Cosmic Queries – The End of The World, with Josh Clark

What will cause humanity's demise? Will it be it artificial intelligence, a meteor, or ourselves? Neil deGrasse Tyson answers fan questions with comic co-host Chuck Nice and Josh Clark, host of the "Stuff You Should Know" and "The End of The World" podcasts. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-the-end-of-the-world-with-josh-clark/ Photo Credit: StarTalk®.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. Today, I got Josh Clark in the house and you know him from Stuff You Should Know and a newly emergent podcast called The End of the World. Josh, welcome to StarTalk.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Thank you very much for having me here. I mean, like, I'm really thrilled to be sitting here.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. And my co-host Chuck Nice. Hey, hey. How are you, Neil? Welcome, welcome. And so I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. So Josh, just Stuff You Should Know, hugely popular.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, we just hit 1 billion downloads. We've been around for almost 11 years. I think from what we understand, we're the first podcast to ever hit a billion downloads.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now we have to teach you how to say that.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Okay, all right.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had a billion.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Eventually we'll get billions and billions.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, when you have 2 billions, then we'll teach you to say billions and billions.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't wait.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, congratulations on that.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. So that's a testament to not only how good the show is, but also that you've tapped into the fact that people still want to learn.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, when we started doing it in 2008, like, learning was actually popular. I don't know if you remember back then, but like, being smart and geeky was super cool. And it's, it's kind of changed a little bit recently, but overall, I, I think the fact that we are still popular shows that there always has been and always will be people who want to keep learning. People who leave college and they're like, oh, wait a minute, that was pretty cool.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lifelong learners.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. And they definitely are a fanbase. And we, there, there's a lot of them out there, we can, we can tell you.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you weren't satisfied with just Stuff You Should Know, now you gotta end the world.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So Chuck, we, we solicited- Questions from our fanbase, our social media platform, who knew Josh was coming on the show?

• 2:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so they they came they came at us.

• 2:18Chuck Nice?

  They did indeed. And of course, we we gleaned these questions from every StarTalk incarnation on the interwebs. And we always start with a Patreon patron because.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So crass.

• 2:31Chuck Nice?

  Why? I am indeed. I have no shame, Neil.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 2:34Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that and, you know, the Patreon patrons give us money and so therefore we give them.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They get the question first.

• 2:41Chuck Nice?

  Precedent and and and privilege because quite, you know, we're like, we're like your government, people. We're like your government. So anyway, um, wow. God, do I really want to start off with such a heavy note? Why not? Let's do it. This is Luke Meadows from Patreon. He says.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Luke Meadows, that sounds like a soap opera name.

• 3:04Chuck Nice?

  It does, kind of. Oh, you know what? That's kind of cool. Yes, exactly. Doctor Luke Meadows.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doctor, excuse me. Of course, Doctor Luke Meadows.

• 3:12Chuck Nice?

  Doctor, will I ever dance again?

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The handsome doctor.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Only with me.

• 3:18Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right, here you go. What does Josh and Neil think is our biggest existential risk? Wow, we're starting off with like bam.

• 3:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do it.

• 3:30Chuck Nice?

  Heaviest bat in the rack.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:33Chuck Nice?

  What is our biggest existential risk?

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got a podcast with the name End of the World. Go for it.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Okay, all right. From what I've found, the across the board, everybody who thinks about existential risks and warns other people about existential risks, say that AI is probably our biggest existential risk. And the reason, let me follow up with an explanation.

• 3:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  The reason why is because we are putting onto the table right now the pieces for a machine to become super intelligent, right? It's out there. It's possible. It's not necessarily right there, but it's it's possible, right? The problem is, is we haven't figured out how to create what's called friendliness into. In AI, so.

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  More human beings.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:22Chuck Nice?

  Humans, humans as well.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  No, that's a really good point, though, right? Like, how we don't even know how to define, like, morality and friendliness. And in, as far as AI goes, um, friendliness in an AI is an AI that, uh, cares about humans as much as a machine can care. It takes into account.

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Friendliness in AI is just an AI that doesn't kill you.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Basically.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that would count as a friendly AI.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. But the, the, the problem is the pitfall with AI as an existential risk is we make this assumption that if an AI became super intelligent, uh, friendliness or would be an emergent property of that superintelligence. That is not necessarily true.

• 4:57Chuck Nice?

  Or that the friendliness that we instill into that AI would supersede the emergent property of overcoming friendliness.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:08Chuck Nice?

  In lieu of, you guys, you guys gotta go.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:12Chuck Nice?

  Like, you guys are the problem.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  I've seen what you do to livestock.

• 5:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  I'm not very happy about that.

• 5:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Humans are a virus.

• 5:22Chuck Nice?

  That was good.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But who was that?

• 5:23Chuck Nice?

  That, that's, that's Agent, hold on, Agent, um, uh, uh, uh, Mr. Anderson.

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're all named Smith.

• 5:31Chuck Nice?

  Smith.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How could you not get the right name?

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  Agent Smith.

• 5:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're all Smith.

• 5:35Chuck Nice?

  They're all Smith, right. Mr. Anderson.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My name is Neo.

• 5:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Stella.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a different, that was a play, I think, yeah.

• 5:46Chuck Nice?

