Unravelling Reddit with Alexis Ohanian

Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the “front page of the internet” with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Learn about how Reddit got started, net neutrality, trolls and more. With BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis and co-host Eugene Mirman.

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?

  This is StarTalk and I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I also serve as the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. My co-host today Eugene Mirman.

• 0:35Eugene Mirman?

  Hello.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Always good to have you, man.

• 0:38Eugene Mirman?

  Great to be here.

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I hear you so much in your voice work. Now, when I see you in person, I just imagine the little characters you're playing. So, I wonder if it's really you or some animatronic version of you.

• 0:49Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, no, it's a, I'm the cartoon.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, today we're featuring my interview with Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit. He's the co-founder of Reddit. And many people consider it the front page of the internet because it gives you access to all the most influential websites of the day because it kind of, people are picking what matters because they are become the, I was gonna say the thousand eyes, the million eyes for you that you don't have to then do yourself. And I have very little expertise in this, so anytime that happens, we reach out into the academic world and find people who do. And today we've got journalism professor and author Jeff Jarvis. Jeff?

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Good to see you.

• 1:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not the first time on StarTalk.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I'm honored to be back. I guess I didn't screw up too much.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. And you're official professor of entrepreneurial journalism at CUNY's Graduate School, Graduate School of Journalism. So, very good. You've got two books, one of them, I love this title, "Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News." So, that's an explicit recognition that news is no longer in the hands of the media moguls, that we've got up and coming whippersnappers who are shaping that world.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  We hope. We hope somebody shapes it, somebody rescues it.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hope means you don't really.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  We don't know yet.

• 2:13Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, you want willpower.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:15Eugene Mirman?

  You wanna actively mold.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, we want the force to operate it.

• 2:19Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, mystical mitochondria-based power.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so tell me about the role of aggregative, is that a word?

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is now.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  It is now, yeah.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aggregative websites in this regard.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  I think what.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a new paradigm. That's a different paradigm. We would go to, I would go to the New York Times website and their editors and writers, and there is my information. And that is simply not the case today.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  No, you, you, what, what goes away here is, I think, the idea of the product and the destination. You come to the New York Times, you, you, you read the New York Times, you, you, you know what they have, and you're done for the day, you're welcome. Um, that doesn't happen anymore, because now, obviously, you can get the best from the BBC and the Guardian and the New York Times and the Washington Post, wherever, and bloggers in an instant. And so, it's important, too, to send those people audiences, to send those outlets audiences. So aggregation, I think, is a very good thing, because it.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's, it actually feeds these sources that wouldn't otherwise get their own.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Exactly. But we don't.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That means I have access to a dozen media sources at once. Is that correct?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Absolutely, you do.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  And it also means that these sources have to be better at being found out there. So, so it's not just about being on Google News, it's also about being throughout Facebook. The Washington Post is now putting every single one of its articles onto Facebook Instant Articles.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  And I've found that I'm reading a lot more Washington Post now than I ever did, because people are linking and recommending things from the Post.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah, so.

• 3:44Eugene Mirman?

  And you're going to the Post's website.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  These are appearing on Facebook now.

• 3:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aren't you paying attention to what he just said?

• 3:50Eugene Mirman?

  Well, yeah, but he also had said that, that, that you link the aggregate links to the site and it sends.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  That's often been the case, but now what's happening, there's two things that are happening.

• 3:59Eugene Mirman?

  Ah, you've been listening, Neil? Oh, I see, there's two things. Go on.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  I've been misinterpreted by both of you now.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there you go, okay.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  It's an articles means that you, you publish on Facebook.

• 4:11Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  With your own ads, so you're making money now, which is a good thing. Then Google's come up with its answer, which is called AMP, or accelerated mobile pages, which are just really fast pages, but it makes it seem as if you never went anywhere. It's so fast. So this changes the paradigm of how we use, uh, media and news, in that news now comes to us, we don't go to it.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And another thing I noticed, which I never. Knew you could do until I saw it happen on Reddit. That readers can upvote and downvote certain mentions, certain links and the like. So that you get this, this filtration force operating among people who, if you're, if they're of like mind, they've already done, helped you out.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you don't have to sift through all of the, the, the, the chaff that's out there.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yes, and, and Reddit has a lot of odd things in it, but it also has real news in it. And there is, in fact, some wisdom from the crowd that is, that is visible there, depending upon your topic.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's divided up into all these subreddits and sub-subreddits. And you, you can find, you can slice and dice.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Everything you want to know and a lot of these you don't want to know are there.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stuff you never knew could be diced in that way.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so what are my numbers here? It's got 700 million monthly visits. It's the 13th most visited website in the United States, 27th in the world as of this month. And that's extraordinary. So, so if we get to my interview with Alexis Ohanian, I, I let off saying that so many, he's young and he's eager and, and energetic and so many of that community of people either never went to college or never graduated for college, from college, if they did go to college. And I, and I asked if he was one of these to fulfill that stereotype. And so that's what got me started in this next clip with one of the co-founders of Reddit. Check it out.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  I have to admit, there would be no Reddit for sure if I hadn't gone to college. And I think if we had dropped out, it wouldn't have worked out as well as it did. Because the idea we technically started in college failed miserably. There was another company, no one asked me about it because no one knows because it failed so miserably. It was called My Mobile Menu or Mm. And it was going to let people bypass lines by ordering food from their cellphone. My Mobile Menu. Yeah. In 03, 04, this was. I'd like to believe ahead of its time. I think like a lot of founders do that we sort of saw the future, but our timing was way off and we we were lucky because we heard this guy Paul Graham give a talk during our senior spring break. We went to go hear him talk up in Boston and And his back he's what?

