Einstein’s Genius, with Ron Howard

Neil deGrasse Tyson, filmmaker Ron Howard, astrophysicist Janna Levin, and comic co-host Harrison Greenbaum celebrate and explore the life of Albert Einstein, including his path to scientific enlightenment and the impact of his genius on the world. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/einsteins-genius-with-ron-howard/ Photo Credit: National Geographic Channel.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today's episode is all about Einstein. And we're featuring my interview with Ron Howard. What does Ron Howard have to do with Einstein? He actually directed the first season of National Geographic's Genius Series. And if you're gonna start a series about the world's geniuses, who better to do it with than Einstein? And I bumped into Ron Howard at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. And I nabbed some quality time in conversation with him about that project. To talk about Einstein, I know the man, I know his work, but I don't know him as well as my friend and colleague, Janna Levin.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jana, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 1:15Janna Levin?

  Thank you, it's good to be here.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, Jana, you are a professor of astrophysics at Barnard College in Columbia University. And you're a theorist?

• 1:24Janna Levin?

  Yep.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you care about complicated cosmic stuff?

• 1:28Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like what the spacetime continuum is doing.

• 1:30Janna Levin?

  I would say everything I think about has something to do with spacetime.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. So do all of us, though, actually, right?

• 1:37Janna Levin?

  Where am I going for lunch?

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When?

• 1:39Janna Levin?

  Example, when?

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when are we gonna have lunch? Let's get a cup of coffee. Where, you know, what? So, yeah, we all think about spacetime, whether or not we know it. Yeah, so, thanks for, you'll offer commentary on some of what comes out in this interview. And we've got Harrison Gremmam. Harrison, welcome back.

• 1:57Harrison Greenbaum?

  Thank you, yeah.

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent.

• 1:59Harrison Greenbaum?

  My family has a connection to Einstein, because my great-grandmother's brother, Louis LeWinter, was part of the group that helped get him out of Germany to New York. So we have like a letter in the family of gratitude from Einstein for helping save him and his wife's life.

• 2:14Janna Levin?

  Wow, you should ensure that.

• 2:18Janna Levin?

  His letter about religion sold for something like $2 million recently in a few months ago.

• 2:23Harrison Greenbaum?

  I have a couple of phone calls to make.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, welcome back.

• 2:27Harrison Greenbaum?

  Yeah.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and what's, you're wearing a shirt with, I recognize the quote. That the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. And who, who said that? Neil deGrasse Tyson. So you wear that on my show. I think you're funny.

• 2:42Janna Levin?

  Aren't you wearing a quote by him?

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm not wearing a quote by him.

• 2:44Harrison Greenbaum?

  You should have a joke.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, thanks for wearing the shirt.

• 2:48Harrison Greenbaum?

  My pleasure.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's one of my more important quotes out there. I'm happy to spread the love of this.

• 2:53Harrison Greenbaum?

  It was his laundry day. It was the last one I had.

• 2:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. But that shirt is apropos to this topic because so much of Einstein's work doesn't make sense to anybody. It makes sense on paper, maybe, to physicists who, who study it, but to the rest of everyone, what the hell was he saying? So hence, the universe is under no obligation to make sense. So, and just to be clear, so you're, you're comedian and a magician?

• 3:17Harrison Greenbaum?

  Absolutely. That doesn't make sense to my parents.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so I have to, I have to play the obnoxious, so, um, does that? So, so, is that why you're not married?

• 3:30Harrison Greenbaum?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 3:32Janna Levin?

  Okay, so I married a musician and we said, okay, maybe you should just tell my parents that you're a magician. And then when they find out, I mean, you're a musician, they'll be so happy.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When they find the truth, they'll be happy with the less, the greater of the lower truths.

• 3:45Janna Levin?

  Right, exactly.

• 3:46Harrison Greenbaum?

  It's like the old Andy Marshall joke, or Jay Marshall joke where he, I want to grow up and be a magician. And his parents were like, you can't do both.

• 3:54Janna Levin?

  That's good.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good, very good. And you're tweeting at Harrison Comedy?

• 4:00Harrison Greenbaum?

  Yeah.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Jenna, you're tweeting at Janna Levin?

• 4:02Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good. Got your, you don't have to say the real version of you. That is you. Yeah. So, why don't we go to our first clip? First clip of me in conversation with Ron Howard. We all know who Ron Howard was. He's Opie from, from, what's that show?

• 4:18Harrison Greenbaum?

  The Andy Griffith Show?

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Andy Griffith Show. And, no, he's a life in Hollywood. And he was in the original musical, The Music Man, as the, the kid with a lisp, who sang about the-

• 4:31Harrison Greenbaum?

  Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, not Louisiana, Paris, Prince of York, girl. I may have played that part in, in middle school.

• 4:39Janna Levin?

  Oh, he sings too.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently. So let's check out my interview with Ron Howard, talking about Einstein.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're handed a project of arguably the most important human being in the 20th century.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Well.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now you get...

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What now? Who... huh? Who... how did you? Where did your audacity come from? To say, "I got this." Einstein, Opie's got this, alright? Opie. I'm listening, come on.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Well, I've read movie scripts about Einstein and periods of Einstein's life before, and I never felt that they were... that that was the right platform for it. It was the right outlet for it. It was always too limiting. And when this script came from a company called Odd Lot, a writer named Noah Pink did a first pilot hour, of course Walter's book, and we began to think about breaking it into episodes. His life was so eventful, and I have tackled some true stories now at this point in my life. And what I was excited by were all of the human twists and turns. And so I do have enough confidence in our ability as storytellers,