  No, that was the end of the Matrix 4.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Stella.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neo.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so you just worried, based on the, the, the sum of experts you've spoken to.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You agree that this is the thing?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  I do, actually, they've convinced me, um, the more I looked into it, and this is one of those things, it's really tough to just kind of get across, you know, a, a brief sketch of the actual existential threat that artificial intelligence poses. And I, I dedicated a whole episode to it in The End of the World. But when you start to dig into it, you realize, like, oh, wait, this is really, like, it's possible that this could happen. And we, while we're, we're improving by leaps and bounds, especially ever since we started. Started creating neural nets that could learn on their own, just feeding them information like just basically sitting them in front of YouTube and say, go learn what makes a cat picture a cat picture, right? Once we started doing that, our AI research just shot off like a rocket, right?

• 6:47Speaker 01

  It was probably the most watershed moment in the history of artificial intelligence, and it happened very quietly about 2006. So we're doing really well with AI development. We're doing terribly with figuring out friendliness. And granted, the AI field has taken this seriously. There are AI researchers who are legitimate AI researchers who are working on figuring out friendliness in parallel to figuring out machine intelligence. But it's not keeping up, and this right here is a very dangerous.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's the thing. So I had a different answer from you.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About our greatest existential risk.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I like your answer better.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Thank you.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than the answer I was gonna give.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  I think.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, just asteroid will render every one of us extinct, including the AI.

• 7:31Chuck Nice?

  Boom. Asteroid wins again.

• 7:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Asteroid basically wins every contest.

• 7:39Chuck Nice?

  It's like the god mode in a video game.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's what we have to do then. I have a hybrid solution here.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We invent the AI that wants to take us out, and you say, no, you have to figure out a way to deflect the asteroid. Cause that's gonna take us all out. And while it's busy doing that, we kill it. Completely distracted.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By solving the asteroid problem. And then. Cause we're not its biggest threat. When do we kill it? Oh, so that right when it's looking up, then you.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  With a screwdriver.

• 8:12Chuck Nice?

  I never saw that coming.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so can I tell you what, what, what sold me over to, to what you said?

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was not, and none, none of the arguments you gave, a different argument, but they all come together.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, I was sure. You can, you can abstract the problem into a simple question. Right? If you put AI in a box.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will it ever get out of the box? Yes. Okay? Uh huh. I'm locking you in the box because I think you're dangerous. Okay? Can the AI get out of the box? That's that's very interesting. Yeah, you can just abstract it to that simple question. To that, that's very interesting. Go ahead. And I was convinced, listening to an AI program, another podcast, Podcast Universe with Sam Harris. I said, my gosh, it gets out every time.

• 9:04Chuck Nice?

  What's in the box?

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because before then, I'm thinking, look, this is America. AI gets out of hand, I'm going, you shoot it. You're right. Okay? You know, this is like, um, Beverly Hillbillies. Just shoot it. Yeah, uh, uh, mod, uh. Any of them.

• 9:22Chuck Nice?

  Any of them, even Ellie May.

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ellie May.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Grandma, everybody's got a gun. Okay, so I can just shoot it. Yeah. And, uh, no, it doesn't work that way. Right. Because AI is in the box, I'm never letting you out. And the AI will convince you to let it out. Right. If it's smarter than you. That's the job. That's. That's his job. That's what. Right. The fact that it's smarter means it will, so here's, I'm making up this conversation, but this is the simplest of conversations. I'm not letting you out, um, but I want to get out. And I'm not letting you, well, I've just done some calculations and I have found a cure for the disease that your, your mother has. Right. But I can't do anything about it in here. You have to let me out to do that.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  That'll get the clampits every time.

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ma, I told you to shoot that bomber.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I said, wow, and it can save everyone in the world? Yeah. And now it's out. It gets out.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Right. That's exactly right. Or, um, any, any of the, uh, the, the locks that we've put around it, any of the, the, um, the protocols we've built to keep it in place. I, I think as you were about to say, it's super intelligent. So by definition, it's smarter than basically all of us combined.

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. It's like saying, it's like saying, um, it's like a.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like a dog believing it can lock you in a room.

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forever.

• 10:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, no, you say, oh, I just bought a, you know, fourteen ounce T bone steak. Do you want it for dinner? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I have to go prepare it. Then they open the door. I get out of the door. Right.

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  And better than yeah, better than that, I think, okay, you're gonna have to forgive me because you had a, you had a colleague on and he's a teacher. And he might have been one of your teachers that we talked to. And one of his, um, methods for getting, um, students to learn is you give them, um, the same problem that some other astrophysicists may have, uh, uh, faced. And then as they solve it, that's how they learn, as opposed to teaching them what that astrophysicist already discovered. You let them make the discovery. So if this thing is so smart, it would literally have the ability

• 11:46Chuck Nice?

  to just whatever we design to go back to square one and redesign it on its own and say, well, now here's the next phase. That's how I get out of it.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's one of the, the emerging threats is, um, AI, machine learning that can write code. Like, I think some Harvard researchers trained, um, a, a, a deep learning algorithm to write code.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had anything that were deep in it. Deep learning, deep this, deep impact.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  It sounds menacing, right? Did the asteroid win in that one? I never saw it.

• 12:17Chuck Nice?

  It, it tied.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was a tie.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  We'll call it a draw.

• 12:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it took out New York City.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Well, that's a good one.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But civilization.

• 12:25Chuck Nice?

  Big win for California.

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Civilization endured. Civilization, that's what matters.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Okay. So, so then that asteroid was not an existential risk.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it was, except we split it into two. And the big piece went away and the little piece still hit.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  In the end, in the end of the movie.

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. Well, you have to destroy New York because it's a movie, but, but they did it right. Rather than, unlike in Armageddon, where the asteroid pieces had GPS locators and hit monuments.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One decapitated the Chrysler Building.

