The Truthiness, with Stephen Colbert

Uncover the truthiness and nothing but the truthiness as Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with Stephen Colbert, comic co-host Adam Conover, author Sophia McClennen, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Rev. James Martin, SJ, to investigate the science of satire. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/the-truthiness-with-stephen-colbert/ Photo Credit: Brandon Royal.

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 the hall of the universe. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And tonight we're featuring my interview with comedian and talk show host, host of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert. So let's do this. So my co-host tonight is comedian Adam Conover. Adam?

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Hello, everybody. Hi. Thank you for having me.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are host of True TV's Adam Ruins Everything. You're always ruining things for everybody.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  That's what we do on the show. We tell you about the awful truth. But that's what it's...

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some people don't like the truth.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, but come on, you must like it.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  You're a science educator.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some other people don't like it. I'm just saying.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  It's always better to know the truth.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I agree, but I'm just saying. And also with me, joining us is Sophia McLennan. Sophia, she's director of the Center for Global Studies at Penn State. Welcome to New York. And in particular, you are author of Colbert's America: Satire and Democracy. Very cool. You're the right person for this show. Yes. I first met Stephen Colbert back in 2006 as one of his first guests on The Colbert Report.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I go back. He and I go back. And he dropped by my office recently. And I had to clear up one thing right off the bat. Let's check it out. So Steve, I gotta tell you something.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Don't, don't start something you're not gonna end. Okay?

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  2006, you were Time 100.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  I was one of the Time 100 most influential people in the world.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the world.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  I personally represented 65 million people.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And...

• 2:05Speaker 02

  That's math, man. Hundred people, 6.5 billion.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, gotcha.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  2007, you were not. But I was.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  I remember.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I seem to remember some monologue where you accused me of taking your spot. I think I remember that.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you got a contact influence off of me. You weren't that influential before you were on my show. Suddenly, you're one of the most influential people in the world. Yeah, pretty shady. Pretty shady.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then they have, then...

• 2:41Speaker 02

  I got back on in 2012, though. When was the second time you were on? I forget.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I just forgot. Does anybody else? Can we check the web?

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, yeah.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  The second time he was most influential? No, check, yeah.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Yes. It's funny, you start out, you start looking like you're gonna fight him, you end up holding hands and crying.

• 3:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I know, as all good fights should end in hugs.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  You know, I was on Colbert's show too, and now I'm on your show. When am I gonna be on the Time list?

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, okay. Well, see, maybe there's a bump. Maybe there's a bump.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe I get the Colbert bump and the Tyson, uh, black hole. I guess sucked into a black hole.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's usually not a good thing.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the Colbert rapport, so, had only been around for like a year when he made the Time 100 list. And so I'm just curious how he might have gotten so influential so quickly.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Well, the key thing that happens for Colbert in 2006 is he does the White House Correspondents Association dinner. Right? So, take yourself back, feels like ages, and imagine Colbert, five feet from George W. Bush, saying things that nobody was saying out loud.

• 3:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  And at the time, it was such a big deal, right? We think of it, but it was sort of panned, right? So, one of the things that also made it super cool was that a fan posted the whole bit online. ThankYouStephenColbert.org. It was then viewed hundreds of thousands of times and the media had to start to cover it.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they gotta react to what people are reacting to. Right, right.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  So that was also part, it wasn't just that Colbert would do, he would impersonate a pundit and get away with saying stuff that other people.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, because he did it in character.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  He did it in character.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  It was also that it was the beginning of this amazing relationship Colbert's had with social media and with like fan-based, sort of that ongoing relationship he has with his fans.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  What I found so fascinating about that moment, because as a comedian, as a young comedian, I was just, you know, I was an amateur comedian at that point. I was just doing open mics and stuff. But every comedian noticed that moment so much.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, open mic is, anybody walks up.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Anybody walks up.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your name is not on the marquee outside.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Do you ever, after this, as an astrophysicist, you have to go up and just start reading your paper out loud in front of other astrophysicists?

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Because there's a microphone.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're ever doing that, your name was in a schedule. Right, right, I'm just saying.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  So, so, um, you know, everybody watched that. It was such a huge moment for comedians. Like, we all noticed, holy crap, this guy is doing something really different. The other shocking thing about it is that they would never book him now. If they were gonna, if they were booking the White House Correspondent, I mean, you know, if they were booking that kind of event today, they would never book Stephen Colbert because they didn't, the political class and the media didn't realize the power that comedy had at that moment. They're, oh, he's just gonna tell jokes.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  And there was actually some debate over whether they really knew what he, you know, who his character was.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  You know, you can't be clear on it. Maybe they set Bush up, or maybe they didn't, right? But no one's admitting it.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, since then, it has 31 Emmy nominations and nine wins, and he's got a Grammy Award for a Christmas comedy album.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I forgot, you can win a Grammy for comedy, of course.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, for me, the most coveted of these awards is two Peabody Awards.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the one where they... Uh, you know, the, the watching, not just how popular you are, but what kind of messaging.