• 6:45Speaker 03

  Oh, Paul Graham. So this guy, he had started a startup in the first boom, sold it to Yahoo, did well. Oh, this is the lecture how to start a startup? Yeah. Oh. He gave this amazing lecture. We met up with him afterward. I talked him into having a coffee with us. We pitched him on our idea of my mobile menu. And he actually liked it, liked it a lot. And a month later, he asked us or suggested that we apply to Y Combinator, which was this early seed stage venture firm. They would give $12,000 to me and Steve to just work for a summer writing code and getting users along with 12 or so other startups and and hopefully launch us out to the world. But yeah, Reddit is not derived from Mmm. So what happened there? Well, we applied with that brilliant idea and we were invited up for interviews.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  And Steve and I gave the best interview of our life and we just rocked it and presented to these four partners of Y Combinator. And they called us up that night. We were out celebrating Harvard Square and they called us to say that we were rejected. And it was fortunate that we were drinking already because then we could just start like misery drinking. And that sucked. And the next morning, hungover on a long train ride back to Virginia, we got a call from them saying, listen, we still don't like your idea.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  And I was like, Paul, you're really trolling me now. This is, this is rude. But then he said, we like you too.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Just in case you had any doubt. Just to be clear. On your way back. Way too early, way too early for this. And they were right, right? There was no app store. There's no easy way to get the software on people's phones. SMS was an ugly hack. Restaurants didn't really have online ordering, anything like that. So They have fax machines. Yes, exactly. That's how they took online orders was through damn fax. But so now how do you get from Mmm? Oh, yes. What Reddit is. These are two different species. This is where good advice goes a long way. He basically said, stop thinking about mobile and build something you'll use every day. What do you do every morning? And Steve was an avid slash dot reader. Old school news for nerds, great commenting section, great discussions. And I would use these new, new fangled things, tabs, every morning. This was new in Firefox back then.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  And I'd open like thirty and just look across all these different news sites. And neither one of us felt totally satisfied by it. And we were basically tasked with solving that problem. So the problem is, I wake up, it's like, what's the morning report for the world? Yes, precisely. And how, for the twentieth century, the news of the day was arguably dictated by whatever was on the front page of like, probably it's the New York Times. And that worked for that time, but doesn't work for an internet age where the most relevant news story of the day could be a video on YouTube that someone shot, or it could be just a photograph, or could come from any number of sources. And what is the sort of source agnostic front page of the internet? And how do we build that and make it democratic? Source agnostic. Yeah, was that good? Yeah, it's awesome. Nice.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  Okay, but that's, that was the goal, and we were tasked to basically solve that problem using users. Oh, by the, by the partners. By the partners. They said, go ahead, solve that problem. We'll give you twelve grand. Go for it.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so everything's got an origin story.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  So, so I, I didn't know that it was a hmm that they started. But interestingly, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, when they, before they founded Google, the company they really wanted to find was a pizza delivery company.

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Thank goodness these guys failed.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, maybe it would have been a really awesome pizza delivery.

• 10:07Eugene Mirman?

  It would have been very good.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Open up a wormhole.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Self-driving car with an oven inside.

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A self-driving car with an oven inside that bakes the pizza en route, and it, and it.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  It knows what kind you like.

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It dings when they ring your doorbell, and then it's ready. See that? Maybe I'd trade that for all of Google, I think.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Tells you when you're hungry, you don't know it?

• 10:24Eugene Mirman?

  And it can tell you all the members of YouTube.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so let me bring back this upvote, downvote concept. Can we really trust our fellow people to judge what we should and should not be reading? Does that sink to the lowest?

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Let me ask you another question, Neil. Can we really trust the citizens to elect a president? We're gonna find out.

• 10:48Eugene Mirman?

  Sounds like you want a dictatorship run Reddit.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, well, I guess, yeah, so there's a chance you'll miss something.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  There's a bigger chance I'll miss something if it's put out, if a newspaper is put out by one editor. Now I get different perspectives, different views. I also get the service of somebody reading. We read 20 versions of the story. We found the best one.

• 11:11Eugene Mirman?

  You can also go to the second page of Reddit, Neil. You don't have to just read only the top three things.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how?

• 11:17Eugene Mirman?

  You can scroll through and vote stuff up.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's your, what's your explanation for how it came to be that Reddit users, they're known all over for being smart, savvy.

• 11:29Eugene Mirman?

  Trolls.

• 11:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 11:30Eugene Mirman?

  Destroying people's lives. There's a real.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Few of them. There's bad apples in every orchard.

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. I don't think they lead the world in trolling, right? Alright, so, so, and I would learn later than probably I should have, how, how well-known my work was on Reddit. And so, and that, for that to be a sort of a community-wide thing, and they all knew it, and they'd chat about me. It says that they have some awareness and sensitivity. How, why, how does that happen?

• 12:00Speaker 02

  There's a, there's a level, well, number one, I think there's an inherent generosity in people. I also think there's an inherent ego in people. They want to show off that I know more than you do.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Which is the appeal of Wikipedia. Uh, but I think in the end.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the appeal of even whether or not you believe you could be a contestant, you want to see people be smarter than other people on Jeopardy, for example. That show's been around for like.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  You want to think you're smarter than all those idiots.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but even if you're not, you want to see someone who's smart beat somebody else who thinks they're smart.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 12:27Eugene Mirman?

  That's true. You do like, yes, Jeopardy is fun to watch the two people fail. Not one person win.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Versus Wheel of Fortune where you think they're all idiots.

• 12:36Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, in that, in that little, the previous interview clip, I didn't get the answer to how it got to be named Reddit. All I heard was the hmm. So, so.

• 12:47Eugene Mirman?

  Which is owned by the crash test dummy.

