Reporting on Science (Part 1)

Take an eye-opening journey beyond the headlines into the business of science journalism, with veteran reporter Miles O’Brien, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice.

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.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I also serve as Director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium, right here in New York City, at the American Museum of Natural History. My co-host is the one and only Chuck Nice.

• 0:37Chuck Nice?

  And thank God for that, huh? The one and only.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're thanking God today, right? Okay. Not your parents for birthing you.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Today, we're gonna be talking about my interview with the science journalist, Miles O'Brien.

• 0:51Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, how many science journalists can you actually name?

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  Now, one. Now I can name one. Miles O'Brien.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Miles O'Brien. He's had a whole career in this stuff. He was a science correspondent for CNN for 16 years.

• 1:08Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he might even been there from the beginning. I mean, I don't know. CNN ain't all that old, right?

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  Not really.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. And he's reporting on science and space and aviation and environmental issues. He was their go-to man. And right now, he's no longer with CNN. He does pieces on science for the PBS NewsHour.

• 1:27Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Formerly the McNeil-Lair.

• 1:30Chuck Nice?

  McNeil-Lair-Lair.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Did one of them die or something?

• 1:32Chuck Nice?

  I'm not sure.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of them left.

• 1:34Chuck Nice?

  I'm sure one of them's gone. I'm not sure if he's left us completely.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't know if he's left this earth.

• 1:40Chuck Nice?

  Right, left the earth or not. But, yeah, I think they both retired.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're both retired. Okay. So I caught up with Miles on the road.

• 1:46Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 1:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, "I can't miss that opportunity to get him on StarTalk." So I pulled out my microphone and we just started talking.

• 1:53Chuck Nice?

  Sounds so dirty.

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I didn't say I whipped out the microphone. I said I pulled it out. You made it. I made it clean.

• 1:59Chuck Nice?

  You made it clean. I made it dirty.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was wondering, was he always interested in science? And did he study science in school? And how do you become a science reporter for a major news? So this is what I was curious about. Let's find out.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  I'm a history major, and it shows in my reporting, don't you think? I'm a classic example of a guy who has a natural interest and appreciation for science. And without naming any names, was taught by some teachers who didn't infuse the enthusiasm for the subject that should be there.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Enthusiasm, because you can read that immediately in the face of a reporter.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's interesting how, when I came to the subject, I came to it in such a strange way compared to other people. History major, I become a reporter, I'm in local news for a dozen years.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What local? Where were you local?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Oh, I was in St. Joe, Missouri. That's a big market. 191 out of 203 at the time. I used to shoot my own stories back in the day when the camera was attached to a big recorder, which itself weighed about 100 pounds, all myself, one man band. And then I found my way into Albany, New York, then Tampa, Florida, Boston. And then, while I'm in Boston.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Each market ever bigger than the previous one?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. More crimes to cover. There's more bodies and therefore more, you know, there's fires and mayhem. And so I was getting tired of that, but I didn't see a logical way out necessarily until I heard that CNN was looking for a reporter. The catch was they were looking for a science correspondent. A science correspondent, the history major, who had been chasing around.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now you're being audacious to respond to an ad for a science reporter.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Scientific term would be ballsy. So I managed to cobble together a tape that had a reasonable number of technical stories that was kind of science-y.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Science wasn't something scary to you?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  This is the key. The only reason I am where I am. I was never afraid of the subject.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's important.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Yes, and this is a key issue with people, because there is a science phobia, which I discovered in a palpable way when I was trying to get stories on the air at CNN. You know, that newsroom is populated by science phobics. They're all poly sci, history, English majors, God bless them, I'm one of them, who are petrified. You say the S-word and they practically run from you. And I cannot tell you how many times you go through all the iterative processes to get a piece ready for air and then there's a final play for the supervising producer of CNN, play the tape for them. Tape, we had, in those days.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was about to comment.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, back in the day.

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, I didn't even have that old.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  It was relatively esoteric. It was like Bucky balls.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carbon sixty, making the vertices of a soccer ball, essentially, yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Right, it was graphite of the year. It was on the cover of Science Magazine. You know, it was a big deal for a little while. We thought we were gonna have superconductivity by now, on Mars, with Bucky balls. A lot of these things didn't pan out, but anyway.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the flying cars, don't forget those.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. So I flew my jetpack into the newsroom and played this tape about Bucky balls. And the guy said, "I know this is science, but that was interesting."