• 12:55Chuck Nice?

  Did it really?

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and hit the clock, continued through the Chrysler Building, went in the front door of Grand Central Terminal and hit the clock in the middle of the floor.

• 13:03Chuck Nice?

  Sure.

• 13:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:04Chuck Nice?

  That's the opening sequence, yes.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm saying, I'm just saying, you remember that?

• 13:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay, okay.

• 13:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got this? Another ones came from over New Jersey and hit the World Trade Center, okay?

• 13:14Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aiming for our, our stuff, alright. So, Deep Impact had science advisors.

• 13:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because, because Armageddon with Bruce Willis violates more known laws of physics per minute than any other movie ever made.

• 13:29Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty funny.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so you know.

• 13:31Chuck Nice?

  Even more than, than Gravity?

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, that one was cool, that was, at least tried.

• 13:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay, alright.

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that one tried.

• 13:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But thanks for remembering my, my gravity tirade. But, um, do you only get one question in this segment?

• 13:43Chuck Nice?

  Well, listen, this has been, I'm, listen.

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The end of the world?

• 13:46Chuck Nice?

  Anytime I'm still entertained on one question, we're doing a great job.

• 13:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The end of the world.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, I, look, see, we can fit in one short one.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay, alright, let me go, uh, let's go with Will J, our Patreon patron who says this. What one or two skills would you learn now to be useful and productive in a post-apocalyptic world? That is, of course, if we survive the event, so.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got one, ready?

• 14:08Chuck Nice?

  Skill, go ahead.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would learn how to break into a hardware store.

• 14:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a very good one. Yeah, nothing more valuable in an apocalypse than the contents of a hardware store.

• 14:18Chuck Nice?

  Or a towel, don't forget your towel too.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A towel?

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  That's a, it's a Hitchhiker's Guide reference.

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, excuse me, ooh, ooh.

• 14:26Chuck Nice?

  You need to have your towel.

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just got hitchhiked.

• 14:28Chuck Nice?

  You need to, uh, you need to be able to, to break into a hardware store. My, my answer would be learning how to collect canned food. That would be mine.

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good one. That's that movie, The Boy and His Dog.

• 14:38Chuck Nice?

  I never saw that, the Don Johnson one?

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Don Johnson?

• 14:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the dog was intelligent and, but the dog would help.

• 14:46Chuck Nice?

  Don Johnson?

• 14:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's apocalyptic earth.

• 14:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's a boy and his dog, the only ones alive on earth's surface, as far as they know. Uh, the dog helps him find food, but the food is all canned and the dog can't get into the can, so he opens the cans and they both eat. Oh, so it's a buddy comedy? It's, it's, it's a.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, uh, so Chuck, what would you, what would you be, your one thing you would take with you? Oh my god.

• 15:09Chuck Nice?

  One skill, it would be this, being funny, cuz everybody loves that. I'd be like, dude, you know, get, get somebody laughing, they'd be like, ha, ha, ha, I'm like, yeah, can we break into this, um, hard work story?

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and one other thing, one other thing, there's one more skill you have to have. Okay. Thou shalt know physics. Alright. Okay, if you don't know physics, just move back into the cave. It's, it's, it's kind of a superpower. Here's the some, here's, here's my thought about that. Recently, I was asked to review a book written by some MIT physicist and engineers. Okay. And it's called The Physics of Energy. The Physics of Energy? It just came out. My god, that, that looks like a textbook. Yeah, that's heavy. It is kind of a textbook. Okay. Yeah, yeah, it's based on courses they taught. Alright. Okay, The Physics of Energy, Robert Jaffe, Washington Taylor. And so I actually blurbed the book.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even books like this can get blurbs, okay? I couldn't put it down. There it goes, you ready?

• 16:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The page turner, okay. Alright, here it goes.

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  If you buy one textbook this year.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah. Here it is, this is, this is it, ready?

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If your task was to jumpstart civilization, but had access to only one book, then The Physics of Energy would be your choice. Wow. Professors Taylor and Jaffe have written a comprehensive, thorough, and relevant treatise. It's an energizing read as a standalone book, but it should also be a course offered at every college, lest we mismanage our collective role as shepherds of our energy-hungry, energy-dependent civilization. Sweet. Book drop.

• 16:46Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Now, does that, does that blurb have anything to do with the, with the chat that I see sitting on this table here from Taylor and Jaffe?

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, that was just to cover postage.

• 17:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, gotcha.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the point is, you don't want to have to wait for another Isaac Newton to be born, to discover the physics, and then you want to, you want to start where you left off.

• 17:14Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 17:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, that's what this book would do.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Cool. That was a really good answer.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, better than the towel, I think.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  For sure. Or the canned food.

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't mean to besmirch.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  No, it's alright.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, Douglas Adams here, but...

• 17:27Speaker 01

  It was a jokey answer at best.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, well, we just end that segment, we're gonna come back to more Cosmic Queries on the End of the World as we know it. When StarTalk returns.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Today's special Cosmic Queries edition, on the ends of the world. And we've got Josh Clark with us. Josh?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're the, the Stuff You Should Know guy.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a new podcast, Ends of the World.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, The End of the World with Josh Clark, appropriately.

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You really want to associate your name with that concept?

• 18:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. I like it, you're kind of like the Tyler Perry of science podcasts.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 18:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  That's what I was going for.

• 18:17Chuck Nice?

  And listen, it's a smart thing to do.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Everyone who worked on it, I made sign a, a contract that said they would not look me in the eye during production. That's what I was going for, for sure.

