Making Stuff, with Adam Savage

You ever feel like just makin’ stuff? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice sit down with the master of making stuff – Adam Savage. They answer fan-submitted questions about creativity, MythBusters, engineering, and a whole lot more.

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.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Co-host today, Chuck Nice. Chuck?

• 0:16Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil, always good to be here at the Cosmic Crib.

• 0:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And who we making a sandwich with here?

• 0:21Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've seen him before.

• 0:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we have. We did.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one, the only, the inimitable.

• 0:26Chuck Nice?

  Dun dun dun.

• 0:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Adam Savage.

• 0:28Chuck Nice?

  Yes!

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Adam, welcome back.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  Thank you very much.

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is like your third time on StarTalk.

• 0:32Chuck Nice?

  It's been too long since I've been in this office.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's been too long. We enjoyed your last visit and I feel like we're lifelong friends, even though we've only had a few times together.

• 0:39Chuck Nice?

  It feels like culturally, we're, we're...

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Culturally, that's what it is.

• 0:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we like bounce and a lot, we vent.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The cultural Venn diagram has quite the area where you two overlap. And that creates the friendship even without

• 0:51Chuck Nice?

  It does.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  individual time together.

• 0:53Chuck Nice?

  I see what you're doing and I think, oh, that's awesome. That's great.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool, man. So we've got you on. You actually have a new book.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  I do. Holy cow.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll talk about your book. What are you saying? You have it. I, I, I'll do the talking about your book.

• 1:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay, alright.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 1:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That looks better, doesn't it, Chuck? That is. That's called public relations. When he talks about his book, it's bragging. It's bragging. When you talk about it, it's public relations. There you go.

• 1:16Chuck Nice?

  But enough about me. What did you think of my book?

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, "Every Tool's a Hammer", great title, and this, you know, my, my favorite picture in here is, there's a lot of interesting pictures, like you and your workshop and your, my favorite is the stuff that you dumped out of your backpack.

• 1:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then neatly organized it.

• 1:34Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was just cool. I like seeing what's, and I like, um, John Hodgman's comment. He said, "This, this is a map of his brain." Nice. That's, I thought that was a very good comment.

• 1:47Chuck Nice?

  If you feel like venturing into that unknown territory, yeah, this is the map.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For some people, you don't want to go there.

• 1:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But for Adam Savage, yeah, you want to see what's, what have, what, what's been driving him his whole life.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  That is so funny. Some people you don't want to go there, just, my wife left her, she journals and it was out on...

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She journals?

• 2:02Chuck Nice?

  She journals. And so the journal was on the bed.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you did not.

• 2:05Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm laying on the bed and watching TV. The journal is sitting right there. She comes in the room and she goes, "Oh my God, I left my journal up." And she goes, "You didn't read it, did you?" And I went, "I don't want to know what's going on up there." I don't want any parts of what is happening in your head.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your wife said, "I hope you didn't read my journal. That does not bode well."

• 2:25Speaker 02

  What movie exists in which someone read someone else's journal and it all turned out great?

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good point.

• 2:30Chuck Nice?

  That's so funny.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ain't no movie about that.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Now, I used to, my twin boys used to like sit in their bunk beds and talk every night and my mom was like, "What are they talking about?" I'm like, "I don't know. That's their private moment. I'm not gonna listen to him."

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't wanna know. Let them have their moments. But I wanna know what's on in his head and so does our fanbase.

• 2:47Chuck Nice?

  Now, that is so true, cuz I have their questions.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cuz this is a Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk. And we just solicited our fanbase, questioned, knowing they'd land in the lap of Adam Savage, about just making stuff.

• 3:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so Chuck, I haven't seen them. Chuck reviewed them just this morning?

• 3:05Speaker 02

  I'm actually reviewing them and, um...

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Adam hasn't seen them, so let's see what you got.

• 3:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and these are cool. And as usual, we always start with a Patreon patron because they support us.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cuz we're that low.

• 3:15Chuck Nice?

  We, well, no, we're that-

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're that high.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  We're that high.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 3:18Chuck Nice?

  That we have supporters.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wanna be a member of Patreon so that I could get my questions answered by somebody.

• 3:23Chuck Nice?

  Believe it or not, you can. You can actually donate to Patreon and then ask yourself a question.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how I can get on that list?

• 3:29Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I will do. I'll ask myself.

• 3:33Chuck Nice?

  That would be funny, guys.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, I'll do that.

• 3:34Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go. This is, uh, Bike and Bird says, um, "Hey, Adam, we've all heard of examples of items or procedures getting discovered by accident. Microwaves, penicillin, even chocolate chip cookies. Through all of your different experiments, was there an outcome or product that was produced that was applied to another test, or maybe even applications outside of the show?" Um, and this is just Justin from Texas.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Did he invent anything by accident?

• 4:06Chuck Nice?

  Did you ever invent anything by accident? It was a long way. It was a long walk around the block.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a whole, off-ramp?

• 4:11Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You took the cloverleaf to get back on?

• 4:14Speaker 02

  I have a comment and a question, but an autobiographical story first. Um, actually.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, there's a word for that in science, it's serendipity.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  A great word.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Uh, there was a moment, I can't think of anything we invented by accident, but I do remember we were on.

• 4:31Chuck Nice?

  A discovery.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  We were on Hawaii, doing, on Mythbusters, shooting Duck Tape Island. And this was the conceit, Jamie and I get stranded on a deserted island.

• 4:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jamie, your co-host from, from Mythbusters.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  So Jamie Heineman and I get stranded on a deserted island and all we have is a pallet of several hundred rolls of duct tape. What do we do?

• 4:49Chuck Nice?

  That's...

• 4:51Speaker 02

  So we.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. So, so is MacGyver tuning into this episode?