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, that sounds like a book in it.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Yes, as if the two were mutually exclusive. So, it's interesting how science is perceived by people. And I think we do a pretty good job in our educational system of scaring people away.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But how much of this was because you were simply a good journalist, telling the story?

• 5:20Speaker 02

  That's a really good question, because really, the purest definition of a journalist would be, the most important thing is an overriding sense of curiosity, a desire to understand your subject.

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No matter the subject.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  And an ability to communicate that to your audience. That's the job, right?

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  So whether it's politics, and lord knows we get a lot of that, or science, it should be the same discipline. When I went down to interview for the job, Bailey Barish was the science editor at the time. She was a former molecular biologist. She actually knew science. And I came in there as this local news guy, cobbled together this reasonably technical tape out of Boston, and really had no business being there. And she put me through the two-day interview, which included going out and shooting a story, you know, reading in front of the camera, all the stuff you'd expect, but also a written and oral exam about science.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  I flunked. You know, she was asking me all these things about climate change, and this was nineteen ninety-two.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Early in this.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  You would've known about it, but I was the history major chasing bodies around in Boston. I didn't really know much about it.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We knew about it from the eighties when they started talking about the effect of climate change from asteroid impacts and nuclear winter and all of this.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Right. Of course, Jim Hansen and Al Gore were talking to Congress about it late eighties, but I wasn't paying attention. Anyway, so I flunked it miserably. I get to the end of the line after this two-day ordeal, the president of CNN, Bob Farnaud, and he's at his desk, you know, and he's... He doesn't even look up from the papers, you know, his desk. Obviously, you don't know shit about science. So this is one of those moments in your life, what do you do? And I threw the Hail Mary pass. I said, "And that is why you want to hire me." And I thought at the time that was deep into the balzification. The truth is, it is the truth. Because the audience of CNN, it's not scientists. You know, they tell us to write to them, somewhere between the fifth and eighth grade education. And what you need is somebody who's curious, not afraid of the subject,

• 7:11Speaker 02

  and able to figure out ways to communicate complex things in a more simplistic way. All those things, as it turns out, I was pretty good at. And so actually, having somebody come in there defending a degree might get in the way. And, as we all know, science is a lot of things to a lot of people, and it's very compartmentalized. If I happened to be an astrophysicist, what would I know about buckyballs? Or whatever. I would have a keener understanding of the scientific process. But I'd learned the scientific process pretty quickly along the way. And I also had a former molecular biologist as my editor. So it's a great lesson for all of us, I think, about science and why it scares us and how, if we're just a little curious and embrace it, we might all like it a little bit.

• 7:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to the StarTalk interview with science journalist Miles O'Brien. That'll continue when we come back.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Radio. Neil Tyson here, Chuck Nice.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Across the desk from me. We're here in New York City. And we're talking about science journalism.

• 8:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we've got Miles O'Brien. So apparently you only know one science journalist and his name is?

• 8:32Chuck Nice?

  Miles O'Brien. And, and before this-

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta get out more.

• 8:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I really do. And, and, um, except I also know Science Friday, except I don't know the journalist.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know the journalist on Science Friday, NPR Science Friday.

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  But I'm gonna rename him Ballsy O'Brien.

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ballsy, from that last clip. Yeah, as a history major bust into the man's office, saying, "I'm gonna be your science reporter."

• 8:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man, Ballsy O'Brien.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's kind of, that's, that, that's, uh, there's a gender neutral way to say that.

• 9:00Chuck Nice?

  What is that?

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You say, "Go naddle, O'Brien."

• 9:04Chuck Nice?

  Go naddle.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, go nads, because men and women both have gone out, go nads, there you go. Um, so, uh, we, we have more of my interview with him. Uh, like I said, I caught up with him like on the road and I, some of the clips sound like we were in a rain conduit under a highway.

• 9:21Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 9:23Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely, that's so true.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we got him, I got him on, on tape.

• 9:27Chuck Nice?

  Were you guys graffitiing a wall while you were talking?