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember the crash test.

• 12:52Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I always try to walk like they did. They had this great, this great walk as they went to their death in the car. Uh, so let's go back to my interview, just find out where Reddit comes from. Check it out.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reddit, the name comes from where?

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Latin, because I'm an erudite scout. No, here's what's great. Here's what's great. Okay, so it came from the fact that we couldn't come up with a good name. We wanted to call it, we wanted to call it snu. Because here's the thing, I'd be like, hey Neil, check out my website, snu. And then you'd be like, what's snu? And I'd be like, exactly. Right? So.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Let the record show.

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Neil was laughing at me.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think you like. No, I'm laughing with you.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not at you. And so the little icon, his name is snu.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The little alien.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Alien.

• 13:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Creepy alien creature. He's not creepy, but he's.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Or it's not creepy.

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's like.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Not gendered.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's what is it? Kind of thing. You look at it. I don't know what that is, but it's a thing.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has a name.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  His name is snu.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  And that's, that's because.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  The person who owned snu.com wanted four grand for it. And we didn't have that kind of money. So we're like, well, screw it. And we ended up naming the mascot that. And then Reddit came about because I was sitting in the library. I remember Alderman Library at UVA and trying to come up with domain names. And I liked this idea. I hoped people would say I read it on Reddit, which I don't know if they ever have, but that was the bastardization was R E D D I T. Now I learned a year later, we hired a very smart dude, Dr. Chris Slow, who knew Latin and was like, it's, I think it's to render or there's some clever thing. I don't know. Some Latin person's gonna be like, you're wrong idiot. But I, it has another version of it that kind of applies to Reddit today, but it was not.

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'll take credit for having that extra depth.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Anyone who knows me knows that that is not true.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  But I will take credit for it. Sure.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love these back of house stories because you take so much for granted afterwards and somebody had to come up with it first. And there's another part side of Reddit, not just as an aggregator of news and it can send you there, but also it's people sharing their own ideas and their own reactions. And the history of media reporting was never that, except for the opinion pages, right? And now everything is an opinion.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  We fundamentally insult the public. We say, we don't want to hear from you until after we're done with our, with our work. And here's the news, you're welcome. And then we'll allow you to comment on it, but we're gonna think you're all trolls and idiots, so we're not gonna pay attention to that.

• 15:20Eugene Mirman?

  That's often the case. And maybe less so actually on Reddit, but...

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Dark view of humanity, don't you?

• 15:28Eugene Mirman?

  No, just a dark view of a comment section.

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'd like, I'd like, I never thought of the op-ed section and the letters to the editor that way before. It is that. It's, "We will report the news and we'll give you this little column to blather on about, but no one will really care."

• 15:43Speaker 02

  How much better to collaborate. There's a new company called Harken that enables the public to vote up stories they want the reporter to report on. And then, and then you assign the journalists. That's collaboration, right? That's pretty cool. Reddit...

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We like the field editors, telling them what to report on.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Well Reddit is editors. It's people who read, so you don't have to. They find the best stuff, they make judgments, and, and as long as you stay away from certain topics, it's very good.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I, I had to ask Alexis about people becoming part of the news community by interpreting and sharing their own perspective. Let's see what he tells us.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  I've talked to a lot of Redditors all over the world in the last 10 years, and the stories I hear just consistently blow me away. And one of the key threads of it is, one, I'm so grateful because Reddit gave me a voice. And it comes from people, there was a woman with cerebral palsy who told me this, and for her it mattered because she was being judged solely on the text that she produced. Not how she looked. She couldn't get on stage and tell a million people a story, but she could get on Reddit and tell a million people one. And if it was good enough, if enough people liked it, that's how she was rewarded for it. And then the other part of it is on the consumption. Reddit is a place where legitimate experts will come and talk to anyone, just like having you walking down the street and being able to say, "Hey, what's up? Let me ask you a

• 17:01Speaker 03

  question." I've had people, I guess there's an aviation Reddit community, and people just like starting out trying to get their aviation licenses or pilot's license, flying license, whatever, would ask the silly, stupid newbie question and get responses from veterans with 20 years' experience, as if it were just a random person walking down the street. And for them, it was so amazing. What makes those experiences so cool is that everyone is treated equally.

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, I never thought about that, that, that the internet in that forum are people walking down the street. That's great.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Well, I always say that we shouldn't judge the internet as if it's the New York Times. And everyone, every time somebody says a bad word, we think, well, that ruins the internet.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Instead, the internet is Times Square. And there's fake Elmo's there, and there's naked towns.

• 17:45Eugene Mirman?

  There's also real Elmo's.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, in case there are mathematicians listening, we're not talking about the variable Times Squared. We're talking about the location.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  We're in New York.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  New York City, Times Square.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  There's only one Times Square.

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Named after, of course, the New York Times.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. So, so that's, it's, it's, it's a, a mess of humanity there. The internet is just people.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but in a way, it democratizes information, doesn't it?

• 18:07Speaker 02

  It does indeed. And, and I think that we, if we give faith and trust to the people, and we give them the tools and knowledge and respect, good things can often come with that. Wikipedia is a miracle. Reddit is a miracle of what people do in their spare time with generosity.

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 18:22Eugene Mirman?

  And information.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Yes. Okay, so that's, that's the voice I hear from journalists. Without us, you'd be nowhere.

• 18:29Eugene Mirman?

  I mean, no, no, it's a lot of generosity, but it's not like if you go to, like, I wonder what the Pacific Ocean is? It's just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. It's real.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 18:37Eugene Mirman?

  Formative.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:38Eugene Mirman?

  And it's as accurate as a real encyclopedia, right?

