Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast A Universe of Inspiration (Repeat) About this episode Explore how science has inspired art through the ages, from Leonardo da Vinci to computer games, when Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews artist Peter Max. With co-host Lynne Koplitz and guest Bill Nye.
Transcript 10,523 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Today, we're going to talk about the universe as it inspires the creativity of artists. Artists throughout time and artists of all kinds, not only painters but sculptors and the like.
0:31 Speaker 01 That's very interesting.
0:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've liked it because I've, you know, scientists, we hang out together and sometimes we're not appreciated as much as we would like to be for whatever reasons. And occasionally, we see some of what we, our handiwork, reflected in the creativity of artists themselves, and we say to ourselves, "Maybe we're becoming mainstream."
0:51 Speaker 01 Maybe we're creative and we're not nerds.
0:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, well, no.
0:56 Speaker 01 Let's take credit for that. Okay, I'll take credit for it too.
1:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, actually, I saw enough of this happen, so a few years ago, I wrote an essay for Natural History Magazine called "The Universe as the Artist's Muse."
1:07 Speaker 01 Dude, you have a family. Do you ever not, you're always writing, you're like, "I wrote a book about that."
1:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, because I got, what I do, okay?
1:14 Speaker 01 That inspired the symphony I wrote.
1:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So...
1:17 Speaker 01 You're great, Neil. I'm happy that I get off the couch, but that's great.
1:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, no, it was an essay because I was impressed by how often I was being called by artists to get the latest image from the Hubble telescope, where they wanted to find out the latest understanding of the Big Bang, or black holes, or Mars, so that they can paint a scene, something inspired by it.
1:36 Speaker 01 I mean, even as a comic, you know, artists tend to look at, we're people, all artists, whether it's writer, comedian, or visual artist, you know, we tend to look at the whole world. We look at everything, over, under, in, out.
1:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I agree. I just don't think science was in that portfolio until recently.
1:54 Speaker 01 Well, science is part of the world.
1:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is definitely part of the world. In fact, it shapes the world. And so, I think science has come a long way in terms of being felt by the general public. And so, let's see what Bill Nye has to say.
2:08 Speaker 01 Oh, Bill Nye.
2:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill, he's my boy, Bill. You know, Bill is, Bill, he's got to set the tone.
2:14 Speaker 01 He's a shaky little manic man we love.
2:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill, give it to me.
2:18 Speaker 02 Hey, Bill Nye, the Science Guy here. When you think of a planet in your mind's eye, what do you see? Many of us see Saturn. But no one could envision such a thing until astronomers, starting with Galileo, drew sketches of this and other worlds. I've seen Saturn rings, Saturn brooches, Saturn ladies' pumps, dress shoes with jeweled Saturns instead of bows. How sexy is that? With images of distant stellar clouds and our so-called nearby worlds, we can make planetary art from photographs. If you've never taken a bit of time with the Voyager spacecraft's pale blue dot, well, you must. And thanks to a spacecraft named after another astronomer, Cassini, you can see our world through the thin rings of another.
2:59 Speaker 02 You can see the Earth beyond the rings of Saturn, backlit by the sun. It's a photo. It's astronomy. But for me, it's inspirational. It's art. This is Bill Nye, hoping that after we're done star talking, you do a bit of star looking at the works inspired by distant worlds and heavenly wonders.
3:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh.
3:17 Speaker 01 That was very deep, Bill Nye.
3:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill, it's deep in one minute. That's a Bill Nye minute for you.
3:22 Speaker 01 It's inspirational.
3:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, yes. And, you know, when you think of the first of the artists to be fully scientifically inspired...
3:30 Speaker 01 I was just gonna say, who are we gonna talk about first?
3:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You gotta, it's gotta be Leonardo. Leonardo da Vinci. There's no, there's nobody like him before or since. I mean, here's a guy who, who was on top of science. He was all over engineering. He was in architecture. And, oh, by the way, he painted on the side. This guy, and he used to do experiments in physics, physics experiments. The word physics didn't quite have, was defined back then. But he would do experiments in motion and weights and...
3:57 Speaker 01 And wait, now he did this for his art?
3:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I, I don't know if it's for his art, but he did it in a way that then influenced his art. I don't know if that was the point of why he did these experiments. He was a smart, curious guy. You're smart and curious, you play with stuff.
4:13 Speaker 01 So he was one of those guys that activated both sides of his brain?
4:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, completely. If you did like one of these scans on his brain, it would be firing at every, every cubic inch that was in there.
4:21 Speaker 01 Great guy to date.
4:25 Speaker 01 I think he sounds great. I just I'm just saying some of these guys in history. I go, oh, he'd be a good like Galileo, great boyfriend, Da Vinci, not so much.
4:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, he's okay. Well, because he'd be too distracted by his own thoughts rather than by you.
4:36 Speaker 01 And I like someone who's yeah, like who's manipulated easily, not someone like that.
4:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would not happen with Leonardo, for sure.
4:42 Speaker 01 No, but but tell me more about him.
4:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So so first, he's considered one of those brilliant people who ever lived. And you look at his writings, all the the subjects that he touched, geology, physics, biology. And on the side, he he was a painter, right? And so one of my favorite parts, oh, by the way, you know about his, he drew a first, a model for a helicopter. It turns out it wouldn't work if you actually built it, but but he's thinking about flying. He's thinking about flying and not just saying, gee, wouldn't it be great if I had wings and I flew like a bird? He's actually trying to draw a machine that could make that happen.
5:16 Speaker 01 Oh, so he was one of the first people who started with machinery?
5:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, yes. To bring machinery to the to the task of ideas, rather than just imagining that you had wax wings like like Icarus trying to fly to the sun. He says, look, dude, you need some machines to do this.
5:29 Speaker 01 And that's more like who I would date.
5:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So so you've got this. And and with Leonardo, he's he's he's he embraced all knowledge. And with all of that knowledge, it infused into his artistic expression.
5:42 Speaker 01 How did it infuse in his art? What did it do?
5:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, okay, did you did you know that he?
5:49 Speaker 01 Probably not, but go on.
5:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so he he he basically pioneered, well, he didn't invent perspective. That's something that's been around since ancient Greece, but it got lost. It got lost until the Renaissance. And Renaissance is French for rebirth. And so it's the rebirth.
6:04 Speaker 01 And Leonardo was in the Renaissance?
6:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, he was. Yes, he was.
6:07 Speaker 01 I'm gonna show my ignorance. Okay, so until then, let's let's go back a minute. So let's go back to like the Greeks and Egyptians and all these kind of people like first, okay, Egyptians, when they did hieroglyphics, they were flat.
6:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, all those dudes are flat. Right, right. You look on there like they're all flat. And you never see like a three quarter face of an Egyptian, right? They're always like side on.
6:26 Speaker 01 You didn't see him walking into the distance. There's none of that.
6:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, none of that. They're flat. So.