• 4:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More, more things to do with duct tape.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Exactly. So we made shelter, we, we actually made traps and caught chickens. We ended up making a 21-foot-long outrigger canoe with which we were able to get past the breakwater of the north shore of Oahu. Uh, but there was a moment when Jamie was asked to make a, a, a still for, uh, distilling, um, uh, clean water. Sorry, fresh water from, from the saltwater.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  And so he was digging into the beach to make a hole. And the procedure is, you dig into the beach, you make a hole, it's gonna be a kind of a damp hole, cause it's on the beach. And you let sit in some plastic with a rock in the middle. And as water condenses from the saltwater collects on the inside of the membrane you've put, you can catch it in a cup and drink fresh water. However, Jamie noticed that when he dug in and tasted just the water that was being filtered through the sand, that it was much less brackish and salty. And so he got really excited about the idea that the sand of the beach itself was filtering the water.

• 5:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  And we explained that this was a whole episode about duct tape. And while this was really interesting, it really didn't fit within our narrative.

• 6:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  But he kept insisting, and so we ended up shooting this whole sequence with Jamie, which I think we put on the web, because that was the most interesting part of that day for him, was the idea that the sand filtered the salt out. But this was a classic thing of Jamie going, uh, this is the thing I'm interested in. And we're saying, no, that's not what the episode's about. He's like, I don't care what, what you're saying.

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make a new episode.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  I just wanna talk about this thing.

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  And now I love all my water gritty.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, just a little.

• 6:26Chuck Nice?

  I need just a little bit of. Grit in all of my water now.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  I'll drink it out of my boot, thank you.

• 6:32Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 6:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, cool. Next question.

• 6:34Chuck Nice?

  That's a great story, great story, great story. Uh, this is John Cole from Facebook, who says, "Between StarTalk and the Tested YouTube channel, I am in heaven." Hello, Adam? How do you get over the maker's equivalent of writer's block? Oh, good one.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  This is a great question.

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  Good one. John Cole, you are thinking, my friend.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so do you ever just walk into your garage and say, "I don't know what I'm gonna put together today"?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Totally. Really? But more than that, I also hit moments where I spend a whole day assembling something and realize that I've assembled it chiral-y backwards. And that I have to take the whole...

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We want to explain what chiral-y means.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Well, chiral is left and right. Your hands are chiral.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was gonna let Chuck explain.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  I'm so sorry. Chuck, what is chiral?

• 7:18Chuck Nice?

  It's the, it's, it's the mirror image without the mirror.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice!

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Ooh, that was much more concise than that.

• 7:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was way better than where you were going with that.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was. I was being way too wordy.

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you can make something that is the mirror image of itself.

• 7:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you hold them together and they're mirror images.

• 7:33Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And our amino acids are, have one chirality, and they all have the same chirality for all life on Earth. And when we found amino acids in asteroids, we found that they were 50/50

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of both chiralities. So we knew that it didn't care, and there wasn't one life form, because amino acids aren't alive yet,

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Mm.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, that overran the other. So, our chirality is the one chirality in the whole world. And there's suspicions that if there was another life form with the other chirality of our molecules,

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that you wouldn't be able to metabolize them if you ate them.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the, the molecules wouldn't fit together, yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  They wouldn't fit together, so it couldn't break down.

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Might not even be able to taste it.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's cool. And they would probably be like a guy, one half of his face would be black, and the other half of his face would be white.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  It's really angry and sweet.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  And he's right, exactly.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  But so from a standpoint of making, whenever you have two parts that are chiral, it can be a devilishly difficult assembly problem because everything looks very similar, but the order of operations is very precise.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tetris is kinda like that. Two of the pieces are mirror opposite each other.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Right. So regularly in making, you hit a spot where you've...

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw it. 3D Tetris, I was thinking. Sorry.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  So you hit a spot where you've screwed something up and you feel, I feel really dejected about it, and I don't feel like moving forward, or I don't feel like undoing the five hours of work I've just done.

• 8:56Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  And I'm angry, I'm pissed off, I feel sad about it.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  That's funny, because I feel the same way whenever I put anything together from Ikea.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, that table is upside down.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  It's blistered.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Yes, totally. Ikea is absolutely ripe for that kind of screwing up.

• 9:18Chuck Nice?

  But go ahead.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Well, so...

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how does everything fit in a flat box, anyway? Isn't there something that should not be able to fit in a flat box?

• 9:26Chuck Nice?

  The Ikea car.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, sorry.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Go ahead. There's a line from, uh, Mary Carr, who wrote Liar's Club, wrote about, uh, about what she does with writer's block. And she says, "If I can't think about what to write, I sit at my desk and I copy writers I love in longhand because my fidelity at the desk is to be writing, whether it's my own writing or not."

• 9:49Chuck Nice?

  Wow, what an exercise.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  It's a beautiful exercise, and I take that to heart in the shop. If I can't think of what to make, I organize something in my shop. A drawer, a shelf, a bin. I take something and I adjust it because...

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you do shop time, no matter what?

• 10:02Speaker 02

  I do shop time, and I do so much more shop time than I ever did before because I realized it's a deep part of that whole process, of prepping the shop and prepping myself for the work.

• 10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do a little bit something like that. I have a book called, um, The Greatest Wits of All Time, and they're phrases out of letters and correspondence from people that have extraordinary wit, and I just read it. I say, "Wow, that was an awesome juxtaposition of words, phrases, or rhythm." And that just sort of rebaptizes me into a mood.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That I then say, "Okay, I'm ready, I can move."

• 10:33Speaker 02

  That feels fertile.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. I like that.

• 10:36Chuck Nice?

  So do you ever suffer writer's block in the...

• 10:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I go through this exercise. I have a lot of books written by writers who like writing about writing, also about whatever else they wrote about.

• 10:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did that sentence make any sense?

• 10:48Chuck Nice?