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll get the interview wherever I can, whenever I can. Uh, so, uh, in this, in this next clip, I, I'd asked him, what is, what's going on? Cause it seems like journalists are now the center of the story. You know, they're not talking about something else. Everything's gotta go through them and get their opinion and their perspectives. And I just was curious about the trend. Let's find out.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  I think the idea of journalists becoming personalities was probably rooted in a good idea, but it's gotten out of control. The good idea is that we all need to kind of have somebody take us along for the ride. Otherwise, you'd all go out and do stories and it'd be mayhem, right? The notion of journalism is that you hire a guy like me who has the time wherewithal, profession, to go out and talk to people about complicated things and, and relay that back. In the process of doing that- You kind of want to go along for my journey and see how you did it. That makes for a more effective storytelling motif.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're my personal guide?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  I kind of like that. I'm a tour guide to the world of science. Now, you could do it other ways where people like you, as a scientist, could carry the entire story. Sort of the old BBC style, right? No narration, just let the scientist tell the story. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that this is another way to do it. What happens, though, is if you get really good at it, you get in the way of the story as the fame and the fortune and the attention.

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your identity becomes bigger than the story itself.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Well, dwarfs. It's like the sun exploding and taking the planets in with it. I don't know, that's a bad analogy. The point is, I think it's difficult to stop this train once it gets going down the tracks. And we're pretty far down the tracks right now. The thing about working for a place like PBS is, no one cares. There's no money or fame. It's just, we go out and do stories.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go out, get the job done, and go on to the next kid.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  I insert myself to the extent that it makes sense, and no more, no less. And it doesn't get out of control. What happens is, it becomes a real money game. And frankly, it leads to bigger contracts for journalists. And so, it's obvious that they would do this. But I think there's a little bit of a conflict of interest there in telling the story.

• 11:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess, I don't mind people being personalities. But what has happened is, the journalists have now become opinion leaders. And so, the line that I thought used to be there between, here's someone who I trust, who's giving me news, and here's someone who, I just heard the news, but now they're telling me how to think. I don't know that that line is still there.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  No, it's gone. But I think what has happened, part of the problem here, is that in a world where information has become a commodity, what is a journalist to do to provide the value added? Right? How do they, in this cacophonous world, wave their hands and say, hey, hey, listen to me over here? And it's a natural outcome of my experience, covering news for thirty years and space for twenty, to have enough depth and knowledge of it to actually be able to analyze it in a way that is not just the facts, ma'am. I can go beyond Joe Friday. Now, does that mean that I turn my work into just opinion screed after opinion screed? No.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Does it mean that I, in the context of what I do on the web through the various media that I'm involved in, there are places for me to kind of connect some dots that I wouldn't necessarily in a classic AP-style story? Yes. Reporters are given a license to give their opinion. It's very easy to just keep doing that.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's happened with Lou Dobbs. He was probably the first to do that in a really big way. I used to watch him for news and then I noticed a growing fraction of his delivery of content, which is how he thought about the world, it was like the Lou Dobbs Show, you know, rather than time to get more news.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Well, there's a lot of history to this. Of course, you know, we call this the Fox-ification of news because Fox, of course, made a huge business out of providing news from a very distinct perspective.

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From a point of view.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Right? There used to be a thing called the fairness doctrine, all that's gone for the broadcast. Of course, cable has never been FCC-controlled anyway. So what you've seen is this kind of polarizing component to the mainstream media on cable. Lou saw that, got right on there, and she helped lead that charge. And the presumption is that plain old vanilla newscast, that Ted Turner always said, "The news will always be the star here." That was his quote, back in 1980.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sentence was actually uttered.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  That was uttered. It's an quaint and humble time.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my God.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  He got off his horse there in Atlanta and it was lit by kerosene. "The news will be the star." What a notion.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody should resurrect that.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  CNN's philosophy should be that still today. But for whatever reason, they've decided they have to answer this Fox-ification factor, but they can't quite figure out how to do it because they want to be the world's most respected, important network, which they are globally, and yet they want to put in this edge, and you can't square that very well. So I think, frankly, if they just got back to that notion, you could cut your salary on air talent, you know, Ted just hired washed-up local anchors to do it back in 1980 because that's all he could afford. And all they did was give the news. Well, these days, could you make a business doing that with all the other sources?