6:30 Speaker 01 And there were arrows pointing like, then they went that way, then they went that way.
6:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So they were flat.
6:35 Speaker 01 Right.
6:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's the absence of perspective that.
6:37 Speaker 01 Okay, then then who, the Greeks?
6:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, so.
6:40 Speaker 01 Did they have perspective?
6:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, well, so so what so perspective comes in, but it doesn't really take off, right? It's there, it's discovered, they know about it, and it's it's used in the architecture, right? It's there, but you don't you don't see. Paintings that make full use of this until the Renaissance. And so my point is that the the physical principles of light and optics and ray tracing and and in the case of Da Vinci, he was he studied the laws of physics, not they were not known as laws of physics back then, but he wanted to know how things balanced and how things would look if they were imbalanced, because if you draw something that your eye and brain told you doesn't quite look right, it's not as convincing to you. So he wanted to make sure he understood how things worked.
7:22 Speaker 01 I took art in college, and my mother is an artist. And as a kid, I remember one of the things she always used to make me do, and they make you do this in art class in in school, is they make or in college, they make you look at what you thought you saw and what you really saw. And that's what it sounds like you're saying, like, because sometimes what you think you see is not exactly what's there.
7:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because your brain is messing with what what it is you thought you saw. And he's trying to get the the basic data there so he gets it right.
7:45 Speaker 01 My mom makes me squint. You know, you squint, you see what it really is.
7:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know who we have for this week's StarTalk? I spent some time with Peter Max.
7:54 Speaker 01 Oh, that's a big crew.
7:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do you know Peter Max? Remember Peter Max? And he's still around?
7:58 Speaker 01 He's a big pop artist.
7:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Pop artist. And did you know he's deeply inspired by cosmic themes?
8:03 Speaker 01 I wouldn't be surprised by that.
8:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, let's check out what Peter Max had to say. Peter, I understand the universe inspires you. Is that a recent phenomenon or does it go far back?
8:13 Speaker 03 It started when I was about ten, seven years old, living in China. And I was near Tibet, and I met an older man who started talking to me, do you know about the stars and the planets? And I had no clue. And every day would talk about it. And by the time, I think five, six or 10 days went by, it's all I would think about. And what I would go to sleep dreaming about it, thinking about it.
8:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It took only a week for it to just infiltrate your your mind and body?
8:40 Speaker 03 Jumpstart that. And believe it or not, it just grew and grew and grew. There's not a single day in my life. Where I'm not preoccupied with things about planets, stars, the universe. What is this whole thing? There's not a day that goes by where I don't think about it. I wake up in the morning and it's amazing, like some cosmic alarm clock opens my eyes and I think about the universe. I don't think the bed I'm sleeping in, I don't care what day it is, I don't care what today I have to, what it is I have to do today. The first thing is the universe, the cosmos, then I gotta calm this down and then I look at my sheet, what I gotta do today. The first thing is the universe. So you've got it bad. I got it bad. You got it so bad it's good. Yeah, it's unbelievable.
9:24 Speaker 03 That's why when I'm with you, see you on TV, talk to you, even hear your name, forgive me, but I get so inspired by that.
9:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's so nice to me.
9:33 Speaker 01 Forgive me, he says, that's so beautiful, you're his muse.
9:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He didn't have to say that, but that was so nice. So Peter Max, if you remember Peter Max, he wrote all those love posters from the 60s and, yeah, and it's like, he was the artist of a generation.
9:47 Speaker 01 Oh my gosh, you still see all the t-shirts that have the peace sign and the hearts, the big hearts that he did. And I wanted to say, what he said I thought was so sweet about waking up and how the universe inspires him, like he doesn't think about his bed. That's what I'm saying, like artists are so neat because they think in such a bigger...
10:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A bigger canvas, yes.
10:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, and the universe I think is inspirational because it's infinite.
10:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I wonder, I wonder if any listeners, if anything about science or space inspires them, either artistically or otherwise. I know it inspires me and I'm a scientist, it inspires Peter Max and...
10:19 Speaker 01 It inspires me.
10:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then he's an artist, and Lynn.
10:22 Speaker 01 And I'm, you know, something like an artist.
10:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you know, with Da Vinci...
10:25 Speaker 01 So call us, wait, call us.
10:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh yeah, sure, I gotta give you the number.
10:28 Speaker 01 At 877-5STAR-TALK. Tell us what inspires you from art, I mean, from science.
10:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, let us know, because there are many people who are inspired, who are creating art, who are making a difference in this world. And I'm charmed by that, because like I said, to see artists get mainstreamed in that way, if it becomes the subject of art, to see science get mainstreamed in that way. When science becomes the subject of artists, I think science has arrived in the culture in the ways that no one had ever imagined for it. Do you know what?
10:57 Speaker 01 You're just excited about scientists being cool.
11:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do you know what Leonardo did to try to become a better artist?
11:03 Speaker 01 What did he do, Neilie?
11:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's drawing people and so he dug up cadavers.
11:09 Speaker 01 Really?
11:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Dug them up, peel them open to see.
11:12 Speaker 01 Oh gross.
11:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's gross, but if you're committed to your art, you'll do whatever it's.
11:16 Speaker 01 What did he do? He peeled them open? See, this is again, we give, we.
11:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're dead. What do they care? They're dead. Who's gonna know?
11:22 Speaker 01 Jeffrey Dahmer did the same thing and he didn't get credit for being, he did the same thing.
11:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He killed them first. That's different. Leonardo didn't kill them first. They're already dead.
11:30 Speaker 01 Oh, he just dug them up. That's fine.
11:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Dug them up. That, who's gonna know? He dug them up, peeled back the skin.
11:35 Speaker 01 That's weird.
11:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Looked at how the muscles came together, how they formed. He wanted to know what was going on beneath the skin of his subjects.
11:41 Speaker 01 Well, don't, don't they have an exhibit now that bodies exhibit?
11:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, yeah, which I haven't seen yet, but I've read about it.
11:45 Speaker 01 You got downright giddy.
11:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, cuz I wanna go. I wanna take my kids to see it so they can see, they're creeped out. They're, my kids are eight and 12 and they're, they don't wanna go.
11:53 Speaker 01 You should not see that right now, Neil.
11:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're completely creeped by it, but I'm gonna drag them kicking and screaming so they can see what bodies are.
11:58 Speaker 01 Are you really?
11:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's human physiology.
12:00 Speaker 01 And if you create little serial killers, I don't be surprised.
12:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, that's maybe the modern version.
12:06 Speaker 01 Take them to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum where all the normal kids belong right now.
12:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, the prob, so here, here's what's interesting. Had, if we had the bodies exhibit, which is in a lot of the big cities across the country right now, where they have, they have, they have people formally alive, shown without their skin, and you can see how the muscles and all their rest of the body parts come together in different poses and shapes and.
12:27 Speaker 01 Really? So it's like, it's really like a serial killer Disneyland?
12:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I guess so. Well, no, creepy, uh, uh, demented serial killer Disneyland. Yes, cuz yeah, serial killers just kill people. You gotta be demented enough to peel their, their skin back and see what the muscles are doing.
12:42 Speaker 01 But I do understand why they would, why Leonardo would have done that.
12:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If bodies exhibit existed back then, he wouldn't have to dig up cadavers. That's my point.
12:49 Speaker 01 And I just saw a thing on National Geographic, cuz you know, all my knowledge of everything is from you or television.
12:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
12:53 Speaker 01 I just saw a thing on National Geographic where they had found these, um. Pterodactyls.
12:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
12:58 Speaker 01 And they did that very thing. They had found just the fossil, just the skeleton. And they took it and they did, they put the skeleton through a CAT scan.
13:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, all right.
13:07 Speaker 01 Which I thought was really weird, but there was nothing inside, of course, because it was a skeleton.
13:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
13:10 Speaker 01 But they, they could, they drew art, artistic pictures of, and then they could figure out what would have gone in there by what was missing.
13:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There you go.
13:19 Speaker 01 Isn't that kind of cool?
13:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't have a pterodactyl cadaver, a little cadaver, so you do the best, the next best thing you can.
13:24 Speaker 01 What's missing, that's how you figure it out.
13:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you know, these, these bodies that are in the exhibit, they're preserved. You know, there are different ways you can preserve human flesh. And one of them is you'd sort of dip it in acetone, right? That gets rid of sort of the moisture and the water. So you know. And then they have to sort of keep, then they have to like, keep it, keep its shape. So they infuse it with silicone, which then hardens the tissue so that then it can stay on display.
13:46 Speaker 01 Like Pamela Anderson.
13:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, she's alive. I don't know what fraction of her body weight is silicone.
13:52 Speaker 01 I don't know about that. Lisa Rinna, Pamela Anderson.
13:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So they would not need to be prepped if they were donated their body to this exhibit? Is that, was that what you're saying? Because they, you know, they're, they're pre-made for the exhibit.
14:06 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. I'm saying they're going to last for a long time. They'll be around with roaches and cheese whiz.
14:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and Twinkies, don't forget. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. My day job is as director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. Uh, we are live in Los Angeles and Washington DC, and I'm here with Lynn, Lynn Koplitz. Give us a call if you have something about space that inspires you. Science or space or science in general. If you're an artist in particular, or if you're just somebody on the street.
14:34 Speaker 01 Or a writer or poet.
14:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, exactly. I want to.
14:36 Speaker 01 Tell us how creatively it's.
14:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I want to hear what it is that might influence you, because we'll hear more from Peter, from Peter Max, learning about how science infused his creativity. Our toll-free number is 1-877-5-Star-Talk. And we're live streamed on the web on StarTalkRadio.net. Let's take a break. We'll be right back.
14:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you've been gone for a couple of weeks, I'm so happy to have you back.
14:59 Speaker 01 I'm happy to be back. Now, before we move on, I want to go back to Leonardo da Vinci for a minute.
15:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
15:04 Speaker 01 We were talking about bodies and the bodies exhibit.
15:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because he dug up bodies to get the artistic form of what he drew.
15:11 Speaker 01 And then on the break, we were talking about the bodies exhibit now.
15:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, during the break, yeah.
15:15 Speaker 01 And then you told me a little something that I didn't know, which was that those were prisoners, like Chinese prisoners?
15:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're told that the bodies on display in the bodies exhibition, which is shown in many cities now, were not necessarily people who donated their bodies to this cause, that they were the bodies of prisoners who were executed.
15:33 Speaker 01 Oh, that's much better then. I like that better.
15:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it became a little controversial, because the prisoner might not have had a choice in the matter.
15:40 Speaker 01 Who cares? He was a prisoner!
15:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I'm just saying, I'm just not voting for sides here, I'm just saying that it may be as controversial as it was in Leonardo's day when he's digging up cadavers.
15:50 Speaker 01 Now, was it controversial when he was digging them up?
15:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, he was. You dig up a body, and the body's a sacred burial grounds in a church yard, or wherever people were? Of course!
15:58 Speaker 01 But people didn't, people, they didn't, did they know he was doing that?
16:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't think, he did it in the dark of night.
16:03 Speaker 01 He did it late at night, right, with an assistant who made nothing, probably.
16:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, you know, one of the most famous illustrations from Leonardo's era is the, you know, the Vitruvian Man, have you ever seen this?
16:13 Speaker 01 Is that the one with the man in the circle and the square?
16:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly, exactly.
16:16 Speaker 01 He's hot!
16:19 Speaker 01 What? I mean, seriously?
16:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, I never thought of it that way, it's just like a little homunculus inside of a circle.
16:24 Speaker 01 I just like from back then, everything's got abs. Jesus, Vitruvian Man.
16:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's true, yeah, well, because it's drawn by people who like muscles.
16:30 Speaker 01 And have never been to Pittsburgh.
16:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I have no-
16:34 Speaker 01 Have you ever seen that, there's no abs in Pittsburgh?
16:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No abs in Pittsburgh. You just performed there a few weeks ago.
16:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, the great sports teams, but no abs.
16:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The sports players have the abs, not the viewers.
16:41 Speaker 01 Yes, exactly.
16:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, is this gonna be on their next, like, tourist motto? Visit Pittsburgh, no abs?
16:47 Speaker 01 Don't worry about your abs, come to Pittsburgh. So, talk to me about Vitruvian Man.
16:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, here's where you get into trouble, because if you have an aesthetic, okay, but if you want to believe that somehow the human form is some epitome of aesthetics, this is what went into the Vitruvian Man. And so you all remember this image, it's this man with his arms. Outstretched and his legs slightly parted and it's a perfect circle drawn around him. And the arms are just touching the edge of the circle and his feet are at the bottom of the circle.
17:16 Speaker 01 So you're saying this isn't just art, this was to prove something?
17:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's to prove that the human form had some aesthetic beauty to it because the circle was a thing of beauty. And in the center of that circle, you know what was there?
17:26 Speaker 01 His wee wee?
17:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, his belly button.
17:28 Speaker 01 Oh.
17:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so what we-
17:31 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm sorry.
17:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What we learned-
17:32 Speaker 01 I'm thinking about-
17:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What we learned was that some people don't have those proportions. It was assumed that your, your distance from fingertip to fingertip equaled your height. And then that was considered the ideal form. And then you actually measure people and some people's hands are shorter, some are longer. Mine are actually especially long. Some people have what, you have a, a, a high ape index. It's what's been joked about. If your arms are really long compared to your body height, my arms were a foot longer than my height. So I can touch your nose sitting right where I am right now.
18:02 Speaker 01 How do you know that?
18:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, because you know, so the point is in that circle-
18:05 Speaker 01 No, no, you don't know. Did you measure them?
18:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Measure my arm, the distance from fingertip to fingertip, yeah.
18:10 Speaker 01 You're hilarious.
18:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it's 84 inches and so that's, so I'm just telling you that that's, it's not, not everybody, I'm not alone in those who don't fit the circle.
18:19 Speaker 01 But people are bigger now, right? They were smaller then.
18:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but if it's in proportions-
18:22 Speaker 01 They just draw bigger circles?
18:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's just a bigger circle, everything would be in proportion. So that didn't really turn out the way anyone had hoped, but it remains an iconic vision. It remains an iconic vision of what humans would have looked like. And then there's this thing with the golden ratio, remember that? Many people have heard of it, but don't quite remember it. It has a mathematical form, I'll tell you what it is mathematically, but it's more interesting artistically.
18:43 Speaker 01 Oh, really? Oh, really? Mathematics is not more interesting than art. Hmm, that's a new idea.
18:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright, so if you take a, a line segment and you could split it exactly in half if you wanted, right? And it'd be half and half. But if you don't split it in half and make one segment a little longer than the other, okay? You want to cut it into two pieces where A plus B divided by B-
19:07 Speaker 01 I fell asleep for a minute, tell me more.
19:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A plus B divided by B is in the same ratio as A to B, as B is to A. Now, that's what it is arithmetically. Okay, so, now you can write that out as an equation. It's 1 plus the square root of 5 divided by 2 to 1.
19:24 Speaker 01 Neil, I'm so sorry. I don't want to be disrespectful, but I'm gonna shoot myself in the face if you keep... What does this mean?
19:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm just saying, so if you do the math, you get a ratio of 1 to about 1.6. In other words, back then, back then, if you designed form, you would design it so that the base was 1.6 units long and the height was 1 unit high. And that would feel aesthetically pleasing to you. And that was called the golden ratio.
19:51 Speaker 01 Oh, that's very... Now, that's very interesting.
19:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know what they've done lately?
19:53 Speaker 01 Can they do that with your face?
19:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly. They're measuring people's faces, the width of the face and the height of the face and the nose to the eyes to the mouth. And the claim is, those people where those measurements capture the golden ratio are considered more beautiful than other people.
20:05 Speaker 01 I was gonna say, that's very creepy. Because that's good, like, that movie, Gattaca, that's saying that those people are more perfect.
20:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow, could this be the one where they make to genetically choose your offspring? So you choose one that has more golden ratios and then more people will think you're attractive.
20:18 Speaker 01 But that's not fair either, because in different cultures, in different places, the ratios are gonna be different, right? Like, if you go to Africa, facial features are gonna be different than facial features maybe in certain parts of America or eastern...
20:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They claim they've done it for people all around the world and everyone focuses back on this golden ratio. I have my... I'm suspicious of it, but I'm just reporting what they've said. And it's fascinating that there might be some genetic...
20:44 Speaker 01 It sounds a little Aryan to me. I don't like it.
20:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That there might be some genetic propensity for that.
20:49 Speaker 01 I don't like it.
20:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you know about the, um, not only that, in Da Vinci's most famous painting is what? Do you know what his most famous painting is?
20:58 Speaker 01 Oh, don't do this to me. You make me feel stupid, Mona Lisa.
21:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The Mona Lisa, of course.
21:02 Speaker 01 I have it in my room. She looks like a dude.
21:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You have a copy of the Mona Lisa. Let's get that straight.
21:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, not the real one. I mean, I live in a three-floor wall cup that smells like trash and says "Wash me" on the Sharpie marker on the wall. I don't think the real Mona Lisa's in my apartment.
21:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, what, she looks masculine to you?
21:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, she looks like a dude.
21:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, you know what they found? They were able to study the painting. You can expose it to a certain wavelength of light that penetrates the top surface of paint and you can see a whole other painting, a whole other illustration below it. And it's rumored that that was a self-portrait of Leonardo himself. That was the first attempt at whatever he was doing on that canvas.
21:35 Speaker 01 Oh, and then he painted like his inner Mona Lisa?
21:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, well, I don't know. Is that why you think he looks like a, she looks like a dude?
21:43 Speaker 01 I didn't know that. I mean, until you just said it, but yeah, she does look like it. I look at her every morning. She's right over, like in front of my bed and she looks like a dude.
21:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, well, okay.
21:50 Speaker 01 A sweet dude.
21:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this is Leonardo in drag is what you're saying?
21:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm just saying it was a little bit like there was a review back then.
21:58 Speaker 01 But, but, um, yeah, cause she's got kind of a thick, like forehead and she's kind of crossed.
22:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I gotta look again. I gotta look again to check that out.
22:06 Speaker 01 She's a little Liza Minnelli-ish.
22:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Put her in a review, is that what, in Vegas? Uh, let's, as you, as you're listening to Star Talk Radio and for this episode, I spent some quality time with Peter Max, pop artist from the 1960s and he's still at it right on through to today. And let's see what more he has to say about how the universe has inspired him.
22:26 Speaker 01 He's interesting.
22:27 Speaker 03 We are part of something that is so enormously big. You know, when you talked about the molecules in one glass of water. There are more molecules in one glass of water than there are glasses of water on planet Earth. Well, that line that you gave me about this feeds me for the next six months. I want to think about this at least once a day. I love it so much.
22:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I'm happy to be your fuel supply. So let me ask you, are you, are you more influenced by science directly? Or is there a bit of philosophy that folds in?
22:58 Speaker 03 There's science, there's the mystery of the science because there is so much more we don't know than we do know. And we do know a lot and so that we must probably not know a billion times as much. But it's wonderful what we do know. But I was also lucky in 1966, just about the same time. I met a Swami, a holy man from India.
23:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you would use pure science as your source of objects and imagery, but the philosophy is a means of how you would interpose them?
23:28 Speaker 03 Yes, yes. So it was nice. Through meditation, I was able to get very, very peaceful and quiet. But through looking at the universe, I would get excited. And so in between the peacefulness and the universe is where the art world lived.
23:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's Peter Max. He's just so in tune with his own sense of art and self and science.
23:48 Speaker 01 He sounds so like, like a cool hippie guy, like very like down to earth and calm. He calms me just listening to him.
23:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Isn't it? He's got one of these calming voices. It's so, it's so, it's so beautiful.
23:59 Speaker 01 And you two, the two of you are like a glass of warm milk and a cookie.
24:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Our phone number is 1-877-5-Star-Talk. If there's some aspect of science that has influenced you, inspirationally, as a creative person, or just in your thoughts, give us a call. We have Nancy from Santa Monica. Nancy, you're live on StarTalk.
24:20 Speaker 01 Hi Nancy.
24:21 Speaker 04 Hi.
24:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hi.