  That sounded very meta.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a lot of inception today. I would never want to write that sentence. That's only a speakable sentence. And so, and there's one sentence that I, I think I uttered this in our last recording. A sentence from The Great Gatsby. This is, this is a sentence where I knew I still have not become a great writer. And maybe never will. Oh, wow. Okay, I, I have to hear this now. "In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths amid the whispers, the champagne and the stars." That's a great. I, I can't, I read that and say, that's why I am not a novelist. Yes. And he is.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  You're reminding me of one of my favorite passages from-

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Obviously, this is, uh, the, it was in front of The Great Gatsby's, his party. Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  You're reminding me of a line from Chandler.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's, that's like a perfect simile. Plus, he mentioned- Came and went as moths. Yes, as moths. That's beautiful. It's very elegant. "The whispers, the champagne and the stars." Incredible.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  You know, I didn't come here to feel inadequate.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And yet.

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  And yet, and yet, here we are.

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, so what were you saying, Adam?

• 12:03Speaker 02

  I was saying, it reminds me of this line from Chandler where his hero Marlowe is sitting in a waiting room for too long and he describes the time passing as, "The minutes tiptoed by their fingers to their lips."

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lovely.

• 12:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so, uh, I have one. It's a quote from my father. Uh, "Seriously, what the hell are you still doing here?"

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You haven't moved out of the basement yet?

• 12:30Speaker 02

  That's a talk every father has.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's next you got there, Chuck?

• 12:35Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go, let's move on, uh-

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to remind you, we got, we got Adam here because he's got a new book. Yes. We would have him anyway even without the book. Let me just make that clear. Absolutely. Okay, but he was made available to us by Simon and Schuster. Okay? Um, for free, right? He was like in New York doing media, and I guess we count as media. You do? We do, yeah. Nice. I can handle that. Uh, "Every tool's a hammer, life is what you make it." I see what he did there. Yeah, it's very cool. That's right, right. So Adam.

• 13:03Chuck Nice?

  Every tool is a hammer, actually, though, it sounds like something Donald Trump would say, though. I'm just saying.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  You know, the phrase of mine he's grabbed is, "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, very nice. Is that a quote from you?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  That is.

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he actually quoted that?

• 13:21Speaker 02

  No, he hasn't quoted that, but clearly it's his entire life.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's just living it. Living it, okay.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  I love it. All right, let us, let's take Mitch Morris, who comes to us.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're doing well with the words, with the names today.

• 13:33Chuck Nice?

  That's because they're regular names.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Regular, yeah, regular. How racist can you get?

• 13:37Chuck Nice?

  I, I can get a lot more racist. I'm just letting you know, since we're asking.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 13:46Chuck Nice?

  But you are right, that is, uh, it's extremely, um, what do you call it? Um, presumptive of me. All right, here we go. Mitch Morris from Instagram.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get a lot more presumptive.

• 13:59Chuck Nice?

  Um, Mitch Morris from Instagram wants to know this. What is the most important tool ever invented? That's for the both of you. What an interesting little question. Very simple little question, but very interesting.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll answer first, because I want him to bring closure to this question. So, so when I was younger, I said, "Wow, this crescent wrench is really useful." Right? Because you can adjust it and, and then I discovered the...

• 14:25Chuck Nice?

  Miter saw?

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, the, the...

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Vise grip.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The vise grip.

• 14:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, "Oh, I've died and gone to heaven."

• 14:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vise grip. And then, and then...

• 14:36Chuck Nice?

  You got better than vise grip?

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 14:37Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The most important tool is money to pay somebody else.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That became the most important tool. I ain't fixing this plumbing, I'm gonna hire a plumber.

• 14:50Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's gonna be my toolkit for this.

• 14:52Chuck Nice?

  Capital. That, you may have just answered the question.

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  I have to say, in the circles I travel in, a crescent wrench is known as a nut corner rounder. And the vice grips are known as the professional nut corner-rounder.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  They can mess up. Don't get me wrong, I love both of those tools.

• 15:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Taking your hacks and removing the edges to it.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Until it can no longer be.

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  A nut corner-rounder.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  I have to go to the simplest, I mean, one of the six simple machines, the lever. I feel like the ability to move heavy objects with a mechanical advantage and the lever, the lever exists before the wheel or any rollers to me.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's feeling Archimedes, who said...

• 15:35Speaker 02

  "Give me a lever and a place to stand and I can move the world."

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think he said lever, he just said, "Give me a place to stand."

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Give me a place... I think he was describing the object he was holding.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'm saying, that was implicit. He doesn't give me a lever and a place, just give me a place to stand and I can move the world. Beautiful.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Next question.

• 15:56Chuck Nice?

  All right, good stuff.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, lever, I'll give you a lever. We can do the lever.

• 16:00Chuck Nice?

  Here we go.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  Here's the next question. From Wummm... Wummu Shop. Wummu Shop. Wummu Shop, yes. Sounds problematic.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have a brain injury that's preventing words?

• 16:17Chuck Nice?

  I think I just had a stroke.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, what can't pronounce.

• 16:20Chuck Nice?

  Wummu Shop. "Hi Neil and Adam, you guys are both my heroes. Which would you say would be the more important for the future of invention? Good old fashioned mechanical know-how or advances in material science? I.e. inventing a new type of suspension bridge that is stronger and lighter versus discovering a stronger and lighter titanium alloy."

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon.

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got Chuck Nice with me.

• 17:20Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're doing Cosmic Queries.

• 17:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we are. And before we went to break, we had a question from Woo Mu Shop, who says, "Hi Neil and Adam. You guys are both my heroes. Which would you say will be the more important for the future of invention, good old fashioned mechanical know-how or advancements in material science?"

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Adam, go.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Uh, good old fashioned mechanical know-how. We are always going to be advancing in material science, and there will sometimes be things that we cannot replicate because we lose a technology or we forget a process. But as long as we have a deep foundation in mechanical knowledge, in making things and the roots of the physics of putting stuff together, we can utilize those advances and we can adjust to the changes in the available materials as they come.

• 18:02Chuck Nice?

