Expanding Our Perspectives, with Susan Sarandon

Ready to have your perspectives expanded, cosmically and otherwise? Neil deGrasse Tyson welcomes actress and activist Susan Sarandon, exoplanetary scientist Dr. Rebecca Oppenheimer, astrophysicist Dr. Emily Rice, Bill Nye and co-host Maeve Higgins.

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?

  Welcome to the Hall of the Universe of the American Museum of Natural History. I'm your personal astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. And tonight on StarTalk, we are featuring my interview with Susan Sarandon. We all know her because she's an Academy Award-winning actress. She is a humanitarian, and she's an all-around free thinker who's deeply invested in the big picture. So, let's do this.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got with me my co-host, Maeve Higgins.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maeve, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Always great to have you, professional comedian.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as always, we bring on an expert guest to help carry the content. And I have with me a friend, a colleague, Dr. Emily Rice. Thanks for coming to StarTalk.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you thought I was geeky with my ties. There's a... She's got planetary nebula on her shirt.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Raising the bar, we call it.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, that's the Helix Nebula, if I'm mistaken.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Yes, I wore this for you. This is the Helix Nebula.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  We wanted to rebrand the Cosmos Nebula.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. Okay, wait, can I get a little... Because I knew which nebula that is.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  What's its new NGC number?

• 1:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know my nebulosities. I just want you to know. Back up!

• 1:42Speaker 02

  And what about... Do you know what the rocket is?

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean the space shuttle?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Um, which one?

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  You got it. On your necklace.

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yes, I'm not the, believe it or not, I'm not the geekiest of my community of fellow astrophysicists. So Emily, I'm gonna draw on your perspectives during this program as we feature my interview with Susan Sarandon. My high point memory of her is as, uh...

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Intel Man Louis?

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it...

• 2:16Speaker 01

  The pilot?

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rocky Horror Picture Show, of course.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's Janet in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Damn it, Janet.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, she's also an activist and a humanitarian. And she was appointed in 1999 to be UNICEF's goodwill ambassador. And so, she's also active in LGBT issues. I guess we have a Q on there now, LGBTQ. And she's also an advocate for marijuana legalization. But if you add it all together, this is a, this is a broadening of people's acceptance and understanding of who and what we are. Uh, as people. And some years ago, she actually came to this institution, the American Museum of Natural History, because her son had her, his birthday party here. It was a child.

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can, if you're a kid, you can come here and have a birthday party, it's cool. It's cool. So she came, and I met her for the first time then. And I brought to that party, uh, meteor, I have meteorites in my office, so I brought one.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Humble brag.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't mean to show off or anything.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  And did they just land there, or did you...

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In my office.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I put it in order for where they would land, you know? Guided, the LoJack found my office.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, when she came to my office, it was one of the first things she remembered, was that I produced this meteorite. Let's check it out. This is what I brought to your son's birthday party. Cause if you have a birthday party at the museum, we gotta do, gotta take you places you haven't been before.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you feel that?

• 3:55Speaker 03

  So, does this mean, ah, it's heavier than the Academy Awards?

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me!

• 4:03Speaker 03

  But this, so we're

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that how you compare?

• 4:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's heavy. So, we're made of stardust, right?

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, as is this.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  So this is part of me and you.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is forged in the heart of a dying star.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  Of a dying star.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Well, I'm not dying, but...

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is, this is mostly iron. And so it is likely that the very same star that created this iron, created the iron that's in this, as well as the iron in your blood.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  See, I find that really cool.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have a kinship with the cosmos on its deepest level. So meteorites, a reminder, first that Earth moves in a shooting gallery. That's my first thought when I think of meteorites, because we get hit by them. But also, there's a colleague of mine who did a calculation. And it turns out that if you add up all the iron in the hemoglobin of all the residents of the New York metropolitan area, it's about the same amount of iron as we have in that meteorite. So just even thought to calculate that, that was cool. And so it's a literal reminder, a scientific reminder,

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that we are stardust and that we've come from the same points of origins. So I'm impressed that she was impressed by that, because she prompted that memory within me for me to bring out the meteorite. And Emily, would you agree that this is a powerful, this is powerful stuff?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, to, to hold a meteorite, to know that that came from outer space. I mean, it's one thing to tell people, you know, we're star stuff. Somebody said that, right?

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carl, I think was his name, yeah.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Carl who? Okay, you know, Carl Sagan made this famous, we are star stuff. To think about it is one thing, but to hold it? And she like went down a little bit, you could see that on the clip, because it's so heavy.

