Season 6 Time Capsule (Part 1)

Join host Neil deGrasse Tyson as he revisits our fan’s favorite episodes from a season overflowing with science, comedy, moguls, whistleblowers, evolution, invention, and exploration.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I'm also the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. This week, we're wrapping up season six of StarTalk with the first part of our time capsule show. Every season, we send out a survey to our fans and ask them to pick all of their favorites. And we've had many interesting guests from all across the spectrum of the sciences.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With two full seasons on the National Geographic Channel, it was a close race, but the results are now in. Now, let's remember our favorite moments from this past season. First up, polyamory, one-night-stands, fetishes, and Tinder? We discuss the science behind one of our most basic animal instincts in one unforgettable episode. The Evolution of Love and Sex with Dan Savage. Co-host Chuck Nice and biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher join us in the hall of the universe for our sexiest conversation ever.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Over one-third of Americans have had a one-night-stand. Actually, almost 60% have had a one-night-stand. Casual sex is not casual unless you're so drunk you don't remember it. It's not casual.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I had to ask Dan that because people are asking him this all the time. He's in a long-term marriage that began as a one-night-stand.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  A lot of people have. I mean, as I say, over 30% of people have had a one-night-stand turn into a long-term relationship.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out what he's going to tell us about one-night-stands.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  I think that happens a lot more often than we know. Because people who meet-

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the one-night-stand has such a stigma.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Right. People who have sleazy meetings, they don't tell their kids about it. If your parents met in rehab, if your parents met in a sex club or a dungeon somewhere, they're not gonna-

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the backseat of a 57 Chevy.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  They're not gonna tell you. I actually wrote a series of columns. This is how long I've been doing my advice column. While Ann Landers was writing hers, she wrote a column, a bunch of columns where she invited her readers to share their how-they-met stories. And they were all these mute, cute stories. "I danced with this boy at a USO, danced during the war, and then we wrote letters to each other all through the war, and then we met."

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's a generation who are now full up with those.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they were all so innocent, all of her stories. And I was just thinking about the people I knew who were in successful, loving, long-term relationships, many of which had really not innocent starts, who met, who had one-night-stands like Terry and I did, who met in rehab, who had a drunken three-way and then fell in love with the guest at the three-way, the third, the spare.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The spares.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  And those aren't the stories you're gonna tell your grandparents or your kids.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that never gets out. No, no, no.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  So we have this distorted view of how a decent, loving relationship must start. And then people do this thing.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, wait, I have to interrupt. You made such an important point there. Because if we give the view of love and romance that we want to be true, and that's what percolates, then we establish culture and social mores based on that, so that if anyone is different from it, you get ostracized.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  What we know about primates and mammals, we are not a naturally monogamous species. We are a pair-bonding species. But there's social monogamy, which is the pair bond, and there's sexual monogamy, which is never touching anybody ever again with your genitals. And we are not-

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've never split that before.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  No, we need to split it. All of these birds we used to look to and think, "Why can't we be monogamous like birds?"

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the eagles and the-

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, certain geese and little birds that would mate. And they would mate for life. And we would measure our failure as humans to live up to the standards set by these damn birds. Well, along comes genetic testing, and we find out that these birds are screwing around on each other constantly. That they are socially monogamous, pair-bonded, but they're not sexually monogamous. No primates with testicles our size are monogamous, sexually monogamous. Women, hidden menses. I'm not saying all this to say that people shouldn't- Go for monogamy if monogamy is something that they want. I'm not saying this to argue that people who made a monogamous commitment have license to violate that monogamous commitment.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, that's what headlines would do when they hear a phrase that comes out of your mouth.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  And they do that. And so I'm not, my argument then isn't, you shouldn't have it, you shouldn't do it. My argument is, we should be a little compassionate and understanding about the fact that monogamy is a struggle.

• 4:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our StarTalk Live shows are an opportunity to engage with our fans and collide science with comedy in an open arena of thought and of course, humor. You selected Evolution Live with Richard Dawkins as one of your favorite episodes. Recorded at the Beacon Theater, I and my co-host Eugene Mirman were joined onstage by none other than Richard Dawkins, my good friend Bill Nye, the Science Guy, comedian Jim Gaffigan, and comedian Maeve Higgins.

• 5:05Speaker 03

  So why don't I have wings?

• 5:07Speaker 04

  Well, that's a very good-

• 5:08Speaker 03

  And it would definitely make me better.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  That's a very good question.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  I mean, the one thing I do know so far is that I'm the smartest person on this panel.

• 5:20Speaker 05

  Right? I mean, that's pretty obvious.

• 5:23Speaker 06

  Because you're wearing glasses.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's the glasses.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  But why don't people have wings, considering everyone wants wings?

• 5:32Speaker 04

  It's an excellent question, why don't people have wings? They wouldn't be better off with wings. Wings can get in the way. A queen ant has wings and she flies and gets mated, and then she digs a hole and starts the nest. The first thing she does is bite her own wings off.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Because they get in the way, you don't need wings. Worker ants don't have wings. Ants only grow wings in order to fly to get mated.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  So I wouldn't want ant wings, but what about regular, like, pretty bird wings?

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Well...

• 6:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll take this one, Richard.

• 6:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Yes, Neil?

• 6:05Speaker 05

  So you dig us out of this one?

• 6:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'll save you on this one, Richard. So, I venture to guess that you-

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Hold it, hold it, you're gonna, you're gonna take over with, "I venture a guess."