• 18:27Chuck Nice?

  Very nice.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  But it's a, it's all about existential risks, and it's largely based on the work of a guy named Nick Bostrom.

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Who is a philosopher out of Oxford.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oxford, yeah.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Who's basically been warning people about existential risks for 20 years, and has really kind of given us our understanding of what existential risks are, and why they're different, and why they're worth paying attention to.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, I know him, I know his work, I've not, I've not met him.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I've referenced his work many times in my talks.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  I got to speak to him a few times for the podcast, like, three times. And on the third time, his, um, his assistant was like, you know, Dr. Bostrom, like, puts every request for, um, like, a media appearance, or an interview, or a project, or whatever, through a cost-benefit analysis. And I made it through that grinder, like, three times.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And I felt pretty good about that, and then I realized...

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, do you think the billion downloads has something to do with that?

• 19:12Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  I didn't flaunt it. I just came in.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying. I think the billion, that's a heavy number.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  But the thing, I, I think the reason why he, he was speaking to me so frequently or so willing to talk to me about the same thing three times is, um, because, you know, he was talking through me. He was trying to reach more people and, and that kind of brought me back down to size a little bit after I realized that.

• 19:37Chuck Nice?

  That's a good thing though. I mean, you know, it's, it's worthwhile.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, get us, get some more questions.

• 19:42Chuck Nice?

  Let's do it.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any more Patreons?

• 19:44Chuck Nice?

  No, but I, oh God, here it is. So this is Phil Vader 23 from Instagram, somewhat rhetorical, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm interested. I think I know why he asked. If the world ended, uh, would the human race end? And I'll say vice versa. There are, there are a lot of people who feel like that this is like, we're it. Who, you know what I mean? Like if we end, that is the end. Like, so if the world ended, would the human race end? And if the human race ends, we, we know the world wouldn't end, but would it make a difference?

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth is going to be here with or without us.

• 20:23Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth is here before, during, and after asteroid strikes. It's here before, during, and after viral attacks. So we are a blip in the history of the earth. So when people say, oh, save earth, it usually means save ourselves on earth. In almost every case, somebody says, save earth. That's implicitly what they mean. Save humans on earth. They might say, oh, save the other animals. They might say that, but.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  They don't mean it.

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that what they mean is what we are doing is affecting other animals. And ultimately that might affect us because we're in a, we're in an ecosystem that has balance and, and interconnectivity. So it's the shortsightedness of decisions we make. Uh, uh, let me not call it short sighted. Let me say not fully researched.

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because I think people think they're doing what's okay, right? They thought, let's make a smokestack and plump, pump smoke into the air.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that it goes into the air high above you, rather than at ground level. That's better, right? And no one is thinking, well, this is still in the air and it's wrapping around the earth. You know, so air pollution was not imagined that it would ever be a worldwide problem.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so we had to learn that. And when we did, we'd made great progress, right? I mean, air is cleaner than it's ever been.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All around the world.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Thank you, Al Gore.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He invented, he invented clean air. So, yeah, this end of the earth thing, uh, do you talk much about the end of the earth?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  I do, it was, it's a, it's a, a big point that I make that, um, if we, if we screw up and we like wipe ourselves out, whether it's through AI or some biotech accident, or, um, maybe, uh, something going awry with nanotech, or a physics experiment even potentially, um, if we do this.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's trying to drag my people into.

• 22:20Chuck Nice?

  I heard that. I was waiting for, you know, global thermal nuclear.

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought I would get out of that one, you know, but no.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  I considered it, but then I decided no. Um, but if we, if we, if the worst comes and we slip up and we wipe ourselves out, life would almost, almost certainly go on. Because it has so many times before, we've been through at least five that we know of mass extinctions. Big ones too, I think the Ordovician one, I can't remember how long ago it was, it was very, very ancient. But they're, they're starting to think that a gamma ray burst basically sterilized earth, came that close to just killing all life on earth, and it still couldn't. A gamma ray burst hit earth and life still hung on. Hung on after the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs and a lot of other species. Life will probably keep going, you, I would bet just about anything on it.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  So, yeah, there will be life after, after we go, if we go. If we go to us, the world will have ended, so it is kind of moot in that respect.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, so one thing about the gamma ray burst is that was invoked after no one could find any other reason for how that many, how much life could go.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Oh, is that right?

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I mean, it's plausible. We have them in the universe.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Usually they're pointing in some other direction. Or if they point towards us, they're very far away. So the question is, in the statistics of this, could you have one that's nearby that points straight at us? And if it does, these are high-energy particles, high-energy light, and it first takes out the ozone layer.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ozone protects you until there's no ozone.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it keeps coming. So it's like the first line of defense that is now all massacred. Now it keeps going, makes it all the way down to Earth's surface, and those are high-energy particles that is incompatible with the large molecules that we call biology.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it just breaks apart your molecules.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it kills every, it'll kill everything. If you're in a cave, you'll survive, but you probably eat things that depended on things that died on Earth's surface.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  So would you survive even with the atmosphere burned away? Or the ozone layer?

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, the ozone, yeah, it would take out the ozone. So you'd have to go to places where you'd still be protected.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By, from the ozone, which would be underground.

• 24:31Chuck Nice?

  Underground.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  So, uh, yeah, you would really like episode four, which is about natural risks, including gamma ray bursts. And in the end, you'd be very proud. I, I conclude that they are quite rare and probably not going to happen.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, rare enough so that really you should like, do things like buckle your seatbelt.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's other.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  That's very good advice. But, but you can take care of both. You can take care of immediate threats, like dying in a car crash, while you're simultaneously thinking about more remote, larger threats as well.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in proportion, you do that in a, in a balanced way.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 25:04Chuck Nice?