• 5:49Speaker 03

  my ability, you know, to sort of get the big ideas across in an accessible way. Because we're not doing your job. We are telling the story of a life, and we're trying to make it as clear and be as accurate as we can in terms of the science. But this is not the... this is not the deep understanding. This is a more holistic and it's more humanistic. And he has so many twists and turns in his life. It's impacted by his own behavior. It turns out he was kind of a Bohemian dude in a way, you know, and a thinker. He had a lot of relationships. And working at a patent office.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Because he was a bit of an outsider. You know, his Judaism and religion worked against him.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Germany, yes.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  In Germany, at that time, in a serious way. You know, he wound up being on lists. You know, like, "Let's get it, let's get him." And so he faced all kinds of hurdles. And the surprising thing about Einstein is sort of... is kind of where he kept showing up and having an impact throughout that first half or so of the 20th century. And the lasting reverberation of what he learned and the discoveries he made. And I think as a dramatist, this is probably the most exciting thing, how close the world came on numerous occasions to sort of blocking this guy's ability to sort of offer us his insights.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's a good sort of profile of the series. It's Einstein as a person. And you get to know who he is and what he does and why he mattered. And it was inspired by the book by Walter Isaacson, Einstein, His Life and His Universe, I think it was. Einstein's Life in the Universe, back in 2007. It was a bestselling book. So, Jana, what, how did Einstein change our view of the world? Because up until Einstein, when I think of classical physics, it's things fall, things are heavy, there's that there, this is here. You know, we kind of, the universe was a manifestation of how it's, it should be.

• 7:55Janna Levin?

  How it's experienced.

• 7:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How our senses bring it to us. So what happened with Einstein?

• 8:00Janna Levin?

  Well, one aspect of Einstein's revolution that I love the most is that he wanted to adhere to such simple principles that he was willing to throw away things that seem so experientially real, just what you're describing, in order to adhere to those principles.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you say throw away, you mean my life experience might prevent me from thinking the way I should. So let me discard that for the moment and open up my head.

• 8:27Janna Levin?

  Yeah, to realize that just because this is the familiar experience we have, we are these limited creatures. You know, we know that we can't see across the entire spectrum of light. We have a very narrow band that we can see. And we discovered there's light out there and well outside what the eyes can see.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait a minute, we can see visible light.

• 8:42Janna Levin?

  Visible light.

• 8:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That aptly named?

• 8:46Janna Levin?

  Because the sun shines, peaks in the yellow, so do our eyes. I mean, clearly we're bound by this. We can't see X-rays and gamma rays. But they're out there and we can build other instruments. So even just the idea that the world is much better than our perception.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to make it clear, because not everyone knows this, that these words that we use in so many different contexts, ultraviolet, infrared, X-rays, radio waves, gamma rays, that's all light.

• 9:08Janna Levin?

  That's all light.

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just light we cannot see. And you need special detectors and machines to use them, to generate them. In our eyes... See this very narrow part of this entire electromagnetic spectrum? And we just see the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, Roy G. Biv. So, continue, sorry.

• 9:25Janna Levin?

  Except for Gavin, which you can see when you get me very angry.

• 9:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes, Mr. Hulk, yes, okay.

• 9:30Janna Levin?

  So Einstein was faced with a very serious constraint, a very serious limit, which was the limit of the speed of light. And this was discovered before he was working on this, that that light had a fundamental speed, that it seemed to be a fact of nature, which is very bizarre, super strange. I mean, the speed of a basketball is not a fact of nature, right? It can stop, it can go faster, it can go slower. Light can do none of those things. It can only go at this one precise speed. And most people were trying to say, well, that's clearly wrong, because that doesn't make any sense. Now, what is speed? Speed is distance you travel over time. And so Einstein said, I believe it, right, divided by time. And Einstein said, I do think that that's right. And there was, there were reasons why he was driven by that limit to force him to say, there must be something wrong with distance and time,

• 10:15Janna Levin?

  something wrong with space and time and the way we conventionally think about it.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he put all his confidence in the speed and not in his life experience of space and time.

• 10:24Janna Levin?

  That's right, he knew one had to go. And you could ask, why did he choose the speed of light over everything else? And that is because, imagine this thought experiment. I'm floating in empty space and I don't think I'm moving. Now, I think I'm alone, I don't see the earth, I don't see anything, I have no frame of reference. Suddenly, Bob, another astronaut, floats past me. And I say, Bob, you're moving, you know? And I only know you're moving because you're moving past me. But Bob's experience is exactly that he's not moving and he's floating in empty space and he's stationary and I floated past him. And it was very important to Einstein.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, who's right?

• 10:56Janna Levin?

  That, right, that neither of them. How do you know his name was Bob? And obviously, the answer was Bob. No, so precisely. They knew each other? I want to know the backstory, the friendship.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, you know, car auto shop name tag.

• 11:15Janna Levin?

  So he thinks about this, neither of them can be preferred. And so, he believes that the speed of light is a fact of nature. And so he says they both have to measure the speed of light, even though they're moving relative to each other, which it seems impossible. And so he said, "It's so important to me that neither of them be preferred, because how would you possibly choose? That I would rather suggest that they have different perceptions of space and time from each other. And that is why, although they're measuring the same speed of light in an impossible circumstance, it's because they are not perceiving the same space and the same time."

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jenna, that is the most brilliant explanation

• 11:51Janna Levin?

  Thank you.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of the birth of relativity that I have ever heard.

• 11:54Janna Levin?

  I really greatly appreciate that. I've worked on it for years, I've thought about it.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it just spilled out of your mouth.

• 11:59Janna Levin?

  It was not spontaneous.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I just had a cup of coffee and there it is. No, no, no, that is brilliant. So, if I can add some punctuation to the end of that sentence, he wrapped everything else around the requirement that they both measure the same speed of light.

• 12:16Janna Levin?

  That's right.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in doing so, it distorts time. It distorts space. And it interferes with our classical understanding of nature. And he did that to preserve the speed of light.

• 12:27Janna Levin?

  Exactly. So, space and time are relative, but the speed of light is absolute.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 12:33Janna Levin?

  It could have been called the absolute theory.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If Einstein had a microphone back then, he'd drop them all.

• 12:41Janna Levin?

  Go around the room, drop your microphones.