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You weigh more than her Academy Award, yes.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  It's heavier than you expect, because we're, we're used to Earth rocks, which also have magnesium and silicate and things in them. But this is iron that sank to the middle of an asteroid way back in the day. And so it's way heavier than we would expect for an Earth rock. And so people take it and like, don't expect it to be so heavy. And to hold outer space.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Is that when people who look, who like weigh a bit more than they look? Is that because they've got more? You know, people, I've got big bones, like they say stuff like that?

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This meteorite has, it's a big boned meteorite, yeah. So, uh, in, but it's one thing to hold a meteorite and you say this is from space, but you have to be told that you're connected to it. It's not an obvious fact because it clearly looks otherworldly.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Alien, yeah.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, aliens. So, uh, to appreciate the fact that there's a lot of sweat equity that went into that discovery. So as an educator, no one feels that sense of spiritual connection to the cosmos until they're taught that, right? This must be what you found in your classes.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, even the, like even the, one of the most recent meteorite impacts, right? The meteor crater in Arizona that was created only 50,000 years ago.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Recent, quantify. Yeah, that's recent impact, cosmically.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  That's recent.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remember we got an astrophysicist in the house. Recalibrate. Okay, the recent impact of 50,000 years ago.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  The recent impact, we remember it.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  I thought you were talking about like 2013 and I was like, I didn't hear about that. Is she talking about Tucson?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Um, and even that one, we didn't know for a long time whether it was actually made by a meteorite impact. There was debate among the geologists for a little while, whether it was some kind of volcanic activity, something under the crust or something. It was only relatively recently, maybe a hundred years ago, that they, you know, started to find enough of the, of the pieces left over to prove that it was from a meteorite impact and then you have that scar.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was still taken until like the 1960s before everyone just agreed that, what it was. It was meteor, and until then officially everyone called it meteor crater.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, now it's.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And before then it was Beringer crater.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  It's still Beringer crater officially, but meteor crater.

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But to you and me, we call it meteor crater.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Susan Sarandon, already in this sort of conversational baptism in my office, she's, I know she's already thinking deeper, broader thoughts and she's got a passion for space. And what, I, I didn't know this, but she actually recently linked up in a live video call with the Italian astronaut Samantha Cristofuretti. I gotta put in the, can you help me?

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Uh, al dente.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Al dente.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  That means outdoors in Spanish.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Samantha Cristoforetti.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Cristoforetti.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who was the first female astronaut from Italy. And had a conversation with her onboard the International Space Station.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Susan spoke to Samantha in space.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Susan spoke to Samantha. And that left a strong impression on her. Let's check it out.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  When she described, you know, finally getting up there and looking down on Earth and she took, I could see Earth through the copula.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the copula, yeah. That was a relatively recent addition to that.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  That was.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Changes the outlook.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  But what she said, well, this is what's interesting is that because we have technology to kind of show where we are in the scheme of things.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic perspective.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Couldn't say it better. Cosmic perspective. She said it made it so clear to her that how important our tending of the Earth environmentally was. That for her, that was such a huge, huge thing to be able to look down and understand that we have to join forces and that we have to all be aware and the interconnectedness of everything. And I think that what science can do is just to see all that water and to see how insignificant we are and how significant the future is.

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it's the, I think the psychologists call it the overview effect. And it can change you.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Does it change the astronauts permanently?

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Well, basically, yes.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  So when she comes back to Earth, she's like, "It doesn't matter that he didn't text me back." And then like three days later, she's not going to be like, "Where's the half and half?"

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I don't know how it manifests in everyday social. But it can definitely put your brain in a new place.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  That's what I try to convey to my students, is this sense of wonder. And, you know, I hope we don't have to put everybody in space to get this because it's going to get really expensive.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the extraordinary for being in space. And then there's the ordinary that, when juxtaposed with the extraordinary, can make some indelible memories. First of all, just let me make it clear. Samantha is, it holds, is, holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, which was 199 days.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  199 days.

• 10:58Speaker 04

  It's like three years.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that?

• 11:00Speaker 04

  It's like three years.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On a different planet, yes. But on Earth, it's...

• 11:05Speaker 04

  That's so nice.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Earth, it's a little less than two-thirds of a year. Yeah, yeah. So here's the woman, first Italian woman in space. And this was a topic that came up in my conversation with Susan. Just the challenges facing women in science.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People have hypothesized, is it discrimination? Is it just old men or just, you know, is there a stereotype? I mean, I don't know that all this has been resolved, but we know it's a problem in need of attention. And then it had me wonder, maybe, is there any value in completely freeing ourselves from thinking of gender in that way at all? I just wonder that sometimes. Because gender shapes the conversation. And maybe gender is not what we think it is. And coming up, we'll discuss redefining our entire perception of gender at all on StarTalk.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk, right here beneath the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. And we're featuring my interview with Susan Sarandon. And she's a humanitarian, as you know, she's an actress. And we're talking about expanding our perspective, something she's good at in many ways and in many dimensions. And one way is from outer space. Another way is to try to do that right here on Earth. Another way is to think about gender in ways that have not been traditional. Historically, there's men and women, and that's kind of it. But she's a card-carrying geek herself, and she wants to share science with everyone regardless of gender. Regardless.