  Wow, great answer.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I only kind of agree with that.

• 18:05Chuck Nice?

  Uh-oh.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm agreeing 50%.

• 18:08Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 18:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I'm into material science. It is one of the most underappreciated, unheralded branches of science in this world.

• 18:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. If you go back 50 years, hardly any... No, I'm not bragging about this advance. I'm just citing it as a difference in our lives. You go back 50 years, hardly anything was made of plastic.

• 18:33Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And almost everything is made of plastic today.

• 18:37Chuck Nice?

  And it's working out great.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For many things. As long as you don't have to throw it away, okay? It's working out great. The plastic is stronger. It's more reliable than other materials. And you can mold it. And just think of the things that having simple, quote, "standard mechanical knowledge" would... So what? Look what this material can do. There are materials now that have memory of a shape they once had.

• 19:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can deform it.

• 19:05Chuck Nice?

  I sleep on it.

• 19:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you'd like wet it and then it goes back to the previous shape. That got nothing to do... Nothing in your lab, nothing in your garage is ready for that.

• 19:15Chuck Nice?

  But within the one is better than the other, mechanical knowledge can push humanity forward on its own, whereas material science can't necessarily.

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the good materials, you don't need the mechanical knowledge. It's built into the material itself.

• 19:30Chuck Nice?

  I totally disagree with that.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Smackdown. Meet me in the octagon.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  We actually, so as an aside, we just, I just finished a new show for the science channel called Savage Builds, in which I build absurd things every week. In the first episode, we made a suit of Iron Man armor in 3D-printed titanium.

• 19:52Chuck Nice?

  Mmm.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  And speaking of material science, I discovered that when you 3D-print titanium, you can attenuate its grain structure so that it is far stronger than normal titanium.

• 20:02Chuck Nice?

  Mmm.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Cause you can give it these super tight little crystalline granules.

• 20:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can get closer.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. But that, wait, wait, wait. Except, that makes it denser.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Uh, it didn't in this case.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It didn't, okay.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  No, it's still 45% the weight of steel and

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting, okay, okay.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  And stronger, stronger.

• 20:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it made it denser, you would lose some of the value of it being light.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, this stuff was amazing. We had potato-chip-thin pieces. Uh, they were bulletproof.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Bullets slid right off of this stuff.

• 20:28Chuck Nice?

  So wait a minute. Is this something that was already discovered?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, GE is using 3D-printed titanium in their jet engines right now.

• 20:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we would have accidentally discovered.

• 20:40Chuck Nice?

  It's a property that you discovered.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

  It's a property that you've found for yourself.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  I was working with the

• 20:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To make armor out of.

• 20:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  There's an amazing engineering school called the Colorado School of Mines.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, everyone knows that.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Those guys are incredible, and I worked directly with them in their additive manufacturing department.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so he just figured out a brilliant new material to make armor for knights.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  600 years late.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Exactly, man.

• 21:10Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but I, I, I can't wait to see what new material is coming down the pipe, and what, how that might transform how we live. I think about that all the time.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 21:21Chuck Nice?

  Excellent question, once again, from our listening audience.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the, and just, just for the point of interest, we trans, we transitioned from, ooh, that's cheap, it's made of plastic, to, oh, it's made of plastic, fine. I don't have any problem. It'll, it'll last forever.

• 21:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was, that, that happened in, we're about the same age, probably.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That happened in our lifetime.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  It did.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  It did.

• 21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, just

• 21:40Speaker 02

  I totally agree.

• 21:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just I just want, I don't want to smack you down too hard. Just, just, the octagon will decide this. Okay. Does anyone know what the octagon?

• 21:49Chuck Nice?

  I'm sure they do, and there's a lot of UFC fans.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay. I don't know what the Venn diagram is.

• 21:57Chuck Nice?

  Right now, there's a guy, uh, calculating an equation of kick ass.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 22:02Chuck Nice?

  So, uh, this is Mike, uh, okay. This is Mike, uh, Pumaking.

• 22:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pumaking?

• 22:09Chuck Nice?

  Pumaking.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pump making?

• 22:11Chuck Nice?

  Pump making, I don't know.

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:13Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Mike said, these people, I think they're just screwing with me.

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You think so?

• 22:17Chuck Nice?

  I really do. They're like, is it Chuck? We're gonna just make up names. All right, here we go. Mr. Savage, what is something that you would think will be possible to build in the future that is now considered science fiction?

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, very good.

• 22:33Chuck Nice?

  That's a great question.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Room temperature superconduction?

• 22:37Chuck Nice?

  Wow! Wow, you went for a big one, didn't you?

• 22:40Speaker 02

  I did. No, I'm really excited about, speaking of material science, I'm really excited about graphene.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It came back. It came back to me.

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Material science, all right.

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  So now, um...

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But so, so, so, so is that your, that's your answer?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  That's my answer. Room temperature superconduction is gonna be a, I, I believe it will happen in our lifetimes. And I think that, uh...

• 22:59Chuck Nice?

  And once that happens, will we actually be able to have, you know, spaceships that stop and hover and...

• 23:04Speaker 02

  I don't know. Well, at least we'll be, actually, we'll probably, one of the things we'll learn a significant amount about is the, is our brains. Is whether, it's the processing power of our brains. There's a, I feel like as computers become more powerful, they're going to become a real interesting window into consciousness and sentience, and what it is to think about the thinker.

• 23:23Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I hadn't quite put, heard it put that way, but now that I have, I agree 100% because it's hard for the brain to study itself. But if we make computers that are becoming better, better approximations of our brain, now we have something we can study.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so we would asymptotically come to an understanding of our brain simply by making our computers that much more complex. Possibly one day achieving consciousness themselves and becoming our overlords.

• 23:55Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how the story is.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  I think if we ever made a machine conscious, the first thing it's gonna say to us is, "What the [bleep] did you do?"

• 24:05Chuck Nice?

