Comedy and Cars with Jay Leno

StarTalk host Neil Tyson welcomes legendary “Tonight Show” host and car collector extraordinaire Jay Leno to discuss comedy, culture, and the past, present, and future of automobiles. Matt Kirshen co-hosts, with guests Bill Nye and Mona Chalabi. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

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.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To the hall of the universe at the American Museum of Natural History, this is StarTalk. And I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Tonight, we're featuring my interview with legendary comedian, nighttime talk show host, and car fanatic, Jay Leno.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And our conversation started from the roots of comedy, all the way up to the past, present, and future of cars. So let's do this.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never tackle these topics alone, so I've got my comedic co-host, Matt Kirshen.

• 1:01Matt Kirshen?

  Hey!

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You host a podcast called Probably Science?

• 1:06Matt Kirshen?

  I do.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I told you never to come back until it became Definitely Science.

• 1:10Matt Kirshen?

  We've bumped it up to Likely.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Likely, okay. And my next special guest, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, needs no introduction. So, no introduction. Okay. Bill!

• 1:21Bill Nye?

  Neil!

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, this is a show about a comedian gearhead.

• 1:30Bill Nye?

  A man can dream.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, we got you on here because you've got a huge background in engineering. You worked for Boeing. You worked on like the original 747.

• 1:39Bill Nye?

  Uh, yeah, it had already been designed, but I...

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it needed some parts that you need, that you...

• 1:45Bill Nye?

  We tweaked it.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You tweaked it.

• 1:46Matt Kirshen?

  Were you the one who was like, "Let's make it big"?

• 1:50Bill Nye?

  Actually...

• 1:51Matt Kirshen?

  It was just a biplane at first, and you're like, "You know what? We can get a lot more than two people on this thing." We rarely think large.

• 1:57Bill Nye?

  But it is interesting to note that if you have the cargo version of the 747, you could fly the very first Wright Brothers flight inside a 747. And secondly, when you build an airplane like a 747, you plan to make it bigger. And that's what I kinda worked on, extend it up her deck.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's not the only reason why I have you on the show. Because you are best known for bringing sort of fun and humor to your science.

• 2:26Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so comedy is a dimension of your professional identity.

• 2:31Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so...

• 2:32Bill Nye?

  What kind of turn of phrase is that?

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sucks.

• 2:35Bill Nye?

  Dimension of my professional identity.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like the word dimension. I use it any possible time that I can.

• 2:42Bill Nye?

  No, I strongly believe that we can use science, technology, energy production technology to make the world better for all of us.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Better for all of us. And Bill Nye being an American icon? But not the only American icon. There's at least another one out there, former Tonight Show host, Jay Leno. I asked Jay about just the roots of his comedic inclinations, so let's check it out. So you were the class clown?

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. You know, most comedians you speak to have the ability to remember everything that got a laugh. I remember being four years old, four, maybe five, my mother took me... We're going to some ladies' house in the Bronx, and it was an apartment full of all sort of middle-aged women.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you were four, this would be one of your earliest memories in life.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I was the only kid there, and I looked at... And I asked what I thought was a reasonable question. I said, "How come women have humps like camels?" Well, you hear this, you heard, "Woo! Woo! Oh my God, you hear woo woo!" And women shrieking and laughing, "Woo, Kathy, that one, that little boy of yours, Papa!" My mother's turning red and I thought, "I thought I asked a personal reasonable question." You know, but I remember it because it got such a huge reaction, you know? And I thought, "Oh," I mean, it just stayed in your memory. And consequently, things that got a big laugh in class or whatever, to this day, it seems very clear.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 4:07Matt Kirshen?

  But hang on.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 4:09Matt Kirshen?

  Neil, what... What is the reason?

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The reason for what?

• 4:14Matt Kirshen?

  For the... The humps. The humps. I'm an engineer, Neil. We're not exposed to these things. You know how to keep the humps in place. You could structurally hold the humps. I've given that a lot of thought, actually.

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Matt, do you remember the first laugh you got?

• 4:31Matt Kirshen?

  I'm still waiting.

• 4:35Matt Kirshen?

  And there it was. It was right there. I will never forget it.

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let the record show, we have established Matt's first laugh.

• 4:41Matt Kirshen?

  Mark that down. Note the time. I had the route of realizing halfway through a mathematics degree that I'm not gonna be a mathematician. But I am funny. And that was my natural route. So how far along did you get? I graduated on a technicality. I mean... So I have a diploma, I have the thing, and then I've never used it since. But in the US, you have an undergraduate degree. I had an undergraduate degree. Wow.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In mathematics?

• 5:10Matt Kirshen?

  In mathematics.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Now, there's some hilarious mathematics that's out there.

• 5:15Matt Kirshen?

  Well, you could write, you know, a 5318008 on a calculator and then...

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so getting back to Jay, Jay Leno.

• 5:28Matt Kirshen?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got the... You know, funny man, and I had to... I know comedians hate it when you do this, but I had to do it. I said, "Okay, Jay, tell me a joke." Not only tell me a joke, but how do they work? What makes a good joke? Let's find out.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  Okay, the joke is, these two hunters are in the woods, and it's 6:30 at night, and it's sort of twilight, it's kinda dark. And they're walking along, and one guy goes, "Oh, be careful." "What?" "Look out." And they look down, and there's a six-foot hole, perfectly cylindrical, perfectly smooth, straight down. He goes, "I think he saved my life. I almost stepped in that hole." He goes, "How deep do you think it is?" "I don't know. Let's throw something in the hole and see how deep it is." So they look around, they see this old anvil, and the two of them pick the envelope, throw it, and...