• 6:12Speaker 03

  Changemaker Award.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Changemaker, exactly. So, so I can see why he might be influential, given that exposure, but why would he be so important a comedian? In your circles?

• 6:23Speaker 02

  I mean, he, uh, he and Jon Stewart both, you know, I think as a unit, that, that classic hour back to back, you know? Really showed me as a comedian, what comedy was capable of doing. That comedy could, you know, cause they're, oh yeah, people used to make fun of the president, you know? But it was that comedy could really speak to people intelligently with intelligence? And ta-talk about actual issues that were happening today and.

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never thought about that. What you're saying is that the, the cor, the, the perimeter of what counted as important and good comedy.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grew.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for me, I picked up different things about it. So, so there was all that what you described, but I was a guest on his show multiple times. And that was not unusual for scientists. Yet they had scientists, all the, both of them.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. And so I just thought, wow, scientists now have a voice.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In, in an important outlet that wasn't previously accessible to them. So I asked him about this heavy presence of science on his show. Check it out. There was kinda like a scientist every week, or an academic who had expertise.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That had to mean, unlike most talk show hosts.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you valued science.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Oh, I love it.

• 7:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the conversation.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  I love, I love learning things.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but where's that come from?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where, where's the science come from?

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Where's the science come from?

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause you're, you're a comedian, you're a talk show host, and it's not anybody's first thought.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Well, listen, comedians are great deconstructionists by nature.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  You take things apart. In this case, usually it's human behavior or something like that. And then you put it back together in a kind of a wrong way. You know, like you rebuild the monster with some of the organs missing. Go, look how it flops around. Um, uh, my, uh, my dad was a scientist. He was an immunologist. Um, what he really wanted to do was, um, he loved bench science more than else. Bench science and teaching. But, um.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bench science?

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Uh, that's what it's called. Bench science, like basic sciences. Like on the bench. You never heard of bench science?

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  When I was a kid, that's what it was called. Someone who was in the trenches, actually on the bench with the microscope, doing the work.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's the opposite of baseball.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Exactly, you want to get on the bench, exactly. Um, and then, and then, uh, at a young age, I kind of fell in love with, I fell in love with science fiction. And, and I was interested in, um, uh, thinking logically, you know, so the scientific method is applied to narrative, like, Asimov is good in this regard.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isaac Asimov.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, this sounds like you were a geeky kid.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Oh, I was a total geeky kid. I was, it was science fiction and fantasy to a large degree. Um, and, you know, computer programming classes and before any of this stuff was cool, man.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, he says comedians are deconstructionists. So, just tell us a little more what that means. I know what it means, you know, from a philosophical point of view, but when a comedian uses the phrase, what's going on?

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Uh, we try to talk about, you know, all those questions you have about the world, you know, um, is, are things really like that, you know, or, or why are things this way? And we turn that into telling you the awful truth about, you know, everything that you take for granted.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Adam ruins everything every Tuesday at 10 on True TV.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, of course, on The Colbert Report, he, uh, he plays a sort of satirical character, kind of with the persona of like an ultra-conservative pundit. And so, we talked about the fun we had playing with that dynamic in the times I'd appeared on his show, so let's check it out.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  You were one of my favorite people to interview on that show, and on the new show too.

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  But one of the reasons was, is that I think you like an argument.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure, well, I can, I, I, like, I can hang with you on, on an argument.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  But that old show was a constant argument. It was an argument with reality.

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  And my guest represented a, a slice of reality.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  And you, being a scientist, seeking the truth, seeking the truth of our reality, were a perfect foil. For his just profound love of strength through ignorance.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, and of course, the concept of truthiness is now in our vocabulary. It's in our analysis. We even use it in my circles, in my professional circles.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How truthy does that sound?

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What it feels like, is it real?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do I want to believe that?

• 10:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Or is that really what's happening? Am I letting my desire for that to be the truth?

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, and of course, as a scientist, you have to, you need, you have to be inoculated against being a victim of feeling what is true even against what the evidence shows.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Sophia, could you just lay out sort of more formally what truthiness is or what that word had come to mean in, in the Colbert Nation?

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Well, you know, on his first show, which is when he coins the term truthiness.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  His first show?

• 11:19Speaker 03

  He says.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Incredible, this is his first show.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  He says, "I'm going to feel the news at you." Right? So, it really was coded in the idea that what you know comes from your gut. And, and when he did the first truthiness word segment, he said, "You know, you have more nerve endings in your gut than you do in your head." So, he was playing all the time with what at, at that moment felt like a real assault on truth. And truthiness became not just the word of the year. Miriam Webster made it the word, word of the year in 2006.