  That's so true.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, next question.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Alright, cool. Good, good, good question.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic Queries version.

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of StarTalk.

• 24:14Chuck Nice?

  Well, see, now here's somebody. He calls himself, or herself, "The Dragon Horde of Dice."

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dragon Horde of Dice.

• 24:24Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That person's mama probably did not give that person that name.

• 24:27Chuck Nice?

  No, but I think it's, I think her name is Kate, cuz it says @KateNader.

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 24:34Chuck Nice?

  So, there you go. Hey, for Adam, since I know you do cosplay, what is the most complex mechanical prop costume you've ever tried to build? Like a prop or costume that had no moving parts, or could collapse, expand, or something that you may have tried to just recreate?

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you make Transformers proud, ever?

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. No, I have not done a Transformers costume. A few years ago, I've, I've been obsessed with armor since 1981, when I went and saw Excalibur with my dad.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love Excalibur.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  John Boorman's film is amazing.

• 25:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My top five favorite films.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then I learned disturbingly.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. I know the fact you're about to tell me. Go ahead.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, really? No, no, no, maybe not.

• 25:16Chuck Nice?

  I don't know the fact, please.

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me, I'm having a private conversation with my man here. Okay. So, Excalibur, from the early 1980s, John Boorman. An early film that had Patrick Stewart in it.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Liam Neeson was in it.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Gabriel Burns.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so is Helen Mirren.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Helen, oh, she's so beautiful in that movie.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's the King Arthur story told. So.

• 25:37Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Much later, I realized, I think half the reason why I liked the movie was because of the soundtrack.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is very powerful Wagnerian. Um, and that which is not Wagnerian comes from Carmina Barana. Very emotional, energetic music that you're just feeling every scene. Then I thought to myself, maybe the movie's not so good, but the music was amazing and that completely compensated for it.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  I've watched it recently. It's still super campy and still really impressively great.

• 26:09Chuck Nice?

  But did you watch it on mute?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With subtitles and mute. Try that next time.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  I did not apply a control, Chuck.

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay. So what's, so your answer?

• 26:19Speaker 02

  So I've been obsessed with armor since then. And I actually, when I was a junior in high school in 1984, I went to, I built a suit of armor out of roofing aluminum with my dad and wore it to school on Halloween and passed out of heat exhaustion in third period. This is all up, just up north at Sleepy Hollow High School.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hence your Twitter handle, "Don't Try This."

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At home.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  A few years ago, I called up Terry English, who's the master armorer that built all the armor for Excalibur. He lives in the southern tip of England in Cornwall. And I went to his studio a couple summers ago and spent 10 days embedded with him as his assistant while he and I manufactured me a suit of King Arthur's armor from Excalibur.

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were an apprentice?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  I was an apprentice and he made me my lifetime goal suit of armor of Arthur's armor from Excalibur.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 27:09Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty intense.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  It was so intense. It was amazing. He lives in this incredible sort of overgrown shop in Cornwall. Um, he's...

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he is you in England?

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa. There's only room for one per continent, I think. I don't know.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  That was by far my favorite mechanical prop construction.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. But it was not, it was not electronic or anything. It's just mechanical.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Hammering aluminum all day long.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you have chain mail and everything?

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's, yep, absolutely.

• 27:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. Wow, that's pretty wild, man. That, hey, congratulations on that.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you still have it?

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I wear it every chance I get.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How'd you get it through TSA?

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Um, I actually, I, when I, I...

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever they were known back then.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  No, I made, I actually, uh, took it to New Zealand last year to make a little film with Peter Jackson about it where a demon tears my arm off. We called it "A Farewell to Arms."

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, things are getting weird real quickly here.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  When I carried the armor with me, I was thinking, this is, this is priceless to me. I can't really insure this. So I, I checked it as luggage with a GPS transceiver in my luggage so I could monitor it being loaded on to my plane.

• 28:17Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty wild.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  I felt if the airline was gonna tell me they couldn't find it, I wanted to know that I could find it.

• 28:21Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell you something.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plane goes down, they can't find the black box, but he found, he found the plane.

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Found the suit of armor. We found the suit of armor.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know where anybody else is.

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

  We have no idea why all these people are dead, but we do have an awesome suit of armor right now.

• 28:38Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god.

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dang dude.

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow, man, that's, that's pretty wild.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're far weirder than I ever extrapolated for you. Yes.

• 28:46Chuck Nice?

  Wait, you and Peter Jackson are making home movies?

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Occasionally, yeah.

• 28:51Chuck Nice?

  What's going on?

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And for those who didn't know, the, um, the Lord of the Rings series was mostly filmed in New Zealand.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  By Peter Jackson, and Peter Jackson was inspired to, one of the key inspirations for him in making Lord of the Rings was Excalibur.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm not the only one who likes Excalibur? It's my top five movies.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  It's a super important film.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the other four are really weird, not that, but that's in there. That's.

• 29:13Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:14Chuck Nice?

  I, I can't say it's one of my favorite.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 29:17Chuck Nice?

  I'm, I'm not cool enough.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 29:19Chuck Nice?

  I need help. Here we go, uh, this.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One other thing?

• 29:23Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These five movies are like the only five movies I've ever, not only seen a zillion times, but sat through the director's, um, narration of it.

• 29:33Chuck Nice?

  Narration?

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  Director's commentary?

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The director's commentary. Because you have to like the movie so much.

• 29:38Chuck Nice?

  That you'll suffer through.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't even need to watch this next ver- next iteration of it, and hear somebody just talk through it.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:44Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 29:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was.

• 29:45Chuck Nice?

  Well, you've also seen it that many times.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's part of, that's, that's how you earn the director's cut at that point.

• 29:49Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 29:51Chuck Nice?

  Right. Alright, now I gotta know what are the other four movies?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I'd do too.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 29:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, cuz if that's, if that's part of the top five.

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's the top five.

• 29:57Chuck Nice?

  And that means there's four other movies that made it to director's cut.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Number one, The Matrix.