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I got this one. That if you had wings, you would either be dead or have more successful sex.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  The latter is sort of one of the reasons I'm curious.

• 6:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so-

• 6:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the point is-

• 6:36Speaker 03

  I would definitely hide them.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The act of having a feature doesn't always mean you'll be better at reproducing.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  Sight, eyes of one sort or another, have evolved several dozen times independently, and often to exactly the same design. I mean, the vertebrate eye, which is a camera eye, and the mollusk eyes, especially squid and octopus eyes, are very, very similar indeed.

• 7:01Speaker 05

  What do you mean by a camera eye?

• 7:03Speaker 04

  With a lens that focuses a real inverted image on a retina, as opposed to a compound eye, say, or a parabolic reflector eye, which some mollusk-

• 7:13Speaker 03

  What kind do people have?

• 7:15Speaker 04

  We have a camera eye.

• 7:16Speaker 06

  Camera eye?

• 7:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  A camera eye, and then what's the other eye, what's like a common thing that has that?

• 7:20Speaker 04

  Well, a compound eye is a thing that insects have, and shrimps have, and things, where you have a great big hemisphere, and lots of little tubes pointing out all over the hemisphere in different directions. And so each tube is looking at a different part of the visual field.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  It sounds fairly erotic.

• 7:37Speaker 05

  I think I have that. I have that.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Insofar as there's an image at all, it's not an inverted image, because that tube is looking up there, that tube's looking down there, whereas in our eyes, that light there is focused on the bottom of my retina, and that there is focused on the top of my retina. So a camera eye has an inverted image. It's a mildly interesting philosophical question, why we see the world the right way up, but I think there were some experiments by a man called Stratten, who actually wore glasses that turned the world upside down, and it took him a few months to get used to it. And then when he took the glasses off, he couldn't see anymore. Brilliant!

• 8:17Speaker 05

  Hence the expression, "Don't try this at home."

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of your favorite episodes featured my conversation with the ever-controversial Edward Snowden. He's a CIA agent turned international fugitive, and he's famous for leaking secret documents to press from within the national security agency, the NSA. Some call him a hero, some call him a traitor. I just call him a fellow geek.

• 8:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Throughout your schooling, even though you dropped out of high school, did you like math and science? Did you know this? Was this a latter day thing?

• 8:51Speaker 07

  Uh, no, I was always fascinated with science. And actually, one of the great grievances I have about dropping out of high school early is the fact that I never finished chemistry. I've always loved chemistry.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, most people say they never went to their prom. So you're saying... This is, in the history of the world, the person who drops out of high school regrets not having had chemistry. This is the first time, that sentence has never been uttered in the history of the world by a college dropout.

• 9:19Speaker 07

  If you haven't noticed, I'm a little bit of a nerd.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Okay, so you missed some chemistry there.

• 9:25Speaker 07

  Right, yeah, but, you know, people who are contemplating dropping out, people who are contemplating sort of leaving college early and things like that, and getting a start, they realize, and they may be very correct, in going, you know, I don't need this. I can still get through life without it, I can still achieve my goals, and I'm already an expert in sort of the areas where my valuable skills lie. And they go, I'm not gonna be a chemist, you know, I'm not going to be a physicist, I'm not going to be a linguist, so I don't really need those courses. And they may be right. They may never use algebra again, or calculus, or something like that. But at the same time, they may find later in life that they're working on a project, or their own sort of independent research or exploration,

• 10:09Speaker 07

  whether it's intellectual or whether it's practical, where, had they learned that, there would be some synergy there. They've got holes in sort of their body of knowledge that are very difficult when you're not going through sort of a structured lifestyle path, which is what sort of the university and public education model offers us.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying, I don't know...

• 10:31Speaker 07

  Go back and fill those in.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not to put words in your mouth, but what you're saying, I think, is, yes, you need the curriculum-based learning, because that assures that you don't have any obvious gaping holes in your proper education, but the rest of the learning really can't happen in a classroom. It's gotta happen in the real world.

• 10:50Speaker 07

  Right, it's really a preparation, a structure to continue your own learning. Now, there are always people who can self-educate, who can make up for the gaps and things like that, but it's really rare, and I don't think we should encourage, as a matter of course, people to simply go out on their own and just hope for the best, hope they can make it, because it's very difficult, particularly when you're young, to foresee the kind of decisions you're gonna make, the kind of topics you're gonna be interested in 20 years from then.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where's your allegiance? Wasn't it to the NSA? Didn't you swear allegiance to be Secret Agent Man? I mean...

• 11:28Speaker 07

  You know, that's a really good question, because that's actually a fairly common criticism, was some say, you know, "I broke an oath." But they actually aren't familiar with the way that the oath and the nondisclosure agreements and so on, the secrecy agreements work in the intelligence community. I didn't swear an oath to secrecy. There's no such thing when you join the CIA or the NSA. It doesn't exist. There is a government form called SF 312, a standard form of bureaucratic legalities, that's a civil nondisclosure agreement, that says you should not disclose secret or classified information or whatever, there would be possibly civil criminal penalties and so on if this occurs.

• 12:11Speaker 07

  But then, at the very first day, you walk into service as a government officer, a staff officer at the Central Intelligence Agency, you take what's called the oath of service, which is not to secrecy, which is not to protect classified information, it's to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign or domestic. So, the question is, what do you do when your obligations come in conflict? When you have a standard government form on one hand, a civil agreement, a nondisclosure agreement?