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that was a thing.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  It is a thing. I think xenophobia was the word last year, but anyway.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  So, truthiness, though, was also important because it gave us a common vocabulary for a lot of things people were feeling and thinking, but we didn't have the word. And that's what he gave us.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so why are we susceptible to believing things that sound true? This is like, you guys study this.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what's?

• 12:17Speaker 03

  It's depressing. Well, it turns out.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because in science, we care about evidence and we have, actually, we have to train ourselves to trust evidence even in the face of bias.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're trained this way. So, I'm guessing, I kind of understand, but how could it be so widespread?

• 12:34Speaker 03

  So we have what we call confirmation bias, which is that you just like information that reaffirms what you already know. Right? So you can be presented with counter evidence, or what we call correcting information, and you just, "I don't want it, it doesn't feel right," and you just ignore it. It's fascinating how the brain will just forget that it got information that would contradict what they already believed. So we all sort of do that. But the bigger thing that happened, especially during that period of the Colbert Report, is that we had a strange moment in US history where pundits, politicians, leaders themselves were not sort of champions of evidence.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  And so it got worse. It's definitely, the statistics show it's substantially worse today.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have people feeding that frailty.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Well, that brings us to a little segment I have prepared. It is everyone's favorite game show, True, Truthy, or False?

• 13:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh!

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where did you get this?

• 13:43Speaker 01

  I made this during the last clip. I built it, I built it myself with a hot glue gun and some magnets. Okay. Here we go, I'm gonna spin, I'm going to spin the wheel. Each card has a fact on it. You two are gonna tell me whether it is true, truthy, or false.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Here we go. If you folded a piece of paper 42 times, it would reach the moon.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  If you folded a piece of paper 42 times, it would reach the moon, of any size.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you folded in half 42 times, yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yes, you fold a piece of paper.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would reach the moon, yeah.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're absolutely right, that is true.

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's 2 to the 42nd power times the thickness of the paper. That's a huge frickin' number.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Yeah!

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to do the math precisely, but I...

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Neil, you're right!

• 14:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  The moon is about 240,000 miles away. That's the equivalent of 3.8 times 10 to the 12th pages, which is about right.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get that, yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Great, okay, let's do another one.

• 14:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The power of doubling is astonishing.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  More than 20% of Americans are related to Rick Moranis. What do you think? More than 20% of Americans are related to Rick Moranis.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  No.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's simply false. It is not, it is neither true, nor is it truthy. It certainly doesn't feel right. It's not right.

• 15:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. But in the tree of life?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're all related to one another.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  I'm gonna spin again.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  DNA is the only foolproof type of forensic evidence.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It feels truthy, but

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that's kinda

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Foolproof.

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Foolproof.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  I'll give you, I'll give you a hint. You were, you were actually, you were actually right the first time. It is truthy. It's truthy. You gotta right, cuz it feels It feels true.

• 15:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It feels truthy, yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  It feels true. It's something we've heard, it's like, yeah, DNA, oh, it's sciency, you love science.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's science stuff.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  So you wanna trust the science, right? But the fact is that DNA can suffer from incomplete samples and crime scene contamination. Oh, this is great, researchers asked pairs of people to shake hands and handle separate knives, right? But in 85% of cases, DNA from both people was found on the knives just because they shook hands. Which goes to show, even though science, and we, our emotional truth is that science is always right, we can't go with that just because it feels truthy. We actually need to look at the evidence and be just as critical about DNA evidence as we are about

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a cog in the evidence wheel.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  So you should shake hands before committing a crime.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Yeeeee.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, shake hands with a hundred people, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  That is technically true, it's maybe not advice you wanna give, but yeah, yes, yes, absolutely. Well, that's the game, everybody.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thank you for that, alright? So Sophia, I have to ask you. Can news satire teach us more about news than news itself?

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Well, it can, and it has, and it keeps doing it.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's just a empirical fact?

• 16:46Speaker 03

  We have some really cool data. So what, what, there are a number of studies, in fact, actually, to the great dismay of a lot of cable news folks, multiple studies that came out and showed that viewers of Stewart and Colbert knew more about current issues than viewers of, say, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  And so what they found was that, and one of the things that's curious about this is you think, well, how could you know that that's the only source of the news? But they correct for that, right? So one of the things-

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in other words, I could watch Jon Stewart in The Daily Show, but still consume 10 other newspapers and things, and therefore it would give a skewed result.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can't, that won't work for the data, right? So the data, there was a study, for instance, in 2007 Pew Research study.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pew?