• 12:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I asked her about blurring the lines so that gender may no longer be a barrier to participating in science. Let's find out how she reacted to this idea.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  I do think that the difference between men and women is really great. And so in terms of problem solving, or imagining, or empathy, or any of those things, to have both genders, and now we're getting

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, in everything.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  genders that are transgender.

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  The crayon box is even bigger and everyone can, you know, color outside the line everywhere.

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What crayon are you?

• 13:37Speaker 03

  I'm many. I'm a melted down version of the few, but I think it's

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what freaked me out in elementary school? I mean, I'm old enough to say this, right? I, you know, you open up the Crayola box and there's a crayon called Flesh.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  Ooh, and it didn't match you?

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here I am, wondering, this is a world that didn't have me in mind to enter it.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  Wow, wow. So then if you were a kid that's in the wrong body, imagine what you're feeling when you look in the mirror and you're going, "Oh my god, why are they calling me that when that's not what I feel?"

• 14:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yes, that's a whole frontier, and you've been active in that. I mean, we need people to keep that going, keep the freedoms.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Well, but also freedom, it so opens up everybody's definition of who they are and what they can be if you're not

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're right, it opens you up.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  It opens up if you're not, if you're not described by your genitals, you know, then that's a much bigger definition, right?

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  So how fabulous that men can embrace their female side more, and the same with women can, you know, embrace their masculine side, that can only make the better world.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's just the bigger story of why be constrained by anything at all, even nationality, or religion, or anything.

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, so often we try to contain everyone, "Oh, you're that, therefore you can or can't do this." And maybe, have you been contained in any way, or pigeonholed?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Well, I was like categorizing everything since I was tiny. So.

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's just in, it's in us.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think so. I mean, I'm relearning things now as I get older. Like about, say about transgender. Like, I was one of the people that, like, Caitlyn Jenner, I was like, oh, like, I didn't think mu- much about that before. Like, it took that to, for me to see that interview where she talked about her transgender experience.

• 15:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Because before, when I was a baby, I was like, boy, girl, red, blue, you know?

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  I mean, I probably didn't even say that out loud, but, but do you know what I'm saying clumsily is like that I?

• 15:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's how we learn, I guess. It's a shorthand.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  We have to simplify things. Like, that's the way that we under, the world is so complex and there's so much going on that, you know, from a very, very young age, that's how we have to, that's what we have to do to understand it. We have to simplify things and.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are things that we don't simplify because they don't come simplified. We, there, there's a whole range of height that people have. We don't put that into two categories. There, there's a range of weight. There's a, there's a lot of things that come in ranges. And so, it's, I don't think it's hard to think about a spectrum. And, in fact, Emily and I have a colleague who may have a unique perspective on this topic. And it's Rebecca Oppenheimer, who is the department chair of astrophysics here at the museum. And we have her standing by, live on video, Paul, right now. You guys, you can put, put that up?

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, hey, there she goes. Hey, Rebecca.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  How are you?

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How you doing? Thanks for staying up late for this.

• 16:41Speaker 05

  Hey, I'm always late. I, I'm an astronomer, right?

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Stupid comment of mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we, we, the nighttime is, is, is, is, is our friend, is our place.

• 16:54Speaker 05

  It's when we get our best ideas and our best innovations.

• 16:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly. And so, so, so what, from your point of view, what does gender mean today?

• 17:04Speaker 05

  This where it is really complicated and the questions you ask are. You know, you can ask one person and get a different answer, but let me give you my perspective. Gender and sex are not the same thing. Um, gender is a sense of who you are. Whereas sex is, uh, perhaps what your birth certificate says, perhaps something else. It's very complicated and I don't think it can be summed up very quickly in such a short conversation. But I will say this. Those of us who identify along a certain binarity of gender, say, for example, I identify as a woman. Um, I am a woman.

• 17:47Speaker 05

  Um, experience life differently than they would as a man. And I've, I spent a large fraction of my life putting on an act pretending to be a man. Um, which was interesting, but rather, uh, unpleasant. Um, I have to say.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So did we, did we hire into the department 15 years ago Benjamin Oppenheimer? Or did we hire Rebecca Oppenheimer?