• 6:16Speaker 03

  Don't even hear it hit, just go, "God, how deep is this hole?" Next thing they hear, this goat come running at them, like 20 miles an hour. And the guy goes, "Look out!" The goat almost knocks them over, dives in the hole. The two hunters go, "You know, this place is crazy, let's get out of here." So they're walking back, and they hear a farmer going, "Becky, Becky!" And the farmer goes, "Hey, you two hunters, come over here. You see a goat around here?" Guy goes, "Yeah, goat ran by us about 20 miles an hour, almost knocked him over, dove in that hole." Farmer goes, "That's impossible, I had him chained to an anvil." Okay, now see, but the reason that joke works, or doesn't work, is that you're focused on six foot, perfectly cylindrical. I've taken your mind off the actual circumstances that have happened.

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've given me geometric details.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  Right, right, so you consequently, to someone like yourself, I could see you focusing on, "What could that be, six foot..."

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm sitting there thinking, I'm not even listening to the rest.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  That's what I'm saying. It's like a verbal form of magic.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What could that be?

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Where you distract with this hand.

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, actually, what I forgot to say in that bit was, why is an anvil out there?

• 7:24Bill Nye?

  Well, that's another question you gotta roll with, you gotta suspend your disbelief. And then how do you casually pick up an anvil?

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, yeah, the man just tossed it in.

• 7:32Matt Kirshen?

  But he throws it with like a, "Oh, this old anvil." You see him just underplay that crucial element of it, because that's more misdirection.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was intrigued that he said it's kind of, it's intellectual magic. Sleight of hand, but it's sleight of misdirection with verbal. Would you agree?

• 7:48Matt Kirshen?

  It kind of, I say the only thing, the big thing's different with magic and comedy and a joke is, when a joke's happened, you now know all the information, you know everything that's happened. But when you've seen a magic trick, okay, you now know that what's gonna have happened is, the person goes into that cabinet but comes out of that cabinet. But you still ideally don't know how. You don't know what's taken place. In a joke, you have all the information laid out in front of you, but it's still meant to surprise.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 8:15Matt Kirshen?

  Which is why jokes are less effective the second and third time around.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, whereas it's still great to see someone get sawed in half, or whatever.

• 8:21Matt Kirshen?

  It's always great. But ideally, unless you're sort of working out the trick, you still, a magic trick will still baffle and entertain the next time it happens.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember a New Yorker comic, where there's a funeral.

• 8:35Bill Nye?

  So here's the thing about some jokes work more than once.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, the magician is there in a cape. At the funeral, they said, "She was a good assistant." And there are two half-sized coffers.

• 8:50Bill Nye?

  That's as troubling as the goat.

• 8:54Bill Nye?

  But notice that it's still funny to him.

• 8:59Bill Nye?

  And so, uh, there is, so there is something of longevity to certain jokes, and we retell jokes.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is there a logic to a great joke?

• 9:06Matt Kirshen?

  I, you know what, there's, there's a, there's 20 different theories as to how humor works. Freud had a theory, and there's been endless ones probably before and certainly since, and none of them are sufficient, that I've heard. I've never heard a theory of comedy or a theory of humor that makes you go like, "Oh, that's it, that's everything, that person has cracked what humor is and what comedy is." Uh, so yeah, there are-

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if you could, then everyone could be a comic. Because you just follow the formula, but that's not the case, obviously.

• 9:35Matt Kirshen?

  And that people have tried to write computer programs that then write jokes, and they all end up being sort of riddles and wordplay, and half of them are vaguely funny and half of them aren't, and I think that's where those theories fall down.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just wait till the super computer.

• 9:47Matt Kirshen?

  Well, because a good scientific theory, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but a good scientific theory should also be able to predict.

• 9:52Bill Nye?

  That's what you want, is prediction.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, otherwise, it's, it's not worth much of anything.

• 9:55Matt Kirshen?

  And most of the humor theories are ones where you've already got the information, and you're drawing various inferences from that.

• 10:02Bill Nye?

  Nevertheless, though, for any topic, you can go, let's say, to the electric computer machine, to the internet, and find a list of jokes that someone has gone to the trouble to record.

• 10:16Matt Kirshen?

  Yes, I wonder whether at some point, sort of, someone can program some neural network that takes every decent joke and plugs it in and converges on it.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had a StarTalk episode where we interviewed Joan Rivers in her apartment in New York, and I'm there, and she has 20-foot ceilings in her, in her-

• 10:33Bill Nye?

  The way she does.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the way she does, and on one of the walls, her 20-foot ceiling-

• 10:37Bill Nye?

  Watch for the misdirection with the ceiling.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Was a goat.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There were, there was one of these library card catalogs from like the original New York library and it's like hundreds of them and they go up higher than I can reach and she pulls them out, pulls it and every single card, there's a joke.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  I can believe it.

• 10:58Bill Nye?

  Were they good, I bet there were some good jokes.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's some good ones, there were some good ones.

• 11:01Bill Nye?

  Can you remember any?

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I remember the interview, I don't remember like the single jokes that came out. Look, yeah, there was one, there was one joke, ready? Um, I asked her, Joan, uh, what do you, what do you, when the aliens come, what are you, what are you gonna do? She said, I don't care if the aliens come, just as long as they're single and Jewish.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, did you know that Jay Leno hosted The Tonight Show 4,610 times, longer than Johnny Carson before him. And so I, I wondered, do, do we here in America have an unlimited appetite for entertainment? I had to ask him, let's check it out.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  We're the first generation that has to be entertained 24 hours a day. People actually used to come up with things to do.

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That actually think.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Themselves. Like kids say to me, what do people do before television or computers? Well, they made stuff. They did, I mean, they're, they're fast. The idea of having free time without something in it to constantly keep you amused seems foreign, you know?

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this doesn't bode well for successful civilizations?

• 12:05Speaker 03

  No.