  That is my new phrase now, just for when I'm going to have reckless abandon, just gamma life.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but to Josh's point, you, if you take a 90% of the life and 10% survives, what you've done is pry open ecological niches that where the 10% of the life that remains can.

• 25:22Chuck Nice?

  Now to just run and fill that.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To just run, fill that.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Well, you could, yeah, you can make a pretty good, um, case that if we are wiped out, we would leave the biggest ecological niche of all currently on Earth.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Haven't you seen the book Life After Man?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  I saw like the special on like Discovery or Science

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, maybe they made that after the book.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  They did.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about a lifetime special that I

• 25:45Speaker 01

  You know, Christmas in life after

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if we, so who do we keep trying to kill that lives with us? That like the mice and rats, right? Right. So if we're out of the way, what sets the upper size of a mouse or a rat? It's that it can escape from being killed by us by going to a pipe or a hole. If we're not there, nothing to stop the growth of rodents. Which is like, what's the name of the Capybara. That's it. What's that again? South America, Capybara. That's right. It was a rodent that was this big. It's a river, river rodent. Nothing, nothing, there's nothing to stop it. So then they would just run the world. Nice. Right.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  So, but, but

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'd have museums. Yeah. With human skeletons.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  With Teddy Roosevelt stuffed in it.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  So there, there would also be nothing stopping the capybaras or the giant rodents from also gaining intelligence. It's possible that, that we like to think of ourselves as, as the only intelligent life on earth. And that's just patently untrue.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  We just have to expand our definition of intelligence. So perhaps we're the current endpoint in the evolution of intelligent life on earth. But if we're gone, that doesn't mean that that evolution of intelligence is just going to cease as well. So maybe a million years or 50 million years or a hundred million years from now, the capybaras will be like exploring the, the galaxy or the universe.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that presumes that intelligent, intelligence improves your survival.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  I, it doesn't?

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a very big assumption.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  I, but that is an assumption I would

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look at the cockroach, it's doing just fine. Without any kind of brain that we would

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Okay, that's true. That's true, but you can also demonstrate that if we

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're pretty smart though, those cockroaches.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  If we take our intelligence, the cockroaches are smart.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait Chuck, are you actually have? Have a cockroach circus. When I see a cockroach, I'm not saying, gee, that's intelligent. I'm really not thinking that, I'm sorry. Well, you're not as dumb as me.

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you can be so intelligent that you have devised ways of destroying your own genetic lineage.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  That is the entire point of the podcast that I made, The End of the World with Josh Clark, that we could possibly have become so intelligent that we might accidentally wipe ourselves out with that intelligence.

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is my point. So therefore, an intelligent Capybara might not be where evolution takes it.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Right, okay. So, let's say that that is, that we're following not a predetermined or prescribed process, but just one that you can bet is probably going to follow within a certain boundary. And that we're kind of in the middle of that boundary, and that the Capybaras that came behind us would follow the same path, right? There's every reason to believe that if we wipe ourselves out, the Capybaras will wipe themselves out too. And that goes to inform another thing that I go into in the podcast, what's called the Great Filter. It's the idea that it's possible that there is some barrier between the origin of life, growing into intelligent life, and that intelligent life spreading out into the universe. And that that is why we seem to be alone in the universe, because the humans and the Capybaras will always inevitably destroy themselves,

• 28:49Speaker 01

  probably because of their intelligence. Because they gain, as Sagan put it, they became more powerful before they became wise. And that's a very, that's a precarious position to be in, and that's the position that we're in right now. That's called adolescence. Technological adolescence, actually, is what he called it, precisely.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The energy to act but without the wisdom to constrain it. So, there's a version of what you said, which surely you know about, because it would have been in that same world of research that you did. It has to do with, all right, let's say we want to colonize, that's a bad word today, settle another planet.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Show up.

• 29:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Show up.

• 29:29Chuck Nice?

  Let's say we want to take a vacation.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A one-way vacation. Pitched at and not leave.

• 29:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Permanent vacation.

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  Where we have to actually build a place to live.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, so what happens? So you go out to the planet, and then, okay. What's the urge that made you want to do that? Well, it's an urge to like explore, okay?

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or to conquer.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Either. It's the same effect. Now, there are people there who want to do the same thing. You've bred this into your genetic line.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you, you having babies and you're the one who wanted to do this.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then they get two planets. And then they have babies and they get two planets. One, two, four, eight, sixteen.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is suggested that you can reach a point where the very urge to explore

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  necessarily is the urge to conquer.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thereby preventing the full exploration of the galaxy.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Because you're gonna run into somebody else with the same urge.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your own people.

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  Your own people.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 30:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is a self-limiting arc.

• 30:37Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's the Borg. I mean, you know.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  But the thing is, is the, the great filter in particular, which is an economist, a physicist turned economist named Robin Hanson, and I'm sure you're familiar.

• 30:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I don't know.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, Robin Hanson came up with this idea that there's, there's something that stops life from expanding out into the planet. And the reason why it would seem to, to stop before they, they expand out from their planet is because we would see evidence of them otherwise by now.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's, that's the Fermi paradox.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. Which is episode one.

• 31:06Chuck Nice?

  I mean.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, Neil, you would love this podcast. It'd be right up your alley.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Another question.

• 31:14Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Let's keep it moving.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gotta be fast, because we're almost out of this segment.