• 17:38Speaker 03

  Yes, and they put Stewart and Colbert at the top, you know, up with like NPR.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Right? So, so just think about this for a minute. Both Stewart and Colbert were a little freaked out to find out that was true, because it turns out they wanted to do comedy.

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  They did not want to be the source of everyone's news. They wanted to make fun of the news and make fun of pundits and politicians. They didn't want all that pressure. That wasn't what they were looking for. It was just the sign of the times.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm in that statistic, because my primary source of news is through them, and if there's a news story that's, that's kind of interesting, then I go and dig up other sources.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Well, you are exactly the story, right? Which is that people would get the hook from those shows, and then they would go and start looking into it more. And that was, from a satire standpoint, a first of its kind.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again, so this is the perimeter of the comedic circle growing even further.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  That's why those guys, that's really the top of the mountaintop for a lot of comedians like me, for what you can do with comedy.

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because nobody went to Rodney Dangerfield for current events.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, right, right, right. Well, part of it, though, was that the news itself had gotten so ridiculous, right? And so Colbert would make fun of the fact, especially morning news, right? They're covering, say, an alligator walking down the street. Like, no wonder people are not really learning anything. And so it turned out that the satire news was informing the public at a much higher rate, and that's still true, right? They really control it at some level, some of the conversation.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, what we try to do on our show is, you know, we're, look, I'm just a comedian, right? I'm not a scientist or researcher of any kind, but what we try to do is, is bring, and following in that mold, bring information to the audience through comedy. So we mostly go to journalists, scientists, and we bring them on the show.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, plus, it makes a better bit if the information you bring in is current events.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because then people bring an awareness of it to

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  your bit.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Well, the thing is, people also, people love to laugh, and they love to learn, and they love to be informed, and so that template of doing both of those things at once while you're, you know, making fun of the information as you're giving it, turns out to be really effective.

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Well, next, in my interview with Stephen Colbert, we discover the roots of his passion for science and comedy, when StarTalk returns.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We're talking about science and satire with comedian Stephen Colbert. And I asked him about the origins of his sharp sense of humor. Check it out.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  I'm from a family that valued it, you know? Like, it was, like, oxygen. Like, it was a humorocracy. You know, I've said this before, but like, the funniest person in the room was king at any one moment.

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  And there's a lot of us. There are 11 kids in the family.

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Catholic family?

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Yes. And, uh, and, uh...

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And which, what's your rank order?

• 20:49Speaker 02

  I'm 11th.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Jimmy, Eddie, Mary, Billy, Margaret, Tommy, Jerry, Little Paul, Peter Steeman. I'm the baby. And so, you know, as my sisters would say, that they're, you know, I always had an audience. There was always somebody ready to watch. And so I wanted to entertain them. I heard my mom say once, I said, they were complaining to her about how bad my storytelling was. And I heard my mom saying, "He loves telling you his stories. Just listen to them." And I'm, and after that, I thought, well, I've got to get better at this, because I can't force my brothers and sisters to listen to my stories.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To realize that people will listen harder, will care more if they're laughing.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With you at what you say.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was this a revelation or because it's one thing to just make humor and it's another thing to be a pundit. But it's quite an entire other thing to merge the two.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Well, listen, I think you gotta do comedy about the things that interest you. You know, especially if you're doing 200 hours of this a year. You can't fake it. You have to talk about things that actually interest you. And so that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to scientists all the time. Is that's I don't have to fake my interest in that.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  But also, um.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  I mean, comedy is essentially thinking. You know, it's it's it elicits laughter, but that's not the same thing as an emotion. I think the comedy alleviates fog off the mind. Because when you're laughing, you can't be afraid. And when you're not afraid, you think better. I think laughing leads to thinking.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We discovered that on our own in StarTalk. There are people who don't know that they like science and other people who think they don't like science. Then you package it in a way where they come and they smile and they laugh. That makes our show. We don't have a show without that.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  If you get their attention with comedy and then they listen to what the science is, they'll have their own emotional reaction.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  That is greater than anything you could lay on them.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I agree.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  You cannot feel science at people. But science can make you feel.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  The numinous. You know, the awe. You know?

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The wonder.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Of StarTalk.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Wow, you just win it.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love to say, you know, we were we were like feeling it.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So have you found that that comedy helps people learn from your show?

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. In in two ways. I mean, one, there's an incredible quote from George Carlin. I'm gonna butcher it a little bit, but it's when someone is laughing. Is when they're most truly themselves, you know, when their defenses come down and they're most true to themselves. And that's when you can plant a little seed of a new idea in that moment and have it grow. That that had a real impact on me.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does that also mean their defenses are down?

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can get in.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Exactly, because they're reacting so honestly in that moment.

• 23:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Sophia, how does? How does satire help us connect feelings to facts?