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  SF 113, whatever.

• 12:41Speaker 07

  SF 312.

• 12:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  312, okay.

• 12:46Speaker 07

  And then you've got the Constitution on the other. And it also matters, what is the significance of these breaches? There's a question here of, is this something that's a, some sort of minor one-off departure from regulations? Or is this a fundamental, continuing, and massive violation of the Constitution? When you have the National Security Agency, for example, as the court that operating outside of the law, in fact, in violation of it, and violating the Fourth Amendment rights of 330 million Americans every second of every day, that, I think, for most people would change their calculus.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is Ben Franklin's famous quote your favorite motto? So, excuse me, I have to like write it down here. "Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve either."

• 13:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's amazing how many lessons we can draw from history, from people who lived so far before us, without the benefit of our knowledge, without the benefit of our technology, and yet, they realized that there are certain fundamental principles, certain fundamental values, that are not dependent on time or place. They're valuable to everyone, everywhere.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Last season, my conversation with Seth MacFarlane was chosen as one of your favorite episodes, and this year, you selected him again. He's an executive producer of Cosmos, a space-time odyssey, but is best known as the creator of the hit adult cartoon series, Family Guy. He joined us again in our sixth season to discuss the science in Family Guy, believe it or not, with co-host Chuck Nice and science guest, my friend and colleague, Charles Liu.

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At some point, I had to find you and talk to you about the science in Family Guy.

• 14:42Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just have to watch a few shows, and it's in there. It's in there deep.

• 14:48Speaker 08

  When I was a kid, I was, you know, I was, I was in a church choir. I went to Sunday school and I went to a regular school. And, you know, my parents believed in exposing me to everything and letting me figure it out for myself. And eventually I said, "Oh, well, these guys are, you know, making these assertions, and these guys are making these assertions, but these guys are backing it up with something. These guys are offering evidence, and so that seems a little more trustworthy."

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:17Speaker 08

  And, and so I was kind of drawn to, to, to science because it seemed that...

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You arrived there derived from your own curiosity?

• 15:25Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting.

• 15:27Speaker 08

  I actually wasn't a great science student in school.

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think you don't, it's not that, you don't have to be, you just have to enjoy it.

• 15:34Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whether or not you're good at it, and people try to equate the two, but I don't think that's a prerequisite.

• 15:39Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's, it's, and then, you know, obviously I discovered the original Cosmos and Carl Sagan and, and...

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the time you saw the original Cosmos, did you have any idea that you would one day be executive producer on the next Cosmos?

• 15:52Speaker 08

  Didn't, didn't occur to me. Didn't occur to me. It was, was, was not something that, that ever crossed my mind.

• 15:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  During your early flatulence humor with Peter Griffin, you're not thinking, "I'm gonna executive produce Cosmos one day."

• 16:04Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 07

  We now return to Carl Sagan's Cosmos, edited for Rednecks.

• 16:15Speaker 09

  I'm Carl Sagan. Just how old is our planet? Scientists believe it's four... Hundreds and hundreds of years old. Scientists have determined that the universe was created by a god. Big Bang. If you look at the bones of a Jesus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, it's clear by the use of carbon dating that... Mountain Dew is the best soda ever made.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I knew you were gonna pick that one, Neil. How did I know you were gonna pick that one? Oh, God. So, that's being extremely politically incorrect to make a whole other point. And so, so comedy can do that. And he's mixing a little bit of science, because he's referencing the original Cosmos from 1980.

• 16:58Speaker 08

  Which is very cool. And what's even more cool is, I believe I heard the word Jesusaurus in there.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I had to, I have Seth MacFarlane in my office. I had to ask him directly about that Carl Saganic click. Let's check it out.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that, you voicing Carl?

• 17:22Speaker 08

  That was me, that was me doing Carl.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got me hearing a little Carl.

• 17:25Speaker 08

  That was me doing Carl Sagan.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carl Sagan. And he gave a little turtleneck, so yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 08

  What we're looking at is the fossil of a Jesusaurus Rex. So they dubbed over.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 17:39Speaker 08

  They dubbed over.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the beginning, there was the big god.

• 17:45Speaker 08

  Igbang.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, I mean, I was on the floor. So it meant you knew Cosmos, you cared about Carl Sagan, you cared about sort of scientific truths, of course. And so, and that didn't have to be in there. It's a frickin' cartoon, you know, but it was there. And so there were statements being made. And, and you must be aware of the sort of the political weight that you're, that you're voting in these scenes, right?

• 18:12Speaker 08

  Yeah, that's, that's difficult, I think, for, for both of us to, to walk that line. Because you, you have, you know, you're servicing an audience. And at the same time, you, you kind of have a duty to the truth. So, you know, it's that, it's that balance. But it's at a certain point, I think, you know, the truth has to win out. You just have to say, you know what, I'm, I'm, I'm just gonna tell it like it is.

• 18:40Speaker 10

  Where are we? This is Cohog, Brian. Same year, same time. But in this universe, Christianity never existed. Which means the Dark Ages of scientific repression never occurred, and thus humanity is a thousand years more advanced.

• 18:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He went there! So I came back to Seth to get him to comment on that multiverse episode. Because that episode goes to many other kinds of universes.

• 19:07Speaker 08

  Yes, it does.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was just one of them. We picked that one. I had to ask him about that, but let's find out what he says. This is present-day Cohog.