• 18:40Speaker 02

  There are those who would argue it makes mistakes, but so do encyclopedias.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a whole other show.

• 18:45Eugene Mirman?

  Sorry.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:46Eugene Mirman?

  By the way, how accurate an encyclopedia is. Quick, quick.

• 18:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, when we come back.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Does anybody who'd know, he would.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back from the commercial break, more of my interview with co-founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, when StarTalk returns.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm with my co-host, Eugene Mirman.

• 19:08Eugene Mirman?

  Hello.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweeting at Eugene Mirman.

• 19:10Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, cool. And it's not Eugene Mirman 87 or something?

• 19:14Eugene Mirman?

  No, it's not. There aren't. Yeah, 86 others.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's only one of you.

• 19:18Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 19:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And our guest, journalism professor Jeff Jarvis, not your first rodeo. Thanks for. Thank you for having me. Thanks for doing this. We're featuring my interview with Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of the very popular website Reddit. And one of the most enduring elements of Reddit.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is the AMA.

• 19:38Eugene Mirman?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ask me anything. And that was my first encounter with Reddit because I was getting these, these people were calling for me to do an AMA with Reddit. I didn't know anything about it. I didn't, but it's where celebrities and other famous people, you, in fact, you don't have to be famous, but most of them are. You want to be interesting. Yes. If you're not famous, you should have done something interesting. You have a job. Everybody's wanted to know about it. Exactly.

• 20:03Eugene Mirman?

  I've worked at Starbucks underneath it for 200 years. What did you do? How does that work?

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Politicians can do it as well, and it's a direct one-on-one conversation with the public. So in this next clip, I asked Alexis how it got started and what makes a good AMA session. Let's check it out.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  It was a byproduct. There's a community that was very active, still is called Ask Reddit, where people come and ask questions and, you know, others answer. Someone showed up there one day and said, I'm so-and-so. Ask me anything. And the community responded saying, this doesn't belong here. The format of this community is asking questions, not being interviewed. Go create a new Reddit community for yourself.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the rest is history.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  And then r/aima was born. And now these AMAs happen across the site, like the music community has regular AMAs. The science community has regular AMAs. And it's a really cool way, whether you're a celebrity or just a person with a great story to tell. So what makes a good AMA? Authenticity. Authenticity is the biggest, that, that's the one I think Hollywood celebrities and politicians struggle with the most. But some do an amazing job, sort of breaking that down and just being human. I think there's going to be a generation coming up of these, whatever, digital natives, who understand that authenticity is what rules the day. There's this weird culture clash now where like somehow, I don't know, Lord can make news for taking a selfie with a zit cream on her face.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Because it's like, oh my goodness, like the veil has come off. Here's a superstar with zit cream. But for all of, that's how, that's how the media talks. Um, but our, but for, for so many people, that's, that's what they seek. We want the authenticity. What makes AMA successful is that they feel like they bumped into you on the street and just started talking. And you talk to them like a human would in real life.

• 21:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I wonder something Jeff, if you look at, you can be a celebrity for many reasons and perhaps the most common kind of celebrity is you're a great actor, actress. And so what does it mean for an actor, actress, to be authentic? If their entire way you know them is being inauthentic, taking on characters and that's their brilliance. Now, what are you gonna talk to me about if I'm that actor? What does it mean to be authentic?

• 22:17Speaker 02

  I will confess that I used to work at People Magazine.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There, I said it!

• 22:20Speaker 02

  And I pointed my journal to your ear.

• 22:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what do People Magazine always do? We always had to have the star in the kitchen.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Why? They had to cook pasta. Cause we had to believe we're just like them.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so they, okay, so...

• 22:37Speaker 02

  You wanna know this person is human.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They go to the bathroom, they, not that you would show photos of that.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Please don't go there.

• 22:43Eugene Mirman?

  If you have enough money.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When were you with People Magazine?

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Oh, that was what led to the idea for Entertainment Weekly.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't answer my question.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Eighties.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the eighties, okay.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  You're trying to date me here, you're trying to show how old I am!

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because I was in People Magazine and, and I'm not accustomed to people just coming into my house and wanting...

• 22:59Eugene Mirman?

  Did you make pasta?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  We were cooking pasta.

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More than my professional identity.

• 23:02Eugene Mirman?

  Sexy actor physicist making pasta?

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, at the time, I think I'm holding my then, how old was she? One-year-old daughter, you know, upside down by her ankles over the pillow.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Gravity you were doing.

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and she was smiling and having, showing that I was like dad.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, okay, so this is consistent with your...

• 23:19Speaker 02

  So the AMA, I've had the privilege of walking through a crowd with you and it's gotta be torture because everyone is stopping you, asking you cosmic huge questions.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and I'm...

• 23:28Speaker 02

  And you give them the respect and you answer their questions.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. And I'm glad that my, if we call that fame, that my fame to so many people is not about me, it's about the fact that I managed to trigger some curiosity within them and now I'm just continuing to feed them.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  And the AMA, the AMA allows you to scale that.

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Right? Walking through one crowd and answering for the eighty-hundredth time.

• 23:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. That is a number.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  It is, exactly.

• 23:54Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, no, I know.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eighty-hundred, yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Pluto, damn Pluto, right? Now you can answer it once and you can refer to it. So the internet creates an archive of, of addresses where you can say, "Don't read me there." You ever do that? Do you ever say, "Read my AMA? I already answered that."

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, well, what happens is often I...

• 24:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I take the challenge of being succinct. And I try to answer it succinctly, but if you want more, then go there. Otherwise, that one encounter is kind of wasted.

• 24:23Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. I try to have every encounter contain something.

• 24:27Eugene Mirman?

  I like the idea of being like, oh, that's a great question. Go to the internet. It's the answer's also there.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or for your case, I have a joke about that. Go look it up there.