• 23:47Speaker 03

  So the-

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a fair question?

• 23:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it is. And it's really interesting to ask this about satire, right? Because not all comedy is satire. Some comedy actually isn't very smart and is actually kinda stupid, right? Making fun of how people look, not necessarily gonna get you smarter. But what satire does, satire lives in the land of irony. Right? So irony depends on, I say one thing, but I mean something else. Right? So suppose it's sort of pouring outside and we both show up at work and you say, hey, nice weather. And I'm like, yeah, it's great. And you know that I didn't mean great, because I was being sarcastic. Right? Your brain has to hear what I'm saying and invert it into what I meant.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  And so when we look at brainwaves, like you said, you literally do see the brain light up when it has to process irony, sarcasm, snark.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Snark is really good. Swearing is actually good, but that's a different topic. So the brain is processing what you're saying and has to think it through.

• 24:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Suppose the person doesn't get the satire and then takes it as fact.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  Um, that's sad.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so is that, is that, wait, wait, is that the failure of the person who didn't get it? Or the failure of the person who delivered it?

• 25:04Speaker 03

  Okay, well I-

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just a bad comedian.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  There's some really interesting data on this, right? So it turns out that there are people who have a difficult time processing irony.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we all know those, these people.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  Yes. And, and-

• 25:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't take them to the comedy club.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  They don't like me, usually, because I tend to be somewhat sarcastic. I mean, right, if you grew up in a sarcastic household-

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you get, that's what-

• 25:23Speaker 03

  And then someone's like-

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's survival.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Why, why are you being sarcastic? Or they just find it offensive.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  It's the most frustrating thing to a comedian when they take you seriously.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  It is, it is.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Funny sentence.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  It is, when you're taken too seriously. I was, was a joke!

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, my good friend Bill Nye, he's a big fan of Stephen Colbert, and he's sent in this dispatch for our show tonight. Let's check it out.

• 25:48Bill Nye?

  We're right off the famous Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. And Hollywood celebrates its stars, just as you do, Neil. Now, Stephen Colbert has one or two stars on his show every night. And Stephen celebrates knowledge and science. That's why he has guests like Neil DGT and even BNSG once in a while. Now, one thing the United States does export, for better or for worse, is our popular culture, our pop culture. And a lot of it's produced right here in Hollywood, USA. Now, here's hoping that Stephen Colbert's passion and good humor get exported right along with the memory of all these stars.

• 26:30Bill Nye?

  Back to you, Neil.

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sophia, I've known this for a while, that one of our biggest exports is entertainment. You kind of stumble on it when you travel. And you put on the TV, and all the shows are like shows you have back home, but dubbed in the local language. But we don't have any of their shows dubbed in our language back here. So, so there's a great asymmetry there. And so, I'm just curious, how long do you think American entertainment will continue to influence the world?

• 27:00Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, what we see is, especially with things like what we saw in The Colbert Report, right, and The Daily Show, there are sort of versions of this everywhere. In fact, there was a total Colbert Report ripoff in China. It was really funny. It was almost identical. And in fact, we have these examples of satire news shows similar to what we had. And part of it is, it's not a very expensive format, right? And people enjoy it. But the other piece of it that we want to remember is that across cultures and across time, human beings have always produced satire. Because it's what you do when you need to mock systems of power that are abusing their status, right?

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's always been a need for it.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  It's always been, so for instance, Colbert referenced Jonathan Swift on his show, right? So they know-

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd love me some Jonathan Swift.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  It goes a little like to Aristophanes, you know, or I think that's a-

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Juvenile and all that stuff, so yeah.

• 28:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, yeah.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The showing off that I'm literate.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  We all knew you knew.

• 28:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, thank you, thank you. So Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report had such a pop culture following that it reached all the way to space. Let's check it out. Dude, you've got a treadmill in space.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  The combined operational load-bearing, load-bearing, external resistance treadmill. Colbert. Isn't that the greatest?

• 28:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's crazy, man.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  I mean, Newton, take me now. I don't.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crazy, I got a bust of Isaac Newton over there, he's looking at you, smiling.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  It's incredible. Here's how it happened. Do you, what is it? So the old show, I loved having things named after me because the whole show was an expression of the ego of my character, not of me. I have no ego, I'm a humble servant. But one of the great things is that I could piggyback my ego on his ego. And we were on break or something like that, I was about to go back to work the next day, and I noticed online that NASA was having a naming contest for one of the new modules that would attach to the space station. And I went, well, surely they're not letting people just submit names. They have to be like a list of four, and it's gonna be like Tranquility, or you know, Serenity, or some nonsense like that.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  And I said, nope, you can submit your own. So I submitted myself, the next day I said, go vote! And we beat everybody. And then NASA, before they announced two ones, said, okay, we need to talk. Because we're not gonna name the module after you, sorry. So this is what they first offered me. They, it was through an intermediary, or else I would've jumped on it right away. They said, we have a water reclamation system. Where it reclaims the astronaut's urine, please. Urine, this is a family show. Urine, and then it's filtered, so it's drinkable again. And I was like, I'm in. You mean, you could name the astronaut urine filtration system after me? And?