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe not.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  I'm not sure.

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so Chuck, does your fame get in the way of your storytelling of accurate content?

• 14:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yes, all the time. And by get in the way, I mean not at all, because I don't have any fame. Kind of hard for it to get in the way of something that doesn't exist.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't exist. Let me ask you something, because I'm partly on the journalist's side of the line in the sand, because I get called by journalists to talk about the universe. If you're watching the news, what do you want to hear? Do you want to see a famous person and then have them talk about the news objectively?

• 15:06Chuck Nice?

  I don't want to see a famous person. And he's right, you know.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Miles O'Brien.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  Miles O'Brien is right. I love when he says, basically what he's saying is, you gotta get the money out of journalism. You hear that, Matt Lauer? We're coming for you. No.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming for your paycheck.

• 15:19Chuck Nice?

  We're coming for your pay. It's like, it's like Citizens United. Get the money out of politics. We gotta get the money out of journalism, because it really has become about personalities. It's a cult of personalities.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but it's not the journalist's fault. People tune in. They want to see Anderson Cooper. They want to see Rachel Ray, or she's cooks, but still. Personality apparently matters.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know, I blame Walter Cronkite for this.

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good point. People tune into him.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  He's the guy that did it. He's the guy that was, people were like, I gotta get home and watch Walter Cronkite, because I really trust that guy, and whatever he tells me is true.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's his fault.

• 15:55Chuck Nice?

  It's his fault. God rest his soul.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. I, I have to agree with you.

• 16:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was his way of telling the news that people trusted.

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we didn't think of it as personality type, but that's what it was.

• 16:07Chuck Nice?

  That's really what it was, yeah. And for him to be on the news nightly and coming into your home and saying, you know.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In your living room.

• 16:13Chuck Nice?

  In your living room. And that's the way it was, or it is, or.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or will be, or might have been.

• 16:22Chuck Nice?

  I love that. See, that's true journalism.

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 16:25Chuck Nice?

  You know, and that's the way it might have been.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's honest journalism.

• 16:29Chuck Nice?

  I'm totally objective.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, for most of my world, the universe, it's hard to put a strong opinion on it. You know, if I tell you, you know, two galaxies are gonna collide, or the sun just burnt up some plasma, and that gets reported, it's not susceptible to politicizing.

• 16:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I don't know. You don't watch a lot of Fox News, do you?

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I mean, you'd be surprised. I mean, of all the sciences.

• 16:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astrophysics, I think, is the least politicizable. Like, when you think about it.

• 17:04Chuck Nice?

  See, yes.

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's biology, there's health, there's geo-, you know. Think of all the other sciences and the way people try to put a spin on it.

• 17:10Chuck Nice?

  But see, now, here's the deal. Once again, you're thinking like a scientist. Because when you think about the absolute, uh, you know, what you think is just a truth, okay? For instance, the age of the universe.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 17:26Chuck Nice?

  Because of measurable light.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 17:28Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fourteen billion years old.

• 17:29Chuck Nice?

  Fourteen billion years old. There are people who say, "Nah-uh." That's no. That's, that can't be.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, but it's the, it's, like I say, the good thing about science is true whether or not you believe in it. We just move on.

• 17:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's true. Now, that's, that's a good point.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all, that's all I'm trying to say here. But the, the idea that we have personalities, I think it's unavoidable because we like personalities. There it is. You can complain about it, but that's not going to change.

• 17:54Chuck Nice?

  And also, information has to do with, whether or not you receive it, has to do with, uh, from whom it's coming.

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The storyteller.

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  The storyteller.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not everyone is an equal storyteller.

• 18:02Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and the journalistic version of a storyteller is, do I just like what you wear or what you sound like?

• 18:08Chuck Nice?

  Or your hair.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 18:09Chuck Nice?

  Right. Your big, your great journalist hair.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crazy. We gotta take a break? We'll be back with StarTalk's interview with Miles O'Brien, science journalist.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio, continuing. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, Chuck Nice.

• 18:41Chuck Nice?

  Your personal comedian.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is that right?

• 18:44Chuck Nice?

  I'm trying to be something.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need some kind of moniker.

• 18:46Chuck Nice?

  I'm just trying to be something now.