• 12:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nobody would have a microphone left after that. So, tell me about his famous year, 1905.

• 12:50Janna Levin?

  So, it's this incredible year where Einstein is actually unemployed.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anis merabulus.

• 12:54Janna Levin?

  The miraculous year. Einstein's technically unemployed as a physicist, although he's gainfully employed as a patent clerk. And he has what he calls the physics department.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A deadbeat.

• 13:03Janna Levin?

  Which is... No, literally, one of his professors called him a lazy dog. And Einstein said of himself, "You know, when I was a student, I was no Einstein."

• 13:12Harrison Greenbaum?

  What did they say before Einstein? Because now when you use something, it's like, alright Einstein. But like before Einstein, I was like, alright Newton.

• 13:18Janna Levin?

  Alright Maxwell, Rutherford.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So list what he did that year.

• 13:23Janna Levin?

  So that year, he discovered, he writes down the special theory of relativity, which we just discussed. He discusses something called the photoelectric effect, which has to do with the quantum nature of light. And it verifies that light has a quantum particle nature, as well as a wave nature, which was shocking. And Brownian motion-

• 13:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The duality, the wave-particle duality.

• 13:42Janna Levin?

  Exactly. We think of light as a wave, and he showed that it actually behaves like a particle under certain circumstances. And Brownian motion was similarly about the quantum aspect of matter. So you imagine dust floating around in the sunbeam in the window. That's an example of Brownian motion, where the dust particle just sort of randomly moves around. And that's because there's all these quantum, these little-

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The atoms are pitting-

• 14:01Janna Levin?

  They're colliding. And then finally, after special relativity, which is actually technically a consequence of special relativity, he writes the paper of the most famous equation in modern history, which is E equals mc squared. And where he realizes that energy is like the time component in some sense of momentum, and it has, the energy of moving in space has a kinetic energy. The energy in moving in time has an energy, even if you're not moving in space. And that is E equals mc squared.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's contained in the matter itself.

• 14:33Janna Levin?

  That's right. It's like the kinetic energy of your motion in time.

• 14:38Harrison Greenbaum?

  Yeah, thus spotting a ton of terrible tattoos. I'm sure there's a lot of people who eagle mc squared who does not know that that's what it means.

• 14:44Janna Levin?

  You can see them on StarTalk social media.

• 14:46Harrison Greenbaum?

  Look at the good ones.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then he turned 26.

• 14:50Janna Levin?

  And then he turned 26.

• 14:51Harrison Greenbaum?

  That was at 25? I'm 32 and I've like been eliminated from two reality shows? Is that the best thing?

• 14:58Janna Levin?

  All of this was sitting in his drawer that he called the physics department in the patent office.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's pick up my next clip with Ron Howard talking about the Genius series that aired on National Geographic Channel.

• 15:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again, when we think of Einstein, we don't typically think of him in the context of other, of the scientific community at the time because he's so singular. But looking at the treatments for several of your episodes, you reach in to places where other scientists, who are famous in their own right, actually, play a role, Einstein, Metzger could name a couple.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  Uh, well, you'll have to help me because of radiation.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, there's Wilhelm Rundgren. Yes, yes. He discovered X-rays.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  And, uh...

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He won the first Nobel Prize in Physics. It was all timed out for when Alfred Nobel set up the foundation, but...

• 15:45Speaker 03

  And of course, then then Leonard, who taught Mileva-Merich. Mileva-Merich was a very influential person in his life. You know, Einstein's first wife.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  And, uh, you know...

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some say she might have come up with relativity herself.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Well, some say that. She definitely was...

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After living with Einstein, the relativity thing. Oh, my gosh. Time got stretched. I don't know.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  She was a great mathematician and helped him a lot with the math and was definitely there with him. And he needed, uh, you know, he needed collaborators. He needed people to work with and bounce ideas.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Marie Curie is the character in this as well.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  Yes, we have Fritz Haber. Later, another winner, very important factor in his life. And, but Einstein was also very much a humanist. You know, unlike, say, John Nash, who was sort of focused in his world and brilliant, but troubled in other ways.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mathematician and a beautiful mind.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Mathematician and a beautiful mind. Uh, you know, Einstein, he played the violin. He loved sailing. He loved nature. He loved women. He liked the world, you know, and he was interested. And there...

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, that's a combination right there. Violin, sailing, nature, women, the world.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, and then there's, and then there's the physics.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there anything left after that?

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Then there is that physics thing.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The physics. Oh, he did physics on the side. Yeah, yeah.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Janet, let me ask you, how important is collaboration? If you're a lone genius, does collaboration even matter? Do you need my help?

• 17:14Janna Levin?

  Yes. Harrison's secretly all these years been had my back.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got your back.

• 17:21Janna Levin?

  Had my back.

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or is lone genius a trope that we want to be true but never is?

• 17:25Janna Levin?

  I mean, it's not true for me or in my experience of other physicists. I know some very brilliant physicists. I don't know any lone geniuses. And one of the most wonderful aspects of theoretical physics is collaboration. And it's one of the things I've tried to explain to other people. Physicists don't like to be alone. I mean, there are times you need to be alone. But there's nothing more adorable than seeing physicists sit around a table and you watch the rhythm of how they're talking. There's splurts, right? There's this energetic, "rarr!" And then they'll go quiet.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a word, splurt?

• 17:52Janna Levin?

  I think I just made it up.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Great word.

• 17:54Janna Levin?

  What did I mean? Splurges, splurges. What did I mean, y'all?

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let it be a word.

• 17:59Janna Levin?

  Can you guys edit that post-introduction?

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, loving the word. It's a flat and a splurge at the same time. I'm loving it. Go.

• 18:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our engineer just looked up the definition. A sudden gush?

• 18:13Janna Levin?

  It's definitely not what I meant.

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Contains saliva.

• 18:15Janna Levin?