• 30:12Speaker 02

  And then you could, can you bring some of that water down? I can have a bourbon and astronaut pee? Oh. You know, I want to have, that's a perfect cocktail. That's the most American cocktail. Kentucky bourbon and astronaut pee. Come on, carve my face on Mount Rushmore. And before I could say yes, they said, okay, we've run it through the higher channels and they're not going to let you name, because this is exactly why. And they said, what about a treadmill? And I said, that sounds fantastic.

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, that's not the only thing the man has named after him. He's got a flavor of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. There's a bald eagle in a zoo, which is of course the symbol of a show and named after him. And he has a species of spider named after him. So, Sophia, what is it about him that he can rally fans with such thoroughness?

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Well, so, part of it is that he's a lot like you. He combines smart, sort of a smart bit, with a lot of charisma. And so, he was also at the forefront of using Twitter. I mean, he had such energy behind getting the Colbert Nation, right? The fans to get connected.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  And it also let you be in on the joke when you did that, like because...

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're a participant?

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, we call it citizen satire.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Citizens, you've got a term for that.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  Right, so, this is a real kind of relationship with his fanbase. This was very new, especially at the kind of magnitude that Colbert had.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you know, he's a true science lover, and he actually had a question for me about something he'd forgotten in science class from his days in school. Let's check it out.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Can you explain to me something about the difference between a theory and a hypothesis? I've had this explained to me all through my childhood, all over again, over and over again, and then when we get to this stage in my life, I forget the difference between a theory and a hypothesis.

• 32:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, let me give a bigger answer. In the old days, we would measure some phenomenon in nature, it would repeat a zillion times.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 32:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is law. Okay. The laws, you know, Newton's laws of gravity. Yeah. Okay. In the 20th century, we discovered that these laws were incomplete. And at the edges of the law, they would like break down and we needed a bigger understanding of what happened. This is how Newton's laws became Einstein's laws. Newton is a special case of Einstein's. And we said, well, if this is going to continue, the word law just is too, is not appropriate. So we'll just simply call them theories. So a theory is an idea that accurately describes what you see and empowers you to predict accurately what you have yet to observe. Okay. Theory of evolution, theory of gravity, when they'll call it the theory of gravity,

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  a quantum theory, all of this. Now, if you have an idea, especially one you just pulled out of your ass, don't call that a theory. I have a theory. It's like, no, it's a hypothesis. I have a hypothesis. You have a hypothesis. And for, and until it is fully supported by evidence, you gotta keep calling it a hypothesis. All right.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Adam, did you get that straight from science class? I remember that one from science. I have a pretty good recall. All right.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, up next, Stephen Colbert shares his thoughts on reason and religion when StarTalk returns.

• 33:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. Featuring my interview with comedian and late night talk show guru Stephen Colbert. And his shows are infused with a love of science, but he's also been very open on his show about his devotion to Catholicism. So I asked him about that aspect of his background. Let's check it out.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  I was raised in a, in a, uh, regular church-going Catholic, uh, house. I was an altar boy, um, yeah, it was really a big part of my life.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, being in the south and being religi- having religion a big part of your life, and having all this science, there was not, not, no problem there, I guess?

• 34:26Speaker 02

  No, no, because my dad, you know, my dad was a perfectly logical, um, rational, um, Catholic, devoted rightly, you know, to reason. Um, and I was not raised that those things were incompatible, you know? I was raised with, um,

• 34:49Speaker 02

  the church as a teaching organization, you know? My dad was taught by Jesuits. And, you know, Big Bang, the Big Bang was first postulated by Catholic priests.

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  You know, and so that's the church that I was raised in.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So Jesuits actually have some badass moments in their history. They, they singularly invented the Gregorian calendar.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  What?

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before the era of telescopes.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Okay, so how did they do that?

• 35:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, they would just careful measurements of the sun, moon, and stars.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  And then math.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they show, and a little bit of math, and they showed that the old Julian calendar was mismatched to the beginning of the seasons.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  I've always been taught that the Jesuits were pretty good on science, that they were a powerhouse.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so they were mean to Galileo, okay, but other than that...

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Was it the Jesuits who were mean to Galileo?

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They were, they were terrible to Galileo.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Well, come on, I heard he was a jerk.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yes, actually, yes, yes.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he was a real a-hole.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  He lived. They didn't burn him.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Oh, God.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  They didn't burn him, put away the violins, everybody, he lived. Right? Did they kill him or not?