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's your moniker, your Twitter moniker? Uh, Chuck Nice Comic?

• 18:50Chuck Nice?

  At Chuck Nice Comic.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Comic, okay. I follow you, actually.

• 18:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I follow you too.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, thank you.

• 18:55Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 18:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mutual-following society.

• 18:56Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, we, we've been listening to my interview with Miles O'Brien.

• 19:00Chuck Nice?

  Fascinating stuff.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The science journalist, started out at CNN and, and freelanced for a bit, and now he's a regular correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, is all about science journalism. And I just wanted to get to the bottom of it, because I've been interviewed a zillion times, and not all science journalists are created equal. And so I wanted to ask him, what did he think made a good interview or bad interview? Let, let's find out.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  How many times have you sat and listened to an interview on TV where it's obvious the person doing the questioning is not listening?

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I see that.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  And this happens a lot in live TV.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like they're just going through the motions.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very difficult because they'll say, hey, we got Neil Tyson on this morning and we're going to talk about this new planet they discovered, right? And we got maybe four minutes. And when you get on the air, somebody's gone long before you, the politician, and they get in your ear and they say, we only have two minutes with Neil.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they're talking to you the whole time.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  And then when you talk, the minute you say something, they're screaming in my ear and I can't. So it's obvious what happens. That becomes a horrible interview. And a lot of that is not the fault of the anchor person. But the moral of that story is, if you're allowed the opportunity to actually have a dialogue as we're having now, you'll have a great interview. You know, Larry King famously did not do homework. He was proud of that fact. Now, I think that's a little extreme, but there is a little kernel of wisdom in that.

• 20:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, he's CNN, he's in the family.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  He is in the family, but he famously did not do any homework. He wanted to be as if he was a viewer, which led to some very embarrassing moments on television, frankly, where he just asked some really inane, stupid questions. However, by and large, I think there's something to that. You don't want to forget who's coming along with you on this. And to the extent that you're trying to impress people by being smart and knowing stuff, you're not doing a good job as an interviewer. You're just trying to show off. If you're just asking questions that seem logical to you as a reporter and a person, and by extension, the viewers, and you're listening to your subject, you're going to have a great interview.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that must be the times when I find myself sometimes having to toe the interviewer when I'm being interviewed, because they don't really know what they're asking, so I have to sort of help them along. And that's a big effort that I have to put in. I don't want to have to do that.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  It takes two to tango. Sometimes you just don't click.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because when they do click, then we can go to new places in a short amount of time.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  It's extraordinary.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a back and forth.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  And, you know, I know this is a family show, but it is like some other things in life. Either you got the chemistry or you don't, right?

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm fatigued when I have to toe a journalist's interview. Oh, man, it's like, we could have, we could have made music together.

• 21:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now I'm toeing your ass.

• 21:39Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, right, you're a big lard butt. You're a big journalistic lard butt, I gotta carry you around now because you don't know what.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you must feel that, what, you must feel that if you're doing a room. If you're in a comedy doing a room and the room is not with you, you gotta toe them, right? That's a, that's a burden.

• 21:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but you know, you can't look at that way, can't look at it that way as a comedian because it's my job to make them laugh.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is your job.

• 22:01Chuck Nice?

  So I can't look at them and say like, well, you guys aren't getting this, it's your fault. You know, I don't suck, you do. It's a little difficult as a comedian to take that stance.

• 22:16Chuck Nice?

  Right in the middle of my ass, you know what, you guys suck.

• 22:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You guys have no sense of humor.

• 22:21Chuck Nice?

  Right, you guys have no sense. But now, it's funny what I, what he said about, I, I think the thing I learned the most in that clip was that Larry King is lazy.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because I did, I, I never did Larry King while he was on, excuse me, I was never interviewed by Larry King. While he was on CNN.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  Thank you for that.

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he, he has an, he has a web show now.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I did his web show.

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so my first time ever with Larry King, he's there, suspenders and.

• 22:50Chuck Nice?

  Cleveland, you're on. Cleveland, you're on with Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're sitting here having some gin sono together. What's your question?

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so what was interesting was, he never actually followed up on any answer that I gave. He just kept, it was like a machine in motion.

• 23:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it was superficially, it might have seemed like a conversation, but it wasn't.