• 18:13Speaker 05

  You hired, well, my legal name at the time was Ben Oppenheimer. Um, but I was a woman.

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we hired, we hired a woman. We didn't know it yet. You knew it, we didn't know it yet, but you knew it.

• 18:25Speaker 05

  I knew it when I was six or seven. I knew my name back then. I knew everything about it, but I had no sense of how to articulate it. No one talked about this in the seventies. It just wasn't something that came up, except with Jerry Springer. Um, and then it was, uh, you know, a parody and, and really rather nasty stuff that he put on his screen.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so does, so what you're, uh, not to put words in your mouth, but what you're suggesting is that there is a fluidity there not recognized by people who have the urge to bin things into, into discreet, discreet categories. And if that's the case, then it's meaningless to speak of one gender or another. And maybe we should abandon the entire idea.

• 19:13Speaker 05

  Yes and no. I always had a sense of who I was. However, I'm just one of many billions on this planet and many, many others feel quite differently from me. And what I'm finding, actually, it's a very interesting thing. It ties into some of what Emily was saying earlier. That science actually may not be simply about classifications. And Emily, you and I have published on this subject ourselves.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Not about people, though.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, not about people.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  Well, yes, not about people, but objects that we observe.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  So much easier to understand, I think.

• 19:51Speaker 05

  And we've noticed that there's a greater diversity than we ever imagined out there before.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just want to emphasize, you just said it briefly, but I have to say that in our field, in astrophysics, by the way, we have a conversation that includes three astrophysicists in this moment. I don't know that TV has...

• 20:07Speaker 02

  And we're talking about gender.

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has that ever happened in the history of television? But that we, a big part of our field is understanding the categories of objects we observe through a telescope. And if you've only observed a few, you have an urge to just make two or three categories. You observe many more, you say, "Wait a minute, there are nuances. I need six categories, 10 categories." Then you realize, there are no categories. It's a continuum.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  That's right. Exactly.

• 20:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we see this in our field.

• 20:35Speaker 05

  And that's what we're finding. We're finding with planets, the words have almost no meaning. And in fact, as you look at the parameters that they exhibit, how they're different, what their atmospheres are, and as we move on to new types of planets, over and over again, they don't fall into normal categories. And this is the exciting thing. I don't find it threatening, I find it really exciting.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, but Pluto's still a dwarf planet. Just make sure. You didn't change that, just to be clear.

• 21:05Speaker 05

  Well, there may be other subclassifications of Kuiper belt objects.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Ding.

• 21:12Speaker 05

  So be it. Let's have fun with it and see what's out there. And I think the same is true of human exploration and social science. With gender comes deep questions about a person's most innate sense of who they are.

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, basically, we have to broaden our understanding of the range of how...

• 21:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The world manifests, not only in the rest of nature, but in humanity itself.

• 21:46Speaker 05

  And to me, scientific thought is one of the best ways to do that, because we're trained as scientists to question everything, yet at the same time, we also have to admit when we are simply wrong. And when we're wrong, that's a fact. We can't prove anything, but we can disprove things.

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Rebecca, thanks for taking time. We'll catch you in the corridors.

• 22:11Speaker 05

  I'll keep you all in line with the budget.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, she is chair of the department, I'd say. So, thanks Rebecca for piping into StarTalk.

• 22:21Speaker 05

  Thank you, Neil.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 22:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, up next, more on the expanded perspective that derives from my conversation with Susan Sarandon, and why she thinks Carl Sagan had his view of the world expanded in more ways than just looking through telescopes. We'll find out when StarTalk returns.

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the Coleman Hall of the Universe of the American Museum of Natural History. And I've got Maeve Higgins, my comedian co-host, and I have Emily Rice, a friend and colleague. Emily, thanks for being on.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. And so, in my conversation with Susan, Susan Sarandon, it was clear that she likes opening doors of opportunity. She likes gaining a cosmic perspective in whatever way that can be provided. And that's what I learned, that she's a strong supporter of the legalization of marijuana. And so, she argues the world would be a better place if people smoked weed instead of drank alcohol. So, this is a completely defensible point, and it came up in the conversation. And again, this show is about how my conversation with her... Comes to stimulate perspectives you might not have had before.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so in this she reflects on the relationship between Carl Sagan and marijuana. How it may have helped him achieve the cosmic perspective. Let's check it out.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  In the book Botany of Desire, they quote Carl Sagan, who wrote a book, not using his name, where he goes on and on. There's one chapter in that book that talks about the fact that all of these plants exist and always had, and animals do them, and why are they there for us? Any kind of plant that gives you some kind of psychedelic experience. But he talks about how marijuana specifically, because we have so much distraction and so much coming in, sights, smells, right now, talking to you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that what marijuana does is help you be present. And these days with everybody on there, various,

• 24:53Speaker 03

  I mean, everyone walking down the street is holding, it's crazy, or devices, that people are having a harder and harder time being present. And so I thought it was interesting as a scientist that he felt this need for us to be able to focus and to get rid of some of the stuff that was coming in every now and then. Obviously Carl Sagan was in high all his life.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so people extol the virtues of it, and it's becoming more and more legalized in the country. What's the latest count here I have? Was it 23 states? What is it? Washington, DC? So this is, this is going on and on, and it looks like it's not going back.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Susan Sarandon just sold me two speedballs outside the planetarium.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right?