• 19:14Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in a universe where... what was it?

• 19:18Speaker 08

  Where Christianity had never been, had never come to power. Christianity had never evolved into a major religion, because...

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And science then took hold a thousand years earlier.

• 19:28Speaker 08

  Because, right, the ancient Ionians knew much of the science that had to be rediscovered during the Renaissance.

• 19:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, a lot of rediscovering.

• 19:36Speaker 08

  But it was squelched for, what, a thousand years?

• 19:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Essentially, essentially, yeah.

• 19:40Speaker 08

  And what I always wonder about that is, is that is that a thousand years that we needed to morally evolve ourselves to be ready for the technology that we have? Or would we...

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That implies we are morally ready for the technology.

• 19:53Speaker 08

  Yeah, right, right.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It comes with that.

• 19:55Speaker 08

  Or would we have gotten there much sooner?

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think often...

• 19:59Speaker 08

  Both technologically and ethically.

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, I ask myself often, in the timeline of history, subtract the Dark Ages. Would we have landed on the moon in the year 1500?

• 20:09Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And is that even a conceivable thing?

• 20:12Speaker 08

  Right, yeah, right.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A year 1500, would we have landed on the moon? Now, a lot of other fields of science have to progress alongside it.

• 20:19Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need the chemistry, you need material science.

• 20:22Speaker 08

  Sure.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need all of this. But in principle, 500 years, you know, you have the technology earlier, so you drive it. You know, but would we have gotten rid of slavery earlier, you know? How does that, how does that play out?

• 20:36Speaker 08

  Yeah, that's the question. Is it, does that go hand in hand?

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

• 20:42Speaker 08

  It seems to me, I mean, I got an art school degree, what do I know? It seems to me it would be more likely that it would have to go hand in hand. Because I think with, with a greater knowledge of science goes a greater wisdom.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to Startalk. This special time capsule episode is a hodgepodge of your favorite moments from all of season six. One of your best loved shows featured my interview with Baz Landsdorpe, founder of the Mars One mission. He's the guy who wants to take humans to Mars and then leave them there. This episode, I'm joined by co-host Eugene Mirman and former astronaut Mike Massimino. I also talk with Ryan McDonald, one of the top 100 candidates hoping for a one-way ticket.

• 21:52Speaker 11

  The difference between Mars One and a lot of other ideas is that we are proposing a mission of permanent settlement, a one-way trip, which takes away the biggest complexity of the more standard mission, which is, in my opinion, the return trip. I mean, it's hard to get back. That's true. It's hard to launch rockets from Earth. With 100 engineers checking the rocket at the last moment, all the conditions are controlled, let alone launching a rocket from Earth to depart from Mars, flying through space, waiting on Mars for two or four years, and then launching without any supervision or checks. And from my point of view, that's practically impossible. And that's why I came up with the idea of permanent settlement.

• 22:34Speaker 11

  Now, if you have such ideas, presumably you have a rocket or some way to get to Mars. We're not an aerospace company, so we're not going to build the rocket. We're actually not going to build any system. We try to source them from established aerospace suppliers all around the world, mostly in the US. So you don't have to invent something to do this? No, because it is permanent settlement, there's no new inventions needed. Of course, a lot of design, a lot of testing, a lot of building before we can actually do it. But no new inventions are needed to get humans to Mars and to keep them alive there.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Mike.

• 23:13Speaker 12

  Yeah, where do we start with this?

• 23:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, why? He says no new inventions. We've been to Mars. Wait, let's back up. Back up. Okay, so it's not like we don't know how to get to Mars. We know how to get to Mars.

• 23:25Speaker 12

  Right, but he's right as far as coming back is where a lot of the cost is. I mean, even that's what a lot of the dangers. The guys that went to the moon, when they went there, they not only did they have to land, but they had to get back. It was another launch that they had from the moon. Mike Collins, I heard him speaking about it, said that when on Apollo 11, he was pretty sure he would be able to come back alive because he didn't have the added complexity of landing and then having to launch.

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mike Collins was in the command module that never landed.

• 23:51Speaker 12

  Right, he did not land. Buzz Alden, Neil Armstrong on the moon, they were, there is a much different situation for them. And they were worried about the abort light and, you know, did they have to abort before they landed and so on? Because once you got there, you had to be able to come back. And it is really risky. He's right about all that. But as far as, you know, but that's kind of the point is to come back. You know, if you want to come back, that's what you have to do.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but if you want to come back, you're not signing up for his mission. So what's your, so you got.

• 24:15Speaker 12

  Alright, okay, fine. Let's go to the next topic.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  So it's all people who want to go and stay on Mars?

• 24:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, but he wants the people to arrive alive, correct? He didn't say that.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  No, he wants the people to die halfway and stay there.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now that I agree with he can do. 200,000 applicants, down to 100.

• 24:36Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And guess what? I've got one of those 100 on video call right now. Ryan McDonald.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Alright.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a master student in physics at Oxford University in the UK. And we should throw to him right now. You got him on line? There he goes. Hey!

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're one of the successful candidates. So why did you show up among the 200,000? What special talents did you have?