• 12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They get, they get sort of fat and lazy.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  No, no, but see, I'm one of those people who believes engineers will save the world. And I think it's true. When I came to LA, there were at least 120 days a year, they told you not to go outside because of the smog. Well, now you have 10 times as many cars you had in 1972 and there's no smog days anymore. I mean, is it still a problem? Sure. But it's way better. I mean, getting the lead out of the air is, well, you see what that's had on, in, in urban crime in the cities with lead out of gasoline, there's less shootings, there's less murder.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be, just to be clear. So lead got banned in nineteen seventy-three, seventy-four. Right. Around there, leaded gas. Right. And, which was the biggest source of lead in the environment. Right. Inhalable lead. Right. So then you add fifteen years to that. Right. Okay, you get to nineteen, late eighties, early nineties. That's when the crime rates started dropping. Right. So, the crime rate wouldn't drop immediately. No. They're just children at the time. Now, see, I- So when you get to the crime committing age, that's when we saw nationwide. Yeah. Crime dropping, so yeah.

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, so he's, he's, he's your man.

• 13:14Bill Nye?

  I'm loving this, Jay.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's loving you.

• 13:16Bill Nye?

  Engineering, right on.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He knows it, he understands.

• 13:19Matt Kirshen?

  I also love that he seems to have the quality that both of you have, which is somehow steer every conversation back to your pet subject. Cause you asked him a question about humor and somehow he ended up talking about cars.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me, so, so Bill, if, if engineers can change the world as you call for daily, can you also save the world?

• 13:42Bill Nye?

  Save the world, Neil, you're an astronomer, astrophysicist, my bad.

• 13:48Bill Nye?

  The world's gonna be here no matter what we do, yeah.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you save humans on the world?

• 13:52Bill Nye?

  Yeah, that's what we want. I wanna save the world for me. Now, there are, of course, a few humans, I wouldn't mind if they, uh, go elsewhere, but-

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but the estimates are- The US government made the estimate, based on projections, that we need a million more scientists and engineers.

• 14:11Bill Nye?

  I'm working on it.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than what we will produce at the current rate in the next decade if we were to maintain our, our preeminence in science and technology.

• 14:20Bill Nye?

  That's, that's our mission in life, Dr. T.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A million. I don't see that happening on college campuses.

• 14:25Matt Kirshen?

  How many, um, how many bloggers will we need?

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how do, how do, how do you boost those numbers, Bill?

• 14:32Bill Nye?

  We get young people excited about science. Out there in the audience, yes.

• 14:39Bill Nye?

  So, thank you.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The people who didn't pay for their ticket tonight?

• 14:45Bill Nye?

  There's a couple of things about Jay Leno's comment about engineers and the air quality in Los Angeles, air quality writ large. There was an engineering solution involving the catalytic converter. But also, people were so fed up with the air quality that they decided to do something about it, and they did what in the United States, as in here in the summer of 2016, is perhaps the greatest evil you can ever perpetrate on the populace. They passed regulations. My, oh my, you can't say that word. And so, which, and they also paid taxes, and this led to using technology for the greater good.

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back then?

• 15:24Bill Nye?

  Back then. And so, the air quality is generally better in so many ways, even though, as Jay Leno pointed out, there are so many more cars.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he makes, fine, but he also makes the point that we are, we surround ourselves with entertainment 24/7.

• 15:38Bill Nye?

  So, you're talking about StarTalk.

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, a big question is, is the entertainment supplanting anybody's need for actual knowledge? Is this, is this, are we, where's, where's this going? Matt?

• 15:49Matt Kirshen?

  I don't know, right?

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill?

• 15:51Matt Kirshen?

  So... It feels like you're talking your way out of a job right now.

• 15:54Bill Nye?

  So, I would say that if you go to a dinner party, if you're with people at lunch, and a question comes up, some exotic thing, where's the firth, a fourth, or something? You can look it up. You can look up the capital of New Jersey on, on the electric internet. You can find out how many shows Jay Leno hosted instantly. So, this enables...

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what's the capital of Jersey?

• 16:24Matt Kirshen?

  Sort of, mouth it, mouth it clearer?

• 16:27Matt Kirshen?

  Trenton?

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Trenton, very good.

• 16:29Matt Kirshen?

  There we go, yeah. Just, just edit that last bit out.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good, says the Brit, okay.

• 16:33Matt Kirshen?

  So, what you're saying is, basically, technology has...

• 16:37Matt Kirshen?

  Killed the bar trivia night.

• 16:40Bill Nye?

  Uh, it's changed it.

• 16:41Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Bill Nye?

  Because there'll be who can, who can use their thumbs.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so what's your point? We, we know we got the internet.

• 16:46Bill Nye?

  So you're, this is the claim that, uh, people watch television all day and don't create anything at all, I think is an extraordinary claim. It's difficult to back up. We now have phones that do way more than a Star Trek communicator with people using all their imagination.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, my regret, I, I, we should set up a, a rule that if two people disagree, you have to argue for at least 10 minutes before anyone looks up the answer.

• 17:09Bill Nye?

  I'll go for that.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It can force your brains through new thought pathways.

• 17:13Bill Nye?

  It'd be the chess with the clock backwards. You can't go to the clock till after you've properly guessed.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, okay.

• 17:21Bill Nye?

  But you chose 10 minutes, but let's take another number that I think would be more reasonable at a party. Two minutes?

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, at a party, two minutes.

• 17:29Bill Nye?

  Not right now, not right now.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure, but you get to explore mental pathways of solution making. And sometimes you don't know the answer, but you have fragments of an answer that you bring together in a fresh way.

• 17:37Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Establishing new neurochemical pathways.

• 17:40Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the brain.

• 17:41Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what I wonder is whether there's a generational distinction.

• 17:46Bill Nye?