• 23:15Chuck Nice?

  But it really wasn't.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wasn't, he was just, I'm, I'm getting through these questions.

• 23:18Chuck Nice?

  I'm getting through my questions.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever he answers, doesn't matter, I'm moving, you know?

• 23:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that means he gets through an interview, you know, you gotta credit him that.

• 23:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's not gonna leave anything out from his agenda items, but.

• 23:28Chuck Nice?

  But that's not a conversation.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was not a, it was not a conversation.

• 23:31Chuck Nice?

  And it's also not an opportunity for people to learn even more and more, especially with someone like you. Because you're, I mean.

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I go places.

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm serious. You do, and I'm not, you know, listen, I'm gonna kiss your butt just a little bit right now. But the fact is that you're not just smart about astrophysics, you are, and you are intellectually curious, period. So like, there are so many things that you could talk about. That's what had, that's, you know, that's why I do this show.

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it flushes, well, thank you. Thanks for, for, yes, it flushes out all the, the surrounding terrain.

• 24:00Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of a conversation. No, I, I, I agree. So, so, but it's interesting that he is definitely aware of that because he's on the journalist's side of that equation, and he sees it and he knows it when it's happening.

• 24:11Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, so, so, uh, generally when I go in, I'm ready for the journalist to not, uh, come back at me, and I try to, I parcel the information so that it lives on its own.

• 24:22Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm, but if they then engage me, we go to new places.

• 24:25Chuck Nice?

  Now you know what to do. So, see, now that you do do in comedy, it's like, ooh, I could tell this is a stupid audience.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take that to another place.

• 24:32Chuck Nice?

  I better go someplace else.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more StarTalk Radio.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk Radio, we're back. Neil Tyson here with Chuck Nice. Chuck, we just came off that clip about what's a good interview or a bad journalistic interview.

• 25:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, you know, I, I don't expect anything from the journalist. I try to come with my information parcel, and I check to see if, does it click or does it not?

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I put out a little, a little testers to see, are they paying attention or, and are they not?

• 25:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh, absolutely. We do that in comedy, too.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You do?

• 25:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you have to calibrate your audience.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Calibrate? Oh, cali, I love the word. Very scientifically literate.

• 25:25Chuck Nice?

  You gotta, you gotta float little trial balloons, you know what I mean? You tell a joke and then they don't get, you're like, oh, okay, I see what it is. We're going in a dick jokes it is. That's what you're getting. Okay, people. That's smart for you.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're calibrating the intelligence level of your audience.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Miles O'Brien has a lot of history there. He started at CNN and then CNN closed their science division. God. And I said, "Look, I can't interview Miles without hearing some backstory on that." So let's see what he has to say.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  In 1980, when CNN was new and the fanciest commercial they could get on the air was the Chia Pet and Zanfear the flute guy, AT&T, back when it was really Ma Bell, approached Ted Turner and said, "Ted, how would you like it if we sponsored your fledgling cable news network for science stories?" And Ted said, "Science, yes, we'll do science." Now, admittedly, Ted Turner probably would have done science eventually, would have gotten around to it, but AT&T forced the issue. They came in and they said, "We want to do three spots a week. You'll play the spots and right after the spot, we'll air an AT&T commercial. And then we'll compile those pieces along with a few other things and we'll

• 26:41Speaker 02

  have a weekend show called Science and Technology Week and we're going to give you X million dollars."

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brilliant idea.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, there was a science unit at CNN, brand new network, cable news, 24 hours, and they had a science unit run by a molecular biologist, Bailey Barish, and off to the races they went. And for years and years and years, the world could be coming to an end and those spots would air.

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, guaranteed, and time.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  The pieces were linked to the advertiser. We had a direct linkage between our science coverage and moolah.

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the crash truth, not some noble principle.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  No, it was money.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Money.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  There were other, they had a travel show that was similarly linked to commercials. And over time, CNN decided they didn't like that and they didn't have to do it anymore because they got to be the big dog. And so why should we force ourselves, producers hate this because in the middle of their show, they have to put the buckyball piece in with the AT&T spot right after it and it messes up their show and if something's going on and makes it difficult for us to produce our shows. So let's get rid of the linkage. And once they got rid of that linkage, it was just a matter of time. Now, I deluded myself into thinking we were so good and that they cared. Or at least I thought that for a while, but then I noticed we weren't getting on the air. We would pitch ideas, we would produce stories, and they wouldn't get on the air.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  And then we'd get queries from certain shows to do, you know, how does that water skiing squirrel water ski anyway? Is there some science there?