  That's even worse. I used a real word incorrectly. It does not happen often. I'm pretty good with my vocabulary. But they'll have these very energetic conversations where they're talking intensely. And then you see them just kind of go quiet. How many people, four or five people, sit around together? And will comfortably sit quietly for a minute?

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Usually have to talk about sports or something.

• 18:35Janna Levin?

  Right. No, they sit quietly for minutes. And sometimes I just watch it from the other side of the room. And then somebody pops up again with the next idea that they had clearly all collectively gotten stuck on.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's what happened 1,000 years ago in Baghdad. A city open to travelers and traders of all different cultures and backgrounds and beliefs. And across the table, ideas were shared. Ideas were contested. And only the best ideas rose up out of that. And over that period, you had the golden age of Islam, where great advances in mathematics and medicine and engineering. So, yeah, across the table is a major part of the progress of science. So, thanks for bringing that.

• 19:16Janna Levin?

  Absolutely, and at the Blackboard, it's a pleasure.

• 19:18Harrison Greenbaum?

  Thank God it's not like a table of comedians, because when we sit around, we just insult each other excessively.

• 19:23Janna Levin?

  And no one gets a word in.

• 19:24Harrison Greenbaum?

  Yeah.

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take our first break. We're talking about Einstein with Jan Levin. And when we return, we're gonna get inside Einstein's mind on StarTalk.

• 19:44Speaker 04

  Bringing space and science down to earth. You're listening to StarTalk.

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk, featuring my interview obtained back in 2017 with the one and only Ron Howard, who so many of us know as a child actor. And then he had his entire life unfold in Hollywood, right on through Happy Days as playing a teenager. In his lighter years, he's a director. And in this particular example, he directed the multi-part Genius series, inaugurated with Albert Einstein, which aired on the National Geographic Channel. So, this whole StarTalk is about Albert Einstein. So, let's lead off with my next clip, interviewing Ron Howard. And we're gonna get inside Albert Einstein's mind. Let's check it out.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  If there's a lesson, as an ambitious, creative, brilliant person, what he did was, he would look at, he would apply this sense of logic to his life and also problems of science. And if there was a gap, and he went, hmm, that to that, that's an assumption. Let's dig into that assumption. And that was his, that was sort of his little superpower. It was his willingness to go there.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the power of science literacy. Not as measured by how many things you know, but what is, how is your, how is your brain wired for inquiry?

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 21:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you ask the next question? That is something that's not taught in school. So when someone exhibits it, it's like, whoa, look what that person's got. And I think it's teachable.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  It requires a kind of an endurance, but somebody has to support that. Kind of a, you know.

• 21:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got to keep at it.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the answer's always not just there. If it was just there, somebody else would have had the answer. So you've got to dig deeper.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Now fortunately, as you know, like Tesla, he was a visualist.

• 21:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tesla, the person.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a person before it was a car.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, are we clear on that?

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Well, Tesla could visualize, you know, you know, problems being solved, plans materializing. And, and of course Einstein was great at these, at the thought problem.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The great thought experiment.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  Thought experiments, yeah.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. What, in German, gedanken?

• 22:19Speaker 03

  Our show's in English.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sorry.

• 22:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jan, the thought experiment, what word was I trying to come up with there?

• 22:29Janna Levin?

  Gedanken.

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Gedankenexperiment?

• 22:31Janna Levin?

  Yeah, Gedankenexperiment.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, just a Gedankenexperiment.

• 22:33Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's thought experiment.

• 22:35Janna Levin?

  Yeah. And people in English say Gedanken still, experiment.

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We still do.

• 22:38Janna Levin?

  And physicists will say it that way.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As an homage to Einstein, because he was German.

• 22:41Janna Levin?

  Right, exactly.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what is a thought experiment?

• 22:44Janna Levin?

  So a thought experiment is literally when you just...

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm guessing they're cheaper than real experiments.

• 22:49Janna Levin?

  They're significantly cheaper. You need some like food and coffee.

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, a little caffeine, that's it.

• 22:53Janna Levin?

  A little caffeine, you know. It's a way of challenging what you think you know and understand by eliminating all of the extraneous stuff. So for instance, we already talked about astronauts floating in empty space. Now, I cannot do that experiment in reality. I can have astronauts floating near the Earth, but they're going to see the Earth, it's confusing. So the thought experiment is to remove...

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Earth is their reference frame.

• 23:17Janna Levin?

  Their reference... And so that confuses this argument I'm trying to make. So the thought experiment is imagine that the astronaut is floating in empty space with no frame of reference. And then by eliminating all of the stuff that was confusing you, all of the extraneous interferences, you allow your thoughts to hone in on only the essentials. And then stuff becomes clear.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're Einstein.

• 23:41Janna Levin?

  But he taught us.

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Completely clear.

• 23:43Janna Levin?

  He taught us this as a technique and we absolutely use it all the time. So imagine I'm standing at the event horizon and I do this. Imagine this is an eliminating.

• 23:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vent horizon of a black hole.

• 23:54Janna Levin?

  Right, a vent horizon of a black hole, whatever it is, I can, we can invent all the time experiments that we only do in our minds.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what that also means is you need to know enough physics to constrain the idea, but be open enough to new physics to have a new, a new discovery emerge from that thought.

• 24:16Janna Levin?

  Yeah, here's a beautiful thought experiment that is due to Einstein that he called the happiest thought of his life. He was thinking about gravity and so when we think we're heavy in our chairs, we think that's gravity. Lying in bed, it feels heavy. Standing in an elevator, heavy on our feet. He imagined, well, I'm going to do it in the elevator context. You feel heavier on your feet. There's something wrong with all those examples is that there's something in the way, something extraneous. The elevator, the chair, the bed. Why do I need those things to talk about gravity? Why do we need an elevator, a chair and a bed? So instead he cuts the cable of the elevator. And he says, imagine what would happen if you were falling freely in this elevator. It has no windows, you can't see anything outside.

• 24:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So before you cut the elevator, you're standing in the floor of the elevator and you have a weight.

• 24:56Janna Levin?