24:23 Speaker 04 So, I'm dabbling in art. I'm actually an environmental scientist, but I like art a lot and I've observed a lot of artists who've been inspired by environmental science. And I thought I'd just share this something with you. We have a bunch of art galleries here in Santa Monica called Burgamot Station, and there is this really cool exhibit on hyperbolic crochet. And what this is, you guys were talking about Leonardo da Vinci and perspective, right? Well, that's about flat planes as a geometry. Apparently, there's another kind of geometry that was, I guess, driving mathematicians crazy, the hyperbolic space, which is the geometric opposite of a sphere. And I guess I was taken by this
25:07 Speaker 04 because I actually photographed the captions here. So in 1997, there was this Cornell mathematician who was trying to figure out how to model this geometry, and so he wound up crocheting it. And you wound up finding that corals, kelp, sponges, all these different kind of anatomical features, actually hyperbolic geometry. So these artists have gotten together and crocheted these incredible landscapes of these objects with hyperbolic crochet. And I was at the exhibit at Burgamot Station.
25:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there's a lot of children now going around without mittens because the crochet effort is going to art.
25:39 Speaker 01 I love crochet and it's very difficult, but it does have a lot of that spiral and it is very interesting.
25:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So are you saying that crochet is the natural artistic way to express these forms of nature?
25:50 Speaker 04 Well, no, crochet was a technique that humans could use to model this geometry, which was very hard to do mathematically otherwise, or I guess even on a computer.
26:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, that's very cool. And so anyone near Santa Monica, go check it out, definitely.
26:06 Speaker 01 That sounds so interesting. I'm gonna look it up online. Thank you Nancy.
26:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you Nancy.
26:09 Speaker 01 You know what I like about that too, is because if you're using yarn or whatever is what you use or rope to crochet... That is also going, that's great for studying the body too, because it is like tendons and muscles.
26:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, how it holds together and how it doesn't.
26:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, you can pull it and make it twisted and make it do things that you can't do with just charcoal and it brings in perspective.
26:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You'd use yarn as a substitute for muscle.
26:31 Speaker 01 It brings in, shut up Neil, I have lots of crochet things, I just told Neil to shut up.
26:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One other thing about perspective, another very famous painting is The Last Supper. The Last Supper, it's one of the most famous.
26:42 Speaker 01 Oh, Jesus's dinner party.
26:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Jesus's Last Supper, and they call it supper rather than dinner, I was intrigued by that.
26:48 Speaker 01 I like to call it Jesus's dinner party. I just love a man that throws a dinner party at the end.
26:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And if you look at that, there are lines of perspective that reach what they call a vanishing point. And the vanishing point is where all the lines that are horizontal in a room or in a painting end up focusing down in the backdrop of the painting, and it focuses right on Jesus's eye.
27:07 Speaker 01 Really? That's very interesting.
27:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So wherever you are in the painting, the lines take you right to the center of his face, and so.
27:12 Speaker 01 For those who don't know, when you're drawing or painting perspective, a vanishing point is one of the first things you draw, so that you can.
27:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because everything else works into that.
27:23 Speaker 01 Everything comes off of that, works into that.
27:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly.
27:25 Speaker 01 So that's very interesting that the vanishing point, so that was no accident, that the vanishing point was Jesus's eye.
27:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No accident at all, and plus his 12 dinner guests.
27:32 Speaker 01 And he was the center of the whole thing.
27:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We have a tweet, you can tweet us at StarTalk Radio. We have a tweet, someone asks, "Do you think Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings are a combination of science and art?"
27:46 Speaker 01 And anatomy.
27:49 Speaker 01 Their vagina, aren't they?
27:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, they're flowers.
27:51 Speaker 01 Their vagina flowers. Get, oh come on, they're vagina flowers, tweeter.
27:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Flowers.
27:55 Speaker 01 They are not flowers, look at them. Oh, please.
27:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
28:00 Speaker 01 Look into those flowers, they're not just flowers. You know what, Neil?
28:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, okay, I'm just, all right.
28:04 Speaker 01 This is what annoys me about men.
28:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sometimes a flower is just a flower.
28:08 Speaker 01 Well, sometimes it needs you to look for the G-spot on it.
28:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so what we're saying is Georgia O'Keeffe took the flowers of the southwest and folded them with her knowledge of human anatomy to create a whole new expression of, a whole other way to communicate with the viewer.
28:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think what Georgia O'Keeffe and many artists do, and great artists do, is that they are, they make you look at something a different way. They make you see the other possibilities in it.
28:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, then that, okay, all right, I'll give, I'll give other possibilities.
28:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I think Leonardo did that. I think all the great artists and painters, and they've all done that, and writers, they've taken things that everybody looks at every day, and they, they've twisted it and showed you other sides to it.
28:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We've got another tweet, uh, they're asking, is the golden ratio, which we talked about a moment ago, only about aesthetics, or is it indicative of the health of an organism? And that's a fascinating point.
29:04 Speaker 01 What a great question. What kind of geniuses do we have listening to this? My family's clearly not tuning in.
29:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, no, what's good about that is, if, if the, if that aesthetic, if the aesthetic is sort of hardwired into our brain, and we identify beauty that way, and then you turn ill, or you, something happens to your bodily form.
29:23 Speaker 01 Don't put the horns on me. You pointed at me.
29:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And if you turn ill, then your body starts taking a shape that does not fulfill that golden ratio, and you, and you look less attractive to others. It's a fascinating concept there. So maybe it is hardwired.
29:35 Speaker 01 I'm angry.
29:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So my, I, I, so my question is, I don't know the answer to that, but it's an intriguing possibility.
29:41 Speaker 01 Like osteoporosis.
29:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, exactly. Your, your bones start becoming misshapen, and you no longer fulfill the golden ratio.
29:47 Speaker 01 Well, I think there should be a golden ratio for different ages.
29:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So there should be like a silver ratio, a platinum ratio.
29:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, just like the average, what your average weight should be, or whatever. It should just be like, here's the, right, the silver ratio.
29:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's an excellent, excellent thought.
30:00 Speaker 01 The platinum.
30:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent thought. We've got some more of my interview with Peter Max. I was in his studio, uh, in New York City, and he's got this huge studio, where he's, he's still painting. He's still doing it. The guy is still doing it.
30:12 Speaker 01 Why didn't I get to go to this? I'll take you to my thing. I love Peter Max.
30:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You didn't ask. Let's see what more Peter Max has to tell me.
30:21 Speaker 03 While I was a realist and I started painting realism like Michelangelo, I couldn't get any work. I did, there were no galleries were interested in it, no museums, nothing. And I used to sit in a little cafe, which back then was almost like what is a Starbucks today? And I would make my astronomical drawings every day because I loved it. And I had maybe a hundred little drawings with me. And one day an art director said to me, Peter, what's this on the bottom of your portfolio? And I go, oh, oh, it's nothing because I was shy. I was a realist. I was a classical guy. Because at the top of your portfolio was all your realistic. Yeah, I wanted to be like Michelangelo. I wanted to be revered as like I was because I was so good in realism. Anyhow, and one day he said to me, what's this in the bottom of your portfolio? I said, no, it's nothing. It's nothing. And he insisted I take it out.