• 25:10Speaker 13

  Well, I think principally it's about the mind that you have. You need to be able to rapidly absorb large quantities of information and be able to apply them in an unfamiliar context. Because as long as you have a good brain, you can be taught whatever skills you require. Obviously, I have a physics background. It helps me. I can solve my differential equations and the like. But I know very little about medicine, for instance, which I'll have to learn as part of this. So I like to think that I've demonstrated that I can learn the skills that I need to be able to, to train for a mission such like this.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there was an exam they gave you to demonstrate this talent?

• 25:39Speaker 13

  Yes, but we've only been tested as individuals up to this point. It's the group dynamic which ultimately decides who gets selected to go into training for this, and that's still coming up. That's why I see, it's the one thing that I've noticed that all the 100 candidates at this point share in common, and that's it. We're fundamental optimists who are in this in order to give something back to the world as a whole. It's not about running away to Mars and leaving problems behind, it's about how we can make the world a better place.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  It isn't about escaping your problems on Mars?

• 26:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, who are you in debt to here on Earth?

• 26:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is a lot of unpaid credit cards.

• 26:16Speaker 13

  Oh, well, um... When I signed the contract for my student loan, it didn't say anything about moving to a different planet.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's right, that's right. But you'll be leaving family and friends and loved ones on Earth, and you're okay with that? Or rather, are they okay with that?

• 26:34Speaker 13

  Well, so, my family's always been really supportive of everything that I've wanted to do in life. They know that this is what I want to do more than anything else, and that I want to do it for the right reasons. If my involvement as a candidate in this mission can get even a single young person inspired about space exploration, it's more than worth it for me.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It seems our fans couldn't get enough of Richard Dawkins this season. Also among your top picks was Exploration of Science and Religion with studio guest Reverend James Martin. Co-host Eugene Mirman joins us to figure out if science and religion are compatible. As you may know, atheists as a community are ranked last in who anyone would elect to high office. Last, after, you know, serial killers or something, I mean...

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Is it because they're preachy?

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, there's, in some ways, a bias, a discriminatory force in society against atheists. Have you thought of this? In fact, let me lead with the clip, and then we'll get your reaction to it. Richard Dawkins in my office.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  I think you're exaggerating the desire of the secular movement to convert everybody to our point of view. We're not like missionaries knocking on the door and sort of saying, "Have you found Jesus?" and that sort of thing.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or have you not found Jesus?

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you lost Jesus yet?

• 27:59Speaker 04

  It isn't really like that. It's rather more, "We want to convert you not to atheism, but to the view that atheists should not be discriminated against." That there should not be...

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a purer message there.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  It's a purer message, and it's it's a very important one in the United States where where atheists can't get elected to Congress. You don't have to say, "Yes, I'm converted. I'm now a born-again atheist," but you have to say, "I no longer will discriminate against somebody because of his lack of religion." When I vote, I will look at the look at the record and vote on other grounds. There are real problems with young people coming out, just like there was coming out as gay, with their parents. I mean, you know, teenagers thrown out of the house because they've come out as an atheist.

• 28:55Speaker 14

  Well, I mean, I agree with him. Atheists should not be discriminated against, and I should say, you know, in the old saying, "Some of my best friends are atheists and agnostics," but I'd also say, you know, it's ironic, you know, he said he's not a missionary, but he does have a mission. I mean, his mission, he's written all of these books, and his mission is to convince people, not only the validity of atheism, but that, you know, religious people are basically...

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe he was thinking door-to-door missionaries.

• 29:16Speaker 14

  Yeah, but his mission, the thing that kind of compels him and sends him out is to convince people that not only that atheism is correct, but also that religious people are basically idiots, you know, so when we're talking about discrimination, we have to be careful. There are places where people who are religious, you know, are seen as basically insane or idiots, so there's that too.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except you can't discriminate unless you have the power to do so.

• 29:40Speaker 14

  True.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a well-known fact. So you can't say that atheists are discriminating against anybody when atheists are not in charge of anything.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  They run some bars.

• 29:50Speaker 14

  I mean, I'm not gonna claim discrimination, but you know, there have been places where I have been, you know, in social situations and, you know, public events, where people assume, you know, that you're basically, that I am basically, an idiot, or I don't believe in evolution, or I don't believe in science, or I'm small-minded, or I'm homophobic, or I'm sexist, or whatever, because I wear a collar, or because I'm religious. So there is that kind of...

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they started the conversation with that bias, against you?

• 30:13Speaker 14

  Yeah, yeah, and so I do experience that, so...

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then you enlightened them.

• 30:17Speaker 14

  Right, and I think, and I'm against...

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that's why I don't associate with any label, other than that as a scientist. I don't even go there. I said, "You're gonna have to have the conversation with me..."

• 30:26Speaker 14

  I agree.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "...and then formulate whatever the hell you wanna call me after that."

• 30:29Speaker 14

  And that's why I think it's difficult for...

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry, I used "whatever the hell," sorry.

• 30:31Speaker 14

  No, not at all. I think that's why it's difficult to say...

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever the heaven you wanna call me, after that.

• 30:35Speaker 14

  I agree, and that's why I think it's difficult, or we shouldn't say, "Religious people think this," or "Religious people think that," because it is a label that is applied to people, and often applied to make them seem uneducated, insane, or just idiots. And it's as if you have to check your brain at the door.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's check in, on Bill Nye's weekly rant.