  Right, if you dropped your keys, it would fall to your feet. Okay? You dropped your water bottle, it would fall to your feet. You cut the cable, suddenly you're floating in the elevator cab because you and the elevator are falling at the same rate. Your keys, you let go of them, are floating in front of you. Your water bottle is floating in front of you. You would feel as though you were an astronaut in the International Space Station. In fact, you wouldn't be able to do an experiment that told you you weren't an astronaut in the International Space Station. And until, of course, the unhappy end when you hit the ground.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not on a space station.

• 25:29Harrison Greenbaum?

  Were you really there on Twilight Zone Tarot here? And you had a lot of fun?

• 25:33Janna Levin?

  So he called this the happiest night of his life because he realized what you're doing in a gravitational field when it's just you and gravity is you're falling freely in the spacetime around.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So to him, gravity was no weight at all.

• 25:46Janna Levin?

  Was no weight at all. It's weightlessness, not heaviness.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Earth is weightless in orbit around the Sun.

• 25:51Janna Levin?

  That's right.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when you talk about how heavy is the Earth, it's just zero.

• 25:54Janna Levin?

  Yeah. And so the astronauts at the International Space Station are doing that experiment, but just in a better way. They're falling, but they're also cruising at such a rapid rate, parallel to the Earth, that they always clear the horizon. They mercifully never crash into the surface of the Earth. But they are always in free fall. The International Space Station.

• 26:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they fall a mile downward, they've traveled so far along the Earth that Earth's curved downward a mile.

• 26:19Janna Levin?

  That's right. So they just fall.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they are falling, but they never hit the Earth.

• 26:22Janna Levin?

  They fall on a circle. And there's Einstein's second important idea, which leads to general relativity. The first is you're just falling around the Earth. The second is if you can fall in a circle, spacetime is curved. What you're really doing is you're falling along the natural curves in spacetime. And it leads him to the idea of the general theory of relativity, that gravity is really curved spacetime.

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The lesson here is Einstein was a badass.

• 26:50Janna Levin?

  Yeah.

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think we got this one.

• 26:52Janna Levin?

  It's some beautiful stuff.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's some beautiful, beautiful shee.

• 26:55Janna Levin?

  Yeah. As long as you don't say the "tee", you don't have to bleep it.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. No, no bleeping it. It's some beautiful shee.

• 27:03Harrison Greenbaum?

  Did also something very important happen in relativity class when you took it?

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes. How did you know this?

• 27:08Harrison Greenbaum?

  I Googled it.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you Googled it. I met my wife in relativity class. Did you know that?

• 27:12Janna Levin?

  I did not know that.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Under John Archibald Wheeler, a big relativist of the middle.

• 27:16Janna Levin?

  That's amazing. I of course know your wife. Lovely.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And she got her PhD in mathematical physics.

• 27:21Janna Levin?

  Amazing.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, yeah.

• 27:23Harrison Greenbaum?

  That's thanks to Einstein also.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I noticed her first in that class.

• 27:28Harrison Greenbaum?

  And then relativity.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, I met her in relativity class. Yeah. So Einstein's not the only genius in the world. A good one and important to us.

• 27:38Harrison Greenbaum?

  I'm right here.

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know how many people remember or know that Ron Howard directed the movie A Beautiful Mind.

• 27:47Janna Levin?

  Oh, right.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is about John Nash, the economist.

• 27:50Janna Levin?

  Yeah, after the book.

• 27:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tortured genius.

• 27:53Janna Levin?

  And mathematical economist.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mathematical, but he got his Nobel Prize in Economics for his work. So I asked Ron Howard about that. Check it out.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  With Beautiful Mind, I wanted to understand what those eureka moments were like. I went to university to university, talking to people who knew Nash. Do you know Simon Chappelle? Does that name ring a bell?

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Mathematician at NYU, knew Nash a little bit. And a very colorful Hungarian professor. And he was able to explain it in very similar terms. He said, "All right, look, here's the way I would describe John Nash and people of that sort of ilk." He said, "If you say that scientists, elite scientists, are sort of on the boundary of what's known and unknown, and we have the light and the dark, so you sort of say there are those people who are pushing the boundaries. That's, you know, those are those elite scientists." He said, "There are three types. And the people on the very front, all they want to do is push the light out a little further, take what they've got, that discovery that it exists, that there's more that exists, is kind of enough for them. They don't care about application.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  They toss it over to their shoulder to the next, you know, sort of level of genius that says, 'Oh, wow, I know what to do with this,' turns it into something." And then he said, "There's a third type," and I think this was John Nash, "and if it's a war against darkness, they're paratroopers. And they go into the dark, and they come back to the light and show you what they've found."

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah, so they don't leave a safe foot in the circle?

• 29:18Speaker 03

  No, they just go all the way in. And he said, "Some of them don't make it."

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, some of them, like, don't come back.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  Don't come back, yeah.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, right. I agree entirely with that. And the risks of putting both feet out of the circle are real, but you're right. Every now and then you need one to do that, because they'll find something where there were no no preconceived path there.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Yes, right, right.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the parachuter is in the breeze.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't even know where the breeze came from.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's a crocodile pit here, and there's a pot of gold there.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And half of them bring back the pot of gold.

• 29:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Janet, I don't know if you know, I was at Princeton while John Nash, when John Nash got the Nobel Prize. And I'd occasionally see him walking by. My office was adjacent to, in the astrophysics building there, Peyton Hall it's called. There's a long walkway where I had a very big sweep of traffic. I could see people going back. Occasionally I'd see him, and he was just always, just deep in thought. And you know they're deep in thought because they're not looking where they're walking. You know? It's just kind of a, the head bobs and there isn't...

• 30:30Janna Levin?

  Now, not everyone knows how to read that. It's very important that you can read that so you respect...

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, give it the space.

• 30:35Janna Levin?

  That that person is working.