• 24:34Eugene Mirman?

  Exactly. Go to album four, track three.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's that joke.

• 24:39Eugene Mirman?

  Exactly.

• 24:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I've actually done three or four AMAs. And my least successful AMA, and this is this authenticity thing, my least successful one was when I did one when Cosmos came out.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Promotional.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think it's it's had it smelled a little like I'm trying to get people to watch.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Remember any wacky questions?

• 24:59Eugene Mirman?

  You answer everything with like, that's addressed in Cosmos episode four, because that'll do it.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but my first three, no, I wasn't promoting anything. It was just, it was time.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  College, you were promoting a science.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was just science, and there was not something to check out later. And maybe that was, I was groping for what I would think authenticity would mean, even in my case, and I think that was it.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  You're always authentic.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People had honest questions and I had honest answers. And I try, you know, it's it's a race between the rate at which you can answer a question and the rate at which they get deposited right in front of you. And I can't keep them all up, but I go right in a row and I try not to skip.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Remember any question that that?

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'll tell you the question. There are questions I skip. They're the ones where you can just look up the Wiki page. So, how far away is the sun? You're wasting everyone's time right now, okay? You can get that. Um, I think for me, the most interesting one was they asked, what is the meaning of life? And and my reply.

• 25:50Eugene Mirman?

  Solid question.

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then got repeated in many ways and in many times and in many places was, for me, it's it's simple. It's often when you ask that question, you presume that the meaning of life is under, you know, a tree stump or a rock or behind a wall, as though it is something to be found in life, rather than something to be created in life. And so then I described those things.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  That's why he's there.

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That in my life, create meaning.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Good. I love that.

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, lessing suffering.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  And here's the power of Reddit. That got quoted and linked to all over, right?

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a debt. It got quoted all over.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  So you have this archive of something that exists now.

• 26:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Therefore, I won't tell you what the meaning of life is. You gotta go to the.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'm a scientist and Reddit became this place where people, people shared scientific thoughts, the scientific community would go. And I wanted to hear what Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, said about the role of science in the, in the discourse in the Reddit community. Check it out.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Somehow, over the last, I'd say, three or four years, the science community has gotten incredibly rigorous and just amazing. The discussions, and I've been-

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you say rigorous, you mean organized in its presentation of content?

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Yes, and people get called out for not citing properly. People get called out for saying something and it just not being true. And, you know, that's the sort of thing that's not supposed to happen very often on the internet, especially when you have a platform with millions of people pseudonymously, but it does. And I went to one of these, the American AAAS, is that right? Okay, conference. I don't know what that-

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  American Association for the Advancement of Science.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  Yes, thank you. And, and they're all about bringing science to the people and to, like, total rubes and idiots like me. But the wild thing was, they talk about how the internet has been so helpful to them. And I get so floored when they talk about how discussions they see on science and Ask Science, those two communities in general, really help bring even a, just a basic understanding of it to just regular folks. And the thing that really impresses me is when I hear from people who are scientists, who come to the science community and get the spotlight shined on them for a minute, for a day, and get to talk to just anyone who wants to ask a question. And it makes them feel really great. And it's like, here I am, sitting there thinking like, yeah, the work you're doing is helping

• 28:13Speaker 03

  move humanity forward. You should feel this great all the time. But apparently, science is not that cool yet. But it's gotten a lot cooler. And if this can be one way to help popularize it, awesome.

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I can speak firsthand that I think science, people have greater access to scientific discovery than ever before. And you don't, you don't have to wait for the one documentary on the one channel out of the 12 channels on television for them to arrive. But would, but from a journalist professional perspective, would you agree with that? I mean, because there used to be the one science journalist, and maybe they got it right, maybe they didn't, but everything had to funnel through that person. But right now, there's more of a democratization of that.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Which I think is generally good. When I interviewed you at CUNY, at my, at my university, and asked you about this.

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  CUNY, the City University of New York.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Sorry, yes, I'm all right, it was CUNY. And, and, you know, asked you about this, you expressed a frustration that, that the few science journalists who were left too often do it wrong. They say, "New study, ever change every idea, that's that." And, and you eloquently-

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The way, the way they talk about a new study, it's, it's, it, they, they bathe, they're bathed in hyperbole.

• 29:22Eugene Mirman?

  And it's also very easy to get bogus science into real news, or like, sort of bogus studies.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. But even, even if you have a legitimate study, you don't see it in the context, Neil taught me, of, of the other studies, and where this, this sits in the, in the process of discovery and verification and debunking. So I, I think that what's happened in science journalism is there's very few left anymore. Uh, that's bad.

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very few science journalists.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Journalists, yes. Uh, because they get, you know, the, the industry's in trouble. Uh, however, you have blogs, you have scientists who can go and speak directly to the public. You speak directly to the public. We gave you a journalism award, and you say, "I'm not a journalist." But you, you do journalism by informing the public. And so I think that the popularization of this is good. I also think that academics-

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I was very honored to have received that. It's the Knight-

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Uh, the, the Knight Journalism Innovation Award.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Knight Journalism Innovation Award.

• 30:09Eugene Mirman?

  Did I get like, uh, eighth of a Knight journalism award?

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Uh, you popularized through comedy, which is important too.

• 30:17Eugene Mirman?

  Thank you.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Which is important too.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:19Eugene Mirman?