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It felt the beginning of the end.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the first shuttle launch that you're not covering for CNN because you got pink slapped.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm watching CNN, and in come the replacements.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Send in the clowns.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And come the replacements, and this particular launch, it landed at night.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there was like the night scope on it. And so they announced it saying, oh yeah, there's a glowy area of the shuttle. Yeah, they got a special camera that makes the hot spots glow. And so I tweeted, I said, could someone teach the reporter the word infrared?

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he was describing what he saw, but with no understanding behind it. And so therefore, the viewer is not taken to a new place that they don't see for themselves.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  And worse yet, no one in the newsroom would have called him on that and said, you dummy, that was infrared, because they either are not listening or are equally uninformed.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, if you don't have dedicated staff, they don't have the vocabulary. They don't have the insight, they don't have the lexicon to carry a story. So they're just people on the street at that point.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not trained journalists.

• 29:15Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Yeah, people who are, yeah, these guys are going up into the sky

• 29:22Chuck Nice?

  in their sky chariot. Oh my God, look at that, it's magic.

• 29:29Chuck Nice?

  And there's hot flames coming out the back. Exactly. Apparently the ship had Mexican. There's a lot of flames coming out of the back. Oh, what? It's terrible. It's terrible. No, it's, you know, it makes sense. You're absolutely right. What he just hit on and what you just said, one of the things that, beyond that, in addition to that being annoying, the fact that these guys are kind of proud and think it's cute when they don't know something about science. You know what I'm saying?

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. Oh, I never did well in science. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. The interesting thing is there's a lot of mysteries in science where if you learn a little bit of science, then you could talk about those mysteries, not the mystery of why you don't know the word infrared at all.

• 30:10Chuck Nice?

  Right. And there's not a mystery behind that. It's called public school.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, this is StarTalk Radio. We'll be back in a moment.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk Radio, Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, and I'm in studio with Chuck Nice.

• 30:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 30:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice comic.

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  That's right, Chuck Nice comic.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's, is that where you, no, you're at here right now.

• 30:53Chuck Nice?

  I am at here. Oh, my mother would just had a stroke.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's where you be at.

• 30:57Chuck Nice?

  Where you be at? I be at here. Oh, my, oh, God.

• 31:03Chuck Nice?

  I can almost feel the lash of a belt across my backside. How dare you?

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck bringing the ghetto into StarTalk Radio.

• 31:11Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, we've been featuring my interview. This whole show has been on science journalism and who's the leading science journalist? It's gotta be Miles O'Brien. I mean, who else would we be talking about?

• 31:20Chuck Nice?

  Uh, who else?

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I caught up with him. I think it was in Washington DC. I did this interview some time ago and it was the best I could do. I had pulled out a microphone and, but do you know what, you know what's happened to Miles since then?

• 31:30Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He got into an accident and he damaged his forearm of his arm and they had to amputate. He's like missing half his arm now.

• 31:38Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I know. He had really good spirits about it because the, the option was to not amputate and then die. So if that's your choices, I think you're, you're good with the missing

• 31:47Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Half an arm.

• 31:48Chuck Nice?

  One arm, die.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 31:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I got it.

• 31:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got that, but he's got, he's back in business and got an active Twitter feed and he's still doing pieces for the PBS NewsHour. So, uh, that he's a real trooper.

• 31:59Chuck Nice?

  Oh, good for him.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I wonder, I asked him in the interview, what kind of stories, you know, I like knowing people's favorites, right? So I asked, what is, what's the favorite stuff he likes to do as a, as a journalist? Because you know, there's going to be some boring stories out there.

• 32:11Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yes, this is true.