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they're at the office, like the brain office. And other people can walk by and they don't even know they're there. So could you, do you have any way to compare one genius mind to another? Maybe Einstein to John Nash?

• 30:48Janna Levin?

  No, I absolutely believe that minds are unique, which is why it's frustrating that we do, in science, sometimes limit the pool of people we look at, or we think about, or we look at a scientist, or we think about a scientist, and also...

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Restricting access to the range of genius that is out there.

• 31:04Janna Levin?

  That's right, and all minds are different. We do get trained, and sometimes the training's too severe. So, as in that clip, the people who are more afraid to go out into the darkness. The training is so severe that you are trying to replicate one great mind with their progeny.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they have a sense of how that worked.

• 31:20Janna Levin?

  Intellectual progeny, right.

• 31:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're trying to duplicate that.

• 31:21Janna Levin?

  Right, but the ones that blow us away are the ones that just are different. You know, Gödel, or Georg Cantor's mathematical examples, you know, the Einstein, the John Nash. I mean, these are people who just thought differently, and it's a wonderful thing.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why, why are some sort of normal and others, they're not socially... They might say they just went crazy. They went off the deep end mentally. Whatever the proper word is, I don't know, but the point is...

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We see genius manifested in all the spectrum of mental stability. And I'm just curious, if you have any insight there?

• 31:58Janna Levin?

  Well, I have thought about this quite a lot. Not necessarily for personal reasons.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, yeah, no, of course not. It's research from other people.

• 32:06Janna Levin?

  My friends.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your friend.

• 32:07Janna Levin?

  My friend was concerned. Um, no, so, um, I do think that it's not just the genius of the mind. It's the kind of person who has not invested primarily in their own comforts, necessarily. Their own career ambitions, probably don't even consider what they do as a career.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or not even value social interaction the way so many others do. So that goes undeveloped.

• 32:31Janna Levin?

  Escalating the ranks, um, you know, securing the most money, um, and so.

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kissing ass.

• 32:38Janna Levin?

  Kissing ass. So people who are already on that fringe and have that mind are in a kind of super precarious position and also a super wonderful position. They're the ones with the opportunity to go into the complete darkness because they're going to, because they have that, they, they don't have the attachment to what they'll lose if they do.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that is brilliant.

• 32:59Janna Levin?

  And then, yeah, that's a recipe for a little.

• 33:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isaac Newton, he single-handedly invents, discovers the laws of motion, laws of optics. Uh, on a dare, he invents integral and differential calculus. Then he turned 26. He had great hair also. I think there's something about hair, like Newton always had those like flowing locks? Well, I think those. I think genius is in the follicle. When we come back, I have some insight into those flowing locks.

• 33:25Janna Levin?

  You can't see me, but I'm fluffing my hair.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Genius, absolutely genius. Janet genius locks. When we come back, more on Isaac Newton's hair on StarTalk, where we're talking about Albert Einstein and his genius.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. An addition where we're exploring Einstein and his genius mind. And I've got the help of Janna Levin. Jana?

• 34:15Janna Levin?

  So good to be here.

• 34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know until this, this episode of StarTalk, how deep into Einstein you are.

• 34:20Janna Levin?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's more than, it's not just regular physics knowledge. It is, you know this man.

• 34:26Janna Levin?

  The man is interesting.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Harrison, you're, welcome.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm happy to be here.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 34:33Speaker 03

  I'm fascinated by all these hair-related questions.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know why I'm with you.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  The one who's losing his.

• 34:38Janna Levin?

  Speaking of mustaches, yeah.

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 34:40Janna Levin?

  I'm the only one who doesn't have one.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A mustache?

• 34:42Janna Levin?

  On the set.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  It's a sign of genius. That or the flowing hair. So we got it all covered.

• 34:47Janna Levin?

  We've covered the whole thing.

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so in this segment, we talk about other dimensions of Einstein. And my conversation with Ron Howard, who directed the first installment of National Geographic's Genius Series. And that first series was about Einstein. Let's check out Einstein's politics in this segment. Do you get into his work on, you said he was a humanist. He had very strong statements about racism in America especially.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just how people are treated. He had very, so the politics of Einstein.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Well, he gets, he gets dragged into it. And during the course of his, of his life, you know, he became so eminent, so important. And with that controversy, especially given his, his religion. But he was dragged into that, you know, I mean, he was, they asked him to be the first Prime Minister of Israel.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When Israel was first birthed.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Onto the.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  And he was sort of dragged kicking and screaming into it. And then at a certain point, again, I think applying that logic that he did to his personal life, that he did to his, his, his work in science. I think he felt that, you know, he was an absolute pacifist. But he believed that, that, you know, the bomb needed to be developed because he knew.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  He knew the people who were working on the problem in Germany.

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he wrote the equation that enabled it in the first place. Equals mc squared. That's where you get the energy out of the atom.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Which he didn't work actively on the bomb, largely because Hoover didn't want him to. And he didn't really, I don't think, really wanted to. And later fought hard, along with, I don't know, a number of other eminent scientists, to try to convince the government not to ever drop it on people.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Janet, tell me about Einstein and the bomb.

• 36:39Janna Levin?

  Well.

• 36:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it simple or is it complex?

• 36:40Janna Levin?

  I think it's quite complex. And I think it was for so many of the originators of the ideas of quantum mechanics that went into the creation of the bomb. There's a great line in the play Copenhagen where the character Niels Bohr, who was one of the inventors of quantum mechanics, says to his wife, "I don't think they thought of a way to kill people using quantum mechanics."

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 36:58Janna Levin?

  And of course, wow, right? Because to them it was just...

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw that play. I don't remember that line.

• 37:03Janna Levin?

  Yeah, because to them it was just ideas, the world of ideas. They had no intention of making a weapon. It was inconceivable. And here they are, under the pressure of the war, and they urgently feel they need to build the bomb because of the implications of their other colleagues. The community of physicists. Because their colleagues that they developed quantum mechanics with, some of them are on the other side. And then they have this incredibly complicated relationship because almost all of them, really, pull back after the use of the bomb in the war and urge control and regulation and limitations and don't want the H-bomb, the hydrogen bomb.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The next level up.