  Oh, God.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Between, uh, among and between how people think about knowledge and information and entertainment. And coming up next, we will try to gauge what millennials know or don't know compared with the generations that preceded them on StarTalk.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. We are here beneath the Hayden Sphere of the American Museum of Natural History. We're featuring my interview with Jay Leno and one of my favorite segments of his show was called Jaywalking. And so I thought I'd ask him about it. Wendy Channing, let's check it out. So you're asking people questions. You know, how many moons does Earth have?

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And...

• 18:36Speaker 03

  Well, these seem like common sense questions more than science questions.

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And nobody gets the right answer.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  No, but there is a reason for that.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 18:44Speaker 03

  We're not quite as doomed as it appears.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just to be clear, in case people don't remember, you would go out into the street?

• 18:50Speaker 03

  Mostly Melrose Avenue. Melrose Avenue is a good cross-section, and we'd always try to find people between the ages of 21 and maybe 40.

• 18:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Because there's something that happens there hormonally that people just are rushed, they're confused, and they don't pay attention. Because I thought, one day we did-

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're no longer in school.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  No longer in school.

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're no longer settled in life.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so they're in some gap.

• 19:15Speaker 03

  For example, when we ask 8th graders questions, got them all right. When we ask elderly people questions, got them all right. I mean, to the point where we'd have to talk to 25, 30 people to get one. Whereas in the 20 to 40 range, we would never talk to more than 15 to 16 people. We would have nine gems. Fantastic.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you would throw science in there as well as politics and other things, but I was always impressed how much science you touched upon.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  But just normal sci- to me, it never really seemed like science. It seemed like common sense. You know, I've got a book at home. It's called Projects for Boys, Popular Mechanics.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back when you can get away with a title like that.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 1927. And it's these complicated projects that I think an adult would have a hard time doing. But this is, if you worked on a farm, you grew up on a farm, or your dad had a store, you were expected to know these things.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To fix stuff.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  You know, before Netflix, people did stuff.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  You had to learn things.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what we need to know is how do we gauge what we know today versus what people knew a generation ago? We can try to guess that, or we don't have to guess when we have access to real data on this very subject. And when we need data and numbers, we turn to Mona. Mona Talaby. Thanks for joining us once again on StarTalk. She's a data journalist. So Mona, what do you have for us?

• 20:48Speaker 04

  So I'm trying to answer this question, which is, do some age groups, like, say millennials, really know less than others? So let's just set aside intelligence for a second and look at general knowledge. Pew Research Center asked Americans to look at photos of historical figures and name them. And what they found was that almost everyone correctly identified Martin Luther King Jr. But when it came to some politicians and world leaders, like North Korea's Kim Jong-un, older respondents did better than younger respondents, which might mean that Jay Leno is right. But I also have some data that might explain why that is. So we know that different age groups get their information from different sources. Younger Americans, those aged 18 to 29, are more likely to go online, while older Americans tend to go to TV, print, and radio.

• 21:32Speaker 04

  And there's one last thing that I think is really important here, which is, what do we mean by general knowledge, right? Very often, that gets defined by the cultural gatekeepers in society. Maybe if that quiz had asked about Kim Kardashian rather than Kim Jong-un, those younger millennials might not have appeared quite so unknowledgeable.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so maybe you need millennials to write their own general knowledge test.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Maybe, and then you'd see that older Americans don't do so well.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, thank you, Mona. Mona! Yes!

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I always wondered what millennials thought. Do they think coherently enough to deserve their own demographic name?

• 22:07Matt Kirshen?

  Well, yeah, it's also unclear exactly who is a millennial, what a millennial is, because millennials seems to be defined less by age group and more by lifestyle and attitude. So I don't know, you might be more millennial than me, just in terms of your outlook and your behaviors. We've got a little test here, just to see.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you have a test?

• 22:24Matt Kirshen?

  We have a little test, yes.

• 22:25Bill Nye?

  No, it's your millennial quotient.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quotient, there you go.

• 22:29Bill Nye?

  How millennial are you?

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, how millennial?

• 22:31Bill Nye?

  Your millenniality.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've got a test?

• 22:33Matt Kirshen?

  Yes, we're going to test your MQ here.

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, your millennial IQ. All right, let's go.

• 22:39Matt Kirshen?

  So are you afraid of any non-text communication?

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My daughter satisfies this, yes.

• 22:44Matt Kirshen?

  Your daughter is exclusively text-based?

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, she's all text.

• 22:46Bill Nye?

  She'll be sending you the email.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not even email, I get an email from a spy a week later. "Why didn't you text me?" "'Cause it's email, you know."

• 22:51Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, she's been at the other end of the table and she'll send you a text. I guess that's not uncommon.

• 22:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pass the salt, you know?

• 22:59Matt Kirshen?

  I fit partially in that category in terms of like if someone calls me up, "Why are you doing that?" That's a weird thing.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "I have to talk to you now."

• 23:05Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, leave a message. And, uh, okay, next. Are you a total pro at taking a selfie?

• 23:11Bill Nye?

  I pretty much am the pro-iest at selfies.

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would grade myself a B+. But this man over here, A+.

• 23:17Bill Nye?

  So, one of my favorite stories. Uh, I don't tell it every day, but I'm there with Neil deGrasse Tyson in the White House, which is where a federal employee lives.

• 23:27Matt Kirshen?

  Alright, name-dropping Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 23:31Bill Nye?

  Here comes the President with his entourage, and when the President walks around, there's several people with cameras. Impressive cameras, like NFL Films cameras. But Dr. Tyson has it in his head that he's gonna get a selfie with the freaking President of the United States.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so we had to choreograph this 'cause we didn't know if he would allow it, so...

• 23:54Bill Nye?

  Plus, this is just a cultural reference. Guy of my ancestry not gonna ask the freaking President for a selfie. You can do a little brother-to-brother thing that I ain't got.