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I, that's, I'll give you that.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Number two, All That Jazz. With Bob Fosse? Bob Fosse, yeah, well, it's his movie, yeah. That's a good one. Roy Scheider, sort of playing Bob Fosse, okay? Three, The Conversation.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Ah, such a good movie.

• 30:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man. Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola's The Conversation. Conversation. Uh, four, it's a toss-up between-

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Oh, wait, Conversation, that's with the man and the woman?

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Okay, go ahead.

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That movie.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  That movie.

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the man and the woman.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Okay, alright, go ahead, go ahead.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Conversation, uh, and then, there's probably a toss-up here, but the, um, West Side Story. Amazing. That's great. West Side Story, and, uh, and then Excalibur, I think it's fifth out of those five.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  I, look, I say there's at least nine films in my top five.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, you-

• 30:51Speaker 02

  There are nine films in my top five.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  The top five lists actually can go quantum, and we can fit lots of-

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll get another dimension on it. Yes, exactly, you've got timelines on your, on your- So, so those five are so unlike each other. And there's, what an eclectic mix you have. It's really weird, but I totally, so I used to dance, okay, so hence the Bob Fosse.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Have you done Dancing with the Stars?

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's, that's, that's so cliché.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  I know, I know it is, but I suddenly want to see you on the show.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I was dancing, no one was publishing my books. No one was publishing my books, I don't need to dance anymore. Okay, so, so, Chuck. Do you love Strictly? I'm serious. Do you love Strictly Ballroom? I'm dancing for nobody, okay?

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Oh!

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My people have come a long way.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Copy that. Okay.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Alright, so, so, uh, there's that, and I, I wrote a, a column for a magazine, under the pen name of Merlin, so I have extra interest in the Merlin Arthurian legends, and I have the Mallory book in vellum, you know, so, there's that. Matrix, of course, is the ma- Matrix 1, of course, not 2 or 3.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Absolutely perfect.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Matrix has to be there.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  There are two other movies?

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And The Conversation was just so, so well-done.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and there're no explosions, there's no chase scenes.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a story well-done. And so, so there I am. Nice. Those are my five. Now, but listen, so, there you go, people, now you know what you're doing, uh, Netflix and chill with Neil's List.

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a weird list.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  What a weird list on Netflix and chill, right?

• 32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And West Side Story is New York. It's, it's the city. It's, I'm half Puerto Rican. Um, my mother's name is Shrentita Malia Feliciano Tyson. Okay, that's her name.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  West Side Story is such a masterpiece.

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's a masterpiece.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  A masterpiece.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Masterpiece. Masterpiece. And while I don't know how to compose music, if I ever could, I'm imagining that I could compose the music that we hear in West Side Story.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Of West Side Story.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. That's where I'm thinking that's what I would reach for. And...

• 32:57Speaker 02

  That would be your North Star.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was my, that'd be my North Star. I like, he's beautiful. I love Adam.

• 33:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, next question, what was that?

• 33:34Speaker 02

  All right, so this was, uh, Lane from Minnesota who said, "As a builder, I remember failed projects more than the successes." Is it true?

• 33:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me about failures relative to successes.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Well, and we talk about this a lot these days. Failure is a really popular word. And Silicon Valley says, you know, "Build fast and break things." We talk about educating kids. We talk about teaching them how to fail. And I have a particular take on this because I think failure is a fine word.

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, a version of that from the 90s or 80s, which, which was shocking when we first heard it was, "If it ain't broke, break it."

• 34:10Speaker 02

  Break it. Yes.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that way, you might invent something better than the thing you had before. And just because it worked, doesn't mean that's the best version of what it could be.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Indeed.

• 34:19Chuck Nice?

  Or you just end up with a lot of broken shit.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what, if you're not creative.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  There's always broken shit.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't heed that advice, if you're not creative. Alright, so go ahead.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  But we don't really mean failure. Um, wrong turns on the path to get to a success are not failures, they're simply iterations. And I, I, I'm here.

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's not a euphemism or anything like that.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  No, my, my, for me.

• 34:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Smells like one.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  What I want to preach is that both science and art are iterative processes that include tons of wrong turns. And the wrong turns aren't outliers, they're part of that process. And we go up the path and we're like, okay, this isn't the path. So let's go back to the fork and continue down another path and see if that's the path. And so, yes, I also remember my failures more than my successes because that's where I learned. The failures are the, the failures. The wrong turns I took to get to the right turns are the, are the places that I learned the most about myself and about how to build things and about how to recover from those moments.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what they say about rocket launch failures? That they're not failures, they're just experiments rich in data.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  But this is, right in the movies, there's always the guy who says, "My experiment was a failure." No scientist says that.

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, we don't, we don't actually. If it's well-designed, a, a negative result is actually useful information to you.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Indeed.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Publishable information.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  We, we don't.

• 35:37Chuck Nice?

  You have to say that when somebody else is paying for what you do.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but all of our, I was just reading an article the other day about how sci, how journals, publishing journals don't highlight no results.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't value it in the publishing.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  They don't value it in the publishing.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we should, we should.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  And we should.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a problem.

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  That's true. I'd never thought of that. But yeah, there is a great deal of value.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tells you what not to do.

• 36:00Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Tells the next person, "Look, this is what I did, it didn't work out." And now I don't have to waste time going down that.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  And the scientific inquiry that is equally as important as some brand new fact.

• 36:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh no, that makes a lot of sense.

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know Chuck has, has a new hero of the recent months who may have been responsible for setting us down the wrong path. Because his, his, his mantra was, "Failure is not an option." This was from Apollo 13, and this is, uh, Gene Krantz. And so, "Failure is not an option." And then that became America, "We're not gonna fail." And then we lost track of the value of failure.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  The most surprising thing I learned from doing Mythbusters for 13 years was what, how surprisingly creative the scientific discipline is. And how it mirrors the creative discipline. To me, conducting and building experimental methodologies is every bit as creatively satisfying as making a sculpture, painting a painting, or writing a book.