• 25:46Speaker 01

  I think it was her. I don't know. It's making the show so interesting.

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Emily, you have any reflections on this?

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Not really, actually, because my parents might be watching, but like... It's not legal in New York, right? Not yet, no, they don't enforce it. It's kind of, they, it's not legal yet, but they also have said, I think the police have said that they won't tick it or something like that.

• 26:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did they decriminalize it or something? Was that what it was?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Not officially, but they, but they, like, the unofficial policy is...

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not up on all the latest laws, right, okay.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  They covered it on...

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I might have it in my notes, you keep talking. Fuck them on yourselves while I check my notes.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Okay. Oh, the universe is my drug, like, that's the, you know, I want the same thing, kind of like, I want a different perspective, like, a broader perspective, a changed perspective, but that's the universe for me as an astrophysicist, which is kind of amazing, like, just to think about, you know, I have my own little research area, and that's honestly the hardest thing to think about, but when, when I talk to my colleagues about the research on black holes, or on galaxies, or on these nearby stars, it's just like, what, you're, these objects are thousands, millions of light-years away, they don't exist anymore, some of them, because the light has taken so much time to reach us, we know all of these amazing things, as if these things were right next to us, and we could, like, test them in a lab, like, sometimes we,

• 27:06Speaker 02

  you know, if I have a drink with my colleague, maybe we, we're like, you know, complaining about work, maybe we complain about our budgets, and then we're like, we're doing astronomy for a living, like, we're magicians practically, it's so awesome to be able to study the universe like this.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And be paid for it.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  But do you think that Carl Sagan, is that true, about Carl Sagan and that botany?

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I don't know, I mean, I don't, I don't have firsthand knowledge of this, all I know is from what she told me, and what others have rumored, and what...

• 27:32Speaker 02

  I've heard that story before.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and, and his biographers have said this, so, so, I mean, I don't, the times I met him, I don't think he was high. He, he was channeling the universe, as good educators will do, and so, if that was the consequence of a marijuana-induced perspective, I would not have known it at the time, because you kind of get that for free, anyway, from, from the universe itself.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  But now we get it from Carl, maybe he was high.

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  But I think she was saying that he concentrate, it made him concentrate more, or like, be less distracted, not necessarily be like, whoa, just be like, focused.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that pantomime.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this show is about expanding perspectives and what we did was we went out to our fanbase to ask if they had any questions regarding expanding perspectives. And they sent in questions to us through our various social media sources. And Maeve, you have these questions?

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're gonna ask them of me?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're directed to me, it turns out.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  You don't know these questions?

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do not know what they are and if I don't have an answer, I'll just say, "I have no idea."

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Are you high? No, that's not it.

• 28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is what we call StarTalk's Cosmic Queries. So I welcome these and these are people from all around the world.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have quite a broad base and I'm happy to learn every time we get a question from yet another distant land.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yes, this distant land is Old England.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Old England, okay.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  My enemy. No, no.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maeve, a native of Ireland, yes, okay. Wasn't England everyone's enemy at some point?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Of course. Okay, so this question comes from Matt Eli in London, England. He asks, "Is there a moment that sticks out in your memory of when you have witnessed someone else's cosmic perspective expanded when they weren't seeking it, but it happened?"

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. It happened to Mike Massimino and he described it on StarTalk. He probably described it at other times, but I got him to tell me on StarTalk. Mike Massimino, the astronaut. He's an engineer, an astronaut, and he was one of the people who went to fix the Hubble Telescope. But while he was in space, spacewalking, fixing the Hubble Telescope, he looks down to Earth. He is stupefied by that view as Earth rotates past. And he says to himself, "Am I in heaven? And is that Earth?" And then he remembered he came from Earth. And then said to himself, "That's heaven."

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he teared up in the retelling of this revelation he had that his home planet is what he and the rest of us need to think of as heaven. That was a mind-broadening cosmic perspective that I saw unfold right in front of me because at the end of that explanation, he was in tears.

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On that note, coming up, I'm gonna ask Susan Sarandon about the movie roles that might have shaped her cosmic perspective when StarTalk returns.