31:05 Speaker 03 And when he looked at it, he went, oh, my God, this stuff looks unbelievable. Hey, guys, fellas, the girls, come over here. See what this guy does. And I walked out of there for the first time in my life with 14 projects. That paid like, you know, a few hundred dollars each, which was today like a few thousand each. And when I delivered them about 10 days later, I walked out of there with 22 projects. And in the next 18, 20 months, I won 66 gold medals in art and design for my creativity and for my inventiveness. And I suddenly realized that the stuff I was doing, which was these cosmic characters and cosmic stars and cosmic runners and all these characters with wings that I invented
31:49 Speaker 03 only because of my interest in, in the space area that I invented characters that lived there that really weren't anything I could see in the regular world. So it's fair to say that the universe birthed your career as an artist? Completely.
32:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you want to be a great artist, study the universe. That's the.
32:07 Speaker 01 I think that's very cool that that's his inspiration.
32:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. And so rather, it wouldn't have to be the universe in particular, but I think. It's fair to say that you can be a new kind of an artist, or as an artist you can reach another dimension of reality if you come to it with some kind of science literacy. Is that fair?
32:24 Speaker 01 Well, I think, I think it is fair, but I think the other thing that our show keeps bringing up is that science makes you ask questions.
32:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
32:31 Speaker 01 It keeps you asking questions.
32:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Probing the nature of reality.
32:34 Speaker 01 And I think when a creative person keeps asking questions, it keeps broadening their, you know, their view of things, and that's what happened to him. He kept asking questions and he's kept creating these characters and people built on that.
32:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's not just science ideas, it's actually, there's math even beyond the golden, the golden ratio that we talked about earlier. There's algebra, so there's a branch of-
32:53 Speaker 01 Look at the Matrix.
32:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well-
32:54 Speaker 01 Movies and things are being built around this whole thing now.
32:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly, and there's a, there's a branch of algebra called linear algebra, which is, you don't normally greet that in, in high school, but you can take classes in it in college, where there's 3D computer games that are enabled because of a huge mathematical engine that's driving them.
33:14 Speaker 01 Oh yeah, I guess so.
33:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, no, so that's how-
33:16 Speaker 01 Like Grand Theft Auto.
33:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? (laughing) I, I don't know the extent of math-
33:21 Speaker 01 Because of science and math, you can kill a hoe.
33:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? (laughing)
33:24 Speaker 01 And steal a car.
33:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I haven't checked the math engine on that, on that, on that particular game.
33:29 Speaker 01 But you know what scares me?
33:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it allows them, what it does is, they're trying to create a, a virtual world for you that you move through, and if you're stealing cars in it, fine, that's your virtual world, but the perspective that changes as you run down the street, and as doorways open, and as corridors show up, they have to calculate-
33:44 Speaker 01 I know.
33:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? -at every split second what the new scene looks like as you travel through that world.
33:49 Speaker 01 And what it will look like if you do this move or that move.
33:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly.
33:52 Speaker 01 They don't know what you're gonna do.
33:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They don't know what you're gonna do next, so it has to be ready for that, and that's the computing power.
33:56 Speaker 01 That's true, because I play Lara Croft Tomb Raider, and when you dive in the water, all of a sudden you're in the ocean and the music stops.
34:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do you wanna be Lara Croft?
34:02 Speaker 01 Um, no, she's way too active.
34:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? She was, I had to, I, I gotta admit, I liked the movie when I saw it.
34:08 Speaker 01 I did, but the video game is very active and annoying. At one point I just started jumping off the slide. But here is what concerns me as an actress, aspiring actress and comic. You know, CGI now, computer graphic imaging is really taking over. I went to see Bolt, the 3D, when it was 3D, with my friends.
34:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bolt is with the dog?
34:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, with my friend's sons. And I have to grab little kids from out of nowhere so I can go to these movies and not look scary. And I went to see it, it was great. But when I was a kid, 3D movies were not as intense as they are now. I mean, they're so realistic. And as an actress, it started bothering me, Neil, because I started thinking, wow, when are we going to fade out? Like the way talkies took over silent films.
34:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right.
34:53 Speaker 01 Like, I'm finally getting acting roles, and I'm done. They're going to start just drawing people.
34:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you draw people and animate them in 3D, and then they won't need you anymore.
35:02 Speaker 01 So isn't there a chance that regular actors and actresses are going to become obsolete?
35:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know what they can do? They can fully scan your body in various motions, and then fully get you to read like a whole encyclopedia of words. And then they have all your vocabulary, they have all your body motions, and they can just cast you in a 3D animated movie.
35:17 Speaker 01 So they might not need us anymore?
35:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No. Yeah, you just sort of sell your body that one time, and then you get used later on.
35:23 Speaker 01 Well, I know there are people in LA listening to this show right now. If this scares you, because you're waiting tables and you're thinking, what now, call us at 877-5STAR-TALK.
35:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you're worried about being out of a job, is that what's...
35:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, some of the science stuff, when it comes into the creative form, scares me. Because like, for example, I don't like nude digital film. I hate it.
35:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nude digital film?
35:44 Speaker 01 No, the digital film versus like 16mm things.
35:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay.
35:48 Speaker 01 Let's shoot everything on digital. Now all of a sudden, I don't want to see people with lines in their face. I can see that in a mirror myself. I want pretty people. I want the old grainy imaging. I want the Barbara Walters lens that looks like it's got Vaseline over it. That's what I want.
36:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The soft focus lens.
36:02 Speaker 01 Yes, thank you.
36:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, you know, photography is a, you know, it's...
36:07 Speaker 01 Did I make you nervous? All of a sudden Neil's like, I'm never going to be on The View. What is lens done?
36:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know. We're going to go to break, and we're going to come back. Give us a call, 1-877-5STAR-TALK. And we're tweetable at StarTalkRadio. And we'll be right back. And we're going to talk about photography, and the universe, and how that's inspired whole generations of artists and movements, social movements, simply because of images we've obtained from the night sky. See you in a minute.
36:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? StarTalk Radio, Neil Tyson on the line here. We've got Lynn Kopfels, my co-host Lynn. Hello. Hello, we've got a caller who called into 1-877-5-Star-Talk with our question has sci... they have a question about the relationship between science and art and inspiration. Awesome. Who is the muse for whom? We have Rick from LA. Rick, you're live on StarTalk.
37:07 Speaker 01 Hi Rick.
37:08 Speaker 05 Hey, how you guys doing today?
37:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, thank you.
37:10 Speaker 01 We're doing good. How you doing, Rick?
37:14 Speaker 05 Big fan, big fan.
37:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, thank you. So what you got for us?
37:17 Speaker 05 Uh, well, I was... you know, you're talking about how, um, how, uh, science has inspired art over the years, and I just wondered if you could think of any examples where, uh, art has inspired science?
37:29 Speaker 01 Oh, that's a good question, Rick.
37:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, well...
37:33 Speaker 05 Scientific discovery.
37:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, let me... here's the best I could do for you there. For example, before the era of photography, when people nonetheless had telescopes and they wanted to be able to tell others about what they saw, they had to draw what they saw. So they needed an artistic talent just to communicate their science to other people. And if they were not good at their art, they'd be showing something that was not really what they saw to other people, and that would confound any attempt to have sort of a level-headed assessment of what was going on.
38:05 Speaker 01 Well, also, the constellations. At first, they, they, they came up with like, what the stars, they came up with pictures, correct?
38:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but there's no science anywhere in that. No, there's just...
38:16 Speaker 01 The stars.
38:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, no, no, they're, they're connect the dots points. That's... I mean, they are, there are scientific subjects themselves, but things we only learned much later, long after anyone was drawing pictures with them.
38:28 Speaker 01 Okay, so Rick, the question, the answer is, we don't really know.
38:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, wait. No, I, uh, let me, no, I may offer a little insight. I can say that artists, not to speak for artists, because I don't claim myself among them, although my brother's an artist, uh, I can say that all artists I know are driven, often, if not all the time, by some aesthetic. And it's the aesthetic that drives, that fuels their attempt to create a form. And I can tell you without hesitation that as a scientist, we approach the universe, we approach the natural world with a similar expectation that what we're going to discover is something aesthetically pleasing, something beautiful, something that will make you say,
39:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? that is nature at its finest. And so I can tell you that we share a common driver. But whether or not there's some art that inspired a scientific discovery, it may be that it doesn't-
39:24 Speaker 01 Also, if you're talking about what kind of art you're talking about, because we've already discussed on this show that there are films that have probably in television programs like Star Trek that have inspired scientists.
39:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly. So what happens there is the art-
39:35 Speaker 01 Close encounters.
39:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? -triggers someone to be interested in a subject.
39:38 Speaker 01 Exactly.
39:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it affects them in an emotional way, and then they become charged, and then they want to learn about the science. So that's-
39:44 Speaker 01 What we're saying is we all need each other.
39:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Kumbaya. Hold, hold. So Rick, thanks for calling in.
39:51 Speaker 01 Thanks, Rick.
39:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we still, we still have some more from Peter Max. Peter, Peter Max, you gotta love him. And like you said, Lynn, he's such a soothing voice. I could listen to him all day.
40:02 Speaker 01 He's like Venus flytrap. Remember him on-
40:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it was scary.
40:05 Speaker 01 They've got that really smooth, hey.
40:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's see what more he's got to tell us.
40:09 Speaker 03 I was in Cleveland. I had an art show, and I wake up in the morning, and I go back to sleep, and I wake up again about 10:30, and I'm flip-flopping around the TV set. And suddenly I see Neil Tyson with his khaki pants rolled up past his knees, squatting down, lifting up a handful of sand and saying, "You see all the sand? There are 10,000 beaches in the world. They're like 10 or 20 miles long." And then he lifts up another big pile full of sand, and he said, as it's running through his fingers, he said, "For every grain of sand that we have on these 10,000 beaches, there are more planets in the universe." And I meant, "Oh, my God. I can't be... This is so big. It's so gigantic that all the grains
40:52 Speaker 03 of sands in 10,000 beaches that are like probably 10 feet deep and 10 to 20 miles long, that there are more planets than this." The first thing I looked is for my phone. I found Neil Tyson's phone number, and I called him up and said, "Is this real?" He said to me, "It's probably bigger than that."
41:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I'm honored to have blown your mind without drugs. How, how, what do you think of that?
41:18 Speaker 03 It is like, there's nothing that's nicer to be blown away by than the cosmos, the universe, these complete unbelievable facts that exists. And the more you think about it, the more you dream about, the more it starts making sense. And you still know that you're just this little microscopic little thing in the universe, thinking about all the bigness, the largest thing. I mean, isn't it true now that because of this thing they call the string theory, they think that there could be other universes?
41:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There are a couple of ideas that lead to the idea that there could be a multiverse, and we're just one bubble within an uncountable number of other cosmos.
41:56 Speaker 03 Just like when Hubble discovered the first few galaxies.
41:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly.
42:00 Speaker 03 And now they're discovering maybe more universes.
42:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's philosophically the same thing, because back then, we imagined it was only one galaxy, and then he discovered a universe of galaxies.
42:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, you got it. There must be a place you can hide. It is too big. It's too big to imagine. You know, sometimes you gotta take a tranquilizer to calm it down. It's just so amazing.
42:19 Speaker 01 Okay, now, I didn't think this could happen, but Peter Max made me like you more.
42:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really? So I got dibs from Peter Max, and now it's...
42:27 Speaker 01 He actually makes you sound even cooler.
42:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I didn't know he'd go off on that that way. I was just trying to get some...
42:33 Speaker 01 It's so sweet that you touched him so much.
42:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Content for our show, but I didn't know that.
42:37 Speaker 01 And he's an amazing artist, an amazing influence and person, and that's really neat.
42:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you know.
42:42 Speaker 01 I have a homeless person in my neighborhood who says I really inspire them.
42:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Was that that guy that was on the sidewalk when I visited you the other day?
42:49 Speaker 01 It was the lady who wears these big crazy Erykah Badu wraps in her hair.
42:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So photography can inspire people. Do you remember, I don't know how old you are, Lynn, but in the 1968, Apollo 8 went to the moon. It didn't land, but it actually circled the moon and came back and took a picture of Earthrise above the lunar landscape.
43:08 Speaker 01 I was very little when that happened.
43:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, but you've certainly seen that photo. It's called Earthrise. By the way, Earth does not rise on the moon, because the moon doesn't rotate compared to the Earth, so Earth is just always in the sky. So the picture is, misrepresents what actually happens on the moon. It rose because they were in orbit around the moon when they took the picture. That's what...
43:26 Speaker 01 Okay, that's great. Yeah, thanks. But now...
43:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm just saying.
43:29 Speaker 01 No, no, I'm saying, that's great things. Is a moon camera different than a regular camera?
43:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's bigger and more expensive and take better pictures than most cameras you'll ever see in your life.
43:38 Speaker 01 Do you have one?
43:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I don't. No.
43:40 Speaker 01 You do, don't you?
43:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what I'm saying is that picture who that showed Earth.
43:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Without any lines of continents or states or cities, it was just this blue orb juxtaposed as part of the scenery of another world transformed our understanding of our place in the universe. And the modern green movement is traceable to that photograph. And so there's there's scientific photograph that became iconic art that influenced a generation of people to take action. I just had to share that with you.
44:08 Speaker 01 Interesting. Now, the Hubble images and things are the is that the same kind of camera?
44:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I Hubble, no, it's a digital camera. That was a regular sort of film camera back in the days of Apollo eight. And now Hubble pictures is digital. It's it's a very expensive version of the detector that's in the camera that all of us have, the digital cameras that we all use. It's called a CCD, charged coupled device camera. So I'm just you asked, I'm just telling you, you asked, did I volunteer that?