• 30:56Speaker 15

  Can science and religion coexist? Well, sure. There are billions of deeply religious people all around the world, who accept the laws of nature, as we discovered through the process of science. Most of the astronomy that we started with, was developed in the Islamic world, about a millennium ago. And the calendar that everybody uses all over the world, was developed by Jesuit priests. Heck, the Vatican has its own astronomer, for crying out loud. But from time to time, you'll meet people who insist that the Earth is somehow six or 10,000 years old. Well, that's just not possible. When we look at rocks like this, we can find where radioactive elements have replaced non-radioactive elements that have the same chemistry,

• 31:40Speaker 15

  and we've determined that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, not thousand years old. About half of what we learn, we learn informally, in places like this, in museums. So I encourage you all to come to a museum like this one, and listen to the rocks.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the most iconic voices of our time emanates from Sir David Attenborough. He's a BBC broadcaster and naturalist whose filmography spans the entire breadth of life on our planet. In this episode, the story of life on Earth, my co-host Eugene Mirman and guest Bill Nye dig into my conversation with a man who's widely considered a British national treasure, often voted as the person most wanted to be everyone's grandfather. Your filmography is huge, I don't need to repeat that here, everyone knows it, but what intrigues me about it is it spans the entire breadth of life on Earth.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not just mammals, as we all favor in zoos and things, it's not just birds, as bird collectors would... It's insects, it's plants. Here's one, have you done one on fungi?

• 32:51Speaker 16

  I mentioned, yeah, yeah, of course we didn't, as you rightly infer, plants are not fungi, are not plants, they're a different kingdom altogether. But actually, there's only one single subject we're covering, and that's the history of life. But in fact, it's the history, why they appeared in the order they did, why they changed into the way they did.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an important sociocultural observation, because we look around the world and we say, this is one kind of life, that's another kind of life, here's one kind of plant, and what you're saying is, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but if we take a step back, put it all together and say, this is life on Earth, and we're part of that system, that's a whole other outlook.

• 33:28Speaker 16

  Well, that's what I've been trying to do all my life, really.

• 33:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you think you've succeeded?

• 33:33Speaker 16

  That's for others to say. I mean, you can chronicle the history of life in a surprisingly detailed way, in quite a short period. You know, that life starts in the deep sea, and it leads to different kinds of invertebrates, and shells, and crustaceans, and shrimps, and so on. But then there are fish with backbones, and fish with backbones emerge onto land and become amphibians with wet skins, and amphibians with wet skins get dry skins and become reptiles, and some of the reptiles turn their scaly skins into feathers and become birds, and the others turn them into hairs and become mammals.

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is Biology 101 in 30 seconds.

• 34:10Speaker 16

  But that's what the history is, and you can put as much or as little detail on that skeleton as you like.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you have put great detail on it.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you hopeful about our future as humans on Earth?

• 34:23Speaker 16

  I think our grandchildren, looking back, saying those blokes back there, the beginning of the 12th century, 13th and 1st century, had it good, much better than we've got it now, I think they'll say.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're not hopeful about the future?

• 34:36Speaker 16

  No, I think it's going, I think things are going to get worse, or less comfortable. They get more comfortable for some people, some people who haven't got it pretty good now, I mean, they will either disappear from that part of the world, or else their living standards will be increased a bit. But by and large, I mean, the people who are living high on the hog, which is you and me.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 34:56Speaker 16

  Our equivalents won't be quite so high.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. And so it's a, it's a reality check on the excesses of, of modern life.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so he, he thinks we're, that's it.

• 35:07Speaker 17

  You know what's funny is that every scientist you talk to, I don't care what their particular concentration, if they know anything about science, they're not hopeful. No one says, "You know what, it's gonna be great." You know, I mean, people need to wake up and realize that every single scientific mind in the world, basically says, "Hey, you know what, we might be in trouble."

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, are you hopeful, 'cause you're, you're our last hope here.

• 35:32Speaker 15

  I'm always optimistic. If you're not optimistic, you're not gonna take action and get things done. But I say it's gonna be a close call, and this is not an extraordinary claim. It's gonna be a, a, a tough nut to crack. So what we wanna do is have a fee for carbon, carbon dioxide production, and then we will return the fee to the people.

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Power to the people.

• 35:56Speaker 15

  Because...

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I didn't know Bill was a communist, man. Had I known that before, I invited him on the show.

• 36:01Speaker 15

  But here's the trouble.

• 36:02Speaker 17

  I can hear Ted Cruz right now.

• 36:03Speaker 15

  Okay, so Ted, Ted, here's the trouble. Where's the model for this? Collect, using, um, wealth from the public and redistributing it to the people. Well, I don't know, don't they call that socialism? Yeah, and where is it in the United States? Alaska. Alaska has the Alaska.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have a reverse income tax. That's right. Yeah. The state makes money. My wife came from Alaska. Oh my, that's right. Yeah, so every family gets, it's like a thousand dollars per, I don't know what it is now.

• 36:34Speaker 15

  This year it's eighteen hundred.

• 36:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, in her day it was a thousand dollars per member of the family, which also meant you might want to have more babies, but it's per year. And this is the, it's called, it's a tax, um, a negative tax rate for their oil profits that they make.

• 36:49Speaker 15

  Alaska Production Fund, yes.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:51Speaker 15

  So we could do this and this would provide economic incentives, which I think is the key to getting her done.

• 37:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We're reaching back into the season six archives to listen to some of your favorite conversations. With your help, we were able to narrow down our favorite moments. One of your favorite episodes featured my interview with Professor Brian Cox. Along with co-host Maeve Higgins, join me under the Hayden Sphere of the Hayden Planetarium to discuss the value of science. Is there any tradition, forgive my ignorance here, of British superheroes? Or is it really an American phenomenon?