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I agree 100%.

• 36:59Chuck Nice?

  But I think it's better when you call it a wrong turn, the way you put it that way. Because if you think about it, just from the, from a standpoint, everybody can identify.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Driver's standpoint.

• 37:11Chuck Nice?

  Driver's standpoint. When you make a wrong turn, how many times have you done that and discovered something that you really like?

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there's a botanical gardens over here.

• 37:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Oh, my god.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  In fact, that process is the soul of stand-up comedy.

• 37:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, absolutely, yeah.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Right? Iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate. Every joke, every joke.

• 37:28Chuck Nice?

  Even, listen, it's the same process even when the joke works.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:33Chuck Nice?

  You go back and you try to crack it open and see, how can I make this even better?

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Indeed.

• 37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it works, break it.

• 37:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, no, absolutely, yeah.

• 37:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Super cool.

• 37:41Chuck Nice?

  Wow, Lane, what a great question. You're a hero, Lane. That's what you are. You are. All right, this is Chris Goes to the Park. Thank you, Chris.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 37:51Chuck Nice?

  Thanks, Chris. Uh, he says, hey, Adam, are there any inventions your team created on Mythbusters that you have kept or that you might still use today? P.S. Loved your show growing up. It inspired me to study engineering. Now I'm an engineer.

• 38:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Always amazing to hear. Um, there's nothing that we kept from the public on Mythbusters, except for one thing.

• 38:16Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Cary Grant and Tori were.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, I didn't understand the question then. You mean, is there something you made on Mythbusters that the public never saw?

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Or no, or there's something you made that you took home with you. Something we came up with or that we discovered on Mythbusters that we have somehow kept from the public.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, that's not how I read the question.

• 38:30Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, he meant, but I like that.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's even better.

• 38:33Chuck Nice?

  Is there anything that you invented or came up that you were like, wow, this is so good. I'm actually gonna put it to use in my life.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, that's how I, that's how I read it.

• 38:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Wow. Yes, I mean, really, it was the more the process of telling the stories on Mythbusters. Okay, but wait, that's not as interesting a question as the one you thought it was.

• 38:50Chuck Nice?

  I know, I was gonna say.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Let's assume it was the question you thought it was.

• 38:54Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, which is.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Cary Grant and Tori were testing the explosive, Cary, uh, sorry, my co-hosts on Mythbusters, Cary Byron, Tori Bileche, and Grant Imahara, uh, they were testing a story that involved a commonly available, commonly available material that is as close to a description as I'm going to get, and its explosive properties, and what they determined with this use case scenario was so spectacularly terrifyingly explosive that we agreed to destroy the footage of the explanation and never tell how we got to that.

• 39:29Chuck Nice?

  And I thank you for that.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, no, Bomb Squads the world over know what we figured out on our, on our own.

• 39:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Uh, and are thankful that we've decided not to put that in the episode.

• 39:40Chuck Nice?

  So, yeah, it's like.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Give it our engineer Ben just found it on YouTube.

• 39:43Chuck Nice?

  Right. Did you know if you took cotton balls and chewing gum, you could actually bring down the World Trade Center? Like, what? I'm like, yeah, no, that's crazy. Yeah, so, um.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Okay, so the answer is yes, you did. Yes, yes, yeah.

• 39:55Chuck Nice?

  So you, you quarantined that information.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  We did.

• 39:57Chuck Nice?

  And just sit to hell with it.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  The world doesn't need it. It will not be better for this bit of knowledge.

• 40:02Chuck Nice?

  All right, now, just between us, what was the, what was the, what were the materials?

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Just between you and us.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, just between us, just what were the materials, so.

• 40:12Chuck Nice?

  All right, I don't wanna, I don't wanna know, to be honest, cuz I'm, I can't be trusted. All right, this is Ringamilly, who says, "How do you create new things that haven't before been thought of? In other words, what is your process for, uh, creative discovery?"

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Good.

• 40:30Chuck Nice?

  Uh, uh, you know, is there any process that says, "Well, you know what? Boom."

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know if there's, I don't know if it's reasonable to think about something as, "I want to make something that's never been thought of." I don't think we have the, the choice. To to sequester an invention, or a build, or something creative into a category before it's been made. And everything we made is based on everything that we've seen. So, just as, is it Newton that said we stand on the shoulders of giants?

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Just as Newton says that, we all do. It's called culture.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I see farther than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants who have come before me.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  And that is one of the greatest descriptions of culture that anyone's ever penned. That's exactly what's happening. When I was, you know-

• 41:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially now.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  When I was seventeen, I saw Alien. It took me five years to get the aesthetic of H.R. Giger out of my system. I had to recapitulate the aesthetics that he was doing because I found it so powerful, until I kind of understood it. That recapitulation-

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that person is the what to the movie?

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, he does. H.R. Giger designed the Alien monster.

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said it like, "Well, but we all have beer with H.R. Giger."

• 41:33Speaker 02

  No, I'm sorry. H.R. Giger is this crazy German who designed all of the creatures and alien technology from the original movie Alien.

• 41:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got you.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Ridley Scott's first science fiction film.

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. And of course with Sigourney Weaver.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton. That's one of my top five films.

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  An amazing film. I mean, it's a Gothic horror film, not a science fiction movie, but...

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My issue with it was that the aliens still had, like, a mouth, a jaw, teeth. Yeah, but he had a mouth and a mouth. A mouth and a mouth. I mean, that's pretty creative. No, no, I'm just thinking, most life forms on Earth do not have a mouth and teeth. Like trees, and worms, and butterflies, and this sort of thing. So, I, if you're gonna have a complete alien, you should be more creative than even that. Like the Blob, 1958 Steve McQueen movie.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, it got no bones. Nothing. It's just a blob.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Terrifying.