• 31:17Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why are we taking so long to answer these questions?

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  Because, no, it's good. I like it. You know what I mean?

• 31:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 31:21Chuck Nice?

  Deep dive. Uh, DJ Mas 2006 from Instagram says, "How do you want to die?"

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Chuck knows how I want to die, because I want to, I want to fall into a black hole.

• 31:32Chuck Nice?

  That's it. Yes.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's a good one. That's totally good.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Good lord. So can I, can I follow up with a question, Chuck?

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Okay. Would you know that you have fallen into a black hole?

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would know in advance that that's what I want to do.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 31:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then I'd fall in.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then I would watch what happened and report back until my signal never gets out of the black hole and I get ripped apart.

• 31:51Chuck Nice?

  No, but I think what Josh is asking is if you're in the black hole, would it, is it, is it a process that would allow you some consciousness at a, at a level where you would be like, oh my god.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until you're ripped apart.

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  I'm in the black hole!

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until you're ripped apart, but you're conscious of everything as you fall in, even through the event horizon.

• 32:06Chuck Nice?

  Even through the event horizon. You would still be conscious.

• 32:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes. Yes, and you'll see the whole thing.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 32:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally cool. How about you?

• 32:11Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, uh, quickly and painlessly is how I want to die.

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not imaginative. Come on, everybody wants that.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  No, but just in case there's somebody listening, you know.

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give them what you know about what people don't know. Give me a better answer than that.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Okay, alright, fine, fine. Uh, uh, how do I want to die? I don't know. I think a low-energy vacuum bubble would be pretty cool, just washing over us all of a sudden, which would probably be quick and painless, too.

• 32:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then you, it would happen at the speed of light, so you wouldn't see it coming.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Quick and painless.

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's another quick and painless. Whereas a black hole is quick, but very painful, but deeply fascinating.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Because you get spaghettified, right? And you would feel that.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Okay, that's what I was.

• 32:47Chuck Nice?

  Ah, this hurts so bad, but it's so interesting.

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's science.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, when we come back, more StarTalk Cosmic Queries on the end of the world.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk is back. I got Josh Clark with me, who is, has a new podcast on ends of the world, because he wasn't happy with the billion downloads of Stuff You Should Know. He's still at it, so glad to have you on the show.

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're, we're doing, uh, it's a Cosmic Queries edition, and Chuck, we spent so much time answering only a few questions.

• 33:30Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 33:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta make this whole segment a lightning round, okay? So, let's just do it.

• 33:34Chuck Nice?

  We have never done this before. The entire segment will be, which means that you have to answer the question as concisely as possible.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, in a soundbite, basically. Practice a soundbite.

• 33:42Chuck Nice?

  In a soundbite, okay?

• 33:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you don't soundbite, I will soundbite you. Okay, go.

• 33:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. NicoBlack247 on Instagram says, uh, when we find life off of the earth, would you expect, how would you expect religious groups to react? Would they change? Thanks from Illinois.

• 34:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, go.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  They would freak out, I think.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some religious groups would freak out because life on earth, human life on earth, intelligent human life on earth is the belief to be the sole creation of God. But so many other religious groups will be totally down with it and just see it as a greater part of God's creation.

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  All right, Bing Bing, let's move on. This is Liam Beckett on Instagram who says this. Um, do you think as a society, we will ever get past biased news from both sides or only become more divided, speaking of the end of the world?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. I think this is just kind of like a temporary problem that we have and we are going to continue to advance and as we advance, we will be less divided. I, that's my hope at least.

• 34:48Chuck Nice?

  Neil?

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was beautiful.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was unrealistically beautiful.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Really? You think so?

• 34:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's just a phase we're going through. It's not the beginning of the end of civilization. Um, my, my issue is people try to beat each other on the head to convince them of your own opinion and try to get you to vote in ways that align with their opinion when there's so much, so many things out there that are objectively true, that we should all agree on what is objectively true and then base civilization on that. And then after that, celebrate each other's diverse opinions rather than beat each other over the head for them being different.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  But I think that's a point that we're, we're, we can conceivably get to and when we do, we will be less divided. So really, you just said the same thing I did.

• 35:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh, there we go. All right, time to move on.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next question.

• 35:44Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. This is Francesco Sante says, as long as humans have existed, I assume we have looked up and felt a connection with the universe, even if we didn't have the insights of astrophysics and cosmology. Do our atoms know, all caps, that they came from up there?

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 36:08Chuck Nice?

  Next question.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so, so John Kennedy, I think before, President Kennedy, before he was president, as you may know, he, they have a home, a home in Hyannis port, right? So, the ocean coastline is not unfamiliar to him. They own boats, this sort of thing. He spoke often about the allure of the ocean and wondered openly whether we are drawn to the ocean shore because our genetic profile may remember that in fact, our vertebrate history is owed to the fishes in the sea and that we're somehow pulled back to it.

• 36:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I can, I can poetically agree with that, but there is no way we could have known that we are stardust without modern astrophysics telling us this. I think we will look up and wonder, but I don't think it's because there's a genetic connection. I think it's because we just want to know if someone up there is going to eat us.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  That looks dangerous.

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're looking, we're looking up at the universe the way you look in the brush. There's something there is going to harm me. If it's not, then otherwise it's a beautiful thing to look at.

• 37:16Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 37:17Chuck Nice?

  Interesting. Okay.

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next.

• 37:19Chuck Nice?

  Alejandro Hernandez, once from Twitter, says this, "With some AI nearly capable of passing the Turing test, do you believe the technological singularity will occur in the near future? And if so, how do you think humanity will fare?" Now, we touched upon that in the...