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk, right here beneath the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, for which I serve as director. It's kinda cool to have the keys to the planetarium.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  So cool.

• 31:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't mind telling you. That's just cool.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  I think if I had the cleaner in here.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, they have the keys too. Yes. Okay. Damn.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thought I was special, but you're right. So, tonight, we're featuring my interview with Susan Sarandon, and she's open-minded, she's broadly-perspected. Is that a phrase? Does that work? And she tried, it said she tries to contribute to society in meaningful humanitarian ways. She's a, in fact, she's a United Nations humanitarian, and an activist for women in science, and of course, she's an Academy Award-winning actress. All of the above.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Leave some for the rest of us, Susan.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Great combination. One of her films, we got to talking about her films, one of which was The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which she starred in as the unforgettable character Janet. Damn it. Damn it, Janet. And so, if you don't remember The Rocky Horror Show, we actually have a clip from the movie. I don't know how much we get to show this legal, but whatever it is, our people said it's okay. Let's just, let's remind us what Rocky Horror looks like. Check it out.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Susan Sarandon, there she is, as Janet. Uh, that was towards the end of the film. And that's a film that challenged, it was nineteen, mid seventies when it came out, I think nineteen seventy-five perhaps? Seventy-six, around there. And it was, uh, it, it, it was a little early for how much it packed into one cinematic expression of transvestite, transgender, uh, homosexuality, all this spectrum of sex and gender that now everybody's talking about in the news. That all got covered. It's about being yourself, being what you want to be without the judgment of others.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, while you're not supposed to be in judgment of others, I will stand in judgment of you at this moment, Maeve, for wearing nothing cosmic.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Oh, I know.

• 33:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flanked by the helix nebula.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  I can hook you up.

• 33:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've got rainbows on my tie, so, so you, now, you said you could help, how do you help her out?

• 33:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, I have a fashion blog, an astronomy fashion blog.

• 33:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 33:44Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An astronomy fashion blog?

• 33:47Speaker 02

  There's a universe full of astronomy fashion out there, it's really amazing. And it's, but it's fine, it's real. I can't. You can't buy it on our, we kind of curate on the blog, yeah.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're an aggregator for all the stuff that's out there.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and?

• 34:00Speaker 02

  We accept donations, uh, samples, Valentino especially, if you're watching, yeah.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Uh, we'll do reviews.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You will review?

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely, yeah. Sure, yeah.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, am I on there?

• 34:12Speaker 02

  You are on there, yeah. I, with my cosmic Converse, that you were jealous because they didn't come in your size.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have Converse All-Star sneakers, white, that have been painted, but that have been?

• 34:22Speaker 02

  No, no, they're real, they're made by the company, made, and it's an image, the image is NGC 602.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  That one?

• 34:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The new general catalog 602.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A fuzzy object is probably a galaxy.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Faint fuzzy. It's a, it's a star forming region in the small Magellanic Cloud.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sorry. Yeah. So, okay.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Is what it is. This is like dirty talk between astrophysicists.

• 34:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is so dirty talk.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so this has gone to extreme limits. My co-executive producer of StarTalk wore a dress at the Emmy celebrations in Los Angeles. Designed by...

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Valentino.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Valentino.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. They have a whole collection.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was hewn from the cosmos itself.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Gorgeous.

• 35:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which has accurately drawn constellations and labeled as such. There's the Big Dipper, there's Cassiopeia, there's Ophiuchus, we have Saturn, we have the Big Dipper, we have galaxies, we have Saturn. So, give it up for StarTalk.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's always the one yelling in my ear if I'm behind schedule, or she's the one. So, anyhow, when we return to StarTalk, we'll pick up my interview with Susan Sarandon. And we chat about awe in the digital age. Is it still possible? Or has the progress of science ruined it for us all on StarTalk?

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, the American Museum of Natural History, right here at Central Park West, New York City, which contains the Hayden Planetarium, which is sitting above our heads as we speak. Yes. Yes. So, welcome back, Maeve. Maeve Higgins.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 36:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how long you been in the States now from?

• 36:13Speaker 01

  For like almost two years. Well, a year and a half.

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Year and a half from, from...

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Venezuela.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From Ireland. Welcome stateside.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Across the pond. And Emily, great to have you as a colleague. And...

• 36:28Speaker 02

  I moved here from upstate.

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That doesn't count. Yeah, that's sorry.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  So exotic.

• 36:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I ask?

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, just evidence that I'm not the geekiest one out there. She's wearing a nebula in space, just so you know.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Is it geeky or is it geek chic?

