happen, okay.

• 38:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  And rapture?

• 38:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rapture.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  I'll give it a nine.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Rapture?

• 38:54Speaker 01

  That's from the bible.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a, isn't there a Blondie song called Rapture?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  No, it's, there's a big trumpet and then me and a bunch of other Christians lead.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  And you stay here for a while.

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I am much less convinced of this than devout Christians, so I gotta go low on that one.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  I knew that was gonna happen.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I give that one a negative one, okay, go on.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Even, even, even below the shark B mutation?

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Below the shark B mutation. Cause I know we got people in the labs mutating gene pools, so-

• 39:21Speaker 01

  What about pan- how do you say that pandemic?

• 39:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh pandemic.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Pandemic?

• 39:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pandemic.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So instead of an epidemic, a pandemic? Um, you know pandemics.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  That could happen, right?

• 39:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before we had airplanes moving people back and forth, transporting their germs with them, you had to go like Konostoga to, to, to take a, you know, someone who was germ infested from one place to another, and even then they didn't get very far.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Don't go to whatever, they got malaria.

• 39:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and so nowadays you've, uh, we can, any disease, a bug that shows up in one place, it could be all around the world, it's much faster than it otherwise would have been, uh, taken to get there. So, I, I put a pandemic very high, I'd go seven, seven or eight, yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, you think about that, back in Bible times, if they'd had planes, everyone would have lepers.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody, everybody, and the black, and the plague and everything.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything. Okay, and then the last one was alien invasion.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alien invasion, with aliens coming to suck our blood.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Uh, why do they always make them out to be bad? What if aliens just came and wanted, you know, needed a place to stay?

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you remember when Hawking gave the warning that aliens would probably be evil and like wanna take, enslave us? I, I think his concept of that is a fee, it's a mirror held up to the human race, because it's, it's how we know we behave.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  And it's what we've done.

• 40:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's what we've, not only-

• 40:35Speaker 01

  We've been doing it.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Been there, been doing it, that's right, any mismatch.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Whoever's got the bigger stick wins.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The bigger stick, and well, or more, in speaking in a more modern sense, whoever, who's got the best, the more advanced technology wins. And so, any alien who's crossing the galaxy to visit Earth-

• 40:50Speaker 01

  So shouldn't Japanese people win?

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm just saying, aliens that come to Earth, that, if they came to Earth across the galaxy, they got more technology than us. So there's a fear factor that they'll all be evil. And my, my, what I think will save us, is that they'll take it, they'll study Earth really hard, and they'll look at the species that calls itself dominant, and they will conclude, based on all the evidence available to them, that there is no sign of intelligent life on Earth, and thereby leave us alone.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  You think we're gonna be so stupid, they're gonna leave us alone?

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Compared to them, if they're that advanced...

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Leave these ants alone!

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When was the last time you walked past a pile of worms and said, "Gee, I wonder what they're thinking? I wanna make peace with them."

• 41:34Speaker 01

  But I've also seen people stomp 'em, just because they were there.

• 41:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they were in the way.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this is how I think about the ends of the world. And I think some are more likely than others. I think we're more likely to kill ourselves than to have something in the universe that we then blame it on. Because I just see our behavior. Just look at our past behavior. It looks... It's... Human behavior scares me.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it scares me too. And you're right, because if the aliens did come here and they didn't wanna fight, we'd be like, "Oh, can we go back to your planet and take everything? We're just gonna do a little cherry pick and see if there's anything we want."

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I saw a science fiction... Actually, it was a science fiction radio play one time, where the aliens came to Earth because they wanted the hydrogen in our water. And they had run out of hydrogen where they were, and they were sucking our water supply. And so, they were not fighting us, they were taking our natural resources. And that was a science fiction author...

• 42:29Speaker 01

  That's interesting.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's interesting, but that science fiction author never had Astro 101. Because they would've learned that 92% of the entire universe is made of hydrogen. You don't have to come to Earth. So, everyone take...

• 42:41Speaker 01

  You can get it somewhere else.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pay attention in Astro 101, because that's what'll work for you there.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  You could get it closer to your planet.

• 42:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've gotta wrap up the show, but you've been listening to StarTalk. And I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.