• 24:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we set this up. President's going one person at a time, greets Bill, then greets me. And so now the three of us can form a triad. And I say, "Mr. President, I'd like, uh, do you mind if I get a selfie?" He's, "Oh, okay." So I pull out my cellphone and I'm holding it up. And the three of us are there smiling, and I click the button... Disc full.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then Bill with his A-plus selfie taking, uh... Boom, boom, boom. Saves the day. He pulls it out!

• 24:37Bill Nye?

  So, uh, everybody, if you're gonna do the selfie, just a couple things. Practice holding the phone so you don't have to squeeze a mechanical button. You can touch the white button at the bottom. Cause then you don't shake the phone, okay? Touch the white button. Then, the other thing is, uh, hold the phone a little above your eyes. Otherwise, your eyes look closed.

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus it gets rid of a double chin, if that's one of the things you're trying to hide.

• 25:05Bill Nye?

  And then, then the other thing is, look at the lens. Everybody looks at the yellow box or the yellow circle, and so you're not looking at the lens.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's take one now. Just, just, just, just take one now. Alright. Okay.

• 25:19Bill Nye?

  You're gonna show us?

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. So let's line this up. Everybody there?

• 25:23Bill Nye?

  Matt, you gotta lean forward.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Matt, get in there. I'll go sideways. Here we go.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so, we're featuring my interview with Jay Leno. Award-winning comedian, late-night, former late-night talk show host. And he's still out there. And he's a car nut. He owns like, three hundred cars.

• 25:48Bill Nye?

  You're not kidding. That's not a joke.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not a joke. So, I asked him, does, can he reflect on just what role and impact the car has had in our culture? Let's check it out. I'm amazed that we went thousands of years with horse and buggy. And within a couple of decades, it's gone.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody's got a car.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, New York City had eighty tons of manure a day dumped in the city. And in the summertime, people dying of dysentery, horses would drop dead from the heat. Guys would cut the reins, leave the carcass on the road. It would sit there for two or three days. Then the car comes along, a little puff of blue smoke in your face once in a while. That doesn't seem so bad, does it? Isn't that a big thing of horse crap?

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but this is a very important period. Transitioning from horses to cars. And you can understand better how and why that transition happened so quickly. Because at the time, in New York City, there were 170,000 horses. In New York City, used mostly, of course, for transportation. But there's something called the horse pollution crisis. And those 170,000 horses produced up to 30 pounds of mule deer each per day. Multiply that by the number of horses, you get 3 million pounds of horse poo piling into the streets every day. Not to mention 60,000 gallons of horse pee.

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, the most urgent problems in urban life were what to do about this environmental disaster. And then, the car arrives. Where there is no poop, just like he said, a puff of smoke.

• 27:31Matt Kirshen?

  You're saying the car was the solution?

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it was the solution to the pollution.

• 27:35Matt Kirshen?

  But then, I think the point is, that's then gonna carry on. Like, we're gonna presumably, in 30, 40, 50 years from now, look back at this generation and go, like, can you believe people drove around in cars burning dinosaur fossils?

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that the future you try to make happen in your books? That's what I envision, is we get away from driving our own cars, except recreationally on the weekends, of self-driving cars. But you're admitting, we have a problem, a pollution problem, caused by the car, that has solved the pollution problem. That's right, it was a step. Will innovation save us once again? Oh, that is my hope. Okay. As a kid, what was your favorite magazine? Popular Science. Popular Science, how about Popular Mechanics? Oh yeah, I liked it. Both? I liked it, I liked both. Okay, I subscribed to Popular Science. I thought you were a Popular Mechanics guy. The reason why I say, is Jay Leno wrote a column for 15 years for Popular Mechanics. Uh, yeah, which I read from time to time. So you knew about this?

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it means he spent a lot of time thinking about how we relate to our technology. And I would find out about it in the next clip, check it out.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  We live in a replace society now. We don't live in a repair society. And that's what biomechanics is all about. It's about fixing things that are broken and understanding why they're broken and how they work. You know, most technicians...

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lost art.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  For example, I have a fairly new car. There was a leak in the transmission. Now, to me, it was a replacement gasket. You split the two sides, you clean it, you put a new gasket in and you seal it up. No, they replaced the entire transmission. Dropped it, took it out and put a new one in. It didn't cost me anything, it was under warranty. But it was actually cheaper for them to do that than to try and fix it when there's really nothing wrong with it.

• 29:17Matt Kirshen?

  See, I had a car that blew a gasket a while ago. And that was when I found out that was actually a thing and not a turn of phrase.

• 29:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I see. It literally blew a gasket.

• 29:27Matt Kirshen?

  It literally blew a gasket. And I did not know that was like, "Oh, okay, I guess there's a gasket and it can blow. Who knew?" This is basically like just a furious man under the hood. Arrgh!

• 29:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this not-fix-it, throw-away culture actually goes back more than 100 years now. Our crack team of researchers found that the first routinely throw-awayable thing was a bottle cap. A disposable bottle cap back in 1892. That was the beginning of, "This is a lid that I will never reuse. I must throw it away." And some of us here are old enough to remember that gentlemen had monogrammed handkerchiefs that they would reuse. Which was the nastiest thing I could possibly... Bill, don't... Leave that in the pocket, please. Thank you. So there'd be a woman crying and the man would take his handkerchiefs up and give her... What? Is there snot in the handkerchief?

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she's gonna pat her tears with it? So then we have disposable handkerchiefs, right? So I think it's a cultural thing that no longer in America do we repair things. I think it's a cultural economic fact.

• 30:36Bill Nye?

  But in Jay Leno's transmissions case, they put a... that's a pun. They put a new transmission in there. So somebody was under there with wrenches doing some wrenchy things.

• 30:46Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, they did at least replace the transmission and not the car.