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's geek chic, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So, we're featuring my interview with Susan Sarandon. And we got to talking, you know, she came to my office and the conversation, we just, it goes organically and I never know in advance where it's gonna go. And so that's why we do it ahead of time. We get the best parts and we slot them in. And in this part, we talk about the state of awe in modern times. Is it there? What has science done to it? Has it increased it? Has it decreased it? Of course, I think it has increased, but that's what I brought into the conversation. Let's just find out, see where it goes. There's a saying, one of the edicts from Arthur C. Clarke, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's true on all levels, right?

• 37:33Speaker 03

  I think a lot of technology has robbed us of our awe, actually.

• 37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You think so?

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, because you look at a picture now that's amazing and you go, yeah, but that was photoshopped. People even think the pictures on the moon of the astronauts were photoshopped. We have so many skeptics.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so...

• 37:50Speaker 03

  You could be photoshopped right now and you might not even be talking to me.

• 37:56Speaker 03

  Who knows?

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I will not divulge whether or not that's true.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  Well, touch hands, ET. See, there.

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Maeve, as a comedian, do you guys joke about any of this?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Well, just as a person, I'm really easily awed. Like, when she was saying that, I was thinking, I get, yeah, I'm impressed by, like, vending machines that can vend. No, not just vending machines. No, but one...

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't finish that sentence. Leave it right there. I'm impressed with vending machines.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  With the robotic arms and the suction? No, the ones with, like, cheeseburgers, like, hot things in them. Did you ever see one of those?

• 38:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't...

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Well, see, they're incredible.

• 38:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry, sorry. So if I'm eating a cheeseburger.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  You don't even need to see.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not coming from a vending machine.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you need to spend more time in America to know where to get your hamburgers, okay? What? So what do you, you're impressed that food can come out of a machine hot?

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Hot food, you press a button, you just, it's like a real vending machine that you would get chips from.

• 39:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  But instead, it's like all these burgers, and they taste disgusting, but the novelty value, it's truly awesome. You just press a button, it's hot.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maeve, Maeve, Maeve.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  You have to see one of these to truly.

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maeve, Emily and I study the birth, life, and death of the universe. And I ask you a question about awe. And you tell me a machine that heats a nasty hamburger

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  leaves you in a state of awe.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Honestly, you talk about stupefaction, you should see me standing in front of one of those machines. First of all, it's like this, the, the choice, you can get cheeseburger, regular hamburger, pickle, no pickle. All these things, then you just put in, you just put in your, they're so cheap as well, a dollar. And then you just press a button and whatever, often they just get jammed at the end, but you keep going. And eventually you will get a kind of a flattened burger out of a machine. You don't have to talk to anyone, no one needs to know you're eating a burger. You can go for a second lunch afterwards.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I, I'm, I'm a little older than you, but when I was growing up.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People were awed by the fact that we walked on the moon.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that, yeah, that's so.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  I heard that.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Spectacular, but I mean.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, no, there's no button, that's it.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Back on the ground.

• 40:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Back on the ground, you're hungry.

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's not a vending machine.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  We need to do it again, and that's the thing, is that we didn't, we didn't live through this.

• 40:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you post Apollo, pre Apollo?

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Post Apollo.

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Post Apollo birth.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Post Apollo. That's, and that's a thing, like, we, we have, why should we believe it? Frankly, do it again. That's what I want to do it again. I want to look at the moon while people are walking on the moon. People, not just, not just white dudes, but people. Send them up there. I, one of my favorite things right now to do, and you need technology to do this, is to know when the space station is going overhead. You can get like an app on your phone, where's the space station?

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, I use it all the time.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  You know NASA websites, yeah. It's amazing. You see a little, you know, it's hard, you sit there and you're like, oh.

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, it's not when the space station is overhead, it's when it's overhead and visible.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Visible, yeah.

• 41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's got to be overhead during twilight.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where you are in darkness, but it is high up enough so that it is still receiving sunlight reflecting it down to you.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's different for different places on Earth. So I did this the other day and we watch it, you know, at first you're sitting there and you're like, oh, I feel kind of like an idiot. Like I'm on my front stoop, you know, like staring there waiting for, you know, something, Santa Claus or something like that. But then you see it, it's a really bright thing and it starts to move and you're like, there's people up there right now having coffee. It's amazing. And this one in particular, it was maybe 10:30 at night or so, and it went away. It went, like it went high up above and then it was a bright, it was bright and then it was just gone.

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it would enter a shadow.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  And I thought about it, yeah. I was like, that was sunset.

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  I was just waving it at astronauts on the space station as they were experiencing sunset. It was, it was so, and we could do this.

• 42:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, that's, Maeve, that's what I'm talking about, okay?