  So, you sound convinced.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. But there are other places, uh, so if you look at, uh, the internet, uh, you know, people say, "Oh wow, you have a lot of followers on your Twitter stream, and you're, on your Facebook page," which counts in the single-digit millions, but there are other places that-

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Attract science interests that dwarf my numbers. Like the, the, the, the Facebook page, I effing love science. Actually, I want to say it so that you can bleep it. Ready? This site, I fucking love science. Did you hear that bleep? Good. Okay. Uh, that, that, um, that's another aggregator of news. And there's someone there saying, this is cool. I think this is cool science. I want everyone else to know it. And then they post it.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Yes, I love that. I love that.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and they don't have to know every nuance of the facts about it. It's just cool and you have people celebrating a culture.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  The internet gets smashed too much for spreading misinformation, which it does. But importantly, what the internet does too is, is just slam down on misinformation. And you can correct mistakes faster.

• 31:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so let me ask you, so, so, okay. I, in the next clip, I had to ask Alexis, what does he do about trolls? Because you can, so I guess trolls manifest in many different ways. But if I have, if, if someone has bad science, you want people to jump in and say, this is wrong. But are they trolls? The trolls are the bad signs. Uh, and then there's the traditional troll who are just kind of annoying. And should we even let them be there in what we like to tout as a free enterprise? So let's see what Alexis says about this.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  I wish I had a good answer. At some point, there is just a part of human nature that is going to involve this. The best that we can do though, is continue to build better tools and platforms to basically thwart and curb their effects on the rest of us. On some level, there is this amazing thing, which is when you encounter just that online discussion. And maybe it's, I don't know, it's, I mean, the creationist evolution thing doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon. Even in a wealth of knowledge, oh, let's talk about vaccines because that's a good thing to hate on. Right? The amazing thing is, I don't know what to do in that situation other than try to win with more counter speech. To try to show even more evidence and even more data that no, it's okay to vaccine your kids.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  And actually, it's kind of morally irresponsible to not. But it's tough because the same internet that enables someone to push out good information about something that is. Scientifically proven also allows people to push out misinformation and for them to get into great big fights in it where no one seems to win. But the bit of data that I do have is that, keep in mind, across all these platforms, the vast majority of people are not actually commenting or voting. So on all these sites, any user-generated site, 20% tops of viewers are actually doing something. The vast majority are just reading. And so that's where we have this silent majority of people who are just consuming content and where I really hope the best ideas can win.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's your take on trolls? If someone simply disagrees with prevailing science and they're rattling on about it, do they count as trolls?

• 33:33Speaker 02

  No, that's an ignorant fool.

• 33:34Eugene Mirman?

  That's not someone intentionally trying to get you angry.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  That's what a troll does.

• 33:40Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, there's two different things. There's me saying-

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hadn't thought about that.

• 33:43Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, there's, "I believe the earth is flat and I'm saying it to bother you." Some people really believe that. Those people are dummies. Some people do it to annoy you. Those people are terrible.

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they said that Hitler made the earth flat, that's a troll.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Can I get bleeped too?

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 33:58Eugene Mirman?

  This is unserious. You won't get bleeped, by the way.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Good, yeah, Howard Stern, yay! Baba Booey! So there's a very good book called Assholes A Theory, which tries to create a taxonomy of people you don't like. And in there, the troll holds a special dark place in hell. The troll is exactly right. A troll tries to get your goat. A troll tries to irritate you and get you going, and that's their success. So this is why we say, the rule is, don't feed the trolls. And every time I made a mistake, every time I've gone in, I can tell, that person is there just to get me, and I argue with them, I regret it. It's wrong.

• 34:38Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  The problem with Reddit is it's an open platform, like Twitter, and people can go in there and do whatever the hell they want. And so it becomes a breeding ground under a dark bridge with mold and mildew of trolls, who, some of them need their meds-

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's what a literal troll is. It's under a bridge.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  And some of them are sick people. And so there are-

• 34:59Eugene Mirman?

  Some of them are teenagers.

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just, yeah, mischief.

• 35:03Eugene Mirman?

  Who are yet to just have responsibilities.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mischievous teenagers.

• 35:06Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I, I, I'm, what is the law, how quickly it has to mention Hitler or Nazis? Godwin's law. Godwin's law, which says? Uh, the, um, I'm gonna get it wrong, you're a scientist. Really stupid. The probability approaches unity with, if within twenty. Longer, the longer the conversation, the argument goes on. That someone will mention either Hitler or Nazis. That's, and I've seen that. Yes. Which topics had nothing to do with anything. There is an exception now which will get you in trouble. What's that? Donald Trump. Okay.

• 35:35Eugene Mirman?

  You are or are not allowed to.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're allowed to, you're allowed to make the reference now. Well, when we return to StarTalk, we'll continue with my interview with co-founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, who is more to come.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm with my co-host Eugene Mirman. Eugene, love having you, man.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And our guest, Professor of Journalism, Jeff Jarvis. And you tweet too?

• 36:02Speaker 02

  I, I do too much.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Too much?

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Too much.

• 36:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At Jeff, you know, depending on what, what you were drinking at the time, at Jeff Jarvis.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  I have a Cabernet rule, which is you shouldn't tweet after Cabernet, but I found the loophole. It's called Pinot Noir.

• 36:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it's okay to tweet after Pinot Noir. Very good. I'll get you a Burgundy one day and we can chill. Uh, we're featuring my interview with Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of the new site and online community, that's a good word to call it, community, uh, called Reddit. And, you know, it's where we get our news, interact with celebrities. I kinda like it because science is always on those pages. And, uh, it's only possible really because the internet is wide open. And that brought up this idea of net neutrality, and it's been discussed in Congress, and the FCC's weighed in on it. And I had to, I asked Alexis, what, what's up with net neutrality? Let's find out what he says and then we'll talk about it. Check it out.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  Net neutrality is about ensuring that all bits are treated equally. It's this idea that the cable companies don't, and there's only a few of them, they don't get to choose the winners and losers, the market does. And that's really important because the flatness of the internet, the ability to access any content just as equally, is really important because, could you imagine turning on your internet, whatever your provider might be tomorrow, and realizing that like, you get Bing search for free, but Google costs an extra $20 a month? That's where things get real ugly. Because innovation happens because that kid in her dorm room can compete with Google right now.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so no one of your generation proposed this law. This is, these are old folks.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  These are Comcast, Verizon, these are the lobbyists of the large telcos.