• 30:49Bill Nye?

  Right, right.

• 30:50Matt Kirshen?

  That would've been the truest throwaway culture. Like, "All right, it's gone. This thing's out of gas. Get a new one."

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll tell you a little bit about my joyride with Jay Leno in his jet-powered supercar. He calls it his Ecojet. I got to ride in it. And we talked about that in my interview with him. Let's check it out. Jay, did you look at your field of cars and say, "I want more power"? Is this what led you to put a jet engine in an automobile?

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Well, it's alternative power. It's alternative fuel.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So would a nuclear fusion reactor be an alternative power?

• 31:30Speaker 03

  That would be an alternative power.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's compelling you to do that?

• 31:32Speaker 03

  It runs on renewable fuel.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why it's called Ecojet.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Ecojet. We had 165 miles an hour. We had plenty more to go. I just didn't want to push any further. You know, if I killed Tyson, "Oh, Jay Leno killed Tyson",

• 31:46Speaker 03

  then I gotta cancel the show for the weekend, pretend that I'm in mourning. "Yeah, because I killed Tyson. I'll be back next weekend." You know, so that's why we kept this beat down.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was fun when, as we sped past 130 miles an hour, the driver's-

• 31:56Speaker 03

  We had a window blown out.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Driver's side window blew out.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I gotta get a new seal for the window. That's how you test.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that is 40 miles an hour faster than I've ever gone on wheels.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Oh, there you go. Okay. We'll hit 200 next time.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Bill Nye?

  Wow.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a jet-engine car, but it is not propelled by jet exhaust.

• 32:18Bill Nye?

  It's connected to a transmission.

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So the engine power is all directed to a drivetrain. It can go 245 miles an hour, faster than a Ferrari F1. It also has 650 horsepower. And so what charms me is we're using a jet-engine car and measuring its power in horses.

• 32:39Matt Kirshen?

  How many tons of manure does the car leave?

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A [bleep] ton of manure.

• 32:48Bill Nye?

  I wonder how much, just thinking out loud, how many acres or hectares of corn do you need to get to that much oil?

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That I don't know. That's a great question. But it is biofuel, biodiesel, and...

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we have horsepower. There are a lot of terminology that... To hear the engineers talk, I didn't understand a single, because I'm a city kid.

• 33:09Matt Kirshen?

  See, I appreciate that, because also, like you said, I know almost no terms. Gasket even was relatively unfamiliar to me.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had never blown a gasket.

• 33:17Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, but there are these sort of terms-

• 33:20Bill Nye?

  You ever have pulled a tranny?

• 33:25Matt Kirshen?

  Not even going near that, my field.

• 33:28Matt Kirshen?

  We actually got another little quiz here, because there are these terms in mechanic.

• 33:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what did you do?

• 33:32Matt Kirshen?

  We have a little quiz, a little game show. I want you to know, I want to know whether this mechanical problem is a science fiction problem, or a real life, real mechanical problem.

• 33:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bonafide mechanical problem.

• 33:45Bill Nye?

  Real or not, is that right?

• 33:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright.

• 33:47Bill Nye?

  Do we go bing, meh?

• 33:48Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, so is it a real thing? Is it a real thing in real life if you have a cracked harmonic balancer?

• 33:55Bill Nye?

  You have, you can be cracked harmonic, yeah.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I would say it's science fiction.

• 33:59Bill Nye?

  You harmonically balance a crankshaft and things.

• 34:02Matt Kirshen?

  You're exactly right, it is a real car thing. The harmonic balancer is a device connected to the crankshaft of an engine to reduce torsional vibration and serves as a pulley for drive belts. And now I have more questions than that actually answered.

• 34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, okay, so what that means is, because I pay attention to when they, when I have to pay to get my car fixed, I've never broken my harmonic balancer.

• 34:22Bill Nye?

  No, no, they're usually geared, they're very, very high rel, high reliability, they're in oil bath, but Neil, you like this. The rate of change of position is?

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's velocity.

• 34:33Bill Nye?

  Rate of change of velocity is?

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Acceleration.

• 34:35Bill Nye?

  So the rate of change of acceleration?

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is a jerk.

• 34:38Bill Nye?

  And that's what will make that go away.

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, cool.

• 34:41Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little bit of physics stuff going on there, yes.

• 34:45Matt Kirshen?

  Alright, would it be a real?

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, just to be clear, so rate of change of position is speed or velocity, and we've all familiar with being at a constant velocity, when you're at a constant velocity, you don't feel it. So now, if you're accelerating and you're positioned yourself and all your muscles are resisting the constant acceleration, then you have a change in the acceleration, that's a jerk. So you feel it, and then you punch the brakes some more, then you'll feel a jerk forward. That's why it's appropriately called a jerk. So what else you have?

• 35:14Matt Kirshen?

  Alright, what about defective planetary gears?

• 35:17Bill Nye?

  Sure.

• 35:18Matt Kirshen?

  Defective planetary gears?

• 35:19Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, planetary gears, where you have a sun gear and planet gears.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know anything about it.

• 35:23Bill Nye?

  You have a three-speed bicycle, you have a planetary gear train.

• 35:26Matt Kirshen?

  That is exactly it, they're the primary gears within an automatic transmission.

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, very good, alright.

• 35:33Matt Kirshen?

  What if you had an unmotivated binary motivator?

• 35:37Bill Nye?

  That sounds like science fiction to me.

• 35:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what is it?

• 35:40Matt Kirshen?

  You are straight up correct, that isn't Star Wars, it's device in droids.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Star Wars, okay.

• 35:44Matt Kirshen?

  Tell me one more, what if you had a damp flux capacitor?

• 35:48Matt Kirshen?