• 32:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every, you know, everybody's got to do the boring ones, but why, I just wanted to find out what makes him tick.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  What meant the most to me as a journalist, covering the loss of Columbia, to be on the air for 16 solid hours live, no net, and drawing upon my knowledge and wits. It's the Columbia space shuttle that broke up. The loss, February 1st, 2003. At that time, I was a couple of weeks away. We had been having private meetings to talk about what NASA had agreed to do, which was to fly me on the shuttle to the station. That was all ready to go, once Columbia landed. You were in line to be an astronaut. I was gonna do it. I was gonna move to Houston. I had the whole thing lined up. I'd been working on it for years. And that Saturday morning, we lost Columbia crew, friends of mine, NASA. This is our family, right?

• 33:04Speaker 02

  And so, as a journalist, talk about a mix of emotions to deal with. And I went on the air for 16 hours and frankly helped our nation get through a horrible tragedy. And so, I'm extremely proud of being a part of that. But to say that's your favorite story, sounds really strange. Because it's a horrible thing. So, the bookend to that is, to cover John Glenn's return to flight, with Walter Cronkite as my co-anchor. Who else in the world can say Walter Cronkite was their co-anchor? And we ended up having a nice relationship that lasted up until his death. That's the way it was. He was a great man, and it was a wonderful experience. So, it's hard to beat those two. Is there some future story that you want to cover? You know, if I had the opportunity, I would gladly take a one-way trip to Mars

• 33:49Speaker 02

  and set up a bureau there. Gladly. Wouldn't that be awesome? Mars Bureau. Mars Bureau. That sounds great, too. Doesn't that sound good? Miles O'Brien. Reporting live from the Valles Marineris. Well, and you see, the reporting, I've thought about this reporting lives thing. You think the lag is bad going to Baghdad now. 20-minute, the punchlines on jokes don't go so well. Yeah, there's no witty repartee. You know, Miles, how you doing? We'll get back in 40 minutes. 20 there and 20 back.

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, you can't have spontaneous live reporting.

• 34:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cuz Mars, you know, at its sort of average is 20 minutes away, like travel time.

• 34:26Chuck Nice?

  Like travel time.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so I'm gonna say, "Hey Miles, how you doing?" 20 minutes later, he receives it, and he can answer instantly, right?

• 34:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "I'm fine." 20 minutes later, back, right?

• 34:36Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 34:38Chuck Nice?

  And here's the thing, that would kill that conversation. "I'm sorry, could you say that again?" You're done. Just wasted an hour.

• 34:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So there'd be some serious nipping and tucking of those interviews to put them on air. But it's interesting how tragedy, and consider that CNN, its greatest ratings over all the years, were during tragedies, during the Gulf War.

• 35:01Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, when there was major disasters, people tuned into CNN, and so there it is. I mean, it's, maybe, it's something deep within us all, I don't know. We, we...

• 35:13Chuck Nice?

  We definitely gravitate towards the macabre and tragedy.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does that work in humor too? Did you?

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it does, as a matter of fact.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is odd, because people wanna laugh, but now you're gonna make them sad, and they laugh about being sad?

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  And, well, there is a very specific dark humor that many people, you know, subscribe to.

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 35:33Chuck Nice?

  That they just love when you, you know, when you have jokes, like, there's, okay, like, dead grandmom jokes? Okay, I hate to put it...

• 35:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dead grandmom jokes, okay.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  But there's a whole genre of, they're just called dead grandmom jokes.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just the dead grandma genre?

• 35:46Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and people love it.

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You guys are messed up.

• 35:48Chuck Nice?

  We are messed up in the head, man.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You guys are just messed up, okay? So, actually, no, now that I think about it, when I tell cosmic stories, the ones that people, eyes open the most are like, when the human species goes extinct from asteroids.

• 36:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God, yes.

• 36:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or if you get stretched and spaghettified falling into a black hole.

• 36:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People totally dig that.

• 36:09Chuck Nice?

  Well, there's something in our psyche that, I mean...

• 36:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's not you, comedians are messed up, we are messed up as humans.

• 36:15Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. I mean, I have to say, one of the most fascinating things to me is when you think about two galaxies colliding.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A train wreck that is the most awesome thing to observe, ever.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely, and why would that appeal to me?

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we conclude in this StarTalk that human beings are just messed up.

• 36:30Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the head.

• 36:31Chuck Nice?

  Thanks for tuning in.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have a nice day.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chuck Nice, thanks as always for being my co-host. That was all about journalism. It'll continue, trying to bring the universe down to earth any way we can. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.