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Executives.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Who are spending lots of money down in DC to get their way.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, but you won.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  We won. The internet, Americans, a year ago, look at the press from a year ago, everyone was saying, no chance in hell, don't bother, it's a done deal. And a year later, we were able to do it. And you want to know the secret? Phone calls. Phone calls. Online petitions, those were nice. The Twitter campaigns, the Reddit uploads, those were helpful, but it was phone calls. And it was getting people, we did this with SOPA and PIPA. These were these two bills that were going to break the internet a couple of years ago. We defeated those two bills in the House.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Acronyms for?

• 38:20Speaker 03

  Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. But this was an instance where we actually rallied to create something. We actually rallied to get something done at the FCC. Had more petitions signed in, I think, history than anything else. The Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident was the previous record winner for that in terms of FCC comments. But, we triumphed over it and created enough.

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the wardrobe malfunction during the Super Bowl.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  Yes, indeed. But, but we now have a new record winner, which was Americans calling to demand net neutrality. And, and we won.

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is this winning, I have in my notes here that the FCC adopted the open internet rules, February 26, 2015, is that what, is that the winning stroke there?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Alexis Ohanian is a hero of the internet. He led the SOPA PIPA fight and won and beat down laws that were gonna make the internet favor big companies.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By fat cat media giants.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Yes, but the war is never over. So yes, the FCC has seen the light and they're doing some very good things, but two things happening. One, T-Mobile for example, is now offering you a deal that says, hey, if you use these services, we won't charge you for the data. That sounds like a great deal, but they get to choose which services are in that deal. And if I have a startup that I want to start my new comedy special session, you get nowhere unless you're favored by T-Mobile. Also in India, I had a guy in my office just this week named Nikhil Paua, and Nikhil is the one who fought down internet.org, which was Facebook's, I think, good idea to try to give people free internet access in certain services. But that's not neutral.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  If Facebook or the telco, which is far more important, gets to decide which services are free and which you have to pay for, that's an advantage to some players over others, and that's not neutral.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But so what's the difference between net neutrality and an open internet?

• 40:15Speaker 02

  An open internet says that no one has to ask permission. No one has to ask permission to be able to get bits to you. That's an open internet. And so if someone is favored over you, if suddenly this podcast is slowed down because you didn't pay the telcos to deliver it, then you can't go fight and compete with big old television.

• 40:37Eugene Mirman?

  Everything is delivered as quickly as it can be.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Given whatever is the hardware constraints.

• 40:43Eugene Mirman?

  My website is not any slower or faster than CBS.com.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  A bit is a bit is a bit. And if you stop it, if you slow it down, if you substitute it, if you censor it, then the internet is not truly free.

• 40:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that would have an impact on privacy presumably, is that right? Because the information would go through some, some?

• 41:01Speaker 02

  Yes, but that exists anyway. It's already going through a whole bunch of servers and government can come and snoop on that. And so you're right, the problem is the NSA and the GCHQ in the UK.

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a lot of letters.

• 41:14Eugene Mirman?

  It's like someone's working for the FBI.

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the national security agency.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Whatever GCHQ.

• 41:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the GCHQ and then the United Kingdom.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  So.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  They basically put taps on the internet.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  And Google wasn't even aware of it, that there was, there was information that was being just sucked up by them and they put it back together and they saw what was going on. That's a huge problem and a different problem, and that's why we also have encryption. So the other fight going on with the, an open and free internet now, is that we should have the right to encrypt our data so you can't snoop on it.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  But, but, police authorities want to say, no, no, no, we want a backdoor to that, so that we can check on the nefarious activities of Dr.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the same way they could have tapped your phone, but with, with court permission.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 41:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  So these are issues that keep on going on and on and on, so basically.

• 42:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Prevent terrorist cells and things.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  So we need a bat signal for Alexis Ohanian.

• 42:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  I actually think that Alexis is a born politician. Someday soon, we'll be voting for him for president.

• 42:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My interview with him, he was charming and, and, and smart and, oh my gosh, yeah.

• 42:17Eugene Mirman?

  Maybe though he should have some mayoral experience. I don't know if just a businessman becoming a politician is such a great idea.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  He handles trolls, he can handle anybody.

• 42:26Eugene Mirman?

  That's true, it's true. If you're president, you can't be doxxed. Everyone knows already where you are.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, is there any, what was the argument against net neutrality? Other than it was, all I heard is it's bad, it's bad. Somebody must have thought it was good.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  The argument in the industry is we invest a fortune in getting these pipes to you. We should be able to maximally, uh, profit from that. And we should be able to offer deals and get paid on both ends. Now, we, the users, pay. They say, well, we also like the show to pay. So what happens if they come to you and say, Dr. Tyson, you have a very nice show here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it.

• 43:04Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. It was so slow, you could never hear it.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Uh, and, and.

• 43:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be a shame, wouldn't it?

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Would be a shame. So they might say to you, if you want your show distributed well to everybody, pay us. That way they get paid from both ends. The user is paying for the internet access and you're paying for the access to get it to the user. That, to use a scientific term, sucks.

• 43:24Eugene Mirman?