• 42:06Speaker 02

  But burgers are pretty good too, in fairness.

• 42:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maeve, Maeve, do we, can you, here, Maeve?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  You should have asked Emily first.

• 42:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta go to commercial, but when we come back, of course, I'm going to find out where in the universe Bill Nye the Science Guy is, and he will send us his next dispatch on his understanding of how science can expand all of our perspectives. Next on StarTalk.

• 42:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. And featuring my interview with Susan Sarandon. And talking about opening our minds and opening our sense of how we see and perceive the world. And anytime we have any subject running down on our show, I've got to catch up with my friend, Bill Nye the Science Guy. Let's find out what his take is on broadening one's perspective. Check it out.

• 43:11Bill Nye?

  Science is the best idea humans have ever had. Just look at that skyline. All of those shapes came out of somebody's head. And the people who designed all that, they did it with science. Look at this bridge and these cables. It's like a series of elegant spider webs. But with all due respect to my spider friends, okay, I don't have any friends who are spiders. Nevertheless, this is more complicated than anything that comes out of an arachnid, reptilian, or serpentine brain. No, this has got stones and cables and air. Oh my. And I often wonder how the world would be different if our leaders, if politicians, could get a perspective of all this from way up there.

• 43:55Bill Nye?

  Or better yet, up, up there in outer space. Think looking down at the world from above makes you think very differently about the whole place and all the creatures that live on it. Because when it's all said and done, the cosmos rules. Back to you, Neil.

• 44:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, from the Brooklyn Bridge. I think he's just being a tourist, right? Because he's new to New York. So, this notion of thinking more broadly about life, the universe, and everything, of course Susan Sarandon has kind of been all about that, her professional life, in many different ways, not purely astronomically, of course. She's been a UN ambassador, and she's a big fan of using science to inform perspectives just in general. And it's nice to have that kind of advocate and someone that influential. So, let me just introduce you to my final clip with her, where we talk about bringing a cosmic perspective down to Earth.

• 44:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a cosmic perspective is a point of view you don't otherwise get, and it's handed to you by the universe. But, of course, there are many people who would assert whole other experiences by other means, right?

• 45:09Speaker 03

  Well, the idea of having something that takes you out of your narrow self-involved ego-based experience and encourages you to let go of all the things you're worrying about because you now see it doesn't really matter, because the cosmos is so much bigger

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  and you have no control over it. So to be able to access a different perspective. However, if you can do that by being able to be up in space and look down and get this rush. I mean, just about everybody that gets shot up there comes back with a different perspective.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're changed. This is another way to think about where you came from, Mother Earth, where you are, what's further out there. And I can say that essentially every one of my colleagues in astrophysics thinks this way and feels this way, more importantly, feels that way. None of us are ever going to lead legions of armies into battle to fight over a line in the sand. It is not within us to do that, okay? Now, if you get there-

• 46:10Speaker 03

  So we should take the whole UN and just shoot them up into space and have them-

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And have them see, and they'll come back-

• 46:15Speaker 03

  Have them look.

• 46:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh, they'll come back and party. They'll come-

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Seriously.

• 46:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be an interesting movie plot. Right when the General Assembly is meeting, you just launch the United Nations, the entire block, into space. So, so this perspective, not enough people have that point of view. I mean, I think it's clear.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  I'm not sure that all astronomers do. We squabble over data and things like that. I've heard stories about-

• 46:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we're not shooting each other.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  We're not shooting each other, no.

• 46:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not threatening deaths.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  And we do know how to party, so.

• 46:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  That's definitely true.

• 46:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not supposed to let people know that, I don't think.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  I know, I think we do. It's a recruiting tool, frankly, I think. We want more people to be scientists. We party as much as we science.

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we can't party like there's no tomorrow because we know there's another several billion years

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. left in the universe. The Andromeda Galaxy is gonna collide with our galaxy in four billion years.

• 47:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a lot of them that kind of put things into perspective.

• 47:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if I can offer some summative reflections. This cosmic perspective, which we associate with being in space. Yes, it changes you. And you have committees in the United Nations discussing the peaceful uses of outer space. There are outer space treaties that discuss if we're in space, we need to treat one another kindly. And I think this is a noble exercise. And it may even be a successful one. However, I actually have very low confidence that that would succeed. Because on Earth, people kill each other over nothing. And so we just say, "Oh, but in space, we'll all be nice to each other?" How about this? Let us not have wars on the surface of the Earth first. But there's no doubt about it.

• 47:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once you get to space, with its unlimited resources, unlimited energy, space has the potential to be the most peaceful place in the universe. And that is the hope with which I end this episode of StarTalk. And as always, I, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, bid you to keep looking up.