• 42:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was it? It was a blob. It was a blob. It was completely terrifying. And it would eat your blood, suck your blood. And do you know when the Blob first landed, do you know what color it was? It was transparent. It only turned red after it ate its first victim.

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Yes, you didn't know that.

• 42:41Chuck Nice?

  I did not know that.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  We didn't know that. Why did you edit him? I know that.

• 42:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, and it could come through the vents into the thing.

• 42:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 42:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's, to me, that's creativity.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  So, I, I, I don't think that you can say to yourself, I want to think of something that's never been thought. I think you have to just keep on thinking, what do I, what do I want that doesn't exist?

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  What do I want to make extant?

• 43:04Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  That, that I can't obtain, or I can't get.

• 43:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so your urges are guiding your creativity?

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 43:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there you go.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And that, actually, that's what this book is to me. It's a permission slip to everyone to follow those weird urges. I call them secret thrills.

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you shouldn't title it Follow Your Weird Urges?

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'd be a bestseller overnight.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  The publisher rejected that song.

• 43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They rejected that title.

• 43:28Chuck Nice?

  Is it too late to change that title? Because that's a damn good title.

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just remove the cover, right, right.

• 43:33Chuck Nice?

  Follow Your Weird Urges.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Draw it on the, on the.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  I know what I'm signing in your book, Neil.

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so we have to go into lightning round now.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 43:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we have a few minutes left.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 43:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I need from you soundbite answers.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  Great.

• 43:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, are you ready?

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, go.

• 43:47Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Olivia Waits from Instagram. She wants to know, how long does it take to usually come up with a truly new idea?

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Ah, that is impossible to quantify.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next.

• 43:59Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Canis slicker, sis.

• 44:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me ask, what's the longest and shortest time it took you to come up with a new idea?

• 44:06Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to get the range.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  It's impossible to quantify. The range between one minute and 17 hours.

• 44:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, good.

• 44:13Chuck Nice?

  There you go, I'll, I'll accept that.

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pull that one out of his ass, the 17 hours.

• 44:16Chuck Nice?

  Sorry, we were looking for two days.

• 44:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wrong answer.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, go.

• 44:21Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Uh, canas, canas slicker. What, oh, that doesn't even sound, I think somebody made, never mind. What is your most unique, out-of-left-field inspiration that has ever happened to you or even surprised you? That is weird. Where did you find inspiration in a place that you never thought you would?

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. I'm, I'm gonna need time to think about that one. I don't have a, a, a soundbite answer for that one.

• 44:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have till the end of the show. Okay, next question.

• 44:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Julie.

• 44:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, let me, let me reword that question. Uh, maybe it's the same question. Among all your sources of inspiration, what has been the most fertile?

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Uh, reading, actually, always, reading about the first experiment of something that was discovered. Reading Fizhau's speed of light experiment is so thrilling.

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mmm, okay, good, good.

• 45:06Chuck Nice?

  Wow, what a great answer. Even better question. Uh, sorry.

• 45:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fizhau is in Doppler Fizhau, it's a, in late 19th century, early.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  He calculated the speed of light with the clockwork and mirrors.

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, there we go. Next.

• 45:20Chuck Nice?

  There we go. Uh, this is Julia from NB says, or fromd, says, "If you had unlimited resources and time, what would you build?"

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Ooh. Oh, I'd build a spaceship and I'd go to the moon and then I'd go to Mars.

• 45:38Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  With unlimited resources and material, yeah, totally. I would start some interplanetary exploration.

• 45:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beautiful, love it.

• 45:43Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this office, I love that answer.

• 45:45Chuck Nice?

  All right, last question?

• 45:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no.

• 45:47Chuck Nice?

  That's it?

• 45:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think we have time.

• 45:49Chuck Nice?

  There we go.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Final reflections. Chuck, give me your final reflection.

• 45:52Chuck Nice?

  Um, I am going to now pursue my weird urges.

• 45:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Weird urges, there you go.

• 45:57Chuck Nice?

  And I am really happy that I have.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go for it.

• 45:59Chuck Nice?

  I'm happy I have permission to do so.

• 46:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Adam, you got this book. Presumably, there's still stuff in you that's not in this book, otherwise buy the book and then we don't have to ever watch you again. Right, Joe?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, I helped some stack.

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me something that's not in the book that we should carry with us.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Um, that all human beings really want to do is tell each other stories. And it's how, it's, that's both science and art, it's how we understand the universe.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if the story you're telling is how to build something.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Indeed.

• 46:30Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, I like it. Very nice.

• 46:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what I'd like to think, if I can add to an earlier question about creativity, to have a thought, to see what everyone else has seen and think what no one else has thought, that's a commonly invoked definition of genius. But maybe it's not genius that we're honoring there. Maybe it's hard work, where you have a lot of dangling thoughts within you, because you've read a lot of books, you've seen a lot of movies, you've spoken to a lot of people, you've done a lot of tinkering, and they're sitting there waiting in your head, and then you walk. Amid all of these dangling parts.

• 47:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you say, "Give me two bits of that, one part of that, one part of this." Because they're available to you to draw from. And out of that comes a brand-new idea, a brand-new object, a brand-new concept. So, I think the people who are cited as the great inventors and geniuses of the world are simply those who have more bits and pieces in their lives waiting to be assembled into something new. Hmm. I totally agree. Very nice. It's beautiful that you agree with me. Because I pull that from the cosmic perspective. Adam, thanks for being on StarTalk. Chuck, as always. Always a pleasure. You're my man, dude. A pleasure, gentlemen. You've been listening to, possibly even watching, this episode of StarTalk featuring

• 48:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Adam Savage, formerly of Mythbusters, and now he's just making stuff and he's got a Science Channel program that I can't wait to catch. Give me the name of it again? Savage Builds. Savage Builds? Nice. Sounds angry. May tw- June 12th. June 12th. There we go. Okay. Summer 2019 on the Science Channel. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking out.