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they didn't kill him, they put him on house arrest.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  All right.

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Please.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, joining us now to tackle this portion of our show is an actual, authentic, Jesuit priest and author, Father James Martin. Father, welcome.

• 36:14Speaker 05

  Nice to meet you.

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, he was never taught, Stephen Colbert was never taught, that reason and religion were incompatible. So, why would you say so many people have the impression?

• 36:28Speaker 05

  Well, I think the same thing that drives bad science, which would be ignorance. So, this is the same thing that drives bad religion. You know, people don't understand a lot of some of the theories of science and some of the actual facts about science. And a lot of people don't understand religion and kind of what's behind religion. And so, I think it's a little bit of ignorance. And also, you know, we're responsible for it, too. I mean, we haven't always been very pro-science. But, you know, there really is no conflict between faith and reason. I think most intelligent believers would tell you that.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Colbert is apparently proud that the Catholics didn't kill Galileo.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  It's kind of a low bar.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a low bar. So, in modern times, Father, what has the Catholic Church done as a sign that it embraces science rather than shun it?

• 37:17Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, in terms of what's going on in the Vatican, you can see a lot of conferences on science, a lot of conferences for, you know, both atheists and believers. But, I mean, they sponsor professional conferences and scientific conferences and try to explain to people how, exactly, how science and faith can coexist, which I think is very important.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if I remember correctly, the recent encyclical by the Pope included a lot of reference to science.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  Well, right. Laudato Si, which is about climate change and also about how it disproportionately affects the poor, drew on a lot of science and climatologists and was one of the first papal encyclicals that really kind of pulled that in, not at a sort of abstract level, but on a real granular level, actually saying that these are the effects of climate change. And, you know, to show that we have nothing, not only the fear from science, but we really need science and it can help us in our religious beliefs and in the sort of the proclamation of what we're trying to do in the Catholic Church.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Father, you wrote a book, a bestselling book, called Between Heaven and Mirth. Awesome title.

• 38:19Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 38:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter are at the Heart of Spiritual Life. So, this whole show's been about comedy. And so, where does humor...

• 38:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Linked to spirituality.

• 38:32Speaker 05

  Well, the first thing is that joy is the kind of natural end to religion. I mean, the Christian message is one of joy. Christ is risen is supposed to be good news.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Although, although in Catholicism, suffering is a major part of this.

• 38:46Speaker 05

  It's a, it's a part of it, but it's not the only part. I mean, the, the final part of the, of the Christian story is the Easter resurrection, which is joyful. And, you know, Adam was talking about how we remember things.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good, because it was pretty bloody up until that point.

• 38:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, for, right, for, for a few days.

• 39:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, all right.

• 39:01Speaker 05

  But, you know, Adam was saying that humor helps us remember things. And New Testament scholars say that Jesus used humor in his parables. We don't understand it because we're not, you know, first century Judeans or Galileans. But there are sort of examples. For example, he says-

• 39:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're telling me he cracked some jokes?

• 39:17Speaker 05

  He does. There's, there's an example, you're talking about how to remember things. At one point with the scribes and the Pharisees, he says, "You strain out a gnat and you swallow a camel." And we say, "Well, that's interesting." But in Aramaic, the words, right, for camel and gnat are gamla and gama. So what he's doing is he's doing a little pun. He's doing a little word play, which would have helped people remember things in his day. So we don't understand it.

• 39:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got lost and trashed.

• 39:41Speaker 05

  That's a joke, yeah.

• 39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a joke.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 39:42Speaker 05

  There's another time, there's another time where one of the disciples hears it's the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and he says, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Which is a little bit of a dig, basically. So there, we, we don't, we don't get it because it's, you know, first century Galatian-

• 39:55Speaker 01

  These are stand-up jokes, I know this!

• 39:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, and so part of it is, is recognizing that in these stories that we know so well is some humor. And the people at, in those times would have understood these things as funny and, as Adam was saying, memorable, too.

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some of the best satire is when you make fun of yourself or your own, your own tribe, I guess. So, Father, how would a Catholic go about satireizing the Catholic Church?

• 40:18Speaker 05

  Very easily.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Easily!

• 40:21Speaker 05

  There's a, there's a lot to, there's a lot to laugh at. And I, I mean, I think that's a perfectly legitimate target. I mean, they're human organizations, we have to keep humble. And so why wouldn't you make fun of, you know, people who are pompous or, or stuffy or, or things that we do that are crazy? So why not?

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Father, thank you once again for being on StarTalk. All right, coming up, Stephen Colbert shares from a hopeful reminder that knowledge is power when StarTalk returns.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Start off from the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. We've been discussing the intersection of science and satire with comedian and talk show host Stephen Colbert. Check it out. So Stephen.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Neil.