  And also probably there's endless websites that wouldn't even have the opportunity to be optimized or the money to optimize it.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well Alexis wrote a book, when was this? Back in 2014 called Without Their Permission. And I, I, I didn't know, I hadn't read it, I, I asked him about it, let's check it out.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  This is a riff off the amazing Grace Hopper quote, who is one of the OGs of computer science. That's original gangster, who wrote, you know, it's or said it's better to ask for.

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, there's no such thing as original gangster. That's gangsta.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 44:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You spell gangster, G A N S T A.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  That is true.

• 44:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, just, alright, yep. If you're gonna go there, don't like.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  I shouldn't have asked it. You're right. I should come correctly.

• 44:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you just go all the way.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  The, so Grace Hopper, an original gangsta of computer science. She very famously has this quote, I guess now it's a cliche, but it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And, you know, we talk about permissionless innovation all the time with technology and the internet and this idea that, you know, someone with a great idea and a laptop and some code can create something that is essentially or arrange something in a way that's never existed before and just do it. You don't need to open a factory, like you just open your laptop. I mean, when the internet is at its best as a tool, it really enables people to do the amazing stuff that they want to do. Whether you want to learn knowledge or put it out into the world, I mean, I've seen it and I use the book, not only to talk about some of the stuff I've been lucky to be a part of,

• 44:54Speaker 03

  but the people I've gotten to meet and know in philanthropy and activism, in the arts, who have been able to use technology to spread really, really amazing ideas and do stuff that they simply wouldn't have even 20 years ago.

• 45:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do your, do your students read this book and do they?

• 45:09Speaker 03

  Well now.

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's good to know. So, uh, are you taking your students into the future? Is that what you do?

• 45:18Speaker 03

  They're taking us into the future.

• 45:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, cuz you're.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  That's the issue.

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're probably three times their age or something, or some factor of.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Hey, thanks, thanks so much.

• 45:26Eugene Mirman?

  You're like, what, 19 times older? You're a wizard, right?

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 45:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a weird.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  I tell the students every time they start, I say, the future is yours. You have to create it. I'm too old. I'm not gonna see it. And if you don't do it, no one's gonna do it.

• 45:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if they tweet too much, it's not because they're drinking Cabernet Sauvignon.

• 45:41Eugene Mirman?

  No, no.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  It's a rire. Bad beer.

• 45:43Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, they're drinking, yeah.

• 45:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, uh, how, the internet serving you good?

• 45:49Eugene Mirman?

  Very good. And I first sort of, that's how I, I rose is really through creating a website that had videos and animations sort of before anybody really was doing that.

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is at a time when you might not have been able to get gigs on stage?

• 46:01Eugene Mirman?

  It's the late, it was the late 90s. And that's when I, and then it first started going around actually virally. And then I got an email from-

• 46:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are an OG.

• 46:09Eugene Mirman?

  I'm an OG. I got, I got an email from Pete Townsend from The Who. That was sort of like one of the first big things.

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 46:15Eugene Mirman?

  Wow.

• 46:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was this some joke about The Who?

• 46:17Eugene Mirman?

  No, he was like, there's a thing on your website that I, that I like. It was just a really crazy. So it was like, so for me, I think the democrat, democratization of the internet has been amazing. It's helped me completely, uh, do everything I've done.

• 46:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool, cool. We gotta wind this up now. You got any concluding thoughts, Mr. Professor?

• 46:35Speaker 02

  I, I, I think that, um, Alexis Ohanian used the permissionless internet to invent something we couldn't have ever predicted. And that the public he enabled also helped him invent that. That's the future of the internet, collaboration. Uh, David Weinberger, who's a wonderful professor at Harvard, says that the smartest person in the room now is the room itself, the network that puts all of our brains together. And that's what Reddit does.

• 46:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. Now, were you the one who told me that it took 500 years for-

• 47:04Speaker 02

  50 years after the invention of the Gutenberg press for anyone to think to invent the newspaper?

• 47:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Newspaper. So I got that from you.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  About 400 years, uh, before it became the, the mass media product we know now.

• 47:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so that, we are so young on the internet right now.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  1472 in Gutenberg years.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's 1472 in Gutenberg years. And so we're still-

• 47:24Speaker 02

  We don't know what the internet is yet.

• 47:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We were still inventing it.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  We have no idea what it is yet. We still think it's a new fangled book.

• 47:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 47:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so-

• 47:32Eugene Mirman?

  Can't wait till it merges with humans. Very excited.

• 47:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, for me, I don't... The internet was never sort of a... So much a destination for me as... When I put things on the internet, they were things I were... I was doing anyway, thoughts I was having already. And I... I have tweet-like thoughts every day of my life. I'm sorry. And I just- You can get a pill for that.

• 47:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there a word for that disease? And so I thought, "Let me just put it on Twitter." And that seemed to resonate with people. And so I... For me, the internet is... Is an extension of what I am, rather than a replacement- The internet connects you with- What I might be. The internet is not wires, it's people. And so the... The magazine Wired, I thought they would've changed their name by now.

• 48:17Eugene Mirman?

  Although, they'll actually-

• 48:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I actually proposed that they should've changed the name to Wireless, but they didn't like it. I told them, yeah, yeah, Wireless.

• 48:23Eugene Mirman?

  Then it sounds like it's like a phone or router magazine. People want to read a boring router magazine.

• 48:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta close that down, that's our show, and thanks to our guest, Jeff Jarvis, for being on StarTalk a second time, thanks. Will I get to do a third? Yeah, I think he did okay this time. And thanks to Alexis Ohanian- Upvote Jeff Jarvis's presence on StarTalk. And thanks, uh, in the internet space, to Alexis Ohanian for agreeing to sit down with me and... And have that chat. Uh, Eugene, as always, thanks for being on here, and I, as always, bid you to keep looking up.