• 37:55Speaker 18

  It's a good question. A British superhero. There must be one. I'm gonna get.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You see, then there isn't. If you have to say, I wonder, there's surely, no, then there's none.

• 38:05Speaker 18

  Sherlock Holmes. Is that a superhero?

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No!

• 38:08Speaker 18

  He's got, he's almost.

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He has powers of deduction. He doesn't have physical other powers.

• 38:14Speaker 18

  Yeah.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of our superheroes can do something no other human on earth can do. Where you can imagine being Sherlock Holmes.

• 38:22Speaker 18

  Well, you can imagine Iron Man. There's an engineer.

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 38:26Speaker 18

  So, so he doesn't have superpowers in himself, does he? It's all.

• 38:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 38:30Speaker 18

  So you could compare, could you?

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, but just give me one from British culture. So if it's not, then it's interesting to me that that is an American phenomenon.

• 38:39Speaker 18

  King Arthur.

• 38:41Speaker 18

  He's waiting, isn't he, in suspended animation?

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, hang on there.

• 38:44Speaker 18

  To rise up.

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He pulled the sword, but that's it, right?

• 38:47Speaker 18

  Yeah, he's not very impressive. He's not Spider-Man. But he, but he... But he's been around for...

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can he fly? Can bullets bounce off his head?

• 38:56Speaker 18

  No, but he's Captain America.

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, what I'm probing here, for the first time, is trying to understand what is in the American psyche, that we generate superheroes by the dozens. And here we have a culture as near to American culture as exists in the world, in the UK, and there isn't this tradition of superheroes saving the day, or supervillains to go against the superheroes.

• 39:20Speaker 18

  Yeah.

• 39:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I'm curious what's behind that.

• 39:23Speaker 18

  Maybe that's part of the American culture that's to be celebrated, that you have this idea. You know, from Kennedy's speech, I've always thought, actually, that that speech that Kennedy made was, for me, is the image of America that I have, which is, we choose to go to the moon, not because it's easy, but because it's hard. You know, that thing, we build a rocket, our materials have not been invented to do it, you know, that wonderful thing. And it seems to me to be quite a uniquely, certainly 20th-century American ideal, that you'll, you can do this, and you can walk on the moon before this decade is out. That's a superhero thing to do, isn't it?

• 39:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 39:57Speaker 18

  So maybe it's to be celebrated, just thinking about it, that that's maybe part of the American psyche.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Might we not have gone to the moon if we didn't have superhero mission statements?

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to ask him, just because it's been in the news, would he go on that one-way trip to Mars? I just, I like collecting people's opinions and views.

• 40:17Speaker 06

  Is it because he's like your UK competition, so you're like...

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would he go, or would he not? I don't know.

• 40:23Speaker 06

  Why don't you go to Mars, Brian?

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go to Mars, and don't come back.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's check it out.

• 40:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there are plans for people to take a one-way trip to Mars. Are you gonna sign up?

• 40:34Speaker 18

  No. Why would you do that? Why would anyone wanna do that?

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thousands of people have lined up to go on this one-way trip to Mars.

• 40:42Speaker 18

  I know, but that wasn't ever the trick. The great thing about Apollo was the return of the thing. It was always a Kennedy speech, wasn't it? It was to go to the moon and come safely back to Earth. That's a difficult bit.

• 40:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a key word, safely.

• 40:54Speaker 18

  Yeah, it's not particularly difficult, I think. It wouldn't be difficult to go on a one-way trip to the moon, I think, even now.

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 40:59Speaker 18

  You could do it.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:01Speaker 18

  But it's getting back off the moon again.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's not as technologically challenging as the full round trip. But the idea of just pitching tent on another planet?

• 41:14Speaker 18

  It doesn't appeal to me. I don't think there's much to do there.

• 41:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like Earth too.

• 41:18Speaker 18

  There are very few restaurants on Mars. There are very few... Yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 18

  So, you know, but it is interesting. I mean, and it's interesting that the framework is a reality TV show, essentially. And is that what exploration has become? Is that what we want exploration to be, a reality TV show? I'm not sure, actually. Well, I am sure. I don't think that's what exploration is.

• 41:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want it to be that.

• 41:47Speaker 18

  No, I don't. I don't want that to be the way that we have to resort to funding, essentially killing a load of people, which is essentially what it is, on television. That's really what it is. Is that really the way we want to fund the expansion of the frontiers of our knowledge? I'm not really sure.

• 42:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of my favorite conversations this season, and indeed, your number-one favorite episode according to your votes, was about the future of humanity with the one and only Elon Musk. He's the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, and is considered to be a real live Iron Man, Tony Stark. Co-host Chuck Nice and science guest Bill Nye the Science Guy join me to explore the future of our world with a man who is helping to forge it.

• 42:32Speaker 19

  When I was in college, I sort of thought, well, what are the things that are most going to affect the future of humanity? And electric cars, solar power, essentially sustainable.

• 42:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most people are thinking, I just want a job when I get out. And you're trying to reshape humanity as an undergraduate.