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me sharpen that question. Here it is. How soon is this going to happen?

• 37:36Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I don't know.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  How close?

• 37:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How soon will AI be our overlords?

• 37:42Speaker 01

  The thing that, that I find upsetting and scary is that it could happen...

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Says the man who has an end of the world podcast. He says, "What I find scary, I'm afraid now."

• 37:51Speaker 01

  It could happen at any time, conceivably. It could happen at any time. From what I understand, we have all the components out there and it could just kind of happen. They could fall into place. I don't know. It's impossible to predict when it will happen and you can't say with absolute certainty that it will happen. It's just really possible and the fact that it is possible means that it could conceivably happen at any time.

• 38:15Chuck Nice?

  And is the self, is, I'm sorry, is the singularity, this is my question, so we're still in our, our lightning round, is the singularity actual consciousness or is it self-aware?

• 38:30Speaker 01

  So the singularity is this point where machines become self-aware and super-intelligent. Or, if you're a transhumanist, that's the point where we merge with a transhumanist?

• 38:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what is that?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  So that's a big, big umbrella term and it encompasses a lot of different thoughts and philosophies, but the main thing that threads it all together is this idea that we can and will and should merge with our machines, merge with our technology, which sounds far out until you realize like...

• 38:57Chuck Nice?

  We're already doing it.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, we wear like glasses and contacts and clothes and stuff like that to improve our bodies.

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I carry the world internet in my pocket.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Now...

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't have to graft it into my cerebellum.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Okay, but wouldn't it be easier and more convenient if you did just kind of get information that rapidly, that easily and could expand?

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Open skull surgery, or pull this out of my pocket, is that my choice?

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Basically.

• 39:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't need to see the latest cat video that badly. I can wait until I can dial it up on my phone.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  But what about an infinite loop of cat videos? Let me sweeten the pot a little bit.

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question!

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  Alright. Okay, here we go. Rex Young, you almost touched on this, but from Twitter says this. Rex wants to know, "Any general advice on how to foster peace in the world, locally, online, or in the world at large?"

• 39:48Speaker 01

  I'm glad this person's a great question.

• 39:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that would then preclude, if you succeed at that, that means total worldwide warfare is off the table as an existential risk. So that's an important question.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I think that that seems to be found in the organizations and the institutions that we build. From what I understand, the moral progress of humanity has been kind of tied to the global community that we've been developing. And as we spread out and understand and meet more and more people and connect with more and more people, that seems to be in lockstep with this movement toward peace on a global scale.

• 40:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's so hopeful.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  I really am hopeful. I'm deeply hopeful for the future of humanity. I'm also worried, but I am hopeful for sure.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 40:38Chuck Nice?

  That's really cool.

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's so beautiful.

• 40:40Chuck Nice?

  It is. I'm a comedian.

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wish I was that. I'm not that hopeful.

• 40:46Chuck Nice?

  If I were that hopeful, I'd be unemployed.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  I mean, I still give us, I still give us a very low chance of making it to technological maturity and safety. But I'm, I am deeply hopeful that we will and that if we do reach that, that there will be a much more peaceful species that we are.

• 41:02Chuck Nice?

  All right, cool. I don't know how much time we have.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep going. Just do it. Do it.

• 41:04Chuck Nice?

  This is Fyodor Popov.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fyodor? What?

• 41:09Chuck Nice?

  Feodor.

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Feodor.

• 41:10Chuck Nice?

  Feodor. But not Theodor. Feodor.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fyodor.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  That's the original version.

• 41:16Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. What do you think are the best ways to keep abreast of current developments in the study of existential risk? There are great websites out there like those of Future Humanity Institute and Future of Life Institute. Neither is very active on social media. Have you ever specifically researched the various topics you've explored since you finished the series?

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, great question. So, so a couple of things. I'm planning on doing a follow-up to the, the, the end of the world podcast, these first 10 episodes. That's a lot more podcasty, a weekly kind of thing to keep abreast of all this stuff. So, listen out for that. But also, the Future of Life Institute actually is pretty, pretty, um, pretty visible on social media. They have a great podcast as well. But that, that's a really important point. Right now, as far as existential risks are concerned, um, there's a lot of academics writing really smart papers and you have to go grind those up to understand what's going on. So, that's one of the reasons why.

• 42:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm an academic. We read the papers.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't grind them up.

• 42:17Chuck Nice?

  I'm a non-academic.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  If you're non-academic, you grind. That's exactly right.

• 42:21Chuck Nice?

  And use them as, uh...

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, just in all fairness, academic research papers are very dry.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And very jargon-filled.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're, they're really hard to get.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  You have to teach yourself how to read an academic paper. So, it is a grind for people like us, right?

• 42:34Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Um, so that's why I made this podcast and that's why I, I plan to continue to make the podcast because I will grind this stuff up and then... Try to explain it so that it's not just academic.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll be our conduit to our extinction.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  That would be, that would be great. If we're gonna go extinct either way, I might as well be the guy.

• 42:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. I get bored, so you don't have to. There you go. Alright, here we go.

• 42:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got another one, I think.

• 42:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I've got another one. Here's this one. Uh, this is Mario Gurt.

• 43:03Chuck Nice?

  Mario Gurt on Instagram says, is it possible that our universe is someone else's Large Hadron Collider?

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good.

• 43:12Chuck Nice?

  What an awesome little question.

• 43:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, are we the galaxy on the Belt of Orion?

• 43:17Chuck Nice?

  Right, there you go.