44:31 Speaker 01 LOL.
44:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You asked. And so the Hubble photos are are today's generation of exposure to the rest of the world.
44:40 Speaker 01 Which are better?
44:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, definitely digital pictures are far superior.
44:44 Speaker 01 Because they're more accurate.
44:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're they they they're far superior.
44:46 Speaker 01 They're not as romantic.
44:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, you know.
44:48 Speaker 01 I'm a Luddite.
44:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In terms of romance, do you know there's a scene in the in the Carl Sagan film Contact? I don't know if you saw the film.
44:54 Speaker 01 Yes, of course.
44:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Remember where Jodie Foster was taken by the aliens into their distant land?
44:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And she's looking and it's so beautiful. And you remember what she says?
45:01 Speaker 01 No.
45:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? She says, because she's without she's speechless by the beauty of it all. She says, they should have sent a poet.
45:08 Speaker 01 Oh.
45:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's that's just.
45:11 Speaker 01 But that's poetical in itself.
45:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Poetical or political?
45:14 Speaker 01 Whatever, poetical.
45:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm just and other thing.
45:17 Speaker 01 Really, Neil?
45:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm a big fan.
45:19 Speaker 01 I'm not Peter Max. You better watch what you say.
45:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm I'm a big fan of Van Gogh's Starry Night.
45:24 Speaker 01 Oh, you think?
45:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Inspired a song.
45:26 Speaker 01 Just so everyone knows, who doesn't know Neil, Neil has Starry Night stuff all over his office, everywhere, like pillows, books, which is great because it's beautiful.
45:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it was the cover of one of my books, too. I can't because it's a star night. It's an artist whom he could have named that painting Sleepy Village.
45:43 Speaker 01 Neil, you know what? We had this argument before. No, it couldn't.
45:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, he could.
45:46 Speaker 01 It's all stars in the sky. It's about the sky, not about the village.
45:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm agreeing. So the man came through. I'm totally with you on that. And then there's other art that has inspired, you know, the the ceiling of the of Grand Central Terminal.
45:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, you took me there and showed the ceiling to me.
46:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, well, you didn't need me to take you there. It's Grand Central Terminal.
46:03 Speaker 01 I know, but I never really looked up at it till you took me there.
46:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's different. Okay, so that ceiling, did you know that all the stars are backwards? That pissed me off when I discovered that.
46:11 Speaker 01 And who did that? What was that artist's name?
46:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I forgot. Paul Hail-Yuf from 1912.
46:16 Speaker 01 Was he dyslexic?
46:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? French artist. I think he was not sufficiently scientifically literate to know that the image of the sky he was looking at in a map was the reverse of what he had to put on the ceiling.
46:26 Speaker 01 Or he might have been dyslexic now.
46:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It can't be that dyslexic. Dyslexic is flip a few letters or a few words, not an entire sky. So there's no excuse. I don't forgive him at all.
46:36 Speaker 01 I wonder if he still got paid.
46:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you know, with those Hubble photos, some of the colors are vivid. They can represent colors that you would see if your eyes were huge and if your retina was sensitive to the filters that the Hubble telescope uses. You wouldn't necessarily see what Hubble sees. You would, however, if you've got, if you can tune your eyeballs in the way we tune the Hubble telescope.
46:57 Speaker 01 I don't get that. What does that mean? So it means the colors that I think I see on there are not the colors that really if I'm up in space?
47:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's great. If you had special eyeballs, you would see it that way. You would see it just that way. We have feeble eyeballs.
47:08 Speaker 01 So in space, when I see, if I was in spacecraft looking at it, it wouldn't look like that?
47:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, it would look like something else that was commenced with your eyeballs. But in Hubble, we want to see...
47:15 Speaker 01 That's aggravating.
47:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I'm sorry, but it's just, you know, what happens when people put on makeup before they get photographed? It's not what you really look like. It's something else. I'm just letting you know.
47:24 Speaker 01 But if you were there on the planet, would it look like that?
47:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It would look different.
47:28 Speaker 01 Like is Mars really red?
47:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes. You're acting like you're getting angry with me.
47:33 Speaker 01 Because I just find that aggravating.
47:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's get a fast clip of Peter Max, our final clip with him. Let's see what more he has to tell us about how he's been inspired by science.
47:40 Speaker 01 How much he loves you.
47:41 Speaker 03 I want to make an animated film. I told you about it earlier. And this film has a lot to do with the universe. And it's with like, you know, us suddenly connecting with another species from far, far away who have some common interest with us. And it's a beautiful, it's a musical. It's a two-hour musical. And I'm about maybe halfway through designing it, conceiving it, and I'm gonna go to some of my friends in Hollywood and see how I can get it made.
48:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, we gotta get you back when that comes out.
48:12 Speaker 03 Yes.
48:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Listen, Peter Max, it's been great having you on StarTalk, and thanks for your hospitality, inviting me into your studio where I'm inundated by paintings ready to fall on me. This place is... This place, you need like three more floors of this warehouse.
48:26 Speaker 03 Thank you, thank you. We just have a couple floors here with about a hundred people. But it's my playground. I, in the morning, I can't wait to get here. At night, I don't want to leave.
48:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's how all jobs should be. Peter Max, thanks for being on StarTalk. That was Peter Max.
48:40 Speaker 01 I love him!
48:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh my god. But you, how about, why do you love all the guests that I have on, on the interview?
48:44 Speaker 01 Well, I don't love, I think he's my new favorite.
48:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
48:47 Speaker 01 Until our, our guest next week, she's my real favorite, but it's really awesome.
48:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So did, I don't know if you know, that NASA is not unmindful of the fact that art matters in our culture and in society. So they, it's not just fighter pilots, flyboys, and scientists they send into space.
49:01 Speaker 01 They send artists?
49:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, no, they don't send artists into space, not yet. But there's a, there's an Arts in Space program where artists are invited to capture so, the discoveries of NASA, the voyages of NASA, in whatever is their artistic means of expression. And it was started in 1962, and they've commissioned artists such as Norman Rockwell and, and others. And it, and it chronicles the history of space exploration through the eyes of artists and others. And there's more than 2,000 works of art by 350 artists in their archive.
49:32 Speaker 01 That's interesting. And listen, next week, this has been a great show, but next week, tonight, we need everyone to watch the Joan Rivers Rose.
49:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Joan Rivers is being, she's a buddy of yours, apparently.
49:41 Speaker 01 She's my dear friend, and she's on our show next week.
49:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, indeed. Thanks to your connections. I could have never had access to this woman.
49:48 Speaker 01 We had so much fun with her.
49:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? She's an icon of comedic, she's going to be riffing on all the science that we're trying to take seriously here, and tell us where that fits and where it sits. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio.
49:59 Speaker 01 What's up, Neil?
49:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Funded by the National Science Foundation. We'll see you next week.
50:03 Speaker 01 Keep looking up.
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