• 42:45Speaker 19

  I mean, it's pretty, in America, it's pretty easy to keep yourself alive. So, I mean, my threshold for existing is pretty low. I mean, I figured I could like be in some Dench apartment with my computer and be okay and not stop. In fact, when I first came to North America, I was in Canada when I was seventeen, and just to sort of see what it takes to live, I'd try to live on one dollar a day, which I was able to do. You sort of just buy food in bulk at the supermarket.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rice and beans and the...

• 43:12Speaker 19

  Yeah, I went more for the hot dogs, hot dogs and oranges. But you get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after a while. And of course, like, you know, pasta and a green pepper and a big thing of sauce, and that can go pretty far, too. So I was like, oh, okay, you know, if I can live for a dollar a day, then at least from a food cost standpoint, well, it's pretty easy to earn like thirty dollars in a month, you know?

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I would think.

• 43:38Speaker 19

  So probably be okay.

• 43:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that allowed you to not have to worry about money because you did the experiment?

• 43:43Speaker 19

  Yeah, I did the experiment, exactly.

• 43:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this was an important psychological, philosophical anchor for you, not to put words in your mouth, but that's a starting point to launch anywhere you want to go.

• 43:53Speaker 19

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so now you've got a baseline, a life baseline, from which to go new places, intellectually, psychologically, financially. So what came first, thoughts of an electric car or thoughts of space?

• 44:06Speaker 19

  You know, when you're starting out in college, like in your freshman and sophomore, you're like, you have these sort of sophomoric philosophical wanderings. And I try to think of, okay, what are the things that, well, seem to me would most affect the future of humanity? There were really five things, three of which I thought would be interesting to be involved in. The three that I thought were, would definitely be positive would be the internet, sustainable energy, both production and consumption, and space exploration, more specifically, the extension of life beyond a, on a permanent basis. And then, although I never thought I'd actually be involved in that, that was something I thought that was important in the abstract, but not something I thought I would ever have an opportunity to be involved in. And then the fourth one was artificial intelligence, and the fifth one was rewriting human genetics. These were just the five things that I thought would most affect the future of humanity.

• 44:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, did you want to change humanity when you went to college? I didn't even want to change my underwear when I was in college. Are you kidding me? Bill, you're engineer man, do you agree with this list?

• 45:01Speaker 15

  Yeah, it's a pretty cool list.

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a cool list.

• 45:03Speaker 15

  I would have included educating women and girls, raising the standard of living of women and girls so that the human population of the world will slowly become more manageable.

• 45:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A greater tapping the lost intellectual capital.

• 45:18Speaker 19

  From a terrestrial standpoint, the biggest problem we need to solve on Earth this century is sustainable production and consumption of energy. This really is quite a serious problem. People really should take this quite seriously. Even if you put the environmental consequences of dramatically changing the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere aside, we will eventually run out of oil.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hold me that aside.

• 45:42Speaker 19

  Well, if we don't find a solution to burning oil for transport and we then run out of oil, the economy will collapse and civilization will come to an end, or as we know it.

• 45:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With or without global warming?

• 45:54Speaker 19

  Yeah, with or without, exactly. I mean, and so if we know that we have to ultimately get off oil no matter what, we know that that is an inescapable outcome. It's simply a question of when, not if. Then why would you run this crazy experiment of changing the chemical composition of the atmospheric oceans by adding enormous amounts of CO2 that have been buried since the pre-Cambrian era? That's crazy. That is the dumbest experiment in history by far.

• 46:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The problem is, it's not even-

• 46:21Speaker 19

  Can you think of a dumber experiment? I honestly cannot. What good could possibly come of it?

• 46:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So therefore, we need another solution here. But of course, electric cars still uses coal.

• 46:35Speaker 19

  That's why you need sustainable power production, like solar and wind.

• 46:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which can still charge your car.

• 46:39Speaker 19

  Yes. I mean, I'm quite worried about artificial superintelligence these days. I think, and I've said this publicly, I think it's maybe something more dangerous than nuclear weapons. So we should be really careful about that. If there was a very deep, super-digital, superintelligence that was created that could go into rapid recursive self-improvement in a non-Logarithmic way, then, you know, that was-

• 47:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's self-learning?

• 47:02Speaker 19

  Yes. So like, it just could reprogram itself to be smarter and iterate very quickly and do that 24 hours a day on millions of computers, well-

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then that's all she wrote.

• 47:12Speaker 19

  That's all she wrote.

• 47:15Speaker 19

  I mean, we will be like a Pat Lappert or if we're lucky. I have a pet Labrador, by the way.

• 47:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'll be their pets.

• 47:22Speaker 19

  It's like the friendliest creature.

• 47:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they'll domesticate us, so that we will be lap pets to them.

• 47:29Speaker 19

  Yes. I mean, or something strange is gonna happen.

• 47:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'll keep the docile humans and get rid of the violent ones, and then breed the docile humans.

• 47:38Speaker 19

  Yeah, I mean, the utility function of the digital superintelligence is of stupendous importance. What does it try to optimize? And we need to be really careful with saying, oh, how about human happiness? Because it may conclude that all unhappy humans should be terminated. And that we should all just be captured and with dopamine and serotonin directly injected into our brains to maximize

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Happiness.

• 48:02Speaker 19

  Happiness, because it's concluded that dopamine and serotonin are what cause happiness.

• 48:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Therefore.

• 48:06Speaker 19

  Therefore maximize. I'm just saying, I'm just saying we should exercise caution.

• 48:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. Join us next time for part two of our time capsule show, where we will relive your favorite cosmic inquiry moments. That's all for now. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.