  That is, of course, real. So, there was a documentary called Back to the Future. I highly recommend it. I think it's on Netflix. And you'll learn a lot of stuff.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thank you, Matt, for straining us out. When we come back, is everybody's favorite segment. It is Cosmic Queries. We'll take your questions about the physics of cars, next, on StarTalk.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk, with my interview with TV legend and icon Jay Leno, talking about his love of comedy and his comedic challenges. So, let's check it out. What do you make of this emergent, um, social-cultural-political sensitivity that the next generation is carrying with them up in the ranks? So, can't say that it offends this group, that group, or the other group. And it's kind of the comedian's thing.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  Well, it is.

• 36:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I don't give you room to offend, do you even exist as a comedian?

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Well, you can offend, it's just how you offend. You know, I remember years ago, years ago, going to see Rickles.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don Rickles.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  Don Rickles.

• 37:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Master of offenders.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Right, okay. And the young people and old people in the audience. And Rickles come out and go, uh, when he would, when he would use a cuss word, young people would laugh, but old people would go, "Ooh." But when he did a joke like, "And the black guy here, steal my hubcaps."

• 37:28Speaker 03

  Young, young people go, "Ooh, gee, what's that?" And the older people laughed. So, it, it's just a matter of, it changed. You know, it seems overly sensitive now, but you know, if you go back to Vaudeville...

• 37:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are no hubcaps anymore.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People don't know what a hubcap is.

• 37:43Speaker 03

  Exactly. No, but I mean, if you go back to Vaudeville... Really racist joke.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pre-TV.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, there is a real, there's a reason for political correctness. It, it, it exists for a reason. I mean, I remember as a young man being in a room and guys doing jokes that were really offensive to women and all the men laughed because only the men counted. Okay, these people really didn't count because all, what's the matter with her? She's got a stick up her butt. What's her problem? Whatever it might be. You would just discount it. As you get people more and more equal, suddenly the equality thing needs to reach everybody if you, if this makes any sense. You, you know what I'm saying? I, I mean, you reach the point where.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The humor pathways.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, instead of making the black guy the butt of the joke, this stupid guy near me. It's really the same joke. There's no reason to make it the black guy other than to put a racial aspect to it, to make it funnier to someone who already believes that. But I, I, does some of it go too far? Oh, sure. I mean, I had an example once. I was just talking on stage.

• 38:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You still do stand up?

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, all over the country. And I said, I, I, I'm walking out, you know, my wife's in the kitchen. Boo. I go, no, my, my wife's, we have a house that has a kitchen. My wife was standing, you want her in the den? I'll make it the den. I just happened to go in and she was in the kitchen. She wasn't barefoot. She wasn't breastfeeding children while making a cake. She was just in the kitchen that our, that our home happens to have. I mean, it was so ridiculous.

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So people reacted in that moment?

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't even tell the joke.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Didn't even tell the joke.

• 39:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now some emergent sensitivities is in the transgender community and.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I, I just wonder, are these no longer a fair game for comedic?

• 39:28Speaker 03

  It depends how you go after it, I guess. I mean, um, like the Caitlyn, there was a story that said Caitlyn Jenner is writing her autobiography. See, I think it's gonna be one of those he said, she said kinda thing. And you go, well, what's wrong with, somebody said, what's wrong with the joke? It was a he, now she's, so what's wrong? It's a he said, she said.

• 39:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That seems pretty good to me. Did, did anyone complain about that? No, we complained about that. Okay, so it's how you do it.

• 39:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And right now it's time for Cosmic Queries.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is where we answer questions from our fans from the internet and other sources of social media. And we solicited questions about the physics of cars and driving. And Matt, I've not seen these questions.

• 40:18Matt Kirshen?

  You have not.

• 40:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I've got Bill here to help me. And whatever I don't know, I'm going to direct to him, which will probably be most of them. So let's check it out.

• 40:24Matt Kirshen?

  All right. Well, Drew Davenport from Illinois asks, "How much more difficult would high-speed driving be on a lower-gravity planet or the moon?"

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, so a couple of things. First, if you are relying on friction between your rubber tires and the road, then the lower your surface gravity, the lower your maximum acceleration can possibly be. Your acceleration is related to the normal force, what's called the normal force, the weight of the car on the road.

• 40:55Bill Nye?

  I mean, it's at a right angle.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the vertical force of the car on the road. So, the greater that force is, the more you can propel the car forward by rotating the wheels. If the gravity gets lighter and lighter and lighter, then there's less pressure on the wheels, and then the wheels will start to skid. So, lower-gravity planets, your 0 to 60 best acceleration will not be 3.6, 3.8 seconds as it is on Earth. It would be 4 seconds, 5 seconds, 6 seconds, whatever would be on the moon. Next.

• 41:29Matt Kirshen?

  Next. Chris Ryu from Dorset in my home country asks, "How long do you think it will be until we have viable flying cars, and what impact do you think this will have on the world?"

• 41:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, where are the flying cars?

• 41:41Bill Nye?

  When you say "impact," I think that's the problem.

• 41:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's bad.

• 41:44Bill Nye?

  We've got, you know, the teenage air car people, the elderly air car people.

• 41:51Bill Nye?

  There's gonna be issues.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where's the flying cars? I'm blaming you for this.

• 41:55Bill Nye?

  Uh, it's a really difficult problem.

• 41:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I think we already have flying cars. They're called helicopters.

• 41:59Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 42:00Bill Nye?

  But, and then, uh...

• 42:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're noisy.

• 42:02Bill Nye?

  They're noisy and they're hard to, uh, really drive on city street, or above city streets.

• 42:07Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, that's what we mean by flying car, really, I think. Isn't it a car that can go on the ground and then can take off at will?

• 42:12Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, and there's...

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what a helicopter does.

• 42:14Bill Nye?

  You can park them, yeah.

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what a helicopter does.

• 42:17Bill Nye?