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever are the challenges of politics between knowing what is true and what isn't? I think we feel that even more deeply in the sciences. When you have people rising up with platform, speaking objectively false things about the natural world.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's frustrating.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we don't even know what to do. And all I have to say is let's just fall to the bottom and then everyone figures out how they should pay attention to knowledge. I don't know.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  But in the, in the process of that fall.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Things are broken.

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  And things are neglected.

• 41:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  When instead, things could be built. And action can be taken to prevent further damage. A report was recently published, leaked actually, from 15 different federal agencies, I believe, who all agree that climate change is happening faster. The effects are more profound, more immediate, more palpable, knowable by individuals. You can see it happening in your lives. It was leaked because the fear was that the president administration would

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Suppress it.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Suppress this report. So, so this is the world we live in now? That science has to be leaked? Are we gonna get our weather forecasts from a guy wearing a trench coat and a shadowy, you know, deep throat is giving us our weather forecasts in a, in a parking lot somewhere in Washington DC? You know? You know, leaking the information that it's partly cloudy tomorrow? Just fear of knowledge, like fear of knowing things about the world is so weak. I think the, the, the thing that will save us from people who don't want to know is that knowledge is power and if they refuse to know, they will lose power.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Sophia, is there a tipping point for the power of knowledge overcoming the forces of ignorance?

• 43:14Speaker 03

  So, the big thing that you see in Colbert is that he loves knowledge, right? What we're seeing today isn't so much a distinction between ignorance and knowledge, it's misinformed versus uninformed versus informed.

• 43:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  Okay, so if you're misinformed and I try to inform you, it's not likely to go well for me, because I will actually sort of ask you to give up a thing you think is true.

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm hunkered down on it.

• 43:51Speaker 03

  Right, but if you say, "Hey, you know, there's a new planet," and I say, "Oh, okay, I didn't know, I'm cool, but I didn't know," and you informed me, that relationship is, that still works.

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but...

• 44:06Speaker 03

  It's the misinformed versus...

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but, so, is this a pendulum? Is it, are we in a swing of the pendulum where misinformation trumps accurate information?

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Your metaphor here assumes that there will be another swing, right?

• 44:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  That there's movement.

• 44:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm asking you. You study this stuff.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  So, no, it's not good. The misinformation in the general public today is significantly worse than we've ever seen, at a time when, in fact, people have so much information at their fingertips.

• 44:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Adam, if we, if science is suppressed in society, like Colbert mentioned, what's gonna happen? You have thoughts on that?

• 44:49Speaker 01

  I mean, it, there's, nothing good can happen as a result. You know, science is how we learn about the world around us, it's how we take action. If you don't know the world, you can't take appropriate action in the world. So, I mean, if science is suppressed...

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a beautiful sentence.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you. That means a lot coming from you.

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, before we wrap, Stephen Colbert offered a final thought on the importance of knowledge and learning.

• 45:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flew his own excitement for science. Check it out.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Here's what got me excited about science, among other things. I would say two things that happened in rapid succession. The moon landing of 1969. The eclipse of 1970, which was totality going up the east coast. I live in Charleston, South Carolina.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  But then all the missions throughout the 70s. I was glued to all of them. I mean, I still believe that it's the most exciting thing. The most exciting way to light a candle in the mind of a child is to say, "See all of that out there? That's for all of us to discover. We can go do it." You know? That's, that, that is a tangible frontier for us. I mean, I'm totally hooked into that hopeful vision of the future. I'm still with the "we do not choose to do this" and the other things because they're easy, but because they are hard. The harder it is, the more valuable it'll be to do. The better, the more we have to do them.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The deepest respect I have for any profession that's out there is for the community of comedians. As a, as a, as a group. They're smart, they're clever, they're witty, they know stuff. And they have access to us. They know how to reach us, make us smile, make us think. And what is satire? It's a way to open a door to an idea that you might otherwise be uncomfortable with. But now you hear it in, in this comedic context. Then you start laughing at it.

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know what happens? Which is why comedy at its best, there is no substitute for it. You know what happens? They get inside of who you are. And they understand society like no one else does. And they connect you to society. They figure it out, they put it back to you in a way that makes you laugh.

• 47:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you realize that the jokes you just laughed at, the comedian who's delivering the jokes, they're not really there at all. Because all they did was hold up a mirror to society and a mirror to ourselves.

• 47:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is the value of comedy in this world. And we need it, because without it,

• 48:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  civilization itself would be unbearable.

• 48:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is a cosmic perspective.

• 48:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ladies and gentlemen, I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. And I'd like to thank our guest, Adam Sapiens. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for joining us. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.