• 37:45Janna Levin?

  Which is much more powerful.

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Weren't there some who pulled back after they saw that Germany was collapsing?

• 37:51Janna Levin?

  Yes. Some people thought they should not have used the bombs in the war.

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because Japan was not working on the bomb.

• 37:57Janna Levin?

  That's right. And Germany was out of the picture.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Germany is out of the picture. So therefore, the motivation, the triggering motivation to make the bomb in the first place had evaporated.

• 38:05Janna Levin?

  That's right. And so, of course, there must be just tremendous, just complicated experiences. I mean, Oppenheimer had the line, "We are destroyer of worlds." Do you remember exactly what the line was? When he first seized the test.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are, yeah, it's from the Bhagavad Gita.

• 38:21Janna Levin?

  Destroyer of worlds, yes.

• 38:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I am something. I am destroyer of worlds.

• 38:26Janna Levin?

  Yes, I am death? I don't remember. Okay, well, the engineer will Google it. I see him, his fingers tapping away.

• 38:33Janna Levin?

  So I think their feelings were complicated at every stage. And of course, here we are, where we're still a species, the only species we know of on Earth that's capable of wiping itself out.

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 38:46Harrison Greenbaum?

  I don't know, I feel like the dolphins could do it if they wanted to. They could figure out some way to get rid of themselves.

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're better shepherds of their own survival.

• 38:54Harrison Greenbaum?

  That's right.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And therefore it won't happen.

• 38:56Harrison Greenbaum?

  Jumping out of the water, like, oh my god. Why is all this doing this?

• 38:59Janna Levin?

  It's fascinating, dolphins don't try to manipulate their environment to the extent that we do. And that is just fascinating difference between human beings and other intelligent species.

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Although beavers totally manipulate their environment.

• 39:09Janna Levin?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not the only ones in town.

• 39:11Janna Levin?

  That's true. Does their technology escalate? Or is it the same as it was?

• 39:16Harrison Greenbaum?

  The atom bomb beavers.

• 39:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna dam the whole Earth.

• 39:20Harrison Greenbaum?

  I have this balloon filled with termites, oh no! Mass destruction.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So on this next clip with Ron Howard, he's a movie director in his later life, so I had to ask him, and I had to sneak into this topic and ask him about science and movies. Check it out. So you combine all these factors, he's a brilliant scientist, he's got a social life, he's got a bohemian dimension to him, he's politically controversial, he shapes 20th century politics with his discoveries, and he moves in circles of the shakers and movers of the day. Why wasn't this done decades ago? Why do we have to wait till 2017 to hear all of this?

• 40:08Speaker 03

  Again, I honestly think it's what's happening in television, and a channel like National Geographic with everything that it stands for, saying that, you know, yes, we want you to do it, we want you to do it with authenticity, we're willing to support it and market it, and it fits, you know, it fits what our audience needs, and it's a really exciting time.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a different answer.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 40:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They figured out they can make money off of science.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Hey, okay, well, that's, yeah.

• 40:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we have good evidence of that, for example... Though, not this network, of course, The Big Bang Theory. Though they be caricatures, you are eavesdropping on the geeky lives of people who are completely scientifically literate, and it's the number one show on television. So anyone who's paying attention to that fact and saying, "Okay, I want to get me some science."

• 40:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make money off of that.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  Well, I'll tell you, with Apollo 13, when I had the opportunity to make that movie, that was the first story that I got involved with that was based on real events. And I was mortified by it because I thought, "Well, I'm not going to be able to be as creative and inventive and cinematic and so forth. I'm going to be, you know, sort of locked into these facts." And at the end of the day, I found it was very, very liberating. Because when people know it's based on real events, they really lean in. It's a different kind of mindset, and...

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you were worried, as a creative director, that the facts would constrain your storytelling?

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Yes, and that it would, and that, you know, I might not be able to be as dramatic or as exciting as I wanted to be. And I realized that's not the point with this kind of story. In fact, the facts are part of the entertainment value. They're part of the mystery. They're part of the discovery.

• 41:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jen, do you have a favorite movie about a scientist?

• 41:40Janna Levin?

  Oh, that's an interesting question. Um, I've actually been interested...

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a few. There've been a few.

• 41:45Janna Levin?

  There've been a few. I have to say, I got a little more interested in scientists in plays, um, which then were turned into movies. We talked about Copenhagen.

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me, you see theater?

• 41:53Janna Levin?

  No, I know.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you catch it on stage? Theater.

• 41:57Janna Levin?

  Hilariously, I...

• 41:58Harrison Greenbaum?

  My favorite scientist is Wiccan Morty.

• 42:00Janna Levin?

  I know, but hilariously, I kind of hate theater. And this is one of the family jokes. Like, I almost always walk out halfway through a play. Like, I am not a huge fan of theater. Like, it's really hard for me to get over the bump where I love it. So I'm sorry about that out there. I know that's bad. I think I just muddied my... I think I just lost every...

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Turn off the microphone now.

• 42:17Janna Levin?

  Do I have to leave? Do I have to leave?

• 42:19Harrison Greenbaum?

  That depresses the part of me that is a performing artist who puts on shows.

• 42:22Janna Levin?

  I'm so sorry.

• 42:22Harrison Greenbaum?

  And the Jewish part, where you paid for the ticket.

• 42:26Janna Levin?

  So I, but I do love books, and I love, I love reading and writing. And so plays just naturally came more easily to me on paper. So I was reading them. So I read Proof, um, which is a fantastic play about math.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw it on Broadway.

• 42:39Janna Levin?

  Yeah, but it's a fictionalized story.

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:41Janna Levin?

  Um, did you see it with Mary Louise Parker?

• 42:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, I did.

• 42:43Janna Levin?

  I heard it was fantastic. I didn't see it.