• 43:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you get that reference?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Men in Black?

• 43:23Chuck Nice?

  Men in Black.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Uh, the first one?

• 43:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  I haven't seen it in a while.

• 43:29Chuck Nice?

  I love Josh.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  I'm feeling it.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, no, no, you, you have, you have, um, incomplete geek street cred.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, no, I know. It's true. There's, there's things that I need to learn still, for sure.

• 43:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some gaps, okay. We still love you. Uh, so, what was I talking about?

• 43:49Chuck Nice?

  So you said, are we the, are we, are, are we the galaxy on the Belt of Orion? Or, you know, are we a galaxy, are we the universe inside somebody else's thumb?

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Large Hadron Collider.

• 43:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me answer that in a slightly different way.

• 44:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we first probed the atom and we found, oh, wait a minute, the atom has a nucleus and it's got electrons that orbit the nucleus? That's just like the solar system. The solar system is just like the galaxy. Where the stars orbiting the center of the galaxy, we have planets orbiting a star, and we have electrons orbiting. So maybe it's that all the way down.

• 44:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe that's the theme, and maybe that's how all this works. And when you start probing the atom on that scale, the laws of physics manifest in completely different ways.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not just a scaling phenomenon.

• 44:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for us to have these laws of physics manifest the way that we do, and claim that it's the microscopic physics in someone else's collider, it's just not a realistic extension of how things work. Although it was deeply attractive, because it, it, it was philosophically pleasing to imagine that you just had nested.

• 44:57Chuck Nice?

  Of course, because it's very linear.

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just nesting. It's just, you just keep going.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So because things manifest differently on these scales, you can't just get, for example, okay?

• 45:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a something called a water strider, which is a an insect that can just stride on the water. Yeah. Using the surface tension of the water. It uses the surface tension of the water. If that were any bigger, it would just fall through. You can't you you can't scale things because the forces operating have different manifestations on different scales. Right. That's why. And so that's why, uh, what what's the movie Them? Do you remember the movie Them?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  With the ants?

• 45:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ants. Oh, he's got one.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  I have seen that one.

• 45:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got one.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  It's all.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Giant ants. I might have some nuclear thing and the ants got big. Nice. And ants are coming. Okay, ants are creepy anyway, and now they're bigger than you. Yeah. You freak out. I love ants. That can never happen.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Do you love ants?

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love them so much. Because ants have these tiny spindly little legs. Right. And if you scale up the size of the ant, its weight outstrips the ability of these spindly legs to hold them up.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Have you done this on Twitter? Have you have you done a Twitter rant about them?

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I could. I could totally rant on this. Uh, so the point is, as you get bigger, I can say this mathematically. As you get bigger, the strength of your legs, your limbs, only goes up as the cross-sectional area. But your weight goes up as the cube of your dimensions. Ooh. So what happens is, because as you get bigger, you grow in all dimensions, but your legs, if if your leg gets wider, the strength is only the cross-section of your leg. Right. It's cross. Eventually, you just crush yourself. That's why hippopotami don't have skinny legs. Right. And they're short, fat, stumpy legs. Stumpy, big, big, stumpy legs. But elephants have stumpy legs. Right. Okay? A giraffe has long, slender legs, but a giraffe is not, don't weigh all that much. Right. It's slender.

• 46:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the distribution isn't. The distribution is completely different. So it's so it's a fascinating cottage industry, studying the relationship between size and life. And how things scale. And how things scale. Wow. Yeah. I don't. And that wasn't a lightning round? No. But who cares? That was really cool, man. It's why if you take a bucket of water and empty it on your car, it doesn't stay as a big ball of water.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 47:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if the make the water smaller and smaller and smaller. It just becomes droplets. Then it's a drop, and the drop will stay on the car because surface tension holds it. Surface tension is not strong enough to hold big things. It'll hold a little thing. Right. The world of insects. Is completely surface driven, their physics courses in Insects 101 is all about surface tension.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Huh, right, yeah.

• 47:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause they, you can get trapped inside of a little bubble.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do I get out? With surface tension.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  That's why everyone needs to know physics.

• 47:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody needs, even insects.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Humans, everybody.

• 47:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh wow, that was cool.

• 47:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta wrap this up.

• 47:44Chuck Nice?

  That was cool, that was cool.

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta wrap this.

• 47:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, we're done.

• 47:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, sorry.

• 47:48Chuck Nice?

  I was trying to go back to another one.

• 47:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We did get a bunch in there though.

• 47:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we did. Listen, that was like the longest lightning round we've ever had.

• 47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, no, it was good, good, good. So Josh, thanks for, thanks for coming on.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta do this again.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  I will do it anytime you want.

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anytime. Josh, before we sign off, tell us exactly where to find your work.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Oh, you can find The End of the World with Josh Clark anywhere you find podcasts, including the iHeartRadio app and Apple Podcasts and all that jam. And then you can find me on social media at Josh Umm Clark, cause I don't know if you noticed or not, but I say um quite a bit. And I started a hashtag to keep a conversation about existential risk going. It's hashtag EOTW Josh Clark. So people can find me those ways.

• 48:30Chuck Nice?

  Awesome.

• 48:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, if you're looking for the end of the world, this is your man.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, thanks Josh. Chuck, always good to have you.

• 48:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, are you kidding me? It's my pleasure.

• 48:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, you've been listening to, possibly even watching, StarTalk, End of the World as You Know It Edition, Cosmic Queries. Josh Clark, thanks for being here.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 48:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As always, I bid you to keep looking up.