  It's a difficult problem.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm saying, we have flying cars. They're called helicopters.

• 42:20Matt Kirshen?

  Alright, Ricardo Cruz from Miami, Florida says, "Be honest, do any of you nerds know how to change a tire?"

• 42:29Bill Nye?

  So, what I really recommend is everybody get in the habit of the verb is cracking the nuts before you jack it up. Just take that time and (knock, knock, knock) loosen all the nuts.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's an entire episode of The Big Bang Theory where they attempt to remove the lug nuts of a wheel, and they end up, uh, burning down the car.

• 42:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe that's where that question came from. I'm featuring my interview with Jay Leno, talking about comedy, talking about cars. And at one point, the conversation got to electric cars. Apparently, electric cars have been around, like, since the beginning. And they never really caught on. And so, I didn't understand why. I had to ask him. Let's check it out.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  When electric cars came out initially, they were targeted at women. The idea was, the man liked the big thing that you cranked it and boom, it burst into life and exploded. Where electric car, you could get in and just press on the pedal and go. I've got a couple of ads from the turn of the century. "Make this your wife's Christmas the happiest. She can go 80 miles and... And it shows the husband..."

• 43:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which was far back then.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who lived any...

• 43:34Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 43:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, who'd never go 80 miles.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  For New York City, whatever. New York, New York City had charging stations every 10 blocks in 1908, 1907. You had electric, steam, and gas. Each one had a third of the market. But, but electricity was the way to go because it was cheap, it didn't pollute.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  But eventually, though, because men like things that roll, explode, and make noise, it became more popular. For new technology to succeed, it can't be equal. I mean, it, it, I mean, it's gotta be better than.

• 44:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are men, we like noise and explosions. This is...

• 44:11Bill Nye?

  After you drive electric, you'll never go back.

• 44:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah?

• 44:14Bill Nye?

  Never go back. It's quiet, outperforms any gas-powered car.

• 44:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How would the world have been different if we stayed with electric cars back then?

• 44:22Bill Nye?

  Well, I tell you, instead of "back then," when the batteries had real limitations to chemistry, requiring the, uh, the materials for the batteries is challenging. But 1999, when General Motors was marketing the electric vehicle one, the EV1, which they whimsically called "The Impact." If General Motors had stuck with that, it would be a whole nother.

• 44:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, Bill, as we wind things down here, I want to, you... Normally, I would introduce your dispatch.

• 44:50Bill Nye?

  Oh, but I didn't.

• 44:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nine times in the city.

• 44:52Bill Nye?

  Yes, but I'm very proud of this one.

• 44:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you are here, so I defer to you.

• 44:56Bill Nye?

  Thank you. I got back to my roots as a gearhead. I, they, we went to a frou-frou, cool rental car place where you only rent crazy fancy cars. And they let me get under there and, uh, turn some wrenches.

• 45:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really? Let's check it out.

• 45:18Bill Nye?

  I became an engineer because I'm a bit of a gearhead. I mean, let's face it, cars are cool. I mean, you're in your own seat, listening to your own music, going almost anywhere you want. Sometimes, really fast, and in safety, or, or relative safety. We've turned bunny trails and cow paths into streets and super highways. But now, we have more cars and trucks than we have people. Millions of them. This has led to air pollution, and traffic congestion, and transportation inefficiency. I can imagine a day where car driving is like horseback riding. It's for enthusiasts. People go out in the country and drive around on the open road.

• 46:03Bill Nye?

  Meanwhile, us city folk will get around in our self-driving electric taxipods. Back to you, Neil. I gotta finish torquing these coilovers.

• 46:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I just have to confess. If the auto mechanic came out from under my car with a bowtie on, I just don't know how I would react.

• 46:26Bill Nye?

  It's a TV show.

• 46:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I'd like punch him in the face or something.

• 46:30Bill Nye?

  I'm glad.

• 46:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For no reason. That's just weird to me.

• 46:35Bill Nye?

  Well, note well that if you look at old pictures of the the gas station attendant, he would often have a bowtie.

• 46:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's true. They were, they were.

• 46:45Bill Nye?

  They were dapper. That's some dapp.

• 46:47Matt Kirshen?

  And if you look even closer, you'll see Neil punching them.

• 46:51Bill Nye?

  I strongly recommend.

• 46:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not violent.

• 46:54Bill Nye?

  I strongly recommend against a straight tie around any rotating machinery.

• 46:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes, because you'll take your neck.

• 47:00Bill Nye?

  Could be catastrophic, yeah.

• 47:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What we learned, and there's an old saying in wrestling, as you're wrestling a person, wherever you bring their head, their body will follow.

• 47:09Bill Nye?

  Ouch.

• 47:12Bill Nye?

  I'll sit back here. But that was really fun. I appreciate you guys letting me go to that.

• 47:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I do a fair amount of reading on the history of science, and the history of human thought, really. And one thing that intrigues me persistently is the state of human awareness of their time. And every year for the past several hundred, since the Industrial Revolution, not a year goes by without someone writing, "We are living in special times. Look at all the inventions. We've just created the steam engine. We have transformed all of life and civilization. Oh, look, we've just created the aeroplane. What will that bring for the future?"

• 47:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I see this persistently, decade after decade, century after century. And here we are, the dawn of the 21st century, grappling over societal challenges of pollution, global warming, death tolls on the highways from driving cars. And I ask myself, should I wait around for innovation? I don't know. I just want to make sure that we live in a world that values innovation. Because then, we can all look forward to a tomorrow where maybe no one will ever have to be stuck in traffic because there is no traffic and there are no cars. This is a thought from the cosmic perspective. You've been watching StarTalk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 48:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Matt Kirshen. Bill Nye the Science Guy.

• 48:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As always,

• 48:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I bid you to keep looking up.