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, I became latter-day friends with her.

• 42:48Janna Levin?

  Oh, lovely.

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We talked about that, yes.

• 42:49Janna Levin?

  Um, so...

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's about a woman who... Is a math genius, but no one knows it. And is it her father or her brother? Her father is also in math genius, but then

• 43:00Janna Levin?

  Everybody knows it.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gets addled later on, but no one knows it. But she keeps writing the theorems down and they think it's his and not hers. And no one believes it could ever be her because the dad was the genius that everyone knew. And so

• 43:15Janna Levin?

  It's really a terrific play.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, brilliantly.

• 43:17Janna Levin?

  And that did get turned into a movie. And then another one that comes to mind is Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, which where the characters talk about chaos and complexity and iteration and computation. And it's just, and it's a multi-layered, beautiful, like really interesting. So those are, it's more about the characters, I think, than biopic sort of stuff.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I asked her what favorite movies and she gives me The Books of Play.

• 43:42Janna Levin?

  My nerd level is deep.

• 43:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That the millions of people have read, right?

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're talking to somebody who thought it was biopic. I didn't know it was biopic for years. So I wondered if Ron Howard was holding anything back. Something he wasn't fully letting on about his life and his personality. Check it out. Do you have some secret geek underbelly that is only you're carefully letting us know about movie by movie? But in fact, you go home and you just geek man?

• 44:14Speaker 03

  I do, I do, I do look at the Science Times. Okay, okay. But I, you know, but I skim it.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This would be the, in Tuesday, the section of the New York Times that features science.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  Right, right. I enjoy that. But it's, what I, what I discovered, because by the way, my, you know, my, my, my 10th grade science teacher, Mr. Dowd would be, you know, if he's still alive, and I kind of hope he is, you know, he would be smirking to see me in a conversation with you.

• 44:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you mess up in his class? Did you, what did you do? What, what, what, all right. Confess here and now. Did you blow up the chem lab? What happened?

• 44:54Speaker 03

  There were no explosions, but you know, I wasn't too big on dissecting the frog.

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neither was the frog.

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sure.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  And I couldn't quite remember the new, I don't know, nucleuses and other things at that time. And I was, you know, so I was a little lost, but he got me through it. He got me through it, but no, it's really that it's the drama. I mean, through Apollo 13 and other stories, I realized that this kind of curiosity that I do have about how the world works, I've always been fascinated by teams of people who are trying to problem solve under a kind of duress. And I began to realize the sort of pressure that scientists feel. I realized there's a great deal of drama and that there's also a tremendous amount of insecurity. And then I began to understand that process and I began, I could connect it to the creative

• 45:45Speaker 03

  process because you're going into realms, you're coming to understand things that kind of can't be articulated or explained other than this notation that most people don't under, you know, can't grasp. And it's an act of creativity and discovery and takes a kind of bravery.

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we gotta wrap this up. Harrison, do you have any sort of deep thoughts you want to share with us about genius or?

• 46:06Harrison Greenbaum?

  Well, I did a little research into Einstein and realized his second wife was his cousin, so that blew my mind. So it turns out everybody has a little bit of a freak flag to fly, including Einstein, who married a woman who was his first and second cousin. So I feel a little bit better about where I stand.

• 46:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know there's such a fly, a freak flag. Is that what that is? I don't, I haven't seen those flying.

• 46:27Harrison Greenbaum?

  Oh, I fly a many of them.

• 46:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll look for them. Jenna, what, give us some parting thoughts.

• 46:32Janna Levin?

  Well, this idea of genius, I think, is really appealing to us as human beings. But it's fascinating to me to realize that if it hadn't have been Einstein, it would have been somebody. And that's really important, that we remember that. And as much, he gave us lots of special things besides just the discovery of relativity. He gave us a way of thinking about it, and that is unique to him. But I do think that there's this, yeah, competition between the universe and us. And...

• 47:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cage match.

• 47:03Janna Levin?

  Yeah. And I think the universe has like really good odds.

• 47:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm betting on the universe on this one. Man versus the universe.

• 47:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm taking the spread. I, let me follow up on a point that you just made. Often, we see the word art and the word science conjoined. College of Arts and Sciences, so many universities have such a place. The history of art and science, they are two sides of the same coin. But there's actually a fundamental difference between the two of them. Let's take Van Gogh's Starry Night, the painting. If he didn't paint that, no one else ever would, or ever will. If Beethoven didn't compose his Ninth Symphony, no one else in a quadrillion years would compose the Ninth Symphony. But Einstein, with all of the genius that he has manifested, if he were never born,

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  someone, or some combination of people, would have come up with the special theory of relativity. Not as early as he did, it would take a little time. The general theory of relativity, which is one of the greatest achievements of the human mind, eventually, someone would do that. So, for me, scientific genius is not that you stand apart from everyone else. You just, you arrived at the bus stop sooner than others. And so, really, the discovery of the universe is for us all. It's just a matter of when, more than it is a matter of who.

• 48:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is a cosmic perspective. You've been listening to, possibly even watching, this episode of StarTalk, featuring my interview with Ron Howard at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, a couple of years ago. And we were talking about Einstein. I want to thank the organizers of that conference and Ron Howard himself for giving us his time. And let me thank my co-host, Harrison, thanks for joining me. Oh, my pleasure to be here. You gotta come back, I love this. I would love to. Do this again.

• 49:10Janna Levin?

  Let's just keep going.

• 49:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fly your freak flag whenever you want on StarTalk. You want to keep going, you don't want to ignore the end times of the, of the show? I was gonna say, I know where your office is now.

• 49:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Jana, you're just up the street, but you're too much of a stranger. You gotta come back more often.

• 49:26Janna Levin?

  I'll be here, anytime. Anytime you put that light out in the sky.

• 49:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Janna Levin?

  The bat light.

• 49:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Neil signal. So thanks for coming back for this, and we'll surely tap your expertise again. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. This has been StarTalk, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.